The lie of the land: does environmentalism have a future in the age of Trump?

The Guardian/Paul Kingsnorth

March 18, 2017

On the complex interweaving of globalism, nationalism, environmentalism -- not as simple as we might hope. From an environmentalist who voted for Brexit.

"The anti-globalist attack on the greens is a wake-up call. It points to the fact that green ideas have too often become a virtue signal for the carbon-heavy bourgeoisie, drinking their Fairtrade organic coffee as they wait for their transatlantic flight. Green globalism has become part of the growth machine; a comfortable notion for those who don’t really want much to change." 

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Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic Party.

The Guardian/Trevor Timm
March 17, 2017

Photograph: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images

If you look at the numbers, Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America – and it’s not even close. Yet bizarrely, the Democratic party – out of power across the country and increasingly irrelevant – still refuses to embrace him and his message. It’s increasingly clear they do so at their own peril.

A new Fox News poll out this week shows Sanders has a +28 net favorability rating among the US population, dwarfing all other elected politicians on both ends of the political spectrum. And he’s even more popular among the vaunted “independents”, where he is at a mind boggling +41.

This poll is not just an aberration. Look at this Huffington Post chart that has tracked Sanders’ favorability rating over time, ever since he gained national prominence in 2015 when he started running for the Democratic nomination. The more people got to know him, they more they liked him – the exact opposite of what his critics said would happen when he was running against Clinton. [READ MORE}

Key Democratic Officials Now Warning Base Not to Expect Evidence of Trump/Russia Collusion

The Intercept/Glenn Greenwald
March 16, 2017

FROM MSNBC POLITICS shows to town hall meetings across the country, the overarching issue for the Democratic Party’s base since Trump’s victory has been Russia, often suffocating attention for other issues. This fixation has persisted even though it has no chance to sink the Trump presidency unless it is proven that high levels of the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Kremlin to manipulate the outcome of the U.S. election — a claim for which absolutely no evidence has thus far been presented. [READ MORE]

What do you call it when you do the same thing over and over and expect different results? Oh yeah, the democratic party. 
-- Naomi Klein



Current Affairs/February 25, 2017

THEY MUST BE TRYING TO FAIL

By failing to appoint Keith Ellison to chair the DNC, Democrats have written their suicide note…

by NATHAN J. ROBINSON

At this point, one has to conclude that the national Democratic Party has a death wish. Given the opportunity to throw a minuscule bone to the Sanders progressives, the DNC declined. By giving its chairmanship to former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, instead of Rep. Keith Ellison, party leaders have shown that they must be actively desiring electoral oblivion.

The Ellison/Perez fight had been portrayed as a re-litigation of the Sanders/Clinton primary fight. It was and it wasn’t. It was, in that Keith Ellison was endorsed by Bernie Sanders, while Tom Perez had the backing of members of the party’s more traditional establishment. But that’s also an oversimplification. After all, Chuck Schumer, not exactly a socialist insurgent, had endorsed Ellison, and the political differences between Ellison and Perez were not nearly so obvious as those between Sanders and Clinton. (READ MORE)

The Did-You-Talk-to-Russians Witch Hunt

When it comes to trying to take Trump down, by this point it would seem he has provided plenty of substantial grounds even in three short weeks. However the MSM and the Deep State are concentrating on pushing the story of a connection with Russia, which allows them to kill three birds with one stone:

1) It delegitimizes the Trump presidency.

2) Shifts the blame for Clinton's loss away from the candidate and the party.

3) Opens the door for war with Russia, which Deep State seems so eager for.

Do read Robert Parry's cautions below, where he carefully puts the relationship between the US and Russia into perspective. 

But then I'm reminded that when Hillary was Secretary of State, the Clintons were connected with the sale of a company, Uranium One, which gave the Russians control of 20% of all US uranium production capacity. Because uranium is a “strategic asset, with implications for national security” the sale required oversight by the State Department. Then shortly before the sale, Bill Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock. Further, Uranium One’s chairman gave $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation, a contribution that was not revealed despite Hillary’s agreement with Obama to identify all donors. Not that I approve of anything Trump does, but this makes vague revelations of his associates’ phone calls to unidentified Russian personages look like small potatoes indeed.

Red Square in Moscow with a winter festival to the left and the Kremlin to the right. (Photo by Robert Parry)

Democrats, liberals and media pundits – in their rush to take down President Trump – are pushing a New McCarthyism aimed at Americans who have talked to Russians, risking a new witch hunt.

By Robert Parry/Consortiumnews.com consortiumnews.com 2/18/17

In the anti-Russian frenzy sweeping American politics and media, Democrats, liberals and mainstream pundits are calling for an investigative body that could become a new kind of House Un-American Activities Committee to hunt down Americans who have communicated with Russians. The proposed commission would have broad subpoena powers to investigate alleged connections between Trump’s supporters and the Russian government with the apparent goal of asking if they now have or have ever talked to a Russian who might have some tie to the Kremlin or its intelligence agencies.

Such an admission apparently would be prima facie evidence of disloyalty, a guilt-by-association “crime” on par with Sen. Joe McCarthy’s Cold War pursuit of “communists” who supposedly had infiltrated the U.S. government, the film industry and other American institutions..(READ MORE)

Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal--New York Times, 4/24/15

The headline on the website Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when its precursor served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.”

The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.

But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one...(READ MORE)

Scolding Trump voters will not carry the Democrats back to power

Lexington/The Economist

The rise of the Herbal Tea Party

AS A rule, populist insurgencies are rarely defeated with slogans in Latin. Yet there it was, swaying proudly over the protest march that filled the ceremonial heart of Washington, DC, a day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump—a handwritten sign reading: “Primum Non Nocere”. The cardboard sign, quoting the ancient medical principle “First, Do No Harm”, was held by Mike Gilbert, an epidemiologist from Boston, Massachusetts, who joined hundreds of thousands of others showing their disapproval of the new president. Mr Gilbert gave two reasons for attending what was officially the “Women’s March on Washington”, part of an internet-organised global protest that saw sister marches in hundreds of cities. He marched to show solidarity with “the women in my life” and to rally support for “sound science”, which he fears will be undermined by ideologues chosen to oversee scientific funding and regulation.

Many marchers set out to shame Mr Trump for boorishly boasting, years ago, that fame allowed him to grab women “by the pussy”. They wore knitted pink “pussy hats” with pointy ears, or carried such signs as “Viva La Vulva”. Some youngsters mocked the new president as a short-fingered nativist, chanting: “Can’t Build A Wall, Hands Too Small.” Still others said that they hoped their numbers would humiliate the president by dwarfing crowds that turned out for his inauguration. That gambit seemed to work, as Mr Trump spent his first days in office bragging implausibly about the size of his inaugural crowds.... (READ MORE)

The Elites Won’t Save Us

Posted on Feb 12, 2017

By Chris Hedges/Truthdig

The four-decade-long assault on our democratic institutions by corporations has left them weak and largely dysfunctional. These institutions, which surrendered their efficacy and credibility to serve corporate interests, should have been our firewall. Instead, they are tottering under the onslaught. 

Labor unions are a spent force. The press is corporatized and distrusted. Universities have been purged of dissidents and independent scholars who criticize neoliberalism and decry the decay of democratic institutions and political parties. Public broadcasting and the arts have been defunded and left on life support. The courts have been stacked with judges whose legal careers were spent serving corporate power, a trend in appointments that continued under Barack Obama. Money has replaced the vote, which is how someone as unqualified as Betsy DeVos can buy herself a Cabinet seat. And the Democratic Party, rather than sever its ties to Wall Street and corporations, is naively waiting in the wings to profit from a Trump debacle.

“The biggest asset Trump has is the decadent, clueless, narcissistic, corporate-indentured, war-mongering Democratic Party,” Ralph Nader said when I reached him by phone in Washington. “If the Democratic strategy is waiting for Godot, waiting for Trump to implode, we are in trouble. And just about everything you say about the Democrats you can say about the AFL-CIO. They don’t control the train.”

The loss of credibility by democratic institutions has thrust the country into an existential as well as economic crisis. The courts, universities and press are no longer trusted by tens of millions of Americans who correctly see them as organs of the corporate elites. These institutions are traditionally the mechanisms by which a society is able to unmask the lies of the powerful, critique ruling ideologies and promote justice. Because Americans have been bitterly betrayed by their institutions, the Trump regime can attack the press as the “opposition party,” threaten to cut off university funding, taunt a federal jurist as a “so-called judge” and denounce a court order as “outrageous.”

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