The Blathering Superego at the End of History

I love the title and the opening of this article by Emmet Rensin in LA Review of Books.  He of course is infamous for this Tweet while working for Vox "Advice: If Trump comes to your town, start a riot." for which he was suspended.  I certainly hope he finds a better job that that Vox piece of crap in the future.  Looks like he has been a bit radicalized by the incident.

LIBERALISM IS NOT working. Something deep within the mechanism has cracked. All our wonk managers, our expert stewards of the world, have lost their way. They wander desert highways in a daze, wondering why the brakes locked up, why the steering wheel came off, how the engine caught on fire. Their charts lie abandoned by the roadside. It was all going so well just a moment ago. History was over. The technocratic order was globalizing the world; people were becoming accustomed to the permanent triumph of a slightly kinder exploitation. What happened? All they can recall is a loud thump in the undercarriage, an abrupt loss of control. Was it Brexit? Trump? Suddenly the tires were bursting and smoke was pouring into the vehicle, then a flash. The next thing they could remember, our liberals were standing beside a smoldering ruin, blinking in the hot sun, their power stolen, their world collapsing, their predictions all proven wrong.

Of course not ever being among the faithful liberals except as I faltered listening to Obama's first acceptance speech I find it amusing to to imaging the wonks, unwitting or not "blinking" in the sun surveying the wreckage of all their ideas.  Then as one commenter says "I started skimming when it became clear the author was more interested in impressing me with wordplay than building to something meaningful".  Nonetheless it's a guilty pleasure to read unless of course you are among those still raw and sensitive about crumbling Neoliberal ideas being trampled by an idiot with orange hair. Don't take if personally -- You'll get over it sooner than you think.

Read whole article here The Blathering Superego at the End of History - Los Angeles Review of Books:

Militarizing the Minds of Police Officers

This article from the New Yorker is and introduction to a 7 minute documentary video. I have reproduces it entirely here as I think you should read it before watching.  CAUTION:  This contains graphic violence and you may not want to see it.  I have followed the issue for a long time and have long since made up my mind about police and especially militarization.  I was nonetheless deeply affected and reawakened to its cultural and political importance by this clip.

     Three years ago, amid the protests erupting in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, President Barack Obama ordered a review of a federal program allowing military equipment to be transferred from the armed forces to state and local police departments. For many, the images of local police dressed in camouflage and travelling in armored vehicles became a metaphor for the ways in which the lines had blurred between civilian law enforcement and the military—a phenomenon that the journalist Radley Balko has referred to as the “rise of the warrior cop.” The review resulted in an executive order that curtailed the transfer of some types of military equipment. A new short film by Craig Atkinson, “Conditioned Response,” which includes unreleased footage shot while filming his documentary “Do Not Resist,” from 2016, suggests that the armored vehicles rolling through Ferguson were only the most visible indicators of this militarization. Another, more subtle—and perhaps more intractable—form of it is affecting the psychology of the officers themselves.
     For the past two decades, David Grossman, a former Army Ranger and self-described product of a law-enforcement family, has been conducting police-training seminars on the use of deadly force. Policing is a complex job that at times requires split-second decision-making. More often, though, it requires a reservoir of knowledge about social interaction and human behavior, and the ability to read situations that may become violent. Officers are granted a great degree of latitude in their work, partly because interacting with the public requires more nuance than any rigorous set of codes could possibly hope to encompass. Grossman’s “Bulletproof Warrior” philosophy, however, dispenses with these gray areas. Here the war on crime is not metaphorical; police are a kind of domestic militia tasked with subduing a potentially lethal enemy. Danger is ambient, ever present, and unpredictable. (Grossman did not respond to a request for an interview.) Grossman’s seminar exists at the opposite pole of the current drive for criminal-justice reform. While progressives emphasize police training to de-escalate conflict, Grossman’s seminar pushes officers to become more comfortable with the use of deadly force. As Grossman informs one group of attendees, “only a killer can hunt a killer.” Killing is a central theme of Grossman’s seminars but is only a fractional portion of law enforcement’s responsibilities. The vast majority of police in this country never use deadly force in the course of their careers.
     Jeronimo Yanez, the police officer who fatally shot Philando Castile, in Minnesota, last year, belongs not only to the small percentage of officers who have killed civilians but also to the much larger group of officers who have attended Grossman’s seminars. He reacted quickly, interpreted an otherwise calm moment as the paramount danger, and fired seven times into a vehicle with a four-year-old girl in the back seat. A jury determined that Yanez had not committed any crime, but, at the very least, no reasonable person would understand his handling of the situation as good policing.
     Last year, sixty-three police officers were killed by assailants who used weapons—but a thousand people were killed by police, and a hundred and seventy of those people were unarmed. If there is, indeed, a war, it’s an asymmetrical one.

FOCUS: Militarizing the Minds of Police Officers:

"Necessary Trouble" and a Long, Hard Struggle: Talking Movements With Sarah Jaffe

Book Review:

I am engrossed in this book and I agree with this writer that it may be the most important book this year.  We simply have to organize better.  We have to be more effective.  We have to be more real.  The book is not academic. It is not old idealism but rather pulls together what worked in Arab Spring, Wisconsin, Occupy, Fight for $15, Our Walmart.  It's all about finding leaders in the trenches not being leaders.  It is a new type of democracy on the barricades, truly from the bottom up.  I will have a lot more to say when I finish this book but for now I recommend it and this interview as well.



"Necessary Trouble" and a Long, Hard Struggle: Talking Movements With Sarah Jaffe:



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Jon Ossoff's loses -- I told you so!

My inbox has been flooded for many months with appeals for support to Ossoff who I called out on day one as being a Clinton clone and not worthy of progressives' support. Clearly the DNC made a classic attempt to put lipstick on a pig in this race with predictable results.  Ossoff's opponent Karen Handel is an idiot and actually said, "I do not support a livable wage" in debate. How could they lose you might ask?  With all that money?  Sorry, that's just too easy.  Just being a democrat is enough.

     Ossoff explicitly campaigned against single-payer healthcare and tax increases for the rich, and was rewarded by Democratic donors with $24 million in donations and another $8 million in outside spending. By contrast, Democratic special election candidates in Montana and Kansas campaigned on more progressive platforms and were outspent by large margins.
     His policy positions have led some to describe him as a “ mild-mannered, centrist candidate,” who, according to his opponent, Karen Handel, “ talks like a Republican.”

Sadly, I strongly believe that the DNC will continue in it's death throes pushing to the right, actively displacing and subverting progressive candidates, and in so doing strengthen and consolidate the power held by corporate friendly conservatives.  I an word, the DNC is worse than in the way, they are the problem.

Why Jon Ossoff's Loss Could Be Bernie Sanders' Victory | Alternet:



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Subcomandante Marcos Turns 60: The Life of Mexico's Zapatista Resistance Leader

For those in need of a history lesson or just a reminder of how long progressives have been opposing the global capitalist agenda represented by Neoliberal politics:

We Zapatistas say that neoliberal globalization is a war of conquest of the entire world, a world war, a war being waged by capitalism for global domination. That is why we are joining together to build a resistance struggle against neoliberalism and for humanity.    --Subcomandante Marcos, 1994

"Subcomandante Marcos"

Often derided as irrelevant this movement has been globally influential and will be important moving forward.  It epitomizes authentic self rule and integrity and it deserves our support.  I provide here an old article from 20 years ago to underscore the indirect attack by our government on this movement-- Drug war and the Zapatistas
Subcomandante Marcos Turns 60: The Life of Mexico's Zapatista Resistance Leader:



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Do People Matter Most Or Does Property?

I find it unsurprising that the government offers victims 5000 pounds to pay for funerals and housing but does nothing direct to help re-locate them, leaving them to sleep outside.  Jeremy Corbyn's proposal is a brilliant piece of linguistic framing.  The system will of course find it impossible to "requisition" vacant housing.  They simply do not know how to take from the rich.  Go figure.

Grenfell Tower

Corbyn said the following:

It cannot be acceptable that in London you have luxury buildings and luxury flats kept as land banking for the future while the homeless and the poor look for somewhere to live.”
And in an interview on ITV on Sunday, Mr Corbyn said the flats could be requisitioned by the government or bought using compulsory purchase orders.
Occupy it, compulsory purchase it, requisition it – there’s a lot of things you can do.
“But can’t we as a society just think, it’s all very well putting our arms around people during the crisis but homelessness is rising, the housing crisis is getting worse and my point was quite a simple one.
In an emergency, you have to bring all assets to the table in order to deal with that crisis and that’s what I think we should be doing in this case.”
“Every day at Heathrow, planes get delayed. Hundreds of people get stranded at airports all over the world,” he said.
Hotels are found for them immediately, they are sorted out. Four-hundred-or-so people, still most of them have not got somewhere decent, safe or secure to stay in.
Somehow or other, it seems to be beyond the wit of the public services to deal with the crisis facing a relatively small number of people in a country of 65 million

Do People Matter Most Or Does Property? | Ian Welsh:

Operation Condor

A bit of dirty laundry:

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/44203-operation-condor-us-latin-american-slaughter-torture-program