Vesper 30,233 Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 (edited) Welcome to the era of Daily Mail socialism Morgan McSweeney’s relationship with Britain’s most important tabloid is as ideological as it is strategic. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2025/04/welcome-to-the-era-of-daily-mail-socialism On the staff of the Morning Lark, the fictional tabloid that crops up in a few Martin Amis novels, readers of the paper are known as its “wankers”. Editors ask, “Is this of genuine interest to our wankers?” The political positions of the Lark are weighed up, “out of deference to the deepest personal considerations of our wankers”. Any drop in readership is described as “losing wankers”. The readers aren’t seen simply as a vulgar blob either, but a genuine social stratum. Clint Smoker, one of the Lark’s senior reporters, explains: “The quality broadsheets are aimed at the establishment and the intelligentsia. The downmarket tabloids are aimed at the proletariat.” The Lark – aimed at “the unemployed” – is a second cousin to the Daily Star, dealing in royal news, football news and pornography (ideally all three at once). Couched between solidarity and contempt, this language would surely not be found in a real newsroom. But the truth in this satire is that newspapers have types. Where Mondeo Man is a psephological fantasy, newspapers have what we might call imagined communities, vast numbers of readers who otherwise know nothing about each other, yet breathe the same cultural snorkel of information, opinion and sudoku. And in an age of low circulations, as newspapers fall back on their core constituencies, these communities are only more pronounced. This makes them a vital subject for political study. Where else can strategists find herds of voters who form one inky silhouette? You don’t have to turn to satire to find the Sun’s type, at least you didn’t during the 1980s when its readership rallied to the side of Margaret Thatcher. According to Chris Horrie and Peter Chippindale’s history of the paper, Stick It Up Your Punter!, its greatest and most terrible editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, summarised it during an office argument over an article on the legalisation of marijuana: “You don’t understand the readers, do you, eh? He’s the bloke you see in the pub – a right old fascist, wants to send the w*** back, buy his poxy council house, he’s afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates the queers and weirdos and drug dealers. He doesn’t want to hear about that stuff!” In so far as the Daily Mail imagines its community, Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s chief of staff, very much wants it for his own. “If I could marry a front page, it would be this one,” McSweeney said last year, after the Mail splashed “Starmer: UK nuclear deterrent is safe in my hands”. The quote is from Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund’s book Get In, and the echo of Thatcher’s declaring the NHS “safe in our hands” to ward off fears of privatisation was unmissable. If McSweeney did marry that front page, his head might have recently been turned by: “Finally! Patients to be put before NHS bureaucrats” (this represented the Mail ’s enthusiastic response to the abolition of NHS England). Things have been tougher between Labour and the Mail since late March: Rachel Reeves’ Spring Statement has been pilloried harder than Prince Harry’s charity shenanigans in its pages. But when the PM contributes a Mail op-ed telling its readers they “are RIGHT to be angry about illegal immigration”, as he did recently, we know who McSweeney’s talking to. For some of Labour’s modern constituency, the McSweeney turn is viewed as betrayal. The public sector is their people; institutions are there to be preserved, not flattened. And when it comes to Starmer’s welfare reforms and maintenance of the two-child benefit cap – that’s not Labour behaviour. There’s a reason they’re called “Tory cuts”. But viewed from the bloody crossroads where Fleet Street and Whitehall meet, British political history isn’t that straightforward. Sneering at Michael Foot’s advocacy for the Falklands War in Iron Britannia, Anthony Barnett spoke of “Daily Express socialism”. Linking Foot’s invective against Leopoldo Galtieri to his days on the Express during the Second World War, Barnett’s aside captures a tradition that is vivid in Labour Party history. It is patriotic yet unafraid of class warfare; it’s redistributive, but cheerful about defence spending; and it interprets public opinion instead of trying to patronise it. McSweeney, for instance, is mindful of polling showing the two-child benefit cap, loathed by Labour MPs, is popular among voters. With the ascendancy of McSweeney’s Labour Party, we are seeing this Labour tradition in its 21st-century form. This is the age of Daily Mail socialism. And its enemies are as easily personified as its Middle England constituents. McSweeney again: “Why should Labour be the party of the judges? Why should we be the party of the BBC?” For the parts of the left that turned Brenda Hale into an anti-Brexit hero, for the public-sector workers who reliably vote Labour, such talk will seem heretical. This is the most potentially transformative part of what was once called the Starmer project. McSweeney accepts the criticisms of progressives as his premises. The left, he believes, has abandoned “its people”; it no longer speaks the national demotic; it must accept the ambient social conservatism in British culture if it is to achieve its goals. Reorienting Labour around these axioms might be seen as McSweeney’s historic mission – copy of the Mail folded under his arm. But in a Labour Party of declining popularity, the question for its strategist remains (in the unreconstructed language of the Morning Lark) : who are the Labour Party’s true wankers? And can one bunch be so easily exchanged for another? [See also: Putin’s endgame] Edited April 4 by Vesper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulham Broadway 17,335 Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 Latest Israeli airstrikes kill 100 Palestinians -mostly children at school The attack on the school in the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City has been branded a "heinous massacre" Israel’s military said the stepped-up offensive is intended to pressure Hamas and eventually expel the militant group, stressing it was a "Hamas command and control centre" in the Gaza Strip. Israel gave the same reason — striking Hamas militants in a "command and control centre" — for attacking a United Nations building used as a shelter on Wednesday, killing at least 17 people. AP Press The UN was set up after WW2 to protect the same people committing genocide now Fernando 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,233 Posted April 5 Share Posted April 5 I was a British tourist trying to leave America. Then I was detained, shackled and sent to an immigration detention centre Graphic artist Rebecca Burke was on the trip of a lifetime. But as she tried to leave the US she was stopped, interrogated and branded an illegal alien by ICE. Now back home, she tells others thinking of going to Trump’s America: don’t do it https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre Just before the graphic artist Rebecca Burke left Seattle to travel to Vancouver, Canada, on 26 February, she posted an image of a rough comic to Instagram. “One part of travelling that I love is seeing glimpses of other lives,” read the bubble in the first panel, above sketches of cosy homes: crossword puzzle books, house plants, a lit candle, a steaming kettle on a gas stove. Burke had seen plenty of glimpses of other lives over the six weeks she had been backpacking in the US. She had been travelling on her own, staying on homestays free of charge in exchange for doing household chores, drawing as she went. For Burke, 28, it was absolute freedom. Within hours of posting that drawing, Burke got to see a much darker side of life in America, and far more than a glimpse. When she tried to cross into Canada, Canadian border officials told her that her living arrangements meant she should be travelling on a work visa, not a tourist one. They sent her back to the US, where American officials classed her as an illegal alien. She was shackled and transported to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention centre, where she was locked up for 19 days – even though she had money to pay for a flight home, and was desperate to leave the US. Burke had arrived in the US during the Biden administration, only to become one of 32,809 people to be arrested by Ice during the first 50 days of Donald Trump’s presidency. Since February, several young foreign nationals have been incarcerated in Ice detention centres for seemingly little reason and held for weeks, including Germans Lucas Sielaff, Fabian Schmidt and Jessica Brösche. (Brösche, 26, spent more than a month in detention, including eight days in solitary confinement.) Unlike these other cases, Burke had been trying to leave the US, rather than enter it, when she was detained for nearly three weeks. I had been following news of Burke’s trip since she arrived in the US on 7 January. To me and my family, Burke is Becky, our neighbour and, for two and a half years, the person who took care of my kids after school. Her London home was only five doors down from us, but we met online, through a website that matches families with people offering childcare. Becky spent her mornings as a graphic artist and comic-book editor, and her afternoons collecting my son and daughter from primary school and entertaining them back at my place, making them snacks and refereeing their squabbles. Best of all, she drew with them. When my daughter turned seven, she asked if she could have a comic-making party; all her friends went home with little zines Becky had helped them make. We felt so lucky to have her in our lives. Two years ago, Becky went to San Francisco for two weeks on a Workaway placement, staying in a family home free of charge in exchange for sweeping floors and walking the dog. Last August, she used Workaway again, in Switzerland. The internet was opening up the possibility of another life for her – one where she could see the world on a shoestring. In September, Becky told me she was going to leave London in January to go travelling on her own. We were sad to see her go, but I was full of admiration for her; I wish I had been as bold and free in my 20s. We threw her a farewell party just before Christmas; everyone cried. I kept up with news of her travels on Instagram, and there were regular postcards and WhatsApps: pictures of the tattoo she had got in Portland; a video she filmed of herself on a forest walk. She told me she had seen bald eagles and woodpeckers, deer and seals. And then, on 26 February, everything went silent. Becky wasn’t someone who liked to be immersed in global news. But, even if she had been, she could never have foreseen what would happen to her. She booked her plane ticket six months ago, while pundits were still predicting a close race for the presidency, or a Kamala Harris victory. Her story gives a glimpse of what America has become since then. I meet up with Becky at her parents’ house, in Monmouthshire, six days after she arrived back in the UK. After so long in detention, she wants to spend as much as possible in the sunshine, so we sit in the garden while their dog – a cocker spaniel named Mr Bojangles – runs circles around us. Becky is much paler than the person my family knew so well. Her eyes are hollower. She began her trip with a stopover in Iceland, taking in the northern lights, going on to spend three nights in a hostel in New York City. Having already stayed in San Francisco on a Workaway placement, she didn’t feel she had anything to hide when she landed in New York. She would have told the border official her plans in full had he asked about them, she tells me. But he didn’t. The homestays were a big part of the appeal of her trip. “I really liked becoming part of these other families. You don’t get placed so firmly in the community if you’re going to a hotel that’s sterile and separate.” Her first placement was three weeks with a household just outside Portland. Becky would “destroy dandelions from their lawn” and cook meals; her hosts took her on day trips, including an overnight stay at the seaside. They drove her to her next homestay, which was in Portland itself. Becky’s second host took her on forest hikes. “She knew every single plant, every single bird call. It was like having a personal tour guide,” Becky beams. “It was incredible. I thought, this is going too well, I’m having too much fun here.” Both her hosts had been worried about how the US was changing under Trump. “I’m hearing so many scary stories about Ice raids and passports being detained,” Becky WhatsApp’d me on 8 February. Her first host had a transgender friend whose passport had been seized after she tried to change the name on it. But Becky felt like a spectator to it all. “I was worried on their behalf – an abstract worry and concern for others – rather than for myself. Because, I thought, I’m getting out of here.” On 26 February, Becky boarded a Greyhound coach for the three-hour ride from Seattle to Vancouver. She was due to spend two months in the home of a divorced father who wanted help with meal prep and laundry during the one week out of every two that his kids lived with him. Becky had never been to Canada before and was looking forward to this part of her trip. She sat at the back of the coach, listening to a comedy podcast, watching the world flash by. She wasn’t thinking about the dismal state of US-Canada relations when she handed her passport to the Canadian border official. He asked what she was planning to do in Canada. Travel, she replied. He asked where she was staying. Living with a man and his family, she said. He asked how she knew him. Becky said they had met on Workaway, and that she would be helping out around the house. The official told her they needed to research what Workaway was. He told Becky’s coach driver to leave without her. Workaway warns users that they “will need the correct visa for any country that you visit”, and that it is the user’s responsibility to get one, but it doesn’t stipulate what the correct visa is for the kind of arrangements it facilitates in any given country. Becky had always travelled with a tourist visa in the past – including to the US in 2022 – without any problems. She checked that work visas were only required for paid work in Canada. She had had months to plan her trip, and would have applied for a work visa if it was necessary, she says. But the Canadian officials told Becky they’d determined she needed a work visa. She could apply for one from the US and come back, they said. Two officers escorted her to the American side of the border. They talked to the US officials. Becky doesn’t know what was said. After six hours of waiting – and watching dozens of people being refused entry to the US and made to return to Canada – Becky began to feel frightened. Then she was called into an interrogation room, and questioned about what she had been doing during her seven weeks in the US. Had she been paid? Was there a contract? Would she have lost her accommodation if she could no longer provide services? Becky answered no to everything. She was a tourist, she said. An hour later, Becky was handed a transcript of her interview to sign. She was alone, with no legal advice. “It was really long, loads of pages.” As she flicked through it, she saw the officer had summarised everything she told him about what she had been doing in the US as just “work in exchange for accommodation”. “I remember thinking, I should ask him to edit that.” But the official was impatient and irritable, she says, and she was exhausted and dizzy – she hadn’t eaten all day. “I just thought, if I sign this, I’ll be free. And I didn’t want to stay there any longer.” So she signed. Then she was told she had violated her tourist visa by working in the US. They took her fingerprints, seized her phone and bags, cut the laces off her trainers, frisked her, and put her in a cell. “I heard the door lock, and I instantly threw up.” At 11pm, Becky was allowed to call her family. Her father asked what was going to happen next. “I looked at the officer and he said, ‘We’re going to take you to a facility where you’ll wait for your flight. You’ll be there one or two days – just while we get you on the next flight home.’” Becky was shackled and put into the back of a van. “I had no idea where we were going. It was just bumping around in darkness with handcuffs on.” At 2.30am, she arrived at the Ice facility in Tacoma, Washington. She was made to change into standard-issue underwear, a yellow top and trousers. Officers took away all her personal belongings, measured her height and weight, made her pose for a mugshot, and assigned her an “A” number (short for “alien”). Whenever she asked the people processing her arrival how long she would be detained for, they told her they couldn’t help: they worked for GEO, the private company contracted to run the facility, and not Ice, the government body that would decide her fate. At 5.30am, she was taken to the dorm that she was to share with 103 other women: a massive room filled with metal tables, benches and bunk beds, some cells around the perimeter, and a row of payphones, “like a hospital mixed with a canteen”. It was bathed in bright halogen light that Becky would come to learn would always be on, albeit slightly dimmed between 11.30pm and 5.30am. Becky’s bunk was on a mezzanine level. Burke’s sketch of her bunk in the detention centre. Illustration: RE Burke All Becky wanted to do was sleep, but instead she headed to the payphones to make the one free call she had been told she was entitled to, to tell her family how to put money into her inmate account. “In my head, this was a thing I had to do immediately, otherwise I’d be stuck without a way to communicate with the outside world.” She gave her parents her A number, and they tried to reassure her. It’s just one or two days, they repeated to her. A horrible experience. But over soon. As soon as the call ended, Becky went on one of the detention centre iPads, which had apps allowing inmates to send messages to Ice and check the balance on their inmate account. “I sent a message to Ice straight away saying: ‘I am a tourist. I was just backpacking. I have not outstayed my visa. I’ve only been in America one month and two weeks. I don’t know why I’m here. I want to go home. Please can you help?’” She frantically refreshed the app to see if her account had been credited. (It took longer than expected, because funds can only be transferred into accounts for “illegal aliens” from within the US. Becky’s father, Paul, discovered he could only do it through an American friend.) “I was seeing no money arrive, and I was getting really upset thinking I told them the wrong A number.” As she sobbed holding the iPad, Becky found herself surrounded by other inmates who wanted to comfort her. A woman called Lucy offered to let Becky use her phone credit if money hadn’t appeared in the account within a few hours. Rosa, a Mexican woman who spoke barely any English and had already been detained for 11 months, offered Becky a Pot Noodle she had been able to buy from the commissary, the shop where they could purchase luxuries. At 8am, Becky finally curled up in her bed to sleep, with Rosa praying in Spanish in the bunk below. Becky quickly learned the monotonous rhythms of the detention centre. Wake-up time was 5.30am. Breakfast – which for Becky was cold potato and a sachet of peanut butter, the only vegan option – was at 6am. Lunch – black beans and more cold potato – was anytime between 11.30am and 2pm. Four times a day, inmates had to sit on their bunks for an hour so they could be counted by staff. Dinner frequently arrived after 8pm. They were often ravenous between meals, which was why the commissary was so vital. It was also the only place they could access shampoo, deodorant, nail clippers and anti-shank toothbrushes. On her first day in the facility, Becky asked for a scrap of paper and a pen, and began to draw the inmates on the table next to her. She was immediately inundated with portrait requests. A Mexican woman called Lopez, who had a photo of her children stored on one of the iPads, told Becky she would buy her some paper and colouring pencils from the commissary if Becky drew her kids. She soon became the dorm’s unofficial artist-in-residence, with women huddling around the dirty mirrors to make themselves look presentable before they sat for her. They would decorate their cells with Becky’s drawings, or send them to their families. Lopez declared herself Becky’s manager. “She kept saying, ‘Becky, you need to ask for stuff in exchange. Ask for popcorn.’ And I’d be like, ‘Lopez, I don’t need anything.’ I thought, I’m here briefly, you’re stuck here a long time. I’m not going to take your food away from you.” The majority of the women were from Latin American countries, but some were from India, China, Iran, Afghanistan and Gaza. “Most of them were asylum seekers, but there was this handful of new people who had come in recently who did not know why they were here.” Lewelyn joined the dorm a few days after Becky. She had just returned from visiting her family in the Philippines; she had been living in the US since 1976, working as a lab technician at the University of Washington hospital’s cancer centre. “She’d had a visa issue that had been resolved many years ago, but now it was flagging on the system again.” Kseniia, a Russian woman who had been working for two years in a California nail salon, had permission to work in the US but was handcuffed while waiting for her husband to come out of an Ice interview. “She was so confused. She kept saying to me, ‘I’ve got a work permit.’” Burke’s sketches of some of her fellow detainees. Illustration: RE Burke There were other tourists, too. Bana, from Romania, was on holiday in Canada and visited Peace Arch park, on the international boundary between the US and Canada. She told Becky she had been taking selfies with her husband when a US border official told her they had strayed into American territory without the right visa and took her into custody. Becky had arrived in the detention centre on a Thursday. She soon realised she would not be out of it before the end of the weekend. No one ever replied to the message she sent to Ice on the iPad; she found out the Ice officer assigned to her case had gone on annual leave. The following Monday, Paul contacted the Foreign Office in London, and the British consulate in San Francisco. “They were doing the diplomatic bit,” he tells me. “But, after seven days, I could see it wasn’t really working. My perception is the British consulate couldn’t get Ice people to respond to them. There was no end in sight.” After Becky had been incarcerated for more than 10 days, Paul decided to go to the media. A quiet, unassuming man, he found himself live on Newsnight, Sky News and Good Morning Britain. Becky made it to every national newspaper in the UK, and had coverage in US press, too. Hours after her story broke, she was visited by an Ice officer who told her she was now “at the top of the pile” to be processed. Four days later, on a Thursday, another Ice officer came to the facility to tell Becky her flight had been booked for the following Monday. Becky’s face began to appear in the newspapers they received at the facility. At one point, her face flashed up on one of the three TV screens they had in her dorm. “Everyone clapped. After that, a few people came up to me and said, ‘Can you put me on TV, too?’” She feels very guilty that she was able to leave. “I was aware that it was from a major position of privilege that the press listened to this story. I was a British tourist, I had these images of my trip on Instagram, and I had contacts with journalists, so I was very lucky. And I wanted the same thing that Ice wanted, which was for me to go home.” At lunchtime on 17 March, officers came into the dorm, barked Becky’s name and told her to get ready to go. She had hidden some of her drawings among her official paperwork – her signed transcript and the document declaring her an illegal alien – in the hope she could smuggle them out. She wasn’t allowed to tell her family she was on her way home, but one of the women offered to ring her parents to notify them. Becky was shackled at the ankles, wrists and waist, and then made to shuffle out into a van. “When I got close to the airport, I felt really relieved and also overwhelmed, watching people with their suitcases, people going on holiday. It was a bit like whiplash – reality whiplash. Did that just happen?” But her ordeal was not over. She was taken to the basement of Seattle-Tacoma international airport for a security check. While every item in her bag was swabbed and dismantled, she was subjected to a full body search. “I was in this very loud, weird, industrial space with pipes and conveyor belts and lights and sirens, being told to open my legs. I was silently crying, watching all my stuff being torn apart as someone else was searching every crevice of me.” She boarded the plane before any of the other passengers. “I found my seat, threw my bags on it, and went into the toilet and sobbed in the cubicle, with the British Airways classical music surrounding me.” Six days after she landed at Heathrow, Becky still sleeps with her lamp on. She is enjoying home-cooked food and long showers, but feels guilty for resting in comfort when she knows her friends are still incarcerated. “I’m thinking of them every day,” she tells me. She is working on a comic that will tell the story of what happened to her, and the women she shared 19 days with, based on the drawings, notes and official documents she managed to take out of the detention centre. Becky still doesn’t know why she was incarcerated for so long. She suspects it might be because Ice is simply overwhelmed. “Maybe border security have been pressured to prove they’re stepping up.” She shrugs. “It did feel like they wanted to get me from the moment I was walked to the American side.” On 4 March, the White House issued a statement celebrating how “Ice arrests of illegal immigrants have surged 627%” during Trump’s first month in office. Jasmine Mooney, a Canadian woman who was detained by Ice for two weeks, says while the private companies who own the facilities are run for profit, there’s no incentive to get people out quickly. But in the era of Elon Musk’s department of government efficiency (Doge), it seems counterintuitive for public money to be deliberately wasted on detaining illegal aliens with the will and means to return home. Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, promised “shock and awe” from day one of his administration. Perhaps Becky’s incarceration was political theatre – or performative cruelty. Whatever the reason, in Trump’s America, a tourist who makes a mistake can be locked up, seemingly indefinitely. The deportation paper Becky signed bans her from the US for the next 10 years. Paul tells me they are going to try to appeal it, but Becky says America isn’t the country she thought it was. Her advice to anyone planning to travel to the US is simply not to go. “First, because of the danger of what could happen to you. And, secondly, do you really want to give your money to this country right now?” She has emerged from the experience with new eyes. “I was naive to think that what was going on in the world, or at the border, wouldn’t affect me,” she tells me, her arms folded across her chest. She had believed if she was honest and acted in good faith she would be insulated from harm, but now thinks that might have been naive, too. “If I’d lied, I’d be on holiday in Canada right now.” Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,233 Posted April 5 Share Posted April 5 Gaza Death Revisionists Are The New Holocaust Deniers There are considerable similarities in the arguments used by the two groups. https://www.readthemaple.com/gaza-death-revisionists-are-the-new-holocaust-deniers/ In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) released an order effectively stating that some of Israel’s actions in Gaza may amount to genocide. Many others, including Amnesty International, The Lemkin Institute and a United Nations Special Committee, have already concluded that Israel has committed genocide. These findings have not been accepted by Israel or its supporters. Instead, they’ve engaged in genocide denial. In doing so, they’ve replicated many of the sorts of arguments used by Holocaust deniers, and for similar reasons. I won’t bother addressing cruder examples of Gaza genocide denial here, such as that Gazans allegedly look too well fed or happy, or that Israel could have killed all Gazans if it wanted to. Instead, I’ll focus on the sort of denial that has entered mainstream Canadian media, presented as serious news and analysis. It’s been impossible for all but the most deranged of Israel’s supporters to claim no Palestinian civilians are being killed in Gaza. As such, they’ve sought to distort/downplay what has happened, which if done when discussing the Holocaust is considered a form of genocide denial punishable by up to two years of prison in Canada. Mainstream sources on Holocaust denial, including the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), state that disputing the fact that around six million Jewish people were killed is a form of Holocaust denial. This method of denial also happens to be how mainstream deniers generally try to dispute findings of genocide in Gaza. They do so in three main ways: attacking the source of the most commonly cited death count, arguing certain types of deaths should not be counted and using incomplete data to try to cast doubt on the total number of fatalities. The Source Some outlets explicitly claim that Gaza’s Ministry of Health’s death count is intentionally misleading because Hamas is the government. They point to Hamas’s ideology and status as a designated terrorist entity in Canada to say anything coming from it is suspicious. In doing so, they try to take advantage of polls finding widespread Canadian disapproval of Hamas. Other outlets that attempt to be more subtle effectively do the same by adding some version of ‘Hamas-run health ministry’ when mentioning the source of the death count in order to signal to readers that it’s supposedly politicized and untrustworthy. This practice is never seen elsewhere. And it’s not justified here either given that the ministry is made up of a wide-range of Palestinian medical professionals, who deny their findings are dictated by Hamas. Holocaust deniers have historically done the same thing by claiming that the overall death count and particular cases of mass slaughter or death camps were inflated or even staged by the Allies. In both cases, the deniers also claim that the party/parties behind death counts want to make the perpetrators look bad, and that therefore their numbers are intentionally inflated. In the case of Gaza, they’ll point to Hamas’s adversarial relationship with Israel. With regard to the Holocaust, the Museum of Tolerance states, “Holocaust deniers argue that Nazi Germany was the victim of a conspiracy, contrived by the Allies to brand Nazi Germany the villain of World War II. They maintain that the U.S. and Great Britain concocted wild atrocity stories about the Nazis to cover up their own war crimes.” This line of attack effectively argues that the only victims and opponents of genocide that can be trusted are those who do not have an adversarial relationship with the party responsible for the killing. In practice, this means no victims or opponents of genocide can be trusted. Regardless, the numbers in both cases have been found to be trustworthy by third-party sources. Many independent organizations have long track records of working with Gaza’s health ministry to monitor mortalities, and have consistently found its numbers to be trustworthy. In October 2024, Le Monde reported, “Like most humanitarian organizations, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights considers the government source to be reliable. ‘We have been working with the Palestinian Ministry of Health for many years, particularly during previous conflicts. Our assessments are very close to theirs, and in some cases, we even had higher figures,’ its spokesperson assured Le Monde. The assessments carried out by the UN over the last 15 years are more or less similar to the ministry’s figures.” Academic journals have concluded that there is no evidence of inflated mortality counts. And as the UN commissioner’s spokesperson noted, some have estimated mortality counts far higher than what the ministry has reported. For example, a January 2025 study from The Lancet estimated that the ministry actually under-reported deaths by about 41 per cent from October 2023 to June 2024. The Nature Of Deaths Some outlets have alleged that many of Gaza’s dead weren’t killed by Israeli violence, but succumbed to other causes such as starvation, disease and existing medical conditions, and that therefore their deaths shouldn’t be counted. Holocaust deniers have done the same thing, pointing to the spread of diseases in concentration camps to claim that even whatever false number of Jewish dead they put forward can’t be attributed solely or even primarily to the Nazis. If this logic were to be accepted in the case of the Holocaust, it would mean that the official death count would drop significantly as the Holocaust Encyclopedia states that between 800,000 to one million Jewish people “were murdered through deliberate privation, disease, brutal treatment, and arbitrary acts of violence.” It would also mean that perhaps the most well-known victim of the Holocaust, Anne Frank, would not be counted as such. Of course, this logic should not be and is not accepted, with reputable organizations correctly pointing out that the Nazis were responsible for creating the conditions that led to the spread of these diseases and their enhanced lethality. The same is true in Gaza, given that even in relatively normal periods it has been described as an open-air prison occupied and controlled by Israel, which deliberately inflicts conditions to reduce the quality of life for its inhabitants. Of course, things have gotten exponentially worse since Oct. 7, 2023. A wide-range of international organizations place the blame on Israel for these conditions. For example, Amnesty International concluded, “Israel imposed conditions of life in Gaza that created a deadly mixture of malnutrition, hunger and diseases, and exposed Palestinians to a slow, calculated death.” Incomplete Data Some of those attempting to undermine the Gaza death toll will argue that the Ministry of Health has not yet provided fully complete data. For example, as of September 2024 it had provided the name, age, gender and ID numbers of 34,344 dead Gazans, and not the entire 41,957 in its official count at the time. Holocaust deniers have done the same thing by pointing to the fact that not all victims have been identified or that some of those that were named were named in error. Again, no reputable source accepts the claim that the Holocaust death toll should be lowered from where it stands because not every single person that was killed has been identified by name. This is for good reason. And the same should be true in Gaza, which becomes especially evident when examining why the ministry has had trouble collecting some data at this point. In the aforementioned study from The Lancet, the authors write, “The escalation of Israeli military ground operations and attacks on health-care facilities severely disrupted the latter’s ability to record deaths electronically. These challenges compelled the [Ministry of Health] to rely on less structured data collection modalities, particularly when hospitals were under siege or experiencing telecommunication blockades. This might have led to incomplete and geographically biased reporting, as seen in other conflict zones where prolonged warfare complicates casualty tracking.” The study notes that these deficiencies mean the reported number of deaths is actually lower, not higher, than what the real one will be. The similarities between Gaza genocide and Holocaust deniers extend to their motivations for denial and the reasoning for their belief that victims are lying. The Museum of Tolerance states, “Most Holocaust deniers want to wash away the stain of Nazism in an attempt to make Nazism an acceptable political alternative today.” Those who deny the Holocaust are not third-party observers concerned about historical accuracy, but rather have an ideological motivation to distort or deny the truth. The same is true of those who deny the Gaza genocide. Supporters of Israel recognize that the state being found guilty of genocide would do irreparable harm to its image and further isolate it internationally. In fact, even the ongoing events at the ICJ have done considerable damage. As such, they have a vested interest in denying genocide claims regardless of the facts. This is made especially clear when examining claims from Zionists that not only is the state not guilty of genocide, but it has actually waged a typical or even particularly humane military campaign. There are also remarkable similarities in why those who deny the Gaza genocide and the Holocaust believe victims are lying. The Anti-Defamation League states, “Many deniers, drawing on tropes about Jews being greedy and deceitful, claim that Jews invented the Holocaust ‘story’ in order to manipulate global powers and gain support for the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.” Some of those who deny the Gaza genocide have done the same, arguing that Palestinians are lying or at least exaggerating in order to help gain international support to realize their dream of an independent state and/or to destroy the Israeli one. This view should be treated with the same derision as its Holocaust-denial counterpart, and yet it is instead accepted by some outlets as a serious talking point. Unlike the Holocaust or any other genocide, the Gaza genocide has been live streamed for an international audience every day since it began, making it impossible to claim the widespread slaughter is not occurring. It’s particularly disturbing, then, that with all of the real-time proof, and decades of careful debunking of Holocaust denial, the mainstream press has entertained these arguments in a new form. Fulham Broadway 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,233 Posted April 5 Share Posted April 5 South Africa's white Afrikaner separatists want Trump's help to become state https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-africas-white-afrikaner-separatists-want-trumps-help-become-state-2025-04-03/ Summary White Afrikaner separatists want to create breakaway state Orania leaders visited US to try to drum up Republican support Trump has offered Afrikaners asylum in the United States ORANIA, South Africa, April 3 (Reuters) - A group of white Afrikaners was so opposed to majority Black rule when apartheid ended some three decades ago that they carved out a separatist enclave, the only town in South Africa where all residents, including menial workers, are white. Now, the residents of Orania - population, 3,000 - in the semi-arid Karoo region want U.S. President Donald Trump to help them become a state. Last week, community leaders from Orania visited the United States seeking recognition as an autonomous entity. South African authorities acknowledge it as a town that can raise local taxes and deliver services. "We wanted to... gain recognition, with the American focus on South Africa now," Orania Movement leader Joost Strydom told Reuters, on a hill strewn with bronzes of past Afrikaner leaders, including from the era of racist white minority rule that was ended by internal resistance and international outrage. The 8,000-hectare settlement is riding an unprecedented wave of support from right-wing Americans for Afrikaner nationalists, who irrevocably lost power when apartheid ended in 1994 and Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first Black president. In New York and Washington the Orania leaders met influencers, think-tanks and low-ranking Republican politicians. "We told them South Africa is such a ... diverse country that it's not a good idea to try and manage it centrally," said Strydom. Three senior Orania officials interviewed by Reuters were vague about the help they sought in the U.S. They said they were not seeking handouts but wanted investment to build houses to keep up with its 15% population growth, infrastructure and energy independence that it has almost half-achieved with solar. Strydom declined to say whether his delegation had contact with the Trump administration. The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. South African foreign ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri told Reuters: "(Orania's) not... a country. They are subject to the laws of South Africa and ... our constitution." Other Afrikaner nationalist groups have also visited the U.S. to build alliances with overwhelmingly white, Republican audiences, prompting accusations back home that such trips stoke racial tensions. The leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) last week accused Orania's leaders of "destroying the unity of this country", a charge they reject. 'START OF SOMETHING' Afrikaners are descendants of Dutch settlers who began arriving in the 1600s. They resisted the British Empire in South Africa, but once in charge of the country, they hardened racial segregation using discriminatory laws. Orania town sign in front of local shopping centre is pictured in whites-only town of Orania, South Africa, April 1, 2025. REUTERS/Sisipho Skweyiya "There were 17,000 laws on land alone," foreign ministry spokesperson Phiri said. "We had... to reconstruct South Africa into a country that represents all those who live in it." In 1991, as the end of apartheid neared, a group of about 300 Afrikaners acquired Orania, previously an abandoned water project on the muddy Orange River, to create a homeland exclusively for white Afrikaners. "It's the start of something," former Orania Movement leader Carel Boshoff, said of his community, comparing its desire for independence - Orania even uses its own informal currency - to that of Israel, established after World War Two despite stiff resistance from Arabs living in that territory. Boshoff, whose father founded the town and whose grandfather, Hendrick Verwoerd, is widely viewed as the architect of apartheid, dreams of a territory stretching to the west coast nearly 1,000 miles away. Orania's activities are funded through local taxes and donations from supporters and residents. Its leaders were dismayed to find the only solution that anyone in the United States was interested in discussing was U.S. residency, after Trump offered in February to resettle white South African farmers and their families as refugees. "We can't be exporting our people," Boshoff told Reuters beside a framed photo of his late grandfather. "We told them ... 'help us here'," he said. Some U.S. right-wingers have sought to make common cause with Afrikaners in their opposition to diversity policies that aim to empower historically unjustly-treated non-white groups. South Africa's Black empowerment laws have been ridiculed by Trump's South African-born adviser, Elon Musk. Those laws were the reason Hanlie Pieters moved to Orania eight months ago, after 25 years of living in Johannesburg, to become head of marketing for the town's technical college. "Our children ... what opportunities will they have?" Pieters said, bemoaning quotas for Black workers, while trainee plumbers and electricians honed their skills in a shed nearby. A third of all South Africans are out of work, most of them poor Blacks. One such unemployed man, 49-year-old Bongani Zitha, said he thought "people in Orania... are doing very well" compared to many South Africans. "So many people looking for opportunities. It's a struggle," he sighed. Zitha, who has lived in a corrugated shanty town in Soweto with no piped water or sewage since 1995, said at least the people of Orania have "rights to health, education, everything". And unlike himself under white minority rule, he added, Orania residents are free to live wherever they want. Fulham Broadway 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fernando 6,585 Posted April 5 Share Posted April 5 Remember project 2025? The whole agenda that Trump was following. Well it seems like they no longer agree with trump ideas on tariff. Like I said people follow Trump for the conservative value but many are turning against him when you touch the economy. Economy is the most important thing for most people weather liberal or conservative. Fulham Broadway 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,233 Posted April 5 Share Posted April 5 20 minutes ago, Fernando said: people follow Trump for the conservative value he is not a 'conservative' he is a race-baiting, ultra grifting psychopathic narcissist with a god complex he is the least intellectually curious President the US has ever had, he hates deep, deliberative thought and knowledge he is staggering lazy, staggeringly short attention-spanned he is 100 per cent transactional (as long as he thinks the transaction will benefit him) in a carnival barker sort of way he has no core political philosophy, 'conservative' or otherwise, other than TRUMP FIRST, TRUMP LAST, TRUMP ALWAYS, and has chosen hate, division, pain, retribution, perpetual victimhood, grievance, and chaos as his chief tools of conduct Fernando 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,233 Posted April 5 Share Posted April 5 Russell Brand's rape charges expose the devil's bargain between MAGA and "Christian" celebrities There's no depravity the religious right won't overlook — as long as a famous person validates their politics https://www.salon.com/2025/04/05/russell-brands-rape-charges-expose-the-devils-bargain-between-maga-and-christian-celebrities/ On Friday, just shy of a year since Russell Brand was showily baptized in the River Thames, the UK's Metropolitian Police charged the British comedian-turned-MAGA-influencer with one count of rape, one count of oral rape, two counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent exposure. At the time of his 2024 conversion, Brand declared that he had repented of his past and that he would "acknowledge that I am in a battle against myself." A few days before this week's charges, he told Sean Hannity of Fox News that he had "surrendered to a higher purpose." So, for people outside the MAGA bubble, it's a little strange to hear Brand react to the charges by rejecting accountability, instead denying the charges with conspiracy theories so outlandish it's hard to buy that he believes any of it. "We are very fortunate, in a way, to live in a time when there's so little trust in the British government," Brand asserted in a response video on X. "We know the law has become a kind of weapon to be used against people, institutions and sometimes entire nations that will not accept and tolerate levels of corruption that are unprecedented." Even while he insisted that he now lives in "the light of the Lord," Brand insinuated that he's the victim of a corrupt conspiracy to frame him. Christianity emphasizes redemption, making it an attractive framework for a celebrity needing to rehab a bad image. The likelier explanation for the charges is that there's just a lot of evidence against Brand. A collaboration between The Times, The Sunday Times, and Channel 4, conducted over years, produced exhaustively documented allegations of rape and other sexual abuses. They spoke with hundreds of sources, including four accusers. They collected medical records, texts, emails, and internal documents from employers, all showing a pattern of alleged sexual abuse that is often frightening in its violence. The report came out in September 2023. Shortly thereafter, Brand was kicked off YouTube. He then swiftly joined the MAGA-affiliated Rumble network. In the next few months, he moved to the U.S. and got baptized, fully rebranding himself as a right-wing Christian influencer. This timeline doesn't seem to have given Brand's new MAGA audience a single moment's doubt that he might have ulterior motives. On the contrary, his fans encouraged the conspiracy theory that paints him as a political prisoner and the charges as "a political prosecution," as Charlie Kirk complained. "We know you’re innocent, Russell and this is clearly all politically motivated," insisted one fan. "They're willing to sacrifice Russell though because it will make others stay silent," said another. My favorite, though, might be the guy who replied, " It wasn't until you decided to clean up your life and find faith and peace that they decided you must be removed." This, of course, gets the timeline backwards. The accusations have been surfacing since 2006, when Australian singer Dannii Minogue first spoke out about Brand being a "vile predator." The big Times exposé came out in late 2023, but Brand didn't "find faith" until the spring of 2024. Not like any of the other excuses for Brand make sense. The MAGA followers talk a lot about how "they" are doing this to Brand, but it's forever unclear who "they" are. The journalists? Police? Four alleged victims? Hundreds of witnesses? Crown prosecutors? But MAGA would rather believe that hundreds of "they" are conspiring to take down a has-been comedian than accept the likelier explanation: Brand found Jesus just in time to get a new income stream and source of attention and validation, one he would have never settled for when he still had access to mainstream audiences. Religion professor Bradley Onishi, host of the "Spirit and Power" podcast, pointed out to Salon that there is "a long history of the evangelical subculture and the conservative Christian subcultures wanting to find mainstream legitimacy" by grabbing onto any celebrities they can claim are one of them. In the 90s and early 2000s, Onishi noted, evangelicals hyped everyone from U2 and Creed to Jessica Simpson and Katy Perry as "crossover Christian figures" who could sell the larger world on the idea that Christianity is hip and cool. Brand, however, represents a disturbing twist to this saga: the willingness, in the era of Donald Trump, of right-wing Christians to scrape the absolute bottom of the barrel to get this validation. Not that many of them will engage with the actual allegations against Brand, lest their view of him as a godly man get disturbed, but frankly, the details are shocking even in the #MeToo era. One alleged victim said she was 16 when she first had a sexual relationship with the 31-year-old Brand. She says he orally raped her so violently that she started to choke, only escaping by punching him the stomach. Others report that Brand threatened them if they spoke out, a likelier explanation for the delayed reporting than a shadowy conspiracy by the all-powerful "they" against Brand. Brand belongs to a long line of celebrities who, because of scandal or simply falling out of fashion, have discovered the cash and ego-fluffing benefits of converting to the Church of MAGA. Roseanne Barr's TV comeback got derailed because of racist online ranting, so nowadays she spends her time on Tucker Carlson's show talking about her "conversation going with God." Carlson himself was a MAGA figurehead in good standing, but since losing his Fox News gig, he's taken to talking about demon possession and other topics that perform well in the social media feeds of the Christian right. Tattoo superstar Kat Von D got her Sephora makeup line canceled after anti-vaccination statements and marrying a dude with a swastika tattoo. Now she gets glowing write-ups in right-wing media about her conversion to Christianity. Mark Wahlberg got a whole lot louder about being a devout Catholic shortly after stories about his arrests for hate crimes resurfaced. Christianity emphasizes redemption, making it an attractive framework for a celebrity needing to rehab a bad image. In theory, however, there is supposed to be repentance before redemption. But this is the era of Trumpian Christianity, so skipping the part where you say you're sorry is optional. After all, Trump is treated not just as a fellow Christian, but something closer to a savior figure by the religious right. He has never said he's sorry to the victims of his fraud, or to the people he's lied about, or to E. Jean Carroll, who a civil jury found him liable for sexually assaulting. On the contrary, Trump's response to people he's harmed is to escalate the abuse if they speak out against him, which is why Carroll won a second defamation suit against him. Being a bully is admired in the MAGA movement. In MAGA Christianity, actual repentance would be dismissed as "woke." No wonder it was the perfect landing spot for Russell Brand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,233 Posted April 5 Share Posted April 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,233 Posted April 5 Share Posted April 5 There Are No Adults in the Room A brief note on the inherent media problem with covering galactically stupid policies. https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/there-are-no-adults-in-the-room On Thursday, as the stock market nosedived from the Trump administration’s stupid, unthinking, destructive, error-ridden tariff policies, a respected reporter from a well-known media outlet pinged me for an interview. The journalist was interested in the roles that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick might have played in the formulation of Trump’s foreign economic policy. As we started talking, I realized that the reporter and I were starting from rather different premises. The reporter was thinking about the story as how one would cover a significant policy pronouncement in a normal administration: Who is the president listening to on policy? What are the possible faultlines within the administration? Who are the key power brokers? What was their decision-making process? And I was thinking: there was no process. There are no power brokers. On questions of trade, there’s Donald Trump’s whims, his collection of clown car enablers, and maybe an intern who plugs some things into ChatGPT. That’s pretty much it. I know why both of us were thinking the way we were. For reporters, looking for power brokers makes sense even when even when the policies themselves seem inexplicable. Bad policy outcomes can nonetheless be explained by rational actors pursuing their interests. Maybe it’s the result of powerful interest groups pushing their narrow interests. On occasion, bureaucratic politics are responsible. Sometimes bad policies are the result of powerful ideas that percolate within particular groups — you know, ideas like “risk assessment is bad” or “democracy is overrated.” This is slightly more unusual but it’s certainly conceivable. These narrative are familiar to any journalist, or anyone who has taken Political Science 101. And in their own way they are cognitively comforting. They suggest that even when the government enacts strange or counterproductive policies, there is an underlying logic and structure to what is going on. Furthermore, causal stories like interest group pressure or groupthink also suggest how bad decisions might get corrected. If, say, financial markets start to nosedive, then policymakers will react to such negative feedback with policy corrections. So I get where the reporter is coming from. It is soothing in its rationality. As someone who has studied Donald Trump’s decision-making style at great length, however, I come at questions about Trump’s second-term advisors from a different perspective. The key to understanding Trump’s second term is to understand three basic premises: Trump has eliminated all executive branch guardrails; Trump has appointed only sycophants to serve him this time around; Trump’s policy instincts are the most immature, retrograde opinions out there. Think this is an exaggeration? Let’s take a gander at Natalie Allison, Jeff Stein, Cat Zakrzewski and Michael Birnbaum’s Washington Post story, “Inside President Trump’s whirlwind decision to blow up global trade.” It’s pretty damning: The president’s decision to impose tariffs on trillions of dollars of goods reflects two key factors animating his second term in office: His resolve to follow his own instincts even if it means bucking long-standing checks on the U.S. presidency, and his choice of a senior team that enables his defiance of those checks…. Inside and outside the White House, advisers say Trump is unbowed even as the world reels from the biggest increase in trade hostilities in a century. They say Trump is unperturbed by negative headlines or criticism from foreign leaders. He is determined to listen to a single voice — his own — to secure what he views as his political legacy. “He’s at the peak of just not giving a f--- anymore,” said a White House official with knowledge of Trump’s thinking. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f---. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”…. The president’s team mounted remarkably little dissent to a sweeping overhaul of trade policy, according to interviews with more than a dozen people inside and outside the administration, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private talks…. “In their recruiting process, they made sure it would only be people who were totally Trumpers, because in the first administration there was a lot of trouble with people quitting, writing bad books, things like that,” said Wilbur Ross, who served as commerce secretary during Trump’s first term. “The people now have been confirmed as true Trumpers.” Trump seems to believe that a more loyal White House team is ultimately a more effective one. But as the now-unrestrained president's ideas on trade wreak havoc on the global economy, even some of his allies have expressed deepening confusion and alarm. Two days after the momentous rollout, financial markets continue to reel. The very existence of this story is due to some staffers covering their ass to reporters. But make no mistake, it is solid evidence of U.S. foreign economic policy being executed by presidential whim without any functional policymaking process. Paul Krugman explains why the stupidity matters: You might be tempted to dismiss complaints about the policy process as elitist snobbery. But credibility is a crucial part of policymaking. Businesses can’t plan if they have no idea what to expect next. Foreign governments won’t make policies that help America if they don’t expect us to respond rationally. So what do we know about how the Trumpists arrived at their tariff plan? Trump claimed that the tariff rates imposed on different countries reflected their policies, but James Surowiecki soon noted that the tariffs applied to each country appeared to be derived from a crude formula based on the U.S. trade deficit with that country. Trump officials denied this, while at the same time the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released a note confirming Surowiecki’s guess…. The key point is that Trump isn’t really trying to accomplish economic goals. This should all be seen as a dominance display, intended to shock and awe people and make them grovel, rather than policy in the normal sense. Again, I’m not being snobbish here. When the fate of the world economy is on the line, the malignant stupidity of the policy process is arguably as important as the policies themselves. How can anyone, whether they’re businesspeople or foreign governments, trust anything coming out of an administration that behaves like this? ….I’d like to imagine that Trump will admit that he messed up, cancel the whole thing, and start over. But he won’t, because that would spoil the dominance display. Ignorant irresponsibility is part of the message. Does this mean Trump will not listen to anyone? No it does not. But he is listening to the Laura Loomers of the world far more than the Scott Bessents. Media rumors are now percolating that Bessent wants out, “because in the last few days he’s really hurting his own credibility and history in the markets.” The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World disagrees: Bessent hurt his own credibility by believing, against all evidence to the contrary, that he would have been able to guide Trump towards less counterproductive policy positions. This further confirms something that Drezner’s World has been articulating for quite some time: Wall Street types do not understand politics and can rationalize with the best of them. For those readers not on Wall Street, let me summarize the current state of affairs as best as possible. Donald Trump is president. There are no adults in the room to constrain him. We therefore live in uncertain times that will remain uncertain for an extended period of time. 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Vesper 30,233 Posted April 5 Share Posted April 5 (edited) Video Shows Aid Workers Killed in Gaza Under Gunfire Barrage, With Ambulance Lights On The U.N. has said Israel killed the workers. The video appears to contradict Israel’s version of events, which said the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/world/middleeast/gaza-israel-aid-workers-deaths-video.html A video, discovered on the cellphone of a paramedic who was found along with 14 other aid workers in a mass grave in Gaza in late March, shows that the ambulances and fire truck that they were traveling in were clearly marked and had their emergency signal lights on when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire. Officials from the Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a news conference on Friday at the United Nations moderated by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies that they had presented the nearly seven-minute recording, which was obtained by The New York Times, to the U.N. Security Council. An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said earlier this week that Israeli forces did not “randomly attack” an ambulance, but that several vehicles “were identified advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals toward Israeli troops, prompting them to shoot. Colonel Shoshani said earlier in the week that nine of those killed were Palestinian militants. Israel did not respond to a request for comment on the video in time for the first publication of this article, but on Saturday, it issued a statement to The Times saying that the episode was “under thorough examination.” “All claims, including the documentation circulating about the incident, will be thoroughly and deeply examined to understand the sequence of events and the handling of the situation,” it said. The Times obtained the video from a senior diplomat at the United Nations who asked not to be identified to be able to share sensitive information. The Times verified the location and timing of the video, which was taken in the southern city of Rafah early on March 23. Filmed from what appears to be the front interior of a moving vehicle, it shows a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck, clearly marked, with headlights and flashing lights turned on, driving south on a road to the north of Rafah in the early morning. The first rays of sun can be seen, and birds are chirping. The convoy stops when it encounters a vehicle that had veered onto the side of the road — one ambulance had been sent earlier to aid wounded civilians and had come under attack. The new rescue vehicles detour to the side of the road. Rescue workers, at least two of whom can be seen wearing uniforms, are seen exiting a fire truck and an ambulance marked with the emblem of the Red Crescent and approaching the ambulance derailed to the side. Then, sounds of intense gunfire break out. A barrage of gunshots is seen and heard in the video hitting the convoy. The camera shakes, the video goes dark. But the audio continues for five minutes, and the rat-a-tat of gunfire does not stop. A man says in Arabic that there are Israelis present. The paramedic filming is heard on the video reciting, over and over, the “shahada,” or a Muslim declaration of faith, which people recite when facing death. “There is no God but God, Muhammad is his messenger,” the paramedic is heard saying. He asks God for forgiveness and says he knows he is going to die. “Forgive me, mother. This is the path I chose — to help people,” he said. “Allahu akbar,” God is great, he says. In the backdrop, a commotion of voices from distraught aid workers and soldiers shouting commands in Hebrew can be heard. It is not clear what they are saying. The Palestine Red Crescent Society spokeswoman, Nebal Farsakh, said in an interview from the West Bank city of Ramallah that the paramedic who filmed the video was later found with a bullet in his head in the mass grave. His name has not been disclosed yet because he has relatives living in Gaza concerned about Israeli retaliation, the U.N. diplomat said. At the news conference, held at the U.N. headquarters, the president of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Dr. Younis Al-Khatib, and his deputy, Marwan Jilani, told reporters that the evidence the society has collected — including the video and audio from the episode, and forensic examination of the bodies — contradicted Israel’s version of events. The deaths of the aid workers, who went missing on March 23, has drawn international scrutiny and condemnation in recent days. The U.N. and the Palestine Red Crescent said the aid workers were not carrying weapons and posed no threat. “Their bodies have been targeted from a very close range,” said Dr. Khatib, adding that Israel did not provide information on the missing medics’ whereabouts for days. “They knew exactly where they were because they killed them,” he said. “Their colleagues were in agony, their families were in agony. They kept us for eight days in the dark.” It took five days after the rescue vehicles came under attack and fell silent for the United Nations and Red Crescent to negotiate with the Israeli military for safe passage to search for the missing people. On Sunday, rescue teams found 15 bodies, most in a shallow mass grave along with their crushed ambulances and a vehicle marked with the U.N. logo. The area where the convoy stops in the video was captured in a satellite image a few hours later and analyzed by The Times. At that point, the five ambulances and the fire truck had been moved off the road and clustered together. Two days later, a new satellite image of the area showed the vehicles were apparently buried. Next to disturbed earth are three Israeli military bulldozers and an excavator. Additionally, bulldozers erected earthen barriers on the road in both directions from the mass grave. One member of the Palestinian Red Crescent is still missing, and Israel has not said whether he is detained or has been killed, Dr. Khatib said. Dr. Ahmad Dhair, a forensic doctor who examined some of the bodies in Gaza’s Nasser hospital, said four out of the five aid workers he examined were killed by multiple gunshots, including wounds to the head, torso and joints. One paramedic employee of the Red Crescent in the convoy was detained and then released by the Israeli military and provided a witness account of Israeli military shooting at the ambulances, the U.N. and Red Crescent Society said. Dylan Winder, the representative of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to the U.N., called the incident an outrage and said it represented the single deadliest attack on Red Cross and Red Crescent Society workers anywhere in the world since 2017. Volker Türk, the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the council that an independent investigation must be conducted, and that the episode raises “further concerns over the commission of war crimes by the Israeli military.” Edited April 5 by Vesper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,233 Posted April 6 Share Posted April 6 What a fucking idiot. https://bsky.app/profile/joncooper-us.bsky.social/post/3lm632voxfc2k Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NikkiCFC 8,341 Posted April 7 Share Posted April 7 On 05/04/2025 at 19:20, Vesper said: psychopathic narcissist with a god complex New gold visa for 5m with his face on it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fernando 6,585 Posted April 7 Share Posted April 7 (edited) On 04/04/2025 at 11:36, Vesper said: U.S. stock market has wiped out $9.6 trillion since Inauguration Day https://www.marketwatch.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-s-p-and-nasdaq-set-for-further-losses-after-1-679-point-blue-chip-tumble/card/u-s-stock-market-has-lost-9-6-trillion-in-value-since-inauguration-day-6NL1f3p5I5eUhbOGt2Wy U.S. stocks have had a rough go of it since President Donald Trump was sworn into office for his second term in January. Since Jan. 17, the Friday before Inauguration Day, the U.S. stock market has seen $9.6 trillion in value erased, according to data from FactSet and Dow Jones Market Data. Of those losses, $5 trillion has been erased just over the past two days -- the largest two-day loss on record. Major equity indexes were seeing their losses deepen in early trading on Friday. The Dow was down by more than 1,200 points in recent trading, bringing its losses since the market opened on Thursday to nearly 3,000 points. The S&P 500 was down by 3.6%, while the Nasdaq Composite was off by 3.8%, leaving it on the cusp of bear-market territory. The Russell 2000 has fallen by another 4.1% since it became the first major U.S. equity index to enter bear-market territory on Thursday. By the way so far I don't think it's the end of the world. This is a good pullback because market for many years has been up insane. For example from 2008 high which was the financial crisis the S & P 500 was at 747.78 and went as low as 666.79 Where we are today? 5074.09 Insanely higher from 2008, so perspective is key, a little pain is not the end of the world. Now if we where to go to 2008 level then yes we are in a depression type of thing. Edited April 7 by Fernando Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KEVINAA 129 Posted April 7 Share Posted April 7 (edited) We are all about to be homeless and broke while the rich run to their underground bunkers with their gold and silver money bars and wait for humanity to unalive itself like to movies showed us how to not to behave when civilization crashes. 2025 stock market crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_stock_market_crash List of stock market crashes and bear markets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_market_crashes_and_bear_markets Edited April 7 by KEVINAA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,233 Posted April 8 Share Posted April 8 Can We Survive This Level Of Dementia In Our Leadership? https://digbysblog.net/2025/04/07/can-we-survive-this-level-of-dementia-in-our-leadership/ Apparently this illiterate piece of shit thinks the Germans were kind and generous to the Jews? They tried to help the people who were in distress … on the trains, in the camps, in the gas chambers. This is monumentally stupid even for him. He said this to Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel who sat there like a fucking trained seal because he’s as much of a criminal as this garbage human even if he isn’t as demented. This is the person who is shaking down Universities ostensibly because of antisemitism. I give up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,233 Posted April 9 Share Posted April 9 centrist view on things https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/how-partisanship-killed-effective For decades now, populist forces in America and other western nations have been pining for the end of “neoliberalism.” What this means exactly is open to interpretation depending on your ideological persuasion. For leftists here, it’s means breaking the power of Wall Street and multinational corporations through stricter regulation and anti-trust measures, higher taxes on the rich, “rebalancing” of international trade to meet labor and environmental standards, ending military interventions and cutting defense budgets, labor union rights, and far more government spending on things like health care, housing, education, and climate change. For those on the populist right, it means socking it to the “globalists” and “cultural elites” through some of these same measures on trade and overseas interventions with far less enthusiasm for taxation, spending, and regulation and much more fervor for immigration restrictions and non-traditional, anti-elite politics. In the center, there are a dwindling number of pro-business neoliberal advocates and libertarians who ardently defend free markets and trade, globalization, wealth accumulation, deregulation, decentralized government, and open movement of people across borders. There are also more moderate Clinton-Blair “Third Way” types who are less strident neoliberals than in the past but still defend the U.S.-led international order they argue has yielded huge wealth and influence for America while reducing global poverty. The animating concept linking both left- and right-populist opponents of neoliberalism, and splintering centrist factions, is concern about the effects of economic inequality on working-class Americans (both economically and culturally) and the unchecked rise of China and subsequent decline of traditional American manufacturing power with good-paying jobs for workers. Both groups of populists oppose these developments and want policies to counteract these trends, while centrists are divided on the importance of economic inequality as an issue and split on how, if at all, to respond to the rise of China and declining domestic production. Various factions of the left, right, and center have been feuding intensely over the future of neoliberalism since the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Because of America’s two-party system, the political contours of this fight are mainly delineated within the voter coalitions and organized interest groups of Democrats and Republicans. Progressive, anti-neoliberal Democrats (and some independents) united within the Occupy Wall Street movement to oppose the “one percent” and later organized through the presidential candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and their attendant policy institutions. On the other side, national populist, anti-neoliberal Republicans (and some independents) united within the MAGA movement and through Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns, his administrations, and supportive media operations. The primary goal of these anti-neoliberal forces has been to dislodge or co-opt the perceived establishments in both parties—directly or indirectly. This played out differently for Democrats and Republicans. For example, progressives could not directly take over the Democratic Party through either the Sanders or Warren wings given a strong mainstream centrist faction among elected officials and voters, but they did manage to take control of much of the policy apparatus during Joe Biden’s presidency. In comparison, national populists under Trump completely took over the Republican Party and chased out all the establishment types or bludgeoned them into submission. The fight against neoliberalism has always been hampered by partisan politics. Despite a lot of talk in journals and philanthropic circles, there was never any serious effort to create a truly independent “post-neoliberal” movement that would work across party divides to advance a vision of resurgent economic nationalism and better represent American working-class interests regardless of party affiliation. Again, populist forces on the left and right were more interested in attacking the elite policy development and personnel infrastructures in their respective parties than they were in building a dynamic new movement with steadily growing public support and policy successes across presidential administrations—just as neoliberal forces developed during the 1980s and 1990s. For a brief moment during the first Trump and Biden presidencies, there was a possibility of creating a genuinely bipartisan, cross-ideological movement in Congress to advance economic nationalism (with public backing) as an alternative to the perceived neoliberal consensus in both parties. The focus of various economic nationalist policy groups and congressional committees was mainly on combatting China and restoring American economic might for the benefit of a hollowed out working-class and struggling towns and regions across America. There was bipartisan work to advance strategic tariffs on China to help protect key industries in tech and defense, as well as to advance tax incentives for new manufacturing and energy development in both red states and blue states. New investments in basic infrastructure and technological research and innovation also received broad endorsements, as did cross-party policies to bolster working-class families through income and child supports. But this promising moment for effective economic nationalism blew up entirely due to the internal logic of America’s tribal politics, particularly during short two-year periods of unified party control of the federal government. Looking back at 2021-2022, it's obvious that Republicans would never fully commit to Democratic ideas about government investment as part of an economic nationalist agenda—and especially their mobilization to combat climate change and advance clean energy. This came to a head with Biden’s response to the Covid pandemic and his party’s multi-year struggle to pass expansive climate and social spending through reconciliation (with no Republican votes at all, although a smattering of House Republicans have recently argued against repeal). During this period, Biden did work with a pool of Republicans to pass smart bipartisan legislation on infrastructure, R&D spending, strategic checks on China, and energy production. But these efforts were overshadowed by the outcomes of his party’s massive Covid spending, the subsequent spike in household costs, and the deceptively named “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA) that had more to do with climate than inflation—the most important issue on voters’ minds. Not surprisingly, President Trump now wants Republicans to repeal the semiconductor subsidies in the CHIPS Act and reverse or kill most of the clean energy components in the IRA. In turn, looking at Trump’s first term and his early months in office a second time, it’s clear that Democrats did not and will likely never commit to his divide-and-conquer nationalist politics or to his tariff, tax cut, and deregulation agenda carried out through constitutionally dubious executive actions and through the same one-party reconciliation process used by Democrats under Biden. Any hope Trump had of building a larger public majority after his successful 2024 presidential campaign and popular early steps on immigration and cultural issues has all but evaporated within the first three months of his second term as he moved aggressively on the economy. Democrats blame Trump’s erratic behavior with allies and his unilateral steps on tariffs and DOGE cuts as reasons for opposing his agenda, while Republicans counter that it is blind “Trump Derangement Syndrome” that precludes Democrats from backing Trump’s MAGA economic approach. Either way, the prospect for bipartisanship in support of Trumps’s nationalist vision seems remote to nonexistent now. So, both parties attempted to do economic nationalism primarily through their own party lenses thus ensuring that it would engender widespread opposition from the other side and elevate the worst aspects of each party’s agenda to center of political debate. For Democrats it was a monomaniacal focus on climate change and leftist social spending that ignored governmental bottlenecks and wasted money (see the “abundance” discussion for why this is the case). For Republicans it was Trump’s lifelong obsession with tariffs and his right-wing attacks on government bureaucracy, public investments, and international alliances that have limited appeal outside of his MAGA base. The net result of this partisan standoff is that economic nationalism is now widely discredited and increasingly impossible to advance in a smart manner with bipartisan legislation and broad public support behind clearly articulated and well understood national goals. China and other nations hostile to the United States have surely taken note and adjusted their own approaches to take advantage of America’s political dysfunction. Neoliberalism won the ideological battle with its opponents by default. America’s partisan politics ensured that an effective, broadly backed approach to advancing national interests and rebuilding the working class would fail. Huge government spending in areas unrelated to strategic industrial policy coupled with high inflation and a refusal to fix the regulations that prevent new building and manufacturing limited the appeal of the Biden and Democratic approach to economic nationalism with many voters. Chaotic, made-up “reciprocal tariffs” and attacks on America’s allies that threaten to raise prices, slow growth, decrease wealth, and harm U.S. interests over the long-term have likewise discredited the Trump and Republican approach with many Americans. Neoliberalism didn’t win because it is popular. It won because the economic nationalist alternatives presented by partisans on both sides ended up looking far worse and more impractical than the status quo, while much of the neoliberal vision (warts and all) remained grounded in macroeconomic reality and voters’ desire for abundant goods and services, low prices, and economic stability—not partisan command-and-control revolution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,233 Posted April 9 Share Posted April 9 Joe Biden’s Final Days: Did Aides Cover Up His Mental State—or Was It Group Delusion? Revelations from within the Biden bubble—detailed in the new book Uncharted—show how the reelection team persevered despite alarming signs of decline. Asked one top Democratic insider, “How are they letting this f---ing thing go on?” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/joe-bidens-final-days In late June 2024, just a few days after Joe Biden’s implosion in his televised debate with Donald Trump, one of the president’s best friends got a call on his iPhone. The familiar baritone voice on the other end, much stronger than it had been during the debate, was unmistakable. “It’s Joe,” he said. There was a pause. “Joe Biden.” His friend replied: “Yeah, no shit.” Biden burst out laughing. “Hey, thanks for talking Valerie off the ledge,” the president said. Just after midnight on the evening of that disastrous debate, the president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, weeping and distraught, had called her brother’s friend looking for answers and blasted the debate-prep team. Biden’s friend had calmed her down. “No problem,” he told the president. “You don’t have to thank me.” Biden paused and then said, “What do you think?” His friend couldn’t resist this softball. “About what?” he said. Biden cracked up again. The president laughed for four or five seconds. And then, “in a very strong voice filled with timbre,” his friend recalled, “he said, ‘Hey man, that’s why I love you. You’re a fucking wise guy.’ And as he said it, I thought to myself, ‘Where did that voice go? Where did that guy with that voice go? What the fuck happened to this guy?’” What the fuck happened to Joe Biden during the final days of his presidency is a subject of increasingly contentious debate. Angered by his last-minute abdication from the race, Democrats have blamed the president for putting Kamala Harris in a no-win situation, with too short a runway to mount a successful campaign against Trump. Biden’s advisers, it is said, engaged in a cover-up of his deteriorating mental condition, which was dramatically and publicly exposed during the debate. In this version of events, Biden’s inner circle knew the president was non compos mentis and hid this fact from the American public. In fact, it was stranger--and in a way, more troubling--than that. A cover-up, as we’ve understood the term to mean since Watergate, involves deliberately hiding something you know to be true. Biden’s closest advisers, however, were operating in a fog of delusion and denial; they refused to believe what they could see with their own eyes. Despite the president’s obvious cognitive decline, they had convinced themselves that he was fine. Their failure to recognize, up close, what everyone else could see from afar—that Biden was too feeble to run for reelection at the age of 82—led to a political disaster. And a relatively unproven national candidate, his vice president, was thrown into the race at the eleventh-hour against an emboldened Donald Trump. Biden had stepped aside on July 21—eight days after the GOP nominee had survived an assassination attempt. Anyone who’s ever had to persuade an octogenarian grandfather to give up the car keys knew that it was time for the president to step aside. (Seventy-seven percent of Americans and 69 percent of Democrats opposed Biden running for a second term. A goodly share didn’t want Trump either.) But in the summer of 2024, Joe Biden was having none of it. And neither were many of his family, friends, and advisers. Despite months of public opinion polling that showed Biden potentially losing to Trump in critical battleground states, they were all-in on his bid for reelection. Their reasons were both understandable--and delusional. Biden’s naysayers, some of his advisers reasoned, had been wrong in 2020 when they’d pronounced him politically dead after he placed fourth in the Iowa caucuses and fifth in the New Hampshire primary. Biden had gone on to win the nomination and beat Trump in the general election by seven million votes. Come 2024, Bidenworld believed the doubters were wrong again. But as George Clooney wrote in a blunt New York Times op-ed piece in the summer of 2024, Biden could not win the battle against time. His advisers should have known this but refused to face the fact, head on. Bill Daley watched this spectacle unfold in disbelief. Scion of the legendary Chicago Democratic family, Daley, who served as Barack Obama’s second White House chief of staff, says there’s a kind of myopia that comes with proximity to the president. “You’re in the bubble,” he told me. “You’ve crossed the Rubicon.” Something in the air of the West Wing clouds the vision of those who work there, particularly those who’ve been with the president for decades. “Everybody bought into it,” said Daley of the notion that Biden should run for reelection. “And once they crossed the Rubicon, they bullshitted everybody to stay out of the race.” Jack Watson, chief of staff in Jimmy Carter’s White House, compares working there to being in a magnetic force field. The gravitational pull to protect the president--at almost any cost--is immense. I had my own reasons for wondering if Biden’s White House staff was hiding him. As far back as September of 2022, when I asked for an interview with the president for my book on the first two years of his administration, The Fight of His Life, it was granted on one condition: I would send my questions by email and Biden would answer them in writing. It was clear, in hindsight, that the commander-in-chief’s aides didn’t want to risk having him interact in real time with a reporter. When I complained about getting emailed answers, I was told, “If it’s any consolation, we’re not even doing this for [Bob] Woodward.” And yet Joe Biden was no Woodrow Wilson. In 1919, the 28th president suffered a serious stroke; a cover-up ensued; and Wilson’s second wife, Edith, allegedly performed many of her incapacitated husband’s presidential duties. By contrast, whatever you may think of his policies, Biden governed competently behind closed doors. Visitors can attest that during meetings, he commanded every detail and nuance of Middle East policy. On the morning he stepped aside, when senior staffers arrived to hammer out the announcement of his abdication, the president was on the phone, parsing the details of a complex, multi-nation prisoner swap. Mike Donilon, Biden’s senior adviser and confidant, who was with him more than almost anyone, swears he never saw the president mentally diminished. So unless someone produces a failed neurological exam--or a deep-sixed Parkinson’s diagnosis--this was not a classic cover-up but a case of collective denial among Biden, first lady Jill Biden, and the president’s closest aides. Out of a desire to cling to power or just wishful thinking, they believed what they wanted to believe. Still, Biden’s team knew it had a problem: the president was a shadow of himself on the stump. That’s one of the reasons why, in 2020, they effectively arranged for Biden to run his campaign from his basement. In March 2024, a veteran Democratic operative interviewed for a top campaign job with Biden and his aides in the Oval Office. The job interview took a surprisingly candid turn. “Part of their discussion on the strategy of the [reelection] campaign,” she told me, “was ‘Hey, in 2020 we had this great excuse of the basement, of COVID, to keep him out of the public eye. We no longer have that excuse. What do we do?’” Over Saint Patrick’s Day weekend 2024, at a small White House party, Biden spoke to guests using a teleprompter. Daley (who, on a dozen visits to the White House, was never invited to drop in on Biden) couldn’t believe it. If the president needed a script for a small gathering of Irish guys, how would he survive the rigors of a campaign? “How are they letting this thing go on?” he thought. “This is crazy.” Daley ran into his friend Tom Donilon, a long-time national security expert and brother of Biden’s adviser Mike. Why hadn’t anyone spoken to the president about stepping aside and giving someone else a chance to beat Trump? “How are they letting this fucking thing go on?” Daley asked him. Donilon shook his head. “I don’t believe there’s anyone who’s had the conversation with him about not running, including my brother,” he said. If Mike Donilon, Biden’s alter ego, hadn’t spoken to the president about his age, it was almost certain that no one had. Nor did Democrats dare talk about Biden’s age—at least in public. “Everyone ignored it,” said Daley. Challenging the incumbent president could be a political death wish. “Every politician, every big shot, they all bought into the attitude that if you run against him and he gets softened up and loses to Trump, you’ll be blamed and your career is over. Every freaking one of them had no balls.” The depth of denial among Biden’s advisers became clear when they challenged Trump to an early debate, in June. For a campaign covering up for a doddering uncle, this would have been a crazy risk to take. Why would Biden’s handlers, knowing that he’d lost his verbal fastball, send him out to pitch against Trump? They could have held out for a later debate in the fall, effectively running out the clock. (If Biden then fell on his face, it would be too late to replace him as the nominee.) The answer is that Biden’s top aides—campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, Donilon, and senior adviser Anita Dunn—must have believed, erroneously, that he could go toe-to-toe with Trump. When Daley heard that Biden’s aides were considering a June debate, he was aghast. It was pure hubris. “They were so cocky,” he said. “They got CNN, they got the moderators, they got the rules—no audience. They were telling[people]: ‘We got everything we wanted.’” Daley foresaw disaster. He called up Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients. “Jeff, I know you’re debating whether to debate,” he told him. “Do not do this. I’m telling you, don’t do it. I’m just telling you, come up with something, but do not do it.” On Friday, June 21, 2024, Joe Biden arrived at Camp David to prepare for the debate. Just six days away, it might well decide the outcome of the 2024 election. The president’s wobbly state should have been a flashing warning light. At his first meeting with Biden, Ron Klain, his former White House chief of staff, who was in charge of debate prep, was startled. He’d never seen Biden so exhausted and out of it. He seemed unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. The president appeared obsessed with foreign policy and uninterested in his second-term plans. During one prep session in Aspen Lodge, the presidential cabin, Biden suddenly got up, walked out to the pool, collapsed on a lounge chair, and fell sound asleep. Yet his advisers were undaunted. With unintended irony, one of them explained their strategy to me: “An early debate would quiet fears that the president was infirm.” That evening, Biden met again with Klain, Donilon, senior adviser Steve Ricchetti, and deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed. “We sat around the table,” said Klain. “He had answers on cards and I was struck by how out of touch with American politics he was. He was just very, very focused on his interactions with NATO leaders.” The first of two mock debates was scheduled to last 90 minutes but Klain called it off after 45. The president’s voice was shot and so was his grasp of the general subjects that might come up during the debate. “All he really could talk about was his infrastructure plan and how he was rebuilding America and 16 million jobs,” said Klain. Biden had nothing to say about his agenda for a second term. Klain prodded him: “Look, sir, you’re not really telling people what you’re going to do if they reelect you.” “I’m not going to make more promises,” the president snapped. “I made too many promises in 2020 and I delivered on most of them, and all people remember are the things I didn’t deliver on.” Klain retorted: “Well, you have to make some promises to get reelected, sir.” In hopes of piquing his interest in a forward-thinking agenda, Klain arranged a phone call with Melinda French Gates, a persuasive childcare advocate. Biden perked up briefly but soon lost interest again. At one point, Biden had an idea. If he looked perplexed when Trump talked, voters would understand that Trump was the one whose answers were batty or half-baked.. Klain replied: “Sir, when you look perplexed, people just think you’re perplexed. And this is our problem in this race.” Twenty-five minutes into the second mock debate, the president was done for the day. “I’m just too tired to continue and I’m afraid of losing my voice here and I feel bad,” he said. “I just need some sleep. I’ll be fine tomorrow.” He went off to bed. Klain tried to remind himself that Biden had always been a game-day player. Maybe the president would rise to the occasion as he had often done before. On June 27, debate night, Biden arrived at CNN headquarters just before the 9 p.m. start. He was offered a “walk-through”—a chance to check out the camera angles from the podium—but he waved it off. Minutes later, the president and Trump took the stage. Twelve minutes later came disaster. Asked about the deficit, Biden froze, his expression vacant; he seemed unaware of where he was. Some observers wondered if he was having a ministroke. Then he said: “We finally beat Medicare.” From behind the stage, in a green room, Trump’s campaign co-chair Chris LaCivita looked at his colleague Susie Wiles and Tony Fabrizio, their pollster, and said: “He’s dead. He’s not going to stay.” As Biden continued to flail, Trump recognized what was happening and let his opponent self-destruct. After an incomprehensible jumble of words from Biden, Trump parried: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence and I don’t think he knows what he said, either.” Klain, Donilon, Ricchetti, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and other Biden staffers were watching the debacle from a room below the CNN stage. On a Zoom monitor they could see O’Malley Dillon at a separate location, monitoring “dial groups”—focus groups of voters who turned a dial up or down to register their approval or disapproval in real time. The Biden dials were headed south. It was possibly the most disastrous performance ever delivered in a presidential debate—and a fatal blow to Biden’s hopes for reelection. Any objective viewer could see that the president was incapable of waging an effective campaign against Trump. But Biden’s team didn’t see it that way. Ricchetti contended that he thought the president had just had a bad night—like Barack Obama’s lackluster first debate against Mitt Romney in 2012. Dunn argued that the president had actually won the faceoff with the undecided voters who mattered. Like O’Malley Dillon, she’d been watching voter dial groups during the debate and noted that as it wore on, they’d disliked Trump even more than Biden. “It’s a good illustration of the difference between voters and elites,” she said. “Voters experience this differently. They hated Donald Trump. We actually picked up a few votes in the group.” Even the normally clear-eyed O’Malley Dillon grasped for a silver lining. Her first thought wasn’t “How can we talk to the president about stepping aside?” It was: not that many people had actually seen the debate. (Yet an estimated 51 million people were watching.) Biden’s key advisers were among the best and the brightest, adept at managing policy, politics, and public relations at the presidential level. But now they were the blind leading the blind. Some had spent decades rallying around Biden whenever he came under attack; their instinct was to adopt a defensive crouch. Nearly four months later, when I spoke with Reed and Ricchetti at the White House, they were still trapped in that force field of denial. The problem, they insisted, wasn’t Biden’s condition, it was three weeks of Democratic infighting and the media’s obsession with his debate performance. The weekend of July 20–21, 2024, would prove to be seminal, a hinge of American history. As Joe Biden convalesced with a case of COVID at his house in Rehoboth Beach, Maryland, the cries for him to give up his reelection campaign grew louder. On Friday, July 19, Klain called the president. They talked about the growing pressure on him to withdraw. Klain urged Biden to resist it. “That’s my intention,” he replied. For the next 48 hours, there was radio silence. Other than Biden’s Secret Service detail, the only people at the Rehoboth house were Jill Biden and his “body people,” deputy White House chief of staff Annie Tomasini and Anthony Bernal, the first lady’s senior adviser. No one knew if Biden was considering throwing in the towel—but back at the White House, one aide thought the president’s silence was telling. “He’s somebody who checks in pretty frequently and wants to know what’s going on and wants to talk things through,” he said. “When things went quiet, I think we knew he was seriously thinking about it.” On Saturday morning, July 20, Donilon and Ricchetti arrived at the president’s beach house. With more than 60 years of service to Biden between them, they’d been at his side through innumerable political and personal crises. But the president’s men had never faced a situation with such grave stakes for the country and the world. Ricchetti, bearing polling data, went first. He told the president that while he was down by a few points nationally, and more in the battleground states, he was within the historical margin to come back and win. Public opinion wasn’t the obstacle; the party was. Most of its leaders were against him. “There’s a path for you to win the nomination and the presidency,” Ricchetti told the president, “but it will be brutal, and you will have to wage a fierce, lonely fight against your own party. This could hurt your reputation for being a unifying commander-in-chief that is core to you.” But if Biden wanted to run again, Ricchetti was all-in. In fact, the path to a Biden victory was almost nonexistent; Trump’s polling lead in the battleground states was essentially insurmountable. But even at this late hour Ricchetti and Donilon were soft-pedaling this hard reality. What the president’s aides could not sugarcoat was the fact that the party’s leaders were about to lower the boom on him. “They knew the honeymoon was over that weekend,” a source close to the leadership told me. “Pelosi, Schumer, and Jeffries would have all been publicly calling for him to get out.” As the walls closed in, Biden felt abandoned. It was his perceived betrayal by Barack Obama that stung most of all. What hurt was that Obama hadn’t picked up the phone and called him. “The one thing that still gnaws at him,” one of Biden’s close friends told me, “is the fact that Obama never called him to have misgivings about his candidacy—to say, ‘You know, Jeez, Joe, are you sure you’re up to it?’” Biden wasn’t even sure his White House staff had his back. “He was like ‘What happened here?’” said a confidant. “‘Why was there no one on my side?’ And he got very focused on whether or not people were being loyal to him inside the building. I think he lost confidence in the people right around him.” But Biden’s major players were still with him; Donilon, Ricchetti, and Klain were committed to his reelection; they would have died on that hill. The president turned to Donilon, his longtime wordsmith “If I were to drop out,” he said, “what would it look like and sound like?” Donilon said he’d knock out a draft of a withdrawal statement. Biden told him, “I want to sleep on it.” At about noon the next day, Sunday, Jeff Zients was in his West Wing office when his phone lit up. “I’ve decided not to run,” Biden told his White House chief of staff. Zients tried to engage him. “That lasted about a minute,” Zients recalled, “because he said, ‘What I really want to talk about is how do we have as productive a six-month period—that’s how much time was left—as we’ve had in the first three and a half years.’” Who, if anyone, should Biden endorse as his successor? It was a momentous question. Indeed, everything was riding on Biden’s successor—not only the outcome of the 2024 presidential election but the fate of Biden’s agenda, his historical legacy, and the future of the party. The decision was Biden’s alone to make. Just after he spoke to Zients, Biden called Kamala Harris. Within 48 hours, working the phones with her staff from her dining room at the Naval Observatory, Harris had all but clinched the nomination against all potential Democratic challengers. But there were only 107 days until the election. The runway was short to mount an effective campaign against the Trump juggernaut. Democrats had been saddled with the last-minute candidacy of an untested nominee. And for one reason: No one in Biden’s inner circle had leveled with the president about the folly of running at his advanced age and uncertain state. History will likely judge harshly the men and women who served him. Leon Panetta, 86, Bill Clinton’s former White House chief of staff and Obama’s CIA director and defense secretary, was blunt. “I think they were living in an isolated world,” he told me. “Everybody was marching to the same tune. And there was nobody there to say, ‘What the hell’s going on?’ They just never had a grown-up in the room who could look Joe Biden in the eye and say, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’” In February 2025, more than three months after Harris’s defeat, Mike Donilon appeared at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Biden’s confidant was more convinced than ever, he told the audience, that the Democrats had made a terrible mistake by forcing the president to leave the ticket. Just four years earlier, the man had won 81 million votes. “I thought it was crazy they would walk away from the single greatest vote-getter in American history,” Donilon said. “I thought it was insane. I think the party lost its mind.” Biden’s old friend—the one he calls a wise guy, who’d talked his sister Valerie off the ledge after that horrible debate—had a different view. Joe Biden, he told me, has yet to accept the way his presidency ended. “Depending on what day of the week it is, depending on whether he sees Trump on a video replay at night, he’ll say, ‘I could have beat that fucking guy.’ But he couldn’t have. I don’t know if in his lifetime he’ll ever really come to that conclusion. But that debate was it for him. You cannot erase that image in the minds of millions of voters.” From the forthcoming book Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History by Chris Whipple. Copyright © 2025 by CCWhip Productions. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fernando 6,585 Posted April 9 Share Posted April 9 (edited) 90 day pause on all tariffs except on China. Edited April 9 by Fernando Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper 30,233 Posted April 9 Share Posted April 9 Trump blinked because the most braindead, gaslit of his supporters finally are figuring out, despite Trump's pure lies to the contrary, that THEY have to pay the tarrifs, not the other nations and their companies. That and the billionaires and centimillionaires in unison are going after Trump as he has wiped out trillions in market values. Dairy farmer surprised that he has to pay tariff and not his Canadian supplier. Did he forget that Mexico did not pay for the wall? Here Are the Places Where the Recession Has Already Begun Towns near the Canadian border are suffering. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/recession-tariffs-canada-trump/682297/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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