Politics & Stuff

[Vesper 28,763]

1 hour ago, Fulham Broadway said:

People forget Hezbollah was formed from Israel invading Lebanon before

Cant find the pics but the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in 1982 where thousands of women, children were massacred by Druze and IDF militia.

The Sabra and Shatila massacre was the 16–18 September 1982 killing of between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias—in the city of Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. It was perpetrated by the Lebanese Forces, one of the main Christian militias in Lebanon, and supported by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that had surrounded Beirut's Sabra neighbourhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp.

 

[Vesper 28,763]

Criminalising climate protest while ignoring the crisis

The scales of justice are tilted against peaceful protesters—while those responsible for the crisis act with impunity.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/criminalising-climate-protest-while-ignoring-the-crisis

Activists from Letzte Generation occupying a street in central Berlin last year (Mo Photography Berlin / shutterstock.com)

 

Before he turned 22, Christian Bergemann had already spent ten days in preventive detention. His home had been raided by the authorities in Germany and he was under criminal investigation in Austria. His crime? Raising the alarm on the climate emergency—an existential crisis he did not create but inherited from the generations before him now represented in positions of political power.

Climate Rights International spoke to Christian during research for a report which analyses the disturbing trend of disproportionate responses by democratic countries to peaceful climate protests. A member of Letzte Generation, Christian said he had joined the group because he felt compelled to do more to secure a liveable future. Yet rather than acting on scientific warnings concerning climate change and protecting the rights of activists such as him, governments across Europe have wielded the criminal law against those peacefully calling for urgent policy action to safeguard the planet.

Dual failure

This crackdown on climate activists represents a dual failure. First is the blatant violation of international human-rights law. The freedoms of expression, assembly and association—rights enshrined in national laws, constitutions and treaties—are being violated and undermined. The right to protest, to speak up in peaceful dissent, is a cornerstone of democracy. And yet, in countries that pride themselves as guardians of human rights, these basic liberties are being eroded in the name of ‘maintaining order’.

The second failure is no less damaging—to act to address the climate crisis. It is the responsibility of democratic governments to enact policies to protect the planet, to explain why change is necessary and urgent to safeguard the rights and livelihoods of present and future generations. Instead, that role has fallen to climate scientists, economists and activists such as Christian, maligned and punished for filling the void left by political inaction.

Countries such as Germany may take pride in their renewable-energy initiatives and their efforts on behalf of a green transition. But these historically high greenhouse-gas-emitting countries are still not doing nearly enough to avert the looming catastrophe.

Instead of silencing the voices of activists, governments should be echoing their calls to action. Yet far too many ministers and lawmakers are opting for strategies that blissfully ignore scientific facts and sideline the urgency for action, clinging to the comfort of short-term political popularity over the long-term survival of the planet.

The climate crisis not a distant threat—it is a current reality. Every year, rising global temperatures intensify extreme weather events, from scorching heatwaves and raging wildfires to devastating floods and prolonged droughts. Communities around the globe are already feeling these effects.

The frustration is palpable. People around the world are demanding an immediate halt to new fossil-fuel extraction projects and an end to the billions in subsidies governments still pour into the industry. No government can claim to lead on climate while relying on, and in many cases even expanding, fossil-fuel production. The science is clear: ‘business as usual’ will have disastrous consequences.

Landmark cases

Activists and protesters are coming together to hold governments to account. They are pushing for genuine and comprehensive policy action—not tomorrow but now. Faced with official stonewalling and weak excuses, many are taking cases to the courts, which have increasingly become a battleground for climate justice. Landmark cases around the world have revealed the extent to which governments are failing to meet their obligations under international law aimed at addressing climate change and respecting human rights.

In 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in favor of Urgenda, a citizens’ initiative, declaring that the Dutch government was not doing enough to protect its citizens from the dangers of global warming. Similar rulings have emerged in countries such as France, where courts found the government liable for failing to meet its climate commitments, and Germany, where the Constitutional Court ruled that the government’s climate laws were insufficient to protect present and future generations. And earlier this year the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Switzerland had violated basic human rights by failing to adopt adequate climate policies.

Yet despite these legal victories, governments and corporations—through their actions and inactions—continue to fall short of enacting the transformative changes needed and continue to wreak havoc against the environment, biodiversity and climate. The resulting harms are being felt across the world with the most vulnerable populations, countries and communities—those least responsible for the climate crisis—bearing the brunt of the carnage.

That is a why some smaller states, together with legal and environmental advocates, are pushing to expand the scope of individual criminal accountability for such grave offences against the natural environment, calling for the codification and criminalisation of ‘ecocide’ at the international level. This proposal, if ultimately adopted, would allow the International Criminal Court (ICC) to hold corporate executives and government officials criminally responsible for acts that cause severe, widespread or long-term environmental harm.

Earlier this year, the European Union took an important step by adopting a new Environmental Crime Directive, which includes crimes ‘comparable to ecocide’. Within the next 18 months, all 27 EU member states must incorporate these crimes into domestic legislation and ensure their criminal-justice systems have the expertise and capacities to investigate and adjudicate them. They should team up with like-minded nations and work for amendment of the ICC’s Rome Statute to add ecocide as a fifth international crime, alongside war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression.

Operating with impunity

In conversation Christian discussed how he felt about the disproportionate consequences of his actions:

When my house is raided or when I’m being detained, I always ask myself if I should be the one in this position right now. And if it shouldn’t be the people who destroy our future every day, politicians who don’t acknowledge the reality that we’re facing in the climate crisis, if it shouldn’t be the rich people in fossil-fuel companies who’ve been denying the effects of climate change for decades now. I ask myself if these people shouldn’t be the actual criminals, those being charged and those being detained.

While he and other climate protesters are being charged with crimes and even vilified for their peaceful efforts, those responsible for the climate crisis continue to operate with impunity. It is time for the scales of justice to shift—for the legal system to recognise that the true danger to society stems not from those warning of the crisis but from those who profit, politically and financially, from ignoring it. It is time for governments to be leaders, not jailers.

Edited September 24 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,763]

Draghi, Putin and economic warfare in Europe

It has yet to dawn on Europe’s leaders, Paul Mason writes, that the whole continent is implicated in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/draghi-putin-and-economic-warfare-in-europe

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has turned the country into a war economy (Jbruiz/shutterstock.com)

 

As a lifelong Keynesian I should be ecstatic over The Future of European Competitiveness. At the request of the European Commission, the former president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, has laid out a comprehensive strategy for Europe’s economic revival, including a major pump-priming stimulus of €800 billion a year. It marks the end of a long policy hiatus during which the neoliberal impulse in Europe had died but nothing had replaced it.

If the basic prescriptions of the Draghi report are implemented, we should see the integration and modernisation of Europe’s major industries, a sharp uptick in investment and a revival of productivity within a decade. If Europe is not to become the chessboard for the 21st century’s economic contest between the United States and China, Draghi intimates, it will have to become the third major player.

Economic warfare

Yet as Europe’s policy elites congratulate the author, and themselves, there is a big problem. For even as Europe learns to do investment-led growth, it also has to learn to conduct economic warfare—not out of belligerence but necessity.

Russia and its allies are conducting proxy warfare against the west in every dimension: information, energy, food, finance and organised crime. In the third year of its aggression against Ukraine, the Russian economy has become, substantially, a war economy. War-related output has grown by 60 per cent since the autumn of 2022, while the rest of Russian manufacturing has stagnated. War-related expenditure, meanwhile, is close to 40 per cent of the public budget.

The governance structures of the EU, and of its democratic neighbours such as the United Kingdom, are not however well adapted to respond in kind. So the Draghi report, brilliant though its prescriptions may be, needs to be the start of a rethink about Europe’s economic-management strategies, not the end of it.

Europe—including here the UK, so long as it remains under a centre-left government—is going to need not just a new breed of execution-focused technocrats for each of Draghi’s three big objectives: innovation, decarbonisation and security. It is also going to require a cadre of politicians prepared to reframe the task of Europe’s democratic survival around security and defence itself.

That would be a big ask of any nation-state, and it is an even bigger ask for a transnational body founded and structured on the prospect of peace—above all because much of Europe’s postwar economic policy has been premised on the idea that economic interdependence reduces the prospect of conflict. But the incoming commission must turn to the task, and quickly.

‘Setting Europe ablaze’

What can we learn from the last major period of economic warfare, beginning in the 1930s? Britain had emerged from the first world war convinced that blockade, as the primary form of economic warfare, was so effective that fear of it might deter German aggression. It set up the Advisory Committee on Trading and Blockade in Time of War as early as 1924 and by the mid-1930s was actively working on contingency plans for hostilities against Germany and Japan.

Its assumptions were however faulty. Even after the Anschluss of 1938, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria, British policy-makers could not believe that an effectively landlocked country would cope with a naval blockade simply by seizing the resources of eastern Europe and the Balkans. And, much as today with the Russian president, Vladimiar Putin, they were over-optimistic as to the prospect of a dictator falling due to popular discontent over wartime shortages.

But at the outbreak of war in 1939, the British set up a full-fledged Ministry of Economic Warfare, replete with departments for sanctions, soft power, financial pressure, contraband seizures and intelligence. It was from within this department that, from May 1940, the Labour minister Hugh Dalton began to follow the instruction of the Conservative prime minister, Winston Churchill, to ‘set Europe ablaze’ with a sabotage and resistance effort co-ordinated by the Special Operations Executive. As the conflict intensified, much of the ministry’s activities focused on disrupting German trade with neutral countries such as Sweden, using a mixture of soft power, financial disruption, legal action and outright sabotage.

Low thuggery

Since the west is not at war with Russia, offensive actions such as these cannot be taken. But every good intention for Europe in the Draghi plan will be matched with malicious intent by Moscow, using precisely such a mixture of high finance and low thuggery. The aim will be weaken the EU’s ability to secure key sources of critical minerals, for example, or to co-ordinate its defence industries.

In today’s Europe, the obvious place for an economic-warfare function to sit would be with the commissioner-designate for technology sovereignty, security and democracy, the Finnish member of the European Parliament Henna Virkunnen. Her letter of appointment from the continuing commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, overtly references Draghi and the coming report by her compatriot Sauli Niinistö on European defence and civil resilience in the face of Russian aggression. Given Finland’s particular 20th-century history with its big Russian neighbour—marked after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by application with Sweden to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—it has well-developed competencies to combine economic, military and civilian efforts at self-defence.

What is needed above all at this stage is imagination. Most politicians, and many senior businesspeople, in Europe now speak privately of ‘when’, not ‘if’, Russian aggression begins to target NATO and EU states directly. But in public all discussion of Ukraine is steeped in euphemism. And, as with the Draghi report, the deteriorating security environment is spoken of as if the actual process of deterioration had no endpoint.

It may be that, with rapid rearmament and the co-ordination of Europe’s defence industries, the EU and NATO can collectively deter Russia from the aggression its state-television hosts threaten nightly. But if there is a non-negligible chance deterrence fails, the EU must prepare the structures, strategies and people to conduct economic hostilities designed to destroy Russia’s will and means to fight.

Trigger for change

Of course, even to make the case for such preparations, and the political framing needed to justify them, is to invite conflict with those who would ‘understand’ Putin—from the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, to the conservative leftist Sahra Wagenknecht in Germany and the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in Britain. But I would rather have that argument now than on the day Russian submarines begin openly dredging up the fibre-optic cables of the Baltic.

Draghi’s report shows what we need to do domestically: boost investment, divert skills, co-ordinate Europe’s defence industries and set ambitious goals for technological innovation.  But it is still, essentially, a strategy for economic competition, not economic conflict. Niinistö’s project, when it is delivered, should be the trigger for overt institutional change. But in the end we need governments—not simply the commission—to align on the need for economic self-defence.

In this context, the UK-EU security pact, much anticipated in Britain but with scant detail available, could be a useful forum for the next steps. Much of the ‘five missions’ approach to government of the prime minister, Keir Starmer, dovetails with Draghi’s intent—although the latter is much more focused on failures of co-ordination within the single European market.

But wherever it comes from, at some point Europeans have to adapt to a stark fact: we are no longer in economic competition with Russia, or in a position of friction. Russia’s kinetic war against Ukraine has triggered economic conflict with the west. It is not going to dissipate. We need politicians to adopt the mindset and create the institutions required to prevail.

This is a joint publication by Social Europe and IPS-Journal

[Vesper 28,763]

‘Better regulation’? Capital first, society second

EU policies on better law-making are tipping the scales in favour of businesses, marginalising social and environmental concerns.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/better-regulation-capital-first-society-second

Ursula von der Leyen with Mario Draghi at the launch of his report earlier this month, echoing her aim to reduce regulatory ‘burdens’ on businesses (Alexandros Michailidis / shutterstock.com)

 

Since the 1990s, the Europea Union has prioritised ‘better regulation’ and improved law-making. The European Commission has committed to making EU legislation clearer, simpler and more accessible to citizens.

My research—including a recent study commissioned by the Chamber of Labour Vienna—however shows that, under Ursula von der Leyen as commission president, the reduction of ‘burdens’ and ‘costs’ for businesses has taken centre stage. An analysis of all relevant EU official documents demonstrates a shift in the ‘better regulation’ agenda over time, favouring economic interests over social and environmental protection.

Deregulatory agenda

In the early 1990s, EU law was seen as overly technical and complex, prompting efforts to simplify and clarify it. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, EU legislation was increasingly viewed as a burden, especially for businesses, leading to a deregulatory agenda that often compromised societal standards.

Under von der Leyen’s predecessor, Jean-Claude Juncker (2014-19), while such concerns persisted policy solutions became more comprehensive. Tools such as REFIT (a regulatory-fitness and performance programme), the associated REFIT platform and the Regulatory Scrutiny Board were introduced, with a slightly more inclusive language than before.

Under von der Leyen’s leadership, however, the commission has undergone a significant shift, prioritising business interests almost exclusively over broader societal concerns while framing EU legislation as too burdensome and costly. The charts below highlight a sharp increase in the focus on costs and burdens in the commission’s official language under von der Leyen, compared with Juncker.

Word count and proportion (%) of burdens and costs mentioned in European Commission communications under the Juncker and von der Leyen presidencies

Specifically, small and medium-sized enterprises have gained favourable conditions. Yet the commission’s definition of SMEs is so broad that 99.8 per cent of all companies in Europe fall into this category, including large enterprises that benefit from reduced obligations.

Even the Signa Holding property empire in Austria was classified as an SME and benefited from the lesser oversight associated with this deregulatory agenda. Signa declared bankruptcy last year—the largest insolvency in European property development—underscoring the dangers of relaxed regulation.

‘One in, one out’

Von der Leyen’s increasing focus on reducing burdens and costs has reshaped the solutions presented to address policy challenges, notably through a strong emphasis on the ‘one-In, one-out’ (OIOO) principle. This aims to balance any new regulations by eliminating a predecessor in the same policy area. Yet this is to view regulation one-sidedly, focusing solely on the costs of new rules (to be offset by retiring old ones) while overlooking the positive purpose of regulations and their value to society.

This approach risks undermining essential social and environmental standards, contradicting the ambitious goals of the European Green Deal and the European Pillar of Social Rights. Yet, despite criticism from the European Parliament and civil-society organisations, von der Leyen has prioritised OIOO and cost reduction, creating favourable conditions for businesses and SMEs which are increasingly exempt from control and reporting obligations, particularly in environmental areas.

A clear example is found in the the 2022 Annual Burden Survey, where the commission referred to EU legislation protecting workers from asbestos as a ‘burden’ on businesses—ignoring the benefits of safeguarding workers’ health, ensuring continued employment and maintaining contributions to social-security systems. The commission also overlooks the costs of failing to regulate, despite the 2008 global financial crisis showing that the consequences of insufficient regulation can be immense.

Same trajectory

The anticipated second term for von der Leyen will maintain this perspective in the five years ahead. For instance, the commission has confirmed that it will enhance efforts to reduce reporting obligations. The Letta and Draghi reports have meanwhile outlined plans to enhance ‘competitiveness’ and reduce regulatory ‘burdens’, especially for SMEs, reflecting von der Leyen’s policy direction. This could lead to more marketisation and privatisation in sectors such as transport and health, risking welfare systems and favouring corporate interests while creating more precarious working conditions across the EU.

The EU Strategic Agenda 2024-2029, adopted by the European Council in June, follows the same trajectory by focusing on security, competitiveness, SMEs and the single market as drivers of integration, while promoting financial integration and the elimination of single-market barriers. The agenda also addresses climate change and the digital transition but it remains vague on specifics beyond climate neutrality. Public health is marginalised—despite the recent pandemic—with only brief mentions of health co-operation. The 2019-2024 agenda had placed greater emphasis on social and consumer protection and on access to healthcare.

Overall, ‘better regulation’ will remain a key principle of the commission under von der Leyen, as she stresses the need to support European businesses in the global market by reducing their regulatory ‘burdens’. With her commission nominees significantly tilted towards the right, the social and environmental policy acquis will be at risk.

 

Edited September 24 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,763]

Germany’s border controls—wrecking EU solidarity

Europe must fast-track the Pact on Migration and Asylum to prevent chaos.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/germanys-border-controls-wrecking-eu-solidarity

 

Germany’s decision to reinstate border controls without consulting its neighbours is a dangerous step backwards for the European Union. It undermines the essence of European unity at a time when it is most needed. As asylum-seekers continue to arrive, Europe is fracturing under the pressure.

The real solution is not unilateral action or further disunity but fast-tracking implementation of the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum. The pact, agreed in principle but delayed until 2026—mainly because of political disagreements among member states and resistance from countries unwilling to share responsibility for asylum-seekers—is designed to distribute responsibility more fairly, introduce solidarity-based support and streamline the asylum process. Delaying its implementation only worsens the crisis of the movement of people.

Troubling message

The EU has long prided itself on its Schengen Agreement, which allows free internal movement across the borders within its zone. But with Germany’s recent border closure, cracks are showing in this foundational principle. Countries are no longer working together. Member states are responding independently to the crisis, often swayed by domestic political pressures rather than any sense of European solidarity.

Germany’s decision—likely driven by fears of a far-right surge in upcoming elections—sends a troubling message. If Germany, the EU’s largest economy and a political heavyweight, is willing to bypass co-operation, what will stop others from doing the same?

And this is not just a German problem. Other countries, such as Austria, Cyprus and even Poland, are tightening border controls or discussing deporting asylum-seekers back to war-torn countries such as Syria or Afghanistan. This ‘go-it-alone’ mentality is spreading and threatens to dismantle the hard-earned unity Europe has built over decades. We are witnessing a dangerous trend where border closures and nationalist policies replace co-operation, with disastrous results.

Distributing responsibility

Under the current Dublin Regulation, southern nations such as Italy and Greece, which often occupy the frontline between Europe and the rest of the world, bear the responsibility for processing asylum-seekers, creating an unsustainable situation. This leads to overburdened systems, overcrowded camps and human suffering—all while other EU nations, such as Germany, experience secondary migration as asylum-seekers move north in search of better opportunities.

Accelerating the EU pact is thus critical, to ensure a more equitable and efficient system. It seeks to distribute responsibility for asylum-seekers more fairly across the EU, relieving the pressure on the frontline Mediterranean countries. Each member state would be required to take in a quota of asylum-seekers or contribute financially to those that do so. This solidarity-based support is essential to ensure no country bears the brunt of the crisis while others simply close their borders.

Moreover, the pact introduces mechanisms to streamline the asylum process, making it quicker and more balanced. By speeding up processing times for asylum applications and introducing clearer rules for deportations where claims are rejected, it will help prevent the bottlenecks and backlogs that plague the system. Every EU country would share responsibility for processing asylum-seekers, ensuring the burden did not fall disproportionately on certain nations.

Implementation too slow

The 2026 timeline for implementation is simply too slow. The crisis is happening now and EU leaders must act swiftly. Bringing forward the pact would not only provide immediate relief to overburdened border nations but also prevent the disintegration of European unity we are seeing in real time. Border closures are a temporary sticking-plaster, which will only deepen divisions between EU member states and stoke nationalist rhetoric across the continent.

There is also a moral imperative. The EU prides itself on being a bastion of human rights and democratic values. But by allowing the current asylum system to continue in its broken state, it risks betraying those values. The far right, which paints undifferentiated ‘migrants’ as threats to European security and culture, is gaining traction precisely because centrist and progressive leaders have failed to present a clear, united solution. Implementing the pact immediately would send a strong signal that Europe can protect its borders while upholding its commitment to human rights.

This is not just about political expediency: it is about Europe’s identity. Does it want to be a continent which closes its doors to the most vulnerable, rather than living up to its ideals of compassion, solidarity and co-operation? Germany’s border controls are a symptom of a much larger problem—the absence of a unified, comprehensive policy on the movement of people.

Changing course

But it is not too late to change course. The EU should fast-track the pact now, distribute responsibility more fairly, support frontline countries through a system of solidarity-based contributions and streamline the asylum process.

This crisis is not going to disappear but, with co-ordinated action, it can be managed in a way that honours the principles on which the EU was built. Failure to do so will only embolden those who seek to divide Europe and undermine everything so many have worked so hard to build.

The time for temporary, reactive measures is over. The time for a united, fair and compassionate solution is now—protecting the integrity of the European Union and the dignity of those seeking refuge within its borders.

Edited September 24 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,763]

Thousands flee homes in Lebanon as toll from Israeli strikes rises to 558, officials say

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/24/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-hamas-war-news-gaza/

BEIRUT — Israel struck 1,500 targets throughout Lebanon over the past 24 hours, it said Tuesday afternoon local time, hitting what its forces said were militant sites linked to Hezbollah in the country’s south and east and in the capital Beirut. Thousands of Lebanese people are seeking to flee to safer areas. Since Monday, Israel’s strikes have killed at least 558 people, including 50 children, according to an updated toll from Lebanon’s Health Ministry. At least 1,835 were wounded. Hezbollah fired more rockets Tuesday as world leaders scrambled to cool tensions and avoid a wider war.

 

Key updates

 

Israel vows to return people north. Many residents see war as only way.

 

IDF says it hit 1,500 more Hezbollah targets in Lebanon

 

Thousands flee to safer areas in Lebanon; flights canceled

 

[Fulham Broadway 16,825]

2 hours ago, Vesper said:

The Sabra and Shatila massacre was the 16–18 September 1982 killing of between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias—in the city of Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. It was perpetrated by the Lebanese Forces, one of the main Christian militias in Lebanon, and supported by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that had surrounded Beirut's Sabra neighbourhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp.

 

Yeah saw photos a lot worse to be honest. Where babies were really decapitated, limbs chopped off, not made up like on Oct 7th. The Isarelis got the Druize drunk and high on PCP. 

[Fulham Broadway 16,825]

Used to be a member on here @CHOULO19from Lebanon.

Hope hes safe he was/is an intelligent poster. Lovely bloke

[cosmicway 1,318]

The extreme right makes tremendous pogress everywhere.
In America it is 50-50 as we know.
In Europe it's 30% to 40% on average.
Back in the eighties, nineties if one brought into conversation the antics of the extreme right wingers they called him a) funny, b) crazy, c) a probable secret commie or even highly probble.
Now it is dangerous, everyone knows.
To blame for this is the left and the communist left and no one else.
If nothing else, plain arithmetic proves this.

 

Edited September 24 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,763]

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/24/world/gaza-israel-hamas-hezbollah/10333190-0748-52ee-8d98-3d4943490798

Israel has argued that Hezbollah uses Lebanese civilians as human shields and embeds weapons amid the population and that is why the Israeli military must strike populated areas.

In a video message released Tuesday in Hebrew, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warned people in Lebanon that “those who have a missile in their living room and a rocket in their garage will not have a home.” He said something similar in an English language video released Monday. 

Edited September 24 by Vesper

[Fulham Broadway 16,825]

8 minutes ago, Vesper said:

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/24/world/gaza-israel-hamas-hezbollah/10333190-0748-52ee-8d98-3d4943490798

Israel has argued that Hezbollah uses Lebanese civilians as human shields and embeds weapons amid the population and that is why the Israeli military must strike populated areas.

In a video message released Tuesday in Hebrew, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warned people in Lebanon that “those who have a missile in their living room and a rocket in their garage will not have a home.” He said something similar in an English language video released Monday. 

Same old bollocks from them

It could stop tomorrow if the US stopped arming Israel.

[Fulham Broadway 16,825]

Israel has universal healthcare thanks to US taxpayers

Its a shame US citizens dont though

Each Israeli family has had $116 000 from US tax payers for the last 40 years

[Vesper 28,763]

3 hours ago, cosmicway said:

To blame for this is the left and the communist left and no one else.

there is no far left, let alone a communist left in the US

the furthest left federally elected Democrats are bog standard centre lefties, not a single actual socialist, let alone a commie in the entire lot

almost every single major issue that someone like Bernie Sanders or AOC push are quotidian centre left initiatives that most of the EU laready has

things like family and medical leave (the US is the only advanced nation on the planet without it)

universal healthcare (at least 40 million yanks are not covered)

univeral pre-K education

extend the enhanced Child Tax Credit (which was passed under Trump, but then the Republicans flipped and refused to renew it, along with a handful of conservative Democratic US senators like Manchin and Sinema aiding in the blocking)

etc etc

 

[Vesper 28,763]

2 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Israel has universal healthcare thanks to US taxpayers

Its a shame US citizens dont though

Each Israeli family has had $116 000 from US tax payers for the last 40 years

and you can add another 25 to 30 billion plus USD to the total since this chart ended in April, 2024

[Vesper 28,763]

Trump Shows Signs of Strength in Sun Belt Battlegrounds, Polls Find

New polls from The New York Times and Siena College showed Donald J. Trump ahead in Arizona and leading in tight races in Georgia and North Carolina.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/us/politics/times-siena-polls-arizona-georgia-north-carolina.html

 

Voters across the Sun Belt say that Donald J. Trump improved their lives when he was president — and worry that a Kamala Harris White House would not — setting the stage for an extraordinarily competitive contest in three key states, according to the latest polls from The New York Times and Siena College.

The polls found that Mr. Trump has gained a lead in Arizona and remains ahead in Georgia, two states that he lost to President Biden in 2020. But in North Carolina, which has not voted for a Democrat since 2008, Ms. Harris trails Mr. Trump by just a narrow margin.

The polls of these three states, taken from Sept. 17 to 21, presented further evidence that in a sharply divided nation, the presidential contest is shaping up to be one of the tightest in history.

[These latest Times/Siena results are some of the best results for Donald Trump in these states for weeks, Nate Cohn writes.]

Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina are on the roster of seven battleground states where the focus of both the Trump and Harris campaigns has been since Labor Day. Ms. Harris has shown relative strength in several key states across the Midwest and, most critically to her hopes of becoming president, Pennsylvania.

But Arizona, which Mr. Biden won by just over 10,400 votes in 2020, now presents a challenge for the Harris campaign. Mr. Trump is ahead, 50 percent to 45 percent, the poll found. A Times/Siena poll there in August found Ms. Harris leading by five percentage points. Latino voters, in particular, appear to have moved away from Ms. Harris, though a significant number — 10 percent — said they were now undecided. And Mr. Trump is benefiting from ticket splitting there: While Ms. Harris is trailing, the poll shows that the Democratic candidate for Senate is ahead.

In North Carolina, which Mr. Trump won by under 75,000 votes in 2020, the former president has a slim lead over Ms. Harris, drawing 49 percent of the vote compared with 47 percent for Ms. Harris. (The poll was mostly conducted before reports that Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor there, had made disturbing posts in a pornography forum, which some Republicans fear could hurt Mr. Trump in the state.) And in Georgia, a state that Mr. Biden won by just under 11,800 votes in 2020, Mr. Trump continues to have a slight lead over Ms. Harris, 49 percent to 45 percent. The margin of error in each state is between four and five percentage points.

[Follow the latest polls and see updated polling averages of the Harris vs. Trump matchup.]

The polls found that voters in this part of the country were worried about their own future and the future of the nation, suggesting that Mr. Trump’s dark campaign rhetoric — “Our country is being lost, we’re a failing nation,” he said in the debate — could be resonating with some voters. A plurality said the nation’s problems were so bad that it was in danger of failing. Republicans were much more likely to hold that unsettled view of the future than Democrats, 72 percent to 16 percent.

“Whatever road we’re on right now just, to me, does not look like it’s going to end well,” said Tyler Stembridge, 41, a fire captain in Centerville, Ga., and a Republican who said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 and intended to support him again in November.

In one striking finding, nearly four years after Mr. Trump was impeached by the House for “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the rioting of Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, respondents were evenly divided over the question over whether Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris would do a better job handling democracy.

But in one sign of how these contests remain up for grabs, about 15 percent of the electorate in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina described themselves as undecided or not definitely decided, leaving open the possibility that they could still change their minds. This group of voters had leaned toward Ms. Harris in these states in August but now lean slightly more toward Mr. Trump.

The latest round of Times/Siena polls comes as Ms. Harris has enjoyed a surge of contributions and enthusiasm among Democrats since her debate with Mr. Trump this month. And Ms. Harris continues to fare much better against Mr. Trump in the three states than President Biden did before he dropped out. A Times/Siena poll last week found Ms. Harris leading Mr. Trump by four percentage points in Pennsylvania, unchanged since before the debate. Both campaigns view that state as the most important battleground of the election.

While these three Sun Belt states have drawn a great deal of attention from both the Trump and Harris camps, North Carolina and Georgia are especially essential to the former president’s hopes of returning to the White House, analysts say. Ms. Harris could win even while losing all three of these states, though it would be difficult.

For many undecided and persuadable voters, character was a pressing concern, and that could be a challenge for Mr. Trump. Around a third of these voters said they had concerns about Mr. Trump’s personality and behavior, with another 9 percent expressing concerns about his honesty and ethics. About 7 percent of voters who were undecided or said they could still change their mind voiced concerns about Mr. Trump as a potential threat to democracy.

Concerns about Mr. Trump’s character loomed largest in North Carolina, where 44 percent of voters who were undecided or said they could still change their mind specifically cited his behavior, including erratic behavior and outlandish comments.

“The man is trouble,” said Samuel Russell, 69, a pastor in Concord, N.C., and an independent voter who said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 and intended to vote for Ms. Harris this time. “He doesn’t care who he hurts. He doesn’t care who he throws under the bus. He lies through his teeth everyday. He will not take blame for anything. He’s just not a good person.”

Far fewer of the undecided or persuadable voters cited concerns about Ms. Harris’s behavior, though 16 percent had concerns about her judgment and personality, and 12 percent spoke of concerns about her honesty and follow-through. Notably, 12 percent of these voters who said they could still change their mind said their biggest concern about Ms. Harris was around her handling of the economy.

What questions were asked? Who answers polls?

The New York Times/Siena College Poll has earned a reputation for accuracy and transparency. Our pollsters and editors are committed to explaining our methods and answering common questions. Read our Q. and A. and explore the full results of the polls:

You Ask, We Answer: How The Times/Siena Poll Is Conducted

Cross-Tabs: September 2024 Times/Siena Polls in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina

Notwithstanding Mr. Trump’s relative strengths, the polls paint a portrait of voters across these three battleground states as leaning toward more liberal policies and positions on some of the most contentious issues of the day. Two-thirds of voters in the states said they would like abortion to be always or mostly legal. (In Arizona, 58 percent of voters said they planned to back Proposition 139, which would provide a “fundamental right to abortion” in the state.)

A majority of respondents, 56 percent, said transgender people should be accepted for having the gender with which they identify. And 62 percent said they approved of the Supreme Court decision in 2015 guaranteeing a right to same-sex marriage.

At the same time, Mr. Trump’s “America First” message enjoys significant support. Just over 50 percent said America had lost out to its foreign competitors on trade, leading to a loss of jobs. Mr. Trump has promised to impose steep tariffs should he win the presidency. And a majority of respondents said the United States should be paying less attention to problems overseas and more to problems on the home front.

As in nearly every state and national poll conducted this year by Times/Siena, a plurality of voters — 31 percent — identified inflation or the economy as the top issue in deciding their vote. And 55 percent of these Sun Belt respondents said Mr. Trump would do a better job managing it, compared with 42 percent for Ms. Harris.

Abortion — an issue that Ms. Harris has focused on, assailing Mr. Trump for appointing Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion and leading to bans or restrictions in 22 states — was cited as the top issue by fewer voters.

Abortion and immigration were each cited as the top issue by 16 percent of likely voters. Respondents saw Mr. Trump as able to do a better job on immigration, 54 percent to 43 percent, and Ms. Harris as able to do a better job on abortion, 53 percent to 41 percent.

But Mr. Trump — who has sent conflicting signals on abortion — has closed the gap slightly with Ms. Harris on which candidate would do a better job on abortion rights, mostly by improving his standing on the issue with Republicans by a few points. In his debate with Ms. Harris, Mr. Trump declined to say whether, as president, he would sign a national abortion ban, contradicting his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, who had said that Mr. Trump would veto a national ban.

Ms. Harris has had a rocket ride of a candidacy since Mr. Biden dropped out and Democrats quickly rallied around her: the four-day celebratory Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the debate with Mr. Trump in Philadelphia and millions in campaign contributions that has permitted her to invest in advertising in battleground states, like these three, to shape American views of a late-arrival presidential candidate.

But with less than two months to go until Election Day, Ms. Harris has shown mixed success in selling her candidacy, at least in these three states. And the jubilant scenes from her rallies are not translating to some voters, who remain unpersuaded and unhappy. In one sign of that, women and young voters, who historically have supported Democratic candidates, are divided over whether Mr. Trump’s policies or Ms. Harris’s policies would be better for them.

Note: The unlabeled segment in gray refers to the share of likely voters who did not respond or who said they didn’t know.

Based on New York Times/Siena College polls of 713 voters in Arizona, 682 voters in Georgia and 682 voters in North Carolina conducted from Sept. 17 to 21.

 

Overall, 45 percent of respondents said Mr. Trump’s policies as president had helped them, and 34 percent said they had hurt them. “With Trump, he did what he said he was going to do," said Erik Kerr, 55, a landscaper in Tucson, Ariz., who said he planned to vote for Mr. Trump.

“I work in a field where a lot of immigrants that have come across the border, they come in and they throw a shovel in the back of their truck and they call themselves landscapers,” he said, adding, “When I’ve been doing it for 35 years, it just kind of feels a little disheartening.”

By contrast, Michelle Bell, 60, a registered nurse in Garner, N.C., and a Democrat, said that if Mr. Trump were elected to a second term, his policies would harm a wide swath of voters.

“His policies hurt people like me because his interests are basically self-centered, very extreme,” said Ms. Bell, who said she voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 and would support Ms. Harris this time. “He believes in conspiracy theories. He believes in spreading misinformation.”

The polls found that 42 percent of likely voters said Ms. Harris’s policies would hurt them, compared with 37 percent who said they would help them.

Angela Bullock, 54, a Republican living outside Charlotte, N.C., said a Harris presidency would create a “financial burden” for her.

“People coming across the border, flooding our schools with the children putting, you know, even more stress on teachers than they already have,” she said.

Both candidates are viewed more negatively than positively in the three states, but Ms. Harris’s favorability rating has fallen slightly since August, to 46 percent from 49 percent, while Mr. Trump’s popularity has remained relatively stable at about 47 percent.

The polls were mostly conducted before CNN reported that Mr. Robinson, a Trump ally who is the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, had once called himself a “black NAZI” and defended slavery in a series of postings on a pornographic website. In the immediate aftermath of the reports, Republicans were concerned that the scandal would not only cost them the race for governor but also pull down Mr. Trump in a state that he won by just over a percentage point in 2020.

Mr. Robinson, the state’s lieutenant governor, trailed his Democratic opponent, Josh Stein, 47 percent to 37 percent in this poll. The results that were collected after the revelations about Mr. Robinson leaned more toward Mr. Stein, though ultimately did not change the nature of the race.

In another high-profile state race that was included in these polls, Representative Ruben Gallego, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Arizona, is ahead of his Republican opponent, Kari Lake, 49 percent to 43 percent. The finding that voters there were more likely to support the Democrat running for Senate than the Democrat running for president was another sign of Ms. Harris’s challenges in Arizona.

The respondents who said they were splitting their ticket — supporting Mr. Gallego and Mr. Trump — were much more likely to be Latino, less college-educated and lower-income.

---

Here are the key things to know about these polls:

• Interviewers spoke with 713 registered voters in Arizona, 682 registered voters in Georgia and 682 registered voters in North Carolina from Sept. 17 to 21, 2024.

• Times/Siena polls are conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, in both English and Spanish. Overall, about 97 percent of respondents were contacted on a cellphone for these polls. You can see the exact questions that were asked and the order in which they were asked here.

• Voters are selected for the survey from a list of registered voters. The list contains information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters of each party, race and region. For this poll, interviewers placed more than 250,000 calls to more than 116,000 voters.

• To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups that are underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree. You can see more information about the characteristics of respondents and the weighted sample at the bottom of the results and methodology page, under “Composition of the Sample.”

• The margin of sampling error among likely voters is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points across the three states, plus or minus 4.4 percentage points in Arizona, plus or minus 4.6 percentage points in Georgia, and plus or minus 4.2 percentage points in North Carolina. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error. When computing the difference between two values — such as a candidate’s lead in a race — the margin of error is twice as large.

You can see full results and a detailed methodology here. If you want to read more about how and why The Times/Siena Poll is conducted, you can see answers to frequently asked questions and submit your own questions here.

 

 

the nightmare scenario is deffo still on:

[Vesper 28,763]

The Unbelievable Trump

[Vesper 28,763]

While Campaigning for Catholic Votes, Trump Echoes the Klan

Today on TAP: He’ll speak at the Al Smith Dinner, while reviving the same hateful attacks that were levied against Smith.

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-09-24-campaigning-for-catholic-votes-trump-echoes-klan/

A small-sized kerfuffle has broken out about this year’s Al Smith Dinner, an event hosted by the New York Archdiocese of the Catholic Church, to be held on October 17th. Every four years, the event usually features the two presidential candidates delivering humorous speeches, though there have been years when only one of those candidates appears. This is one of those years, as Kamala Harris’s campaign said she’ll not be attending, though Donald Trump has announced he’ll be there.

Harris’s campaign said the event conflicts with her swing-state schedule, though there’s clearly more to it than that. New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, one of Pope Benedict’s Dark Ages appointees, who’ll preside over the dinner, has been a vociferous critic of the Democratic Party for quite some time, even penning a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined “The Democrats Abandon Catholics.” As this is the first Al Smith dinner since the Supreme Court revoked American women’s right to an abortion, Harris likely concluded that the better part of valor was to steer clear.

But Trump’s appearance at the dinner is a complete outrage, though the Benedictine Dolan is surely too benighted to realize it.

The dinner is named after Al Smith—as the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928, the first Catholic to run for president. Smith was the son of immigrants; he was half Irish, one-quarter Italian, and one-quarter German. Raised in Manhattan’s impoverished Lower East Side, Smith’s secondary education took place not at a high school (for economic reasons, he had to drop out) but rather at the Fulton Fish Market. (When he served in New York’s legislature, where Republican leaders often called on their fellow Republicans to speak by introducing them with their university degrees [LLB, e.g.], Smith’s colleagues introduced him with the honorific “FFM.”) A product of Tammany Hall, though himself scrupulously honest, Smith rose to become Assembly Speaker and then New York’s governor for most of the 1920s, where he amassed a notably progressive record.

But he was Catholic, in a country that four years earlier had banned immigration from those European nations that weren’t predominantly Protestant. He was Catholic at a time when the Ku Klux Klan was at its greatest height, and when its focus was more anti-Catholic and antisemitic than it was anti-Black (which reflected its growth outside the South). He was not only Catholic but a staunch defender of equality for Blacks and Jews and every imaginable race, religion, nationality, and ethnic group that populated his beloved New York. And as he campaigned across the nation in the fall of 1928, the Klan burned crosses in the towns and cities he visited.

A typical attack on Smith that fall was that of South Carolina Protestant pastor Bob Jones Sr., who, referring to Smith’s opposition to Prohibition, nonetheless said, “I'll tell you, brother, that the big issue we’ve got to face ain’t the liquor question. I’d rather see a saloon on every corner of the South than see the foreigners elect Al Smith president.”

“Foreigners.” Immigrants from undesirable countries who had become citizens and dared to vote.

Smith responded to these attacks by extolling the unique strengths of what then was called a “melting pot” nation and excoriating the bigotry that was driving historically Democratic Southern whites to vote Republican (i.e., for Herbert Hoover). In his speech accepting his nomination, he said:

The rugged qualities of our immigrants have helped to develop our country, and their children have taken their places high in the annals of American history.

Every race has made its contribution to the betterment of America. While I stand squarely on our platform declaration that the laws which limit immigration must be preserved in full force and effect, I am heartily in favor of removing from the immigration law the harsh provision which separates families, and I am opposed to the principle of restriction based upon the figures of immigrant population contained in a census thirty-eight years old. I believe this is designed to discriminate against certain nationalities, and is an unwise policy.

(In his speech, Smith also decried U.S. military intervention in Nicaragua, and assailed corporate concentration, noting that “one-twentieth of one per cent of the 430,000 corporations in this country earned 40 per cent of their profits. Prosperity to the extent that we have it,” he continued, “is unduly concentrated and has not equitably touched the lives of the farmer, the wage-earner and the individual business man.” Smith’s speech, that is, prefigured much of the New Deal.)

Facing a huge nativist backlash, Smith was soundly defeated by Hoover.

So, consider the spectacle of Donald Trump speaking with the archbishop’s blessing at a dinner named in honor of Al Smith. It’s hard to imagine a greater antithesis to Smith’s values than Trump’s, who, along with his mini-me JD Vance, is centering his campaign on the very same nativist and bigoted appeals that Smith was victim to and that he condemned day after day. The 1928 antecedent for Trump isn’t Smith’s campaign; it’s the KKK’s.

(By the way, if you want to hear Smith’s paean to the strengths that immigrants bring to America, here’s a radio broadcast he delivered in 1943, shortly before his death. It’s also a wonderful display of the classic white working-class New York accent that has since all but disappeared.)

Edited September 24 by Vesper

[Thor 2,392]

5 hours ago, cosmicway said:

The extreme right makes tremendous pogress everywhere.
In America it is 50-50 as we know.
In Europe it's 30% to 40% on average.
Back in the eighties, nineties if one brought into conversation the antics of the extreme right wingers they called him a) funny, b) crazy, c) a probable secret commie or even highly probble.
Now it is dangerous, everyone knows.
To blame for this is the left and the communist left and no one else.
If nothing else, plain arithmetic proves this.

 

lol no. 
 

Anything that isn’t left these days is deemed far right. You really want people to sit here and believe 50% are far right? What a ridiculous statement. 
 

It’s closer to the 1-5% range.