Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Imagine Elizabeth Warren as President. Now Imagine Bernie Sanders.

When we first conceived this dual-cover issue of In These Times, early in fall 2019, die-hard supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren already seemed caught in an endless loop.

Frustrated Sanders fans criticized Warren for jumping in after she sat out 2016, standing a little to Sanders’ right and pulling progressive support. Defensive Warren fans, worried Sanders had plateaued, had high hopes for a female candidate who seemed fresh and full of momentum. Attacks and parries followed: She’s a capitalist; no, they’re both social democrats. He’s a class reductionist; no, he’s building a multi-racial coalition. Wall Street secretly likes her; no, Wall Street definitely hates her. He’s bad on reparations and makes nativist comments; she’s terrible on foreign policy. She’s cynically copying Sanders; no, she’s been like this for a decade. Nobody seemed to convince anyone, and a lot of people remained quietly torn as the primaries approached. How to break the loop? In These Times decided to approach the debate in a new way. Policies had been compared ad nauseam, but what did Sanders and Warren supporters imagine these presidencies would actually look like? How would each overcome all the forces arrayed against them—Republicans, establishment Democrats, the Supreme Court, corporations? We asked two prominent progressive journalists and thinkers, Daniel Denvir and Kathleen Geier—Sanders and Warren supporters, respectively—to lay out the likely course of each presidency. Then we invited two activists and scholars, Brian Tokar and Rachel Gilmer, to rebut their cases. The arguments in all four pieces surprised, engaged and challenged me. Whether or not anything here changes your thinking, I hope it feels new. Just as this political moment does.

"What a Bernie Sanders Presidency Would Look Like" by Daniel Denvir

A rebuttal by Brian Tokar: "Why Bernie Can't Be Organizer-In-Chief": (coming soon)

"What an Elizabeth Warren Presidency Would Look Like," by Kathleen Geier

A rebuttal by Rachel Gilmer: "Warren's an Ally. We Need a Leader." (coming soon)

#Renewables beat #FossilFuels on 137 days in greenest year for #UK #energy | Business | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/07/renewables-beat-fossil-fuels-greenest-year-uk-energy

#Environment #RenewableEnergy

Polluted wastewater in the forecast? Try a solar umbrella

Evaporation ponds, commonly used in many industries to manage wastewater, can occupy a large footprint and often pose risks to birds and other wildlife, yet they're an economical way to deal with contaminated water. Now researchers have demonstrated a way to double the rate of evaporation by using solar energy and taking advantage of water's inherent properties, potentially reducing their environmental impact.

Study finds dopamine, biological clock link to snacking, overeating and obesity

A new study finds that the pleasure center of the brain and the brain's biological clock are linked, and that high-calorie foods -- which bring pleasure -- disrupt normal feeding schedules, resulting in overconsumption.

Iran Is Not What You Think

            War, many people believe, often results from cultural differences and misunderstandings. President Trump’s assassination of General Qassem Suleimeni has Americans considering the possibility that we may soon add Iran to our list of unwinnable wars in the Middle East. As that calculus unfolds, no one questions the assumption that there are irreconcilable differences between […]

Progressive v. Progressive Come Lately

Given the choice between a leftie-come-lately who used to be a Republican and someone who consistently supported progressive causes all their life, the media will fall in love with the newbie every time.

“Fear sells.” That's what Ring said in 2016, according to this staggering history of how Amazon's surveillance doorbell company built over 600 police partnerships and put cameras on front doors across America. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjp53/how-ring-went-from-shark-tank-reject-to-americas-scariest-surveillance-company

#Tory #NHS shake-up blamed for fall in #child #vaccination rates | #Society | The Guardian

I think I missed this story but found the link on #RMS's page today.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/25/tory-nhs-shake-up-blamed-for-fall-in-child-vaccination-rates

#Medicine #Politics

Windows Subsystem for Linux is a horrible, pointless initiative... unless you're Microsoft.

Microsoft has built its $trillion business on *controlling the platform* and exploiting its users. Windows is slowly decaying, and, tellingly, the crucial developers Windows needs to stay relevant... are moving to Linux, and few look back.

Ring claims its primary business is the security of its customers. Yet the company has failed to follow even basic data security best practices, opting instead to put the burden on its customers. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/ring-throws-customers-under-bus-after-data-breach

#Trump's lawless thuggery is corrupting justice in America | #RobertReich | Opinion | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/05/trump-american-justice-election-iran

#US #Politics

Fresh #CambridgeAnalytica leak ‘shows global manipulation is out of control’ | #UK news | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/04/cambridge-analytica-data-leak-global-election-manipulation

#Facebook #Elections #Manipulation #US

Microbes from humics lakes surprise – bacteria and algae produced omega-3 fatty acids from microplastics

The environmental fate of microplastics has been difficult to trace. A research group used carbon isotope labeling to follow the fate of polyethylene in the food chain. To the researchers surprise, plastic carbon was transformed into beneficial fatty acids, omega-3 and omega-6, by the microbes originating from humic lakes.

https://www.codepink.org/01042020
Anti-war protests in 60 cities today

Why I'll never install cloud-based security cams...

Google Home Hub shows stills of other people's Xiaomi security cameras:

https://www.reddit.com/r/googlehome/comments/eine1m/when_i_load_the_xiaomi_camera_in_my_google_home/

Mutt running natively on my #Librem5 #Chestnut phone--just needed to install the deb and scp my mutt settings from a different computer. #livingthedream

To Stop Trump’s War with Iran, We Must Also Confront the Democrats Who Laid the Groundwork

Since President Trump took office in 2017, the leadership of the Democratic Party has overwhelmingly supported the precursors  to today’s dangerous U.S. escalation towards Iran: sanctions, proxy battles and a bloated military budget. Yet, now that we stand on the brink of a possible U.S. war of aggression, Democratic leaders are feigning concern that Trump is leading a march to  war without congressional approval, and using a faulty strategy to do so. These objections, however, are grounded in process critiques, rather than moral opposition—and belie Democrats’ role in helping lay the groundwork for the growing confrontation.

The U.S. drone assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force and a ranking official of the Iranian government, takes confrontation with Iran to new heights, inching the U.S. closer to the war the Trump administration has been pushing for. While Trump deserves blame for driving this dangerous escalation, he did not do it on his own.

As recently as December 2019, the House overwhelmingly passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2020 with a vote of 377-48. Two amendments were stripped from that bill before it went to a vote: Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) amendment to block funding for a war with Iran barring congressional approval and Rep. Barbara Lee’s (D-Calif.) amendment to repeal 2001’s “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists” (AUMF). That AUMF effectively allows the government to use "necessary and appropriate force" against anyone suspected of being connected to the 9/11 attacks, and has been interpreted broadly to justify U.S. aggression around the world. Officials from the Trump administration have suggested that the 2001 AUMF may give them authority to go to war with Iran.

Of the 377 Representatives who voted for the $738 billion defense bill, 188 were Democrats. Just 41 Democrats opposed the legislation. The bill cleared the Senate with a tally of 86-8, with just four Democrats voting against it. None of the Senators running for the 2020 Democratic nomination were present for the vote. Before the vote, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took to the Senate floor to brag about the fact that “partisan demands” had effectively been removed from the bill and declared that “sanity and progress” had won out. “Reassuringly, the past few days have finally brought an end to bipartisan talks and produced a compromise NDAA,” said McConnell.

At the time of the bill’s passage, 31 organizations, including Yemeni Alliance Committee and the National Iranian American Council Action, put out a joint statement condemning the NDAA as a looming disaster destined to be abused by the Trump administration. “The NDAA is a massive blank check,” reads the statement. “The authorization of $738 billion is obscene. Further inflating the Pentagon’s overstuffed coffers does not make us safer—it perpetuates a system that treats military intervention as the solution to all world problems.” Despite these concerns, Democrats did not put up much of a fight, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus declined to whip the vote against the NDAA.

Democrats’ complicity doesn’t stop with bloated war budgets. In July 2017, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was the only lawmaker in both the House and the Senate who caucuses with the Democrats to vote against a bill that bundled together sanctions on Iran, Russia and North Korea. Democrats didn’t just vote for the bill—their leadership in the House helped make the decision to tie the sanctions together, and proponents of the bill used anti-Russia rhetoric to ram it through Congress. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told the Intercept at the time, “I just looked at the sanctions, and it’s very hard, in view of what we know just happened in this last election, not to move ahead with [sanctions].”

Sanders was clear that he opposed the bill because of his opposition to sanctions on Iran, but supported sanctions against Russia and North Korea, which are also aggressive and harmful to the people of those countries. Still, he was demonized by some in the Democratic establishment. As we previously reported, Adam Parkhomenko, former Hillary Clinton aide and founder of the Ready for Hillary PAC, said on Twitter at the time, “Feel the Bern? Bernie Sanders voted against Russian sanctions today. 98 Senators voted for Russian sanctions today. Sanders voted the same way anyone with the last name Trump would vote if they were in the Senate. No excuses―stop making them for him.”

When Trump—surrounded by hawkish advisors—pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in May of 2018, the Democratic establishment roundly criticized him, often citing the supposed threat posed by Iran, even though the country has no nuclear weapons program, according to U.S. intelligence agencies’ own assessments. “The president's willingness to shatter the international consensus, forged over years of arduous negotiations, on how to constrain Iran's nuclear program only makes sense as part of a campaign to erase his predecessor's legacy, regardless of the consequences to our national security,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said at the time.

Yet, Democrats’ previous support for sanctions already violated the Iran deal, whose benefits for the Iranian people were almost entirely premised on relief from devastating sanctions. In December of 2018, high-profile Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren, called for the United States to return to the Iran nuclear deal. While such a move would certainly constitute a de-escalation, these calls were bereft of accountability for the role that Democrats played in emboldening Trump to impose even more sanctions—and ultimately walk away from the agreement.

These failures are consistent with a troubling pattern: Democrats tee up the ball for Trump’s aggressive maneuvers, and then express outrage when his administration takes a swing. The Trump administration has been on a course towards towards confrontation with Iran for three years. He’s hired notorious Iran-war fanatics Gen. James Mattis, John Bolton and Elliot Abrams. His biggest donor is anti-Iran radical billionaire Sheldon Adleson. His State Department appears to have staffed out some of its Iran policy to the pro-Israel, rightwing think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He’s signaled from day one his goal was to march the United States towards war. Yet, Democrats still padded his war budgets, often voted for his appointments, baited him to have a tougher stance against Iran’s most important ally, Russia, and did nothing to curb his support for anti-Iran forces in the Middle East. Democrats have, for the most part, been not only unwilling to spend their political capital trying to change this course, but have actively encouraged it through their support for proxy battles against Iran in Syria and Iraq. And we must not forget that it was President Obama who, in 2014, sent troops back to Iraq as part of the war against ISIS.

Although many Democrats were quick to criticize Trump’s deadly drone strike, most of the statements were qualified with assertions about the murderous nature of Suleimani. “No American will mourn Qassem Suleimani’s passing,” begins Joe Biden’s statement. “He deserved to be brought to justice for his crimes against American troops and thousands of innocents throughout the region. He supported terror and sowed chaos.” Initial statements from Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar began with similar declarations. The first statement that has even referred to the killing as an “assassination” has been from Bernie Sanders. Warren later followed up her initial statement with remarks that also used the language of assassination.

Some Democrats who voted for the NDAA and handed the Trump administration a blank check suddenly expressed concern about the President’s powers. “Soleimani was an enemy of the United States. That’s not a question,” tweeted Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.)—who voted or the bill. “The question is this - as reports suggest, did America just assassinate, without any congressional authorization, the second most powerful person in Iran, knowingly setting off a potential massive regional war?”

Other Democrats are also expressing concern that Trump is deploying the wrong strategy against a dangerous enemy, while accepting the premise that intervention could be justified. This approach is reflected in presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg’s statement, released today: “Before engaging in military action that could destabilize an entire region, we must take a strategic, deliberate approach that includes consultation with Congress, our allies, and stakeholders in the Middle East.” This statement presumes that a destabilizing war of aggression could be justified, conceding Trump’s moral justifications, even as Buttigieg handwrings about the method.

We can’t stop a war with Iran unless we recognize U.S. aggression is not the product of failed strategy, or the Republican Party alone. It’s the product of a system where it’s normal bipartisan politics to lay the building blocks of war with no public account of the profound harm that is being done. And then, on the eve of said war, those Democrats who have been setting its course feign outrage and shock—if a Republican is in the White House, that is. We saw this script play out with the Iraq War, and we’re seeing it again now. In a U.S. political establishment where killing people abroad comes with little political cost, the politicians who contributed to the U.S. climate of belligerence are never forced to face the consequences. It costs nothing to to jockey for war, but everything to stand against it––including war’s precursors, such as sanctions, bloated military budgets and CIA meddling. Our only hope is to change this.

The Decade That Put Capitalism On Trial

I can’t say I’m convinced this decade has really just ended, especially since it didn’t start Jan. 1, 2010. As far as I can tell, it actually began in 2007, with Wall Street’s historic financial crisis.

That calamity has defined the last 13 odd years—call them the long teens—and transformed American politics by showing the center, indeed, could not hold. In the immediate aftermath of the mortgage debacle, the Tea Party rose to prominence, foreshadowing the racist, rightwing populism that continues to gain ground at home with Trump and around the world. But over time, the U.S. Left learned its own lessons: that capitalism can fail and that the government can spend huge sums of money to intervene in the economy. These revelations, in turn, have shaped the emerging generation’s sense of what is possible, spurring a democratic socialist revival and opening space for teenage environmentalist Greta Thunberg to credibly insist in 2019, “If we can save the banks we can save the world.” United behind the proposal for an economically and ecologically transformative Green New Deal, young people understand it isn’t some pie-in-the-sky fantasy but a pragmatic and urgent necessity.

Greta’s comments echo the now famous refrain, which I first heard on Sep. 17, 2011 when a few hundred of us gathered at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan for Occupy Wall Street: “The banks got bailed out; We got sold out.” As a result of the financial crash, around 7.8 million U.S. homes were foreclosed. Black households lost half their collective wealth. Back then I didn’t have a home or savings to lose, yet my personal finances were in meltdown nonetheless. Around the same time Lehman Brothers collapsed, I got a call telling me my student loans were in default. I remember trying to grasp the logic: “I don’t have money, so you are increasingly my principal by 19%?” My balance ballooned, as did my monthly payments, which meant I was even more broke than before.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, as I became more deeply involved in Occupy, I found myself gravitating to work focused on the problem of debt. It made sense, since most people drawn to the encampments were in the red as a result of being forced to debt-finance basic goods such as housing, healthcare and education, often with disastrous results.

Soon enough, I was collaborating with people I met through the movement and devising new creative ways to organize to transform indebtedness into a source of power and leverage. We co-founded the Debt Collective, a union for debtors, and in 2015 we launched the country’s first student debt strike, eventually winning over $1 billion in loan relief and crucial changes to federal law. Early on our position was mocked by mainstream media, but through organizing and public education we have shifted public opinion, helping lay the groundwork for the decommodification of higher education. We never would have predicted that in 2020 two leading presidential candidates would make our twin demands of mass student debt cancellation and free public college central planks of their campaigns.

Occupy marked a decisive break with the aughts, a difficult decade for social movements. In the wake of 9/11, New York City protests were often massively overpoliced, making demonstrating a grim and dispiriting affair, with the protesters who did show up to an action typically quarantined in “free speech pens” or arrested after being trapped by the awful orange netting cops would use to catch demonstrators like fish. Fortunately, most of the young people who had answered the call to “Occupy Wall Street” were new to activism—their sense of possibility hadn’t been constrained by the previous decade’s crackdown on dissent. Emboldened by recent uprisings including the Arab Spring, the Spanish and Greek indignados, and the occupation of Wisconsin’s state capitol, the people gathered in Zuccotti Park were determined to hold their ground for the night, and they succeeded.

This has been one of the astonishing motifs of this decade: wave after wave of new people engaging in social movements for the first time, be it Occupy, Dream Defenders, Black Lives Matter, #NoDAPL, the Women’s Marches, #MeToo, Indivisible, Democratic Socialists of America, Sunrise Movement, the Schools Strikes for Climate, and more. Since 2016, there has also been a remarkable insurgency of bold, unabashedly leftwing candidates for public office, many inspired by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ progressivism. If you had told me in 2010 that socialists would be winning office from Houston, Texas, to Fulton, Georgia, and serving as judges, city councilors and Congresswomen, I never would have believed you.

If this decade has been anything, it has been a decade of crisis: the financial crisis, the post-Trump political crisis and the climate crisis. I spent much of this period writing a book and making a film about democracy and one thing I learned is that the word for crisis, like the word democracy, comes from the ancient Greek, krisis. It means the turning point in an illness—death or recovery, two stark alternatives. It’s fitting, then, that two divergent possibilities lay ahead: on one side, the path to a more egalitarian society, underpinned by a wholesale transformation of our economic and energy systems; on the other, a nostalgic, ethno-nationalist rightwing backlash combining plutocracy with other forms of minority rule. No one knows what the next decade will bring, but given the high stakes we have no choice but to pick a side and try to be part of the cure.

Blast From the Past

Meet the new war, same as the old war.