Goodbye Administrative State, Hello Community Resilience

This is a brilliant article by Heinberg and answers many questions for the TINA crowd ("there is not alternative" -- think Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Hillary Clinton) and the anarchist and revolutionary side as well.  Spinning off Trumps clumsy, brutal and dangerous efforts to roll back regulation, he identifies two areas wherein reduction is administrative complexity would indeed have outsizes positive ramifications for the world -- Finance and Energy.  He outrageously suggests a managed collapse of both the sectors as being our best hope for our survival

"Are there other, better opportunities for reducing societal complexity? Maybe it would make more sense to seek simplification in the areas of the system that most threaten its overall stability. Two obvious candidates are the financial sector and the energy system. For the past four decades, America's financial system has grown faster than any other segment of its economy -- by piling on debt. And as we've seen, debt levels are now unsustainable. Previous societies have been able to extricate themselves from similar dilemmas in only one way -- by forgiving debt, cancelling it, and repudiating it on a large scale. This will eventually happen, quite literally by default, one way or another; why not get ahead of the curve by managing a financial collapse? If it were managed really, really well, perhaps it might not even feel like a collapse". -- Richard Heinberg

I love this guy, a local and he plays a mean violin. And, lot of great book references here.

Goodbye Administrative State, Hello Community Resilience:



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Bernie On Congressional Approval for Airstrike Is Dead Wrong

Even as I boosted Bernie for President I knew he was wrong on foreign policy.  I could give a damn about a Congressional rubber stamps for American wars of interventions around the world.  They are motivated by desire for empire, corporate war profiteers and are just wrong. Even his opening paragraph is full of untruths.

"In a world of vicious dictators, Syria’s Bashar Assad tops the list as a dictator who has killed hundreds of thousands of his own citizens to protect his own power and wealth. His regime’s use of chemical weapons against the men, women and children of his country, in violation of all international conventions and moral standards, makes him a war criminal."

Much like Saddam Husein before him Assad, (cut of the same cloth, both real pieces of work and products of the Cold War,) tops the long standing Neo Con list of targets for regime change.  Decades of clandestine dirty trick, economic sanctions culminating in a US sponsored transfer of many billions in weapons via US ally Saudi Arabia which armed the extremist rebels of choice in a new holy war and turned the usual middle-east bloody repression of this secular dictator  into a horrific bloodbath of historic proportions that they have the gall to call a civil war.

Assad has indeed committed serious crimes against his opposition just as Saddam Hussein before him but the real war crime, the real cause of 400,000 dead, the full responsibility for this catastrophe in the middle east belongs squarely on the shoulders of the US.

If you recall Saddam Hussein used US supplied Sarine gas on his Kurdish opposition with a wink and a nod by the US.  This was ironically used in the run up to the first Gulf war as and example of how terrible this dictator was.  One year later 100,000 people were dead, many children.  This is on us. Now it's 400,000.  Forgetting history is deadly.  I do not have a road map here but I do know we can not bomb our way to peace.

"A clear conscience is a clear sign of a bad memory" Mark Twain


FOCUS: No Airstrikes Without Congressional Approval:



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One of the biggest fights in food is about to become a civil war

At one of our recent meeting with Farmer Guild, Evan Wig presented the news -- Big Ag in the guise of the USDA wants us little guys who do organic food to join in with the big guys to research and promote what we do.  You know "the rising tide raises all boats". My ass! Paid for with a tax on producers like us, they would produce advertisements with slogans like “Incredible Edible Egg,” “Pork: The Other White Meat,” “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner,” and “Got Milk?” promoting industries  in the past (mostly Big Meat and Big Dairy), without ever mentioning a specific company or brand. Who pays for those ads? most people will never know. Promoting beef as the perfect food for what ails you always seemed a bit murky on the ethic meter to me.  But central to the question at hand is whether this begins Big Ag's take over of organics.

Read on...., One of the biggest fights in food is about to become a civil war | New Food Economy:



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Sessions Takes Aim at Obama-Era Police Reforms

The phrase "Obama era police reforms" is a sick joke anyway as anyone that has been part of efforts at accountability well knows.  Ask Black Lives Matter if platitudes are effective policy even as they are the stock and trade of  New Democrats since Bill Clinton including Obama.  Reports indicate that extra judicial shootings and cover ups continue unabated the January and February of this year despite spotlights shone on Baltimore and Ferguson.



Sessions said “Local control and local accountability are necessary for effective local policing,” the memo read. “It is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies."  This could just as well been written about the Voting Rights act and is an obvious republican plank.  If Sessions had not done this the Supreme court would have anyway.

I of course completely disagree that this is Federal over-reach.  Civil rights are what the constitution is for and we certainly have a right to not be shot by bad cops.  I do fear what comes next.  Less accountability, more militarism and authoritarianism is clearly where we are going, Sessions will support that and should be resisted.

Sessions Takes Aim at Obama-Era Police Reforms:

Trump's perverse populism | openDemocracy

We could do with a bit of education on a term, much in "abuse".  This is short and to the point and very useful.

Trump's perverse populism | openDemocracy:



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More on solidarity and May Day demonstrations

read this

https://socialistworker.org/2017/03/28/making-may-day-a-day-for-solidarity

Another article by occupy.com to critique

Read this article thoroughly to find how it plays into identity politics by conflating occupy' s central question of income inequality with movements dedicated to cooperation and Cooperative living and intentional community.  This keeps us divided.

It would be better to link this blog to the actual occupy page as there are comments on that page that support my contention that occupy is full of s***

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/38056-capitalism-killing-you-income-sharing-could-save-our-lives

If resistance sees regime change as the goal It ultimately fails

This article contains many jewels of wisdom. It shows clearly that what is lacking  in the logic of resistance  is that we resist capitalism not Trump and if we don't see this clearly all of the bad things that Trump is going to do will simply be done by his neoliberal successor. Simply look at history of the past 40 years of our move to the right to understand this.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40068-capitalism-produced-trump-another-reason-to-move-beyond-it

More industry propaganda spread by New York Times

Read this one more thoughly


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/technology/net-neutrality.html?_r=0

Israel Buys Social Media Monitoring System That Can 'Plant Ideas' in Online Discourse

Nothing new here.  This does however confirm the fallacy of a political resistance using social media platforms for organizing.  It's kind of like inviting the FBI to sit in and take part in your meetings.  Even if the core of groups use encryption for sensitive communications the entire online discussion, coordination of the rank and file and promotion of the movement on the Internet is an open door for manipulation.

This is not just about privacy.  It is about content, the framing ideas and toxic mental pollution by government and corporate trolls.  It certainly is, as the article says, already happening...Israel is just buying new software after all. Thus we can deduce that online discussions are already manipulated...seeded with misinformation...already pushed into frameworks that misinform, encourage infighting on the left and disunity of purpose.  This is no way to build a movement.


Israel Buys Social Media Monitoring System That Can 'Plant Ideas' in Online Discourse:



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How Bill Clinton Paved the Way for Donald Trump’s Racist and Audacious Deportation Agenda

This article provides historical background for immigrations issues and demonstrates that it has been the official policy of the US to marginalize immigrants going way back to the first New Democrat, Bill Clinton, (and beyond.) Together with mean spirited welfare reform, jump starting privatization and the prison industrial complex, skyrocketing incarceration rates and escalating the war on drugs, Clinton rewrote the book on depriving immigrants civil rights to due process.  That is the same playbook we have today.  Trump has simply declined to put a happy face on it while Clinton would smooth talk  and smile winningly and while screwing immigrants.  To be certain Donald added a spike in hate crime to the stew which make our self righteous liberal blood boil, but this harm pales by comparison to the oppression and institutional violence of  our long established right wing immigration policy.  It needs to change.


How Bill Clinton Paved the Way for Donald Trump’s Racist and Audacious Deportation Agenda | Alternet:



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Verizon's AppFlash App Can Track Phones, Target Ads | Digital Trends

The article is too full of minutia and doesn't say much more than the headline. Suffice to say, every company is doing it, legal or not.

One of the commenter's statement below the article is that "nothing really changed" with this legislation.  This is straight out of industry talking points.  Although it is true that the recent FCC rules had yet to go into effect, the research, millions of public inputs and public interest briefs and the arduous rule making process has been ongoing for nearly 10 years, this throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the proverbial legislative "Green Light" that starts the race to the bottom for privacy and net neutrality that the industry has lobbied for many years.  Wall street will now see dollar signs and reward and invest in the most aggressive and abusive companies. Yes this does matter, even if the former rules would not have solved the problem of invasion of privacy.

Verizon's AppFlash App Can Track Phones, Target Ads | Digital Trends:



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Diverse Protest Groups Unite As 'The Majority,' Aiming for Large-Scale Demonstrations on May 1st

This is a good idea.  "The Majority" as names go, as true as it is, may not be easy to own.   The organizing perspective is nontheless quite necessary for an effective resistance:

"Those organizing with The Majority coalition seek to unite front-lines movements and rally behind a vision rooted in historical perspective."

The Left in America is not very good at this, bad in fact and the Right damn well knows it.  Unless we coalesce, unite or join in solidarity, whatever you want to call it the Right will back us into identity politics corners and through framing struggles as single issue battles they will have us infighting for scraps sooner than you can shake a stick.

Diverse Protest Groups Unite As 'The Majority,' Aiming for Large-Scale Demonstrations on May 1st | Alternet:



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