Global
The Julian Assange drama drags on. Though he continues to sit in a top security British prison awaiting developments in his expected extradition to the United States, the Spanish High Court has been given permission to interview him. Assange is claiming that the Spanish company contracted with by the Ecuadorean government to do embassy security in London spied on him using both audio and video devices. The recordings apparently included conversations with Assange’s lawyers outlining his defense strategies, which is an illegal activity under Spanish law. The prosecution has also indicted the company director, former military officer David Morales, on associated criminal charges of bribing a government official and money laundering. Morales has said that he is innocent.
My God, they put Jesus and his parents in cages, as though that’s what U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents would do — you know, keep the spirit of love and compassion from entering the United States of America.
Are they suggesting there’s an equivalence here between the divine family and a bunch of illegals . . . drug dealers, rapists, possible killers of American citizens?
First the good news.
If one of the worst pieces of legislation ever drafted becomes law, there is one small measure in it that we can be pleased with. RootsAction.org and World BEYOND War and many other organizations and activists from Puerto Rico and the rest of the United States and beyond urged Congress through a petition and a variety of lobbying approaches to provide $10 million for the purchase of closed detonation chambers in the clean-up of military contamination in Vieques, Puerto Rico.
This was one of dozens of positive measures passed by the House of Representatives but not by the Senate. Unlike most such measures, this one survived the “compromise” between the two versions of the bill.
The House and Senate have agreed upon a catastrophic military spending bill.
The House has happily tossed under the bus the following measures that had been in its version prior to “compromising” by going with what the Senate (and the campaign funders) wanted:
[UPDATE: silver lining on Vieques!]
Justifying the Supposed Benefit of Every Foreign Base.
And all of these are virtually or entirely gone:
–repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.
–prohibit military force in or against Iran.
–prohibit support to and participation in the war on Yemen.
Roger Hallam is of course right in his short book, Common Sense for the 21st Century: Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse. While some portion of humanity heaps scorn on the victims of the fossil fuel propaganda who deny climate science, only a much smaller portion points out the equally delusional and disastrous denial of the need for nonviolent revolution.
Facts are facts, as Hallam points out. The current political systems cannot change fast enough. They have to be overturned. This is no more open to dispute than the fact that humanity is roasting the globe. But it is perhaps even less acceptable to those who believe that they can believe what they choose to believe.
“NGOs, political parties and movements which have brought us through the last 30 years of abject failure,” writes Hallam, “– a 60% rise in global CO2 emissions since 1990 — are now the biggest block to transformation.” Hallam is a founder of Extinction Rebellion and points to the obvious need for mass civil disobedience.
With the holidays approaching, few want to think about their weight. It will certainly go up not down before 2020 arrives. People will probably start thinking about their weight on January 2 –– and joining gyms.
It is true that in much of the world, people have never been bigger. The average American man todayweighs 194 pounds and the average woman 165 pounds. The growing girth has led to the creation of special-sized ambulances, operating tables and coffins as well as bigger seats on planes and trains.
From three different vectors, the oligarchy is on the march to capture the Democratic presidential nomination. Pete Buttigieg has made big gains. A timeworn ally of corporate power, Joe Biden, is on a campaign for his last hurrah. And Michael Bloomberg is swooping down from plutocratic heights.
Those three men are a team of rivals -- each fiercely competitive for an individual triumph, yet arrayed against common ideological foes named Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
The obvious differences between Buttigieg, Biden and Bloomberg are apt to distract from their underlying political similarities. Fundamentally, they’re all aligned with the nation’s economic power structure -- two as corporate servants, one as a corporate master.
The thing I learned in 2019 was people can be into wack things and it’s hard to tell if they support Trump or not. The lesson here is that humans will live their lives regardless who is elected in November.
The other lesson is Trump will still be funny, make a bunch of money and sex with his hot wife and several women if he is President, impeached or loses the election.
This country doesn’t need threats of Civil War.
If Trump loses...he gives a really a historic speech and then back to sexing women half his age, uncriticized.
If he wins…Trump entertains and confuses with a series of absurd speeches and is forced to have sex with attractive women with media skepticism. Why the Republicans are threatening war when the man in question will still find sex and money is why the Republicans finally lost the television wars.
Some Republican’s coarseness finally overpowered the image that Democrats are aging hippies who can’t be trusted.
It is hardly surprising to see Middle Eastern countries at the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index, as the worst violators of freedom of the press. But equally alarming is the complete polarization of public opinion as a result of self-serving media and, bankrolled by rich Arab countries, whose only goal is to serve their specific, often sinister, agendas.
One does not need to highlight of how state-controlled media in the Middle East lacks the minimal required degree of partiality, let alone integrity. Only a deluded person would argue that governments that kill, torture and imprison journalists, intellectuals and social media activists have an iota of respect for the freedom of the press and expression - in fact, of any kind of freedom at all.
NOTE: This is the debut of a new occasional column pointing out factual inaccuracies, misstatements, falsehoods, disinformation, misrepresentations, propaganda and lies in the mass media - from cable news to talk radio to movies and beyond. In our Orwellian era of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” when journalists are vilified as “enemies of the people,” truth - and the ability to discern it - is becoming increasingly endangered. This “post-truth” climate threatens is corrosive to our social discourse. Indeed, something I’ve noticed is that the very word “fact” itself is frequently used incorrectly on the airwaves.