FOUR ON THE FLOOR

1. Bertoldt Brecht once wrote “Unhappy is the country that breeds no heroes.” And I add, miserable is the country that sends its heroes to jail—which is exactly what happened this week when Theresa Okoumou was found guilty by U.S. District Judge Gabriel Gornstein for protesting zero tolerance immigration policy by scaling the base of the Statue of Liberty last July 4^th.

 

Okoumou holds up Rise and Resist T-shirt

While Kristjen Nielsen admits to Congress she has no idea how many have died under her department’s watch, Okoumou remains unrepentant, and despite facing up to 18 months in prison, she declared she would climb “ as long as our children are in cages.”

Okoumou addresses reporters

2. Protest works. Take a look at what’s happening in France. Our lamestream media need us to discount the Gilets Jaunes movement as violent, chaotic and un-American. But so far the movement has won abolition of Macron’s hated fuel tax hike, augmentation of the minimum wage by 7%, and cancellation of levies on overtime and pensions. The rest of France is protesting, too. Peaceful protest works and shows a sense of humor. Have a look at this video for another slant:

https://www.brasscheck.com/video/whats-really-happening-in-france/

3. This week the Fossilized Democrats just blocked Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s push for a Green New Deal Committee, and announced that they would not block members who are on the take for fossil fuel money. Which is all the more reason to share this video of Greta Thunberg’s TED talk video far and wide:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAmmUIEsN9A

And responding to Greta, what if a couple of organizers (you and a friend maybe) started organizing your single urban city block, enlisting every building to agree to solarize its rooftop, and raised funds from your mayor and city council and other foundations and climate-concerned organizations to initiate a pilot project—the first of its kind? And what if one by one, other city blocks followed? And what if other cities caught on? And foreign cities, too, say in India and China? And what if we called this initiative “Greta’s Grid”? If Japan can do it, so can we.

Yokohama rooftops

4. And, courtesy of my friend and reader, Ann Vermel, for all those who may celebrate the coming of the Light, please accept my season’s greeting:

http://www.bbc.com/travel/gallery/20181128-the-96-year-old-painter-who-saved-a-village

Only two asks this week because they’re so critical:

Call Pelosi at 202 225-4965 or 415 556-4862 and Jim McGovern (D-Mass) at 202 225 6101 to insist they uphold the Green New Deal; refuse to let them bury it by appointing fossil fuel bottom feeders to the Climate Committee. To succeed the Committee needs to have legislative, and subpoena power, and be specifically tasked with creating a Green New Deal.

And call your members of Congress to insist they fight for the Green New Deal! 

Because she got her first pair of shoes to make the journey, Jakelin Caal Maquin was super excited to be heading north with her dad toward a better life. Demand an investigation into the death of a 7-year-old child in ICE detention at https://www.justiceforjakelin.org/

Sustainability

Gravity powered light which produces lumens without electricity has been invented.

Norway votes to make Norway first country barring its biofuel industry from importing deforestation-linked palm oil.

In a first, the Virginia State Corporation Commission rejected Dominion Energy’s Integrated Resource Plan.

U.S. fracking sector continues nine-year streak of cash losses.

Calling for a worldwide student strike, Greta Thunberg speaks truth to power at COP24: “Since adults are behaving like children, we will have to take responsibility.”

  

The White Wolf Pack announces that four Native nations across North America will continue to uphold the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

32BJ SEIU supports Green New Deal efforts to reduce greenhouse gasses, switch to renewables, and create good jobs.

Luxembourg becomes first country to make all public transportation FREE.  (What a concept!)

Center for Biological Diversity sues administration for refusing to recognize ocean acidification cause by fossil fuel pollution is impairing Oregon’s coastal waters.

Protecting endangered wildlife, judge halts Grapevine mega- development in Kern Country.

With 77% in favor, Baltimoreans amend charter to ban water and sewer privatization.

“Here we come!” march on Pelosi’s office by progressive coalition led by Justice Democrats, aims to flex grassroots muscle.

Nine northeast and mid-Atlantic bipartisan governors plan to develop regional policy to reduce emissions from transportation.

In spite of coal-industry sponsorship of the COP24 talks, global investors managing $32 trillion issue stark warning to all governments demanding urgent cuts in carbon emissions and the phasing out of all coal burning.

Despite the rise in 2018 U.S. emmissions, U.S. energy output for the year from renewable power sources reaches 229 gigawatt hours, 38% of recorded electricity usage.

Oil Change International announces that the world’s taxpayer-backed multilateral development banks which control hundreds of billions, pledge to align their finances with the Paris Agreement on climate change.

In Florida, socialist groups step up with direct aid to hurricane victims, and speak out about consumption of fossil fuels as the root cause of increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters.

UK members of Extinction Rebellion superglue themselves to government buildings to fight climate change.

Australian Tony Rinaudo, using a regeneration technique developed in West Africa some 30 years ago, has helped reforest over 6 Million hectares.

New Zealand government announces an initial $240 million to plant 100 million trees yearly for a total of one billion, creating 1,000 new jobs.

De-militarized Costa Rica leads the way to fossil-free future.

Three major banks suspend lending for S.F. Hunter’s Point shipyard home purchases because of radioactive contamination liability.

Judge halts Keystone XL pipeline, citing ‘complete disregard’ for climate.

Native American tribes bring back bison from brink of extinction.

Germany to oppose pro-nuclear policies and subsidies and financing for nuclear power under the Paris Climate Agreement.

France becomes First European country to ban all five bee-killing pesticides.

Despite fossilized Democrats blocking Ocasio-Cortez’ push for a Green New Deal, the latest poll shows the Deal has overwhelming bipartisan support. 

The Mapuche Confederation files lawsuit naming Exxon, Total, and Pan  Americana energy over illegal fracking waste dumps.

Worthington, Ohio girl scouts organize more than 100 homes, 17 installing solar panels.

The Border

Chef José Andrés takes his World Central Kitchen to the Border where feeds 3000 refugees a day. 

Common Defense vets head to Tijuana calling attention to administration’s xenophobia and human rights abuses and volunteering to help arriving families.

Salvadoran mother and son reunited after eight months of separation.

Faith leaders beaten and arrested demanding de-militarization of the U.S. Mexico border.

Refused right to seek asylum, Honduran refugees demand reparations for destructive U.S. foreign policy in Central America.

To end fear and protect justice, dozens of retired judges all on ICE to end courthouse arrests.

New York’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals grants emergency stay of Wayzaro’s deportation, allowing her to stay with her family while she fights her case.

Despite intimidation tactics, mom and her five kids tear-gassed at border finally allowed to file for asylum.

Judge Emmet Sullivan rules administration’s asylum policy “unlawful.”

Dreamer-led Times Square billboard emblazoned with migrant stories, including deaths under ICE custody.

Congress member Jerry Nadler warns Kirstjen Neilsen “Although your (DHS) Department has evaded meaningful oversight till now, the time for zero accountability is over; beginning in January, this committee intends to do its job.”

Justice John Roberts join four liberal judges to uphold 9^th Circuit’s decision by Judge Jon Tigar that asylum is legal and must be upheld.

International

While the U.S. congress passes bipartisan bill to boost advanced nuclear energy, Hitachi announces it may cancel UK nuclear project.

Peace may break out as two Koreas begin verifying removal of DMZ guard posts.

President Moon lays out five-year plan for inter-Korean cooperation.

International Criminal Court announces it will open an investigation into U.S. crimes in Afghanistan.

Chile sentences 36 former Pinochet era intelligence agents.

Jeremy Scahill reacts to Falluja-lynching Mattis retirement (he’s a hawkish war criminal), and the administrations intent to withdraw from Syria and Afghanistan (a good idea), and points out why the D.C. war party is furious.

Les Gilets Jaunes waltz to Edith Piaf while police stands respectfully by before evicting their encampment.

Saying “The state needs to be confronted with insurrection, sabotage of its structures and permanent revolt,” Canadian anarchists intervene against construction of migrant prison in Laval.

Protests rage in  Catalonia against Spanish cabinet visit.

Haiti mounts year-long insurrection against corruption.

Don’t hold your breath: U.S. Senate votes to end U.S. role in Yemen war.

 

Human and Civil Rights

Now that 113 million Americans have a direct family member incarcerated, Michigan is first Midwest state to legalize recreational use of marijuana.

Judge dismisses charges against 5 activists charged with trespass at the nuclear bomb facility at nuclear weapons site at Kansas City National Security Complex.

Supreme Court denies appear of lower court rulings against terminating Medicaid contracts with Planned Parenthood.

In a suit brought by parents of Central American immigrant children, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler denies administration’s efforts to toss most claims that the government ended a refugee resettlement program without proper explanation.

Blocking transport links and fuel supply, French working class people take to the streets of Paris and other major French cities demanding economic justice.

White supremacist James Field found guilty of murder at Charlottesville white nationalist rally.

In Chicago, the nation’s first charter school teacher’s strike wins victory for teachers.

Bolstered by their massive teacher’s march, Los Angeles public school teachers are preparing to strike January 10^th.

FBI announces it’s launching a database to track deadly police encounters.

Thousands of Spanish retired workers demand ‘decent” pensions.

Wanting to kiss and hold her dying son, public pressure wins Yemeni mother waiver to #45 anti-Muslim ban.

Supreme Court declines to hear two anti-abortion cases from Kansas and Louisiana respectively that could have given states green light to strip Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood.

Congress unanimously passes bipartisan bill strengthening federal juvenile justice law.

Executions and death sentences in U.S. remain near historic lows in 2018.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin commutes sentences of 21 applicants through campaign led buy Oklahoman s for Criminal Justice Reform.

Two more newly elected N.C. sheriffs announce end to county agreements with ICE.

Athens Ohio City Council adopts resolution condemning pending state legislation that stiffens penalties against environmental protesters.

Anti-BDS laws challenged as unconstitutional after speech pathologist loses job at Texas school  for refusing to sign pro-Israel pledge.

Domestic Politics

Bernie Sanders emerges as clear front runner, trouncing all others, in 2020 straw poll.

New Yorkers confront Amazon Exec at City Council meeting with a “you’re worth a trillion dollars, why do need out $3 billion when we have crumbling subways, crumbling public housing, people without health care, and over crowded public schools?”

In major progressive victory, Dem leadership abandons tax rule making bold agenda impossible.

N.C. House passes voter ID bill, sending it back to the Senate for harmonization.

In a first, although McNamee was approved by the Senate, every single Democratic Senator voted against the proposed FERC commissioner.

“Stand up, Fight Back!” protestors storm capitol as Michigan GOP moves ahead with lame-duck coup.

Senate presses for expanded probe of FEMA over hurricane Maria.

Defending Maine’s right to ranked choice voting, Federal judge rejects GOP lawsuit.

Failing to recognize the U. S. Indian Removal Act as genocide, the U.S. House of Representatives declares genocide in Burma of the Rohingya in a bipartisan vote.

Samoa gets final approval by the Fed for a publicly owned bank, the second in the U.S.

DOE announces automatic cancellation of $150 million in student loans connected to for-profit colleges that closed in recent years.

The farm bill passes with some good news for families relying in SNAP (formerly food stamps). There are to be no more punitive work requirements. To be treated like any other crop, hemp is now officially out of reach of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

#45 Foundation agrees to dissolve under judicial supervision after New York AG lawsuit in all probability to ide evidence of potential crimes. 

Two new law suits challenge unconstitutional anti-BDS boycott laws. laws.

Administration announces actual step forward on gun control as DOJ announces that rapid fire bump stock devices fall within the federal definition of machine guns and are therefore illegal.

House committee on oversight and reform to launch four investigations into family separation, luxury jet travel, the 45 organization, and improper e-mail account use.

Sanders and ?Feinstein demand Congress ditch effort to criminalize pro-Palestinian BDS campaign.

ACLU sues Texas over law that says contractors can’t boycott Israel.

Warren-Schakowaky bill aims to create Office of Drug Manufacturing.

117 years after being introduced for the first time, Senate finally votes to make lynching a federal crime (probably because so many government figures are now at risk.)

Philanthropy

Besides feeding 3,000 refugees daily at the border, now chef José Andrés offers to feed federal workers who won’t get paid during #45’s temper tantrum shutdown.

NO TITLE, NO WORDS FOR THIS

“We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago.” Fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg addressing COPOUT 24 in Katowice, Poland.

When I found out that COP24 was being sponsored by Poland’s largest coal mining corporation, I recognized that, beyond the macabre Polish joke, nothing would ever be accomplished there other than the usual yakayakayak accompanying all the other yakyak  COPOUTs that have preceded it.

Fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg addressed a world body. She is calling for a world-wide global climate strike. And 7-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin died last Thursday in ICE custody. Children have become very powerful.  Powerful in two ways: They have ideas, and have less trouble calling bullshit. And children of color when they grow up screw the U.S. voting apparatus.

Rest in peace: Jakelin Caal Maquin, 7 years old

How can the “we” Greta Thunberg refers to do what adults cannot? Perhaps children have the global imagination to evoke scenes like those pictures we used to see in the 40s and 50s of thousands of Chinese at work with their bare hands and their wheelbarrows, building the largest dam in the world—up to that point. Because that is the magnitude of the effort the human race is being called upon to exert now if we have a shred of a chance left to reverse climate change: whole neighborhoods in every city on earth collectively fixing solar panels to every roof. Everyone working, hauling hardware and panels, assisting installers climbing and straddling rooftops, passing up material, equipment and hardware, teams cooking in vast communal kitchens, feeding all the workers lunch and dinner. Grand-parents minding  children, keeping them fed and amused while younger adults work together to accomplish this Herculean task, the task of equipping every single roof throughout the world with solar panels. And that is only one effort among many other possible ones, such as installing solar powered batteries to refuel electric cars and solar powered trains and planes. And supporting efforts such as repurposing private institutions to serve as local banks to bankroll the greater effort. And demanding that public utilities supplant sclerotic corporate utilities, such as PGE, with a new death toll of 88 to its credit and now demanding a rate hike to kill off more of us.

Greta Thunberg rivets the Secy with a stern rebuke

The world already has examples of this kind of mega collective practice. For example, in the city of Djenné in Mali, every inhabitant collaborates once a year in a festival known as Le Crepissage de La Grande Mosquée to replaster it. The young men climb the protruding side pegs, plastering the walls, the old men scree the roof, children lead mules carrying heavy baskets of wet plaster to the site. Women pound the corn and prepare vast cauldrons to feed the workers. The whole city engages.

Children have the imagination to conjure up a world where people scrap their cars entirely. Make no mistake, the world already has an example of the magnitude of sacrifice that requires an entire people to surrender the deeply embedded cultural practices that have been theirs for as long as 500 years. Here I cite the example I blogged about last September 15^th, of the Agami, a small tribe in Nagaland, a far north state of India. Although hunting was once their important source of livelihood, and had been their practice for hundreds of years, some 20 years ago they gave up this culturally-entrenched practice because they understood that their prey were becoming endangered species, and would no longer form part of their ecosystem if they were hunted to extinction.

The magnitude of the threat of climate collapse is the equivalent now of the Earth colliding with a large meteor, but apparently only children are capable taking it seriously, let alone imagining the scope of such a calamity. Adults, entirely bound in the prevailing culture, are barely able to check their cell phones for the latest Facebook post. 

                                        ____________

Besides threatening the Earth's entrenched fossil fuel culture few adults  have the imagination to shake, children of color are a threat to the U.S. establishment voting demography as well, now that demography has shifted with numbers of people of color overtaking the numbers of their White Protestant overseers, and gumming up the voting works.

That is why children of color are being deported. They have become as expendable as anyone else suffering under the oppression of genocide and ethnic cleansing: Palestinian people, boat refugees crossing the Mediterranean on overcrowded rubber rafts, or caravanning to the U.S. Mexico Border, migrants world over, some of them battling, most of them fleeing the consequences of colonialism and global warming, drought, flood, fire, and famine, and their pauperizing consequences.

Protesters kneeling before the CBP agents at the border

That is why a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl was allowed to die, severely dehydrated, in the detention holding pens of the Department of Homeland Security under its “director,” Kirstjen M. Nielsen, who declined anything close to an apology or accepting responsibility, let alone an expression of regret that this death occurred on her watch, and ought to have been averted, but blamed the father of the child instead.

At the urging of Congressperson Joaquin Castro, an investigation has been launched, but no investigation can re-unite this child with her grieving father and mother or assuage every single one of us, citizens of the U.S. who grieve for her and for our country. For starters, why not write to the good Secretary and her CBP commissioner henchman, Kevin McAleenan and let them know exactly how you feel:  Kirstjen M. Nielsen, Secretary of Homeland Security, Washington D.C. 20528-0075. Kevin McAleenan, Customs and Border protection, 1300 Pennsylvania AV, NW, Washington D.C. 20229. Cite a story to get your point across. They may be heartless, but maybe not illiterate. We leave that to #45. Allow them five business days to respond but don’t hold your breath. Pinpoint the location of your nearest ICE headquarters instead. Organize a demonstration outside, and use public transportation or a bicycle to get there. Raise bloody hell. Repeat. Repeat after that. Call for an end to our homegrown Homeland Gestapo. And don’t go home till it’s zeroed out.

 

Demand that the immigrant children’s prison in Tornillo Texas be shut down now and for good at

https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/shut-down-the-immigrant?source=s.em.mt&r_by=802365

And shop at HiVis for your high visibility safety vest for as little as $4.99.

More To Come: Hold Onto Your Handkerchiefs

This week, in the context of mawkish obsequies for the now defunct #41, CIA darling and war criminal George Herbert Walker Bush, my 93-year-old friend called me up giggling, reminding me that in my glory days I gave #41 what the French sardonically call le geste noble, the universally recognized “street” gesture, one hand placed in the crotch of the other arm in high salute.

It was at the time of $1000 dollar a plate GOP dinner and Gulf I- the first war on Iraq as you may remember. The long defile of very black limousines crawled down San Francisco’s California Street to make a right turn past the corner where I stood. As the cortege came within 30 feet, never one to let a golden opportunity pass by, I took aim. I like to think #41 got my message, but he smiled and waved, nodding his head like a kokeshi doll, one of those pin-neck Japanese dummies that nods and nods in meaningless assent.

Why is it that the president’s club, dead and alive, which has done such inestimable harm to the country, around the world, and to the planet undergoes this celestial transformation once their members depart? If such amnesia could, it would float each one of them straight to Paradise. But a cursory review of their careers here on Earth may suggest why there might just be a traffic jam outside those pearly gates:

The Line Up

Let’s start with the deceased #40. The secret czar of Iran Contra, the election warping October Surprise schemer, and air traffic controller union buster, who began the cult of wealth, ignored the spreading pandemic of AIDs, and with the nomination of Clarence Thomas, laid the cornerstone of the right wing Supreme Court, oversaw the Savings and Loan scandal, and raised the national debt by nearly a trillion dollars. He terms out to

The late #41 of Willie Horton fame, a pre-curser to the dog whistling #45. His role as chief architect of US neoliberal trade policy through ushering in NAFTA helped to exacerbate global inequality and fuel the loss of over one million manufacturing jobs in the United States and Canada. An old CIA hand, he lied the nation into war and was responsible for the murder and assassination of thousands in Iraq.  The first of the 40s to use “depleted” uranium ordnance, contaminating the Earth’s soils for all eternity, eventually insuring that 15 out of 100 in Basra would be born with devastating malformations.

To be succeeded by #42 who passed Wall Street deregulating measures and “ended welfare as we know it,” consigning the poorest of the poor to immiseration, who signed NAFTA into law, underselling Mexican corn, and forcing Mexicans to migrate to the U.S. or starve, ordered military “intervention” in Bosnia and Kosovo, where “depleted” uranium contaminated Yugoslavian soils for all eternity.  And presided over ten years of sanctions against Iraq in which nearly half a million people died in a country which, prior to U.S. regime change policy, had had one of the highest living standards in the Middle East.

 

                            #43's likeness: 670 soldiers dead from a lie

To be succeeded by #43 of the torture memos, those workarounds that shredded the Constitution, and his invite to the members of Congress to hear the new policy, which implicated them—including Nancy Pelosi—for all time.  Took the nation into the second Gulf war by lying , causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands. A bit of interruptus here, while he declared “mission accomplished” decked out in an operetta costume that cost upwards to $10,000 dollars for a war that still rages, and who opened up Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib for business.  

And next to the bottom, #44 oversaw the coup that toppled democratically elected Honduran President Zelaya, which is why all those desperately poor folks are now heading north from Honduras, deported some two million of the poorest souls on Earth, and kept the Tuesday ‘Kill List” where he signed off on deaths by targeted assassination by more drones than previous presidents on people whom he didn’t know, and whose names he didn’t understand. And toppled the now failed state of Libya (with the help of his gleeful Secretary of State who crowed: We Came, We Saw, He died,” as she gloated over Gaddafi’s lynching.)

And last and most triumphal of all, racist, xenophobic #45 (still with us) cager of children, and never one to let a business deal stand in the way of a little murder.  Maybe his least harmful action so far was attending the funeral of now defunct #41 where, for a moment at least, his tweets were temporarily suspended. Just this week, his antics may have caught up with him, but he’s Individual #1 and not a felon because a sitting president is sacred, and sure to be eulogized the minute he departs this Earth.

ICE immigant family

The official military budget, foreign and at the border for 2019 is $716 billion. 

Support Medicare for All and lower drug prices by demanding Pelosi appoint Ocasio-Cortez to Ways and Means Committee at

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/sign-now-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-for-ways-and-means?refcode=g-WaysMeans1209.d-20181209.m-15528.s-52049&referrer=group-democracy-for-america&source=direct_link

Reduce lame duck abuse: Please sign:

https://www.dailykos.com/campaigns/petitions/sign-the-petition-no-more-lame-duck-sessions-period?detail=emailaction&link_id=0&can_id=655968a96e1bce05c463b2f640bf633c&source=email-sign-the-petition-no-more-lame-duck-sessions-period&email_referrer=email_464357___subject_594295&email_subject=statefull-default-state-signatures-needed-republicans-have-subverted-democracy

Remind Congress that #45’s Fox News Heather Naubert is a standard bigot and unfit to be UN Ambassador.

https://act.winwithoutwar.org/act/tell-senate-no-on-nauert?source=em20181208&t=4&akid=2972%2E586616%2EYtofkq

Although there shouldn’t be one at all if we are to live on this planet, please donate to a sensible Pentagon budget at

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/giving/give-npp/

And now for something entirely different: Newly elected President Andrés López Obrador affirms his commitment not to lie, steal, or betray the Mexican People.

Brooklyn to unveil first statue of Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Alabama legislature votes 102 to 0 to proclaim Dec. 1^st as Rose Parks Day, the fifth state to honor her.

California Republican concedes defeat, giving House Democrats their 40^th pickup with Dem, TJ Cox.

N.Y. School installs vending machine that dispenses free books.

Unlike Al Gore, Democrat Dan McCready withdraws concession in tainted N.C. race.

N.C. GOP open to new election in fraud-marked House race.

Michigan and Nevada pass automatic voter registration, inviting Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine and N.Y. to follow suit.

Rasida Tlaib (D), rather than joining the customary AIPAC-funded junket to Israel for freshmen congress persons, announced she would organize her own focusing on poverty, education, access to clean water and Israel’s detention of Palestinian children.

After brilliant citizen agitation in Portsmouth, N.H., Air Force agrees to pay $14.3 million to construct water treatment facility to remove PFOS and PFOA from city-owned wells.

In the absence of federal leadership, New Jersey starts to regulate PFOS and PFOA at steeply lower levels than the EPA’s.

Philadelphia joins New York as the second largest city to hike wages to $15/hr, and approve fair workweek law that requires large employers to give workers two-week up front schedules and offer predictability pay for last-minute schedule changes.

Resistance

Protests urge Sen. Schumer to oppose Bernard McNamee as FERC Commissioner.

Internet refers to #45 as ‘Individual1’.

Worker Veste Jaune protests lead to police riots in ten major cities throughout France, and Belgium and the Netherlands as demonstrators take to the streets to protest against income inequality, higher taxes, and to express disgust with Macron’s austerity measures.

With a 1,035 to 720 vote, Columbia’s graduate student union agrees to a bargaining framework with the university’s administration.

Protests engulf Wisconsin Capitol as outgoing Scott Walker and GOP move to cripple Democratic power in wee hour session.

After the Supreme Court declined hearing their case, Brian Segree of The Center for Biological Diversity states center will continue opposing The Wall in the courts and Congress.

Huge Marriott Hotel strike ends with San Francisco workers winning better pay.

Senate Judiciary Committee scraps votes on #45’s judges because of Mueller probe.

Disgusted with unpaid internships, Cortez supports paying interns $15 an hour.

Members of the Connecticut immigrant rights activist community shut down Hartford federal courthouse, protesting injustices suffered by Nelson Pinos and family, victims of ICE terror.

Recent victories and grassroots organizing outline the importance of addressing state-sponsored violence as a health hazard with distinct causes and solutions.

Calling themselves “Occupy Jamie Dimon,” activists chase billionaire across the U.S.

Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib expose congressional orientation’s so-called ‘bi-partisan’ corporate sponsors.

Walmart workers confront Alice Walton outside her Manhattan penthouse with a demonstration demanding better pay.

Chicago’s largest union of striking teachers close 15 schools.

The wars

Yemen’s oil-rich Shawa Province declares independence and orders Saudi-allied government out.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in delivers message urging North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un to pay a reciprocal visit to Seoul within the year for the summit meeting in the Capital of South Korea.

The Planet

Fifteen-year-old Greta Thornberg addresses COP24: “We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago.”

As #45 moves to bailout it out, coal falls to levels not seen since 1979.

California becomes first state to require all new 3-story-and-under construction to install solar.

Winona LaDuke calls for indigenous-led Green New Deal.

Oglala Sioux Tribe and their allies win when federal administrative judges rule that Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff failed to take a hard look at cultural resources when they recommended renewal of a uranium mining licenses at Crow Butte Mine.

Representative Adam Smith, prospective chair of the U.S. Armed Services Committee declares “nothing endangers the planet more than nuclear weapons.”

Toshiba retreats from nuclear construction project in the U.K.

Cincinnati becomes 100^th U.S. city to commit to 100% clean energy.

From wind power maintenance to energy efficiency upgrades, clean energy jobs now outnumber fossil fuel work in Midwest.

Maersk Navigation announces it will go carbon free by 2050.

In response to federal government’s rollback of longtime protections, the State of California is stepping up to protect birds.

Louisiana judge rules in favor of plaintiff suing private corporation, Energy Transfer Partners for illegally seizing their land and starting to install a crude oil pipeline on it.

Sempervivens Fund purchases 50-acre property along Highway 9 in Santa Cruz, California, one of the last unprotected holdings of Castle Rock. 

In a first-ever, Virginia State Corporation Commission issues order rejecting Dominion Energy’s Integrated Resource Plan.

Dominion Energy, contending with Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals permit stay, temporarily shuts down construction on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

Alberta’s premier announces that government will temporarily curtail province’s oil production absent sufficient pipeline capacity.

Human Rights

Canadians call on pension funds to stop investing in U.S. private prison firms profiting from “brutal human rights abuses” of #45.

Germany allocates $62 million to development projects in Palestine.

Neo-Nazi convicted on all counts of driving into a crowd of protesters and killing Heather Heyer.

Oncology nurse deported by #45 over a year ago wins fight to return to the U.S.

WE ARE ALL LEONARD PELTIER NOW

It used to be that as I walked the streets of Oakland, or as I drove past gnarled stands of Monterey cypress in the countryside, I’d catch sight high in the canopy of plywood signs crudely lettered in red paint: “Free Leonard.” You had to be alert to find them, half hidden, high up the trees, and wonder who put them there, and how they managed to climb that high without getting caught. And you imagined them tacking such signs up in the wee hours of the night, when the streets are emptied of cops, and filled with homeless people sleeping under overpasses and in darkened doorways.

Leonard Peltier

Where he has been incarcerated by the government 43 years for his inconvenience to it, Leonard Peltier writes from jail “Another year and I am still writing you from a prison cell...alive and still breathing, hoping, wishing, praying not just for my pains, but for all native Nations and the People of the World who care and have positive feelings about what is happening to Mother Earth and against the evils committed by Wasi’chu in their greed for Her natural resources,” and at the same time (this past week) Ecologise re-publishes a 2017 article by Noam Chomsky saying that “indigenous people are our only hope for survival.”  (It’s nearly unfathomable to imagine how any indigenous person reading those comments might feel about them: Now that you’ve decimated the soils, the water, the air, the forests, and the meadows, are you proposing to return the land that you have stolen and befouled so we can save you? Imagine what feelings that idea might evoke.)

Writing for Yes Magazine, Louise Dunlap, knowledgeable about the Indians of Northern California, describes how the catastrophic recent California fires would never have happened under the forest and fire management practices by the land’s original inhabitants, the Concow and Maidu people, who like many other tribes knew how to husband the Earth because they knew they were part of a system that plays no favorites.

Under the steady progress of climate change, many parts of the world—not just California are burning.  But relying on Thanksgiving distractions to obscure its message, on Friday, the Administration released the 1,656-page climate assessment report, Volume II, in which 13 federal agencies present the most alarming warnings to date of climate change and its dire consequences.  All 1,656 pages are entirely too overwhelming to process for those of us who will be impacted. Nothing has changed really from the government’s 2014 assessment either, because, well because … Well let’s just say… Aw, shucks, let’s just say that by 2050, half of San Francisco will be under water.

2050 San Francisco

Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz writes “What White Supremacists Know: The violent theft of land and capital is at the core of the U.S. “experiment”: the U.S. military got its start in the wars against Native Americans.”  That’s how she connects U.S. addiction to militarism and the presidency of  #1, George Washington, who speculated on lands belonging to Native Americans, all the way up to #45, the apotheosis of the grim Realtor.

Not to be deterred from its death-dealing proclivities, the White House ordered troops to the Border to fire tear gas (a chemical weapon banned in warfare) on migrant women and children, some of them still in diapers, almost all of whom are indigenous people, asking —legally—for asylum, indigenous people whose caravan deliberately makes a statement that individuals are no longer hiding their attempts to escape death squads and assassinations as they attempt passage through a harsh desert landscape, seeking safety for themselves and their families, while The Center for Biological Diversity runs an article how the U.S. Navy has plans to grab more land for the Nevada bombing range, land about the size of Delaware, to drop more bombs on it. These are lands set aside as a wildlife refuge, lands originally ceded to the Western Shoshone and Northern Paiute native people which the Navy now proposes to steal and seal its fate planting bombs there instead of seeds.  

Stillwater Wildlife Refuge

Here is message I wrote re: the FRTC Draft EIS on the government web site: “I oppose the Navy expansion of its bombing range to add the wildlife refuge at Fairview Peak area and the Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge. I oppose it on ecological grounds. I oppose it on budgetary grounds. I oppose it because this is land ceded to the Western Shoshone and Paiute Peoples, and does not belong to the U.S. government to do with as it pleases. and I oppose it on the grounds of resisting climate change because as the largest consumer of fossil fuels in the world, the U.S. military, must change its posture if the planet is to survive.”

History bats last. The country can never again bury the tiger burning bright, the Sioux struggle to save the waters from its fossil fuel exploiters at Standing Rock. The battle was pitched, it was genocidal, water hoses were turned on the water protectors in sub zero temperatures. The scenes of outright warfare there can never be erased, and despite overwhelming odds, native peoples and their allies made a statement: Idle No More.

But Pace Noam Chomsky, indigenous peoples will not save us. Not unless we join them, as the veterans did at Standing Rock. Because if we want to protect life on Earth, we are all Leonard Peltier now.

The only prison we’re in is our own deadly inertia.

A Polish Coal company, the EU’s largest producer of high-quality coal, becomes first sponsor of U.N. climate talks.

The essentials

Oppose the Navy’s land grab for an expanded bombing station at

https://frtcmodernization.com/

Tell Congress: stop the Native American land grab in Utah at

https://act.credoaction.com/sign/land_grab_2018?t=3&akid=30720%2E216994%2EAA2cwA

The fringes

Demand Chase stop bankrolling fossil fuels at

https://act.ran.org/chase_execs?utm_campaign=kxlarc3_f1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=rainforestactionnetwork

Demand a green New Deal at

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/add-your-name-sign-the-peoples-demands-for-climate-justice?source=PeoplesDemands2018_CD&referrer=group-common-defense

Add your name: sign the people’s demand for climate justice at

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/add-your-name-sign-the-peoples-demands-for-climate-justice?source=email&&

Contact your local school board or food bank to support backpack program fighting child food insecurity (otherwise known as hunger).

Tell the U.N.: send observers to the border at

https://act.credoaction.com/sign/un_immigration?t=3&akid=30757%2E216994%2EA0fM2O

Demand Congress stop funding Border Patrols’ human rights abuses at

https://www.dailykos.com/campaigns/letters/sign-and-send-the-petition-congress-stop-funding-border-patrols-human-rights-abuses?detail=emailactionLL&link_id=3&can_id=655968a96e1bce05c463b2f640bf633c&source=email-babies-in-diapers-were-tear-gassed-sign-and-send-the-petition-3&email_referrer=email_460529&email_subject=babies-in-diapers-were-tear-gassed-sign-and-send-the-petition

Read

https://truthout.org/articles/climate-change-denial-is-raking-the-ashes-of-paradise/

Donate to fire-ravaged North Valley Mutual Aid at

https://www.gofundme.com/north-valley-mutual-aid

Donate to help protect land rights Maasaii defenders at

https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/donate

Black internationalists demand closure of hundreds of U.S./NATO military bases.

Following the coroner’s recent findings, advocates filed a notice of wrongful death tort claim against all parties responsible for transgender Roxanna Hernandez’ death while in ICE detention.

FDA approves life-saving cancer drug claimed to be affordable and accessible to all in need.

Stacey Abrams files federal lawsuit detaining Georgia’s extensive voter suppression.

Ending polling crisis, 2018 polling reported the most accurate in a decade.

Tucson demonstrators wheat paste in intersection after second border patrol agent found not guilty.

Defying White house by a vote of 63 to 37, Senate advances war powers resolution to end U.S. complicity in Saudi assault on Yemen.

BXE activist Ted Glick disrupts Senate vote on #45’s corrupt, climate-denying FERC nominee.

New Jersey immigrant leaders launch successful hunger strike demanding drivers licenses for all.

Scaling the outside of the building to hang their banner, 30 Greenpeace-UK activists aided by an animatronic orangutan demand Oreo drop Indonesia-decimating palm oil.

Tricking the sensor system on the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota, activists halt and block the movement of oil trains.

Mapuche and Ionko Nations in Chile call for dialogue with Chilean government. over corporate incursions.

Thanks to organizing efforts by Comunidad Colectiva, McFadden wins post of sheriff promising to end 287g, (local police collaboration with ICE) where seven NC counties total elect black men to serve as sheriff.

Engaged in tense negotiations, L.A. teachers overwhelmingly vote to strike if no resolution is reached.

Saudi crown prince MBS (for BS) may face prosecution in Argentina for alleged complicity in the murder of journalist Khashoggi and the Saudi-led crisis in  Yemen.

Because activists stood up against proposed government censorship in Israel, the “loyalty to culture” bill collapses.

City of Northampton and the State of Vermont pull out of a planned “training” junket for U.S. police to learn “crowd control” from the Israeli military, the IDF.

Senator Tim Scott announces his opposition to confirming Thomas Farr to the federal bench, bringing the nomination to a halt and because of lack of support on both aisle sides, the Senate will not confirm his nomination.

In the red for the second consecutive year, the NRA experiences $55 million income decline for 2017.

Four St. Louis cops indicted on federal civil rights charges for protest abuses.

Jill Stein and plaintiffs end Pennsylvania recount lawsuit with settlement guaranteeing the state will provide new voting systems and paper ballots by 2020, with automatic audits by 2022.

Borrowing from the Green Party, freshmen Dems push for  Green New Deal.

As borrowed by freshperson Ocasio-Cortez, the Green New Deal  includes public bank funding.

U.S. students sue for constitutional right to education.

Formally requesting that the $540 invoice for “police escort” presented to organizer Cindy Sheehan for the Women’s March on the Pentagon be withdrawn, march officially refuses to pay to play. Sorry.

More than 300 miles of Virginia streams and the brightly colored Candy Darter fish are protected under the Endangered Species Act. High fives for the Candy Darter!