#Americans jailed in Turkey

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Why they're smearing Lina Khan

My god, they sure hate Lina Khan. This once-in-a-generation, groundbreaking, brilliant legal scholar and fighter for the public interest, the slayer of Reaganomics, has attracted more vitriol, mockery, and dismissal than any of her predecessors in living memory.

She sure must be doing something right, huh?

A quick refresher. In 2017, Khan — then a law student — published Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox in the Yale Law Journal. It was a brilliant, blistering analysis showing how the Reagan-era theory of antitrust (which celebrates monopolies as “efficient”) had failed on its own terms, using Amazon as Exhibit A of the ways in which post-Reagan antitrust had left Americans vulnerable to corporate abuse:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

The paper sent seismic shocks through both legal and economic circles, and goosed the neo-Brandeisian movement (sneeringly dismissed as “hipster antitrust”). This movement is a rebuke to Reaganomics, with its celebration of monopolies, trickle-down, offshoring, corporate dark money, revolving-door regulatory capture, and companies that are simultaneously too big to fail and too big to jail.

This movement has many proponents, of course — not just Khan — but Khan’s careful scholarship, combined with her encyclopedic knowledge of the long-dormant statutory powers that federal agencies had to make change, and a strategy for reviving those powers to protect Americans from corporate predators made her a powerful, inspirational figure.

When Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, he surprised everyone by appointing Khan to the FTC. It wasn’t just that she had such a radical vision — it was also that she lacked the usual corporate law experience that such an appointee would normally require (experience that would ensure that the FTC was helmed by people whose default view of the world is that it should be structured and regulated by powerful, wealthy people in corporate boardrooms).

Even more surprising was that Khan was made chair of the FTC, something that was only possible because a few Republican Senators broke with their party to support her candidacy:

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1171/vote_117_1_00233.htm

These Republicans saw in Khan an ally in their fight against “woke” Big Tech. For these senators, the problem wasn’t that tech had got too big and powerful — it was that there were a few limited instances in which tech leaders failed to wield that power in the ways they preferred.

The Republican project is a matter of getting turkeys to vote for Christmas by doing a lot of culture war bullshit, cruelly abusing disfavored sexual and racial minorities. This wins support from low-information voters who’ll vote against their class interests and support more monopolies, more tax cuts for the rich, and more cuts to the services they rely on.

But while tech leaders are 100% committed to the project of permanent oligarchic takeover of every sphere of American life, they are less full-throated in their support for hateful, cruel discrimination against disfavored minorities (in this regard, tech leaders resemble the corporate wing of the Democrats, which is where we get the “Silicon Valley is a Democratic Party stronghold” narrative).

This failure to unquestioningly and unstintingly back culture war bullshit put tech leaders in the GOP’s crosshairs. Some GOP politicians actually believe in the culture war bullshit, and are grossly offended that tech is “woke.” Others are smart enough not to get high on their own supply, but worry that any tech obstruction in the bullshit culture wars will make it harder to get sufficient turkey votes for a big fat Christmas surprise.

Biden’s ceding of antitrust policy to the left wing of the party, combined with disaffected GOP senators viewing Khan as their enemy’s enemy, led to Khan’s historic appointment as FTC Chair. In that position, she was joined by a slate of Biden trustbusters, including Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ Antitrust Division, Tim Wu at the White House, and other important, skilled and principled fighters like Alvaro Bedoya (FTC), Rebecca Slaughter (FTC), Rohit Chopra (CFPB), and many others.

Crucially, these new appointees weren’t just principled, they were good at their jobs. In 2021, Tim Wu wrote an executive order for Biden that laid out 72 concrete ways in which the administration could act — with no further Congressional authorization — to blunt corporate power and insulate the American people from oligarchs’ abusive and extractive practices:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

Since then, the antitrust arm of the Biden administration have been fuckin’ ninjas, Getting Shit Done in ways large and small, working — for the first time since Reagan — to protect Americans from predatory businesses:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

This is in marked contrast to the corporate Dems’ champions in the administration. People like Pete Buttigieg are heralded as competent technocrats, “realists” who are too principled to peddle hopium to the base, writing checks they can’t cash. All this is cover for a King Log performance, in which Buttigieg’s far-reaching regulatory authority sits unused on a shelf while a million Americans are stranded over Christmas and whole towns are endangered by greedy, reckless rail barons straight out of the Gilded Age:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

The contrast between the Biden trustbusters and their counterparts from the corporate wing is stark. While the corporate wing insists that every pitch is outside of the zone, Khan and her allies are swinging for the stands. They’re trying to make life better for you and me, by declaring commercial surveillance to be an unfair business practice and thus illegal:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

And by declaring noncompete “agreements” that shackle good workers to shitty jobs to be illegal:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal

And naturally, this has really pissed off all the right people: America’s billionaires and their cheerleaders in the press, government, and the hive of scum and villainy that is the Big Law/thinktank industrial-complex.

Take the WSJ: since Khan took office, they have published 67 vicious editorials attacking her and her policies. Khan is living rent-free in Rupert Murdoch’s head. Not only that, he’s given her the presidential suite! You love to see it.

These attacks are worth reading, if only to see how flimsy and frivolous they are. One major subgenre is that Khan shouldn’t be bringing any action against Amazon, because her groundbreaking scholarship about the company means she has a conflict of interest. Holy moly is this a stupid thing to say. The idea that the chair of an expert agency should recuse herself because she is an expert is what the physicists call not even wrong.

But these attacks are even more laughable due to who they’re coming from: people who have the most outrageous conflicts of interest imaginable, and who were conspicuously silent for years as the FTC’s revolving door admitted the a bestiary of swamp-creatures so conflicted it’s a wonder they managed to dress themselves in the morning.

Writing in The American Prospect, David Dayen runs the numbers:

Since the late 1990s, 31 out of 41 top FTC officials worked directly for a company that has business before the agency, with 26 of them related to the technology industry.

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-06-23-attacks-lina-khans-ethics-reveal-projection/

Take Christine Wilson, a GOP-appointed FTC Commissioner who quit the agency in a huff because Khan wanted to do things for the American people, and not their self-appointed oligarchic princelings. Wilson wrote an angry break-up letter to Khan that the WSJ published, presaging their concierge service for Samuel Alito:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-im-resigning-from-the-ftc-commissioner-ftc-lina-khan-regulation-rule-violation-antitrust-339f115d

For Wilson to question Khan’s ethics took galactic-scale chutzpah. Wilson, after all, is a commissioner who took cash money from Bristol-Myers Squibb, then voted to approve their merger with Celgene:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4365601-Wilson-Christine-Smith-final278.html

Or take Wilson’s GOP FTC predecessor Josh Wright, whose incestuous relationship with the companies he oversaw at the Commission are so intimate he’s practically got a Habsburg jaw. Wright went from Google to the US government and back again four times. He also lobbied the FTC on behalf of Qualcomm (a major donor to Wright’s employer, George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School) after working “personally and substantially” while serving at the FTC.

George Mason’s Scalia center practically owns the revolving door, counting fourteen FTC officials among its affliates:

https://campaignforaccountability.org/ttp-investigation-big-techs-backdoor-to-the-ftc/

Since the 1990s, 31 out of 41 top FTC officials — both GOP appointed and appointees backed by corporate Dems — “worked directly for a company that has business before the agency”:

https://www.citizen.org/article/ftc-big-tech-revolving-door-problem-report/

The majority of FTC and DoJ antitrust lawyers who served between 2014–21 left government service and went straight to work for a Big Law firm, serving the companies they’d regulated just a few months before:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/The-Revolving-Door-In-Federal-Antitrust-Enforcement.pdf

Take Deborah Feinstein, formerly the head of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where she’s represented General Electric, NBCUniversal, Unilever, and Pepsi and a whole medicine chest’s worth of pharma giants before her former subordinates at the FTC. Michael Moiseyev who was assistant manager of FTC Competition is now in charge of mergers at Weil Gotshal & Manges, working for Microsoft, Meta, and Eli Lilly.

There’s a whole bunch more, but Dayen reserves special notice for Andrew Smith, Trump’s FTC Consumer Protection boss. Before he was put on the public payroll, Smith represented 120 clients that had business before the Commission, including “nearly every major bank in America, drug industry lobbyist PhRMA, Uber, Equifax, Amazon, Facebook, Verizon, and a variety of payday lenders”:

https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/andrew_smith_foia_appeal_response_11_30.pdf

Before Khan, in other words, the FTC was a “conflict-of-interest assembly line, moving through corporate lawyers and industry hangers-on without resistance for decades.”

Khan is the first FTC head with no conflicts. This leaves her opponents in the sweaty, desperate position of inventing conflicts out of thin air.

For these corporate lickspittles, Khan’s “conflict” is that she has a point of view. Specifically, she thinks that the FTC should do its job.

This makes grifters like Jim Jordan furious. Yesterday, Jordan grilled Khan in a hearing where he accused her of violating an ethics official’s advice that she should recuse herself from Big Tech cases. This is a talking point that was created and promoted by Bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-16/ftc-rejected-ethics-advice-for-khan-recusal-on-meta-case

That ethics official, Lorielle Pankey, did not, in fact, make this recommendation. It’s simply untrue (she did say that Khan presiding over cases that she has made public statements about could be used as ammo against her, but did not say that it violated any ethical standard).

But there’s more to this story. Pankey herself has a gigantic conflict of interest in this case, including a stock portfolio with $15,001 and $50,000 in Meta stock (Meta is another company that has whined in print and in its briefs that it is a poor defenseless lamb being picked on by big, mean ole Lina Khan):

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ethics-official-owned-meta-stock-while-recommending-ftc-chair-recuse-herself-from-meta-case-8582a83b

Jordan called his hearing on the back of this fake scandal, and then proceeded to show his whole damned ass, even as his GOP colleagues got into a substantive and even informative dialog with Khan:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-07-14-jim-jordan-misfires-attacks-lina-khan/

Mostly what came out of that hearing was news about how Khan is doing her job, working on behalf of the American people. For example, she confirmed that she’s investigating OpenAI for nonconsensually harvesting a mountain of Americans’ personal information:

https://www.ft.com/content/8ce04d67-069b-4c9d-91bf-11649f5adc74

Other Republicans, including confirmed swamp creatures like Matt Gaetz, ended up agreeing with Khan that Amazon Ring is a privacy dumpster-fire. Nobodies like Rep TomM assie gave Khan an opening to discuss how her agency is protecting mom-and-pop grocers from giant, price-gouging, greedflation-drunk national chains. Jeff Van Drew gave her a chance to talk about the FTC’s war on robocalls. Lance Gooden let her talk about her fight against horse doping.

But Khan’s opponents did manage to repeat a lot of the smears against her, and not just the bogus conflict-of-interest story. They also accused her of being 0–4 in her actions to block mergers, ignoring the huge number of mergers that have been called off or not initiated because M&A professionals now understand they can no longer expect these mergers to be waved through. Indeed, just last night I spoke with a friend who owns a medium-sized tech company that Meta tried to buy out, only to withdraw from the deal because their lawyers told them it would get challenged at the FTC, with an uncertain outcome.

These talking points got picked up by people commenting on Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley’s ruling against the FTC in the Microsoft-Activision merger. The FTC was seeking an injunction against the merger, and Corley turned them down flat. The ruling was objectively very bad. Start with the fact that Corley’s son is a Microsoft employee who stands reap massive gains in his stock options if the merger goes through.

But beyond this (real, non-imaginary, not manufactured conflict of interest), Corley’s judgment and her remarks in court were inexcusably bad, as Matt Stoller writes:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-for-microsoft-mergers

In her ruling, Corley explained that she didn’t think Microsoft would abuse the market dominance they’d gain by merging their giant videogame platform and studio with one of its largest competitors. Why not? Because Microsoft’s execs pinky-swore that they wouldn’t abuse that power.

Corely’s deference to Microsoft’s corporate priorities goes deeper than trusting its execs, though. In denying the FTC’s motion, she stated that it would be unfair to put the merger on hold in order to have a full investigation into its competition implications because Microsoft and Activision had set a deadline of July 18 to conclude things, and Microsoft would have to pay a penalty if that deadline passed.

This is surreal: a judge ruled that a corporation’s radical, massive merger shouldn’t be subject to full investigation because that corporation itself set an arbitrary deadline to conclude the deal before such an investigation could be concluded. That’s pretty convenient for future mega-mergers — just set a short deadline and Judge Corely will tell regulators that the merger can’t be investigated because the deadline is looming.

And this is all about the future. As Stoller writes, Microsoft isn’t exactly subtle about why it wants this merger. Its own execs said that the reason they were spending “dump trucks” of money buying games studios was to “spend Sony out of business.”

Now, maybe you hate Sony. Maybe you hate Activision. There’s plenty of good reason to hate both — they’re run by creeps who do shitty things to gamers and to their employees. But if you think that Microsoft will be better once it eliminates its competition, then you have the attention span of a goldfish on Adderall.

Microsoft made exactly the same promises it made on Activision when it bought out another games studio, Zenimax — and it broke every one of those promises.

Microsoft has a long, long, long history of being a brutal, abusive monopolist. It is a convicted monopolist. And its bad conduct didn’t end with the browser wars. You remember how the lockdown turned all our homes into rent-free branch offices for our employers? Microsoft seized on that moment to offer our bosses keystroke-and-click level surveillance of our use of our own computers in our own homes, via its Office365 bossware product:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

If you think a company that gave your boss a tool to spy on their employees and rank them by “productivity” as a prelude to firing them or cutting their pay is going to treat gamers or game makers well once they have “spent the competition out of business,” you’re a credulous sucker and you are gonna be so disappointed.

The enshittification play is obvious: use investor cash to make things temporarily nice for customers and suppliers, lock both of them in — in this case, it’s with a subscription-based service similar to Netflix’s — and then claw all that value back until all that’s left is a big pile of shit.

The Microsoft case is about the future. Judge Corely doesn’t take the future seriously: as she said during the trial, “All of this is for a shooter videogame.” The reason Corely greenlit this merger isn’t because it won’t be harmful — it’s because she doesn’t think those harms matter.

But it does, and not just because games are an art form that generate billions of dollars, employ a vast workforce, and bring pleasure to millions. It also matters because this is yet another one of the Reaganomic precedents that tacitly endorses monopolies as efficient forces for good. As Stoller writes, Corley’s ruling means that “deal bankers are sharpening pencils and saying ‘Great, the government lost! We can get mergers through everywhere else.’ Basically, if you like your high medical prices, you should be cheering on Microsoft’s win today.”

Ronald Reagan’s antitrust has colonized our brains so thoroughly that commentators were surprised when, immediately after the ruling, the FTC filed an appeal. Don’t they know they’ve lost? the commentators said:

https://gizmodo.com/ftc-files-appeal-of-microsoft-activision-deal-ruling-1850640159

They echoed the smug words of insufferable Activision boss Mike Ybarra: “Your tax dollars at work.”

https://twitter.com/Qwik/status/1679277251337277440

But of course Khan is appealing. The only reason that’s surprising is that Khan is working for us, the American people, not the giant corporations the FTC is supposed to be defending us from. Sure, I get that this is a major change! But she needs our backing, not our cheap cynicism.

The business lobby and their pathetic Renfields have hoarded all the nice things and they don’t want us to have any. Khan and her trustbuster colleagues want the opposite. There is no measure so small that the corporate world won’t have a conniption over it. Take click to cancel, the FTC’s perfectly reasonable proposal that if you sign up for a recurring payment subscription with a single click, you should be able to cancel it with a single click.

The tooth-gnashing and garment-rending and scenery-chewing over this is wild. America’s biggest companies have wheeled out their biggest guns, claiming that if they make it too easy to unsubscribe, they will lose money. In other words, they are currently making money not because people want their products, but because it’s too hard to stop paying for them!

https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/12/ftc_cancel_subscriptions/

We shouldn’t have to tolerate this sleaze. And if we back Khan and her team, they’ll protect us from these scams. Don’t let them convince you to give up hope. This is the start of the fight, not the end. We’re trying to reverse 40 years’ worth of Reagonmics here. It won’t happen overnight. There will be setbacks. But keep your eyes on the prize — this is the most exciting moment for countering corporate power and giving it back to the people in my lifetime. We owe it to ourselves, our kids and our planet to fight one.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

[Image ID: A line drawing of pilgrims ducking a witch tied to a ducking stool. The pilgrims' clothes have been emblazoned with the logos for the WSJ, Microsoft, Activision and Blizzard. The witch's face has been replaced with that of FTC chair Lina M Khan.]

[blackoutfeverdream]

This would not have happened under Harris.

And why? Iran would know for all the last eighteen months' idiocy and the spasms of Biden's calcified Cold Warrior program they still would have a decent shot at restoring JCPOA/BARJAM.

No matter what, AIPAC have spent their shot. They're not done as a meaningful force in the Democratic Party per se but their public hysteria and assault against any and all Progressive Democrats post-October 7, 2023 meant in all functional terms they've lost their ability to terrify a lot of people. After all- this thing was a rout. The Dems didn't just lose; they let themselves get shattered, Progressives and "Centrists" alike. Didn't matter. No amount of knee-padding the Party Line helped.

AIPAC shoveled dumptrucks of money to Republicans and Tory Dems with such open mania it's difficult to believe anyone who wants non-MAGA votes wants their poison anymore.

(One might question how long the opportune and always uneasy love affair with Zionism-

they brought the money and Pat Robertson brought the bodies-

is gonna last in an American religious reaction that's shown itself totally serious about its Dominionist wet dreams outlasting the night but that's another tirade)

But with Trump? No. No new Iran Deal. He's too stupid; his loyalists are too stupid; the Gulf-Turkey-Israel Lobby are too stupid.

So Iran will find itself isolated in parallel- by their hell-disaster showing in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon and their inability to deepen relations with semi-neutrals at the Sino-Russian periphery like South Africa, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.

Instead Tehran should rename itself Caracas North.

The "hard-liners"

(oh how the press love their meaningless cliches)

have no alternatives but to crush. And hard. All they have left is the debased coinage of religious puritanism and while hordes of dipshits might be as careless about Syria's new ISIS-lite government as they were about Libya, you can be damn sure the Iranians won't be.

They

are

fucking

surrounded now. Do the Taliban scare them? No. But it ain't great to have them to your east when all you've got to the west, north, and south is mortal enemies and the Congo with sand. Iraq is in serious straits

you know this shit in Syria is going to reignite the same sectarian civil war that brought us ISIS in the first place and likely implode Lebanon

and so now all they've got is acres of enemies all aligned in a bloc ready to relitigate the Battle of Karbala.

It's not gonna be fun to be a woman, queer, or just about anybody in Iran.

Time and again, how alike we all are.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ruth Ben-Ghiat at Lucid:

"Should I leave the country now for somewhere safer?” “How do you know when it's time to move?" “Where should I go?” Almost every day now, as the inauguration of Donald Trump approaches, I receive queries like these from fellow Americans. The personalized nature of the decision to go into exile means that it is very difficult to counsel people. However, we can learn from the history of such fateful choices, which also teaches us that exile is not a linear path, nor an irreversible one. I have been engaging with the history of émigrés from dictatorships for decades. My interest in studying Fascism was sparked by growing up in Pacific Palisades, California, where the writer Thomas Mann and other famous exiles had sought refuge from Nazism. Over the next century, America became a destination for so many others fleeing dictatorship. Now it may be our turn to experience some form of autocracy. The title of this essay sums up the eternal dilemma of the anti-authoritarian: do I stay and resist, or go into exile? In reality, there is a third option, and as everywhere in the world, it is likely to be the most popular one. You stay put, and keep your head down and your criticism of the government private. That way you and your loved ones can minimize any adverse consequences while you “wait it out.” Only a small percentage of the population leaves the country, or stays and actively resists, not least because these choices pose financial, legal, physical, and other challenges. And yet it is often these minorities who make history, whether by leading the opposition from abroad (as Belarusian politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is doing from Lithuania) or from inside the country, organizing protests or other resistance actions. And in our age of transnational repression, being abroad can still be dangerous for dissidents who persist with political activities.

Yet the questions that the politically active have grappled with have changed little since the dawn of authoritarianism. If all the resisters leave, who is left to fight for freedom? How can I turn my back on my country? “Guilt is exile’s eternal companion,” reflects the writer Hisham Matar, who, as the son of Jaballa Matar, an opponent of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, was forced to follow his compatriots’ fates from abroad and had no information about his imprisoned relatives back home. And if the resisters who stay are silenced, who is left to lead the struggle, document the abuses, and counter the propaganda? Isn’t it more pragmatic to leave and be able to work for freedom rather than sit in jail? Alexi Navalny’s death in a Siberian lager is an example of what can happen to high-profile opponents of the dictator when they do not leave. Navalny could have easily remained abroad after his stay in Germany to recover from a Kremlin poisoning, but he refused to remove himself voluntarily and make it easier for the “thieving little man in his bunker,” as he memorably referred to Vladimir Putin during his 2021 Moscow sentencing, to claim victory over him and his anti-corruption work.

Some people escape one dictatorship by going to another. That might seem strange, and yet geographical proximity or the ability to get residence papers make it a not uncommon choice. Chileans who fled Augusto Pinochet’s military regime after the 1973 coup settled in Brazil’s military regime, or (if they were Communists) in East Germany. Germans found refuge from Nazism in Fascist Italy, and Syrians crossed the border to Turkey as they fled the Assad regime. Some exiles also return home, thinking maybe it won’t be that bad, before leaving again for good. Many people want to know the right time to leave, and history is full of stories of people who did not leave their countries in time to escape persecution. There are good reasons for this. Dictators are impulsive, and love “shock events,” as I refer to them in Strongmen (which has exile as a theme). What is fine today may be grounds for persecution tomorrow, and all bets are off if a state of emergency is declared.

Going into exile also requires money and other things that many individuals do not have: a job offer, the right connections, entry papers, a way to care for loved ones who cannot leave, or a place to stay in another country. Those at elite institutions or multinational/global companies might have more possibilities to move abroad than activists or politicians rooted in local contexts. That’s why we should not assume that those who stay in dictatorships are in denial. The Jewish linguist Viktor Klemperer is a case in point. He remained in Nazi Germany because he could not find a university position abroad (unlike his famous conductor cousin, Otto Klemperer, who moved to Los Angeles). “Don’t think about it, live one’s life, bury oneself in the most private matters!" he wrote in late September 1938, hoping, like other Jews who stayed in Germany, that each new round of persecution would be the last. "Fine resolution, but so difficult to keep.”

As we prepare for some form of autocracy in America, it is no comfort to know that Trump and his zealous and unscrupulous associates have advertised their desire to go after groups of people perennially targeted by authoritarians: immigrants, Muslims, Jews, opposition politicians, the unhoused, LGBTQ+ people, activists, journalists, scientists, and educators. It will be especially dangerous to be a transgender person in America, or anyone involved with reproductive and immigrant rights. American movements in response to autocracy may differ from those of other populations due to the strength of states’ rights here. We are likely to see internal migration instead of exile, with people leaving states where voting, reproductive, LGBTQ+ and other rights are being extinguished.

There's also a history of regional movement in search of freedom in our country that we can build on. The Jim Crow South was a regional authoritarianism in many respects. That’s why the former CEO and President of the NAACP, Cornell William Brooks, states in our 2021 Lucid interview that we might begin to see “Black Southerners who came to New York and Chicago and Detroit” as “refugees; they were fleeing terrorism. And so Black folk are the descendants of these refugees, as well as of enslaved people." While every person contemplating exile has their own unique situation and resources, there is one constant among such departures: when you exit your homeland, you enter into a state of waiting. Waiting for things to get better; waiting for the tyrant to die or, if elections still exist, be voted out; waiting for freedom to arrive so you can return to beloved places and people.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat wrote a solid piece on the tough decision for those opposed to tyrannical regimes as to whether to stay and fight back or leave for exile.

[nicklloydnow]

“The Syrian government fell early Sunday in a stunning end to the 50-year rule of the Assad family after a sudden rebel offensive sprinted across government-held territory and entered the capital in 10 days.

Syrian state television aired a video statement by a group of men saying that President Bashar Assad has been overthrown and all detainees in jails have been set free.

(…)

The statement emerged hours after the head of a Syrian opposition war monitor said Assad had left the country for an undisclosed location, fleeing ahead of insurgents who said they had entered Damascus following the remarkably swift advance across the country.

(…)

It was the first time opposition forces had reached Damascus since 2018, when Syrian troops recaptured areas on the outskirts of the capital following a yearslong siege.

(…)

The night before, opposition forces took the central city of Homs, Syria’s third largest, as government forces abandoned it. The city stands at an important intersection between Damascus, the capital, and Syria’s coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus — the Syrian leader’s base of support and home to a Russian strategic naval base.

The rebels had already seized the cities of Aleppo and Hama, as well as large parts of the south, in a lightning offensive that began Nov. 27. Analysts said rebel control of Homs would be a game-changer.

(…)

The advances in the past week were by far the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by a group that has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations. In their push to overthrow Assad’s government, the insurgents, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, have met little resistance from the Syrian army.

(…)

Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali said Sunday he does not know where Assad or the defense minister are. He told Saudi television network Al-Arabiyya early Sunday that they lost communication Saturday night.

He has had little, if any, help from his allies. Russia is busy with its war in Ukraine. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of fighters to shore up Assad’s forces, has been weakened by a yearlong conflict with Israel. Iran has seen its proxies across the region degraded by regular Israeli airstrikes.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday posted on social media that the United States should avoid engaging militarily in Syria. Separately, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser said the Biden administration had no intention of intervening there.”

“A fast-advancing rebel offensive in Syria threatens to dislodge Russia from a strategic linchpin that Moscow has used for a decade to project power in the Middle East, in the Mediterranean and into the African continent.

It also challenges Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to portray Moscow as a flag bearer for an alternative global order to rival Western liberalism, and his defense of the Syrian regime as evidence of successful pushback against American dominance in the region.

(…)

Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015 to prop up President Bashar al-Assad against an armed uprising prompted by the Arab Spring, giving it a role as an influential foreign power in the Middle East. It sought to leverage its relations with rival powers such as Iran and Israel, as well as Turkey and Gulf states, to mediate conflicts and claim status as a regional power broker.

(…)

Syria has partly been an ideological project for Putin. The intervention in Syria became a way for Russia to extend its vision of a multipolar world opposed to the Western liberal order, said Nicole Grajewski, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of a coming book on Russia’s relationship with Iran, including in Syria.

“To see Russian planes leave Syria as rebel forces move onward towards their air bases, and their assets in Damascus fall, this would be so devastating for the Russian image of itself,” she said. “It would be akin to a Saigon moment for them.”

Putin’s assistance was instrumental to Assad’s survival, and showed Moscow’s allies far beyond the Middle East that Russian intervention could help push back popular uprisings, said a former Russian official. African leaders began to invite Russia, and specifically contractors from the Wagner paramilitary group who also played a critical role in Syria, to help stabilize their regimes.

Syria holds significant strategic value for Russia as well. The Khmeimim air base near the coastal city of Latakia serves as a logistical hub for flights to Libya, the Central African Republic, and Sudan, where Russian private contractors and soldiers have operated for years.

A naval base in the port city of Tartus serves as the only replenishment and repair point for the Russian navy in the Mediterranean, where it has brought in goods by bulk through the Black Sea. Tartus has granted Putin access to a warm water port, something Russian rulers for centuries before him sought in the Middle East. The port could also potentially connect Russia to Libya—like Syria, a Soviet-era ally—where it seeks a naval base to extend its reach into sub-Saharan Africa. A rebel takeover of those Syrian coastal positions could jeopardize Russia’s global-power projection.

“Syria provided so many advantages at a low cost,” said Anna Borshchevskaya, senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank and author of a book on Putin’s war in Syria. “Losing Syria would be a big strategic defeat that would reverberate beyond the Middle East. It would have global repercussions.”

(…)

“One way to see Putin’s ambition in Syria is as part of his larger imperial vision,” said Borshchevskaya. “That’s what Ukraine is, that’s what [the invasion of] Georgia was in 2008, and to some extent that’s what Syria was,” she said. “Now in 2024, Russia finally finds itself overstretched.”

(…)

The Russian intervention in the civil war turned the tide in Assad’s favor and helped Iran consolidate its military foothold all the way to the Israeli border. Western attempts to isolate Moscow and Tehran through sanctions have pushed them closer together.”

“For years, Syria’s complicated battlefields have been populated by shifting groups of militants battling a range of enemies, including each other, and proxies backed by outside powers. Iran and Russia have propped up the autocratic Assad regime for more than a decade, while Turkey and the United States have troops on the ground in areas outside government control, and each support local proxies.

News reports and videos posted on social media indicate U.S.-backed rebels, supported by American airstrikes, may now be battling Syrian government forces as part of renewed fighting in the east.

That U.S. backing means boots on the ground. Around 900 U.S. troops are deployed in Syria alongside private military contractors, in what one expert calls “arguably the most expansive abuse” of the war powers granted to the executive branch in the wake of 9/11 — and those troops have, on average, come under fire multiple times each week since last October, according to new Pentagon statistics obtained by The Intercept.

Since the war in Gaza began last year, U.S. forces have been under sustained attack by Iran-backed militants across the Middle East, with the Pentagon’s Syrian bases being the hardest hit. Since October 18, 2023, there have been at least 127 attacks on U.S. forces in Syria, according to Lt. Cmdr. Patricia Kreuzberger, a Pentagon spokesperson, and information supplied by U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM. On average, that’s about one attack every three days.

(…)

Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer now with the International Crisis Group, said the ongoing bombardment of U.S. bases should prompt hard questions in America’s halls of power. “Why are U.S. troops in Syria? What is the mission? What is the endgame? And is this legally authorized?” are the questions that need answers, he said. “The administration doesn’t want to have that debate. Congress also seems perfectly fine avoiding it. And so, the legislative and executive branches are content to muddle along, avoiding their constitutional responsibilities — the need for congressional authorization — and really debate the merits of this conflict.”

THE U.S. MILITARY has been conducting operations in Syria since 2014. America’s bases there and in neighboring Iraq ostensibly exist to conduct “counter-ISIS missions,” despite the fact that the Pentagon concluded in 2021 that the Islamic State in Syria “probably lacks the capability to target the U.S. homeland.”

Around 900 U.S. troops — including commandos from Combined Special Operations Joint Task Force-Levant — and an undisclosed number of private military contractors are operating in Syria. In 2022, The Intercept revealed the existence of a low-profile 127-echo counterterrorism program in Syria targeting Islamist militants. Under the 127e authority, U.S. Special Operations forces arm, train, and provide intelligence to small groups of elite foreign troops. But unlike traditional foreign assistance programs, which are primarily intended to build local capacity, 127e partners are dispatched on U.S.-directed missions, targeting U.S. enemies to achieve U.S. aims.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led militant group based in the country’s northeast is America’s main proxy force in Syria. While the SDF fights Islamist extremists with U.S. support, it also battles Turkey and Turkish-backed militants. Turkey, America’s longtime NATO ally, opposes the SDF due to that group’s ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish nationalist militant group that both the Turkish and U.S. governments, among others, have designated a terrorist group.

(…)

The future of America’s escalating war in Syria may face renewed scrutiny early next year. President-elect Donald Trump showed antipathy to the U.S. war in Syria and withdrew U.S. forces from the north of the country in 2019, opening the door to a Turkish invasion.

“When Trump ordered the removal of U.S. forces from Syria in late 2018, there was a scramble within the government to try to figure out what that meant and whether there were ways to walk it back,” said Finucane, the former State Department lawyer. “The Pentagon was fine to pull out U.S. troops from al Tanf because there was really no counter-ISIS mission. But in his memoir, [Trump’s national security adviser] John Bolton said he wanted to keep troops there to counter Iran.”

For four years, experts say the Biden administration has continued this shadow effort aimed at Iran under the guise of a counter-ISIS mission, fending off several congressional efforts to force the removal of U.S. troops from Syria. Last year, a bid by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to compel the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Syria within 30 days also failed. “The American people have had enough of endless wars in the Middle East,” Paul told The Intercept at the time. “Yet, 900 U.S. troops remain in Syria with no vital U.S. interest at stake, no definition of victory, no exit strategy, and no congressional authorization to be there.” Those troops may be increasingly drawn into the Syrian civil war in support of their SDF allies.

“This is arguably the most expansive abuse of the 2001 AUMF in the history of the law,” said Erik Sperling of Just Foreign Policy, an advocacy group critical of mainstream Washington foreign policy, referring to the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, enacted in the wake of the September 11 attacks. “We know from Biden administration leaks that the U.S. presence in Syria was part of an anti-Iran proxy war strategy but after Congress started voting to remove troops, they cracked down on those leaks and they said it’s only about terrorism.”

(…)

U.S. troops have, however, been relentlessly attacked across the Middle East since last October. There have been at least 208 attacks against U.S. forces in the region — two in Jordan, 79 in Iraq, and 127 in Syria — according to Kreuzberger and CENTCOM. In addition to coming under fire about once every other day, U.S. troops have been killed or seriously injured in these attacks. In January, three U.S. soldiers were killed and more than 40 other personnel were injured in an attack on a base in Jordan near the Syrian border. Eight U.S. troops also suffered traumatic brain injuries and smoke inhalation from an August 9 drone attack on the Rumalyn Landing Zone in northeastern Syria.”

“Israeli ground forces advanced beyond the demilitarized zone on the Israel-Syria border over the weekend, marking their first overt entry into Syrian territory since the 1973 October War, according to two Israeli officials speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive developments.

(…)

Israeli forces took control of the mountain summit of Mount Hermon on the Syrian side of the border, as well as several other locations deemed essential for stabilizing control of the area.

Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military chief of staff, appeared to confirm on Saturday night that Israeli forces had gone beyond a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, saying Israel had “deployed troops into Syrian territory,” although he did not elaborate further.

(…)

More recently, the Israeli military has been more explicit about striking sites and people there, saying it was targeting Hezbollah’s supply lines. But the deployment of ground troops beyond the demilitarized zone in Syria marks a significant shift in policy as the first overt entry of Israeli military forces into Syrian territory since the 1974 cease-fire agreement that officially ended the last war between Israel and Syria.

The Israeli Air Force over the weekend was also striking targets in Syria to destroy government military assets that could fall into the hands of rebel forces and are considered strategic threats by Israel, the two officials said.

(…)

The targets included small stockpiles of chemical weapons, primarily mustard gas and VX gas, which remained in Syrian possession despite prior agreements to disarm, according to the officials. The Israeli military also targeted radar-equipped batteries and vehicles of Russian-made air defense missiles, as well as stockpiles of Scud missiles, according to the two officials.

(…)

Israel captured the Golan Heights during the Middle East war of 1967 and annexed much of the territory in 1981. The rest is controlled by Syria. Most of the world views this area as Israeli-occupied Syrian territory, though Donald J. Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty there in 2019 during his first term as president.”

[theoutcastrogue]

Prison Paintings by Gülsün Karamustafa

"Prison Paintings is a series of fifteen paintings in acrylic on paper made by the Turkish artist Gülsün Karamustafa between 1972 and 1978. The works present an emotive sequence of images showing women of all ages in prison settings. They are painted in bright bold colours in a quasi-naïve style. The sombre subject matter draws on the artist’s personal experience of being incarcerated in Turkey in the early 1970s. The Prison Paintings were painted from memory, after the artist had been released from an institution intended for female prisoners serving life sentences. The paintings depict intimate and private moments in the lives of the women prisoners and reflect Karamustafa’s personal observations of daily life in prison. With scenes of inmates sleeping, playing cards or cooking, and portraits of others behind bars or shown in head shots with their prison numbers writ large across their chests, Prison Paintings can be seen as a response to the climate of political repression in Turkey during the 1970s." [Tate]

Context

"Problems occurred as a result of the politics of the nineteenth government and the Americanization of the 1950s in postwar Turkey. This led to the sociological and political confusion of the 1960s, as influenced by the leftist movements in May 1968. The country went through a significant change: besides the student clashes between right and left wing groups, economic problems led to large-scale migration from small villages to bigger cities, creating a hybrid city culture. Despite the traumatic effects of the 1960 and 1971 military coups, the leftist youth of the 1970s dreamed of a better future. In such a chaotic environment, Karamustafa was jailed for six months for concealing a political fugitive soon after her graduation from Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul in 1969. The series Prison Paintings (1972) depict those years of imprisonment: women in vibrant reds, oranges, purples and blues are depicted sleeping in the prison dormitory, or waiting in line to get a bowl of soup. The video Making of The Wall (2003) documents some of the imprisoned women, recalling the days of torture and hunger strikes they experienced. The trauma is alleviated, yet certain memories remain present." [Ibraaz]

[akonoadham]

"Had I believed in what the Americans had taught me, had I believed that I was a savage who should feel gratitude to Christians, who had just lost his tail and come out of being a monkey, someone who had had no contribution to civilization, whose history has not even been a series of catastrophes, someone who has no mention in time, a savage not worthy enough to have a history, then, only then I would either be dead, or an addict, or in jail simply because I had believed in what they said, just like many of my generation who were bound to the morphine needle or who were jailed simply because they believed what they were told. This is not a crime that I accuse only my country of, this is a crime that I accuse all of humankind. It is a serious accusation."

+ James Baldwin in an interview with Nazar Büyüm, Istanbul, Turkey, 1969

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 11, 2024 (Monday)

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 12, 2024

Authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary visited former president Trump in Florida on Friday, and on Sunday, Orbán assured Hungarian state media that Trump “will not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war. Therefore, the war will end, because it is obvious that Ukraine can not stand on its own feet.” Russian state media gloated at the news, and that Trump’s MAGA allies in Congress are already helping him end support for Ukraine. 

President Joe Biden and a strong majority of lawmakers in both chambers of Congress, as well as defense officials, support appropriating more aid to Ukraine, believing its defense is crucial to America’s national security. Today, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin once again called such aid “critical.” 

The Senate passed a national security supplemental bill early in the morning on February 13, by a strong bipartisan vote of 70 to 29. The bill would be expected to pass the House, but House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), a Trump loyalist, refuses to bring it up for a vote. 

Trump loyalists have been obstructing aid to Ukraine since President Joe Biden asked for it in October 2023. Their insistence that they would not address the national security needs of the U.S. in Ukraine until they were addressed at the border now sure looks like a smokescreen to help Russian president Vladimir Putin take Ukraine, a plan that would explain why Trump urged Republicans to kill the national security supplemental bill even when it included a strong border component that favored Republican positions. 

It appears as though Trump is deliberately undermining the national security of the United States.

In excerpts from his forthcoming book that appeared on the CNN website today, journalist Jim Sciutto reported conversations with Trump’s second chief of staff, General John Kelly, and Trump’s third national security advisor, John Bolton, in which the men recounted Trump’s fondness for dictators. “He views himself as a big guy,” Bolton told Sciutto. “He likes dealing with other big guys, and big guys like Erdogan in Turkey get to put people in jail and you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. He kind of likes that.” “He’s not a tough guy by any means, but in fact quite the opposite,” Kelly said. “But that’s how he envisions himself.”

Kelly noted that Trump praised Hitler and what he thought was the loyalty of Hitler’s generals (some of whom actually tried to assassinate him), but both Kelly and Bolton noted that he “most consistently lavished praise on Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Certainly, Trump prizes loyalty to himself: today Alex Isenstadt of Politico reported a “bloodbath” at the Republican National Committee as the incoming Trump loyalists are pushing out more than 60 RNC officials and staffers to make sure everyone is “aligned” with Trump. 

An exclusive interview today by Katelyn Polantz, Kaitlan Collins, and Jeremy Herb of CNN revealed that Brian Butler, who worked at Mar-a-Lago for twenty years, has come forward to give the public the same information he told to investigators looking into Trump’s theft of classified documents. On June 3, 2022, the day Trump and his family were scheduled to fly to New Jersey for the summer, Trump’s aide Walt Nauta asked Butler if he could borrow a car from the Mar-a-Lago car service, although Butler and his valets usually handled getting the Trump family luggage onto the plane. June 3 was the same day Trump and his lawyer were meeting with officials from the Department of Justice at Mar-a-Lago to arrange for Trump to turn over national security documents. 

Butler loaded a vehicle with the luggage, then met Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira—at the time a close friend of Butler—driving a vehicle loaded with bankers boxes, at the West Palm Beach airport. Butler says he didn’t know the bankers boxes contained anything unusual, and he helped Nauta load the plane with the boxes as well as the luggage. “They were the boxes that were in the indictment, the white bankers boxes. That’s what I remember loading,” Butler added.

Butler was also present during conversations about hiding evidence from federal authorities. 

While Trump opposes aid to Ukraine, President Joe Biden pushed for it once again when he released his fiscal year 2025 budget today. (There is overlap this year between funding fiscal year 2024 and fiscal year 2025 because House Republicans have been unable to agree to last year’s appropriations bills. Those are supposed to be done before October 1, when the new fiscal year starts.)

In addition to funding for Ukraine, the president’s $7.3 trillion budget covers Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ benefits, all of which are mandatory, and expands investment in health care, child care, and housing. Biden would pay for all this—and reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over the next ten years—with higher taxes on those making more than $400,000 a year and on corporations. 

In his defense of the middle class as the engine of economic growth and his declaration that the days of trickle-down economics are over, Biden sounds much like Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt did when he ushered in the New Deal in the 1930s. In that era, Roosevelt and his Democratic allies replaced a government that worked for men of property with one that worked for ordinary Americans.

There were other echoes of the FDR administration today as Trump’s undermining of aid to Ukraine has become clear. Ukraine stands between an aggressive Russian dictator and a democratic Europe.  

In the 1930s and 1940s, the U.S. had to decide whether to turn away from those standing against dictators like Hitler, or to stand behind them. There was a strong isolationist impulse in the United States. Some people resented that war industries had made fortunes supplying the devastating weaponry of World War I. Others believed that Hitler’s advance in Europe was a distraction from Asia, where their business interests were entwined. Congress passed laws to keep the U.S. from entanglement in Europe until Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Then Congress allowed other nations to buy munitions from the U.S. so long as they carried them away in their own ships.  

The following year, FDR promised the American people he would not send troops into “any foreign wars.” But in July 1940, newly-appointed British prime minister Winston Churchill asked the U.S. for direct help after Britain lost eleven destroyers in ten days to the German Navy. Roosevelt exchanged 50 destroyers for 99-year leases on certain British bases, but that would not be enough. He asked Congress to provide military aid.

On this date in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law “An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States.” The new law gave the president wide-ranging authority to sell, give, lease, or lend war supplies to “any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.”

The law defined “war supplies” generously: they ranged from aircraft and boats to guns and tools, to information and technical designs, to food and supplies. The law also gave the president authority to authorize U.S. companies to manufacture such war supplies for other countries whose defense was important to the United States.

This law is the one we know as the Lend-Lease Act, and it was central to the ability of the Allied Powers—those standing against Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito—to fight off the Axis Powers who were trying to take over the globe in the 1940s. By the time the law ended on September 20, 1945, supplies worth more than $50 billion in 1940 dollars—equivalent to more than $770 billion today—had gone to the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, China, and other allies. 

Four days after he signed the Lend-Lease Act into law, on March 15, 1941, FDR told journalists at the White House Correspondents’ Association, “The big news story of this week is this: The world has been told that we, as a united Nation, realize the danger that confronts us—and that to meet that danger, our democracy has gone into action.”

FDR noted the “superb morale” of the British, who he said were “completely clear in their minds about the one essential fact—that they would rather die…free…than live as slaves.” He continued: “The British people and their Grecian allies need ships. From America, they will get ships. They need planes. From America, they will get planes. From America they need food. From America, they will get food. They need tanks and guns and ammunition and supplies of all kinds. From America, they will get tanks and guns and ammunition and supplies of all kinds….

“And so our country is going to be what our people have proclaimed it must be—the arsenal of democracy…. Never, in all our history, have Americans faced a job so well worth while.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[girlactionfigure]

A Woman Of Valor: Recha Sternbuch

She saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis.

Recha Sternbuch was an Orthodox Jewish woman in Switzerland who saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis.

Recha was a young mother who owned a business with her husband Yitzchak in Montreux Switzerland. They were Swiss representatives of Va’ad ha-Hatsala, the rescue committee of the American Union of Orthodox Rabbis.

In 1938, while pregnant, Recha began spending nights near the Austrian border to smuggle in refugees who were being turned back by Swiss border guards. Recha befriended a Swiss police captain, Paul Gruninger, who helped her smuggle over 800 refugees from Nazi-controlled Austria into neutral Switzerland.

The Nazis discovered what Recha was doing – apparently due to a Jewish informant – and she was arrested and jailed, causing her to miscarry. Once released from prison, Recha continued her activism. She forged visas that enabled hundreds of German and Austrian Jews to escape to Switzerland. Recha also helped smuggle Jews to Palestine by way of China.

On the day of her son’s bar mitzvah, Recha heard that Jews were being deported from Vichy France. She skipped the bar mitzvah ceremony and got on a train to France where she distributed visas and money to French Jews to help them escape. As an Orthodox woman, she normally would not take a train on Shabbat, but the preservation of human life overrides virtually every other Torah commandment.

Recha sent coded cables to contacts in Jewish rescue committees in the United States and Turkey. In 1942 she sent an urgent cable alerting American Jews to the genocide taking place in Europe. She developed a relationship with the Papal Nuncio to Switzerland, Monsignor Phillippe Bernadini, and he provided her with access to Vatican couriers for sending resources to Jewish resistance organizations.

Incredibly, in 1944 Recha successfully contacted Jean Marie Musy, the former president of Switzerland and a close friend of Heinrich Himmler, a leading member of the Nazi party. Recha charmed Musy, and convinced him to negotiate with Himmler, who agreed to release Jews from concentration camps in exchange for $1 million. About 1200 Jews were freed before the exchange was shut down by Nazi collaborators in Switzerland. Recha also negotiated the release of thousands of Jews held in concentration camps in Austria.

After the war, Recha tirelessly visited Displaced Persons Camps to locate surviving Jewish children and connect them with foster and adoptive Jewish parents.

The descendants of the Jews Recha saved now number in the hundreds of thousands.

For her determination to achieve the near-impossible, we honor Recha Sternbuch as this week’s special Thursday Hero.

[libertariantaoist]

News Roundup 1/15/2024 | The Libertarian Institute

Here is your daily roundup of today's news:

News Roundup 1/15/2024

by Kyle Anzalone

Ukraine

The New York Times Says Ukraine Is Struggling to Hold Territory NYTThe Institute

US Says Aid to Ukraine “Ground to a Halt” CNBC

American Citizen Jailed in Ukraine for His Political Views Dies AWC

Korea

North Korea Test Fires Missile NYT

Israel

White House Aiding Israeli Targeting in Gaza The Intercept 

Israeli Outlet Says IDF Ordered Hannibal Procedure on Oct 7 Ynet

CIA Providing Israel with Intelligence on Top Hamas Officials NYT

Israel Destroying Gazan Infrastructure Needed to Support Life France24

UN Official Says “Providing Aid Across Gaza Is Almost Impossible” Statement The Institute

Syria

Turkey Bombs Kurdish Groups in Iraq and Syria AJ

Yemen

US Issues News Sanctions Targeting Yemen Treasury Department 

Major Tanker Companies Halt Red Sea Shipping in Response to US and UK Strikes CNBCAWC

Yemen Issues Defiant Response to US and UK Strikes AWC

Saudi Arabia Calls for US To ‘Avoid Escalation’ in Yemen AWC

White House Conducts Additional Strike in Yemen AWC

Yemen Issues Defiant Response to US and UK Strikes AWC

Most of Houthis’ Military Abilities Remain After Strikes NYTAWC

Netanyahu Tells Blinken: ‘This Is Also Your War’ AWC

Federal Employees to Stage Walk Out Over Biden’s Support for Gaza Slaughter AWC

Somalia 

Two Navy Seals Missing Off Coast of Somalia AP

Read More

[talkingcrowsstuff]

OKAY, SHE IS HERE!!! (I am still trying to figure out how to edit sprites, but this is how she looks like!)

Full Name : Denise Tekel

Alias(es) : Deedee (the nickname that people in the department gave her)

Gender : Female

Status : Alive

Birth : 1987

Nationality : Turkish-American

Residence : Grimsborough, US / Manisa, Turkey

Past Profession(s) : Community and Social Service Specialist / Sport Coach

Family : Hüsnü Tekel (Father) †

Stacie Tekel (Mother) †

Laila Tekel (Little Sister)

Unnamed Grandmother

Unnamed Grandfather

Affiliation(s) : Grimsborough Police Department (formerly)

Heigh : 5'7

Age : 36

Weight : 160 lbs

Eyes : Brown

Blood : 0+

GRIMSBOROUGH POLICE DEPARTMENT

Rank : Police Superintendent ||

PROFILE : Denise is an average person, she usually says this mostly about herself. In the department, she usually tries to look tough to seem cool, but when her patrol is done she turns back to her own warm personality. Behind indoors, she does baking and just spends time with her little sister. She is overall an extrovert person, so she likes to meet with new people and be in new places, and she can fit in easily.

Her personality is mostly friendly, understanding and warm. When she is irritated and anxious, she tends to lose her temper and panic for a long period of time(but she is working on this bad habit of hers).

BACKSTORY : She lost her mother and father when she was 19 years old because of an arguement with their neighbours. The neighbours shot her mother and father when the arguement got more agressive, Denise and Laila was also about to get shot until polices came to the scene. She thought her parents' murder would get the justice it deserved, but the neighbours were released from the prison, not even staying in the jail for the deserved time. Thats the reason why she wanted to become a police officer; she wanted to bring justice to the right places and make her parents proud to get their right, and also to bring inner peace.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS : She never had a girlfriend, or a boyfriend in her life. She always thought "its not the right time" when it came to the romance stuff, but she likes to encourage people to take the first step to talk with their crushes. That was her love motive until she came to Grimsborough. When she was partnered with Jones, thats when she fell in love with him at the first sight. She thought it was just a little crush, and it'll pass away but it never passed away, in fact, it only got stronger.

Before she had to leave Grimsborough to go to the Pacific Bay, she was planning to confess to him but she was so anxious about rejection, and when she heard about his divorce situation, she felt guilty over her feeling for Jones. So she kept those feelings to herself, and they only got stronger(she still has feelings for him!).

HOBBIES : When she is not on duty, she likes to relax, and she has two ways to relax; Actually relax, or just exercise until she passes out. For example, she bakes and draws with her little sister to actually relax. But when she decides to exercise to let her frustration and anger out, she takes it really seriously. She gets in her own world whenever she exercises, and she lets all her rage out from exercising(she is actually built-up from all the exercises).

[beardedmrbean]

NEW YORK - A New Jersey software developer who prosecutors said once photographed landmarks in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., for possible terrorist attacks was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in prison by a federal judge who said it seemed he no longer was a danger.

In fact, Judge Paul G. Gardephe noted, Alexei Saab, 46, has become a model prisoner since his 2019 arrest, helping others incarcerated at New York City's federal jails to get high school equivalency certificates, learn English and find relief from psychological problems.

Gardephe called Saab's 2005 exit from his relationship with the Lebanon-based Hezbollah Islamic Jihad Organization and the "peaceful and productive" life he lived in the New York City area afterward among "inconvenient facts" that made it impossible to grant the government's request that Saab be incarcerated for 20 years.

A jury at a trial last year heard prosecutors portray Saab as a highly trained terrorist who scoped out landmarks in the U.S., France, Turkey and the Czech Republic. 

According to prosecutors, Saab was a sleeper cell waiting to activate if Iran was attacked by the United States.

But the jury was unable to reach a verdict on a material support for a terrorist group charge. It convicted him of receiving military-type training from the Hezbollah organization, conspiring to commit marriage fraud and making false statements. It acquitted the Morristown, New Jersey, resident of three other charges.

At sentencing, the judge also noted that Saab cooperated fully with FBI agents when they asked to interview him in 2019. He was interviewed 11 times over four months, and each time was allowed to go home, the judge said. He finally was was informed of his rights and arrested after his 12th session. He has been jailed ever since.

Gardephe said the "facts and circumstances" suggest Saab was no longer a danger to the community and there was little risk he would commit new crimes.

The judge said there were also "inconvenient facts" against defense arguments that Saab serve no more than a decade in prison.

He noted that Saab, born in poverty-ridden Yaroun, Lebanon, and raised by middle-class parents who were public school teachers, did not stop his affiliation with the Hezbollah organization after he came to the United States in 2000.

Saab took photographs of and researched weak points in U.S. landmarks and provided the information to "one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world," Gardephe said.

Prosecutors said the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center, Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Station, and airports, bridges and tunnels were among over 40 locations that Saab surveilled in New York alone.

Defense attorney Marlon Kirton wrote in a presentence brief that his client went through a transformation after arriving in America as he "began to experience the feeling of true freedom."

He said Saab was 23 and "loved how Americans lived passionately and fearlessly" and he decided he wanted that for himself. The lawyer portrayed his client as a victim of Hezbollah.

By 2005, he became a U.S. citizen and obtained two master's degrees. He decided that "while he still feared Hezbollah, he felt safe in the United States, knowing that the organization could not touch him," Kirton wrote.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

America’s richest Medicare fraudsters are untouchable

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/13/last-gasp/#i-cant-breathe

"When you're famous, they let you do it": eight words that encapsulate the terrifying rot at the heart of our lived experience, a world where impunity for the powerful trumps the pain of their victims.

"Populism," is shorthand for many things: rage, despair, distrust of institutions and a desire to destroy them. True populism seeks to channel those totally legitimate feelings into transformative change for a caring and fair society for all. So-called "right populism" exploits those feelings, using them to drive a wedge between different groups of victims, turning them against each other, so that elites can go on screwing the squabbling factions.

The far-right parties that are marching to victory through a series global elections are different in many ways, but they all share one trait: they appeal to mistrust of institutions, claiming that the government has been captured by elites who serve them at the expense of the governed. This has the benefit of being actually true, and while the fact that far-right parties are owned by these government-capturing elites might erode their credibility, the fact that so many "progressive" parties have stepped in to defend the institutional status quo leaves an open field for reactionary wreckers:

https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/02/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-slogan-219908

Why would voters turn out to support a "Department of Government Efficiency," run by a bully whose career has been defined by abusing the people he is in charge of? Maybe they're turkeys voting for Christmas, but they also have personal, traumatic experience with government departments that protected the abusive corporations that preyed on them.

Today on Propublica, Peter Elkind tells the incredible story of Lincare, the nation's leading supplier of home oxygen, a repeat-offender fraudster and predator that has made billions in public money without any real consequences:

https://www.propublica.org/article/lincare-medicare-lawsuit-settlements-oxygen-equipment

Lincare has been repeatedly found guilty of defrauding Medicare; in this century alone, they have been put on probation four times, with a "death penalty" provision that would permanently disqualify them from ever doing business with the federal government. In every case, Lincare committed fresh acts of fraud, but never faced that death penalty.

Why not? Lincare is far too big to fail. In America's bizarre, worst-in-class, world-beatingly expensive privatized health care system, even public health provision (like Medicare) is outsourced to the private sector. Lincare has monopolized oxygen, a famously very important molecule for human survival, and if it were disqualified from serving Medicare, large numbers of Americans would literally asphyxiate.

Lincare clearly knows this. Too big to fail is too big to jail, and too big to jail is too big to care. They are the poster children for impunity, repeat offenders, multiply convicted, and still offending, even today. Lincare has been convicted of fraud under the administrations of GW Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden, and they're still in business.

What a business it is! Elkind takes us to the asbestos-poisoned town of Libby, Montana, where more than 2,000 of the 2.857 population suffer from respiratory diseases from the open-pit mine that operated there from 1963-1990. The elderly, dying population of this town rely on Medicare and Medicare Advantage oxygen concentrators to draw breath, and that means they rely on Lincare.

That means they are prey to Lincare's signature scam: charging Medicare (and 20% co-paying patients) to rent an oxygen concentrator every month, until they have paid for it several times over. This is illegal: under federal rules, patients are deemed to have bought their oxygen concentrators after 36 months and contractors are no longer allowed to charge them. Lincare doesn't give a fuck: the bills keep coming, and Lincare patients who survive long enough have paid the company $16,000 for a $799 gadget.

When Brandon Haugen, a local Lincare customer service rep, noticed this and queried the company's home office in Clearwater, Florida (home to Scientology and the Flexidisc), he was given the brushoff. After multiple attempts to get company leadership to acknowledge that this was illegal, he quit his job, along with his colleague and childhood friend Ben Montgomery. Between them, Haugen and Montgomery had 14 children who depended on their Lincare paychecks. Despite this, they both quit and turned whistleblower, with no job lined up. Eventually, Lincare paid $29m to settle the claim, with $5.7m to the whistleblowers and their lawyers. For Lincare, this was part of the cost of doing business and the fraud rolls on.

Lincare doesn't just defraud Medicare, they also have a high-pressure commissioned sales force that has repeatedly been caught defrauding Lincare customers – overwhelming sick, poor, elderly people. Patients are pressured to accept auto-billing, then Lincare piles medically dubious gadgets onto their monthly bills, as well as useless, overpriced "patient monitoring" services. Customers with apnea machines are mis-sold ventilators by salesmen who falsely claim these are medically necessary.

Salespeople illegally auto-shipped parts and consumables for Lincare machines to patients, then billed them for it. To satisfy the legal requirement that they telephone patients before placing these orders, sales agents would call patients, put them on hold, then part the call until the patient hung up.

Salespeople are motivated by equal parts greed and terror. Make quota and you can get up to $8,000 per month in bonuses. Miss that punishing quota and you're out on your ass (which is why one salesperson ordered a medically unnecessary ventilator).

Lincare also habitually ignores requests to pick up medically unnecessary equipment, because so long as the equipment is on the patient's premises, they can continue to bill for it. As one Ohio manager wrote to their staff: "As we have already discussed, absolutely no pick-ups/inactivation’s are to be do[ne] until I give you the green light. Even if they are deceased." Execs send out company-wide emails celebrating regional managers who have abandoned pick-ups, like a Feb 2022 "Achievement Rankings" email that touted the fact that most regional centers had at least 150 overdue pickups.

Lincare represents a deep, structural rot in American society. They are too big to punish, and too powerful to regulate. A 2006 law meant to curb oxygen payments was gutted by industry lobbyists. Today, Congress is weighing legislation, the SOAR (Supplemental Oxygen Access Reform) Act, which will allow Lincare to bill the public for hundreds of millions more every year, raising rates and eliminating competitive billing. The bill is supported by patient advocates who are rightly interested in getting oxygen to patients who have been locked out of the system, but the cost of that inclusion is that Lincare will be even more firmly insulated from its corruption.

The Trump Administration will doubtless crack down on some of America's worst companies, and the furious voters who elected the only candidate who campaigned on the idea that America was rotten will cheer him on. But Trump has made it clear that he will select the targets of his administration based on whether they are loyal to him or stand in his way, without regard to whether they harm his supporters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

Companies like Lincare, repeatedly caught paying illegal kickbacks, know how to play this game.

Image: p.Gordon (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Smoke_bomb_with_burning_fuse.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[the-rad-menace]

Men commit tens of thousands of murders in the United States each year - not even going into attempted murders, violent assaults, or rapes. Bears in North America kill a small handful of people each year, at most.

I was thinking of two specific cases where men threw their wife/gf off a cliff while hiking, but when I googled it, I got so many articles about similar cases that the ones I was looking for didn't even show up on the first few pages of results. "Pregnant" wasn't even part of my search query but it seems to be a common denominator in a lot of these.

[head-post]

Hamas submits names of hostages to be released, 5 Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrike

Gaza ceasefire and hostage release talks are progressing and Hamas presented a list of hostages to mediators in Cairo, while five people were killed in the Gaza Strip on Monday as the Israeli army continued its deadly offensive on the Palestinian enclave.

Hamas announces names of first hostages to be released

Negotiations on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release are progressing and Hamas has submitted a list of hostages to mediators in Cairo, Qatari newspaper The News Arab reported on Monday.

The newspaper cited advanced talks mediated by Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the US, including the exchange of names for a potential deal.

Egyptian intelligence has reportedly obtained the names of hostages with medical conditions and elderly captives, as well as Palestinian prisoners to be released from Israeli jails.

An Israeli delegation is expected to arrive in Cairo on Monday to finalise the terms of the agreement. The report also claims that four hostages with American citizenship who do not meet the humanitarian conditions of the first phase will be included in the agreement.

Among the 100 Americans held by Hamas in Gaza are Edan Alexander, Keith Siegel, Sagi Dekel-Chen, Omer Neutra, Itay Chen, Judy Weinstein Haggai and her husband Gadi Haggai, with some reportedly dead.

Hamas confirmed that its delegation left Cairo after talks with Major General Hassan Rashad, head of Egyptian intelligence. The group has reportedly asked other Palestinian factions, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to compile a “dossier” on the hostages they are holding, including their health status and whereabouts. However, a Hamas spokesman warned that ongoing Israeli military operations were complicating efforts to find and secure the hostages.

5 Palestinians killed as Israel continues deadly onslaught on Gaza

Five people were killed in the Gaza Strip on Monday as the Israeli army continued its deadly onslaught on the Palestinian enclave, a medical source said.

Israeli shelling killed three civilians in Jabalia in northern Gaza, the source said. One person was also killed in an Israeli strike in Khirbet Al-Adas, north of Rafah in southern Gaza, and another Palestinian was killed in a drone strike in the same town, the source said.

Eyewitnesses said Israeli troops opened fire on the tents of displaced people in the Al-Mawasi neighbourhood, west of Rafah. The Israeli military also set fire to a school sheltering displaced people in Beit Lahia to force them to leave the building, they added.

In Gaza City, an Israeli airstrike hit the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood, but no casualties have been reported yet.

Israel has launched a military offensive on the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 44,700 people, mostly women and children, since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on October 7 last year.

Israeli UAV attacked a car at a Lebanese army checkpoint

An Israeli drone fired a missile at a car near a Lebanese army roadblock in the south of the country, the Lebanese army said on social media X.

“Israel attacked a car near the Saf al-Hawa army checkpoint in Bint Jbeil. One person was killed and four soldiers were wounded,” the report said.

Read more HERE

[bookishtck]

Uber conversations

In jr. year undergrad, I had to use Uber for my education practicum as the school I was placed in was far from campus and I didn't have a license. (Needless to say I am still recovering financially, but the drivers were cool.) Here are some of the conversations I remember...

A 40-something Korean American man who had bought land in Costa Rica from his college roommate's family to make a coffee business, but was now back in the suburbs to take care of his parents. He was the self-proclaimed black sheep middle child with no kids, so the responsibility fell on him.

A brusque, corporate-sounding, well-dressed Tesla driver who told me that he bought two or three other Teslas at the same time he had bought this one. I asked why he was doing Uber if he had money for 3 Teslas and he said "In life, you find that the only money you really have is the cash inside your hand. I've gained millions and lost millions overnight." He was a car dealership owner and we talked about how the invention of the lightbulb changed our society to be pervaded by capitalism. Obviously, he assumed I didn't know how to open the door.

A borderline drunk man in a wifebeater who kept trying to find out my age. I was going to a gyno appointment and he overheard me telling my birthday to the check-in worker over the phone. He made a "pheeeeewwww" sound and seemed genuinely concerned for me (I think he thought I was getting an abortion.)

A former racehorse trainer who was not so much angry at the world as he was confused about why things are so messed up. Because of how Covid changed the entertainment industry, he had lost his job. I offhandedly mentioned my beliefs as a Christian. He said he believes in God and grew up in church but still doesn't get why people are so selfish.

A Ghanian man who after hearing that my grandparents immigrated from Korea, went on a passionate tirade on how lazy Americans are. "You've got to TOIL," he kept saying. He seemed okay hearing that I'm studying to be a teacher.

The car pulls up and there is a giant poster saying I STAND WITH IMRAM KAHN with Kahn's face on the door. I ask the driver about the poster and it turns out he ran away from Pakistan because he's in trouble with govt for speaking out against their actions. I think his family is still there. Naturally, I related his political situation to the only one I have extensive knowledge on: North Korea. We emphatically bashed world dictators together while agreeing on the necessity of free speech.

Similar to the Pakistani gentleman, an older Turkish man who taught me how to say thank you in Turkish, and also was in trouble with their govt. He kept saying "If I go Turkey, I go jail. They are very bad." But I think he has family here, which is good. He was quite cautious and even asked me if he could take a call from his wife. I wonder if previous customers gave him a hard time.

An extremely relaxed-sounding Romanian man who asked every Korean American's most dreaded question ("North or South?"), then said it was just a joke when I told him, laughingly: "Every driver asks me that." He talked about his upcoming travels to Europe, and I asked him what it's like living in the US. He sped through a railroad crossing as the bar was coming down and we kind of just laughed it off.

The worst by far: a guy who asked "You Chinese? Oh, Korean? You doctor?" and then "You so beautiful." It was scary because it was still dark outside and no one else was on the road. I stayed as quiet as I could. He was the only Egyptian I've met that I didn't like.

A man who gave me the inside info on how Uber exploits its workers. He asked how much I paid for the ride and said he gets about $3 less than that. Also, the Uber app is skewed in favor of the customers and the company, not the drivers: they have a harsh penalty for cancelling rides, even if they are in danger because of the customer. I had never thought of that. This driver also talked about how he dodged bullets because he once drove a distraught young girl to her mother's house out of state while her crazed abuser chased her out of the airport. Apparently she was holding a pillowcase as a backpack and was crying. Upon arrival, her mother gave him a massive tip, so he said that in hindsight he probably saved her life.

A cheery Puerto Rican lady who practiced Spanish with me and was impressed with my accent, laughing the whole time. When she turned around to say goodbye, she happy-freaked-out at my eyes (monolids) and pulled her own eyes in a slant. Weirdly, this has happened before from another Latina lady. I took it as a compliment both times.

I don't remember his name, but he was a younger guy from an African country, maybe Kenya, and he asked for help to he could take an English competency class at my college. I gave him the info, but now I feel like I should have directed him to a college nearby my own, which would be more practical. I wonder if it worked out for him; he's probably very busy.

[stoicforestsss]

Why do people force women to have pap smears, especially when they tell them they are reliving shit. What would happen if I said this during one, but, of course, I ain't going to a gynecologist. I won't be speculum gang raped.

"Can I touch your boobs now?"

"Yes, mommy. Stick it in me! Baste me like a turkey. Yesss."

*moans loudly so people in the other rooms can hear*

"Fuck me more. Yes. Ouch. So rough."

*moans"

*mmmoooaaaannnnnnnssss*

"I'm gonna cumm-" while they finger.

Yeah they'd be uncomfortable right? It's like you have to be submissive to them. They're an authority. They tell you when to get naked and they tell you when to do what. Then you both go about your days. They get rid of the only thing I had that protection from - that was strangers touching me.

Just don't go. Don't be degraded and disrespected by shitheads. Go if you want. Don't feel the need to go. Unless there are kids in you I guess.

So yeah, everyone who's female now that American reproductive rights are dying next to the women with septic babies slowly killing them. Yeah. Let's just insert things into people and touch their boobs when those people are telling us they have sexual trauma. Ok. It's fine. And we'll act like dicks. What are they going to do? Not get birth control? Not get std testing? Go to holistic care providers?

Use the website Nurx for birth control. Don't go to the health department or the in-office. Start boycotting them. Shit.

Remember men aren't required to get those tests. They aren't pressured into it at an early age. They aren't coerced into it for medicine. The medical industry is doing this to you only. The medical industry purposefully keeps the collective hive mind of women's medical needs at a medieval minimum, while men get the advanced pain killers and respect. Men get pain killers. You don't. Don't go to people who hurt you. You're going to demand respect and walk out when you don't get what you want.

Another thing you're going to do is you won't submit to victim culture. Uber sends me emails about empowering women with Uber by adding more protections and ways to contact people and record audio and footage. How is that telling the actual people who have never been told to behave to be good? It's not all men, but by God, American society sure as hell can't teach men to have respect for shit.

It starts with the indirect criticism of "stop wearing that, you're distracting Michael" and it turns into "I can tell you what you do with your body, since I view you as a yummy, preppy, sexy, feeble, in need of protection, baby machine. Get on the table so I can force you to have this physical, you sexual beast. I can't force your boyfriend to go through anything like this year after year."

You're going to speak up and say when you're hurt. You're going to say when people are disrespectful. You will fight for the things you need and want and the people you love and you will not let people take away your rights. Also, let's put away the baby voice that society teaches you to do and put on that big, booming voice you learned of when your mom was upset with you. That voice is what you should use. Tweak it a bit, but the whole "I'm a pretty little airy head voice fairy" voice makes you sound submissive. Present yourself as not submissive and instead dominant, and the stereotypes people have about women will cease to be reasonable.

Don't become the fulfillment of their prophecy. Don't submit to things you don't consent to, men too. It's not just men, but society has a lot to learn about teaching men to respect others and women being strong. Hell, it's like this society slowly beats the strength out of you. Don't lose it. Ever. It's a deeper issue than what your worry is. It's what the next generation of humans will believe. It's what you need as people, in juxtaposition to how being so pro-life makes someone fine with a death penalty for an abortion and jail for miscarriages, say no to the witch trials. Forcing women to have someone check for HPV when they don't want you to is a witch trial when men can go around spreading everything like candy and not even know.

I'm joining them.