#defund the russian military

[prongsmydeer]

Things I Kept Thinking About While Watching Pacific Rim (2013):

It's crazy that there are only two female pilots when the entire premise of Jaeger Pilots is a capacity for intellectual and emotional vulnerability with each other. I feel like you are way more likely to come across women who are skilled in doing that than men

I thought at some point they might return to why the Jaeger pilots were being defunded, considering it was by far their most efficient way of dealing with the Kaiju. I understand that if the film is taken as an allegory for climate change, that move represents a form of environmental nihilism, but the metaphor kind of falls short when the same nations they're representing are also deeply militaristic. The more likely outcome than rerouting resources away from a military operation, would probably be the alliance itself falling apart? I think if the film had used that premise, it would more strongly contrast with why the Jaeger rebellion, which persistently believes in the power of cooperation, empathy, and collective action, is the best solution

I did appreciate the detail that most people defaulted to their first language in times of trouble (Mako speaking in Japanese during her fight, Sasha and Alexis speaking in Russian during theirs, etc.) or when they wanted to communicate privately (like Mako commenting on Raleigh when she thought he wouldn't understand) and I think that helped the movie to expand beyond an American War Movie

On that note, I feel like what the movie lacked in strength of dialogue (often feeling very American War Movie), it more than made up for in interesting world-building and character dynamics. The idea that Stacker knew Mako should be a pilot, but was reluctant to put her and Raleigh in the same Jaeger, due to their mutual Kaiju trauma, was so interesting. The concept of drift compatibility, very cool. The concept of the rapid technological evolution of Jaegers from analog (nuclear) to digital, with both of them having clear drawbacks, very cool. Even just the concept of Raleigh being one of the only established pilots to be completely and utterly willing to let any stranger in his head. I feel like I could think about this movie for hours

Truly, they breezed past the dinosaur thing. Nobody even questioned it!!! What do you mean, the dinosaurs were a trial run? They really needed a paleontologist on their research team

[mightyflamethrower]

At the nexus of most of America’s current crises, the diversity/equity/inclusion dogma can be found.

The southern border has been destroyed because the Democratic Party wanted the poor of the southern hemisphere to be counted in the census, to vote if possible in poorly audited mail-in elections, and to build upon constituencies that demand government help. Opposition to such cynicism and the de facto destruction of enforcement of U.S. immigration law is written off as “racism,” “nativism,” and “xenophobia.”

The military is short more than 40,000 soldiers. The Pentagon may fault youth gangs, drug use, or a tight labor market. But the real shortfall is mostly due inordinately to reluctant white males who have been smeared by some of the military elite as suspected “white supremacists,” despite dying at twice their demographics in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are now passing on joining up despite their families’ often multigenerational combat service.

The nexus between critical race theory and critical legal theory has been, inter alia, defunding the police, Soros-funded district attorneys exempting criminals from punishment, the legitimization of mass looting, squatters’ rights, and general lawlessness across big-city America.

The recent epidemic of anti-Semitism was in part birthed by woke/DEI faculty and students on elite campuses, who declared Hamas a victim of “white settler” victimizing Israel and thus contextualized their Jewish hatred by claiming that as “victims,” they cannot be bigots.

There is a historic, malevolent role of states adjudicating political purity, substituting racial, sex, class, and tribal criteria for meritocracy. They define success or failure not based on actual outcomes but on the degree of orthodox zealotry. Once governments enter that realm of the surreal, the result is always an utter disaster.

After a series of disastrous military catastrophes in 1941 and 1942, Soviet strongman and arch-communist Joseph Stalin ended the Soviet commissar system in October 1942. He reversed course to give absolute tactical authority to his ground commanders rather than to the communist overseers, as was customary.

Stalin really had no choice since Marxist-Leninist ideology overriding military logic and efficacy had ensured that the Soviet Union was surprised by a massive Nazi invasion in June 1941. The Russians in the first 12 months of war subsequently lost nearly 5 million in vast encirclements—largely because foolhardy, ideologically driven directives curtailed the generals’ operational control of the army. After the commissars were disbanded and commanders given greater autonomy, the landmark victory at Stalingrad followed, and with it, the rebound of the Red Army.

One reason why the dictator Napoleon ran wild in Europe for nearly 18 years was that his marshals of France were neither selected only by the old Bourbon standards of aristocratic birth and wealth nor by new ideological revolutionary criteria, but by more meritocratic means than those of his rival nations.

Mao’s decade-long cultural revolution (1966–76) ruined China. It was predicated on Maoist revolutionary dogma overruling economic, social, cultural, and military realities. An entire meritocracy was deemed corrupted by the West and reactionary—and thus either liquidated or rendered inert.

In their place, incompetent zealots competed to destroy all prior standards as “bourgeois” and “counter-revolutionary.” It is no surprise that the current “people’s liberation army,” for all its talk of communist dogma, does not function entirely on Mao’s principles.

Muammar Gaddafi wrecked Libya by reordering an once oil-rich nation on Gaddafi’s crackpot rules of his “Green Book.” At times, the unhinged ideologue, in lunatic fashion, required all Libyans to raise chickens or to destroy all the violins in the nation. I once asked a Libyan why the oil-rich country appeared to me utterly wrecked, and he answered, “We first hire our first cousins—and usually the worst.”

There were many reasons why the King-Cotton, slave-owning Old South lagged far behind the North in population, productivity, and infrastructure. But the chief factor was the capital and effort invested in the amoral as well as uneconomic institution of slavery.

After the Civil War, persistent segregationist ideology demanded vast amounts of time, labor, and money in defining race down to the “one drop” rule—while establishing a labyrinth of segregation laws and refusing to draw on the talents of millions of black citizens.

Yet here we are in 2024, ignoring the baleful past as the woke diversity/equity/inclusion commissars war on merit. Institutions from United Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration to the Pentagon and elite universities have been reformulated in the post-George Floyd woke hysteria. And to the delight of competitors and enemies abroad, they are now using criteria other than merit to hire, promote, evaluate, and retain.

The greatest problem historically with hiring and promoting based on DEI-like dogma is that anti-meritocratic criteria mark the beginning, not the end, of eroding vital standards. If one does not qualify for a position or slot by accepted standards, then a series of further remedial interventions are needed to sustain the woke project, from providing exceptions and exemptions, changing rules and requirements, and misleading the nation that a more “diverse” math, or more “inclusive” engineering, or more “equity” in chemistry can supplant mastery of critical knowledge that transcends gender, race, or ideology.

But planes either fly or crash due to proper operation, not the appearance or politics of the operator. All soldiers either hit or miss targets, and engineers either make bridges that stand or collapse on the basis of mastering ancient scientific canons and acquired skills, training, and aptitude that have nothing to do with superficial appearance, or tribal affinities, or religion, or doctrine.

The common denominator of critical theories, from critical legal theory to critical social theory, is toxic nihilism, which claims there are no absolute standards, only arbitrary rules and regulations set up by a privileged, powerful class to exploit “the other.” Yet, not punishing looting has nothing to do with race or class, but everything with corroding timeless deterrence that always has and always will prevent the bullying strong from preying on the weak and vulnerable.

Defunding the police sent a message to any criminally minded that in a cost-to-benefit risk assessment, the odds were now on the side of the criminal not being caught for his crimes—and so crime soared and the vulnerable of the inner city became easy prey.

Another danger of DEI is the subordination of the individual to the collective. We are currently witnessing an epidemic of DEI racism in which commissars talk nonstop of white supremacy/rage/privilege without any notion of enormous differences among 230 million individual Polish-, Greek-, Dutch-, Basque-, or Armenian-Americans, or the class, political, and cultural abyss that separates those in Martha’s Vineyard from their antitheses in East Palestine, Ohio.

Moreover, what is “whiteness” in an increasingly intermarried and multiracial society? Oddly, something akin to the old one-drop rules of the South is now updated to determine victims and victimizers—to the point of absurdity. Who is white—someone one half-Irish, one half Mexican—who is black—someone one quarter Jamaican, three-quarters German? To find answers, DEI czars must look to paradigms of the racist past for answers.

Moreover, once any group is exempted and not held to collective standards by virtue of its superficial appearance, then the nation naturally witnesses an increase in racism and bigotry—on the theory that it is not racist to racially stigmatize a supposedly “racist” collective. And we are already seeing an uptake in racially motivated interracial violence as criminals interpret the trickle-down theory of reparatory justice as providing exemption for opportunistic violence.

Throughout history, it has always been the most mediocre and opportunistic would-be commissars that appear to come forth when meritocracy vanishes. If there was not a Harvard President and plagiarist like Claudine Gay to trumpet and leverage her DEI credentials, she would have to be invented. If there was not a brilliant, non-DEI economist like Roland Fryer to be hounded and punished by her, he would have to be invented.

The DEI conglomerate has little idea of the landmines it is planting daily by reducing differences in talent, character, and morality into a boring blueprint of racial stereotypes. Punctuality is now “white time” and supposedly pernicious. The SAT, designed to give the less privileged a meritocratic pathway to college admissions, is deemed racist and either discarded or warped.

In its absence, universities are quietly now “reimaging” their curriculum to make it more “relevant to today’s students” and, of course, “more inclusive and more diverse.” Translated from the language of Oceania, that means after admitting tens of thousands to the nation’s elite schools who did not meet the universities’ own prior standards that they themselves once established and apprehensive about terminating such students, higher education is now euphemistically lowering the work load in classes, introducing new less rigorous classes, and inflating grades. In their virtue-signaling, they have little clue that inevitably their once prized and supposedly prestigious degrees will be rendered less valued as employers discover a Harvard, Stanford, or Princeton BA or BS is not a guarantee of academic excellence or mastery of vital skill sets.

Toxic tribalism is also, unfortunately, like nuclear proliferation. Once one group goes full tribal, others may as well, if for no reason than their own self-survival in a balkanized, Hobbesian world of bellum omnium contra omnes. If our popular culture is to be defined by the racist hosts of The View, or the racist anchorwoman Joy Reid, or members of the Congressman “Squad,” or entire studies departments in our universities that constantly bleat out the racialist mantra, then logically one of two developments will follow.

One, so-called whites in minority-majority states like California will copy the tribal affinities of others that transcend their class and cultural differences, again in response to other blocs that do the same for careerist advantage and perceived survival. Or two, racism will be redefined empirically so that any careerist elites who espouse ad nauseam racial chauvinism—on the assurance they cannot be deemed racists—will be discredited and exposed for what they’ve become, and thus the content of our character will triumph over the color of our skin.

Finally, do we ever ask how a country of immigrants like the United States—vastly smaller than India and China, less materially rich than the vast expanse of Russia, without the strategic geography of the Middle East, or without the long investment and infrastructure of Europe—emerged out of nowhere to dominate the world economically, financially, militarily, and educationally for nearly two centuries?

The answer is easy: it was the most meritocratic land of opportunity in the world, where millions emigrated (legally) on the assurance that their class, politics, religion, ethnicity, and yes, race, would be far less a drawback than anywhere else in the world.

The degree to which the U.S. survives DEI depends on either how quickly it is discarded or whether America’s existential enemies in the Middle East, China, Russia, and Iran have even worse DEI-anti-meritocratic criteria of their own in hiring, promotion, and admissions—whether defined by institutionalized hatred of the West, or loyalty oaths to the communist party, or demonstrable obsequiousness to the Putin regime, or lethal religious intolerance.

Unfortunately, our illiberal enemies, China especially, at least in matters of money and arms, are now emulating the meritocracy of the old America. Meanwhile, we are hellbent on following their former destructive habits of using politics instead of merit to staff our universities, government, corporations, and military.

Our future hinges on how quickly we discard DEI orthodoxy and simply make empirical decisions to stop printing money, deter enemies abroad, enforce our laws, punish criminals, secure the border, reboot the military, regain energy independence, and judge citizens on their character and talent and not their appearance and politics—at least if it is not already too late.

[mariacallous]

Had the great Maya Angelou been alive to witness Saturday’s climax of the omnishambolic dog’s breakfast of a misbegotten legislative process that took place in the U.S. House of Representatives, surely she would have said, “When a political party tells you over and over again that they have no higher priority than serving Vladimir Putin, believe them.”

Then, again, it didn’t take the genius of Ms. Angelou to get the message. At the critical moment at which they had one last chance to avert a government shutdown, when Republicans in the House were forced to abandon all of their legislative priorities but one, the one they chose to ditch was the vital U.S. aid to Ukraine. In so doing, they sent the world an unmistakable signal once again that the first and guiding loyalty of Donald Trump’s GOP is as it always has been to the Kremlin.

Other messages were sent as well by the week of cringeworthy drama that was to the floor of the House as an untrained puppy would be to the floor of its new home.

Had James Madison, Alexander Hamilton or John Jay been watching, they surely would’ve been compelled to write a new Federalist Paper, likely entitled “On Legislative Clusterfuckery.” Kevin McCarthy, the ragdoll Speaker of the House, was toyed with and tormented by a MAGA alliance that appeared to be made up from a group of particularly inept extras from the movie “Idiocracy.” Neither principles, ideals, nor any sense of responsibility made an appearance during the prolonged floor fight.

Matt Gaetz, the chief tormentor, evoked Shakespeare. But not in a good way. He was more in the sort of character described by Macbeth when he spoke of “an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Gaetz and his misfit supporting cast, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, threatened to oust McCarthy if he did not meet their demand that he break the deal he had made months ago with President Biden to avoid the last government financial crisis. They wanted cuts to critical social programs including child care, Head Start, Meals on Wheels, law enforcement, housing and more. They wanted to cut the salaries of senior officials including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. And they seemed willing to throw millions of government employees—including the military, the Border Patrol, the IRS, administrators of aid programs and others—out of work, thus harming the lives of tens of millions more Americans.

But they also knew that every recent past government shutdown—and all were the handiwork of Republican House majorities—backfired on its authors. And so, just as many had given up hope and every agency of the U.S. government was making plans for a government shutdown that would have begun at midnight of Oct. 1, McCarthy agreed to put forward a so-called “clean” Continuing Resolution that would extend funding for government programs until Nov. 17 of this year. They continued funding at prior levels. They even included funding for disaster assistance and cut a pay boost the House GOP was trying to give itself despite their reckless disregard for their responsibilities.

But something had to be given to the far right. The GOP needed some concession to make it seem as though their childish games had all been worth it. What did they choose? What was the one thing they said would be the last hill they would die on, the one issue so important to them that they would turn out the lights of the U.S. government to defend their position? It was to defund Ukraine aid. It was to settle for, in the words of progressive commentator Josh Marshall, “one sloppy kiss with Vladimir Putin.”

The message that it sent to the world was unmistakable. Economist Timothy Ash tweeted, “Staggering that the GOP, the party of Reagan, has been captured by Russian fascists.”

French writer and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy wrote that U.S. aid to Ukraine should not be politicized, saying “it is about freedom and democracy, good over evil, right over wrong. Support for Ukraine is essential for the entire free world.”

Yale history professor Timothy Snyder wrote, “Cutting off Ukraine aid makes America unreliable, weakens the cause of democracy, threatens the international legal order, encourages tyrants around the world, and hastens Chinese aggression.”

Liz Cheney, one of the last Republicans with a conscience still standing, pointedly noted that the decision by the MAGA GOP to deny Ukraine funding came on the 85th anniversary of Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 “peace in our time” speech.

It was an apt point. Just as Hitler saw Chamberlain’s weakness as the opening he was looking for, surely Vladimir Putin saw the GOP message for what it was, encouragement for his aggression and his war crimes from the Party of Trump, a clear signal that all he would have to do was wait until the next election cycle and if they won, a GOP-led U.S. would abandon Ukraine, our allies in Europe, and reward Putin’s brutality by extending his reach ever more deeply into the heart of Europe.

Democrats and a handful of more moderate Republicans promised in the wake of the deal that they would seek and expected to get a new supplemental bill that would ensure Ukraine aid continued to be funded.

Let us all hope they are successful and it passes. But the damage has been done. The Putin wing of the GOP and all those who have enabled them made it crystal clear that of all their dangerous priorities, the most important was to strengthen America’s enemies, weaken our allies, and to put democracy at risk overseas just as they are doing here at home.

Nobody is cheering the last-minute deal to keep the government open that cleared the House and then, late Saturday, the Senate. McCarthy, seen as weak before, is seen as even more spineless and at risk than he was. The reprieve that was won is only temporary. The future is uncertain. While the Biden administration and Democrats handled this as well as possible, it is clear that getting anything done in Congress will be very difficult. And while the lunatics from the GOP’s MAGA ward may have temporarily gained control of the congressional asylum, they damaged their tattered reputations even further by achieving not a single solitary thing for any of their supporters—any that is, except their cackling Russian patron whose Bond villain laughter from deep within his bunker home could be heard round the world by all who understand the menace and his Trumpist supporters represent.

[tomorrowusa]

Policing in Russia has not exactly been great – and it's getting worse.

Russia has one of the largest police forces in the world, employing over 900,000 officers to serve a population of 146 million, according to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. It has nearly 630 officers per 100,000 people - more than double the US or the UK. But in August, Interior Ministry Chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev said the country had a "critical" shortage of police officers, which could affect crime rates. How can that be the case, given the sheer number of officers?

In real terms, Putin has defunded the police. You get what you pay for.

"They haven't adjusted the salary at all," a former officer from Rostov, in southwest Russia, said. "After inflation and the new prices, it's not enough." He quit to become a taxi driver. His friend, who was also a police officer, is now a courier. Both of them earn twice as much as they did as police officers. "I reached the rank of major (the equivalent to a sergeant in the UK). But still a person working at a supermarket earned more than me - hardly dangerous work. Only an idiot would join the police now," the former officer from Rostov said. [ ... ] As the number of officers drops, the pressures on those who remain increase. Former officers have told the BBC this is leading to corruption. "Officers are beating confessions out of people, inflating arrest quotas, we're seeing this all the time," says a police major from the Russian city of Tomsk. "It's only going to get worse. There will be falsification of evidence, targeted beatings, there just isn't going to be time to investigate anything properly. "You've got a lead and you need to chase it? Much simpler to drag the first suspect back to the station and beat him up, so he takes the blame."

The war in Ukraine, of course, is making things worse.

Initially, the war convinced some officers to stay in the force. Russian police officers are exempt from being called up for military duty, so some officers who were on the verge of resigning when Russia invaded Ukraine told us they kept their jobs to avoid fighting. [ ... ] But as the war rumbles on, police numbers are dwindling. The force cannot fill existing gaps - let alone recruit the 40,000 extra personnel that the Interior Ministry says is needed in Donetsk and Luhansk, areas of Ukraine that Russia partly occupies.

Russia needs more police for the areas it illegally annexed in Ukraine.

Russia predicts it will need another 42,000 officers by 2026 if it occupies further territories. For serving police officers, having an opinion about the war is simply not allowed. They are not even allowed to call it a war. "Officers must keep their mouths shut," one detective says. "We can't have personal views about the 'special military operation' - or they'll fire us." [ ... ] Interior Ministry officials from the three Russian cities of Tomsk, Yekaterinburg and Yaroslavl claim they now spend most of their time investigating and revising "endless charges against people discrediting the army". "People are always looking for an excuse to denounce someone," a former major from Tomsk says. "There's nobody around... Everyone's gone to check on some grandma who saw a curtain that looked like the Ukrainian flag.

It's like the Stalin era in Russia – people are denouncing each other for fun and profit. Every time somebody complains to the police about real or (more likely) imagined pro-Ukraine sympathies or criticism of the war, the cops need to open a new investigation which keeps them from doing more typical police work.

The police situation is yet another way Russia is rotting from within.

[astropithecus]

Just sort of a brain dump - there's an additional layer of complexity here: Russian political forces generally view the Israel/Palestine issue as the inevitable outcome of Western imperialism (which, in fairness, is an uncomfortably difficult position to refute) and side with Palestine.

With Israel being counted among America's allies (and America providing a lot of the 'muscle' behind the establishment of Israel after WWII), Palestinian leaders are understandably mistrustful of America's ability to fairly mediate negotiations between Palestine and Israel, and Palestine's ties to Russia reach back to the Soviet era. So for decades, Palestine has depended on Russia's cooperation to secure their place at the negotiation table in regard to Israel's borders. Even before the Hamas attack that Israel used to justify this latest series of war crimes, the conflict between Palestine and Israel has served as sort of a proxy war between Russia and the United States, really since the 1950s or 60s.

During the cold war, Americans looked at the American economy versus the Soviet economy as the proving grounds for the superiority of Western "imperio-capitalism." This is why so many boomers interpret the fall of the U.S.S.R. as primarily an economic failure instead of a political one. They want the moral of the story to be that America was right about state economies. The real moral of the story is that racism will tear any country apart, but that's a different post.

In the same way, though, Israel/Palestine has turned into the new proving ground. There are a lot of Americans on both sides of the aisle that side with zionists because a free Palestine would mean Russia "wins." It'd mean America can't just use the threat of our military to overrule other nations' sovereignty. It's an idea that sums up something like "if America is the world police, a free Palestine means turning in our gun and badge." And you know how the average voter feels about defunding the police.

Negotiations between Israel and Palestine were deteriorating leading up to the Hamas attack, I'm inclined to believe that's because Russia's highly-visible blunders and underfunded presence in Ukraine undermine their ability to be a sufficiently intimidating Palestinian ally - Israel and the U.S. aren't scared of them anymore. China backs Russia, which means even with egg on Putin's face the US won't risk open hostility with Russia directly, but China's a lot more divided than Russia on topic of Israel/Palestine. It's not a sure thing China would defend Palestine on the ground, even if Russia decided to. That's apparently enough uncertainty that America's comfortable providing the munitions for Netanyahu's genocide.

So in short, people are dying on the Gaza strip because the cold war never ended. The American status quo position remains "we're on whatever side Russia's not." From that "world politics" viewpoint, if you support both Ukraine and Palestine, as one country Russia is (directly) attacking and one country Russia is (indirectly) defending, you're on two different sides of the issue.

Me personally, though, "incongruous views on world politics" is a much more acceptable character flaw than "doesn't see the problem with a civilian massacre." But I'm just a guy that sends emails for a living, I guess.

democrats and republicans just voted together to censure Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American serving in the US federal government, for calling out the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians and Biden’s complicity. you can read her statement here.

they fear us. they know most Americans are calling for a ceasefire. they know the real power lies in the hands of the people. don’t stop talking about Palestine, boycotting, protesting. free Palestine.

[the-final-straw-blog]

Mohammad Hureini of Youth of Sumud

This week, we're featuring a conversation with Mohammad Hureini (twitter / instagram), a young activist from Masafer Yatta, an area in the hills south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank in Palestine. Mohammad is a member of a non-violent group called Youth of Sumud that struggles to hold on to the sites and lives of Palestinian villages despite displacement by the Israeli military occupation as well as the illegal zionist settlements (like the neighboring Havat Ma’on) and their routine violence and impunity. For the hour, Mohammad speaks about the work of Youth of Sumud, their recent report co-published with The Good Shepherd on increased settler violence entitled Indigenous Erasure: How the zionist movement is using state sanctioned violence to eliminate the Palestinian communities of the West Bank, the South African genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice and other topics. A transcript of this interview will be available soon, a podcast version of this is available at our website.

Al-Addameer's recent publication on prisons and repression of Palestinians since October 7th, 2023: https://addameer.org/media/5262

Organizations Mohammad names doing on the ground support:

Defund Racism (https://defundracism.org/): follows NGO connections to settler projects

recently published a report on Regavim, a pro-settler organization that pulls funding from the US, Canada and elsewhere to displace Palestinians

Operation Dove /Operazione Colomba from Italy (https://www.operazionecolomba.it/)

International Solidarity Movement (https://palsolidarity.org/)

Community Peacemaker Teams (https://cpt.org/)

Recent interviews about the conflict in Palestine

Yuval Dag, Israeli anarchist military refuser

Joey Ayoub on the War in Gaza

Jewish anti-zionist Anarchist in Israel

Announcements

B(A)D News #75 is out!

Check out the January 2024 episode featuring updates on support for antifascists facing charges in Budapest from February 11, 2023; reflections from an Autonomist on the '80s-'90s journal "Radikal"; a portion of our interview with Israeli refuser Yuval Dag; and an interview from Solidarity Zones on the case of accused Russian war sabateur, Ruslan Siddiqui

. ... . ..

Featured Track:

Building Steam with a Grain of Salt by DJ Shadow from Entroducing....

Check out this episode!

[uboat53]

"OVER THE PAST DECADE, the Republican party has turned its back on everything it once claimed to stand for. The party of “law and order” has smeared prosecutors, attacked the justice system, and called for defunding federal law enforcement. The party of “limited government” has tried to use state power to punish companies for their political views. The party of American leadership is increasingly leaning toward abandoning Europe to a Russian invasion. The party of “family values” is backing a rapist for president. To that list, add one more betrayal: The party of “national security” is subordinating military readiness to snowflake cultural sensitivities. Specifically, Republicans are demanding that military personnel who refused orders to get vaccinated against COVID during the pandemic—and were discharged for their defiance—should be reinstated with back pay. At the same time, many of these politicians are calling for a ban on transgender service members. They’re pretending that the “woke mind virus” is a threat to military preparedness, but an actual virus isn’t. These Republicans aren’t serious about preparing for a real war. To them, the armed forces are just another battleground in the culture war."

Source

[hihereami]

This also happened in Argentina, where the ''russian and chinese vacciness'' were deemed ''dangerous'' by multiple psyops while we were on our way to develop our own vaccine (also deemed ''not ready for humans'' by several politicians while it VERY MUCH WAS) while moderna and astrazeneca were lauded. In a context of a country with public mass vaccination and no antivaxxer history - unlike the US and europe - we started having the biggest antivaxxer moves which eventually became the fertile ground for the current fascist goverment to take root and expand its reach, by starting with that unhinged, scared part of the population.

Four years later? CONICET - the science institute that develops vaccines and other scientific advancements - is being defunded and torn to pieces, so is our nuclear systems (lauded as even more advanced than the USA's and Europe's) while our national resources even have a nice little USA military base :)

All COVID vaccinations were done through the public sector and you couldn't choose which vaccine you took -- which these sectors used to fuel a bunch of distrust over a truly good vaccination campaign. My grandma used to call me before I got each vaccine telling me ''tell them to give you the english vaccine!!'' like that by itself had some merit.

People from the US think it's conspiracy and don't understand how their country just again and again organise these massive psyops that either divide our populations, introduce problems and sections that weren't there before and/or implant puppet goverments just so they can have an easier access to our resources, land and bodies.

i rlly do not think white global northerners understand how fucking bad the anti sinovac psyop was in context of the philippines and other targeted countries being from the global south, with a history of economic and military intervention and destabilization by the usa specifically.

i live in the philippines and sinovac was the only available vaccine for MONTHS of the pandemic. people were fucking dying and we had no pfizer, no j&j, no astrazeneca, no moderna. sinovac was the ONLY vaccine supply we had. and the supply wasnt even enough for even my small city. we do not have the infrastructure to manufacture our own vaccines and tests. we were entirely reliant on imports from other countries who Did have the capacity to manufacture such things

i got up early for several days straight to go to a pop up walk in vaccination site (were talking there by 7:30am) set up in a fucking public basketball court because it was the only way to get vaccinated, and 3 times i had to go back empty handed so to speak after exposing myself to this massive opportunity for transmission because they fucking ran out of shots and prioritized the elderly and disabled and i didnt have my legal pwd (person with disability) card yet. i had to go to a different barangay (local unit of government) to get my shot MONTHS LATER and only got mine because one of my family was in the local govt and reserved some shots for us.

many filipinos use facebook which is where some of the psyop was conducted because you can use it for free on your phone and it is often where news is disseminated. i know we have that joke about People Believing Anything They See On Facebook but i cannot stress enough that people here get local news from fb the same way you (used to) get news from twitter about shit like localized emergencies and whatnot.

because we are third world, you know that the state of our education system is nothing compared to the states. media and news literacy here is dangerously low and the population is sensitive to mis/disinformation, as can be seen during the 2022 presidential elections where the usa Also interfered lol. i cannot stress enough how much of the population was susceptible to this psyop, especially those in poverty who couldnt afford proper education. hell, even educated people fell for this shit. do you think jhunjhun who didnt finish grade 6 would be able to identify disguised foreign intervention that was in his own language?

we were already recovering from public scrutiny of a different vaccine, a dengue vaccine, which lowered public trust in inoculation. and then the usa goes and does THIS??? i cannot emphasize enough that they are directly responsible for the tens and thousands of unvaccinated covid deaths. they are responsible for my friends having to bury their unvaxxed parents and grandparents at the age of 19. they are responsible for mass death and disability.

but were just a country in the periphery. so who cares about us? our lives are worthless to the usa, which is why they admitted that they did this when they would otherwise "never" to their own population. third worlders arent real people to your government. we are merely statistics and a petri dish for experimentation. so who cares if we die? the real important thing isnt our lives, its that the usa has more control over us than china.

[rauthschild]

Press-ganging and involuntary conscription have been illegal and unlawful for over two hundred years, just as slavery and peonage have both been abolished worldwide since 1926.

Yet all these evils continue unabated in the modern world.

Joseph R. Biden, the President of a foreign Municipal Corporation residing in the District of Columbia, is issuing Executive Orders that clear the way to illegally conscript Americans under the same False Legal Presumptions used during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam conflicts.

According to the secret accords recently uncovered between the US CORP and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) it is apparent that these renegade corporations are colluding against the national interests of both the Ukraine and Russia. These commercial organizations have been promoting an illegal proxy war in Ukraine, and are now preparing to openly engage because their proxy war has failed.

It is also apparent that these activities by the CCP are an attempt to evade China's obligations under the Sino-Russian mutual defense pact. The most likely results will be continued war in the Ukraine and a civil war in China with or without Russian intervention --- and great international distress worldwide.

The United States of North America, our unincorporated Federation of States, objects to this unlawful activity on the part of these municipal and commercial corporations and calls upon the Principals responsible to take appropriate action in their respective jurisdictions to defund and otherwise forestall these actions.

We now know that our military was unlawfully converted into a foreign mercenary force back in the 1860's, and so, the criminality of the so-called "Selective Service" is made apparent.

Can GMC or Raytheon or Berkshire-Hathaway or Exxon roll up to anyone's door and demand that they enlist as a mercenary?

No, they cannot.

When the US, INC. or the USA, Inc. comes knocking, they, too, are merely corporations. The only difference is that they have been operating under color of law and abusing the appearance of governmental authority for a long time.

The Perpetrators pretend that they are addressing their own citizenry---that is, Municipal citizens of the United States mischaracterized as THINGS, corporate franchises with names written in Dog Latin, hence, "Dog Tags".

This is why a soldier's name is written in all capital letters, with their last name first, and first name last. They have been dehumanized and reduced to the level of objects.

There is no law against lying to, killing, or abusing a corporate franchise.

If you are an Autochthonous American, you have no obligation to any Municipal Corporation --- instead, they have obligations owed to you, which they are not only not fulfilling, but are actively evading.

It's time everyone worldwide understands this.

The Perpetrators, foreign municipal and commercial corporation personnel, come to our doors and our schools under the pretense of being our government. They subourn commercial service contracts under color of law. Later, when they want to promote a new Mercenary Conflict, they enforce these purloined and misrepresented service contracts.

Anyone who wises up and refuses to participate is labeled a "draft dodger" and prosecuted as a criminal.

Joe Biden is ordering his corporation's employees and dependents to get ready for yet another Mercenary Conflict.

The Selective Service (Corporation) puts out deceptive ads disguised as Public Service Announcements, telling young men and women that they have to sign up for "Selective Service" -- that is, the Draft, and telling them that if they don't sign up for Selective Service, they will be unable to receive college loans.

These ads and publications by the Selective Service (Corporation) never disclose the fact that by enrolling, these young Black, Brown and Coppertone people are unknowingly volunteering for foreign mercenary service.

We have found that the majority of Selective Service materials have been printed in Puerto Rico, at the same location that printed the bulk of Internal Revenue Service documents, none of which carry OMB numbers. This is because they are not official government forms.

They are only made to look like official government documents for purposes of deceit and commercial advantage.

These are scams. These are dirty, dishonest, coercive "voluntary enslavement" rackets that the Municipal Corporations have used to entrap the Autochthonous people in this country since the 1930's.

They use the Territorial and Municipal Post Offices to promote their scams in violation of Universal Postal Union regulations, and they use the public airwaves to promote their activities via radio and television ads.

Our young people are owed full disclosure.

First, they must know and be told that they are not obligated to sign up with Selective Service. Anyone telling them that they have to sign up or must sign up is engaged in coercion and misrepresentation.

When Federal or Federal State-of-State Employees engage in this activity, it takes on the additional character of racketeering under force and color of law.

Our Autochthonous young people are owed all the nasty facts related to "Selective Service", especially the fact that if they enroll, they are signing a contract obligating them to serve as foreign mercenaries and agreeing to risk their lives for a fraction, usually about one-fifth, of the pay that commercial mercenaries normally receive.

They should know that their prospective employer is not their government.

Most of all, they should know that there is precious little defence of their country involved.

Instead, they will be employed as thugs going into other countries and terrorizing the local people to expedite theft of natural resources, artifacts, and whatever else the criminals running the District of Columbia crave.

There's no honor in performing this service, though a great many honorable men have been fooled and coerced into performing it.

Entire generations of Americans have been deceived by these foreign press ganging and conscription operations, but we are not asleep any longer.

Americans have slogged through Mercenary Conflict after Mercenary Conflict, convinced that they were acting with just cause and defending their country in time of "war", but they have been deceived.

It's our erring British Territorial Subcontractor that is a democracy, not our country, not our actual government.

Our country hasn't fielded an Army or engaged in a declared War since The War of 1812.

Everything else that has gone on since then has been a series of ugly commercial conflicts misrepresented as "wars".

We consider the activities of the Selective Service (Corporation) to be a criminal form of commercial and international fraud, resulting in press-ganging, enslavement, racketeering, and ultimately, war profiteering under color of law.

We consider that the undisclosed and misrepresented nature of these Selective Service contracts renders them null and void. Any court, foreign or domestic, and any local Draft Board enforcing these purported service contracts is an accomplice to the crimes herein described.

[ssunvulcan1981]

This is Brian Griffin

We will Save Our Ukraine

We will joins NATO

We will Against the Russian MIlitary

[atlasgaveup]

Your Democratic policy?

Open borders

1.3 MILLION have breached our borders

Ambushed/murdered police officers

Defund police

Minneapolis burned to the ground

Smash and Grabs/looting

Masking our children (child abuse)

Shuttered small businesses

$90 BILLION in lost military weaponry to Afghanistan

13 DEAD service members killed in Afghanistan

6000+ shot, 797 murdered in Chicago

Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles are war zones

Rolling gun battles with the cartel on our border

Tax dollars to support illegals? Why?

Inflation at an all time high in 40 yrs

Homelessness Americans

Homeless Veterans

People being fired for refusing to vax

Unconstitutional mandates

Closed down our pipeline

Closed down coal mines

Closed down steel mills

Supply chain disaster

Abortion for under age girls without parents knowledge

Spying on a sitting President

Russian collusion hoax

Our military has become a joke

Our Allies are laughing at us

Gas prices higher than medication

AND.....

$30 MILLION DOLLARS FOR CRACK PIPES!

Great job!

[personal-blog243]

It’s officially time to ask yourself...

Am I willing to open my mouth for trumps dick and let him throw me in a gas chamber to burn me and my loved ones alive because a RUSSIAN BOT POST FROM OVER A YEAR AGO that took many things out of context convinced me that a multiracial, daughter of immigrants, who is anti choke hold, anti no knock warrant, pro LGBT equality act, anti death penalty, anti mandatory minimums, pro $15 hr min wage, anti electoral college, pro background check and anti assault weapons, pro DACA, pro legal weed and freeing prior convictions, pro defunding military, pro making lynching a federal hate crime, pro reparations, co sponsor of green new deal and Medicare for all, pro sex worker, pro Paris climate agreement, pro free college & pre k, pro canceling student dept, who made Brett Kavanaugh cry and has interrogated Barr and stood up to Biden on race and sexism and has smoked weed and listens to Tupac, pro choice, pro free surgery for trans inmates, anti private prison, pro bail reform, anti fracking, pro undocumented people having healthcare, and has one of the most progressive voting records in the senate and is pro bussing to integrate schools, pro asylum, pro paid leave, increase teacher pay, pro Maternal Care Act, and pro bringing troops home is somehow not a good enough VP? Especially when compared to pence?

Sources: politico, axios, and pbs

If nothing else, use her tough on crime past to de radicalize your racist relatives instead of discourage dems.

[mariacallous]

ATTENDING THE INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CONFERENCE in Munich over the weekend, J.D. Vance continued his criticism of Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia (“there’s no clear end point,” Vance said). Fully embracing his role as a MAGAer-than-thou Republican, the junior senator from Ohio has repeatedly made headlines in recent months for his militant opposition to military aid for Ukraine—and, in particular, for a blatantly misleading memo he sent to every Senate Republican last week asserting that the Ukraine aid bill contained a provision that could lead to a new Trump impeachment in 2025 for trying to negotiate peace. Vance also earned plaudits from Sputnik, the Russian propaganda network, for telling Tucker Carlson that Ukraine needed to be defunded for its own good, since Democrats “want to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian drop of blood.”

Given his stance and his prominence on U.S. policy toward Ukraine, it’s worth taking a moment to look back on a Vance tweet from February 9 riffing on Carlson’s much-hyped interview with Vladimir Putin:

If you read this tweet and come away bewildered because you’ve never heard of “Duglas Makki” and because Vance appears to be criticizing the Putin regime and Carlson, you’re not the crazy one. The tweet is a troll job. And if you dig into what it means, you’ll better understand why this MAGA senator is parroting vile Kremlin talking points about Ukraine.

THERE IS NO “DUGLAS MAKKI.” The reference is to Douglass Mackey, whose alter ego “Ricky Vaughn” was a notorious alt-right social media figure during the 2016 presidential campaign. In January 2021, shortly after Joe Biden’s inauguration, Mackey was prosecuted for election interference. The charges stemmed from posts on Twitter—where he had 58,000 followers and was rated a major election “influencer” by MIT Media Labs—urging Hillary Clinton supporters to vote by text message. (There is, of course, no such option.) What’s more, the tweets were specifically geared to black and Latino voters. In March of last year, Mackey was convicted by a federal jury in Brooklyn.

Why does Vance know or care about Mackey? Because he’s a cause célèbre on the right.The narrative pushed by Carlson, erstwhile presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and many others is that Mackey’s prosecution was not only a dangerous assault on free speech but an outrageous demonstration of double standards. He was punished, his defenders say, for mocking Clinton supporters by inviting them to vote by text message and implying that they’re stupid enough to fall for such a scheme—while a left-wing Chinese-American comedian, Christina Wong, got away with the exact same joke mocking Trump supporters.

But in fact, it wasn’t even close to “the exact same joke.” Wong’s tweet, with a clearly humorous video clip in which she claimed to be “coming out” as a Trump supporter, did tell Trump voters to “skip poll lines” and “TEXT in your vote,” but gave no number to which votes could supposedly be texted. By contrast, Mackey clearly went to some trouble to make the memes he posted look like real campaign ads—complete with the Hillary for America campaign logo and “Paid for by Hillary for President 2016” fine print—and urged people to text “Hillary” to a specific number. Carlson asserted last March that “of course, in real life, no one did believe” that they could text their vote. But in fact, according to the Justice Department, nearly 5,000 people did text “Hillary” or some variation to the number in the fake ad, though we don’t know how many were actually tricked out of voting. Lastly, there was strong evidence that Mackey discussed strategies to suppress the black vote in private Twitter groups and mocked black people as dumb and “gullible.” (It’s also worth mentioning that Mackey’s “Ricky Vaughn” Twitter account was overtly white nationalist and filled with racist and antisemitic vitriol, and Mackey admitted at the trial that those were his genuine opinions at the time; in his later interview with Carlson, he described his content as merely “pro-Trump memes [and] jokes.”)

Obviously, Mackey’s repulsive speech is protected under the First Amendment. There are also some legitimate differences of opinion about his election interference case; UCLA law professor and First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh has expressed some reservations about it, partly because the federal statute under which Mackey was convicted (unlike some similar state laws) mentions violence, threats, and intimidation but not deception. For what it’s worth, Mackey’s First Amendment defense was considered by the federal court which heard the case, and was rejected in a carefully argued 56-page opinion.

One may have misgivings about Mackey’s conviction. But it’s abundantly clear that Vance’s summary of the story is extremely misleading. To say that Mackey was arrested for “making memes” is like saying that a person prosecuted for terroristic threats made by phone was arrested for making phone calls. And if Mackey is an “independent journalist,” then Alex Jones is Walter Cronkite.

THERE ARE A FEW THINGS that stand out about Vance’s “Duglas Makki” tweet.

For starters, it shows how deeply the senator is embedded in the far-right fringe. The Mackey case is so obscure outside MAGA and MAGA-adjacent circles that many of Vance’s own followers didn’t get the joke and took the story at face value.

But the context of Carlson’s trip to Russia and interview with Putin makes Vance’s reference to the Mackey case particularly repellent.

The tweet was presumably a sarcastic rejoinder to those who criticized Carlson for failing to bring up Russian political prisoners, including journalists, during his two-hour interview with Putin. See, Vance is saying, here’s a case of a journalist being persecuted for speech in an outrageous way that you’d think happens only under a dictatorship like the one in Russia—but actually, it’s right here in the USA, he’s being persecuted by the “Biden regime,” and none of the journalists dismissing Carlson as not being a “real journalist” are interested.

But to see how despicable the moral equivalency is, one need only look at some of the real cases of people persecuted and imprisoned in Russia for speech critical of the war against Ukraine or of the Putin regime.

Exactly a year ago, Maria Ponomarenko, a journalist and mother of two in Barnaul, Siberia, was convicted of spreading “fake news”—that is, posting the truth about the Russian bombing of the Mariupol Drama Theater in the spring of 2022, in which hundreds of people sheltering inside, including children, were killed. Ponomarenko’s sentence was six and a half years in a penal colony. Years, not months. Contrast to Mackey’s seven-month sentence for “memes” that evidence showed, and the jury believed, were intended to keep at least some black and Latino voters out of the voting booth.

And just four days after Vance’s tweet, Russian academic and magazine editor Boris Kagarlitsky was given a five-year sentence for a video in which he discussed Ukrainian strikes at the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Russia to Crimea and suggested that the bridge was a legitimate military target. Convicted of “justifying terrorism,” Kagarlitsky had been initially sentenced to a 609,000-ruble fine (about $6,700) with no prison time, but the prosecution appealed the sentence as unduly lenient, which the Russian legal system allows. The court obliged. Such harsh sentences for social media posts and other expressions of dissent are no longer the exception but the rule in Putin’s Russia.

Another victim of these draconian repressions is an American journalist—a dual Russian-American citizen, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty editor Alsu Kurmasheva. She was arrested in October for failing to register as a “foreign agent,” a designation she and RFE/RL dispute. In December, the authorities filed additional charges of spreading “false news” about the Russian military. Kurmasheva, whose offense was the distribution of a book about Russians who oppose the war in Ukraine, may face as much as fifteen years in prison. While Carlson brought up the case of the other detained American journalist, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, during his interview with Putin—and even, for once, pushed back on Putin’s evasive replies—he did not say a word about Kurmasheva. But that doesn’t seem to bother Vance, who clearly thinks this issue is a good occasion to troll “the libs.”

Back in the late Cold War, obnoxious leftists used to respond to critiques of the Soviet regime and its gulag with claims that the United States, too, had “political prisoners”—offering as examples the likes of Leonard Peltier, the Native American activist serving a life sentence for the 1975 murder of two FBI agents, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, the black activist and journalist sentenced to life without parole for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer. But now we have seen a stunning role reversal: It’s the MAGA right, including a sitting senator, that excuses and defends the Kremlin’s political repressions by trotting out faux “political prisoners” in America, be it Mackey or the January 6th rioters. The America-hating shoe is solidly on the other foot.

[libertariantaoist]

News Roundup 7/2/20

by Kyle Anzalone

US News

Seattle’s mayor ordered the police to clear the CHAZ. [Link]

Minneapolis’ city council has spent $63,000 of taxpayer money to hire private security for themselves. [Link]

A family had to demolish their home after a SWAT team destroyed it trying to remove a shoplifter. So far, they have only been given $5,000 for their destroyed home. The Supreme Court refused to hear their case asking for restitution. [Link]

The US has wasted over $300 million on the F-35 project because it is unable to track spare parts. [Link]

The UN Security Council passes a resolution that calls for a 90-day humanitarian pause in conflicts to address Covid. [Link]

Venezuela

The UK is refusing to give the Venezuelan government access to $1 billion in gold at the UK central bank deposited by Venezuela. The UK recognized coup plotter Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela over a year ago. Guaido remains unpopular and out of power. [Link]

Afghanistan

Democratic Senators will try to force Trump to sanction Russia over the Taliban-Russian bounty allegation. [Link]

An amendment to the 2021 NDAA pushed by Senator would have pulled US troops from Afghanistan in 2021. The amendment was defeated. [Link]

Israel

Some factions of the Democratic party are pushing to condition US aid to Israel on their fair treatment of Palestinians. [Link]

Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank is delayed, in part, because of a lack of a green light from the US. [Link]

Israeli officials say annexation is not imminent. [Link]* The Palestinian Authority says many of its employees will see their monthly pay cut in half. The PA is in a tax dispute with Israel. [Link]

Middle East

The US threatens to attack Iran to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. [Link]

Saudi Arabia announces a new offensive in Yemen. [Link]

Africa

An international coalition targeting jihadists in the Sahel says it will intensify their efforts. [Link]

A famous Ethiopian singer was killed in what police called a “targeted” attack. The death started protests that killed 80 people. Both protesters and security forces were killed. [Link]

Read More

[yingyangstache]

For their egos “performance activism”, like democrats patting their backs for voting out Trump and then clapping when Biden says “defunding the police is not the answer”, or clapping when your “leftist” mayor extends covid workman's comp benefits for front line workers but not for essential workers. It’s for the headline, so the people who “pay attention” can feel better, without actually doing the work of paying attention.  I liken it too the end of WW2... There’s a great film on Netflix called 5 Came Back, about film makers that went to the European theater, made films for the government, had a huge hand in helping the effort of the war, then when it came time to actually help the veterans after the war with films about PTSD and the effects of war on the young men that came back the film made about the topic was burred and blacklisted by the US government until like... 2014 or something stupid like that.  It’s all a performance. What the US government is doing to Russia what the US populace WANTS done to itself. Why isn't it’s oligarchs being stripped of their political influence and forced to pay their fair share? They can do it to a different country but not in their own? NY spends more on it’s police force than the Ukraine does on it’s whole military, and it’s holding off the Russian military this long on it’s own? And you expect civilians to feel safe with that looming over them?  Don’t get it twisted BTW, Fuck Putin, that clown child needs to be plugged, and I hope his replacement is smart enough to realize that peace is %1000 more profitable than war. All he has to do is pull out of Ukraine, burn Putin's people on pikes, exposé a couple of oligarchs, and submit for UN or NATO membership and suddenly the ruble would be worth more than a plastic cup. Hell, maybe transition over to a Euro, fuck it. Cement your legacy as the bringer of peace to Russia.  Anyway. TL;DR Performance will always get applause from idiots, because it’s easier to consume than the MASSIVE brick of text I put out. Who the fucks gonna read that? or something longer to get the actual facts? 

so film festivals are starting to pull russian films out of their programs. this is getting crazy

[newstfionline]

Headlines

WHO Issues Warning As Daily Caseload Grows (Foreign Policy) As dense crowds of protesters gather around the world, and New Zealand announces a return to life as usual, it’s easy to forget that a pandemic is still raging. On Monday, the WHO recorded the largest daily increase in new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, 136,000 in total; 75 percent of new cases came from just ten countries, mostly in the Americas and South Asia.

Stress is skyrocketing among the middle-aged (Marketwatch) If you’re middle-aged and you’re thinking, “I don’t remember everyone being this angry and miserable 20 or 30 years ago,” you’re not wrong. A recent study confirms what many people in later middle age already feel: We really are much more stressed than middle-aged people were back in the 1990s. The good news? As we get older our levels of stress will go down again. We’ll be happier in retirement than we are in our 40s and 50s, even with health issues. Older people experience fewer stressors and are able to cope with them better, says David Almeida, a psychologist and professor of human development at Pennsylvania State University. Meanwhile, the simplest answer is to move more. “My advice to people is to move when you are exposed to stress,” he says. “Moving, physical activity, is probably the best stress reducer.”

After Protests, Politicians Reconsider Police Budgets and Discipline (NYT) In an abrupt change of course, the mayor of New York vowed to cut the budget of the nation’s largest police force. In Los Angeles, the mayor called for redirecting millions of dollars from policing after protesters gathered outside his home. And in Minneapolis, City Council members pledged to dismantle their police force and completely reinvent how public safety is handled. As tens of thousands of people have demonstrated against police violence over the past two weeks, calls have emerged in cities across the country for fundamental changes to American policing. The pleas for change have taken a variety of forms—including measures to restrict police use of military-style equipment and efforts to require officers to face strict discipline in cases of misconduct. Parks, universities and schools have distanced themselves from local police departments, severing contracts. In some places, the calls for change have gone still further, aiming to abolish police departments, shift police funds into social services or defund police departments partly or entirely.

U.N. General Assembly won’t meet in person for first time in 75-year history (Washington Post) For the first time in the United Nations’ 75-year history, world leaders won’t convene in New York for the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting this September. U.N. General Assembly President Tijjani Muhammad-Bande explained Monday that an in-person gathering during the coronavirus pandemic would be impossible because world leaders typically travel with large delegations of aides and security personnel, making it hard to keep the numbers of attendees at events low. “A president doesn’t travel alone, leaders don’t travel alone,” he said. The session will instead take place remotely, though U.N. officials have yet to say exactly what that might look like.

Mexico’s Leader Rejects Big Spending to Ease Virus’s Sting (NYT) Across the globe, governments have rushed to pump cash into flailing economies, hoping to stave off the pandemic’s worst financial fallout. They have mustered trillions of dollars for stimulus measures to keep companies afloat and employees on the payroll. The logic: When the pandemic finally passes, economies will not have to start from scratch to bounce back. In Mexico, no such rescue effort has come. The pandemic could lead to an economic reckoning worse than anything Mexico has seen in perhaps a century. More jobs were lost in April than were created in all of 2019. A recent report by a government agency said as many as 10 million people could fall into poverty this year. Yet most economists estimate that Mexico will increase spending only slightly. Hostile toward bailouts, loath to take on public debt and deeply mistrustful of most business leaders, Mexico’s president has opted largely to sit tight.

Cuba almost coronavirus free (Foreign Policy) Cuba—a country that prides itself on its health system—has almost vanquished its coronavirus epidemic, according to official data. It has recently averaged less than ten cases per day and on Monday went nine consecutive days without a reported death from COVID-19. “We could be shortly closing in on the tail end of the pandemic and entering the phase of recovery from COVID,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel said over the weekend.

Spain makes masks mandatory until coronavirus defeated (Reuters) Wearing masks in public will remain mandatory in Spain after the country’s state of emergency ends on June 21 until a cure or vaccine for the coronavirus is found, Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Tuesday.

This round’s on us, says Malta (Reuters) Residents of Malta will be given $112 vouchers by the government to spend in bars, hotels and restaurants in an effort to revitalize the tourist industry. Tourism accounts for a quarter of the Mediterranean island’s GDP but it has been at a standstill since mid-March when flights were stopped during the coronavirus emergency. Flights to a small number of countries will resume on July 1 but they exclude big tourism source markets Britain and Italy.

Russia rejects Iran embargo (Foreign Policy) Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has called for “universal condemnation” of the U.S. campaign to pass a permanent arms embargo on Iran through the United Nations Security Council. In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Lavrov called the U.S. attempt to hold Iran to the confines of the Iran deal while the United States had already broken the deal was “ridiculous and irresponsible.”

Moscow’s strict coronavirus lockdown turns lax overnight (Washington Post) In a sudden about-face from one of the world’s strictest coronavirus lockdowns, Moscow dramatically eased restrictions Tuesday, abolishing the city’s digital-pass system for travel and allowing salons and most other nonessential businesses to open. Schedules for when Muscovites were allowed outside based on their address have also been done away with after just one week. Restaurants and cafes will be allowed to serve people on verandas starting June 16 and nearly all restrictions will be lifted by June 23—the day before Russia’s rescheduled Victory Day parade on Moscow’s Red Square. The city’s walk schedules and requirements for wearing face masks outside have increasingly been ignored by residents, and Moscow authorities might have been feeling the pressure from small businesses that have been closed since late March with little government aid to sustain them.

Tracking the origin of the coronavirus outbreak (Daily Telegraph) Coronavirus may have broken out in the Chinese city of Wuhan much earlier than previously thought, according to a new US study looking at satellite imagery and internet searches. The Harvard Medical School research found that the number of cars parked at major Wuhan hospitals at points last autumn was much higher than the preceding year. It also found that searches from the Wuhan region for information on “cough” and “diarrhea”, known Covid-19 symptoms, on the Chinese search engine Baidu spiked around the same time. It has led researchers to suggest that the outbreak began much earlier than December 31, the date the Chinese government notified the World Health Organization of the outbreak.​

North Korea cuts off all communication with South Korea (AP) North Korea said it was cutting off all communication channels with South Korea on Tuesday, a move experts say could signal Pyongyang has grown frustrated that Seoul has failed to revive lucrative inter-Korean economic projects and persuade the United States to ease sanctions. The North’s Korean Central News Agency said all cross-border communication lines would be cut off at noon in the “the first step of the determination to completely shut down all contact means with South Korea and get rid of unnecessary things.” North Korea has cut communications in the past—not replying to South Korean phone calls or faxes—and then restored those channels when tensions eased.

The Palestinian Plan to Stop Annexation: Remind Israel What Occupation Means (NYT) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is pressing for annexation in conjunction with the Trump administration’s peace plan, which at least ostensibly contemplates an autonomous Palestinian entity as part of what it calls a “realistic two-state solution.” Mr. Netanyahu has vowed to annex up to 30 percent of the West Bank, and could do so as early as next month. But to the Palestinians, annexation flouts the ban on unilateral land grabs agreed to in the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, and would steal much of the territory they have counted on for a state. For that reason, they say it would kill all hope of a two-state solution to the conflict. In response to the annexation plan, Mr. Abbas renounced the Palestinians’ commitments under the Oslo agreements last month, including on security cooperation with Israel. The strategy aims to remind the Israelis of the burdens they would assume if the Palestinian Authority disbanded, and to demonstrate that they are willing to let the authority collapse if annexation comes to pass. The Palestinian Authority says it will cut the salaries of tens of thousands of its own clerks and police officers. It will slash vital funding to the impoverished Gaza Strip. And it will try any Israeli citizens or Arab residents of Jerusalem arrested on the West Bank in Palestinian courts instead of handing them over to Israel.