IMPORTANT READS

BIZ POLITICS--Growing tension between California and the federal government over immigration has business owners in the crosshairs, worried about the potential effect on their enterprises and unsure which laws they should follow. 

DC DISPATCH--In American Pravda: My fight for truth in the era of fake news by James O’Keefe, delivers an interesting, thought provoking piece of reading. Basically, it raises questions on the role of media, equating the American journalism, as it stands today, and Stalin’s suppression of freedom of speech in 1930’s. Pravda was of course the Soviet Union’s bastion that became Stalin’s vehicle back then. He used it extensively to propagate lies, which nobody dared to oppose. People accepted those lies, even though they knew them to be so. Americans have always prided themselves of being free from similar constraints, proclaiming democracy to be the best form of governance, with freedom of speech being at its core. 

DC DISPATCH-For the past few months, Bitcoin has been making more headlines than normal. In July 2011, Bitcoin had parity with the U.S. dollar and has since catapulted to an all-time high of 17,900 on December 15, 2017. So many have asked, what is propelling this exponential growth? 

TRUTH WATCH--Comparing Trump to Hitler may sound like it has been overplayed, but there has never been any administration in the history of the United States that followed the fascist doctrine so closely. It was well-know that Trump studied Hitler’s speeches and this was validated in a 2016 Vanity Fair interview with his former wife, Ivanka. 

CHANGE AGENCY-Assume, for the sake of argument, that Mueller’s team believes Donald Trump is a crook. They’ve discovered evidence of something  --  obstruction as president, collusion as a candidate, money laundering that leaves him compromised, whatever -- that convinces them Trump should be removed from office.

RELIGION AND POLITICS--Today, just about everyone -- including lobbyists, state legislators, and Supreme Court litigants -- assumes that freedom of religion naturally means opposition to same-sex marriage and reproductive rights, and sits in tension with anti-discrimination and civil rights laws. 

RACISM AND POLITICS--In the past couple of weeks, thanks to the president’s racist comments about Haiti and African countries he can’t even name -- remember “Nambia”? -- as well as the stamp of approval he awarded future immigrants from Norway, we’ve seen a surprising amount of commentary about that fortunate country.

MEDIA WATCH--American mass media journalism is broken. There are some simple elements of U.S. journalistic practice that have proved easy for special interests to hack, and the editors at least have allowed themselves to be used by sinister forces. (I am speaking primarily of television news here, and primarily of the 24 hour channels).

DC WATCH--If you google the phrase “locker room talk,” (LRT)  you won't see an image of a sunset-hued Neanderthal dressed in a  kosovorotka, but a definition put forth by the Urban Dictionary. This method of communication is defined as “any manner of conversation, that polite society dictates be held privately - with small groups of like-minded, similarly gendered peers - due to its sexually charged language, situations or innuendos.” 

THE END OF CIVIL DISCOURSE-The funeral has begun. The casket lies open on the altar of decency and the asterisk rests quietly within, while the officiant prepares to close the coffin and lower it into its grave.

POLITICS--Former Maricopa County Sheriff and U.S. Senate candidate Joe Arpaio at his office on January 10, 2018, in Fountain Hills, Arizona

THE PRICE OF A TRUMP PRESIDENCY--The United States' global standing has plummeted under the Trump administration, according to Human Rights Watch's (HRW) annual report and an international Gallup survey regarding the country's reputation as a world leader.

SCIENCE AND AGING-A start-up company in California called Alkahest has an unconventional, and rather vampiric, idea for curing Alzheimer's disease. The founders believe that the disease can be slowed, stopped, or possibly reversed using blood from young people.

CORRUPTION WATCH-When the federal Ninth Circuit Court issued its decision In re Sunnyslope on May 26, 2017 (WL 2294746), it may have saved Los Angeles from disaster. 

PACIFIC STANDARD-Many labels come with stereotypes attached, and applying them can influence how a specific individual is viewed, and treated. While these harmful labels are often based on race or religion, new research identifies a different large group of Americans who are surprisingly subject to being stigmatized: Baby Boomers. 

GUEST COMMENTARY--In a New Year’s Eve display of liberal newspaper death penalty abolition harmony – buoyed by the release of the Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPIC) annual report evidencing another year in the long-observable trend of capital punishment’s disuse and disfavor in America – both the Washington Post and New York Times’s editorial boards published opinion pieces arguing for an end to what the Times called a “cruel and pointless” practice; one that is “savage, racially biased, arbitrary,” and which “the developed world agreed to reject...long ago.” 

NON VIOLENCE--About a year ago, sometime between the feelings of depression that followed Trump’s election and his inauguration, an old activist friend – and occasional Capital & Main contributor – contacted me. Vivian Rothstein had traveled to the South to register voters during the civil rights movement, and she thought it was time again to focus on non-violence as a way of resisting what was floating to the surface in America. She meant not only white supremacy, but what many activists recognize in Trump’s authoritarian tendencies: a threat to democracy itself. Would I join a small group of people to offer trainings in nonviolent resistance, including civil disobedience?

JUSTICE-Because it seems that, some 20 years after its creation, the so-called “Baron & Budd witness coaching memo” has gone missing–well, at least from Wikipedia, where it resided for years. 

PERSPECTIVE--Long before he started running for president, Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that he’s both brainy and well-educated. It is one of his most persistent lies.

TRUMP BEST AT SOMETHING--President Donald Trump, who recently said he would announce the “MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR,” has been awarded the title of the world’s most oppressive leader toward press freedom by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

WORLD WATCH--“Mr. Kim may be partly motivated by an intense need to roll back sanctions that, by all accounts, have begun to bite.”

Whoa and ouch. This was my wakeup paragraph. I was sitting at Starbucks, reading the New York Times, feeling confusing old emotions wash over me on the first day of the New Year, when suddenly these words hit me like a sucker punch: The sanctions against North Korea “have begun to bite”?

Compare this throw-away fragment of international news with a brief analysis of the effect of U.S. and global sanctions against North Korea by the Council on Foreign Relations: “Sanctions are often felt most by ordinary families, not the power elites who are the intended targets. . . . Sanctions and extended periods of drought have left many of North Korea’s twenty-five million people malnourished and impoverished.”

The wakeup bite for me wasn’t that the New York Times was wrong, simply that, as it presented the latest bit of international news to its global audience, the context of its reporting wasn’t factual data but 21st century mythology.

In our contemporary mythology, the defining gods, especially here in the “developed world,” are hulking, dangerous entities called nations, which stomp across the planet endlessly pursuing their interests. They are alleged to be conscious beings, usually with human faces — Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un — and their power rivals that of Zeus or Yahweh. But the effects of their behavior, even when it kills actual humans, is trivialized by the scribes as the equivalent, for instance, of a divine a bee sting.

Notice how quietly, how smoothly, most geopolitical reporting shifts back and forth between actual individuals and the imaginary beings called nations:
“The statement emphasized the roles of the two Koreas in resolving the nuclear crisis. President Trump, in contrast, has pursued a tougher approach . . .”

“But Mr. Moon also agrees with China and Russia that talks are needed to resolve the nuclear crisis. Mr. Kim’s sudden peace overture on Monday will probably encourage both Russia and China to renew their calls for some kind of ‘freeze for freeze’ — a freeze on North Korean tests in return for a freeze on all American-South Korean military exercises. Presumably, under that situation sanctions would begin to ease.”

OK. Nuclear freeze — very important. The Times story contained sober and responsible data, but I still felt tormented by it. Slowly it began occurring to me: The jargon here is mythical. And such reporting does nothing but perpetuate the status quo that keeps these belligerent, increasingly unstable gods in power.

In such a context, the only peace that’s possible is tense and temporary. To long for lasting, transcendent peace — to imagine that it’s possible — is to marginalize yourself. Come on. Read Trump’s latest tweet: “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

The voice crying out is bigger than Donald Trump. It’s the voice of the mythical nation desperately shrieking: I’m not going away!
My response: Yes, you are.

The most toxic force on Planet Earth is nationalism. I’m not against collective consciousness. I believe with all my being in a human identity that transcends self and ego, but the concept of “the nation” is poisoned by the worst of who we are.

Addressing the question what is a nation, the Global Policy Forum explains: “National identity is typically based on shared culture, religion, history, language or ethnicity.” But they leave out the most important element. National identity of the Trump sort — and as quietly revered in the New York Times and the rest of the status quo media — requires a shared enemy. Without it, there’s no news.

A year ago, after Trump’s election, I suggested he may be the poster boy of nationalism’s last gasp, that a larger consciousness is waiting to lay claim on American politics.

“Trump says build a wall. Even if the wall is mostly a metaphor, the effect of that metaphor is to lock in consciousness, as though ‘America’ is the only truth Americans are capable of understanding: Fifty states and that’s it. We’re exceptional and the rest of you, keep out. Locked-in consciousness never keeps people safe, but it does keep them scared. You might call it patriotic absolutism, which yields fear, violence and war.”

The latest manifestation of the border wall is in relation to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the law protecting some 700,000+ people — a.k.a., “the dreamers” — born outside the U.S., brought here as children, which could expire in March. Trump says he won’t renew DACA unless he gets congressional approval for his lunatic wall, estimated to cost between $68 billion and $158 billion to build. “We need it. We see the drugs pouring into the country, we need the wall,” Trump said.

Besides the cost, there’s another overlooked detail: “Environmental groups have also expressed concerns over the potential impact of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border,” according to Newsweek.

“Aside from the massive carbon footprint associated with the transport of raw materials, the U.S.-Mexico border is also home to many endangered species that routinely move between both sides of the Rio Bravo. The jaguar is one these species. As reported in Science earlier this year, the border wall would decimate the jaguar population across North America.”

If only for the sake of the jaguar, it’s time to expand our consciousness, to create a myth called One Planet.

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one . . .”

(Robert Koehler is a contributor to CityWatch, courtesy of  PeaceVoice.  He is a Chicago award-winning journalist and editor.)

-cw