#keep republicans out of power to keep the us from becoming like russia

[qqueenofhades]

I hate hate HATE the fact that putin probably has this shit eating grin on his face w all this denial of ukraine aide. I know there are a couple of other packages where congress can piecemeal it in the future but still. Fuck!!!!!!!! HOW is it all so obvious AND so badly done by the Rs lol

It just illustrates the extent to which the GOP has become the Group of Putin on pretty much every level. There are many reasons for this and they are all equally important to understand:

They love Putin anyway because of all the pro-Trump election interference in 2016, and they're hanging their hat on it being just enough to squeak Trump back in for 2024.

They hate Ukraine to start with because a) it was the cause of Trump's first impeachment (the failed extortion of Zelenskyy) and b) it's central to their current flailing and failing attempts to portray Biden as doing some kind of crime in Hunter's business interests there (in Burisma).

They also loathe the idea of democracy in general and think autocrats, especially their buddy Putin, should have the right to do whatever they want, as well as subscribing to the isolationist America Only xenophobia that was also prevalent in the late 1930s right before WWII. So any noble appeals to maintain Ukraine's democracy and freedom hold no water with them, when they're busy trying to destroy those things here in America as well.

They're heavily influenced by Russian dark money and Russian propaganda, which is part of the larger nexus of Russian influence that operates within and enables the European and American far-right in a creating an anti-Western illiberal fascist theocratic far-right global coalition. If you're interested in this topic, I recommend this (excellent but extremely depressing) book.

As such, yes, the growing anti-Ukraine sentiment in the Treason Caucus is giving plenty of unfortunate credence to Putin's hypothesis that if he can just hang on in Ukraine until 2024, the Republicans will get elected/into full power and instantly be able to cancel all US support for Ukraine. Which they would probably do, and which would be an unmitigated calamity for Ukraine, America, and the world, because that's how the Group of Putin likes to roll.

The Kremlin talking heads are thrilled about this entire development, because obviously of course they are.

The budget resolution to keep the government open for the next 45 days doesn't directly affect aid to Ukraine -- at least for now. The previously agreed-upon financial and military assistance will continue to be paid out, and since a new package will have to be negotiated soon anyway, it's highly likely that Ukraine aid will be included either in that one or a separate bill beforehand.

The Senate Republicans, aside from the usual suspects, are generally supportive of aid to Ukraine. To give -- choke, ugh, wheeze -- Mitch Fucking McConnell 0.2% of credit, he has consistently held the old-fashioned anti-Russia pro-Ukraine line against the crass Putin-smoochin' of his comrades, and made sure to appear jointly with Schumer during Zelenskyy's recent visit to DC. However, he is toadstool slime who may well attempt to price in Ukraine support by trying to cut other American domestic programs or Biden accomplishments. So. Mixed bag.

Lindsey Graham, of all people, has also emerged as a high-profile Senate GOP voice for Ukraine support. However, he is a spineless paramecium who will ultimately do whatever Trump tells him, so let's likewise not put too much faith in that.

Biden has already issued a firm statement insisting that US aid can't be disrupted in any circumstances, and there has been a bipartisan Senate statement as well. So there is existing pressure to get a new package done quickly, and an extra $300 million funding for Ukraine (a resolution, however, not a binding legislation) was approved with 300+ votes in the House just a few days ago. So there is still the ability to do it.

The main question is Kevin Fucking McCarthy. He has issued tepid and conditional statements of support for Ukraine (with the usual "we should be spending this money on our southern border!!!" Republican bullshit) and is under pressure to put a new funding bill on the floor quickly, but since the crazies oppose it and also him, he could easily be his usual brand of spineless and delay doing so. He may also try to strip Ukraine aid out of the next full-year budget resolution, which is already going to be enough of a clusterfuck, but he's going to face far more opposition from Democrats who voted for the 45-day funding package to keep the government open for now, but won't accept anything long-term without money for Ukraine.

Anyway. Republicans the worst, McCarthy sucks, Putin sucks, film at 11.

[tomorrowusa]

Texas gives us a peek at what the US would be like under a Trump dictatorship. Check out the authoritarian Texas Republican platform.

The Texas Republican Party approved its new platform at its annual convention last week. It reflects the hard-right stances of its members, with reiterations of Texas’s “right to secede,” demands for bans on quarantines during future pandemics, calls to investigate “unidentified aerial phenomena,” and more. Tucked in between these more outlandish provisions is an ominous one that would effectively end representative democracy in Texas—and keep the state firmly in GOP hands even as it becomes increasingly diverse and urban. The platform calls for the establishment of what can best be described as an electoral college of sorts for Texas statewide races. “The State Legislature shall cause to be enacted a State Constitutional Amendment to add the additional criteria for election to a statewide office to include the majority vote of the counties with each individual county being assigned one vote allocated to the popular majority vote winner of each individual county,” the new plank declared.

The Texas state electoral college would essentially give Loving County (population: 64) equal representation with Houston's Harris County (population: 4,780,913).

It is hard to imagine that such a system as the Texas GOP has proposed would comply with the one-person, one-vote principle, to put it lightly. Texas has 254 counties, some of which are extremely sparsely populated. Loving County, which is on the state’s western border with New Mexico, counted only 64 residents during the 2020 census, making it the least populous county in the United States. Eight Texas counties are home to fewer than 1,000 people, and an additional 86 counties each have fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.

I'm sure Justice Alito and Justice Thomas wouldn't stand in the way of such a warped and undemocratic system.

In a decision last month on a racial-gerrymandering case from South Carolina, Thomas once again called for those precedents to be overturned. He argued that the Constitution gave the federal courts no role to countermand how states draw their political divisions, even if they do so to weaken or eliminate Black electoral power. Thomas even expressed doubt about the validity of the high court’s efforts to enforce Brown v. Board of Education in the face of widespread resistance to desegregation from Southern states.

Republicans are making no secret about their opposition to democracy in America; they are downright blatant about it. They love Russia which is run by a dictator chosen in sham elections with economic power in the hands of billionaire oligarchs. Outside the largest cities, Russians live in poverty with a quarter of the rural population still using outhouses. That is what Trump really means by making America "great".

The national election is five months away. There's plenty of time to avoid a Russia with a Texas accent type of government. But you need to make a commitment to be more politically active in real life, contribute more to counter the tens of billions raised by Trump, and to light a fire under political slackers you know personally. Like illness, politics almost never gets better without proper care.

[charms-of-earth]

Ok, I don’t know what else to do so I’m writing this all down. I feel like I have no power to alter the course right now, so I’m doing whatever I can to calm down and be safe. This is a lot. When I read 1984, I wanted the love story to happen so badly that when I learned about what really happened and how it ended, I threw the book out the window. I was so angry that anyone would write such a hopeless and bleak world, even as a warning that I just acted out of anger. Years later, things are starting to really worry me about this country and I think back to the book. Three global powers, Russia, China, and the US. Russia and the US are getting all buddy-buddy and China is being seen as less and less favorable as the years go by. Just like in 1984. Always at war with one country and friends with the other, but it changes. Can you see the similarities? Somehow, the reality is worse though. In the book, everyone is taught to incinerate proof of the collusion between countries, or how a few decades back things were different. They were being gaslit into believing that things were always this way. In real life though, we have plenty of proof that Trump has been colluding with Russia. He’s a convicted felon, a traitor to his own country, and people who support him just…don’t care. 

The Republicans are doing everything they can to undermine the Democrats, and the Democrats are being spineless and not fighting back. If you’re too radical of a leftist, that's dangerous and you will be targeted. If you’re a radical right wing however, you have the police on your side. You have Trump on your side. You have a billionaire that owns the biggest social media platform in the world right now on your side. The fascists are getting bolder every year, and the people who have the power to stand up to them aren’t doing that. People are afraid to be labeled as a socialist because of this country’s history with that word and what we think it means. Someone comes along who tries his best to convince the world that it’s not a scary thing and it will do the country good, and he’s not even put on the ballot. We are in late stage capitalism and drastic changes need to be made to keep this country from going full fascist, and the people who are in power are either too afraid to speak up and potentially become a target for abuse and violence, or they support the fascists. If some big changes aren’t made soon, we could go to war with China. We could become a police state. We could be stripped of all our rights. There could even be another holocaust. People like Trump don’t want me to exist. People like him are doing whatever they can to make life for me as uncomfortable as possible. Why, though? So I’ll leave? There’s nowhere for me to go. I have lived here my whole life, this is my home. My friends are here, my doctors are here, all my things, my community. My favorite restaurant, the park down the street, my partner’s place of work that he likes working at. Our lives are here. Everyone I’ve talked to doesn’t want to think about it. People are scared and trying to protect themselves because we’re taught to try and not worry about things we have no control over. That’s the thing though - we have more control than we realize. We are the many and they are the few. We outnumber the rich and powerful by a big margin, and they know that. If we were to ever unite under a common goal (reclaiming our country from the fascists), they wouldn’t be able to stop all of us. They are afraid of us. The people making these decisions know that most people won’t like the changes they are making, because those changes better their lives, not ours. Revolutions mean lives lost, and civil unrest, and political upheaval, so we’re all waiting and holding our breath and hoping for the best. Hoping can’t change the world though. Good intentions can only take us so far. I see the writing on the wall. A civil war is coming, and I don’t know if the safest place is right here, or another country. I sometimes wish I could move to another world, but that's not possible.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

S.V. Dáte at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON ― President Joe Biden on Tuesday praised the NATO alliance at its 75th anniversary celebration as he potentially became the last U.S. president to address the group’s annual summit. Biden told the civilian and military leaders from 32 countries assembled in Washington that the alliance, founded after World War II to keep the peace in Europe and thwart Soviet expansionism, has a new mission in stopping Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Today NATO is more powerful than ever ― 32 nations strong,” he said at evening ceremonies at the Andrew Mellon Auditorium, where the founding treaty was signed in 1949, as he welcomed the two newest members, Sweden and Finland. “Our commitment is broad and deep,” he said. “Our nations will continue to keep faith in what we pledged in years to come.” How long the United States will honor that pledge, though, is unclear. Donald Trump, the coup-attempting former president who will become the Republican presidential nominee next week to challenge Biden’s reelection, has long threatened to abandon NATO. According to his own defense secretary, Trump planned to pull out of the alliance in his second term ― a plan foiled by his loss to Biden in the 2020 election.

John Bolton, his former national security adviser, said Trump had wanted to withdraw in his first term and almost did at the summit in 2018. Bolton said Trump never understood how NATO worked and did not care to learn. “He spent four years as president, he didn’t know anything about it when he entered the Oval Office, and he didn’t know anything about it when he left,” Bolton said in an interview earlier this year. [...] Although Biden told the audience that Americans appreciate the work of NATO, it is nevertheless unclear what anyone could to do to stop Trump from unilaterally withdrawing from the treaty if he is elected and chooses to do so, as presidents have sweeping power in international affairs. It is also unclear whether NATO could survive without the United States for the four years of a second Trump presidency ― or longer if he chooses not to leave office at the end of it.

Last night, President Joe Biden (D) addressed the annual NATO Summit, and he could possibly be the last sitting US President to address the organization.

Donald Trump, if he gets elected into office again, would like to pull the US out of NATO, which would be a calamitous disaster and another way to pucker up to Russia.

See Also:

The Guardian: Biden promises new air defenses for Ukraine in forceful Nato speech

[mariacallous]

Sitting in a small lounge at a Romanian airport last month, I asked NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg about the prospect of another Donald Trump presidency. The former U.S. leader and presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee had recently made headlines for saying that he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to alliance members that don’t spend enough on defense. What would Trump 2.0 mean for NATO at the time of a major land war in Europe?

Luckily for Stoltenberg, we were interrupted: His plane had been refueled, and we were ready to take off again.

I hit pause on my recorder, we downed the rest of our coffees, and we went out to the tarmac under an overcast sky to board the plane and continue the interview. Stoltenberg was in dark jeans and a sweater, a more casual contrast to the smartly besuited phalanx of aides and serious-faced security detail that trailed us.

For three dizzying days in mid-March, Stoltenberg toured the South Caucasus—Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—a geopolitically important slice of land between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea that has become even more important and contested since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Foreign Policy joined Stoltenberg on his trip (which included brief refueling stops in Romania)—alongside a small coterie of his top advisors, several photographers, and a crew of burly security men—to watch the NATO chief at work and get his candid insights about the state of the alliance today and where he thinks it’s headed.

“My main responsibility is to ensure that NATO allies, also the United States, are committed to our collective defense,” Stoltenberg said, once we got back on board his charter plane and settled into the front row as the plane’s engines whirred to life to take off again. “The best way of doing that is not to speculate and not to be a kind of pundit. But it’s about ensuring that I do what I can to keep this family together.”

When I pressed him further on Trump, he offered up a defense of the alliance as a solid U.S. investment and a strategic bulwark against China—an argument tailor-made for the MAGA world.

“The United States is concerned about the economic and military strength of China. Remember that the United States represents 25 percent of the world’s GDP, but together with NATO allies, we represent 50 percent of the world’s GDP and 50 percent of the world’s military might,” he said. “This makes a difference. NATO is good for Europe, but it’s also good for the United States.”

Comments like these are part of why Stoltenberg has been in the job of leading the world’s most powerful military alliance for so long—even if for the last several years it’s been somewhat against his will. He’s a savvy diplomat who has proved remarkably capable of keeping the NATO family together against difficult odds, and he’s as solid a salesman as NATO can have for pitching its continued relevance to the Trumpist wing of America at a time when the alliance faces unprecedented challenges from outside and deepening skepticism from some within.

The next U.S. president is, at least in theory, not Stoltenberg’s problem. He’s set to retire from his post on Oct. 1, a month before the U.S. elections. But he’s tried to retire before, and NATO keeps clawing him back. Alliance leaders extended his term four separate times. He and his advisors insist there won’t be a fifth.

During Stoltenberg’s 10-year tenure, he’s won praise from across an alliance that isn’t always the most unified, particularly in the Trump era.

When Stoltenberg first joined NATO back in 2014, he did so at a time of crisis, when NATO was still being shaken awake from its post-Cold War daze. Russia had just launched its first invasion of Ukraine, illegally annexing Crimea and backing separatists taking control of regions of eastern Ukraine. NATO’s “strategic concept”—the document guiding the alliance’s strategic priorities—from several years prior, 2010, was woefully out of date, listing Russia as a partner and making no mention of China.

Alliance defense spending was laggard across the board; only three of the alliance’s 28 members at the time—the United States, United Kingdom, and Greece—met the NATO benchmark of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense.

Stoltenberg’s appointment was initially met with some skepticism. He was a Social Democrat from Norway, an economics wonk without a defense background who worked to forge closer ties with Russia during his second tenure as prime minister from 2005 to 2013. In his youth, before steadily climbing the ranks of Norwegian politics, he protested against Norway’s NATO membership, with a song booklet that had former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin on its front page. “We sang the chorus, ‘Singing Norway, Norway out of NATO.’ It was a hit,” he later reminisced.

But he was no stranger to crisis. He was prime minister in 2011 when a right-wing terrorist detonated a bomb outside his office and then massacred a youth summer camp—one he used to attend—killing in total 77 and injuring more than 200. “It was the darkest day in Norway since the Second World War. It was the darkest day of my life,” he later told U.S. lawmakers during a special joint address to Congress.

In the last decade, NATO allies have totally revamped defense spending, spurred mostly by alarm over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prodded along by Trump, and quietly facilitated by Stoltenberg. This year, 18 of NATO’s 32 allies are slated to meet the 2 percent defense spending benchmark—significant progress but a far cry from what defense experts say the alliance needs to face off against Russia in the long run.

Stoltenberg, senior U.S. and other NATO member officials said, also played a pivotal role in the tortuous negotiations to admit Finland and Sweden to NATO. Both countries threw off their long-standing nonalignment policies to join the alliance after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but Turkey and Hungary, the latter led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, threw up massive political roadblocks to membership. (For a new member to join, all current members have to give assent.) Finland joined in April 2023, and Sweden joined last month.

Throughout his visit to the South Caucasus, I saw Stoltenberg the workaholic in action. Every meal was a working meal—be it dinners with presidents or breakfasts with his policy advisors.

In his visits to the Caucasus, he delivered messages carefully calibrated to each country. In Armenia and Azerbaijan, he pushed for normalization talks and lasting peace between the two countries after their devastating 2020 war, in which Azerbaijan emerged victorious. He was careful in Armenia to stress that each country can pick how to approach their own ties with NATO—a nod to the geopolitical tightrope Armenia has to walk as a treaty ally of Russia that is still looking to expand its ties with the West in the face of its 2020 defeat and alarm over the war in Ukraine.

In Azerbaijan, ruled by President Ilham Aliyev for over two decades, he spoke mostly of energy security and made no mention of shared democratic values or human rights. Azerbaijan is a major gas exporter to Europe, an important energy alternative to Russia, though it is not an aspiring NATO member.

In Georgia, he pushed the importance of democratic reforms (in the face of worrying democratic backsliding he didn’t explicitly call out publicly) and reiterated NATO’s pledge to have the country one day join the alliance—a pledge that seems more far-fetched than ever before given its nearly two decades of waiting.

In every speech and every interaction, Stoltenberg was quintessentially Scandinavian, concise, and very practical.

“Jens has been the master of steady as she goes,” said Rose Gottemoeller, a retired senior U.S. diplomat who served as deputy NATO secretary-general under Stoltenberg from 2016 to 2019. “He never wavers from his talking points, but it’s always a very firm, clear message. He’s not a flashy kind of guy,” she added. “He’s Norwegian, for god’s sake.”

There’s a lot of heartburn and unease about what comes next for NATO after the “steady as she goes” Stoltenberg era.

He is, as one senior Eastern European official put it to me, “the only guy who could get along with both Trump and Erdogan.” Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the president of NATO ally Turkey and a thorn in the side of NATO unity. Yet Stoltenberg managed to maintain good ties with Erdogan, helping broker talks between the Turkish leader and Swedish government to overcome Turkey’s objections to admitting Sweden into NATO.

Trump liked Stoltenberg, too—thanks to some deft maneuvers by Stoltenberg early on to ensure Trump saw him as an ally in the fight against, rather than the flag-bearer of, Europe’s moribund defense spending. “I think he’s doing a fantastic job,” Trump said of Stoltenberg in 2019. “I am a big fan.”

Finding someone else who fits that bill is very hard to do.

The job of a NATO secretary-general is a weird amalgamation of other high-profile global posts—he (there hasn’t been a she yet) needs the consensus-based support of a U.N. secretary-general, the diplomatic panache of a foreign secretary, the military prowess of a chief of defense, and the managerial skills to oversee a massive Brussels-based bureaucracy—all without any of the formal powers that a head of state or nation’s top general has.

This is to say nothing of the type of crisis leadership required to deal with a major land war in Europe and foreboding revanchism from a nuclear-armed Russia.

Then there are all the unspoken criteria. Stoltenberg’s replacement needs the blessing—or, at the very least, the absence of outright objection—of all 32 alliance members. They will probably need to come from a country that meets or is close to NATO’s 2 percent of GDP defense spending benchmark, be hawkish enough on Russia to satisfy the alliance’s eastern members but not too hawkish as to rattle more cautious Western members, be a former head of state or government who hasn’t weathered too many political scandals to sink them, and gain the backing of the “Big Four”—the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany—so that other members get in line.

With all these criteria to meet, the list of plausible candidates winnows quickly down to, well, extending Stoltenberg again. But he’s adamant that, this time, he’s really leaving.

The top contender to replace Stoltenberg, outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, faces an early hurdle: He has already been branded as a no-go by close Trump allies (though whether their protests will have any effect remains to be seen). Romania has also put forward its president, Klaus Iohannis, as a candidate, though it’s unclear if he has the support that Rutte has. (Romania meets the magic 2 percent benchmark; the Netherlands does not.)

Beyond the Trump factor, one major question for NATO and Stoltenberg’s successor is what comes next in the Ukraine war. Western support for Kyiv seems to be flagging in its third year of conflict—a massive new tranche of vital U.S. aid for Kyiv has been stuck in Congress for months—and Russia is moving its entire economy onto a wartime footing.

“It’s this spring and this summer that the war in Ukraine will be decided,” the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, Josep Borrell, told me during a visit to Washington before I met with Stoltenberg. “Many analysts expect a major Russian offensive this summer, and Ukraine cannot wait until the result of the next U.S. elections.”

I asked Stoltenberg what he expects in the war’s coming months.

“I’m always very careful predicting, because wars are by nature unpredictable,” he said. “Ukraine has performed better than expectations, again and again. At the same time, what we saw last year was, of course, that the long-prepared [Ukrainian] offensive didn’t give the outcome we all hoped for.”

“The small gains the Russians have achieved, they have paid a very high price for, up to 900 casualties per day in the fight for Avdiivka,” he said, referring to a small town that Russia recaptured from Ukraine earlier this year. “We need to be prepared for a war of attrition.”

The next major question is on NATO expansion. Putin is fixated on NATO expansion as a strategic threat to Russia (never mind that Russia is driving its own nervous neighbors into NATO’s arms—and by their own demand and not NATO’s).

NATO is torn over Ukraine’s future membership. Some allies pushed for NATO to extend Ukraine a formal membership invitation at the upcoming NATO summit, scheduled to be in Washington this summer as the alliance rings in its 75th anniversary. The Biden administration and Germany quashed those plans.

Other allies quietly sided with Washington and Germany, fearing that admitting Ukraine too early and with some of its territory still occupied by Russia is a recipe for a spiraling NATO-Russia conflict that no one wants—and one that could well turn nuclear.

“Ukraine is closer to membership than ever before,” Stoltenberg said. “As soon as the political conditions are in place, we can make a decision and Ukraine can become a member very quickly after that.”

What those political conditions are, he didn’t specify.

One of Stoltenberg’s predecessors, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is pushing a unique proposal to get around the thorniest parts of this question. His proposal would allow Ukraine to join NATO and have NATO’s collective defense clause—the bedrock of the alliance’s deterrence muscles—only apply to the Ukrainian territory that Ukraine firmly controls. I asked Stoltenberg about this.

“I think it will not be helpful if I’ll speculate about just how we would issue that. Meaning that, of course, if I’m too specific about that now, I think it will make the internal process more difficult.”

After these caveats, though, he offered some historical precedents for this idea. “You have examples where security guarantees have been issued to parts of territories. The United States has security guarantees for Japan, excluding the Kurils, which is controlled by Russia,” he said, referring to a disputed group of islands that Russia has controlled since the end of World War II but Japan also lays territorial claim to. “West Germany became a member of NATO in the 1950s without East Germany, even though West Germany always aimed for a united Germany,” he added.

It’s not a matter Stoltenberg is likely to have to handle as he prepares to wind down from his job after the upcoming summit in Washington this summer, which will be his last as secretary-general. Yet the unanswered questions about Ukraine’s future in (or out) of NATO will likely define the legacy of Stoltenberg’s successor.

Back in 2022, Stoltenberg was slated to become the next head of Norway’s central bank after leaving NATO. On paper, it seemed like a step down from leading the world’s most powerful military alliance, but it’s a job he said he was “really looking forward to,” in a nod to his roots as an economics wonk. That plan got derailed when his term at NATO was extended yet again. “That did not happen,” he said. “I have given up on that.”

So what comes next? “My focus now is on doing my job as secretary-general until my tenure ends,” he said, in a classic diplomatic non-answer.

Most officials who work closely with him say he deserves a break. Whether he actually takes one is another matter entirely. “His job is exhausting, and he’s been doing it for a decade. He earned a quiet retirement,” said one senior official who works closely with him. “I give it about a week before he gets restless and wants to get back to work.”

As is typical of Stoltenberg, he never let his diplomatic guard down when speaking to me throughout the trip—a sign he hasn’t checked out of his job after a tumultuous 10 years in office.

At the end of the trip, I asked him what his favorite meal was. “The best thing I ate was the dinner we had—” but then he stopped, apparently mindful of the fierce national culinary rivalries in the region. “No, you know that’s very dangerous.” He paused and reset. “In the Caucasus, they have very delicious food.”

[back-and-totheleft]

Ten quotes

Filmmaker Oliver Stone visited the Alamo Drafthouse in Littleton on Sunday to introduce perhaps his best- and least-known films: Natural Born Killers (1994) and the largely forgotten U-Turn (1997), the latter starring Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, Nick Nolte, Jon Voight, Powers Boothe, Julie Hagerty (!), Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix. Based on a book and screenplay by John Ridley (Twelve Years a Slave), it’s about a man who is heading to Las Vegas to pay off a gambling debt until forced to stop at the broken-down desert town of Superior, Ariz.

Here are our 10 favorite things that came out of Stone’s mouth after the U-Turn screening, ranging from his thoughts on Will Ferrell as the epitome of all evil; to the shouting from Jennifer Lopez’s motel room while filming U-Turn; to the influence of the animated cat-and-mouse Tom and Jerry on his score; to the letter of recommendation he wrote for Claire Danes; to working with an insecure young actor named Donald Trump on Wall Street (“He doesn’t entertain failure”); to how our modern world has been driven to the brink of madness:

On Sean Penn: "Poor Sean. He put up with a lot. He was a replacement for Bill Paxton, who dropped out at the last second because he was freaked out by the role. Strange fellow. But Sean stepped in, and he helped us make the film – because it was really close to falling apart."

On Jennifer Lopez: "She was married at the time to a young Cuban, and the walls of that Arizona motel … man, talk about Latin temperament. There was a lot of banging and screaming. People would say, ‘I need sleep, so I can’t stay in the room next to Jennifer Lopez.’ Meanwhile, Sean Penn has got his eye on her, too, so there was this whole crazy jealousy thing going on. But Jennifer came to see me years later, after she had become J.Lo. She was another person completely now. It was after her third marriage or something. She said to me, ‘I want to go back. I want to make that kind of movie again. I just want to get real like that.’ Because she had been doing all that glittery stuff."

On whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the subject of his upcoming film, Snowden: "I am really not at liberty to say too much. Put it this way: He’s smart, he’s articulate, he cares very much, and it doesn’t matter that he’s in Russia. He could be anywhere in the world. He’s still connected by the Internet. This is a man who spends possibly 70 percent of his time on a computer. He keeps his contacts up. He participates in forums and discussions and lectures. And he is working very seriously on a constitution for the Internet, which we really need. Many, many people admire him. I find him in good spirits. I didn’t see any sign of depression. He has broadened his sense of humor. I showed him the film a couple of weeks ago (Snowden), and he responded very well."

On the current presidential race: "I am scared. But I don’t think the Republicans are the issue. Everyone wants to be stronger and stronger in terms of dealing with the world, but that’s not the right way to go about it. I believe in an international balance of power. I am concerned that Hillary Clinton is embraced by the neo-conservatives, or the liberal interventionists as I call them, because her policies, and Obama’s policies, and Bush’s policies have driven us to the edge of madness. We have created a mess in the Middle East with four interventions. Also Afghanistan and Libya. We are not effective as a military force abroad. We don’t need 800 military bases. We have to change our way of thinking. Sanders gets it, to some degree. And Trump, in his own way, actually gets it, too. He’s the only Republican who has come out and said outright: ‘Hey, that Iraq war was a stupid (bleeping) thing to do.’ And all these Republicans are shocked. The establishment is shocked. ‘How can you say that Mr. Bush screwed up?’ I mean, come on. It’s about time we wake up in this country. Let’s get real."

Working with Donald Trump in Wall Street: "He’s a smart dude. He’s funny. And yet, he’s an egomaniac and a narcissist, as you can see. I’ll never forget this: He jumped up after Take 1 of his scene with Michael Douglas and said, ‘How was I? I was great, wasn’t I?’ I said, ‘Donald, it was good, but I think you can do better.’ I got him to do nine or 10 takes, and he would jump up after every one and say the same thing. ‘How was I?’ He doesn’t entertain failure."

On U-Turn actors Joaquin Phoenix and Claire Danes: "They really did a turn in this film. This was before they became really famous. They were both such fun. It was a delight. Sean Penn’s character says, “Is everybody in this town on drugs?” And that’s the overall feeling of the movie. You have to be free and you can’t care. Claire was not hot at that point. She had done Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio, and he took off from that movie. She … less so. So by the time U-Turn came along, she was happy to grab it. She was going back to Yale at that point, and she wanted me to write her a letter of recommendation. I had flunked out of Yale, but I wrote it anyway. She always thanked me for that. She is a wonderful actress."

On who he looks up to: "It would be easier for you to give me a list with everyone on it and I could tell you who to take off. Most of the people would stay on it. Stanley Kubrick was a big deal for me when I was young. So was Federico Fellini. So was Jean-Luc Godard and Luis Buñuel. In my generation: Francis Ford Coppola, of course. Martin Scorsese. William Friedkin. In this generation: Alejandro Iñárritu has done a tremendous job. Birdman is an interesting philosophical story. So is The Revenant. He’s got talent. A lot of other people do, too. I think this Adam McKay, who did The Big Short, is very smart. He’s very good with dialogue, too."

On the Foley cartoon sounds in U-Turn: "The music was by Ennio Morricone, and he has a beautiful history. He not only some wrote Sergio Leone classics but also 1900, which I think is one of the most beautiful scores ever written. He’s written for so many people. I wanted him to do two things for me: One was this love theme, which I thought was tremendous. But the rest of it – he didn’t do it right. And he is not the easiest guy to get along with, if you talk to most people. He knew the game: His contract said he would never come back to the United States. So there would be no rewrites. When he delivered the score, the love theme was there. But the rest was not what I wanted. So I had to bring him back, and he was really (bleeped) off. That was a rough three days. I was trying to make him understand what I wanted, because I can’t put it into musical terms. I can only express it. I wanted the music he had done for Leone, only modernized with those reverbs and those exaggerated sounds. I call it kind of a cartoon sound. That booinnnng sound. He just didn’t seem to get it. I was desperate, so I showed him a cartoon of Tom and Jerry. I said, ‘That’s sort of what I want.’ He was so upset. He said: “You want me to write cartoon music? You brought me back to America for this?” He gave me what I wanted on a second pass, thank God. He’s still a (bleep) but … I am glad to see he got an Oscar. Not for his best music (The Hateful Eight). Probably his worst score, in fact. But he I am glad to see he got an Oscar."

On Oliver Stone’s movie recommendations: "You might boo me for this, but I was laughing my head off when I saw Zoolander 2. The critics all turned on it, They said it was dreck. But it’s very witty. Very well-written. And Will Ferrell has never been better as the incarnation of all evil. I say this seriously: You see evil in my movies, but when you see this movie, you will see evil. The way evil has become in the modern world."

Advice to a first-time filmmaker: "Get a good night’s sleep. That’s very important. Stay healthy. Eat well. It’s exhausting. I find directing is like being the host of a giant party. You are trying to put through your vision of a film, if you have one, and you are going to find there are a lot of impediments to that. It takes inner grit."

-Oliver Stone in Denver: Ten awesome quotes, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, March 7 2026

[route22ny]

The split-screen reality of the Trump era became all too real for Stephen Richer recently, and in a very literal way. On May 15, the Arizona election official — a Republican — was looking at two computer screens. On one was former President Trump’s claim that a key election database had been deleted, an “unbelievable election crime.” On the other screen was that very database, quite intact.

“Wow,” Richer tweeted. “This is unhinged. I’m literally looking at our voter registration database on my other screen. Right now.”

A couple of days later, he made his dismay even more explicit.

“What can we do here?” he asked in an interview with CNN. “This is tantamount to saying that the pencil sitting on my desk in front of me doesn’t exist.”

When Richer unseated a Democratic incumbent to become Maricopa County’s recorder in November, he thought he had won the most boring job in politics: maintaining the county’s voter files. But he had not reckoned on Trump, #StopTheSteal, and the most massive, audacious and successful propaganda campaign in modern American history — a campaign that has adapted Russian-style disinformation to U.S. politics with alarming success.

Fortunately, Richer and his local Republican colleagues have refused to be victimized. Instead, they have shown how to fight back.

Information warfare takes many forms, but it has an overarching goal: to divide, demoralize and disorient a political foe by manipulating the social and media environments. As Yuri Bezmenov, a Soviet intelligence defector, explained in a chilling 1983 interview, “What it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their family, their community and their country.”

One potent weapon of mass distraction is the “fire hose of falsehood,” a torrent of lies that aims not so much to persuade as to confuse and disorient. After Russian intelligence services got caught poisoning a defector and his daughter in the U.K. in 2018, the Russian government responded with a blizzard of mutually contradictory lies: Britain did it, Ukraine did it, a jealous lover did it, it was a suicide attempt and so on.

Another standard technique: conspiracy bootstrapping. First you spread a rumor. Then you demand an investigation. Failure to investigate just confirms the conspiracy, but so does an investigation with a negative finding. It’s a trap: either ignoring or debunking the conspiracy theory propagates it.

Those techniques are not new. Intelligence services and propaganda experts understand them well, and master propagandists like Josef Goebbels and Vladimir Putin have used them to powerful effect. What no one imagined was that they could be deployed by an American president and his party — and not against a foreign antagonist, but against the American public.

Pundits often say that, whatever his authoritarian tendencies, Trump is too inept and inattentive to have done much lasting damage to democracy. They are wrong: In the realm of information warfare, Trump is a genius-level innovator. It was he who figured out how to adapt Russia-style disinformation to the U.S. political environment, no mean accomplishment.

His use of the fire hose of falsehood was masterly. In his 2016 campaign, according to PolitiFact, 70% of his checkable claims were false or mostly false, a flood of untruths whose like had never been seen in a presidential campaign. He began his presidency by lying about the weather at his inauguration and also lying about the size of the crowd. By the time his presidency was over, Washington Post fact-checkers had clocked him at more than 30,000 confirmed falsehoods, with nearly half coming in his final year.

Similarly, he was a master of conspiracy bootstrapping. He retailed conspiracy theories and falsehoods on the grounds that a lot of people were saying them, although of course he was the sayer-in-chief. Truth and common decency need not apply; when a prominent cable news host criticized him, Trump peddled an absurd (and deeply cruel) lie that the host was suspected of murder.

The black arts of disinformation had the intended effect, at least from Trump’s point of view. They exacerbated the country’s divisions, commandeered the country’s attention, dominated his opponents, disoriented the media and helped him establish a cult of personality among followers who trusted no one else.

Still, he saved the worst for last. His pièce de résistance was the propaganda attack on the 2020 election. Beginning months before the election, he launched a drumbeat of unfounded attacks on mail-in voting. Pundits were puzzled. Many Republicans vote by mail, and the pandemic was especially dangerous to older voters who lean toward Trump; why discourage them from voting safely and conveniently?

But Trump was aiming for the post-election. He saw he was in electoral trouble. With the anti-mail campaign, he was organizing, priming, and testing an unprecedented propaganda network, ready for use if he lost.

And then came #StopTheSteal itself, a disinformation campaign whose likes the country had never witnessed. It mobilized the White House, Republican politicians, social media, conservative cable news and talk radio, frivolous litigation, and every other available channel to broadcast the message that the election was rigged. The Big Lie, as it was aptly named, failed to keep Trump in office, but it succeeded at its secondary goal: turning the Republican Party itself into a propaganda organ.

In April, only a fourth of Republicans believed Joe Biden was legitimately elected, and GOP politicians who insisted on truth were persona non grata.

With that as background, we can see more clearly what is going on right now in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest. In 2020, Biden carried Maricopa by more than 45,000 votes, and with it the state. The result was certified by the Republican governor, double-checked twice by the county’s election officials, and then confirmed by two independent audits.

But in classic bootstrapping fashion, Trump and state Republican leaders seized on conspiracy theories, such as that phony ballots had been smuggled in from Asia, to launch an unnecessary recount conducted by an unqualified company whose boss had promoted uncorroborated charges of election fraud. In textbook fashion, the controversial recount drove yet more public attention to the conspiracy theories, engendering yet more suspicion and spawning me-too demands for partisan “audits” across the country.

The Arizona shenanigans will not change the outcome of the 2020 election, but that is not the point. A great propaganda campaign is cyclonic and self-propelled: once unleashed, it takes on a life of its own, heedless of any underlying reality. By that yardstick, the Arizona recount is a great propaganda campaign.

Americans have never been exposed to Russian-style disinformation tactics, at least not coming from a major political party and deployed on a national scale. We are thus dangerously vulnerable to them. What can we do? There are no quick or simple answers; developing immunity requires everything from more sophisticated journalism and better-designed social media platforms to teaching media literacy, and much more.

But here is where to start: Do what Stephen Richer did. Insist loudly, unwaveringly and bravely on calling out lies, even at the cost of partisan solidarity.

Once it became clear that the #StopTheSteal campaign was escalating instead of dying out, Richer went public with a no-holds-barred denunciation of what Trump and his enablers were up to. “Just stop indulging this,” he told CNN. “Stop giving space for lies.”

At his side were all five of the Maricopa County supervisors — four of whom are Republicans. Calling the recount a sham, a con, and a “spectacle that is harming all of us,” they declared they “stand united together to defend the Constitution and the republic in our opposition to the Big Lie. We ask everyone to join us in standing for truth.” They also wrote a blistering 14-page letter shredding the alt-audit in detail.

Propaganda attacks succeed when critical points of resistance collapse; they stumble when trusted voices expose lies for what they are. Individuals and small groups may not be able to shut down a propaganda campaign or neutralize all its effects, but they can strip away its facade of legitimacy and act as an anchor against runaway fabulism. That was why the Soviet Union struggled so mightily to silence Andrei Sakharov and other dissident voices, and why those voices ultimately brought down the evil empire.

And it is why Rep. Liz Cheney made a difference when she chose truthfulness over her job in the Republican congressional leadership. The day she was booted, she read her colleagues John 8:32: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” She could not end #StopTheSteal, but she could, and did, dent its credibility and embarrass Republicans whose equivocation and silence abetted the Big Lie.

In the same way, Richer and his colleagues in Arizona laid down a marker. They risked their political standing and even their personal safety (Richer has needed security protection) to expose their own party’s propaganda and shame those who spread it.

The deployment of Russian-style information warfare has allowed Trump and his authoritarian cult to usurp the Republican Party. And they are not finished. Now that they have succeeded with mass disinformation, it will be a fixture of American politics for years to come.

Countermeasures begin, though do not end, with personal integrity: standing up for facts and staying reality-based, whatever the short-term political costs. Think of it as epistemic patriotism, and pray for more of it, especially from Republicans.

***

The author, Jonathan Rauch, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the author of “The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth.”

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-arizona-dreaming-20210522-uyd6ivuv75hd5gof2geyd5adtu-story.html

[tomorrowusa]

The worst geopolitical predictions for 2023 came from - (🥁 drumroll 🥁) - Putin's Russia!

Former President Dmitry Medvedev is renowned for being a drunken sot with a big mouth and empty head. When making predictions for 2023 a year ago he may have been taking vodka intravenously.

Medvedev burst on the scene for keeping the presidential seat warm at the Kremlin (2008-2012) while Putin was constitutionally forced to sit out a term. Putin has since "fixed" the Russian constitution so he can serve well into the next decade. Medvedev's qualifications for office were that he is shorter than Putin and too dull to engineer a coup.

So now that 2023 is almost over, Medvedev's predictions seem even more bizarre and hilarious than they were at the end of 2022.

Putin Ally Brutally Mocked Over Failed 2023 Predictions

Remember that in addition to being a former president and prime minister of Russia, this guy is now deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia. Now we know why his country is making such bad decisions like thinking that it can get away with invading a neighboring country.

Just to address a few of Medvedev's predictions...

The price of oil (at least the benchmark West Texas Intermediate Crude) is currently $71.33 a barrel – less than half of Medvedev's figure. In April of 2018 the price was $74.15.

France and Germany are definitely not at war.

Neither the EU nor the Euro have collapsed.

Poland and Hungary have not occupied Western Ukraine. How this is supposed to happen while Poland itself is to be partitioned (another Medvedev prediction) defies all logic.

Civil war did not break out in the US and Elon Musk is not president. Musk is a bit like Medvedev but with less vodka and more money.

The dollar is still in circulation. I made a number of purchases with it on Friday and will again over the weekend.

Things may not be perfect in the US but AT LEAST WE'RE NOT RUSSIA. 🇺🇸 And as long as Republicans are kept out of power, we won't become Russia.

[aphspain-pure]

Spanish Gold in Moscow

@hetaliamondaychallenge September 28: “Chaos isn’t meant to be understood”. 

Category: Fanfic. 

Pair: RusSpa (Russia x Spain).

Words: 2.073.

Genre: Historical, Drama, angst, shounen-ai. 

Note(s): During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) the Sencond Spanish Republic was completely ignored by Europe, while the fascist that had rebealed were helped by some militar forces. Spain was basically used as a test game of the military armament and strategy before the 2WW. The only country that gave real help to the Republic was the USSR. To finance the war, the government spent all the Spanish gold. 

1938

With an absolute ill look in his face, Spain, who still liked to considerate himself as the Second Spanish Republic, moved his gaze to the door that opened a few seconds before.

Nations could perceive other nations in a certain rate, so he wasn’t really surprised when the other entered the room; he had sensed him from far away, knowing he was leading to his position. Weary eyes without the so-called typical Spanish shine looked at the other, a little smile crossing his feverish face.

- Buenos días, Rusia.

Right in front of him, heavy, enormous and clearly powerful, the actual leader of the giant Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Russia, stared back at him with his famous sweet smile. Spain didn’t have known him till a pair of centuries ago, but he knew about this certain characteristic even before personally meeting him. He heard from France, England, Prussia, Austria and even Denmark about this “gentle look monster” that was so big and terrifying in the east.

Anyway, Spain didn’t have really hated this guy even once; he was actually grateful for his performance during the Napoleonic wars, though. If it wouldn’t have been for the Russian forces, France’s troops wouldn’t have retired from his vital territory and he wouldn’t have regained his independence. He sighed, trying to get rid of the thoughts of the past.

He was now, currently, going to lose his independence against his own people, in the middle of the worst civil war he had ever have –and Spain was certainly a country that had endured quite some civil wars-.

A strong ache tortured his mind while he suffered a new wave of deaths. Every time his people died, his body would burn and a painful sensation split him in two. They were dying at that very moment, out there, in the valley of the Ebro, killing each other in a battle that had been going on for months. He nearly cried, but couldn’t afford doing it in front of the power that was standing over there, staring at him with a complicated look in his eyes.

After a few moments, Russia, still smiling even if Spain’s looks were terrible, spoke with a calmed voice. – How are your wounds? –he had asked.

A quick smile was formed in the Spaniard’s mouth, quite ironic.

- Well, my right arm has grown up again, so I can’t complain.

Russia stared at the renewed arm, where a few days ago only a stump could have been appreciated. They, nations, received wounds just like humans but their bodies weren’t actually the same. If they were cut, they would recover; if they lost blood, after resting for a while they’d be up again; if they were burn till ashes, they would start to be reborn just like a Fenix. If they were killed, they wouldn’t die.

Only another nation could kill one.

Even if Spain had lately started to question if a nation could kill itself, just like how he was feeling during these days in which he thought he was actually going to be destroyed by his own people.

Russia’s hand reached him and touched his back. He jumped for a moment, sored. He then relaxed, looking far away and not giving attention to the hands that touched his still bleeding injuries. 

When a certain happening was so bad, so traumatic, that it gave the nations nearly-coma state, the injuries would still remain bleeding some time. Sometimes it lasted days, sometimes centuries. Those were produced by the bombing, the Biltz, in Guernica, and they still bleed after a year.

He trembled, just by remembering it. The hand in his back made him shiver in pain, but it was the most comforting thing he could afford to have those days, so he didn’t say anything.

Then, he gained composure and faced the other.  - What are you doin’ here, anyway? I thought you were going back at your place for some bureaucracy stuff.

Russia remained silent.

That silence made Spain worry.

He didn’t hate Russia at all. He was nice to him, and every time they had met he could only see a true innocence behind the brute and scary dude everyone saw. He liked him quite a bit, and he lately, during his few peaceful years with a Republic, found out that he was such an intelligent and interesting chat partner. Thanks to the leftist ideology of his government the relations with the Soviet Union had been pretty good, so they had become nearly friends at this point.

He even had became the only nation helping him in this suicidal situation.

During civil wars Spain, normally, stayed apart and watched his people decide his fate. He disliked choosing between his beloved people, so que stayed aside.

This time, he couldn’t.

He had seen what happened with Italy after the Great War. The fascism grow up and ate Ita-chan and Romano completely. The brutality that came with it made Spain shiver from his position in the neighbour peninsula. He didn’t recognise his cute Italian brothers with those black shirts and that dark look in their face. Then it expanded to Germany and developed into the National Socialism, which happened to be even worse. A virus was expanding all over Europe and even reached his brother, Portugal.

Spain could have seen it coming. He even spoke with a few general of the army and old requetés, he tried to create a flexible government just to evade the incoming clash. But it was all in vain.

The military coup happened, and while it wasn’t effective, war broke out.

It may be pathetic coming from a country that used to be a world power but, this time, Spain feared his people. That’s why he stayed with the republicans. That’s why he suddenly started dying from the insides.

And while Spain was in that desperate situation, Europe didn’t mind at all and, trying to avoid a Second World War, signed a No Intervention Pact in which 27 countries swore not to intervene in his civil war. That had broken Spain’s heart, who found himself suddenly isolated and left apart, left to die alone. It was even worse when, even if knowing it, the United Kingdom looked away while the Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy broke that pact and helped the rebels. He couldn’t believe England’s coward attitude.

But it was kinda worst when he watched his closest friends actually attack him, help the fascist rebels.

First, the Italian brothers; then, Germany, Austria and Prussia under the name of the Third Reich. Portugal also attacked the Republic by sending his Viriatos and even the American self-proclaimed Hero’s Ford Company sent help to destroy him. All his old friends were against him. He, on the other hand, only received some fusils from Mexico and a few airplanes from a very scared France, who refused to send more help. The only one who lent him it’s power was the Soviet Union, or preferably Russia.

He still remembered when he had met Romano in the site of Toledo. Romano had been excited, he spoke about autarchy, about having a great colonial empire, and about things such as war being the way through the future. His golden eyes sparkled when he had, for the first time in centuries, hugged Spain.

If you join us I promise we’ll bring this to an end.  –he had whispered, while speaking about how great it was being a fascist country.

He had been then, suddenly, pulled apart by a giant body that happened to be his ally, Russia, who looked at Romano with electric violet cruel eyes. Spain could have said something to stop a conflict, but, when he looked at Roma, he couldn’t longer see his cute tomato-like crybaby. In the past Romano would have cried and call him to save him but, then, he held his gaze prideful, strong and dangerous in front of the terrible Russia.

A bombing had made them react and, when he came to himself, he was with the International Brigades heading to Madrid.

Remembering all of that made him feel sick and hided half of his face while looking at the floor with a tired smile.  

He suddenly had an urge to vomit, but he managed to stay calm and recover a moment later. – Sorry, I beg you excuse me. My house is total chaos now, no, wait… EUROPE is a total chaos now, haha…! I don’t understand how or why, but it makes me think things a way too much.

- Chaos isn’t meant to be understood.

That statement made Spain stay quiet and, then, he looked with his nearly dead green eyes at the other.

- I’m going to ask again, Russia. –he said, this time, cautious-. Why are you here?  

- You haven’t paid me to help you lately.

And if he had frozen before, this time Spain had lost all the blood of his veins.

He started sweating. He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t.

- Y-yeah, I-I know… It’s just that all the gold that I’ve been keeping in my reserves has been already taken to Moscow, so I-I…

Russia’s voice was sweet but cold as ice. – You’re not going to pay for my services.

The Spaniard’s eyes opened at his full.

- No! Don’t even think ‘bout that! I’ll pay, I swear it! It’s just that, right now, my people are starving, we don’t have armament and the industry it’s all stopped. I can’t now but, when we win, I’ll return what I owe! A-and I’ll even make it double…! I’ll work hard, I swear. But, now, with all my old gold gone, I…

- So you’re not paying.

The calmed voice made Spain feel like if he were to hyperventilate. He felt like crashing. Like glass about to break.

- I’m not. –he confirmed then.

The taller man stood up, and Spain followed him, clearly desperate.

- Y-you can’t leave me, Russia! If I don’t have your help I’m lost! –after hearing those words the Slavic turned around and faced him, with his so-typical smile in his face.

- So you’ll pay me?

The brunette looked away, clearly ashamed. – I have… nothing to pay you with. B-but I promise..!

- Нет. You can pay me. –response that took an ¿hah..? out of Spain. Russia laughed in a calmed way and then, explained. – Even if you don’t have anything you still possess your body, da?

And Spain’s eyes darkened.

Ah, true. Nation prostitution.

It had been a while.

It used to be so common in the past that he didn’t know why he felt so surprised when Russia suggested it. It may have been ‘cause Russia is fairly younger than himself, or ‘cause the times have changed. He had been so accustomed to it even when he was a child that it wasn’t so much of a surprise finding out that some new power wanted to take advantage of his position to appeal to this. Spain could easily remember when he was forced to be Rome’s or the Islamic Empire’s sex-boy, or even Turkey’s or France’s. Well, he had also been like that with some nations; but, well, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and he was also a sinner after all.  

He looked back at Russia and sighed. – Is this old damaged body worth all the gold I could have had afford to pay you weeks before? –and Russia’s aura became surprisingly pink, just like a happy kid’s.

- And much more! I’m happy so I’ll help you.

And leaned forward to kiss Spain’s forehead. Spain rised an eyebrow, but let him be, anyway. He needed help and Russia was eager to help him only receiving some affectionate touches here and there in return. There were worst things he could have had to do.

Another wave of pain drove him crazy sored and let himself drown in the straw bed he had been using before. He took a deep breath. 

Then, when the fever started to be stable again, spoke directly to Russia.

- Well, then, how about a quickie? I have to go back to the battlefield in 30 minutes and I think I could come back quite worse than now, ha ha. –he had laughed, with his shiny –and now tiny- smile.

Russia smiled back, getting rid of his Soviet general military hat while getting closer to the sun-burned skinned nation. He sat, and grabbed the other’s cheeks with a gloved strong hand. That tranquil smile crossed his happy face.

- Let me tell you this is going to be a payment in instalments.

[giftofshewbread]

It’s Over!  ( Biblical Update )

By Daymond Duck     Published  on: August 15, 2021

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come” (II Tim. 3:1).

Be aware that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (II Tim. 3:13).

The right of U.S. citizens to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to buy and sell, etc., is being challenged by the shadow government’s desire to restrict and/or control American’s freedom of religion, speech, right to buy and sell, etc.

Covid is a global medical crisis that the godless shadow government created to justify the establishment of a world government, world religion, and worldwide tracking system to enslave everyone on earth.

The public is being told that proof of vaccination (passports, I.D. cards, or whatever) is needed to bring Covid-19 under control when the truth of the matter is that Covid-19 and the variants are a tool that the rich and powerful are using to bring all people under their control.

It is possible and perhaps likely that this proof of vaccination will eventually be followed by the lockdown and persecution of Christian groups and institutions based on their support for Bible teaching and lack of support for the globalist agenda (the godless world government, godless world religion, abortion, gay rights, etc.).

Before the persecution reaches its peak, Christians will be removed (Raptured) from this earth, and the door will be thrown wide open for the godless shadow government to select a leader to take dictatorial power on earth.

Following his appearance, their so-called proof of vaccination will probably evolve into a data system that will be used to determine who can buy and sell, who can live or die, etc. (Don’t overlook the fact that some of the leaders that want to force everyone to be vaccinated are the same people that want to reduce the population of the earth from almost 8 billion to about half a billion; many support abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, etc.).

God will allow these godless globalists to select a leader to rule for seven years, but God will ultimately cause them to regret what they have done for all eternity.

A reader recently sent an e-mail to this writer containing part of a message that Dr. Franklin Graham delivered at a Baptist Church in Florida.

Dr. Graham said, “The American Dream has ended.”

Readers need to understand that the one who said “The American Dream has ended” is one of the most highly respected preachers in the world, not a fanatic and not a prophecy teacher, but America must decline if the globalists are going to meet their goal of a world government and a world religion by 2030 or before.

Here is a repeat from the article I wrote last week: On July 27, 2021, former Sec. of State Mike Pompeo said, “Collapse from within is possible… Immigration without assimilation, illicit drugs, human trafficking, disputed elections, inflationary risks have become the tools to disassemble our republic in what must surely be an attempt at national suicide.”

I want to close my opening remarks this way: We are not seeing the Mark of the Beast yet (people are not being jabbed in their right hand or forehead; people are not taking the name, number, or Mark of the Beast; unvaccinated people can still buy and sell in most places; etc.).

On the other hand, we are seeing the global development and advancement of technology and policies that many excellent Bible prophecy teachers believe will lead to the Mark of the Beast (forced compliance, loss of one’s job, development of passports or passes, a demand for government databases to track people, a demand to prevent the unvaccinated from entering stores to buy or sell, the spread of anti-Christian rhetoric, etc.).

Also, keep in mind the fact that the Church will be Raptured a minimum of 3 ½ years (and perhaps more) before the global development and advancement of the technology and policies goes into effect as the Mark of the Beast (the Gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church).

Here are other reasons to believe that history is approaching end of the age Bible predictions and the American Dream is over.

One, when Jesus was asked about the signs of His coming, He listed famines, pestilences, earthquakes, etc. (notice that the words are plural as in more than one famine, more than one pestilence, etc.; Matt. 24:7).

Today, the world is trying to deal with Covid-19, the Delta (India variant), Lambda (Peru variant), and Epsilon variant (pestilences plural).

Two, on Aug. 6, 2021, California announced that a low water level caused by drought has forced the shutdown of the state’s second largest hydroelectric plant for the first time since the dam was completed in 1977.

The state will be able to get electricity from other systems.

More: On Aug. 4, 2021, the Dixie wildfire destroyed Greenville, Cal., a gold rush town of about 1,200 people (5 days later, Fox News reported that about 600 buildings have burned and about 13,000 are in danger).

More: On Aug. 6, 2021, it was reported that Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border, the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and Lake Mead in Nevada have hit record lows this summer.

FYI: Drought is having a devastating impact on crops, cattle, hog, and sheep production in the U.S. (a very large part of America’s food supply).

FYI: Unprecedented wildfires are also taking place in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Lebanon, and Russia.

Three, during the Tribulation Period, the world will be divided into two groups: those that take the Mark of the Beast and those that refuse to take the Mark of the Beast.

Today, the world is being divided into two groups: those that have been vaccinated and those that have not been vaccinated.

Four, on Aug. 9, 2021, World Net Daily posted an article by Wayne Allen Root that said:

Republicans asked for “papers” from migrants who had broken into our country. Criminals. Democrats said, “No, that’s racism.”

Republicans asked for “papers” once every two years for federal elections to prove you have a right to vote. Democrats said, “No, that’s racism.”

Now Democrats want American citizens, not illegal aliens, not criminals, but patriots born in this country to produce papers 24/7. We’ll need papers to enter restaurants, bars, nightclubs, concerts, casinos, conventions, and hotels and to board a train, plane, or bus. We’ll need papers to enter a supermarket, or we’ll starve to death—all for the crime of being unvaccinated.

Note: U.S. Sen. Rand Paul said the U.S. is at a crossroads, and he is urging U.S. citizens to “resist the mandates, lockdowns, and the harmful policies of the petty tyrants and bureaucrats.”

Five, on Aug. 6, 2021, Natural News reported that the U.K. has admitted that it is building storage areas for bodies in the 32 boroughs of London and the city itself.

These storage areas are being built because the government expects an increase in deaths over the next five years due to their attempts to force people to be vaccinated (some people that are not allowed to buy and sell will go hungry, get sick, etc.).

Writer’s Comment: It is common for some people to ask how bad will God let it get before He Raptures His Church. No one knows the answer to this, but the situation is worsening, and Christians everywhere need to pray about it.

Six, on July 31, 2021, the Carnival Cruise Ship Vista left Galveston, TX with everyone or board vaccinated (every guest, every crew member, every staff member, everyone vaccinated; no unvaccinated people on board).

On Aug. 8, 2021, it was reported that a small number of people on the ship have tested positive for Covid.

Seven, God promised to bless those that bless Israel and to curse those that curse Israel (Gen. 12:3).

On Aug. 4, 2021, the Iranian-backed terrorist group that controls Lebanon, Hezbollah, fired three rockets into Israel.

On Aug. 5, 2021, Israeli jets struck terrorist targets in Lebanon for the first time in 15 years, and Pres. Biden announced that he will give the terrorist government $100 million dollars in economic aid (borrowed money that will add to inflation in the U.S.).

On Aug. 6, 2021, Hezbollah forces fired 19 rockets from Lebanon into Israel, and Israel responded with artillery fire.

On Aug. 8, 2021, new hardline Iranian Pres. Raisi met with leaders of the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Houthis, and promised to support their terrorist activities until Israel is defeated.

Writer’s Comment: This could easily get out of hand and lead to the fulfillment of several prophecies (Psa. 83 if that is a war; the Destruction of Damascus as prophesied in Isa. 17; the Battle of Gog and Magog as prophesied in Ezek. 38-39; time will tell.).

Eight, violence is on the increase, and some politicians want to defund the police and take the guns away from law-abiding citizens, but the globalist goal is only partly to prevent citizens from defending themselves against criminals.

The globalist goal is primarily to prevent citizens from defending the U.S. against the shadow government’s takeover of the U.S.

For whatever it is worth, thousands of people have marched in Paris and other French cities four weeks in a row to protest the loss of their freedoms.

On Aug. 6, protests erupted in Turin, Italy.

Nine, on Aug. 6, 2021, a guest on Fox & Friends said the strongest outbreak of the Covid Delta Variant is in Texas and Florida, and those two states are where the Biden administration has taken the largest number of Covid-infected migrants.

Ten, concerning global pandemics and the Mark of the Beast, on July 25, 2021, The Times of Israel reported on a study that found that people vaccinated before Feb. 2021 are twice as likely to get Covid as those vaccinated in June 2021 for two reasons: 1) Their vaccine effectiveness decreases over time and is becoming less effective every day; and 2) The Delta Variant is more contagious than the original Covid-19, and therefore more able to overcome the resistance of their declining vaccination.

The doctor that headed up the study said, “We definitely need to think about a third vaccine.”

It is the opinion of this writer that the globalists will want people to take a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. vaccination until they bring in the Mark of the Beast.

Update: On Aug. 5, 2021, Moderna said data shows a noticeable drop in antibody levels 6-8 months after a vaccinated person’s second jab, so vaccinated people will need to get a booster shot this fall.

Writer’s Comment: Just a reminder to U.S. citizens that Pres. Biden said, “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccines.”

Eleven, concerning world government: it is widely known that the World Economic Forum (WEF) wants to establish a world government and eliminate private property ownership by 2030 or before.

The WEF even produced a video saying, “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.”

My article “Developing Now,” posted two weeks ago, quoted Tony Koretz who said, “A global medical dictatorship is rising.”

I added that “It is hard to deny that the shadow government is using unelected individuals to dictate policies to nations all over the world.”

On Aug. 3, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) extended the U.S. government’s eviction moratorium, a document that allows renters in areas that have a high level of Covid to not pay their rent.

Put another way, property owners that have rented their house, apartment, etc., to someone else must make the mortgage payments (if the property owner has a mortgage payment), pay to keep the house, apartment, etc., repaired, and the property owner cannot evict the renter for not paying their rent (the renter can live in the house free, and the property owner must pay the bills).

The fact that the CDC (a medical group) can force private property owners to make the property payments and let renters live in the property free sure looks like a global medical dictatorship has taken over.

The real owners of the property are not happy with making the payments and receiving no rent.

Twelve, on Aug. 4, 2021, concerning a Mark on the forehead to buy and sell, it was reported that Amazon is now using palm scanners at 53 Amazon-owned stores, and it plans to expand the program to other stores in the U.S.

Customers can use a simple hand scan to pay, enter or I.D. themselves, and Amazon will give them a $10 promotional credit to sign up.

Before my final word, pastor Keith Watts asked me to include this paragraph in my article (something I can’t start doing for ministries all over the world): “I am asking all prayer warriors from around the world to join with us for a day of prayer, fasting, and repentance on August 16, 2021, for the sake of the Philippines and on behalf of over 110,950,213 precious souls. We will be fasting from the time we wake up until we go to bed, interceding on behalf of the lost souls in the Philippines.”

Finally, are you Rapture Ready?

If you want to be rapture ready and go to heaven, you must be born again (John 3:3). God loves you, and if you have not done so, sincerely admit that you are a sinner; believe that Jesus is the virgin-born, sinless Son of God who died for the sins of the world, was buried, and raised from the dead; ask Him to forgive your sins, cleanse you, come into your heart and be your Saviour; then tell someone that you have done this.

[mariacallous]

End American dependence on Taiwan’s semiconductor factories. Declare economic independence from China. Give India an AUKUS-like submarine deal. And stage a dramatic visit to Moscow to broker a deal to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

These aren’t just my ideas, insists insurgent Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy. They’re drawn from the legacy of Richard Nixon, the U.S. president Ramaswamy says he admires most. 

One thing most everyone agrees on is that Ramaswamy, who burst into the spotlight this summer, is looking to bust foreign-policy norms. His most ambitious proposal? Bringing the Kremlin into the fold with the United States as a “strategic check” on China. Like Nixon, who based his diplomatic strategy on grand spectacles such as his 1972 Cold War-era overture to China, Ramaswamy wants to split the axis between Beijing and Moscow—only this time in the other direction: Turning Russian President Vladimir Putin against China to broker a peace deal to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

This idea, and a broader foreign-policy game plan, were outlined in detail by the political novice and onetime biotech entrepreneur in American Conservative magazine this week. His is a version of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s wheeling-and-dealing isolationism, advocating a turn away from moralizing liberal projects to “affirmatively” defending the U.S. homeland from Chinese expansionism. 

“In China, he saw the greatest butcher of the 20th century, Mao Zedong,” Ramaswamy wrote on Monday of Nixon. “Yet rather than counting Mao’s crimes or launching a moralistic push for his downfall, he understood that Mao was the driver of the Sino-Soviet split.” 

Taking a page from Nixon’s Cold War wedge diplomacy, Ramaswamy wants to use Russia as a counterweight to China. “I will respect and revive Nixon’s legacy by rejecting the bloodthirsty blather of the useful idiots who preach a no-win war in Ukraine that forces our two great power foes ever closer,” Ramaswamy wrote. “The longer the war in Ukraine goes on, it becomes ever clearer that there is only one winner: China.” 

Ramaswamy also hinted that he will use the offshore threat of American power instead of direct military intervention, patting Nixon on the back for not putting U.S. boots on the ground during the armed conflict between India and Pakistan in 1971 and instead keeping U.S. ships nearby. 

He’s not the only candidate espousing such out-of-the-box thinking. Anti-establishment fervor has gripped the top of the Republican field, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Ramaswamy is joined by Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in pushing back on further American aid to Ukraine. (Ramaswamy is also offering the prospect of sanctions relief to the Kremlin.) There may be popular backing for such a move. As U.S. President Joe Biden has floated a $24 billion humanitarian and military aid package for Ukraine to Congress, a July poll showed that 55 percent of Americans and 71 percent of Republicans opposed further U.S. assistance to Kyiv. 

“This is an anti-Washington cycle. It’s much more 2016 than it is 2012,” said Peter Rough, a senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at the Hudson Institute. “The kind of frustrations and anger match something of a populist, tear-it-down message. Vivek represents that outsider status.” 

But just as Nixon’s plan to leverage the China opening for détente with the Soviet Union ran into congressional headwinds, Ramaswamy’s views conflict with the Republican establishment on Capitol Hill. Most Republicans in Congress still want Biden to send more weapons to Ukraine, despite public support for the massive military aid effort having ebbed. 

And some think Ramaswamy’s surge could also be an opening for some of the Republicans who jeered him on the debate stage. By castigating him for being too weak on Ukraine, they could distinguish themselves from the leaders in the GOP field and Biden. Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, for instance, has enjoyed a post-debate surge in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire. “[Biden’s] tepid approach has only slowed Ukraine’s advance and dragged out the war as costs mount, making some Republicans susceptible to Vivek’s hucksterism,” Rough, who served in the Bush administration, said in a subsequent email. 

Ramaswamy’s takes have also invited criticism of a different kind—that he is cribbing from other people’s material. Last week, the rapper Eminem asked Ramaswamy, the first millennial GOP presidential candidate, to stop using the 2002 hit “Lose Yourself” on the campaign trail. And at the Fox News debate at Fiserv Forum last week, Christie accused the businessman of stealing from Obama’s script. “I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT standing up here,” Christie said. “The last person in one of these debates … who stood in the middle of the stage and said ‘What’s a skinny guy with an odd last name doing here?’ was Barack Obama.”

The Nixon Foundation recently invited Ramaswamy – along with every Republican candidate – to speak earlier this month at the presidential library of the 37th U.S. commander in chief in Yorba Linda, California. But Ramaswamy’s pledge to move beyond the “bloody follies of neoconservatism and liberal internationalism” doesn’t hold up perfectly with Nixon’s track record. Even while Nixon administration officials touted using the soft-power opening to China as a substitute for hard-power tactics during the Cold War, the United States still spearheaded the invasion of Cambodia as U.S. troops began to leave Vietnam.

Ramaswamy’s lack of nuance, experts said, is part and parcel of a larger leadership crisis in the GOP.

“The Republicans are in the wilderness,” Rough said. “If one thinks back to the postwar era, all the way back to World War II, basically, every Republican president has been able to define what a Republican foreign policy looks like.”

With no incumbent, Rough said, the party has descended into internecine debates while missing the bigger picture. “We have massively overspent over the years. And Americans are looking around and thinking for what? What [have] these investments actually gotten us? And now you’re telling us we have to invest in Ukraine as well.”

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

IF Joe Biden wins, and IF Donald Trump concedes, and IF there’s a peaceful transition of power, there’s going to be a corrupt bargain behind it.  The most likely scenarios are that Trump will pardon himself, or he’ll resign on January 20th at 11:59 and have Pence pardon him in his 1 minute in office.  Less likely but possible, Trump convinces Biden to pardon him as part of his “exit package.”  I’ll go quietly if you pardon me, I’ll go full nuclear if you don’t.  Even less likely than that, our friend Donny takes a page out of Snowden’s book*, and takes a permanent vacation to a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States.  It would almost certainly be daddy Putin’s Russia, but I wouldn’t rule out Saudi Arabia, North Korea, or maybe even China (the animosity between Trump and Xi is a joke, nothing but a dick measuring context between two authoritarian brinkmen; remember, in 2017 we thought Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un hated each other, until they didn’t.  He and Xi will reconcile when it suits them personally, mark my words).

These scenarios rely on a lot of ifs.  What I actually believe is gonna happen is that Trump will win the electoral college and lose the popular vote, again, and congressional Democrats will whine about it and do nothing all the way to January 20th.  They’ll probably keep the House, but that doesn’t mean anything anymore because their only real power was subpoenas, and Trump has decided that the president doesn’t have to obey them anymore; the real power comes from the Senate, which has to confirm any and all cabinet and judicial appointments, though this too is up in the air because if the Democrats tried to hold his appointments hostage like the Republicans did to Obama, Trump would just make recess appointments.  Or more likely than that, he would just continue writing executive orders to sidestep Congress, which would be legally binding until Congress or the Supreme Court overturned it.

I don’t see any universe where this man faces consequences for anything.  Even if Biden wins AND Trump gets charged for any number of his federal, state, or local crimes, he’ll never go to prison; no judge in the country is going to sentence a former president to anything but time served, a halfhearted slap on the wrist at best.  If a judge tried, Trump’s lawyers would appeal it all the way up to the Supreme Court, which would rule 6-3 in his favor, possibly even 7-2, or hell, it could be a unanimous ruling, because the liberal justices wouldn’t want to appear “political.”  They’d come up with some BS explanation about precedent or impropriety, something about “healing,” “moral fabric,” “retribution,” blah-dee-fucking-blah, acquittal, move onto the next case.

There are no legal means to “punish the bad guys,” and I definitely DON’T condone the use of, shall we say, “extralegal” means.  Besides, one person alone couldn’t change anything, it would take the organization and coordination of a large number of people in cities all over the country, fueled by the systemic injustice and divisive rhetoric that the bad guys use to remain in power.  Why, if such an undertaking were possible, I think we would have seen some signs of civil unrest this summer, signs that would only be amplified by the controversial outcome of another disproportional election (the third in 20 years).

Rome didn’t fall in a day.

*I want to be clear that I am not equating Edward Snowden with Donald Trump; Snowden is an American hero and Biden should issue him a full pardon if he becomes president, I’m just saying that Trump will probably have the same idea to leave American jurisdiction

[theculturedmarxist]

For those that might not know, Grover Norquist is Washington’s anti-tax poster boy since the Reagan administration. Calling him an anti-tax lobbyist is missing the vast majority of other shit he’s responsible for or has had a hand in. He’s basically been integral in creating the immensely shitty situation in regards to a failed government and overpowered business lobby that we’re in today.

Anyway, I wanted to share the absolutely delusional bullshit these people say to each other, because it’s absolutely illuminating.

Grover Norquist On Taxes, Socialism And The Demonization Of The Rich

Grover Norquist is President of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a taxpayer organization that opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle and has been leading campaigns for tax reductions since 1986. ATR was founded at the request of President Reagan and asks all candidates for office in the United States to sign the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, a written commitment to vote against any tax hikes while they are in office. Rainer Zitelmann spoke with him:

Rainer Zitelmann: In Europe, governments are already looking beyond the coronavirus crisis and planning massive tax increases. In particular, there have been increasing calls for a wealth tax on the richest within society to pay for coronavirus measures and guard against future crises. Supporters of free market economics, on the other hand, are calling for tax cuts to get the economy back on track once the current crisis has abated. What do you think will happen in the United States? If Trump is re-elected, will he cut taxes again? And what will happen if Biden wins?

Grover Norquist: Once we’re looking back on coronavirus in our rearview mirror rather than having it flying at the windshield—then what? Little will happen before the November 2020 American presidential election. Democrats will demand higher taxes and massive spending, Republicans will propose tax cuts. But the Democrat-controlled house will block any tax reductions and the Republican-dominated senate and the Trump veto will block any tax increases or spending explosion. Should Trump win re-election, Republicans will move to enact their stated goal of reducing the corporate income tax to 15% from today’s 21%. They will push to index capital gains for inflation—so capital gain taxes would only be due on real gains, not inflationary gains. Should Biden win the presidency, and the Democrats capture the senate, Biden has promised $3.4 trillion of new taxes. That is three times what Hillary Clinton threatened/promised in 2016—and she lost for being too left wing. Spending will explode. Income tax will be increased, an energy tax will be imposed and eventually a Value Added Tax will be levied. Of course, this fork in the road would be exactly the same if there was no coronavirus. Republicans are the party of tax reduction and (modest) spending restraint. Democrats remain the party of endless tax hikes and endless spending sprees.

Zitelmann: In the United States, socialism used to be a dirty word—and it still is for many older Americans. In contrast, large numbers of younger Americans are committed to “socialism.” So why has anticapitalism become so popular in the United States, especially among younger people?

Norquist: The sad answer is that younger Americans do not know what socialism means. Millennials do not remember the Soviet Union. Or Stalin’s Gulags or the Warsaw Pact. They only know Russia. They could not even tell you what the initials U.S.S.R. stood for, or that Nazi is the abbreviation of National Socialist. Somehow, Bernie Sanders, who is well versed in Soviet history and Cuba’s tradeoff of “literacy” against political prisoners, has explained to younger Americans that “socialism” means Sweden and Denmark.

‘Sanders Had Already Won The Policy Debate’

Zitelmann: Sanders is now out of the race. However, you believe that his ideas have nevertheless prevailed. Why is that?

Norquist: You might think that Bernie Sanders’ withdrawal from the 2020 campaign and the likely victory of Vice President Joe Biden represents a move to the center by the Democrats. Sadly, no. I would argue that Bernie Sanders left the race not because he failed to get enough delegates to win but because he had already won the policy debate. Biden’s threatened tax hikes total $3.4 trillion dollars over a decade. That is three times more than Hillary Clinton threatened. Biden promises to ban fracking, plastic bags (he said plastic, let’s generously assume he meant only plastic bags), expand Medicare with a “public option,” meaning a door through which all Americans could be pushed into a one-size-fits-all, government-controlled health care system, and an energy/carbon tax. What is the difference between Biden and Bernie? They have the same Rolodexes. The same likely White House staffers. The same rhetoric.

Why The Rich Are Being Demonized

Zitelmann: In the Democratic primaries, all of the candidates seemed to be competing to outdo each in terms of their “rich-bashing” rhetoric. Even Michael Bloomberg, himself one of the richest men in the world, was forced to demand higher taxes on the rich before he was forced to withdraw from the race. Where does this hatred of the rich come from?

Norquist: The Democrats need trillions of dollars to buy votes to win the 2020 election. To do that they will require a great deal more money than the $3.8 trillion raised in taxes under the 2019 budget. And they can’t afford to admit that regular voters are the likely target of their new and additional taxes—an energy tax, a Value Added Tax and higher payroll taxes. So Democrat candidates, continuing the strategies adopted by Clinton and Obama, started by demonizing the rich and then promising to tax them—not you, the typical voter. Now, both Clinton and Obama did raise taxes on the middle class—but they talked so much about taxing the rich that even a well-educated voter could be forgiven for thinking that the new taxes were all on the rich. Every new tax voters heard about were announced as targeting the rich (or corporations which, of course, pass on their increased tax burdens to consumers in the form of higher prices and workers in lower wages). The left needs to demonize the rich. It is, after all, their justification for taxing them. Americans do not like the idea of taking money away from someone who earned it.

Zitelmann: A great deal of energy is expended on arguing that the “rich” did not earn their money.

Norquist: Yes, the logic is this: If the rich are only rich because they got lucky, then they never truly earned or deserve their fortunes. This is why Barack Obama told small businessmen in the 2009 campaign, “You did not build that,” when referring to their own small businesses. If you didn’t build it—it isn’t really yours. And, once Democrat logic is accepted, taking it away is not really theft. Nor wrong. Nor immoral. But demonizing the rich has a second advantage for the left. In addition to making it easier to tax the rich and trick voters/taxpayers into thinking they are not the true target of higher taxes, the war on the rich covers up the 50-year failure of the Great Society. The Great Society was launched in 1965 with the promise that the government knew how to help the poor become middle class and self-reliant. Government spending on housing, healthcare and education would instill the poor with middle-class values such as hard work, self-reliance and a willingness to work and save today for a better tomorrow, maintaining a long-term perspective. But the Great Society spent some $14 trillion in giving money to the poor, or more often paying well-paid government employees to “provide services” to the poor, and has little or nothing to show for it in terms of improvements in savings, income, education or work. So rather than admit that they wasted trillions of dollars and concede that they should shut down government job programs that only benefit the Democrat party’s base, the left pivoted to a new problem. Not that the poor are poor, but that there is a large gap between the rich and poor.

This new problem—inequality—can be solved without helping to lift a single poor person out of poverty and into the middle class. One only needs to reduce the wealth and income of the rich. That way we will be more equal. All worse off. But more equal. It is possible for modern Democrats to reduce inequality without doing anything to help poor people or communities. The middle class can suffer while we “reduce inequality.” That they can do. To tax the rich; first undermine their right to keep what they create. Demonize them. To avoid embarrassing questions about the failure of the left’s “war on poverty” you just need to shift the focus to inequality.

‘Immigration Is Our Strongest Competitive Advantage’

Zitelmann: Donald Trump has certainly done some positive things in terms of tax policy and deregulation. At the same time, however, he has increased what was already an extremely high level of national debt and is pursuing protectionist trade policies. I have the impression that Trump has no clear market economy compass. How capitalist is Trump?

Norquist: It’s not clear whether Donald Trump has ever read Hayek. But his tax cuts are straight out of the Ronald Reagan/Art Laffer/Milton Friedman playbook. His de-regulation goes further than all previous presidents combined. His judges will strengthen and repair America’s commitment to the rule of law for a generation. And his unwillingness to be dragged into every stupid idea some European intellectual thought up—windmills, solar to replace real energy that really powers a national economy—has been a godsend. Those who wish to embroil America in every war in every quadrant of the globe have no ally in Trump. Trump knows that war is the enemy of liberty and fiscal prudence. Free trade and immigration are issues where Trump departs from President Reagan and Adam Smith. But as President Trump said before the coronavirus crisis—we are running out of workers in the United States. And the higher wages and jobs growth he delivered reduced the grumpiness of American voters who no longer lash out at immigrants and foreign competitors suspected of stealing their jobs. Trump’s tax cuts, de-regulation, sound legal system and respect for property rights delivered growth to America before the virus and will return when the virus is behind us. Trump’s growth silenced the concerns that drive protectionism and tariffs and stoke fears of immigration. Yes, the wall will be built. America will gain control of its borders, but it will maintain large and open doors. Immigration is our strongest competitive advantage over China, Japan, Russia and most of the world. And yes, our trade agreements need to ensure that our intellectual property is not stolen and reduce the ability of governments anywhere to subsidize trade and disadvantage foreign competition.

Zitelmann: What are your thoughts on the Fed’s low interest rate policy? What does this mean for our market economy system?

Norquist: The danger of near-zero federal interest rates is that borrowing money is seen as “almost” free. The deficit is not the problem. Overspending is the problem. The deadweight cost of government is total spending. The deficit is one element of the problem—like the visible part of an iceberg. But it is the larger, hidden mass of the iceberg below the water line that ripped the Titanic apart. If deficit spending is held down, and taxes are not raised, then there is a limit on spending. That is good. But if deficit spending is “free” or “inexpensive” because interest rates (today) are low, then public opposition to more and more government spending is reduced and government spending will be allowed to increase and weaken the economy.

[danwhobrowses]

America, We Need to Talk

For some reason in these past years the concept of ‘Reason’ and ‘Sense’ has departed your country, I’ve hissed, I’ve simmered, I’ve hit my head against the wall hoping that in the end IN THE END the collective mass of the American People will open their eyes, stop making excuses and realise that for 4 years, America has not become ‘Great Again’ I’ve resisted the urge to unload many a time, but news that Donald Trump is to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize is just too much, because this is literal horseshit. For some part it feels like they’re only trying it just so Republicans can force a rhetoric as if Trump did a better job than Obama - who won in 2009 for easing religious tensions, preventing Nuclear Weapons distribution and profiting, working towards fixing climate change and assisting with the UN - as people die of COVID, cities burn and violence against peaceful protests continue to ravage your country.

I have to say that again, Ravage, because I feel as though some people are blind to the matter at hand. Donald Trump will say something and his cult of followers will believe it, when someone disagrees and presents evidence it’s deemed irrelevant or forged, if a Democrat says something on the contrary they need a full powerpoint presentation to prove it, somehow this mentality has poisoned the American society when the louder people will say something in confidence only for the rest of the world to read and think it’s one of the dumbest shit they’ve ever read. This isn’t just coming from a Brit, this is coming from family in Chicago, a co-worker who moved out of America and worked in the army, Italians, Greeks and someone who was in Hong Kong during the riots. The people who believe in Democracy, Majority Vote, Free Healthcare, Fair Wage, Equal Rights AND international peace that doesn’t look towards World War Fucking Three look at your country in shame because the state of your leadership and how it’s been allowed to continue with ridiculously boneheaded and stubborn reluctance to see the truth. So let’s start with the boiling point shall we, a Nobel Peace Prize Nomination? Have you learned anything from the last year? Or has the far-right got the prize so by the balls that this nomination is used as a cheap add-on to coincidentally peacock the Trump administration in its build to an election. The nomination to Trump has been cited to be in favour of the following things; Israel-UAE relations (aka ‘Saving the Middle East), Serbia-Kosovo deal (aka ‘Saving the ‘Middle East’’), Inter-Korea relations and likely the support of Jerusalem and Hong Kong, and in face value that may sway the common person who knows nothing about these deals. But a simple amount of research cuts most of these at the legs. Let’s talk Serbia and Kosovo, since it’ll directly involve Israel, relations were tense but they have not been at war, they are peacefully not talking to each other. The media will have you think that Peace has been brokered by Trump only in this but in reality Serbia still refuses to recognize Kosovo’s independence, the tensions are still there you can just travel there now. This is an agreement that’s been build up since the economic and trade agreement in 2013. If that year isn’t surprising you that is 3 years before Trump was elected, when Barrack Obama was in office - Republican Public Enemy Hillary Clinton was at the forefront of that when she was Secretary of State. So no, Trump hasn’t saved the Middle East by this deal, mainly because Kosovo and Serbia are in Europe, they have been part of the EU for quite some time and the deal is already jeopardized since Serbia won’t build an embassy in Jerusalem if Israel recognize Kosovo as independent - which was part of the original deal. Also for all the Republicans’ use of ‘fear by Communism’ to slander their opponents they sure love to rub shoulders with countries also rubbing shoulders with Russia and China. So this segues into Israel-UAE, the Arab Nations have mainly been reluctant to recognize Israel as independent. On the 13th August a deal was struck called the Abraham agreement establishing Diplomatic Relations. Except, this was in the making since 2012 and only delayed to help progress Israeli-Palestine conflicts (which Trump’s actions with Israel led to Palestine cutting ties with the administration and his ‘Peace Plan’ falling apart 3 years after announcing it). UAE and Israel had been in conversation before Trump was signed in, but only made headway when the FDD - already funded by the UAE - took over. For 3 years USA did little for the relations, UAE and Israel doing it themselves, it’s only now do the US mediate a peace agreement, which meant that Trump didn’t really do much in terms of convincing both sides, he just made sure things didn’t get out of hand - which was never close to happening since there is little tensions. It was Kushner who requested the meeting and Mossad also had a huge part in it. Also I want to add that the US are only buddied with these two out of fear of Iran - you know, that country that Trump almost goaded into war in January after bombings and the death Assassination of General Soleimani who helped the US in the wake of 9/11 track and hunt down the Taliban, as well as fighting ISIS, how peaceful was that? The Middle East is still in Civil and Proxy Wars, no saving has been done there, the US just were there for Israel and UAE to confess that they’re friends. Which leads me to Korea. The Olympics helped more than Trump did, a shared effort where both countries had to travel and accommodate each other. Tensions may’ve eased in 2016 but they were far from resolved and in 2020 not much is better. Korea still antagonize one another and the North still antagonizes the US, any ‘peace’ the Trump Administration will claim to towards Korea faded quickly. And finally, Hong Kong, the US may be supportive and rightly so but this is again fear of Communism, it should’ve happened sooner but the US was hoping for that big and meaty trade deal with China. And this isn’t months I’m talking about it’s years, the proposal first took place after the Umbrella Movement...in 2014, it was annually brought up in Congress but postponed until the Senate decided to. And after Trump signed it he said he might veto it in favour of the China trade deal

“We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I'm also standing with President Xi: he's a friend of mine." - Donald Trump, November 2019

So really, this Nobel Peace Prize is the product and efforts of other people that set events in motion that Trump was there just to sign his name on. Meanwhile, in the country he is President of, the COVID Death toll has officially risen to 190 Thousand. 20% of COVID deaths are in the United States. Tear Gas/Pepper Spray - which is a recognized chemical weapon not allowed to be used in warfare - is used by Trump Supporters along with paintballs to attack peaceful protesters and Trump calls that peaceful because ‘Paint is not bullets’ - as someone who has been hit with Paintballs from safe range, they will hurt like a bitch and if you don’t wear protective gear they can do enough harm to crack and sometimes even break bone, the asthmatic co-worker I aforementioned that was in Hong Kong also notes that Tear Gas is awful, it may not kill you but it is far from peaceful. In the same breath Trump refuses to condemn a 16 year old carrying an AR and shooting someone in the head. He has also refused to condemn Epstein’s financier Ghislaine Maxwell and ‘hopes that she’s well’...the sex trafficker, but when you mention late Civil Rights leader John Lewis and his words are ‘can’t say one way or the other...he didn’t come to my inauguration’. This is your leader. The embodiment of the standards the country upholds itself to, it baffles me and many many others that the American People Chose a racist, bigoted, misogynistic, careless, self-important, naive, power-mad, severally-bankrupted, reality tv personality man-child, who is also intending to use US Taxpayers money to cover lawsuit fees against him alongside all his other golf trips. The man literally said that no other president has done more for Black People than he has, this is while he profusely condemned Kaepernick taking a knee to protest Police Brutality against Blacks and POC only for years later the world support it as BLM protests still happen because action has not been taken. We’ll also see what happens on the 14th regarding the Felony Hearing of the officers in Buffalo who pushed over Gugino and gave him a brain injury which he is still rehabilitating from after Trump tried to sell him as an Antifa member. Just in case you’re unaware, antifa stands for anti-fascist but Trump will paint that again in ‘Fear of Communism’. If you actually look up this stuff, the web of Trump’s lies unravel, and yet people just forget about. The man is a pro at gaslighting I’ll give him that, I mean leaking e-mails that condemned Clinton right at election time was some cutthroat stuff, but a man who needs to rely on preying on xenophobia, paranoia, fear, racism and invests mainly on smear tactics and dismantling, is not someone who can lead a country to prosperity, the amount of leeway this man gets from his supporters just hurts my head. So let me ask you America, truly, what is it that you want? Because it can’t be this, can it? Protests, Riots, people refusing to wear a simple face mask to limit the spread of a deadly virus because they think it’s a fake thing that the entire world decided to get in on with WHO just to spite Trump? Teenagers carrying guns? Refugees refused asylum and kept in cages? Do you want to keep spending your savings just to go to the doctors? or do you think that ‘Patriotism’ is blindly defending your country’s flaws and clinging to archaic and outdated thinking because centuries ago your country prospered in it? I’ll tell it to you straight: America is not the greatest country in the world, it hasn’t been for a long time. I don’t know what your history books tell you; that Native Americans were fine with slaughter, that the US won WW2 with the military might they always had, that Vietnam was a moral victory, but the present day should tell you that your country is a mess, and the man who has been at the helm for 4 years will not fix it in another 4. There’s only so much of Obama’s policies he can plagiarize as his own; he has left the UN, left the Paris Agreement for cleaner air and energy and all his original campaign members have been arrested, an alarming amount of people associated with him are facing criminal charges - is that not a red flag? Don’t let your thoughts that as a patriot you have to support your country no matter what, true patriotism is not just the love of your country but the hope and strive to better it because you can love it but accept that it has flaws. I mean even I’ll admit that the UK has a lot of its own shit to deal with, doesn’t mean I hate where I live I just know it can be better. If this were anyone else, hell if this were a Democrat the Republican party would be booking them a flight to the other side of the world with the stuff Trump has done and let to continue on with afterwards, through him you went from the United States to an Absolute State and the rest of the world wonder if this will either lead to World War 3 or a Second American Civil War You don’t have to like Joe Biden, but he clearly looks like the lesser of the two evils here, and at least in 4 years time America under him won’t be on fire. If you still don’t like him someone new could be elected after, but right now you are on a downward spiral and need someone who can put you back into a stable place, that man is not Donald Trump. The man who wants to intercept mail-in voting and outcry its ‘risk’ of tampering when he himself voted by mail is not a truthful leader, the man who tried to cancel the World Health Organization when they simply asked to not call COVID a racist name that incited xenophobia after decrying cancel culture is not a moral leader, and the man who said that COVID would peter out and suggested injecting disinfectant into the lungs to combat it only to now suddenly buy out all the experimental treatment so that they can try and engineer a cure in time for the election campaign, is not a wise leader. All the stuff you see in these coming months is just an attempt to win your vote, for the most part it’ll be Trump stamping his name on something other people worked on for years and claiming that he did all the work. So make sure you actually check the truth of these things, research and fact-check yourself with valid, neutral sources. Take off the blinders, take a breath and actually see the full picture. And please, as well as not letting this man have the Nobel Peace Prize Don’t give this guy have a Second Term

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 19, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters,” wrote Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci. Trump and the Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to retain their hold on power, while President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris are quietly trying to move forward.

There are monsters, indeed. Today, New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported that Trump held a long meeting at the White House yesterday with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani; disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, whom Trump recently pardoned for lying to the FBI; and Flynn’s lawyer Sidney Powell. These four are the heart of those insisting—without evidence—that Trump won the 2020 election. They have talked of Trump declaring martial law and holding new elections. In the meeting, Trump apparently asked about appointing Powell as special counsel to investigate voter fraud in the 2020 election.

White House advisers in the room, including White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, pushed back strongly, noting that Powell has yet to prove any of her accusations. Axios journalist Jonathan Swan reported that senior Trump officials think Trump is spending too much time with crackpots who are egging him on to seize power. One told Swan: when Trump is "retweeting threats of putting politicians in jail, and spends his time talking to conspiracy nuts who openly say declaring martial law is no big deal, it’s impossible not to start getting anxious about how this ends."

The country is increasingly ravaged by the pandemic. Friday saw more than 250,000 new infections in a single day. More than 315,000 have died, including 3,611 on Wednesday. More than 128,000 Americans have received the vaccine.

The economy is in recession, but yesterday, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) objected to one-time federal payments of $1200 because he says he’s worried about the deficit. Democrats noted that the Trump administration’s tax cuts for the wealthy and military spending added a projected $4 trillion to the deficit by 2026. Then, just as it seemed both sides had come to an agreement over a coronavirus relief bill, the Republicans scuttled it with a new demand that would rein in the ability of the Federal Reserve to combat the recession. This would take from Biden a key tool. The Republicans seem to be doing their best to undercut the Biden administration so they can regain power in 2022 and 2024.

(Just before midnight tonight, the Senate appears to have reached a compromise. Details are not yet available).

This week, the United States learned of a massive hack on our government and business sector. Intelligence agents as well as Trump's Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, say Russia is behind the attack. Once again, though, Trump refuses to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin. He claimed that the attack wasn't as bad as the "Fake News Media" says it is, and he suggested the culprit could have been China, rather than Russia. Then, once again, he insisted he won the election.

And yet, if the Trump administration models an assault on our country by a group of oligarchs determined to seize power, the incoming Biden administration is signaling that it takes seriously our future as a true multicultural democracy.

Nothing signals that more than the nomination of Representative Deb Haaland (D-NM) as Secretary of the Interior Department. Haaland is a member of the Laguna Pueblo people who have lived in the land that is now New Mexico for 35 generations. She is the daughter of two military veterans. A single mother who earned a law degree with a young daughter in tow, she was a tribal leader focused on environmentally responsible economic development for the Lagunas before she became a Democratic leader.

Her nomination for Interior carries with it deep symbolism. If confirmed, Haaland will be the first Native American Cabinet secretary and will head the department that, in the nineteenth century, destroyed Indigenous peoples for political leverage.

The United States government initially put management of Indian affairs into the War Department but, in 1849, transferred the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the newly created Department of the Interior. Reformers hoped that putting Indian relations under the control of civilians, rather than military, would lead to fewer wars. But the move opened the way for indigenous people to be swept up in a political system over which they had no control.

In the nineteenth century, as settlers pushed into Indigenous territory, the government took control of that land through treaties that promised the tribes food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, and usually the tools and seeds to become farmers. As well, tribal members usually received a yearly payment of cash. These distributions of goods and money were not payment for the land. They were the terms of the deal. If tribes were to give up the lands on which they depended to survive, their people needed a replacement for their livelihoods.

But here’s where politics came in. Tribes moved onto the reservations, either willingly or by force. In the nineteenth century, those reservations were often large tracts of land. To pick up their food and so on, the Indigenous people would go once or twice a month to the agency, essentially a town on the reservation, usually with a school, a doctor, warehouses, and stores. The agency grew up around the man in charge of the agency: the agent.

With Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior, the agents were political appointees. The U.S. senators of the state in which the reservation was located made their choices and told the president, who then made the appointment. While some of the agents actually tried to do their job, most were put into office to advance the interests of the political party in power. So, they took the money Congress appropriated for the tribe they oversaw, then gave the contracts for the beef, flour, clothing, blankets, and so on, to cronies, who would fulfill the contracts with moldy food and rags, if they bothered to fulfill them at all. They would pocket the rest of the money, using it to help keep their political party in power and themselves in the position of agent.

When tribal leaders complained, lawmakers pointed out—usually quite correctly—that they had appropriated the money required under the treaties. But the system had essentially become a slush fund, and the tribes had no recourse against the corrupt agents except, when they were starving, to go to war. Then the agents called in the troops. Democrat Grover Cleveland tried to clean up the system (not least because it was feeding the Republicans so much money) in 1885-1889, but as soon as Republican Benjamin Harrison took the White House back, he jump-started the old system again.

The corruption was so bad by then that military leaders tried to take the management of Indian Affairs away from the politicians at the Interior Department, furious that politicians caused trouble with the tribes and then soldiers and unoffending Indians died. It looked briefly as if they might manage to do so until the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 ended any illusions that military management would be a better deal for Native Americans than political management.

The Interior Department today manages our natural resources as well as the government’s relationship with Indigenous tribes. Placing Haaland at the head of it is more than simply promoting diversity in government. It is a recognition of 170 years of American history and the perversion of our principles by men who lusted for power. It is a sign that we are finally trying to use the government for the good of everyone.

“A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior,” Haaland tweeted after the announcement. “I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.”

A new world struggles to be born.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[newstfionline]

Thursday, January 28, 2021

Republicans Rally Against Impeachment Trial, Signaling Likely Acquittal for Trump (NYT) Senate Republicans rallied on Tuesday against trying former President Donald J. Trump for “incitement of insurrection” at the Capitol, with only five members of his party joining Democrats in a vote to go forward with his impeachment trial. By a vote of 55-to-45, the Senate narrowly killed a Republican effort to dismiss the proceeding as unconstitutional because Mr. Trump is no longer in office. “I think it’s pretty obvious from the vote today that it is extraordinarily unlikely that the president will be convicted,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of the five Republicans who voted to proceed to trial. “Just do the math.” It would take two-thirds of senators—67 votes—to attain a conviction, meaning 17 Republicans would have to cross party lines to side with Democrats in finding Mr. Trump guilty. If they did, an additional vote to disqualify him from ever holding office again would take a simple majority.

Foot of snow blankets parts of Midwest, disrupts travel (AP) A major winter storm dumped more than a foot of snow on parts of the middle of the country while another system blanketed areas of the Southwest, disrupting travel for a second consecutive day Tuesday and shuttering many schools. Several coronavirus testing sites closed Monday and Tuesday in Nebraska and Iowa, as both states saw 12 to 15 inches (30.5 to 38.1 centimeters) of snow in places. At least 4 inches (10 centimeters) of snow was expected through Tuesday across most of an area stretching from central Kansas northeast to Chicago and southern Michigan. National Weather Service meteorologist Taylor Nicolaisen, who is based near Omaha, said up to 15 inches (38 centimeters) was reported in spots between York, Nebraska, and Des Moines, Iowa. He said it’s uncommon for the region to get more than a foot of snow from a single storm, and it has been decades since some cities saw this much.

As variants spread, countries pursue new round of travel restrictions (Washington Post) Governments around the world—including those of the United States, Britain and New Zealand—are moving to impose stricter travel limitations in a bid to slow the spread of new coronavirus variants that experts warn are more contagious. President Biden confirmed Monday that he would extend a ban on travelers from Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland and 26 other European countries. Visitors from South Africa will be banned from entering the United States starting Saturday. New Zealand, which has been lauded for its handling of the pandemic, may keep its borders closed to visitors for “much of this year,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. The new U.S. restrictions come as several countries reconsider eased travel polices amid worry over virus variants that can make people sicker, spread faster and, in some cases, compromise the effectiveness of vaccines.

Biden and Putin Agree to Extend Nuclear Treaty (NYT) President Biden and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia avoided a renewed arms race on Tuesday when they formally agreed to extend the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between their countries. But White House officials said Mr. Biden also confronted the Kremlin leader over the poisoning of an opposition activist and a hacking of government and private computer networks in the United States. It was the first call between the leaders of the world’s two largest nuclear powers since Mr. Biden’s inauguration. But it was being watched as much for its tone as its substance: Mr. Biden vowed during the transition to make Russia “pay a price” for the hacking, and his administration, in its opening hours, demanded the release of Aleksei A. Navalny, whose arrest on Jan. 17 prompted protests last weekend across Russia that resulted in more than 3,000 arrests. The call was, in essence, the opening act of what promises to be a deeply adversarial relationship between the two leaders, and most likely the sharpest turn in American foreign policy since President Donald J. Trump left office one week ago.

‘Lying is a thing presidents do’ (The Media Today/CJR) Adam Serwer, of The Atlantic, reminds journalists and the public that “Biden will lie to you,” because lying is a thing presidents do. “The press and the public should resist the temptation to assume that the Biden administration will always be on the level, or that its dishonesties can be forgiven because Biden’s predecessor wielded falsehood with such abandon,” Serwer writes. “Already, Biden has sought to mislead the public by setting expectations for vaccinations that experts have said are too modest—which will allow the president to declare his approach a great success if the goal is exceeded.”

Calm returns to Dutch cities after riots, with police out in force (Reuters) With shops boarded up and riot police out in force, it was relatively calm in Dutch cities on Tuesday night after three days of violence during which nearly 500 people were detained. In several cities, including the capital Amsterdam, some businesses closed early and emergency ordinances were in place to give law enforcement greater powers to respond to the rioting, which was prompted by a nighttime curfew to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The Netherlands’ first curfew since World War Two was imposed on Saturday despite weeks of falling infections, after the National Institute for Health (RIVM) said a faster-spreading variant first found in England was causing a third of cases. A hospital in Rotterdam had warned visitors of patients to stay away, after rioters tried to attack hospitals in various cities. In Amsterdam on Monday, groups of youths threw fireworks, broke store windows and attacked a police truck, but were broken up by a massive police presence.

The World Is Dependent on Taiwan for Semiconductors (Bloomberg) As China pushes the world to avoid official dealings with Taiwan, leaders across the globe are realizing just how dependent they’ve become on the island democracy. Taiwan, which China regards as a province, is being courted for its capacity to make leading-edge computer chips. That’s mostly down to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest foundry and go-to producer of chips for Apple Inc. smartphones, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Taiwan’s role in the world economy largely existed below the radar, until it came to recent prominence as the auto industry suffered shortfalls in chips used for everything from parking sensors to reducing emissions. TSMC’s chip-making skills have handed Taiwan political and economic leverage in a world where technology is being enlisted in the great power rivalry between the U.S. and China—a standoff unlikely to ease under the administration of Joe Biden. Taiwan’s grip on the semiconductor business—despite being under constant threat of invasion by Beijing—also represents a choke point in the global supply chain that’s giving new urgency to plans from Tokyo to Washington and Beijing to increase self-reliance.

Indonesian volcano unleashes river of lava in new eruption (AP) Indonesia’s most active volcano erupted Wednesday with a river of lava and searing gas clouds flowing 1,600 meters (5,250 feet) down its slopes. It was Mount Merapi’s biggest lava flow since authorities raised its danger level in November, said Hanik Humaida, the head of Yogyakarta’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center. After morning rain, ashfall turned into muck in several villages, where the sound of eruption could be heard 30 kilometers (18 away). Police and rescue services told miners to cease work along rivers but no one was evacuated. The 2,968-meter (9,737-foot) volcano is on the densely populated island of Java and near the ancient city of Yogyakarta. It is the most active of dozens of Indonesian volcanoes and has repeatedly erupted with lava and gas clouds recently.

Amid crisis, Hezbollah ‘bank’ a lifeline for some Lebanese (AP) When Lebanon’s financial meltdown began in late 2019, Hassan Shoumar was locked out of his dollar savings like everyone else in the country as banks clamped down with capital controls. But the young engineer had an alternative. He could still pull out the dollars in his account at the al-Qard al-Hasan Association, the financial arm of the militant Hezbollah group. Stepping in where the state and financial institutions have failed, Hezbollah is providing a vital lifeline for some Lebanese. In the country’s wrecked economy, everyone is desperate for hard currency and liquidity as the local currency plummets in value. At commercial banks, depositors stand in line for hours and fight with managers in vain to access their dollar savings. Most banks have stopped giving loans. But at Hezbollah’s al-Qard al-Hasan people can take out small, interest-free loans in dollars, enabling them to pay school fees, get married, buy a used car or open a small business. They can also open saving accounts there. With poverty rising across Lebanon, Hezbollah provides its community with low-cost schools and hospitals and distributes heating fuel to the poor. Hezbollah continues to pay its fighters and employees in its institutions in U.S. dollars, while everyone else gets their salaries in Lebanese pounds, which lost about 80% of their value in the crisis.

Missiles over Saudi Arabia (Times of London) Iran-backed militias in Iraq are feared to have opened a new front against Saudi Arabia, after a second suspected drone attack in less than four days over the capital Riyadh. A double blast was heard above the city on Tuesday morning. Witnesses said there appeared to have been some kind of missile interception. A similar incident on Saturday was initially blamed on the Houthis, the Iran-backed rebel group fighting the Saudi-backed recognized government in Yemen to the south. However, the Houthis denied it, although they have claimed numerous previous attacks on Saudi cities during the six-year war. Instead, a new militia based in Iraq issued a statement of responsibility. The Alwiya al-Waad al-Haq, or Brigades of the Righteous Promise, said the attack had been “launched solely by Iraqi hands”. An online news channel close to Iran-backed groups in Iraq said the attacks were intended to make Saudi Arabia the “playground of missiles and drones” and that it would become a target of the “resistance” from both north and south.

France says it bombed an ‘armed terrorist group.’ Witnesses say it was a wedding. (Washington Post) The men gathered for a wedding, they said — one more somber than those of the past. Strict rules have warped life in their central Mali village since the extremists invaded: no music or dancing. No mingling with women. Smoke a cigarette and get beaten. Parties, even conservative ones, invite punishment, so they wanted to celebrate quickly in a remote field, according to two guests. Grilled mutton and beef were about to be served when bombs fell from the sky. “We heard what sounded like a plane and then a loud noise,” said one guest, a 46-year-old teacher. “Suddenly there were wounded people everywhere. Body parts everywhere. What happened on the afternoon of Jan. 3 is hotly disputed. The French military took responsibility for an airstrike near Bounti in the Mopti region, saying in a Jan. 7 statement that a pair of Mirage 2000 fighter jets had dropped three explosives on “a gathering of armed terrorist group members” in an area known to be rife with them. The French armed forces said the airstrike killed about 30 men — all militants. But villagers say there was a tragic misunderstanding: Only men were in the field because extremists had banned socializing with women. Guests provided testimony that aligns with reports from Human Rights Watch and a Malian group that conducted an investigation into the airstrike. Those probes concluded that 19 civilian men — some in their late 60s and 70s — died in the blasts.

Ugandan election aftermath (Foreign Policy) Opposition leader Bobi Wine accused President Yoweri Museveni of using the military and the police “to oppress his opponents and to suppress our rights” after he was freed from 11 days of house arrest following disputed elections on Jan. 14. Museveni was declared to have won Uganda’s presidential election earlier this month, winning roughly 59 percent in an election judged by the United States as fundamentally flawed. Wine’s campaign team will decide whether to contest the results of the presidential election and have until a deadline of Feb. 2 to do so.

Pew: How COVID-19 Changed Faith (CT) “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” James, the brother of Jesus, didn’t have a global pandemic in mind when he wrote these words in the opening chapter of his biblical epistle to “the 12 tribes scattered among the nations.” But as the coronavirus closed churches worldwide, a global survey of more than 14,000 people has found that few lost faith while many of the most faithful gained. Today, the Pew Research Center released a study on how COVID-19 affected levels of faith this past summer in 14 countries with advanced economies: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. “In 11 of 14 countries surveyed, the share who say their religious faith has strengthened is higher than the share who say it has weakened,” noted Pew researchers. Overall, a median of 4 out of 5 of each country’s citizens said their faith was more or less unchanged. Leading the pack in strengthened faith: the United States. Americans were three times more likely to report their religious faith had become stronger due to the pandemic: 28 percent, vs. a global median of 10 percent. Next came Spaniards (16%) and Italians (15%), whose nations were two of the worst hit during the coronavirus’s deadly outbreak in the spring.