Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Who Was That Greta Girl Again?

People who comment on Greta Thunberg’s personality, demeanor and looks should instead focus on the fact that she is right that we face an existential environmental crisis.

Facebook has just released a tool that lets you turn off some third-party tracking. But changing the new setting requires 9 different clicks, in a corner of the site that most users will never see.

Here’s how to go turn it off now. (1/6) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/how-change-your-facebook-activity-settings

Trump’s NLRB Quietly Makes It Riskier To Wear Union Schwag at Work

The Republican-controlled National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ended 2019 by rolling back another round of Obama-era regulations and handing down a number of pro-employer decisions. One of those rulings restricts workers from wearing union buttons and other pro-labor insignia.

Don't dismiss compulsory student tracking via a phone app just because it's limited to athletes. These measures always start with a small powerless group, then use that "success" to justify expanding to others. #privacy

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=14274

An egg a day not tied to risk of heart disease

The controversy about whether eggs are good or bad for your heart health may be solved, and about one a day is fine. A team of researchers found the answer by analyzing data from three large, long-term multinational studies.

Walnuts may slow cognitive decline in at-risk elderly

Eating walnuts may help slow cognitive decline in at-risk groups of the elderly population, according to a study conducted by researchers in California and Spain.

Lab turns trash into valuable graphene in a flash

Scientists are using high-energy pulses of electricity to turn any source of carbon into turbostratic graphene in an instant. The process promises environmental benefits by turning waste into valuable graphene that can then strengthen concrete and other composite materials.

Current model for storing nuclear waste is incomplete

The materials the United States and other countries plan to use to store high level nuclear waste will likely degrade faster than anyone previously knew, because of the way those materials interact, new research shows. The findings show that corrosion of nuclear waste storage materials accelerates because of changes in the chemistry the nuclear waste solution, and because of the way the materials interact with one another.

Researchers advance solar material production

A team has developed a more efficient, safer, and cost-effective way to produce cadmium telluride (CdTe) material for solar cells or other applications, a discovery that could advance the solar industry and make it more competitive.

Sea level rise to cause major economic impact in the absence of further climate action

Rising sea levels, a direct impact of the Earth's warming climate, is intensifying coastal flooding. The findings of a new study show that the projected negative economy-wide effects of coastal flooding are already significant until 2050, but are then predicted to increase substantially towards the end of the century if no further climate action on mitigation and adaptation is taken.

Patterns of thinning of Antarctica's biggest glacier are opposite to previously observed

Using the latest satellite technology from the European Space Agency (ESA), scientists have been tracking patterns of mass loss from Pine Island -- Antarctica's largest glacier.

Young People Don’t Support Biden. Why Does the Establishment Still Think He’s the Most “Electable”?

And so, we begin the Roaring 2020s with war, assassination and firestorms on a burning Earth. We know it will be a decisive decade. What remains to be seen is whether, here in the United States, “We the People” break with the rule of the corporate oligarchy and take measures to ensure a democratic future on a habitable planet. The window of opportunity to save the world has become a narrow slit. Will we make it through?

That will be determined in no small measure by the 2020 General Election, which is shaping up to be a three-way race in a two-party system.

First, we have the Republican Party, its fealty fully pledged to President Donald Trump. The Christian Right loves that he is stacking the courts with culture warriors. The corporate Right likes that he cuts taxes and guts environmental regulations. And white nationalists like his racist theatrics and the gratuitous cruelty of his immigration policies.

Second, we have the Democratic Party’s progressive wing and its standard bearers Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Their populist calls for a redistribution of wealth and an expansion of a social democratic welfare state—tuition-free public college, Medicare for All, the Green New Deal—resonate with a growing number of voters.

Third, we have the Democratic establishment. It has hitched its wagon to the concept of “electability,” which national polls reveal to be a top concern of Dems. In other words: Who can beat Trump? These centrist Democrats and their allies in the corporate media vehemently oppose any meaningful attempts to redistribute wealth and power. Bereft of appealing policy proposals to inspire the base, they have weaponized “electability,” using it to limit the range of possible candidates, both in demographics and ideology. It is also employed as a cudgel against any transformative policy, the argument being that Big Change will spook independent voters—and thereby help reelect Trump—completely ignoring the potential of big ideas to turn out voters otherwise likely to sit out.

Their candidate is Joe “Electable” Biden. Their candidate’s main policy expert is Bruce Reed, who accompanies Biden on the campaign trail. As architect of President Bill Clinton’s 1996 so-called welfare reform, Reed coined the “end welfare as we know it” slogan. A former CEO of the now-defunct Democratic Leadership Council, Reed left his post in 2010 to serve as executive director of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which unsuccessfully attempted to reduce the deficit by cutting cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.

Why Biden is so electable—a 77-year-old candidate who stepped onto the national stage in 1972 as the junior senator from Delaware and has twice run (and lost badly) for president—is never explained. A 1995 video has surfaced of Biden speaking in favor of a GOP-sponsored balanced-budget amendment. “When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well,” he bragged. “I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans’ benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the government. And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time.” And his backing of the Iraq War has rightly dogged him: As CNN reported, at a January 4 event in Des Moines, Iowa, “Biden again dishonestly suggests he opposed the Iraq War from the beginning.”

Is it any wonder that young people are not flocking to the Biden campaign? In a December 2019 poll of Iowa voters, only 6% of likely Democratic caucus-goers between 18 and 34 supported Biden, while 55% supported Warren or Sanders. For a Democratic Party establishment truly concerned with electability—now and in the future—that is the poll to pay attention to. 

Why Centrist Democrats Can’t Get to Bernie Sanders

Centrist Democrats find themselves in a quandry: the more they attack Bernie Sanders, the more that voters support him. If only there was a solution.

New species of Allosaurus discovered in Utah

A remarkable new species of meat-eating dinosaur, Allosaurus jimmadseni, was just unveiled. The huge carnivore inhabited the flood plains of western North America during the Late Jurassic Period, between 157-152 million years ago, making it the geologically oldest species of Allosaurus, predating the more well-known state fossil of Utah, Allosaurus fragilis.

Fungal diversity and its relationship to the future of forests

Researchers predict that climate change will reduce the diversity of symbiotic fungi that help trees grow.

New York: Join @STOPSpyingNY on January 29 as they discussion NYPD's use of the Gang Database. They will be joined by New Yorkers that have been affected by the database and look to #EndtheDatabase. https://www.eff.org/event/stop-x-radtech-voices-gang-database

Scotland Is on Track to Hit 100 Percent Renewable Energy This Year, Slàinte Mhath!
https://earther.gizmodo.com/scotland-is-on-track-to-hit-100-percent-renewable-energ-1841202818 #climatechange #climatecrisis

James Thindwa, a Man Who Did What Needed to Be Done—And Said What Needed to Be Said

In These Times lost a friend on January 19, with the passing of James Thindwa (1955–2020), a prominent Chicago community organizer and a long-time member of our board of directors.

James was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, grew up in Blantyre, Malawi, and at the age of 18 came to America to attend Berea College in Berea, Ky. Modeled after Oberlin College, Berea was the first interracial and coeducational college in the South.

In a moving tribute to him, James’ wife, the historian Martha Biondi, wrote:

His passionate commitment to fighting for social justice and his belief in the power of ordinary people to change their lives, and our world, will live on in the rich legacy he imparted to so many. …

A lifelong activist and champion of human rights, James fought in numerous struggles, including the anti-apartheid movement, immigrant rights movement, antiwar movement and many campaigns for racial justice. James was a firm believer in the responsibility of government to tax the rich, defend the rights of workers, and provide free health care for all and robust support for the elderly. He refused the lure of cynicism and despair his whole life. He instilled in so many young organizers a fervent belief in the power of personal and social transformation.

Professionally, James was best known as a community and labor organizer, as Lee Sustar, a Chicago activist, writes in Jacobin. James served as the executive director of Chicago Jobs With Justice and, most recently, as a national organizer for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), where he worked to bring the Chicago Teachers Union model of bargaining for the common good to AFT locals across the Midwest. 

James was also a gifted writer; In These Times regularly turned to him when events of the day demanded a dose of political sanity. In the past decade, James wrote 26 articles for In These Times, including several editorials.

What follows is a sampler of times James said what needed to be said:

In January 2013, following President Barack Obama’s speech at his second inauguration, James noted what Obama did not say but should have said. In “Obama’s Progressive Agenda: Missing a Main Ingredient,” he wrote, in part:

Notwithstanding Obama’s welcome and reassuring political posture in this moment, his wish list for progressive transformation is lacking a key item. The president has shown no interest in seriously defending organized labor and union rights, even as Michigan, the “cradle of the labor movement” was instantaneously flipped into a “right-to-work” state. And this followed brazen attacks on workers in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana by GOP governors in the service of corporate elites seeking a return to unfettered capitalism and unbridled exploitation of workers. …

The right to organize is a core Democratic (and democratic) principle. It serves a fundamental social justice purpose, is universally recognized, and is indispensable to a healthy democracy. Why are these considerations not compelling enough for the president to pick up this cause? …

Reviving the primacy of labor rights will require all partners in the progressive movement to develop political savvy and the wherewithal to defend this endangered civil right. For a Democratic president to declare a new progressive renewal without labor rights at its center is an embarrassment for Democrats, and a betrayal of the rich history of the country’s populist social movements. Pay equity, the workers' rights issue Obama has focused on, is an important but safe issue for him. After all, who really can oppose this? But pay equity is not a substitute for union rights. Where union organizing can raise wages for all workers, pay equity simply guarantees equal treatment. The workers can be equal in poverty.

In August 2016, following the Democratic National Convention that chose Hillary Clinton as the party’s standard bearer, James took on Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and his fellow members in the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in “The Black Political Establishment Should Never Have Given Hillary Clinton a Blank Check.” Today, with Lewis and a number of other members of the CBC jumping on the Joe Biden bandwagon, his essay remains just as relevant. He wrote, in part:

During a Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee (CBC PAC) endorsement session for Hillary Clinton, Georgia congressman and movement veteran John Lewis questioned Sanders’ civil rights bona fides, declaring, “I never saw him. I never met him.”

Why would Lewis take this odd tack, which discounts the contributions of multitudes who participated in the struggle without having personally met him? Because, of course, Lewis and the CBC were not mounting a real effort to substantively engage Sanders on racial politics. They were stumping for Clinton.

… But that support is part and parcel of a decades-long encroachment of neoliberalism and its gospel of market infallibility on black politics, and on the Democratic Party in general….

Neoliberalism has also neutralized the passionate advocacy long a feature of black leadership. Few black leaders beat the drum against the Democrats’ rightward drift, even though the party’s abandonment of the working class disproportionately affects black communities. …

The black political establishment has fallen prey to the same corporate influence as the rest of the Democratic establishment. In 2010, the New York Times reported that the CBC Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the CBC, raised $53 million over a five-year period, much of it from corporate donors—Big Pharma, telecom and financial industries. Most went to finance leisure activities such as glitzy conventions, golf and casino junkets, and underwriting the foundation’s headquarters. …

Rashad Robinson, executive director of the activist group Color of Change and a critic of the CBC, terms such practices “civil-rights washing …

A real debate within the black community over whom to support would have signaled to Clinton and the Democratic establishment that the days of taking black folks for granted are over. … t would have aligned Black America with the global anti-elite political revolt currently underway. … Instead of using the Sanders challenge to make the candidates compete for black votes, the black establishment effectively awarded Clinton a no-bid contract. Sweetheart deals are as bad in politics as in commerce.

One of the things that most frustrated James, was a tendency on some parts of the Left to discount the importance of electoral politics or to call for the establishment of a third party. As he saw it, building popular movements went hand-in-hand with electoral activism.

In October 2016, as the general election loomed, James wrote “The Luxury of Opting Out of This Election.” He wrote, in part:

 [F]ew topics have generated more spirited discussion among its readers and writers than how the Left should relate to the Democratic Party: whether to challenge the neoliberal establishment from within or to build a competing political structure from without. This is an old debate, but carries more relevance and urgency today than ever, given the rise of a neofascist Republican presidential nominee.

A core mission of left movements is to promote the interests of working-class and marginalized communities. Yet for many such communities, this debate is far removed from everyday realities.

People whose livelihoods can turn with an election don’t have the luxury to wait for a messianic third party—or a political revolution, for that matter—to rescue them. As just one example, for those making minimum wage, this election could make the difference between their pay plummeting (if Trump carries through on abolishing the federal floor of $7.25 per hour) or doubling (if Hillary Clinton makes good on the Democratic Party platform promise, pushed through by the Sanders campaign, to raise the minimum to $15). On purely humanitarian terms, progressives must help ensure relief for vulnerable communities by voting without apology for the candidate—yes, Hillary Clinton—who will embrace a minimum wage hike. …

Since its founding, In These Times has championed an inside-outside strategy of political engagement—pushing the Democratic Party left by working through the electoral system while simultaneously building popular movements. That strategy works. Outside, the climate movement forced President Obama to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline in November 2015. Inside, the Sanders campaign pushed Clinton to abandon her support for the pro-corporate Trans-Pacific Partnership. Should Clinton be elected, it will be up to the progressive movement, mobilizing on the outside and organizing on the inside, to encourage her to tack to the left, rather than, as was her husband’s wont, to the right.

Here at In These Times, we pledge to continue to help build a national progressive movement by reporting on conditions on the ground and providing a forum to share strategies, solutions and lessons learned. As In These Times’ 40 years on the beat demonstrate, we are up to this historic challenge.

James, a principled internationalist, did not believe “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” He was particularly skeptical of those on the Left who, rather than condemn political persecution and violations of human rights wherever they occur, establish a hierarchy of oppressors, excusing despotic governments merely because their leaders oppose Washington’s imperial designs. In August 2018, James took up the subject of creeping fascism in “We Can Criticize U.S. Imperialism and Oppose Putin, Too.” He wrote, in part:

Some on the American Left feel the attention given to the Trump-Putin alliance and the ongoing Mueller investigation is problematic. The incredible phenomenon of a president who behaves like a Russian intelligence asset—his inability in Helsinki to criticize Russian interference in U.S. elections when asked—makes for riveting television. But critics argue the outrage expressed by many progressives toward Putin is overblown and hypocritical. The wall-to-wall media coverage, they say, distracts from underreported crises locally and globally, including racist police violence, nuclear proliferation, domestic voter suppression, the war in Syria and so on.

Critics also suggest the focus on the Mueller investigation comes at the expense of a potential focus on American warmongering. They remind us that the United States also interferes in other countries’ elections, and contend that people of color in the United States are so besieged with other concerns that Trump’s Russian connections are of little interest or import. But as progressives, we should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Those on the Left who criticize Russian interference and Putin’s authoritarian posturing—his xenophobia, racism, homophobia and sexism—are simply being consistent, resisting the bad “campist” habit of confusing principled anti-imperialism with reflexive support for Washington’s antagonists.

… A truly internationalist Left must persist in resisting reactionary global actors everywhere.

James’ voice in In These Times will be sorely missed. But like his organizing strategy and the influence it had on many, the words James wrote will survive through the people who read and reflected on his essays. His is a legacy In These Times is honored to have contributed to.