A poignant story

I have just finished reading How to Hide an Empire by historian Daniel Immerwahr. It is an excellent book about the complex relationship of the US with the concept of empire and the great lengths it has gone to hide the fact that it is an imperial power. In the early part (p. 56-58) he recounts a poignant story. He tells it so well that to summarize and paraphrase it would be to do a disservice to the story so I give it below.

He sets it up by saying that industrialized agricultural practices had greatly depleted the soil and up to the beginning of the 20th century, the main sources of fertilizer to revive soils were natural sources that were mined from rocky islands in the Pacific ocean that were made of out of hardened bird droppings called guano.
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Bernie hasn’t changed

Watch this interview with Phil Donahue from back in 1981 just after he had won the race for mayor of Burlington, Vermont. He was fighting against the big banks and corporations and for the poor and working class back then too and his basic message has not changed. It is also clear that he has never combed his hair in his life.

Marie Newman will challenge conservative Democrat again

The Democratic party establishment has announced a crackdown on insurgent candidates challenging incumbents in primaries, warning that any vendors who support such candidates will be blacklisted by the party. It is clear that they are so scared of the energy of the new young progressives that they will go to any lengths to support neoliberal and even conservative incumbents. An excellent test case of this is Illinois congressman Dan Lipinksi. If you did not see the (D) after his name, you could be excused for thinking of him as a Republican based on his views and voting record.
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The Extinction Rebellion protest in London

Over the past nine days, a group known as Extinction Rebellion has been blockading central London to highlight the problem of climate change and to protest lack of action on it. They just ended the protest.

Extinction Rebellion, which has been backed by senior academics, politicians and scientists during nine days of peaceful mass civil disobedience, said it would leave its remaining blockades, but added: “The world has changed … A space for truth-telling has been opened up.

“Now it is time to bring this telling of the truth to communities around London, the regions and nations of the UK, and internationally. In this age of misinformation, there is power in telling the truth.”

The group said it would like to “thank Londoners for opening their hearts and demonstrating their willingness to act on that truth”.

The statement added: “We know we have disrupted your lives. We do not do this lightly. We only do this because this is an emergency.”

The activists said protesters had “taken to the streets and raised the alarm” in more than 80 cities in 33 countries. “People are talking about the climate and ecological emergency in ways that we never imagined,” they said.

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The ‘Stop Bernie’ movement tries to regroup

Bernie Sanders has shown that his popularity during the 2016 election is not ephemeral and is continuing this time around too. This has caused considerable consternation in the Democratic party establishment at this threat to the dominance of its neoliberal orthodoxy and they are scrambling to find ways to derail the Sanders campaign. The Center for American Progress and ThinkProgress, both closely affiliated with the party leadership, has made no secret of its desire to derail the Sanders campaign.
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The TurboTax ‘free’ tax software rip-off

According to the deal that the IRS has with the private tax preparation companies, the IRS will not develop its own free software provided that the companies offer free software to people earning less than $66,000 per year. Congress is now about to pass a measure making that agreement an actual law. But Justin Elliot and Lucas Waldron at ProPublica tried to file free and found that TurboTax has made it incredibly difficult for people to even locate the free service.
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Jimmy Carter calls the US ‘the most warlike nation’

The former president said that this was true not just for the current time but in the history of the world and backed up his assertion with facts.

Carter then referred to the US as “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” a result, he said, of the US forcing other countries to “adopt our American principles.”

Carter then said the US has been at peace for only 16 of its 242 years as a nation. Counting wars, military attacks and military occupations, there have actually only been five years of peace in US history—1976, the last year of the Gerald Ford administration and 1977-80, the entirety of Carter’s presidency. Carter then referred to the US as “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” a result, he said, of the US forcing other countries to “adopt our American principles.”

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