#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.]

[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]

The world became a deadlier place for journalists in 2022, with 67 individuals killed while carrying out their work. That is up from 47 in 2021, according to a report published by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) on Friday.

Ukraine became the most dangerous country thanks to the Russian invasion, accounting for 12 of the total number of killed journalists and media staff.

The report also highlighted violence in Haiti and organized crime in Mexico, accounting for 6 and 11 deaths respectively.

"The surge in the killings of journalists and other media workers is a grave cause of concern and yet another wake-up call for governments across the globe to take action in the defense of journalism, one of the key pillars of democracy," IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said.

Killings threaten press freedom

The IFJ released its report ahead of International Human Rights Day and renewed its calls for a "Convention on the Safety and Independence of Journalists" to be voted on by the UN General Assembly.

It said the 2022 figures mark a shift in the recent decline in the number of journalists being killed while on the job.

The report also named Mexico, the Philippines and Pakistan as hotspots where the killing of journalists has threatened media freedom.

The report also highlighted the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces in broad daylight, highlighting that the number of journalists killed across the Middle East increased from 3 to 5 this year.

Hundreds of journalists in jail

The IFJ also reported on the number of journalists behind bars, which increased by 10 in 2022, reaching 375.

According to the NGO, China topped this list with 84 imprisoned journalists, followed by Myanmar (64), Turkey (51), Iran (34), Belarus (33), Egypt (23), Russia and occupied Crimea (29), Saudi Arabia (11), Yemen (10), Syria (9) and India (7).

"These figures make for grim reading and cast serious doubts on the political will on the part of governments to address such grave threats to media freedom," the report quoted Bellanger as saying.

"The number of journalists being held for simply doing their job makes a mockery of the lofty declarations on human rights and media freedom made by too many governments and trumpeted at international conferences."

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[zooterchet]

The Rotary Lodge (American Intelligence)

The Rotary Lodge, was James Madison's concept, of the American countryside.

Whereas some countries are run by police, military, or common word, America is run by crime.

The intelligence apparatus.

Upon being elected United States President, your Lodge is created. Your form of criminal act, as a secret society, a common practice of intelligence service, federal, supported by the State Police, through United States Army Intelligence.

Garfield Lodge, marijuana smuggling services, at your high services, sir.

If you want to deal with aliens, mountains, swirling roads, or deep forests, you must be a kid that was on contract slave labor as a kid, or even impressed slavery, and you are now a police officer's family, of high regard.

That's me, James Garfield, the Transylvanian.

Goering, Thorne, Suleiscu, U'Niall, Boudica, Stoker, Seamus, those are all me.

Even poor Daemona, the wife of Shane, taken too soon, from her husband Shane, forefather of Clan Washington, with Boelyn's daughter, Elizabeth I.

Only two Lodges removed; Kennedy, the Gypsies, those police and churchmen affiliated with criminal services, and Dubya, Alcoholics Anonymous, the Shriners' Jewish hand, of Turkey.

But Dubya wanted it.

That's why my children, are in the Black Parliament, Washington's arm, the assassins, and why I had to consort with your friend "Crux", Fillmore Lodge; CRASH, the assassins.

It was fun to be "Chet", Lee Harvey Oswald, with my good and beautiful friend, FOX, Leiveine Harvey.

I had pretty bad slashed up arms for a while, from your friend in KGB/ONI.

The Queen's Blunder, was the most legendary move in chess, as a game opener, on her own programmed software.

It never goes well after this, says "Chet".

Remember, Dr. Leo, Mossadegh Shah, Copy Chet is still out there.

He's in jail, with you, isn't he.

As for Machiavelli, he's received his lethal injection.

I'm also a Madison, a Pasha, come twice.

Enjoy Obama Lodge, the right for police to be civil, in court.

Enjoy Blockbuster Video, and Donald J. Trump.

Watch out for the Capone Police Squad, Doji's Dozen.

He's out there right now, good ol' Alphonse Gaetano, Joe Biden, watching.

A steak for a stockbroker, not too much to ask for.

[back-and-totheleft]

"I'm a freethinker"

Maverick American director Oliver Stone told AFP that the legal proceedings against Donald Trump are "all political" and that the ex-president was a victim of "lawfare" -- when prosecutions are used to silence political figures.

"Almost 100 indictments against the guy… it's ridiculous," said Stone.

"This is all political. They want to put him behind bars, but they're not going to be able to," he added.

However, the 77-year-old director of "JFK", "Platoon" and "Snowden" said that he would not vote for Trump in this November's US presidential election.

"Everyone's corrupt. Russia runs on corruption, so does Turkey. So does the United States. Corruption is a way of life, but they make it into a political issue now," Stone insisted.

But he said he would not be voting for incumbent President Joe Biden either.

"Never for Biden, because Biden is a warmonger," said the Vietnam veteran.

Stone spoke to AFP Tuesday during a trip to Paris to promote his documentary about nuclear energy, "Nuclear Now".

He said he has been thinking a lot about "lawfare" as he has recently completed a film about Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Lula, as he is widely known, was imprisoned in 2018 on corruption and money-laundering charges after several years in power.

The charges were overthrown after an investigation found the judge was biased, and Lula was re-elected president last year.

"The concept of lawfare is all over the world, and it's been used for political reasons, weaponised," said Stone.

"And so that's what they did with Lula. They put him in jail and he got out and he won the election. It was a hell of a story… but people don't know it, except in Brazil."

Stone has often focused on Latin American leftist leaders, with no less than three documentaries about the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and one about his friend the Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013.

Lula, Castro and Chavez were all "humanists", he said.

"They're all great. They're all original, doing the best they can for their country. I think Chavez was motivated by love of country. So it was Castro."

There is not yet a release date for his Lula film, though he has launched previous films at the Cannes Film Festival, which takes place in May.

Stone has often been denounced as a conspiracy theorist for his views on US foreign policy and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, laid out in "JFK" and a follow-up documentary.

He has a simple response for his detractors. "I'm a freethinker."

-Jordi Zamora, Agence France-Presse (AFP), March 13 2024

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 1.30 (before 1940)

1018 – Poland and the Holy Roman Empire conclude the Peace of Bautzen. 1287 – King Wareru founds the Hanthawaddy Kingdom, and proclaims independence from the Pagan Kingdom. 1607 – An estimated 200 square miles (51,800 ha) along the coasts of the Bristol Channel and Severn Estuary in England are destroyed by massive flooding, resulting in an estimated 2,000 deaths. 1648 – Eighty Years' War: The Treaty of Münster and Osnabrück is signed, ending the conflict between the Netherlands and Spain. 1649 – Charles I of England is executed in Whitehall, London. 1661 – Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, is ritually executed more than two years after his death, on the 12th anniversary of the execution of the monarch he himself deposed. 1667 – The Truce of Andrusovo is signed, ending the Russian-Polish War of 1654-1667. 1703 – The Forty-seven rōnin, under the command of Ōishi Kuranosuke, avenge the death of their master, by killing Kira Yoshinaka. 1789 – Tây Sơn forces emerge victorious against Qing armies and liberate the capital Thăng Long. 1806 – The original Lower Trenton Bridge (also called the Trenton Makes the World Takes Bridge), which spans the Delaware River between Morrisville, Pennsylvania and Trenton, New Jersey, is opened. 1820 – Edward Bransfield sights the Trinity Peninsula and claims the discovery of Antarctica. 1826 – The Menai Suspension Bridge, considered the world's first modern suspension bridge, connecting the Isle of Anglesey to the north West coast of Wales, is opened. 1835 – In the first assassination attempt against a President of the United States, Richard Lawrence attempts to shoot president Andrew Jackson, but fails and is subdued by a crowd, including several congressmen as well as Jackson himself. 1847 – Yerba Buena, California is renamed San Francisco, California. 1858 – The first Hallé concert is given in Manchester, England, marking the official founding of The Hallé orchestra as a full-time, professional orchestra. 1862 – The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor is launched. 1889 – Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, is found dead with his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera in the Mayerling. 1902 – The first Anglo-Japanese Alliance is signed in London. 1908 – Indian pacifist and leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is released from prison by Jan C. Smuts after being tried and sentenced to two months in jail earlier in the month. 1911 – The destroyer USS Terry makes the first airplane rescue at sea saving the life of Douglas McCurdy 16 kilometres (10 mi) from Havana, Cuba. 1920 – Japanese carmaker Mazda is founded, initially as a cork-producing company. 1925 – The Government of Turkey expels Patriarch Constantine VI from Istanbul. 1930 – The Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union orders the confiscation of lands belonging to the Kulaks in a campaign of Dekulakization, resulting in the executions and forced deportations of millions. 1933 – Adolf Hitler's rise to power: Hitler takes office as the Chancellor of Germany. 1939 – During a speech in the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler makes a prediction about the end of the Jewish race in Europe if another world war were to occur.

[reasoningdaily]

WASHINGTON — US military assistance to Egypt is facing increased scrutiny following allegations that Sen. Bob Menendez used his influence in Congress to secretly aid the government of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. 

Human rights groups say the charges against Menendez, if true, have tainted aid dollars approved by the administration earlier this month. Speaking on condition of anonymity, two congressional sources told Al-Monitor that Democratic offices are discussing options, including placing a hold on a recently greenlit tranche of military aid to Egypt. 

The longstanding US partner in the Middle East has been among the biggest recipients of American security assistance since the 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. That provision of aid — to the tune of roughly $1.3 billion per year — has continued despite the country’s poor record on human rights.  

On Friday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Menendez and his wife, Nadine, with accepting bribes including cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible in exchange for using the 69-year-old senator's office “in ways that benefited the government of Egypt.” 

Menendez has pledged to fight the bribery charges and has rebuffed calls from a growing number of Democrats to resign. On Monday, the senator rejected the Justice Department's allegations and defended his “clear and consistent” record on holding Egypt accountable. 

“Those who now are attempting to malign my actions as it relates to Egypt simply don't know the facts,” Menendez said in public remarks in Union City, NJ. 

The 39-page indictment contains an explosive list of allegations involving Menendez and Wael Hana, an Egyptian-American businessman who prosecutors said had close ties to Egyptian military and intelligence officials.   

According to the three-count indictment, Nadine Menendez and Hana arranged a series of meetings between the senator and Egyptian officials that included discussions of US foreign military financing to Egypt. 

Federal prosecutors say Menendez disclosed  “nonpublic information” to Hana during a May 2018 dinner about the US supply of military aid to Egypt. Shortly after their dinner, Hana texted an unidentified Egyptian official claiming that “the ban on small arms and ammunition to Egypt has been lifted.”

Later that month, Menendez allegedly ghost-wrote a letter to other US senators on behalf of Egypt asking that they release a hold on $300 million in assistance, the indictment said. 

As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since 2021, Menendez’s buy-in was needed to move forward with major arms sales to foreign governments. Under the arms sales process, the State Department informally notifies the chairs and ranking members on the House and Senate foreign affairs panels, who can then provide input and place holds on the proposed transfers. 

Menendez has used this authority to obstruct transfers to Turkey and Saudi Arabia over human rights concerns, but did not publicly announce holds on Egypt's military sales. On Monday, he indicated he did so privately. 

Menendez has stepped down from the committee chairmanship, as required by Senate Democrats’ internal rules. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), an outspoken critic of the Sisi government who has pushed for restrictions on Egypt’s aid, is expected to temporarily assume the role.  

Since coming to power in a 2013 overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Sisi has waged what monitoring groups say is a sweeping crackdown on dissent that has seen tens of thousands of Egyptians arrested or jailed on political grounds. 

During the time prosecutors say Menendez accepted bribes to assist the government of Egypt, American citizens and lawful permanent residents were detained in the North African country's jails. They include Mustafa Kassem, an Egyptian-born auto parts dealer from New York, who died in January 2020 after launching a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. 

In response to Cairo's repression, Congress since 2014 has placed human rights-related conditions on a fraction of its military assistance. Successive US administrations have bypassed such restrictions, citing Egypt's role in supporting counterterrorism and regional stability, including as a mediator between Israel and Palestinian militants. 

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Cardin and eight other senators wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in August urging the Biden administration to slash $320 million from Egypt’s annual assistance package — the full amount that Congress in its annual appropriations legislation had tied to human rights progress. A source with knowledge of the letter said Menendez passed on signing it. 

The unsealing of the Menendez indictment came just over a week after the administration said it would withhold just $85 million in assistance from Egypt this year. It used a national security waiver to override the rights-related requirements that lawmakers had attached to the remaining $235 million in restricted funds. 

“The secretary made a very carefully thought-through evaluation of certain national security priorities ... contributions Egypt was making and will continue to make,” the State Department’s top-ranking Middle East diplomat, Barbara Leaf, said at Al-Monitor and Semafor’s inaugural Middle East Global Summit on Sept. 20. 

Human rights advocates say that military aid should be re-examined in light of the Menendez accusations. The Freedom Initiative, a Washington-based group that advocates for Middle East political prisoners, said President Joe Biden should announce a review of the bilateral relationship with Egypt, and Congress should place an immediate hold on the $235 million approved earlier this month. 

Murphy told reporters Tuesday evening that Menendez should resign, and the aid should be paused pending an investigation.  

Blinken on Friday declined to comment on such calls, citing an “ongoing legal matter.” 

Holding up military aid to Egypt is not without precedent. Last year, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), then-chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, blocked the release of $75 million to Egypt over its treatment of political prisoners. The funds were returned to the Treasury Department after his office and the State Department failed to agree on a new set of rights conditions for Egypt. 

Seth Binder, director of advocacy at the Project on Middle East Democracy, said the allegations in the Menendez indictment put to rest the idea that Egypt’s government doesn’t care about US military aid. 

“It’s clear that their involvement and effort in trying to push to get military aid cleared and released is an indication that this is absolutely something they care strongly about, and they're willing to do whatever they can to get the assistance that they think belongs to them,” Binder said. 

A representative for the Egyptian Embassy in Washington did not immediately return a request for comment.