New Evidence of Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica’s Role in Brexit
The New Yorker – November 17, 2018 – Jane Mayer
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/new-evidence-emerges-of-steve-bannon-and-cambridge-analyticas-role-in-brexit
The possibility that Brexit and the Trump campaign relied on some of the same advisers to further far-right nationalist campaigns has set off alarm bells on both sides of the Atlantic… Emma Briant, an academic expert on disinformation at George Washington University, has unearthed new e-mails that appear to reveal the earliest documented role played by Bannon in Brexit. The e-mails, which date back to October of 2015, show that Bannon, who was then the vice-president of Cambridge Analytica, an American firm largely owned by the U.S. hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, was in the loop on discussions taking place at the time between his company and the leaders of Leave.EU, a far-right nationalist organization.
Facebook Revelations Should Be a Wake-Up Call
News and Guts – November 19, 2018 – Dan Rather
https://www.newsandguts.com/dan-rather-facebook-revelations-wake-call/
I am not an expert in this realm. I don’t pretend to have any specific policy answers. But I do know that we can try to invoke the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt and the other trustbusters who tackled the powerful monopolies of ages past in the service of justice, fairness, and freedom. Obviously, tools and solutions will have to be tailored for our age, but that is a challenge worthy of our energy.
Maternal mortality, US vs. other developed countries
The New York Times – November 16, 2018 – Kim Brooks
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/opinion/sunday/maternal-mortality-rates.html
For experts studying the United States’ maternal mortality and injury rates — which are estimated to far surpass those in other developed countries — and for women in labor, the failure to treat mothers as people is neither antiquated nor dystopian, but absolutely pressing.
How many husbands control the votes of their wives? We’ll never know
The Guardian – November 19, 2018 – Rebecca Solnit
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/19/voter-intimidation-republicans-democrats-midterm-elections
There’s a form of voter intimidation that widespread and unacknowledged. It’s the husbands who bully and silence and control their wives, as witnessed by dozens of door-to-door canvassers across the country I heard from.
Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested ‘6kg of plastic’
BBC – November 20, 2018
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-46275742
The use of throwaway plastic is a particular problem in some South East Asian countries, including Indonesia. Five Asian nations – China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand – account for up to 60% of the plastic waste that ends up in oceans, according to a 2015 report by environmental campaigner Ocean Conservancy and the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment… At the end of last year, the UN said marine life was facing “irreparable damage” from the approximately 10m tonnes of plastic waste ending up in the oceans every year.
A Lung-Cleansing Scream
Commonweal Magazine – November 9, 2018 – Andrew J. Bacevich
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/lung-cleansing-scream
Fountain has written a deadly serious book [“Beautiful Country Burn Again”]. In it, he offers a penetrating critique of a contemporary American politics thoroughly corrupted by money and moneyed interests. His pithy summary of the existing system consists of a mere eight words: “Profit proportionate to freedom; plunder correlative to subjugation.” In less highfalutin language, this means that in our rigged system, the well-to-do enjoy liberty and exercise power; everyone else struggles to get by… The primal scream derived from more than one factor. Racism is part of the mix, but so are culture, class, and America’s role in the world… Ours is a profoundly sick society. For definitive proof, just look at who is living in the White House.
US Planetary Military: From Failed Mideast Counter-Insurgency to Nuclear Brinkmanship
Informed Comment – November 21, 2018 – Danny Sjursen, a U.S. Army major and former history instructor at West Point.
https://www.juancole.com/2018/11/planetary-insurgency-brinkmanship.html
Frustrated by its inability to close the deal on any of the indecisive counterterror wars of this century, Washington had decided it was time to prepare for “real” war with a host of imagined enemies. This process had, in fact, been developing right under our noses for quite a while… Think of these developments as establishing a potential formula for perpetual conflict that just might lead the United States into a truly cataclysmic war it neither needs nor can meaningfully win. With that in mind, here’s a little tour of Planet Earth as the U.S. military now imagines it.
It’s Time for America to Reckon With the Staggering Death Toll of the Post-9/11 Wars
The Intercept – November 19, 2018 – Murtaza Hussain
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/19/civilian-casualties-us-war-on-terror/
Even as the U.S. government evades responsibility for the human cost of its overseas endeavors, some researchers are determined to keep count… Brown University’s Costs of War Project this month released a new estimate of the total death toll from the U.S. wars in three countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The numbers, while conservatively estimated, are staggering. Brown’s researchers estimate that at least 480,000 people have been directly killed by violence over the course of these conflicts, more than 244,000 of them civilians. In addition to those killed by direct acts violence, the number of indirect deaths — those resulting from disease, displacement, and the loss of critical infrastructure — is believed to be several times higher, running into the millions.
Pilgrims then, pilgrims now, in hope of a better life
The Boston Globe – November 21, 2018 – editorial
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2018/11/21/pilgrims-then-pilgrims-now-hope-better-life/NSmRGgXWBUuAJXGpCcvgYP/story.html
There is a Thanksgiving that celebrates once-shared values along with a shared meal — a Thanksgiving that acknowledges the struggles of those who came before us, seeking a better life and freedoms they didn’t have in their homelands. Let’s call them, for want of a better name, Pilgrims — or perhaps more accurately small-p pilgrims. For with the exception of those Native Americans who were here to greet the original settlers, this is a nation of pilgrims… Ron Vitiello, the man nominated by President Trump to take over Immigration and Customs Enforcement, when asked about the administration’s separation policy. “We’ll get less people bringing their children.” … Is this what we’ve become?
White House Approves Use of Lethal Force for Border Troops
Military Times – November 21, 2018 – Tara Copp
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/11/21/white-house-approves-use-of-force-some-law-enforcement-roles-for-border-troops/
Some of those activities, including crowd control and detention, may run into potential conflict with the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. If crossed, the erosion of the act’s limitations could represent a fundamental shift in the way the U.S. military is used, legal experts said.
US economy faces hit from climate change, report warns
The Boston Globe – November 23, 2018 – Coral Davenport and Kendra Pierre-Louis
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2018/11/23/economy-faces-hit-from-climate-change-report-warns/PBPsBJWioRu1XD9ROnmILK/story.html
A major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequences of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significant steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the U.S. economy by century’s end. The report, which was mandated by Congress and made public by the White House, is notable not only for the precision of its calculations and bluntness of its conclusions, but also because its findings are directly at odds with President Donald Trump’s agenda of environmental deregulation, which he asserts will spur economic growth… Climate change is taking the United States into uncharted territory, the report concludes. “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid,” it says.
A Very Grim Forecast
The New York Review of Books – November 24, 2018 – Bill McKibben
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/11/22/global-warming-very-grim-forecast/
Though it was published at the beginning of October, Global Warming of 1.5°C, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is a document with its origins in another era, one not so distant from ours but politically an age apart. To read it makes you weep not just for our future but for our present. The report was prepared at the request of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the end of the Paris climate talks in December 2015… The takeaway messages are simple enough: to keep warming under 1.5 degrees, global carbon dioxide emissions will have to fall by 45 percent by 2030, and reach net zero by 2050… At two degrees, the report contends, there will be a “disproportionately rapid evacuation” of people from the tropics. As one of its authors told The New York Times, “in some parts of the world, national borders will become irrelevant. You can set up a wall to try to contain 10,000 and 20,000 and one million people, but not 10 million.”
Trying Again for Full Employment
Portside – Dollars and Sense – November 24, 2018 – Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg
https://portside.org/2018-11-24/trying-again-full-employment
As prominent progressives talk up a federal job guarantee, what can we learn from earlier attempts to legislate full employment?… The direct government job-creation approach has the added benefit of being anti-inflationary, because it can target job-creation to unemployed workers in contrast to an overall stimulus like a tax cut, which can heat up an economy in areas where there is little surplus labor… Jobs-for-all legislation would employ workers in upgrading the nation’s depleted physical, human service, cultural, and environmental resources. This is a persuasive rallying cry: that conquering unemployment by government job-creation would not only benefit jobless people, their families, and communities—it would benefit all of us.
This Kind of Wealth Really Can Solve Our Problems
Yes! Magazine – November 13, 2018 – Vicki Robin
https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/good-money/this-kind-of-wealth-really-can-solve-our-problems-20181113
In economic terms, I have amassed social capital. Community is the ultimate unit of wealth: real people in real places solving real problems together—with love… As my life has shuttled through dances and events and fundraisers and performances and parties and projects here, I’ve gained a visceral sense of a strong social safety net that runs in parallel to government services. It is here for me, and I am part of it, and this is a quiet yet breathtaking “asset.”
Progressives Are Pushing Economic Democracy. Democrats Need to Listen
Yes! Magazine – November 12 2018 – Geoff Gilbert
https://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/progressives-are-pushing-economic-democracy-democrats-need-to-listen-20181112
The small group of people who own the economy possess extreme power over the rest of us: they make the investment decisions that determine how everything we need to live will be produced, whether or not people will have affordable access to these goods and services, what jobs will exist, where jobs will exist, and so on. Whoever is empowered to make these decisions governs any given society, irrespective of the structure of its government and other institutions… If the U.S. aspires to democracy, we must democratize these decisions and our economy… We can use solidarity economy institutions to deliberately displace corporate economic power and to move toward economic democracy. And we can pressure Democrats at all levels to help us build these institutions by driving public resources to them.