In a new poll, half of Republicans say they would support postponing the 2020 election if Trump proposed it

What a sensational headline, (and I don't mean good or true.)  I would remind the reader that a study is not a fact.  Although I do think that it is entirely possible for us to have a coup in this country (indeed probable), I doubt that Trump is the one to lead it. Although I am not suprised by the study results, I agree with the commenter below that this study does not mean much, and as Noam Chomsky has recently noted, the one to fear is the young, truly charismatic and intellectually coherent fascist that replaces him.  That is certainly the authoritarian direction we have been going toward for many years.  Combine this with the seemingly unstoppable bi-partisan militarization of police, the exponential increase in domestic surveillance and use of military grade drones at home over time-- we have grounds to be very worried -- Just not necessarily about Trump.  The devil is in the details.  The neoliberal establishment for decades has given the executive branch unprecidented tools while eroding trust in the house and senate. Elections are a farse in too many ways to count in these comments and a majority of statehouses and governerships are even worse. Corrections to this undemocratic drift in course that makes a coup possible will be connected to many thousands of nooks and crannies of law and administration that will still be there after Trump is gone unless changed.

Comment by Tim Willoughby
8/15/2017 3:35 AM PDT
I'm surprised by the results of this survey. Appreciated getting as much detail as we did on methodology behind it, but would love to know some more details of how the results were weighted. If you weight on age, gender, race, and education, and do so to match the population, that could be a lot of weighting! I hope these results were weighted to represent the Republican population, and that it worked out that none of the weighting factors were especially high.

If you had only a sample that began skewed, then weighting could send those results in all sorts of crazy directions.

Additionally, 52% agreement, while surprising, is unlikely to be a significant difference against disagreement (i.e. if you ran the exact same study again, it wouldn't consistently be higher than disagreement), with the sample size you're talking about.

While the headline numbers here are certainly concerning, I'm not convinced that the stats really mean much here."

The the original Washington Post article here if you wish to read it.

In a new poll, half of Republicans say they would support postponing the 2020 election if Trump proposed it - The Washington Post:



'via Blog this'

Indivisible Guide - A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda

This is just a link. go here and look at their ideas for action



Indivisible Guide - A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda:



'via Blog this'

Who Owns the Internet?

I found this article on the Media Ecology Facebook page together with the following comment. Well, what do you think?

     Last fall, some Times reporters went looking for the source of a stream of largely fabricated pro-Trump stories that had run on a Web site called Departed. They traced them to a twenty-two-year-old computer-science student in Tbilisi named Beqa Latsabidze. He told the Times that he had begun the election season by pumping out flattering stories about Hillary Clinton, but the site hadn’t generated much interest. When he switched to pro-Trump nonsense, traffic had soared, and so had the site’s revenues. “For me, this is all about income,” Latsabidze said. Perhaps the real problem is not that Brand’s prophecy failed but that it came true. A “computer bum” sitting in Tbilisi is now so “empowered” as an individual that he can help turn an election halfway around the world.
     Either out of conviction or simply out of habit, the gatekeepers of yore set a certain tone. They waved through news about state budget deficits and arms-control talks, while impeding the flow of loony conspiracy theories. Now Chartbeat allows everyone to see just how many (or, more to the point, how few) readers there really are for that report on the drought in South Sudan or that article on monopoly power and the Internet. And so it follows that there will be fewer such reports and fewer such articles. The Web is designed to give people what they want, which, for better or worse, is also the function of democracy"...Alexander Kuskis in Media Ecology.

This from the new New Yorker

Thirty years ago, almost no one used the Internet for anything. Today, just about everybody uses it for everything. Even as the Web has grown, however, it has narrowed. Google now controls nearly ninety per cent of search advertising, Facebook almost eighty per cent of mobile social traffic, and Amazon about seventy-five per cent of e-book sales. Such dominance, Jonathan Taplin argues, in “Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy” (Little, Brown), is essentially monopolistic.  Elizabeth Kolbert - New Yorker

Who Owns the Internet? | The New Yorker:







'via Blog this'

Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection

Neil Postman had the best take on bullshit and crap detection:

As I see it, the best things schools can do for kids is to help them learn how to distinguish useful talk from bullshit. I will ask only that you agree that every day in almost every way people are exposed to more bullshit than it is healthy for them to endure, and that if we can help them to recognize this fact, they might turn away from it and toward language that might do them some earthly good. - "Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection", by Neil Postman

Why bullshit is no laughing matter | Aeon Ideas:

The book list for Postman is well worth reviewing.  Much of our current debate about culture, causes of malaise and collapse of education have been known, studied and advocated for many, many years.  But, of course we have no memory of history here in America so it is not surprising that we just react.

• Television and the Teaching of English (1961).
• Linguistics: A Revolution in Teaching, with Charles Weingartner (Dell Publishing, 1966).
• Teaching as a Subversive Activity, with Charles Weingartner (Delacorte Press, 1969)
• "Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection" — speech given at National Convention for the Teachers of English (1969)^[12]
• The Soft Revolution: A Student Handbook For Turning Schools Around, with Charles Weingartner (Delacorte Press, 1971).
• The School Book: For People Who Want to Know What All the Hollering is About, with Charles Weingartner (Delacorte Press, 1973).
• Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk: How We Defeat Ourselves By the Way We Talk and What to Do About It (1976). Postman's introduction to general semantics.
• Teaching as a Conserving Activity (1979).
• The Disappearance of Childhood (1982).
• Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985).
• Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education (1988).
• How to Watch TV News, with Steve Powers (1992).
• Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992).

Oppressive Precedents Used Against Nazis Will Be Used Against the Left | Ian Welsh

I have to agree that the decision to cut someone or some group off from the Internet or phones or banking or credit should not be in the hands of private industry -- a very dangerous precedent.

On the other hand I would applaud efforts illegal or not to disrupt, misdirect and destroy such sites and organizations by any means necessary by individuals and organized groups.  I am proposing a sort of anarchy of the narrow sort often associated with Anonymous and Antifa.  This all seems very messy but it is a necessary part of a broad platform to resist oppression and mobilize for progressive change.

Read comments by the service providers here on ZDNet



Oppressive Precedents Used Against Nazis Will Be Used Against the Left | Ian Welsh:



'via Blog this'

Dark Age America -- a blog

An expatiate's point of view


An astute social critic for many years Morris Berman recently had this to say:

I have to admit to my own lack of imagination. When I wrote Twilight (2000), or DAA (2006), or WAF (2011), the 2017 scenario of the endgame never once entered my mind. Maybe it would have, if I had written a book of cartoons. There are a number of ways a civilization can collapse, of course, but death by absurdity was one I just never thought of.

I found the following blog entry very insightful and motivated me to look at this book again as I did not really pay attention to it at the time.

  
    I've been rereading a book I 1st read many years ago, "The Denial of Death," by Ernest Becker. His argument is that we take on symbolic 'immortality projects'--for example, the American Dream--in order to hide from our mortality; to deny death. This project gives people the feeling that there is meaning in their lives. But because the project is essentially arbitrary, and sits on a volcano (the fear of death), it is endowed with a kind of ferocity. He thus writes that we "wheel and deal in an idiot frenzy"--a perfect description of hustling America. All of this, he says, explains the phenomenon of depression. People start to feel that their immortality project is false, that they've been sold a bill of goods; or they feel that they cannot be successful, be a 'hero', in terms of that immortality project. (I would add, they can probably feel both emotions at the same time.) The result is that they are reminded of their mortality, and their feelings of worthlessness.
     This goes a long way to explaining Trump--an illusory life-raft against the collapse of the American Dream, the promise to restore it--and also, the genocide we visit on other peoples, and the rage we see at home. Police are mowing down unarmed civilians at an alarming rate, and civilians are mowing down each other. The degree of all this was dramatically lower 20 years ago. At that time, it would be unthinkable that someone would be so offended at an oversight of not receiving bacon on their cheeseburger, that they would return to McDonald's with a machine gun and hose the place down. This would seem to be the stuff of (surreal) comedy, yet it happens all the time. Americans are depressed, bitter, and spiritually lost as a result of their immortality project having failed them--or of them, having failed it--and are going over the top on a daily basis as a result. (The stats: there is now more than one massacre a day in the US, now, defined as the killing and/or maiming of 4 or more individuals.) We are, to quote Dylan Thomas, raging against the dying of the light. There are of course better ways of reacting to our individual and national decline, but neither the country nor its inhabitants are likely to find them. All we have ever known, in America, is blind impulse, and all indications are that that is not going to change.

Morris Berman is the author of a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness–-The Reenchantment of the World (1981), Coming to Our Senses (1989), and Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000)

http://morrisberman.blogspot.com/

Charlottesville: far-right crowd with torches encircles counter-protest group

And do you still say that this is protected speech and not a Klan rally? I strongly disagree. These marches will intimidate other community opinion and chill the peaceful voices that simply want to protect the religious and ethnic minorities that are the focus of these marchers' hate. Right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities I only wish the Anti-Fa were there in numbers that could have successfully confronted the march with force. Fascist success here will breed more and bigger hate marches and the collateral damage of attacks and murders at the hands of white nationalist hate group. Those 254 fatalities will certainly escalate and become lynchings. Don't be such a fucking mamby pamby liberal. They will come for you next.


In a White House statement yesterday the Trump administrate gave what amouts to support to the marchers.

 Yet, yesterday, Trump’s deputy assistant and counterterrorism adviser, Sebastian Gorka, ridiculed the idea of lone-wolf terrorists and played down the threat of white supremacist violence.
     Not surprisingly, Gorka made his comments on the Breitbart News Daily radio show. Under the leadership of President Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, Breitbart became the platform for a new form of white supremacy called “the alt-right.”
     It says something about Trump that Gorka and Bannon are members of his administration. And what it says is quite disturbing. -- Sothern Law Povery Center

This is no candle light march.  It is truly disturbing. "Jews will not replace us" is just one of the slogans. They mean everybody who does not agree will be subjected by force.

Charlottesville: far-right crowd with torches encircles counter-protest group | World news | The Guardian:



'via Blog this'

When Will Climate Change Make the Earth Too Hot For Humans?

If you have not seen this you should.  Not right before bed, and then do something fun afterward because this is the darkest, worst case scenarios I have seen.



When Will Climate Change Make the Earth Too Hot For Humans?:



'via Blog this'

Henry Kissinger warns destroying Isis could lead to ‘Iranian radical empire’

Beware Kissinger's comments on "what next after Isis' defeat" as they have deep roots in diabolical NeoCon planning (just look at that face) and are historically and geo politically absolutely incorrect.
First reported in mainstream press, his comment were actually presented as a keynote speech before The Centre for Policy Studies Margaret Thatcher Conference on Security 2017, the pinnacle of Neoconservative think tanks.  This disinformation is however is completely supported by headlines across the globe including from the NY Times "Iran Dominates in Iraq After U.S. ‘Handed the Country Over’" which is discussed in this podcast I have included below .  Implicating Iran is part and parcel of pushing the NeoCon agenda which is never ending war, a plan in the making for 30 years and largely successful in creating chaos and destruction.

The pod cast is not limited to the current media hysteria over the prospect of an Iranian Radical Empire but rather goes deep into uncomfortable facts about the middle east that Americans prefer to forget.  Hence it is a lively history lesson on the middle east conflict and I recommend a refresher course and an immunization for fear mongering and hype.  Give it a listen.


Henry Kissinger warns destroying Isis could lead to ‘Iranian radical empire’ | The Independent:



'via Blog this'

Kissinger pushes Iranophobia, fear of 'radical empire' as ISIL declines

Kissinger is not ill-informed, rather he specializes in disinformation  When the Iranian Radical Empire idea is dissected, it proves to be quite a ridiculous proposition.

     I presume Kissinger thinks the Iranian radicalism here is the ideology of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, or Khomeinism, which holds that clerics should rule society.
     If Kissinger is suggesting that we go slow on rolling up ISIL because it is a check on Iran, that is a non-starter. ISIL blew up Paris and Brussels and Istanbul and Damascus and Baghdad, and it simply must be stopped.
     As for the radical empire idea, first of all, that is ridiculous. Lebanon is a multicultural country where Christians, Sunni Muslims, Shiites and Druze shape politics. Even Hizbullah admits that it isn’t a plausible country for Khomeinism.

     Most of Syria is dominated by the secular Baath Party. Its alliance with Iran is one of convenience, not ideology. Although the upper echelons of the Baath and the Syrian Arab Army are dominated by the Alwaite Shiite minority, Alawites are esoteric, New Age Shiites without Friday mosque prayers or a seminary-trained clerical establishment. In short, it is the least likely community to support Khomeinism you could imagine. The rest of Syria is Christians, Druze, Kurds and Sunni Muslims– also not likely to be tempted by Twelver Shiite clerical Khomeinism.
     Although the majority of parliament in Iraq is Twelver Shiite, most Iraqis reject Khomeinism. They do not want clerical rule. Even the chief cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, rejects clerical rule in favor of parliamentary governance. And Shiites in Iraq are not all-powerful. They need the Kurds and Sunni Arabs. Kurds are Sunnis. So 40 percent of Iraq is Sunni or other non-Shiite minority.

Kissinger pushes Iranophobia, fear of 'radical empire' as ISIL declines:



'via Blog this'

A Quick Note On Venezuela

Venezuela’s problems prove nothing except that resource economies are vulnerable and that the world system and super power are hostile to socialists

This article provide a much needed simplification of this volatile situation that festers amid hype, demagoguery and hysteria. I am very sad for the Venezuelan people and I do not blame the Bolivian Revolution. I do not excuse their petty corruptions but they did many good things that will now be lost. They tried to do the right thing and were beaten by the world for trying.

A Quick Note On Venezuela | Ian Welsh:

If you want a more in depth view of what they might have done to succeed I recommend Ian's other article called Seven Rules for Running a Real Left-Wing Government | Ian Welsh: It is not about Venezuela specifically but it innumerate what a revolution would have to do to beat the odds in a global capitalist world and as you might guess the odds are nearly insurmountable.  What we are left with is lighting a candle in rememberance of a heroic chapter in South American history.

Fossil fuel subsidies are a staggering $5 tn per year globally

This says a study from IMF who might know something.

The new study finds 6.5% of global GDP goes to subsidizing dirty fossil fuels

And yet all those same governments with hand over heart swear the are committed to fighting global warming. Given that is impossible with this amount of subsidy -- I guess they are all just lying?  Ya think?

Fossil fuel subsidies are a staggering $5 tn per year | John Abraham | Environment | The Guardian:

Keeping the Wealthy Healthy -- and Everyone Else Waiting

Our health care system is broken in too many ways to count. This article illustrates the corruption of money, yet again another way it's broken.

I do however believe that the heroic care that is used as example, as visceral as it may be, is romanticized out of useful context. I was first introduced to the single payer debate in 1994 when California single payer, prop 186 was defeated in a high priced campaign of lies.  A group of Canadian doctors presenting a film in Petaluma understood the single payer mechanism as vitally important and yet only the first step.  We have in this country a "Heroic Medical Care" system when what we need in this country is a "Public Health Care" system. Such a system would clearly focus on preventative care, well baby, diet, lifestyle, obesity, pollution -- all the little things that reduce the need for heroic medical intervention to a small fraction of the total program. This context is largely missing from the national debate. .

     If rich people had to wait in line for an MRI like everyone else, the American health care system would be changed overnight. We have one health care system for the 1 percent and another for everyone else. I call it wealth care.

It is predictable that millionaire doctors and administrators of hospitals would use the health crises of the ultra rich as an opportunity for fundraising.  After all providing that value is an important albeit unfair part of their job.


Keeping the Wealthy Healthy -- and Everyone Else Waiting:



'via Blog this'

The Aftermath of Ghost Ship and the San Pablo Fires

This is important to hear

Media’s Grim Addiction to Perseverance Porn

Perseverance Porn.  What a instructive label for something I have always felt very uneasy with that is expecially abundant on Facebook.

    A healthy press would take these anecdotes of “can do” spirit and ask bigger questions, like why are these people forced into such absurd hardship? Who benefits from skyrocketing college costs? Why does the public transit in this person’s city not have subsidies for the poor? Why aren’t employers forced to offer time off for catastrophic accidents? But time and again, the media mindlessly tells the bootstrap human interest story, never questioning the underlying system at work..

Media’s Grim Addiction to Perseverance Porn | FAIR:

We can go way deeper in the direction of understanding the propogana of poverty in our neoliberal state.  Don’t Lie to Poor Kids About Why They’re Poor
Those at the bottom — and the top — deserve to know why their experiences are so different.
August 3, 2017 | Josh Hoxie
Originally in OtherWords

     Work hard and you’ll get ahead — that’s the mantra driven into young people across the country.
     But what happens when children born into poverty run face first into the crushing reality that the society they live in really isn’t that fair at all?
     As new research shows, they break down.  A just released study published in the journal Child Development tracked the middle school experience of a group of diverse, low-income students in Arizona. The study found that the kids who believed society was generally fair typically had high self-esteem, good classroom behavior, and less delinquent behavior outside of school when they showed up in the sixth grade.
     When those same kids left in the eighth grade, though, each of those criteria had degraded — they showed lower self-esteem and worse behavior.

With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons

This is a very important article for understanding what is in it for the neo conservatives and how the DNC and beltway democrats are playing both sides.  Also under the cloak of opposition to Trump the nation is marching to war

     There's a common misconception that neoliberalism & neoconservatism are mutually exclusive. By definition most folks in Washington are both.  The only thing that changes is the political party that  the neocons choose to align with.  Currently it's the Dems.          -- Caitlin Johnstone‏ 

The public debate in this country seems ever more simple in its clear divisions of two sides at war for the minds of the people.  It is anything but two sided once you strip away the knee jerk narrative you find a cast of characters planning and coalescing power to which the public is completely unaware.

Glenn Greenwald's article in the Intercept is full of evil doers and their connections.
With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons:



'via Blog this'

Pop Quiz -- Under what circumstance should you talk to the police?

Black? White? Young? Old? Guilty? Innocent?

Not even there? Wasn't even driving?  Was at my mother's all night?

Is there any circumstance that justifies speaking to the police?

OK, ready?  Here's the answer.  Even if you know the answer is no you should watch this video to understand how innocently wrong you could be.

Law professor James Duane is a fast talker and entertaining in this 30 min. video

A Law Professor Explains Why You Should Never Talk to Police - VICE:

Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers is so big, subscription journals are doomed, data analyst suggests | Science | AAAS

Sci-Hub is of course illegal but this is totally on its way and plots a course for the liberation of information that has been held hostage by gatekeepers.

     There is no doubt that Sci-Hub, the infamous—and, according to a U.S. court, illegal—online repository of pirated research papers, is enormously popular. (See Science’s investigation last year of who is downloading papers from Sci-Hub.) But just how enormous is its repository? That is the question biodata scientist Daniel Himmelstein at the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues recently set out to answer, after an assist from Sci-Hub.
     Their findings, published in a preprint on the PeerJ journal site on 20 July, indicate that Sci-Hub can instantly provide access to more than two-thirds of all scholarly articles, an amount that Himmelstein says is “even higher” than he anticipated. For research papers protected by a paywall, the study found Sci-Hub’s reach is greater still, with instant access to 85% of all papers published in subscription journals. For some major publishers, such as Elsevier, more than 97% of their catalog of journal articles is being stored on Sci-Hub’s servers—meaning they can be accessed there for free.

 Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers is so big, subscription journals are doomed, data analyst suggests | Science | AAAS:

Single Payer -- They say it's not possible!

Here's what happened when a Republican senator challenged a Canadian doctor on their single-payer health care system. pic.twitter.com/eT7t7pGFWR

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 1, 2017

Is Capitalism in Crisis? Latest Trends of a System Run Amok

C.J. Polychroniou, a political economist/political scientist here interviews David M. Kotz, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism (Harvard University Press, 2015).

      Today, the question that should haunt progressive-minded and radical scholars and activists alike is whether capitalism itself is in crisis, given that the latest trends in the system are working perfectly well for global corporations and the rich, producing new levels of wealth and increasing inequality.

 This is a long view analysis of economics and capital as a national and global system.  It could be a great place to start a discussion of the concept "small is beautiful" as it begs the question: Is a localized, sustainable social and economic order possible?  This is of course a very important question as the framework of discussions of capitalism most often does not address ecological sustainability which is so critical as we pass  400 ppm atmospheric CO2 which already guarantees climate disasters and threatens survival on the planet. This article concludes that a state centralized socialism has already proven the most effective model to address such a crisis but leaves us wondering how to best structure a stable state social order in the long run on a small planet.



This discussion continues:

     Having survived the financial meltdown of 2008, corporate capitalism and the financial masters of the universe have made a triumphant return to their "business as usual" approach: They are now savoring a new era of wealth, even as the rest of the population continues to struggle with income stagnation, job insecurity and unemployment.
     This travesty was made possible in large part by the massive US government bailout plan that essentially rescued major banks and financial institutions from bankruptcy with taxpayer money (the total commitment on the part of the government to the bank bailout plan was over $16 trillion). In the meantime, corporate capitalism has continued running recklessly to the precipice with regard to the environment, as profits take precedence not only over people but over the sustainability of the planet itself.
     Capitalism has always been a highly irrational socioeconomic system, but the constant drive for accumulation has especially run amok in the age of high finance, privatization and globalization.

The outcome of all this is not at all obvious and in fact as this article insinuates, the strongest possibility in our current political landscape is a fascist strongman and more war and oppression, rather than a new utopian renaissance.  I for one will not give up my dreams for peace and justice. In fact, such dreams may be all that can save us.

Is Capitalism in Crisis? Latest Trends of a System Run Amok: