#its only about trump to me as far as he is the leader of the opposition party

[7loveneverfails]

I keep seeing people discuss the Trump case like, "Oh, you think it's bogus? You're so ignorant it's spelled out in the indictment."

"So what was he charged with?"

"It says right there, did you even read it?"

"What do you think he was charged with?"

"If you can't understand what is so obvious, I can't help you."

I don't think I have seen anyone say what he was charged with clearly. I couldn't make heads or tails of the documents. It just really looks bad to me. Going down this road was a huge deal, there should be a damn clear reason why we did it.

And there isn't.

[deadpresidents]

Hypothetically what do you think would have happened if the january 6 rioters had gotten to pence or pelosi before they got safe?

At this point, I almost dread answering questions like this anymore because I know the kind of hate mail it will unleash for the next few days, but it's important to keep talking about what happened on January 6, 2021 since so many people are trying to normalize it. That includes many people whose lives were in danger that day, as well as the former President who tried to hold on to power by encouraging his supporters to launch a violent insurrection and is now referring to those who have been brought to justice for attempting a coup as "patriots" and "hostages".

I genuinely believe that there were people in that crowd who would have killed Vice President Pence, Speaker Pelosi, and certain Congressional leaders if they had reached them on January 6th. I think there are people in that crowd who were ready to hold lawmakers hostage. Why else did they have handcuffs and zip ties? To help the Capitol Police maintain order? (Oh yeah...that's right, thanks for reminding me: they violently attacked the police -- some even beat police officers with the "Blue Lives Matter" flags that they brought with them.) Now, I do not think that everybody who was at the Capitol on January 6th -- or even the majority of those who took part in the insurrection -- were willing to go that far. I think a lot of them got swept up in what was happening and went with the flow. That doesn't excuse what they did. The flow that they got swept up in was still a fucking insurrection, and anyone who took part in that deserves to be held accountable. But I think there were certain elements embedded throughout that crowd that were much more organized and prepared to fully execute their plans for a coup after disrupting the certification of the Electoral College votes.

I actually think Vice President Pence was probably in more danger than even Speaker Pelosi or some of the Democratic leaders because Trump was so actively calling him out in the days and hours before the insurrection. I think that's why Pence is so adamant now about not supporting Trump. I mean, think about how disgustingly loyal and subservient Pence was to Trump throughout those four years until basically the first few days of January 2021. But even as other Republican leaders are crumbling and offering their allegiance to Trump again in 2024, Pence is standing by his decision not to endorse or support Trump, and I think that's because he realizes that Trump absolutely almost got him (and his family, who were with him in the Capitol on that day) killed on January 6th. Shit, even Mitch McConnell has folded and endorsed Trump again despite the fact that Trump has spent the last three years not only insulting him but also making racist attacks and questioning McConnell's wife's loyalty to the United States all because Elaine Chao had the audacity to resign from Trump's Cabinet in the wake of the insurrection. Yet Mike Pence -- who spent the better part of four years following Trump around like Paul Heyman follows Roman Reigns...

...THAT same Mike Pence is steadfastly refusing to endorse Trump because he has personal experience about how real of an existential threat Trump is. Some of those people at the Capitol were very serious about following through on their chants to "Hang Mike Pence", and not only does Pence realize that, but he also knows now that Trump -- who refused to take actions that would have helped clear the Capitol more quickly -- said "he deserves it" when hearing about those chants.

That's what is so scary about the insurrection, its aftermath, and the Trump Republican Party's redefinition of what happened that day. It almost worked. They stormed the United States Capitol and invaded both chambers of Congress. They carried Confederate flags into the United States Capitol -- even the fucking Confederate States of America didn't successfully invade Washington, D.C. and plant their flag in the Capitol. They were willing to hurt and probably kill some of America's elected leaders. And the people who helped plan and instigate the events of January 6th have spent the three-plus years since then learning from their mistakes and figuring out how to be successful next time. And guess what? "Next time" is only a few months away.

[redhoodie1723]

Yeah let's also cancel Lewis Hamilton for meeting and having conversations with Putin... Yeah... Also maybe Seb too because he was also there???? Yeah... Right...some of you have never had a job where you had to talk positively about someone you didn't like or approved just for the sake of keeping that job.

idk which time ur talking about hamilton and putin meeting up and making friends, as the only time i can find that they've interacted was at the 2015 russian grand prix where putin was giving out the race trophies. hamilton, vettel, and perez were all on the podium for that race. correct me if im wrong and theres another time theyve met, but thats literally all i can find.

now, first of all, there's a big difference between having to interact with a political figure on a race podium, and choosing to interact with them freely out in the paddock, taking pictures with them, and praising them in additional interviews. there's also a big difference between being polite to the current leader of the country you're in that is known for killing/imprisoning people who speak out against him, and actively supporting an ex-leader who has (as far as we know) never actually killed someone for not being supportive.

if you ask me, it would've been unsafe for hamilton or any of the drivers on that podium to speak out against putin at that moment or act impolitely. on the other hand, the biggest trouble norris could get in for not praising trump and taking pictures with him is maybe a talking too back at the mclaren HQ. like, lets be real, it would be ridiculous and insane of mclaren to fire norris after all the time/resources theyve put into his development, especially now that its finally starting to pay off. it would be like shooting themselves in the foot, a move thats generally reserved for ferrari's strategy team or sauber's pit stops.

furthermore, you are simply assuming that norris' job wouldve been at risk in this situation. not once has it been implied that he was threatened or coerced into this situation. its even less likely that that has happened since piastri hasn't made any comments or taken any pictures with trump as far as i can find. for all we know, it could've been norris' idea to do all that. so, not exactly the strongest defense here.

and even if he had been forced into the corner and told to take pictures and play nice, he also took it a step further to compliment trump in other interviews saying it was an "honor" and there's a lot to "respect" about trump. hamilton has never come out saying any of that about putin. in fact, he has come on the record since then condemning putin and his actions. can you tell me where norris has come out condemning trump and his actions? no? that's funny.

[akzeriyyuth]

Far Cry 4 thoughts:

• Has anyone noticed that one of the insults hurled at Ajay from the enemies translates to "Sister f***er"? Given what happened to Ajay's sister... Damn, that's brutal. The only decency in it was that he had no idea that he even had a sister.

• Amita says at one point that Sabal has the numbers and is more popular in the Golden Path for leadership, which is an interesting subtlety-- Mohan and Sabal were both sexist AF about women not being involved outside support tasks-- so it follows that of course the people there would be dudes with similar ideas as Sabal. (Even though there are women on the frontlines.)

• Going on from THAT, if Amita is chosen as leader and doesn't have the numbers, wouldn't it be clearly obvious that the opposition would take them down even if you killed Sabal and sided with her? Like, canon sets it up as Kyrati as being a place of toppling the leader and about military and physical strength. Even if Amita "wins", that doesn't seem like it's going to work for long.

• I keep seeing a lot of people saying "Pagan Min wasn't that bad!" Like... Nah. I know he's gorgeous and clever and hilarious and I love him as a character. He did do *some* humane things and cared about some people close to him. He wasn't sexist, wasn't homophobic and didn't throw people in jail for using drugs. He didn't use religion to push his rule. In pretty much every other way, he was ABSOLUTELY FUCKING TERRIBLE, but I guess when you've endured Donald Trump as President, I can sorta see how Min would look like a lesser evil.

• When I realised Ajay could ride elephants, and that no one else did, was when I started thinking, "Okay, he has some mystical connection with the land and something godlike going on." Then the thangka thing happened and I was like, "Descendant of Kalinag head canon unlocked."

• One thing I find fascinating about the game is how music gets used. Like there are hints in the lyrics of some of the songs as to the direction of the story- "Should I Stay or Should I Go" is pretty blatant, but towards the end, when Ajay is starting to become more aware of how he's being used by Amita/Sabal there's that line in "Bombay Twist" - "Why are you driving the taxi?" which makes that explicit-- and then when "The River" starts playing as you approach Pagan at the end, "...And you still owe me something... More than this" it feels pretty obvious that there's a need for Ajay to get closure beyond revenge.

But, yeah. I wish I had found this fandom when it was in its heyday because there is so much in the details and it's like, eh, no one around to discuss stuff with. :(

[eelhound]

"Being scandalized by Republican hypocrisy sort of feels like getting mad at a dog for peeing on your carpet. If anything, you’re the chump for having any sort of expectations for them.

The far more perverse thing, to me, is the way the idea of 'political violence' has been invoked in the aftermath of [the attempted Trump assassination] as something totally alien and un-American. 'There’s no place in America for this kind of violence,' said President Joe Biden. 'It’s sick,' he continued, saying that this kind of political violence was 'just unheard of.' He later said the violence was 'contrary to everything we stand for as a nation.' Former President Obama shared similar sentiments, saying, 'There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy,' urging Americans to 'use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics.' The headline for the New York Times Editorial Board’s take on events was that 'The Attack on Donald Trump Is Antithetical to America.'

I’m sorry, but what country do these people think they live in? We’ve just spent the last nine months being blasted in the face with images and videos of some of the most unspeakable carnage imaginable coming out of Gaza. Most of it has been carried out using U.S.-made weapons. Political violence is so 'antithetical to America' that on the very same evening that the op-ed was penned, the Israeli military dropped eight massive American-made bombs on the al-Mawasi refugee camp, an area that the Israel Defense Force had previously designated a 'safe zone' for civilians to flee. Israel claimed that two senior members of Hamas may have been hiding among the 80,000 civilians sheltering there. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 90 people are dead and 300 are wounded. One of the survivors described the scene to Reuters: 'I left the tent and looked around, all the tents were knocked down, body parts, bodies everywhere, elderly women thrown on the floor, young children in pieces.' Not long before reports of this massacre rolled in, Israel Katz, the foreign affairs minister of Israel, issued a condemnation of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, saying 'Violence can never ever be part of politics.' The irony was apparently lost on him.

Many of the people currently condemning political violence don’t actually hate political violence. What they really condemn is violence against politicians. But there is no act of violence more political than dropping bombs on a city of defenseless people because you want their land. Massacres like the one carried out Saturday have been going on for nine months, and, among the political class, they have rarely been condemned with anything nearing the force of the Trump assassination. In fact, the student protesters who spoke out against the war in Gaza — condemning political violence, in other words — were met with state violence themselves, which was cheered on by these same politicians. 

On the contrary, the people right now who are dismayed at political violence are some of its foremost perpetrators. Biden is, of course, selling Israel the weapons they’re using to destroy Gaza and kill scores of its people. Beyond that, President Obama authorized so many drone strikes during his term of office that if he were to apologize to one innocent civilian killed by them each day, it would take him more than three years. Trump, today’s brave victim of political violence, not only expanded those drone assassinations and spoke openly about 'taking out terrorists’ families' but even bragged about ordering the assassination of an American citizen in an act of 'retribution.' 

Even when they’re not directly ordering acts of what we might think of as 'political violence, U.S. leaders oversee a system that inflicts violence on both a national and global scale.

At home, both parties support a for-profit healthcare system that kills tens of thousands of Americans each year who can’t afford medical care. Each week, nearly 150 people (and nearly 1,500 in the wintertime!) still die of COVID-19, in part because treatments for the illness are so unaffordable. The Biden administration has abandoned most efforts to mitigate the virus, including workplace protections, and ended the public health emergency in 2023, which transferred costs of testing, vaccination, and care from government to health insurance companies and individuals. The CDC now tells workers that they no longer need to stay home from work for five days if they catch the illness, and only one state, New York, still requires businesses to pay leave for employees who are sick with COVID. And some state governments have even criminalized wearing masks in public.

The Supreme Court just made it legal for states and cities to jail homeless people sleeping outside. Police, whose departments both parties have showered with increasing amounts of funding, killed more people last year than at any point in the previous decade. The U.S. has so many mass shootings that it averages out to more than one a day, but our leaders have failed to pass even the most basic gun control laws, like an assault weapons ban or universal background checks at the federal level. And after mass shootings, Republican-led state legislators in particular have been more likely to loosen gun restrictions rather than tighten them.

When migrants flee poverty and war to seek relative safety in the United States, they are met with razor wire and buoys with blades affixed in order to maim them. Since the U.S. Border Patrol began its Prevention Through Deterrence program in 1994, the agency reports that 10,000 people have been killed while attempting to cross. Other aid organizations estimate the number to be as high as 80,000. Even those who reach the U.S. safely are often subject to inhumane conditions in immigration detention centers.

The United States provides military support to a majority of the globe’s dictators, which allows them to carry out their own acts of political violence. The U.S. has provided arms to Saudi Arabia as it has carried out a monstrous military campaign in Yemen that has killed more than 150,000 people, including tens of thousands of civilians. U.S. sanctions have inflicted collective punishment on the people living in enemy nations, like Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, in an effort to foment regime change. One study found that U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, which deprived its people of food and medical supplies, contributed to as many as 40,000 deaths from 2017-2018 within the country. 

Each act of violence described above is a consequence of political actions or political inactions. And I could go on with more examples, going all the way back to the founding of the nation and the genocide of Native Americans. As former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner wrote in Newsweek yesterday, 'America was founded on violence. [...] A nation founded in violence, whose economy is rooted in violence, will have a society that is violent.'  And yet, most of this violence is inflicted on average people, not politicians — which may be one reason our policies are rarely conceived of as 'violent.'

To be clear, I don’t intend to diminish the significance of the attempt on Donald Trump’s life. It was indeed a destructive act of political violence that should be opposed. But the very same people who treat an attack on Trump as some horrifying anomaly — including Trump himself — are perpetrators of vastly greater violence than what occurred on Saturday.

 In response to the assassination attempt against Trump, in an effort to 'lower the temperature,' the Biden campaign pulled its advertisements criticizing Trump from the air. And on condition of anonymity, campaign officials reportedly told Reuters that 'Rather than verbally attacking Trump in the coming days, the White House and the Biden campaign will draw on the president's history of condemning all sorts of political violence including his sharp criticism of the ‘disorder’ created by campus protests over the Israel-Gaza conflict.' (Reuters has since quietly removed this paragraph from the story, though they did not issue a correction or retraction, so the reason is unclear.) Apparently, now that Trump has been shot, he’s no longer a 'threat to democracy,' and they’re instead going to spend precious time bashing voters that Biden already desperately needs to support him. 

This was an election where, in the words of President Biden, 'Personal freedoms are on the ballot.  The right to privacy, liberty, equality, they’re all on the ballot.' But after the assassination attempt, according to Axios, a 'senior House Democrat' says 'We've all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.' Two days ago, Trump was Hitler Jr. Now, the party that has spent the last nine years claiming to be the only bulwark against fascism is throwing in the towel with fascism on the doorstep. 

It could not be clearer that, to the people in charge, all of this is a game and a joke. But seen from their perspective, the decision of Democratic elites to essentially throw the election in an act of decorum does make a sort of sense. Writer and attorney Dylan Saba put it quite well on X: 'Truly beautiful to see the ruling class come together like this… What’s most important is their personal safety — and the love they have for one another.' 

He’s right! People in Biden’s position will be insulated, more than most, from the consequences of a potential Trump victory. They will not be deported if he wins the election. They’ll be able to pay to get their loved one an abortion if they need one. None of them are transgender and at risk of having their legal personhood revoked. Most of them would probably benefit from Trump’s plan to get rid of the federal income tax in favor of a regressive tariff. 

To the extent that the members of the ruling class care about any of this, it’s only insofar as it affects their personal power and well-being. Just look at how Joe Biden has been acting in the past few weeks as he’s clung to the nomination. When asked how he’d feel if his decision to stay in the race results in Trump returning to power, he said: 'I'll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that's what this is about.'

That really is 'what this is about.' This is about them, their comfort, their egos, and their personal glory — all of it completely divorced from the reality of life for the vast majority of people on this planet. And that’s why an assassination attempt disturbs these people so much more than all the death and destruction that is inflicted on the world each day as a result of their actions. We must remember: the fights that matter are not theirs, they’re ours."

- Stephen Prager, from "'Political Violence' is All Around Us." Current Affairs, 16 July 2024.

[mariacallous]

VSquare SPICY SCOOPS  

There is always a lot of information that we hear and find interesting and newsworthy but don’t publish as part of our investigative reporting — and share instead in this newsletter.  

ORBÁN’S KEY EU PRESIDENCY EVENT FACES UNCERTAINTY

Remember when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán kicked off Hungary's EU presidency with that "peace mission" tour, visiting Putin, Xi Jinping, and Donald Trump? And that he plotted his Kremlin visit behind his allies’ back? Well, Hungary’s EU allies haven’t forgotten, and they're not exactly thrilled. Many have already responded by boycotting high-level EU meetings hosted by Budapest. Leading the snub squad are the Nordic and Baltic countries, which have recently decided to jointly skip these events on a political level – no ministers or prime ministers allowed. But for Orbán, the only important events in Budapest are the European Political Community (EPC) summit and the informal EU summit focused on the Western Balkans, which will be held on November 7-8. As I previously reported, Orbán originally had high hopes that Donald Trump himself would show up (at least virtually).  However, since July, not only are Trump’s election chances in jeopardy, but so is the full participation of EU leaders at the Budapest EPC/EU summits. According to multiple diplomats I’ve talked to, EU capitals are watching Orbán’s next move before making a decision about whether they’ll participate. While the coordination between Nordic and Baltic countries suggests that they’re the most likely to pull out, there’s also speculation that Poland and even the Czech Republic may boycott at least the informal EU summit. It will mostly come down to what Orbán does next with his controversial Ukraine-Russia policy, one source said, noting that this is the key issue uniting the aforementioned countries. “But, for example, if Orbán continues his “peace mission” by visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it might only anger a few of them,” the source continued, adding that there’s still time for these countries’ leaders to make their decision.  

HUNGARIAN EU PRESIDENCY BUREAUCRATS QUIETLY FRUSTRATED AND WORRIED

In addition to keeping EU countries in the dark about his visit to Putin, it turns out Orbán also left his own EU presidency team in the lurch. Several foreign officials told me that Hungarian bureaucrats were just as blindsided as their EU counterparts were, with many initially assuring these foreign officials that Hungary's EU presidency would be non-controversial and professional. These Hungarian bureaucrats, who regularly interact with EU officials, are now feeling the brunt of Orbán's unpredictable diplomacy – and feeling quite embarrassed. A Hungarian government-connected source acknowledged “quiet but real frustration” over how Orbán's erratic diplomatic moves have undermined the hard work of his own loyal staff tasked with managing the Hungarian EU presidency, adding that “many worry what’s coming next.” However, according to a different source connected to the Hungarian government, while high-level Russian-Hungarian intergovernmental meetings are indeed expected in the coming weeks, these will focus on less explosive – economic and financial – issues unrelated to Ukraine.  

PATRIOTS FOR EUROPE’S FIRST RIFT – OVER HUNGARY AND VENEZUELA

Orbán was recently directly warned by his own people about the fallout of his pro-Russian foreign policy, according to a well-connected Hungarian political insider. In late July, Hungary blocked an EU statement condemning Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a Putin ally, for election fraud. This move not only angered EU governments but also shocked Orbán’s closest allies within the far-right Patriots for Europe group. According to the political insider, senior Hungarian MEP Enikő Győri immediately informed Orbán that Hungary’s stance caused a significant rift within the group, potentially risking its unity and future. Sheltering a far-left socialist strongman seemed utterly absurd to the group's predominantly anti-Communist, right-wing members, such as Spain's Vox delegation. However, the insider couldn't confirm if this led to Orbán’s subsequent U-turn, in which Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó even reached out to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado to express Hungary's support. (Orbán’s spokesperson didn’t respond to my request for comment. Enikő Győri directed me to a press officer who didn’t get back to me yet.)

GEERT WILDERS ENJOYING VACATIONS IN HUNGARY – AND FULL SECURITY PROTECTION

There’s one ally from the Patriots for Europe gang who’s extremely unlikely to turn against Orbán: Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders. Kasper Goethals, a great journalist from the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, helped me out with this scoop by sharing information about Wilders’ frequent trips to Hungary based on a source close to the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV) leader. Wilders’s fondness for Hungary – his wife’s ancestral home – is well known, but it’s not clear how he manages to travel there so frequently. Wilders requires serious Dutch security protection because of death threats, meaning much about his travel plans is kept under wraps. But according to Kasper’s source, while multiple other countries refuse to provide Wilders with the necessary protection, making it difficult for him to travel as he can’t bring armed or sufficient security to ensure his safety, Hungary always guarantees full security. This means that Wilders not only frequents Hungary because it’s his dream destination, but also because it’s the rare place where he can feel both protected and respected.  For example, when Wilders visited a rally of Tommy Robinson’s supporters in the UK, his Dutch security detail was not allowed to carry their weapons. Not so in Hungary, and according to Kasper’s source, the red carpet treatment means that Wilders is tied closely to Orbán, and he usually can't visit Hungary without the Hungarian Prime Minister insisting on a friendly one-on-one meeting. According to a different source – this time an official involved in Dutch-Hungarian relations – the security cooperation between the countries on Wilders’s protection is excellent, a confirmation that Hungarian authorities provide their Dutch colleagues with whatever they need. It is unclear, however, how much Wilders’s trips and vacations cost Hungarian taxpayers. Meanwhile, a former high-ranking Hungarian law enforcement officer told me that such security arrangements are reciprocal, meaning Hungarian dignitaries, including Orbán, also benefit from Dutch security services when visiting the Netherlands. When I asked if Wilders' security detail in Hungary includes Hungarian officers, the source bluntly stated that “this information is classified”. (Hungary’s government didn’t react to my request for comment.)  

CONSERVATIVE INFLUENCE NETWORK CASTS ITS WEB ON ALBANIA

When discussing trendy new holiday spots, Albania is hard to overlook – especially with Trump’s daughter and son-in-law building a luxury resort there. The country isn’t just a hotspot for dubious real estate projects but has also caught the eye of international far-right and conservative influence networks (read our earlier article on Ordo Iuris and their allies). According to a draft agenda I obtained, the right-wing Albanian Policy Center will host a significant international conference in Tirana on September 10 titled “Forum on the Future of Albania – The Conservative Way Forward,” featuring key foreign partners like The Heritage Foundation (US), Nazione Futura (Italy), Center for Fundamental Rights (Hungary) and Ordo Iuris (Poland). “After more than two decades of Soros-dominated US foreign policy on this part of the world, it is time for Conservatives in South-Eastern Europe to move out of their comfort zone and take up the challenge of presenting themselves and their ideas to the world,” the draft agenda reads. Viktor Orbán is expected to send a video greeting, while anti-Muslim and ultra-Catholic figures from Poland’s Ordo Iuris are likely to find an eye-opening networking opportunity with Albania’s local conservatives in the predominantly Muslim country. What’s even more intriguing is that the organizers are also expecting a representative from the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung – the foundation of Germany’s moderate right-wing CDU party – to participate in the George Soros-bashing.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A key figure in the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” campaign has apologized after being accused of asking teenage boys for sexual pictures.

Ali Alexander has become one of the most ubiquitous figures in the MAGA movement. Trump himself reportedly requested that Alexander speak at his rally before the riot, with his appearance only quashed by a last-minute intervention from Trump’s aides. But this week, Alexander stands at the center of a scandal that raises questions about how powerful men in the far-right treat their younger acolytes.

“This is so gay,” Alexander said in a statement issued Friday night that addressed the allegations in broad terms.

Alexander, who has described himself as bisexual in the past, added that he was “battling with same-sex attraction.”

The budding online scandal has also roiled the pro-Trump and white supremacist “America First” movement, just months after it reached new levels of notoriety after its leader, Nick Fuentes, dined with Donald Trump and rapper Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago. Now Fuentes is facing backlash from his own supporters over whether he ignored warnings that Alexander, his friend and ally, was allegedly soliciting nude pictures from young men within Fuentes’s movement.

On Friday night, Alexander—who was questioned by the House January 6th Committee about his role organizing a canceled rally dubbed the “Wild Protest” outside the Capitol, which drew crowds to the building right before the riot began—issued a statement Friday offering a general apology.

“I apologize for any inappropriate messages sent over the years,” Alexander wrote, adding later, “When I’ve flirted or others have flirted with me, I’ve flexed my credentials or dropped corny pick up lines. Other times, I’ve been careless and should’ve qualified those coming up to me’s (sic) identities during flirtatious banter at the start.”

Alexander didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Daily Beast. In his statement, he claimed he had also been targeted by false accusations and edited screenshots of his messages, but declined opportunities to point out which accusers or screenshots aren’t legitimate.

Rumors about Alexander’s alleged sexual behavior towards younger men have circulated in conservative online circles since at least 2015. But they reached a new level late last month after Milo Yiannopoulos —the controversial British provocateur and one-time Alexander ally—turned on Alexander after Alexander and Fuentes pushed him out of a potentially lucrative position in West’s nascent presidential campaign.

Yiannopoulos started releasing video interviews and other evidence meant to prove that Alexander sexually propositioned both adult men in their 20’s and at least two teenagers. Yiannopoulos, whose own career as a far-right pundit imploded in 2017 after remarks he had made downplaying the seriousness of pedophilia surfaced, claims he has more damaging videos to release about Alexander and Fuentes.

Yiannopoulos claims he’s releasing the video against Alexander because Alexander dropped Yiannopoulos’s name to entice young men. One screenshot purports to show Alexander dangling the prospect of a meeting with Yiannopoulos to a teenage boy.

“The reason I’m doing this is because he used my name,” Yiannopoulos told The Daily Beast.

In 2017, Aidan Duncan—a 15-year-old boy in Colorado interested in right-wing politics—sent Alexander nude pictures after Alexander asked him for them, according to an account Duncan gave in a March 2023 podcast appearance.

While Duncan was a high-school sophomore just starting out in politics, Alexander was a 32-year-old with a decade of political work for the Republican Party behind him. And now he was willing to share the connections he had gained through that work with Duncan, as long as the teenager met certain preconditions, including secrecy.

“You’ll have [me] sharing my entire network with you,” Alexander told Duncan, according to Snapchat screenshots reviewed by The Daily Beast.

Originally from Dallas, Alexander pleaded guilty to felony property theft in 2007 and felony credit card abuse in 2008. But despite his criminal background, Alexander—who was then using his legal name, Ali Akbar—managed to rise in the GOP during the online conservative backlash to the Obama administration. Leveraging his position writing for blogs with names like “Hip Hop Republican,” Alexander received funding from billionaire conservative mega-donor Robert Mercer, organized a national club for bloggers that later faced questions about how Alexander spent the money he raised, and hosted an annual party at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

By 2017, Alexander had become an ardent Trump supporter with a passion for social media trash talk. He became a protege of MAGA figures like Roger Stone and InfoWars chief Alex Jones, and ran with a group of other young MAGA internet provocateurs, including anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer and blundering smear artist Jacob Wohl.

But in his messages to Duncan, according to the screenshots, there was one name Alexander dangled as a perk for the teenager if he kept up contact with Alexander: Milo Yiannopoulos. In a Sept. 4, 2017 exchange about an upcoming trip Alexander was planning, Alexander purportedly told Duncan he would introduce the teenager to Yiannopoulos and speculated about whether the boy would be Alexander’s “arm candy” and suggested the boy would have to be “entertaining.”

“Rolling with me?” Alexander wrote, according to the message. “Mostly. I’ll have an Entourage. Depends. Ha. I mean, depends—if it’s me babysitting you during the day, then no. I don’t have kids. If it’s something more entertaining, then maybe. All depends on what we’re up to. No matter what, I’ll let you meet Milo. There’s probably five ppl I’ll introduce to him. But who will be my arm candy—the one with me always in VIP and in/out? Well that is to be determined by the boy who plays his cards the most correct.”

“Arm candy > baby sitting,” Alexander added, according to the screenshot.

Other screenshots show Duncan sending Alexander a picture, which was redacted in the version of the screenshot reviewed by The Daily Beast. Alexander responded with the “face with heart eyes” emoji and asking the teenager which app Alexander should use to send him money.

An undated series of screenshots purport to show Alexander laying out rules for his contact with the teenager, many of them stressing secrecy and a sort of quid pro quo relationship between sexual availability and career opportunities.

“Everything is secret and private,” one rule read. “We’re family.”

Another said that Duncan was “allowed to say no,” but that Alexander might “deprive” him of something unspecified in return.

“Boundaries are cool,” the message reads. “Allowed to say no. However, the less you deprive me of, the less I deprive you of. I’m a big sharing person unless it’s not even.”

Finally, according to the messages, Alexander asked Duncan to “be mindful of each other’s reputation.”

In an appearance last month on a podcast hosted by white supremacist Richard Spencer, Duncan claimed that Alexander wanted Duncan to fly to Texas and “be his intern,” assuring the teenager that the boy could just lie to his parents and say that he was going to a swim meet.

But Alexander had grown frustrated by May 2019, claiming that the still-underage Duncan wouldn’t send him “good jack off material,” according to the screenshots.

“You don’t even send me videos anymore,” Alexander wrote, according to the message. “No good jack off material. Don’t even wanna be my side piece.”

A day later, according to the screenshots, he asked Duncan to come to Texas for a week for an “internship.”

Duncan, now 21, has since become a relatively high-profile member of Fuentes’s racist “America First” movement, going by the name “Smiley.” On Spencer’s podcast, Duncan said he believed Fuentes knew about the rumors about Alexander’s alleged solicitation of nude photos.

“I think Nick is 100% aware,” Duncan said on the podcast.

Last Thursday, Duncan posted a statement on Twitter about his communications with Alexander.

“When I was 15 I was naive and desperate,” Duncan wrote. “I thought I had no choice but to cooperate with inappropriate and humiliating requests if I wanted to make it in politics. I figured that was just the nature of the game.”

Alexander started messaging 17-year-old Lance Johnston in the summer of 2019, according to Johnston. The floppy-haired teen was a rising star on conservative TikTok communities, amassing more than 140,000 followers under the screenname “Lancevideos.”

Johnston and Alexander started exchanging messages about politics. Johnston claims that a friend warned him early into their communications that Alexander has a history of asking for sexually explicit pictures.

“My friend at the time had told me that he had heard some weird rumors about him,” Johnston told The Daily Beast. “At first I was kind of like ‘I don’t know.’ I was 17, I had just gotten into politics.”

Alexander moved “oddly quickly” towards discussing sex with the teenager, according to Johnston. In July 2019, in what Johnston claims was the night of the White House “Social Media Summit” where Trump feted Alexander and other conservatives as victims of online censorship, the 34-year-old Alexander used the eggplant emoji to ask the teenager for a picture of his penis, according to a screenshot.

“Show me ur 🍆” Alexander wrote, according to the messages.

“What’s that?” Johnston said.

“Omg dick,” Alexander wrote back, according to the picture.

Johnston says he refused and quickly blocked Alexander. Johnston took a screenshot of the exchange, but he was fearful of raising the issue more broadly on the far-right.

“I thought in my mind that he would try his best to try to discredit me and ruin me politically and influentially with my time in politics,” Johnston said.

Still, a friend of Johnston’s publicized the screenshot, which began circulating in conservative circles. Alexander took to a video livestreaming app to defend himself.

“You can have any conversation you want with someone who’s 17,” Alexander said.

The eggplant-emoji screenshot gained new circulation in far-right circles in 2022, as Alexander and Fuentes achieved prominence as members of West’s entourage. That’s when, Johnston claims, Fuentes asked him to say in a text message to Alexander that the screenshot had been doctored and apologize. Presumably, that text message could then itself be screenshotted and used to discredit Johnston.

“Nick personally asked me to apologize to Ali for supposedly faking the messages,” Johnston said.

But Johnston insists the eggplant screenshot is legitimate. In exchange for disowning the eggplant exchange, according to Johnston, Fuentes and Alexander offered to get him a job in politics.

“Basically they wanted me to lie, apologize to Ali, and then they said they would try to get me a job,” Johnston said.

Fuentes denied Johnston’s claims about him in an email to The Daily Beast.

“I never offered Lance Johnston a job nor did I urge him to disavow that screenshot,” Fuentes wrote.

In a post on the social media app Telegram, Fuentes claimed Johnston was using the screenshot to “extort” Alexander into giving him a job on West’s campaign.

Four years later, Johnston thinks Alexander used his prominence in the MAGA movement for “very creepy” ends.

“No person like Ali should be even near politics,” he said.

Alexander, who has described his ethnicity as half-Black and half-Arab and says he’s bisexual, might seem like an unusual ally for the avowedly racist and homophobic “America First” movement led by Fuentes.

But Fuentes, a 24-year-old who marched at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville with a long history of racist, antisemitic, and sexist remarks, has appeared frequently with Alexander at events like a “Stop the Steal” rally in Georgia in 2020.

The pair would later become arguably the most prominent far-right figures in West’s short-lived, virulently antisemitic presidential campaign after Yiannopoulos’s ouster.

In text messages reviewed by The Daily Beast, Yiannopoulos warned Fuentes in broad terms about his ally’s reputation. “Alexander wants to come to your events to have sex with underage boys,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a January 2022 text to Fuentes. “Snap out of it.”

As the allegations mounted against Alexander over the weekend, Fuentes said he “disavowed” Alexander’s actions and called them “gross,” but accused Yiannopoulos of sitting on the claims until he could use them to get revenge on his rivals from the West campaign. In a Telegram post, Fuentes also blamed Duncan and Johnston for “flirting” with Alexander to advance their careers.

“[Duncan] and Lance were willing to go along flirting with Ali (to varying degrees) without any protest because they thought it would advance their political careers,” Fuentes wrote. “If you are flirting with adult gay men because you think it’s going to land you a job, you know full well what you’re doing and it’s gross. Sorry but even at 15, I would have never sent nudes to an adult gay man. There’s something wrong there.”

Fuentes added that “the real victim in this entire saga is me.” In a self-pitying post, he referred to himself as an “incel”—internet slang for “involuntarily celibate.”

“Sounds like everybody involved got what they wanted,” Fuentes wrote. “Except me, the incel, who is now somehow being blamed for things I had nothing to do with.”

This isn’t the first time Fuentes’s racist group has been dogged by accusations of inappropriate sexual behavior regarding children. In August, Fuentes associate Alejandro Richard Velasquez Gomez was arrested and charged with possessing child pornography. Velasquez, who went by “LatinoZoomer” online and has been photographed with Fuentes, also faces charges over allegedly threatening a conference held by a rival conservative group.

The accusations against Alexander and his apology have already alienated several far-right figures. Anthime Gionet, the far-right provocateur known as “Baked Alaska” who was recently released from a prison term for his role in the Capitol riot, posted a statement Sunday saying he would not “working with Ali in any capacity moving forward.”

“So Ali admitted to sending inappropriate messages and flirting with young boys?” pro-Trump rapper Bryson Gray tweeted. “Disgusting.”

Despite his Friday night apology, Alexander struck a more defiant tone hours later in a bizarre, late-night Telegram audio livestream from what appeared to be a karaoke bar. As an amateur performance of Billy Joel’s “You May Be Right” played in the background, Alexander told an acquaintance that his life had become a “reality show” revolving around one question: “Implode or not implode.”

Asked by someone on the stream whether he wanted to perform karaoke, Alexander demurred.

“I’m in the middle of a scandal,” Alexander said at one point. “I can’t do karaoke. I’m in the middle of a scandal that I’m going to survive.”

[biblioflyer]

Star Trek Wars and Responsible Allegory

The ending for Strange New Worlds season premiere has me setting yellow alert. Mild spoilers follow.

I trust the writers and showrunners of Strange New Worlds.

I trust them to maintain a fundamentally optimistic worldview while not shying away from the impact of what the characters are experiencing. M’Benga and Chapel illustrated that beautifully.

Strange New Worlds is an easier watch than Picard, and that is to be expected. As I’ve passionately argued, Picard is a show about damaged people bereft of resources and facing hard moral dilemmas. Star Trek the Next Generation and Strange New Worlds are about the elite, handpicked for their gifts, provided every advantage, and with the best ship in the fleet insulating from the consequences of poorly calculated risks.

Neither is a better concept! Although even with an open heart, Picard is not an easy show to watch. I love Strange New Worlds for its ability to go down smoothly without feeling stupid. I’m unbelievably burnt out on hopeless suffering and bleak universes that defy attempts to improve them.

Which is why the implications of a Gorn war story alarm me so much.

My ethics call me to be pro-Ukraine but anti war propaganda.

Do you follow that nuance?

I’ll unpack it.

If the Ukraine War is something the Strange New Worlds production feels it needs to acknowledge in some fashion and allegorize, then using the take on the Gorn we’ve seen to date speaks to the soul scorching atrocities of the Russian invasion force, but little else about this conflict.

The likely Gorn motive of expansion for expansion’s sake is not an inaccurate parallel to Russia but it is superficial. It's comfort food for those of us rooting for the speedy removal of Russia’s occupation and horrified by the carnage wrought, but frankly Star Trek doesn’t need to be that ham fisted. It has a history of treating war as more than a spectator sport and seeking a deeper, richer understanding of the origins of conflict.

The Gorn, thus far, are entirely lacking in the sort of dimensionality and nuance that would make them compelling villains or hold a mirror up to our world to seek more profound truths. They’re the sort of villains to consume war as content, not understand war.

For all the slings and arrows directed at Discovery, something it did right with its Klingon War arc is show how actually it's not entirely about cynical, material motives like those of us who see the machinations of greedy oligarchs behind society’s ills would prefer to think is generally the rule. 

T’Kuvma’s supremacist ideology, contempt for other cultures, and “fear” of assimilation and loss of identity is familiar to students of the intellectual rationalizations of Russia’s invasion. That’s not coincidental. T’Kuvma was rather clearly meant to stand in for various strains of ultranationalism and ethnonationalism circulating at the time. 

T’Kuvma is reminiscent of Orban, Trump, Johnson etc. because the advisers whispering in their ears were themselves inspired by if not directly, then by very few degrees of remove, by Alexander Dugin and other architects of the Dark Enlightenment values that gave Putin the labels and rationales to crush both political threats to his regime and people he found aesthetically repugnant. These same Dark Enlightenment values create the permission structure for invasions, annexations, and the systematic murder of Ukrainian public intellectuals, civil leaders, and other cultural figures.

Now of course other Klingon House Leaders, oligarchs if you will, flock to T’Kuvma’s banner for their own cynical reasons, but much of our current reality is difficult to explain using an entirely cynical, materialist framework. If only because it's hard to imagine how the most outrageously successful (for Russia) invasion would have been a profitable enterprise without a myopic degree of cultural supremacism and complete disregard for the idea that this invasion might fail utterly to achieve any goal that would shore up and enrich the Russian economy, demography, or even just enrich the already extravagantly wealthy.

In the Dominion War, we find the Founders, themselves consumed by a supremacist and xenophobic worldview, using Jem’Hadar and Cardassians alike as phaser fodder with the casual attitude of Skynet deploying a wave of Terminators. 

At one point DS9 even manages to humanize the Jem’Hadar. Outmatched and Ketracel White starved survivors recognizing the futility of their assault on a prepared Starfleet position, but unwilling or unable to shake off their conditioning to choose surrender. Even the betrayal of this band’s Vorta is reminiscent of accusations that Wagner was leaking intelligence on the Russian army in exchange for lighter treatment from Ukrainian forces.

Meanwhile, Damar portrays the horror of recognizing an ally is intentionally wasting the lives of your people for a cause that seemed worthy in the beginning, but has been exposed as inevitably bringing greater ruin not glory. Damar drowns his grief in kanar because he can’t see a way out. His own cultural heritage has left him without much of a tangible idea of a different society to hope for and fight for. Eventually though, he realizes if he doesn’t do something the humiliation of losing a war will be just the beginning of the horrors visited upon the Cardassian people.

Damar is many characters. He’s the separatist who realized his “liberator” cares nothing for him except as a prop to rationalize the war and will sell his life cheaply once his part in the narrative is no longer interesting. Damar is the homegrown resistance to the war in Russia we scan the news desperately searching for.

The Gorn of Strange New Worlds can allegorize the depravity of the Russian invasion, but it would be a caricature in every other respect. Good allegory shouldn’t simply inspire us, it should inspire dissent and righteous rebellion were it to leak across digital iron curtains. If Star Trek is to dabble in propaganda, then it should not just be about great victories on the battlefield, it should describe a better future.

Sorry George, there are not heroes on both sides, but there are victims. Yet the Gorn really don’t seem like they can be victims unless Strange New Worlds is preparing to show us a different side of them. Maybe we’ll see some Gorn convicts used as phaser fodder or sympathizers who thought they were purchasing freedom with their loyalty but have found themselves instead press ganged with bottom of the barrel equipment in hand.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from DeSmog Blog:

Earlier this year a far-right group called Canada Proud began running Facebook ads to its more than 534,000 followers attacking the climate change technology favored by conservative leaders as well as the country’s largest oil and gas producers. 

“Carbon capture is billed as a green technology that stops carbon from entering the atmosphere,” the ad explains. “But is it really good for the environment? As it turns out, not really.” The technology, Canada Proud claimed, “can poison groundwater, it can put carcinogens in the soil and even has a record of causing earthquakes.” 

Major oil sands companies and their political allies in Alberta and Ottawa have for years pushed the opposite message — that carbon capture and storage, also known as CCS, is necessary to ensure the survival of oil and gas while also addressing climate change. 

So far the loudest attacks against carbon capture have come from environmental groups and progressive politicians which see it as an expensive false solution to climate change that furthers our dependency on oil and gas. 

But as more of these projects move forward, they’re also activating opposition from the right, creating new political divisions between establishment conservatives and groups attempting to catalyze grassroots anger towards expensive industrial megaprojects in rural areas. 

“It’s very interesting that groups like Canada Proud are seemingly mobilizing, or testing the waters to mobilize, against carbon capture and storage,” Bob Neubauer, an assistant professor in communications at the University of Manitoba who studies rightwing populism and climate change disinformation, told DeSmog. 

“Their base doesn’t appear to be full of people who are excited about a technocratic post-carbon scenario,” he added.

Dissatisfaction with the technology has been edging into the mainstream of rightwing discourse. “We might as well take tax money at gunpoint and burn it,” Canadian conservative influencer Jordan Peterson in February wrote on X to his 5.3 million followers in response to a CCS project in Wyoming. 

U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been frequently interviewed on conservative media platforms, last year called carbon capture a “boondoggle.” Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran a failed primary campaign this year against Donald Trump for the Republican leadership, called pipelines in Iowa that can transport captured carbon to sites where it can be buried underground “the greatest violation of property rights.” 

These tensions are growing in Alberta, the heart of Canada’s oil and gas industry, where a consortium of six top oil sands companies known as the Pathways Alliance applied this spring for regulatory approval to build a $16.5 billion carbon capture and storage project. It’s been blanketing the country in ads stating that “carbon capture is an important step towards carbon neutral resource extraction.” 

Alberta’s premier Danielle Smith, who earlier this year shared a stage with Tucker Carlson and was recently interviewed on Peterson’s podcast, has announced taxpayer support of up to $5.3 billion for the plan. “Let me tell you, we are only going to strengthen the case for carbon capture, utilization and storage in the years ahead,” she said during an industry convention last year. 

Grassroots Opposition Growing

Rural northern Alberta, where the project will be built, is definitely no hotbed of environmental activism. The region is home to an anti-renewable energy group called Wind Concerns whose leader earlier told DeSmog that climate science is “ridden with fraudulent data and outright lies.”

Yet locals there have created a new group called No to CO2 Landowners Group, which has teamed up with the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and environmental organizations to oppose the Pathways Alliance carbon capture plan. 

“Despite their claims, this is unproven technology with far-reaching implications into the future,” Amil Shapka, one of No to CO2’s representatives, has said. “With this being Canada’s largest CO2 pipeline and storage project, is our community ready for the potential health, safety and environmental risks to our water?”

The increasingly scrambled politics of carbon capture are now creating tensions at the national level in Canada. Because the federal Liberal government has proposed investment tax credits up to $10 billion to support the Pathways Alliance plan, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is now associated with a mega-project opposed by some rural Canadians. 

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Bagley : Salt Lake Tribune

* * * *

[Kristof: We're less and less a Christian nation, and I blame some blowhards]

Nicolas Kristoff :: Oct 27, 2019

Perhaps for the first time since the United States was established, a majority of young adults here do not identify as Christian.

Only 49% of millennials consider themselves Christian, compared with 84% of Americans in their mid-70s or older, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center (Religion, Oct. 19).

We don’t have good historical data, and the historians I consulted are wary of definitive historical comparisons. But something significant seems to be happening. The share of American adults who regard themselves as Christian has fallen by 12 percentage points in just the past decade.

“The U.S. is steadily becoming less Christian and less religiously observant,” the Pew study concluded.

Some on the religious right will thunder that this as a result of a secular “war on Christianity.”

“Christians and Christianity are mocked, belittled, smeared and attacked,” declared an essay on Fox News’ website, plaintively titled, “How Long Will I Be Allowed to Remain a Christian?”

This mockery of Christians is, as I’ve written many times, both real and wrong. But a far bigger threat to the “brand” of Christianity comes, I think, from religious blowhards who have entangled faith with bigotry, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia. For some young people, Christianity is associated less with love than with hate.

“Pompous right-wing political chest-thumping, and an unwillingness to listen on matters like climate change or racism, has contributed to a perception by millions that Christianity is irrelevant, or worse yet, a threat to progress,” the Rev. Richard Cizik, the leader of a group of self-described “new evangelicals” with moderate views, told me. “That’s a real burden to carry going into the 21st century.”

Cizik, who was fired from the National Association of Evangelicals in 2008 after he expressed support for civil unions for gay people, added that Christianity’s reputation suffers from backward views on women’s issues and from the unwavering support among evangelical hard-liners for President Donald Trump.

“Trump has played them like a fiddle,” he said.

It would be difficult to imagine a president more at odds with Jesus’ message than Trump, a serial philanderer and liar who has persecuted refugees, divided families, exploited the poor and allegedly committed sexual assaults. When Trump in 2016 was asked to name a favorite part of the Bible, he muttered “an eye for an eye” — a reference to an Old Testament passage that Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, specifically renounced.

That is the opposite of the Christianity whose heroic side I’ve often praised: A Catholic doctor in Sudan’s Nuba mountains … a missionary doctor in Angola … nuns everywhere. If they were the face of Christianity, its reputation would be golden. Likewise, Christian organizations like International Justice Mission, Mercy Ships, Catholic Relief Services and World Vision labor to make the world a better place. Across America, a crucial safety net comes from churches organizing food pantries and emergency shelters.

Surveys find that religious Americans donate more to charity than secular Americans and are substantially more likely to volunteer. In a Pew survey in 2016, almost two-thirds of highly religious Americans said they had donated time, money or goods to help the poor in the past week.

There’s nothing about faith that necessarily makes it a bastion of conservatives. Martin Luther King Jr. and many other liberal civil rights leaders were shaped by their Christian beliefs, Jim Wallis is a liberal evangelical writer with a large following, and Jimmy Carter is truly the unTrump, at age 95 still building houses for the needy. But today’s prominent evangelical leaders are mostly conservatives.

Pew’s latest report found that nonbelievers are gaining ground fast. “Nones” — those with no particular religion — now account for more than one-quarter of the American population. There are substantially more nones than Catholics.

The decline in religion is particularly evident among young people. Those born between 1928 and 1945 are only 2 percentage points less likely to identify as Christian than they were a decade ago, while millennials are 16 percentage points less likely to call themselves Christians.

“Adults coming of age today are far less religious than their parents and grandparents before them,” said Gregory Smith of the Pew Research Center.

Smith noted that the data seem consistent with the argument made by leading scholars that young adults have turned away from organized religion because they are repulsed by its entanglements with conservative politics. “Nones,” for example, are solidly Democratic.

The upshot is that a majority of white adults now attend church just a few times a year at most. Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to attend, although their attendance is dropping, too.

The central issue is that faith is supposed to provide moral guidance — and many moralizing figures on the evangelical right don’t impress young people as moral at all. Sen. Jesse Helms said in 1995 that AIDS funding should be cut because gay men get the disease. The Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson initially suggested that God organized the 9/11 terror attacks to punish feminists, gays and lesbians.

God should have sued Falwell and Robertson for defamation. But, in some sign of karma, a survey found that gays and lesbians have higher public approval than evangelicals do.

[bopinion]

2023 / 52

Aperçu of the Week:

"Germany is still paying the price today for what Hitler did. That's why Germany is silent, it has bowed its head."

(This is how Turkish head of state Recep Erdogan explains why Germany has not condemned Netanyahu for the many civilian victims in the Gaza Strip. And I hate to say it: he's right).

Bad News of the Week, Part 1:

Democracy is in danger. And from the right. Take Germany, for example. Looking ahead to the 2024 election year, there is growing concern about a clear shift to the right. Surveys show the AfD as the strongest force in the eastern German states of Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg. In Thuringia, the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland) is at 35%. Although the state association there, as in Saxony, is classified by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as "definitely right-wing extremist".

The former President of the Federal Constitutional Court, Andreas Voßkuhle, is not the only one to warn of the consequences of the far-right party's electoral success: "The AfD as the strongest parliamentary group in one or more state parliaments would turn Germany's political landscape upside down. The political heads of this party are aiming for a fundamental change in the system".

The leaders of the established parties also agree that the much-vaunted "firewall against the right" must absolutely hold. However, doubts about this are justified. The opposition CDU (Christian Democratic Union) in Thuringia, for example, has already shown in several votings that it is in agreement with the AfD when it comes to opposing the current minority government consisting of the Left, the Social Democrats and the Greens. In doing so, they argue that they can hardly make their own day-to-day political business dependent on the behavior of the right. On the one hand, that is true. On the other hand, the Thuringian AfD is anything but squeamish in its fascist positioning. Its chairman Björn Höcke, for example, said things like "The problem is that Hitler is portrayed as absolutely evil."

No wonder that, according to a court ruling, he can officially be called a "fascist". Reason: the statement that Höcke is a fascist is not an insult, as it is "based on a verifiable factual basis." And this man is currently leading by a wide margin in the election forecasts. And could also lead a minority government if all other parties do not jump over their party-political shadows. Höcke as Thuringia's prime minister for the first time? It's not just me who would sleep badly...

Bad News of the Week, Part 2:

Democracy is in danger. And from the right. Take the USA, for example. Because there are increasing signs that the next president will once again be Donald Jessica Trump. Who is making increasingly radical right-wing statements as the election campaign gets underway. By that I don't just mean his evergreens such as building a wall on the Mexican border or banning Muslims from entering the country. But also his language. Migrants would "poison the blood of our people". He wants to "exterminate" communists. That is Nazi jargon.

The negative effects of his first term of office are still being felt. For example, his appointments of arch-conservative and relatively young judges to the Supreme Court have resulted in a fundamental paradigm shift for decades to come - away from a non-partisan institution and towards a programmatic right-wing agenda. The reversal of abortion rights is just one of the first examples of this. Or his dismantling of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), which he restructured in such a way that it reversed various laws supposed to protect air and water for Trump's financial supporters from the fossil fuel industry. Already during Trump's time in office, 80 environmental protection regulations to curb various pollutant emissions such as mercury or sulphur dioxide were abolished or at least radically weakened.

And Trump has learned. So when he announces that he will grant oil drilling rights "like crazy", abolish health insurance coverage (Affordable Care Act or Obamacare), impose blanket punitive tariffs on all imports or stop investments in renewable energies, that is credible. And the famous "adults in the room" from the last term of office will no longer exist, loyal yes-men would be installed in all positions without exception. Republican Trump critic Liz Cheney openly warns of the disintegration of democracy. Because "the shields, the people who stopped him last time (are) no longer there." Trump as US president one more time? It's not just me who would sleep badly...

Good News of the Week:

An exhausting year has come to an end. Wars, natural disasters, economic problems, political turmoil, etc. have characterized it. Or as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz put it in his New Year's address: "Times have become more turbulent and rougher". Yet not everything in Germany was as grim as it seems at first glance.

An energy transformation was implemented and independence from Russian gas and oil was achieved surprisingly quickly. And even without the feared shortages during the winter heating period. The crunching traffic light coalition with the Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens, which governs Berlin, has held firm despite fundamental differences and sometimes open disputes (a member survey of the Liberals was narrowly in favor of the coalition). And delivers a reasonably solid performance in day-to-day political business. The sensitive topic of migration - which also includes issues such as racism, "Leitkultur" (meaning "defining culture"), security (control) and the labor market - has put a strain on society. But ultimately not divided. I could go on...

The omens for 2024 are not really rosy. But not darker than last year either. Scholz says that Germany is up to the challenges of these times: "We can also cope with headwinds". And that is exactly what will be decisive: "We." If there is a we, a cohesion, the awareness of not being alone in all the crises, of not leaving others alone either, the tasks of the near and distant future can be mastered. "We can do it!" said Scholz's predecessor Angela Merkel. May she be right. All the best for the New Year!

Personal happy moment of the week:

I didn't work last week. Well, at least not "for work", since there were still a household, kids, taxes... a daily life. But the alarm clock didn't ring too early, I saw friends and family, listened to music, ate too much... enjoyed life. And since the holiday January 1st was a Monday this year, my work week starts on a Tuesday and lasts only four days. Fine with me.

As I write this...

...a lot of financial disadvantages become valid at the turn of the year. Two examples of many: The abolition of the energy price brake and the increase in the CO2 price and in the grid fee mean that practically all households will be affected by massively rising energy costs. These are already at a record high due to the war in Ukraine, the Russia sanctions and the destructive sabotage of the Baltic Sea pipelines. In addition to consumers - model calculations show that the cost increases will eat many people's leisure and vacation budgets - energy-intensive industries such as metals, chemicals and building materials will also be affected and will (have to) pass this on in their sales prices.

In the catering sector, VAT will rise from 7% to 19%. The original reduction during the coronavirus pandemic was intended to stabilize demand, as many catering establishments had to reduce their range, number of seats or opening hours due to official requirements. Nevertheless, higher wages and energy prices led to a significant price increase. Now everything will be more than a tenth more expensive in one fell swoop. This means that eating out or a visit to the bar will finally become a luxury that not everyone can afford. We've just had another sumptuous brunch with the children on the occasion of our wedding anniversary before the increase takes effect. This will soon become a sweet memory.

Post Scriptum

"Congratulations, your blog is now 4 years old." writes Tumblr. Thank you.

[shysurvivor]

Tl;dr 2024 Elections in Saxony saw voting fraud and apparently being upset about votes whose original vote was cleary identifiable being marked ineligible is just me being emotional

This post will be all over the place. But it is a political post! Because that's also what defines tumblr isn't it? Political posts, random spills of political opinions and rants. That's what makes tumblr so special. Because you can put your thoughts out there. You can do your part within the discourse. Like, I ain't got the time to write some freaking essay! At least not NOW. But the thing is too important to just let it slip away. Because that is what I am currently seeing happening. And yeah, I know that this website is not really that focused on Europe and even less on Germany, but still. This is IMHO a very dire situation and nobody is really talking about it. I feel a bit like a crazy person (not saying that I am not) but like the crazy person warning the village about the oncoming danger and being put off as the Crazy PersonTM.

But that's okay because that's why I am here (isn't that why we are all here? Genuine question). So here it is, my fellow readers (aka the void of internet bc I really don't think that this is gonna be read by more than me and maybe one other person lol).

Okay so some basic facts about old Germany: it is a republic that consists of 16 federal states. Each federal state has its own parliament that is elected by the people of each state. This is independent of the big national parliamant btw. Anyway, so this year in September some states held elections for their state parliaments. One of the states was Saxony. So as you might have heard, Germany has (once again) a problem with right-wing parties. No, right-wing is way too euphemistic. the AfD is a party whose leader repeatedly invoked Nazi paroles used by the SS, who is trying to deny the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime and more.

And they also try to copy narratives from global extremists, like Trump and others. Casting doubt on democratic institutions and such is like their bread and butter. Anyway, so when the polls were closing and the votes were counted it was soon discovered that some mail-in votes were tampered with. We vote on paper so a extremist far-right party (Freie Sachsen) created stickers to put over the ballot that the voter casted and re-did the cross for their own party. It was apparently very difficult to discern them as false. Anyway so police got involved and what not to look where someone had opened the votes and stuff.

And first it was unclear how big the impact would be.

But then it was clear that it was about 110 mail-in votes and that the total result of the election is not compromised.

But then, a few days later, the absolute BANGER was reported.

Even though they could CLEARLY identify the ORIGINAL VOTE, they still decided to mark them ineligible and discard them basically!

WTF?

And then the electoral manager of the state had the audacity to say that there are no legal grounds to make them count and that he knew that this was a highly EMOTIONAL issue.

EXCUSE YOUUUU?

This is not an issue of emotions! This is an issue of democratic legitimacy. This is a question about governmental legitimacy. This is an issue that touches so much more than just emotions! And even if it is only emotional - people feel emotional because their clear and easily identifiable vote is ignored and rendered ineligible and apparently our legal system is supporting this?

And instead of triggering a debate about I dunno, changing the legal system so it is better equipped to protect voters and their votes in cases like this, this topic is swiftly replaced by the usual media frenzy of whatever BS Donald Trump is once again saying.

Hello???

This makes me genuinely so angry! Nobody is picking this up. Because it is only some 100 or so people. No big deal. As if the infringement of voting rights is not questioning the whole legitimacy of the very system that the leading parties are supposedly so concerned about!

But I forget, this is just me being so emotional!

As if we're back in ancient Greece. Someone might have to call a doctor to put some onions in my nose so that my uterus will stop wandering around my body causing me to be so utterly emotional - one might say hysterical about this!

[almaqead]

"Blue in the Face." From Surah 20. "Taha, the Char."

Kamala Harris is about to address the people. What on earth could she possibly say about being the Vice President while her BFFs Donald Trump, the Jo Bros and their fellow Mormons all dug terror tunnels under Israel pretending to be those crazy crackers from Hamas?

Why doesn't she go find a few more serial killer terrorists to sit in her audience and they can all cheer each other on to victory? About leading people, the Surah called Taha, "From the bottom up" says: You can't just do a yoohoo, you have to know "everything", and when one knows the compass of everything, then one has to behave like it, or one cannot address the people.

The entirety of the Quran was given to the Prophet to create the Compass and help man avoid situations that might cause paradise to slip away from him.

Always, on this planet paradise is so close, and always so far away because our leaders are not willing to be steadfast. We must turn away from evil, and our world's leaders must be the first to do it. Of these, Moses was the first, the one the Torah and the Quran exemplify as the greatest one to challenge the devil and pry the people out of his claws:

20: 98-122:

˹Then Moses addressed his people,˺ “Your only god is Allah, there is no god ˹worthy of worship˺ except Him. He encompasses everything in ˹His˺ knowledge.”

This is how We relate to you ˹O Prophet˺ some of the stories of the past. And We have certainly granted you a Reminder1 from Us.

Whoever turns away from it will surely bear the burden ˹of sin˺ on the Day of Judgment, suffering its consequences forever. What an evil burden they will carry on Judgment Day!

˹Beware of˺ the Day the Trumpet will be blown,1 and We will gather the wicked on that Day blue-faced ˹from horror and thirst˺.2

They will whisper among themselves, “You stayed no more than ten days ˹on the earth˺.”

We know best what they will say—the most reasonable of them will say, “You stayed no more than a day.”

And ˹if˺ they ask you ˹O Prophet˺ about the mountains, ˹then˺ say, “My Lord will wipe them out completely, leaving the earth level and bare, with neither depressions nor elevations to be seen.”

On that Day all will follow the caller ˹for assembly˺, ˹and˺ none will dare to deviate. All voices will be hushed before the Most Compassionate. Only whispers1 will be heard.

On that Day no intercession will be of any benefit, except by those granted permission by the Most Compassionate and whose words are agreeable to Him.

He ˹fully˺ knows what is ahead of them and what is behind them,1 but they cannot encompass Him in ˹their˺ knowledge.2

And all faces will be humbled before the Ever-Living, All-Sustaining. And those burdened with wrongdoing will be in loss.

But whoever does good and is a believer will have no fear of being wronged or denied ˹their reward˺.

And so We have sent it down as an Arabic Quran and varied the warnings in it, so perhaps they will shun evil or it may cause them to be mindful.

Exalted is Allah, the True King! Do not rush to recite ˹a revelation of˺ the Quran ˹O Prophet˺ before it is ˹properly˺ conveyed to you,1 and pray, “My Lord! Increase me in knowledge.”

Exalted is Allah, the True King! Do not rush to recite ˹a revelation of˺ the Quran ˹O Prophet˺ before it is ˹properly˺ conveyed to you,1 and pray, “My Lord! Increase me in knowledge.”

And ˹remember˺ when We said to the angels, “Prostrate before Adam,” so they all did—but not Iblîs,1 who refused ˹arrogantly˺.

So We cautioned, “O Adam! This is surely an enemy to you and to your wife. So do not let him drive you both out of Paradise, for you ˹O Adam˺ would then suffer ˹hardship˺.

Here it is guaranteed that you will never go hungry or unclothed,

nor will you ˹ever˺ suffer from thirst or ˹the sun’s˺ heat.”1 

But Satan whispered to him, saying, “O Adam! Shall I show you the Tree of Immortality and a kingdom that does not fade away?”

So they both ate from the tree and then their nakedness was exposed to them, prompting them to cover themselves with leaves from Paradise. So Adam disobeyed his Lord, and ˹so˺ lost his way.1

Then his Lord chose him ˹for His grace˺, accepted his repentance, and guided him ˹rightly˺."

Commentary:

No one has repented of the acts of terror perpetrated by the Mormons against Israel. We are speaking not of it at all, not of prosecuting the authors of the plan to do it, Donald Trump, the Republican Party, Christian Broadcasting Network, the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, Hillsdale College, the Museum of the Bible, the Waltons, the Marriotts, the Cheneys...We have not given God His Due only the devil.

The Quran is being violated right and left- there are sick and dying and diseased and dismembered people all over the place, the temperatures are rising, and no one is fighting for the cause of the just, only for the causes of the wicked.

I have said it over and over, Donald Trump is a terrorist and a mass murdering criminal and he must not appear on stage opposite Kamala Harris as if he has done nothing wrong at all. I expect the world to be firm with the US Government about this.

Now that we know what happened and who do it, we need to know which way the compass is going to point- is it going to come up under the people and lift them highter with the truth, with the knowledge it has, or is it going to lie to them and tear them even farther down?

[thecpdiary]

Farage, Reform UK Concerns

There is strong opposition to Nigel Farage and his right wing Reform UK Party, suggesting concerns about its impact on British politics.

Journalist Beth Rigby

"WATCH: Thousands gather in Birmingham for Farage. This a Trump-style rally from a politician who is offering disillusioned voters a new political home. But is all the controversy around him & his campaign, beginning to bite? via @BethRigby on Twitter." Sky News. The phrase "be informed, be warned" resonates deeply with me, as I believe that knowledge is power and awareness is key to making informed decisions.

The UK Elections

The UK election is just around the corner. In this tumultuous world, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless. But as you mark your X on that ballot paper, remember that your voice matters. Your vote is a declaration of your values, your beliefs, and your hopes for the future. As you make your way to the polling station, remember this is a chance to shape the course of history; to build a future for you and your family. It's a chance to stand up for what you believe in, even when it's hard. It's a chance to be part of something bigger than yourself.

Nigel Farage: UK Independence Party (UKIP)

Nigel Farage, as leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), was a prominent figure in the Brexit campaign. The "big red bus" was at the heart of the controversial campaign used by Vote Leave, which Farage was associated with, although he did not directly lead this part of the campaign. The bus claimed the UK sent £350 million a week to the EU, suggesting this money could instead fund the NHS.

Repeal of Human Rights Act

Farage and UKIP argued that the Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, needed to be repealed or amended to prevent excessive interference from European courts.

Immigration

Nigel Farage has been a strong critic of the UK's open-door immigration policy and has argued that it has put pressure on public services, housing, and employment.

He has called for a reduction in immigration to the UK and has advocated for stricter controls on borders.

Farage has also been critical of what he sees as the lack of transparency and accountability in the UK's immigration system.

The Benefits System

Farage believed that the benefits system needed to be reformed to prevent abuse and ensure that only those who truly need support receive it.

Border control

Farage has emphasised the importance of controlling Britain's borders, including introducing a points-based system for non-EU immigration.

Nigel Farage – Personal views:

Farage has been criticised for making comments that have been perceived as xenophobic or racist, including claims that Britain was being overrun by immigrants.

He has also been accused of using divisive rhetoric to appeal to voters.

However, Farage has denied any wrongdoing and maintains that his concerns about immigration are based on economic and social issues rather than racial or ethnic differences.

Reform UK

Origins

After Brexit, Farage rebranded the Brexit Party as Reform UK, which is a private company of which he is a Director and the majority shareholder; although it is registered as a political party.

The company aims to push for reforms in areas like the economy, public services and governance.

Political Position

While Farage has been a polarising figure, labelling Reform UK as a "fascist party" is a significant charge. Farage and his supporters generally argue for national sovereignty and conservative policies, often invoking populist themes. Accusations of fascism typically come from critics who view their stances as authoritarian or extreme. Electoral Impact and Concerns

Potential Influence

Concerns about Farage and Reform UK gaining power center on their policy positions and rhetoric, which critics fear could undermine democratic norms or exacerbate social divisions.

Wider fears about the rise of the far-right

There is a desire to prevent Reform UK from gaining electoral success and influencing UK politics. This sentiment echoes wider fears about the rise of far-right or populist movements globally. Broader Context

UK General Elections

The performance of Reform UK in elections can influence the broader political landscape, especially if they attract significant support or sway policies of major parties like the Conservative Party.

Conclusion

Concerns about Nigel Farage and Reform UK reflect a deep skepticism about their political agenda and potential impact on the UK's democratic and social fabric. The debate over their role in British politics is part of a broader conversation about nationalism, populism and the future direction of the country.

Make 'good choices'

"Make good choices." It's a simple yet profound piece of advice that echoes through my mind as I write about politics. Make good choices for yourself, for your community, for your country. As you head out to vote on July 4th, take a moment to reflect on what matters most to you. What are your core values? What do you stand for? What kind of future do you want to create?

For more relatable, inspirational, lifestyle blogs, please check out my site https://www.thecpdiary.com

[mariacallous]

SECOND HELPINGS  

We’d already reported but the story went on… here’s a second bite of our previous stories and scoops.  

Orbán’s most trusted guards protect Geert Wilders. Two weeks ago, I reported on how frequent visits by the Dutch far-right leader to Hungary are made possible because Wilders receives the red carpet treatment with full security protection (Wilders often receives death threats). It was only after I sent out the previous edition of Goulash that Hungary’s interior ministry sent an official explanation, revealing that the same counter-terrorism special forces that protect Orbán also look after Wilders. “According to current legislation, certain personal protection tasks can be temporarily assigned to the Counter Terrorism Centre (TEK) by the Minister responsible for law enforcement on a case-by-case basis. This was the case with Geert Wilders,” the ministry wrote, refusing to disclose further details for security reasons. Knowing how TEK operates and how close they are to Orbán – plus their involvement in surveillance scandals here and here – it is certain that Wilders’s every movement in Hungary is extremely closely watched. Ex-Orlen CEO Daniel Obajtek is suddenly followed by Orbán’s daughter. VSquare, FRONTSTORY.PL and Radio Zet’s joint investigation into the secret Budapest luxury hideout of the former Polish oil company executive (linked to the Orbán government) was the third biggest story on the Polish internet in June. It was quoted in 212 articles, which, taken together, generated 25.6 million views. A few weeks later, after being elected as an MEP, Obajtek filed his asset declaration with the European Parliament, suddenly revealing that he also receives €15 thousand per month from a Hungarian company with ties to Viktor Orbán’s son-in-law – the same company that is behind the penthouse apartment he stayed in Budapest. Obajtek’s proximity to the Orbán family is now also shown on social media: the Hungarian Prime Minister’s daughter, Ráhel Orbán, recently made her Instagram account public – revealing that she actually follows Obajtek’s account, too. Chinese EV company’s Hungarian plans are in jeopardy. Back in April, I wrote in this newsletter on how the Orbán administration made pro-government news sites take down articles about how Great Wall Motors (GWM), a Chinese EV company, is building a new factory in the Hungarian city of Pécs. These news pieces were premature as the government was still in negotiations with the company. According to diplomatic sources and a well-connected foreign policy expert, due to the company’s ailing business, GWM has actually postponed a decision on its Hungarian investment to this autumn. That on its own is not a good sign – but it’s even worse that, at the end of August, GWM closed its European headquarters in Munich, laying off 100 employees. US polls worry Budapest. Just a few weeks ago, I reported on the Orbán government’s excitement over JD Vance, a fan of the Hungarian prime minister, becoming Donald Trump’s running mate. What a summer it has been since! Kamala Harris replaced Biden and is currently managing a small lead over Trump in many polls, meaning Hungary's leadership is growing increasingly anxious. Two government-connected sources confirmed to me that they are closely tracking the polling results, and becoming slightly worried. Orbán’s all-in gamble on Trump looked even riskier this week, as Trump used his September 10 debate to praise Orbán for endorsing him. This brought renewed scrutiny on Hungary’s authoritarian direction, drawing sharp criticism from top Democrats like VP nominee Tim Walz and Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Radio Free Europe’s Hungarian broadcast backed up another previous Goulash scoop by reporting that Viktor Orbán’s long-time spin doctor, Árpád Habony, is playing a role in Trump’s campaign, making occasional trips to Florida.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth on Friday called for military leaders to “stand up for women” amid a roiling Defense Department controversy over how to respond to vicious criticism of female soldiers by Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

A fierce debate was triggered after Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe was recently scolded by the Army — and his retirement put on hold — for defending female soldiers, with one of his tweets last year calling out Carlson.

Retired Col. Yevgeny Vindman — the twin brother of retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified at Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation during his presidency — lashed out last month at the treatment of Donahoe by an Army cowed by the political right because he “stood up to Fox/ Tucky.”

The Pentagon and the Army “are lost. They fear the right,” Yevgeny Vindman tweeted. “They are losing their moral compass and service-members will vote with their feet.”

Carlson has repeatedly bashed women in the military with misogynistic insults, as he denigrates an increasingly “feminine” U.S. armed forces — and hails the brutish “masculine” militaries of Russia and China. Carlson has never served in the military.

Wormuth warned at a conference earlier this week that Army leaders need to stay “out of the culture wars” — and out of politics.

“We have got to ... have a broad appeal,” she cautioned. “When only 9% of kids are interested in serving” in the military, “we have got to make sure that we are careful about not alienating wide swaths of the American public to the Army,” Wormuth added.

But on Friday, she clarified her comments amid a furious backlash.

“Let me be clear: I expect @USArmy leaders to stand up for women—and all Soldiers—who are unduly attacked or disrespected,” she tweeted.

She added in another tweet: “Use good judgment online. Keep it professional.”

Several top military leaders have angrily responded to Carlson’s insults — without referring to him by name — and issued statements supporting women in the armed forces.

Donahoe had named Carlson in a tame retort in March 2021, saying the right-wing Fox host “couldnt be more wrong” with his insults against women in the military.

That’s when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) fired off a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, accusing Donahoe and other military leaders of partisanship for sticking up for soldiers and other service members.

A report on the issue by the Army’s Office of the Inspector General, obtained last week by the website Task & Purpose, stated that “while potentially admirable,” Donahoe’s post “brought a measurable amount of negative publicity to the Army.”

A headline on a Washington Post opinion column early this month asked: “Why is the Army punishing a General for calling out MAGA lies?”

The military is “rightly eager to stay out of politics, but this laudable instinct can lead it to run away from controversy even at the cost of ceding the information battlefield to the far-right forces trying to subvert American democracy,” warned writer Max Boot.

Donahoe’s “only offense was to champion on social media the very values the Army claims to stand for,” Boot added.