#the eu elections are even worse because the candidates are like

[laurelwreathring]

show me the local election result predictions show me the predictions show me them show me show me show show me show me

[notasapleasure]

A tale of two Georgias

Note: I wouldn't normally share subscriber-exclusive content from this news site, but I think Shota Kincha's opinions are too important to hide away in an exclusive email this time. If you're so minded, please consider supporting open journalism in the Caucasus anyway and sending some money OCMedia's way.

Highlighting is my own. Of course I support Georgia joining the EU, but absolutely not under conditions that ignore the recent rolling back of democratic freedoms.

---

By Shota Kincha, for OC Media.

On Wednesday, Georgians celebrated a long-awaited recommendation from the European Commission for their nation’s candidacy for EU membership, leaving the country’s candidacy pending just final approval from the heads of EU member states in mid-December. But the Commission’s assessment of the government’s ‘progress’ seemed to be based on wishful thinking, rather than its actions. 

On denying Georgia the status last year, the European Commission outlined 12 ‘priorities’ Georgia would need to address for the decision to be reconsidered — preconditions that largely reflected the spirit of the April 2021 agreement brokered by European Council President Charles Michel between the government and opposition groups.

When the unforeseen possibility for Georgia to formally apply for membership presented itself in early 2022, Georgia’s leadership had already failed on some of the key components of the previous year’s accord. 

Instead of addressing the ‘perception of politicised justice,’ an apparent euphemism for the imprisonment of opposition leaders, most notably Nika Melia in early 2021, the Georgian court imprisoned another prominent government critic, Nika Gvaramia, only five weeks before the European Commission was due to assess Georgia’s readiness for EU membership candidacy.

Instead of the ambitious judicial reform promised in the 2021 Michel deal and mentioned in the EU’s ‘12 priorities’ last year, the ruling Georgian Dream party has continued to shield corrupt judicial officials with a stranglehold on Georgian courts, resulting in more politicised administrative fines and criminal cases against civil activists, political leaders, media managers, or youth with ‘confused orientation’ who risked their freedom to defend Georgia’s pro-Western choice on the streets.

In the run-up to the European Commission’s latest decision on Georgia, the government and security services run by oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili’s goons artificially created an anti-Western parliamentary group, gifted them private channel PosTV, and made violent extremist pro-Russian Alt Info immune to obstruction or challenge. 

If the last five years under Georgian Dream rule had been a steady decline in democratic freedoms, the government’s actions in the months since it applied to join the European Union — including their recent initiatives to clamp down on Georgia’s civil society and constrain protest — far surpassed any and all negative predictions.

But listening to President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, one could have assumed she was discussing an entirely different country. 

Despite Georgia’s government persecuting free media, parroting Russian propaganda against the West, refusing to undertake institutional reforms in a way that included other groups and stakeholders, and satisfying only three of the twelve conditions set last year, the European Commission complimented them with no substantial criticism.

I do not believe the EU should approve Georgian membership candidacy later this year, as the move looks set to validate and entrench the government’s precipitous lurch towards authoritarianism. 

The European Commission’s approach may be based on the belief that denying Georgia candidate status could lead to Georgians becoming disillusioned with the EU and the West. But Georgians have been staunchly pro-Western for decades, perhaps even centuries. 

The real danger to Georgians’ trust in the West comes from the West’s indifference to anti-democratic moves by Georgia’s government, which, if left unchecked, will continue to use state institutions to slowly but steadily shift popular mood and policies towards Russia. 

Even were we to allow that recommending EU candidacy status was a justified decision in Georgia’s best interests, doing so did not obligate the institution’s leaders to legitimise the country’s government in the way they did.

Listening to the widely televised announcement by the European Commission on Wednesday, Georgians could reasonably have concluded that democratic backsliding, state capture by big capital, and a politicised judiciary are consistent with Georgia’s pro-Western aspirations, or that related warnings from local activists and media have been baseless or overblown. 

The announcement could also have created the impression that the ruling party has been delivering on reforms demanded by the EU, a powerful notion less than a year before the country’s next general elections. 

The truth is, however, that in inviting Georgia to join the club while neglecting to call out the government’s shortcomings, the EU is playing a dangerous game, and one it has played before. The EU does not want another Orban, and the South Caucasus definitely does not need another Aliyev.

I may be wrong: perhaps granting Georgia candidate status will still be a wise choice on the EU’s part. But even in its recommendation, the European Commission could have sent a clear message that business as usual would no longer be tolerated. 

What Georgia’s leadership heard instead will become abundantly clear in the coming months. 

[linkedsoul]

HI MY FRENCHIES FROM THE 3RD CIRCUMSCRIPTION OF FRENCH PEOPLE ABROAD aka my French residents of Northern Europe and especially London: (and my English speaking followers who'd like to French elections drama)

Macron's candidate, Vincent Caure, is blatantly lying on his program about his opponent's party, the NFP, which feels very dishonest and, frankly, kind of pathetic? I know Frenchies in London voted a lot for him but PLEASE let's not let a liar get ahead of the race.

He claims the NFP - a coalition of green and leftist parties - will have Mélenchon as Prime Minister. For some reason, the French media is OBSESSED with making Mélanchon (the leader of a prominent leftist party) THE DEVIL. Look. I know some people don't like Mélenchon even on the left. But he's NOT EVEN PART OF THIS ELECTION. Besties: he's not a candidate anywhere. And even less for French people abroad. And even worse: the NFP has NEVER said who they'd send as Prime Minister if they get the majority in the assembly. This is FAKE.

He pretends French people abroad will be doubly taxed because of the NFP wants to put back the "exit tax", and that the NFP is obsessed with the universal tax (aka paying taxes for your country even when you work abroad). The exit tax is a specific tax that affects only people who own A LOT in assets. I have no idea how to even reach to that kind of criteria. I don't think neither me nor any of the French people I know in Dublin have the assets required to have to pay the exit tax. I wish I had that amount of money so I could get taxed on it! Alas, Vincent Caure and I don't live in the same world because it's not even remotely a worry for me. As for the universal tax, it's nowhere in the NFP's program so I guess they're not as obsessed with it as Vincent claim they are.

He offers to put more procedures online such as passpot renewal online whereas the NFP offers nothing. Ok slay king, then run your campaign on that instead of telling lies. Unless this is your only good point?

He claims that the NFP wants to end nuclear energy, which would make us depend on Russian gas. Nowhere is this written on the NFP program. There are only 4 mentions of the word "nuclear" in the NFP program and none of it is associated to the word "stop" or "end", half of them are not even about nuclear energy itself... I don't see where he got that from.

He does agree that the NFP wants to make railways more accessible but argue that they didn't vote for a law making mobility within France easier. Fair! He forgets to mention most of the supporters of this law were his party only and BOTH LEFT AND RIGHT voted against, citing lack of funding for this law as an issue, that the Prime Minister back then brushed away, so take that what you will. Also want to note his only point for this program is that they're going to use the funding for transport that they already have so... ok good? that's not revolutionary. That's just expected.

He also claims that:

the left is the one who led to the far right taking the lead when it's his own party who called for an election. Like. The move no one expected nor wanted except the far right. That was all Macron. That was all your party. You guys flirted so much with the far right that you led them right in, that is NOT the left's fault and even less your favorite scapegoat, Jean-Luc Mélenchon - who, I'd like to remind everyone, is not a candidate for this election oh my god shut up about Mélenchon already I don't care about Mélenchon why are you obsessed with Mélenchon

The left wants a Frexit because of their tax policies (debunked above) and nuclear energy policies (also debunked above). The left is notoriously pro-EU, his opponent is a British-French citizen who probably saw the shitshow of Brexit from the front rows. And even if the left wants to tax VERY rich people trying to avoid being taxed on their huge assets out of France (fun fact: it's for the people who try and get their assets moved to Dubai not to pay taxes on them lmao) and wanted to reduce the use of nuclear energy, that does not equate Frexit, like, I... I don't see the correlation.

The left is planning for 300 billion more expenses and intends to cover for those expenses by taxing people the most. The thing he's not saying is that they intend to tax the richest. It's the rich the target. The very VERY rich. Not you, regular French immigrant to Ireland who struggles with the cost of life in Dublin and cry for a better flat.

ALL IN ALL: Vincent Caure is a liar who ment comme un arracheur de dent et fait sa campagne dessus, ce qui est un peu dégueu.

He cries about potential taxes that would only affect a very, very tiny minority of French people who were probably trying to evade said taxes anyway and tries to frame it as "double taxing French people abroad"

The left wants to tax the rich and good for them and good for us who are not playing in the targeted tax bracket AT ALL.

Macron's party is the one who's fucked us all over; Attal is a notoriously impopular Prime Minister; they're a party for the rich (as proven above by trying to act as if a tax on the rich was gonna be a double tax for everyone like... lmao how out of touch are you) and love to frame themselves as the only right solution QUAND C'EST EUX QUI NOUS ONT MIS DANS LA MERDE

As with the rest of his party, he's obsessed with Mélenchon, who has nothing to do with this specific election since the opposition is initially from the Green Party.

SVP SI VOUS ÊTES DANS LA 3E CIRCONSCRIPTION DES FRANÇAIS À L'ÉTRANGER, VOTEZ CHARLOTTE MINVIELLE AU MOINS POUR NE PAS ÊTRE REPRÉSENTÉ PAR UN CANDIDAT QUI VOUS MENT SANS HONTE POUR AVOIR DES VOTES

and for my English speaking friends: please pray for us all (at least here the far right is not gonna pass but I'd rather not have such a liar for deputee please and thank you)

ET COMME TOUJOURS, ON EMMERDE LE FRONT NATIONAL!

[purplepink-blueberry]

Slovak presidential elections posting by blueberry bc what else would i do, actual schoolwork?

yesterday was the first round but i fell asleep at 11 pm like a child so i couldn't do a summary/explanation. Well. I could. but it would make zero sense. So. Let's do a summary/recap/explanation for the fortunate people who are studying something more useful than Poli Sci (this is a joke, I love studying Poli Sci and I think the knowledge is important, humanities/social sciences are just underappreciated)

so. presidential elections in Slovakia. They happen every five years (the same years the EU parliament elections take place!) and we, shockingly, elect our president.

(A sidenote, a president in Slovakia is kind of like a monarch in a constitutional monarchy, except we choose them, they represent us abroad, their signature is required for legislation to become law and they are the chief army officer, but since we are in NATO and at peace, currently, that doesn't add too much extra responsibility. Legislation is proposed and approved by the parliament, the president just has to sign it. Or they can veto it, or ask the constitutional court to check whether the law doesn't go against the constitution).

After 5 years of having a president that truly deserves a better country to be a president of, we will have a new president and we'll decide in two weeks.

but wait blueberry, didn't you say that you had the elections now?

Yes, I did. For presidential elections, it is required that the winner has more than 50% of votes to actually assume the role and when you have a multiple-party system, this doesn't usually happen. I mean, we had originally 11 candidates, 2 of whom withdrew, so 9 in total. I'd be actually worried if anyone got more than 50% there because that wouldn't be a sign of the healthiest of democracies (not that our democracy is healthy but getting more than 50% in the first round would either mean one of the candidates has a cult base of followers, and cult of personality is Not Good or that somehow half of Slovakia united against something even worse... and I for real don't wanna see that). Okay but back to elections. In the first round, all candidates who have gathered enough signatures in a petition (for them to be a candidate) compete. In the second round, two weeks after the first round, the first two candidates compete.

Later I can do a brief summary of everyone who was a candidate but only like a half of them are actually relevant names (to me).

The person who won the first round is Ivan Korčok and in second place was Peter Pellegrini. If one of these names is familiar from my electionposting in October, that's because I mentioned Pellegrini as he is the leader of Hlas, which is a pretend-social democratic political party (or was? As a president, you can't be a member of any political party in Slovakia, the president is supposed to be impartial).

Korčok used to be the minister of foreign affairs during the "reign" of Matovič (I'll do a summary at some point, it is *unhinged*) but when his party (the liberals) left the coalition, he resigned. Frankly, the only reason he won the first round is because he isn't tied to Fico.

Korčok won with 42.5% of votes, Pelle was second with 37%, third was Harabin with 11.7%, fourth was Forró with 2.9% and fifth was Matovič with 2.1%

In two weeks, we'll see. And I might do more tired electionposting because I will go to my school's election night event. But my prediction is that Korčok will lose.

[eretzyisrael]

What We Can Do About It

Last week I explained How They Did It, how the enemies of Israel – the Arabs, the Soviets, the international Left, and others – turned much of the West against us. What can we do about it?

I concentrated on the ‘softer’ aspects of cognitive warfare, such as the infiltration of higher education and international organizations like NGOs and UN agencies, corporations, the use of social media, the exploitation of minorities with grievances, and the support of public antisemites (e.g., Ilhan Omar). But we should keep in mind that more kinetic actions can also have primarily cognitive objectives. The PLO’s European terrorism during the 1970s paved the way for its conversion from a gang of despicable terrorists into a member of the UN, and for murderer and thief Yasser Arafat to become a “statesman.” The 9/11 attacks against the US changed the media portrayal of its Arab and Muslim citizens from “billionaires, bombers, and belly dancers” to hardworking citizens who are targets for islamophobic hatred (this is not the case with Jews, despite the fact that Jews are far more likely to be the victims of hate crimes today).

Terrorism works on various levels, but on the deepest, visceral one it creates paralyzing fear, which the mind – still subconsciously – tries to rationalize away by distancing itself from the victims and identifying with the terrorists. “Don’t kill me, I am on your side!” the terrorized mind shouts. “I’m one of the good ones!” (e.g, a “Jew for Palestine”).

The counterattack has to be planned, coordinated, and specifically targeted in all of the arenas, soft and hard, in which cognitive war is being waged against us. This is something the State of Israel has never come close to doing. Our efforts at public diplomacy have often been most charitably described as a bad joke, like the campaign to advertise Israel as a destination for gay tourism(“Come to Israel! We have nice beaches and we won’t hang you!”) At best we are reactive, responding to vicious accusations of war crimes, apartheid, and other depravities, usually long after the damage has been done. And we often ignore the cognitive implications of our actions, or the lack thereof.

It won’t be easy. Organized support for anti-Israel organizations (including those connected with terrorism) has been going on for decades, with millions of dollars annually flowing from sources like the George Soros organizationsand the European Union. Social media, especially, is constantly changing and new battlefields appear almost daily. Everywhere you look (e.g., Wikipedia) there is anti-Israel bias. And for every pro-Israel activist there are ten, or a hundred, attacking us.

An effective cognitive counterattack must have two parts: how we speak to the world, and – most important – how we act. Let me take the second part first.

There are basic human instincts that precede the ideas expressed in the UN charter by hundreds of thousands of years. Our actions must affect those instincts in a way that will cause others to respect us, and our enemies to fear us. I am not suggesting that we follow the example of the PLO and hijack planes in Europe, but our response to terrorism and threats from enemy countries (e.g., Iran) can be designed to have the appropriate effect. Humans are attracted to strength. They want to be on the side that’s stronger. They talk about the importance of moral and legal principles, but they bet on the winner. Our actions should radiate power and control, and even ruthlessness.

For example, no terrorist should survive his attack. Israeli security forces and the individuals involved have been sharply criticized, both by Israelis and others, for the “Bus 300 affair” in 1984, when two captured terrorists were executed in the field after interrogation. My contention is that this action sent exactly the right message, both to our enemies – “don’t try this or you will die” – and to the rest of the world – “Israel does not tolerate terrorism against her citizens.”

Our pusillanimous responses to Hamas, which has on numerous occasions killed Israelis and which today holds two Israeli citizens and the bodies of two soldiers hostage, is supposed to be justified for practical reasons, but is a total failure from the standpoint of cognitive warfare. When Israel bombs an unoccupied Hamas installation after arson balloons or even rockets from Gaza have burned crops or damaged buildings, the message that is sent is that we are too weak to protect ourselves. When our citizens are held captive while we supply electricity and water to the Gaza Strip, the message is that Hamas is in control, not Israel. I understand the limitations of our power, as viewed by the IDF, but I believe that they are not weighing the cognitive aspects of the question heavily enough.

Recently, the IDF demolished the home of a terrorist murderer, a citizen of the PA who was also an American citizen, despite a request from the US State Department to desist. This was the correct action from the cognitive point of view, sending the message that Israel is a sovereign state which controls Judea/Samaria, and which does not tolerate terrorism. On the other hand, the continued presence of the illegal Bedouin settlement of Khan al-Ahmar as a result of pressure from the EU and the UN tells the world that Israel does not control the land.

Our greatest enemy is Iran, whose regime has explicitly threatened to destroy us on numerous occasions and is developing nuclear weapons. There are obviously multiple considerations that play into choosing the best response, from a pre-emptive strike on her nuclear installations to a continuation of the campaign of sabotage that Israel has been waging for the last few years. Cognitively, the best approach is the one that publicly demonstrates that Israel has the power to destroy the installations, regardless of the distance or their fortification. This could be a massive aerial attack, or it could be covert action that is made public after the fact. The worst case is that we refrain from taking action because of pressure from the US.

In the soft realm, one priority is to put an end to Israel’s self-imposed cognitive failures. There is no reason that Israelis should be allowed to act as paid agents of the EU or the international Left, as is the case with B’Tselem and numerous other anti-state organizatons. There is a weakly enforced law that requires Israeli NGOs that receive half of their funding from foreign governments to report that, on penalty of a relatively small fine; and even that was opposed by the Left and the Arab parties in the Knesset. It is absurd that these groups should be allowed to operate in Israel. All foreign funding – private or governmental – for political NGOs should be forbidden, period. Representatives of foreign NGOs hostile to Israel should not be allowed into the country.

Speaking of Arab parties, there is a Basic Law that says that in order to run for election to the Knesset, a candidate or list must not “[negate] the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.” This law is interpreted loosely by the Supreme Court, so that Arabs who do precisely that can sit in the Knesset. That must end.

Israel has military censorship, which sometimes makes us look foolish when foreign publications are revealing details that Israelis are not allowed to read or hear from their own media, but at the same time, the Ha’aretz newspaper is allowed to attack the state, day in and day out, often using material from the foreign-funded NGOs. Foreign propaganda outlets make good use of it, saying “even Israelis admit…” This is unacceptable; it borders on treason, and it must stop.

There is a place for traditional hasbara, explanation, or presentation of the news from the viewpoint of the state. I am not sure why everyone is entitled to an opinion and a platform from which to broadcast it, while the state is not. Why not a government TV/radio/Internet news outlet, staffed with professionals who could respond immediately and accurately to false accusations? Doing this properly, so that it would be both authoritative and not boring, would be expensive and require high quality personnel that would not be easy to find; but it is worth doing.

Much of what I have suggested will be criticized because “it violates human rights” or it is “antidemocratic,” or similar things. I don’t disagree. But the idea that Israel has to be a paragon of human rights and democracy is wrong. It is an expression of the antisemitic idea that Jews must always be held to the highest of standards – indeed, to a standard that is continually raised so as to always be out of reach. Israel is not a Platonic ideal state; it is not even the United States. It is a tiny nation with no strategic depth that is surrounded by enemies who themselves violate every standard of civilized behavior. National survival is more important than human rights – especially when those defining the concept of human rights are indifferent (or worse) to our survival.

Abu Yehuda

[thepropertylovers]

What Foreigners Really Think of The U.S. Right Now

The other night, after the kiddos went to bed, we decided to watch the second Borat movie that just came out (have you seen it?). It was insane and hilarious all at the same time, but it got me wondering: what do folks who don’t live in the U.S. think of The United States of America right now? What is their perception of us?

So I decided to pose this question on Instagram and wow. Y’all did not hold back. I want to thank everyone who submitted for your candidness and honesty, even if some of these were hard to swallow. It’s important to note that just because these are their opinions of America, it doesn’t mean it is all necessarily true. Regardless, it was interesting to read everyone’s thoughts and get an outsider’s perspective.

We received hundreds of submissions and couldn’t post them all, but below, people from all over the world share what they really think of the United States at the moment.

Leadership is out of touch with reality and messing things up real bad, not just for the U.S. but also for the world. What’s worse is that half the country is being misled successfully. It just shows poorly on the country all over. -Annonymous

Your president is a disaster when it comes to foreign politics and corona. No class, no knowledge. A joke. Very scary to watch. But half of the voters are happy with it. And that is even more scary. Very difficult to understand the hate and ignorance in your society right now. -Mikkel

It’s just weird. Everything basically. I totally understand now why the U.S. is described as '“flawed democracy” in the democracy index. It’s just a crazy system which is not providing equality among people- regarding the vote especially. This system leads to the fact of the two big parties (similar in the UK basically). But democracy is about diversity in opinions and options. Not just two. -Max

The US is more divided than ever. The two parties cannot work together nor do they appear to want to. The government is no longer run by reason, facts, and policy aiming for the betterment of the entire country and or world in the long or medium run; rather it’s instant gratification for the few who benefit from nepotism. Lies and misinformation are used to build a dictatorship hiding in the form of “patriotism”. And those who could act as a check or balance focus on their own personal gain, putting their needs above those of the persons they should be representing. -Joel

I personally don’t think there is a very good atmosphere in the USA, especially right now, Trump’s administration does not protect the American people or the economy. He only cares about himself and his male-white supremacy. The worst of all is that lots of Americans think Trump is actually a good leader (idk why, honestly). But thank God that people are starting to wake up and fight about what they believe. We can see it through BLM protests, feminist movements, and so on, and the whole world is proud about those people fighting for their rights. America was once the land of dreams, but nowadays (with all that is happening) it is even scary to go there. Lots of things have to change and those changes have to start, voting and defending your rights and your beliefs are the first step. Greetings from Spain. -Antonio

The main reasons I can think of are vote suppression/gerrymandering, expensive health care wealth inequality, racism, lack of fun control… -Brian

Definitely find the hypocrisy of the Republicans so annoying, Trump still being in office, the fact that there has been no police reform or justice for Breonna Taylor, the gun laws, and the COVID numbers just to name a few. -Brian

Here in the UK it seems like CARNAGE over there..don’t get me wrong, it’s wild here too but Trump is insane and it’s really odd seeing so many Americans supporting him. -Dan

Really worried about the fact that you might go for 4 more years with Trump and the fact that he’ll for sure contest the results if he loses. Add to this, all the racial violence and in particular the way some policemen act without being condemned by any judge. And finally the pandemic which seems to be even more out of control than in other countries. This is coming from someone who lives in France where we’re going to be under lockdown for the second time since the beginning of the pandemic (2nd lockdown starting tomorrow evening and will last at least until December 1st 😢). -Estelle

To put a long story short, let’s just hope Cheeto doesn’t get reelected otherwise our UK trade deal will be a disaster and we don’t need any more negative influences in the UK around gender and sexual equality.-Christian

I think with this administration, the US has demonstrated how to shipwreck a whole nation economically, ideologically, socially, and politically within a really short period of time. After just 4 years, we’ve come to associate the US with widespread narrow-mindedness, a lack of respect and courtesy to other nations (and minorities in its own country for that matter), short sightedness when it comes to global phenomena like environmentalism or migration patterns, and a celebration (by some at least) of almost barbaric notions of violence, oppression, and backward thinking, all under the camouflage of its constitution and socio-historic heritage. We’ve really admired the Obama administration over here in Europe, which-despite its flaws and shortcomings- has opened up the US to international partnerships and has established an ongoing discourse shaped by mutual respect and politeness…the contrast couldn’t be more pronounced these day…-Sebastian

I look at our Prime Minister and government and then see Trump and think we really could have it so much worse! Vote!! -Ant

As an American living in London, I can tell you that the news coverage here makes the US look like an absolute joke. Mainly due to 45, his lies, his bigotry, and his insane desire to make covid seem as though it’s a falsehood “created by the left” while hundreds of thousands of Americans have ben victimized by this pandemic. What was once seen as a country of opportunity and freedom, is sadly no longer held to that level of greatness in comparison to its neighboring countries. It saddens me because I had plans to move back home within the next year or so, but if the US continues on its path, I can see myself in London for the unforeseeable future. I can’t live in a country where I am seen or believed to be lesser than another because of my sexual preference. I can only hope and pray that this election brings the change we need to be that country of greatness once again. -Rob

Very poor to be honest. And I’m not necessarily [talking about Trump]- I think the immediate reaction is to blame him. Though, he is pretty awful. There was obviously a huge level of social and other problems in the US, and the current administration has exploited them to the breaking point. Whereas more “skilled” past administrations had the ability to leverage those issues for their benefit, but not let it boil over. I actually thought Trump would be a positive for the US and world- in that his incompetence would force other world leaders to step up. Meaning more equity in how disputes etc. are assessed and the US wouldn’t bully smaller nations. I think the US has hit the point in its journey with capitalism that the USSR hit with socialism in the late 80’s that led to its collapse. Does that mean collapse for the US, I don’t know but the system isn’t providing equity and equality for all as it stands. -Paul

Worried but also hopeful for you guys because I don’t think all citizens in America reflect the current administration. It’s been really great to see people voting early and making their voice heard. No matter what happens just know you did what you could in this moment in time. Even though the current administration provides a scary outlook for the future. As long as the current and future generations lead with love, there will hopefully be a brighter future. Love from Canada. -Ajetha

I've been subscribing to all of the US News since the Black Lives Matter Movement commenced and honestly, it made me scared as a Filipino Asian to step foot in the States ever since. I have big dreams of flying over there and probably working there as an immigrant after I finished college. However, when I found out about the racial injustice that is currently ongoing in the country, I became hesistant of still wanting to live there. Although, I'm positive that there are still people like you two that will be open about working immigrants, I really hope that racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia will end for good among every human beings in the US and also around the world. I do wish and pray that the 2020 US election will make certain amends to the current situation y'all are experiencing because it's getting pretty scary out there. -Harvey I’m an American living overseas working for the US government. I’m trying my hardest to stay overseas so my family and I don’t have to come back to the mess that is the US right now. From politics to COVID, it’s not a good time. While the virus may be surging again in Europe, at least the people comply with the government rules. Sometimes I believe Americans take freedom and liberty a bit too far, especially when it comes to the greater good. -Anonymous

Allthough on social policy the US is no real example for us (I think there is more social ‘security’, more justice, high standards in education for all in most of the EU countries), they always have been a ‘safe haven’ in big international politics. It now feels like ‘they have our back’ doesn’t imply anymore. -Jasper

Well personally I think the country seems in total disarray, instead of focusing on the real issues in the streets both house of the capitol are focused on bashing each other during the election campaign which is a circus due to the sitting POTUS. The obsession with the right to bare arms and the gun culture bewilders most other countries, you have teenagers walking into schools with Assault weapons and yet people still want guns to be available, worst still you ban one type of assault rifle but another just as powerful is kept on sale, it’s plain weird. -Philip

Neither candidate represents their party well. As an outsider looking in, it just baffles me that either of these men could potentially be the leader of the free world...It genuinely feels like worrying times are ahead for the US. -Marc I'm from India and living in Germany at the moment. The race problem in the US is as bad as the class/caste problem in India. Even if I don't have money I can go to a government health center in India. I just had an operation and stayed at the hospital for 18 days here in Germany, I had to pay only 180 Euros, everything else ( the operation and the many tests and scans that followed) was covered by the insurance. When my friends at the US heard about it they were shocked about low the hospital bill. There are really great labs (I'm a researcher) that I would like to work but I have no intentions of working/living in the US for a longer period of time. -Maithy

I think the US has become a joke to the rest of the developed world. Neither candidates running for president are fit to run such a powerful country. I can't help but feel after the election if Trump wins the left will riot and if Biden wins the right will riot. The country might just rip itself apart. American politics has zero empathy and zero morals. Honestly its terrifying. -Andrew

The US has always been a bit confusing to me - the two party system, the focus on religion, the divide in income and possibilities- as well as being the beacon of light in the fight for human rights, the strong personal pride in creating caring societets, the blending of and openeses for ethnicities and cultures... But for a while politics have become not at all about politics, religious beliefs are taking charge in policy work, the wealthier part shows little companion towards the less wealthy, the public spending is way above budget year after year while health care seems to be crazy expensive and not for all. The intrusion of US interest in politics in other countries are blunt to say the least, creating conflict where human lives have no value if they’re not US lives... School shootings that seems to be acted upon as that is part of normal lives, and schools to expensive for even middle class kids to study at... This is a shift in trust and soft power that affects all of us. -Olof

To be honest, I couldn’t come to the US right now, it scares me. The leadership, the gun laws, the violence and the divide of the nation. It sucks, because I love America and have been there 7 times in the last two years from Australia for work... but not anymore. I’m not coming back now until peace wins. -Anonymous

The fact that such a hate filled government is presiding over what is one the greatest countries in the world is scary. And it is seriously mind blowing that out of such a powerful country filled with some of the greatest minds in the world it’s these two men are the best you can do to be your next president. Unbelievable. Seriously unbelievable. -Rachel

I think the orange dude in office is making you guys look bad. But also, good (?). Seeing the black lives matter movement and so many of you stand up to the problems your country faces has been inspiring. One thing our countries have in common is how we are divided into very distinctive opposites sides. I mean, where do all these racists, bigots, utterly, madly conservites people came from? I few like a few years ago things did not seem so much as a boiling pan about to explode. Or maybe they were all hiding and when a lunatic like them rose to power (how that happened still boggles my mind) they all showed their true colors. It’s scary. I hope Trump doesn’t get reelected. Brazilians loooove to imitate americans🙄, so if he gets reelected it makes that much probable that our lunatic will also be in office for four more years. P.S. have you guys watched the show Years and Years from HBO? A really good watch is this election times! ☺️ -Taty

Re. The US atm. Unfortunately your president has made your country a laughing stock around the world and he's destroyed relationships with allies. It's gonna take time to rebuild all of that. He's also moved an entire branch of your government to the far right, even though the majority of the country if left/centr of left. So you've a supreme court that doesn't represent you and it's looking like they're going to try and take away rights from people. You have a healthcare system that doesn't look out for its people and there's this bizarre fear of universal healthcare that seems insane to every other 1st world country. If if Biden wins (and I really hope he does for everyone's sake), there's going to be a lot of work in undoing the damage Trump has done before he can even get into what he wants to do. All the while you've an ultra conservative highest court. There's also the massive political division and the systemic racism. It's a lot. It's not impossible, but it's going to take so much time and people who want it to change. -Ciara

I’ve been sitting here for an hour thinking about your question and there are many different outlooks I could raise so I’ll keep it generic. I’ll start with the elephant in the room known as Covid. Each day, our morning news informs us of what your leaders are doing and daily case numbers in the US. We sit here completely shocked at how your government has let it reach this point. You may have heard that Melbourne has just come out of one of the strictest and longest lock downs in the world. I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone to have to do, but I will say, I feel much more comfortable to be able to go to the shops knowing the numbers are at about 2-3 a day instead of in the thousands. I do think that your government does need to address this now, could even be making it compulsory mask wearing. It’s hard for me to comment about your economy as we don’t here much about it, but I will say Trump ‘says’ make America great again, let’s get more jobs, they are pro life, yet how is someone who is prolife not doing anything to stop a virus that is killing people? Isn’t your unemployment rate worse (pre-covid) than what it was when Obama was president? I think as a generic outlook, if change isn’t made in the election, the outlook from a Australian does not look like it would be something you’d want to be apart of. I love America. Have visited a couple of times, even thought about moving there, but at the moment, I’ve never been more thankful to not be there. -Ben

[militant-holy-knight]

Tom Kratman’s Caliphate Review: Disturbingly Prophetic

Its easy to forget that outright right-winged/conservative literature actually exists though admittedly it’s hard to find those with actual merit nor enjoy the same popularity as other types of works. I’ve came across one example written by retired US Army soldier Tom Kratman whom you may or may have not heard about if you are familiar with the Sad Puppies incident from 2015, where the Hugo Awards were biased against writers with conservative leanings. Kratman is someone who delights in offending left-wing sensibilities by his own admission and it’s reflected in his works that often deal with themes like fighting Muslim terrorists in sci-fi settings. One such of these works is Caliphate, written in 2008 and it struck me how... prescient this book was about the contemporary times and may well still be for the future.

The premise is as follows: Islamic terrorists seize nuclear weapons and use it to nuke three American cities during September 11 (as well as London and Israel). The American outrage against Muslims spirals into the election of a third-party populist candidate who promises vengeance against this attack, which he does by simultaneously nuking all Islamic countries in the world (and North Korea for good measure). This disaster leads to an massive exodus of Muslims into Europe who migrate there and thanks to their massive birthrates, they are able to hijack countries by voting for hardcore Islamist parties (as democracy must abide by the majority). They transform Europe - or at least Western Europe or the countries associated with the EU - into a Islamic empire, the titular Caliphate which functions like a hybrid of the modern day Islamist regime like the Taliban, ISIS and Boko Haram (public executions, lashings, women can’t be seen outside without being covered), and the Ottoman Empire (conscription and brainwashing of dhimmis into military service).

The story follows two parallel narratives: one in the distant future over a century after the terrorist attack where America has transformed into a totalitarian empire know as ISA (Imperial States of America) which is in cold war against the Caliphate in Europe and a second one set in “present days” when things are relatively normal but then we witness the events quickly fall apart. The first one follows John Hamilton, an disillusioned American soldier who is recruited by the CIA to infiltrate the Caliphate and investigate a trio of Canadian scientists who are working in a virus to destroy America. The second one follows Gabrielle, a liberal German woman that sees the collapse of Europe up close and tying them together is that she is the ancestor of one of the main characters. These narratives are told simultaneously and are always accompanied by critical quotes of Islam in their opening.

You’d think a work like this would be simply “AMERICA FUCK YEAH” and “FUCK ISLAM” over and over, but Kratman actually does a surprising amount of nuance. For one, it’s made clear that this America is really a dystopia and not an ideal place to live, reflected by its actions and Hamilton’s thoughts about it - at one point, US soldiers carry out ethnic cleansing against Moros in the Philippines and Hamilton is disturbed even after someone close to him died because of them. And while the book doesn’t hold back in bashing Islam, not all of them are portrayed as intolerant religious fanatics - there are genuinely good characters and even some grey ones with complexity added to them. For that matter, even non-Muslims can be villains too so it isn’t a black and white kind of work.

A surprising amount of world-building was put in place to make this world interesting: it’s established that the USA has occupied Canada and the Philippines, England has turned into an absolute monarchy, China has become some kind of transhuman empire, only a portion of Europe is actually under the Caliphate control with most of Eastern Europe under Russia control (because of course) and it’s heavily implied Israel has carried out a final solution against Palestinians. This can however can be a detriment because all these interesting paths are presented but never truly explored. We never see how the UK is under the absolute monarchy, nor this Russian tsardom and we only hear whispers about how bad China is in the distant future (which is implied to be worse than the Caliphate). The one that truly does get any exposure is the Neo-Boer State which was established in the southern half of the African continent by European refugees fleeing from Muslims in their own country and has a section of the story taking place there.

Besides Hamilton, there are other viewpoints in the story with the ones after his following German brothers Hans and Petra, two Christian siblings that live in the Caliphate and are taken apart by the devishrme-like system. He becomes a janissary soldier, while she becomes a servant in a Muslim household. Their stories are actually far more compelling than Hamilton since their struggles are more personal while Hamilton wouldn’t be out of place in a video game where he starred as it’s generic Space Marine protagonist. Hans remains a Christian despite his outward conversion to Islam and actively rebels against Caliphate culture which leads to him adopting a crusader identity, while Petra’s storyline explores the woes faced by women under a fundamentalist Islamic regime i.e. not unlike what those who endured Taliban or ISIS regime.

And make no mistake: the story never holds back on the graphic content. There is plenty of violence including impalement, crucifixions, sexual attacks and etc, which may be a turn off for many readers, and it doesn’t help they have to drive home how dystopian this setting is. It may come across as over-the-top as it made me wonder how plausible this Caliphate could even function (it’s established that the Caliphate can only function in a slave-based economy or taxing the dhimmis, which they can’t afford to abuse or exile since they’d collapse). The Arab Peninsula was once unified under Muhammad and his four successors who drove out all Christians, Jews and polytheists from their lands, but then fell into tribalism and stayed that way for centuries with only Mecca and Medina (the only relevant sites of Islam) being controlled by outsider Muslims.

I know I make the story sound unrealistic and fantastical, but the main takeway from this book I had was how prophetic the story was in regards to the current and political atmosphere. Keep in mind that what I am about to write was published in April 2008, in a completely different scenario than the one we live:

The insane American president who nukes the Islamic world is very Trumpesque and shares similar slogans (”WE WILL MAKE THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS PAY”). He is basically what leftists believed Trump would actually do if he was elected like put Muslims in internment camps like the Japanese-Americans in WW2.

Great Britain actually breaks out from the European Union, except under much different circumstances: rather than voting themselves out like Brexit, they turn into an absolute monarchy once again and become completely isolationist.

The rise of an brutal, terrorist regime mirrors the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria that rose to prominence during the Arab Spring in 2011.

A large-scale migration of Middle-Easterns into the West triggered by some kind of disaster, only it was an genocidal attack in the book rather than the consequences of a regional movement that led to the collapse of MENA states with the Arab Spring.

The “present day” narrative also presents scenarios no different than the current reality of Europe with no-go zones where migrants of Muslim background are involved in criminal activity and target the native population as seen in France, Germany and Sweden.

Islamists infiltrating democratic institutions in order to impose their values as seen with many neighbors in Belgium and the Netherlands where Muslims are the majority to the native population.

Russia expanding their control over Eastern Europe mirroring their foreign policy to consolidate their regional superpower status.

China being up to no good with technology.

And of course a deadly virus engineered to destroy political rivals, though this time by rogue scientists working for Muslim terrorists rather than China.

It’s possible that some of Kratman wrote was already true of his time which served as basis for the present day narrative. But reality was much different back then: Obama was yet to become President and Bush was still in office (and nobody had an idea how the former would turn out), China was less despotic then than it’s now under Xi Jinping, the Russo-Georgian War was still to take place and migration to the West was relatively low compared to after the 2015′s refugee crisis, the UKIP was considered a fringe party and the UK leaving the European Union was a distant dream. Nobody was talking about no-go zones, but then again the Internet wasn’t as big back then as it’s now. Rather than writing about the modern political atmosphere of his time, Kratman envisioned a possible future which he predicted fairly closely and at the same time, it spoke about issues that are relevant to anyone who isn’t afraid to speak about the problems regarding Islamic ideology or integration of migrants into their host countries.

What depressed me the most about the book is that it’s dystopian reality may be our own future. It’s an common concern for conservatives and right-wingers that Muslims become a majority in the West - a boast that they never cease making - soon which might lead to an eventual clash of civilizations. A quarter of Belgium might be Islamic and this is possible because of enabling from leftist politicians that flirt with radicals for convenience and consider the values they promote like women and LGBT rights to be an acceptable sacrifice to overthrow conservative capitalism. This kind of behavior is actually acknowledged and mocked by Kratman, as Gabrielle is an radical SJW that hates Western conservatives more than Islamists to the point this leads to the breakdown with her relationship with an Egyptian migrant that converts to Christianity and ends up moving to the USA before becoming a authoritarian regime.

The book presents Islam’s conquest of Europe as a complete surrender without a fight - the migrants just breed like rats and vote for Islamist parties to hijack the government through legitimate means and one American ambassador chides Gabrielle and her people for abandoning their own values and allowing this to happen. This probably speaks a lot to the more cynical among us who see our governments bending over to outsiders over their own people and see where it might be headed. Personally I don’t believe a caliphate is where the future is headed, as it provides no real attractive alternative that the West has presented, but it certainly won’t stop some people from trying and there will be certainly a fight.

Are we really going have to look forward for an revived Ottoman Empire in the heartland of Europe where Christian boys are whipped into slave-soldiers, girls are sold to harems like cheap prostitutes and non-Muslims live like second class citizens being forced to pay outrageous, humiliating taxes like the jizya? Hopefully not, but the possibility of terrorists acquiring nukes is an always constant one, and with the Iranian nuclear program will push it’s neighbors to do the same as form of deterrence if they feel threatened. Knowing how fragile Muslims states are and that if those nukes fell into the wrong hands, the events of the book could be precipitated but luckily for us, nuclear armament is expensive and takes a lot of work which not even the wealthiest countries like Saudi Arabia can afford to develop it themselves, let alone the poorest ones like Syria and Iraq so that might not be a reality just now.

Do I recommend this book? The world is very interesting, it’s actually a bit more complex and nuanced as both sides don’t come off as “bright” (albeit the Caliphate is presented as worse). If you want to see a book that talks about issues you find relevant like immigration and terrorism from a conservative perspective, this is a must-read. The main protagonist can be very dull whereas the secondary protagonists are more compelling - it depends on how much you like military heroes written by an American veteran I guess. While the ending to the main story was satisfying on itself (the present day ends on a sad foregone conclusion), it sets up a sequel with many plot threads going unresolved. It’s disappointing to me since this is a standalone book and Kratman hasn’t indicated any plans on writing a follow-up, though if he did it now I am sure he would have done so without a completely different perspective than the one he has in 2008 and he would have certainly got more material to work with. 

P.S. This book has a Skanderbeg reference, so it’s an instant win for me.

[warsofasoiaf]

Hello.

This is probably a stupid question, but what do you think of the UK General Election (As a rather disillusioned Englishman) and the manifestos, (or lack thereof) of the main parties? It seems to me that choosing between the sacked-numerous-times-for-lying-in-journalism Boris Johnson compared to Jeremy “Anti-NATO” Corbyn is like choosing between crawling in broken glass or crawling in hot coals. There’s only been strawman points made, wondered if you had any looking as an outsider with no bias to either party? Thanks.

It’s not a stupid question, but take into account, I’m not an unbiased observer. I want a continuing strong relationship between the UK and the US, I believe our alliance serves both American and British national interest, and I want us to cooperate on matters such as security concerns and countering Russia and China. 

Anyway, I feel really bad for the UK voters. Their primary parties have been taken over by militant partisan tribals devoted to their own particular blend of junk political science and nonsense interpretations of history that glorify their tribe. Both are distressingly comfortable with prejudice if it gets them votes, both are habitual liars, both are cynically devoted to victory at all costs, both are comfortable with illiberal dictators.

Boris Johnson is a huckster, but even that seems too generous because at least a snake oil salesman can have a dandy sales pitch that’s fun to listen to. Johnson is the result of the cult of Brexit. He’s established himself as the candidate that can get Brexit done but he lacks the clout to press the EU on these points. Stuck in the weaker negotiating position, Boris played a hand that everyone knew he didn’t have. His campaign on Leave should have shown him for who he is; once he is called on to actually deliver what he promised, the only thing he delivers is awkward walkbacks and excuses. His manifesto, at least as I understand, is more about winning votes than a strong and clearly articulated vision. He’s trying to position himself as a capable and trustworthy candidate that comes across with all the integrity of a schoolkid who says “I didn’t do it” when his hand is caught in the cookie jar. 

Corbyn is also quite dishonest. Being against Boris Johnson should be a shoo-in, but the man is so toxic that people can’t even hold their noses long enough in the voting booth. He bullied out dissent in the Labor Party to establish a pseudo-cult of personality. He’s cynically trying to exploit the Remain camp to vote Labor as the opposition despite his own anemic campaign for Remain was largely due to his own power-grubbing. His anti-NATO stance and belief that they were the ones who caused the Euromaidan is nothing short of parroting a Russian conspiracy theory because he believes it suits his own personal interest. He believes himself to be Clement Attlee, but he’s Jim Callaghan ready for another Winter of Discontent. 

Neither one is committed to anything but their own personal power. Pity the Lib Dems can’t get anything.

I wish I had a solution that could get the UK back on track, but I sadly don’t have one. I hope things work out for you all, but I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

-SLAL

[adventures-in-asexuality]

‘Home’ Alone

You may have heard that Boris Johnson has recently become the leader of the Conservative Party in the UK, and, as such, the Prime Minister. This wasn’t an election open to the general public; party leaders are elected by the members of that party, and it’s no real surprise that the Conservative Party members like conservative candidates.

This isn’t a post about that, per se; there are plenty of other people detailing all of his failings and horrifying attitudes and behaviours. It’s just an illustration of how the political situation in this country is devolving faster and faster. I started talking about this in 2014, just a couple of years after I first got on tumblr at all, and I’ve been talking about it ever since, whenever I have the mental fortitude to do so - which, right now, isn’t often. 

But, hey, what’s another list of my deepest fears? 

I wrote a post a year or two ago with some of the things that we’re facing here, in the UK. I’ll link the entire post, but here is the most important paragraph:

‘But. I have been saying this. I said it when reports came out of the huge number of people dying within a few weeks of their disability claims being denied or revoked. I said it when a coroner went so far as to name the DWP as the cause of death on a death certificate for a disabled person. I said it when we started seeing stats of the huge proportion of cases of denied benefits that were winning at appeal or tribunal (and the huge barriers to even getting to appeal or tribunal in the first place). I said it when we heard about the suicide baiting in disability assessments. I said it when we heard that, even if you could get them, disability benefits were leaving people cold and hungry.’

These aren’t stopping.

Back in 2015, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities announced that they were going to investigate how the UK was treating disabled people. The report came out in 2016, and, as summarised here, found ‘‘grave and systematic’ violations of the rights of disabled people’. There’s no enforcement method for this, though, and the government were free to disagree and to carry on exactly as they were. Which they did. 

In 2016, the Brexit referendum happened. One of the topics that I remember very clearly from that time was the Conservative promises that they could write a new Human Rights Bill, since we would no longer be bound by the EU’s rulings on human rights. This was, of course, presented as a good thing, though I’m not even sure entirely how. All I remember was thinking about all the rights that we already knew were being violated, about how it was so obvious that a UN Committee was investigating it, and thinking: Why would a government ever write their brand new human rights bill to enshrine rights that they are already violating?

The answer, of course, is that they won’t. 

We haven’t heard anything more about the supposed brand new human rights bill since then - hell, we haven’t even left the EU yet - but this is always at the back of my mind, casting a shadow over my day-to-day life.

Because what this means for me is that my country does not want me. I can never be at home here because I am not wanted here; because my country would rather people like me die quietly, preferably in a way that doesn’t impact on their statistics, and leave the abled people alone. 

What does this have to do with asexuality, then? Well, I am ace and arospec and a lesbian, and there are two very obvious consequences of this.

Firstly, I don’t have a family. Anyone who’s been following me for a while will know this already, but here’s the bottom line: I am estranged from my family for many reasons, including that I am queer. This is a story everyone knows, I’m sure - it’s easier to list queer people of my acquaintance who do have a family - but it does remove one of the common support networks that people have. 

Secondly, I don’t expect to be in any kind of significant relationship any time soon. Don’t feel sorry for me or tell me to meet more people; it’s just a natural consequence of liking very few people and also being a bundle of trauma and disability. I’m used to it. The real problem is that this removes the other common support network, and most people in life assume that you have either one or the other. 

Coyote wrote a piece recently, On “single”, that’s relevant here. The whole post is well worth reading, but in it, ey comments on one of the conversations we’ve repeatedly had with each other: the issues with emergency contacts. You’re supposed to have someone who would drop everything to come help you. And, realistically, people expect this person to be either your partner or your immediate family. After all, those are the people that you can count on, right?

(Wrong. But we all know that.)

Coyote commented on how untenable this is in ir post, and I’m just going to quote the relevant part here. 

‘Ever since I left my family, I’ve been intensely aware of how, if I were to go for too long between jobs, or if I were to get severely sick, there’s practically no one close at hand to intervene or take care of me. And that weighs on me. That makes my life feel tenuous and unstable in a way that’s more far-reaching for me than simply not having a romantic partner. It would be different if I had solid career prospects and enough savings to coast on indefinitely, but I don’t.’

I want to underline that this is how the state of being singled affects us all. Not just the traumatised ones, not just the disabled ones, not just the ones who face other difficulties and marginalisations. All of us. This is always only survivable by the lucky ones. 

So where does this leave me? I have a bunch of progressive disabilities. I’m barely managing to hold down a job at the moment; I’ve given up having hobbies, seeing friends more than a couple of times a year, leaving the house at all except for essential errands, and I’m still constantly exhausted and in severe pain. All I do is work and rest for the next day’s work, and I’m still ill too often for my employer. I drag myself to work in so much pain that I’m propping myself upright, typing one-handed and slowly collapsing over my desk, and people still assume that I’m malingering, that I should just stop complaining and do my job better. 

And these are progressive disabilities. They are only ever going to get worse.

You can see, now, why the gutting of social safety nets is a very personal issue for me. 

Let’s recap. The government is aggressively uninterested in supporting disabled people, so when (and it will be when) I can’t manage to hold down a job no matter how much I injure myself in the process, I won’t be able to rely on them for such extravagant things as a roof over my head and semi-regular meals. People who support such cuts often say that people on disability benefits are just malingering, that real disabled people would have their family or partner care for them, but even setting aside what an awful situation that puts carers in even if it works as planned (and it is an awful situation), I don’t have either of those support networks. I’m on my own now, and, barring some extremely unlikely events, I’ll stay that way even when I can no longer support myself. 

This means that I don’t have a home. 

That’s a little overdramatic: I have somewhere to live at the moment. I’m even lucky enough, now, that I can live by myself; I have lived with strangers before, and it didn’t work well. I don’t want to repeat the habit. I can shape my space around me to some extent, and I do have a roof over my head, and both of these are important; I don’t want to trivialise that. 

What I don’t have, though, is any sense of security or welcome. I live here, and I have possessions here, and, bit by bit, I’ve even acquired nonessential items (even if every time I acquire something that wouldn’t fit in a suitcase packed in the dead of night, I panic a little bit). I’m always aware, though, that this place is only mine for as long as I manage to keep up full-time employment; as soon as I’m forced out of that sphere, I’ll need to be elsewhere, and I won’t have elsewhere to be. 

My welcome in this country, in this city, in this house is measured only by my participation in the capitalist workforce, and as soon as I involuntarily exit it, I will be unwelcome everywhere. 

Home is supposed to be the place that you’re always welcome, right?

Yeah, I don’t see that happening any time soon. 

This is the point where people start talking about wider communities, like the ace community. It’s an understandable impulse; if the normal support networks fail people, we want to think that there are backups. That smaller communities are still there to help us. 

I’ve talked before about not feeling welcome in the ace community for a variety of reasons, but that’s not entirely relevant; sure, I’m not at home here, but even if I was, there’s a bigger barrier here: we don’t have resources for this. (I feel like I should be talking more explicitly about the aro community here - because, at least to some extent, this would seem to be a more common aro-specific issue than an ace-specific issue - but I find it hard to think that it would be appropriate, since I'm not meaningfully involved in the aro community, largely because it's pretty clear I am unwelcome.) Most ace community resources are focused on dealing with people’s journey to recognise themselves as ace and how they can navigate their relationships afterwards - and even though that can be a large part of people’s lives, it’s not the be-all and end-all, and isn’t even on the radar for some of us.

This isn’t to say that this entire issue is just due to a failing of the ace community; this is a large and systemic problem, and it feels pretty self-defeating to throw any amount of effort at it at all. We also don’t talk about it, much, though, and that, I think, is the greatest disservice. It can feel like so much of ace community resources are devoted to reassuring aces that they are okay as they are and, from that basis, helping aces find partners, or at most reassuring unpartnered aces that just because they’re single now won’t mean that they’re single forever, that we ignore almost completely the logistical challenges of going through life without the societally expected support networks. 

We can’t solve this entire problem by ourselves - that would require completely rewriting society. But maybe we can include it in our directory of problems, understanding that this is an ace issue and finding or creating resources for it accordingly.

[lhs3020b]

Some notes on recent polling developments (long, fairly depressing)...

The YouGov MRP figures came out last night. This is notable because in 2017, the multilevel-regression approach was the sole one that spotted the possibility of a hung parliament. We all ridiculed it at the time - I'll confess that I side-eyed it too. And then - well, we all know what happened to Theresa May, don't we? So, the MRP thing deserves to be taken seriously. And unfortunately, this year, it's looking grim for us. Briefly, the MRP is forecasting a Tory majority. They're also predicting that all opposition parties (bar the SNP, who only stand in Scotland) will lose seats. Labour in particular look in the danger-zone for a collapse, and contrary to their bullish predictions, the Liberal Democrats are also forecast to lose seats. (Note that this is with respect to their current strength - technically, the MRP result gives them a gain of 2 seats on where they were on the 9th of June. They currently have 19, due to defections from various other parties.)

I'll admit that I don't want to believe the MRP results, but this has never been a data-denialist blog, and I don't intend to start on that road today.

One caveat is that the reporting on the MRP results has ben remarkably-bad. The actual YouGov page is here: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/11/27/yougov-mrp-conservatives-359-labour-211-snp-43-ld- Buried a long way down the page, they say this: "Taking into account the margins of error, our model puts the number of Conservative seats at between 328 and 385, meaning that while we can be confident that the Conservatives would currently get a majority, it could range from a modest one to a landslide." As far as I can tell, the "majority of 68" figure is derived by treating 317 as a working majority and assuming that the Tory vote lands right at the upper end of their confidence-interval. This is poor statistical practice for a variety of reasons. It's also a bit questionable in terms of parliamentary arithmetic - the "working majority" thing depends on how many Sinn Fein MPs Northern Ireland elects (they don't take their seats, so count toward neither Government nor Opposition tallies). And we won't necessarily know how many that is until, well, December the 13th.

(Also, a further health-warning is that apparently the model isn't able to fully-represent some local phenomena, such as independent candidates, and the effect of the Brexit Party's partial stand-down is also apparently somewhat-unclear. The last caveat is that the analysis assumes data that has already been collected - that is, if public opinion changes between now and polling day, then obviously existing projections could become obsolete. This will still be a possible source of error even if the MRP sample is statistically-unbiased and the underlying theory/analysis is all sound.)

However, even the best-case scenario for us gives the Tories 328 seats, which is both a working and a (very small) absolute majority.

Obviously, this is not a good situation for us.

While not quite a landslide, nonetheless an inflated Tory majority will be devastating for this country. The stuff they'll do will be awful. Brexit will happen. There'll be a bus crash late next year, when the transition period ends. (No, they will have no plan for this - they won't feel they need one, as they'll be secure in power until 2024.) There'll be a Windrush for resident EU citizens. They'll trash the economy. They'll probably crash the NHS - the only question there is whether they do it through accidental negligence or through deliberate malice (say, an ideologically-driven trade "deal" that gives President Trump everything he wants on a silver platter). Nothing will be done about the country’s escalating housing crisis. They'll double down on all the maddest of the madcap "law-n-order" stuff - expect an explosion in jailable offences, accompanied by lengthy minimum-sentence tariffs and further restrictions on legal aid. They'll also resuscitate their plans to manipulate the parliamentary boundaries, and change electoral laws in their favour. The media? Expect no surprises from them. The newspapers are largely already Conservative Pravdas. The BBC - nervous about its precious Royal Charter - seems to be in the process of declaring itself for the Tories too.

Bluntly, if the Tories get re-elected this year, they'll gerrymander things so you have little chance of getting rid of them in 2024.

Perhaps this is the key thing to understand about Boris Johnson: really, he's less Britain's Trump, and more Britain's Victor Orban. He'll leave just enough vestigial democracy intact to make what he's doing plausibly-deniable, but he'll busily rearrange the furniture to favour himself and his friends. If he gets re-elected this December, you can expect to be seeing his face into the 2030s. The only reason I put the cut-off as early as that is that I expect the coming climate-crisis will wreak havoc with the Tories' internal coalition. (Oh you've built all your luxury millionaire mansions by the seaside? How nice for you, especially now that the sea is literally in your parlour. Umm, whoops.)

What can be done? Well, the first thing is to reiterate some discussions I've seen on Twitter recently. The TL;DR of them is that hope doesn't have to be something you feel - it can be something you do. (And that's just as well, because I'll admit that 2019 has destroyed what traces of social optimism I was clinging to. I'm dreading the bad end that's coming to us next month, but I also fully-expect it.)

So, my advice remains as it has been: on December the 12th, turn up, and vote for whoever you judge most likely to beat the Tory.

Remember, the MRP approach is fallible. "Mortal, finite, temporary" is absolutely in play here; no model is any better than the data that went into it. Or, indeed, the date when it was calculated. And at the end of the day, the only poll that genuinely-matters is the one on December the 12th, and that hasn't actually happened yet. (Though admittedly, given the storm-surge of pre-emptive grief that's flooding Twitter today, you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.)

As for the horrible mess that are our opposition parties, I'll repeat what I said in 2017: it's OK to vote for a least-worst option. You're not perjuring yourself or committing any moral sin, rather you're trying to be a grown-up. Part of the package of being an adult is making the best of bad situations.

It absolutely does suck - believe me, this is one of the most soul-destroying election campaigns I've ever seen. Every single party has clown-show'd itself. All of them have done things that are ridiculous, inept or otherwise ghastly. (Well, maybe not the Greens - I haven't heard of any specific scandals surrounding them - but their cardinal sin is that they have no plausible prospect of winning the election.) But even then, the barrel we're going to have to stare down is going and voting for them anyway.

(As a related case-in-point, one factor that seems to have helped the Tories win their unexpected 2015 majority was that a contingent of left-wing voters simply stayed at home on the day. While it's hard to find concrete statistics on, nonetheless anecdotally, this absolutely was a thing. A lot of people were demotivated by Labour's confused and incoherent campaign, left cold by all the bothering about fiscal rules, and alienated by things like the mug with "controls on immigration" on it. All of those are 100% valid criticisms. Except, except, except ... it helped an even worse party back into office. The theory of "if the choices are bad, sit it out" has been tested to destruction. It turns out that looking the other way is also a choice, and not necessarily the best one.)

I would add that there are also real questions to be asked about the utter vacuum of political strategy of people nominally on the anti-Tory side - it seems the Opposition spent the summer fixated on the minutiae of House procedures, while never stopping to ask why they were on this battlefield to begin with. Meanwhile the Tories largely-ignored Commons process, and instead sent a political appeal straight to Leave voters. It lost them a lot of individual legislative battles (and I'm not minimising their defeats - they were important!), but it put them in a good strategic place to win an election. And in the long run, it turns out that was what mattered.

It's hard not to feel bitter while thinking about the events of spring and summer. Perhaps if Jo Swinson had been less blinkered about Jeremy Corbyn, perhaps if Labour could have had the minimum sense to call a Vote of No Confidence when BoJo was vulnerable, perhaps if the collective Opposition had been able to recognise the huge wave of unharnessed political energy washing through the country during the petition back in March, perhaps if Change UK had managed to be something other than an unfunny joke, maybe if Corbyn had taken the anti-semitism problem seriously in 2018 and had actually done something instead of sitting on his hands and letting it metastasize to the point where it derailed his election campaign ... but, no. That's for some other, better timeline, not the one we live in. We seem to live in the world that resolutely and firmly chooses the wrong fork in every road. I don't know whether our timeline quite qualifies as the Bad Place, but it's certainly a place full of bad choices.

In a weird sort of way, though, this brings us back to the key theme. Whatever you might think of what's happening in this election - and goodness knows I'm as appalled as anyone else - nonetheless, your vote matters. Use it. As we're seeing, this is the ultimate limitation on their power, and the one chance we have of stopping them.

So once more, let me reiterate: turn up. Vote against the Tory. Do it as a hopeful action, even if you don't feel hopeful. If nothing else, do it so that when the bad things happen, at least you can say you tried to stop it. I wish I had something less bleak to offer here, but this is where we are.

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: November 2020

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of November 2020 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

Nobody was expecting Donald Trump to concede defeat gracefully, but bloody hell, between the completely batshit insane conspiracy theory bollocks from himself and the rancid Trump offspring to Rudy Giuliani making complete fools of themselves even before he had to give a press conference from the parking lot of a landscaping firm as nobody checked which Four Seasons it was, before threatening to outlaw Twitter because people made fun of his little table (yes, that sentence does make sense), nobody could have expected just how tempramental toddlers are now thinking it's a bit much

...although somehow the Tory government managed to have an even worse response, because not only did posting a boilerplate jpeg to congratulate Joe Biden for his victory the laziest response possible, but then it turned out that they only had a celebratory jpeg for a Trump victory and hastily edited it on Paint so that Biden’s name was on there, but did a cack-handed job of it even though a.) Common sense dictates you have one for each candidate ready in advance, and b.) Given they had several days to accept which way the wind was blowing, the fact they did the most cack-handed job says everything you need to know 

Smirking cretin Priti Patel has bullied Home Office staff and, having initially tried to bury the report, the best the Tory government could come up with to try and make this go away was claim that she was bullying her subordinates by accident while proven liar Boris Johnson claimed she had done nothing wrong, numerous members of the Tory government either said that as they hadn’t seen her bullying anyone she must be innocent or tried claiming she was “accused” of bullying instead of found guilty of bullying, and to top it all off we had Michael Gove’s wife Sarah Vine accused anyone calling Patel of being a bully racist while Alison Pearson said Patel can’t be a bully as she isn’t tall enough. Also, did I mention this came out during national Bullying Week?

...and just a thought for Jess Phillips after she decided to weigh in, considering it’s on record that you bullied Diane Abbott (and have gleefully said how you told her to “Fuck off” on various occasions) it's not a good idea for you to try and act as you’re above bullying as you will get called out for your hypocrisy

Murderer Amanda Knox thought it would be a really funny joke to suggest that, no matter what the election result, the next four years couldn’t be as bad as the four years she spent studying abroad.  You know, those four years where she murdered Meredith Kercher and got away with it

So it turns out that the moral compass of the Tory government says that it is fine for Dominic Cummings to be happy to sacrifice the elderly if it protects the economy during a pandemic while displaying that he doesn’t know how herd immunity works, purging 21 MPs from the party for not buying into his No Deal Britait Jonestown, siphoning hundreds of millions of pounds into the pockets of his mates in various dodgy contracts, or flagrantly violating the lockdown rules by driving several hundred miles to Durham (where he owns a house he doesn't pay council tax for) after testing positive for Covid - but as soon as he calls Carrie Symonds “Princess Nut Nuts” he’s out the door...for a staged photo op, even though he is remaining in his job until December, which is when he was going to leave anyway

...and we should mention Laura Kuenssberg bullishly stating that Cummings was going nowhere in the wake of Lee Cain being told he could leave when his contract is up in December but they want to make it look like he is being fired, but within twelve hours saying that Cummings would always be leaving in December as a blog post in January stated, which not only asks if anyone has checked the archived version of that blog in case any edits were made in mid-November, but also how she can justify her £290k a year salary if she can get a story that badly wrong that Cummings’ blog disagreed with her

There’s a reason why Lindsey Graham isn't popular in the Senate and it isn’t because he questions if Biden won the election, it's because he’s telling people to “misplace” the votes for Biden which they are counting so that Trump could claim that he won Georgia instead of losing Georgia, demanding a recount, then losing Georgia

Once again proven liar Boris Johnson demonstrated that lockdown rules apply to the little people but not to him or his inner circle, as he met with fellow Tory MP Lee Anderson in person rather than via Zoom as the lockdown rules state, didn't wear a mask as lockdown rules state, and clearly didn’t social distance as a picture of him with Anderson taken during the meetings shows they are not two metres apart as lockdown rules state, which means that he had to spend two weeks self-isolating as a direct result 

Has anyone told Keir Starmer that The Board of Deputies weren’t on the ballot for Labour leadership?  Because by his performative act of refusing to restore the party whip to Jeremy Corbyn after his performative suspension, which he did after the BoD stamped their feet and demanded the whip not be restored, he’s not doing a good job of demonstrating leadership

First of all it was news that Steve Bannon uses Twitter, as surely he should have flounced off for Parler years ago.  But secondly, the real news is how he used his Twitter account to call for Anthony Fauci to be beheaded - at which point he suddenly couldn’t use his Twitter account anymore

According to Iain Duncan Smith putting the UK into a second lockdown is “giving in to the scientific advisors” as if during a pandemic, which the last time I checked was a scientific matter, you should instead be listening to Julia Halfwit-Brewer, Dan Wootton, Alison Pearson or Isabel Oakeshott rather than people qualified to talk about what to do in the face of a global pandemic 

Nice Guy Rishi Sunak proposed a return of Eat Out To Help Out for Christmas.  You know, the thing which has been directly linked with causing a spike in Covid numbers in August?

Tory arrogance was neatly summed up by George Eustace casually saying that, if Lurpak didn’t want to incur the massive price hikes of Britain crashing out of the EU without a paddle, all they have to do is move their entire base of operations to the UK

The fact that Disney have been trying to justify their refusal to even issue royalty statements to Alan Dean Foster for his novelisations of the Star Wars and Alien franchises and have simply been pocketing the revenue made by the books continued sales by claiming they only purchased the license and not the liability, which is a particularly unique interpretation of copyright law

It was only a matter of time before The Daily Mail started trying to create dirt about Marcus Rashford because he has the sheer gall to say that feeding children is not a bad thing, which they did by reporting the horrors of him...buying a house for his mother

Twitter troll Ben Bradley had a stellar month, first by standing up in Commons and asking why there isn't a Minister for Women while also showing a terrifying inability to understand what equality is, and soon followed that up by quoting Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech by claiming that it was about equality - only for Bernice King to tell him that, no, her father’s speech was about eliminating racism from our society

I think that it's time for The Daily Express to admit that, when they're running articles saying that it’s Remainers who are to blame for Trump getting dumped onto the street, that maybe they have a problem

The Streisand Effect still hasn’t reached WWE judging by their continuing to double down on demanding their employees independent contractors stop earning money via third-party platforms manifested in their releasing Thea Trinidad from her contract in spite her Twitch account always being under her real name and not her WWE moniker of Zelina Vega

It was a coincidence that the Jewish Labour Movement decided to hold their annual conference on the Palestinian Day of Solidarity.  Of course it was...

This month it was Fin Taylor who demonstrated just how far from satire HIGNFY has strayed with his “Bomb Glastonbury and kill all Jeremy Corbyn supporters” joke in response to Joan Bakewell lying about Corbyn breaking the law - and, afterwards, Taylor was generally being a smug twat about it on his Twitter - which also serves to show how Tim Davie is fine with booking comedians whose acts have plenty of questionable content contained within it if it guarantees the Tories escape criticism

This month’s example of Steve Baker making himself a walking punchline with no self-awareness came from him howling that further lockdown measures would be a violation of terms set out by the European Convention on Human Rights - yes, the exact same convention that Baker has a.) Repeatedly accused of meddling with British affairs and is an example of the EU nanny state, and b.) Frowns upon things such as Steve Baker repeatedly voting against allowing child refugees to be reunited with their families

Nothing says “worker happiness” quite like GameStop running a competition for their stores to post Tik Tok dances where the store which is voted the winner receives prizes such as an Amazon Echo, a Visa gift card, and the privilege of working an additional ten hours during the week of Black Friday.  Wait, did I say “worker happiness”?  I meant to say “Dickensian shithousery” where employees are expected to compete so they can work more hours

Of course the “We’re not racist”s of Twitter had an issue with Sainsburys Christmas ad because it didn’t appeal to white men due to having a black family, in much the same way that Compare the Market’s ads don't appeal to white men as they’re not Russian meerkats

Professional victim Laurence Fox thought it would be a good idea to get into a slanging match with The Pogues while lying that Fairytale of New York would be banned from the airwaves.  It went about as well as could be expected

It wouldn’t be Remembrance Day without The Sun or The Daily Mail exploiting it for some obvious ragebait, and this year was no exception with both “papers” posting a photo of Extinction Rebellion posting with a banner in front of the Cenotaph protesting climate change - a photo taken two days earlier, but they held off on posting it until the day itself to get the rage flowing, because they needed something as neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Meghan Markle were within a mile of Whitehall

This month it was Ernest Cline who demonstrated a lack of understanding of the Streisand Effect by ordering DMCA takedowns on anyone who posted an excerpt of Ready Player Two online, which mainly served to help the internet realise which the actual excerpts were and which the parody versions were - because it was pretty hard to tell them apart otherwise...

“I’ve been silenced”, shrieked Suzanne Moore in an interview with the Telegraph, fatally undermining her argument in the process.  Funny how the people who have been “silenced” keep doing that, isn’t it?

Because we haven’t heard anything idiotic from Jake Paul in a while, Jake Paul decided to say Covid isn’t real and flu has killed just as many people.  So I give it a week before his older brother Logan feels he has to one-up this and say the Holocaust was fake...

And finally, not for much longer, is Donald Trump and his complicity in trying to organise a coup - but not a very good coup, as his minions at Fox News had to exaggerate how many people were actually protesting about him losing an election and crying about it - which was further undermined by his inability to tell Michigan and Minnesota apart

[opedguy]

Pelosi Urges Biden to Skip Debates

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Sept. 25, 2020.--Urging 77-year-old former Vice President and Democrat nominee Joe Biden to skip the debates with 74-year-old Donald Trump, 80-year-old House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) repeated her previous Aug. 27 on CBS “This Morning,” when asked if she still believes Joe should not debate Trump.  “I do, not that I don’t think he’ll be excellent, I just think that the president has no fidelity to fact or the truth,” Pelosi said, making no sense. If she really thought Joe would beat Trump in the debate, you’d think it would help his chances on Nov. 3.  Pelosi often accuses Trump of  the very things she’s guilty of, a lack of “fidelity to the Constitution of the United States.”  Pelosi said Sept. 20 when she said she would consider impeaching Trump to stop him from replacing the late Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Pelosi said she has more “arrows in her quiver.”       

      Pelosi has so much “fidelity to the Constitution of the United States,” she willing to abuse her Article 1 impeachment power to start another proceeding against Trump, this time for daring to replace Justice Giinsburg.  Pelosi can’t possibly think that appointing a High Court replacement by an incumbent in an Election Year is a high-crime-and-misdemeanor.  Yet Pelosi says Trump has no “fidelity to the Constitution.”  Pelosi filed two impeachment articles against Trump not for high-crimes-and-misdemeanors but because things didn’t work out with the 22-month, $40 million Special Counsel investigation, conducted by 75-year-old former FBI Director Robert Mueller.  How much “fidelity to the Constitution” did former FBI Director James Comey have when he opened a counterintelligence investigation based on “probable cause” from former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fake dossier.    

         Pelosi has so much “fidelity” to the Constitution, she had no problem joining her fellow House Democrats accusing Trump of Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential campaign when she knew Hillary’s dossier was filled with Russian disinformation and outright fabrications by 56-year-old former MI6 British spy Christopher Steele.  “Why bother?” Pelosi asked, Trump will just lie his way in the debate.  But Democrats, especially Biden, only tell the truth, like when he said with a straight face Sept. 18 that Trump was responsible for 200,000 Covid-19 deaths.  Biden and Pelosi have so much “fidelity” to the truth that they lay the blame on Trump for the deadly coronavirus AKA CoV-2 or Covid-19 global pandemic.  Both are so honest they’ve made Covid-19 the No. 1 2020 campaign issue.  Pelosi or Biden know that if the shoe were on the other foot, Democrats would have done no better, maybe worse, managing the virus.   

          Pelosi’s real anxiety concerns Joe’s memory that shows all of his 77-years and then some.  When Joe faces Trump Sept. 28 in the first debate in Cleveland, he says he’ll be “fact-checking” Trump, something doubtful when he’s forced to answer Fox New Chris Wallace’s questions.  While Wallace is no fan of Trump, Joe will be forced to talk about some specifics about how he would have done things differently managing the Covid-19 crisis, so far only saying he’d mandate face-coverings in federal jobs.  Joe doesn’t want to answer his backing of the Iraq War, but even more controversial, toppling Col. Muammar Gaddafi Oct. 20, 2011 on his watch.  Toppling Gaddafi, like the Iraq War, opened the floodgates of radical Islamic terrorism in Libya, resulting in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, killing 52-year-old U.S. Amb. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.      

       Trump’s been very clear about his opposition to involving the U.S. military in endless Mideast wars, something former President Barack Obama and Biden continued during his eight years in office.  Trump will remind Biden about his backing of the Saudi proxy war in Syria, causing 500,000 deaths and displacing 15 million Syrians to neighboring countries and Europe.  Forced immigration quotas from Syria on the European Union pushed the U.K. to pass Brexit June 23, 2016, eventually breaking off from the EU Jan. 31.  Biden wants to talk about the success of the Obama-Biden economy that had real U.S. Gross Domestic Product [GDP] at less-than two percent for eight years in office.  Pelosi, like other Democrats, worry that Biden could get surly, possibly combative, if Trump raises his 50-eyar-old son Hunter’s work on a corrupt Ukrainian energy company board.      

       Since winning the Democrat nomination June 5, even before, Biden doesn’t take direct questions from the press, instead prefers to orchestrate press events with carefully scripted questions-and-answers.  Things will be different Sept. 28 when Wallace asks questions of both candidates, letting voters decide who answer them best.  Pelosi doesn’t want Joe debating because she thinks Joe has the presidency wrapped up, so why take any chances with debates.  Pelosi was asked about her ongoing feud with Trump, admitting it helps her fund-raise.  “Well, I don’t care what he says about me.  Every knock from him is a boost for me.  If he wants to help me raise money, he can keep knocking me,” Pelosi said, admitting that she benefits from the tiff.  Whether admitted to or not, Biden has low expectations going into the debates.  If he survives without a major gaffe, it’s a big win. 

About the Author

 John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.  

[armeniaitn]

As Lukashenka Turns To Geopolitics, The West Faces Learning Curve In Belarus

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/politics/as-lukashenka-turns-to-geopolitics-the-west-faces-learning-curve-in-belarus-51800-24-08-2020/

As Lukashenka Turns To Geopolitics, The West Faces Learning Curve In Belarus

With hundreds of thousands of protesters flooding the streets of Minsk in recent days as Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka put the military on high-alert warning of a foreign-backed plan to oust him, the standoff in Belarus shows no signs of subsiding.

The embattled strongman has been back-footed by the massive, unprecedented demonstrations demanding he resign in the wake of the August 9 presidential election the protesters view as fixed.

And with nowhere else to turn to, he has gone looking to the Kremlin for support.

Lukashenka — in power for more than a quarter-century — has in recent days even accused European Union countries of plotting a “color revolution” to topple him and warned that NATO is massing troops on Belarus’s western border.

The military alliance flatly rejects the charges in what appears an attempt by Lukashenka to elevate his full-blown domestic crisis into a geopolitical one reminiscent of standoffs between Russia and the West across the former Soviet Union.

Despite Lukashenka’s rhetoric, the events in Belarus remain domestically driven.

EU flags and ambitions of Western integration have not been a factor in the demonstrations that have spread across the country, with protesters and opposition figures such as exiled presidential candidate Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya repeating that the protests are motivated by the desire to freely choose a leader and are not part of an anti-Russian or pro-Western movement.

But with poor relations and high suspicions between Moscow and the West, the EU and Russian responses to ongoing developments in Belarus are being shaped — for better or worse — by past experiences in Georgia, Ukraine, and Armenia.

“Everybody knows the Russian playbook after 2014 and is concerned about it, but the West and Russia are being far more careful now than before,” Paul Stronski, a former director for Russia and Central Asia on the U.S. National Security Council who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told RFE/RL. “The protests in Belarus are not geopolitical and the West isn’t looking to change that.”

Walking A Tightrope

European leaders have been quick to express solidarity with the protesters, but the EU has offered a calibrated response to the crisis that suggests the bloc’s leaders are wary of antagonizing the Kremlin to avoid military intervention by Russia on Lukashenka’s behalf.

While eager to defend democratic values, fair elections, and the rule of law, European leaders have hedged their response. EU foreign ministers have called the election results fraudulent, agreed on sanctions, and demanded the release of protesters unlawfully detained, but have not backed the opposition’s call for new elections.

Instead, the bloc has urged dialogue between the government and the opposition to foster a “peaceful transition of power.”

“The tone from the EU suggests a clear acknowledgement of a Russian role in the outcome and that there is still some hope that it’s possible to engage with Russia constructively,” Joerg Forbrig, the director for Central and Eastern Europe at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin, told RFE/RL.

Crisis In Belarus

Read our coverage as Belarusians take to the streets to demand the resignation of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and call for new elections after official results from the August 9 presidential poll gave Lukashenka a landslide victory.

Finding a constructive solution with Russia on the stalemate in Belarus would involve the EU overcoming the lack of trust that cratered relations with Moscow following its 2014 annexation of Crimea and the ensuing war in eastern Ukraine.

But the events in Belarus vary markedly from those in neighboring Ukraine in 2014, which were a direct response to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to abandon European integration and reforms in favor of the Moscow-led Eurasian Union. This led to the EU and Ukraine’s future political orientation becoming a central factor of the protest movement that led to Yanukovych’s departure and Russia’s intervention.

In Belarus, the situation remains different, with the focus on the erosion of rights and opportunities during Lukashenka’s 26-year reign as president.

This has led some commentators, such as former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, to argue that the 2018 revolution in Armenia — where mass demonstrations led to the resignation of longtime President Serzh Sarkisian — is a more instructive example for Belarus.

In an August 18 op-ed, Bildt said Armenia offered the best template for current developments in Belarus, where fresh elections could pave the way for a new government. While Armenian protests pushed out Sarkisian, the new administration led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has retained the country’s pro-Russian policies.

“To ensure a smooth process, Belarus’s external orientation should be kept off the table,” Bildt wrote. “The election and broader struggle must be solely about democracy within the country, and nothing else.”

“Russia doesn’t always intervene if a previous partner loses an election. They can live with power transfers and Armenia is the best recent example of that,” said Forbrig. “Russia is still shaping its approach in Belarus and has shown in the past it can be adaptable.”

Looking For A Toolbox

But unlike Sarkisian in Armenia, Lukashenka shows no signs of leaving office on his own accord and shouted at protesters during a visit to a factory that “there will be no new election until you kill me.”

Despite the nationwide protests against his rule, Lukashenka still appears to enjoy overwhelming support among the military and security services and, unlike in Armenia, the Belarusian authorities had no qualms about using force against their citizens, violently breaking up demonstrations, detaining people in mass, and reportedly torturing protesters.

With Lukashenka making it clear he intends to hang on to power and no clear path towards a political transition on the horizon, the EU has few other policy options than the sanctions and support that it has already offered.

Maryya Sadouskaya-Komlach, a Belarusian journalist and program coordinator at Free Press Unlimited, told RFE/RL that she believes the EU was not making enough use of the preexisting mechanism it already possesses, in particular the European Endowment for Democracy (EED), an organization founded by the bloc to support civil society and political activists. The EED has been notably quiet during the weeks of protest in Belarus, which Sadouskaya-Komlach thinks sends a signal of indifference to the protesters.

Meanwhile, sanctions appear to be the main option in the EU’s toolbox, but with Belarus being sanctioned in some form or another by Europe since 1997 and not having changed course by now, the utility of the sanctions seems limited. “The EU wants to use targeted sanctions as a symbol of its tough actions against Lukashenka, but it is instead a symbol of its policy failure,” Sadouskaya-Komlach said.

A Confused Kremlin

The current situation is also a policy conundrum for the Kremlin.

Regardless of how the current situation ends, Moscow will retain significant influence in Belarus.

The economy relies heavily on Russia, which effectively subsidizes Minsk with low-cost oil and gas shipments and the two countries are well-integrated — a union that the Kremlin is keen to deepen.

Furthermore, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lukashenka have a famously tense relationship, with the Belarusian president eroding his own standing with the Kremlin by resisting Putin’s push for deeper economic union.

But Lukashenka’s dominance of Belarusian politics creates a quandary for Russia.

Unlike in Ukraine, where the Kremlin has spent decades cultivating pro-Russian politicians, parties, and oligarchs, Belarus has few alternatives for Moscow to support. Similarly, Tsikhanouskaya, who is in exile in Lithuania, and her campaign, which allowed members of Belarus’s traditional Western-funded opposition to dominate the postelection Coordination Council, are viewed with suspicion by Moscow.

“This can’t be a situation like Armenia because Lukashenka won’t give up,” Angela Stent, a former U.S. national intelligence officer on Russia and a professor at Georgetown University, told RFE/RL. “I can’t see him giving up peacefully, let alone negotiating him leaving the country or holding new elections.”

For the time being, Moscow appears to be backing its problematic partner in Minsk as he tries to cling to power.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently warned that the situation in Belarus was a “continuation” of the tug-of-war between Russia and the EU over Ukraine in 2014 and claimed that the thus far very peacefully protesting opposition wants “bloodshed.”

“No one wants a repeat of Ukraine in 2014 and no one wants to do anything that will provoke Russia,” Stentsaid. “There is a very limited toolbox for the West here.”

Read original article here.

[ladystylestores]

Duda declares victory in Poland’s presidential election, with polls too close to call

Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, of the center-right opposition Civic Platform party (PO), told a rally in the city Sunday that the election had been close as predicted, but once votes were counted “I am sure that we will win, for sure.”

According to an exit poll presented by state broadcaster TVP and conducted by Ipsos, Duda had 50.4% of the vote when polls closed Sunday. Trzaskowski got 49.6%. The exit poll estimated an election turnout of 68.9%, the highest in 25 years for a presidential election.

The exit poll by Ipsos has a margin of error of two percentage points for each candidate. Official preliminary results are expected Monday.

Speaking at a rally in Pultusk on Sunday, Duda said he was accepting victory based on the exit polls.

“Thank you to all my fellow Poles who voted for me and cast their votes. I want to thank you with all my heart because this turnout shows how much you care about our country,” he said.

Duda invited Trzaskowski to the Presidential Palace on Sunday evening to “shake hands.”

In response, Trzaskowski thanked Duda on Twitter for the invitation, but added, “I think that the most appropriate time will be after the election results have been announced.”

Poland’s National Electoral Commission (PKW) said it would hold a news conference when the results are determined, likely Monday.

Duda’s victory — if confirmed by final results — would be seen by the nationalist ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party as a validation of the populist policies it has pursued since coming to power in 2015.

Election issues

During campaigning, Duda sought to mobilize his more conservative, largely rural base with appeals to traditional Catholic values and a promise to maintain popular social welfare policies, such as a child allowance and lower pension age.

His focus on the issue of LGBTQ rights — at one point describing them as an “ideology” worse than Soviet-era communism — highlighted the deep cultural divisions in this Central European nation of 38 million people.

Duda’s reelection may help the PiS consolidate power after losing control of Poland’s upper house, the Senate, to the opposition in parliamentary elections last October. Its ruling coalition still narrowly controls the lower house, the Sejm.

The government’s radical reforms to the courts and stance on LGBTQ issues, supported by Duda, have already put Poland on a collision course with the European Union.

But with Duda in the presidency for another term, the PiS — led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski — is likely to continue on the same path.

Duda has built close ties with US President Donald Trump since welcoming him to Warsaw in 2017. He received a boost from Trump last month, when he became the first foreign leader to visit the White House after months of coronavirus lockdown.

Trump has suggested that some of the US troops he plans to withdraw from Germany may head to Poland.

Global impact

The outcome of the election could reverberate beyond Poland.

The country is a major beneficiary of EU funding and the bloc as an institution is popular with Poles. A Pew Research Center poll published last October found that 84% of those surveyed in Poland had a favorable opinion of the European Union.

But if the Polish government moves further to weaken the rule of law, in the view of EU leaders, its position in the bloc could be damaged.

The European Commission has already launched several infringement procedures, including Article 7, over Poland’s radical reforms to the judiciary, which the PiS insists are necessary to root out corruption.

In campaigning, Duda argued that the very close cooperation between president and government was in the interests of Poland and should continue.

Trzaskowski told CNN before the election Poland needed a “balance of power where the president of the Republic can cooperate with the government as needed, for instance when it comes to restoring good relations with the European Union, but who is ready veto legislation for instance that meddles with the rule of law.”

Poland should again be a constructive member of the European Union rather than being marginalized, he said.

“That’s why it is very important to restore good relations with our closest neighbors. And, you know, we have the same goals, even with this conservative government when it comes to security, when it comes to our relations with Russia, with our Eastern neighbors. But we just have to be strong and influential and that’s the goal for the president of the Republic.”

CNN’s Susannah Cullinane contributed to this report.

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Why France is hiding a cheap and tested virus cure

By Pepe Escobar – Posted with permission The French government is arguably helping Big Pharma profit from the Covid-19 pandemic What’s going on in the fifth largest economy in the world arguably points to a major collusion scandal in which the French government is helping Big Pharma to profit from the expansion of Covid-19. Informed French citizens are absolutely furious about it. My initial question to a serious, unimpeachable Paris source, jurist Valerie Bugault, was about the liaisons dangereuses between Macronism and Big Pharma and especially about the mysterious “disappearance” – more likely outright theft – of all the stocks of chloroquine in possession of the French government. Respected Professor Christian Perronne talked about the theft live in one of France’s 24/7 info channels: “The central pharmacy for the hospitals announced today that they were facing a total rupture of stocks, that they were pillaged.” With input from another, anonymous source, it’s now possible to establish a timeline that puts in much-needed perspective the recent actions of the French government.Let’s start with Yves Levy, who was the head of INSERM – the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research – from 2014 to 2018, when he was appointed as extraordinary state councilor for the Macron administration. Only 12 people in France have reached this status. Levy is married to Agnes Buzy, who until recently was minister of health under Macron. Buzy was essentially presented with an “offer you can’t refuse” by Macron’s party to leave the ministry – in the middle of the coronavirus crisis – and run for Mayor of Paris, where she was mercilessly trounced in the first round on March 16. Levy has a vicious running feud with Professor Didier Raoult – prolific and often-cited Marseille-based specialist in communicable diseases. Levy withheld the INSERM label from the world-renowned IHU (Hospital-University Institute) research center directed by Raoult. In practice, in October 2019, Levy revoked the status of “foundation” of the different IHUs so he could take over their research.

A picture taken on February 26, 2020 shows French professor Didier Raoult, biologist and professor of microbiology, specialized in infectious diseases and director of IHU Mediterranee Infection Institute posing in his office in Marseille, southeastern France. - Raoult reported this week that after treating 24 patients for six days with Plaquenil, the virus had disappeared in all but a quarter of them. The research has not yet been peer reviewed or published, and Raoult had come under fire by some scientists and officials in his native France for potentially raising false hopes. (Photo by GERARD JULIEN / AFP) French professor Didier Raoult, biologist and professor of microbiology, specializes in infectious diseases and director of IHU Mediterranee Infection Institute, poses in his office in Marseille, France. Photo: AFP/Gerard Julien Raoult was part of a clinical trial that in which hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin healed 90% of Covid-19 cases if they were tested very early. (Early, massive testing is at the heart of the successful South Korean strategy.) Raoult is opposed to the total lockdown of sane individuals and possible carriers – which he considers “medieval,” in an anachronistic sense. He’s in favor of massive testing (which, besides South Korea, was successful in Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam) and a fast treatment with hydroxychloroquine. Only contaminated individuals should be confined. Chloroquine costs one euro for ten pills. And there’s the rub: Big Pharma – which, crucially, finances INSERM, and includes “national champion” Sanofi – would rather go for a way more profitable solution. Sanofi for the moment says it is “actively preparing” to produce chloroquine, but that may take “weeks,” and there’s no mention about pricing. A minister fleeing a tsunami Here’s the timeline: On January 13, Agnes Buzyn, still France’s Health Minister, classifies chloroquine as a “poisonous substance,” from now on only available by prescription. An astonishing move, considering that it has been sold off the shelf in France for half a century. On March 16, the Macron government orders a partial lockdown. There’s not a peep about chloroquine. Police initially are not required to wear masks; most have been stolen anyway, and there are not enough masks even for health workers. In 2011 France had nearly 1.5 billion masks: 800 million surgical masks and 600 million masks for health professionals generally. But then, over the years, the strategic stocks were not renewed, to please the EU and to apply the Maastricht criteria, which limited membership in the Growth and Stability Pact to countries whose budget deficits did not exceed 3% of GDP. One of those in charge at the time was Jerome Salomon, now a scientific counselor to the Macron government. On March 17, Agnes Buzyn says she has learned the spread of Covid-19 will be a major tsunami, for which the French health system has no solution. She also says it had been her understanding that the Paris mayoral election “would not take place” and that it was, ultimately, “a masquerade.” What she does not say is that she didn’t go public at the time she was running because the whole political focus by the Macron political machine was on winning the “masquerade.” The first round of the election meant nothing, as Covid-19 was advancing. The second round was postponed indefinitely. She had to know about the impending healthcare disaster. But as a candidate of the Macron machine she did not go public in timely fashion. In quick succession: The Macron government refuses to apply mass testing, as practiced with success in South Korea and Germany. Le Monde and the French state health agency characterize Raoult’s research as fake news, before issuing a retraction. Professor Perrone reveals on the 24/7 LCI news channel that the stock of chloroquine at the French central pharmacy has been stolen. Thanks to a tweet by Elon Musk, President Trump says chloroquine should be available to all Americans. Sufferers of lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, who already have supply problems with the only drug that offers them relief, set social media afire with their panic. US doctors and other medical professionals take to hoarding the medicine for the use of themselves and those close to them, faking prescriptions to indicate they are for patients with lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. Morocco buys the stock of chloroquine from Sanofi in Casablanca. Pakistan decides to increase its production of chloroquine to be sent to China. Switzerland discards the total lockdown of its population; goes for mass testing and fast treatment; and accuses France of practicing  “spectacle politics.” Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, having had himself treated with chloroquine, without any government input, directly calls Sanofi so they may deliver chloroquine to Nice hospitals. Because of Raoult’s research, a large-scale chloroquine test finally starts in France, under the – predictable – direction of INSERM, which wants to “remake the experiments in other independent medical centers.” This will take at least an extra six weeks – as the Elysee Palace’s scientific council now mulls the extension of France’s total lockdown to … six weeks. If joint use of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin proves definitely effective among the most gravely ill, quarantines may be reduced in select clusters. The only French company that still manufactures chloroquine is under judicial intervention. That puts the chloroquine hoarding and theft into full perspective. It will take time for these stocks to be replenished, thus allowing Big Pharma the leeway to have what it wants: a costly solution. It appears the perpetrators of the chloroquine theft were very well informed. Bagged nurses This chain of events, astonishing for a highly developed G-7 nation proud of its health service, is part of a long, painful process embedded in neoliberal dogma. EU-driven austerity mixed with the profit motive resulted in a very lax attitude towards the health system. As Bugault told me, “test kits – very few in number – were always available but mostly for a small group connected to the French government .  Same for chloroquine, which this government did everything to make inaccessible for the population. They did not make life easy for Professor Raoult – he received death threats and was intimidated by ‘journalists.’ And they did not protect vital stocks. Still under the Hollande government, there was a conscious liquidation of the stock of masks – which had existed in large quantities in all hospitals. Not to mention that the suppression of hospital beds and hospital means accelerated under Sarkozy.” This ties in with anguished reports by French citizens of nurses now having to use trash bags due to the lack of proper medical gear. At the same time, in another astonishing development, the French state refuses to requisition private hospitals and clinics – which are practically empty at this stage – even as the president of their own association, Lamine Garbi, has pleaded for such a public service initiative: “I solemnly demand that we are requisitioned to help public hospitals. Our facilities are prepared. The wave that surprised the east of France must teach us a lesson.” Bugault reconfirms the health situation in France “is very serious and will become even worse due to these political decisions – absence of masks, political refusal to massively test people, refusal of free access to chloroquine – in a context of supreme distress at the hospitals. This will last and destitution will be the norm.” Professor vs president In an explosive development on Tuesday, Raoult said he’s not participating in Macron’s scientific council anymore, even though he’s not quitting it altogether. Raoult once again insists on massive testing on a national scale to detect suspected cases, and then isolate and treat patients who tested positive. In a nutshell: the South Korean model. That’s exactly what is expected from the IHU in Marseille, where hundreds of residents continue to queue up for testing. And that ties in with the conclusions by a top Chinese expert on Covid-19, Zhang Nanshan, who says that treatment with chloroquine phospate had a “positive impact,” with patients testing negative after around four days. The key point has been stressed by Raoult: Use chloroquine in very special circumstances, for people tested very early, when the disease is not advanced yet, and only in these cases. He’s not advocating chloroquine for everyone. It’s exactly what the Chinese did, along with their use of Interferon. For years, Raoult has been pleading for a drastic revision of health economic models, so the treatments, cure and therapies created mostly during the 20th century, are considered a patrimony in the service of all humanity.“That’s not the case”, he says, “because we abandon medicine that is not profitable, even if it’s effective. That’s why almost no antibiotics are manufactured in the West.” On Tuesday, the French Health Ministry officially prohibited the utilization of treatment based on chloroquine recommended by Raoult.  In fact the treatment is only allowed for terminal Covid-19 patients, with no other possibility of healing. This cannot but expose the Macron government to more accusations of at least inefficiency – added to the absence of masks, tests, contact tracing and ventilators. On Wednesday, commenting on the new government guidelines, Raoult said, “When damage to the lungs is too important, and patients arrive for reanimation, they practically do not harbor viruses in their bodies any more. It’s too late to treat them with chloroquine. Are these the only cases – the very serious cases – that will be treated with chloroquine under the new directive by Veran?” If so, he added ironically, “then they will be able to say with scientific certainty that chloroquine does not work.” Raoult was unavailable for comment on Western news media articles citing Chinese test results that would suggest he is wrong about the efficacy of chloroquine in dealing with mild cases of Covid-19. Staffers pointed instead to his comments in the IHU bulletin. There Raoult says it’s “insulting” to ask if we can trust the Chinese on the use of chloroquine. “If this was an American disease, and the president of the United States said, ‘We need to treat patients with that,’ nobody would discuss it.” In China, he adds, there were “enough elements so the Chinese government and all Chinese experts who know coronaviruses took an official position that ‘we must treat with chloroquine.’ Between the moment when we have the first results and an accepted international publication, there is no credible alternative among people who are the most knowledgeable in the world. They took this measure in the interest of public health.” Crucially: if he had coronavirus, Raoult says he would take chloroquine. Since Raoult is rated by his peers as the number one world expert  in communicable diseases, way above Dr. Anthony Fauci in the US, I would say the new reports represent Big Pharma talking. Raoult has been mercilessly savaged and demonized by French corporate media that are controlled by a few oligarchs closely linked to Macronism. Not by accident the demonization has reached gilets jaunes (yellow vest) levels, especially because of the extremely popular hashtag  #IlsSavaient (“They knew”), with which the yellow vests stress that French elites have “managed” the Covid-19 crisis by protecting themselves while leaving the population defenseless against the virus. That ties in with the controversial analysis by crack philosopher Giorgio Agamben in a column published a month ago, where he was already arguing that Covid-19 clearly shows that the state of exception – similar to a state of emergency but with differences important to philosophers – has become fully normalized in the West. Agamben was speaking not as a doctor or a virologist but as a master thinker, following in the steps of Foucault, Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt. Noting how a latent state of fear has metastasized into a state of collective panic, for which Covid-19 “offers once again the ideal pretext,” he described how, “in a perverse vicious circle, the limitation of freedom imposed by governments is accepted in the name of a desire for security that was induced by the same governments that now intervene to satisfy it.” There was no state of collective panic in South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam – to mention four Asian examples outside of China. A dogged combination of mass testing and contact tracing was applied with immense professionalism. It worked. In the Chinese case, with the help of chloroquine. And in all Asian cases, without a murky profit motive to the benefit of Big Pharma. There hasn’t yet appeared the smoking gun that proves the Macron system not only is incompetent to deal with Covid-19 but also is dragging the process so Big Pharma can come up with a miracle vaccine, fast. But the pattern to discourage chloroquine is more than laid out above – in parallel to the demonization of Raoult. Read the full article