Atomiswave 6,118 Posted July 12, 2021 Share Posted July 12, 2021 3 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said: Two billionaire press barons now own half of the top 10 daily newspapers. Every day they peddle 'stories' that divide people. Fake controversies that create division between people with shared economic needs - and they distract the public from a low tax, low regulation, libertarian worldview that few in Britain support. Elections expert Professor Sir John Curtice claimed that the Conservative Party are now seeking to "tap into" a wider set of values held by those who voted to leave the EU in 2016 through an "anti-woke agenda". Culture war pedlars often use contrived stories to pit working-class communities against one another and caricature movements for racial and LGBT equality. We need to have the confidence to call out what they are doing so we can build on the public demand – especially amongst working-class people up and down the country – for action on jobs, climate change and building a better future for the next generation. HAs always been so, though more now than ever. Divide and rule is the mantra and sadly its working cuz we are allowing it. Fulham Broadway 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,226 Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 The Rise of Anti-history The Trumpist wing of the GOP uses history as a bludgeon, without regard to context, logic, or proportionality. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/republicans-anti-history-marjorie-taylor-greene/619403/ In June, Marjorie Taylor Greene visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The visit was, by her own account, revelatory. Earlier in the spring, the Georgia member of the U.S. House compared Food City, a grocery chain that identified vaccinated employees on their name tags, to the Nazis, who forced Jews to wear Stars of David. A few days later, she compared Democrats to Nazis. Now she was contrite. “When you make a mistake, you should own it. I have made a mistake, and it’s really bothered me for a couple of weeks now, so I definitely want to own it,” she said. “The Holocaust—there’s nothing comparable to it.” The lesson wore off in less than a month. When President Joe Biden announced plans to send public-health workers door-to-door to encourage people to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, Greene tweeted: “People have a choice, they don’t need your medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations.” David A. Graham: Marjorie Taylor Greene is just a symptom of what ails the GOP Another museum visit would probably be futile. For Greene and others in the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party, anti-history has become a shibboleth. They drop historical references and facts into political debates, but without regard to context, logic, or proportionality. Their villains include Adolf Hitler, but also Mao Zedong and Joseph McCarthy; the Holocaust was bad, but also, Jewish people control the weather. The pose is more than the simple historical illiteracy that’s endemic among American politicians. In this GOP faction, members are willfully ignorant of history, which they view in purely instrumental terms, as a bludgeon to wield even as they do not bother to understand it. As usual, Donald Trump himself has led the way. In 2018, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly had to give the then-president a capsule lesson about interwar history and which countries were on what side of the two world wars, according to a new book from the Wall Street Journal reporter Michael C. Bender. “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things,” Trump reportedly replied, citing the improving German economy in the 1930s. (Trump denies this.) “You cannot ever say anything supportive of Adolf Hitler,” Kelly replied. “You just can’t.” He was right, though he somehow didn’t see this as a reason to quit on the spot. Trump’s ignorance of history is well established. In the first fortnight of his presidency, he cited Frederick Douglass as “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice,” evincing no awareness of who Douglass was. A few weeks later, Trump mentioned Abraham Lincoln at a dinner. “Great president. Most people don’t even know he was a Republican,” he said. “Does anyone know? Lot of people don’t know that.” Who? Then in May 2017, Trump mused nonsensically that if Andrew Jackson had lived later, the Civil War might have been avoided. Read: Trump’s peculiar understanding of the Civil War Predictably, many of the most egregious examples of the anti-historical approach involve Hitler. Another notable case occurred in Washington State, where a Republican state legislator wore a Star of David to an event in order to protest vaccine mandates. (“It’s an echo from history. In the current context, we’re all Jews,” he wrote on Facebook, before later apologizing.) American conservatives have often argued that the Nazis were actually leftists, noting that the party’s full name included the words National Socialist, but the anti-historians have moved from this smirking sophistry to a reflexive recourse to the Holocaust, no matter how ill-fitting or ill-advised, in nearly any debate. The contradictory views of Hitler from the anti-historians might seem like ideological confusion. But they actually demonstrate how the anti-historians’ use of the past is purely opportunistic. These politicians aren’t interpreting history to bolster their views, but cherry-picking isolated, misunderstood examples to fit whatever argument they happen to be making. Anti-history is not restricted to peculiar views of Hitler. Earlier this week, the former Trump spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News viewers, “We know most of our forefathers, all of our main Founding Fathers, were against slavery, recognized the evils of it.” (Several Founders expressed ambivalence about slavery while enslaving people, but that’s not what McEnany said.) Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina is fond of citing American history and is often wrong, creating his own anti-history canon. Read: Donald Trump’s narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass Many legitimate disputes exist about the facts of history and its interpretation: Consider some—though perhaps not most—of the debate over The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project. Political figures might also make dubious or mistaken statements about history without participating in anti-history. Conspiracist thinking, another hallmark of Trumpism, is anti-history’s natural partner. Each snatches isolated facts or claims out of their proper context, fabricates new contexts for them without regard to reality, and fashions them into partisan weapons. That Greene (found espousing bizarre anti-Semitic theories when she isn’t comparing anything she dislikes to the Holocaust) and Trump are leading proponents of both anti-history and conspiracy thinking is not a coincidence. In 1955, the founding father of a new strain of conservatism, William F. Buckley, promised that his magazine, National Review, would “stand athwart history, yelling ‘Stop.’” The rising Trumpist strain in the conservative movement stands athwart slop, yelling, “History!” Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,226 Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 TUCKER CARLSON’S MANUFACTURED AMERICA The Fox host has a new daytime show, and he’s using it to poison the meaning of patriotism. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/07/tucker-carlson-today-americana-fake-log-cabin/619411/ First comes the piece of timber. Then the strip of leather. Then the fence, the mountain, the trees, the river. The pictures whirl, like icons in a Western-themed slot machine, until they land on their final image: the smiling face of Tucker Carlson. This spring, Carlson began hosting a new show on Fox Nation, the network’s digital streaming service. Tucker Carlson Today features interviews, one-on-one and in-depth, with Carlson’s preferred guests—skeptics of multiculturalism, skeptics of science, skeptics of “the system” as it currently operates. The show is pretty much what you’d expect it to be, save for one thing: It takes place in a Foxified version of Frontierland. It begins, episode after episode, with that reel of images. And Carlson hosts it from a gaudy facsimile of a log cabin. The set is constructed almost entirely of wood, or a wood-like substance. Just behind Carlson’s chair is a backlit American flag. The space is otherwise spare: a shelf with a display of tattered books, a sepia-toned globe, a rug, a large desk (made of thick glass, the set’s one concession to cable). A screen mounted on the wall sometimes serves as a portal for the guests who do not come to Carlson’s cabin in person. Its default image, however, offers a window into the cabin’s imagined environs: a farmhouse and a field, overlaid with the words—rendered in lowercase, because all things are casual in the daytime—tucker carlson today. Log cabins, those mainstays of American iconography, typically suggest hardiness, homeyness, humility. Carlson’s version, though, is a show of force. Tucker Carlson Today, a homestead on a manufactured frontier, is one of the spoils of Fox’s deep investment in its star, evidence of the trust the network has placed in him to continue its basest and most basic project: insisting that some Americans are more American than others. Fox has long reinterpreted manifest destiny as a media product, treating the American mind as a vacant space upon which any dream, or any delusion, might be constructed. The network’s webward expansion continues that effort. Tucker Carlson, spewer of marketable mistrust, has conquered prime time. Now he is coming for the rest of the day. On the june 16 episode of Tucker Carlson Today, Carlson hosted a man the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as an extremist—ideology: white nationalism—on the basis of his use of “racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the Black and Latino communities, women and the poor.” Carlson spoke with Charles Murray for nearly an hour. He flattered. He fawned. “We are honored to have you,” Carlson told him. Murray, who disputes the SPLC’s assessment of him, spent the episode issuing the kinds of claims that have made him infamous. At one point, he stated as fact that white people are more qualified for cognitively challenging professions than Black people are. Carlson did not push back on the assertion. He nodded appreciatively as Murray dismissed Fox News’s latest manufactured threat, critical race theory, as “a repudiation of the American creed.” The Carlson of the evening is overt about stoking his audience’s anxieties; a recently updated intro reel for Tucker Carlson Tonight features a Border Patrol vehicle and a person holding a sign that reads freedom over fear!! america. The Carlson of daytime is more casually branded: just Carlson and a pal, the whole thing suggests, chatting in his cabin after a day of hunting or fishing—a little bit cable, a little bit Cabela’s. The setting helps hide the propaganda in plain sight. It takes the argument implied in most everything that Carlson broadcasts—they are coming for you—and recasts it as a natural outgrowth of rugged individualism. The April 26 episode of Tucker Carlson Today, an ode to the AR-15, is titled “I Will Not Comply.” The May 12 episode warns of the American education system leading to the “complete indoctrination of all kids K through 12.” The June 21 episode takes a stand against the “climate consensus.” Read: Do you speak Fox? Fox News, at this point, is a fantasy factory, churning out historical mythologies in real time. Cancel culture gives way to woke culture gives way to critical race theory, the terms denuded of their true meanings and summoned as metonyms for people Fox does not include in its vision of “real America.” The pilot episode of Tucker Carlson Today featured Douglas Murray, an editor at The Spectator in the United Kingdom and a critic of identity politics as Fox defines it. He claimed that the path to success in today’s America is “to show that you are an oppressed minority.” He cast aspersions on “race hucksters and oppression-mongers” and proceeded to offer the kind of insight that can get one booked on the inaugural episode of a Fox News talk show: “The American people are proud. They have a lot to be proud of.” America deployed as an easy branding exercise is not new. What is new, though, is the insistent ahistoricism of this version of America. Also new—and given the way propaganda has worked in the 20th century, this should serve as a dire warning—is the notion that the facts of the past should be sources only of national pride. Many conservatives, the historian Matt Karp recently argued, are abandoning the old rhetoric of the Lost Cause in favor of a more flexible form of nostalgia. “People on the right seem to be sort of sacrificing the Confederacy, to some extent, because it doesn’t do the work they want it to do,” Karp told Slate’s Rebecca Onion. “What does work is laying claim to the nation at the heart of the idea of America. Not in the old-school ‘the founders were geniuses and set aside universal freedom from everyone’ Lynne Cheney kind of a way, but in a new school way that just says, ‘America, fuck yes!’” This approach to America is so enamored of its own woozy mythology that it treats reality itself as unpatriotic. QAnon’s followers aren’t conspiracy theorists, they insist; they’re patriots. This is the version of America that is summoned when Fox hosts, in reaction to Colin Kaepernick’s protests, express more indignation about “the flag” than they do about violence done against their fellow Americans. It is the America that is evoked when the ultraconservative Prager University sends a since-deleted Fourth of July tweet noting that “You should NOT be ashamed to #FlytheFlag,” accompanied by an image whose flag contains the wrong number of stars. It is America seen not as a nation but as an ongoing work of fan fiction. Over several decades in the 1900s, the Italian novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco traveled around the United States. He embarked on a tour a bit like the one that the French mega-tourist Alexis de Tocqueville took—but this journey was focused not on what America was but on what it wasn’t. Eco produced a travelogue that explored Americans’ “faith in fakes.” He went to Disneyland, Hearst Castle, Las Vegas. He marveled at the American habit of turning illusion into architecture. Even in those days, Eco diagnosed an underlying quality of American culture: an assumption that the best kind of art and entertainment is that which is “realer than real.” Watch a little of Tucker Carlson Today and you might be reminded of Eco’s insight. The artificiality of the show’s set—its shiny wood walls, its backlit flag, its screen that acts like a window into a lost American naturescape—channels that faith in the fake. In Carlson’s world, the news itself operates as hyperreality. Carlson describes cities on fire, quaint towns invaded, Stalinist reeducation taking place in kindergartens. His 2018 book, Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution, is replete with claims about an illusory America. Among them: “Girls thrive when boys fail: this is the underlying assumption of modern feminism,” or “The main reason elites no longer talk about unfairness is that they don’t believe it exists.” No provocateur has gone wrong challenging the hegemony of the “elites”—even when the provocateur in question, the product of boarding school and generational wealth, is a member of the class he denigrates. Carlson claims that he is speaking for “America.” He refuses to be hindered by the fact that the America he is speaking for quite often doesn’t exist. Read: American cynicism has reached a breaking point Carlson recently told an interviewer that were he to do it all over again, he’d move to Montana or Idaho. “I wouldn’t participate in the system at all,” Carlson said. “It’s a dead end. It’s collapsing. It certainly doesn’t want people like me.” The line is classic Carlson. Here he summons the majesty of the American landscape only to decry the corruption of the American “system.” He punctuates it with casual grievance. By “people like me,” Carlson means his viewers; he means “real Americans,” as Fox has taken pains to define them. Why are the “Dems” and the “libs” to be feared? Because they are not what you are. Why are the media to be mocked? Because they tell lies about your country. They are false flags in human form. And they are coming for you. You might read this sort of rhetoric, fairly, as a form of neo-McCarthyism. It is on display in many episodes of Tucker Carlson Today: the Un-American Activities Committee not of the House, but of the Performatively Rustic Cabin. Carlson, too, long ago abandoned any semblance of decency. He makes claims—claims that are bigoted, cherry-picked, fabricated; claims about the dirtiness of immigrants, about the danger of vaccines, about the existential threats posed by those who are not white or male or Christian—and answers the objections with a ready reply: He is not a journalist. He is merely an entertainer. This is the cynical core of his daily performances; people who criticize him, he insists, are missing the joke. People who believe him are missing the point. Carlson’s new set codifies that logic. Yes, Charles Murray came on his new show and argued that white people are more qualified for cognitively challenging professions than Black people are, but he did so from a Log Cabin syrup bottle brought to life. Can’t you recognize lighthearted entertainment when you see it? Why so serious? The trick works. It has elevated Carlson to a position of direct influence over American hearts and minds. He is using the platform to do more than anyone, including quite possibly Donald Trump himself, to continue the grim work of Trumpism. He is, in that way, transcendent. A recent iteration of the Fox Nation site laid out five topic-oriented verticals: Fox Politics, Fox History, Fox Justice, Fox Religion, and … Tucker Carlson. Many historians describe the election of 1840 as the first modern presidential contest, a race fueled by the assorted cynicisms of political-image management. Many, too, describe it as the “log-cabin campaign.” The Whigs, attempting to unseat the Democratic incumbent, Martin Van Buren, spun their candidate as hale and humble, living off the land and within, yes, a log cabin. Supporters of William Henry Harrison, some cosplaying as “frontiersmen,” built decorative log cabins on wheels, parading them around town. Harrison rallies amassed huge crowds—despite the fact that the candidate they celebrated declined to declare major policy proposals. The emptiness served the endeavor. Harrison’s still-famous campaign slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” said nothing, lyrically, and his carnivalized humility lent itself to easy merchandising: log-cabin-branded shaving soap, log-cabin-stamped coins, an ad hoc campaign newspaper called The Log Cabin. The branding was also a fiction. Harrison, the person, was the wealthy son of a onetime governor of Virginia. He was 66 years old when he was nominated for the presidency, and not notably hardy. He lived in a mansion. But the fantasy was more fun. As often happens in American politics, then as now, the lies won. You might see, in the log-cabin campaign of 1840, the primordial outlines of the current moment. You might see Tucker Carlson, a member of the elite he finds it convenient to decry, fabricating his own version of Frontierland. Carlson is constantly rumored to be considering his own presidential run. If so, the setting would serve the attempt. Americana, in Carlson’s vision, is its own justification. The patriot does what he must, not for Americans but for America, the ideal. “Left untended,” Carlson remarks in the concluding chapter of Ship of Fools, “democracies self-destruct.” He continues: There are two ways to end this cycle. The quickest is to suspend democracy. There are justifications for this. If your voters can’t reach responsible conclusions, you can’t let them vote. You don’t give suffrage to irrational populations, for the same reason you wouldn’t give firearms to toddlers: they’re not ready for the responsibility. Who does Carlson mean by you? What does he mean by irrational populations and responsible conclusions? The answer is, like so much of what Carlson says, both teasingly vague and wincingly clear. “America,” in this vision, is permission. You can draw a direct line from Carlson’s spin on “America” to the radiating ferocity of the Big Lie; the attempts by state legislatures to suppress—and, in some cases, invalidate—Democrats’ votes; the January 6 Capitol insurrection. When you become convinced that your only cause is “America,” you can convince yourself of much else along the way. “America,” the Capitol rioters screamed, as they readied their nooses. “America,” the legislators shrugged, as they restricted Americans’ votes. “America,” Carlson cajoles, from his fabricated frontier, as he helps bring the country to a breaking point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,226 Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 The Biggest Threat to Democracy Is the GOP Stealing the Next Election Unless and until the Republican Party recommits itself to playing by democratic rules of the game, American democracy will remain at risk. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/democracy-could-die-2024/619390/ The greatest threat to American democracy today is not a repeat of January 6, but the possibility of a stolen presidential election. Contemporary democracies that die meet their end at the ballot box, through measures that are nominally constitutional. The looming danger is not that the mob will return; it’s that mainstream Republicans will “legally” overturn an election. In 2018, when we wrote How Democracies Die, we knew that Donald Trump was an authoritarian figure, and we held the Republican Party responsible for abdicating its role as democratic gatekeeper. But we did not consider the GOP to be an antidemocratic party. Four years later, however, the bulk of the Republican Party is behaving in an antidemocratic manner. Solving this problem requires that we address both the acute crisis and the underlying long-term conditions that give rise to it. Addressing the short-term threat Last year, for the first time in U.S. history, a sitting president refused to accept defeat and attempted to overturn election results. Rather than oppose this attempted coup, leading Republicans either cooperated with it or enabled it by refusing to publicly acknowledge Trump’s defeat. In the run-up to January 6, most top GOP officials refused to denounce extremist groups that were spreading conspiracy theories, calling for armed insurrection and assassinations, and ultimately implicated in the Capitol assault. Few Republicans broke with Trump after his incitement of the insurrection, and those who did were censured by their state parties. From November 2020 to January 2021, then, a significant portion of the Republican Party refused to unambiguously accept electoral defeat, eschew violence, or break with extremist groups—the three principles that define prodemocracy parties. Because of that behavior, as well as its behavior over the past six months, we are convinced that the Republican Party leadership is willing to overturn an election. Moreover, we are concerned that it will be able to do so—legally. That’s why we serve on the board of advisers to Protect Democracy, a nonprofit working to prevent democratic decline in the United States. We wrote this essay as part of “The Democracy Endgame,” the group’s symposium on the long-term strategy to fight authoritarianism. Read: Democracy is already dying in the states As we argued in How Democracies Die, our constitutional system relies heavily on forbearance. Whether it is the filibuster, funding the government, impeachment, or judicial nominations, our system of checks and balances works best when politicians on both sides of the aisle deploy their institutional prerogatives with restraint. In other words, when they avoid applying the letter of the law in ways contrary to the spirit of the law—what’s sometimes called constitutional hardball. When contemporary democracies die, they usually do so via constitutional hardball. Democracy’s primary assailants today are not generals or armed revolutionaries, but rather politicians—Hugo Chávez, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—who eviscerate democracy’s substance behind a carefully crafted veneer of legality and constitutionality. This is precisely what could happen in the next U.S. presidential race. Elections require forbearance. For elections to be democratic, all adult citizens must be equally able to cast a ballot and have that vote count. Using the letter of the law to violate the spirit of this principle is strikingly easy. Election officials can legally throw out large numbers of ballots on the basis of the most minor technicalities (e.g., the oval on the ballot is not entirely penciled in, or the mail-in ballot form contains a typo or spelling mistake). Large-scale ballot disqualification accords with the letter of the law, but it is inherently antidemocratic, for it denies suffrage to many voters. Crucially, if hardball criteria are applied unevenly, such that many ballots are disqualified in one party’s stronghold but not in other areas, they can turn an election. Republican officials across the country are laying the legal infrastructure to do just that. Since January, according to Protect Democracy, Law Forward, and the States United Democracy Center, Republicans have introduced 216 bills (in 41 states) aimed at facilitating hardball electoral tactics. As of June, 24 of these bills had passed, including in the battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Texas. Approved measures allow Republican-controlled state legislatures or election boards to sideline or override local election administrations in Democratic strongholds. This would allow state legislatures or their appointees to meddle in local decision making, purge voter rolls, and manipulate the number and location of polling places. It would also allow Republicans in Arizona, Georgia, and elsewhere to do something Trump tried and failed to do in 2020: throw out ballots in rival strongholds in order to overturn a statewide result. Finally, the new laws impose criminal penalties for local election officials deemed to violate election procedure. This will enable statewide Republican officials to compel local officials, via threats of criminal prosecution, to engage in electoral hardball. Throwing out thousands of ballots in rival strongholds may be profoundly antidemocratic, but it is technically legal, and Republicans in several states now have a powerful stick with which to enforce such practices. Republican politicians learned several things in the 2020 election’s aftermath. First, Trump’s failed campaign to overturn the results revealed a variety of mechanisms that may be exploited in future elections. Second, Republicans discovered that their base would not punish them for attempting to steal an election. To the contrary, they now know that efforts to overturn an election will be rewarded by Republican voters, activists, local and state parties, and many donors. The 2020 election was, in effect, a dress rehearsal for what might lie ahead. All evidence suggests that if the 2024 election is close, the Republicans will deploy constitutional hardball to challenge or overturn the results in various battleground states. Recent history and public-opinion polling tell us that the Republican activist base will enthusiastically support—indeed, demand—such tactics. The new state election laws will make that easier. Democratic strongholds in Republican-led swing states will be especially vulnerable. And if disputed state-level elections throw the election into the House of Representatives, a Republican-led House would likely hand the presidency to the Republican candidate (no matter who actually won the election). The American system has faced crises before—including the disputed elections in 1824, 1876, and 2000. Given the considerable authority that the Constitution grants to state legislatures, the processes of voting, vote counting, and even the selection of electors can easily be subverted for partisan ends. Electoral guardrails must therefore be hardened through federal legislation prior to the 2024 election. To save democracy, democratize it Beyond the acute crisis facing American democracy, however, is a deeper problem: the radicalization of the Republican Party. Unless and until the GOP recommits itself to playing by democratic rules of the game, American democracy will remain at risk. Each national election will feel like a national emergency. Therefore, the de-radicalization of the Republican Party is a central task for the next decade. Chris Hayes: The Republican party is radicalizing against democracy Normally, in a two-party democracy, if one party veers off course, it is punished at the ballot box. Electoral competition is thought to be a natural corrective for political extremism: Parties that stray too far from the average voter’s positions lose votes, which compels them to moderate and broaden their appeal to win again. When a professional sports team loses, it fires its coach, acquires new players, and regroups. The same should hold for political parties. Indeed, if you ask moderate or Never Trump Republicans what will get Republicans back on course, they will almost invariably answer “devastating electoral defeat.” They may be right. There is a hitch, however: Competition’s effects are being undermined in the U.S. today by what political scientists call countermajoritarian institutions. We believe that the U.S. Constitution, in its current form, is enabling the radicalization of the Republican Party and exacerbating America’s democratic crisis. The Constitution’s key countermajoritarian features, such as the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate, have long been biased toward sparsely populated territories. But given that Democrats are increasingly the party of densely populated areas and Republicans dominate less populated areas, this long-standing rural bias now allows the Republican Party to win the presidency, control Congress, and pack the Supreme Court without winning electoral majorities. Consider these facts: Republicans have won the popular vote for the presidency only once since 1988, yet have governed the country for nearly half of that period. The Democratic and Republican Parties each control 50 seats in the U.S. Senate, even though Democratic senators represent 40 million more voters than do Republican senators. The three justices who most recently joined the Supreme Court were appointed by a president who did not win the popular vote—and were confirmed by Senate majorities that did not represent a majority of Americans. Countermajoritarian institutions shield Republicans from genuine competition. By allowing Republicans to win power without national majorities, this constitutional welfare allows the GOP to pursue extremist strategies that threaten our democracy without suffering devastating electoral consequences. Most Americans oppose most of the Republicans’ current positions. But if we do not reform our democracy to allow majorities to speak, expecting the GOP to change course would be naive. Americans tend to view countermajoritarian institutions as essential to liberal democracy. And some of them are. In the United States, the Bill of Rights and judicial review help ensure that individual liberties and minority rights are protected. But many of our countermajoritarian institutions are legacies of a pre-democratic era. Where they pervade the electoral or legislative arenas, they do not protect minority rights so much as empower partisan minorities and, in some cases, enable minority rule. Peter Wehner: The GOP is a grave threat to American democracy To save our democracy, we must democratize it. A political system that repeatedly allows a minority party to control the most powerful offices in the country cannot remain legitimate for long. Following the example of other democracies, we must expand access to the ballot, reform our electoral system to ensure that majorities win elections, and weaken or eliminate antiquated institutions such as the filibuster so that majorities can actually govern. Congress is considering limited democratizing reforms, such as banning legislative gerrymandering. But those proposals pale in comparison with the extent of the problem. Serious constitutional reform may seem like a daunting task, but Americans have refounded our democracy before. After the Civil War and during the Progressive era and the civil-rights movement, political leaders, under pressure from organized citizens, remade our democracy. Always unfinished, our Constitution requires continuous updating. American democracy thrived because it allowed itself to be reformed. Given the scale of the threat, reforming our democracy over the next decade is among the most pressing challenges we face today. 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Vesper 30,226 Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 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: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,226 Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 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." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulham Broadway 17,333 Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 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 Vesper 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atomiswave 6,118 Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulham Broadway 17,333 Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atomiswave 6,118 Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 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 ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,226 Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 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.” Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,226 Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,226 Posted July 14, 2021 Share Posted July 14, 2021 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.” Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,226 Posted July 14, 2021 Share Posted July 14, 2021 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulham Broadway 17,333 Posted July 14, 2021 Share Posted July 14, 2021 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'' Vesper and Atomiswave 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,226 Posted July 15, 2021 Share Posted July 15, 2021 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.” Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,226 Posted July 15, 2021 Share Posted July 15, 2021 Fulham Broadway and Atomiswave 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atomiswave 6,118 Posted July 15, 2021 Share Posted July 15, 2021 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. Fulham Broadway 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,226 Posted July 15, 2021 Share Posted July 15, 2021 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,226 Posted July 15, 2021 Share Posted July 15, 2021 (edited) 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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