The Digger

March 26th, 2019 He has sent so many cliques and groups into titters of anger, and the indignant have attempted to turn on him.  The university environment should be the last place where dangerous ideas, and views, are stifled and stomped upon. In actual fact, we are seeing the reverse; from students unions to middle- and upper-managerial parasites and administrators, the contrarian idea must be boxed, the controversial speaker silenced and sent beyond the pale.  Dissent and disagreement are lethal toxin to such affected notions as “diversity” and “inclusiveness”. It should be very clear that meaningless terms such as diversity and inclusiveness do very little to the content of actual intellectual conversation.  Ideas are there to be debated, not accepted by high caste strictures.  The modern academic environment suggests something quite opposite: a policing rationale, an insistence on thought control that is insidious and all too common in managed structures....

"Donald Trump couldn’t have asked for a juicier 2020 campaign issue" On Sunday,  Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to Congress , summarizing the findings of Special Counsel  Robert Mueller ’s  Russia  investigation. The most telling section, quoted directly from Mueller’s report,  read : “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” That one sentence should end a roughly  33-month  national ordeal (the first Russiagate stories date back to July 2016) in which the public was encouraged, both by officials and the press, to believe  Donald Trump  was a compromised foreign agent. After the 2016 election, the storyline instantly became that Trump was an illegitimate president, a foreign operative who’d cheated his way into office and would therefore need to be removed ahead of schedule. There were...

I've been hanging out on Twitter a bit where the narcissist Joshua Frank, co-editor at Counterpunch, has been sounding off quasi-centrist fumes while Russiavapping. Link:   To Celebrate or to Not? The Mueller Question Finally, it’s over. Well, sort of, anyway. Late Sunday afternoon, Attorney General Bill Barr released his much-anticipated  summary  of Bob Mueller’s Russia investigation. The big news, of course, was that nobody in Trump’s orbit “knowingly” coordinated with Russian efforts to disrupt the 2016 election. Trump won’t be charged with obstruction of justice and not a single American was indicted for conspiracy. To the delight of Russiagate skeptics, it was a complete vindication. To the dismay of the liberal establishment and MSDNC — who all cashed in on the chaos — it was an enormous letdown. Much of the celebration, however, took on a twisted form. Matt Taibbi was the most contorted, writing in a  column  that, “WMD was a pimple compared t...

26 March 2019 The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, as part of its “Wallace House Presents” speaker series, hosted an event on March 19 titled “The Weinstein Effect: Breaking the Stories That Spurred a Movement.” The event consisted of a conversation between Ken Auletta, a writer on various media issues, and Ronan Farrow, the  New Yorker  contributing writer whose October 2017 article about Harvey Weinstein helped touch off the #MeToo campaign. The two-hour event was dominated by self-promotion and self-congratulation, identity politics and contempt for basic democratic rights. In their meandering comments, which were distinctly deficient in terms of facts and details, the two speakers took for granted that Farrow’s mix of hearsay, unproven allegations and anonymous comments constituted “evidence” of wrongdoing. The event underscored the fact that #MeToo is a political campaign alien from—and hostile to—the interests of the working class, both women and men. Farr...

Ort suggested I put this up. Good idea Ort! It asks some questions to which  you can be sure the Tr[i]ump[h]ians will demand answers, like how, when a person is exonerated of a charge, is that not an exoneration? And this one: " Does the full Mueller Report mention, for instance, that the animating document claiming that Trump  colluded  with Russia was manufactured by Mrs. Clinton’s employees? And that this document was used time and again improperly and illegally to prolong the inquisition? How could Mr. Mueller  not  acknowledge that? And if not, what sort of investigation was this?" So here's Kunstler's take on the situation, from his "Clusterfuck Nation" blog. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  The Narrative  is dead! Long live  The Narrative! That’s what played on CNN, NBC, and  The New York Times  yesterday as they struggled to digest the parting meal Robert Mueller served to the RussiaGate lynch mob: a nothingburger with a side of c...

"One key feature of the Trump era is a renewed public focus on the issue of democracy. Last year’s congressional elections had the highest midterm voter turnout since 1966. Americans across the country have poured into the streets and packed the halls of Congress to protest President Trump’s power grabs. Over one million people convicted of felonies have regained the right to vote in Florida, thanks to a successful statewide ballot measure. New York City residents pushed their elected officials to   all but force   the world’s richest person, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, to walk away from $3 billion in tax breaks. But leave it to public school teachers to educate us about a direct attack on democracy that’s been   hiding right under our noses   since long before the Trump presidency: Privatization. A wave of teacher strikes is highlighting the country’s deepening education funding crisis while also raising concerns over the expansion of charter schools....

"Recent developments make clear there is little time left before the effects of environmental destruction threaten the survival of most humans, animals, and ecosystems. A  2018 report  by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that we have only 12 years before the devastating impacts of climate change become reality. As conditions worsen worldwide due to rising temperatures and extreme weather events,  additional consequences  include climate refugees, disputes over resources, deteriorating infrastructure, new health concerns, and challenges to food production and distribution. Moreover, those most affected by toxic pollution and climate change are often people of color in politically marginalized communities who have contributed the least to the current environmental crisis. As the dangers of planetary destruction become increasingly dire, there is a corresponding growth in the strength, coordination, and urgency of movements for environmen...