Vesper 30,234 Posted September 4, 2024 Share Posted September 4, 2024 "Proof of Citizenship voting" urged by Trump is a ploy to reduce the number of FEMALE voters eligible to vote in this election. It's not really about undocumented voters, because there's never been any evidence that illegal immigrants vote in any significant numbers. But women do. And MANY women wouldn't be easily able to prove their citizenship in November. Why? Because many women -- i.e., married women -- changed their names upon marriage, and so a birth certificate with a different name wouldn't prove their citizenship. They would need either (1) a birth certificate and a marriage certificate and a driver's license (or identity card) with their current name, OR (2) they'd need a REAL ID or a passport. But many married women don't have a marriage certificate handy (they'd have to order one, which would take weeks), or have a REAL ID or a passport -- especially women who've been married and voting for decades. Donald Trump Calls For Government Shutdown Over Fake Voter Fraud Fears Trump says he would "shut down the government in a heartbeat" if Republicans don't pass a bill blocking noncitizens from voting, which is already illegal. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-government-shutdown_n_66d21e56e4b013957161cd53 Former President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Republicans in Congress should shut down the government next month. Trump said that if Democrats won’t agree to legislation barring noncitizens from voting ― something that rarely happens because it’s already illegal ― then Republicans should block legislation funding basic operations of the federal government. “I would shut down the government in a heartbeat if they don’t get it and if they don’t get it in the bill,” Trump told podcast host Monica Crowley, a Republican operative who served in his administration. Earlier this month, the far-right House Freedom Caucus took the official position that any government funding bill must include the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. Among other things, the bill would make states require proof of citizenship for voter registration. (Voter registration forms already require people to attest to their citizenship, under penalty of perjury, per federal law.) Congress has to pass a spending bill by the end of September to prevent a partial government shutdown that would interrupt a wide variety of departments and services, but not major programs like Social Security and Medicare. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t have enough members to actually block a clean government funding bill, which would likely pass the House with lots of support from Democrats and Republicans alike. Trump’s support for the SAVE Act could sway some Republicans, but House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who also supports the measure, hasn’t said he would insist on it in a funding bill. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been reportedly working behind the scenes to get the Freedom Caucus members to drop their demands. Senate Democrats won’t support the measure, and neither would President Joe Biden — and a chaotic government shutdown would probably not help Republicans with Election Day just a month away. Trump suggested Republicans should actually increase their unrealistic demands by adding a bill restricting legal immigration. “If they don’t get these bills, they should close it down, and Republicans should not approve it,” Trump said. At a press conference over the summer, Johnson essentially admitted there was no evidence that undocumented immigrants vote in significant numbers in federal elections. Instead, he claimed to know it was happening “intuitively.” “We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it’s not been something that is easily provable,” Johnson said. “We don’t have that number.” Trump and Johnson’s false statements about illegal voting have stoked fears among Democrats and even some Republicans that they will undermine confidence in November’s election and prompt another outburst of violence like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. end The article below isn't directly about the voting issue, but it discusses how many people still don't have a REAL ID, and why. And though it mentions that 44% of people still didn't have a REAL ID license, it didn't mention the difference between men and women. Married women will have a much higher rate of failing to get a REAL ID than married or single men, because REAL ID requires the extra step of locating a marriage certificate or other proof of name change. https://www.deseret.com/politics/2024/08/30/save-act-attached-to-spending-bill/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,234 Posted September 4, 2024 Share Posted September 4, 2024 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,234 Posted September 4, 2024 Share Posted September 4, 2024 The Continuing Adventures Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,234 Posted September 4, 2024 Share Posted September 4, 2024 (edited) https://prospect.org/politics/2024-09-04-sound-of-one-maga-attacking/ In 2016, a Twitter account called “FutureRickPerlstein” appeared, then suddenly went inactive. It documented convergences that spoke to the surreal nature of the new political era that was aborning with the political emergence of Donald J. Trump; the kind of things the titular Perlstein might feature in a book on the history of the 2016 election written 50 years from now in the style of his (OK, my) books like Nixonland, The Invisible Bridge, and Reaganland. Like, you know, the time Donald Trump said the reason Mitt Romney lost was that he didn’t run a video of Donald Trump saying, “Barack Hussein Obama, you’re fired!” at the 2012 Republican National Convention. “They thought it was too controversial. Stupid people. The cinematographer said it was one of the best things he ever did.” I was flattered by how well this mysterious tweeter captured what I try to accomplish: to convey the thump and thrum of history, how it feels to people living through it. I stress that political change is never only about political change; it is also driven by—and simultaneously drives—changes in popular culture, religion, economics, and many other “nonpolitical” variables. Change is often best discerned in unlikely synchronicities. Like when two very different groups of Americans—Irish working-class Catholics in Boston and hillbilly fundamentalists in West Virginia—simultaneously lashed out violently in the fall of 1974 to purify their children’s public schools from the pollution of liberals. Or how an offhand joke on a TV sitcom, better than any “scientific” poll, sent up a flare that foretold not just who would next occupy the White House, but the unexpected new voting bloc that sent him there. (“Archie Bunker, a Democrat, is one of us!” a delighted New Right activist proclaimed the night after a December 1976 episode of All in the Family in which the blue-collar tribune informed his shocked hippie son-in-law that Reagan would be elected in 1980.) Well, if FutureRickPerlstein were pressed back into service to tweet about 2024, PresentRickPerlstein suggests he or she might start with a remarkable convergence that took place last week in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, A DERANGED MAN rushed the press pen at a Trump rally in Johnstown, a depressed old steel town about an hour from Pittsburgh, and one of the onetime “sundown towns” where Trump has been dog-whistling his way across America of late. These details are necessary, but not quite sufficient, aspects of what made it exemplary of our twisted times. The other part wasn’t the tree that fell in the forest; deranged, violent men, after all, are a dime a dozen these days. It’s how little sound it made. That’s what FutureRickPerlstein might pay attention to most. The assault wasn’t mentioned at all in the biggest newspaper in the election’s most important swing state, The Philadelphia Inquirer. The story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the paper of record in the western part of the state, did reference the press riser scuffle—in the 20th paragraph, and then for three sentences. What was not in the Associated Press’s dutiful dispatch, by contrast, tells us more than what was; and the number of places where that dispatch did not appear tells us more than anything. More from Rick Perlstein AP items are useful tools for historians: With a database like Newspapers.com, you can gin up a rough estimate of how deeply a story penetrated into the media consciousness by counting how many newspapers ran it, at what length, and on what page. When it comes to the present, you can do the same thing with LexisNexis. This is how I learned that the AP story appeared in precisely one American newspaper, the Chicago Daily Herald (I live in Chicago and I don’t recall ever hearing of it; it covers the northwestern suburbs), and also only one in Canada (in Red Deer, Alberta—population 100,844—home of the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and Museum). It did for some reason appear in lots of outlets in India and Africa. Perhaps readers there find comfort in confirming that the “Third World” ain’t the only place local authoritarians assault the free press, and editors are just giving their readers what they want. Giving readers what they want is also what editors do all too often here, unfortunately. Think of all those editorials responding to the kind of vicious savagery the rest of us know is routine in American life by doggedly insisting that “this is not us.” Or the way they don’t report much on America’s metastasizing slow civil war at all. The missing Johnstown story is a nice illustration of the argument I’ve been making often these days about how systematically American political journalism represses the story of right-wing political violence. And combined with that, how rarely the media adequately analyzes what might come next. Think about it. As the AP reports, the fellow was immediately subdued by authorities armed with tasers. In an update, they added how “the man was arrested, released and will be formally charged next week,” to “face misdemeanors in municipal court for alleged disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and disrupting a public assembly.” Not so burdensome, right? Easy to imagine him building a minor MAGA career from his heroics. Easy, also, to imagine the next guy trying the same thing with five, ten, or fifty buddies at his back. Maybe, then, the story deserves representation on a few American front pages here and there? THE AP DISPATCH INCLUDED ONE OF THOSE absurdly rigid genre conventions of American political journalism, the one where the mere fact of puddles on the ground in the morning cannot be taken for evidence it had rained during the night: “It was not immediately clear what motivated the man or whether he was a Trump supporter or critic.” Came next another rigid genre convention, the one that requires reporters to run a verbatim response from the Trump campaign, thus turning their notion of “objectivity” into a conveyor belt for disinformation: “‘Witnesses, including some in the press corps, described a crazed individual shouting expletives at President Trump,’ said campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez. ‘His aggression was focused on the president and towards the stage as he entered the press area.’” Well, who are you going to believe, Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez or Donald Trump? Scroll down for the video as it appears on the website of thugocrat Pamela Geller. Note a textbook fascist technique: blithely insisting that two plus two equals five, should the demands of propaganda require it. The headline is “Deranged Democrat Tries to Charge at Trump During Pennsylvania Rally.” The video shows Trump plainly saying, “That’s beautiful,” as police violently subdue an agent of disorder, then correcting himself when he realizes that the man is attacking the press. Trump then, correctly, said, “No, no, he’s on our side.” IN FAIRNESS, THE PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE did bother to mention Trump’s words; the AP, no dice. Since the AP only rates the story as worth less than 300 words, that level of detail is not possible. That means what just happened—Trump identifying with an attempted assault on journalists—had been rendered invisible to readers who think they have received the full story. Even more crucially, if a bit more subtly, the AP makes it impossible to grasp the story’s broader context: the main reason, really, stuff like this ought to be on all the front pages. Second paragraph: “The incident Friday came moments after Trump had criticized major media outlets for what he said was unfavorable coverage and had dismissed CNN as fawning for its interview Thursday with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz.” Readers like responsible journalism, right? But a much bigger tree also crashed in that forest. In every last media account I tracked down, including this one, it didn’t even register a whisper. Return to that video (this time at a friendlier link). Trump is in the middle of one of his favorite stories. He was talking about the assassination attempt on his life in nearby Butler, Pennsylvania, just a month earlier, and the pattern visible in the sky that day: “… two American flags, very far apart, held up by different frames, they were very big flags, beautiful flags, they were waving … the wind blew the flags together, and they formed a perfect angel … a perfect angel was formed!” Google it: “Trump,” “shooting,” “angel,” “flags”—and don’t forget to put in “God.” The story of the flags God braided into angels at the exact moment he laid hands on Donald J. Trump offers proof to the skeptical that Trump’s survival revealed him as the instrument of His will. It’s manifestly possible that what most motivated the attacker was this notion that those getting in Donald Trump’s way are not merely enemies of the people, but enemies of God. That millions of people now think this way is something future historians will surely latch onto in trying to make sense of whatever comes next. When elite agenda-setting political journalists start wrapping their minds around that reality is the precise moment they will start actually doing their jobs. It’s Project 2025 Summer here at The Infernal Triangle! I’m studying the whole thing for a series of columns. If you want to share your expertise on one of the federal departments the Heritage Foundation wants to weaponize or gut, contact me at [email protected]. Edited September 4, 2024 by Vesper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,234 Posted September 4, 2024 Share Posted September 4, 2024 (just one poll, but still, MI is absolutely vital and Harris has been up for weeks) ' New Poll Shows Tight Race In Michigan A new poll out of Michigan shows a statistical toss-up between Harris and Trump in the state. The survey, conducted by WDIV/Detroit News, found Trump ahead 44.7% to 43.5% among likely voters, with 4.8% of respondents undecided. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has failed to remove his name from the ballot, garnered 4.7% in the poll. When definite voters were counted, the race shifted to show Harris holding a 1.6% lead over Trump, 45.7% to 44.1%. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulham Broadway 17,335 Posted September 5, 2024 Share Posted September 5, 2024 Silence about raping kids Vesper 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,234 Posted September 5, 2024 Share Posted September 5, 2024 Kant, Einstein and ‘perpetual peace’ In today’s runaway world, Einstein’s ideal of ‘abolishing war’ becomes unavoidable rather than impractical. https://www.socialeurope.eu/kant-einstein-and-perpetual-peace A world-weary Albert Einstein commemorated at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington: ‘I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones’ (Bill Perry / shutterstock.com) Jeffrey Sachs, adviser to successive secretaries-general of the United Nations, has published an important proposal, based on ten principles, for a possible reform of the UN as its Summit on the Future looms later this month in New York. Noting that next year will mark the 230th anniversary of Immanuel Kant’s celebrated essay, ‘Toward perpetual peace: a philosophical sketch’, Sachs writes: The great German philosopher put forward a set of guiding principles to achieve perpetual peace among the nations of his day. As we grapple with a world at war, and indeed a dire risk of nuclear Armageddon, we should build on Kant’s approach for our own time. Although Kant could not have imagined the destructive potential of nuclear arms and other contemporary technologies—from bacteriological weapons to artificial intelligence—that make it practically impossible to draw a clear dividing line between civil society and the military arena today, the worrying international situation indeed threatens an atomic conflagration between great powers. And Sachs’ ten principles for gradually reforming the UN and promoting a peace process, based on a greater willingness to co-operate between large and small powers, are valid. But two additional considerations are necessary, to broaden the available forces and to outline more precisely the long-term institutional goal which Kant outlined—a world federation. Economic governance The first observation concerns the peace process, which does not necessarily have to involve the military potential of the great powers. Recall the initiative of the postwar French government for pacification with defeated Germany via what became the European Coal and Steel Community, the start of the process of European unification. The Schuman Declaration of May 1950, prepared by the senior official Jean Monnet and presented by the French foreign minister, Robert Schuman, affirmed: The pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for the setting up of common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe, and will change the destinies of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they have been the most constant victims. Today the international situation is very different. The wealth gap between rich and poor countries cannot be solved without a serious reform of the governance of the international economy—also demanded by the threat of irreversible ecological disaster. And while nuclear technology is being used by national governments to threaten a world war, the climate crisis is forcing all nations to co-operate for the salvation of their citizens. At the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 in the United States on the postwar international financial order, the British economist John Maynard Keynes proposed a new international currency, the bancor. Keynes’ proposal was rejected in favour of the US dollar acting as a global reserve, a policy Washington abandoned in 1971. Today what is required is a reform of the International Monetary Fund—one of the Bretton Woods institutional products—to enable its Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to act as an international reserve. This plan was developed by Robert Triffin in the 1960s and proposed many times since. Five currencies make up the basket of SDRs: the dollar, the renminbi, the euro, the pound sterling and the yen. A world reserve currency—let’s call it the bancor—would enable global economic governance among the US, China, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Japan, which could soon be extended to other G20 countries. In addition to the IMF’s global monetary reform, a new Bretton Woods, engendered by inclusive multilateral co-operation among great powers, would make it possible to relaunch the World Trade Organization, paralysed by the failure of its dispute-settlement mechanism. Baruch plan The second concern is the ambiguity contained in any disarmament plan that leaves intact the system of international political and legal relations. Here the postwar resonance is the failed Baruch plan developed by the US financier and governmental adviser Bernard Baruch. Urged by the peace movements following the explosion of the two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August 1945, the following year the US government proposed to the Soviet Union a plan for a world authority, within the UN, to which all nuclear weapons and the resources necessary for their construction would be entrusted. This authority would have the power to inspect places of production and report to an international court individuals responsible for violating the rules it established. The Baruch plan however soon ran aground. Washington proposed abolition of the right of veto held by the ‘permanent five’ in the Security Council, on which the Soviet government would not relent. Conversely, Moscow demanded the destruction of US nuclear weapons stockpiles—the Soviets did not then yet have the atomic bomb—which the Americans rejected. So in the end the plan failed. A historian of those events observed: As the essence of the American proposal was limitation of sovereignty, so that of the Soviet was equality of sovereign power. The Americans demanded agreement on a control system before abolition of nuclear weapons; the Soviets, abolition before control. Today, with a plurality of nuclear powers—some big, some small—the historical and political situation is much more complex than at the time of the Baruch plan, when there were only two superpowers. Moreover, technological development is such that even a conventional war could cause endless destruction, as with the war between Russia and Ukraine and that between Israel and Hamas. As in the two world wars, there are countless casualties among the military forces and the civilian population. Now between war and civilian technology the boundaries are uncertain. The system of information and data transmission is based on satellite networks that are becoming a target for world governments. China has developed lasers for the destruction of satellites. Russia and the US are working on possible forms of space sabotage of satellite communication networks, through the explosion of nuclear bombs in extra-terrestrial space. Global public good Global security—and therefore the lives of the citizens of the world and the future of young people—has become a public good that can no longer be guaranteed by national governments. A treaty among a few great powers today could not prevent some other power from building new instruments of domination based not only on nuclear technologies (think of genetic manipulation, for instance). When the Baruch plan was under discussion, Albert Einstein observed: ‘It is not feasible to abolish one single weapon as long as war itself is not abolished.’ His institutional proposal was inspired by Kant’s perpetual peace. In 1947 he wrote: The nation-state is no longer capable of adequately protecting its citizens; to increase the military strength of a nation no longer guarantees its security. Mankind must give up war in the atomic era. What is at stake is the life or death of humanity. The only military force which can bring security to the world is a supranational police force, based on world law. To this end we must direct our energies. Today, in a climate of serious international political and military tensions, Einstein’s proposals will be considered by political ‘realists’ an unattainable utopia. Utopias are however the modern formulation of the great perspectives of common life, hope and transcendence, articulated in the past in the language of the great religions and still shared by millions of the planet’s inhabitants. ‘Progress,’ said the Irish writer Oscar Wilde, ‘is the realisation of Utopias.’ Humanity has organised itself in its history into different civilisations but the civilisation of the citizens of the world does not yet exist. It is therefore necessary to initiate a dialogue among all the civilisations of the planet to identify the necessary path, step by step, to ‘abolish war’ and build a ‘supranational police force, based on world law’. Without a compass, it is very difficult to reach the destination. Einstein’s proposal must be the North Star for all those who intend to reform the UN with the intention of guaranteeing perpetual peace to the citizens of the world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,234 Posted September 5, 2024 Share Posted September 5, 2024 What’s behind the massive protests in Israel? | The Take Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,234 Posted September 5, 2024 Share Posted September 5, 2024 22 hours ago, Vesper said: https://prospect.org/politics/2024-09-04-sound-of-one-maga-attacking/ In 2016, a Twitter account called “FutureRickPerlstein” appeared, then suddenly went inactive. It documented convergences that spoke to the surreal nature of the new political era that was aborning with the political emergence of Donald J. Trump; the kind of things the titular Perlstein might feature in a book on the history of the 2016 election written 50 years from now in the style of his (OK, my) books like Nixonland, The Invisible Bridge, and Reaganland. Like, you know, the time Donald Trump said the reason Mitt Romney lost was that he didn’t run a video of Donald Trump saying, “Barack Hussein Obama, you’re fired!” at the 2012 Republican National Convention. “They thought it was too controversial. Stupid people. The cinematographer said it was one of the best things he ever did.” I was flattered by how well this mysterious tweeter captured what I try to accomplish: to convey the thump and thrum of history, how it feels to people living through it. I stress that political change is never only about political change; it is also driven by—and simultaneously drives—changes in popular culture, religion, economics, and many other “nonpolitical” variables. Change is often best discerned in unlikely synchronicities. Like when two very different groups of Americans—Irish working-class Catholics in Boston and hillbilly fundamentalists in West Virginia—simultaneously lashed out violently in the fall of 1974 to purify their children’s public schools from the pollution of liberals. Or how an offhand joke on a TV sitcom, better than any “scientific” poll, sent up a flare that foretold not just who would next occupy the White House, but the unexpected new voting bloc that sent him there. (“Archie Bunker, a Democrat, is one of us!” a delighted New Right activist proclaimed the night after a December 1976 episode of All in the Family in which the blue-collar tribune informed his shocked hippie son-in-law that Reagan would be elected in 1980.) Well, if FutureRickPerlstein were pressed back into service to tweet about 2024, PresentRickPerlstein suggests he or she might start with a remarkable convergence that took place last week in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, A DERANGED MAN rushed the press pen at a Trump rally in Johnstown, a depressed old steel town about an hour from Pittsburgh, and one of the onetime “sundown towns” where Trump has been dog-whistling his way across America of late. These details are necessary, but not quite sufficient, aspects of what made it exemplary of our twisted times. The other part wasn’t the tree that fell in the forest; deranged, violent men, after all, are a dime a dozen these days. It’s how little sound it made. That’s what FutureRickPerlstein might pay attention to most. The assault wasn’t mentioned at all in the biggest newspaper in the election’s most important swing state, The Philadelphia Inquirer. The story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the paper of record in the western part of the state, did reference the press riser scuffle—in the 20th paragraph, and then for three sentences. What was not in the Associated Press’s dutiful dispatch, by contrast, tells us more than what was; and the number of places where that dispatch did not appear tells us more than anything. More from Rick Perlstein AP items are useful tools for historians: With a database like Newspapers.com, you can gin up a rough estimate of how deeply a story penetrated into the media consciousness by counting how many newspapers ran it, at what length, and on what page. When it comes to the present, you can do the same thing with LexisNexis. This is how I learned that the AP story appeared in precisely one American newspaper, the Chicago Daily Herald (I live in Chicago and I don’t recall ever hearing of it; it covers the northwestern suburbs), and also only one in Canada (in Red Deer, Alberta—population 100,844—home of the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and Museum). It did for some reason appear in lots of outlets in India and Africa. Perhaps readers there find comfort in confirming that the “Third World” ain’t the only place local authoritarians assault the free press, and editors are just giving their readers what they want. Giving readers what they want is also what editors do all too often here, unfortunately. Think of all those editorials responding to the kind of vicious savagery the rest of us know is routine in American life by doggedly insisting that “this is not us.” Or the way they don’t report much on America’s metastasizing slow civil war at all. The missing Johnstown story is a nice illustration of the argument I’ve been making often these days about how systematically American political journalism represses the story of right-wing political violence. And combined with that, how rarely the media adequately analyzes what might come next. Think about it. As the AP reports, the fellow was immediately subdued by authorities armed with tasers. In an update, they added how “the man was arrested, released and will be formally charged next week,” to “face misdemeanors in municipal court for alleged disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and disrupting a public assembly.” Not so burdensome, right? Easy to imagine him building a minor MAGA career from his heroics. Easy, also, to imagine the next guy trying the same thing with five, ten, or fifty buddies at his back. Maybe, then, the story deserves representation on a few American front pages here and there? THE AP DISPATCH INCLUDED ONE OF THOSE absurdly rigid genre conventions of American political journalism, the one where the mere fact of puddles on the ground in the morning cannot be taken for evidence it had rained during the night: “It was not immediately clear what motivated the man or whether he was a Trump supporter or critic.” Came next another rigid genre convention, the one that requires reporters to run a verbatim response from the Trump campaign, thus turning their notion of “objectivity” into a conveyor belt for disinformation: “‘Witnesses, including some in the press corps, described a crazed individual shouting expletives at President Trump,’ said campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez. ‘His aggression was focused on the president and towards the stage as he entered the press area.’” Well, who are you going to believe, Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez or Donald Trump? Scroll down for the video as it appears on the website of thugocrat Pamela Geller. Note a textbook fascist technique: blithely insisting that two plus two equals five, should the demands of propaganda require it. The headline is “Deranged Democrat Tries to Charge at Trump During Pennsylvania Rally.” The video shows Trump plainly saying, “That’s beautiful,” as police violently subdue an agent of disorder, then correcting himself when he realizes that the man is attacking the press. Trump then, correctly, said, “No, no, he’s on our side.” IN FAIRNESS, THE PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE did bother to mention Trump’s words; the AP, no dice. Since the AP only rates the story as worth less than 300 words, that level of detail is not possible. That means what just happened—Trump identifying with an attempted assault on journalists—had been rendered invisible to readers who think they have received the full story. Even more crucially, if a bit more subtly, the AP makes it impossible to grasp the story’s broader context: the main reason, really, stuff like this ought to be on all the front pages. Second paragraph: “The incident Friday came moments after Trump had criticized major media outlets for what he said was unfavorable coverage and had dismissed CNN as fawning for its interview Thursday with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz.” Readers like responsible journalism, right? But a much bigger tree also crashed in that forest. In every last media account I tracked down, including this one, it didn’t even register a whisper. Return to that video (this time at a friendlier link). Trump is in the middle of one of his favorite stories. He was talking about the assassination attempt on his life in nearby Butler, Pennsylvania, just a month earlier, and the pattern visible in the sky that day: “… two American flags, very far apart, held up by different frames, they were very big flags, beautiful flags, they were waving … the wind blew the flags together, and they formed a perfect angel … a perfect angel was formed!” Google it: “Trump,” “shooting,” “angel,” “flags”—and don’t forget to put in “God.” The story of the flags God braided into angels at the exact moment he laid hands on Donald J. Trump offers proof to the skeptical that Trump’s survival revealed him as the instrument of His will. It’s manifestly possible that what most motivated the attacker was this notion that those getting in Donald Trump’s way are not merely enemies of the people, but enemies of God. That millions of people now think this way is something future historians will surely latch onto in trying to make sense of whatever comes next. When elite agenda-setting political journalists start wrapping their minds around that reality is the precise moment they will start actually doing their jobs. It’s Project 2025 Summer here at The Infernal Triangle! I’m studying the whole thing for a series of columns. If you want to share your expertise on one of the federal departments the Heritage Foundation wants to weaponize or gut, contact me at [email protected]. An Author’s Note An update on this morning’s story, "The Sound of One MAGA Attacking" This morning you received a column from me reflecting on news reports that a pro-Trump rally attendee in Johnstown, Pennsylvania attempted to hop a barrier and assault members of the press. From that report, and accompanying video that appeared to confirm it, I observed how frightening it was that the man carried out his attack amid a recitation by Trump of a favorite story of his about an angel supposedly appearing in the form of two American flags just as he dodged a would-be assassin’s bullet. The man, I speculated, may have believed Trump was carrying out God’s will, and that the media was standing in his way. I also noted the fact that news reports of the event noted that the attempted assault came after a rant against the media, but did not mention the story about the angel. I argued that this symbolized how the media falls short in grasping just how terrifying the worshipful nature of Trump’s support has become. I also complained about how few American news outlets reported on the event. I thereby concluded that both the assault, and the failure of the media to take it seriously, was an exemplary symbol of this particular moment in American politics. I was wrong! It turns out I based my interpretation on incorrect, incomplete, and misleading accounts of what had actually taken place. Reports now indicate that the arrested man was attempting to hang an anti-Trump banner from the press pen. I’ve asked TAP editor David Dayen to take down the story. I’m grateful to him for doing so. One part of it, to be sure, was correct, and disturbing: Donald Trump thought the man was trying to assault the press, and uttered the words "No, no, he’s one of ours," in apparent encouragement of that would-be assault. But I was errant in mocking the Associated Press for reporting, "It was not immediately clear what motivated the man or whether he was a Trump supporter or critic"; and in calling Trump campaign advisor Danielle Alvarez a liar for stating, "His aggression was focused on the president and towards the stage as he entered the press area." I apologize to the AP and to Ms. Alvarez. I apologize to you, too, my readers. I cherish the trust you repose in me, and am terribly sorry for projecting what I presumed to be true, based in my broader narrative about what’s going on in America, instead of hanging back, keeping cool, and waiting for more facts to develop before going off half-cocked. The world’s already plenty scary enough without stoking any extra fear. Accuracy has to come first. Onward. ~ RICK PERLSTEIN Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmicway 1,333 Posted September 6, 2024 Share Posted September 6, 2024 On 04/09/2024 at 13:38, Vesper said: The AfD can win on an extremist platform The results in Saxony and Thuringia show the party does not have to moderate its positions to have electoral success. https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-afd-can-win-on-an-extremist-platform The Thuringia AfD leader, Björn Höcke, relishing his ‘outlaw’ status while sending a defiant eastern message to Berlin The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has achieved unprecedented results in regional elections in the states of Saxony and Thuringia, both part of former East Germany. The party took around 30 per cent of the vote in each state. In Thuringia, this put the AfD well ahead of any other party. In Saxony, the AfD was a close second behind the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The result is particularly concerning given the extreme position of the AfD in Thuringia and Saxony. These regional branches of the AfD have been classified as right-wing extremists by German security authorities. The leader of the AfD in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, uses particularly radical language. It’s also alarming for German democracy that the AfD has managed to garner significant support while very openly embracing extreme views. Far-right parties in other countries have often had to moderate their rhetoric to achieve electoral success, but the AfD has not, in this case, had to do so. A rising force The longstanding taboo in Germany that once rendered far-right positions unacceptable has been eroding for some time. Now this taboo appears to have lost its influence over a third of voters in the east. The threats posed by the AfD to democracy do not seem to be putting them off. Admittedly, mainstream parties have struggled in Thuringia in recent years, with both the far right and far left having success, especially in areas that struggle economically. There is a sense among some voters in former East German regions that the economic and political system of the unified Germany benefits them less than the rest of the country, which leads to resentment towards mainstream elites. But while this has likely contributed to the current election result, concerns about crime and immigration also played a key role. Anti-immigrant slogans seem to have been a key mobilising force, particularly for AfD voters. Indeed, voter turnout was very high in these elections—above 70 per cent in both states. It’s also significant that the AfD gained considerable support among voters under 30, reflecting a wider trend in Europe for younger people, particularly men, to increasingly lean towards far-right positions. The AfD’s strong presence on platforms such as TikTok also seems to be part of the formula. What next? State governments hold considerable power over numerous issues that significantly affect the everyday lives of citizens in Germany, including education, which is exclusively determined at the state level. Additionally, state governments participate in federal legislation on matters that affect the regions. The AfD would need a coalition partner both in Thuringia and in Saxony to form a government. Yet all parties running in the elections have committed to avoiding a coalition with the AfD. Thus all other parties in Thuringia and Saxony face the very challenging task of forming a coalition without the AfD. To achieve this in either Saxony or Thuringia, the electoral arithmetic necessitates unprecedented coalitions between parties with strikingly different ideologies. Whether this will be feasible remains to be seen. Such a coalition would compel the conservative CDU to work with very left-leaning partners, including the newly formed BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance). It is likely to be extremely challenging for CDU and BSW politicians to find common ground. The BSW, which was formed this year as a splinter group from the Left party, takes a strong stance against immigration. This is in stark contrast to the Left party, which sees immigration much more positively. The latter, however, saw significant losses in both states. Involving the BSW in a government could have implications for national political discourse, too, particularly as the BSW opposes Germany’s provision of weapons to Ukraine. Thus the AfD and BSW align more closely on certain key policy issues that resonate with voters and it is an open question whether the BSW will continue to rule out working with the AfD. The successes of the AfD in Saxony and Thuringia will also have immediate ramifications for Germany’s national government and the chancellor, Olaf Scholz. All three of the parties that make up the national government coalition—the social democrats (SPD), the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats—suffered losses in these regional elections. The results are likely to exacerbate tensions in Berlin. Questions will be raised about whether the coalition can survive until the federal elections of 2025 and how the three parties can hold together as they try to appeal more to their own core voters. This first appeared on the Europp blog of the London School of Economics It's a long swim for AFD to win in Germany, although it seems they are gaining in popularity. Germany is defferent from the other countries of Europe in that the traditional conservative and socialist parties (CDU and SPD) don't hate each other - certainly not to the same extent as everywhere else. Therefore they will oppose AFD and won't allow it to infiltrate them. Meanwhile ISIS wanted to help AFD in the Thuringia election by staging the terror attack on election day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmicway 1,333 Posted September 6, 2024 Share Posted September 6, 2024 On 03/09/2024 at 11:19, Vesper said: Taxing the super-rich—more possible than ever https://www.socialeurope.eu/taxing-the-super-rich-more-possible-than-ever The concentration of wealth is a global issue and it is getting worse. A mere 3,000 people have amassed $14.4 trillion in wealth, the equivalent of 13 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product. While the world’s billionaires controlled less than 3 per cent of global GDP in 1993, the growth of their wealth and political influence has since accelerated. Regardless of nationality, the world’s ultra-rich share two striking similarities: the vast majority are men and they typically pay much less tax, as a share of their income, than their employees and middle-class workers in general. The concentration of wealth is thus a global issue, one so alarming that the G20 (the group comprising the world’s largest developed and emerging economies) formally addressed it last month. As G20 finance ministers put it in the final declaration at their conference in Rio de Janeiro in late July, It is important for all taxpayers, including ultra-high-net-worth individuals, to contribute their fair share in taxes. Aggressive tax avoidance or tax evasion of ultra-high-net-worth individuals can undermine the fairness of tax systems … Promoting effective, fair, and progressive tax policies remains a significant challenge that international tax cooperation and targeted domestic reforms could help address. Fiscal equity underpins democracy. Without sufficient tax revenues, governments cannot guarantee adequate services such as education, healthcare and social protection, nor can they respond to much larger problems such as the climate crisis (which is already destabilising many countries around the world). Given the dire consequences of inaction in these areas, it is imperative that the wealthiest pay their fair share of taxes. Important milestone The Rio declaration is an important milestone. For the first time since the G20 was established in 1999, all members agreed that the way the super-rich were taxed must be fixed and they committed themselves to doing it. But this consensus did not come out of nowhere. Advocates of tax fairness covered much ground in the months leading up to the summit. Brazil occupies the G20’s rotating presidency this year and in late February the country’s finance minister, Fernando Haddad, invited me to speak at a high-level meeting in São Paulo. I was commissioned to write a report on tax fairness and taxation of the super-rich (the focus of my work as founder and director of the EU Tax Observatory in Paris), which I submitted in late June, to inform the July summit discussion. In the report, A Blueprint for a Coordinated Minimum Effective Taxation Standard for Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals, I advanced a proposal for a new effective taxation standard which included a co-ordinated minimum tax of 2 per cent of wealth for such individuals—the world’s 3,000 billionaires. This standard would not only generate significant revenue (around $200-250 billion per year). It would also correct the structural injustice of contemporary tax systems, whereby billionaires’ effective tax rates are lower than for middle-class individuals. Overwhelming support The global public overwhelmingly supports fair taxation of the ultra-rich. According to an Ipsos poll in G20 countries, released in June, 67 per cent agree that there is too much economic inequality and 70 per cent support the principle that wealthy people should pay higher income-tax rates. The Rio declaration signals a significant shift: world leaders can no longer support a system in which the ultra-rich get away with paying less in taxes than the rest of us. Finance ministers have already agreed to important preliminary steps to improve tax transparency, enhance tax co-operation and review harmful tax practices. True, there was no political consensus to include the 2 per cent minimum tax on billionaires in the final text. The declaration had to be approved unanimously and some countries still have reservations about some aspects of the proposal. For example, while the United States administratiion under Joe Biden supports a billionaire minimum tax domestically, it has been reluctant to advance the issue on the international stage. No going back But there is no going back. The minimum tax is now on the agenda and, looking at the history of international tax negotiations, there are concrete reasons to be optimistic about the proposal’s future. In 2013, the G20 acknowledged multinational companies’ rampant tax avoidance, giving political momentum to address the issue. Its initial action plan included improving tax transparency, enhancing tax co-operation and reviewing harmful tax practices—the same wording now used in Rio. Then, in October 2021, 136 countries and territories (now 140) adopted a 15 per cent minimum corporation tax. Fortunately, we do not need all countries to adopt a 2 per cent minimum tax on billionaires (or on centi-millionaires, if that is what policy-makers decide). We simply need a critical mass of countries to agree on a set of rules to identify and value the wealth of the ultra-rich and to adopt instruments to impose effective taxation, regardless of the billionaires’ tax residency. This way, we can avoid a scenario where the ultra-rich flee to fiscal havens, thus ending the race to the bottom among countries competing to offer billionaires the lowest tax rate. Over the last ten years or so, international co-operation on taxation has improved significantly. The introduction of automatic exchanges of bank information, for example, has greatly reduced the possibility of tax avoidance. We already have the tools needed to make the world’s billionaires pay their fair share of taxes. It’s now up to the governments to act quickly and effectively. When you "tax the rich" there is always the danger of taxing the ... superpoor. Why ? Because the tax is immediately passed on to the consumer as price increase. It's the law. Also you cannot tax a business so as to make it close down. The commies - commie fellow travelers like to do that and in many cases have succeded (but they have their reasons). We the public lose the goods or whatever services are provided and the workers lose their jobs. Suppose you are one of the cronies of a super rich billionaire, like Elon Musk. You have opened some little shops called "heels express" in every tube stations. They fix ladies shoes - that's what they do. At the end of the year you go to the boss and say "boss, those heels express have done nothing the whole year - one thing is the mayor has fixed all the pavements and no one breaks a leg, the other is the new socialist taxes". What will happen ? The mother company has enough money to subsidize these little shops till kingdom come, but no - they will close down. So that's why the socialists lose their marbles when they talk about tax increases. Do you know what was my monthly allowance as a freshman back in the eighties ? 100 quid it was. In Greek money the nominal equivalent of today's 20 euros ! That was strictly enforced because there were capital controls in place. When they increased it to 200 quid (40 today's euros) it felt great - quantum leap into the jet set ! Now 40 quid is barely enough for one month's supply of fags (if I follow the doctor's orders to become a light smoker). Why money is losing it's value progressively ? My estimate is 70% due to socialist etc taxes, 30% due to other reasons (profiteering - raw materials). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulham Broadway 17,335 Posted September 6, 2024 Share Posted September 6, 2024 On 05/09/2024 at 10:48, Vesper said: What’s behind the massive protests in Israel? | The Take Israel keeps saying its a democracy -yet they cant oust Netanyahu who is desperate for the US to bomb Iran and start WW3 just to distract from him being prosecuted They have dropped more bombs on Gaza than the West dropped on Dresden and Hamburg No reporters allowed into Gaza Al Jazeera banned from Israel... Israel is the US attack dog that no matter whether its Trump or Harris it will continue slaughtering women and children funded by US taxpayers Imagine if 41 860 US civilians, or if they were British, Swedish, or Israeli women and children that had been slaughtered - corporate media would be talking about it endlessly. Its racism pure and simple. Imagine if Russia was torturing children by sticking extendable batons up the anus and irreparably damaging internal organs to Ukraine prisoners with no trial, including children Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,234 Posted September 6, 2024 Share Posted September 6, 2024 Trump = gaslighter and liar https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/05/us/harris-trump-election/6e63d15c-b88d-5213-ae12-2fb05b450bf3 Much of Donald Trump’s speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, delivered virtually, covered familiar ground. He falsely said that the Biden administration had given Israel “no support” since the Hamas attack last October, then offered a dark vision in which he asserted Israel “would no longer exist” if Harris won in November. Harris has struck a balancing act on Israel similar to many Democrats, saying she backs the country’s right to defend itself while also lamenting the devastation and civilian deaths caused by Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,234 Posted September 6, 2024 Share Posted September 6, 2024 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmicway 1,333 Posted September 6, 2024 Share Posted September 6, 2024 On 03/09/2024 at 11:14, Vesper said: What should Labour aim for in Europe? https://www.socialeurope.eu/what-should-labour-aim-for-in-europe The new government’s goals are modest. But economic reality may force it to follow changing public opinion. In its campaign for the general election in the United Kingdom in July, Labour generally kept a low profile on the UK’s departure in 2020 from the European Union. In government, the party said, it would not seek to rejoin the EU—not even the customs union or the single market—despite the outgoing Conservatives being on the defensive on this issue. Public opinion now firmly holds that ‘Brexit’, stemming from the referendum to that effect in 2016, was a mistake. Only 31 per cent say it was the right decision—indeed, some polls suggest over 60 per cent would vote to rejoin the EU if that question were put to a referendum now. Improving relationships What Labour did say in its manifesto was that it would pursue ‘an improved and ambitious relationship with our European partners’. And, since the election, it has moved swiftly to re-establish cordial contacts. Concretely, the new Labour government is likely to seek, first, to reduce some of the barriers to UK-EU trade. This would include a veterinary agreement, mutual recognition of professional qualifications, visa exemptions for touring performers (such as musicians and actors) and regulatory alignments in key sectors such as chemicals. An opportunity to do this could arise through the scheduled ‘review’ of the post-Brexit trade and co-operation agreement, concluded when Boris Johnson was premier, due next year. But on that there are various views on mainland Europe about whether the fundamentals can be revised. A second goal would be to negotiate a security agreement with the EU. This could turn out to be of great significance, given the situation in Ukraine, especially if Donald Trump were to be re-elected as president of the United States in November. It would include security in the widest sense—not just military co-operation but sanctions, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, fighting traffickers, combating climate change and more. The German ambassador to Britain recently advocated a UK-EU ‘security and co-operation agreement’, which would also include agriculture and visa rules. A third avenue would be to rejoin some of the EU’s technical agencies (at least as an observer or associate member), such as Europol. Finally, the shared commitment to achieve ‘net zero’ greenhouse-gas emissions remains to be built on, with co-operation on climate and energy presumably embracing cross-border energy interconnectors and the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. This is all well and good. And the new administration might also seek renewed participation in the Erasmus+ student-mobility scheme. The Johnson government pulled out despite the withdrawal arrangements specifically providing for continued involvement—a piece of gratuitous cultural vandalism. Over-cautious But the realities of government may force Labour to go further, more quickly. The biggest challenges it faces are the catastrophic state of the public finances and the lethargy of the economy. After years of austerity, there are pressures for higher public spending on multiple fronts. Yet with both public debt and taxes as shares of gross domestic product heading towards levels not seen since the aftermath of the second world war, finding an extra £3 billion here or £4 billion there has become the subject of intense debates. These figures are however dwarfed by the £40 billion a year of lost tax revenue caused by Brexit. Economic ‘growth’ was very much the maxim of Labour’s campaign. Yet growth cannot be rekindled while ignoring the annual 4 per cent loss to GDP attributed to Brexit by the Office of Budgetary Responsibility, the lost trade with the UK’s main export market (and main source of its supply chains) and the extra transaction costs on businesses imposed by Brexit. Labour’s over-cautious red lines at the hustings—no to rejoining the customs union, no to full single-market membership—will severely limit the potential improvements it can bring in government. There will be costly border checks for as long as there is a customs border. Frictionless trade in goods (no extra conformity tests, value-added-tax forms, export permits, labelling requirements and so on), including with the wider European Economic Area, will remain a chimera unless the UK aligns with the single-market rules and standards it helped set and endorsed as a member. And there will be little scope to improve trade in services—even for touring performers and musicians—without some freedom of movement. Biggest beneficiaries What is holding the new government back? It seems to be a belief that full participation in the single market would require full restoration of the freedom of movement enjoyed by EU citizens. This is seen as an insurmountable obstacle, given the public concerns about record levels of immigration to Britain. Yet most migration to Britain is from outside the EU, which is (as it always was) a matter for national regulation. Within the limits of international law, it is for the UK itself to decide how open or restrictive it wants to be. The lesser (now much less) migration from the EU was part and parcel of free movement, of which Britons were actually the biggest beneficiaries, with more of them living in other member states than was the case for any other nationality. This freedom was not however unconditional: those exercising it had to find work or be self-sufficient—conditions which Britain failed to enforce, but could if free movement (perhaps referred to as ‘conditional free movement’ to emphasise this point) were to be restored. Nor was it a cost to the UK exchequer: EU citizens in Britain paid far more in taxes than they received in benefits and services combined. Far from enabling the UK to ‘take back control’ of its borders, Brexit has removed key tools for so doing. In the EU, Britain could use the internal agreement that asylum-seekers should be processed by the country in which they first arrived. One could waive that rule, as Germany did. But Britain used it to send thousands of asylum-seekers back to the member state of initial arrival—something it can no longer do. The UK was also able to participate fully in the EU’s system of co-operation among police and intelligence forces. This meant it could, when needed, obtain information on individuals when they arrived at the border, from fingerprints to criminal records. It also meant co-operating to fight international gangs of people traffickers. Brexit was a shot in the foot as regards its supposed major benefit of controlling the border. Maybe popular If economic reality forces the Labour government to go further, and at least to rejoin the single market and the customs union—even if that includes ‘conditional’ free movement with EU members—it will find that this does not throw up as many problems as it fears. It may even be popular. Many businesses, universities, artists and others want it. So do Labour Party members. Above all, if the tracker polls show that public opinion continues its gradual but relentless shift in favour of rejoining the EU, then surely these smaller steps, at least, should be easier. Brexit is the biggest win of the extremer right wing forces since 1933. If we count coup d' etats, the biggest win since Papadopoulos. Labour shamefully plays ball. Brexit support was at first pretty high, because we have to count the Cameronite Tory turncoats. Now it's no longer the majority. And what problem do the European citizens pose - reasonably that is ? Those are German, French, Swiss ..., they 're not even economic immigrants, nomadic peoples in distress. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulham Broadway 17,335 Posted September 6, 2024 Share Posted September 6, 2024 Over 600 000 Russian conscripts killed taking small Ukrainian villages and towns. All conscripts of any country should tell their masters to shove their orders up their fucking arses and go and fight themselves imo. Did Putin really want these Pyrric victories ? (Pyrrus was a Greek who fought the Romans but with massive casualties decimating his army for small victories). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,234 Posted September 6, 2024 Share Posted September 6, 2024 oh, ffs! Judge delays sentencing in Trump hush-money case until after US election Conditions for sentencing over ex-president’s payments to adult film star ‘fraught with complexities’, judge says https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/06/trump-hush-money-sentencing Describing conditions as “fraught with complexities”, a New York judge on Friday delayed Donald Trump’s sentencing on charges stemming from hush money paid to an adult film star until 26 November. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, had asked Justice Juan Merchan to push back his sentencing date until after the US election. Trump had previously been scheduled to be sentenced on 18 September, less than two months before election day. Trump’s lawyers in August argued there would not be enough time before the sentencing for the defense to potentially appeal Merchan’s forthcoming ruling on Trump’s request to overturn the conviction due to the US supreme court’s landmark decision on presidential immunity. While Merchan noted that Trump’s attorneys had “repeat[ed] a litany of perceived and unsubstantiated grievances from previous filings that do not merit this Court’s attention”, Merchan’s response acknowledged that the combination of an upcoming presidential election and the supreme court’s ruling had “render[ed] the requirements of a sentencing hearing, should one be necessary, difficult to execute”. Merchan had been scheduled to rule on that motion on 16 September. The supreme court’s 6-3 ruling, which related to a separate criminal case Trump faces, found that presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted for their official acts, and that evidence of presidents’ official actions cannot be used to help prove criminal cases involving unofficial actions. Prosecutors with Bragg’s office argued their case involved Trump’s personal conduct, not official acts, so there was no reason to overturn the verdict. But they took no position on Trump’s request to delay sentencing, saying in a 16 August filing they deferred to Merchan on the question. The prosecutors said an appellate court could delay the sentencing anyway to give itself time to consider Trump’s arguments, a move they said would be “disruptive”. Merchan interpreted Bragg’s response to the request as a signal of support for a delay. “[A] careful reading of that response can fairly be construed as a joinder of the motion,” Merchan wrote. “The public’s confidence in the integrity of our judicial system demands a sentencing hearing that is entirely focused on the verdict of the jury and the weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors free from distraction or distortion.” Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,234 Posted September 7, 2024 Share Posted September 7, 2024 SWITCH IT OFF! https://washingtonspectator.org/switch-it-off/ A renowned chronicler of the evolution and growing pains of democracy, Anthony Barnett reports on the dire potential for abuse of the surveillance state in the wake of the SCOTUS ruling on presidential immunity. West Oxford, UK — Speaking on 29 July at the LBJ library in Austin Texas, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, President Biden denounced the Supreme Court decision, delivered at the beginning of the month, in the case of Trump v The United States. He said the Court majority had proclaimed “a fundamentally flawed principle” as the law of the land. Namely, that “The presidency is no longer constrained by the law, and the only limits on abuse of power will be self-imposed by the president alone.” In response he called for a Constitutional amendment to be called “No One is Above the Law.” Perhaps because it came during the initial excitement of the Harris-Walsh ticket and because he is seen as yesterday’s man, the President’s unusual shout-out for a new Constitutional amendment has been ignored. These are rare events and often of marginal importance. The last such proposal was in 1992 and prevented members of Congress from giving themselves a pay raise more than once in a legislative session. But Biden’s demand for a new amendment is fundamental. It addresses a massive issue in simple language and might prove popular with voters across all parties as well as the undecided. To see why, we have to put the Supreme Court ruling together with two other developments: the far-right Republican project to ensure white minority rule and the surveillance powers of the US intelligence services. This combination is so explosive that it genuinely does create the conditions for a new kind of irredeemably authoritarian outcome, one that is only possible in the age of cyberspace. It is striking that even in a thorough overview of the dangers posed by the prospect of Trump’s return to power, such as Thomas Edsall’s recent guest essay in The New York Times, there is no mention of the potential for abusing the powers of the digital surveillance system already developed by US intelligence services. The Far-Right Republican Project Since the Heritage Foundation published Project 2025 eighteen months ago there has been a barrage of articles and podcasts about the danger it prefigures. These articles have alerted audiences around the country to the extreme hazards of a second Trump presidency and have called attention to an alarming ambition that is both open and unapologetic. Conservative, predominantly white America knows it constitutes a minority. It does not “believe” that 81 million US citizens voted for Biden (or against Trump) in 2020. If that many did, the reasoning goes, then many of them should not have had the right to do so, or even to count themselves as Americans. Voter suppression is essential to ensure minority rule. And immediately after the 2020 result, the Heritage Foundation circulated model bills for legislatures in Red States to ‘protect’ the ballot by making voting harder. But establishing minority rule on a permanent basis demands more than gerrymandering in all its variations and preserving the bias built into the Electoral College. Such a fundamentally undemocratic project requires what can be called “deep rigging.” This is where the seriousness of Project 2025 comes in, and it does not hide its ambition. For example, the personnel employed by the Federal and state governments must be replaced, in the words of the Project 2025 blueprint, so that “our political appointees” will “seize the gears of power.” The aim is a root and branch reconstruction of the Federal State. The objectives of Project 2025 are sustained by a far-right Supreme Court at the top of the judiciary, and by governors in gerrymandered red states who manipulate the composition of their state Congressional delegations in order to control Congress. Combine these with a Trump presidency in control of the executive branch and you have a self-reinforcing minoritarian regime able to give itself the veneer of legality, in perpetuity. Trump is only interested in Trump. But his corporate and ideological supporters want to ensure that after Trump, the Democrats never win again. If Trump feels that his ‘legacy’ also depends on this, he will be unrestrained in the deployment of executive power to achieve it. The Supreme Court Ruling “The Court thus concludes that the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” With these words, published on 1 July 2024, the Supreme Court placed the U.S. President above the law. Or, as Justice Thomas put it in his supporting opinion: “there has been much discussion about ensuring that a President ‘is not above the law.’ But, as the Court explains, the President’s immunity from prosecution for his official acts is the law.” (His italics.) To grasp the potential significance of this ruling, glance back to events of less than four years ago. When then Vice-President Pence was told to stop the electoral college count on January 6th, he instead followed the advice of legal counsel who argued he did not have the constitutional authority to do so. He felt he had no alternative but to defy his President. Now, in an “official act” the President could order his Vice-President to stop the count, and under this new ruling the very fact that this instruction is coming from the President would make it lawful and, presumably, the defiance of it unlawful. The Surveillance State In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that since 9/11 the US intelligence agencies seek to record, hold and index as much electronic data as it can on all US citizens in a process of unwarranted surveillance. He published classified slides that disclosed how the US and its allied agencies sought to gather and store electronic signals — the metadata of every email, phone call and social media message, domestic as well as international, the all-important record of who communicates with whom. The government was also seeking to index and record content and make bulk information usable. You might think you have deleted your email record, but the NSA — the National Security Agency — has not. You might use end-to-end encrypted messaging. But the NSA stores who you are messaging with and how often; also, what you read, listen to or watch online, retaining the location track of your digital device as well. I found these revelations hard to believe. Indeed, I still do. So when General Michael Hayden visited the UK in 2014 I took the opportunity to interview him to explore Snowden’s claims. A retired four-star general, Hayden headed the NSA over a crucial period, from 1999 to 2005. In that role, after 9/11 and on the instructions of President Bush, he oversaw the development of “bulk surveillance” globally and within the US. He then headed the CIA until 2009. An account of our discussion was published in openDemocracy. He later wrote Playing to the Edge, a 400-page account, limited by official secrecy, of his ten years at the head of NSA and the CIA. It opens with how (again, on presidential orders) he initiated STELLARWIND — to collect and track intelligence domestically as well as globally. Towards the end, Hayden writes, “215 {a section of the Patriot Act} was all about Americans. NSA kept a repository of American calls — not content, but facts of calls like from whom, when, for how long. It was massive, but access was tightly controlled not just by limiting the number of people who could touch the data but also by limiting their purpose to only counterterrorism.” The Supreme Court ruling allows the president to reset such limits at will. When I met him in Oxford, General Hayden was cheerful and straightforward and, at the time, the most right-wing person I had ever bought a coffee for. The opposite of apologetic, he was confident that he had done what had to be done and was proud of it. He explained that the United States needed to be able to exercise supremacy over its enemies in cyberspace just as it could on land, sea and air. Every concern I expressed was rebutted without any denial of what was taking place. He argued that without access to the whole “haystack” there was no way to get to “the needles” of information that could track down potential terrorists. I suggested that if any state gathered and kept all information about me, who I met and what I communicated in private as well as in public, then I feared for my liberty. He replied that my anxiety was baseless because I was “uninteresting.” I protested that if “my metadata is held and can be accessed by people unknown to me who have the power to influence my life and then my capacity to act as a free person, my liberty is invaded.” His reply: “I go back to the key point, how else am I going to do this? In a world in which I am now challenged by volume… I know hostile actors are sending emails around the world through paths that are unpredictable. Unless I have the metadata in a way that allows… selectors of legitimate foreign intelligence targets to see where their communications are.” He added, “I can’t do that without accessing bulk communications.” What he meant by “selectors of legitimate foreign intelligence targets” were the staff of the NSA and its agents who used their access to the haystack domestically as well as globally to identify America’s enemies. Later he conceded “there is potential for abuse, because the innocent or, in my terms, the uninteresting, are in there as well.” “And that would include yourself?” I asked. “Of course,” he replied. I pressed the point: “You don’t feel that that monitoring in any way affects your liberty as a person?” He replied, “It does not. Because I know and have great confidence as to how and when the data is accessed, and it is under very narrow specifications.” In an aside that at the time I took to be insignificant, he added, “As you can probably tell, I’m pretty comfortable with all this. Don’t get me wrong. Don’t think I do not fear an overreaching government or an overreaching executive, I do.” Even then, however, his concern was mainly with the potential for abuse of tax records. Then Donald Trump ran for the White House and won. Hayden was appalled by the new president and the way he threatened the methodology and integrity of the US intelligence services, especially in relationship to Russia. He wrote The Assault on Intelligence, a vigorous critique of Trump’s onslaught on the basic methods of America’s professional military and security services. Soon after it was published, General Hayden had a stroke which gave him aphasia, a speaking difficulty that does not impede clarity of thought and judgment. I met with him again on Zoom in 2022. I asked him if he thought the possibility of a return to power of a second Trump administration, especially after the events of January 6, altered the view he took when we talked in 2014. There is a limit as to what he could say as he is constrained by his oath of secrecy. But not many dots need to be connected. Hayden knows, as few do, the full extent of the actual surveillance the US is capable of. Under a president who expresses open contempt for “specifications” that govern its use domestically, he no longer has “great confidence as to how and when the data is accessed.” What happened during the four years that Trump was president was in his view bad “but survivable.” Should the White House be re-occupied by a president who is experienced, resentful and has consciously shed the traditional norms and restraints of the Constitution, it “would not be good at all.” What, then, I asked, would be his advice to his successors at the NSA and CIA about the surveillance system whose operation he initiated, should Trump regain the presidency? He answered without hesitation, “Switch it off.” It Won’t Be Switched Off The system isn’t going to be switched off. The perceived threats from China and Russia are enough to ensure this, not to speak of possible fundamentalist terrorism whether Evangelical, Hindu or Islamic or even lone shooters and would-be assassins. And if it is not switched off before a potential dictator gains the White House, it certainly won’t be afterwards. So we now have the following situation. Project 2025 sets out the case for the incoming president to appoint people to run all Federal agencies with women and men whose main qualification is that they will do the bidding of the White House. The Supreme Court has ruled that whatever the president decides is the law. Among the Federal agencies are the intelligence agencies who have collected sweeping surveillance of everyone’s metadata and can now search that information with far greater speed and accuracy with AI. Two months ago if anyone had said that an incoming presidency could purge anyone from any government position who subscribed to The Washington Spectator or indeed read the New York Times online, I’d have thought they were a mad conspiracy theorist. Mad in the sense that while Trump might bang the desk and want this to happen, the USA is not China, Russia or Saudi Arabia and it could not happen. Today, however, it is now legal for him to demand their names; they could be delivered in days by the intelligence agencies; and they will be, if these are headed by compliant recruits as set out in Project 2025. Trump and his supporters succeeded in part because they consistently surprised the liberal and traditional political classes with their willingness to breach what were regarded as established norms. The greatest of all abuses of power still awaits: an executive that marginalises anyone it chooses. Processes originally designed to defend the republic can now be deployed to terminate the employment of any American citizen currently working in any Federal service; and the same powers can be lent to State administrations. In an official act, the President can demand all the personal metadata that profiles any US citizen and use it at will. All without the need for Gulags or concentration camps. Appalled at the majority decision, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayer wrote for the minority, “Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends… the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.” In her eloquence she summons up a world still limited to analogue evil and old-fashioned crime. Digital penetration and control and the threats of the abuse of cyberspace do not figure in her list. Yet she is right to see that a Trump victory in November can now bring to an end America’s standing as a land free of royal tyranny that goes back to 1789. Slavery, the genocide of native tribes, the invasions and coups that toppled governments and flattened the economies of other countries, these realities always made the claim to moral and democratic superiority contestable. But what was also incontestable were America’s own domestic efforts to become a country ruled by law, the foundation of viable modern democracy. The Supreme Court ruling torpedoes this. The apparatus of surveillance permits a uniquely penetrating form of control. Project 2025 sets out how the combination can be deployed to ensure minority rule. President Biden’s proposed amendment, therefore, should not be seen as an attempt at legacy-setting by aged figure out of touch with present realities. On the contrary, it could hardly be more necessary as a baseline step to reverse the threat to the republic. After all, why shouldn’t a Democratic president be tempted to deploy unfettered access to the surveillance databases provided by July’s Supreme Court ruling? Indeed, the average MAGA voter might well feel that the Democrats are the ones who really put themselves ‘above the law.’ America needs a new president with the voice and energy capable of reasserting the supremacy of the rule of law by securing this within an amended constitution — and persuading red as well as blue voters that she is doing it in their interest. Anthony Barnett is the founding editor of the award-winning global website, openDemocracy and the author of Taking Control! Humanity and America after Trump and the Pandemic. His 20 minute film, US Progressives on a Knife Edge (2022), featuring interviews with Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, David Sirota, Larry Cohen and Tope Folarin can be seen here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,234 Posted September 7, 2024 Share Posted September 7, 2024 If you plan to be in LA next week, the hot ticket will be the author talk at the Diesel Bookstore in the Brentwood Mart on Thursday, September 12, featuring a conversation between Randy Fertel and Lolis Eric Elie about Randy's new book Winging It! Improv's Power and Peril in the Time of Trump ("a masterwork, voracious in scope"; "a tour de force exploration of improvisation" - Kirkus). Lolis is a much-admired LA-based screenwriter whose credits include "Bosch," "The Man in the High Castle," and the HBO series "Treme." Both writers are refugees from the vibrant New Orleans literary scene. I'll be attending this event and would enjoy seeing any Washington Spectator readers who can make it. The event is free and starts in the courtyard at 6:30 PM. Winging It: Improv’s Power & Peril in the Time of Trump https://www.amazon.com/dp/0882141589 In Winging It, literary scholar and cultural polymath Randy Fertel returns to the interrogation of improvisation he began with his earlier work A Taste for Chaos (2015). In this new volume, Fertel explores the wider landscapes of popular culture and public affairs, ranging deftly from the unmediated experience in hook-up culture, psychedelic trips, Fred Astaire’s tap dancing, Frans Hals’s brush strokes, social media, and Hamilton’s hip-hop to—last, though alas not least—the performative and demagogic posturing of Donald Trump. The gesture all improvisations share—I will create this on the fly, or as Trump has it, my gut knows more than many brains—defies rationality and elevates embodied emotions, instinct, and intuition, challenging our assumption that everything of value depends upon long study, tradition, and hard work. Claiming to be free of serious purpose, improvisation only pursues pleasure. Or so it says. At the farmers market, I’m responding to color, and smell, and I’m following my intuition. In my kitchen when I’m imagining where things will lead, I’m improvising. In his artful and authoritative new book Winging It, Randy Fertel explores how improvisation shapes and enlivens our wider world. Yield to your impulses, act spontaneously, and get this book—it’s a revelation. —Alice Waters, Founder of Chez Panisse and the Edible Schoolyard In Winging It, Randy Fertel presents a wide ranging and masterful study of the art of improvisation that will delight scholars and lay readers alike. The work’s true fascination lies in its adept analysis of the political implications of the quicksilver art form. It is a work to be savored slowly and thoughtfully, especially in anticipation of the upcoming elections. —Jessica B. Harris, author of High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America A masterwork—voracious in scope ... and about as hopeful as can be in these troubling times. —Bruce Boyd Raeburn, Curator Emeritus, Hogan Archive of New Orleans Music and New Orleans Jazz, Tulane University In the new century, we’re all winging it now. Randy Fertel gives us an impressive and artful view of cultural patterns that are roiling our world in so many ways. His knowledge is encyclopedic and his feeling for the complexities and double binds we face is deep and humane. —Stephen Nachmanovitch, author of Free Play and The Art of Is Winging It soars. Author Randy Fertel is a whipsmart, plate-spinning savant, an audacious flying circus wingman. Every performer faces unknown risks, but Fertel takes it to a whole new level, and it’s a very exciting ride. —Michelle Shocked, singer/songwriter Winging It dances with the reader atop a mountain of scholarship, original thinking, and profound applicability. Written in the spirit and style of improvisation, this book charms the reader into a fresh perspective on our discombobulated world, touching on social media, popular culture, literary classics, neuroscience, AI, and politics. It’s smart, fun, insightful, and relevant to life today and the incomprehensibles we live within. Don’t walk, improvise your way to the bookstore to grab this irresistible tour de force from Randy Fertel. —Eric Booth, author of Making Change and The Everyday Work of Art Randy Fertel is a master at unveiling theatrical illusion. In this brilliant book, he shines a piercing light into the shadows of the so-called improv style in politics. Winging It reveals the concealed instincts and the fierce emotional currents that keep a rapacious predator aloft. —Murray Stein, author of Jung’s Map of the Soul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,234 Posted September 7, 2024 Share Posted September 7, 2024 On 06/09/2024 at 09:03, cosmicway said: My estimate is 70% due to socialist etc taxes, 30% due to other reasons (profiteering - raw materials). Billionaires pay less, due to the tax structure, of a percentage of their wealth and income than do their secretaries. Multi-national corporations often pay NO income tax (and some get billions in refunds), again to to an utterly regressive tax structure. It's a rigged game from the top down. Systemic control and nearly unlimited wealth and power for them. Austerity and (outside of the upper middle class and higher in the West) ofttimes horrendous poverty and hardship for billions of folk across the globe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.