wrongologist – Page 219 – The Wrongologist

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 8, 2015

March is Wrongo’s favorite month, because it has March Madness™ and Daylight Savings Time.

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the Selma march. On Jan. 14, 1965, newly elected Alabama Gov. George Wallace said in his inaugural address in front of the Alabama State Capitol:

Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people… I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny…and I say…segregation today, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.

On March 7, 1965, the first Selma to Montgomery march began and ended with the events of “Bloody Sunday,” when 600 civil rights marchers, asking for the right of black Alabama residents to register to vote, were attacked by state and local police with billy clubs and tear gas at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

On March 9, 1965, another march by 2,500 this time, including many who had come from other parts of the country, was led by Dr. King and others to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where a court order prevented them from going all the way to Montgomery.

Finally, on March 21, 1965, Federal District Court Judge Frank Johnson ruled that the march could proceed and, the 4-night march began in Selma. 8,000 started the march, but only 300 were allowed to make the entire 54-mile trek to Montgomery. Let us return to March 25, 1965, and read some of Dr. King’s words to the nation that day:

I know you are asking today, “How long will it take”?…I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because “truth crushed to earth will rise again.” How long? Not long, because “no lie can live forever.”
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

On to a busy week in the laughable. The ACA was on trial in the Supreme Court:

The DOJ cites Ferguson, MO police for institutional racism:

Netanyahu and the Republicans see things the same way:

Hillary’s email flap may or may not be a big problem, but it reminds America of Bill:

Some folks seem to be changing their minds about Hillary after the email flap:

Friday Music Break – March 6, 2015

Today we celebrate Eddy Grant. This politically-grounded songwriter had his first #1 UK hit in 1968 as performer and songwriter for the group The Equals, with his song “Baby Come Back“. It is worth a listen if you are a Grant fan, because it is highly unlikely that you have heard it.

But today, we focus on two Grant protest tunes, one which most have undoubtedly heard, and another that most Americans have probably not heard before.

First, the most likely unheard “Gimme Hope Jo’anna“. During the apartheid regime, “Jo’anna” meant Johannesburg. So the song is about the apartheid regime in South Africa, and was subsequently banned there. It is unusual to portray an evil regime as a woman. The play on the name of Johannesburg, the upbeat, happy sounding tune make this a rare protest song. Here is Eddy Grant doing “Gimme Hope Jo’anna” live in London in 2008 celebrating Nelson Mandela’s birthday accompanied by an undistinguished Kurt Darren, a South African music personality:

Sample Lyrics:
Well Jo’anna she runs a country
She runs in Durban and the Transvaal
She makes a few of her people happy, oh
She don’t care about the rest at all
She’s got a system they call apartheid
It keeps a brother in a subjection
But maybe pressure will make Jo’anna see
How everybody could a live as one

Next, the song most have heard, “Electric Avenue”. The song’s lyrics refer to the 1981 Brixton riot in London, the title referring to Electric Avenue, a street in the Brixton area of London. Here is “Electric Avenue”:

Sample Lyrics:
Now in the street, there is violence
And-and a lots of work to be done
No place to hang out our washing
And-and I can’t blame all on the sun

Despite that fact that you can dance to them, Grant’s songs are pointed criticism of the racial politics of the 1980’s.

See you on Sunday.

Reading List Q1 2015

Here are books that the Wrongologist read over the past few months. All were about war, both new and old, and all are highly recommended:

April 1865, The Month That Saved America by Jay Winik (2001). Richmond fell in April 1865. Followed by Appomattox. After that, there was Lincoln’s assassination, and a nearly-successful plot to decapitate the Union government. Then came the real possibility of prolonged Southern guerrilla warfare, which Jefferson Davis considered, and Lee would not. Had Davis decided on guerrilla war, it might have ended any chance at a national reconciliation. This is a great (and short) history of the end game of our Civil War.

The Republic of Suffering-Death and the American Civil War (2008) by Drew Gilpin Faust. It’s hard for us to appreciate just how deadly the Civil War was: 620,000 dead soldiers, (2% of the US population at the time), at least 50,000 dead civilians, an estimated 6 million pounds of human and animal carcasses to deal with on battlefields. When the war began, neither army had burial details, graves registration units, means to notify next of kin, or provisions for decent burial. They had no systematic way to identify or count the dead, and until 1867, no national cemeteries in which to bury them. In an unusual twist, in 1866, the Union Army opened an office in Ford’s Theater to record deaths, house the war records and assist families to find lost loved ones. In 1893, it collapsed, killing 22.

The mortality rate in the South exceeded that of any country in WWI. In addition, the South lost nearly 2/3rds of its wealth in the war.

Embattled Rebel (2014) by James M. McPherson. This short book lets you view the Civil War through the eyes of Jefferson Davis. Davis was an interesting character, he was a one-eyed and sickly micromanager.

McPherson shows how Davis gradually lost support of many Southern politicians, and a few of his generals. He was a West Point graduate, he had fought alongside many Civil War generals on both sides, and he appointed generals who were his West Point buddies. He had long personal feuds with General P.G.T Beauregard, and later, with General Joseph Johnston. Both would not keep Davis informed of their maneuvers, their true troop strength, or their tactics. McPherson summarizes the flawed strategic and logistics position of the Confederacy: The lack of well-trained, well-armed men, the lack of effective railroads, and the lack of usable waterways. The Confederacy started the war undermanned, understaffed, and under-equipped, and it went downhill from there.

Here are three books about the Afghan and Iraq wars, two that deal primarily with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and one that deals with official corruption.

Redeployment (2014) by Phil Klay. Redeployment is a collection of stories around the experience of soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. These stories have no sappy sentimentality or macho muscle-flexing. They are as real and honest as anything you’ll find being written about how these wars have affected America’s young men and women who were sent there, often multiple times, and who have been irrevocably changed by it. A shattering, must-read book.

Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War (2013) Edited by Matt Gallagher. This collection offers a deeply personal look at the human ravages of our Middle East wars; the impact of fear, violence, destruction and death on its warriors, both male and female alike. It portrays PTSD as a nightmare; the psychic suffering of re-integrating into society with brain injuries, trauma such as faces burned off or limbs and genitals blown away. This is truth-telling that only those who were there can write. “Play the Game“, by Colby Buzzell shows the ball of emotions a combat vet experiences as he wanders around Los Angeles in a fog. Mariette Kalinowski’s amazing story, “The Train“, is perhaps the collection’s most affecting story. If there are Americans who still mistakenly believe that women weren’t damaged by serving in combat, they need to read “The Train” to see how PTSD is not an illness of just one gender.

Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War (2014) by James Risen. Risen reveals a litany of the unseen costs of our war on terror: From squandered and stolen money, to abuses of power, to wars on decency, and truth, all in the name of fighting terrorism. Risen makes two overarching points: First, the enormity of waste and corruption generated during the Bush/Cheney invasion of Iraq. Consider: The US government, eager to reflate Iraqi currency post-Saddam, sends plane after plane load filled with US hundred-dollar bills from the US to Baghdad. Why? Because printing new Iraqi Dinars would take too long. A large proportion of that cash simply goes missing.

Second, Risen makes the point that the false legitimacy of surveillance and torture as promulgated by GW Bush, Cheney, the CIA, NSA and their Justice Dept. acolytes that morphed our security apparatus into one that believes total surveillance of American citizens is not only desirable, but necessary.

Our government has done some things that are as shameful as those of its wartime enemies. And it has worked very hard to cover them up.

What are you reading?

Is Snowden the First, or Last of His Kind?

Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right saw “CitizenFour” a few days after the Oscars. It is interesting that the Academy recognized both “American Sniper” and “CitizenFour.” The former bagged one Oscar, for Best Sound Editing, while the latter won for Best Feature Length Documentary. One made big bucks, the other is already on HBO. Both celebrate heroes, one a tool of the Global War on Terror, the other a whistleblower computer geek who saw that the War on Terror was compromising our Constitution.

Laura Poitras accepted her Oscar, but Edward Snowden couldn’t, because of that little “treason” thing.

As Kunstler says: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

He [Snowden] appeared to know exactly what he was doing, and with quiet, unshakable moral commitment. And then he disappeared down the gullet of America’s modern times nemesis, Russia, where he continues to taunt with his very existence, the NSA gameboys, lizard-lawyers and puppet-masters who cordially invite him back home to face, ho-ho, our vaunted justice system. Of course any six-year-old understands that they would love to jam Snowden down some federal supermax memory hole as an example to any other waffling NSA code-jockey having second thoughts about reading your grandpa’s phone records.

Snowden is a much more interesting hero than the sniper, Chris Kyle. The documentary follows Snowden, who was hiding in plain sight in Hong Kong in the spring of 2013, after he stole over 220,000 files belonging to the National Security Agency. Glen Greenwald, Barton Gellman, and Laura Poitras later began revealing to the public the extent to which the American government was spying on everyone’s electronic life while ignoring that pesky US Constitution, and setting the USA on a track towards becoming a police state.

Listening to Ed talk, you’re pleasantly surprised. He gets the concepts, he articulates them beautifully.

Towards the end of the movie, one of the characters (Greenwald?) makes an amazing statement. He says:

What we used to call liberty and freedom we now call privacy. And now people are saying privacy is dead.

Is that what we’re all fighting for? Liberty? Is that a concept that unites the left and the right in America?

You’d expect people to be up in arms about “CitizenFour” but the truth is they just don’t care. That’s our government’s job. If we don’t let the agencies run wild, ISIS will attack Kansas. So we suspend your rights for a while. That’s right, the head fake of fighting “terrorism” has caused us to let our First Amendment freedoms go down the drain, and if someone like Snowden blows the whistle, they are a traitor, or a pariah.

Snowden sparked a debate about how to preserve privacy in the information age—and whether such a thing is even possible. If Snowden hadn’t come forward, the steady encroachment of the surveillance state would have continued, and most people might never have known about the government’s efforts.

There’s something hollow in the soul of America today. Right and wrong used to matter. But now, the government works to keep the average person off balance via subterfuge and fear. And very few of us grasp the facts, even when they’re staring us in the face.

So, we’re dependent on lone wolves to help us see. Snowden says he’s only the first, that the government may get him, but others will follow in his wake. Really?

Once upon a time, “CitizenFour” would have incited a national debate. Now it’s just grist for the mill, Snowden’s character has already been assassinated by the main stream media, and his Oscar-winning movie will come and go.

All of the political debating about immigration, DHS funding, taxes, and ISIS are the sideshow. The main event is how they’ve got our number and we’re already living in 1984. And you believed it couldn’t happen here.

The truth is it already has. We need more Snowdens. People who will say, as Snowden did:

There are things worth dying for.

Today’s Reason for Rejecting Conservative Republicanism

Yesterday, we highlighted an effort by a county Republican Party organization to establish Christianity as the state religion of Idaho. Turns out, that idea was smack in the mainstream of Republican ideas: A national poll of Republican primary voters conducted by Public Policy Polling finds that 57% percent of these voters support establishing Christianity as the national religion, while 30% oppose making Christianity the nation’s religion. Well, this means that 57% of Republicans hate America plain and simple. They want to turn our nation into something out of the Dark Ages.

A number of red states have passed statutes forbidding the implementation of Islam-based sharia law in their states, but Republicans apparently have no misgivings about turning the US into a Christian theocracy. The poll’s cross-tabs reveal that support for making Christianity the official religion is strongest among supporters of Mike Huckabee (94%), Rick Perry (83%), and Ben Carson (78%).

Now the poll was small, only sampling 316 Republican primary voters. Sample sizes of 300-600 are the norm for national telephone pollsters. While 316 is on the low end of that, PPP says that its margin of error is ± 5.5%, so some will say that it can’t scale up. However, PPP has been very accurate in the past.

The same poll also found that 66% do not believe in global warming, and a plurality (49%), do not believe in evolution. So, not only do they wish to establish a national religion, but it appears that their version of Christianity is one that is at odds with the scientific consensus in climatology and biology.

These data were buried deep (starting on page 14 of 47) in a report about how Scott Walker leads in the national eye test competition among Repubs.

Here’s a repeat of yesterday’s reminder: The First Amendment to the US Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. There’s a reason that our Founding Fathers wanted to establish a strict separation of Church and State, and the poll results bear out that wisdom. If things were left up to today’s Republican primary voters, we’d already be a theocracy, perhaps as self-righteous and intolerant as Iran or Saudi Arabia.

The ignorance of our Constitution displayed by the poll results speaks to a voting populace that simply doesn’t care about tolerance, multicultural diversity, and most certainly, not about religious freedom.

America ought to be better than this. Instead, a significant portion of the electorate would be perfectly happy to turn this into a Christian theocracy…a recipe for tyranny by these good, God-fearing Christian patriots.

Our Founding Fathers lived at the end of a 300-year period where Europe had been racked by wars of religion, fought between adherents of various “Christian” sects, and they were only a little over a hundred years removed from the English civil wars of the mid-1600’s which were strongly influenced by religion. The colonies themselves mirrored Europe’s religious division, Anglicans in Virginia, Puritans in New England, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Catholics in Maryland, and many German religious refugees in New York and Pennsylvania. They had darned good reasons to not want any religion to be given preeminence.

And today, we see religious violence in Asia (Burma, India, and China) and in the Middle East. Why would we want to revisit that here, in a nation that knows better?

From fear of Jihadi John, to fear of immunizations, to denial of climate change, it doesn’t seem that Conservative American Christians are comfortable with the idea of critical thinking; it seems to require too much of them. How would atheists, or non-Christians of all stripes survive under the US Christian state? Luckily, that would take a Constitutional Amendment, which could prove very difficult to enact.

How did Conservatives, noted in the not-so-distant past for a fierce commitment to logic, become such prisoners of their various religions?

Monday Wake Up Call – March 2, 2015

The lands surrounding the Mansion of Wrong remain deeply snow-covered, and we picked up another 6” of snow last night. Where is Spring? In other weather-related news, February 2015 was officially the coldest February on record here in the Nutmeg State. So, let’s turn to Pete Seeger for a lovely Wake Up song about snow, with a gentle political message buried inside. Here is “Snow, Snow”:

Sample Lyrics:
Snow, snow, falling down;
Covering up my dirty old town.

Covers the garbage dump, covers the holes,
Covers the rich homes, and the poor souls,
Covers the station, covers the tracks,
Covers the footsteps of those who’ll not be back.

In news of the stupid, a branch of the Republican Party in Idaho voted to take up a measure to declare the state is Christian. The Idea was to bolster what supporters called the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of the US. The proposal was that Idaho be “formally and specifically declared a Christian state,” guided by a Judeo-Christian faith as reflected in the US Declaration of Independence. Jeff Tyler, a member of the committee and backer of the draft resolution, said:

We’re a Christian community in a Christian state and the Republican Party is a Christian Party.

It’s possible that the county Republicans had never heard of the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution, which says…”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”…Oh, and that applies to the states as well.

Well, when the news got out of Kootenai County, the county’s Republican Central Committee decided to shelve the measure, Now, Republicans will tell you it was just a small splinter group, and the resolution was going nowhere, so the US Constitution was never in danger from Republican religious extremists. Perhaps the more realistic way to look at it is that the Constitution is safe for the moment, until another, larger Republican extremist group comes along.

Here are your Monday hot links:

A study of frozen ice cores from the Tibetan Himalayas shows that international agreements on phasing out the use of toxic organic pollutants are working. It’s cheaper to take an ice core sample than it is to place air quality sensors everywhere and monitor them.

In the US, just three out of ten workers produce and deliver all of the goods we consume. Everything we extract, grow, design, build, make, engineer, and transport – down to brewing a cup of coffee in a restaurant kitchen – is done by roughly 30% of the country’s workforce. Another 30% of us spend our time planning what to make, deciding where to install the things we have made, performing personal services, talking to each other, and keeping track of what is being done, so that we can figure out what needs to be done next. The rest are kids, elderly and out of work. Which 30% are you in?

Last week, the Muslim World League, a Saudi-backed alliance of Islamic NGOs, held a three-day conference in Mecca on “Islam and Counterterrorism.” The conference’s organizers cast their mission as developing a coordinated campaign to promote a moderate, peaceful vision of Islam that disavows the violence and apostasy that ISIS thrives on. They also think only Muslims can solve the ISIS problem.

You Tube makes no money. The Wall Street Journal reports that while YouTube accounted for about 6% of Google’s overall sales last year ($4 billion), it didn’t contribute to earnings. After paying for content, and the equipment to deliver speedy videos, YouTube’s bottom line is “roughly break-even”. You Tube has 1 billion users per month. By comparison, Facebook generated more than $12 billion in revenue, and nearly $3 billion in profit, from its 1.3 billion users per year.

An abandoned Walmart is America’s largest 1-floor library. This is an old story, but worth checking out if you missed it. The architect firm of Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle transformed an abandoned Walmart in McAllen, Texas, into a 124,500-square-foot public library, the largest single-floor public library in the United States:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 1, 2015

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them” – Albert Einstein

Israel PM Bibi Netanyahu is addressing Congress on March 3rd about his problems with a potential Iranian nuclear deal. He is looking to turn Republicans in Congress against any deal, an effort designed to undercut President Obama’s negotiations. Bibi has big problems with Mr. Obama, but he has apparently already found a soul mate in Saudi Arabia.

According to the Times of Israel, it is looking as if two former enemies have developed a behind-the-scenes alliance against Iran. Saudi Arabia has agreed to let Israeli warplanes overfly Saudi territory while attacking Iranian nuclear sites. From their report:

Saudi Arabia is prepared to let Israeli fighter jets use its airspace if it proves necessary to attack Iran’s nuclear program, an Israeli TV station reported Tuesday, highlighting growing ties in the shadow of Tehran’s nuclear drive.

This works for Israel since using Saudi airspace provides Israeli planes a direct route for reaching Iran. It means they won’t have to fly around the Persian Gulf, which would take more time and fuel. The Times says that Israel and Saudi Arabia also share intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program at a very detailed level. The alliance works for the Saudis, who are also concerned about a possible agreement coming out of the Geneva. Netanyahu has warned repeatedly that the Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, although Iranian officials insist the nuclear program is purely for civilian use.

The Times of Israel reporting suggests that Netanyahu may have laid the groundwork for his own plan to attack the Iranian nuclear sites, if the international negotiations are successful.

Bibi rocks the House:

Bibi is ALWAYS non-partisan when in DC:

GOP gets adjustment, extends DHS funding for a week:

Republicans didn’t realize the immigration order was already off the table:

Jeb Bush says he’s not in the family business:

RIP Mr. Spock:

Friday Music Break – February 27, 2015

With all the talk about Scott Walker’s Republican presidential bid, maybe there should be some equal time for the governor of Minnesota, Wisconsin’s neighbor to the west, Mark Dayton, who is a Democrat. HuffPo reports:

When he took office in January, 2011…Dayton inherited a $6.2 billion budget deficit and a 7 % unemployment rate from his predecessor, Tim Pawlenty, the soon-forgotten Republican candidate for the presidency who called himself Minnesota’s first true fiscally-conservative governor in modern history.

During his first four years in office, Gov. Dayton raised the state income tax from 7.85 to 9.85% on individuals earning over $150,000, and on couples earning over $250,000, raising $2.1 billion/year. He’s also agreed to raise Minnesota’s minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2018, and passed a state law guaranteeing equal pay for women.

According to trickle-down economic theory, Minnesota must be losing businesses and jobs, right? Wrong. In the real world, the opposite happened. Between 2011 and 2015, Gov. Dayton added 172,000 new jobs to Minnesota’s economy, or 165,800 more jobs in Dayton’s first term than Pawlenty added in both of his terms.

• Minnesota’s top income tax rate is the 4th-highest in the country, but it has the 5th-lowest unemployment rate in the country at 3.6%.
• By late 2013, Minnesota’s private sector job growth exceeded pre-recession levels, and the state’s economy was the 5th fastest-growing in the United States.

Despite Republican complaints about Dayton’s supposedly anti-business agenda, Forbes ranks Minnesota the 9th-best state for business, while Scott Walker’s Wisconsin comes in at #32 on the same list.

And while Walker was busy blocking people from voting, Dayton actually created an online voter registration system, making it easier than ever for people to register to vote.

Oh, and Dayton is a billionaire. He’s an heir to the Target fortune, and a member of 1% who isn’t a prisoner of the billionaire dialectic.

There you have it, proof that trickle-down economics is bunk. Minnesota proves it.

On to your Music Break:
Whitehorse is a Canadian folk rock duo. Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland were married in 2006, but both were established and successful singer-songwriters prior to marriage and subsequently. They started to perform together in 2011. She also works with Sarah McLachlan, providing backing vocals at McLachlan’s live shows. Here are two songs from their just released “No Bridge Unburned” album. First up, “Downtown”:

Sample Lyric:
I’m electrified by the city light
I get off where I need to
And with who I like
I’m a diplomat
I’m a subway rat
I like the unfamiliar
I’m not scared by that

Next, “Sweet Disaster”:

Sample Lyric:
Galileo was bluffing
It’s just a mess out here
There’s no compass to guide us
Through the flashes of violence and fear

See you on Sunday.

Did Chicago Police Run a “Black Site”?

“At any given moment there is a sort of all-prevailing orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss some large and uncomfortable fact”. − George Orwell

The Guardian is reporting that the Chicago police have used a “Black Site” for years:

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site. The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units.
Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights…

Spencer Ackerman of The Guardian reported that alleged activities there included the following:

• Detainees were kept out of the official police booking system
• Persons in custody were often shackled for long periods of time
• Attorneys were denied access to their clients
• There were frequent beatings, causing head injuries

If this is happening in Chicago, then could other cities also be operating illegal detention sites?

A series of US Supreme Court cases over the past 100 years have codified the rights of suspects under our system, but they may not have protected many suspects in Chicago. The Atlantic interviewed Tracy Siska, executive director of the Chicago Justice Project and a criminologist who wrote a story for The Guardian on military interrogation tactics in the city. Siska spoke about the Homan Square abuses of Constitutional rights: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

What used to happen at Homan Square is that prior to a year ago, if you get arrested and you get brought down anywhere in any district, you would not pop up in the city computer as being arrested until they processed the police report, which could take anywhere from an hour to 15 hours.
If they “arrested” you, then they have to report it. But if they don’t “arrest you,” nefarious things could happen and they could interrogate you without a lawyer. And they would move you around from district to district. So [for example] if the family shows up or the lawyer shows up and they say you aren’t here but you are, they’ve denied you access. But if they say you’re at [district] 17, then move you to 15, and then 12, they can question you without counsel. At Homan Square they don’t process paperwork about your arrest. You’re just gone. No one knows.
At some point they have to do the paperwork and prosecute you. After they get your confession, you wind up back in the paperwork.

One implication of Siska’s interview is that the Constitution-shredding actions of the Chicago PD ended in 2014. Again, according to Siska: (emphasis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

About a year ago, [the rule changed]…After arriving at a CPD facility, [officers] have 20 minutes to one hour to put you into the system, and you appear on the system city-wide. Any officer anywhere in the city can find where you are. And anywhere they move you to, every time you move, [officers] have 20 minutes to one hour to put you in so you show up on a computer. Each time you move, your right to phone calls and Miranda rights starts all over again.

Belated exposure of the possible Constitutional abuses at Homan Square proves once again − as if we need more proof − how deeply the police forces in the US have been corrupted by the military-industrial complex and by our political enablers. It shows the extent that policing has become more like an occupation army (as it has been perceived in minority communities for a very, very long time).

There is no evidence that any loss of Constitutional rights, no matter how appalling, will wake up a solid majority of people in this country anytime soon. Like the Orwell quote says, we have agreed not to discuss some very important things, like Constitutional rights in our cities.

Not just that. We had a $4 trillion war based on lies that we didn’t discuss. We had a $1 trillion dollar financial meltdown. Not discussed. We learned that the NSA “collects it all.” Ho-hum.

“Mistakes happen”, and we just move on, talking about “50 Shades of Gray”. Americans have made their screwed-up priorities quite clear. They’ve given up on reality and have decided to go with fantasy.

Monday Wake Up Call – February 23, 2015

Welcome to Monday. The Wrongologist and Ms. Oh So Right are heading back to the Northeast.

Today, the world needs to wake up to the threat posed by outsourcing military operations to private armies whose allegiance is only to the highest bidder. The American Conservative warns in an article by Kelley Vlahos, called “A Blackwater World Order”, that the Pentagon’s dependence on contractors has created a new era of warfare in which several newly founded private military companies are meeting the demand of an exploding global market for armed conflict.

The article describes the book, The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What they Mean for World Order, by Sean McFate, a former Army paratrooper who later worked for outsourcer and defense contractor DynCorp, in Africa. In the book, McFate says that warfare is shifting from global dominance by nation-states to a “polycentric” military environment in which states now compete with transnational corporations, regional and ethnic interests, and terror organizations in the chess game of international power. McFate argues that new access to professional private arms has ended the traditional monopoly on force by the large states, and has brought about the dawn of a new era of armed conflict.

Are we sure these groups won’t go rogue? Who can control the mercenaries? What if a truly wealthy oligarch fields his own mercenary army to seize control of a country? It wouldn’t be for the first time.

Lots of questions, but very few answers.

Here is your Wake Up tune of the day. The National’s “Fake Empire”, from their 2008 album “Boxer”.

A fun fact about “Fake Empire” is that it was used in a 2012 Romney political video made by the group, Ohio University Students for Romney. Apparently, nobody told them that the same song was used by Obama in a 2008 ad. The National asked the Romney people to take it down, saying:

Our music was used without our permission in this ad. The song you’re using was written about the same backward, con game policies Romney is proposing.

Judge for yourself. Here is “Fake Empire”:

Sample Lyrics:
Turn the light out say goodnight, no thinking for a little while
Let’s not try to figure out everything at once
It’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
We’re half-awake in a fake empire
We’re half-awake in a fake empire

Monday’s hot links:

Chinese city says air pollution is due to bacon: Dazhou, a city located in the northeastern corner of Sichuan province, has suffered from especially “severe air pollution” since earlier this month, and officials say the main cause is the smoking of bacon by local residents. China consumes half of the world’s pork every year. Insert your own joke here.

MIT has a list of breakthrough technologies for 2015. Invest at your own risk.

New data for 2013 reveals that states with weak gun violence prevention laws and higher rates of gun ownership have the highest overall gun death rates in the nation. Here is a handy table from the report:

You can see where your state ranks here.

Now, get up, get dressed, and get going.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Author: wrongologist