Politics & Stuff

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Peter Stefanovic exposed Boris Johnson’s lies live on GMB

https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2021/07/07/peter-stefanovic-exposed-boris-johnsons-lies-live-on-gmb/

Good Morning Britain (GMB) has finally shown a viral video on the PM’s lies. It’s had over 25 million views. What’s more, GMB got the video’s creator on to talk about it. And he was adamant that, despite what some people say, the public do care about the PM’s “rampant” lying.

Blatant fact: Johnson is a liar

Peter Stefanovic is a campaigning lawyer. He’s been vocal on issues surrounding the NHS, disability rights, and others. Recently, a video he produced has gone viral. It’s about Boris Johnson’s lies to parliament. As of 11am on Wednesday 7 July, it’s had over 25 millions views on Twitter alone. As Bywire News reported, the video started a cross-parliamentary campaign. It called for an inquiry into Johnson’s lies. Every opposition party got involved, except Labour. Bywire noted that Johnson’s untruths included:

Claim 5: On the 17th of June 2020, during PMQs [Prime Minister’s Questions], the Prime Minister said “There are hundreds of thousands, I think 400,000, fewer families living in poverty now than there were in 2010”.

This is not true. A parliamentary watchdog already issued Johnson with a warning over his previous lies about poverty. But so far, much of the corporate media has ignored Stefanovic’s video – and Johnson’s lies. As The Canary previously reported, sometimes BBC hosts even actively try to shut down mentions of Johnson’s fibs. So, enter GMB to give Stefanovic and his video a platform:

Huge thanks to @susannareid100 @campbellclaret & @GMB for being the VERY FIRST UK news show to have the courage to step up & actually screen & debate my film today, now on 25 MILLION VIEWS pic.twitter.com/4KicfqB7Mo

— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) July 7, 2021

Stefanovic bringing the fire

Stefanovic said that compared to Johnson, his video was accurate with its claims:

Everything that I said in my film has been carefully fact checked by various sources. And so what the prime minister is saying there is provably false.

He was also debating the issue with Johnson’s biographer Andrew Gimson. He tried to defend Johnson. But as Stefanovic pointed out:

There are going to be different people interpreting this film in different ways. So, you’re going to have some people looking at it as I do, and say ‘well – this prime minister is telling bare-faced lies every week’.

Host Susanna Reid tried to interrupt him. But Stefanovic didn’t waver. He continued, saying:

you’re going to have some people looking at the film saying ‘well, the prime minister simply hasn’t got a clue what’s going on in the country’

Reid also put it to him that the public may not care that Johnson lies. But as Stefanovic said, the reaction on social media to his video meant:

the public really do care about the almost rampant lying that we are witnessing in parliament at the moment. And the film itself appears to have become a public protest at the outright lies that we are being seen told on the floor of the house practically every week.

“People care about lying”

As Stefanovic summed up, saying of his late parents:

I remember their stoic honesty. They would never lie; they would never deceive; they would never mislead. And I believe that the majority of people in this country feel the same way. And that’s why so many people have driven this film of mine to 25 million views… People do care about lying… I wouldn’t lie. You wouldn’t lie. I don’t expect our parliamentarians to do it either.

Indeed. So, now we wait to see if the BBC will follow GMB‘s lead.

Watch the full GMB segment below:

 

 

[Vesper 28,795]

Jamaica expected to ask for billions of pounds in reparations over Britain's role in slavery

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/jamaica-expected-to-ask-for-billions-of-pounds-in-reparations-over-britains-role-in-slavery-280336

 

Time doesn't make things go away- Jamaica demands reparations

Last week it was announced that Jamaica would seek reparations from the English monarchy for their part in the transatlantic slave trade.

"We are hoping for reparatory justice in all forms that one would expect if they are to really ensure that we get justice from injustices to repair the damages that our ancestors experienced," Olivia Grange, Minister of Sports, Youth and Culture, told Reuters.

"Our African ancestors were forcibly removed from their home and suffered unparalleled atrocities in Africa to carry out forced labour to the benefit of the British Empire," she added. "Redress is well overdue."

Jamaica was taken from the Spanish in 1655 and remained a part of the British colonies until its independence in 1962. However, the country remained a commonwealth member and also have The Queen as their head of state.

When slavery was abolished in 1834, the English Government borrowed £20 million, which they used to pay slave owners for the loss of their workforce. This loan was only repaid in 2015, and with tax-payer money.

Mike Henry, a labour representative in Jamaica, has worked out that 7.6 billion pounds equate to the same amount initially paid to the slave owners.

"I am asking for the same amount of money to be paid to the slaves that was paid to the slave owners," said Henry, a member of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party.

"I am doing this because I have fought against this all my life, against chattel slavery which has dehumanized human life."

[Fulham Broadway 16,838]

48 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Jamaica expected to ask for billions of pounds in reparations over Britain's role in slavery

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/jamaica-expected-to-ask-for-billions-of-pounds-in-reparations-over-britains-role-in-slavery-280336

 

Time doesn't make things go away- Jamaica demands reparations

Last week it was announced that Jamaica would seek reparations from the English monarchy for their part in the transatlantic slave trade.

"We are hoping for reparatory justice in all forms that one would expect if they are to really ensure that we get justice from injustices to repair the damages that our ancestors experienced," Olivia Grange, Minister of Sports, Youth and Culture, told Reuters.

"Our African ancestors were forcibly removed from their home and suffered unparalleled atrocities in Africa to carry out forced labour to the benefit of the British Empire," she added. "Redress is well overdue."

Jamaica was taken from the Spanish in 1655 and remained a part of the British colonies until its independence in 1962. However, the country remained a commonwealth member and also have The Queen as their head of state.

When slavery was abolished in 1834, the English Government borrowed £20 million, which they used to pay slave owners for the loss of their workforce. This loan was only repaid in 2015, and with tax-payer money.

Mike Henry, a labour representative in Jamaica, has worked out that 7.6 billion pounds equate to the same amount initially paid to the slave owners.

"I am asking for the same amount of money to be paid to the slaves that was paid to the slave owners," said Henry, a member of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party.

"I am doing this because I have fought against this all my life, against chattel slavery which has dehumanized human life."

Check out Dorset MP Drax. The richest MP  -still has plantations where 30 000 slaves were tortured and worked to death

[Atomiswave 6,072]

47 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Check out Dorset MP Drax. The richest MP  -still has plantations where 30 000 slaves were tortured and worked to death

People will never wake up sadly, we are too busy with all other shit, too busy being sheeps.

1 hour ago, Vesper said:

Jamaica expected to ask for billions of pounds in reparations over Britain's role in slavery

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/jamaica-expected-to-ask-for-billions-of-pounds-in-reparations-over-britains-role-in-slavery-280336

 

Time doesn't make things go away- Jamaica demands reparations

Last week it was announced that Jamaica would seek reparations from the English monarchy for their part in the transatlantic slave trade.

"We are hoping for reparatory justice in all forms that one would expect if they are to really ensure that we get justice from injustices to repair the damages that our ancestors experienced," Olivia Grange, Minister of Sports, Youth and Culture, told Reuters.

"Our African ancestors were forcibly removed from their home and suffered unparalleled atrocities in Africa to carry out forced labour to the benefit of the British Empire," she added. "Redress is well overdue."

Jamaica was taken from the Spanish in 1655 and remained a part of the British colonies until its independence in 1962. However, the country remained a commonwealth member and also have The Queen as their head of state.

When slavery was abolished in 1834, the English Government borrowed £20 million, which they used to pay slave owners for the loss of their workforce. This loan was only repaid in 2015, and with tax-payer money.

Mike Henry, a labour representative in Jamaica, has worked out that 7.6 billion pounds equate to the same amount initially paid to the slave owners.

"I am asking for the same amount of money to be paid to the slaves that was paid to the slave owners," said Henry, a member of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party.

"I am doing this because I have fought against this all my life, against chattel slavery which has dehumanized human life."

LOL, good luck with that one. THey know if they cave in then other countries will demand the same. Lets be honest the English do not have a good record in the eyes of others. How many contries did UK plunder again? Way too many.

[Fulham Broadway 16,838]

9 minutes ago, Atomiswave said:

People will never wake up sadly, we are too busy with all other shit, too busy being sheeps.

LOL, good luck with that one. THey know if they cave in then other countries will demand the same. Lets be honest the English do not have a good record in the eyes of others. How many contries did UK plunder again? Way too many.

Yeah but its not the British people - it was a few rich cunts and their lackeys - some of which their descendents still have that acquired wealth.

When it was going on the most of the British people were poor, worked to  death via disease etc. Massive class divide, not  as it is now by sedating people with lots of consumer products and football

If we're gonna blame the whole country, lets get billions and billions back from Italy for the Roman empire

[Atomiswave 6,072]

46 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Yeah but its not the British people - it was a few rich cunts and their lackeys - some of which their descendents still have that acquired wealth.

When it was going on the most of the British people were poor, worked to  death via disease etc. Massive class divide, not  as it is now by sedating people with lots of consumer products and football

If we're gonna blame the whole country, lets get billions and billions back from Italy for the Roman empire

Your right I didnt mean the Eng people, just those in power, and they have benefited so so much through the years. Generation after generation......its BS man. Yup we are indeed sedated, we are hooked sitting in front of our television ( tell a lie vision )

[Vesper 28,795]

UK MPs back Boris Johnson’s foreign aid cut despite outcry

Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May accuses his government of ‘turning its back on the world’s poorest’.

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-mps-back-boris-johnsons-foreign-aid-cut/

LONDON — MPs formally backed Boris Johnson’s cut to foreign aid after a failed rebellion by prominent Conservatives including Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May.

The U.K. prime minister’s parliamentary majority of 80 was cut to 35, as 333 MPs voted in favor and 298 opposed the move to reduce overseas development spending from 0.7 percent of national income to 0.5 percent.

Twenty-four Conservatives voted against the government including May; former International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell; defense committee chairman Tobias Ellwood; ex-Cabinet minister Jeremy Hunt; and Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign affairs committee.

Funding for overseas aid was reduced at the beginning of the year without a change to legislation after Johnson argued the move was permissible under the current law, which allows the target to be temporarily missed in exceptional circumstances. 

However, the government was severely criticized, including by Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, for not offering MPs a chance to ratify the new spending quota.

That led to Tuesday’s vote, and a bid by Chancellor Rishi Sunak to peel away rebels by committing to raising the aid budget back to 0.7 percent when the U.K.’s public spending watchdog forecasts the country is not borrowing to cover day-to-day spending and underlying debt. 

Sunak told the House of Commons: “This decision is categorically not a rejection of our global responsibilities.”

Ahead of the vote, a letter was released to POLITICO’s London Playbook by 14 undecided Conservative MPs who said Sunak’s pledge had persuaded them to back the government. The fiscal argument appears to have been key in seeing off the rebellion, although Damian Green, another Conservative former Cabinet minister who rebelled, claimed on Times Radio that some MPs had been offered government jobs in return for their support.

The 0.5 percent level means £10 billion will be spent on aid this year, about £4 billion less than if the original commitment had been kept.

Speaking against Sunak’s proposed compromise, May told MPs that meeting the Treasury’s test could take “four to five years” and accused the government of “turning its back on the world’s poorest” as she broke the party whip for the first time in her career.

NGOs reacted with dismay to the news. Romilly Greenhill, U.K. director of the ONE Campaign, said: “Today’s result is a needless retreat from the world stage, enforced by the Treasury, at the exact moment the U.K. should be showing leadership.”

WaterAid’s Tim Wainwright predicted the cut would cost “hundreds of thousands of lives.” And former Conservative Prime Minister John Major said Johnson’s government “should be ashamed of its decision.”

He added: “It seems that we can afford a ‘national yacht’ than no-one either wants or needs, whilst cutting help to some of the most miserable and destitute people in the world. This is not a Conservatism that I recognise. It is the stamp of Little England, not Great Britain.”

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Trump Reportedly Lost His Shit Over Story on Bunker Stay: Leaker ‘Should Be Executed!’

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-reportedly-fumed-over-story-on-his-bunker-stay-leaker-should-be-executed

Donald Trump wasn’t happy about a story on his stay at an underground bunker during racial justice protests at the White House last year. In fact, according to reporter Michael Bender’s Frankly, We Did With This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, Trump was so upset about the leak that he called in top West Wing and military advisers and ordered them to find out who was behind it. “Whoever did that, they should be charged with treason!” Trump said, according to Bender. “They should be executed!”

Trump, his wife Melania, and his son Barron were all taken down to the bunker for almost an hour after protests over the killing of George Floyd erupted outside the White House. The next Monday, White House staffers were told to hide their entry passes until they reached a Secret Service checkpoint, further highlighting the perceived threat to safety. Still, Trump later tried to downplay the trip as an “inspection” versus a precaution.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/13/politics/trump-white-house-bunker-leak-executed-treason-book-claims/index.html

 

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Police Reform, LGBTQ Rights, Voting: The Disappearing Dem Agenda

Democrats are already running out of time to enact their agenda—and they’re betting everything on infrastructure.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/police-reform-lgbtq-rights-voting-the-disappearing-dem-agenda

With the most promising window for action in the Joe Biden era already closing, Democrats are going all-in on advancing a sweeping infrastructure bill—at the expense of many other progressive priorities on their wishlist.

Police reform, guns, LGBTQ protections, and voting rights—they were once all near the top of the to-do list for Democrats when President Joe Biden took office and Democrats claimed control of the House and Senate. But, at the moment, none of them are going anywhere, and the packed summer schedule ahead means they’ll stay stuck for the foreseeable future.

Progressives held out hope that the dog days of summer might see momentum build toward ending the 60-vote threshold to pass bills known as the filibuster, a prerequisite to pass most of their agenda. Instead, those days will be filled with work on a $600 billion bipartisan infrastructure plan and a multi-trillion dollar package containing major expansions of health care, childcare, and education benefits that would pass along partisan lines.

In a letter released last Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) officially advised senators to clear their nights, weekends, and even the sacred August recess in order to get both prongs of Biden’s marquee policy package done. He suggested action on other fronts is possible, but Capitol Hill observers in both parties expect every minute of the schedule until Labor Day to be consumed by the infrastructure package.

“What they're saying is, economic package first,” said Jim Kessler, co-founder of the moderate Third Way think tank and a former Schumer aide. “The other pieces, as critical as they are, are going to go on their own timeline. Guns, police reform, voting rights, under the current Senate rules, the paths are very murky.”

But progressive activists—who’ve been pushing hard for election reform legislation as a priority of existential importance to the party and the country—are expecting Biden and Democrats on Capitol Hill to pour as much time, energy, and political capital into advancing their For The People Act elections bill, and changes to Senate rules, as they are into an economic package.

Getting an infrastructure package passed would be a “historic success” that “should be celebrated,” said Rahna Epting, executive director of the advocacy group MoveOn, but, she added the intense focus on the push “leaves on the table so many other things, so many progressive and Democratic priorities that the people voted for this last election cycle.”

“It’s not enough to just deliver on the Build Back Better agenda,” Epting added. “That’s the agenda that ideally proves to voters that life is better under Democratic governance—but we also need voters to be able to vote in 2022.”

Ironically, of all Biden and Democrats’ priorities, infrastructure was seen as perhaps the easiest lift—a clean swing on a noncontroversial issue that could actually pass, giving Democrats a solid achievement to campaign on in the 2022 midterm elections. And if the bill is anything like the one Biden and top Democrats envision, it’d represent the most ambitious public investment in generations.

That a relatively straightforward-seeming path ahead is now so complicated illustrates how difficult it is in this closely divided Washington to get anything done—and how hard it is to make headway on the other items many Democrats have been clamoring to tackle after taking control of the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Although Democratic leaders suggested they could vote on firearm background check legislation in June, it didn’t happen, and no action is expected in light of another failed round of bipartisan talks. And the Equality Act, a landmark LGBTQ rights expansion that Biden promised to pass in his first 100 days, has not gotten a Senate vote amid GOP opposition and concern from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). Schumer teased a possible vote on it in July, but the bill was not mentioned in his letter to senators last week.

On most fronts, the legislative torpor isn’t necessarily for lack of trying. Consistent bipartisan talks on police reform are proceeding, albeit slowly, as Biden’s target date for action, the May 25 anniversary of George Floyd’s death, recedes into the rearview mirror. The lawmakers involved announced a preliminary deal two weeks ago, but there’s concern that a potentially significant step forward on law enforcement reform might also languish amid a packed schedule.

“There’s a crowded agenda on the Senate floor and if we don’t do something soon, we will lose a historic moment where we really should rise [to] the moment and make the reforms necessary,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), one of the lead negotiators, told ABC News on July 1.

Democratic leaders have put some of their priorities to a vote. As promised, Schumer devoted precious floor time to consideration of their For The People Act, known by its legislative shorthand of S.1, in June. All 50 Democrats were united in advancing it. But a GOP filibuster meant the bill did not proceed to debate. Legislation to counter the gender pay gap met a similar fate. As did a bill to establish an independent commission investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

These votes are easy to tee up, but with each day on the floor a valuable one, the appetite for show votes among Democrats inside and outside the Capitol is fairly low.

In his letter to colleagues, Schumer said June’s vote on S.1 “represented the starting gun—not the finish line—in our fight to protect our democracy” and that he “reserves the right” to put the legislation back on the floor at any time. Barring a seismic shift in the political environment, however, that will not happen. Instead, many Democrats are eyeing legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act, which cannot be considered until the fall due to procedural reasons.

Some Democrats hoped the June schedule of planned failure might build momentum for ending the filibuster. With Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) still steadfastly opposed to that option, it’s not hard for many to see the filibuster conversation growing more muted as Congress tackles the meat of infrastructure legislation.

Activists, like Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, are working to ensure the pressure stays on the filibuster and election reform. “People see the crisis of democracy on the same level of a crisis of unpaved roads, and they're going to show up and make some noise,” he told The Daily Beast.

They are also skeptical that Biden’s dream of a big bipartisan infrastructure bill is any more attainable than modifying the Senate rules. Although five GOP senators helped negotiate the bipartisan infrastructure proposal Congress will consider this month, it’s an open question whether five more will sign onto it. “We’re closer on a Senate rules package than we are to getting 10 Republican votes on a massive infrastructure bill,” Levin argued.

If the bipartisan deal falls apart, Democrats may proceed on a partisan bill passed through reconciliation. Either way, there’s a growing indication that the broader package could be a salve for Democrats concerned about their priorities languishing: if it’s the only train leaving the station, then they might as well cram as much stuff into it as possible.

Immigration reform, for example, is among those Democratic priorities destined to fall by the wayside this summer. But some progressives are pushing for Biden’s so-called American Families Plan to include it. Rep. Chuy García (D-IL) announced last week that he would not vote for any version of a bill that did not include a path to citizenship for Dreamers, the undocumented migrants brought to the U.S. as young children.

The left’s much-celebrated Green New Deal, meanwhile, isn’t going anywhere on its own anytime soon. But a large cohort of Democrats see the climate plan’s provisions on clean energy and green transit as essential to any infrastructure effort—and basically nonnegotiable.

“We’re not gonna have a better opportunity to take a huge bite out of our carbon emissions. So, this is like the last place where you would want to sell out or compromise,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Most Democrats believe they won’t get a better opportunity than the first months of the Biden administration to enact the sweeping policies they’ve campaigned on for years. And with an evenly-split Senate and just a five-seat advantage in the House, all it could take is one lawmaker to slow down that train—turning what was already a challenging lift into a legislative obstacle course of epic proportions.

“I’ve always been an optimist on this,” said Kessler, “but it’s going to be a high-wire act all the way to the end. This thing is going to look like it’s plunging to its death 30 times before it gets to the president.

For his part, Biden has tried to publicly keep the spotlight on the broader party agenda even as his administration goes all-in on the dual-pronged economic package. This week, he is set to give an address on voting rights from Philadelphia, outlining how his administration is planning to protect the franchise amid a churn of GOP-backed bills on the state level aimed at repealing voter access they believed led to their 2020 election defeats.

Biden’s move comes after prominent liberals have voiced their discontent that the president has not fully leveraged his bully pulpit to push for voting legislation. Progressives are glad to see him devoting a speech to the issue, but they have made clear expectations are high as the clock runs out on their window to change voting rules ahead of the 2022 elections and, almost inevitably, GOP attempts to gerrymander a House majority.

“Talk is cheap,” said Levin. “There is an actual policy timeline for this—that’s not to say roads and bridges aren’t important, but there isn't as urgent a timeline applied to the infrastructure package as democracy reform.”

“In the next five to six weeks, he added, “we’ll know whether this is a historic presidency or a flop.”

 

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A minimum-wage directive could undermine the Nordic model

Several negative effects need to be addressed in the current negotiations on the directive, in the Swedish trade union view.

https://socialeurope.eu/a-minimum-wage-directive-could-undermine-the-nordic-model

The proposed European Union directive on minimum wages has met strong criticism in Scandinavia. But up to now the debate has lacked specific instances of what statutory minimum wages would mean for the Swedish labour market.

A key feature of the Swedish industrial-relations system is that unions and employers regulate most aspects of the labour market through collective agreements. The Swedish—or rather Nordic—model has repeatedly shown its vitality, solving difficult problems and contributing to high employment and wage growth, while largely avoiding government intervention. This model is threatened by the envisaged EU minimum-wage legislation.

Collective agreements

It has been claimed that Sweden would be unaffected, as article 1 of the commission’s proposal says: ‘Nothing in this Directive shall be construed as imposing an obligation on the Member States where wage setting is ensured exclusively via collective agreements to introduce a statutory minimum wage nor to make the collective agreements universally applicable.’ As we show in a new Arena Idé report, however, wages are not set solely through collective agreements—not even in Sweden.

One in ten employees are found in workplaces without a collective agreement and in the private sector the proportion is 15 per cent. Moreover, according to the National Mediation Office, around 400 of the approximately 690 collective agreements on wages do not contain specified minimum wages. Taken together, this means little over half (53 per cent) of all employees in Sweden are covered by minimum-wage provisions.

It is difficult to reconcile that with this statement by the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen: ‘Everyone must have access to minimum wages either through collective agreements or through statutory minimum wages.’ Ultimately, the question of whether the EU’s ‘guarantee’ of exemption for countries such as Sweden is worth anything would be settled by the European Court of Justice. Of course, the ECJ’s balancing of different interests is not done in a vacuum but is influenced by social norms and values, whose evolution is impossible to predict.

If Sweden were to be forced to legislate on minimum wages, these would probably end up far below those in current collective agreements. The commission has suggested that the minimum wage be at least 60 per cent of the median in each country. In Sweden and elsewhere, collectively agreed wages have acted as benchmarks for wages in companies which do not have collective agreements. But if a statutory minimum wage were set at a substantially lower level, this would serve as the benchmark instead.

Five risks

With a minimum-wage act based on a directive, Sweden would acquire a dual set of minimum wages: one collectively agreed and one set down in law. The potential consequences are difficult to assess but we can see at least five evident risks.

A minimum wage sanctioned by the EU and the Swedish parliament might be viewed as legitimate for employers aiming to lower their labour costs. This would not only lead to increased wage inequality but also distort competition between companies applying collectively bargained and statutory minimum wages. In public procurement, for example, the lowest price usually wins.

There is also a risk that more companies than today would consider not signing substitute agreements or joining an employer association. Such a development might deal a fatal blow to the Swedish industrial-relations model, being based on high affiliation among unions and employers.

Thirdly, a statutory minimum wage below collectively bargained levels might contribute to the emergence of ‘yellow’ or ‘company’ unions (representing the interests of the employer, rather than the employees), amenable to signing collective agreements at the statutory minimum rate. Since 2019, Swedish unions cannot resort to industrial action if a collective agreement has been signed—even if by a yellow union. An EU directive admixed with this weakened union influence could comprise a toxic cocktail for the Swedish model.

This could be circumvented by state extension of central collective agreements, meaning that they are converted into law. But this would be anathema to the Swedish model, with largely self-regulating social partners, voluntary agreements and very limited state intervention. It might also create a further risk—jeopardising member recruitment and so Sweden’s traditional high union density. For that very reason, in 1934 the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) opposed the offer by Gustav Möller, then minister of social affairs, of mandatory collective agreements. France has a statutory minimum wage and state extension of collective agreements—and fewer than one in ten employees are union members.

A final problem concerns the enforcement of collective agreements. If unions have insufficient resources or are not allowed to supervise companies without collective agreements, this task falls upon the government—which, again, would be a clear departure from the Swedish model. Moreover, it would be no small task, as about 60 per cent of Swedish companies, including many small and medium enterprises, do not have collective agreements.

Unpredictable process

As mentioned, the ECJ has final say on whether a directive is applicable to Sweden or not. And for Swedish unions, the antecedents of the court’s decisions are cautionary. In the 2007 Laval case, mobility of labour was prioritised above the fundamental EU principles of subsidiarity and non-discrimination. National affiliation became decisive in wage-setting and Sweden was forced to amend the rules on industrial disputes. This shows how an EU intervention can set in train an unpredictable process, with unintended and undesirable results.

An EU-adopted scheme, which in practice entails parallel systems for minimum wages, might trigger precisely such an unforeseeable chain of events, with adverse consequences for Nordic labour-market models in general. It would be unfortunate if in this way the commission were to undermine the very collective-bargaining systems it has held up as exemplary for wage formation.

A version of this article in Swedish was published in Svenska Dagbladet

[Fulham Broadway 16,838]

Johnson absolutely trounced in PMQs today. Never seen a worse performance by a serving PM.

First decimated by Starmer, then by SNPs Blackford who reminded Johnson how he described black people...

''Flag waving Piccaninies with water melon smiles''

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The Deeply Racist Dimensions To Ashli Babbitt’s Martyrdom

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/the-deeply-racist-dimensions-to-ashli-babbitts-martyrdom

“Who killed Ashli Babbitt?”

It’s a question that, in recent weeks, has become a mainstream rallying cry among the MAGA crew after growing in volume for months on the far-right fringes. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) has asked it repeatedly, as has former President Donald Trump himself.

But the thing is, they think they already know.

They have a specific individual in mind, a Capitol police officer that they believe to be the culprit in the killing. He happens to be a black man.

It’s a detail that, once known, places the calls for the officer to be exposed and punished in a new light. The ensuing witch hunt takes on a racial tinge, casting Babbitt as a defenseless white woman killed by a black man.

And it’s a context that has allowed Trump and others to blow the dog whistle on the case as loud as possible. He venerated Babbitt as “an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman,” adding, “if that were on the other side, the person that did the shooting would be strung up and hung.”

Babbitt was shot and killed on Jan. 6 after trying to break through a window into the House Speaker’s Lobby, where members of Congress were sheltering and continuing to evacuate.

In an appearance with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo last week, Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA director, pointed to a story by Paul Sperry, a reporter with RealClearInvestigations, that attempted to identify the officer in question. The same person had been labeled as the culprit by right-wing blogs such as the Gateway Pundit weeks before.

Officials have not publicly released or confirmed the identity of the officer who shot Babbitt; TPM has not confirmed the officer’s identity. And while that crucial fact hasn’t been confirmed, some far-right groups have already satisfied themselves that they know who it is, and are using that as the basis to build out a palace of grievance over her death.

Alternate realities

Babbitt was one of the many Jan. 6 insurgents that Trump had stranded in a reality where, in fact, Biden had stolen the election. The conservative movement has been trying to use her death to recast the insurrection as a case of innocents being killed.

But the fringe right has molded that narrative to incorporate the explicit use of Babbitt’s race. Racist influencers have also emphasized that Babbitt was killed by a black man, explicitly mixing her supposed martyrdom with the race of the person that shot her.

“With Sicknick’s autopsy, it’s now official: no people were killed by the nationalist demonstrators on January 6th,” wrote far-right propagandist Erik Striker in April, on his Telegram channel. “The only homicide victim that day was Ashli Babbitt, murdered by a black criminal with a badge whose identity is still being kept a secret by the media and the government.”

Western Chauvinist, a Telegram channel with nearly 50,000 subscribers, drew racist comparison’s between Babbitt’s death and that of George Floyd.

“Unlike St. Fentanyl Floyd, Ashli Babbitt will receive no justice from this sick anti-white system,” read an April message on the channel. “But WE will always remember her sacrifice and she will never be forgotten.”

In June, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio posted on his own Telegram channel a message from another account that showed video of a black Capitol police officer on Jan. 6 along with still images of Babbitt’s shooting.

“This black man was waiting to execute someone on january 6th,” the message reads. “He chose Ashli Babbitt.”

Abstraction

In some cases, the racial dynamic is blatant. In others, the dog whistle operates at a less explicit frequency, via layers of obfuscation and deniability.

One thread throughout has been an effort to stoke resentment by drawing comparisons between the mass outrage at the death of George Floyd and what they perceive to be the comparative silence at Babbitt’s killing. In that universe, she’s an unsung martyr not only of the stolen 2020 election, but of the supposedly unfair treatment of whites.

Or, as Fox News’s Tucker Carlson put it in a monologue about Babbitt in April: “Two systems of justice. One for the allies of the people in charge, and a very different one for their enemies.”

Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative commentator, walked a similar line as he described the killing on a Monday episode of his podcast as a parallel with Floyd’s death, suggesting that Babbitt’s race meant she was treated badly and that the cop who killed her was protected.

“But the reason this cordon of protection has gone around him, not only from the authorities but from the media, is they can’t afford to admit that the only lethal force used on Jan 6 was illicitly, inappropriately, and in violation of law — used by a black male capital police officer against a female unarmed trump supporter,” he said.

D’Souza took the narrative even further in the podcast, portraying her as an innocent, unarmed white woman who fell victim to a Black man wielding federal power, and using the lack of transparency from Capitol police on the shooting and on the response to Jan. 6 as a way to stoke racial resentment.

“There have been a number of police shootings,” D’Souza noted. “Can you think of a single case where the identity of the officer has been systematically concealed by the media?”

He then asked listeners why.

The answer, he said, is because the officer is “black.”

“And so we have right away, a racial incident in the sense that you’ve got a black cop shooting and killing an unarmed white woman, who, by the way, is also a veteran,” he said. “And this white woman was doing nothing more in this case than pushing her way through a window.”

Similar comparisons have made their way into radical right members of Congress. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) made the same comparison this week to the death of George Floyd.

“If this country can demand justice for someone like George Floyd,” she said, “then we can certainly demand justice for Ashli Babbitt and everyone deserves to know who killed her … we need to know who it is.”

Trump

Some analysts have likened the reaction of the far-right to Babbitt’s death to that of Vicki Weaver, the white woman who died from an FBI sniper’s bullet at Ruby Ridge in the 1990s.

“Like Babbitt, Weaver quickly became a martyr for both the anti-government and white supremacists,” wrote Simon Purdue, a fellow at the Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right. “Her perceived status as an innocent, white, female victim of ‘state aggression’ instantly placed her on a pedestal, and was used to justify tax protests, demonstrations and even violent action by far-right groups in the years that followed.”

Both Rep. Gosar and Trump have used language that, when heard in the context of the officer’s race, sounds very different.

“Who was the person who shot an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman?” Trump told Bartiromo on Sunday. The former president said last week about the officer: “If that were on the other side, the person that did the shooting would be strung up and hung.”

Gosar, who has associated with far-right figures like Nick Fuentes and popularized the idea that Babbitt is a martyr, has made similar remarks. He released a statement last week describing Babbitt as “110-pound woman with nothing in her hands.”

She, Gosar said, was a victim of “a still unknown Capitol Hill police officer.”

But it was still Trump who went the furthest in the mainstream, coming up to the edge without going over.

“If that were the opposite way, that man would be all over,” Trump said. “He would be the most well-known — and I believe I can say ‘man,’ because I believe I know exactly who it is — but he would be the most well-known person in this country, in the world.”

[Vesper 28,795]

[Atomiswave 6,072]

Good on the French to go out in masses yesterday, they will have a massive massive one on saturday too, shit will get heated, count on it.

[Vesper 28,795]

1 hour ago, Atomiswave said:

Good on the French to go out in masses yesterday, they will have a massive massive one on saturday too, shit will get heated, count on it.

I hope the anti-vaxxers get smashed to bits

fucking death spreaders

the vast majority of them are also RWNJ's

[Vesper 28,795]

Readers are horrified by footage of police storming the Antepavilion building in Hackney, London, and arresting its organisers.

"I didn't realise architecture was so dangerous"
Footage of "sinister" police raid on Antepavilion building triggers anger ahead of tensegrity structure unveiling

https://www.dezeen.com/2021/07/12/footage-police-raid-antepavilion-tensegrity-structure-unveiling/

Organisers of the annual Antepavilion architecture charity competition have released footage of police storming their building and arresting staff ahead of the opening of the rooftop tensegrity structure targeted in the raid.

CCTV footage shows more than 40 officers streaming into the canalside Hoxton Docks arts building in east London after the door was forced open with power tools.

Another clip shows eight officers pulling owner Russell Gray off his motorbike when he arrived at the building after being told about the raid. A third clip shows police pushing Gray against a shutter and handcuffing him.

Gray, who heads the Antepavilion charity and owns the building it is based in, was arrested on suspicion of attempted assault and dangerous driving. He and two employees spent a night in jail but were released the next morning.

Police have issued "no apologies and no charges" following the raid, Gray told Dezeen.

It is thought that police believed the building was being used by environmental protest group Extinction Rebellion to prepare for protests against media groups that are dismissive of climate change.

Installation similar to Extinction Rebellion structures

The rooftop installation, called All Along the Watchtower and designed by a collective called Project Bunny Rabbit, is similar to structures used by protesters to block roads during demonstrations. One of two winners of this year's Antepavilion competition, it will open to the public on 23 July.

During its construction, the arts venue hosted workshops that showed members of the public how to assemble similar lightweight, reusable tensegrity structures made of bamboo poles and steel cables. During the raid, police threatened to come back and remove the structure, according to Gray.

Police said the raid and arrests were “proactive action to prevent and reduce criminal disruption which we believe was intended for direction at media business locations over the weekend”.

However, Antepavilion insisted there was no connection between Extinction Rebellion and the installation. "Antepavilion has no links to Extinction Rebellion beyond commissioning the construction of an art installation at their site using long-established ‘tensegrity’ structural principles," it said in a statement.

"Extinction Rebellion has sometimes used the same tensegrity principles to erect temporary structures at protest sites. The raid is clear evidence of the carte blanche powers police have been given to harass and intimidate, in the government’s efforts to crackdown on dissenting voices."

Raid triggers concern among architecture community

The footage of the raid, which Antepavilion organisers have been projecting onto the side of the building, triggered widespread concern. "The more I look at this the more appalled I am," tweeted architect and head of Central St Martins school Jeremy Till in response to the footage. "While the [right-wing] press bleat on about rising crime, 40 police raid innocent artists."

Architect Julia Barfield described the raid in a tweet as "A shocking misuse of power and resources particularly in a #ClimateEmergency."

"May not be entirely accurate but I count 41 coppers here," wrote Financial Times architecture critic Edwin Heathcote. "Is that not also an insane waste of resources?"

"Utterly mad to hear the Met [police] has arrested the team from this year's Antepavilion, tweeted Open City director Phineas Harper. "The police are out of control."

"This doesn’t seem to have had much attention beyond the specialist art/design press but the sight of 30+ police breaking into a private building to remove an artwork, apparently on political grounds, is….sinister," wrote Simon Hinde, programme director of journalism and publishing at London College of Communication.

"On Friday 25th June 2021, Antepavilion was raided by dozens of police spearheaded by the Territorial Support Group (TSG)," the Antepavilion team said in its statement. "Upon entering, the authorities handcuffed everyone on-site and three people were arrested, held until 4 am the next day and had their phones confiscated."

"The police continued to occupy the site until Saturday night, 26 June."

Antepavilion is a charity that "aims to promote independent thought and symbiosis in the fields of art, craft and architecture". It has organised the controversial annual competition, which commissions designs for temporary structures that challenge planning constraints, every year since 2017.

This year the tensegrity structure was commissioned as a "special early summer commission" alongside the overall winner of the competition. The winner, AnteChamber by Studio Nima Sardar, will be built later this year.

   

Edited July 15, 2021 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,795]

If America Is So Exceptional Why Do So Many Republicans Support Secession?

Polls show a staggering uptick in Republican support for regional secession inside the United States.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/if-america-is-so-exceptional-why

WASHINGTON, DC -- This week, a new survey by the Bright Line Watch showed a staggering uptick in support for regional secession inside the United States. And it’s pretty obvious why this is happening.

American politics has once again de-evolved from citizens debating the issues in good faith to a brutal and often unforgiving bloodsport where political opponents can’t simply be proved wrong, they have to be personally destroyed. 

While Republicans whine about “cancel culture,” many of their top influencers have filed frivolous defamation lawsuits -- SLAPP suits -- against liberals who’ve called them out on Twitter. Everyone from Devin Nunes to Jason Miller to Trump himself has attempted to cancel their various enemies by burying them in legal fees. Personal confrontations are now commonplace, with activists accosting their enemies in restaurants or outside their houses. Domestic terrorists have driven their cars into crowds of protesters. Donald Trump attacked peaceful protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets to clear the way for a photo-op, while threatening to execute leakers. Of course the most brutal example in recent memory is the January 6 insurrection in which Red Hats, incapable of losing with dignity, launched a violent invasion and occupation of Congress.

This is the bloodsport.

One of many reasons for this often deadly disintegration is the lack of a common source for objective reality -- the truth. 

Without any linkage to facts, the political debate has crumbled into nothing more than a Mobius Loop of crapola -- a screaming match based on loudness and zingers rather than who’s justifiably right and who’s justifiably wrong. It’s about destroying the other side personally because that’s the only remaining way to “win.” 

Nevertheless, while there have always been absolute truths in politics, one particular side of our modern debate, the Trump-controlled Republican Party, is operating on the basis of lies invented by a well-known professional con-man. Supporters of Trump have become so brainwashed -- their value as people has become so tangled up in Trumpism, it’s not just that they won’t concede to the facts, they’re utterly incapable of conceding. They will never acknowledge reality. They will never back down. Thus, the difference between the Right and the Left is that the Right is now permanently tethered to Trump’s fiction, while, even though we can be wrong sometimes because, after all, we’re human, the Left continues to base its arguments on facts more often than not -- science, statistics, journalism, historical analysis, and so forth.

Despite what you might’ve heard on CNN, or read in the opinion pages of The New York Times, there’s simply no equivalence between “believing whatever Trump says” and “believing science, stats, etc.” (While we’re on equivalences, it’s also worth mentioning that the left has its weirdos, too, but they're not running the show for the Democratic Party. In fact, they're nowhere in the vicinity of the levers of power. The Republican weirdos, on the other hand, run the party and set the agenda. Don't ever let anyone gaslight you into believing there's an equivalence.) 

So, we’re stuck. The Left can’t -- and shouldn’t -- budge from its relative adulthood or its linkage to the facts, while the Red Hats won’t budge from whatever stunted gibberish Trump farts into his golden toilet.

Consequently, with unstoppable forces colliding with immovable objects, we’re seeing an upward swing in support for regional secession. 

According to The Bright Line Watch, support for secession in the southern region breaks down like so: 20 percent support from Democrats, 50 percent support from independents, and a supermajority of 66 percent support from Republicans, up from 50 percent in January. Nowhere else across America is secession this popular among the three factions. 47 percent of west coast Democrats support secession, and that’s as bad as it gets for members of the liberal party. 

Secession is a quitter’s gambit. Again, the game can’t be won so secessionists have no choice but to hurl their Nintendo controllers across the room and storm off. It’s the last resort of hot-heads and nihilists who failed to crack a book about the previous time a portion of America tried to secede, leading to more than 600,000 deaths and thousands more mutilations on battlefields from Shiloh to Gettysburg.

It’s not only reckless and pathetic, it’s also blindingly contradictory. The same idiots calling for secession claim to love America and its Constitution, especially virtue-signaling Republicans who can’t stop talking about American exceptionalism and the iconography of the United States -- the flag, the anthem, the Second Amendment. 

If America is so exceptional, why leave?

Yes, they love America so much that when the going gets tough, 66 percent of them want to secede from it -- rejecting the United States, which they claim to love, in the most explicit way possible.

And once you do it, you de-facto legalize it. Once it’s legalized, it’s extremely likely the individual states will eventually secede from the new regional government and so on and so on. And the subdivisions will continue until what was once the United States becomes Eastern Europe. And without a unified foreign policy, our overseas enemies become immensely emboldened since it’d be nearly impossible for individual states to repel them. 

As for the American economy? Say goodbye to your toys.

Worst of all, secession is a rejection of democracy. The message it sends to emerging nations is this: democratic republics, especially across large land masses with sizable populations, can’t be sustained so fledgling nations turn to more despotic alternatives. After all, secession will eventually lead to factionalism and disintegration. This was one of Abraham Lincoln’s primary concerns in prosecuting the Civil War: he fought that grisly war in part so that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.” Not just here, but everywhere.

Anyone who believes secession will lead to a better version of democracy is deluding themselves. When democracies fall, they’re too often replaced with something far worse.

Secession will always be galactically unpatriotic by definition, and any serious talk of dissolving the Union has to be vocally and relentlessly beaten back. If you overhear some dingus of either party entertaining the idea, let them know exactly what they’re begging for: namely, the end of the United States as we know it. Contrarians might say that’s a good thing. Sure, it’s easy to blurt such a thing on Twitter, but in execution it’d be a potentially endless nightmare -- the worst parts of the Mad Max movies. And no matter how frustrating American politics has become, it’s lightyears better than the alternative.

[Vesper 28,795]

 

GB News shows attracted zero viewers after boycott over taking the knee

Channel label Guto Harri’s on-air gesture in solidarity against racist abuse suffered by the England team ‘unacceptable’

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jul/15/gb-news-shows-attracted-zero-viewers-after-boycott-over-taking-the-knee

 

GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.

The channel has now said the decision of Guto Harri to make the on-air gesture on Tuesday in solidarity against the racist abuse suffered by English players was “an unacceptable breach of our standards”.

GB News attracted zero viewers during some of its broadcasts this week, according to official television audience figures produced by rating agency Barb, after a viewer boycott prompted by one of its presenters taking the knee in solidarity with the England football team.

The channel has now said the decision of Guto Harri to make the on-air gesture on Tuesday in solidarity against the racist abuse suffered by English players was “an unacceptable breach of our standards”.

A GB News spokesperson declined to say whether Harri, a former spokesperson for Boris Johnson, was still with the channel.

Business editor Liam Halligan and former Labour MP Gloria De Piero attracted no measurable audience to their show between 1pm and 1.30pm on Wednesday afternoon. During the same timeslot the BBC News channel attracted 62,000 viewers, while Sky News had 50,000 people watching.

GB News’ audience again briefly dipped to zero at 5pm, during a late-afternoon programme co-hosted by ex-BBC presenter Simon McCoy and former Ukip spokesperson Alex Phillips.

The figures were recorded the day after Harri’s move, which led to widespread fury on social media from GB News viewers who pledged to stop watching the recently launched rightwing current affairs channel, making accusations that it had sold out and gone “woke”, secretly harboured Marxist values, or was in favour of Black Lives Matter.

Other GB News hosts attempted to defend Harri’s right to freedom of speech and said the spirit of the channel was to encourage free debate. Former Coast presenter Neil Oliver, who has a weekly show on the channel, said: “My GB News teammate Guto Harri is right to say and do as he sees fit. I do the same. That’s the ethos of the channel. Free speech. We don’t all agree with each other – that’s the point, or else where’s the debate?”

Oliver’s plea for open debate and tolerance had limited impact and he was then bombarded with even more negative messages from GB News viewers pledging to boycott the channel. This included suggestions that GB News should feature itself on the channel’s nightly “woke watch” segment which highlights incidents perceived to be examples of preposterous behaviour on “culture war” issues.

By Thursday night the channel tweeted: “GB News stands four square against racism in all its forms. We do not have a company line on taking the knee. Some of our guests have been in favour, some against. All are anti-racist. We have editorial standards that all GB News journalists uphold.”

However, it then also tweeted: “On Tuesday a contributing presenter took the knee live on air and this was an unacceptable breach of our standards … We let both sides of the argument down by oversimplifying a very complex issue.”

The apparent contradiction caused confusion among social media users.

GB News attracted strong audience figures when it launched last month, with hundreds of thousands of people tuning in for its much-hyped first night. However, ratings – which are measured using monitoring boxes attached to thousands of homes – have since plummeted. On Wednesday night they eventually recovered from zero to a peak of 47,000 viewers during Dan Wootton’s late night show.

Andrew Neil, the face of GB News and chair of its board, told viewers earlier that he was taking leave after just two weeks on air after what he described as a “rocky start” but would return “before the summer is out”. The presenter is understood to have gone on holiday to his main residence in the south of France but there is no public return date for his flagship 8pm show.

There is speculation within the station that Neil could even present some of his GB News shows from his European base. A spokesperson for GB News said they did not know whether this was planned.

Multiple staff said Neil was visibly unhappy behind-the-scenes during channel’s first two weeks due to the technical problems which plagued its launch, with issues ranging from lighting so dark that some presenters could barely be seen to sound being out of sync and struggles with remote broadcasting.

Staff at GB News describe an exhausting rush to get the channel on air, with the studio built in a matter of weeks rather than the planned three months and with key equipment not turning up due to delays blamed on the pandemic. GB News invested in new software called DiNA, introduced to automate many of the television production processes that require large staffing levels at the BBC and Sky News. But high levels of on-air typos, the inability to get some remote guests on air, and the short-lived but incredibly popular GB News Fails Twitter account hit morale.

One incident that summed up the channel’s problems was when McCoy presented a section on cute animal pictures but viewers were unable to see any of the pictures, leaving the exasperated presenter to describe them instead.

 

Edited July 15, 2021 by Vesper