#National Columnists Day

[murderousink23]

04/18/2023 is World Heritage Day 🌎, International Day for Monuments and Sites 🌎, International Jugglers Day 🤹‍♀️🤹‍♂️🌎, Yom HaShoah 🇮🇱, National Tax Day 🇺🇲, National Animal Crackers Day 🇺🇲, National Columnists Day 🇺🇲, National Lineman Appreciation Day 🇺🇲, National Paul Revere Day 🇺🇲, Tax Freedom Day 🇺🇲

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Is it ethical for a journalist to wear a wire to dinner and spy for a foreign intelligence agency at the same time as they’re writing for one of Canada’s biggest newspapers? Most experts on journalism ethics might say that’s clearly “unethical,” but National Post columnist Adam Zivo is adamant he sees “no problem” with presenting himself as a journalist by day while moonlighting for a foreign spy agency by night. Zivo, who was sanctioned by Russia in August 2022, has recently been sharing dramatic and fantastical stories about a “weird espionage experience” he had while he was doing war zone reporting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the National Post.

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[mariacallous]

People often say to me that I wouldn’t personally be affected by a second Donald Trump presidency. After all, I live in a blue city in a blue state, and I’m a married, heterosexual woman who isn’t looking to have any more children. I won’t need medication like mifepristone for a miscarriage (though I do have girls in my family who I assume will someday want to have children), and I don’t personally rely on the federal government for education, because my kids don’t go to public school.

So, again, how would any of this affect me? The most likely answer is that, as a public-facing person, I will continue to be subjected to threats, as many in the mainstream media already are. But attacks on the media could escalate if Trump returns to power, given that he doesn’t hesitate to demonize journalists and call them out before his millions of followers. And given what Trump says on television, he may target American citizens for unfavorable speech.

“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” he told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News on Sunday. “Sick people, radical-left lunatics. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the National Guard, or, if really necessary, by the military.” The “lunatics” in question could be anyone from protesters to opinion columnists—or even mainstream reporters—he doesn’t agree with. Trump has referred to CBS as a “A FAKE NEWS SCAM” whose operations are “totally illegal,” and has similarly suggested that ABC should lose its broadcast license. 

What would it mean to have a president who, in this fashion, targets what little is left of the free press? It’s hard to fathom, but there’s a world where Trump imitates his strongman friends like Vladimir Putin or Viktor Orbán or Kim Jong Un—all of whom participate in jailing or killing journalists in countries with state-regulated media. He’s already taking a page from Joe McCarthy this election cycle in targeting the “enemies within,” something my family is all too familiar with.

Few aspects of Trump’s second-terms plans are more openly authoritarian than his immigration platform. On Friday, Trump traveled to Aurora, a suburb of Denver, Colorado, where he is shopping “Operation Aurora,” a policy he said would target “every illegal migrant criminal network operating on American soil” by use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. According to the Brennan Center, the law is “a wartime authority that allows the president to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy nation. The law permits the president to target these immigrants without a hearing and based only on their country of birth or citizenship.” The last time the United States used the Alien Enemies Act, it was to put Japanese and Japanese Americans into internment camps during WWII.

What would internment camps actually entail in the modern day? Well, Trump has talked about deporting up to 20 million undocumented immigrants—an operation of staggering scale that he freely admits will be “bloody.” (The Department of Homeland Security, in 2018, estimated there were 11.4 million undocumented immigrants; Pew put the number at roughly 11 million in 2022.) It’s impossible to imagine what deporting that many people would really look like; maybe blue-state governors would be strong enough to prevent deportation camps from being built in states like California and New York. Maybe the camps would only be in red states, or maybe they’d be erected on federal land, like national parks. Then there’s the question of who would run these camps. Trump, for his part, has mused about using the National Guard. Who would stop any of this, you might ask? Would a Republican Congress stop it? Who would be the grown-ups in the room.

At least during the first Trump administration, the courts prevented Trump from doing some of the things he wanted to do, like ending DACA. But this time, Trump would be starting out with a 6-3 conservative-majority Supreme Court, featuring three justices he appointed. Last year, we saw the Trump-friendly high court issue two rulings that will pretty much serve as a blank check to an emboldened Trump: The first ended the Chevron deference, which will curb the power of federal agencies and expedite the death of regulatory expertise. The other decision, which is perhaps more worrying, Trump would have a blank check to do whatever he wants if he says it’s in the service of the presidency, essentially granting him blanket immunity against any crimes he commits in office. As Ninth Circuit judge and Ronald Reagan appointee Stephen S. Trott wrote, it means that Richard Nixon could have “legally ordered his plumbers to burgle the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.”

Trump is telling us all about his potential plans: internment camps, going after his enemies foreign and domestic, including, presumably, journalists. Will I be one of them? Will he clamp down on the free press? Will he take away the licenses from networks he deems insufficiently supportive of his presidency?

On the campaign trail, Trump has recently posed a question of his own when it comes to voting for him, asking the crowd, “What the hell do you have to lose?” Actually, a lot. While we don’t know precisely what a second Trump term will look like, it’ll surely be chaotic and bleak, and could mark the end of something we certainly don’t want to lose: democracy as we know it.

[hellotailor]

How many people have been laid off from the daily dot??? I’m seeing all these former dotters tweeting, including you. Did they just completely gut their culture section? Are they pulling a National Geographic?

Four people to my knowledge - myself, another longtime geek culture reporter, our editor, and the site's sex columnist. They eliminated the entire entertainment/culture section, meaning no more specialized film/TV reviews, fandom coverage, geek culture news, etc.

So now I'm very available for freelance writing work, podcasting gigs, video/audio scripting, etc! Anyone interested in hiring me can reach me at g.baker.whitelaw at gmail.

I'll share stuff on here once I start publishing at other outlets. I'm already in the process of lining some things up, but we were only laid off on Tuesday afternoon so it's early days yet.

Edited to add: I hadn't considered that people would reblog this to boost my search for freelance gigs!

On the slim offchance that any potential employers stumble across this post, I'm a film/TV critic and culture journalist with a decade of experience in a wide variety of topics and formats, ranging from breaking news to SEO explainers, to in-depth film criticism, op-eds, and coverage of niche internet trends.

[rjzimmerman]

The election

I'm tired of trump and any person who identifies as republican. I'm tired of the presidential, senatorial and congressional election campaigns. I'm tired of the worry beads and hand-wringing, including my own when I conclude that my optimism is irrational if not insane. I'm tired of reading the media reports and the Op-Eds, particularly from the national media outlets that have been ignoring the danger and warning signs by pretending that trump isn't what trump says trump is. I'm tired of watching the videos of trump while listening to the crap spewing from his mouth and seeing his ugly sneers and scowls on his hideous head. I'm tired of wondering and maybe worrying about what motivates the creatures who go to his rallies, or vote for him, or conclude that he is the latest iteration of the messiah.

We won't know about the future when the polls close on Tuesday, November 5, election day. We'll have to listen to the talking heads on TV or read the words in the media written by the "wise" journalists and columnists telling us what we're seeing and what they're seeing and what the future might or might not be. That will go on for a few days, at which point we might have an inkling of what our future might be. Then we can move forward. Until then, I am pausing and will be watching the birds, the four-legged animals, wild and domestic, the rain (finally) and the colors of the forest, and immersing myself in nature.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Anne Applebaum :: @anneapplebaum

This was the moment that mattered. Trump's political movement relies on total impunity for liars, and mostly gets it. The lies bind them together, cement their feeling of power.

* * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 1, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 02, 2024

More than 45,000 U.S. dock workers went on strike today for the first time since 1977, nearly 50 years ago. The International Longshoremen's Association union, which represents 45,000 port workers, is negotiating with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) employer group over a new contract. The strike will shut down 36 ports from Maine to Texas, affecting about half the country’s shipping. Analysts from J.P. Morgan estimate that the strike could cost the U.S. economy about $5 billion a day. The strikers have said they will continue to unload military cargo.

Dockworkers want a 77% increase in pay over six years and better benefits, while USMX has said it has offered to increase wages by nearly 50%, triple employer contributions to retirement plans, and improve health care options. In the Washington Post, economics columnist Heather Long pointed out that the big issue at stake is the automation that threatens union jobs.

Although the strike threatens to slow the economy depending on how long it lasts, President Joe Biden has refused requests to force the strikers back to work, reiterating his support for collective bargaining. He noted that ocean carriers have made record profits since the pandemic—sometimes in excess of 800% over prepandemic levels—and that executive compensation and shareholder profits have reflected those profits. “It’s only fair that workers, who put themselves at risk during the pandemic to keep ports open, see a meaningful increase in their wages as well,” Biden said in a statement.  

In the presidential contest, the Trump-Vance campaign is trying to preserve its false narrative. In Wisconsin today, Trump accused Vice President Harris of murder—although he appeared to get confused about the victim—and claimed that she has a phone app on which the heads of cartels can get information about where to drop undocumented immigrants. He also said that Kim Jong Un of North Korea is trying to kill him.

When asked if he should have been tougher on Iran after it launched ballistic missiles in 2020 on U.S. forces in Iraq, leaving more than 100 U.S. soldiers injured, Trump rejected the idea that soldiers with traumatic brain injuries were actually hurt. He said “they had a headache” and said he thought the attack “was a very nice thing because they didn’t want us to retaliate.”

Trump also backed out of a scheduled interview with 60 Minutes that correspondent Scott Pelley was slated to conduct on Thursday. 60 Minutes noted that for more than 50 years, the show has invited both campaigns to appear on the broadcast before the election and this year, both campaigns agreed to an interview. Trump’s spokesperson complained that 60 Minutes “insisted on doing live fact checking, which is unprecedented.” Vice President Kamala Harris will participate in her interview as planned. 

The campaign’s resistance to independent fact checking of their false narrative came up in tonight’s vice presidential debate on CBS between Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s running mate, and Ohio senator J.D. Vance, running mate for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. CBS Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell and Face the Nation moderator and chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan moderated the debate.

Walz’s goal in the debate was to do no harm to Vice President Harris’s campaign, and he achieved that. Vance’s goal was harder: to give people a reason to vote for Donald Trump. It is doubtful he moved any needles there. 

The moments that did stand out in the debate put a spotlight on Vance’s tenuous relationship with the truth. When Vance lied again about the migrants in Springfield, Ohio, who are in the United States legally, Brennan added: "Just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio, does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status."

Vance responded: "The rules were that you guys weren't going to fact-check.”

There were two other big moments of the evening, both based in lies. First, Vance claimed that Trump, who tried repeatedly to repeal or weaken the Affordable Care Act, “saved” it. Then, Walz asked Vance directly if Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. Vance refused to answer, saying he is “focused on the future,” and warned that “the threat of censorship” is the real problem in the U.S. 

Walz said: “That’s a damning non-answer.” 

Former chair of the Republican Party Michael Steele said after the debate: “I don't care where you are on policy…. If you cannot in 2024 answer that question, you are unfit for office.”

It was significant that Vance tried to avoid saying either that Trump won in 2020—a litmus test for MAGA Republicans—or that he lost, a reflection of reality. While this debate probably didn’t move a lot of voters for the 2024 election, what it did do was make Vance look like a far more viable candidate than his running mate. Waffling on the Big Lie seemed designed to preserve his candidacy for future elections.

It seems likely that the message behind Vance’s smooth performance wasn’t lost on Trump. As the debate was going on, Trump posted: “The GREAT Pete Rose just died. He was one of the most magnificent baseball players ever to play the game. He paid the price! Major League Baseball should have allowed him into the Hall of Fame many years ago. Do it now, before his funeral!” 

Former Cincinnati Reds baseball player Rose died yesterday at 83. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[armoricaroyalty]

Between 2016 and 2018, Andre spent more time abroad than he had in the preceding decade. Almost overnight, the infamous recluse had been transformed into a social butterfly and his diary was suddenly full of international engagements: regional conferences, global summits, casual two-day visits to allies and neighbors. He kept a low profile, traveling without fanfare and without media accompaniment. He flew privately and stayed alone in expensive hotels and ordered room service for two. The palace offered no official explanation for the sudden and remarkable shift in the King's priorities, and the veteran royal correspondents knew exactly how to read the silence: say nothing. At a loss, the columnists and commentators and uncredentialed royal "experts" used their platforms in newspapers and morning shows to steer the national conversation toward the upcoming wedding and the frothy controversy of Rosalind's Tatler interview. Vivi's pregnancy had been the last major scandal. They weren't quite ready for another.

Previous | Chapter Start | Beginning | Next

author's note. I hope everyone missed these two as much as @nexility-sims and I did. The Ionian Union is @funkyllama's setting, thank you for letting me use your story as a backdrop for an illicit extramarital hookup.

Transcript under the cut.

Bergstraße, the Ionian Union // February 2018

Andre and Leonor are in bed together, asleep. Her sleep is disturbed by dreams; an empty beach in Armorica, gulls reeling overhead. She awakes with a start. LEONOR | [ gasping ] ANDRE | Leo? What's wrong? LEONOR | ...I had a bad dream. ANDRE | A nightmare? What about? LEONOR | I dreamed I was alone. ANDRE | Leo...it's okay. I'm right here. LEONOR | I know. Just a bad dream. ANDRE | [ yawning ] I dreamed we bought a house in Nakawe. LEONOR | Nakawe? What about the farm in Tartosa? ANDRE | I'll go there first [ yawns ] Just until the press lose interest... LEONOR | But that could take years. ANDRE | ...well, I was hoping you'd come visit? LEONOR | Just to visit? Not to stay? ANDRE | I didn't know if you'd want to. LEONOR | [ laughs disbelievingly ] ANDRE | Don't laugh! I didn't want to presume, you have your work, your family... LEONOR | [ softly ] You could be part of it, someday. ANDRE | ...would they accept me? LEONOR | Of course they will. They might not approve, but- ANDRE | -they won't cast us out. Unlike... LEONOR | ... ANDRE | ... LEONOR | ...anyway, if you're moving to Uspana, you'll have to start dressing better. ANDRE | Really? What's wrong with my clothes? LEONOR | Tsk. You mix neutrals. Our press will eat you alive. ANDRE | Oh? Are you offering to dress me? LEONOR | [ laughs ] No, I'm telling you to hire a better stylist. ANDRE | Romy Anderson has served the House of St. Fleur loyally for over 30 years. LEONOR | His eyesight's clearly failing, perhaps it's time for him to retire- ANDRE | [ laughs ] You're so bad. LEONOR | Only honest. ANDRE | I love you. LEONOR | I love you, too.

[invisibleicewands]

‘Theatre changed my life,’ says Michael Sheen. ‘Now my passion is for helping others’

Theatre can change lives. And I should know. It’s changed my life more than I’d ever have imagined. Back in 2011, a play called The Passion took over the streets of my hometown of Port Talbot. And I haven’t been the same since.

Perhaps the perception of actors before a play is that we’ll learn a few lines, try on a few costumes... break a leg. But with The Passion, I went all in like never before.

I also met the people doing vital work in the community I grew up in, helping vulnerable people who need it the most, often at make-or-break moments. Being at this coalface of community opened my eyes.

This patchwork of people holding society together with the thinnest of threads, going over and above each and every day to help people in almost every aspect of their lives.

I saw then – and I continue to see – kind-hearted, warm, tolerant people helping out their fellow humans to bring communities together. These are the people who make our nation what it is.

The good deeds that these people did – from giving young carers a night off to go bowling, to setting up the only grief counselling service in the area – generally worked under fragile funding and often were under-appreciated by the wider community.

I knew then that I had to devote as much time and energy as I could to helping, however I could.

In the decade and a half since The Passion, I’ve started projects around homelessness, high-cost credit, care, and local journalism. And for the past 18 months, these have come under the banner of a movement known as Mab Gwalia.

Mab Gwalia believes that opportunity should not only be available to those who can afford it. The ambition is to build a movement that makes change.

We support people and projects which work in three ways: projects creating opportunity and fighting for fairness; projects rooted in communities, helping people directly; and projects that work in new and ambitious ways to deliver change.

My work on The Passion made me realise there’s so many people out there doing this. And Mab Gwalia has supported as many of them as we can.

This has included: Army veterans in Merthyr Tydfil. Autism support for children in Rhondda Cynon Taf. Food growing in Pembrokeshire. Opportunities for women in Swansea who’ve suffered knock-back after knock-back. Community skills hubs in Rhyl.

Theatre changed my life. Now I want the spark it set off in me to do the same for others.

My ancestor, Nanny Blower, the lion tamer

My great-great grandmother was called Mary Ann-North. Or Nanny Blower, as we know her.

She left Wales for New York in 1896 where she became, wait for it, an elephant and lion tamer for the Bostock and Wombwell Circus. Fast forward to today and young people in the Upper Neath Valleys don’t have to run away to join the circus. Organised Kaos comes to them.

Kaos stands for “keeping adolescents off the streets” and that’s what they do. I first met them on The Passion (riding BMXs through fire – them, not me) and now Mab Gwalia has helped fund their work.

Manics band drum up £15,000 for drama study

“Libraries gave us power” – the opening lyrics to Wales’ second national anthem, A Design For Life.

The Manic Street Preachers wrote a version of the song for The Passion, performing it at The Last Supper in the Seaside Social & Labour Club… before being arrested and hauled off stage for the show’s added drama.

The band is working with Mab Gwalia to fund a drama scholarship, providing financial support to students who need it. Since 2021, 11 students have received up to £15,000 each academic year.

We’ve just committed to another three years. The students tell us it gives them a chance to believe. The arts should be for everyone.

Mothers Matter, like my mum and partner Anna

My mum’s going through a tough time as my dad is living with Alzheimer’s. It’s a lot to take. I’m thankful every day for how my partner Anna is with our daughters.

It’s an understatement, but mothers matter. That’s the name of an organisation Mab Gwalia has supported. Mothers Matter helps mums suffering from loneliness and isolation through support, counselling, wellbeing hubs and workshops. Mothers in South Wales don’t have to do it alone.

We give a voice to working class writers

A summer reading recommendation: Only Here, Only Now by Tom Newlands. It’s Cora’s story – a teenage girl with ADHD finding her way through life in the early 90s in post-industrial Scotland. She’ll change the way you think about neurodivergence. It’s an unforgettable debut novel.

Tom was part of A Writing Chance, a project I developed alongside the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, New Writing North and Northumbria University. The Office for National Statistics says nearly half all authors are from the most privileged backgrounds.

So we’re trying to redress that balance. To turn up voices not always heard. Tom was one of the first group – 11 writers who received bursaries and mentoring with industry leaders including regular writer of this column, Ros Wynne-Jones.

You can hear their stories in the BBC Sounds podcast Margins to Mainstream with Michael Sheen. Now, 16 more writers are on board. Think of the stories to come.

My debut at the ‘brilliant Welsh party’

With origins dating from 1176, the National Eisteddfod is Europe’s largest cultural festival. A celebration of Welsh language culture with performances and competitions in everything from composition to cynghanedd (a type of Welsh poetry). And, last weekend, in Pontypridd, I made my debut on the maes (site or field).

My four-year-old daughter now refers to it as “that brilliant Welsh party” which neatly describes the atmosphere. On stage, the actress Sian Phillips said the sounds of words in Welsh “echoed with the language”.

I felt those echoes all day. Spoken in the park by families. Performed by young actors. Sung with emotion by choirs. It was a beautiful thing.

Homeless World Cup a beautiful game

Next month, the Homeless World Cup takes place in Seoul, South Korea. Bringing the tournament to Cardiff in 2019, seeing 500 players with experience of homelessness represent their nation on the football field, was something I’ll never forget.

If you can’t wait until then, watch The Beautiful Game on Netflix. Keep an eye on Callum Scott Howells, a brilliant young Welsh actor who I directed in BBC drama The Way (available on iPlayer).

Nye NHS vision seen on world stage

I’ve spent much of this year playing the man who had the vision and valour to create the National Health Service. Nye was theatre at its most far-reaching.

There were sold-out runs in the National Theatre in London, the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. And cinema screenings were viewed by people all over the world.

On the night we filmed the NT Live screening, NHS workers from around the country were invited to be in the audience. They knew that at that moment, a global audience was learning about our welfare state and the man who was behind it.

My dad came along one night. He was just a little kid when Bevan’s idea became reality. Soon there’ll be very few left who can remember what life was like before the NHS.

Let’s hope it stays that way. Can the new government come up with a progressive policy that inspires a story which packs them in 75 years on? We can but dream.

[eretzyisrael]

by Chaim Lax

A popular adage states that “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”

In this day and age of social media and up-to-the-minute news, it has never been faster for a lie to travel around the world — and it’s been even harder for the truth to try and catch up.

That was the case last week, when Al Jazeera spread a malicious libel about Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian women in Al-Shifa Hospital during the IDF’s ongoing campaign against entrenched Hamas forces there, before quietly removing the story and trying to silently bury it.

On the morning of March 24, Al Jazeera Arabic’s principal news presenter, Elsy Abi Assi (who is no stranger to antisemitism and denial of Hamas atrocities), interviewed a Gazan woman by the name of Jamila Al-Hessi on live TV. She claimed that Israeli soldiers operating in Al-Shifa Hospital were raping Palestinian women and brutally murdering other Palestinians sheltering in the medical complex.

These allegations soon spread like wildfire on social media, with popular anti-Israel accounts picking up the story and disseminating it to their large English-speaking audiences.

Then, that night, Yasser Abuhilalah, an Al Jazeera columnist and former director, tweeted that a Hamas investigation into these allegations had concluded that they were not true, and that Jamila Al-Hessi had justified her on-air deception by claiming that she had exaggerated her claims in order to “arouse the nation’s fervor and brotherhood.”

According to some analysts, Hamas had decided to issue a rare public denial of these claims since its dissemination among Palestinians in northern Gaza was having the opposite effect than was intended: Instead of producing enmity against Israel, these allegations had caused Palestinians to flee the area in fear for their safety.

By the next day, Al Jazeera had removed references to Al-Hessi’s claims from its online platforms, but never formally retracted these libels, even though it had uncritically aired them in the first place.

However, by that point, it was too late. The damage to Israel’s reputation had already been done.

In less than 24 hours, millions of people had already viewed Jamila Al-Hessi’s lies on social media and, despite the denial by Hamas itself, continue to do so through a variety of anti-Israel accounts.

As of this last Thursday alone, the story had been viewed 2.3 million times on the X (formerly Twitter) account of Middle East Eye, 918,000 times on the X account of “investigative journalist” Sulaiman Ahmed, 405,000 times on the X account of “human rights activist”/Hamas supporter Ramy Abdu, and over 305,000 times on the X account of alternative media outlet The Cradle.

Some (including Sana Saeed, a journalist affiliated with Al Jazeera) have even gone so far as to voice skepticism of Hamas’ discrediting of Al-Hessi’s story.

The allegation of rape by IDF soldiers in Al-Shifa Hospital is not the first lie about Israel and the IDF that has been spread since Hamas’ October 7 terror attack and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza.

However, in this case, it was not spread by a lone social media activist or a fringe news source, but by a news organization that enjoys a veneer of respectability among both news consumers and media outlets around the world.

Despite it serving as an official mouthpiece of the authoritarian Qatari regime, and being accused of echoing Hamas talking points, Al Jazeera is viewed as a trusted source of information about Israel and the Palestinians during the current conflict, as well as over the past several years.

In 2022, HonestReporting uncovered that Al Jazeera had been cited by 16 “top-tier news outlets” 116 times in Israel-related news stories, with most never mentioning the Qatari media organization’s inherent bias.

Also, if not for Hamas deciding that the libel about rapes in Al-Shifa Hospital was not in its best interest and issuing a denial of the allegations, it is highly likely that Al Jazeera would have continued to run with this fabrication as a trusted news story.

In this age of the 24-hour news cycle and instant access to news from around the world, Al Jazeera is serving as a valuable tool in Hamas’ propaganda war, spreading misinformation and sullying Israel’s image around the world at record speeds.

Al Jazeera’s malign influence on the views of social media users is concerning. For mainstream media outlets to rely on it as a source for Israel-related stories is downright journalistic malpractice.

[an1tak]

recommendations of books! by ana

I read until I fall asleep

ʚ- All books im looking foward to read this summer! some non fic and fic hope you find something that interests you. its kinda long

ʚ- Almost all of them are tiktok recs the user of where i find the book will be in pink.

Book's:

Memoirs / essays

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture : Cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay has edited a collection of essays that explore what it means to live in a world where women are frequently belittled and harassed due to their gender, and offers a call to arms insisting that "not that bad" must no longer be good enough.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone : From a psychotherapist, and national advice columnist comes a thought-provoking new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist's world -- where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she).

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism : The author of the widely praised Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how cultish groups from Jonestown and Scientology to SoulCycle and social media gurus use language as the ultimate form of power.

Romance

Book Lovers : If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.

Seven Days in June : Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer, who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York.

science / philosophy

When god was a woman ; Here, archaeologically documented, is the story of the religion of the Goddess. Under her, women's roles were far more prominent than in patriarchal Judeo-Christian cultures. Stone describes this ancient system and, with its disintegration, the decline in women's status. Index; maps and illustrations.

It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle : A groundbreaking approach to transforming traumatic legacies passed down in families over generations, by an acclaimed expert in the field

Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind : Drawing upon her years of research and a wealth of remarkable experience, the world-renowned forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black takes us on a journey of revelation. From skull to feet, via the face, spine, chest, arms, hands, pelvis and legs, she shows that each part of us has a tale to tell. What we eat, where we go, everything we do leaves a trace, a message that waits patiently for months, years, sometimes centuries, until a forensic anthropologist is called upon to decipher it.

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents : If you grew up with an emotionally immature, unavailable, or selfish parent, you may have lingering feelings of anger, loneliness, betrayal, or abandonment. You may recall your childhood as a time when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of responsibility in an effort to compensate for your parent’s behavior. These wounds can be healed, and you can move forward in your life.

feminism / law

Justice and the Politics of Difference : This book challenges the prevailing philosophical reduction of social justice to distributive justice. It critically analyzes basic concepts underlying most theories of justice, including impartiality, formal equality, and the unitary moral subjectivity. Starting from claims of excluded groups about decision making, cultural expression, and division of labor, Iris Young defines concepts of domination and oppression to cover issues eluding the distributive model.

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017 : Original, engaging and striking, Palestine – A Biography crosses historical events, never-before-explored archival materials and accounts of generations, dealing in a simultaneously sober and emotional way with the facts of a tragic confrontation between two peoples who claim the same territory.

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny : Misogyny is a hot topic, yet it's often misunderstood. What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with sexism, and why is it prone to persist--or increase--even when sexist gender roles are waning? This book is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics, by the moral philosopher and writer Kate Manne.

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity : Since its publication in 1990, Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. This is the text where Judith Butler began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices

Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" : In Bodies That Matter, renowned theorist and philosopher Judith Butler argues that theories of gender need to return to the most material dimension of sex and sexuality: the body. Butler offers a brilliant reworking of the body, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain sex from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex.

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot : oday's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few.

Aquí no ha habido muertos : El ciclo de terror, corrupción y tragedia impulsado por las drogas en Colombia no terminó con la muerte de Pablo Escobar en 1993. Justo cuando los colombianos estaban listos para dejar atrás el legado asesino de los cárteles del país, se desarrolló un nuevo y sangriento capítulo. A fines de la década de 1990, los grupos paramilitares de derecha con estrechos vínculos con el negocio de la cocaína llevaron a cabo una campaña de expansión violenta, masacrando, violando y torturando a miles de personas.

Poem

Good Grief : When Brianna Pastor released her self-published poetry collection, Good Grief, she was blown away by the outpouring of support from people who reached out and said, “Yes. Me too.” For anyone who has struggled with questions of identity or coped with serious emotional issues, including grief, trauma, anxiety, and depression, this collection will help you find hope on the other side.

Instructions for Traveling West: Poems ; A vivid and inspiring poetry collection about what’s possible when we heed our instincts and honor our intuition, allowing ourselves to strike out for new territories of love, pleasure, and peace.

omg i just ove books xoxo ana

reading playlist +

[clairedaring]

Netflix Thai Original Line-up Information

(updated as of January 2024)

2024

1. Ready, Set, Love (Series)

Release: February 15, 2024

Summary: In a parallel universe, female newborns vastly outnumber their male counterparts due to an inexplicable pandemic. As men become rarer, they are hailed as “national treasures,” and women must win their affections in a government-sponsored competition called “Ready, Set, Love.” An ordinary young woman named Day is unexpectedly accepted into the competition where she meets Son, the most popular guy, and sparks fly. Together they uncover a conspiracy operating beneath the surface, which threatens their love and the world they have come to know.

Director: Yanyong Kuruangkura

Writer: Rangsima Akarawiwat, Phuwanit Pholdee

Producer: Anuthida Silanarong

Production Partner: Get More Film Plus

Cast: Blue Pongtiwat, Belle Kemisara, Lily Nichapalak, Man Trisanu

2. The Believers (Series)

Release: March 27, 2024

Summary: Three young and ambitious entrepreneurs must find a way to repay a mountain of debt from their failed startup, when they stumble upon an unthinkable “business” opportunity — exploiting people’s beliefs in religion for money.

Director: Wattanapong Wongwan

Writer: Aummaraporn Phandintong, Watcharapol Paksri Asamaporn Samakphan, Perapat Rukngam, Jiraporn Sae-lee

Producer: Chanajai Tonsaithong, Somprasong Srikrajang

Production Partner: Joy Luck Club Film House, Deluxe Production

Cast: James Teeradon, Peach Pachara Chirathivat, Ally Achiraya

3. Doctor Climax (Series)

Release: May 2024

Summary: In the late ‘70s when sex talk is still taboo, the life of a straitlaced skin doctor and specialist in venereal diseases is turned upside down when he starts moonlighting as a sex columnist under the pseudonym “Doctor Climax.

Creator: Ekachai Uekrongtham

Director: Kongdej Jaturanrasmee, Pairach Khumwan

Writer: Kongdej Jaturanrasmee, Tinnapat Banyatpiyaphoj

Executive Producer: Ekachai Uekrongtham

Production Partner: GMM Studios International

Cast: Ter Chantavit, Goy Arachaporn, Praew Chermawee, Ton Tonhon Tantivejakul, Tob Chaiwat

4. Terror Tuesday: Extreme (Series)

Release: TBA

Summary: A collection of haunting hit stories inspired by the “Angkhan Khlumpong (Terror Tuesday)” radio program with terrorizing twists and turns that are dialed up to the extreme.

Director: Prin Keeratiratanalak, Abhichoke Chandrasen, Prueksa Amaruji, Chayan Laoyodtrakool, Surapong Ploensang, Chookiat Sakveerakul, Eakasit Thairaat, Alisa Pien

Writer: Prin Keeratiratanalak, Abhichoke Chandrasen, Prueksa Amaruji, Kasidej Sundararjun, Pun Homchuen, Onusa Donsawai, Chookiat Sakveerakul, Thanamas Dhalerngsuk, Eakasit Thairaat, Kanokphan Ornrattanasakul

Producer: Chartchai Worapiankul, Genwaii Thongdeenok, Duangkamol Wongpratoom, Chayamporn Taeratanachai, Chuyot Mueagyot

Production Partner: ATIME, BrandThink Cinema

Cast: Nat Kitcharit, Piglet Charada, Gee Sutthirak, Smile Parada, Earn Pattaravadee, Cherprang Areekul, Music Praewa Suthamphong, Rujira Chuaykua, Not Vorarit, Praew Narupornkamol, Poon Mitpakdee, Care Panisara, Tonhorm Sakuntala, Pat Chayanit, Point Cholawit, Bee Namthip, Sydney Supitcha, Kachapa Tonjaroen, Nina

Yarinda

5. Master of the House (Series)

Release: TBA

Summary: When a diamond tycoon dies mysteriously, a cutthroat battle over his estate erupts between his ruthless heirs and the housemaid whom their father recently married.

Director: Sivaroj Kongsakul

Writer: Nut Nualpang, Weerasu Worrapot, Vatanyu Ingkavivat, Sita Likitvanichkul, Athimes Arunrojangkul

Executive Producer: Kulp Kaljareuk

Production Partner: Kantana Motion Pictures

Cast: Yada Narilya, Bie Teerapong, Chai Chartayodom, Gap Thanavate, Nus Nusba, Claudia Chakrabandhu

6. Don’t Come Home (Series)

Release: TBA (Series)

Summary: A mother and her young daughter flee to their family’s abandoned mansion but soon find themselves haunted by paranormal incidents that lead to the little girl’s mysterious disappearance.

Director Woottidanai Intarakaset

Writer Woottidanai Intarakaset, Aummaraporn Phandinthong

Producer Thananuj Ebrahim

Production Partner: Hub Ho Hin Bangkok

Cast: Noon Woranuch, Pear Pitchapa, Cindy Sirinya, Ploypaphas Fonkaewsiwaporn

7. Tomorrow and I (Series)

Release: TBA

Summary: This anthology series explores the intersection of futuristic technologies and Thai culture, and the unimaginable tensions and moral dilemmas that arise out of their inevitable conflict

Director: Paween Purijitpanya

Writer: Paween Purijitpanya, Pat Pataranutaporn, Jirawat Watthanakiatpanya, Abhichoke Chandrasen, Tossaphon Riantong, Panuwat Inthawat, Eakasit Thairaat

Producer: Surawut Tungkarak

Production Partner: Jungka

Cast: Violette Wautier, Aelm Bhumibhat Thavornsiri, Ray Macdonald, Phuak Pongsatorn, Boy Pakorn, Ink Waruntorn, Poyd Treechada, Tangkwa Chananticha, Wanichaya Pornpanarittichai

8. Bangkok Breaking: Heaven and Hell (Film)

Release: TBA

Summary: When a dedicated rescue worker inadvertently gets caught up in the kidnapping plot of a mogul's tween daughter, he must save her from the clutches of rival gangs hunting them down with unpredictable dangers around every corner.

-> Note: Film sequel to 2021 Netflix Thai original series Bangkok Breaking

Director: Kongkiat Komesiri

Writer: Kongkiat Komesiri

Producer: Kongkiat Komesiri, Piyaluck Mahatanasab

Production Partner: Kongkiat Production

Cast: Weir Sukollawat, Duu Sanya, Mind Atitaya

2023

1. The Lost Lotteries (Film)

Release: November 16, 2022

Synopsis: A heist-comedy film about 5 losers united by a crazy mission to retrieve their 30-million-baht winning lottery tickets from a mafia gang headquartered in a firecracker factory.

Director and Writer: Prueksa Amaruji 

Producer: Ekachai Uekrongtham 

Starring: Wongravee Nateetorn, Phantira Pipityakorn, Napapa Tantrakul, Somjit Jongjohor, Thanaporn Wagprayoon, Padung SongSang 

Production Partner: GMM Studios International

2. Hunger (Film)

Release: April 8, 2023

Synopsis: Aoy, a woman in her twenties, runs her family’s local stir-fried noodles restaurant in the old quarter of Bangkok. One day, she receives an invitation to leave the family business and join team ‘Hunger’, Thailand’s number one luxury Chef’s table team led by the famously ingenious, and infamously nasty, Chef Paul.

Director: Sitisiri Mongkolsiri

Producer: Kongdej Jaturanrasmee, Soros Sukhum  

Writer: Kongdej Jaturanrasmee 

Starring: Aokbab Chutimon, Peter Nopachai Jayanama, Gunn Svasti 

Production Partner: Song Sound Production

3. The Murderer (Film)

Streaming date: July 27, 2023

Synopsis: When an English man is accused of murdering his Thai in-laws, his wife is the only witness that stands between guilt and freedom.

Director: Wisit Sasanatieng

Producer: Transformation Films

Writer: Abishek J. Bajaj

Starring: Mum Jokmok, Oom Eisaya Hosuwan, James Laver

Production Partner: Transformation Films

4. Once Upon A Star (Film)

Streaming date: October 11, 2023

Synopsis: Join the crew of a traveling pharma-cinema troupe as they go on the road to spread the joy of live-dubbed movies, all while overcoming difficulties, deceits, and reaching for their dreams.

Director and Producer: Nonzee Nimibutr

Writer: Ek Iemchuen

Starring: Weir Sukollawat, Noona Nuengthida, Kao Jirayu, Samart Payakaroon, Nat Sadaktorn 

Production Partner: 18 Tanwa

5. Delete (Series)

Streaming date: June 28, 2023

Synopsis: The story of a complicated relationship with secrets to hide, and a grim question to ponder: who do you want to delete from your life? 

Director and Producer: Parkpoom Wongpoom

Writer: Parkpoom Wongpoom, Jirassaya Wongsutin, Tossaphon Riantong

Starring: Nat Kitcharit, Ice Natara, Fah Sarika, Aokbab Chutimon, Jaonaay Jinjett 

Production Partner: GDH

6. Analog Squad (Series)

Release: December 7, 2023

Synopsis: At the turn of the millenium, a group of misfits is hired to play the part of estranged family members in order to fill in the cracks of one broken family.

Director: Nithiwat Tharatorn

Producer: Nalina Chayasombat

Writer: Nithiwat Tharatorn, Aummaraporn Phandintong, Chanathip Amonpiyaphong, Sopana Chaowwiwatkul

Starring: Peter Nopachai, Jaylerr Krissanapoom, Namfon Kullanut, Primmy Wipawee

Production Partner: Jungka Bangkok

[ramsaybaggins]

I just watched the Runaway Bride for the first time with pals and I have an idea for an OFMD AU

Ed is a jaded and bored dating columnist for a national paper. He keeps going on shitty dates and writing bitter columns. He's famous, he's making money, he's bored.

He meets an old friend, Jack, at a bar. Jack has just witnessed another awful date where Ed got torn apart for his column. Jack makes himself known, sits down to have a drink and a catch up with his old buddy. Tells him about this guy, Stede Bonnet, who's run out on a bunch of weddings. The Runaway Groom, they call him.

Stede Bonnet has run out on weddings. Arranged weddings, most of them. The thing is, both parties know the score. They know Stede won't make it to the vows. He's not supposed to. The parents? They don't know the plan. But Stede and his promised, they know the plan.

It started with Marry Allamby. Arranged. Miserable. An 18 month courtship which neither of them wanted. 18 months of parents off their backs. 18 months of Mary having time to find someone she wanted. Stede found out before the wedding and they hatched their plan. Stede ran away. Mary married Doug a couple of months later.

Since then, Stede has used the privilege and wealth of his family to help others find their loves. The engagement lasts as long as needed, and once they find their person, Stede runs away. Every time. He and his family's reputation can take it. He can be weak, a coward, a joke. His arranged partners? They receive sympathy and people rally around them, and a few months later they all marry their real destined.

Oluwande met Jim, and then Archie, and then Zheng. Lucius met Pete. Frenchie met Wee John. They are all Stede's family, now.

Only Stede and his betrothed know. It's why the plan works.

Ed writes a column about Stede Bonnet, the runaway groom. Stede complains, and Ed is fired. Fine. Whatever. Who the fuck cares, he was bored anyway.

Until he's offered a unique chance - go and find out the real story behind Stede. Stede who is currently engaged. Stede who is set to be married in a few scant weeks.

Over the course of those weeks, Ed finds himself falling in love with Stede Bonnet. He's a bitch, he's caring, he's honestly a bit of a cunt. He's wonderful.

He finds out what happened to the previous fiance. Jack Rackham. He wanted to trap Stede for the money, and Stede kicked him to the curb as soon as he found out what was going on. Never even made it to the fake wedding.

When Ed confront him: "People like us don't have friends, we're all just in various stages of fucking each other over."

Ed's in love. He's pretty sure Stede is too. Ed can't sit by and watch at the pre-wedding toast as Stede is cruelly and ritually insulted by the guests and his family. He stands up for him. Stede leaves and Ed confronts him. Confronts him about moulding himself to each new person.

When Ed confesses his love breathily with a kiss at the wedding rehearsal, Stede kisses him back. The wedding is called off. Ed offers to take the fake groom's place, but for real this time.

Stede agrees.

Stede gets halfway down the aisle two days later, and runs.

Ed crashes.

One day Ed shuffles into his lonely apartment and finds Stede sitting on his sofa. Stede confesses that Ed was right. That he didn't know who he was. That he was unloveable, that people from his family and his town didn't get to marry for love anyway. So instead, he helped other people find love through him. He did everything he could to help those he could.

He never helped himself, though. And he didn't know how. But he was ready now. He understands, now.

They get married, just the two of them and their weird celebrant, Buttons, on a crisp autumn day. Stede doesn't run. Neither does Ed.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mary L. Trump at The Good in Us:

Like most Americans, I too want the national temperature to be lowered. I want to see the violent rhetoric to stop. And I want to see our nation unified. But the other side seems to be saying that, in order for that to happen, we’re not allowed to talk about Donal'd’s record of lawlessness, cruelty, and incompetence and we must make concessions to the would-be dictator. On Monday, while Republicans tried to shame their critics into silence by making false and increasingly incendiary claims that it was Democrats who are responsible for creating the context in which Saturday’s shooting took place, we were reminded just how dangerous things will get if Donald wins this election. Today, Aileen Cannon, Donald’s personal pocket judge, took the shocking (but not surprising) and illogical step of dismissing the charges against my uncle. Her behavior since acquiring this case has been abysmal and partisan; she has frequently skated across the line of malpractice. Her repeatedly putting her thumb on the scale in favor of the defense (who am I kidding?—she acted like she was lead counsel for the defense) felt even worse, because we know Donald is guilty. We know he stole our national security documents; we know held them in non-secure locations; and we know he refused to return them. We know these things because we witnessed Donald commit the crimes—and he confessed to them over and over again.

There is no way to interpret Cannon’s decision other than as a political favor from a corrupt judge who, along with the illegitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court (especially Clarence Thomas) is determined to put Donald above the law.

[...]

What happened at Donald’s rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday was deeply wrong and un-American. The same can be said of his plans for this country if he’s put in the Oval Office again. We can’t be quiet. We can’t let the side that continues to traffic in violent political rhetoric blame us shame us or scare us into silence. We must continue to sound the warnings—there will be no pivoting to unity and peace. There will only be Donald and his sycophants and enablers being exactly what we have known them to be. This morning, while pundits and columnists were, once again, falling for the promise to pivot to unity, Donald simply couldn’t help himself. In response to Cannon’s horrifying ruling, he called for the “dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts—the January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia ‘Perfect’ Phone Call charges.” 

[...] Not long after Cannon’s corrupt gift to him, Donald announced the selection of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. If his goal was to pick a hypocritical bully and revanchist sycophant, he could not have made a better choice. Clearly, Vance thinks he’s immune to the kind of consequences suffered by Donald’s former Vice President—you know, the guy who almost got hanged by Donald’s mob—but I’d still suggest that Vance watch his back. Vance is stronger than Pence when it comes to pursuing his own interests, but he’s as transactional as Donald. Pence has very few principles, but on one important days, he had least one when it really counted. Despite the enormous amount of pressure that was brought to bear on him, he showed up to do his job on January 6th. Vance will have no such compunction. If you have any doubts about that, consider his comments to George Stephanopoulos:

“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020.” Of course, Donald gave this fellow-insurrectionist a promotion.  Jen O’Malley Dillon of the Biden-Harris campaign, put it this way, “[Donald] picked J.D. Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people. In other words, Donald didn’t want to take a chance that his new running mate would ever put the country first like Pence did. That’s one more guardrail that no longer exists. 

Mary L. Trump nails it in that we cannot unite around the fascistic and divisive Trump/Vance agenda.

[mariacallous]

He wasn’t kidding. Donald Trump really does want to rule as an extremist strongman, with contempt for the planet, for America’s allies and for the rule of law. He’s made that crystal clear this week, announcing one bombshell appointment after another, each one a declaration of intent. Few things tell you more about a president than their hires – personnel is policy, as they used to say in Ronald Reagan’s White House – and Trump is telling us exactly who he is.

The latest name added to the roster is a storied one: Robert F Kennedy Jr, now lined up for the role of health secretary. You may have known of Bobby Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy may be a hero of yours. But, boy, his son is no Bobby Kennedy. Once an admired environmental campaigner, now he is an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist who promotes treatments that don’t work – such as hydroxychloroquine for Covid – and rails against those that do, spreading the long-debunked claim that childhood vaccines are linked to autism and opposing fluoridation of water to prevent tooth decay. Apparently unchastened by the pandemic, Kennedy believes US public health officials have been too focused on infectious diseases. Or as he memorably put it: “We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.” If deadly pathogens could lick their lips, they would.

At least the RFK nod was not a surprise: Trump had long said he wanted to let Kennedy “go wild” with the nation’s health. More of a jawdropper is the new president’s choice for attorney general, the most senior law enforcement officer in the land: Matt Gaetz. For two years, Gaetz was under federal investigation for child sex trafficking and statutory rape. (No charges were brought.) Until this week, his fellow members of the House of Representatives were running their own ethics committee inquiry into Gaetz – handily halted, thanks to his resignation just days before they were about to report – examining, besides the allegations of underage sexual abuse, accusations that he engaged in illicit drug use, displayed to colleagues, on the floor of the House, nude photos and videos of previous sexual partners, converted campaign funds for personal use and accepted gifts banned under congressional rules.

Some wonder if naming such a man as head of the US justice department is a diversionary tactic, designed to distract attention from the clutch of other nominations that are scarcely less outrageous, in the hope that those will look reasonable by comparison. In this view, Trump knows that Gaetz will never be attorney general, that his nomination will be blocked in the Senate where, even though the Republicans have a majority, too many will balk. Gaetz is chum, thrown into the water to satisfy the piranhas, so that Trump can quietly ensure his other nominees get through. And what a rum bunch they are.

As director of national intelligence, overseeing 18 separate intelligence agencies including the CIA and NSA, Trump has turned to Tulsi Gabbard, a fringe Democratic congresswoman before she defected to the Republicans, best known for meeting Bashar al-Assad while the Syrian dictator was busy slaughtering hundreds of thousands of his own people, and for parroting Kremlin talking points.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard was swift to blame the west, even repeating the Moscow propaganda line that the US had stationed secret biolabs across Ukraine. One of Vladimir Putin’s mouthpiece TV channels took to referring to Gabbard as Russia’s “girlfriend”. When asked if she was, in fact, a Russian agent, the talking head on the Kremlin-backed network replied: “Yes.” Now consider that at the core of the US relationship with its allies – including Britain – is intelligence-sharing and ask yourself whether the likes of MI6 could in all conscience share what they know with such a person.

Her proposed counterpart over at the Pentagon, set to be in charge of the mightiest, richest military in human history, is the weekend host of Fox News’s breakfast show, Pete Hegseth. Admittedly, he served in Iraq and Afghanistan – and as a prison guard in Guantánamo Bay – but Hegseth has never run a whelk stall, let alone one of the world’s biggest organisations, employing close to 3 million people. His rank inexperience would be worrying enough, until you become familiar with what he believes.

He’s covered in tattoos, including symbols favoured by the Christian nationalist far right, among them the slogan Deus Vult and the Jerusalem cross, which celebrates the medieval Crusades when Christians earned their spurs slaughtering infidel Muslims and Jews. These days, he backs the ultra-right Jewish fundamentalists who seek to rebuild the ancient temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the site revered by Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif, a move so incendiary it’s a byword for triggering holy war.

Hegseth will find company in Trump’s choice of ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas governor and evangelical Christian Mike Huckabee. Like Hegseth, Huckabee is against a two-state solution, insists on calling the West Bank by its biblical Hebrew name – Judea and Samaria – and is adamant that “There’s no such thing as an occupation.” In 2008 he said, “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian”.

All of which makes you wonder how those many Arab and Muslim American voters in Michigan and elsewhere, persuaded that Trump had to be a better option for the Palestinians than Kamala Harris, feel now.

We’ve barely got to Lee Zeldin, Trump’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, despite having repeatedly voted against clean water and clean air legislation, and having expressed doubts over whether climate breakdown is “as serious a problem” as people say it is. Or to the self-confessed puppy killer who will head the Department of Homeland Security. Or indeed the man who will lead the new department reviewing government contracts, including, in an arrangement open to spectacular corruption, contracts with his own companies: namely, Elon Musk.

Still, you get the picture. How, then, to make sense of these choices? Some hope it’s no more than an opening bid by Trump, the arch-negotiator: offer the Senate something obviously unacceptable, then haggle from there. Others wonder if it’s part of a dark, deliberate strategy, by which Trump, the agent of chaos, appoints those who are not so much disruptors as wreckers, men and women who can be relied on to make the agencies they lead collapse in failure. When the federal government is a smoking ruin, then all power will have to reside in the single man at the top.

My own view is simpler. At the heart of it is the quality all would-be strongmen value most: loyalty. Trump knows that a character as tawdry as Gaetz, despised by his own colleagues, would owe everything to him. As attorney general, he would do whatever Trump asked, working his way through Trump’s enemies list, prosecuting whoever had crossed his boss, delivering the retribution Trump yearns for.

What’s more, Gaetz and the rest are a kind of test, one that Putin deploys often. You push your allies to defend what they know cannot be defended, to make concessions they would once have considered unpalatable. As the analyst Ron Brownstein put it this week, “Each surrender paves the way for the next.” It is, he says, “a cardinal rule of strongman dominance”.

So now it is up to the Republicans in the Senate. Will they abase themselves yet further, and nod through this parade of ghouls and charlatans? Or will they at last find their backbone and say no to the would-be autocrat who has taken over their party and now looms over all three branches of the US government? After all we’ve seen these last eight years, what do you think is the answer?

[tomorrowusa]

J.D. Vance is even worse than you think.

[H]is worldview is fundamentally incompatible with the basic principles of American democracy. Vance has said that, had he been vice president in 2020, he would have carried out Trump’s scheme for the vice president to overturn the election results. He has fundraised for January 6 rioters. He once called on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into a Washington Post columnist who penned a critical piece about Trump. After last week’s assassination attempt on Trump, he attempted to whitewash his radicalism by blaming the shooting on Democrats’ rhetoric about democracy without an iota of evidence.

Being "evidence-free" is fairly normal for Republicans theses days, but let's continue.

This worldview translates into a very aggressive agenda for a second Trump presidency. In a podcast interview, Vance said that Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat” in the US government and “replace them with our people.” If the courts attempt to stop this, Vance says, Trump should simply ignore the law. “You stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it,” he declares. The President Jackson quote is likely apocryphal, but the history is real. Vance is referring to an 1832 case, Worcester v. Georgia, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the US government needed to respect Native legal rights to land ownership. Jackson ignored the ruling, and continued a policy of allowing whites to take what belonged to Natives. The end result was the ethnic cleansing of about 60,000 Natives — an event we now call the Trail of Tears. For most Americans, this history is a deep source of shame: an authoritarian president trampling on the rule of law to commit atrocities. For Vance, it is a well of inspiration.

Implicitly, Vance favors the persecution of Native Americans. He's a fan of ethnic cleansing.

Vance apparently alters his views simply to further his ambitions.

Ultimately, whether Vance truly believes what he’s saying is secondary to the public persona he’s chosen to adopt. Politicians are not defined by their inner lives, but the decisions that they make in public — the ones that actually affect law and policy. Those choices are deeply shaped by the constituencies they depend on and the allies they court. And it is clear that Vance is deeply ensconced in the GOP’s growing “national conservative” faction, which pairs an inconsistent economic populism with an authoritarian commitment to crushing liberals in the culture war.

A favorite abbreviation of mine for "national conservative" is Nat-C.

Yes, Vance actually follows a monarchist blogger. What would the signers of the Declaration of Independence think?

Vance has cited Curtis Yarvin, a Silicon Valley monarchist blogger, as the source of his ideas about firing bureaucrats and defying the Supreme Court. His Senate campaign was funded by Vance’s former employer, Peter Thiel, a billionaire who once wrote that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” He’s a big fan of Patrick Deneen, a Notre Dame professor who recently wrote a book calling for “regime change” in America. Vance spoke at an event for Deneen’s book in Washington, describing himself as a member of the “postliberal right” who sees his job in Congress as taking an “explicitly anti-regime” stance.

Those pushing the odious Project 2025, which we should think of as „Mein Trumpf“, are big fans of J.D..

Top Trump advisor (and current federal inmate) Steve Bannon told Ward that Vance is “at the nerve center of this movement.” Kevin Roberts, the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation and the driving force behind Project 2025, told Ward that “he is absolutely going to be one of the leaders — if not the leader — of our movement.” He would be a direct conduit from the shadowy world of far-right influencers, where Curtis Yarvin is a respected voice and Viktor Orbán a role model, straight to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Viktor Orbán is not somebody any American leader should emulate. Orbán is essentially a goulash Putin.

In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean described himself as hailing from “the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.” If the GOP under Trump has indeed evolved into an authoritarian party, then Vance hails from its authoritarian wing.

So Vance is from the authoritarian wing of the authoritarian party.

Dictatorships are much easier to prevent than to remove. What are you doing in real life to work for the defeat of the Trump-Vance ticket? If you like democracy, you can't take it for granted.

NOTE: Zack Beauchamp who wrote the highlighted article above at Vox has a related book out this month.

[beguines]

Indian academic Khinvraj Jangid says that Modi's appreciation for Israel was two-fold: "One is that it is a religious nation without any hesitation; without any guilt. And second, it is a strong military state. Physical power is very important to him." During the devastating bombing campaign of Gaza earlier in the summer of 2014, India's Foreign Ministry released a statement in which it said it was "deeply concerned" over the "steep escalation of violence between Israel and Palestine" and "the loss of civilian life." But it also bemoaned "cross-border provocations resulting from rocket attacks" on Israel. Days later in parliament, Modi's government managed to block an opposition party-led attempt to pass a resolution condemning Israel's disproportionate killings in Gaza. Later, it voted for a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution to launch a probe into the bombardment, which calmed nerves once more. But India decided to abstain when it came to voting for the resolution (A/HRC/29/L.35) that endorsed the report in mid-2015. By that time, Modi and Netanyahu were speaking on the phone and planning cooperation, if not regional domination. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Netanyahu had personally called Modi before the vote. Opposition leaders from the Indian National Congress Party and Communist Party India (CPI-M) demanded to know if Indian foreign policy had changed track. Both The Hindu and Haaretz, too, concluded that India's decision to abstain appeared to reflect a significant policy shift toward Israel. The Indian government, however, argued that it abstained only because it took offence to a phrase in the resolution that called for Israel to be taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its crimes. It said it had found the recommendation "intrusive." Commenting on India's response to the Gaza war of 2014, Sadanand Dhume, a columnist with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), wrote that Delhi's response appeared ready to "suggest publicly what many officials already acknowledge privately: A burgeoning strategic partnership with Israel matters more to India than reflexive solidarity with the Palestinian cause."

Azad Essa, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel