Global
We’re now seven weeks away from the Iowa caucuses, the first voting in the Democratic presidential race. After that, frontloaded primaries might decide the nominee by late spring. For progressives torn between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — or fervently committed to one of them — choices on how to approach the next few months could change the course of history.
As a kindred activist put it to me when we crossed paths last weekend, “Bernie speaks our language” — a shorthand way of saying that the Bernie 2020 campaign is a fight for a truly transformative and humanistic future. “Not me. Us.”
I actively support Bernie because his voice is ours for genuine democracy and social justice. Hearing just a few minutes from a recent Bernie speech is a reminder of just how profoundly that is true.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, it is estimated that the total number of passenger pigeons in the United States was about three billion birds. The bird was immensely abundant, as illustrated by this passage written by the famous ornithologist, naturalist and painter John James Audubon:
BITTER DISPUTE OVER PG&E'S BANKRUPTCY STILL RAGES WHILE DIABLO REMAINS UN-INSPECTED....
TIME TO ACT!!
Time (again!) to call the governor, the legislature, the CPUC, the courts, the utility, potential investors, stakeholders, etc....
btw....if you think CA's nuke war is brutal, check out Ohio: (https://tinyurl.com/OHSierra1e )
Powerful forces are quickly moving Pacific Gas & Electric towards a settlement on its hideously complex multi-billion-dollar bankruptcy case. Thankfully, Gov. Gavin Newsom has put at least a temporary hold on a final agreement.
Here’s the good news: The debate is over. 75% of US citizens believe climate change is human-caused; more than half say we have to do something and fast.
The following quotes (except as noted) Are From: https://newrepublic.com/article/120559/honduras-charter-cities-spearheaded-us-conservatives-libertarians
“In the early 1950s the United Fruit Company hired legendary public relations expert Edward Bernays to carry out an intense misinformation campaign portraying then-Guatamalan president Jacobo Arbenz as a communist threat.” -- Scott Price, IC Magazine
Rogue Machine’s world premiere of Disposable Necessities contains plot points that could be dramatized in a Eugene O’Neill or Arthur Miller play about family and friend dynamics. But innovative playwright Neil McGowan has mixed things up by injecting sci fi elements plus a heavy dose of comedy into his two-acter so that Disposable’s Tottens would not only be right at home with A Long Day’s Journey Into Night’s Tyrones and Death of a Salesman’s Lomans, but with Hanna-Barbera’s loony cartoony Jetsons.
If that animated futuristic family was 1962’s humorous prediction of what tomorrow may hold for us (hey! while I’m stuck in traffic on the 10 Freeway, I’m still waiting for my winged car, and while we’re at it, for dogs like the pit bull mix named Babaloo to talk back to me!), set in 2095, Disposable has a more sophisticated scientific vision of, as H.G. Wells put it, The Shape of Things to Come.
Without former Cambridge University professor Alexander Kogan’s desire to obtain Facebook data for his research, Cambridge Analytica would never have had access to the 87 million profiles they used to elect Trump in 2016. But Dr Kogan was not the only academic who worked with parent company SCL and Cambridge Analytica itself as they developed methods for data gathering, analytics and rolled out unethical campaigns, for Donald Trump, the UK’s Brexit campaign and worldwide. Many of the firm’s academic and commercial collaborators remain unknown, and some universities are actively obscuring their staff’s involvement.
BOMBSHELL Film Review
Estranged Bedfellows: What the FOX is Going On?
By Ed Rampell
The star-studded anti-FOX News movie Bombshell is perfect for the #MeToo era, as it dramatizes the struggle of those “FOXy” ladies in front of and behind the camera against sexual harassment at the unfair and unbalanced cable “news” TV network. Classically beautiful atomic bomb Charlize Theron, who can currently be glimpsed in a sensuous perfume ad on the boob tube, won an Oscar for “disfiguring” herself as an ugly murderess in 2003’s Monster. It took me about five minutes to realize that the actress portraying the far more conventionally attractive Megyn Kelly in Bombshell was also Theron. The gifted thespian submerges herself into the role and not only looks like the beleaguered Kelly but preternaturally sounds exactly like the former FOX News host.
The rubber is about to hit the road! Barring catastrophe, and all of this is preparing you to prevent catastrophe, the starting gun is about to go off and in four to six weeks, depending on your calendar and the size of the drive, the first meeting of this new community organization will be launched. It’s now time for the first organizing committee meeting setting everything in motion.
Remember at this point, you have already gotten a prospective member of the committee to host the meeting at her house. You have also identified key people who are willing to be on the committee and come to this meeting. At least as an organizer, you think you have. A rule of thumb is that you need the committee to be about one percent of the total number of households in the designated community. In other words, you want fifteen for an area with 1500 families, twenty for 2000, and so on. To get that number at the first organizing committee meeting you are going to have to have one-and-one-half to two-times the commitments to attend as you want bottoms in the chairs at the meeting. (We’ll come back to this time after time: organizing math matters!)
Mark Ruffalo as Rob Billot in Dark Waters.
Dark Waters is the most important American film in a decade, although it squanders an opportunity to fully portray PFAS* contamination as the nationwide human health epidemic it has become. The film leaves out half of the story and that involves the military’s role.
*per- and poly fluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) include PFOA, PFOS and 5,000 other harmful chemicals used in a variety of military and industrial applications.
Most viewers will walk away thinking they watched a movie that documents the true story of a relatively isolated case of DuPont contaminating the local soil and water of an unfortunate town, Parkersburg, West Virginia. Regardless, Dark Waters is a superior film. If you haven’t seen it, please do so.