Politics & Stuff

[cosmicway 1,313]

9 hours ago, Vesper said:

https://projects.propublica.org/christian-nationalism-origins/

In the beginning — in this case, the 1970s — some Christians feared their influence in society was waning. The Supreme Court had outlawed school-sponsored prayer and Bible readings and had legalized abortion.

In response, religious figures began to organize around the idea that they had a duty to bring Christianity back into public life. Several Christian-influenced organizations, including Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and James Dobson’s Family Research Council, were soon formed and went on to shape Republican policies for decades to come. Evangelical Protestants of different denominations joined forces and united with conservative Catholics, like Paul Weyrich, the founder of the think tank the Heritage Foundation, to advance their shared political goals. Under the banner of “pro-family politics,” the New Christian Right movement fought against abortion access, feminism and gay rights as attacks on traditional family values.

Inside a red-rimmed sports arena, more than 15,000 evangelicals gathered with conservative activists to discuss how to get Christians more involved in politics.

They had come to an event known as the National Affairs Briefing because the evangelists Billy Graham and Bill Bright reported that God had issued each of them the same warning: America had only 1,000 more days of freedom. After speaking with the pair, televangelist James Robison said God had urged him to host a conference that would “refocus the direction of America.”

The sea of believers roared as Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan took the podium.

“This is a nonpartisan gathering, and so I know that you can’t endorse me,” Reagan said. “I want you to know that I endorse you and what you are doing.”

The moment underscored an important shift in American politics, helping to cement evangelical Christians as a reliable conservative voting bloc.

But while Reagan took the spotlight, backstage in Dallas, Robert Billings, a Reagan campaign adviser who had helped found the Moral Majority, nodded to a less prominent visionary: R.J. Rushdoony, the father of a more extreme movement known as Christian Reconstructionism.

“If it weren’t for his books, none of us would be here,” Billings remarked, as recalled in an essay by Gary North, an economic historian and Rushdoony’s son-in-law.

“Nobody in the audience understands that,” replied North.

“True,” said Billings. “But we do.”

The conversation at the National Affairs Briefing shows the early influence of previously obscure elements of the Christian right that have surfaced in recent years. Other groups and figures that emerged in that period remain influential. Robison and Dobson became spiritual advisers to former President Donald Trump, helping him gain support among religious voters. The Heritage Foundation recently crafted Project 2025, a plan to concentrate executive power and promote far-right policies should Trump win the presidential election. Trump has disavowed the plan, though some members of his administration worked on it.

The idea that Christians should be in power has become a central mission of today’s Christian right, but the idea was taking root decades ago. In remarks strikingly similar to today’s rhetoric, Bob Weiner, founder of a major ministry focused on college campuses, said in 1985, “We should be the head of our school board. We should be the head of our nation. We should be the senators and the congressmen. We should be the editors of our newspapers. We should be taking over every area of life.”

As Billings and North noted backstage at the National Affairs Briefing, the New Christian Right owed a lot to another movement, known as Christian Reconstructionism. The fundamentalist movement held that all aspects of society, including government, education, economics and culture, should conform to a strict interpretation of the OId Testament. Though less recognized, Reconstructionism heavily influenced the more mainstream New Christian Right and its aspirations for Christians to infiltrate systems of power.

Up until the 1970s, the way many evangelicals believed the world would end gave them little incentive to get involved in politics. When the rapture came, the faithful would ascend to heaven, leaving the troubled world behind. That sense of remove began to fade due to the influence of Reconstructionists, who, by contrast, believed they had to build God’s kingdom before Christ would return — which required political action.

The movement’s founder, Rushdoony, received less acknowledgement from politicians, in part because of his extreme views, which included justifying slavery, denying the Holocaust and endorsing the death penalty for homosexuality and adultery. But with Reconstructionists’ prolific writings about what Bible-centered institutions should look like, including Rushdoony’s 1973 book, “The Institutes of Biblical Law,” adherents provided instruction manuals for the modern Christian right. Reconstructionists wanted to eliminate public education by slowly dismantling it, and they led the way in developing Christian schools and promoting homeschooling. Thanks in large part to that leadership, their principles spread.

Amid the swampy summer air, scores of evangelical preachers and Christian leaders crowded onto the stone steps of the Lincoln Memorial to sign “A Manifesto of the Christian Church.” The document detailed their beliefs and the policies they would promote, such as fighting abortion, homosexuality and the teaching of evolution as a “monopoly viewpoint in public schools.”

A group called the Coalition on Revival had brought representatives from many denominations to the memorial. Its mission: to “rebuild civilization on the principles of the Bible.” Founder Jay Grimstead anticipated they’d have more political success by uniting evangelicals across denominations and persuasions.

“Christians are everywhere, and we’re going to exert our influence in all walks of life,” Grimstead bellowed to the crowd.

The Coalition on Revival helped evangelicals set aside their differing end-times beliefs and move toward political action by focusing on Reconstructionists’ ideas for reshaping society. Positions articulated in the manifesto, such as denouncing the “state usurpation of parental rights,” foreshadowed some of today’s policy debates.

In the 1980s, as evangelicals became more active in politics and megachurches sprang up across the country, some charismatic Christians — a subset of Protestants who incorporate supernatural elements like faith healing and prophecies — were increasingly moving away from traditional denominations and into independent churches. Those churches were connected by informal networks in which some leaders were considered apostles and prophets. The shift captivated C. Peter Wagner, a seminary professor who specialized in helping churches grow. He considered it the biggest change in Christianity in centuries, called it the New Apostolic Reformation and helped it flourish.

Starting in the late 1990s, Wagner held seminars to shape its tenets and cultivate new leaders. Key to his success was his partnership with Cindy Jacobs, a spiritual leader considered a prophet by some, who helped Wagner understand the world of charismatics.

NAR leaders adopted dominionism and promoted it to their followers. They also advanced the idea of “strategic spiritual warfare,” in which church leaders directed prayers to battle demons they believe control physical territory and influence world affairs. The rapid growth in independent charismatic churches has helped NAR become a formidable political force on the right. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republicans’ vice presidential nominee in 2008, attended a church that frequently welcomed NAR leaders to give guest sermons. But the NAR rose to national prominence in 2016 after their leaders united behind Trump.

The mob stormed the Capitol. They beat police officers, smashed windows and flooded inside, disrupting the certification of the 2020 presidential election. Outside, on the steps and the scaffolding set up for the inauguration, the crowd seethed. The air filled with tear gas and shouts of “1776” and “Hang Mike Pence.” A gallows loomed on the lawn.

And on a stage by the southeast corner of the Capitol, a group of people looked on, blowing shofars and speaking in tongues. They raised their hands toward the sky as they prayed. While some of their followers joined the assault on the building, these leaders of the NAR stayed put, battling in the spiritual realm. One man intoned that he saw a massive serpent with its tail over the Senate and asked God to dispatch angels to yank the demon out.

Flags rippled throughout the crowd: U.S., Confederate, Gadsden, militia and Trump flags — and one used by the NAR. White with a green pine tree and the words “An Appeal to Heaven,” the flag became associated with the movement thanks to Dutch Sheets, an NAR leader known as an apostle, who began promoting it in 2013. Colonists had flown the flag during the American Revolution. The NAR sees it as a symbol of spiritual revolution, a visual prayer for God to create a truly Christian nation. One rioter used the flag to push past police. Another entered the Capitol wearing the flag as a cape. Police later recovered it, soiled with blood and mace.

Sheets had not traveled to Washington, but as the riot raged on, he led a prayer call online with several thousand people listening. Someone held a phone to a microphone so Sheets’ words could ring out at the Capitol.

“We ask you, by your spirit, to hover over the Capitol now and bring order from the chaos,” he said. “This violence, and the spirit of violence and the spirit of wrath, does not produce righteousness. We take authority over it now.”

Jacobs later posted on social media that she condemned “what happened inside the Capitol.” In a statement provided by his ministry, Sheets said, “Those conducting the gathering were concerned when the unrest began. They asked me to join them in praying for peace and protection for all present.”

The NAR helped popularize the concept that Christians should conquer the seven spheres of society: family, religion, government, arts and entertainment, business, education and media. The idea took off in the 2010s when Lance Wallnau, a pastor considered an NAR prophet, repackaged the concept as the Seven Mountain Mandate. Wallnau wrote he learned about the concept when Loren Cunningham, an evangelical leader, told him that God had separately given Cunningham and Bright the same seven arenas in a message decades before. It was an evolution of Reconstructionists’ dominion theology.

Wallnau has popularized the mandate into a powerful framework for conservative evangelicals to influence all aspects of society by taking “territory” and, as he told an audience in September, “penetrating the systems and the culture and the organizational environment of what’s around you in a community.” The mandate has guided some Christians as they built media empires, Christian schools and businesses, and as they sought elected office.

On a hot fall day, a couple hundred evangelical Christians sporting shirts and hats with Trump slogans and Bible verses gathered on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. For hours, they communed inside a cavernous convention center. They worshiped. They sang. They swayed and spoke in tongues. They listened as speakers shared prophecies and conspiracy theories about election integrity. They spoke of the devil and demons and their individual mandate to cast out the forces of evil by voting for Trump. At midday, the Republican nominee for vice president, JD Vance, graced the stage, lending the event the campaign’s imprimatur.

It was the fifth stop of Wallnau’s swing-state Courage Tour, which blended charismatic Christianity, conspiracy theories and conservative politics in an effort to deliver Trump back to the White House.

Years earlier, during the 2016 campaign, Wallnau visited the then-candidate at Trump Tower. He claimed that after he left, God told him to read Isaiah 45: “Thus says the Lord to Cyrus, His anointed, whose right hand I have held — to subdue nations before him.”

Just as God had chosen the heathen Persian emperor Cyrus to restore the Jewish people from exile, Wallnau wrote in an October 2016 op-ed, God had chosen Trump to restore conservative Christians’ cultural power.

“I believe the 45th president is meant to be an Isaiah 45 Cyrus,” he wrote.

Wallnau and others saw it as a prophecy that justified evangelicals’ support for Trump, a twice-divorced man with a history of adultery, who bragged about sexual assault and whom hundreds of people said had cheated them in business dealings. Wallnau’s prophecy played a critical role in coalescing evangelical voters behind Trump.

Christianity is certainly the most anti-Trump reliigion ever.
Jesus Christ may have been a communist - even though communists hate him:

If he is the son of God as we believe then he knows everything and he also knows about communism so he is Social Democrat like Gerhard Schroeder - Segolene Royal.
If not then he was a misguided communist.

The snipet "give unto Caesar" does n't prove anything, like the capitalists think it does.
But whatever the case, a Christian supporter of Trump is an anomaly - these people will burn in hell and made into sish kebap.

But here is the catch.
Christians are against sex.
Like I said before my head at school who was a devout orthodox believed fizzy orange drink was too sexy - he allowed only blue bottles.
We of course did not follow.
So this anti-sex lot have commandeered the situation and you see what you see.

 

 

Edited October 31 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,699]

How the U.S. Election Matters for the Rest of the World

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/31/world/us-election-world.html

The world doesn’t pick the U.S. president, but it will live with the consequences of whether Americans elect Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald J. Trump. It’s a decision that will have globe-spanning consequences, from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine to climate change and global trade.

The world wants to know: What kind of superpower will America be in the years to come? Was Trump an aberration, or was President Biden?

I spoke with my fellow Times foreign correspondents about what’s at stake. One thing is clear: This election polarizes the world as much as it does the United States — but sometimes in unexpected ways.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Vesper 28,699]

Inflation Is Basically Back to Normal. Why Do Voters Still Feel Blah?

Consumers still give the economy poor marks, though the job market is strong and price increases have faded for months.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/31/business/economy/inflation-prices-economy.html

Updated inflation data set for release on Thursday are expected to show that price increases have more or less returned to a normal pace. Credit...James Estrin/The New York Times

Grocery inflation has been cooling sharply, but Tamira Flamer, 27, says she hasn’t noticed. What she knows is that paper plates and meat remain more expensive than they were a few years ago.

“I feel like it’s been rough,” said Ms. Flamer, a mother of two who drives for Amazon, while standing outside a Dollar General near her home in Norristown, Pa., on Sunday.

Ms. Flamer, an undecided voter who says she is most focused on economic issues, underscores a challenge for Vice President Kamala Harris as the presidential election barrels toward its final days.

Voters say that they are very focused on the economy as they head to the polls, yet surveys suggest that they feel relatively glum about its recent track record. That could hurt Ms. Harris while helping her opponent, former President Donald J. Trump.

The lingering pessimism is also something of a puzzle. The job market has been chugging along, although more slowly, overall growth has been healthy and even inflation is more or less back to normal. Inflation data released on Thursday showed that prices have increased by a mild 2.1 percent over the past year.

Confidence has crept back up as inflation has cooled, but it remains much lower than it was the last time the economy looked as solid as it does today. That is true for both the University of Michigan’s confidence index and a separate measure produced by the Conference Board, an organization that conducts business and economic research.

Here’s a glimpse at what might be happening.

Consumers may focus more on price levels than price changes.

There’s a simple reason that many people still feel iffy about the economy: sticker shock.

Although prices are now climbing much more slowly, costs for necessities like groceries and housing are much higher today than they were a few years ago. Many households still feel that burn when they go to pay the bills.

In fact, surveys show that consumers correctly understand that inflation is slowing. The University of Michigan’s inflation expectations measure, and another produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, both show that consumer expectations for future inflation have been slowly moving down.

But they are also annoyed that prices are higher than they were before the pandemic; that levels are up, even if they are no longer rising as quickly.

“It’s not that they’ve lost touch with reality,” said Joanne Hsu, director of consumer surveys at the University of Michigan, explaining that consumers often raised the issue of high price levels during their interviews. “High prices continue to weigh down their personal finances, and that remains very frustrating.”

Wages have climbed faster than prices for many consumers, but that is not true across the board. And people tend to see raises as something that they have earned, whereas they see price increases as something that is being done to them — perhaps even unfairly.

Housing affordability is also bad.

The grocery store is not the only place where prices are noticeably higher. Housing costs have climbed a lot in recent years. And for people who are hoping to buy a first home, affording one has become much more difficult since 2020.

That’s partly because of Federal Reserve policy. Central bankers lifted interest rates sharply in 2022 and 2023 to restrain demand and wrestle inflation back under control. Those elevated official borrowing costs feed into higher mortgage rates — making it much pricier to buy a home on borrowed money.

And while the Fed cut interest rates in September, and is widely expected to lower them at least one more time this year, analysts do not expect the central bank to cut rates to the rock-bottom levels that prevailed in 2020 and throughout the early 2010s.

The reasons for that are positive: America’s economy is doing well. Even if consumers say they feel bad in surveys, they have shown a willingness to keep spending, and U.S. growth is much stronger than what countries like Germany or China are experiencing.

Given that, the Fed may not need to set rates at historically low levels to keep activity chugging along, the way it did before.

“We’re not going back to 3 percent mortgage rates — even 4 percent is a pipe dream,” Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate, said in an email. “The path of mortgage rates will depend on economic growth and inflation, but the new normal over the next couple years will be mortgage rates in the fives and sixes.”

Neither interest rates nor home prices are part of inflation — rents are — but housing is both the typical household’s biggest expense and a crucial avenue for building wealth and eventually getting ahead in America. That makes it important for the nation’s economic psyche.

There’s a clear partisan divide.

Some of the sour attitude boils down to simple partisanship.

Republicans tend to be much more optimistic when a Republican is in office. Democrats also tend to be slightly happier when a Democrat is in office. But they have not displayed the same kind of night-and-day difference.

Since President Biden has been in office, Democrat’s confidence level in the University of Michigan index has been about 15 percent higher on average than it was when Mr. Trump was incumbent. Republican confidence, by contrast, has taken a staggering 56 percent hit.

And the bulk of that decline happened right after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election, though there was a smaller, second leg down after inflation began to pick up.

But partisan preferences do not simply shape economic confidence. Sentiment could help to feed into politics. And that’s one reason today’s wobbly confidence matters.

The end result could shape the election.

Surveys suggest that many Americans are prioritizing the economy as they think about their vote. A national New York Times/Siena College poll of the nation’s likely electorate taken in late October found that 27 percent of respondents had ranked the economy as the most important issue in deciding their vote this election — making it the No. 1 issue in America.

Another 4 percent of voters specifically prioritized inflation and the cost of living, more than those who prioritized foreign policy, taxes or climate change.

Both candidates are focused on prices as they head into the race’s final stretch. Ms. Harris’s campaign subtitled its economic blueprint “A Plan to Lower Costs and Create an Opportunity Economy.” Mr. Trump has been promising to cut costs by lowering gas prices to less than $2 per gallon. (Industry experts have serious doubts about whether policy could bring gas prices down that much.)

This week’s economic reports are final glimpses at the economic data voters will get as they head to the polls, putting Thursday’s inflation figures and jobs numbers set for release on Friday in the spotlight.

This could clearly be an economy election — but a complicated one, as inflation cools, growth remains solid and Americans, nevertheless, remain unconvinced.

Edited October 31 by Vesper

[NikkiCFC 7,926]

So even Jesus Christ was a commie. That's it guys, shut down the internet. 

[cosmicway 1,313]

2 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

So even Jesus Christ was a commie. That's it guys, shut down the internet. 

The commies could have declared him one of theirs.
But like Robespierre of the French revolution they did n't.
The pope and the patriarchs declared themselves above the incorruptible and above Stalin and that was unacceptable.

[Vesper 28,699]

Trump is going around cosplaying as a garbabe man, but still wearing a dress shirt and a tie.

madness

 

Trump's truck stunt backfires as he misses door handle twice and nearly falls over

Donald Trump was seen struggling to open a truck door and nearly fell over in a humiliating video from his garbage stunt in Green Bay, Wisconsin

https://www.express.co.uk/news/us/1969578/donald-trump-truck-stunt-backfires

 

 

[cosmicway 1,313]

1 minute ago, Vesper said:

Trump is going around cosplaying as a garbabe man, but still wearing a dress shirt and a tie.

madness

 

Trump's truck stunt backfires as he misses door handle twice and nearly falls over

Donald Trump was seen struggling to open a truck door and nearly fell over in a humiliating video from his garbage stunt in Green Bay, Wisconsin

https://www.express.co.uk/news/us/1969578/donald-trump-truck-stunt-backfires

 

 

He copied Annegrette Karrenbauer of CDU who was dressing herself as cleaning lady.

 

[cosmicway 1,313]

POLLSTERS METHODS - SIMULATION
-------------------------------------------
I ran computer simulations with random numbers and with conditions similar to those of the coming American election.
The purpose was to measure the effectiveness of swing theory v. the simple method.
My results show that for small-medium sample sizes the swing method is definitely better.
But as the sample size increases the simple counting method tends to get better and even surpass the swing method in accuracy.

Edited October 31 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,699]

Sweden’s libraries caught in a political row about drag story hour

https://theconversation.com/swedens-libraries-caught-in-a-political-row-about-drag-story-hour-241159

Drag story hour is “nothing other than indoctrination and sexualisation of children”, claimed Sweden Democrats politician Jonathan Sager during a session of the local parliament in Kalmar, southern Sweden, in 2022. He was reacting to plans to organise a drag story hour event at the local library, where drag queens would read to children, challenging norms of gender and sexuality. He called (unsuccessfully) for the event to be cancelled.

For someone not familiar with recent political trends in Sweden, Sager’s view may seem out of character for a country known for its tolerance and progressive approach towards sexual minorities. But just like other countries, Sweden is experiencing a backlash against drag story hour events. Public libraries have repeatedly been the target of hatred and threats from radical right actors, including politicians. Culture wars, often associated with the polarised political climate of the US, have now firmly taken root in Scandinavia.

In the US, objections against drag queen story hour form part of a larger wave of protests against LGBTQ+ content in libraries, also manifested in attempts to have certain books banned. Although book bans are not as common in Sweden, tensions have arisen over what children read and who reads to them.

As a result, public libraries, and especially their reading promotion activities for children, are now at the centre of polarising conflicts between the radical right and its opponents.

Sweden is far from immune to the global growth of far-right influence. Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna or SD), became the second largest party in the national parliament following the most recent election in 2022. The current government depends on their support to function. The party has neo-nazi roots and, despite cleaning up appearances, its representatives still push overtly anti-immigration, white supremacist viewpoints.

Like many parties of the radical right, SD promotes a conservative view on culture, gender and family, so its opposition to drag story hour is not surprising. However, there is a deeper conflict over the future of Swedish society at play here, too.

We looked at five instances of political conflict around drag events at libraries in Sweden, finding common themes of dispute over culture and what constitutes a good society.

‘Defending’ our children

In Kalmar, as well as in Trelleborg, another municipality in southern Sweden, local Sweden Democrats have (unsuccessfully) tried to block drag story hours at libraries by arguing that they were “defending” children. In Kalmar, the organiser was accused of “sexualising children”, as though there is something inherently sexual about a drag queen wearing a dress. Sager argued that material that is “gender creative, gender critical or norm critical” should not be used for events involving children.

Historically, reading promotion activities are part of this fear of harmful influence. For instance, certain types of fiction have been portrayed as having a demoralising effect, leading to initiatives that encourage children to read “quality literature” instead. In Sweden, there is less of a debate around the content of children’s literature, so there aren’t US-style arguments about banning books. But there are heated conversations around the act of reading, especially with children.

Reading together teaches children to support democratic values, such as by fostering empathy and understanding. Drag story hour fits well with this perspective because it promotes values of acceptance, diversity and positive self-identification. These are values that are expressions of the characteristic emphasis on equity and pluralism in Swedish cultural policy.

But by ticking these boxes, drag story hour clashes with the politics of the radical right, making the conflict emblematic of a larger tussle over the direction of Nordic cultural policy.

The dilemma of the safe space

The dispute around drag story hour has also inflamed arguments about the meaning of safety in a modern society. Is the safest option to bring security into a library or does that very security compromise the library as a safe space?

In the municipalities of Älmhult and Olofström, in southern Sweden, libraries decided against holding drag story hours because of safety concerns. They felt that bringing in guards was not an option because that would be “completely at odds” with the openness of the library. Visible security measures were seen as incompatible with being a safe space.

In Malmö, drag story times went ahead with security guards in place. Here, a decision had been made that security measures enabled the library to be a safe space via drag story hour.

The controversies over drag queen story telling events at public libraries in Sweden continues. Recently, a drag queen story group filed a charge against 106 people – including five SD politicians – for hate crimes. At the same time, public libraries in many parts of Sweden continue to report successful story telling arrangements in the face of opposition from the radical right.

Edited October 31 by Vesper

[cosmicway 1,313]

6 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Sweden’s libraries caught in a political row about drag story hour

https://theconversation.com/swedens-libraries-caught-in-a-political-row-about-drag-story-hour-241159

Drag story hour is “nothing other than indoctrination and sexualisation of children”, claimed Sweden Democrats politician Jonathan Sager during a session of the local parliament in Kalmar, southern Sweden, in 2022. He was reacting to plans to organise a drag story hour event at the local library, where drag queens would read to children, challenging norms of gender and sexuality. He called (unsuccessfully) for the event to be cancelled.

For someone not familiar with recent political trends in Sweden, Sager’s view may seem out of character for a country known for its tolerance and progressive approach towards sexual minorities. But just like other countries, Sweden is experiencing a backlash against drag story hour events. Public libraries have repeatedly been the target of hatred and threats from radical right actors, including politicians. Culture wars, often associated with the polarised political climate of the US, have now firmly taken root in Scandinavia.

In the US, objections against drag queen story hour form part of a larger wave of protests against LGBTQ+ content in libraries, also manifested in attempts to have certain books banned. Although book bans are not as common in Sweden, tensions have arisen over what children read and who reads to them.

As a result, public libraries, and especially their reading promotion activities for children, are now at the centre of polarising conflicts between the radical right and its opponents.

Sweden is far from immune to the global growth of far-right influence. Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna or SD), became the second largest party in the national parliament following the most recent election in 2022. The current government depends on their support to function. The party has neo-nazi roots and, despite cleaning up appearances, its representatives still push overtly anti-immigration, white supremacist viewpoints.

Like many parties of the radical right, SD promotes a conservative view on culture, gender and family, so its opposition to drag story hour is not surprising. However, there is a deeper conflict over the future of Swedish society at play here, too.

We looked at five instances of political conflict around drag events at libraries in Sweden, finding common themes of dispute over culture and what constitutes a good society.

‘Defending’ our children

In Kalmar, as well as in Trelleborg, another municipality in southern Sweden, local Sweden Democrats have (unsuccessfully) tried to block drag story hours at libraries by arguing that they were “defending” children. In Kalmar, the organiser was accused of “sexualising children”, as though there is something inherently sexual about a drag queen wearing a dress. Sager argued that material that is “gender creative, gender critical or norm critical” should not be used for events involving children.

Historically, reading promotion activities are part of this fear of harmful influence. For instance, certain types of fiction have been portrayed as having a demoralising effect, leading to initiatives that encourage children to read “quality literature” instead. In Sweden, there is less of a debate around the content of children’s literature, so there aren’t US-style arguments about banning books. But there are heated conversations around the act of reading, especially with children.

Reading together teaches children to support democratic values, such as by fostering empathy and understanding. Drag story hour fits well with this perspective because it promotes values of acceptance, diversity and positive self-identification. These are values that are expressions of the characteristic emphasis on equity and pluralism in Swedish cultural policy.

But by ticking these boxes, drag story hour clashes with the politics of the radical right, making the conflict emblematic of a larger tussle over the direction of Nordic cultural policy.

The dilemma of the safe space

The dispute around drag story hour has also inflamed arguments about the meaning of safety in a modern society. Is the safest option to bring security into a library or does that very security compromise the library as a safe space?

In the municipalities of Älmhult and Olofström, in southern Sweden, libraries decided against holding drag story hours because of safety concerns. They felt that bringing in guards was not an option because that would be “completely at odds” with the openness of the library. Visible security measures were seen as incompatible with being a safe space.

In Malmö, drag story times went ahead with security guards in place. Here, a decision had been made that security measures enabled the library to be a safe space via drag story hour.

The controversies over drag queen story telling events at public libraries in Sweden continues. Recently, a drag queen story group filed a charge against 106 people – including five SD politicians – for hate crimes. At the same time, public libraries in many parts of Sweden continue to report successful story telling arrangements in the face of opposition from the radical right.

What do they say ?
Tell us a story.

[Vesper 28,699]

lol, fucking snowflake male RWers

the motherfuckers think they own their wives, and can treat them like chattel

and far too man RW women gutlessly go along

Conservatives in furor over Julia Roberts ad

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4964265-kamala-harris-ad-julia-roberts/

A new Harris-Walz campaign ad voiced by actor Julia Roberts encourages women to vote for Vice President Harris in the presidential election, even if their husbands are backing former President Trump.

The Roberts ad also alludes to abortion rights, which is seen as a pivotal issue in a race that has seen Trump with big polling leads among male voters and Harris with a large lead among female voters.

“In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want. And no one will ever know,” Roberts says in the ad as a woman on screen meets up with her husband after casting her ballot for Harris.

The voter winks at a fellow female voter as her husband asks if she made the “right choice.”

Republicans have responded to the video with outrage, with some claiming that a wife lying about her vote is as bad as an affair.

“If I found out Emma was going to the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair,” Fox News host Jesse Watters said on air Wednesday in a clip highlighted by Mediaite. 

Other GOP members including Charlie Kirk said the thought was “nauseating.”

In criticizing the ad, he discussed a husband working hard to afford his wife’s lifestyle, and then said a wife who lied to her husband about whom she backed would amount to undermining her husband.

“I think it’s so gross. I think it’s so nauseating where this wife is wearing the American hat, she’s coming in with her sweet husband who probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go you know and have a nice life and provide to the family, and then she lies to him saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m gonna vote for Trump,’ and then she votes for Kamala Harris as her little secret in the voting booth,” Kirk fumed to radio host Megyn Kelly.

“Kamala Harris and her team believe that there will be millions of women that undermine their husbands and do so in a way that it’s not detectable in the polling,” he added. 

In response to his statements, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) called Kirk a “twit.”

“Listen to this twit make Donald Trump’s closing argument. Women, you know what to do. #VoteKamala,” Cheney wrote in a post on the social platform X.

Cheney is one of the highest-profile Republicans backing Harris for president.

 

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953 Billion Dollars has been wiped out from the US stock market today

The USA and world economy fully crashing just before Halloween night ends in USA eastern time.

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CNN apologises for pager comment by conservative panellist to Mehdi Hasan

Ryan James Girdusky removed from NewsNight show after telling fellow guest ‘I hope your beeper doesn’t go off’

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/29/cnn-apologises-pager-comment-ryan-james-girdusky-mehdi-hasan

CNN has apologised to its viewers after a panellist on its NewsNight programme made derogatory remarks implying that a fellow guest on the show, the broadcaster Mehdi Hasan, was a terrorist.

Ryan James Girdusky, a conservative commentator, told Hasan, a Guardian US columnist and former host on MSNBC, who is Muslim, that he hoped his “beeper doesn’t go off”, in an apparent reference to Israel’s targeting of Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon with exploding pagers last month. The wave of coordinated explosions killed 12 and injured thousands.

“Did your guest just say I should be killed on live TV?” Hasan asked the show’s anchor, Abby Phillip.

After a commercial break, Phillip issued an on-air apology to Hasan and viewers and said Girdusky had been removed from the show.

“I want to apologise to Mehdi Hasan for what was said at this table. It was completely unacceptable,” she said. “I want to apologise to the viewers at home.”

 

In a subsequent statement, CNN said there was “zero room for racism or bigotry at CNN or on our air” and that Girdusky “will not be welcomed back at our network”. Hasan retweeted the statement on X.

Earlier in their heated exchange, Hasan had said that if people on the far right “don’t want to be called Nazis, stop doing, stop saying”. Girdusky interjected by saying Hasan was called an “antisemite more than anyone at this table”.

After Hasan said he was used to being labelled an antisemite due to his support for the Palestinian people, Girdusky said, “Well, I hope your beeper doesn’t go off.” He attempted to apologise amid crosstalk and sought to justify his comment by indicating he thought Hasan said he supported Hamas.

In a later post on X, however, Girdusky appeared to double down on a more antagonistic approach. “You can stay on CNN if you falsely call every Republican a Nazi and have taken money from Qatar-funded media,” he said. “Apparently you can’t go on CNN if you make a joke. I’m glad America gets to see what CNN stands for.”

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24 minutes ago, KEVINAA said:

 

953 Billion Dollars has been wiped out from the US stock market today

The USA and world economy fully crashing just before Halloween night ends in USA eastern time.

last 24 hours

last year

Edited October 31 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,699]

[Vesper 28,699]

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-10-31-refusing-vote-for-harris-mass-immigrant-deportations/

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents transfer an immigrant after an early-morning raid in Duarte, California, June 6, 2022.

With polls showing that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are running even in nearly every swing state, this election will turn on the decisions of very small subsets of voters. One of those subsets surely isn’t contemplating voting for Trump, but may end up electing him anyway.

I refer to those voters so understandably appalled by Israel’s war on Gaza and the toll it’s taken in innocent lives that they may not vote, or vote for Jill Stein, as a way of protesting the Biden administration’s continued provision of arms for Netanyahu’s war, and Harris’s refusal to cleanly break with that policy.

It’s by no means clear how not voting for Harris will stop Israel’s destruction of Gaza and the attendant slaughter of innocent lives. It is perfectly clear, however, that it will imperil millions of innocent lives right here in the USA should it lead to a Trump victory.

I refer to the immigrants among us whose forced deportation is the fundamental plank in Trump’s platform, the one issue he stresses in every one of his otherwise disjointed speeches, the sine qua non of his pledge to make America great again. To accomplish that deportation, he’s made clear he’d order the National Guard to sweep through immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, and might well order the Army to clear out areas like the Bronx, East Los Angeles, and Chicago’s West Side as well.

The government’s count of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. is roughly 11 million, but Trump and JD Vance routinely inflate that number to 20 million or more. And even in the very, very, very unlikely event that deportations are confined just to the truly undocumented, they would still separate immigrant parents from citizen children, and banish Dreamers—undocumented immigrants brought here as children by their parents—to countries that are utterly alien to them. At minimum, the process will destroy hundreds of thousands of families and devastate entire communities. The toll in innocent lives—not killed, but effectively crippled—will be huge.

And this is the most predictable consequence of a Trump victory. His demonization of immigrants is the central message of his campaign, and a campaign (inevitably entailing some violence) to deport them follows as the night the day.

I don’t doubt that those campaigns will meet serious resistance in our cities, as those opposed to them will take to the streets in very large numbers. I also don’t doubt that the ranks of those demonstrators will include some of those whose opposition to the U.S. military aid that has enabled Israel’s war on Palestinians impelled them not to vote for Kamala. After all, if they’ve refused to vote for Harris due to their revulsion and rage at the loss of innocent lives, the assault on immigrants will likely lead them to feel comparable revulsion and rage.

It’s by no means clear, however, that those imperiled immigrants will welcome those Harris-abstainers to the ranks of their supporters. They may reason—actually, they almost surely will reason—that progressives who didn’t vote for Harris didn’t think that the innocent lives of the immigrants among them mattered very much. Some of them might even conclude that those Harris-refuseniks didn’t give a flying fuck about them.

This is something that voters infuriated by U.S. Gaza policy and still wrestling with how to vote might want to think about.

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Edited October 31 by Vesper

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Saudi foreign minister denounces Israel's north Gaza assault as genocide

RIYADH (Reuters) -Saudi Arabia denounced Israeli attacks in northern Gaza as genocide on Thursday, telling foreign investors that some bilateral agreements it has been negotiating with Washington are "not that tied" to normalisation of its relations with Israel.

 

Speaking on stage at an investment conference in Riyadh, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said Israeli actions in northern Gaza could only be described as a form a genocide that was feeding a cycle of violence.

He reiterated the kingdom's position that it would not recognise Israel without a Palestinian state, adding on that proposed step, Saudi Arabia is "quite happy to wait until the situation is amenable," before moving ahead with normalisation.

"We look at just what's happening now in north (Gaza) where we have a complete blockade of any access for humanitarian goods coupled with a continued military assault without any real pathway for civilians to find shelter, to find safe zones, that can only be described as a form of genocide," he said.

"It is certainly against humanitarian law, international humanitarian law, and is feeding a continuing cycle of violence."