Mr. Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, had subpoenaed a former prosecutor who worked on the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into former President Donald J. Trump…
Tethyssays
In the category of Yes, it’s about damn time:
Manhattan’s top prosecutor [Alvin Bragg] sues to stop Republican [douchebag insurrectionist Jordan] ‘intimidation’ in Trump case.
Lol, I’ve crossposted with Reginald. I’m so very sick of Rethuglicans thinking they can flout all the laws, while mumbling partisan claims about law and order.
Gary Hart didn’t even cheat on his wife, have multiple sugar babies, or pay off any women during his campaign for POTUS. One photo of a strange women sitting on his lap was enough to sink it.
birgerjohanssonsays
Thank you, Tethys and Reginald Selkirk.
.
For your amusement.
God Awful Movies found this gem.
-I now know the next thing Fox News will scare the viewers with once people have lost their fear of the gay and the trans people: evil zombie rabbits!
Military: Wagner mercenaries will last only 2 more months in Bakhmut if tactics unchanged
by The Kyiv Independent news desk April 11, 2023 10:59 PM 2 min read
Wagner mercenaries fighting in Bakhmut will only last two more months if their tactics remain unchanged, Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesperson for the Ukrainian military’s Eastern Operational Command said on April 11.
Speaking on national television, Cherevatyi acknowledged that the forecast was subjective, although grounded in the high casualty rates of Wagner troops.
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar wrote on Feb. 16 that Kremlin-backed private mercenary Wagner Group and Russian proxy units active in eastern Ukraine were losing up to 80% of some assault units.
The situation still remains difficult in Bakhmut, according to Cherevatyi.
However, the Ukrainian military command “clearly sees their plans, we know how to respond to them. Our intelligence and aerial surveillance are working,” Cherevatyi said.
Wagner has been assisting Russia’s military in trying to capture Ukraine’s eastern city of Bakhmut for the past nine months as Moscow tries to consolidate its grip over the entirety of Donetsk Oblast. However, Ukrainian forces continue to hold the city.
Disputes between Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and Russian officials have been ongoing for what the former perceives as a lack of proper artillery support for Wagner troops in Ukraine.
In late February, Prigozhin posted a photo on his Telegram channel of dozens of bodies that he claimed belonged to Wagner fighters killed on the previous day.
Along with the image, Prigozhin shared an audio interview in which he expressed his frustration towards the Defense Ministry for not providing his forces with adequate means to fight.
StevoRsays
Wow! Excellent Choice!
NASA’s first female Goddard Space Flight Center director swears oath on Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagen
NASA’s newly appointed director of the Goddard Space Flight Center has claimed two firsts before even starting her official duties.On Thursday, Makenzie Lystrup became the first woman in NASA’s history to be appointed the director of the Goddard Space Flight Center.
She also became the first person to take their oath of office on a copy of Carl Sagan’s 1994 book Pale Blue Dot. In the US, office holders of a certain level are required to take an oath, otherwise known as being ‘sworn in’, before starting their roles. Religious texts such as the Bible are most often associated with US official swearing in ceremonies. But officials can use whatever text holds the most meaning to them and have sworn oaths on everything from the US Constitution to a Dr Seuss book. … (Snip) .. Prior to joining NASA, Dr Lystrup was vice president and general manager of civil space at Ball Aerospace. During her tenure at the company she led Ball’s contributions to several missions, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), Landsat 9, and the Roman Space Telescope.
birgerjohansson
In the top 10 of my favourite movies.
whheydtsays
Re: SteveoR @ #6…
I’ve long wanted to quiz people running for President of the US and one question would be, “What is the ending clause of the oath of office, as specified in the Constitution.” Anyone who answers, “so help me God” should be automatically disqualified.
Russia has suffered big losses on the battlefield and needs to replenish its forces in Ukraine
By Sofia Samokhina & Kateryna Khinkulova
BBC News Russian
The Russian parliament has approved legislation to start serving call-up papers online.
The Kremlin has denied the move is aimed at speeding up further mobilisation of Russian men or putting a stop to widespread draft-dodging.
Thousands of Russians have avoided the draft to escape the war in Ukraine.
Critics say the law is further evidence of authorities creating an “electronic Gulag”, referring to the Soviet-era network of prison camps.
Until now, conscription papers in Russia have had to be served in person or via an employer.
In reality, it has meant many avoiding the draft by moving away from where they were registered to live, or simply not opening the door when military officials came calling.
Under the new legislation, call-up papers will be deemed to be served as soon as they appear on a special “State Services” government portal called “Gosuslugi”.
“The summons is considered received from the moment it is placed in the personal account of a person liable for military service,” Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of the Russian parliament’s defence committee, said on TV.
From that moment, a conscript will be obliged to turn up at his local enlistment office.
Citizens who fail to show up will be banned from travelling abroad and could face other restrictions. They will not be able to buy or sell property, their driving licences will be invalidated and they will be unable to register small businesses.
Of the 395 Russian MPs who voted on the legislation, 394 supported it and one abstained. Russia’s lower house or State Duma has 450 MPs.
The new legislation will come into effect when it is signed by President Vladimir Putin, which is likely to happen soon.
Last September, the Kremlin began a chaotic emergency mobilisation campaign to support Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, amid a series of humiliating defeats after its full-scale invasion.
Police officers detain a man following calls to protest against partial mobilisation announced by Russian President, in Moscow, on September 21, 2022.Image source, ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP
Image caption,
Some of those who protested against Russia’s military mobilisation were themselves handed draft papers
More than 300,000 former soldiers and ex-conscripts are believed to have been called up, in a drive that often saw young men being picked up on the street or in shopping malls.
Thousands of men aged 18 to 27 fled abroad to avoid the draft and protests broke out in numerous Russian cities, although they were swiftly suppressed.
The talk-show hosts telling Russians what to believe
According to leaked US documents, Russia is estimated to have suffered between 189,500 and 223,000 casualties. Those numbers include 35,500-43,000 men killed in action and another 154,000-180,000 wounded.
BBC News Russian has compiled a list of 17,000 Russian servicemen who are confirmed dead, through gathering information from open sources, with names, ranks and in many cases, the military units they served in.
The last time Russian authorities revealed casualties figures was in September last year, when they confirmed the deaths of 5,937 servicemen.
“A once convenient online government portal turned out to have a flip side,” tweeted Ilia Krasilshchik, who founded the Helpdesk website, which offers advice and assistance to Russian men trying to avoid being sent to fight in Ukraine.
“In an instant, you can be marked out and your exit from the country can be shut off. That’s it. Who needs new waves of mobilisation? Take people out one by one in an attractive interface of a digital state.”
The State Services government web portal is widely used by Russians to apply for a new passport or a marriage licence, pay bills and fines or make an appointment with a GP.
But Mr Krasilshchik warned that the state had turned it into a site to provide the Russian state with cannon fodder for Ukrainian guns.
President Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, denied the new legislation was linked to an attempt to widen mobilisation: “This is simply to improve military records. The system has to match modern requirements.”,
Talk about a juicy target for hacking… Just start sneaking in call-up notices for politicians and their family members…
rietpluimsays
‘This is the real reason why the US wants to ban TikTok.’
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has issued a strong statement urging international leaders to act after videos circulated on social media that appeared to show Ukrainian soldiers beheaded by Russian forces. One video being circulated appears to show the beheaded corpses of two Ukrainian soldiers lying on the ground next to a destroyed military vehicle. A voice says: “They killed them. Someone came up to them. They came up to them and cut their heads off”. A second clip, which may have been filmed in summer last year, judging by the appearance of foliage in the clip, claims to show a member of Russian forces using a knife to cut off the head of a Ukrainian soldier.
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba has compared Russian fighters in Ukraine to Islamic State after a video circulated online that appeared to show a beheading.
Kuleba said on Twitter: “A horrific video of Russian troops decapitating a Ukrainian prisoner of war is circulating online.”
“It’s absurd that Russia, which is worse than Islamic State, is presiding over the UNSC,” he said, referring to the UN security council where Russia took up the rotating presidency this month. “Russian terrorists must be kicked out of Ukraine and the UN and be held accountable for their crimes.”
Reuters reports Ukraine’s domestic security agency said it had launched an investigation into a suspected war crime over the video.
“Yesterday, a video appeared on the Internet showing how the Russian occupiers are showing their beastly [sic] nature – cruelly torturing a Ukrainian prisoner and cutting off his head,” the SBU agency wrote on Telegram.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian UK liveblog. From there:
Chris Mason, the BBC’s political editor, has described Joe Biden’s visit to Northern Ireland as a “blink and you’ll miss it” trip. By the end of the day he will be over the border, in the Republic of Ireland, where he will be staying until Friday….
With less than 90 minutes before Joe Biden arrives in Ulster University for his speech, Northern Ireland political parties have still not had their meeting with the US president confirmed.
Leaders of all five main parties are sitting among the 100 or so guests already waiting in the auditorium for a speech that will restate America’s commitment to peace and prosperity in Northern Ireland.
One MP said: “We have been told we will be meeting him just before he speaks but we don’t know where.”
The trip to Belfast has been marred by repeated speculation of a rift between the White House and Downing Street on the nature of the US presidential visit which has been edited down to half a day, with three days to follow south of the border.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, was seen at the back of the auditorium chatting and joking to Joe Kennedy III, Biden’s recently appointed economic envoy.
Biden is expected to wave a large financial carrot in front of the DUP in an effort to persuade them to return to Stormont, with an economic summit and a redoubling of efforts to lure US investment into Northern Ireland if power-sharing in Stormont can be restored.
Biden ‘hates the UK’, former DUP leader and former first minister Arlene Foster claims
Arlene Foster, the former DUP leader and former Northern Ireland first minister, told GB News last night that Joe Biden was more opposed to unionism than any US president in modern times. She said he hates the UK. She said:
He hates the United Kingdom, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.
I just think the fact he’s coming here won’t put any pressure on the DUP at all, quite the reverse actually, because he’s seen by so many people as just simply pro-republican and pro-nationalist.
The DUP MP Sammy Wilson has also described Biden as “anti-British”….
Joe Biden is “not anti-British,” one of his most senior aides has said in response to accusations by the former Democratic Unionist party leader Arlene Foster that the US president “hates the UK”….
Just hours after he arrived in Belfast, the purpose of Biden’s short visit to Northern Ireland was being questioned by unionists who have been boycotting power-sharing arrangements in Northern Ireland for more than a year, meaning the territory has no devolved government.
At a briefing in Belfast, Amanda Sloat, special assistant to Biden and senior director for Europe at the national security council, denied the president’s Irish heritage made him biased against the British in relation to the continued deadlock over the devolved government in Stormont. She said:
I think the track record of of the president shows that he is not anti-British. The president has been very actively engaged throughout his career dating back to when he was a senator in the peace process in Northern Ireland and that involved engagement with leaders of all of Northern Ireland parties from both of the two main communities.
At a keynote speech at lunch time Biden will be sending out a message underlining the US’s continued support for the peace process in Northern Ireland and his “strong desire” to see enduring economic prosperity and political stability….
Climate models around the globe continue to warn of a potential El Niño developing later this year – a pattern of ocean warming in the Pacific that can increase the risk of catastrophic weather events around the globe.
Some models are raising the possibility later this year of an extreme, or “super El Niño”, that is marked by very high temperatures in a central region of the Pacific around the equator.
The last extreme El Niño in 2016 helped push global temperatures to the highest on record, underpinned by human-caused global heating that sparked floods, droughts and disease outbreaks.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said in a Tuesday update that all seven models it had surveyed – including those from weather agencies in the UK, Japan and the US – showed sea surface temperatures passing the El Niño threshold by August.
But the bureau and climate scientists warned that forecasts were much less reliable during the southern hemisphere autumn and outlooks should be “viewed with some caution”.
There was a 50% chance of an El Niño developing before the end of the year, the bureau said….
Alexey Navalny’s attorney Vadim Kobzev reports that paramedics had been summoned to Navalny’s cell late on the night of April 7–8, due to acute symptoms that the prison personnel refuses to explain.
Kobzev says he wouldn’t rule out that Navalny is being poisoned again, this time in small dozes calculated to make him decline “gradually but steadily”…
…
Navalny recently spent 15 days in a penal cell (“ShIZO”). Kobzev says he lost 8 kilograms (17 pounds) in that time alone. Having been released from the punishment cell last Friday, Navalny was returned there after the episode requiring an ambulance, for another 15-day disciplinary term.
The maximal legal duration of confinement in a penal cell is 15 days. The penal colony is getting around that regulation by sending Navalny on serial back-to-back stays in the ShIZO, separated by brief periods in ordinary prison conditions….
Russia is unlikely to launch its unified digital registry of citizens eligible for military service before the start of the country’s annual fall conscription campaign, the state news outlet RIA Novosti said on Wednesday, citing Digital Development Minister Maxut Shadayev….
One warm afternoon in May, Dwight Jackson was getting dressed for a visit to his favorite cigar lounge. He slipped his holstered SIG Sauer P320 pistol onto his belt, put on a button-down shirt and leaned across his bed for his wallet. Suddenly, he said, the gun fired, sending a bullet tearing through his right buttock and into his left ankle…
The P320 is one of the nation’s most popular handguns. A variant of the weapon is the standard-issue sidearm for every branch of the U.S. military. Since its introduction to the commercial market in 2014, manufacturer SIG Sauer has sold the P320 to hundreds of thousands of civilians, and the gun has been used by officers at more than a thousand law enforcement agencies across the nation, court records show…
More than 100 people allege that their P320 pistols discharged when they did not pull the trigger, an eight-month investigation by the Washington Post and the Trace has found. At least 80 people were wounded in the shootings, which date to 2016…
The Guardian is now liveblogging Biden’s speech at Ulster University:
Biden says he came to Belfast in 1991, and in those days you would not have had a glass building here (because of the bombs)….
Also from there:
Turning away from Northern Ireland for a moment, the Scottish government has confirmed that it is going to court to try to overturn the UK government’s decision to block its gender recognition reform bill. Humza Yousaf, the new first minister, promised to do this during the SNP leadership contest.
Shirley-Anne Somerville, the social justice secretary, has told the Scottish parliament in a written statement that the Scottish government will lodge a petition for a judicial review of the decision.
A telescope in Chile has traced the distribution of this mysterious stuff on a quarter of the sky and across almost 14 billion years of time…
The Chile facility observed the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB – a pervasive but faint glow of long-wavelength radiation that comes to us from the very edge of the observable Universe.
ACT mapped the subtle distortions in this ancient light that were introduced as it passed by all intervening matter…
The distribution of matter agrees very well with scientific predictions.
ACT observations indicate that the “lumpiness” of the Universe and the rate at which it has been expanding after 14 billion years of evolution are just what you’d expect from the standard model of cosmology, which has Einstein’s theory of gravity (general relativity) at its foundation…
Ukrainian hackers claim to have broken into the emails of a senior Russian military spy wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for hacking the Hillary Clinton campaign and other senior U.S. Democrats ahead of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency in 2016.
In a message posted to Telegram on Monday, a group calling itself Cyber Resistance said it had stolen correspondence from Lt. Col. Sergey Morgachev, who was charged in 2018 with helping organize the hack and leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign…
The German government is very worried about jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s worsening health condition, a government spokesperson has said.
The UN has said it is “appalled” by “gruesome” videos, including of Russian soldiers apparently beheading a captured Ukrainian soldier, and another appearing to show the beheaded corpses of two Ukrainian servicemen lying next to a destroyed military vehicle….
Russian-installed authorities in annexed Crimea and the city of Sevastopol have cancelled traditional military parades to celebrate Victory Day and May Day, the Russian-appointed leader of Crimea has said, citing security reasons.
Sergei Aksyonov posted to Telegram that there would be no parades or marches to mark May Day on 1 May, or Victory Day on 9 May, which celebrates Soviet defeat over Nazi Germany. Victory Day is celebrated across Russia and has become central to Vladimir Putin’s idea of Russian identity.
Aksyonov wrote:
The local authorities will certainly visit them [veterans] and congratulate them on Victory Day.
His comments conflicted with those made by the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, who said on his Telegram that a 9 May military parade has not been cancelled. He wrote:
The decision to cancel the military parade on May 9 in Sevastopol has not been made at the moment. Now there are consultations with the Ministry of Defense, the decision to hold the Parade in Sevastopol is the prerogative of the military department.
On Tuesday, Aksyonov said Crimea was on guard and that Russian forces had built “modern, in-depth defenses” and had “more than enough” troops and equipment to repel a possible Ukrainian assault.
His comments came days after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy reaffirmed Kyiv’s intention to take back the Black Sea peninsula that Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
A Delaware judge on Tuesday lectured attorneys defending Fox News in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit after they revealed that Rupert Murdoch is not only the chairman at Fox Corp., but also a corporate officer at its subsidiary, Fox News.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis said Fox lawyers previously had “represented to him more than once” that Murdoch was not an officer for the subsidiary cable network. Such information “could have” led him to make different rulings earlier on in the case, he said…
South Africa said on Wednesday an international arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine war was a “spanner in the works” ahead of a BRICS summit in the country in August.
Pretoria, which has close ties with Moscow, has been faced with a diplomatic dilemma since the international criminal court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Putin in March.
The Russian president is due to attend a summit of the Brics – a bloc which groups together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – in South Africa in August.
But the host nation is a member of the ICC and would be expected to make the arrest if Putin steps foot in the country.
“All heads of state would be expected to attend the summit. But now we have a spanner in the works in the form of this ICC warrant,” Vincent Magwenya, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, told a press briefing on Wednesday.
“What that dictates is that there be further engagements, in terms of how that is going to be managed and those engagements are under way. Once they’ve been concluded, the necessary announcements will be made.”…
A small Texas county is weighing whether to shut down its public library system after a federal judge ruled the commissioners violated the constitution by banning a dozen mostly children’s books and ordered that they be put back in circulation.
The Llano County commissioners have scheduled for Thursday a special meeting in which the first item on the agenda is whether to “continue or cease operations” at the library…
StevoRsays
Good news – kinda?
Oil and gas company Santos has apologised to an Adelaide Aboriginal elder, who asked for his image to be removed from its corporate materials in protest at the company’s treatment of Indigenous people.Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri elder Major “Moogy” Sumner has written to Santos chairman Keith Spence saying he did not give consent for his image to be used in a promotional video played at the company’s heated Annual General Meeting in Adelaide on April 6.
“It is disrespectful that you refused to listen to or answer the questions of the Gomeroi people and Tiwi Islanders who came to the Santos AGM to express concerns about mining on their Country,” Mr Sumner wrote.
“I call on you to apologise to the Gomeroi people and Tiwi Islanders for the dismissive way they were treated by your company at the AGM.”
Santos has apologised to Mr Sumner and said it would remove his images from its website and communications material.
A Chinese woman has become the first person to die from a type of bird flu that is rare in humans, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, but the strain does not appear to spread between people.
The TESS exoplanet finder satellite has discovered TOI-4127 b, a “warm Jupiter” which may yet heat up and is double Jove’s mass in a 56 day orbit around a star more massive than ours.
Egyptian authorities have since 2020 carried out a campaign to silence female social media influencers, using a cybercrime law to detain them on vague charges such as violating “public morals” and “undermining family values”. Last week, TikTok celebrity Salma Elshimy became the latest in a growing list of women to fall foul of the authorities over social media posts….
They note that she was jailed previously in 2020 for a photo shoot at the Saqqara Necropolis that local media said involved “exploiting the cultural value of the antiquities in inappropriate Pharaonic clothes.”
…Trois mois après la présentation de la réforme des retraites et le début d’une mobilisation “historique” marquée par bientôt douze journées de mobilisation, l’heure de vérité approche pour les syndicats, désormais suspendus à la décision du Conseil constitutionnel.
Les “Sages” doivent annoncer vendredi 14 avril, en fin de journée, s’ils valident le projet décrié du gouvernement, ou s’ils le censurent en partie ou dans sa totalité. Ils jugeront aussi si la demande de référendum d’initiative partagée (RIP) de la gauche est recevable ou non.
Les syndicats ont prévu d’ici là une douzième journée de grève et de manifestations, jeudi, avec à Paris un parcours allant de la place de l’Opéra à celle de la Bastille….
In 2021, a Texas intelligence command center disseminated a bulletin warning its law enforcement partners about activists interested in sabotaging fossil fuel infrastructure. The report detailed no specific threat, but instead linked to an interview with Andreas Malm, a Swedish professor of human ecology, on a New Yorker podcast in which he advocated for the destroying or “neutralizing” new fossil fuel projects like pipelines using nonviolent methods.
Now, Malm’s work is once again drawing the attention of a fusion center. “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” a new movie dramatizing Malm’s 2021 nonfiction book of the same name, sympathetically depicts the infrastructure sabotage by environmentalists. The film’s fictional protagonist, Theo, contracts leukemia after growing up in a Long Beach neighborhood with heavy pollution. She joins several others to strap a homemade bomb to an oil pipeline in West Texas.
In a report disseminated last week, another intelligence command center — this time in Kansas City, Missouri — quietly warned of a “developing threat” related to the movie. It was obtained by The Intercept via a source with access to law enforcement reporting, and the Kansas City Regional Fusion Center did not reply to a request for comment.
Again, however, this new report conceded that the intelligence center could not identify any specific threat — a contradiction that experts say speaks to the overbroad authority of state intelligence entities and the make-work required by these centers.
“The performance metric is the number of reports you write, rather than the accuracy of them,” Mike German, a retired FBI agent who is now a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, said of fusion centers. “What do you do after you write reports on realistic threats? Pretty soon you have to start writing about imaginary ones. Lots come straight from the fever swamps of social media.”
The Missouri report goes a step further than Texas’s, since the film “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” is fictional.
Another fusion center, the Colorado Information Analysis Center, recently issued a similar bulletin in anticipation of a student walkout to protest legislative inaction on gun violence, as The Intercept reported last week. The report did not identify any potential crime that might arise in relation to the protest. Defending its report, CIAC said that it was not monitoring the protesters and that the report was merely distributed for situational awareness.
“Fusion center leaders often say this type of reporting is for ‘situational awareness’ but then why send this type of report out broadly to the law enforcement community,” German said. “I am surprised how many of the fusion center products we see focus on protest activity, where the analysts acknowledge in the report itself that they have no indication that any criminal activity might take place.”
“The Kansas City Regional Fusion Center (KCRFC) has prepared the following Situational Awareness Bulletin,” the report, dated April 4, reads, “to provide information to partners concerning a developing threat targeting Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources (CIKR), especially oil and natural gas pipelines.” But in a separate caption, it notes “The KCRFC has no information on specific threats directed at the energy sector in this area.”
KCRFC is one of 80 fusion centers across the country, which were established in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to combat terrorism by sharing intelligence with law enforcement partners. But fusion centers lack the traditional law enforcement requirement for a criminal predicate to exist in order to investigate something, German told The Intercept.
…
While KCRFC’s bulletin acknowledges that neither the film nor the book advocate for the targeting of people, it alludes to unspecified social media posts calling for more extreme tactics….
While Malm’s book draws a hard line between sabotage that only affects property and tactics that might harm people, the FBI makes no such distinction, referring to it all as “eco-terrorism.” “Animal rights/Environmental violent extremism” represents one of five domestic terrorism threat categories the U.S. government has focused on since 2019, per a report to Congress last year. [THIS IS LUDICROUS]…
Follow-up to a post in the previous Thread – “A Palestinian envoy to the United Nations honors the life and work of Nuremberg war crimes tribunal prosecutor Ben Ferencz, who passed away last week…”
Dozens of people in central Myanmar were killed in air strikes Tuesday, according to local media reports and a witness contacted by AFP, as the United Nations and Western powers condemned the attacks and demanded accountability.
The Southeast Asian country has been in chaos and its economy in tatters since the military seized power in February 2021 coup.
UN rights chief Volker Turk said he was “horrified” by the deadly air strikes whose victims he said included schoolchildren performing dances, with the global body calling for those responsible to be brought to justice.
The death toll from the early Tuesday morning strike on the remote Kanbalu township in Sagaing region is unclear.
At least 50 fatalities and dozens of injuries were reported by BBC Burmese, The Irrawaddy and Radio Free Asia…
Alexey Smirnov, a former journalist, reviews, tests, and compares various weapons on his YouTube channel called Large Caliber Commotion.
In an episode, originally posted three months ago, Smirnov compares Soviet and Western anti-tank weapons, including the Swedish AT4. It is unclear where he got the Swedish weapon from.
At one point in the video, Smirnov attempts to shoot the shoulder-fired weapon at a tank, announcing: “Here we have the ordinary AT4 … let’s see how it deals with a T72 tank.”
The vlogger goes on to explain the launcher works while fiddling with it, saying at one point that it doesn’t feel “very smooth.”
As he prepares to fire, Smirnov appears to not hold on to the front grip of the AT4, which is designed to help steady the weapon when being aimed.
The video then shows him pressing the trigger, causing the weapon to launch back into his face. He then falls backward, shouting: “Ah, fuck … you bastard thing!”
The video cuts to Smirnov on his back holding his eye as a cameraman offers to help him up. A text then appears on the screen, reading: “Thank you for understanding.” …
Memphis-area officials will meet Wednesday to decide whether to reinstate Justin J. Pearson to the Tennessee Legislature after Republicans expelled him last week for protesting gun violence on the chamber floor.
The Shelby County Board of Commissioners is slated to take up the issue during a special meeting in Memphis on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. ET [1:30 local time].
Democrats hold a 9-4 majority on the 13-seat board. Only a handful of members have so far commented publicly about their support for Pearson and their intention to vote to return him to the Legislature. A simple majority is required.
…
The vote by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners will come two days after the Nashville Metropolitan Council voted unanimously to reinstate Jones to his seat in the Legislature. The council suspended its rules to allow an immediate vote instead of holding an extended nomination period.
Cameron Sexton, the Republican House speaker, seated Jones to his old position and has committed to seating whomever Shelby County officials appoint to fill Pearson’s vacancy, including Pearson.
Under state rules, elections for both seats must still be held. Those rules dictate that Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, must schedule a primary for Jones’ and Pearson’s seats within 60 days and a general election within 107 days. Both Jones and Pearson have said they will seek re-election….
Abby Grossberg, the former Tucker Carlson producer accusing Fox News of pressuring her to give false testimony in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, filed amended legal complaints on Tuesday claiming there are secret Fox audio recordings of Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies.
Grossberg, who is suing the conservative network for harassment and a toxic work environment, claims that the behind-the-scenes conversations with Giuliani, former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and Trump campaign officials featured them admitting they had no evidence to support their Dominion election fraud lies…
A video began circulating widely on Tuesday evening. In this video, Russian soldiers kill and decapitate a Ukrainian soldier using a knife. Don’t watch it. I appreciate that with any such act of horrific brutality, there is a tendency to watch, not out of accident at the side-of-the-road gawkerism, but because it seems only right that such horror should be witnessed. That, like the atrocities of the Holocaust, such things must be seen rather than allowed to pass unnoted.
Please. Don’t watch it. No matter what your intentions. There is a second version of the video in which the details have been blurred. Do not watch that one either.
I don’t care how hardened you are to the barbarity of war, how familiar you are with injury and gore, or how grimly familiar you may be with the inhumanity that can happen on the battlefield—or anywhere else. Don’t watch it. You don’t need this. It has been seen. Efforts to identify the place and people where this happened are already underway, and any justice that can be rendered is unattainable for those of us far away.
This event has been witnessed. It won’t be forgotten. What happens now is unknown, but don’t take that burden on yourself. Don’t watch it, don’t share it, and if someone sends it your way, delete it. [Tweet from Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov: “He says ‘these horrible images’ must be verified. If it happened, where and who did it, etc. there are many fakes in today’s world after all, etc.”]
BAKHMUT HOLDS … ISH
Also on Tuesday evening, the Ukrainian Telegram channel DeepState brought bad news from Bakhmut. After having been pushed back two days earlier, Russian forces reportedly launched simultaneous diversionary attacks at the north and south of the city. While that was underway, a force that included both Wagner and airborne VDV forces pushed in from the east and took the railroad station and much of the surrounding blocks. [map at the link]
I’ve expanded the area this morning expressly to show how far things have slid from the days when Russia was endlessly trying to take the winery, or the drywall factory, and making their HQ at the landfill back along Patrisa Lumumby Street. At this point, Russia controls somewhere between 70% and 80% of the area within the limits of Bakhmut.
There are still a lot of Ukrainian forces within the city, but they’re now confined to that small area in the west, while Russia has increasingly moved artillery in from three sides, concentrating fire on Ukraine’s remaining force. This is a bad situation, and despite the occasional pushback or slowdown, it has been getting progressively worse since Soledar was occupied by Russia in January. How much longer Ukraine can keep a toehold in Bakhmut is extremely unclear.
As for why Ukrainian forces remain in this area in spite of absolutely hellish conditions, Deputy Minister of Defence Hanna Maliar spoke on Ukrainian television Tuesday night. “It is in Bakhmut where the enemy is concentrating their main efforts, so we have to concentrate there in response in order to stop them,” said Maliar. “In fact, Bakhmut has now taken the main blow of the enemy’s armed forces and their private armies in the East.”
There is no doubt that Russia has lost tens of thousands of men in their attempt to capture Bakhmut. No doubt that the fields and roads around the city are filled with the burnt out shells of Russian tanks, transports, and artillery. It’s impossible to know what the cost has been to Ukraine to defend the city. The daily list of obituaries that end with “killed in Bakhmut” shows that the cost is very high. Squads that had been made famous by their success in Kharkiv or their bravery at Severodonetsk, have evaporated in the heat of Bakhmut.
In an interview earlier this week, Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov spelled out why Russia is wiling to lose so many men and so much equipment if it means making even the smallest gain.
According to Reznikov Russia doesn’t care if they lose 1 million soldiers. Or 2 million. Or three. There are 20 million men of potential military age in Russia. Russia is willing to give up a significant fraction of them if it means capturing all, or even half of Ukraine. After all, should Russia actually capture the areas of Ukraine it has already officially claimed to own, that’s another 20 million people and some impressive resources.
Spend 1 million men to subjugate 20 million? For Russia, that’s attractive math. As for Bakhmut …
“Their ‘creeping’ attack there is going on for the sixth or even seventh month. They use assault waves, attack tactics. There may be ten or twelve such waves that directly follow each other. In Bakhmut alone, because of this, they lose up to 500 killed and wounded soldiers per day. But there, first of all, there are Wagner Group soldiers, criminals and convicts, whom they simply discard in great numbers.”
Russia has spent tens of thousands of soldiers trying to capture Bakhmut. But the question is … does Russia care?
As the Associated Press reports, Russia has just passed a bill that allows the military to send mobilization notices by email or text message. This is widely seen as an indicator that Russia intends to drag another round of mobilized troops to Ukraine, likely replicating past events by throwing many of them onto the front lines untrained and poorly supplied.
How is all this affecting Russia? Here’s what The Moscow Times has to say about an odd shortage of young workers that is affecting Russian productivity.
The number of young workers in Russia fell by 1.33 million people between December 2021 and December 2022.
Where did they go? Many fled Russia when the mobilization was announced. Some shifted to jobs in the “gray economy” when inflation and the declining value of the ruble made ordinary jobs unattractive. Others are dead in the mud across Ukraine.
Not to worry. Russia is finding someone to fill the open positions. Unlike France, where discussions of raising the retirement age have resulted in protests across the nation, Russia reformed pensions just five years ago, reducing the pay of retirees and sharply increasing the time most people have to stay on the job. So jobs that would be going to young people at the start of their careers are now being filled by older Russians who aren’t able to retire.
Russians aged 60-69 showed the biggest increase in workforce share from December 2021-December 2022 at 336,000 people.
With an average life expectancy of 71, it’s not all that clear how many older Russians are available to fill the gap left by the missing young. But hey, Russia can always just kidnap 1 million young Ukrainians. Considering the thousands of people stolen away from Mariupol, and the estimate of child abductions that run as high as 300,000 taken from across Ukraine, they already have a good start.
People. As far as Russia has concerned, they are a fungible commodity.
The bigger question for Russia may not ultimately be whether or not it can really keep up the number of people “creeping” forward in wave attacks. Right now, more than half of Russia’s total active tank force is dead on the field, and it is not even close to manufacturing new ones at a rate that replaces its losses. Declining rates of artillery fire are a good indication that Russia has blown through decades of stockpiles and has started to operate at a level closer to the number of shells it can actually kick out each month.
In total over 10,000 vehicles and pieces of heavy equipment have been lost to Russia since Vladimir Putin launched his illegal and unprovoked invasion. Grotesque as it sounds, it may be those losses and not the number of dead—which Ukraine this morning estimated at over 180,000—that ultimately forces Russia to stop.
Dominion v. Fox News
With Dominion’s defamation case against Fox News set to go to trial next week, the judge made several important pre-trial rulings yesterday:
– Fox will not be allowed to argue that it broadcast false claims about Dominion because they were newsworthy, shutting down what had been a key line of defense for the cable news net.
– The judge was angered by a last-minute revelation that Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch also held an officer position with Fox News. [See Reginald’s comment 22]
– Fox did win one pre-trial dispute: Dominion will not be allowed to mention the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol during the trial.
– A new shareholder derivative lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Delaware against Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch and several members of the Fox Corp. board of directors, claiming they violated their fiduciary duties by allowing Fox News to broadcast election conspiracy theories, NBC News reported. [LOL]
RUSSIA COMPLETES DEFENSIVE LINES AROUND MELITOPOL
[…] equipment loss is likely to make the Russian front lines vulnerable to a Ukrainian counteroffensive once Ukraine assembles the force, and ammunition, necessary to conduct a sustained advance. And Russia may understand that just as well as anyone else.
When Russian forces began making bits of disconnected trench in a seemingly unimportant area of Donetsk shortly after the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv, it was easy to make fun of the “Putinot Line.” The unanchored “dragon’s teeth” looked as if they wouldn’t stop a tractor, much less a tank. The short segment of trench didn’t seem to be defending anywhere in particular. The whole thing was far from the front line that it seemed not just unimportant, but an utter waste of time and effort.
However, over the intervening months, trenches have become ever more important to defending positions on the front line in Ukraine. Sure, the area in between the lines can still be crossed by tanks and other armor, but when the soldiers in the trenches are carrying anti-tank weapons, that crossing can be almost as hazardous as infantry rushing a machine gun nest. And if there is one piece of equipment that Russia makes that’s actually the envy of militaries around the world, it is this: [Video of Russian BTM-3, trench digging machine.]
Using machines like this one, Russia has now completed hundreds of kilometers of trenches, all along the front line and in some areas, many miles from the front. That includes a reported 120 kilometers of trenches around Melitopol where Russia—like apparently every analyst with access to a keyboard—expects Ukraine to launch its counteroffensive in the next few weeks.
Will these trenches actually make up for a shortfall in Russian arms and ammunition? Not completely, and it’s difficult to say just how effective they will be. After all, Ukraine has had some pretty elaborate defensive works in place at locations like Klishchiivka, south of Bakhmut, and Russia managed to overrun them within a day while not being exactly masters of combined arms.
Russia’s defensive lines (which we’ll look at in detail later this week) might be the tonic they need to accommodate their shrinking (and aging) tank force and declining levels of artillery support. Or they might be a literal speed bump on Ukraine’s way to the coast. We don’t know … yet.
FRANCE REPORTEDLY BLOCKING UKRAINE’S AMMUNITION
The one thing that’s obvious to all observers, and which was featured in those supposed top secret documents back in February, is that Ukraine needs more ammo. More small arms ammo, more artillery shells, more tank shells, more MLRS rockets, more ammo.
In addition to the pledges already made by the U.S., U.K., Poland, and others to ship large batches of additional ammo to Ukraine, there is currently a deal on the table to supply Ukraine with more a more constant supply. In an agreement announced on March 20, that deal should provide Ukraine with 1 million 155 mm artillery shells a year.
However, there are reports this morning from Polish media, that France … is blocking the deal.
The issue seems to be about how the ammo—which is produced primarily in Germany, France, and Poland—is to be reimbursed, with supplies coming from nations outside the EU to replace any depleted stocks and Ukraine paying for ammunition on an as-needed basis. France reportedly has issues both with the sources of ammo (they’d like replacement shells to be manufactured within the EU) and with how Ukraine is paying (they want it structured differently).
In the opinion of some diplomats, lobbying by defense companies may be behind France’s decision.
Yeah. That’s just great. I will now resist any remarks about the French and wars.
whheydt @44, I’m sure that Putin would find you fit enough to conscript you into his trench-digging forces.
During WWII there were quite a few Russian women serving in the military. I don’t see Russian babushkas digging trenches … yet, but I wouldn’t put it past Putin to start recruiting women.
According to this resource: The United States Military Academy (2015). West Point History of World War II. Vol. 1. Simon and Schuster. p. 235. ISBN 978-1-4767-8273-7, There were 800,000 women who served in the Soviet Armed Forces during the war, which is roughly 5 percent of total military personnel.
StevoRsays
Wewll, this isn’t much, just implications of world as we know it ending :
Unlike France, where discussions of raising the retirement age have resulted in protests across the nation, Russia reformed pensions just five years ago, reducing the pay of retirees and sharply increasing the time most people have to stay on the job.
Stochastic terrorism operates through the mechanism of plausible deniability. The person issuing the call to action—the call to violence—can later disclaim whatever he or she said by denying that any call was given at all. The person responding to the rhetoric must have misheard or misunderstood. This is key to understanding how the phenomenon works.
What do we have today? What kind of rhetoric is going out on the airwaves these days in the conservative realm of discourse?
I can’t claim to know everything that every mouthpiece or influencer is out there saying. I merely poke around. And the fact that, even with limited media exposure, I was able to discern these calls to action I find quite indicative of how widespread these sentiments must be. What these people are proclaiming is very much out in the open.
One example from last year in terms of stochastic terrorism was the destruction of the Georgia Guidestones. A privately constructed monument ostensibly celebrating ideals championed by the right, the Stonehenge-esque structure was targeted rhetorically by conspiracy theorists and those associated with QAnon. Within a very short span of time, the Guidestones were targeted in real life, brought down by explosives, damaged so badly that they had to be demolished altogether.
Later in the year, in the wake of the attack on Paul Pelosi’s, there seemed to be a ratcheting up of rhetoric from right-wing spokespeople. This came not from prominent politicians but persons more lateral to the movement. Charlie Kirk, for example, “joked” that some patriot should post bail for the assailant. Donald Trump, Jr., posted to Instagram a photo of mens’ underwear with a hammer strewn across. Taunting. [Instagram text and image at the link]
But the tide turned when conservatives did not get the red wave that they had prophesied for weeks on end; and their followers, I’m sure, were dispirited. Momentum had died.
Several things did happen in the interim, however. Elon Musk took over Twitter and became one of the most public proponents of conspiracy theories. Donald Trump announced his bid for office and then held an anti-Semitic Thanksgiving dinner with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, for which he never paid any price; no Republican ever distanced themselves from him on that score. Kevin McCarthy elevated the MAGA caucus in his bid for apex power in the House. The GOP seemed to be settling back into a narrative of “Deep State” undermining and other nostrums (crime, immigration) related to their war on our culture.
What’s happening now? In the wake of high-profile mass shootings, including several at colleges and elementary school (a Christian private academy, no less), Republicans have admitted that they mean to do nothing to rein in the proliferation of guns. They instead turned their ire immediately toward the trans community, with Tucker Carlson (just weeks after re-creating for his audience a fantasy version of January 6th) intoning that this is obviously no time to give up your AR-15.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, true to her QAnon roots, said in an interview that Democrats were pedophiles, and 60 Minutes thought theirs was the platform by which to boost this message.
And now Donald Trump has been indicted.
It’s a five-alarm fire over in right-wing circles right now, and they are communicating to their audience the dire straits. The Lincoln Project drew up a compilation: [video at the link]
Tucker Carlson: This is what it seems to be. It’s a political purge.
Josh Hawley: This is burning down the rule of law.
Lindsey Graham: This is going to destroy America.
Donald Trump, Jr.: This is, like, communist-level shit.
Madison Cawthorn: This is exactly like what happened during the fall of the Roman republic.
Laura Ingraham: It’s like Stalin’s purges.
Lindsey Graham: This is literally legal voodoo.
Glenn Beck: The Bill of Rights is gone. ✂️
Charlie Kirk: We must make them pay a price.
Glenn Beck: They’ve wanted violence from the Right from the beginning.
Alex Jones: This is the season of them staging terror attacks and blaming it on Trump supporters.
Dan Bongino: I mean, we’re in a police state. I’m not even arguing this. ✂️
Tucker Carlson: This is too great an assault on our system, much greater than anything we saw on January 6th.
Josh Hawley: They will regret doing this.
Tucker Carlson: What you’re seeing now is lawlessness, and the question is, “Who can stop it?”
That gives you a sampling of how widespread this outrage is playing, and in what tones.
Other voices have joined the fray. Charlie Kirk just this week said that gun violence is the price we’re obligated to pay for the freedom to possess guns: [video at the link]
Kirk: The Second Amendment protects all of the other amendments. That’s a fact. And there is a cost to any form of liberty. That’s a fact. If you have cars, you get 50,000 auto fatalities every single year. If you have planes, you’re going to have some planes crash. If you have the Open Skies Act, you’re going to have a bad pilot. You have pools, unfortunately you have kids wander into the pool and they die of suffocation. Happens far too often in Arizona. You have peanuts, people could be eating alone in their home and they could choke to death. You get the point.
Liberty has some costs. But yes, liberty is worth it. And I say that because we live under this delusion that somehow we can get gun deaths down to zero. So if you come from the premise that we’re going to have an armed citizenry, you’re going to have a cost.
Lance Wallnau—megachurch pastor with an unhealthy obsession with Trump, an advocate of the Seven Mountains doctrine—now is prophesying that, in May, God will start killing lots of people. [Video at the link]
Wallnau: Satan’s whole Antichrist activity is him trying to consolidate control, because he knows he’s about to lose everything. So you have to really reinterpret what’s going on in the news. Watching what’s happening with Donald Trump, as we’re praying into that. I believe this is the time. Maybe the election wasn’t the time. But this is the time for the imprecatory prayers that would be answered, which is going to be, “May they fall into the pit that they have dug.”
Now what would that look like? Well, it could be that there’s such an outrageous backlash over the clear political persecution of an innocent, uh, political candidate that we’re really becoming like a Venezuela or a Soviet Union where we find a crime to put, to lock up or assassinate our political rivals. The American people won’t put up with it.
Now that the elites in Washington, well, they shrug their shoulders. They’re half happy that this is happening. But I’ve been listening to prophecies lately about sudden deaths. And it looks to me like there could be some sudden deaths coming in May. And in May you’re going to see some of the disciplinary hand of God come down upon those people that have been standing in the path of what He wants to do. I’m not talking about Democrats only. We have Republicans also.
This hearkens back to the ReAwaken America tour, where Julie Green, another Trumpified prophet, laid out a roster of people on God’s hit list, including some in the GOP. [Screenshot at the link: “Angel of Death is coming for them […]” with the roster including Hillary Clinton, Rachel Maddow, Joe Biden, Michelle Obama, etc.]
Does this mean anything? No one can say for sure. And that’s the whole point. They’re not directing anyone to commit acts of violence. They’re merely using the rhetoric of white-hot anger to rile up their base and to imply that what they’re witnessing is the end of the world, and that God will strike down the troublemakers thwarting His will.
New legislation from House Republicans aims to prevent local district attorneys from pursuing charges against former presidents…
Now comes a proposal that Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.) said would “prevent political prosecutions” by moving cases against former presidents from state jurisdiction to federal court, where judges are confirmed by the Senate, an institution reliably influenced by elected Republicans.
“Politically motivated prosecutors should not be able to wield unwarranted power and target our nation’s top leaders for their own personal gain,” Fry said in a statement on his website…
Who decides whether a prosecution is “politically motivated”?
In other news, here are some responses from readers of the article quoted in comment 51:
What the gaggle of conservatives gathered in the Lincoln Project video sets out, what those people establish, is a permission structure. They are relieving people of responsibility and charging them with a duty all at the same time. [a duty to commit violence]
——————
There is a reason for them to “accelerate” and that’s the Orange Anus getting formally arraigned and charged with 34 felony counts. They worried that the wheels are about to come of their fascist hand cart. That if they don’t act soon the figurehead they’ve latched themselves to is likely to be in prison. While that will give him some “martyr” value it will be a huge turnoff to the mushy middle voters that they need to get him back in the White House. Basically their scheming reeks of desperation and fear. But that doesn’t mean we can or should back off. They’re counting on our side collapsing from their rhetoric and some possible acts of terror it creates.
———————-
Authoritarians benefit from violence in a number of ways:
– It intimidates opponents (ostensibly).
– It gooses their own supporters.
– It hardens people into their ideologies, such that if one were already identified as conservative it strengthens that identification.
So, cause crime? Profit!
————————-
What the GOP are doing is arming up their violent base by making guns easier to get, manipulating and gaslighting the 2nd Amendment, riling them up into a violent frenzy, while at the same time legally supporting their right to murder those who oppose their views. Such as they did when they excused Kyle Rittenhouse and are now set to let off Daniel Perry for murder. Each one excused for their crime because the victims were associated to “Anifa” and “BLM.” Groups who oppose the right-wing brand of bigotry, racism and fascism.
————————-
I think if you make outrage, whether its real or manufactured, eventually it will build up sufficiently to require an outlet in some form. And that level is different for different people and different contexts.
But while the results end up the same, manufactured outrage to get clicks, or grift a few dollars is far, far more dangerous as it is not self-limited by reality, and it can be a form of addictive behavior, getting the adrenaline/rage high, requiring more and more outrage to feed it, speeding the need for outlets.
————————-
the new-KGB is finding hateful, angry, vulnerable men to flatter and support and enlist/use to agitate US audiences of Russia’s troll farms and amp up the chaos. That’s what Putin has done throughout his career for like 50 years – without and then with the internet – pretty successfully.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis on Wednesday sanctioned Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., for withholding evidence in the Dominion defamation suit, and said he’s considering further investigation and censure.
According to a person present in the courtroom, lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems played recordings Fox News producer Abby Grossberg made during 2020, which were not handed over to Dominion’s lawyers during discovery.
Grossberg, a former producer for Fox hosts Maria Bartiromo and Tucker Carlson, has sued Fox News and said her deposition was coerced. In an amended filing yesterday, she said she had recorded conversations with Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and others.
The sanction gives Dominion a chance to conduct another deposition, at Fox’s expense.
The surprise evidence and sanction comes days before the trial is scheduled to begin in the $1.6 billion defamation case Dominion Voting Systems filed against Fox News and Fox Corporation. Davis also said Wednesday he was considering appointing a special master to investigate the Fox legal teams’ actions.
Wonkette: “Florida Bigot Unclear On Concept: Are Trans People ‘X-Men’? Because Those Guys Are Awesome!”
Florida Republicans introduced legislation last month that would make it a misdemeanor for trans people to use the bathroom in public. The so-called “Safety in Private Spaces Act” would require that people use public restrooms and changing facilities strictly according to their sex assigned at birth. […] It’s unclear how you’d enforce the necessary genital inspections before anyone enters the bathroom, so this just seems like legalized harassment.
The bill’s supporters claim this will ensure “public safety, decency, and decorum.” Sen. Erin Grall, who sponsored this mess, said, “There are just places where we should be comfortable to do the business that needs to be done in those spaces.” She’s existed in a world with trans people for a while now without incident. She’s the one who wants to make people uncomfortable.
Florida is still technically part of America, so several trans Floridians spoke out against the bill that would directly impact them during a committee meeting Monday. That’s when the villainy escalated to comic-book proportions.
Rep. Webster Barnaby from Deltona viciously attacked these citizens, calling them “demons” and “imps.”
Here’s the pure hatred: [video at the link]
Embracing his ignorance, Barnaby said he didn’t know what gender dysphoria actually is and didn’t want to know.
“I’m looking at society today,” he lamented, “and it’s like I’m watching an X-Men movie.”
That’s a pretty deep cut. The first X-Men film starring Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and a mostly wasted Halle Berry came out in 2000. But just what did he think the point of those movies were? The people terrified of mutants and who want to regulate their existence are all bad guys.
“When you watch those movies or [read] Marvel Comics … ” Oh, good, he’s going to share more of his thought process with us. Better fetch an airsick bag. “… It’s like we have mutants living among us on our planet. And some people don’t like that, but that’s a fact.”
No, it’s not a fact. The X-Men films weren’t documentaries. Mutants aren’t real, although they have served as a general metaphor for marginalized groups. […]
Barnaby’s diatribe continued:
“We have people who live among us on planet Earth who are happy to display themselves as if they were mutants from another planet. This is the planet Earth where God created men ‘male’ and women ‘female.'”
(Technically, we know that Adam has a rib but the Bible doesn’t go into much detail about his or Eve’s genitalia.)
Declaring himself a “proud Christian conservative Republican,” Barnaby displayed more witch-burning contempt for the trans people before him.
“There is so much evil in the world today, and so many people who are afraid to address the evil, the dysphoria, the dysfunction. But I’m not afraid to address the dysphoria or the dysfunction,” Barnaby said, perhaps hoping for an accompanying soundtrack of thunder cracking. “The Lord rebuke you, Satan, and all of your demons and all of your imps who come parade before us. That’s right, I called you demons and imps who come and parade before us and pretend that you are part of this world.” [Wow! Okay then.]
Unlike the X-Men, who I must stress again don’t exist, trans people are part of this world and share the same essential humanity as Barnaby — though that does seem unfair to trans people.
“My righteous indignation is stirred,” Barnaby declared. “I’m tired of this. I’m not going to put up with it. You can test me and try to take me on. I promise you, I’ll win every time.” [cartoon X-Men image at the link]
The bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Rachel Lora Saunders Plakon, tried to distance herself from Barnaby’s supervillain monologue, and Barnaby later apologized in a manner reminiscent of Nic Cage in Wild At Heart:
“I would like to apologize to the trans community for referring to you as demons.”
Alejandra Caraballo tweeted, “It’s extremely difficult to prove unconstitutional animus in legislation and this Rep. just managed to do it explicitly on the record in legislative debate. He may have singlehandedly helped prove discriminatory intent to get it enjoined in court.”
Luckily those two wild and crazy guys [Tucker Carlson and Trump] have something in common, and it is that they both are on Vladimir Putin’s side, against America. So they could talk about that.
Couple things here. Firstly, the sniffing from Trump was just off the charts. […] Secondly, watch the facial expressions from Tucker, because they are priceless. […] Tucker hardly gets a word in edgewise, just lets the blubbering blob babble. [video at the link]
[…] The Hardcore Anti-American Shit
Anyway, so Trump drooled all over dictators, like he always does. How smart is Putin? Tucker wanted to know. And Trump told him first how smart President Xi of China is, and then how smart Kim Jong-Un is, and then how smart Vladimir Putin is.
[…] Follow the bouncing traitor:
TRUMP: Top of the line. Top line. They’re all top of the line. Our guy’s not top of the line. Never was. These are top of the line people at the top of their game. President Xi is a brilliant man. If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find, there’s nobody like that.
Because that’s where you’d go to find the leader of China.
TRUMP: The look, the brain, the whole thing. We had a great relationship. You know, when he first came to Mar-a-Lago, he came, the first day, he was there for a few days, we were going to have a … It was so organized by them and by us, but by them very boom, boom, boom. Everything’s like business. No games, you know. They don’t say, Gee, how did the Yankees do last night? Oh, that was a wonderful. They don’t care. They don’t care about anything. I said, You ever go to a Broadway play? I’ll take you to one. Do you ever have plays like do you ever go … No, I don’t know. He’s all, this is business. These aren’t game players, right? I like it, you know, in a way, I like it. You have no life. But that’s what he likes.
Trump wanted to take the president-for-life of China to see Cats.
TRUMP: Top of the line. Smart. Top of the line.
He talks about people like they’re snazzy brand new 1970s Cadillacs. Top of the line. Unparalleled luxury. Wood grain dashboards. Tail fins.
TRUMP: When they came in, it was supposed to be a meeting that lasted exactly 15 minutes. So we go to breakout sessions with all they had. Like 40 people. We had 40 people, you know, the comparables. Right? And we’re sitting across the table from each other in the ballroom of Mar-a-Lago. It was an amazing scene, but our meeting was supposed to take 15 minutes. It took four hours. We got along so well. There was a great chemistry we had. Great. We talked about everything. A great chemistry.
But people ask me how smart Xi, I said top of the line. You’ve never met anybody smarter.
How smart is Kim Jong-Un? Top of the line. You know people say, oh, this and that. Really smart.
Mini-bar in the backseat. Corinthian leather.
TRUMP: You know, when you come out and as a young man at 24, 23, even though he sort of inherits it, most people when they inherit, they lose it.
He would know.
TRUMP: And that’s easy stuff. He took over a country, a very smart people, very, very energetic people, very tough people at a very young age. And he has total dominant control. That’s not easy. These are, these are very smart …
He finally gets to Putin, and some words about how excited he is for Putin to take over all of Ukraine, because of how Trump is an enemy of freedom and democracy in all the world, not just America.
TRUMP: Putin, very smart.
Velour upholstery.
TRUMP: Now, he’s had probably a bad year. Don’t forget, that whole thing is not, if he took over all of Ukraine, and what are we going to do because Biden is so committed to Ukraine.
Note that Trump is criticizing Joe Biden here, for being committed to Ukraine.
TRUMP: What happens if it’s a not winnable war? You know, there are people that say Ukraine cannot win. You can’t beat Russia right now.
Many people are saying and they have tears in their eyes.
TRUMP: I’m not saying anything out of school. I read it in one of our newspapers. So, you know, it’s probably fake news, but maybe not. I don’t think it is. Russia right now is making massive amounts of ammunition. Sounds simple, right? But they’re making massive beyond anything they’ve ever made before. We don’t have any ammunition. We’ve given it to Ukraine. We’re not, we’re not prepared to fight. I rebuilt our military, new planes, new tanks, new everything. They’ve taken, the military that I’ve rebuilt, and they’ve given it all to Ukraine. I mean, massive amounts.
For more than 80 years, Morgan State University students walking down Hillen Road near the school’s entrance saw a massive red brick wall. Some thought it was a simple alley; others thought perhaps it protected a few garages. But the structure was actually a “spite wall” intended to keep Black students from venturing into a once predominantly white Baltimore neighborhood.
White Baltimore residents banded together in the late 1930s to erect the wall in response to the growing number of Black people in the area attending Morgan State, a historically Black institution. On Tuesday, University President David Wilson, school officials and residents watched as an excavator destroyed the barrier. [historical photo at the link]
[…] “For the white community, this spite wall was to send a signal and to physically create a divider that would symbolize the segregation that they stood for,” said Dale Green, a professor and architectural historian at Morgan State. “They were not supportive of the integration of African Americans into the greater society. The wall was to fortify the whites from the Blacks.”
[…] officials plan to keep a small part of the wall in place as a historical marker where students can learn about its dark history.
House Republicans expressed alarm after an increasingly unhinged Rep. Jim Jordan subpoenaed himself to testify before Congress.
In a blistering statement, the House Judiciary Committee chairman demanded that he comply with his subpoena and called himself a “toadying Soros-backed flunky.”
“The message to Jim Jordan is clear: you can run, but you can’t hide,” Jordan said.
The Ohio congressman warned that, if he refused to testify, he would have “no other choice” but to call for himself to be jailed.
Behind the scenes, Jordan’s G.O.P. colleagues discussed replacing him as the chair of the Judiciary Committee with a more mentally stable member of their conference, such as Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Jury selection in the trial to hear Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News wasn’t slated to begin until Thursday, but Wednesday brought fireworks in the courtroom of Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis. Davis not only admonished Fox News’ attorneys for hiding evidence related to network co-founder Rupert Murdoch, he determined that a special master would be necessary to review the evidence that Fox News is holding but has not yet shared with the court or Dominion.
As NBC News reports, a clearly upset Davis didn’t stop at scolding Fox News. He sanctioned the corporation, giving Dominion another opportunity to review the evidence—at Fox News’ expense. Davis also warned that he is considering “further investigation and censure” after it became clear that Fox News was downplaying Murdoch’s role at the company in order to cover up his involvement in how the network reported on Dominion.
According to CNN Business, Davis also informed both Fox News and Dominion that he intends to appoint a “special master” to review the information Fox has so far withheld and determine which of it should be added to the trial evidence.
“I am very concerned… that there have been misrepresentations to the court. This is very serious.”
Two years ago, Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News for its repeated broadcasting of false claims that diminished trust in Dominion’s voting machines and harmed the value of the company. Many of those claims came from sources close to Donald Trump, including Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who were frequent guests on Fox News’ programs and who repeatedly made unsupported claims about the security, reliability, and ownership of Dominion. Fox News made repeated attempts to get the lawsuit dismissed. All of those attempts failed.
In February, it was revealed that during the process of discovery Dominion had obtained a series of behind-the-scenes texts and emails showing that Fox News knew that many of the claims the network was airing against Dominion were lies, but they went ahead with those lies anyway. As Laura Clawson reported at the time, “Winning a defamation lawsuit against a news network requires meeting an extremely high standard of proof, but this is about as strong a case as you can imagine: Dominion has pages of internal communications between top Fox News personalities and executives showing that they knew what they were doing.”
Fox News responded to Dominion’s outrage over the behind-the-scenes revelations with a statement that utterly failed to address the issues raised by the raft of emails and texts. Instead, Fox News tried to hide behind First Amendment claims. However, Dominion won on almost every point in pretrial motions and on March 31, Judge Davis ruled that the lawsuit could proceed to trial.
Murdoch made some appearances in the previous cache of emails and texts provided by Fox News. That includes an email in which Murdoch said “This is really crazy stuff” when referring to Donald Trump attorney Sidney Powell’s false claims about Dominion. Some of the released material also showed Murdoch discussing with Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott a plan in which they would say that Biden actually won the election in an effort to “stop the Trump myth that the election was stolen.” However, Scott’s reply warns that “we need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers.”
This, and another incident in which Murdoch was quoted worrying about what Sean Hannity might say to his audience, makes the 92-year-old owner of Fox News seem like the most reasonable person in the room.
However, it now seems that by claiming that Murdoch was “only an officer at Fox Corporation and didn’t have any role in Fox News,” much of his involvement with statements and actions related to Dominion may have been left out of documents turned over during the discovery phase of the trial.
Then on Sunday, days before the trial begins, Fox disclosed to Dominion’s attorneys that Murdoch does have a small role at Fox News … in that he is “executive chair” over the whole company.
Judge Davis was clearly shocked by the level of deception. “My problem is that it has been represented to me more than once that he is not an officer,” he stated in court on Tuesday. “I’m very uncomfortable right now.”
Fox responded that Murdoch had been listed as executive chair in corporate filings since 2019. They didn’t explain why they had repeatedly denied that he held a position at Fox News. At the moment, it is unknown which additional communications with or instructions from Murdoch are still under wraps.
Trial was expected to begin on Thursday, but this extension of discovery might cause a delay.
Earlier this year, Murdoch attempted to combine Fox News and parent company News Corporation. That merger was placed on hold in January, in part due to concerns over the Dominion trial.
Commissioners in Memphis voted Wednesday to reinstate one of two Black Democrats kicked out of the Republican-led Tennessee House.
The Shelby County Board of Commissioners voted to send Justin Pearson back to the Legislature in Nashville.
Republicans banished Pearson and Rep. Justin Jones last week over their role in a gun control protest on the House floor after a deadly school shooting.
The Nashville Metropolitan Council took only a few minutes Monday to restore Jones to office. He was quickly reinstated to his House seat. […]
Sen. John Fetterman’s public struggle with depression has led to a larger discussion about the stigmas surrounding mental health. While Fox News pundits and Donald Trump’s colossal failure of a son have mocked Fetterman’s condition and outright questioned his fitness, Fetterman’s challenges are hardly unique. An estimated one in five US adults live with a mental illness (57.8 million in 2021).
Four of Fetterman’s Democratic colleagues — Sen. Tina Smith from Minnesota, Rep. Seth Moulton from Massachusetts, Rep. Ruben Gallego from Arizona, and Rep. Ritchie Torres from New York — spoke this week with ABC News’s Brittney Shepherd about their personal mental health struggles. It was a generous show of support for Fetterman’s recovery and a brave stance for politicians currently in office, including one who’s also running for Senate.
Torres told Shepherd he considers telling their stories a vital form of public service.
“We represent people who are deeply affected by mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, who want to see themselves in their elected officials,” he said. “And I felt like I had a profound obligation to confront the culture of silence and stigma and shame that often surrounds the subject of mental health.” […]
Wonkette: “Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Sues Jim Jordan”
House Republicans were never known for finesse, but their hamfisted handling of the recent Trump indictment by New York prosecutors is a new low. For weeks now, Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan and heads of Oversight and Administration Reps. James Comer and Bryan Steil have harassed Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office with demands that it turn over all its internal documents and testify about the Trump prosecution. And they haven’t been subtle about it, with Reps. Elise Stefanik and Marjorie Taylor Greene, among others, confirming that they are coordinating Congress’s response to Bragg with Trump himself.
But yesterday, Manhattan DA Bragg punched back, filing a complaint in the Southern District of New York seeking judicial relief from House Republicans’ efforts to intimidate his office.
It’s axiomatic that the US Congress has zero oversight authority over local law enforcement officials. That’s how federalism goes, and it’s why conservatives are always howling about “local control,” although Rolling Stone reports that if Trump gets reelected, he plans to launch a civil rights investigation of Bragg on the theory that he’s racist against white people. Nevertheless, Republicans are in lockstep, vowing to punish Bragg for daring to hold Donald Trump accountable for … allegedly … committing crimes in the state of New York. [Tweet from Kevin McCarthy is available at the link]
Jordan and the dipshits’ rationale for their oversight authority has shifted. At the outset, Jordan mumbled vaguely about needing to legislate the Secret Service’s interaction with local police and/or the possibility of proposing a (laughably unconstitutional) law to allow former presidents to transfer state prosecutions to federal court. But after the DA disclosed that his predecessor used approximately $5,000 of federal funds in 2021 to investigate the Trump Organization, Jordan pivoted to insisting that this gives Congress the right to examine the inner workings of the office. This is also ridiculous, since virtually every local police department receives some federal funding, and Jordan’s logic would empower the federal government to conduct not just the civil rights investigation of Bragg that Trump’s [promising] but to micromanage every local law enforcement agency.
Meanwhile Jordan stepped up the hackery by announcing that he’ll be holding a “field hearing” on Monday in New York with the “victims” of Bragg’s “pro-crime, anti-victim policies.” Which is merely stupid, unlike issuing a subpoena for former Manhattan prosecutor Mark Pomerantz to testify on April 20, which is a major escalation.
In February of 2021, Pomerantz was sworn in as a special assistant district attorney to investigate Trump. A year later, he resigned in rage after Bragg refused to take the property fraud case to the grand jury, although those charges later formed the basis of the New York Attorney General’s civil indictment of the Trump Organization. Pomerantz then took the unorthodox (read: arguably unethical) step of writing a book entitled People v. Donald Trump, over the objections of the District Attorney’s Office. Jordan has now cited this book as waiving privilege, as well as proving that the Trump investigation was tainted by bias. He seems untroubled by the fact that Bragg actually killed the part of the investigation Pomerantz worked on, writing in his subpoena letter that “Your book also contributed to the ‘political pressure’ on District Attorney Bragg to bring charges against former President Trump.”
Yesterday, Bragg responded by suing Jordan and Pomerantz in federal court, accusing the congressman of mounting “an unprecedented brazen and unconstitutional attack.” Don’t read this as Bragg suing Pomerantz. The lawyer has already told Jordan to get bent — naming him as a defendant gives Pomerantz additional legal cover not to testify next week. [Ah, that’s interesting! So that’s how that works.]
“Chairman Jordan’s demands, including his subpoena to Mr. Pomerantz, seek highly sensitive and confidential local prosecutorial information that belongs to the Office of the District Attorney and the People of New York,” he writes. “Basic principles of federalism and common sense, as well as binding Supreme Court precedent, forbid Congress from demanding it.”
In support of this argument, Bragg cites New York’s grand jury secrecy laws, as well as attorney-client and work product privileges. On a federal level, he points to the the Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states any power not specifically granted to the federal government in the Constitution, as well as multiple Supreme Court precedents affirming that the federal government cannot direct local law enforcement to do anything other than not violate federal laws. He also cites Trump v. Mazars, the Supreme Court holding that resulted from Trump’s longstanding challenge to the congressional subpoena for the then-president’s financial information. In it, the Court set out a four-part test for evaluating legislative subpoenas which impact the president, […]
Under the Mazars test, courts should determine: (1) if other sources can reasonably provide Congress the same information; (2) whether the subpoena is no broader than is reasonably necessary to support the legislative objective; (3) whether the subpoena would advance a valid legislative purpose; and (4) whether the subpoena burdens the executive entity and may be a result of partisan politics.
Clearly, this subpoena for details about just one case cannot possibly pass any prong of the test. Nevertheless, Judge Mary Vyskocil, a Trump appointee assigned to the case, refused to issue a temporary restraining order yesterday as requested, instead scheduling a hearing on the motion for preliminary injunction for April 19.
Now, there are Trump judges, and there are Trump judges. Vyskocil was originally placed on the bankruptcy court in 2016 by Barack Obama, and her 2019 nomination was unanimously approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee. She is not Judge Aileen Cannon. Moreover, a TRO granted before the defendant has even been served notice of the complaint is a drastic remedy reserved only for cases where the harm to be prevented is both imminent and irreparable. Here, Pomerantz has already said he’s not showing up to testify on the 20th, and he’s clearly not going to be prosecuted by the Justice Department for blowing off Congress, so waiting a week is unlikely to matter.
All of which is a long way of saying that we have no idea what’s going to happen with this case. Courts are loath to intervene with congressional authority, due to separation of powers issues. But considering how long Trump was able to delay compliance through litigation, there’s at least a decent chance Bragg can drag this out to where the subpoena disappears because Democrats have taken back the House and tossed it in the trash. In any event, the DA will have punched back and made it difficult for Jordan to issue any more subpoenas of future witnesses.
And that’s a win. We take those.
Bragg’s lawsuit against Jordan will also allow for discovery, during which Bragg can request evidence that shows Jordan coordinating with Trump.
The Arizona House rose to the occasion on Wednesday, voting to expel Rep. Liz Harris for her role in smearing multiple public officials and private citizens who were accused of accepting bribes from a Mexican drug cartel.
Republicans and Democrats finally found something they could agree upon: Harris had to go.
This, after the House Ethics Committee unanimously concluded that Harris not only knew what her invited speaker was likely to say during a livestreamed February hearing on elections but that the freshman legislator actually took steps to hide the details from House leadership.
Then she lied about it to the ethics panel.
“The Committee finds that, prior to the Joint Hearing, Representative Harris knew or was at least aware that (Jacqueline) Breger would present criminal allegations at the Joint Hearing and REJECTS Representative Harris’ testimony to the contrary,” the ethics panel wrote, in one of five findings that she engaged in “disorderly behavior”…
Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Wednesday removed the national police director who had talked about using exorcisms to catch fugitives.
Neither Petro nor the Defense Ministry elaborated on reasons for the dismissal of Gen. Henry Sanabria, a staunch Catholic who was appointed by Petro in August of last year. But Sanabria was under an internal investigation by the ministry over whether he had inappropriately allowed his religious beliefs to infringe on his duties.
Sanabria had unleashed a debate about the impact of his faith on the police after his statements in an interview last month including that police had used exorcisms to catch drug kingpins and guerrilla leaders. He also issued a strong condemnation of abortion, which is legal in Colombia.
Although Colombia is a predominantly Catholic country of conservative and religious traditions, it is a secular state under its constitution. Petro, who was sworn in as the country’s first-ever leftist president last August, said that Sanabria would never be persecuted over his religion, but that there must be separation between religious beliefs and the state…
Donald Trump sued his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen on Wednesday seeking at least $500 million in damages, as the former U.S. president steps up attacks on his onetime loyal “fixer” after Cohen testified before the Manhattan grand jury that indicted Trump.
In a complaint filed in federal court in Miami, Trump accused Cohen of failing to keep confidential attorney-client communications private and profiting by “spreading falsehoods” about him in books and podcasts.
Lanny Davis, a lawyer for Cohen, called Trump’s lawsuit “frivolous.” Trump often over the years has filed suits against various adversaries…
Helping a client to commit a crime is not protected by attorney-client privilege, so I don’t think there is any valid basis for Trump’s lawsuit. IANAL.
Twice-impeached and freshly indicted former President Donald Trump has a standard mythology about himself. It is somewhat based on the jingoistic, cocaine-fueled action films of the 1980s and ‘90s. In it, Donald Trump is an omnipotent, fearless, and wise leader who inspires deference from all those around him. One of the refrains of this self-delusion is that people are constantly crying around him. Whether it is hardened Navy SEAL veterans and their wives, wizened generals, and calloused laborers, they are all coming up to him “with tears in their eyes.” The only time this seems to be true is when the MAGA world runs into the brick wall of reality and must reconcile how loathsome the rest of the country finds them.
In order to campaign for the Republican nomination while also pleading his case to try and stay out of jail, Donald Trump has reunited with his misinformation enablers over at Fox News. This includes doing an interview that aired Tuesday night with the man that prayed Trump would go away and texted that he hated the Donald “passionately”: Tucker Carlson.
Trump made some of his patented claims during the interview. One of those sets of claims came at the beginning of the interview where he described his experience when he was booked for dozens of federal charges against him in New York City. Trump claimed that basically everybody booking him was apologizing and crying; in fact, “tears were pouring down their eyes.” Not only is this an unbelievable story (and also a strange way to describe crying), but Yahoo! News has a source that says this story is “absolute BS.”
At the beginning of the interview with Carlson, Trump claimed:
“When they signed me in, and I’ll tell you, people were crying, people that work there, professionally work there, that have no problems putting in murderers, and they see everybody. It’s a tough, tough place, and they were crying. They were actually crying. They said, ‘I’m sorry.’ They said, ‘2024, sir. 2024.’ And tears were pouring down their eyes. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Truly unbelievable. Like, if you told it to me one million times I wouldn’t believe you. […]
According to journalist Michael Isikoff, his source was on hand for Trump’s arraignment and told the reporter that not only was Trump misrepresenting the approximately 57-minute booking experience, but Donald Trump’s story, according to the source, was “Absolute BS.” In this context, “BS” means “bullshit.” In fact, “There were zero people crying. There were zero people saying ‘I’m sorry.’” In this context “zero” means 0.00 or the absence of even a single person.
The source’s description highlights Trump absolute detachment from reality, because that source confirmed that Trump and his people had very limited interaction with any employees at the courthouse. According to the source, the only thing that was even slightly out of the ordinary from any run-of-the-mill booking was that Trump’s “fingers were too dry for his fingerprinting, at which point district attorney employees provided lotion for his fingers.” Yikes. Get that moisturizer on, Donald!
Enjoy watching Trump just plagiarize his own lies. It’s sort of like watching a fake-tanned snake eat poop out of its own butt.
Donald Trump is a stochastic terrorist […] The dictionary defines stochastic terrorism […] as “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.”
Trump does this all the time. It’s pretty much all he does these days, come to think of it. […]
Already, Trump has been harshly criticizing Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg on Goof Social since it became clear Bragg would prosecute him. Late last month, Trump predicted “death and destruction” if he were to be charged (he was) and posted a photo of Bragg next to a pic of himself wielding a baseball bat. He’s also called Bragg a “racist” and an “animal.”
His strategy is working—as he no doubt knew it would, considering his track record. According to reports, the Manhattan DA’s office has recently been deluged with threats as a direct result of Trump’s arraignment on charges stemming from his hush-money payments to a porn star.
Vice News:
The DA’s office received more than 1,000 calls and emails from Trump supporters since March 18, the day when Trump inaccurately predicted his own arrest, Bragg revealed on Tuesday. Many of those messages have been “overtly racist and antisemitic,” Bragg’s office said.
One email read: “Hay George Soros asshole puppet If you want President Trump come and get me. Remember we are everywhere and we have guns.”
[“We are everywhere and we have guns” sounds accurate.]
[…] Other emails called Bragg “Black trash” and “Aids Infested.” And if the threats were merely verbal, the situation might not be quite so worrying, but on at least two occasions since Trump incorrectly predicted the date of his arrest, his feral flying monkeys have come too close for comfort.
Bragg received an envelope containing white powder and a specific death threat against him. The letter was immediately contained to prevent exposure, and was later determined to contain no dangerous substance, according to a letter Bragg later circulated to his staff.
On March 28, a Trump supporter protesting Bragg’s investigation pulled a knife on a family, including two children, Bragg’s office said. The protester, a 39-year-old woman, carried a sign that read: “I support Trump, do you?” The protester was arrested.
Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers are risibly claiming that Trump’s obvious threats are not actual, bona fide threats. After all, he’s just an excitable boy who gets a tad worked up when he’s cranky.
“These posts are not threats, they are not harassment,” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche told Judge Juan Merchan during Trump’s arraignment. “He has rights, he’s allowed to speak publicly.”
Okay, sure. This is happening because they’re “not threats”: “We have maintained an increased security presence in and around courthouses and throughout the judiciary and will adjust protocols as necessary,” said Lucian Chalfen, a spokesperson for New York state courts. “We continue to evaluate and reevaluate security concerns and potential threats.”
One crucial part of Trump’s stochastic terrorism is convincing the wider world—and himself—that he’s a victim. In this case, he’s just an innocent lamb being led to slaughter; literally everyone except for the mean racist Black man can see it. […]
To be fair, we have seen video of Lindsey Graham crying for Trump. That was during Graham’s straight-to-camera plea for people to send money to Trump.
Elon Musk and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) called for NPR to be defunded after the outlet announced it would no longer use Twitter due to the social media platform slapping it with a “government-funded media” label.
“Defund @NPR,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday, after sharing an email that said the media outlet was no longer using Twitter.
Boebert responded to the Musk Tweet by saying “I’ve been saying that for quite some time! Let’s get it done!” […]
After ProPublica revealed that billionaire and GOP megadonor Harlan Crow spent decades lavishing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with pricey gifts and globetrotting trips, follow up stories noted Crow is an ardent collector of Nazi memorabilia. . . . What’s on display at his Dallas mansion includes two Hitler paintings, a signed copy of Mein Kampf, and swastika embossed linens. —Mother Jones
Some Reasons That You Might Own a Collection of Fancy Third Reich Table Linens, by Bruce Handy
The fancy Third Reich table linens were a steal compared with the fancy Confederate table linens.
You’re sophisticated enough to separate the art from the artist and/or genocidal regime.
You’re a film-studies major writing an honors thesis on Leni Riefenstahl’s table manners.
You bought them as a thoughtful “cheer up” present for your dear but troubled friend Ye.
You need them as props for your passion project, a bio-pic of Albert Speer, because you’re Stanley Kubrick, and you’re manically obsessive about authenticity, and you’re still alive.
Using paper Third Reich napkins contributes to climate change.
Something, something . . . Antifa.
You’re keeping them off the market because you’re concerned that they might retain traces of Hitler’s DNA, which unscrupulous scientists could use to clone him, or at least grow Hitler lab meat.
You’re worried that they might fall into the hands of extremist neo-Nazi cater waiters.
You’re preserving them as a reminder for future generations that elegant place settings are no excuse for unutterable evil.
The Nazi napkin drawer is the last place anyone would think to look for the afikoman.
Say what you will, but they go great with the Mar-a-Lago napkin rings. ♦
If you’ve been following international news, you’ve noticed the marked rise of protests and conflict in Israel. An unprecedentedly right-wing governing coalition has been elected with Netanyahu at the helm. Hundreds of thousands of people have been taking to the streets in Tel Aviv to protest the right’s moves to get rid of independence and the self-determination of Israeli Jews. Joining us to break it all down is Edo Konrad, editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine, a left-leaning publication that tells the story of people on the ground in Israel and Palestine. Konrad joins WITHpod to discuss the political fight over which hegemonic group may rule Israel, debates over the future of Zionism, why he says there is no going back to a status quo ante and more.
In this public News Brief, we detail how uncritical acceptance by centrist––and even liberal––media that the US is seeing an unprecedented “labor shortage” is helping justify repealing child labor protections in roughly a dozen states.
Chances are, if a character rides a bicycle in a movie or TV show that character is a huge loser. From The 40-Year-Old Virgin to Arrested Development, bicycles are frequently used to represent immaturity, otherness and misfortune. Thankfully, things are changing — at least a little. Witness the Citibike-riding women of Broad City or Dr. Sharon Fieldstone, the sports psychologist who counsels the cast of Ted Lasso after commuting to work on her Brompton folding bike. Journalist Nitish Pahwa of Slate joins us to discuss the ways in which Hollywood and other parts of our entertainment-industrial complex use bicycles and cars to signify power and status.
Ben Affleck’s AIR (2023) chronicles the wheeling and dealing that led to Michael Jordan signing with Nike, and this unabashed celebration of the world’s most famous shoe brand positions the Air Jordan as a victory for trickle-down economics. We discuss the movie that asks the question: “What if you made The Social Network about people who were frickin epic??”
(I can get annoyed with this podcast, but this episode is fun.)
It’s time for @SenFeinstein to resign. We need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty. While she has had a lifetime of public service, it is obvious she can no longer fulfill her duties. Not speaking out undermines our credibility as elected representatives of the people.
This isn’t something that shld be playing out in the press or on Twitter. Sen. Schumer and Gov. Newsome shld speak to Sen. Feinstein and her family and make clear that the state needs a full time Senator. This is unseemly and unkind.
It depends on whether people have tried to speak with her previously. Seems like she should have been aware of the problems long before this.
wzrd1says
Trump is suing Cohen for $500 million. Now, what the lawyers filed and what Trump says, well, if Trump does his usual, Trump will likely look at obstruction charges, as Cohen’s long been on the witness list.
Trump really needs to learn, if you want to get out of the hole, first put down the shovel. He keeps digging in deeper.
I can easily see him talking himself away from just the likely fines and straight into a prison cell.
So sad, too bad.
Richmond, Indiana has a major recycling plant fire, unknown releases, dense smoke, expected to burn for days, only a half mile around the fire evacuated. Based on aerial photos, I’d have went with a mile. Plastics alone generate some really nasty stuff.
Wagner founder wants Russian society to be fully mobilized for war. I’m sure the other oligarchs will find that a wonderful idea, right up there with going bankrupt, experiencing a firing squad and calling Putin crazy to his face.
Dominion judge sanctioning Fox for withholding evidence. Oops, now a special master to investigate for misconduct.
StevoRsays
Jim Wright of the Stonekettle Station blog has a typically brilliant fb post on the disturbing state of the USA & its now openly fascist party here :
Yesterday, the Missouri state house under Republicans control, de facto voted to close all public libraries in the state.
I say “de facto” because while they didn’t out and out say “close all the public libraries” they DID vote to remove all funding for public libraries from the state budget. They also voted to fully defund diversity programs, state run child care, and all state funded pre-school.
They did this as an act of revenge.
Note the lack of “apparently” in that previous sentence.
Republicans led by House Budget Committee chairman Cody Smith OPENLY said the move was in retaliation for a lawsuit filed by the ACLU. That lawsuit seeks to have declared as unconstitutional recent legislation by Missouri Republicans banning over 300 books from school libraries. You can guess which books. Yep, that’s right, LGBTQ themes and anything having to do with any race other than white.
The legislation has now passed the House and is being taken up by the Missouri Senate. And in an appalling coda, during debate over gender affirming care for trans youth yesterday, Missouri Senator Mike Moon went off on a tangent about how girl children in the state of Missouri should be allowed to marry ADULT MEN so long as their parents approve.
“Do you know any kids who have been married at age 12? I do! And guess what? They’re still married!” That’s Republican Senator Mike Moon. Those are his words. And he thinks that’s a GOOD thing.
Where I’m from, we’d call that statutory rape.
We’d call that pedophilia.
We’d call THAT “grooming.”
– Jim Wright
Federal prosecutors probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have in recent weeks sought a wide range of documents related to fundraising after the 2020 election, looking to determine if Trump or his advisers scammed donors by using false claims about voter fraud to raise money, eight people familiar with the new inquiries said.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s office has sent subpoenas in recent weeks to Trump advisers and former campaign aides, Republican operatives and other consultants involved in the 2020 presidential campaign, the people said. They have also heard testimony from some of these figures in front of a Washington grand jury, some of the people said. […]
The fundraising prong of the investigation is focused on money raised during the period between Nov. 3, 2020, and the end of Trump’s time in office on Jan. 20, 2o21, and prosecutors are said to be interested in whether anyone associated with the fundraising operation violated wire fraud laws, which make it illegal to make false representations over email to swindle people out of money.
The new subpoenas received since the beginning of March, which have not been previously reported, show the breadth of Smith’s investigation…
Ha! It would be a real schadenfreude moment if Trump was not allowed to keep all that money he raised.
Commentary:
[…] I’m gonna guess yes, Trump committed wire fraud. He knew darn well that he lost the election fair and square. In fact, Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump told His Chief of Staff, Meadows, to hide the fact of his loss at all costs. It would have been bad for the grift. […]
Business Insider link to article “Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump told Mark Meadows ‘I don’t want people to know that we lost’ 2020 election court case.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced on Wednesday that her return to work in Washington has been delayed due to ongoing health complications and called on the Senate to appoint a temporary replacement for her on the Judiciary Committee
.
Her announcement came hours after Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) called for her to resign from the chamber.
Feinstein has been sidelined since late February after being diagnosed with shingles. Her absence, coupled with that of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), has left Democrats working at an even 49-49 at best during that time.
However, Feinstein’s post on the Senate Judiciary Committee has meant that the panel has been unable to advance partisan nominees through to floor votes over that period.
“When I was first diagnosed with shingles, I expected to return by the end of the March work period. Unfortunately, my return to Washington has been delayed due to continued complications related to my diagnosis,” Feinstein said in a Wednesday night statement.
“I intend to return as soon as possible once my medical team advises that it’s safe for me to travel. In the meantime, I remain committed to the job and will continue to work from home in San Francisco,” Feinstein continued.
“I understand that my absence could delay the important work of the Judiciary Committee, so I’ve asked [Majority Leader Chuck Schumer] to ask the Senate to allow another Democratic senator to temporarily serve until I’m able to resume my committee work,” she added.
At the moment, there are 14 pending judicial nominees who have had hearings before the panel, but have not received a vote by the committee. Since Feinstein has been absent, the panel has had to cancel three committee markups for nominees.
A spokesperson for Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would abide by Feinstein’s request. “Per Sen. Feinstein’s wishes, Majority Leader Schumer will ask the Senate next week to allow another Democratic Senator to temporarily serve on the Judiciary Committee,” they said.
A Politico report also emerged earlier Wednesday detailing the toll that shingles has taken on the 89-year-old senator and the oldest member of the upper chamber, who announced in February that she will not run for reelection in 2024.
Feinstein’s acuity has come into question in recent years. This was most recently on display when she announced her plans to retire at the end of her term, only to tell reporters minutes after that she had not made a decision about whether to seek another term, forcing her staff to correct her.
The longtime California Democrat has also rolled back her workload during the course of her term. She gave up her post atop the Judiciary Committee and allowed Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to become chairman after an outcry over how she handled Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation for the Supreme Court in 2020.
She was also in line to become the Senate Pro Tempore this year as the longest serving Senate Democrat, but allowed Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to take on the position. The position would have put her third in line for the presidency.
Heading into the current two-week recess stretch Senate Democrats were hopeful that she and Fetterman would be able to return to the upper chamber for work next week. Fetterman announced that he would indeed do so after being hospitalized and treated for clinical depression.
“We hope to be back to full strength right after Easter and to get back down to business,” Durbin told The Hill at the time.
Democrats hold an 11-10 advantage on the Judiciary Committee, making Feinstein’s absence even more acute than usual.
Headlining the group of nominees who remain stuck in limbo are Michael Delaney, who was tapped to fill the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacancy, and Charnelle Bjelkengren, a district court judge nominee for the Eastern District of Washington.
Delaney’s confirmation is in peril over his handling of a sexual assault case at a New Hampshire boarding school. Bjelkengren is the target of GOP opposition after she stumbled over questioning during her confirmation hearing.
Since the February recess, the Senate overall has confirmed one circuit court nominee and 12 district court judges.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
The man responsible for the leak of hundreds of classified Pentagon documents is reported to be a young, racist gun enthusiast who worked on a military base, and who was seeking to impress two dozen fellow members of an internet chat group. MPs have warned that British lives have been put at risk by the leak.
Ukraine’s state-owned gas company Naftogaz on Thursday said Russia has been ordered by an arbitration court in The Hague to pay $5bn (£4bn / €4.5bn) in compensation for unlawfully expropriating its assets in Crimea, which the Russian Federation claimed to annex in 2014.
Norway expels 15 Russian diplomats, accusing them of being intelligence officers
Norway’s foreign ministry has said it has decided to expel 15 Russian embassy officials in Oslo, claiming that they were intelligence officers operating under the cover of diplomatic positions.
In a statement, the ministry said:
The government’s decision is in response to the changed security situation in Europe, which has led to an increased intelligence threat from Russia.
The officers concerned “must leave Norway shortly”, it added.
The Norwegian foreign minister, Anniken Huitfeldt, said in a statement:
This is an important step in countering, and reducing the level of, Russian intelligence activity in Norway, and thus in safeguarding our national interests.
Russia’s foreign ministry said it would respond to Norway’s expulsion of its 15 diplomats, state media reported.
The man responsible for the leak of hundreds of classified Pentagon documents is reported to be a young, racist gun enthusiast who worked on a military base, and who was seeking to impress two dozen fellow members of an internet chat group.
The Washington Post interviewed a teenage member of the group, who described the man, referred to by the initials “OG”, from their online correspondence, and shared photographs and videos. The Post also viewed a video of a man identified as OG at a shooting range with a large rifle.
“He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target,” the report said. OG told fellow members of the same internet group that he worked on a military base, which was not named in the report, where his job involved viewing large amounts of classified information.
…
OG appears to have acted as a leader on a server originally set up in 2020 on the Discord messaging platform by a small group of gun enthusiasts and gamers. The group went by several names, but most often it was known as Thug Shaker Central….
According to the teenage member of the group interviewed by the Post, OG “had a dark view of the government”, portraying the government, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence agencies, as a repressive force. He ranted about “government overreach”.
The Post said details were confirmed anonymously by other members of the group, and that it had viewed a total 300 photographs of classified documents, three times the number previously thought to be circulating.
The origins of the leaks on Thug Shaker Central was first reported on Sunday by the Bellingcat investigative journalism group, which also interviewed the same member, who is under 18. [Aric Toler said WaPo, unlike the Guardian, didn’t cite or link to his work.]
However, the Washington Post said the teen member, who had been in touch with OG “in the past few days” had yet to be interviewed by any federal law enforcement officials by the time of publication on Wednesday night, even though the justice department began a criminal investigation and an FBI manhunt was launched at the beginning of the week. The defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has vowed to “turn over every rock” in pursuit of the leaker.
OG’s current whereabouts are unknown. The teenage group member told the Post he “seemed very confused and lost as to what to do”.
“He’s fully aware of what’s happening and what the consequences may be,” he said. “He’s just not sure on how to go about solving this situation … He seems pretty distraught about it.” [Shashank Joshi: “I think it is safe to say that he’s getting arrested today.”]
In his final message to his fellow group members, OG told them to “keep low and delete any information that could possibly relate to him”, including any copies of the classified documents. [LOL]…
India’s financial crimes agency is investigating the BBC over alleged violations of foreign exchange rules, less than two months after the corporation’s Indian headquarters were raided by tax inspectors.
According to officials, the latest investigation is being conducted by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), a central government agency.
In February, dozens of tax inspectors carried out a three-day “survey” of the BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai. Tax authorities accused the BBC of irregularities in its tax filings and illegally diverting its profits.
Both investigations come in the wake of a BBC documentary that was critical of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi. India’s government condemned the documentary as “colonial propaganda” that was “undermining the sovereignty and integrity of India” and banned it from being shared on social media.
The two-part BBC series, India: the Modi Question focused on Modi’s time as chief minister of Gujarat during violent Hindu-Muslim riots that ripped through his state in 2002 and left more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead.
The BBC documentary revealed that a British government document from the time had found Modi “directly responsible” for not stopping the killings of Muslims during the riots, and said the violence had “all the hallmarks of genocide”.
The BBC has stood by the documentary, stating it was “rigorously researched according to highest editorial standards”.
Though the documentary was not broadcast in India, it prompted a strongly worded backlash from the government. Several students who tried to hold screenings of the banned film were arrested or faced accusations of “treason”.
During the February raids dozens of inspectors cloned laptops and mobile phones and questioned editorial staff.
The government denied there was any correlation between the documentary and the raids, which it described as “routine scrutiny”.
The more recent case against the BBC was reportedly filed by the ED under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) two weeks ago. The broadcaster has reportedly been made to hand over financial documents and several staff members have been questioned.
The ED has previously been used against foreign organisations that have been deemed to be critical of the government. Amnesty International and Greenpeace are among the organisations who have had their accounts frozen and their operations halted in India after such an investigation….
Here’s a link to France 24’s English France-protest liveblog:
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across France on Thursday in a 12th day of protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s contested pension reforms, which will raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The demonstrations come a day before Friday’s much-awaited verdict by the Constitutional Council on the legality of the bill….
…
– Public anger over the reforms was further ignited after Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne used Article 49.3 – known as the “nuclear option” – to push pension reform through parliament without a vote on March 16, sparking widespread anger. Days later, the government narrowly survived two no-confidence votes.
– French President Emmanuel Macron insists the proposed changes, which include raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, are needed to reform a moribund system. But some of the government’s own experts have said the pension system is in relatively good shape and would likely return to a balanced budget even without reforms.
The Paris march will start at 2pm, and will start at Place de l’Opéra in Paris’s central ninth arrondissement, and end at Place de la Bastille in the 11th arrondissement in the east of the capital.
Protesters are set to march down the avenue de l’Opéra, rue de Rivoli and rue Saint-Antoine.
“Le combat syndical est loin d’être terminé”, affirme Laurent Berger, secrétaire général de la CFDT, présent dans le cortège parisien contre la réforme des retraites, ce jeudi, se projetant vers de “grandes manifestations populaires le 1er mai”.
“Contrairement à ce qu’espère le gouvernement, le mouvement n’est pas fini”, a renchéri à ses côtés la numéro un de la CGT Sophie Binet, réaffirmant, peu avant le départ du cortège parisien, que le président “ne peut pas gouverner le pays tant qu’il ne retire pas cette réforme”.
France’s highest constitutional authority, the Constitutional Council, will rule Friday on whether President Emmanuel Macron’s contentious pension reform proposal should be accepted, modified or rejected based on the guidelines of the French constitution. FRANCE 24 explains the three possible outcomes.
Not once in living memory has a ruling by France’s Constitutional Council aroused so much excitement. One of France’s three highest legal authorities, the Council is tasked with ensuring that legislation does not contravene the Fifth Republic’s constitution presented by Charles de Gaulle in 1958. The Council is not a politicised body like the US Supreme Court, and has tended to focus on the more technical questions of constitutional interpretation.
But there is enormous public discontent with Macron’s proposed reform, which would notably raise the retirement age from 62 to 64….
Against this tense backdrop, the Council’s verdict is eagerly awaited.
The Council’s nine members, led by former PM Laurent Fabius, will render two key decisions that will affect the future of the legislation: the first on its constitutionality and the second on whether to authorise a public referendum on the reform.
In ruling on whether it conforms to the constitution, the Council will either accept the bill in its entirety, alter aspects of it or reject it wholesale.
One member of the Council cautioned against expecting it to offer a simple resolution to France’s political crisis, telling journalists: “The Council’s decision is probably going to be more complex than some are suggesting.”
While the Council is a legal body and not a political one, it does take political and social context into account. And given that France is in the midst of a fierce popular movement against the reforms with near-weekly strikes and protests, it is “unlikely that the Council will just wave every bit of the legislation through intact”, said Bruno Cautrès, a political scientist at Sciences-Po University’s centre for political research in Paris.
But it seems equally unlikely that the Constitutional Council will reject the legislation entirely. Since the Council’s creation in 1958, along with the rest of the Fifth Republic’s institutions, its members have struck down only 17 laws – and these were invalidated over minor issues.
…
France’s Constitutional Court has long taken a dim view of “legislative riders” – provisions added to bills with a tenuous link or no real link at all to the core legislation – deeming them unconstitutional.
While the pension reform legislation is technically a budgetary measure – an update to France’s yearly social security financing bill – Macron’s government chose this way of introducing the bill because budgetary measures are not subject to a constitutional rule limiting the executive to using Article 49.3 no more than once in a parliamentary session.
Thus, at least in theory, any parts of the bill that are not “budgetary” could be struck down as legislative riders.
…
The Council will also rule on the possibility of holding a public referendum that could stop the pension reform in its tracks.
A never-before-used constitutional amendment from 2008 allows for a “Citizens’ Initiative Referendum” (référendum d’initiative partagée) to be held if a motion wins the support of one-fifth of MPs and the backing of one-tenth of voters. The left-wing NUPES alliance is trying to hold a national vote on passing a law capping the retirement age at 62.
That would be a tall order – even if the Council rules that a referendum can go ahead.
“It’s quite possible that the Council will allow for a referendum, but that wouldn’t necessarily stop Macron from putting his law in place,” Cautrès said.
“As for collecting nearly 5 million signatures in the nine months before the law is implemented – well, that’s not at all certain,” he added.
The Council will also have to consider a handful of appeals against the bill – including from NUPES and from Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party (Rassemblement National).
But one thing is certain, Cautrès said. “The Constitutional Council has an exclusively legal role and is not going to play politics.”
Constitutional Council president Fabius must eventually task one of the Council’s other members to write up an analysis of the bill. Whoever is chosen can draw upon the expertise of the Council’s legal department and may meet with the politicians behind the appeals that have been lodged. Once the report is complete, its author presents it to the rest of the Council.
Council members then take to the floor to share their positions on the report’s conclusions. A simple majority vote of the nine members decides the matter; the Council’s president votes last, casting the deciding vote if need be.
…
Regardless of what the Constitutional Council decides, France is likely to see more upheaval over the reforms in the weeks to come.
tomhsays
Re: #79 “Feinstein asks for Judiciary replacement after calls for resignation”
NYT:
Replacing Ms. Feinstein on the committee would require Democrats to pass a resolution, which would need some degree of bipartisan support — either the unanimous consent of the Senate or 60 votes. It is not clear whether Republicans, who want to hold up President Biden’s judicial nominations, would support such a measure.
Joe Biden on Thursday said that there was a “full-blown” investigation going on with the US intelligence community and the justice department over the leaking of classified Pentagon documents. “We’re getting close,” he said on answers. “But I don’t have an answer.”
Speaking in Dublin, the US president said that while he was concerned that sensitive government documents had been leaked, “there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence.”…
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian US liveblog. From there:
The southern United States is the country’s least friendly region for abortion, and access will soon grow even tighter as Florida moves to pass a ban on the procedure after six weeks. The GOP-controlled state House of Representatives is voting on the measure today, which contains exceptions for the life of the mother [sic], and governor Ron DeSantis has said he’ll sign it. While it’s not the outright ban imposed by some of the state’s neighbors, it’ll reduce abortion availability to a time period when most women aren’t yet aware they’re pregnant.
The greater battle in reproductive rights appears to be over mifepristone, which is used in medication abortion, and the subject of an ongoing federal court battle. Here’s more from Reuters on the late Wednesday ruling from an appeals court that preserved its availability, but imposed restrictions it that made it more difficult to access:
The abortion pill mifepristone will remain available in the US for now but with significant restrictions, including a requirement for in-person doctor visits to obtain the drug, a federal appeals court ruled late on Wednesday.
The New Orleans-based fifth circuit court of appeals put on hold part of last Friday’s order by the US district judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, which suspended the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval for the drug while he heard a lawsuit by anti-abortion groups seeking to ban it.
The Biden administration and the maker of the mifepristone brand, Danco Laboratories, had quickly asked for an emergency stay of that order.
However, the appeals court declined to block portions of Kacsmaryk’s order that in effect reinstate restrictions on the pill’s distribution, which had been lifted since 2016. In addition to a requirement of in-person doctor visits to prescribe and dispense the drug, those restrictions include limiting its use to the first seven weeks of pregnancy, down from 10 weeks. Kacsmaryk’s order will take effect on Friday.
Most Americans, including just over half of Republicans, believe a federal judge’s decision last week that would have taken abortion medication mifepristone off the shelves was motivated by politics, according to a new poll.
The Reuters/Ipsos survey completed yesterday found 56% of overall respondents believed the decision by conservative judge Matthew Kacsmaryk was politically motivated. The view was shared by 67% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans, according to the data.
The poll also found support for medication abortion across party lines. Restrictions on access to abortion pills as the state level were opposed by 51% of Republicans and 73% of Democrats.
The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has condemned the federal appeals court that blocked a judge’s ruling deauthorizing abortion medication mifepristone, but placing new restrictions on its distribution.
“The majority Maga panel of judges on the fifth circuit appellate court continue to undermine the FDA’s lawful expansion of access to safe medication abortion based on dubious legal grounds and baseless pseudo-science,” Schumer said in a statement.
“These extremist judges are putting their own anti-choice opinions before the medical expertise of providers and the FDA and the interests of patients. Senate Democrats will continue to fight back against this right-wing campaign against women.”
If you are wondering where Donald Trump is today, the answer is back in New York City, site of last week’s circus-like arraignment on felony charges of falsifying business records.
This time, he’s sitting for a deposition before New York attorney general Letitia James as part of her case alleging massive fraud by the former president and some of his children. Here’s the scene as his motorcade arrived in Manhattan, from the Washington Post: [link to a tweet with a video at the link: “Trump motorcade arriving at AG’s office to chants of ‘New York hates you’.”]
Fort Lauderdale experienced the rainiest day in its history Wednesday – a 1-in-1,000-year rainfall event – sparking a flash flood emergency in Broward County that has prompted emergency rescues, forced drivers to abandon cars, shuttered schools and shut down the airport through 5 a.m. Friday. And more rain is on the way.
The region recorded widespread rainfall totals of more than a foot, while Fort Lauderdale tallied 25.91 inches in a 24-hour period, according to preliminary reports from the National Weather Service office in Miami.
While the rain Thursday won’t reach nearly the amounts that fell on Wednesday, it will be problematic and create additional flooding, the National Weather Service said. Gusty winds, small hail and even isolated tornadoes are possible.
A flood warning is in effect for portions of Broward County until noon Thursday. A flood watch is in effect through Thursday evening.
Between 14 and 20 inches of rain have drenched the greater Fort Lauderdale metro area since Wednesday afternoon, according to a Thursday morning update from the National Weather Service office in Miami. The deluge is the “most severe flooding that I’ve ever seen,” one mayor said.
“This amount of rain in a 24-hour period is incredibly rare for South Florida,” said meteorologist Ana Torres-Vazquez from the weather service’s Miami forecast office.
Rainfall of 20 to 25 inches is similar to what the area can receive with a high-end hurricane over more than a day, Torres-Vazquez explained. She described the rainfall as a “1-in-1,000 year event, or greater,” meaning it’s an event so intense, the chance of it happening in any given year is just 0.1%.
During the peak of Wednesday’s deluge, a month’s worth of rain fell in just one hour. Fort Lauderdale’s average rainfall for April is 3 inches and it’s been nearly 25 years since the city totaled 20 inches of rain in an entire month.
Extreme rainfall is a signature consequence of a warming climate, and it is happening more frequently. The deluge in South Florida is just the latest instance after 1-in-1000 year rains struck over the past year in areas including Dallas, St. Louis, eastern Kentucky and Yellowstone.
…
There is a slight risk, Level 2 of 5, for severe storms Thursday in parts of Florida, including Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Jacksonville, according to the Storm Prediction Center….
Attorney general Merrick Garland said the justice department will ask the supreme court to review an appeals court decision that preserved access to abortion medication mifepristone but placed new restrictions on its use and distribution.
“The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA to deny in part our request for a stay pending appeal,” Garland said in a statement. “We will be seeking emergency relief from the Supreme Court to defend the FDA’s scientific judgment and protect Americans’ access to safe and effective reproductive care.”
Last week, conservative federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk had sided with abortion foes and revoked the Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of the drug, in a ruling that was to take effect this Friday. The justice department appealed, and late yesterday the fifth circuit court of appeals in New Orleans blocked the deauthorization. However, the judges allowed to go into effect portions of Kacsmaryk’s ruling that required mifepristone be prescribed during in-person doctor’s appointments and limiting its use to the first seven weeks of pregnancy from its current 10 weeks.
“Officers of the Special Operations Forces of Ukraine and units from the defence forces carried out a number of actions on the Donetsk front, which allowed them to establish the location of a Zhitel R-330Zh automated jamming station. The jamming station was quite far behind the front line.
The coordinates [of the jamming station’s location] were promptly transmitted to a rocket artillery unit, which knows how to do its job very well.
The video captures the moment when a HIMARS M142 rocket hit the jamming station.” …
Public outrage prompted a probe by the Pembrokeshire County Council in Wales to investigate whether Pembrokeshire Council member Andrew Edwards said, “All white men should have a Black slave.”
A 16-second audio clip published by this week by Nation Cymru allegedly captures him saying Black people are of “lower class” than white people…
[…] from the […] the Dominion pre-trial hearings. […] the basis for Trump (erroneously) believing Pence could decide which slate of electors to seat on Jan 6, 2021.
[The Bush v. Gore] Supreme Court ruling stopping the recount of Presidential votes in Florida was most unfortunate.
In his dissent Justice Stevens refers to the 1960 Hawaii Presidential election […]
its story […] an apparent winner on election night; a contest by the apparent loser; a court-ordered recount; the certification of one set of electors by the Governor while the recount was under way; a court decision declaring the apparent loser the winner after a recount completed after the date the State’s electors met; competing slates of electors presented to the Congress; and a joint session of Congress choosing which slate of electors to accept.
[…]
Vice President Nixon, sitting as the presiding officer of the joint convention of the two Houses, suggested that the electors named in the certificate of the Governor dated January 4, 1961 be considered the lawful electors from Hawaii.
[…]
The precedent […] Governor [sends] a subsequent certificate of election based on the decision of the count […] and Congress accepts […] his final certification.
[…]
Under this procedure Florida need not rush to complete its recount […] The key date is not December 12 or December 18. It is January 6
a quick thread on standing (in light of CA5’s mifepristone ruling) – and just some of the things that the Supreme Court concluded were *not* sufficiently likely to occur and therefore did *not* constitute viable injuries that allowed the plaintiffs to sue.
…
The Fifth Circuit’s standing analysis is not remotely consistent with these cases – their reasoning, their outcomes, anything.
…
NEW THEORY: I have standing to appeal the 5th circuit’s decision bc it’s dumb and I don’t like it and I have feelings….
Overnight, The Washington Post ran an article in which they claimed to have exclusive knowledge about the person behind the leaks of apparent top secret military information. Ordinarily, this sort of “we interviewed an anonymous friend of a doubly-anonymous person” sort of article might generate nothing but an eye-roll. However, it’s lent some credence by the fact that the Post has now run at least two articles—one on doubts about Ukraine’s ability to conduct an effective counteroffensive back in February, the other concerning Egyptian plans to sell rockets to Russia—that were not sourced from the images that were widely circulating after being posted to a series of forums.
This certainly suggests that The Washington Post has some source for additional information. This “friend” looks to be it.
But the most immediately striking part of the latest revelations on the leaker have to be how the paper of record refers to a person who reportedly “toiled for hours” to write up invaluable top secret information so they could share it on a Discord server. [Screenshot of a paragraph from the Washington Post story, with “young charismatic gun enthusiast” and “searching for companionship” highlighted.]
It’s exactly the way the Post, and others, frequently describe a mass shooter. So long as he’s white.
This glossy, airbrushed, kid glove handling of the leaker continues to a jaw-dropping degree in the following paragraphs as The Washington Post describes an online community drawn together by “their mutual love of guns, military gear and God.”
If the authors on this are ever hard up for work, there are certainly several white supremacist groups who could use some good PR.
The leaker, who used the acronym “OG,” apparently fit right in with this group of “mostly men and boys” (my guess is that “mostly” here is an understatement). OG, who claimed to be on a military base, began almost immediately sending long missives complete with military acronyms and information. They were “what appeared to be near-verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence documents that OG indicated he had brought home from his job.”
No one in this group of gun and God lovin’ guys thought about telling the Army, or the FBI, or anyone else about how OG was gracing them with top secret nuggets. Instead they just sat back while OG explained the importance of what he was uploading and provided notes to explain any concept too tricky—including explaining just how classified the information he was illegally sharing really was. Guns and God guys were good with that.
But don’t think the Post is done at this point knob-polishing OG or his group. Nope. He “toiled for hours writing up the classified documents to share with his companions in the Discord server he controlled.” How nice. What a good guy to put in all that effort for his “companions” who were taking “refuge” on Discord, just swapping “memes, offensive jokes and idle chitchat” as OG kept them informed on “secretive government operations” in order to protect his online pals.
Really. I’m underselling how sickly sweet this article really is in treating both OG and the Discord group. The hero worship of OG expressed by one of the group members—“He’s fit. He’s strong. He’s armed. He’s trained. Just about everything you can expect out of some sort of crazy movie.”—seems perfectly reflected in the way the Post handled this article.
You have to go 14 paragraphs into the piece (that’s 14) before you get to this:
In a video seen by The Post, the man who the member said is OG stands at a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear coverings and holding a large rifle. He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target.
Oh, he just happens to be racist and antisemitic? How charis-f–king-matic! You can just feel that mutual love! You’ll have to guess what kind of memes and offensive jokes OG’s online community was sharing. No, seriously. You’ll have to guess, because the Post just glosses right over that while talking about how all these poor folks were feeling like the pandemic was keeping them away from “their real friends.”
Seriously, this cloyingly sweet take on an online group that seems to have been centered on violence and racism and a guy who joins that group to share information in an effort to be deliberately harmful to both the U.S. and Ukraine is incomprehensible. […]
Oh yeah, the name of this friendly group of God-loving guys doesn’t make it until near the end of the article. They called themselves “Thug Shaker Central.” Jesus would surely approve. We’re also reassured that OG “is not a Russian operative.” And, oh yeah, the Discord channel on which OG served up classified documents about the positions of Ukrainian forces and inside information on Ukrainian assets was called “Bear vs. Pig.”
If all this wasn’t enough, the article also adds the spice of neck-snapping contradiction: [Screenshot of text from the Post, with OG’s anti-government views highlighted.]
The documents were another lesson for younger members in how OG thought the world really worked. The member said OG wasn’t hostile to the U.S. government, and he insisted that he was not working on behalf of any country’s interests … But OG had a dark view of the government. The young member said he spoke of the United States, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community, as a sinister force that sought to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark. He ranted about “government overreach.”
What you can learn from this article appears to be three things:
– The person who posted the images of classified information from February apparently worked on a military base, liked big guns, and liked to film himself shooting those guns when spraying racist and antisemitic statements. He also viewed the U.S. government as a “dark” and “sinister” force.
– He joined an online community filled with guys who also liked to talk about how they loved God and guns while making racist and antisemitic statements. Which might otherwise be known as a collection of white Christofascists with violent fantasies.
– Even though he shared dozens of highly classified documents with that community over a period of years, and went out of his way to prove that these documents were real, and some of the members of that community recognized they were real, none of them bothered to do a damn thing about it.
If I’ve ever read an article that worked this hard to be kind to subjects involved, I can’t recall it. And I’ve spent seven years watching the media write about Donald Trump. This article … this is something. Though I can’t really say what. Here’s a little section from the middle:
The member met OG about four years ago, on a different server for fans of Oxide, a popular YouTuber who streams videos about guns, body armor and military hardware. He said a group of avid members found the server too crowded and wanted a quieter place to talk about video game tactics, so they broke off into their own, small group.
The Post doesn’t seem to challenge this idea, or follow up. Want to make a bet about why this group really decided they needed some alone space? Might it have something to do with the “memes, offensive jokes and idle chitchat” they wanted to share?
In any case … there you go. The Washington Post says the leaker was a fit, strong, charismatic young man who joined a God-loving community for companionship and tried to protect them from darkness and give some insight into the overreaching, sinister government by sharing a few dozen highly classified documents about how America was doing too much for hopeless Ukrainian pigs.
Any questions?
One other note on the leaker. CNN reports that President Joe Biden says the intelligence community is closing in. “There’s a full-blown investigation going on, as you know,” said Biden. “The intelligence community and the Justice Department. And they’re getting close.”
If “OG” is the leaker, he apparently helped out by posting several videos of his own apartment. Multiple articles are out this morning discussing how the intelligence community is once again tightening the screws and the military is further restricting access to information—steps that could make it more difficult to plan future actions.
Meanwhile, Ukraine says they’re not seriously harmed by any of the information released. Mostly because they didn’t trust U.S. security in the first place.
Wonkette: “LOL! Tim Scott … LOL! … Running For POTUS … LOL! No, Seriously!”
He’s really doing it. Tim Scott, the junior senator from South Carolina whose cookout invitations remain extremely limited, announced Wednesday that he’s assembling a presidential exploratory committee that we assume will take his money and tell him he’s not about to humiliate himself.
Here’s his launch video. We’re gonna need a minute to cut through all the terrible. [video at the link]
Elie Mystal: “There are many dumbass things about Tim Scott announcing his run for president at Fort Sumter, but one of the dumbest is… the fort was never taken. After the Confederates took it, they held onto it for the duration of the Civil War, eventually abandoning but never surrendering.
It weirdly sums up Scott’s entire political existence… always claiming victory over the racism the animates the South when the base of his own party calls owning Scott the “lost cause” and is spoiling for Civil War 2. […]”
April 12, 1861, is considered the start of the US Civil War. A white supremacist militia attacked US soldiers at Fort Sumter. This siege was a dark day for the actual United States, and the traitors won, triggering a four-year-long, bloody war. This is a weird moment in history for Scott, who’s Black and descended from slaves, to launch his presidential campaign.
“Our country faced the defining moment,” Scott says while strolling through Fort Sumter. “Would we truly be one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all? America’s soul was put to the test and we prevailed!”
This is a Joe Biden speech twisted into some sick AF “Abraham Lincoln was a Republican!” historical revisionism. Southern conservatives were on the wrong side during the Civil War, and they’re on the wrong side in our present cold war with an anti-democratic insurgency posing as a political party.
“We prevailed”? The Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans would disagree. Also, even someone who took a history course in Ron DeSantis’s Florida would know that the Confederacy held Fort Sumter throughout the entire Civil War and only abandoned it once their evil cause was truly lost, but they never surrendered — much like MAGA after January 6.
“Today our country is once again being tested. Once again, our divisions run deep, and the threat to our future is real. Joe Biden and the radical Left have chosen a culture of grievance over greatness.”
Then we cut to the inevitable photo of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. [image at the link]
Think what you want of her (and I’m sure morons will go on about how she’s no better than Robert E. Lee), but Scott has achieved a new level of moral bankruptcy by directly comparing Joe Biden and specifically a woman of color to the 19th Century white racist traitors who declared war on the United States. That would’ve been gross even before 21st Century white racist traitors attacked the US Capitol on January 6.
On the upside, much like South Carolina during the Civil War, Tim Scott is heading for the biggest of all “L”s.
[…] Nikki Haley only lives in South Carolina now [she is polling at 18% in the Republican presidential primary race]. Scott is the sitting senator and to borrow from a rap song I assume he’s never heard, Trump is about to scream on his ass like his dad. Can he turn this around? […] you’re starting in single digits in your home state.
During an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Scott, who has zero charisma, insisted that his personal tap-dancing story will win over that rabid mob we generously call a Republican primary electorate. According to not-very-complicated math, Scott can’t win the nomination without defeating the clear frontrunner, Donald Trump. When asked point-blank how he planned to achieve this, Scott said, “As opposed to trying to have a conversation about how to beat a Republican, I think we’re better off having a conversation about beating Joe Biden.”
But you have to win the primary first, motherfucker! […] Trump is already raining body blows on DeSantis, who is responding like a dope without the rope. You can’t just say “Let’s go, Brandon!” when the frontrunner calls you an establishment RINO who likes little girls.
This isn’t a “West Wing” primary where everyone plays nice and talks about the issues that matter to voters. Besides, Trump, as the previous nominee, has inertia on his side. […]
As the Republican establishment’s favorite Black conservative (not an impressive achievement, of course), Scott has the same problems as DeSantis. He’s not MAGA enough. He’s the Bud Light of MAGA. DeSantis is a more effective cosplayer and is genuinely evil, but Scott is Republican awfulness at its most banal.
On Wednesday evening, commentators on Russian state media claimed that the grotesque video of a Ukrainian prisoner being decapitated using a knife showed members of the Wagner Group mercenaries rather than regular Russian military.
At first glance, this might be considered just the Russian military taking this opportunity to lob this disgusting crime over the wall to Wagner, especially since Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin is now reportedly investigating running for office in a party that is not the Vladimir Putin-favored “United Russia.”
However, CNN reports that there is another video that is circulating on Telegram that “appears to show the beheaded corpses of two Ukrainian soldiers lying on the ground next to a destroyed military vehicle.”
On the video, a Russian voice can be heard saying (translated): “They killed them. Someone came up to them. They came up to them and cut their heads off.”
This video was supposedly shot near Bakhmut, and is also attributed to members of Wagner Group. It’s also not dissimilar to actions that Wagner Group took in Syria. All of which makes it seem as if Wagner Group may be behind what has to be one of the more graphic displays of barbarity many of those unfortunate enough to watch the video have ever witnessed.
But it’s not as if their attitudes toward Ukrainians is unique. [Video at the link. “[…] “They don’t get the New Testament ethics, they get the Old Testament. A prophet personally cut the throats of 300 servants. These should be dealt within the same manner. They need to be liquidated without having second thoughts.”]
This, according to this priest, is “wholly Christian.” Because, just like those people in the Discord group, he really loves God.
Though this appeared in comments yesterday, I’m adding it again here. [Video of Zelenskyy’s response.]
SC @101, OMG. Tucker is really swimming in the racist sludge. He likes it. He even offhandedly says that Justin Pearson probably got into Bowdoin College not on his own merit, but because he is black.
In other news, here is a followup to comments 97 and 102.
More Ukraine updates:
WHEN DO THE TANKS ARRIVE?
When it comes to Leopard 2 and Challenger 2 tanks, the answer is: They’re already there. First groups of both tanks are already in Ukraine, as are crews who have been training in the U.K. and Poland.
But what about this … [Tweet and image concerning M1A2 tanks on the move in Germany] The U.S. has taken steps recently to accelerate the arrival of Abrams M1A2 tanks for Ukraine, and just yesterday the Ukrainian minister of defense indicated that the U.S. intends to send more Abrams and more Bradleys than have been currently announced. However, all that said, it’s likely way too early to get excited about images of unmarked Abrams being moved around Germany.
According to the U.S. Defense Department, no Ukrainian troops have been trained to operate the Abrams. That statement doesn’t elaborate, but it’s also unlikely that any Ukrainian mechanics have been trained in how to maintain the tank, and drivers of all the supporting vehicles haven’t been trained, and clerks haven’t been walked through the logistics needed to support operation or maintenance of these tanks in the field.
The tanks moving around Germany may actually be those slated to go to Ukraine. However, that doesn’t mean they’re going to be on the front lines next week […]
If Ukraine is going to start a counteroffensive in the next few weeks, it will happen without the M1A2.
TWO VIDEOS FROM BAKHMUT
Russia is moving into the center of the city in force, with more armor supported by artillery across the river in the eastern part of the city. Russia sources are again claiming that “Bakhmut has fallen” and in fact, things do not look good. Remaining Ukrainian forces are grouped together in an area at the west of the city, but Russia still appears to be moving forward. [Videos at the link]
Still, Ukrainian troops are in the city. Are still holding positions. Are still moving and acting with a level of composure that seems almost superhuman. Bakhmut is not gone yet, and all we can hope is that the Ukrainian military is right when it says their sacrifice in the city is worth it.
One thing you might notice: The ground these guys are walking over looks pretty dry. After some rain in the next 24 hours, it looks like Bakhmut will have dry weather for at least the next week. Considering that dirt roads are serving an elevated role in moving people in (or out) of the city, that could help lend Ukrainian forces some much-needed flexibility over the near term.
Heck, let’s make it three videos. After the stories this morning, I need this. [Video at the link: Kids greet their coach who returned from Bakhmut]
The biggest thing on Russian media today—both state media and social media—isn’t either the leaked documents or the beheading. It’s Donald Trump. Trump’s Putin-praising interview on Fox, in which he appears to blame the U.S. for the invasion of Ukraine and the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines, is running on Russian state media with the regularity of Taylor Swift on the average music streaming service.
Just like the beheading videos, I’m not going to show it here.
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) said they have stopped posting content on their official Twitter account, becoming the second major news outlet — after National Public Radio (NPR) — to ditch the popular social media platform.
PBS’ decision comes after Twitter labeled the non-profit TV network’s account as “government-funded media.”
“PBS stopped tweeting from our account when we learned of the change and we have no plans to resume at this time,” said a PBS spokesman, according to several news outlets. “We are continuing to monitor the ever-changing situation closely.” […]
after an interview with BBC, Musk changed BBC’s label to “publicly funded media.” But as of Thursday, NPR and PBS’ labels remain as “government-funded media.”
Ron DeSantis is playing catch-up with the flooding emergency in Florida’s Broward county, a “one in a thousand” weather event that left large areas under water following an overnight deluge.
The Republican governor spent the morning in Ohio on his nationwide book tour. At a lunchtime press conference/update, the mayor of Fort Lauderdale, Dean Trantalis, said he had spoken with the White House but not the governor.
“Governor DeSantis has not yet called. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m sure he’s very interested in what’s going on here,” he said.
Bryan Griffin, DeSantis’s press secretary, broke cover on Twitter shortly after midday Thursday, linking to a Florida department of emergency management bulletin on the flooding.
The governor’s schedule for the day was sent out at 1.22pm, showing afternoon calls were set with state emergency management director Kevin Guthrie and Broward county commissioner Michael Udine.
@NBCNews reporting a 21-year-old w/ possible ties to this area is a MA National Guard member and the suspected leaker of a trove of classified military documents.”
California’s state senators relocated to a secure, remote facility after a “credible threat” forced the Assembly to abandon its Thursday session.
An email from senate secretary Erika Contreras told lawmakers: “The California Highway Patrol (CHP) has notified the senate of a threat they consider to be credible involving the Capitol.
“The CHP and security partners are present in higher numbers in the Capitol area, and are alert of the situation.”
Contreras said the session was moved to another state building nearby. Staff were told to stay home or remain in their offices.
The person suspected of recently leaking classified U.S. government documents has been identified as Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, two law enforcement officials said Thursday.
Officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said that officials have been tracking Teixeira for some time and that an arrest is imminent.
The classified documents from the Department of Defense were found online last month — it remains unclear how long the documents had been on the internet and the total number that have been posted — and revealed details of U.S. spying on Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine, secret assessments of Ukraine’s combat power, as well as intelligence gathering on America’s allies, including South Korea and Israel, NBC News previously reported.
A Facebook post in July from the 102nd Intelligence Wing, which is headquartered at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, congratulated an individual with the same name as Teixeira on a promotion to airman first class. […]
The first chapter of the black-and-white PDF magazine begins with an ominous warning. Over four dense pages, the anonymous writers paint a picture of “an anti-tech revolution, beginning with the annihilation of the U.S. energy grid.”
[…] detail traffic chaos, dwindling supplies of clean water and spreading disease before concluding that a successful attack targeting key points on the electrical grid would lead to “the collapse of the system … chaos, agony, and death”
The magazine was obtained by TPM in a chat group on the encrypted app Telegram dedicated to “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski. Along with the breathless depiction of a widespread blackout, it included a precise list of the locations of “THE MOST CRITICALLY IMPORTANT ELECTRIC SUBSTATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES.”
This apocalyptic brand of extremist rhetoric — and the focus, specifically, on targeting substations — is part of a growing phenomenon that has captured the attention of both the far right and law enforcement. The trend has resulted in a dramatic rise in attacks that have left tens of thousands of people without power. Experts have attributed the wave to the digital spread of right-wing accelerationist ideology, which aims to hasten societal collapse, and materials like this magazine that encourage and provide instructions for targeting the grid.
Participants in the Telegram chat where TPM obtained the magazine shared it on multiple occasions […] They also hurled racial slurs and anti-gay rhetoric while talking about plans for staging attacks.
[…] member, whose avatar featured a glaring bald eagle, posted an even more specific vision naming a major provider of abortion care and reproductive health services.
[…] Due to the inflammatory and potentially dangerous nature of the content, TPM is not naming the magazine, the alias of its writers, or the chat group in which we obtained it. One of the members who posted the magazine said it had been “removed” from other sites and “marked as terrorism.” They noted that it “contains the addresses of those substations and how to deal with them” and encouraged other members of the chat to “download” it or keep it “somewhere you can access it.”
It is easy to dismiss these writings as digital bluster, but law enforcement and academic experts have repeatedly attributed the frightening online rhetoric to the real-world rise in assaults on power stations. And data indicates white supremacists are the driving force behind the uptick in these dangerous attacks.
[…] “From our standpoint, what has shifted in the last ten years since Metcalf is the awareness of the tactic and the attention that has gotten,” a Department of Homeland Security official, who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of their work, told TPM.
“In the publicly available forums we can see tactics and references to the previous, successful incidents getting discussion, diagrams being passed,” the official said. […]
RAGING AGAINST THE ‘ANTI-WHITE SYSTEM’
While there are myriad risks to power stations, relatively simple shooting attacks from far-right white supremacist terrorists have emerged as a major threat to the grid. […] This far-right fixation on power stations comes as there is a consensus among federal law enforcement agencies that white supremacists have become the top domestic terror threat.
[…] Atomwaffen, which rebranded as National Socialist Order in mid-2020 as it faced investigations in multiple countries, is perhaps the best-known modern white supremacist accelerationist group. In general, accelerationism is an ideology that believes modern society is evil and encourages acts that would bring it downl. Many white supremacist accelerationists expect this cataclysm to come through a race war.
“Accelerationists believe that there is nothing redeemable about contemporary society,” said Michael Edison Hayden, a senior investigative reporter and spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.
The power grid is a natural target for white supremacist accelerationists, who view it as the backbone of “the anti-white system,” Hayden said.
[…] TPM emailed with one of the writers of the magazine. They said the publication was produced by a “small group.” While this writer denounced racism as “fucking stupid” and said they would prefer “militant groups of educated anarchists” to use the magazine, they said they would not necessarily be opposed to working with the far right towards the larger goal of “the destruction of techno-industrial society.”
“It is another unpleasant reality that the far-right is far better armed and has easier access to a lot of the locations listed than the Left or post-Left,” the magazine writer explained.
[…] white supremacist accelerationists have proven to be the most capable of doing real-world damage.
[…] After listing off the locations of various substations, the magazine concluded with an ominous accelerationist poem of sorts:
In 2014, one of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow’s companies purchased a string of properties on a quiet residential street in Savannah, Georgia. It wasn’t a marquee acquisition for the real estate magnate, just an old single-story home and two vacant lots down the road. What made it noteworthy were the people on the other side of the deal: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his relatives.
The transaction marks the first known instance of money flowing from the Republican megadonor to the Supreme Court justice. The Crow company bought the properties for $133,363 from three co-owners — Thomas, his mother and the family of Thomas’ late brother, according to a state tax document and a deed dated Oct. 15, 2014, filed at the Chatham County courthouse.
The purchase put Crow in an unusual position: He now owned the house where the justice’s elderly mother was living. Soon after the sale was completed, contractors began work on tens of thousands of dollars of improvements on the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home, which looks out onto a patch of orange trees. The renovations included a carport, a repaired roof and a new fence and gates, according to city permit records and blueprints.
A federal disclosure law passed after Watergate requires justices and other officials to disclose the details of most real estate sales over $1,000. Thomas never disclosed his sale of the Savannah properties. That appears to be a violation of the law, four ethics law experts told ProPublica.
The disclosure form Thomas filed for that year also had a space to report the identity of the buyer in any private transaction, such as a real estate deal. That space is blank….
UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi warned on Thursday that “we are living on borrowed time” following two recent landmine explosions near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia plant.
The Associated Press reports:
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly expressed fears over the safety of the plant, which is Europe’s largest atomic power station.
Russian forces took control of the six-reactor plant in embattled southern Ukraine in March last year.
“We are living on borrowed time when it comes to nuclear safety and security at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant,” Grossi said in a statement.
“Unless we take action to protect the plant, our luck will sooner or later run out, with potentially severe consequences for human health and the environment,” he added.
Two landmine explosions occurred outside the plant’s perimeter fence – the first on 8 April, and another four days later, according to the statement.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blasts, it said.
Reminder that Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis paid the Boring Company $375,000 last year for a study to dig a car tunnel from downtown to the beach
[drone video of cars in flooded Fort Lauderdale streets last night at the (Twitter) link]
Here’s Fort Lauderdale’s mayor yelling at a tunneling expert who is trying to tell him the Boring Company’s proposal isn’t feasible
[video and link to thread at the link]
Fort Lauderdale was looking at building a commuter train to ease congestion — until Elon Musk sold their mayor on a car tunnel
[link to thread by the mayor at the link]
As @parismarx and I discussed last year, Elon Musk uses Twitter to disseminate transportation lies — “underground tunnels are immune to surface weather conditions” 🤔 — to boost his tunneling scam now valued at $5.7 billion
[link at the link]
This mayor has now spent two years sucking up to Elon and his car holes when he could have been pouring money into a plan to prevent his downtown constituents from having to drive through deadly floodwaters
Keep a lookout for Ukraine’s ex-Russian BAT-2 armored engineering vehicles. It’s possible the hulking AEVs are about to become very useful…
The best breaching vehicles can clear mines, fill trenches and excavate berms, all while deflecting small arms fire and artillery shrapnel. Examples include Germany’s Dachs, the American Assault Breacher and Russia’s BAT-2.
It should come as no surprise that, as Ukraine’s allies supply equipment for the coming counteroffensive, breaching vehicles have been a top priority. The United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway and Sweden together have pledged to Ukraine dozens of specialized AEVs.
Ironically, the Russians have helped out, too. When Russia widened its war on Ukraine back in February 2022, a host of AEVs led the way. As the Russian advance faltered and regiments retreated to the current front line, they left behind nearly 200 of these specialist vehicles. Many of them now work for Ukraine…
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on April 12 it had imposed sanctions against 333 more Canadian nationals — including regional officials, lawmakers, politicians, and athletes — “involved in unbridled Russophobia.” The move comes a day after Canada imposed sanctions against 14 Russian nationals and 34 Russian companies, including persons linked to Wagner mercenary group. There are now 1,537 Canadian citizens and companies on Russia’s sanction list…
Jack Teixeira has now been arrested by the FBI in connection with the leaking of classified documents posted to an online forum.
Looks like Teixeira is living out his big guns fantasies … just not the way he may have expected. And hey, doesn’t he look “charismatic?” [Tweet and image at the link]
If everything published so far is correct, information at this level—including source level material from inside the Russian government—was routinely available to someone at the very lowest rank of the National Guard in Cape Cod. Which means that Ukraine was very, very right not to trust the United States within any information of value.
Is there a phrase for the opposite of operational security? [Photo of Teixeira at the link]
Bellingcat analyst Aric Toler was reportedly key to putting together the digital trail leading to Teixeira.
He is a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Why Teixeira would have such access to high level documents isn’t yet clear.
——————–
Russian sources are now confirming that Ukraine, not Russia, controls the train station in Bakhmut. It’s uncertain at this point if this represents an advance by Ukrainian sources, or if the Russian assault on Tuesday actually failed and too many people—myself included—were too quick to accept the loss of that location. Ukraine also appears to control a nearby grain elevator which had been reported as under Russian control.
The tactic now being deployed in Bakhmut is using the city’s fractured buildings as a series of traps. Syrian fighters reportedly developed a similar tactic in 2017 as a means of slowing pro-Assad forces in east Damascus. [Tweet and translated text at the link]
TikTok: Decoder – Substack CEO faceplants interview, excerpt
Host: If somebody shows up on Substack and says “all brown people are animals and they shouldn’t be allowed in America,” […] I’m pretty sure is just flatly against your terms of service. […] Would you allow that on Substack Notes?
CEO: [Squirms for two minutes.]
Host: You know this is a very bad response to this question, right? […] You should just say no. And I’m wondering what’s keeping you from just saying no.
Full Podcast/Transcript: Decoder – Is Substack Notes a ‘Twitter clone’? (1:10:00)
* Excerpt came from 47:40.
StevoRsays
In April last year, registered nurse Kim Gibson tested positive to a mild case of COVID-19, but the symptoms that developed after were anything but.She thought the virus was behind her, but five weeks later she developed new symptoms.
“I woke up and I could hardly stand up straight, I felt like I was on a boat,” Ms Gibson said.
“It impacted me personally and professionally, it was a real debilitating time in my life.
“I was very sensitive to any noise.”
Ms Gibson suffered hearing loss in her right ear, along with tinnitus and vertigo.
“My GP couldn’t see anything wrong with my ear drum … I was referred to an ENT surgeon,” Ms Gibson said.
She said she went through months of agony desperate for answers on what exactly caused her sudden loss of hearing.
To her surprise, doctors confirmed it was a rare side effect of long COVID.
A church responsible for more than 20 schools across Australia says students in “active same-sex relationships” should not take up school leadership positions.The Presbyterian Church of Australia made the statement in its response to the Religious Educational Institutions and Anti-Discrimination Laws Consultation Paper, in which it questioned the ability of LGBTQIA+ students to uphold Christian leadership values.
“If this student were in an active same-sex relationship, they would not be able to give appropriate Christian leadership in a Christian school which requires modelling Christian living,” the submission stated.
“This would also be the case for a student in a sexually active unmarried heterosexual relationship.”
There are about 13,000 students across the church’s schools and pre-schools around the country.
(Citing- ed. ) [Video at the link. “[…] “They don’t get the New Testament ethics, they get the Old Testament. A prophet personally cut the throats of 300 servants. These should be dealt within the same manner. They need to be liquidated without having second thoughts.”
I don’t recall reading that in the Bible & wonder which prophet and atrocity he is referring to there? Anyone know?.
@113. SC (Salty Current) : How is Thomas NOT yet impeached or forced to resign after all this? At least if not outright arrested fro treason and considered a domestic enemy of the state with his wife and sure he knew about her involvement in the Jan 6th attempted Coup and seems very likely was right with her if not behind her actions and words there. It just … aaarrghhh!
@98. Sure enough seems like the launch will be happening about 3 or 4 am ish my time. Dammed Amercian timezones! Bring back Pangea I say! (1 second lauch window apparently – and for over the rest of April too.)
This month, no less than five new species of frog have been described by scientists from the Queensland and South Australian Museums and Griffith University, who published their results in Zootaxa. Among the new species is one with a bird-poo-like appearance (above) when young that changes as it matures, and another named for its blood-red belly. The study’s lead author Steven Richards, an honorary researcher with the South Australian Museum, spent the last 30 years collecting the new specimens from Gulf Province and the New Guinea Highlands. ..(snip).. “We’re definitely estimating there are well over 700 frogs, (on PNG -ed.) which is basically more than any other tropical island area in the world,” Dr Oliver said. “It leaves Borneo for dead and it’s way more than Australia. Australia has got about 250. So it’s an insanely diverse frog fauna.”
But pictures tell a thousand words. Here in no particular order are our five newly classified amphibian friends….
Hmm .. Amphibians generally are in massive trouble globally so I hope those newly discovered – and still undiscovered species – are okay.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@StevoR #123:
@Lynna OM #102:
[Russian priest]: “the Old Testament. A prophet personally cut the throats of 300 servants.”
I don’t recall reading that in the Bible & wonder which prophet and atrocity he is referring to there?
Article: Drunk with Blood, God’s Killings in The Bible
Ahab, the king of Israel, was a follower of Baal, which, of course, Yahweh and Elijah didn’t like very much. So Elijah suggested a prayer contest to determine which god was the real God.
[…]
Then Elijah told the spectators to slaughter the 450 prophets of Baal
* I think the personal throat-sliting is specific to the “New American Bible” (Catholic / Episcopal).
Then Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal. Let none of them escape!” They were seized, and Elijah had them brought down to the brook Kishon and there he slit their throats.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
* I confirmed at least one Russian Bible with the personal throat-slitting. That priest wasn’t anomalously citing an American text while speaking Russian to a Russian audience.
* It wasn’t the “Russian Synodal Bible”. A little odd, cuz that seems popular. (Wikipedia: “commonly used by the Russian Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic, as well as Russian Baptists and other Protestant communities in Russia.”)
Akira MacKenziesays
How is Thomas NOT yet impeached or forced to resign after all this?
Because our illustrious, infallible Founding Fathers made it so the process for removing a corrupt judge requires impeachment from the House followed by a 2/3rds majority vote in the Senate to convict and remove. In the current climate, this requires Republicans to support such removal and that isn’t going to happen.
As for forcing them him out, forget it. The SCOTUS is a lifetime appointment who are answerable to no one.
All the more reason why the Constitution needs to be scraped.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has claimed in its daily intelligence briefing that Ukrainian troops have been forced to make ‘orderly withdrawals’ from positions they previously held in the highly contested town of Bakhmut, and that the last two days have seen an intense artillery bombardment from Russian forces.
…
Rishi Sunak denounced a video on Friday purporting to show the beheading of a Ukrainian prisoner of war and said those responsible should be brought to book. Downing Street said the UK prime minister told Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in a call that the footage was “abhorrent”.
Ukraine’s security service has issued a warning to the millions of people in the country celebrating Orthodox Easter this weekend, Sky News reported. Ukrainians are asked to “limit the attendance of mass events” and avoid lingering “unnecessarily” in temples during the traditional blessing of the Easter basket.
…
China approved the provision of lethal aid to Russia for its war in Ukraine but wanted any shipments to remain a secret, according to leaked US government documents. A top-secret intelligence summary dated 23 February states that Beijing had approved the incremental provision of weapons to Moscow, which it would disguise as civilian items, according to a report in the Washington Post.
China’s foreign minister on Friday said the country would not sell weapons to parties involved in the conflict in Ukraine and would regulate the export of items with dual civilian and military use. Qin Gang was speaking at a news conference with his visiting German counterpart Annalena Baerbock, and he reiterated China’s willingness to help facilitate negotiations to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict and said all parties should remain “objective and calm”. Baerbock urged China to step up to exert its influence on Russia over Ukraine during a trip to Beijing. She said Germany wanted “China to influence Russia to stop its aggression”.
Ukrainian forces are finding a growing number of components from China in Russian weapons used in Ukraine, a senior adviser in President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office told Reuters on Friday.
The US secretary of defence will meet with his counterparts in Sweden and Germany next week, including hosting a Ukraine-related defence meeting with top officials from nearly 50 countries, the Pentagon said in a statement on Friday.
…
Finland’s embassy in Moscow has contacted the Russian foreign ministry after it received a letter containing powder.
The 15 Russian diplomats expelled by Norway this week had sought to recruit sources, conduct so-called signal intelligence and to buy advanced technology, the Norwegian security police said on Friday.
Ukraine has barred its national sports teams from competing in Olympic, non-Olympic and Paralympic events that include competitors from Russia and Belarus, the sports ministry said. The decision published in a decree on Friday, criticised by some Ukrainian athletes, comes after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) angered Kyiv by paving the way for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as neutrals despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
China’s defence minister, Li Shangfu, will visit Russia from 16 to 19 April, and meet Russian military officials.
Also from there:
The war in Ukraine has gutted Russia’s clandestine forces, and it will take Moscow years to rebuild them, according to classified US assessments seen by the Washington Post.
The finding, which the paper says has not been previously reported, is among a cache of sensitive materials leaked online through the messaging platform Discord. Alex Horton writes:
Typically, spetsnaz personnel are assigned the sorts of stealthy, high-risk missions – including an apparent order to capture Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – for which they receive some of the Russian military’s most advanced training. But when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion last year, senior commanders eager to seize momentum and skeptical of their conventional fighters’ prowess deviated from the norm, ordering elite forces into direct combat, according to US intelligence findings and independent analysts who have closely followed spetsnaz deployments.
The rapid depletion of Russia’s commando units, observers say, shifted the war’s dynamic from the outset, severely limiting Moscow’s ability to employ clandestine tactics in support of conventional combat operations. US officials believe that the staggering casualties these units have sustained will render them less effective, not only in Ukraine but also in other parts of the world where Russian forces operate, according to the assessments, which range in date from late 2022 to earlier this year.
Jake Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar.
That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime.
And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more.
Ask yourself who is the real enemy?
A young low level national guardsmen?
Or the…
Definitely the one who is illegally leaking classified information. Thanks for asking.
A Russian tank used in the assault on Ukraine has mysteriously appeared at a truck stop in the US.
The T-90 tank is thought to have been captured last September by Ukraine’s 92nd Separate Mechanised Brigade, after being used in fighting in the Kharkiv region of north west Ukraine.
The combat vehicle was left on a low loader in the parking lot of a restaurant in the state of Louisiana.
Local reports suggest that after the truck towing the tank broke down, the vehicle was left at Peto’s Travel Center and Casino in Roanoke, Louisiana, next to US Interstate 10…
The Republican Accountability Project, a group of “Never Trump” GOPers, dropped a clip featuring Trump’s comments from this week and the past in which he praised Chinese leader Xi Jinping, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It’s embellished with hearts — and has some music to set the mood:…
A Spanish extreme athlete has emerged from a cave after spending 500 days with no human contact, in what could be a world record.
When Beatriz Flamini entered the cave in Granada, Russia had not invaded Ukraine and the world was still in the grip of the Covid pandemic.
It was part of an experiment closely monitored by scientists.
“I’m still stuck on November 21, 2021. I don’t know anything about the world,” she said after exiting the cave.
Ms Flamini, 50, entered the cave aged 48. She spent her time in the 70-metres (230 feet) deep cave exercising, drawing and knitting woolly hats. She got through 60 books and 1,000 litres of water, according to her support team.
She was monitored by a group of psychologists, researchers, speleologists – specialists in the study of caves – but none of the experts made contact with her. ..
Parlement Technologies Inc. has entered an agreement to sell off its social platform to Starboard, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Starboard is a digital media company formerly known as Olympic Media run by founder and CEO Ryan Coyne. The company already owns conservative news sites like American Wire News and BizPac Review, according to WSJ…
StevoRsays
@128. SC (Salty Current) :
StevoR @ #124, do you have a link for the frog report? I especially want to check out the “one with a bird-poo-like appearance.”
Mea culpa , apologies. Thought I’d included that link in the original comment but, nah, I fucked up.
@ 125. & next comment CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain : Cheers. Thanks for that. very much appreciated.
@127. Akira MacKenzie : “As for forcing them him out, forget it. The SCOTUS is a lifetime appointment who are answerable to no one.”
Time that changed. long overdue. Not acceptable. Traitors on SCOTUS? No. Time that was called out, stopped, reversed and punished and the Federalist society treated as the perverting the course of justice traitors at the very least in spirit if not letter of law that they are.
StevoRsays
Said before, will say again, Biden and the Democratic party absolutely need to do something about SCOTUS ideally arresting perjurers and corrupt traitors and drunken rapists on it, starting impeachment proceedings and publicly, directly personally, calling out the Trump cultist & perjury apppointed traitors on there for what they are.
So disappointed and disgusted that they haven’t done so already even knowing the Congress numbers.
Also scrappping the EC same deal – again so very long overdue. One vote, one value. Fuck the flyover, rural, Trumpist Suprmacist Slaver states and their bigoted minority of deluded extremists. One person, one vote. Now. Please.
Why isn’t there more pressure for more necessary reforms over in the US of A? For .. fucks sake,.
…But when [Crater Mountain treehole frogs] first emerge from the hollow, they don’t have the green and white “naispela” markings of their mature form.
Instead, the researchers think they’ve evolved a bird-poo mimicry to avoid being eaten.
“The locals said … all those tree hollows where I found those frogs coming out are well known as bird drinking spots,” Dr Richards said.
“It’s interesting that the little frog coming out looks like bird poo.
“What a great strategy to avoid predators — it’s a hypothesis but I reckon it’s a pretty good one.”
Dr Oliver said bird poo mimicry isn’t as rare as we might imagine.
“There are frogs in South America and frogs in Asia that do the same thing. And there are also lots of insects that do the same thing.
“Our local baby orchard swallowtail [butterflies], their babies are dead ringers for poo.
“But what’s cool is again it emphasises that the New Guinea frog fauna is really diverse, and we’re only … just scratching the tip of the iceberg in terms of the cool things that New Guinea’s frogs do.”
KGsays
When Beatriz Flamini entered the cave in Granada… the world was still in the grip of the Covid pandemic. – Reginald Selkirk@134 quoting BBC
It still is!
StevoRsays
Oh & seems my timing was wrong with the JUICE mission too as it is flying towards Jove and its moons now :
Having been successfully launched. Timezones ..FFS. Sigh. Wish i’d seen it but glad it has happened and wishing they get there sfe’n’smooth as possible and all the science and more as planned Congrats & best wishes to all those who made this spaceprobe fly.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a bill that would ban most abortions in the state after six weeks, according to a release from the governor’s office late Thursday night.
Under the law, most abortions in Florida would be banned after six weeks. Opponents of the legislation have argued that six weeks is before many women know that they are pregnant.
“Let’s be clear about the silent part: You just don’t want women to have choice,” House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, a Tampa Democrat, said Thursday during debate on the bill.
Victims of rape, incest and human trafficking could obtain an abortion up to 15 weeks into a pregnancy, under the legislation, if the woman provides a restraining order, police report, medical record or other evidence.
The bill would also ban doctors from prescribing an abortion via telehealth and require medication for abortion be dispensed by a physician, not by mail.
Supporters of the bill said they were protecting life.
“A woman’s right to choose, I’ve heard people talk about that. Well, that right to choose begins before you have sex,” state Rep. Kiyan Michael, a Jacksonville Republican, said Thursday. “It should not be after you have sex. “
[…]
For decades, courts in Florida have blocked legislative attempts to restrict abortion in the state. The state Supreme Court in 1989 determined that a privacy clause in the state constitution “is clearly implicated in a woman’s decision of whether or not to continue her pregnancy.”
However, the makeup of the Florida Supreme Court has shifted considerably in recent years, and it is now heavily shaped by DeSantis’ conservative influence. He appointed four of the six sitting justices and will name a fifth to succeed Justice Ricky Polston, who resigned last month.
The White House issued a statement sharply criticizing the bill.
At least five people were killed and 15 wounded on Friday by a Russian missile strike on the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk, the regional governor said.
Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote on Telegram that seven more people remained under the rubble after S-300 missiles damaged five apartment buildings and five private buildings, among other objects.
“The evil state once again demonstrates its essence,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyi wrote in a separate post accompanied by footage of a damaged building. “Just killing people in broad daylight. Ruining, destroying all life.”
Kyrylenko said rescuers, paramedics and police were working on the scene….
Paris Marx is joined by Emily M. Bender to discuss what it means to say that ChatGPT is a “stochastic parrot,” why Elon Musk is calling to pause AI development, and how the tech industry uses language to trick us into buying its narratives about technology.
Emily M. Bender is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington and the Faculty Director of the Computational Linguistics Master’s Program. She’s also the director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory….
Paris Marx is joined by Kate Wagner to discuss the goals behind Saudi Arabia’s architectural megaprojects, the incentives for major architects to work on projects for despotic regimes, and how architecture’s relationship to tech is driven by profits and PR.
Kate Wagner is an architecture critic and journalist. She’s also the creator of McMansion Hell….
whheydtsays
Re: tomh @ #142…
Looks like it’s time for a Lysistrata action in Florida.
Jack Teixeira, an Airman 1st Class (E-3) in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was arrested at his home on Thursday by the FBI. Teixeira supervised a Discord group which called itself “Thug Shaker Central.” It was on that platform that he shared dozens of documents—some written by Teixeira as summaries of things he had seen, others direct images of top secret documents—providing detailed analysis on the military capability of the United States, Ukraine, and others. Included were documents, such as a map of Ukrainian air defense positions, that could have a strong negative effect on Ukraine if made public.
The Thug Shaker Central group consisted of between 10 and 20 members at any time. The primary themes of the group were guns, including both civilian and military weapons; games, primarily those which simulate close combat situations; and racism, including descriptions of acts of violence toward people of color. The group was formed in 2020, and Teixeira reportedly began posting classified information to the discord server for the group almost immediately.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Teixeira created a channel called “Bear vs. Pig,” in which he posted documents about the situation in Ukraine, along with his own analysis of events. Some members were reported to be from outside the United States, including from Eastern Europe. Others members of the group said that these Eastern European members had a particular interest in the information Teixeira posted.
I’d like to say we don’t need to talk about Teixeira anymore today, and I’d especially like to say that we don’t need to have any further concerns about how the media is reporting on Teixeira. Unfortunately …
Yesterday, I took issue—to put it mildly—with the way The Washington Post, in their article revealing information about Teixeira before he had been named, described him as a “young charismatic gun enthusiast” who was “searching for companionship” and found it in an online group held together by “their mutual love of guns, military gear and God.”
For those who felt I was being a bit hard on the Post, I give you their tweet following Teixeira’s arrest. [Tweet at the link]
Breaking news, folks. The most important thing to know is that his family was patriotic. So patriotic.
The first three paragraphs of that linked article … nope. I’m just going to post them; they have to be seen to be believed. [Three paragraphs available at the link as a screen capture. “Patriotic zeal” etc.]
See? He wasn’t just young and charismatic, he was also slim and boyish. And patriotic. His family was so patriotic that they got him a “patriotic-themed balloon.” His proud mom posted to Facebook! I put these in as images because I didn’t want you to think I had shorted you a word.
What’s missing from that opening? Any of the information that you see in the first three paragraphs of this article, the one you’re reading, explaining what Teixeira did and why it’s important. The Post’s glowing coverage of Teixeira is at decided odds with what CNN found when they spoke to people who were not part of Teixeira’s family or his online community at “Thug Shaker Central.”
Several former high school classmates of Teixeira’s told CNN Thursday that he had a fascination with the military, guns and war. He would sometimes wear camouflage to school, carried a “dictionary-sized book on guns,” and behaved in a way that made some fellow students feel uneasy.
“A lot of people were wary of him,” said Brooke Cleathero, who attended middle school and high school with Teixeira. “He was more of a loner, and having a fascination with war and guns made him off-putting to a lot of people.”
What both articles are describing is a loner with an obsession with guns and violence. Only The Washington Post has concentrated so much on softening Teixeira’s image that the Vaseline on the lens is now three miles deep. If the description from CNN sounds familiar, it’s because it usually comes attached to an article featuring a body count. Here’s another paragraph from that CNN article on the charismatic, slim, and boyish Teixeira.
Other students, who asked not to be identified, said they detected a more menacing vibe from Teixeira, who some recalled making comments they perceived as racist or mumbling derogatory things about people under his breath. …
One student recalled him showing up for school wearing a shirt with an AR-15 on it the day after a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017.
Just because he didn’t turn up at that high school with a rifle one day doesn’t mean that Teixeira is not responsible for deaths. It may even be a large number of deaths, if the documents he put into a public space have been used by Russian forces in planning attacks. In recent weeks, the number of aerial sorties by Russia in some areas of the front has reportedly increased. Was that because they were aware of how Ukrainian air defenses were situated? Probably not. But we can’t be sure.
It’s likely we will never be sure how Teixeira’s actions have affected things in Ukraine, but he wasn’t some kid playing with make-believe characters in a video game to amuse his friends. He was a member of the U.S. military sharing top secret documents in an insecure forum in a way that put real people, real soldiers on the ground, civilians in Ukrainian cities, and relationships between entire nations at high risk.
One more thing, before I let all this go. Here’s how The Washington Post described Teixeira’s online community in their dewy article on Wednesday evening.
The gathering spot had been a pandemic refuge, particularly for teen gamers locked in their houses and cut off from their real-world friends. The members swapped memes, offensive jokes and idle chitchat.
Memes? What kind of memes? They were racist memes. The entire site was named after a racist meme. Other outlets haven’t shied away from making it clear that racism was a staple of Teixeira’s online community, along with anti-gay “jokes.” The one example we have of a video featuring Teixeira shows him making racist and antisemitic statements between firing a gun at a target. That aspect of this story should not be ignored or glossed over.
Discord is a highly useful tool. I belong to numerous Discord groups—one that talks about model rockets, another on astrophotography, and one that offers support for owners of a cheap and cantankerous 3D printer—but even in the most innocuous group, it’s absolutely certain that someone will show up spewing racism or threats of violence. Those people are shown the door by good group administrators. But Teixeira’s group on Discord, which was run by Teixeira, didn’t do that. It was violence welcoming. Racism welcoming. It also appears, if Teixeira is in fact the person who leaked these documents, that it was crime welcoming.
And now, I really do hope I don’t have to talk about that guy, in this place, again. Also … WTF, Washington Post? What editor approved these things? The only thing I can say is, you’re not alone.
Just heard MSNBC live reporter say that there are no indicators Jack Texiera—hard right Catholic gun zealot & conspiracy theorist who hated government, called Ukrainians pigs, and screamed racist & antisemitic memes—has any “political motives.” [posted by Jeff Sharlet]
Moving on.
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 137
So disappointed and disgusted that they haven’t done so already even knowing the Congress numbers.
Yeah, it’s almost as if that the Dems make a lot of promises they never intend to keep while enforcing voter loyalty with scare stories about what the mean old Republicans will do if the Dems lose.
May 9 is the day Russia celebrates the 1945 surrender of Nazi Germany. It’s long been a national holiday, with parades not just in Moscow, but every regional capital and many smaller cities across the nation. Except this year is going to be different.
With the parade less than a month away, events in the cities of Belgorod and Kursk have been canceled. Those cancellations have reportedly been made because there are security concerns since those cities are capitals of oblasts that border Ukraine. Certainly, Ukraine has demonstrated more than once that it can reach out to Belgorod, which is less than 50km across the border near the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
Ukrainian helicopters famously conducted a low-level flight into Belgorod a year ago this month to take out a fuel depot in a daring attack […] Since then, Ukraine has acted several times, using MLRS, long-range artillery, and drones to hit targets at the military base and railroad deports in Belgorod.
[…] there’s another reason that celebrations this year may be considerably toned down, and not just in these Ukraine-neighboring oblasts. [Tweet and image at the link]
Oryx (who is planning to take a break soon after not just performing a difficult job over the last year and a quarter, but also after being a constant target for online abuse) currently logs Russia’s documented loss of tanks in Ukraine at 1,908. The Ukrainian general staff sets the number at 3,650.
Whatever the real number, the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates that Russia has lost over half its active tank force. In particular, the T-72B3 and T-80BV that have been the workhorses of the Russian military for decades have taken a huge hit. Many of the tanks lost in Ukraine were built in the 1980s or 1990s. Replacing them at the current rate of Russian production will take years, if not decades. At least 60 newer T-90 tanks have been lost, which is thought to be at least a third of Russia’s active fleet. [Tweet and video at the link]
Over the last few months, older and older tanks have rolled into Ukraine. That includes rolling in hundreds of older T-62 and T-64 tanks, and more recently, 70-year-old T-55s like the one in the Twitter image above. As Forbes reported earlier this month, even when Russia can find a newer tank rusting in a rail yard or storage facility, it lacks the ability to repair them quickly enough to address the losses it is suffering in Ukraine.
A 41-ton T-62 with its 115-millimeter smoothbore gun, or a 40-ton T-55 with its 100-millimeter rifled gun, isn’t just easier for Russian industry to restore than a newer T-90 or T-72 is—after all, the T-62 or T-55 requires fewer ball bearings and electronic components. The older tank also is easier for its crew to operate.
That last sentence is particularly critical because Russia isn’t just running out of tanks; it’s running out of tank crews. The old tanks, with manual loading and simplistic fire controls, are easier to operate when Russia puts men inside who have never seen a tank before. And that’s what they’re doing. With the expected results. [Tweet and video at the link]
Of course, Ukraine also has tanks based off the T-64 in the fight, but not all T-64s are created equal. Updated with improved armor, new communications, thermal sites, and electronic fire control, a T-64 can still be a highly effective weapon … so long as it doesn’t have to stand toe-to-toe with a newer tank. But the ones Russia is bringing to Ukraine have little or no new systems. They’re just 20th-century tanks in a 21st-century war.
As the Atlantic Council reports, the cancellation of Victory Day celebrations has as much to do about the shortages of both tanks and troops as it does with concerns over security. They cite numerous commentators who believe Moscow is…
… understandably eager to avoid highlighting the scale of the losses suffered by the Russian army in Ukraine. Whether the real reason is security issues or equipment shortages, the decision to cancel this year’s Victory Day parades represents a painful blow for Vladimir Putin that hints at the grim reality behind Moscow’s upbeat propaganda portrayals of his faltering Ukraine invasion.
They’re a big blow to Putin because, since coming to power, he has elevated Victory Day into a day that doesn’t just commemorate victory in World War II, but celebrates Russia’s supposed role as an reborn superpower on the world stage. Putin has extended the celebration into an entire “quasi-religious victory cult complete with its own dogmas, feast days, and heretics.”
Victory Day, with its ranks of goose-stepping soldiers, blocks of rolling tanks, and examples of big, big missiles, has been elevated as “the defining day in Russian history,” as much about the future as the past. That makes any diminishment of Victory Day a blaring signal that things have gone very, very wrong.
Even with a reported 97% of the Russian military currently tied down in Ukraine, there’s little doubt Putin can cobble together enough gear to put on a good show in Moscow. If nothing else, there are some dozens of the new T-14 Armata tanks which, despite repeated claims, are yet to make an appearance in Ukraine. The few that exist are all prototypes, outfitted to varying degrees, with many lacking systems necessary before they could be sent into combat. Still, they can probably look good in Moscow for an afternoon. Probably. [video at the link of T-14 tank breaking down during a Victory Day parade.]
That video came from just after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Putin was able to keep up the pretense of Russian power then, and he can probably do it now … though some of the historic tanks rolling through Moscow streets might just keep rolling to the west when they’re done to replace those lost in the last month.
Soldiers who show up to demonstrate their skills at drilling in a real sharp coat might also want to think about what happens when they get to the end of the parade route this year. Because trains might just be waiting.
One year ago today, at this exact minute (0114 EEST), the cruiser Moskva rolled over and was promoted to command all undersea orc vessels in the Black Sea.
The rest of the fleet will be joining their flagship shortly.
Slava Ukraïni! [images at the link]
RUSSIA HAS A ONE-TRACK MIND
On Friday, the Ukrainian military reported that it had repelled 49 Russian attacks at various points along the line, primarily around Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
At Kreminna, Russian forces were again reportedly turned back at Dibrova, indicating that Ukraine continues to hold this position just outside the city. Russian forces failed in an attack near Stelmakhivka, west of Svatove and in the perpetual effort to take Novoselivske. There were reports on Thursday that Russia had used aircraft to bomb a power station in the forest south of Kreminna, but that station primarily provides power to the area Russia currently occupies […]
Ukraine reports that they repelled Russian attacks in the Bohdanivka and Predtechyne areas of Bakhmut, Russia is reporting more success there. Right now, I don’t have the evidence to say. However, Ukraine seems to have been repelled by Russian attacks outside the city, including at Orikhovo-Vasylivka and Ivanivske. One concerning name on the list this morning: Novomarkove. This town is southwest of Orikhovo-Vasylivka, which could represent Russia advancing across fields to attack in a new direction. Half of all the attacks reported on Friday appear to have been in the Bakhmut area.
Barely any actions were reported around Avdiivka, at least in the form of attempted advances by Russian forces. That’s also true of positions across the southern part of the line—though there are reports that Russia is gathering forces for an attack at, you guessed it, Vuhledar.
Much of what is in the morning update aligns with a report that was published yesterday indicating that, according to Ukraine at least, Russia is now incapable of sustaining multiple lines of attack. It’s investing everything it has in Bakhmut and can’t mount a major effort elsewhere […]
Russia isn’t just hurting for equipment and ammunition; it’s seriously short on leadership at every level. Bad logistics, poor command, equipment shortages … add it all together, and it seems that no matter how many people Putin shovels into Ukraine, they can put together an offensive at only one location at a time. Even then, this is not actually a “large offensive.” It’s a lot of small offensives that are all happening in proximity. Russia appears to be incapable of directing coordinated actions across a large force.
That doesn’t mean Russia can’t mount an effective defense. At locations west of Kherson city, Russian forces showed they could defend positions even when they had diminished equipment and were under withering fire. So no one should assume that Russia’s inability to conduct a coordinated offense means it will be hot-knife-meets-butter time when Ukraine goes on the offense. […]
ORTHODOX EASTER IS COMING
And Ukrainians of all ages take their eggs very seriously. [Photo of Easter egg painting workshop in Kyiv]
More details concerning the guy that Greg Abbott is planning to pardon:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is planning to pardon Daniel Perry, the man convicted of murder for killing a Black Lives Matter protester at a rally in Austin in July 2020. Abbott is citing a “Stand Your Ground” law after Perry ran a red light and accelerated his car onto a street filled with protesters, then shot Garrett Foster, a protester who approached the car while openly carrying an AK-47. [carrying that AK-47 is legal in Texas, and the gun was never aimed at Perry.] That Abbott wants to make Perry into cause celebre given the bare facts of the case is bad enough, but on Thursday, the Houston Chronicle released a 76-page filing by Travis County prosecutors that should really make Abbott think again, but probably won’t.
The filing includes page after page of social media posts and private messages filled with racism, violent imagery, and, tellingly, a strong preoccupation with exactly what counts as murder when it comes to killing protesters. The man did research on what he might be able to get away with—a search for “degrees of murder charges,” web history looking at Wikipedia on murder in United States law, a status posted about the distinctions between different degrees of murder and manslaughter, discussions of people who drove into crowds of protesters. Daniel Perry didn’t just happen to drive onto a street with protesters and then shoot and kill one of them. This was something he’d thought about a lot.
On May 31, 2020, Perry shows how he is thinking this through:
DANIEL PERRY: “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work they are rioting outside my apartment complex.”
JUSTIN SMITH: “Can you legally do so?”
DANIEL PERRY: “If they attack me or try to pull me out my car then yes.”
DANIEL PERRY: “If I just do it because I am driving by then no.”
So that’s the first question for Greg Abbott: Do you want to pardon the guy who not only murdered someone, but murdered someone after doing his research on different types of murder charges and showing a preoccupation with driving into crowds of protesters?
The second question for Abbott would probably involve some of the more overtly racist things Perry said and shared. Just one with the n-word, apparently, but you don’t need to use that word to be unbelievably racist, like when Perry shared “a meme with a photo of a woman holding her child’s head under the bath water and the text reads, ‘WHEN YOUR DAUGHTERS FIRST CRUSH IS A LITTLE NEGRO BOY.’”
Perry also compared Black Lives Matter protesters to monkeys at the zoo and said, speaking for himself, not sharing a meme, “To bad we can’t get paid for hunting Muslims in Europe.” How about that, Gov. Abbott? Still can’t wait to pardon him?
But that’s not all prosecutors want on the record about what Perry was up to online. They also have him searching for “good chats to meet young girls” and messaging with multiple underage girls, with the strong implication that he had a sexual relationship with one too young to have her driver’s license. This is the guy Greg Abbott wants to make into a heroic martyr of the right.
There are also some messages exchanged that you really want more context on, like this one:
OUTGOING MESSAGE: “He is now saying they threaten him.
”JUSTIN SMITH: “Probably. Sounds like he got kidnapped.”
OUTGOING MESSAGE: “Look just fix it.”
JUSTIN SMITH: “Literally how.”
OUTGOING MESSAGE: “By ensuring this never happens again contacting me and my father if he contacts you.”
JUSTIN SMITH: “I’m sorry.”
OUTGOING MESSAGE: “And tell me if the money shows up.”
That exchange goes on from there, concluding:
OUTGOING MESSAGE: “I am legally not allowed to talk about said issue anymore.”
OUTGOING MESSAGE: “I will hit you up on the DL.”
Daniel Perry was obsessed with protests, especially protests for racial justice. He was specifically interested in when it was permissible to kill protesters. He was also sharing racist memes, saying his own personal racist stuff, and hitting on teenage girls. This guy is a real prince. And Abbott isn’t the only Republican who has defended him:
Dan Crenshaw said a convicted murderer who shot a Black Lives Matter protestor shouldn’t only be pardoned but also *compensated.*
Now texts and social media posts were just released showing the murderer calling Black people “animals” he wants to hunt and saying “I am a racist.”
Maybe Republicans will back away from Perry a little bit following the revelations in this filing, with their racism and obsession with teenage girls and evidence of premeditation. But that’s not a given. And even if they back away now, they were willing to go with him right up to murder. This is where we are right now: Major politicians in one of the major parties support murderers if the murderer is on their side politically and the victim was on the other side. It’s hard to see how you come back from that.
Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s team has come up with a proposal to take to President Joe Biden in debt ceiling negotiations. [Sort of—”discussions” are ongoing among Republicans.]
[…] an actual plan for discussion is in the works. It would lift the debt ceiling until May 2024, with the assumption that the Treasury could take measures to extend it until November, thus making sure it’s a major issue in the election. The strings they attach to that are going to prove unacceptable to the White House and Senate Democrats.
The House GOP has refined their ask from their previous demands that Biden undo the whole of his term so far. Now they have put numbers to those demands, which are mostly steep cuts to all but defense spending. They added nuking Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. Also making sure people can’t afford to make their homes more energy efficient by repealing some of those tax credits. And, of course, they will demand work requirements for people on social assistance programs. They also want to strip executive branch authority in rule-making on almost everything. So, just a few simple things.
The “Main Street” caucus of Republicans, who cast themselves as the reasonable people, have their own plan, which echoes much of that but also tosses in a “Mandatory Spending Commission” to come up with solutions for “increasing the sustainability of Social Security and Medicare” that “will not include cuts to Medicare or Social Security benefits.” The commission would look at “unnecessary” mandatory spending “unrelated to Medicare and Social Security” to sacrifice in the name of shoring up those programs. In other words, Medicaid.
The White House is not impressed. “If today’s reports are true, Speaker McCarthy is adopting the extreme MAGA House Republican position: threatening our economic recovery, hard-working Americans’ retirement, and catastrophic default in order to force devastating cuts to veterans’ health care, education, and other programs that lower costs for working families,” Andrew Bates, deputy White House press secretary, said in response to the reports.
They know this is dead on arrival if it ever makes it out of the House, so that much of it is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is the timeline they appear to be setting for themselves. [Tweet at the link] That’s Republican Study Committee Chairman Kevin Hern of Oklahoma. The end of the April legislative session is just eight legislative work days away.
What’s more, next week in the House will mostly be taken up by the all-important work of making the lives of trans children even more miserable. They’ll be working on the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act” for most of the week. The bill would amend Title X to ban transgender students from competing in sports designated for women or girls.
The chances that McCarthy can actually get his raucous caucus under control to come up with a debt ceiling plan 218 members agree with are slim enough. The idea that he could do it in eight days is laughable.
Several people have died of starvation, and possibly many more, from what police say was a “radicalized” Christian pastor in Kenya leading them in a fasting ritual.
At least four were found in an emaciated state and died while being rushed to the hospital in a police rescue operation on a house in the county of Kilifi.
They were among about fifteen people found in the house fasting. Most are now in stable condition, but police are investigating reports there may be as many as 30 more buried in a local forest…
“The information we received is that the people there were being starved after being radicalised by a certain member of a church who told them that their work in this world is done and they should die and go and see their creator. So far the information at hand is that there are more people who are believed to be in the bush.”
All of the dead belong the Good News International Church. Police have blamed the deaths on its leader, Pastor Makenzie Nthenge, who was not immediately available for comment…
[…] Republicans reacted to the racism allegations with derision. But on Thursday, The Tennessee Holler, an independent reader-supported website, released leaked audio of a closed-door meeting of House Republicans after the expulsion votes. They angrily confronted one of their colleagues, Rep. Jody Barrett, who had unexpectedly voted against ousting Johnson after pledging that he would.
And they talked a lot about racism.
Have a listen to the nearly 10-minute clip The Tennessee Holler released. Captions can be found in the red bar near the center. [Audio at the link]
Barrett’s Republican colleagues turned on him, saying he should have put aside his reservations about the resolution to expel Johnson, rather than make his colleagues look bad.
Rep. Jason Zachary said that for the last three days all he’s heard from Democrats is “how this is the most racist place … even white supremacist. Good lord, we have to realize they (Democrats) are not our friends …They destroy the republic and the foundation of who we are.”
And he told Barrett: “Man, you hung us out to dry … This would’ve been bad anyway, but good God … it brought the racism into it because you didn’t stay with us.”
Barrett asserted that […] after reading the expulsion resolution, he didn’t feel it made the case for Johnson to be removed. Barrett explained his thinking at the time as follows: “I’m concerned I’m going to vote ‘yes’ on a resolution that I know is wrong,” and added that he didn’t want to “put my name on something I knew was gonna be in the annals of history as being wrong.”
Barrett did vote to expel Jones and Pearson. In an NPR interview last week, he pointed out that Johnson was the only one of the three representatives facing expulsion to be represented by legal counsel. He said her lawyers pointed out deficiencies in her expulsion resolution, while House leaders failed to establish what it was that she did to rise to the level of expulsion.
Rep. Scott Cepicky told Barrett he should have raised his concerns about expelling Johnson with party leadership, which “would’ve given us the opportunity to not throw the party under the bus.”
Cepicky was particularly upset that Tennessee Republicans were being made to look racist. (Note: Even before the expulsion votes, Tennessee GOP lawmakers had already built a record of making racist remarks and passing racist legislation.)
A clearly angry Cepicky said, “I’ve been called a racist, a misogynist, a white supremacist more in the last two months than I have my entire life. And by golly, I’m biting my tongue. And I’m telling you, all due respect, those days are wearing thin right now.”
And lest anyone have any doubts, he declared that Republicans consider themselves to be at war with Democrats.
“If you don’t believe we’re at war for our republic, with all love and respect to you, you need a different job,” he told Barrett. “The left wants Tennessee so bad because if they get us, the whole Southeast falls. And it’s game over for our republic. This is not a neighborhood social gathering. We are fighting for the republic of our country right now. And the world is staring at us—are we going to stand our ground?”
And then Cepicky blurted out this gem about one of the reinstated Black lawmakers.
“I’m going to have to swallow this seeing Mr. Jones back up here walking these hallowed halls that the greats of Tennessee stood in. And watch them disrespect this fucking state that I chose to move to. And by golly, it’s got to stop.”
And then he made this remarkable comment which sums up the political cynicism of the current Republican Party. “You got to do what’s right, even if you think it’s wrong.” That, of course, means what’s right by GOP standards.
Jones spoke with CNN’s Jake Tapper Thursday night, after listening to the leaked tape. [video at the link]
He told CNN:
“it was just very surreal to hear the commentary — and to hear from them that they really are reenacting the Civil War. …. So you hear this mentality that is very extreme and very alarming. We’re dealing with people who … don’t believe that someone like me or Rep. Pearson, young black lawmakers, even deserve to be in the legislature.
“But you also hear them fighting amongst each other. I’ve heard from Republicans who are calling on the House Speaker Cameron Sexton to resign. There is a lot of division in their caucus. You heard in that recorded conversation just the infighting and the dysfunction in the Republican Party here in Tennessee because they’ve been controlled by these extreme forces. … And it shows that they’re not free to think for themselves either, that If you diverge from their caucus leadership then you’re seen as an outsider like Rep. Barrett is being seen now.”
As Rep. Cepicky stated, “the world is staring” at Tennessee’s House Republicans. And what do they see? What Rep. Johnson describes: a “mentality that is very extreme and very alarming.”
Finland is building the first stretch of a fence on its border with Russia on Friday, less than two weeks after it joined the NATO military alliance to complete a security U-turn taken in response to the war in Ukraine.
Fearing retaliation from the east following its NATO application, the government decided last year to construct the barrier, primarily in case Russia moved to flood the border with migrants.
Finland aims to guard against a repeat of events on the European Union’s eastern frontier in Poland in winter 2021, when the bloc accused neighbouring Belarus – a staunch Russian ally – of engineering a crisis by flying in migrants from the Middle East, giving them visas and pushing them across the border.
Made of steel mesh, the Finnish fence is scheduled to cover some 200 kilometres (125 miles) of the most critical parts of its border by the end of 2026. Project manager Ismo Kurki said on Friday that, while it is not intended to stop any invasion attempt, the fence will have surveillance equipment…
Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik on Friday told his ally Serbia he was seriously considering declaring the autonomous Serb Republic independent from the rest of Bosnia unless a row over a property law is resolved.
Dodik’s hardline Serb nationalism and pro-Russian stance have raised concern that Bosnia might fracture again along ethnic lines, a generation after its devastating war…
On Thursday, the Missouri House voted in favor of passing the grotesquely titled Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act (SAFE Act), which would make it illegal not only for doctors to perform gender-affirming surgeries on children under the age 18, but to even prescribe them hormone treatments or puberty blockers, which are reversible.
But this was not enough for Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. […] So Andrew Bailey decided to go and issue an “emergency rule” barring gender affirming care not only for children, but for many adults as well.
[…] To be clear, “the science” actually supports gender-affirming care [Andrew Bailey’s actions are] likely in response to the already debunked and refuted account from Jamie Reed, a former employee of the Washington University Pediatric Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, who claimed in an article published earlier this year that the hospital’s staff was just going around transitioning every kid who walked through the doors without telling them or their parents about potential side effects and not really caring if the kids were actually transgender or not. [That’s some weapons-grade disinformation!]
“This emergency rule is necessary to protect the public health, safety, and welfare, and also to protect a compelling governmental interest as the attorney general is charged with protecting consumers, including minors, from harm and investigating fraud and abuse in the state’s health care payment system,” the emergency regulation states.
According to the press release, the rule will prohibit gender transition interventions when the provider “fails” to,
– ensure that the patient has received a full psychological or psychiatric assessment, consisting of not fewer than 15 separate, hourly sessions (at least 10 of which must be with the same therapist) over the course of not fewer than 18 months to explore the developmental influences on the patient’s current gender identity and to determine, among other things, whether the person has any mental health comorbidities
– ensure that any existing mental health comorbidities of the patient have been treated and resolved
– ensure that, for at least the 3 most recent consecutive years, the patient has exhibited a medically documented, long-lasting, persistent and intense pattern of gender dysphoria
– with respect to a patient who is a minor, ensure that the patient has received a comprehensive screening (at least annually) for social media addiction or compulsion and has not, for at least the six months prior to beginning any intervention, suffered from social media addiction or compulsion
– maintain data about adverse effects in a form that can be accessed readily for systematic study
– adopt and follow a procedure to track all adverse effects that arise from any course of covered gender transition intervention for all patients beginning the first day of intervention and continuing for a period of not fewer than 15 years
– obtain and keep on file informed written consent
– ensure that the patient has received a comprehensive screening to determine whether the patient has autism
– ensure (at least annually) that the patient is not experiencing social contagion with respect to the patient’s gender identity
The vast majority of this “emergency” rule is based on the bizarre right-wing theory that thousands of children who are not actually trans are claiming to be trans due to “social contagion,” which is not a thing. Multiple studies have shown that this is not a thing (Restar et al., 2019; Kuper et al., 2019; Kennedy, 2020; Bauer et al., 2021; Sansfaçon et al., 2021; Sorbara et al., 2021; Puckett et al., 2022; Turban et al., 2022; Brakefield et al., 2014) and that the reason two children who are friends might both come out as transgender is better explained by the mere fact that people tend to hang out with people like themselves (Aral et al., 2009; Shalizi & Thomas, 2011).
The regulation also bars adults who have autism from transitioning. Some studies have shown that gender dysphoria is more common among people with autism, but it is entirely unclear why autistic adults would be specifically barred from transitioning. Is it that Bailey assumes that autistic people are being nefariously preyed upon by doctors desperate to do gender-affirming surgeries? If so, to what end? […]
Rep. Peter Meredith (D-St. Louis) brought up the fact that Moon had previously supported a bill that would have allowed adults to marry children as young as 12 as long as the child’s parents were cool with it. You know, like how many parents of 12-year-old girls were okay with their children marrying Warren Jeffs or David Koresh.
Moon owned this, retorting, “Do you know any kids who have been married at age 12? I do. And guess what? They’re still married.” This is not entirely surprising as someone who raises their own spouse is likely to exercise a certain amount of control over them that might make it difficult for them to leave. It also seems rather unlikely that a girl who gets married to an adult at 12 would have been allowed to go to college or get any sort of training that might make her able to be financially independent.
This just shows that all of this is has nothing to do with whether or not people are able to make good decisions at any age or whether they should be allowed to make life-altering ones […] This is about these people and the world they want to live in. They do not want to live in a world in which they have to deal with the existence of transgender people. […] And they really don’t like living in a world where they no longer have the social power to dissuade people from coming out for fear of rejection.
Both the bill and the emergency rule are absurdly cruel and will result in thousands of children and adults at best being chased out of the state of Missouri entirely and at worst being traumatized for life. These are decisions that should be made between patients, their doctors and, if they are underage, their parents. Not by some random Republican politicians who want to be able to live in a world that makes sense to them.
birgerjohanssonsays
I see Sarah Michelle Gellar aka Buffy the vampire killer turned 46 today.
About 40 school districts in Indiana canceled in-person classes Friday after receiving emails threatening the use of explosives on several campuses.
No suspicious or explosive devices were found […] an ongoing trend of non-credible threats […] Earlier this week […] Illinois saw similar threats.
“And this has been going on almost weekly since at least the beginning of the school year in August […] multiple school districts receiving multiple threats across multiple states all within the same day.”
The Supreme Court on Friday paused a rapidly developing legal battle over the abortion pill mifepristone, temporarily suspending a lower court’s ruling that imposed limits on access to the drug so that justices have more time to review the case.
The order from Justice Samuel Alito does not signal which way the court is leaning but it does temporarily delay restrictions that abortion rights advocates warned could significantly limit availability of the drug. President Joe Biden hours earlier asked the high court to intervene to block a lower court’s decision upholding those restrictions.
The order maintains the status quo on the drug’s access until Wednesday at midnight…
Motherboard has discovered a swatting-as-a-service account on Telegram that uses computer generated voices to issue bomb and mass shooting threats against highschools and other locations across the country. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report:
Known as “Torswats” on the messaging app Telegram, the swatter has been calling in bomb and mass shooting threats against highschools and other locations across the country…
Torswats carries out these threatening calls as part of a paid service they offer. For $75, Torswats says they will close down a school. For $50, Torswats says customers can buy “extreme swattings,” in which authorities will handcuff the victim and search the house…
A new ad released by pro–Donald Trump super PAC MAGA Inc hit out at the governor, centering the 30-second video around reports that DeSantis has eaten pudding with his fingers. Originally reported in the Daily Beast, two sources alleged that the governor ate the dessert with three fingers while on a private plane ride from Tallahassee to Washington, D.C. in March 2019.
Glad to see Republicans addressing the serious issues.
A billionaire Texan property tycoon linked to the Duchess of York has been accused of financing a sex-trafficking ring in the US.
Trammell Crow Jr, who Sarah Ferguson has reportedly struck up a friendship with, has been named in a lawsuit by two women who claim he financed a sex and labour trafficking venture…
Speaking of Crow, this from the link @ #113 was interesting:
“The surrounding properties had fallen into disrepair and needed to be demolished for health and safety reasons,” Crow said in his statement. He added that his company built one new house on the block “and made it available to a local police officer.”
Who? Why? Was it for free security for Thomas’s mother? Some other reason?
World Bank staff were apparently told to give preferential treatment to the son of a high-ranking Trump administration official after the US Treasury threw its support behind a $13bn (£10bn) funding increase for the organisation, a leaked recording suggests.
Shared with the Guardian by a whistleblower, the recording of a 2018 staff meeting suggests colleagues were encouraged by a senior manager to curry favour with the son of David Malpass, who is now president of the World Bank but at the time was serving in the US Treasury under Donald Trump.
During the recording, which has left the Washington-based organisation facing questions over standards of governance [LOL], staff refer to 22-year-old Robert Malpass as a “prince” and “important little fellow”, who could go “running to daddy” if things went wrong.
Campaigners said the case could undermine the World Bank’s mission, which includes combating the erosion of public trust in civic institutions by promoting good governance.
Staff were apparently told Robert was the son of the undersecretary of the US Treasury, which had played a “beneficial” role in helping the World Bank secure an endorsement for the multibillion-dollar capital injection.
The recordings also suggest it may not have been the first time the international development bank had hired a family member of an important global figure. “Remember we had a ‘prince’ before … that is a subject for happy hour,” a staff member is heard saying.
The World Bank said it could not confirm the contents of the recording, but added it was “both false and absurd” to suggest that there was any connection between an entry-level hire and the multibillion-dollar capital increase.
The findings raise concerns over internal standards at the World Bank Group (WBG) [LOL], which is governed by high-ranking officials from across its 189 member states, and is holding its spring meeting alongside the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington this week.
It will also raise further concerns over David Malpass’s term as World Bank president. The economist announced his early resignation in February, months after he controversially failed to say whether he accepted that fossil fuels were causing the climate crisis….
[…] Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that Teixeira was “white, male, christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime.” Greene went on to say that the U.S. government is the real enemy for “waging war in Ukraine, a non-NATO nation, against nuclear Russia without war powers.” In a follow-up tweet, Greene described Teixeira as a fall guy for “exposing the truth about Ukraine” and said that “the same people that want to take away your guns, are waging war, in a foreign country, without permission from congress.”
On Thursday evening, Tucker Carlson not only defended Teixeira, but claimed that he was a whistleblower being singled out for “telling the truth” about Ukraine. Because of this, claimed Carlson, Teixeira is being treated “like Osama bin Laden, maybe a little worse.” Bin Laden was shot in the head, then buried at sea, and he was probably dead even before he was shot. So just possibly his treatment is a bit rougher than being arrested at home while wearing gym shorts.
Carlson then went on to read figures from online documents. Except that he skipped the documents Teixeira actually uploaded and went straight to a laughable photoshop from Russian media that showed Ukraine losing seven times as many soldiers as Russia. This, said Carlson, was how Teixeira had revealed that “Ukraine is losing the war.”
Carslon and Greene are not alone. Because the first response of the right to a racist, antisemitic loner who fetishizes guns and obsesses over violence is to pull him in and make him a hero. Just like they did with Kyle Rittenhouse.
Those who read the daily “Ukraine Update” will know that a portion of that update over the last two days has been dedicated to taking The Washington Post to task for their treatment of Teixeira, both before and after his arrest. On Thursday, the paper described Teixeira, who had at that point not been named, as a “charismatic” member of a group formed by young men “seeking companionship” who bonded over their love of guns, the military, and God. On Friday, the Post was back after the arrest to insist that the “slim and boyish” Teixeira “came from a patriotic family.” That included starting off the article with Teixeira’s mom making a proud post on Facebook and buying him a “patriotic-themed balloon.”
If this sounds like the same kind of sickening drivel that is used all too often in pearl-clutching post mortems of a mass shooting incident, those where the shooter is white, that’s not a coincidence.
In their coverage, CNN spoke with others who had known Teixeira in high school. Those conversations revealed a young man who classmates remembered him because he made racist comments, “mumbled derogatory things about people under his breath,” gave off a “menacing vibe,” carried a “dictionary-sized book on guns,” and wore a shirt featuring an AR-15 to school the day after the mass shooting in Las Vegas.
If Teixeira is actually the man responsible for leaking dozens of classified documents, he was not a kid playing video games. He was a member of the U.S. military who betrayed the trust of his superiors and fellow servicemembers. He damaged relationships between nations and violated security in ways that are likely to make future planning more difficult. He placed real soldiers, in the midst of hard and bitter fighting in the muddy trenches around Bakhmut and all along the front lines in Ukraine, at increased risk.
The documents, which include both information Teixeira compiled and summarized himself, as well as photographs of maps, tables, and other information, included those classified as “Top Secret.” Some of these carried codes indicating they were not to be revealed to foreign nationals, even allies. Among the items posted were details of both U.S. and Ukrainian military capabilities, positions of Ukrainian air defenses, and an analysis of Ukraine’s positioning for a possible counteroffensive against invading Russian forces. And more. A lot more. The total number of documents released appears to be in the hundreds.
In one particularly egregious example, by revealing the location of air defenses in the middle of a war, Teixeira knowingly placed the lives of every single Ukrainian military and civilian at risk. The Washington Post may describe him as young, charismatic, slim, and boyish. But try telling that to a mother wailing over the body of a child killed by a Russian missile.
[…]
Teixeira posted these documents to a Discord server where he reportedly served as administrator. That server, named “Thug Shaker Central,” reportedly included members from outside the United States, including from unspecified locations in Eastern Europe. Those members were reported to be particularly interested in the documents Teixeira posted.
[…] The name of the site itself is drawn from a racist, anti-gay meme. […]
For Greene, the arrest of Teixeira simply represents another opportunity to be outrageously vile. Which is her one and only talent. Greene has no concern about the results of Teixeira’s actions.
In 2017, while working for a military contractor, former Air Force Senior Airman Reality Winner sent a copy of a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election to the online news site The Intercept. In later interviews, Winner said she sent the document because she was concerned about the measures Russia was taking to influence U.S. elections and, in particular, their role in the 2016 election.
The document she sent did not include any information on military dispositions, either in the U.S. or elsewhere, and very little that might be a threat to either sources or methods. It was a brief post-election analysis of Russia’s impact on the election, which Winner insisted she took because “I am somebody who only acted out of love for what this country stands for,” and she felt the public “was being lied to” when it came to Russia’s role in the election of Donald Trump.
Winner was arrested even before any of the material in the report appeared in print. In August 2017, she was sentenced to 63 months in prison for this single violation of the Espionage Act. It was the longest sentence ever imposed for the unauthorized release of government information to the media.
A case can certainly be made that Winner really was a whistleblower, out to inform the public about facts being withheld by a government that benefited from general ignorance. No such case can possibly be put forward concerning Teixeira. He made no effort to bring the documents to the attention of the public, the media, or any authority. He used them primarily to inflate his status among a group of young men exchanging LOLs about guns and racism.
When it comes to Carlson, his motivations certainly overlap with those of Greene, but in a way, they’re purer. Carlson just wants Vladimir Putin to be successful in his invasion of Ukraine, and he means to help by using any means at hand to reduce U.S. support for the Ukrainian effort.
[…] Both Greene and Carlson also claimed that Teixeira’s slides show “direct U.S. involvement” in Ukraine, a feature that has already been picked up on by Russian state media, which is enjoying this leak as much as might be expected. [Tweet and video at the link]
The claim made here—that Teixeira’s leak shows a breakdown of the security under Biden—also echoes statements made by Greene, Carlson, and others on the right. Except Teixeira formed his group and began leaking in 2020—under Donald Trump. Don’t expect them to acknowledge that while turning Teixeira into their next big right-wing hero.
[…] the time from now until Trump declares that he would give Teixeira a full pardon can likely be measured in milliseconds.
[…] The Washington Post’s Philip Bump analyzed how traditional media outlets like MSNBC, C-SPAN, CNN, and Fox News were covering the news [news about the financially swampy relationship between Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Texas billionaire, conservative donor, and Nazi artifact collector Harlan Crow]. It turns out that in the case of Fox News, they aren’t covering it all that much. Over a ten-day period after the news broke, Fox News has mentioned Thomas’ name in less than 50 segments, all less than 15 seconds long, according to The Washington Post.
To put this into perspective, over that same period, MSNBC has mentioned Thomas almost 500 times. As for the name Harlan Crow? Fox News has almost never mentioned his name.
[…] Fox News is barely mentioning the Supreme Court story, and talking all the way around the various Donald Trump legal indictments and trials and potential indictments, what are they talking about? According to the analysis, Bud Light. The beer. You see, Bud Light signed a sponsorship deal with internet celebrity Dylan Mulvaney [a trans celebrity]. The deal seems to have included Mulvaney making sure to create product placement social media posts.
Mulvaney’s sponsorship deal led to former celebrities like Kid Rock to start shooting Bud Light cans with guns in protest. Fox News covered that more than 183 times. This coming from the network that spends a considerable amount of of resources trying to torture conspiratorial connections between billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and … everything happening that they don’t like. […]
The Justice Department announced charges against 28 Mexican drug cartel leaders and members on Friday, targeting the infamous Sinaloa cartel and the children of former drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the charges, focusing on the cartel’s fentanyl trafficking, filed in the Southern District of New York, the Northern District of Illinois and Washington, D.C.
Defendants include at least three sons of the imprisoned El Chapo, known as the “Chapitos”: Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar, Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar and Ovidio Guzman Lopez.
A statement from the Justice Department also mentions a fourth Chapito, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, as a defendant in this case.
The Chapitos are accused of fentanyl trafficking and money laundering, among other charges.
Ovidio Guzman Lopez was arrested in January and “charged in a separate indictment alleging the same offenses.” He is still detained in Mexico pending extradition proceedings, according to the Justice Department.
Other defendants in the case include suppliers in China selling fentanyl precursor chemicals to the Sinaloa Cartel, a Guatemalan-based broker who purchases the precursors on behalf of the cartel, and operators of labs in Mexico where the cartel manufactures fentanyl.
Also charged were a weapons supplier who provides the cartel with firearms smuggled to Mexico from the U.S., leaders of the cartel’s security and money launderers who fund the cartel’s operations, Garland said.
“The United States government is using every tool at its disposal to combat the fentanyl epidemic,” Garland said.
Garland said that between 2019 to 2021, fatal overdoses in the country increased by over 94%, with an estimated 196 Americans dying every day from fentanyl poisoning.
“Families and communities across our country are being devastated by the fentanyl epidemic,” he said. “From August 2021 to August 2022, 107,735 people died of drug overdoses in the United States. Two thirds of those deaths involve synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl.”
Garland also outlined how the cartel “operates without respect for human rights, for human life or for rule of law,” describing incidents where defendants fed victims, dead and alive, to tigers belonging to the Chapitos.
The cartel also allegedly used human test subjects in fatal fentanyl experiments.
“In another instance, those defendants experimented on a woman they had been ordered to shoot. Instead they injected her repeatedly with fentanyl until she overdosed and died,” Garland said.
“And after an addict died testing a batch of the cartel’s fentanyl, one of the defendants sent the batch to the United States anyway.”
A total of eight of the defendants are currently in custody, Garland added.
Although Friday’s charges concerned the Sinaloa Cartel, the initiative is part of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s push to target major drug trafficking organizations like Sinaloa and its main rival, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
The Biden administration also announced Friday that it is increasing cooperation with Mexico to combat the trafficking of fentanyl coming north into the U.S., while also cracking down on the trafficking of guns going south into Mexico….
Tennessee Speaker Cameron Sexton is the Republican representative from Crossville. Or is he? Popular Information’s intrepid Judd Legum […] has been investigating whether Sexton actually lives in his district, or if he bought an expensive house in Nashville, moved his family there, but has nonetheless been dinging Tennessee’s taxpayers to the tune of thousands of dollars of per diem expenses.
Who wants to guess which way this is going?
Thanks to Legum’s reporting, Sexton admitted last week that he did indeed move his family to Nashville […] Furthermore:
Sexton went to considerable lengths to obscure his purchase of his home in Nashville. He established an anonymous trust, the Beccani Trust, to buy the property. Cameron Sexton’s name does not appear anywhere on the documents memorializing the sale and the mortgage. A financial advisor based in Utah, Bret Bryce, was appointed trustee and signed most of the documents.
But Sexton’s wife, Lacey Sexton, signed the warranty deed for the property as the “affiant.”
This is 100 percent how you do real estate purchases when everything is on the up and up and you do have nothing to hide, such as whether you may now be ineligible under Article II, Section 5a of the Tennessee Constitution to represent the place you used to live that is two hours away from the state capital.
Sexton did at some point buy a condo in Crossville as a way-less-than-adequate residency fig leaf. Then he neglected to pay the property taxes on it until Popular Info brought it to the public’s attention.
Also, there is this:
But members who live more than 50 miles outside of Nashville are entitled to a much larger per diem, $313 in 2022, to cover the cost of lodging in Nashville. Sexton has taken the larger per diem, which is pegged to the cost of a hotel room in Nashville. On the forms, Sexton claims a roundtrip commute of 236 miles.
These per diems are also available when the legislature is out of session if a member has to travel to Nashville to conduct official business. Sexton makes extensive use of that privilege, consistently charging taxpayers the larger amount.
Since 2021, Sexton has charged Tennessee taxpayers $92,071 in per diem expenses.
Ninety-two thousand dollars in under two years! A fella could easily pay off two years of property taxes on a condo with that windfall […]
You might wonder what happened to #WomanLifeFreedom in #iran . Here is a long [thread] for you after a while on the eve of the Saturday that state has threatened women with a harsh faceoff! Focus of this thread is the compulsory #hijab :…
A response: “Even in the recent religious nights of Ramadhan women took part in the ceremonies without hijab.”
Followup to comment 71. More discussion about Hasan Crow’s collection of Nazi memorabilia, etc.
[…] Even in the privacy of your own home, it does not make sense to honor victims of tyranny with statues of the tyrants or knickknacks from their regimes. How does a signed copy of “Mein Kampf” speak to the horrors of Nazism? How does a “resolute” statue of Stalin capture the misery of the gulag or the murderous brutality of his rule?
They don’t. They can’t. So why are they there?
I don’t know what is in Crow’s heart. But he is a wealthy man. He is a powerful man. And power is attracted to power. “Crow might earnestly think he is buying this stuff to provide some kind of object lesson about the perils of tyranny,” writes John Ganz, my friend and podcast co-host, on Substack, “but there is an unavoidable suggestion of idolatry and vulgar power-worship just under the surface.”
That’s right. Does Crow secretly admire these figures of his fascination? […] He doesn’t respect the weight and meaning of the histories in question.
What Crow has done is trivialize them. He has made them objects of curiosity. He has stripped them of specificity; they are meant to represent evil at its most generic and abstract. “Tyranny” here doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a word. […]
Even in the least litigious of times, Fox News attracts lawsuits like flies to falafel. But after brutally defaming Dominion Voting Systems (allegedly!) with its barmy stolen-election nonsense, the network has recently found itself reeling from a barrage of legal haymakers. The latest? Abby Grossberg—the former Fox News producer who last month filed suit against the network, claiming that Fox lawyers browbeat her into giving misleading testimony in the Dominion case—has amended her lawsuit. CEO Suzanne Scott is now a co-defendant, and Grossberg alleges the company’s lawyers improperly deleted messages from her phone.
In her initial complaint, Grossberg stated Fox’s lawyers tried to set her and Fox host Maria Bartiromo—who, to be fair, is the journalistic equivalent of an incontinent emu running loose in a TGI Friday’s—up as patsies who were ultimately responsible for the network’s airing of easily disprovable conspiracy theories. Grossberg also claimed the network’s scapegoating was a result of the misogyny and discrimination that (allegedly!) prevails at the network.
Now Grossberg is claiming Scott was complicit in the lawyers’ alleged misconduct, which, according to the complaint, included tampering with evidence.
CNN:
In Grossberg’s amended complaint filed this week, she accused Fox’s lawyers of deleting messages from her phone. The lawsuit says Grossberg gave her phone to Fox lawyers in 2022, and “that certain messages between Ms. Grossberg and Ms. Bartiromo were missing/appeared to have been deleted” when she got the device back from Fox’s team.
The topic of potentially missing or withheld evidence is looming large over the Dominion case. A judge sanctioned Fox on Wednesday for withholding key material from Dominion — audio recordings of Bartiromo talking off-air with Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
Ah, yes. Rudy Giuliani. […] He has a starring role in Grossberg’s new filing as well.
The Daily Beast:
Grossberg, who is suing the conservative network for harassment and a toxic work environment, claims that the behind-the-scenes conversations with Giuliani, former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and Trump campaign officials featured them admitting they had no evidence to support their Dominion election fraud lies.
Additionally, she says an adviser of former President Donald Trump pointed out the importance of January 6 weeks before the Capitol attacks, noting that the adviser said there were “no issues” with voting machines and January 6 was now the “backstop” for determining the election.
Well, that sounds significant. So what, exactly, was in these tapes?
During a recording in mid-November 2020, according to Grossberg, Giuliani admitted to Bartiromo that the Trump campaign couldn’t prove some of its Dominion allegations. Asked by Bartiromo what evidence he had implicating Dominion in rigging the election, Giuliani allegedly said “that’s a little harder.” He also conceded that he had no evidence to back up the conspiracy theory that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had an interest in Dominion. “I’ve read that. I can’t prove that,” he said.
Ginni Thomas has reassured the American people that she is doing everything in her power to keep her husband’s mounting ethical issues from interfering with her work on the United States Supreme Court.
Acknowledging that her husband’s controversies were a “distraction,” Thomas said, “They shouldn’t keep me from doing the important work I was sent here to do.”
“There are reproductive rights to shred and environmental protections to erase,” she said. “Regardless of the mess Clarence has gotten himself into, I need to keep my focus.”
Calling her post as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court “a job I’ve loved for the past three decades,” Thomas said, “I’m hopping mad that Clarence would do anything to jeopardize that. But anyone who thinks that I’m giving less than a hundred per cent to my work doesn’t know what Ginni Thomas is made of.”
Approximately 18,000 cows were killed in a blast at a Texas dairy farm earlier this week, according to local authorities.
The explosion, at South Fork Dairy near the town of Dimmitt, also left one person [human] in critical condition.
Authorities believe that machinery in the facility may have ignited methane gas.
Nearly three million farm[ed] animals died in fires across the US between 2018 and 2021.
…
Speaking to local news outlet KFDA, Sheriff Sal Rivera said that most of the cattle [sic] had been lost after the blaze spread to an area in which cows were held before being taken to a milking area and then into a holding pen.
“There’s some that survived,” he was quoted as saying. “There’s some that are probably injured to the point where they’ll have to be destroyed.”
Mr Rivera told KFDA that investigators believed the fire might have started with a machine referred to as a “honey badger”, which he described as “vacuum that sucks the manure and water out”.
“Possibly [it] got overheated and probably the methane and things like that ignited and spread out and exploded,” he said.
In a statement sent to the BBC, the Washington DC-based Animal Welfare Institute said that – if confirmed – a death toll of 18,000 cows would be “by far” the deadliest barn fire involving cattle [sic] since it began keeping statistics in 2013.
“We hope the industry will remain [?!] focused on this issue and strongly encourage farms to adopt common sense fire safety measures,” said Allie Granger, policy associate for AWI’s farm animal program. “It is hard to imagine anything worse than being burned alive.”…
Anything in brackets other than “[it]” is my editorializing. What are we doing here?
Republicans have lost the culture war by winning their most cherished goal. So now they are trying to whip up an anti-trans frenzy. It isn’t working. My latest column.
[NYT link at the link]
The horrifying laws being passed to punish trans people in states the GOP controls are a harbinger of what’s to come and ordinary people, unsurprisingly, want no part of it.
Republicans seem to think that transphobia is the perfect post-Roe wedge issue. But the abject cruelty of their post-Roe lawmaking blitz has only alienated the swing voters wedge issues are meant to peel off.
Abortion rights and trans rights are two sides of the same coin, and the anti-trans bills have demonstrated that clearly. Republicans want to police your body. Is it surprising that Americans are rejecting this? Of course not.
Centrists of a certain type seem to have become convinced that supporting trans rights is a liability for Democrats. They are working in a long tradition of sacrificing queer lives on the altar of so-called moderation. This is wrong and cruel.
Bill Clinton courted the gay vote but then enacted laws that specifically targeted the dignity of queer people. Centrists – I urge you: do not do this. It will not help you win power statewide or nationally.
While writing this column I thought often of my grandmother, a rock-rib Wisconsin conservative who voted for every Republican presidential nominee from Barry Goldwater to Mitt Romney. In 2016 she couldn’t bring herself to vote for Trump. (She didn’t vote Hillary either!)
She raised a gay son and loved her Black grandchildren, one of whom (me!) is queer. We lost her in 2020, but I know in my bones that she would not countenance this cruelty.
This madness is weird and unpopular. [quote from the article at the link]
Through a random chain of links and events I ended up doing cursory internet research on 17th- and 18th-century British history, and, in a moment of anti-drag laws, came across
He was reputed to own the best wig in Scotland…
To my unfathomable disappointment, there is no citation for this claim. However, there’s a painting at the (WP) link.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group, asks the Russian authorities to declare the end of the war and concentrate on gaining a foothold in the occupied territories of Ukraine…
Pakistani police arrested on Friday a Muslim woman on charges of blasphemy after she allegedly claimed she was an Islamic prophet, a charge that can carry the death sentence under the country’s laws.
The woman was taken into custody from her home in the city of Faisalabad in eastern Punjab province, shortly after a mob had gathered outside demanding that she be lynched after news spread of her alleged claims of prophethood, senior police official Nasir Ali Rizvi said.
Rizvi identified the woman as Sana Ullah and said two other people were arrested with her. He said she would be brought before a judge to face the charge against her…
A man who used a stolen riot shield to crush a police officer in a doorframe during the U.S. Capitol insurrection was sentenced on Friday to more than seven years in prison for his role in one of the most violent episodes of the Jan. 6 attack.
Federal prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of 15 years and eight months for Patrick McCaughey III, which would have been the longest sentence for a Capitol riot case by more than five years.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden sentenced McCaughey to seven years and six months in prison followed by two years of supervised release. The judge described McCaughey, 25, as a “poster child of all that was dangerous and appalling about” the Jan. 6, 2021, riot…
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday he will not enter the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
In an interview with Fox News, the devoted ally and defender of Donald Trump opted out of a contest that would have put him into competition with his former commander in chief.
“The time is not right for me and my family,” Pompeo said in a statement later posted to Twitter…
Oh bullshit. He had his people run some polls and found out there was no way he could win.
The SSU has exposed another FSB agent during counter-sabotage activities in Sumy Oblast. He turned out to be a local resident, whom the Russian special service involved in covert cooperation even before the start of their full-scale invasion…
North Bay Village Republican Rep. Fabián Basabe, who skipped a vote Thursday passing a divisive measure that would cut the threshold for abortion in Florida from 15 to six weeks, wants to clarify he was for giving women twice that amount of time.
The reason the House didn’t pass a 12-week ban instead, he said, is because Democrats — who hold just 30% of the seats in either chamber — were unwilling to work with GOP lawmakers…
Montana made history on Friday by becoming the first state legislature to approve a wholesale TikTok affecting nearly all devices in the state. The first-of-its-kind ban, which goes far beyond previous state efforts banning the app on government devices, could set the precedent for a wave of TikTok bans in other Republican-led states. Widespread TikTok bans, for better or worse, could become a reality.
The state’s House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill, called SB 419, by a margin of 54-43 on Friday afternoon. Montana’s state senate already approved the bill back in March, meaning the only thing preventing it from becoming law is a signature from governor and known journalist body-slammer Greg Gianforte. Once signed, the ban will take effect in January 2024. However, the bill would become void if Congress enacts its own national TikTok ban. The bill also wouldn’t apply if TikTok divests its US business from Chinese ownership. ..
wzrd1says
The Wagner decapitation videos just adds to their laundry list of war crimes, not that it matters much, as mercenaries aren’t protected by the Geneva or Hague Conventions, but still representing Russia, opens Russian forces up to reprisals for violation of the conventions.
The last reprisal actions I can recall are of Waffen SS troops, who summarily executed civilians and Allied troops being summarily executed themselves.
Teixeira, he’s an Air National Guard service member on federal duty as a systems administrator. Shitty reporting claims that he should have had access to the documents, but that’s not best business practices in civilian or military environments where least privilege is the standard. The system account and specific applications, as well as the backup job accounts need access, not the SA’s. So, a shit ton of people were, again, not doing their fucking job and some idiot kid will end up paying the price, while they all move forward in their dereliction of duty filled careers, rather than sharing a cell block with him.
Manning’s case had a different dereliction of duty, deleterious personnel action was pending and by regulation, access should have been immediately terminated and wasn’t. The termination of access, to prevent precisely what happened from happening.
I was a senior NCO and after retiring, an SA/NA and later, IA (Information Assurance, information security title in the US DoD). Both were and remain utterly unacceptable.
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #188…
One wonders just how the Montana state government plans to enforce their ban…
wzrd1says
Maybe they’ll have the Montana National Guard march to China and invade?
Or they’ll incarcerate every kid in the state that uses their site and/or client software?
Seriously, this is like trying to repeal the law of gravity. You can try to, but it’s utterly unenforceable.
StevoRsays
@ ^ 190 whheydt & #191. wzrd1 : Cyberwarfare of some kind? A compulsoryu TikTok destroying program – software that is maybe?
.***
US authorities in north-western New Mexico have released body camera footage of police officers opening fire and killing a home owner after they showed up at the wrong address in response to a domestic violence call.The video released by the Farmington Police Department on Friday — just over a week after the April 5 night-time shooting — showed officers arriving at the home.
They walked up to the front door, passing the address that was posted on the home and illuminated by an exterior light, knocked on the door and announced themselves.
While knocking twice more, the officers can be heard asking a dispatcher to confirm the address and to tell the caller to come to the door. The dispatcher states the address of a home across the street.
It was soon after that the home owner, armed with a handgun, opened the door and the officers immediately began shooting, firing multiple rounds as they backed away. The man can be seen dropping to the ground.
About a minute afterwards, a woman can be heard screaming inside the home and more shots ring out.
Authorities have said the man’s wife returned fire from the doorway, not knowing who was outside, prompting the officers to fire again.
She was not injured but could be heard screaming and crying after the second volley of shots were fired.
Ukraine’s top general Valeriy Zaluzhny shared a video showing the effectiveness of US-provided M982 Excalibur shells against Russian forces…
The GPS-guided 155 mm shells offer an accurate, longer-range alternative to conventional artillery shell, capable of hitting within seven feet of their target.
The Excalibur has a range of 25 miles…
StevoRsays
Tragic loss of an unknown number of brave lives :
Every year, hundreds if not thousands of West African migrants disappear, trying to reach the Canary Islands and, they believe, better lives in Europe.
The real death toll is unknown, and so many people and boats are never seen again.
However, in 2021, something strange happened.
The boats — from the Atlantic coastal nation of Mauritania and other African nations, believed to have been used by migrants — weren’t making it to the Canaries. They were emerging on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in the Caribbean, and even as far as Brazil.
All carried a sad cargo — the bodies of young men and women who had dreamt of a new life in Europe. Few were ever identified.
They had drifted to death.
For nearly two years, AP journalists traced the origins of one boat and the people who died in it.
The City of Adelaide has 182 years of history, but today marks the first time an Aboriginal person has been honoured on its chamber walls.A portrait of Ngarrindjeri and Boandik elder Aunty Shirley Peisley — taken by Aboriginal artist Ali Gumillya Baker — was unveiled at Adelaide Town Hall on Friday, as part of an initiative to include a series of portraits of prominent women in council chambers.
Ms Peisley — a fierce advocate for Aboriginal rights — was heavily involved in campaigning in the lead-up to the 1967 referendum, which allowed the Commonwealth to make laws for Aboriginal people, and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to be counted in the census. She was the first female Aboriginal Probation and Truancy officer, working in the Youth Court in the 1970s and, in 2000, she received an Order of Australia Medal for her services to the Aboriginal community.
Josh Marshall, quoting from a Wall Street Journal article:
Let’s Not Kid Ourselves
From the Journal …
The people in the online spaces where Airman First Class Jack Teixeira spent his time and allegedly leaked highly classified documents had many things in common. In obscure game forums and private online chat rooms, his friends posted slurs against minority communities, Ukrainians and pretty much everyone else.
Everyone, that is, except Russians.
Members of that small community, hosted on the social-media app Discord, admired President Vladimir Putin’s regime and its war on Ukraine.
I’m tired of hearing about inflation and jobs reports, what we need in this country is an insufferability index, measuring the degree to which our quality of life is impacted by the shrieking inanity of the American Right in decline. That number would be off the charts this week. The charts I just made up.
Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk cited junk science and authority granted nowhere in actual law to ban the abortion pill mifepristone, because he’d had quite enough of this women-having-bodily-autonomy hooey, thank you very much.
Now, I like having basic human rights removed by Federalist Society weirdos as much as the next fellow, but the electorate has sent no subtle signals since Dobbs. The American public will not passively submit to the revanchist whims of minoritarian zealots bent on shittiness for its own sake.
Of course, like so much of objective reality, this is proving to be a difficult concept for Republicans to wrap their wee minds around. They can’t quite figure out where this “youth vote problem” came from, but with thought leaders like Scott Walker and Kellyanne Conway on the job, I’m confident they’ll find a steady stream of creative excuses to avoid the obvious.
Poor Tim Scott tied himself in knots, and right when he’s launching what some feel obliged to pretend is a campaign for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, too. Mockery aside, Tim doesn’t really need a good answer on abortion, or on anything at all, if we’re honest, given the, ahem, other obstacles he faces in the contest to lead the…y’know…the white nationalist resentment cult.
Actually, I think Texas Congressdolt Tony Gonzalez may’ve hit upon the solution: simply change the subject, and the issue will vanish into the cool night air! Women are flighty creatures, and once they’re restored to their natural station, they’ll be too busy with housework to even think about controlling their own bodies.
Yeah, I bet that works. I bet DeSantistan’s new six-week abortion ban never comes up during the entire presidential campaign, not once, cuz Ron cleverly signed the bill late at night, rather than in a showy, public ceremony. Curses! Outfoxed again, just like Disney!
I dunno. Given the ground he’s already ceding on the pudding issue, I don’t see it happening for DeSantis, though of course, you never really know what Republican primary voters will do, because their brains don’t work.
As predicted, Tennessee Republicans’re feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse over last week’s authoritarian shitfit. Seems nobody bothered to investigate procedural next steps before sending out invites to their big Excommunicate the Urban Black Guys party, so Justins Jones and Pearson barely had time to greet their new, national following before returning to work.
In addition to empowering those they sought to sanction, the other thing Tennessee Republicans accomplished was drawing the world’s attention to all the fashy shenanigans they’ve been up to of late. […]
They sure had fun with their little expulsion vote, though.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you don’t have to defend a plutocrat’s collection of Hitler memorabilia just because he bought Clarence Thomas’ mom’s house. Owning Hitler paintings is pretty fucked up, regardless of any Supreme Court Justices whose lavish lifestyles you may or may not be corruptly financing.
Another thing you don’t have to say out loud is that you think 12-year-olds should be allowed to marry. Meet Missouri State Senator Mike Moon, by the way. Oh, and “Moon’s support of the practice resurfaced during a committee hearing on a bill introduced by Moon that would ban gender-affirming care for transgender children,” which goes without saying, I suppose.
Missouri Republicans’re also working to defund libraries statewide, because it’s quicker than pulling the books about Black people off the shelves individually.
Surprise, surprise, Tucker Carlson’s tougher in his texts than in real life, where he submissively offered his platform up to the doddering fuckwit he once called “a demonic force, a destroyer,” to rant about all his favorite dictators.
And sure, that was pretty emasculating, but nothing a few hours under the ol’ scrotum tanning machine couldn’t fix.Tucker was back on his feet in no time, lionizing the 21-year-old jackass who perpetrated the most damaging national security breach in years to impress a handful of asshats in a Discord chat.
(Marjorie Taylor Greene is also a fan, no doubt believing Jack Teixeira will upload the Jewish space laser schematics as soon as he finds a spare moment.)
Fox News was sanctioned (yay, incidentally) for withholding evidence in the Dominion case, another gleaming example of that organization’s general trustworthiness.
Greg Abbott coulda sworn it was legal in Texas to gun Black Lives Matter protesters down in the street, and he’ll get right on that next legislative session, but for now, he wants the world to know he’s working as quickly as humanly possible to turn a convicted murderer loose.
As you’d imagine, a wingnut like Abbott doesn’t hand out a ton of pardons, but obviously this dude is a special case, given his proudly stated racism. Oh, and his fantasies about killing protesters. Which are documented. And specific. “Might have to kill a few people on my way to work,” that sort of thing.
Yeah, we’ve seen this behavior before, and we’ll see it again. Some wound-up, armed-to-the-gills loser goes cruising for a fight so he can shoot his way out of it. Call it Rittenhousing. And Abbott is far from alone on the Right in believing it should be completely legal. Which is fairly terrifying.
Governor Tate Reeves once again proclaimed Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi. There’s no denying Tate keeps spirit of the Confederacy alive, overseeing the highest poverty rate and highest infant mortality rate in the nation. Truly, the South rose again that time Reeves led his state to the fourth-highest COVID death rate…in the world.
Well, their culture venerates failure, and I suppose we have to respect that.
Kevin McCarthy’s assclown caucus celebrated 100 days of Jim Jordan and James Comer Punching Themselves in the Groin on C-SPAN For Some Reason. […]
There’s now an overpriced anti-trans beer to go with the overpriced anti-trans chocolate bar, for those who enjoy lighting their money ablaze in fleeting displays of petulant hate. Meanwhile, Bud Light’s enjoying all the free advertising that comes with being the official adult beverage of Not These Screeching Bigots, secure in the knowledge that, as Dan Crenshaw so elegantly proved, Republicans are too stupid to successfully boycott anything.
Seems like only yesterday we were laughing at Elon Musk for setting the Guinness World Record for losing money, but he turned everything around this week, by covering up the W in “Twitter” (GET IT HAW HAW HAW) on the side of a building, and trolling NPR into leaving his platform. He’s so good at business, I frequently weep tears of pure admiration.
Congratulations to Arizona state Representative Liz Harris, for being shitty and crazy and dishonest enough to get expelled from a Republican-controlled legislature. I’m honestly impressed. In the state party of Kari Lake and Mark Lamb and Sheriff Joe and the Bamboo Fiber Detection Squad, Liz not only found the line, but crossed it. You should be rewarded for that, with like, a syringe of artisanal, small batch horse dewormer or something.
I see George Santos uncovered the deep state plot to ban toilet paper, which one of ya squealed? […]
Also returning Is J.R. Majewski, who lied about his military record en route to losing his last congressional election by 13 points, in the red wave that wasn’t. Majewski, you’ll recall, rose to MAGA prominence by painting Donald Trump on his lawn, which is the sort of thing swing voters usually go nuts for, so it must’ve been the valor theft.
A Donald Trump speech at an NRA convention is too fucking much for me on a Friday night, but check it out if you hate yourself, I guess.
[…] Trump may be our drama queen as he stumbles his way toward oblivion, but to the evil forces of the world, he is their stooge. He shares that distinction in an inverse relationship he has with his own rabid followers. They serve as his stooges while he picks their pockets.
[…] No one cried for him this week. They were too happy watching him finally face the music. Swan songs are rarely this anticipated— judgment rarely this welcomed.
A rather extraordinary story about the search for an intriguing meteorite that fell in PNG back in 2014 here albeit soem pretty wild speculation on its possible nature :
A team of Harvard University scientists is planning an expedition to Papua New Guinea to investigate the origin and make-up of a rare interstellar meteor, fragments of which are believed to have crashed into waters near Manus Island. n 2014, US ballistic missile systems identified an object that had collided with Earth’s atmosphere and it was added to a NASA “meteor catalogue” of 272 objects.
However — under closer examination by physicist Avi Loeb and his student Amir Suraj — it was discovered it was moving too fast for it to be bound to the sun.
Essentially, that means it went over the solar system’s speed limit, which scientists say indicates it must have travelled from a far-flung region.
“It was moving faster than 95 per cent of all the stars in the vicinity of the sun,” Professor Loeb said.
“We wrote a paper about it and the US government confirmed it, with 99.999 per cent confidence in our identification, and released data about the fireball that was created when the meteor exploded 10 kilometres above sea level.”
Their studies also indicated the material the object was made up of was 10 times stronger than any other known space rock, which enabled it to travel well into Earth’s atmosphere before combusting.
Plus a venus sized exoplanet found around a red dwarf toolcose and likely lacking an atmosphere I’d guess from similar worlds including the closest of the Trappist 1 worlds:
This morning, as it has every morning for the last eight months, Bakhmut holds. The question now is: Has Bakhmut held long enough?
That’s a different questions from “Why is Ukraine fighting in Bakhmut?” or “Should Ukraine withdraw from Bakhmut to save its forces?” Both of those were about the appropriateness of Bakhmut as a theater of combat, and whether Ukraine was causing sufficient damage to the Russian military by remaining in this place to justify its own considerable losses. Months ago, the Ukrainian leadership made it clear that, so far as they were concerned, the answers to these were “Because so long as we keep fighting there, another city is not being destroyed” and a very definite “Yes.”
The constant stream of obituaries that finish with “in fighting near Bakhmut” makes it clear that the cost of holding this city has been very, very high. And there are some indications that Ukraine is backing away from the city, removing some of its forces from the cauldron at the center—yes, for real this time. However, that pull back may not be directly in response to what Wagner Group is doing this week. In fact, it may be the other way around. Wagner may be advancing because Urkaine is pulling back. Right on schedule.
Back in February, one of the soldiers inside the city wrote this on a Telegram post: “Our task from the beginning of the year: ‘Hold Bakhmut until the beginning of April.” Similar messages targeted “mid-April.” Last month, Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin seemed to be aware that something was coming around the same date, warning that April was the date for a major Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Now it’s mid-April, and Ukraine may be withdrawing from the streets of Bakhmut. But are they ready to conduct the counteroffensive that could make all the sacrifice in the city worth it?
Maybe Prigozhin’s letter last month was effective, because there are reports that much of the advances in Bakhmut over the last few weeks have come as Wagner Group is getting better support from regular Russian military. That combined firepower is reportedly giving Russian forces in the city a boost, perhaps explaining how they were able to move from the river to the railway station much more quickly than they captured blocks to the east and south. [UK Intelligence Update available at the link]
Once again, Russian forces are occupying the railway station at the center of Bakhmut, and it doesn’t seem to be “managed to get a few troops near before withdrawing” this time. Reports are that Russia has solidified its position to the east of the station and that Ukrainian forces are no longer fighting in the area across the railroad line. To the north of the station, those tracks still look to be the boundary between Ukrainian and Russian forces, with fire being exchanged across the rails. To the south, Russian forces are again reportedly pressing in to the T0504 highway. [map at the link]
All the old familiar places that Russia and Ukraine traded back and forth for so long—the winery, the drywall factory, etc.—are off the map to the east. This is just the last western nub of the city. However, don’t expect Ukraine to vanish from the rest of Bakhmut overnight. Reports continue to indicate that fighting is going on block by block, house by house.
Wagner and Russian Telegram are also filled with messages about Ukraine leaving behind traps and remote controlled explosives, so that when Russians seek shelter in buildings Ukrainian forces just abandoned, they get a nasty surprise. How many of these reports are true is hard to say, but the constant spread of these stories probably makes Russian forces very reluctant to step through any door in Bakhmut. [video at the link]
Russian forces are reportedly “flooding into” Bakhmut from the east and north. Additionally, as noted in the UK situational report, artillery fire in the city is intensifying. Earlier this week, there were reports that Ukraine had also sent more reserves to the area, however those reserves don’t seem to have entered the city proper—which appears to be a very good idea. Because Russian artillery is able to drop into that remaining area from three sides, making the what’s left or Ukrainian-controlled Bakhmut a very difficult place to be.
Right now, it appears that Ukraine is conducting, and will continue to conduct, a “fighting retreat” from Bakhmut. Unless Russian forces are somehow exhausted—and at this point, we’re passed what seems like a thousand different experts using some variant on the phrase “almost culminated”—it looks like Ukraine will withdraw from Bakhmut around the end of the month.
In a lengthy letter on Telegram, Prigozhin admits that the value of the city for Russia is extremely limited.
The strategic role of Bakhmut is not so great. Bakhmut is followed by Siversk, Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Konstantinivka, Druzhkivka and Chasiv Yar: settlements that are part of the so-called “Donbas ring” and form a fortified area. On the one hand, Bakhmut is part of this fortified area, on the other hand, the capture of Bakhmut itself will not ensure a short-term victory over Ukraine, the road to the Dnieper, or even the capture of Donbas.
Bakhmut the city, the citizens, the tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers who have fought there, the thousands who have died, have held the attention of the Russian military for eight months. In that time, Ukraine has acquired new Western weapons and its forces have undergone extensive training. Most,of the images which the the Ukrainian military has published for the last few months is not of combat along the front lines, but large groups of Ukrainian forces drilling and training away from the lines.
This has not slipped Prigozhi’s attention.
The Ukrainian army has gathered a sufficient number of forces. About 200,000 already sufficiently trained fighters, who have undergone two to three months of training and coordination, are ready to carry out combat missions. The amount of weapons and ammunition is quite enough for these 200 thousand to go on the offensive in various directions.
His worry is that right now, with Russia focusing on Bakhmut and only Bakhmut, those Ukrainian forces could go essentially anywhere. It’s taken months for Russia to assemble the bulk of its force in one place, and even longer for Russia to put together something that seems like a unified push in that single location. In Bakhmut, but nowhere else, Russia seems to be able to exert its will. The opinion of analysts in Ukraine, and the Pentagon, is that Russia’s logistical and command structure currently can support only one significant offensive push. [video at the link]
Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut today
Will Ukraine be able to move in some other region before the last forces give up that remaining toehold in Bakhmut? If Russia is able to claim victory in Bakhmut, and forces of both Russian military and Wagner disperse to other locations, will it be much more difficult for Ukraine to stage an effective counteroffensive? Will Russia be able to keep the tentative cooperation it’s built in the center of Bakhmut and use it to conduct a successful operation elsewhere, maybe in less than eight grinding months, and possibly without shedding 1,000 men a day?
Yeah. Those are questions. That’s what those are. Unfortunately, they don’t come packaged with answers.
Prigozhin’s letter also claims that lengthy battles like Bakhmut are part of a U.S. plot to draw out the war, causing the Russian people to grow disillusioned with the government and turn to more liberal politicians who will end the war and move Russia into greater alignment with the West. […]
More Ukraine updates, (and news from Sudan is included).
LEOPARD 1, LEOPARD 2
If the Ukrainian counteroffensive is waiting on Western equipment, particularly main battle tanks, then there’s both good news and bad news. The good news is that more of those tanks are coming Real Soon Now. [Tweet and video at the link]
This is a Danish Leopard 1A5 which has reportedly finished the necessary repairs and updates needed before being sent to Ukraine. Denmark has promised to transfer a truly gratifying 100 of these tanks to Ukraine. Unfortunately, this is one of the first such tanks reported to be ready to roll, and even when it arrives in Ukraine, the welders are likely to go to work adding additional bits of armor and protection from pesky drones dropping grenades. In other words: These tanks will definitely not be in Ukraine this month.
Reports this morning indicate that Canada has increased the size of its crash program for teaching Ukrainian tankers to operate the Leopard 2. The eight Leopard 2 tanks sent by Canada are reportedly either already in Ukraine or near the border in Poland, but the presence of crews still being trained makes the idea that of these Leopard 2 crews are about to hit the front lines worrisome.
There’s no doubt that Ukraine has assembled a significant, better trained, better rested force away from the front lines. It’s not clear if any of those forces, should they roll out in the next few weeks, would include units formed around Western main battle tanks.
THAT DIDN’T WORK. THAT ALSO DIDN’T WORK.
The Ukrainian military has released this image of Russian tanks that were destroyed in a new series of failed attacks. You get two guesses as to the location, but the first one doesn’t count. Yes, it’s Vuhledar. [Image at the link]
Meanwhile, there are numerous videos and images on Telegram and Twitter this morning that show a failed Russian attack in the woods to the south of Kreminna. This is also one in a big series of failed Russian attacks in a very small area. [tweet and video at the link]
The Ukrainian General Staff situation update actually reports 56 repelled attacks in the last 24 hours, which is up slightly from earlier in the week, but still well below last month’s average.
CREATURES OF THE NIGHT, UNITE
Okay, I don’t usually post images of prisoners of war, but this Russian guy … when they cut Wagner off from its supply of death row inmates, did Prigozhi start recruiting nosferatu? Do we have a Dog Soldiers situation here? [image at the link]
SLOVYANSK HIT BY MISSILE
A missile strike in the city of Slovyansk has hit an apartment building, killing a reported nine people. [Image at the link]
Russia fired a reported thirteen S-300 missiles into Slovyansk and the nearby city of Kramatorsk, this morning. Those cities are essentially the end goal in Russian efforts to capture Donetsk oblast — a goal currently being held up at Bakhmut.
This is one of the largest missile strikes Russia has launched in the last month, but it was still small compared to earlier waves of missile attacks. The S-300 appears to be the only missile which Russia still has in relative abundance.
MEANWHILE, IN SUDAN
Within the last few hours, intense fighting has erupted by the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces in the capital city of Khartoum. Rebel forces have reportedly taken control of the nearby air base in the village of Jabal Awliya.
Those rebel forces are commanded by Commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who was formerly closely connected to Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the leader of the Sudanese military. However, a schism between the two threatens to split both the military and the nation. Part of the reason for that schism seems to go directly back to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. [Tweet and video at the link]
Sudan had previously been enjoying support and investment from Russia, which was helping to prop up the government formed by al-Burhan and Dagalo following the ousting of the previous strongman government in 2019, which was followed by chaos, which was followed by a 2021 coup. In particular, Sudan was giving Russia access to gold mines in Sudan in exchange for weapons and support. That allowed Russia to get easily fungible gold, and kept the Sudanese junta well-supplied.
With pressure from the outside community pushing Sudan to deny access to Russia, and Vladimir Putin’s distraction over Ukraine leading to lessened support for his other projects, the partnership between al-Burhan and Dagalo crumbled.
Honestly, I’m not familiar with either force in this conflict to say whether either of them represent “the good guys.” Even relative good guys. There are levels of connections here that RSF to the government that was overthrown in 2021, which itself was in no way legitimate, and to the one that existed before 2019, which … ditto. The BBC explains more of the rivalry behind the fighting.
All I can say is that images and videos coming out of Khartoum this morning are … kind of nuts. [Tweet and video at the link]
International agencies are calling for a cease fire. Right now, just keep your fingers crossed for the people who live there.
Matthew Kacsmaryk—the far-right federal judge who blocked the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone last week—took his name off a 2017 Texas Review of Law and Politics article and failed to disclose the work to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which requires nominees to disclose all publications, The Washington Post reports. In a draft obtained by the Post, Kacsmaryk argued against Obama administration healthcare protections for the transgender community, as well as for patients seeking abortions, arguing lawmakers had ignored objections of religious physicians. The newspaper obtained emails from Kacsmaryk during his nomination process asking editors to take off his name and replace it with his colleagues’ from the First Liberty Institute. A representative for the First Liberty Institute told the Post Kacsmaryk’s name was merely a “placeholder” and that he did not contribute significantly…
South Dakota’s governor told an audience of people that her two-year-old grandchild has several guns.
While speaking on Friday at a National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbying leadership forum in Indiana, the Republican governor Kristi Noem told audience members her toddler grandchild has multiple guns, reported Mediaite.
During her remarks, Noem spoke about her grandchildren: Addie, who is almost two, and Branch, who is a few months old. Noem then said that Addie already had a shotgun and a rifle.
“Now Addie, who you know – soon will need them, I wanna reassure you, she already has a shotgun and she already has a rifle and she’s got a little pony named Sparkles too. So the girl is set up,” said Noem…
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene reportedly spent more than $65,000 of her campaign funds installing a fence at her home, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Ms Greene’s schedule B itemized disbursements show her various campaign expenditures. Included in that list is a $65,257.49 payment to Bartow Fence Company Inc for the installation of an “additional security fence for residence.”
The expenditure is not illegal; FEC rules allow candidates to spend campaign funds on personal security. However, the cost of the fence is more than $10,000 more than the median household income in her district, according to RawStory…
Russian forces are reportedly staging a two-pronged assault on Bilohorivka, south of Kreminna with the major force coming in across the surface mine area to the southeast. Ukraine has repelled several such attacks in the last two weeks, including one within the last 24 hours, but Russian sources are claiming that this one has made more progress into the town.
The small town of Bilohorivka has been a frequent target for Russia because it is one of the few locations liberated by Ukraine in Luhansk, Oblast.
[Tweet and photo at the link: “T-55 confirmed in use by the Russian forces.”] The first T-55 rolled off the line in 1946, and it was placed in regular service in the Russian army in 1948. This one is probably newer … but it’s still likely older than me, and that’s really saying something.
On Friday evening, the National Weather Service’s tsunami warning service delivered a different kind of warning. There was no wave rushing toward shore anywhere, but if one occurred, notice might not appear on Twitter. That warning came because, as the NWS indicated, “Twitter is now limiting automated tweets and as a result, this account can no longer post all tsunami Warnings, Advisories, Watches, and Information Statements as they are issued.”
The new restrictions from Twitter affected far more than just the ability to warn about incoming waves. For example, in San Francisco, the BART system has warned that it can no longer send out automated alerts about service and issues on the line: “Twitter has shut off its free API, and that means we are going dark until we can find a solution.” In New York, the Metro Transit Authority had a very similar message.
From the weather, to earthquake notifications, to closures of national parks, just about any automated system that was tied to Twitter through that platform’s APIs found itself on the outs Friday evening. So did thousands of other services ranging from those which helped people upload images and video, to whose which helped analysts track the activity of bot farms and troll farms.
After a break of about five hours, the APIs on which many of these services depend seem to have been turned back on, but the outage once again showed that under Elon Musk Twitter has become a undendable, and unpredictable, partner.
[…] For now, the worst effects of the Friday night API massacre appear to have been mitigated, but this closing of the taps, even if temporary, has left both developers, and users, once again scrambling for a more reliable alternative.
One of Africa’s largest countries is spinning out of control, as weeks of mounting tensions between two military leaders erupted in battles in the capital, Khartoum, and in other cities.
Fighting raged on Saturday across the capital of Sudan and in a handful of other cities as months of rising tensions between rival factions of the armed forces suddenly spiraled into an all-out battle for control of one of Africa’s biggest countries.
Clashes at a military base in the capital, Khartoum, quickly spread to the presidential palace, the international airport and the headquarters of the state broadcaster. Residents cowered in their homes as explosions rang out and warplanes screeched over rooftops. An internal U.N. report cited about 27 dead and 400 injured.
By Saturday night, it was unclear who was in control of Sudan, a sprawling and strategically important country just south of Egypt.
The chaos was an alarming turn for a nation that only four years ago was an inspiration to both Africa and the Arab world. Jubilant protesters, symbolized in part by a young woman in a white robe, toppled their widely detested ruler of three decades, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, ushering in hopes for democracy and an end to the country’s grinding isolation.
The revolution faltered 18 months ago when Sudan’s two most powerful generals, who are now fighting each other, united to seize power in a coup. But pro-democracy protesters refused to back down, continuing to lose their lives in demonstrations […]
Sudan has become a flashpoint in the wider global rivalry between the West and Russia.
The Kremlin-backed private military company Wagner has deployed mercenaries to Sudan and runs a major gold mining concession, while Russia’s government has pressed Sudan to allow Russian warships to dock at its Red Sea ports.
Sudan’s military, which has struggled to rule effectively, was supposed to hand back power to civilian leaders this month, as part of a Western-backed deal. But any hopes for a peaceful transition were shattered early Saturday when strained relations between the most powerful military leaders — the army chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, the commander of the powerful Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries — turned violent.
[…] As night fell on Saturday, reports that fighting had spread to military bases in the Darfur region stoked worries that some of the region’s numerous heavily-armed rebel groups could get sucked into the fighting.
[…] When in power, Mr. al-Bashir oversaw a brutal campaign of genocidal, state-sponsored violence in Darfur that caused the International Criminal Court to indict him for war crimes, and which paved the way for the rise of General Hamdan, widely known as Hemeti. […]
“Now Addie (almost two yeras old), who you know – soon will need them, (a shotgun, a rifle and a little pony named Sparkles..
What the.. ?!
No gov, a two year old infant needs none of those things least of all deadly firearms. The pony is nice but not exactly necessary and at two years old.. F ing L!
What does she think her kid is going to be needing and doing and is that the sort of world she thinks she’s running and contributing to making? Just .. expletives. Wow.
I expect that this governor would have plenty of secuity measures and bodyguards and protection which.. can’t imagine they’d be impressed with her obvious lack of faithinthem too..
StevoRsays
@ ^ Fix : her obvious lack of faith in them ..
What does she think – that her professional security will be total failures but her 2 year old toddler will save herself by riding away on a pony firing a rifle and shotgun simultanously and that’ll work?
The Washington Post report on Sunday also detailed how Thomas has had errors on his forms for years, many of them tied to his controversial wife Ginni, who became a nationally-known figure in the aftermath of the 2020 election when reports revealed her emails to Arizona officials who were questioning Joe Biden’s victory in that state.
The latest problems for Clarence Thomas are tied to this real estate firm that shut down in 2006.
After it closed, a new firm Ginger Holdings, LLC, which is managed by Ginni Thomas sister, took over the holdings.
But Thomas has reported income from the defunct company – between $50,000 and $100,000 annually in recent years – with no mention of the new firm…
If this person was municipal dog catcher, he would have been tossed out on ethical grounds by now. But since he has one of the most powerful jobs in the country, he is somehow exempt from ethical oversight. It makes no sense.
StevoRsays
The largest rocket ever built, the SpaceX Starship, is possibly going to launch tomorrow~ish my time or aftermorrow in USA timezones. Monday anyhow. See :
.* Including a chart of marine mammals in the splashdown zone with sea turtles and the very rude sounding Phocid pinniped listed separately at the 9 min 47 secs mark.
tomhsays
Re: #210
Even before these latest revelations, Slate had an excellent piece on Thomas and how he has clearly broken the law. It also points out how for years, in various decisions, he has railed against all sorts of disclosure laws. Not to mention it’s also perhaps the best pun in an article title ever….Quid Pro Crow.
“The wealthy political activist who pays for my vacation getaways purchased a house from me in order to build a museum to me” is out of bounds even if Crow wasn’t letting Thomas’ mother keep living in the place. That’s comic book levels of crooked. I mean, for f—s sake.
More details at the link, including a closer look at Ginger, Ltd. and Ginger Holdings, LLC. Excerpt:
[…] In 1982, Ginni Thomas’ now-deceased parents formed Ginger, Ltd., as a Nebraska real estate company, collecting rent from two residential developments. That company ceased to exist in 2006; a new company named Ginger Holdings, LLC was formed with the same business address, with Ginni Thomas’ sister Joanne Elliot listed as the manager. The assets of the former company were transferred to the new one.
Ginni Thomas, notably, “is not named in state incorporation records” for the new company, reports the Post.
That’s where the Post’s answers end and the questions begin. Contacted by the Post, Joanne Elliot suggested the reporters call Ginni Thomas for information about the company “before hanging up,” which is an odd response from the alleged head of the company. So what’s going on?
The most obvious presumption would be that the company was restructured into an LLC for mercurial legal reasons, closing shop and reopening with Joanne Elliot as the manager while distancing sister Ginni Thomas.
Ginni continued to make regular profits from the company. Justice Thomas, however, never bothered to update the new company status—and hasn’t updated it in the nearly 20 years since the original company shuttered.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is. The Post notes that this error is “among a series of errors and omissions that Thomas has made on required annual financial disclosure forms over the past several decades,” ones that “raised questions about how seriously Thomas views his responsibility to accurately report details about his finances to the public.”
That’s not a great use of the raising questions trope, from the Post. There aren’t “questions” to be had how Thomas views his legal responsibilities in public reporting his financial dealings while on the bench. […]
[graphic showing “5 characteristics of science denial”]
Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks “climate change” science is bogus, and its proponents are grifters. She presented her case in a tweet. She starts,
“If you believe that today’s “climate change” is caused by too much carbon, you have been fooled.”
Her “scare quotes” say she does not believe in climate change. However, she leaves it unclear whether she denies the planet is getting hotter — or if she accepts the increase in global temperature but denies it is due to carbon.
More telling is her use of it the passive voice — “you have been fooled.” In doing so, she avoids saying who was doing the fooling. Her opening sentence is both unclear and wishy-washy. It is the hallmark of someone lacking confidence in their argument.
In the second paragraph, she lays out the groundwork for her argument.
“We live on a spinning planet that rotates around a much bigger sun along with other planets and heavenly bodies rotating around the sun that all create gravitational pull on one another while our galaxy rotates and travels through the universe.
Technically the Earth, other planets, and heavenly bodies “revolve” or “orbit” around the sun — a mass rotates around its axis. As for these “heavenly bodies”, my best guess is she means asteroids and comets.
She is correct that our galaxy — the Milky Way — does rotate and travel through the universe. And she is also right that all masses in the universe exert ”gravitational pull” on each other. (Note, astrophysicists no longer believe gravity is a pulling force, but I am probably splitting more hairs.) Overall, Greene offers a reasonably accurate, if simplistic, explanation of things.
Her vocabulary reveals the genesis of her ideas. Her use of “heavenly bodies” illuminates her religious approach to astronomy. ‘Heaven’ is, of course, not a scientific concept.
Then she arrives at her QED moment.
“Considering all of that, yes our climate will change, and it’s totally normal!”
[WTF] She has left us hanging. She does not explain how all this movement leads to climate change — although it is good of her to acknowledge that our climate is changing.
My best estimate is that she has heard the sun drives climate and weather on Earth and has tossed in the rest […]
As for “it’s totally normal,” I hazard that she is referring to the conservative climate-apologist tactic of pointing out that the Earth has had climate change in the past — without bringing up time scales. What used to take centuries or millennia is now happening in decades. Who knows what Greene means — I doubt she could explain it.
Next, she gets to her comfort zone — conspiracy theories.
“But there are some very powerful people that are getting rich beyond their wildest dreams convincing many that carbon is the enemy and that if humans sacrifice enough energy producing things we can actually control the climate.”
She dodged bringing up these anti-carbon activists before by using the passive voice. Now she obfuscates who they are by not naming these “very powerful people”. The genius of her argument is that if you stay fact-free, it is harder to be fact-checked. And it takes far less time and effort to blame shadowy cabals rather than take on the scientific community.
Greene again befuddles her audience by warning that humans may potentially “sacrifice enough energy producing things.” Does she mean fossil fuels? If so, why not just say so? The answer is that her scattershot writing is just more of the watery gruel Greene serves up as a solid argument. […]
She closes with a warning.
Don’t fall for the scam, fossil fuels are natural and amazing. They produce an abundance of energy that we all need to survive along with more products than you can possibly imagine.
Who are the scammers? We still do not know. Fossil fuels are natural and amazing. However, so are funnel web spiders, belladonna, and mosquitos. The first can be venomous; the second, fatally poisonous; and the last spread malaria, which has killed innumerable people over time. “Natural and amazing” is not necessarily the asset Green thinks it is
Greene is correct that fossil fuels produce an abundance of energy — and we need that energy to survive. But humans have invented better alternatives to the old ways throughout our existence. The internal combustion engine replaced the horse. EVs will replace gas-powered cars. It is what we do. There is no need to stop with fossil fuels when so many renewable, clean, efficient, and non-carbon energy sources are available or within our grasp.
Greene is also correct that we make a lot of stuff from fossil fuels. Petroleum products are the basis of many artificial fibers. Manufacturers use them in cosmetics, medicine, packaging, and food dyes. Ironically, one use is to make the plastics that go into solar panels.
However, while the citizen should be concerned that many petroleum-based products are not biodegradable, making consumer products from oil does not add CO2 to the atmosphere — if manufacturers power their plants with alternate energy. CO2 is generally only released when we burn fossil fuels. [Tweet and fossil fuel chart posted by Marjorie Taylor Greene]
Greene finishes with her clincher — a picture that shows a decline in chemicals released into the atmosphere as fossil fuels increase. She is either a moron or a cynic. The decrease in airborne pollution results from ecological policies enacted under the 1970 Clean Air Act and enforced by the newly created EPA. An act and an agency today’s GOP wants to disembowel and diminish.
But far more egregiously, it does not measure the greenhouse gas that Greene is the crux of Greene’s tweet — carbon dioxide, CO2. This omission is not a surprise as the source of this misleading graph is FossilFuture.com — a website that promotes Alex Epstein, a fossil fuel advocate with a computer science/philosophy degree.
If she were an honest dealer, Greene would have used this chart (source: NASA). But that would have shredded her already piss-poor argument. [Chart from NASA showing the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide]
Bad news for people who like delicious food and do not own a bidet! According to psychic QAnon influencer Utsava, the ‘Deep State’ has been putting 5G technology in hot peppers and toilet paper so that they can control your mind and make you hear voices. [Tweets and videos at the link.]
She explains:
The deep state has teamed up a taken over the wireless providers such as Verizon and they are hijacking the wireless technology 5G. It has been used as tool for surveillance, mind control, and tracking. People are getting harassed by all sorts of technology.
For instance, they make people hear voices. So in those hot peppers, jalapeno peppers from Mexico, what I discovered is there’s a coating in there like graphene, it’s some sort of nanoparticles. And it makes people hear voices.
It gets ingested so they surveil you in your brain so they can see what you see, like with the graphene technology. And then they can send the information, all the information. They can give you hallucinations. People having been hearing voices through that.
And I told people, stop eating that and then it goes away. Toilet paper has it in it too. You can have it sitting – the toilet paper – in your bathroom and the 5G gets in the air.
It gets everywhere, the graphene. You don’t even have to use the toilet paper. So that regular toilet paper, Quilted Northern, I would not buy any further. I would look for maybe organic, maybe a recycled one. And also paper towels, they have graphene in them as well.
So our deep state is putting graphene in peppers from Mexico and toilet paper and paper towels for the purpose of controlling our thoughts? Isn’t that … inefficient? Like do they have a whole department of people whose job it is to send messages and voices and hallucinations to people who eat spicy food and don’t walk around with dirty asses? And also look at things through their eyes? Because that seems both very boring and like a logistical nightmare.
Possibly related: I came across a “targeted individual” on Twitter yesterday who claims that “perps” keep microwaving her right little finger for “psychopathic fun.” [Disturbing tweet and images at the link]
Well, everyone needs a hobby, I guess.
Posted by readers of the article:
Bidets also squirt graphene up your booty hole to turn you French!
——————–
I am always somewhat amused when conspiracy theorists state that the government is using some kind of mind control over the citizens, because the people who believe this are the very people who need some kind of mind control to clean all the nonsense out of their brains.
———————-
Just sayin’ for some folks, installing devices in both hot peppers and toilet paper seems wasteful redundance on the part of the deep state operatives, what with hot peppers vastly increasing use of the toilet paper.
The Russian government has become far more successful at manipulating social media and search engine rankings than previously known, boosting lies about Ukraine’s military and the side effects of vaccines with hundreds of thousands of fake online accounts, according to documents recently leaked on the chat app Discord.
The Russian operators of those accounts boast that they are detected by social networks only about 1 percent of the time, one document says.
That claim, described here for the first time, drew alarm from former government officials and experts inside and outside social media companies contacted for this article.
“Google and Meta and others are trying to stop this, and Russia is trying to get better. The figure that you are citing suggests that Russia is winning,” said Thomas Rid, a disinformation scholar and professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He added that the 1 percent claim was likely exaggerated or misleading.
[…] Propaganda campaigns and hate speech have increased since Elon Musk took over the site [Twitter] in October, according to employees and outside researchers. Russian misinformation promoters even bought Musk’s new blue-check verifications.
[…]even if Russia’s fake accounts escaped detection only 90 percent of the time instead of 99 percent, that would indicate Russia has become far more proficient at disseminating its views to unknowing consumers than in 2016, when it combined bot accounts with human propagandists and hacking to try to influence the course of the U.S. presidential election, the experts said.
[…] The document offers a rare candid assessment by U.S. intelligence of Russian disinformation operations. The document indicates it was prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Cyber Command and Europe Command, the organization that directs American military activities in Europe. It refers to signals intelligence, which includes eavesdropping, but does not cite sources for its conclusions.
It focuses on Russia’s Main Scientific Research Computing Center, also referred to as GlavNIVTs. The center performs work directly for the Russian presidential administration. It said the Russian network for running its disinformation campaign is known as Fabrika.
The center was working in late 2022 to improve the Fabrika network further, the analysis says, concluding that “The efforts will likely enhance Moscow’s ability to control its domestic information environment and promote pro-Russian narratives abroad.”
[…] “Bots view, ‘like,’ subscribe and repost content and manipulate view counts to move content up in search results and recommendation lists,” the summary says. It adds that in other cases, Fabrika sends content directly to ordinary and unsuspecting users after gleaning their details such as email addresses and phone numbers from databases.
The intelligence document says the Russian influence campaigns’ goals included demoralizing Ukrainians and exploiting divisions among Western allies.
After Russia’s 2016 efforts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, social media companies stepped up their attempts to verify users, including through phone numbers. Russia responded, in at least one case, by buying SIM cards in bulk, which worked until companies spotted the pattern, employees said. The Russians have now turned to front companies that can acquire less detectable phone numbers, the document says.
[…] Russian campaigns included one designed to spread the idea that U.S. officials were hiding vaccine side effects, intended to stoke divisions in the West. Another campaign claimed that Ukraine’s Azov Brigade was acting punitively in the country’s eastern Donbas region.
Others, aimed at specific countries in the region, push the idea that Latvia, Lithuania and Poland want to send Ukrainian refugees back to fight; that Ukraine’s security service is recruiting U.N. employees to spy; and that Ukraine is using influence operations against Europe with help from NATO.
A final campaign is intended to reveal the identities of Ukraine’s information warriors — the people on the opposite side of a deepening propaganda war.
TAMA, Iowa — As an icy prairie wind slapped down on the empty town, Lisa Spitler pulled on winter gloves, grabbed a clipboard and started walking toward the cars idling outside the fire station. In two hours, a mobile food pantry would begin a free food distribution. The line of early arrivals already stretched a half-mile to where it dead-ends in this town of 3,000 residents east of Des Moines. […]
even as she stopped at each vehicle to chat, she knew that it was about to become more difficult for Iowans to access the help.
The state legislature, with the support of the Republican supermajority, was poised to approve some of the nation’s harshest restrictions on SNAP. They include asset tests and new eligibility guidelines. By the state’s own estimate, Iowa will need to spend nearly $18 million in administrative costs during the first three years — to take in less federal money. The bill’s backers argue the steps would save the state money long term and cut down on “SNAP fraud.”
[…] The proposed legislation was not a homegrown effort but the product of a network of conservative think tanks pushing similar SNAP restrictions in Kentucky, Kansas, Wisconsin and other states. […]
“[…] the SNAP program is really well-designed. It’s effective and efficient, and it does a tremendous amount of good. Generally, proposals to change it usually are going to make it worse.” [quoting Diane Schanzenbach, a professor at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy.
[…] In January, 39 Republican House members sponsored a bill that would require an asset test, meaning families and individuals are barred from accessing SNAP, Medicaid, and other assistance programs if the value of their cars, farm equipment or other items are too high. The measure would also create more paperwork for recipients, and ban those using SNAP from buying candy and soda, as well as fresh meat, white bread, baked beans or American cheese, among other items.
[…] Republican supporters point to Iowa’s SNAP error rate of 11.81 percent in 2019, which the state was fined for, even though it was in line with the national standard in 2021. (The Agriculture Department warns that the error rate is “not a fraud rate” because it also includes underpayments and eligibility mistakes.) [Correct. Republicans are shouting “Fraud!” when the actual fraud problem is insignificant.]
Northwestern’s Schanzenbach noted that other states are moving toward fewer eligibility requirements, not more, because around 40 percent of SNAP recipients nationally are either elderly or disabled. “They have stable incomes then, so there is just not really much of an upside to having them certify more often,” she said.
Eventually, Iowa legislators stripped the food restrictions from the SNAP bill after a number of prominent players in state business — including the Iowa Beverage Association, the Iowa Association of Business and Industry and Tyson Foods — lobbied against the bill. [LOL]
But the version of the proposal that the legislature would later vote on kept the assets test, tasked the state with contracting with a third-party vendor to conduct rigorous identity verification and authentication on recipients, raised the monthly income threshold of SNAP participants to 160 percent of the federal poverty level for households and gave recipients only 10 days to respond to paperwork mistakes or discrepancies before they are cut from the program. [sheesh]
Enacting the bill is expected to cost Iowa more than $17 million in the first three years, far more than the $2.2 million the state spends each year to administer SNAP. (The federal government funds SNAP and splits administrative costs 50-50 with the state. Last year, Iowa received $60.4 million in federal SNAP funds). […]
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their closing summary:
A row is brewing over Poland and Hungary’s decision to ban grain imports from Ukraine to protect their own agricultural sectors. Reuters reports that a European Commission spokesperson said unilateral action on trade by European Union member states was “not acceptable”.
Following Poland and Hungary’s decision, Bulgaria is considering a similar move. Local news agency BTA reported that the agriculture minister, Yavor Gechev, said the country was mulling over a ban on Ukrainian grain imports.
Ukrainian and Russian armed forces are fighting extraordinarily bloody battles in the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut, but pro-Kyiv forces are still holding on, Ukraine’s military has said.
The death toll from a Russian missile strike on the eastern Ukraine city of Sloviansk has risen to 11. A block of flats was badly damaged and rescue crews were continuing on Saturday to try to rescue people trapped underneath rubble.
…
A new international economic support package of $115bn (£93bn) is giving Ukraine more confidence it can prevail against Russian forces amid growing recognition the war could continue for longer than expected, the Ukrainian finance minister said on Saturday. Serhiy Marchenko said Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers assured him during International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington this week that they would support Ukraine for as long as needed.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy spoke to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Saturday. In two tweets, the Ukrainian president said they had discussed Macron’s recent visit to Beijing to meet China’s president, Xi Jinping.
The Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, will visit Baghdad on Monday, his first trip to Iraq since Russia invaded Ukraine. Kuleba is expected to hold talks with the Iraqi prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, and the foreign minister, Fuad Hussein.
YouTube is hosting videos that promote the Wagner group, the Russian private military company accused of war crimes, according to a report by the Sunday Times. Dozens of propaganda clips on the platform glorify the mercenary group, encourage viewers to join it, and even raise money for the paramilitary organisation. A YouTube spokesperson told the Sunday Times: “Content intended to praise, promote, or aid violent extremist or criminal organisations is not allowed on YouTube.”
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has called for establishing a group of countries that are not involved in the Russia-Ukraine war in order to broker peace. Lula, who has criticised the role of the US and the European Union in the conflict, spoke of attempting to gather a group of leaders who “prefer to talk about peace rather than war”, citing China’s Xi Jinping and the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, both of whom he met this week. [SMH]…
As a country of people who love animals, it shocks and saddens many of us that watching a horse break their neck on national TV is still considered entertainment. That’s why 300 people from Animal Rising went to Aintree on Saturday to stop the Grand National.
We did not fully succeed, and – like last year – more horses died. Hill Sixteen fell at the first fence and was put down due to the horse’s injuries. Hill Sixteen’s death followed those of two others at Aintree last week. We mourn the loss of these animals.
These deaths are par for this course, and for racing events overall. The horse racing authorities and betting industry defend slow incremental “welfare” improvements, and yet horses continue to die with awful regularity: 50 so far on the tracks in 2023. On average, a horse dies every other day on the tracks, over jumps and on the flat, with many more dying in training and the paddock. The dangerous institution of the Grand National should have been retired long ago.
Where we did succeed is in showing that this is a much bigger problem than just one race. We protested because everywhere we look we see a broken relationship with animals and the natural world.
This broken relationship is at the heart of our climate and nature crisis. We’re devouring nature through animal farming and fishing, killing our rivers with slurry from industrial chicken and pig farms, and watching our beloved wildlife disappear in front of our eyes. All because we are stuck in a pattern of outdated beliefs that it is OK to control animals, using them for profit. The Grand National is emblematic of this uncomfortable and one-sided dominance – that’s why we tried to stop it.
There is a solution: repairing this broken relationship, beginning where most harm is done, in our food system. A food system without animals is already known to be safer, more secure and more sovereign, providing all the calories and nutrients we need and, in fact, using less land. This freed-up land could be rewilded for nature to recover, and we could see wildlife – including wild horses – return and flourish.
It shouldn’t take a committed bunch of caring individuals to put this solution at the centre of national debate. But it has. Up and down the country, everyone is talking about our treatment of animals. This national conversation is essential to challenge the fast decline into climate inaction.
…
For those few claiming that our actions affected the horses and outcome, we point to the fact we were not taking action for the other 2,601 deaths since 2007. Direct action has been part of a healthy democracy for as long as there has been democracy, especially when it is obvious that “business as usual” does not represent the values of most of us. In the UK, according to research by the University of York, more than 80% of people under 40 do not want to attend horse racing events because they know it is unethical.
Returning to the bigger picture, has anyone yet taken any action that is proportionate to the coming social and economic collapse that is likely to result from the climate crisis? Have we persuaded our climate-insane government to take proportionate action? Not yet – if we had, it would have already ended animal farming and fishing and supported farmers into safer, more sustainable practices.
That’s why we’ll be taking more action this year, along with all those acting to challenge the existential threat. We’re not against those who attended Aintree, or the trainers or jockeys. But we accept Saturday was the biggest challenge to horse racing in this country for more than a decade.
Let’s hope that we’ve begun the process of having this crucial conversation about our treatment of animals and the natural world, and that others – our government, and all those who say they love animals – stand with us to tackle the mounting crises we face.
Paris Marx is joined by Timnit Gebru to discuss the misleading framings of artificial intelligence, her experience of getting fired by Google in a very public way, and why we need to avoid getting distracted by all the hype around ChatGPT and AI image tools.
Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute and former co-lead of the Ethical AI research team at Google….
This is kind of the earlier companion episode to the one with Emily Bender @ #145 above.
Tl;dr: The harms from so-called AI are real and present and follow from the acts of people and corporations deploying automated systems. Regulatory efforts should focus on transparency, accountability and preventing exploitative labor practices….
Paris Marx is joined by Jim Thomas to discuss how digital technologies are being integrated into the industrial food system, how it empowers agribusiness firms and major tech companies, and its implications for farmers and farm workers.
Jim Thomas is the research director at ETC Group, which has over 25 years international experience tracking the impact of emerging technologies on human rights, biodiversity, equity and food systems….
Since its founding in 1986, Farm Sanctuary has advocated for farmed animals and large-scale institutional reform with the ultimate goal of removing animals from the food system. Senior Director of Advocacy Aaron Rimmler-Cohen joins the podcast this week to discuss Farm Sanctuary’s Food Systems Shift program. In our conversation, Aaron discusses the disastrous policy of government subsidies of animal products and explains why the nonprofit is shifting resources to community-based organizations building sustainable, plant-based food systems. He also highlights three key ways it encourages the federal government to support such a community-focused shift….
Brendan and Andrew welcome back award-winning journalist Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, to discuss his new book, If It Sounds Like a Quack… A Journey to the Fringes of American Medicine. Libertarians figured prominently in his 2020 book, A Libertarian Walks into a Bear (which we interviewed Matt about in Ep. 42), and they do here as well. Matt explains how the libertarian-instigated “medical freedom” slogan has helped to unite the quacks, make their fringe movement go viral, and threaten the future of science- and evidence-based healthcare. He and the co-hosts discuss the long history of struggle between quackery and evidence-based medicine, the mainstreaming of anti-vaxx sentiment in the space of one generation, the fear of zombies—and the far-right messaging encoded in talk of “zombies”—and other manifestations of quackery. They also discuss Matt’s criticisms of the medical establishment and government regulators, and they explore ways to fight back against the quack attack.
Plus current-events segment: What’s Really the Matter with Kansas (and Elsewhere)? The co-hosts discuss Alan Abramowitz’s new study, which shows that racism, not “economic stress,” is what has driven whites without college degrees into the arms of the Republican Party….
birgerjohanssonsays
FUUUUUUUUCK.
Thoughts and prayers, everyone.
Alabama this time, home of George Wallace and a million second amendment enthusiasts.
The FBI alleges Josiah Ernesto Garcia used a site called “Rent-a-Hitman” to apply for a job as an assassin. Garcia was arrested at a park in Hendersonville, Tennessee, on Wednesday by an undercover agent, according to a news release.
It’s the latest in a string of reported arrests linked to the website, originally created in 2005 to advertise a cyber security startup company that never took off. Instead, it became a parody site— complete with false testimonials, a request form, and a job application for aspiring hitmen…
How stupid do you have to be to believe that rentahitman.com is either a joke or a sting?
The (Florida) Senate sprang a 98-page elections bill on the public with scant 24 hours notice before a recent committee hearing…
There’s a lot not to like in this bill. It has more than two dozen specific changes to an elections code that also underwent major changes in 2021 and 2022 — even after trouble-free elections. A year ago, Gov. Ron DeSantis got his elections police force. The year before, the Legislature restricted the use of ballot drop boxes.
This time, the targets are first-time voters such as college students, and groups that register new voters.
Russian society and leadership has an obsession with size. Its land mass is proof of the greatness and glory of Russian culture, with their most celebrated Tsars being the ones who gobbled up the most land.
This obsession over land isn’t unique to Russia. The United States built its country by pushing westward, wiping out entire civilizations that stood in the way, as well as instigating wars with Mexico and Spain in order to expand southward. But the U.S. has at least stopped encroaching on its neighbors. Mexico and Canada don’t need to fear losing territory, and independence is there for Puerto Rico and other American island territories if they want it. There has been some progress in our own notions of empire.
And for all the singing about “sea to shining sea,” Americans don’t take pride in our country’s size [not entirely true, but I get the point], but in its accomplishments. Russia has few of those to point to, hence the obsession with land, and hunger for more of it.
The irony is that the standard world map grossly exaggerates Russia’s size. I already wrote about this map thread today [see comment 215], but this part is even more relevant here: [Tweets and images at the link]
Russia’s notions of greatness are based, in large part, on the standard-issue distorted Eurocentric map of the world. In reality, it’s more like this: [image at the link]
Yes, Russia is big, but it’s no longer the globe-dominating behemoth we’ve been conditioned to expect. But when a country bases its self worth on the amount of land that it holds, it certainly has all the wrong incentives when dealing with its neighbors.
Hence, the U.S. is happy to work with its allies toward common goals—the Europeans, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Those countries all have a close working relationship with the U.S., but the Americans can’t dictate terms. It can lead by example, or by persuasion, but it can’t coerce.
Russia can’t fathom such an arrangement. Hence, its alliance with Belarus isn’t a close working relationship with a valued partner, but an interim step toward full integration of Belarus back into the Russian Federation. And there’s Ukraine, of course, where Russia has already annexed the parts of the country it had conquered (and even some it has subsequently lost, like Kherson oblast north of the Dnipro).
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the criminal mercenary Wagner Group, is ready to call it quits, content with Russia simply swallowing the territory it has already captured. (All quotes are from the Google translate version of the linked article.)
First, I’ll share this passage because it demonstrates just how weird Prigozhin is:
Why did Zelensky rest so much on Bakhmut? Why, starting from December 20, when I challenged him from the artillery guns of PMC Wagner, Zelensky seduced like a boy and rested on Bakhmut? And our intimate dialogue with him has been going on for four months. We both have fun, but the orgasm never came.
Okay then…
Interestingly, Prigozhin himself argues that Bakhmut is strategically insignificant, and that his efforts to capture it are bleeding Ukraine dry. It’s a version of the childish “I know you are but what am I?” game, as it is Russia who has been bled dry. How do we know? Because this is one of only two corners of the map in which mighty Russia is left attempting to advance, and doing a poor job of it.
We’ve long argued about the wisdom of defending the city, and military historians will argue over it for years. But no one is arguing about the wisdom of attacking it. There is none.
Anyway, I’m burying the lede. In short, Prigozhin is saying that Vladimir Putin should declare victory and end the war.
For the authorities and society as a whole, today it is necessary to put some fat end to the [Special Military Operation]. The ideal option is to announce the end of the [Special Military Operation], inform everyone that Russia has achieved the results it planned, and in a sense we have really achieved them. We have ground a huge number of APU [Ukrainian armed forces] fighters and can report to ourselves that the tasks of the [Special Military Operation] have been completed.
Of course, “grinding a large number of Ukrainian soldiers” to the ground was never one of Putin’s goals. It was all about subjugating Ukraine and expanding Russia’s lands, and Ukraine keeps fighting.
Theoretically, Russia has already received this fat point by destroying a large part of the active male population of Ukraine, by intimidating another part of it, which fled to Europe. Russia cut off the Azov and a large piece of the Black Sea, captured a fat piece of Ukraine’s territory and created a land corridor to Crimea. Now there is only one thing left: to gain a firm foothold, to clog in those territories that already exist. But there is cunning – if Ukraine used to be part of the former Russia, now it is an absolutely nationally-oriented state.
Hilarious, he thinks Ukrainian men are “intimidated.” He is right, however, that Russia currently has its “land bridge” from mainland Russia to Crimea—a key strategic war goal. And he knows that Ukraine’s ties to Russia, once bonded by language and some common history, is now fully severed.
If until February 24, 2022 the European Union was greedy to give Ukraine tens of millions of dollars, now tens of billions of billions are being waged for the war. Of course, some of these funds please the pockets of the ruling elite of Ukraine, which benefits from the conflict. Many of those who were forgotten yesterday today got a new chance for self-realization and enrichment.
Like American conservatives, every accusation is a confession. Russia is pulling 70-year-old tanks out of storage because of greed, grift, and pilfering. Heck, Prigozhin himself has benefited from Russia’s mafia-style oligarchy. Yet in this rambling essay, he goes after those oligarchs, labeling them the “Deep State,” and defining them as “a community of near-state elites that operate independently of the political leadership of the state and have close ties and their own agenda.” [Yes, that last part especially sounds like Prigozhin is confessing.] He thinks their lives of luxury are threatened, and would thus ally with the United States in an effort to break up Russia.
Why do the Anglo-Saxons restrain Zelensky by arranging internal conflicts and slowing down the offensive? Just to break the main jackpot – the collapse of Russia into many principalities. The U.S. doesn’t need a quick war. They need a war that will lead to the persuasion of the “deep state” and its victory.
I won’t pretend to fully understand this conspiracy theory—Russia’s oligarchs wouldn’t necessarily benefit from a splintered Russian Federation. Quite the opposite, in fact. They serve at the leisure of a Putin-style strongman, allowing them to continue sucking the riches from the provinces to Moscow and St. Petersburg. If the war was a threat to their fortunes (and it is), they would most benefit from replacing Putin with another strongman, but one willing to end the war.
Perhaps it is this paranoia, that Russian oligarchs are allying themselves with the U.S., that is leading to so many of them flying from skyscraper windows.
Point is, Prigozhin sees enemies all around, eager to splinter Russia. [Yep.] So he argues that a “dramatic pause” (interesting translation of “ceasefire”) is needed in order to freeze the conflict at the current lines, otherwise the situation may “worsen” during a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
If the authorities refuse, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will go on the offensive. In this situation, there may be various scenarios. One of them – the Armed Forces of Ukraine will rest on the defense of the Russian Federation, incur serious losses, after which a colossal counteroffensive of Russian troops to the borders of [Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts in the Donbas), or to the [Dnipro], or in general to Poland will begin. But, given today’s dynamics and problems, such a counteroffensive, to put it mildly, is not very likely. The second option, the Ukrainian army will take a counteroffensive and somewhere will be able to break through the defense.
Prigozhin’s reference to Poland seems to be an oblique slam at the propagandists on state Russian media who hilariously boast that Russia will push beyond Ukraine and into Poland and the Baltic states. His reference to “today’s dynamics and problems” are a reference to the sorry state of Russia’s armed forces.
In this case, in the army, which for years considered itself one of the best armies in the world, decaying moods can begin first, and then the situation deteriorates, as it was after the defeatist wars of the early twentieth century – Finnish, Japanese – and the tragic events of 1917.
He’s never been too shy to criticize the Russian army. Much can be lost or added in translation, obviously, but “which for years considered itself one of the best armies in the world” reads quite sarcastic to me. The reference to morale is a stark admission that his mercenaries have been carrying the military load because Russia’s armed forces are close to breaking.
This can lead to global changes in Russian society. The people are already looking for those responsible for the fact that we are not the strongest army in the world, and in this situation they will look for “extreme”. And these “extreme” will certainly be representatives of the “deep state.” That is, those people who today, without making efforts in the military operation, are as far as possible from the theater of operations, try not to lose their capital, to live their usual lives, and this is absolutely unacceptable for the people tired of war and losing the taste of victory.
Patriots’ craving for justice can have a hard impact on the very deepest state mired in luxury and bureaucracy.
Again, Prigozhin is worried about the collapse of the Russian federation at the hand of the oligarch “deep state” and its American allies/instigators/handlers.
Prigozhin then launches into seemingly endless pontification about the dangers of negotiation, how the U.S. would work with those “deep state” oligarchs to slowly weaken and humiliate Russia. That Russia’s return to military superpower would be hampered and delayed.
Therefore, he argues, “Russia cannot accept any agreement, only a fair fight. And if we get out of this fight shabby, there’s nothing wrong with that.” He’s happy with Russia’s ill-gotten gains, and that’s good enough. Therefore, he wants an end to all offensive efforts, and the establishment of defensive fortifications to protect what they captured, at least until Russia is able to rebuild its armed forces.
To summarize. Ukrainians are ready for an offensive. We are ready to repel the blow. The best scenario of Russia’s healing in order to unite and become the Strongest State is the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in which no handiments and negotiations will be possible.
And either the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be defeated in a fair fight, or Russia will lick wounds, accumulate muscles and again tear up rivals in a fair fight. Therefore, I believe that the option of the agreements is impossible for the future of Russia.
He’s actually not wrong. Russia clearly lacks the firepower for offensive operations. If it really wants to bleed Ukraine, it needs to do it on the defensive. Yet Prigozhin is also right to worry that Russia’s morale is so low, that the chances of a Ukrainian breakthrough are real. Hence, he wants to stop all offensive actions to preserve fodder to man the vast network of trenches they’ve built on occupied territory.
But weirdly, he doesn’t take his own advice. This is Bakhmut currently: [Tweet and video at the link, noting some 30 firefights and fierce fighting.]
That video is freakin’ insane.
To be clear, Prigozhin claims his attack on Bakhmut is bleeding Ukraine dry, yet it is the defenders that have an advantage in this situation. Bullets may be flying all around those two soldiers, but they can hunker down. Wagner’s cannon fodder have to run headlong into that fire. It’s clear who takes the heavier casualties.
And he wants all offensive operations to cease, lest Russia lose the manpower it needs to man defensive trenches, but he continues to throw wave after wave of his cannon fodder into that wall of flying steel.
If the air becomes too humid and is combined with record-breaking high temperatures causing the body’s sweat to inhibit evaporation from the body, the ability to cool itself is dangerously compromised. The phenomenon is known as the wet-bulb temperature, and the threshold of humidity and heat in Celsius is 35 degrees and Fahrenheit 95 degrees. That threshold will be pushed to the outer limits in India, warn experts.
Historically, India has dealt with significant heat events over the millennia, many of which were catastrophic. In 1768-1771, for example, the British Empire was shaken when over 10 million people died in Bengal due to El Nino.
El Nino has already arrived in Peru, and it is slowly building off the coast of India.
Spring arrives, and the country warms up. The World Bank has warned that the Indian subcontinent is getting too hot, and many swathes will become uninhabitable.
And, so, 2023 begins.
March 22, 2023: Vernal equinox or the beginning of spring is the moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator, an imaginary line that runs through the sky right above the equator exactly between the hemispheres. That happened at 2.54 am Indian time on Tuesday.
“Once the sun’s vertical rays approach the equator, the maximum temperature will rise beginning today [Tuesday],” Prof S Abhilash, director of the Advanced Centre for Atmospheric Radar Research at Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), told South First on Tuesday.
Temperatures in the Ganga and Indus valleys will likely pass the critical wet-bulb temperatures that the IPCC warned must never come to pass — could occur in 2023 and 2024.
Conservative by design, the IPCC mentioned if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced. They have not been and will not be anytime soon. India primarily uses coal for energy, and the hotter it gets, the more it will burn if it can find enough. It is a vicious feedback loop, one that we will not want to face.
India is unprepared for this looming catastrophe; no nation is safe from the climate crisis. However, some countries will get there sooner than others.
From QZ:
India’s heat action plans (HAPs), designed to tackle economically damaging and life-threatening heat waves, generally focus on dry extreme heat. It does not consider the threats posed by humid heat, according to a report by The Centre for Policy Research (CPR) released on Monday (March 27).
It is unclear if authorities consider risk factors like the duration of continuous heat, hot nights and so on, on a region-wise basis.
India has 37 HAPs across 18 states at the city, district, and state levels. Only two of these, however, have explicitly targeted vulnerable groups. The rest only have broad categories such as the elderly, outdoor workers, and pregnant women. Even the solutions proposed do not necessarily focus on them, the CPR report stated.
Moreover, these HAPs do not have enough funds. Insufficient capacity building and a lack of transparency are also matters of concern.
“There is no national repository of HAPs and very few HAPs are listed online. Further, it is unclear whether these HAPs are being updated periodically and whether this is based on evaluation data,” the report stated, emphasizing investment in areas like local heat research ecosystem.
[Map with temperature gradients for 14 April 2023. “Thailand just measured over 45°C for the first time on record […] that would be 113.72 Fahrenheit.”]
India and Pakistan in 2022 had record-breaking heatwaves. What follows is commonly called; climate change as a threat multiplier.
Record Smashing Heatwave in India and Pakistan Sparks Landfill Fires and Power Outages
The heatwave has sparked a number of worrying issues in India. The extreme heat caused a massive fire in an equally massive landfill in the city of Bhalswa, where the blaze reached higher than a 17-storey building and covered an area bigger than 50 football fields.
The risk of fire there is particularly high as 2,300 tonnes of the city’s waste are dumped in landfills every day. As organic waste decomposes, it creates a build-up of highly combustible methane gas, which is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Three other landfills around the Indian capital have also caught fire in recent weeks.
Other major issues at hand include crop damage – where India’s wheat crop is usually harvested in the month of April, potentially exacerbating global wheat shortages and food insecurity following the Russian invasion of Ukraine – as well as increasing pressure on domestic energy demand.
India’s electricity demand has soared to a record high in April from the surge in the use of air conditioning. Total power demand rose 13.2% to 135.4 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), with electricity demand in the north growing between 16- 75%, according to Reuters’ analysis of government data.
This has led to a coal shortage in India – also exacerbated by the war in Ukraine – and triggered the country’s worst power crisis in more than six years. Millions are left without power for up to nine hours a day, and critical services such as hospitals are threatened by blackouts.
Why does the power grid fail when everyone turns on the air conditioner?
From the Lewis University Presser:
Why is the power grid so sensitive to high temperatures? It’s quite simple really. First, we certainly love our air conditioners, and air conditioners demand a lot of power. Second, power is generated at only a few places in the country, and yet our air-conditioned homes and businesses and factories are everywhere.
Transmission lines have to carry power from these relatively few power injection points to all these different destinations. Transmission lines, however, are just wires, and they have limited capacity. In fact, their capacity actually goes down when it’s hot. This is worsened by the fact that, when a transmission line is carrying a lot of power, it heats up. The metal conductor in the line expands, causing the line to droop. If the line droops too much, it makes contact with foliage on the ground, resulting in a short circuit and an end to that line’s ability to carry power. With that line now out of service, other lines have to pick up the slack, but they, too, become overloaded and prone to the same problem. Furthermore, as the amount of power these lines carry grows, so does the amount of power lost through them due to heat, as well as the amount of “magnetic loss,” which we call reactive power.
As reactive power is expended at a fast clip on these heavily loaded lines, it can no longer do what it is intended to do, which is to keep our voltages at their designed level. As the amount of reactive power falls, so do voltages. When the voltages fall below what they’re supposed to be, the lights in our home dim, our appliances run at speeds that cause wear and tear on their motors, and our air conditioners begin to pose an even greater burden on the system.
In other words, there are some rather nasty feedback mechanisms that take place that cause the grid a lot of stress when we all turn our air conditioners on. Power system operators traditionally have had a very limited number of controls to counteract these bad behaviors.
President Biden blasted Republicans Sunday for standing with the National Rifle Association in the wake of two more shootings in Alabama and Kentucky.
“This morning, our nation is once again grieving for at least four Americans tragically killed at a teen’s birthday party in Dadeville, Alabama as well as two others killed last night in a crowded public park in Louisville,” Biden said in a statement Sunday. […]
A shooting at a 16-year-old’s birthday party in Alabama Saturday night killed four people and injured more than a dozen teenagers, according to law enforcement. In Louisville, Ky. two people died and four were left injured after shots were fired into a crowd at Chickasaw Park. These pair of shootings are the latest in a recent string of gun violence across the country, including a mass shooting at a bank in Louisville that ended with five deaths just days before the shooting in Chickasaw Park.
Biden criticized GOP members for not acting on gun violence, […] He again reiterated that it is up to Congress to pass gun safety laws and to approve a national ban of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
“What has our nation come to when children cannot attend a birthday party without fear? When parents have to worry every time their kids walk out the door to school, to the movie theater, or to the park?” Biden asked in his statement.
“This is outrageous and unacceptable. Americans agree and want lawmakers to act on commonsense gun safety reforms,” he continued. “Instead, this past week Americans saw national Republican elected leaders stand alongside the NRA in a race to the bottom on dangerous laws that further erode gun safety. […].”
Biden also praised Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) for signing an executive order to expand background checks for gun purchases and for calling on the Tennessee state legislature to pass red flag laws, saying he hopes “more Republican officials will follow suit and take action.” The governor’s actions come in the aftermath of the Covenant School shooting last month that left six people dead, including three nine-year-old children.
“I stand ready, as I always have been, to work across the aisle in good faith on federal legislation that will save lives,” Biden continued. “It is within Congress’ power to require safe storage of firearms, require background checks for all gun sales, eliminate gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability, and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines – and this should happen without delay.”
I think reporters shouldn’t just ask after a mass (or other) shooting what type of gun was used. Reporting on every one should specify not just the kind of gun but the manufacturer of the gun, the politicians who take money from and promote them, and the advertising companies and influencers who hawk their products.
For the first time since the Cold War, an American reporter has been charged with espionage in Russia. On this week’s On the Media, hear about one journalist who stayed to cover Putin’s invasion, and from one who left. Plus, a look at why NPR has sworn off Twitter for good, and how it will affect people who get their news from the app.
1. OTM producer Molly Schwartz [@mollyfication], takes a deep dive into the imprisonment of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and the challenges of reporting on the ground in Russia right now.
2. Nikita Kondratyev, reporter for Novaya Gazeta Europe, on leaving Russia and covering Putin’s invasion in exile.
3. Zoe Schiffer [@ZoeSchiffer], managing editor of Platformer, on Elon Musk’s newest fight with the press and the departure of NPR from Twitter.
It’s so strange how Kondratyev talks about his fears of Russian cities being attacked. Just a bizarre thing to fear. Ukraine doesn’t want to attack Russia. “Western” countries don’t want to attack Russia. This isn’t a reasonable concern.
– Ecologistas en Acción ha preparado sendos recursos de casación, autonómico y estatal, contra la sentencia que desestima su recurso y avala la Operación Chamartín o Madrid Nuevo Norte.
– Para celebrar el Día de la Tierra, el 22 de abril, Día de la Tierra, organizan un paseo y una tortillada [?] en los terrenos de la Operación Chamartín con el objetivo de reivindicar un urbanismo humano, libre de especulación y de arboricidios….
I’m not familiar with this organization or the strength of their legal case, but WTF to this whole project.
…Breaking via the @wsj: “Fox has made a late push to settle the dispute out of court, people familiar with the situation said Sunday.”
Washington Post: Opening arguments in Dominion v. Fox have been delayed until Tuesday “to allow both parties to hold conversations about the possibility of a settlement, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation…”
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
A court in Moscow has sentenced the opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza to 25 years prison, in one of the most high-profile cases to date of a Russian dissident being jailed for opposing the invasion of Ukraine. Kara-Murza, a father of three, was detained in April 2022 and charged with spreading false information about the Russian army in Ukraine. He was later also charged with “high treason” over a series of public speeches he made that criticised Kremlin policies and the war in Ukraine.
The British government on Monday summoned the Russian ambassador to make clear its condemnation of what it described as the “politically motivated” conviction of Kara-Murza, a British dual national. “Russia’s lack of commitment to protecting fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression, is alarming,” British foreign secretary James Cleverly said in a statement. “We continue to urge Russia to adhere to its international obligations including Vladimir Kara-Murza’s entitlement to proper healthcare.”
…
Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu on Monday read a report to President Vladimir Putin about drills conducted by the country’s Pacific Fleet. In footage broadcast on state television, Putin responded by saying that snap checks had shown the Pacific Fleet at a high level of readiness… [LOL]
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said on Monday that Tokyo had lodged a protest with Russia over its military exercises around disputed islands near Japan’s Hokkaido….
Marc Elias tweeted: “I’ve offered the GOP a deal. If they stop suppressing the right to vote, I will stop suing them for suppressing the right to vote.”
To her devoted followers, “Donbas Devushka” – or Donbas Girl – is a Russian Jew from the occupied Ukrainian city of Luhansk, who has faithfully broadcast Kremlin propaganda for months.
But in reality, she is Sarah Bils, a 37-year-old divorcee from New Jersey and a US Navy veteran who served as an aviation electronics technician at Whitby Island in Washington State…
Using assorted pseudonyms including CheburekiVibes, MeatballSubZero, YuGopnik, GhostofLugansk, she has amassed 135,000 subscribers to her podcast on which she broadcasts with a cod “Russian” accent.
Overnight, Justice Clarence Thomas – via one anonymous source to CNN – offered his response to the second round of revelations from ProPublica about his relationship with billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow. It’s not an official response from Thomas, but I guess he’s hoping it’ll do for now.
The top line for most of the coverage will be that Thomas will amend his financial disclosures to include the previously undisclosed 2014 real estate transaction wherein Crow bought Thomas family properties in Georgia, including the house where Thomas’ mother lived and still lives.
But the explanation offered to CNN by the source on Thomas’ behalf is in considerable internal tension with itself, even as it offers some potentially new and interesting information. Let me just reproduce this key paragraph in the CNN report:
The source said Thomas has always filled out his forms with the help of aides, and that it was an oversight not to report the real estate transaction. Thomas believed he didn’t have to disclose because he lost money on the deal, according to the source.
A lot going on there, so let’s break it down.
First off, the side-swipe blaming of aides is super classy. Points for throwing underlings under the bus. [I expected that.]
Second, which is it: an “oversight” or a deliberate decision not to disclose because he didn’t think he had to? Those aren’t usually the same thing. An oversight is when you mistakenly fail to include something you knew you should include and maybe even intended to include but missed it somehow. Not disclosing something on purpose is a different ball of wax. The generous read might be that the “oversight” was misinterpreting the disclosure rules and requirements. But that’s not really an oversight. That’s just flat out getting it wrong.
We learned quite a bit more of interest from the “source.” I’m going to use CNN’s exact language to begin with:
– “As a part of the negotiated sale price, [Thomas’ mother], who was 85 at the time of the deal, was given an occupancy agreement to be able to live in the home for the rest of her life, the source said.”
– “She lives rent free but is responsible for paying the property taxes and insurance.”
– “Thomas and his wife put $50,000 to $70,000 into his mother’s home in capital improvements, and once the sale was completed, Thomas’ proceeds were $44,000, according to the source. Because there was no gain, Thomas thought there was no need to report, the source said.”
[…] To summarize, yes, Thomas’ mother has lived in the house rent-free since 2014 (and for the rest of her life!) but this was somehow baked into the sale price at the outset. So no freebie for the Thomas family, is the implication, because that was negotiated as part of the original sales price. The only way that works is if the Thomases reduced the sale price considerably to offset the future unpaid rent. Maybe, maybe not. But was any of that documented in real time in a way that will withstand scrutiny? Oh and also she’s paying taxes and insurance, so …
Also, I get the sense there’s an effort here to muddle the capital improvements issue. Recall ProPublica reported that Crow put in tens of thousands of dollar in improvements to the home after he bought it. Team Thomas seems to want credit for having made a lot of improvements to the home, too! So many in fact that they took an overall loss on the deal (even setting aside the future rent offset?) hence Thomas’ mistaken reading of the rules that he didn’t have to disclose it.
Finding your concerns assuaged by this “source”? Me either.
Noted very smart legal person Donald Trump, who is currently indicted on 34 felony counts in Manhattan, and who may be indicted on many more counts in many more places before his natural life is up, has some legal advice for Fox News.
It was the middle of the night, 2:39 a.m. to be precise, and his very bad brain was screaming in all caps, as usual:
IF FOX WOULD FINALLY ADMIT THAT THERE WAS LARGE SCALE CHEATING & IRREGULARITIES IN THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, WHICH WOULD BE A GOOD THING FOR THEM, & FOR AMERICA, THE CASE AGAINST THEM, WHICH SHOULD NOT HAVE EXISTED AT ALL, WOULD BE GREATLY WEAKENED. BACK UP THOSE PATRIOTS AT FOX INSTEAD OF THROWING THEM UNDER THE BUS – & THEY ARE RIGHT! THERE IS SOOO MUCH PROOF, LIKE MASS BALLOT STUFFING CAUGHT ON GOVERNMENT CAMERAS, FBI COLLUDING WITH TWITTER & FACEBOOK, STATE LEGISLATURES NOT USED, etc.
If Fox would finally admit that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, it would be very good for the defamation case Dominion Voting Systems filed against them, which is about … their pushing of Donald Trump’s lies about Dominion rigging the 2020 election against him.
Right on, sounds legit.
The rest of the words are just demented babbling. Mass ballot stuffing caught on government cameras! FBI colluding with Twitter and Facebook! State legislatures not used!
Whatever, you dumb bloated pile of skin.
For some reason, we doubt Fox News is going to take Trump’s advice, if only because they, like Mike Pence, do not have the courage. Today was supposed to be the first day of Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation trial against Fox News. Then suddenly the judge postponed it for a single day, reportedly because Fox was making a last-ditch bid to settle. (The judge says this is fairly normal, and seems confident the trial will start as planned tomorrow.) Trump’s brilliant legal advice appears to have come as a response to these developments.
If only Fox would start telling his sad fascist loser Big Lie about the election some more!
If only they would make up some lies that would help heal his wounded self-esteem! […]
Anyway.
This isn’t the first time Fox News has tried to settle this. It hasn’t worked previous times. We’ll see what happens this time, if perhaps Fox News really tries to pony up the big bucks here at the eleventh hour.
We sure hope they don’t settle, because like most patriotic Americans, we want to watch Fox News on trial. We want to see Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity under oath. The Washington Post notes that “Dominion officials have insisted they would not settle without a full-throated apology and acknowledgment from Fox that it aired false information,” but we doubt Dominion is naive enough to think any apology from Fox News would be worth the paper it was printed on or have any meaning coming out of one of Fox News’s lying stupid faces.
After all, as Matthew Gertz from Media Matters reminds us: [tweet at the link: "Something Dominion should probably keep in mind is that after Fox News settled with Seth Rich's family, Tucker Carlson resumed lying about Rich (albeit without explicitly mentioning his name)."]
Most of what we’re seeing right now is about how strong Dominion’s case is that Fox News acted with either “actual malice” and/or “reckless disregard for the truth” with all the statements it aired about Dominion’s role in an imaginary plot to steal the election. As Brian Stelter wrote the other day, before news broke that the trial was delayed:
Practically every media lawyer I know has marveled at the strength of Dominion’s case. “There are so many emails and texts. Each one might be actual malice,” says Jeff Kosseff, a cybersecurity law professor at the US Naval Academy and a careful observer of the pretrial proceedings. Kosseff tells me he is not ruling out “the chance of a courthouse-steps settlement on Monday morning,” moments before opening arguments. “Preventing the Murdochs from taking the stand would likely be worth an inflated settlement,” Kosseff says. But he suspects there is “no advantage for Dominion to settle now.”
[…] Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson is shouting FUUUUUUUUUCK DO NOT SETTLE FUUUUUUUUUUUCK! [Not an exact quote.] [Tweet and image at the link]
As Yahoo! News reminds us:
After leaving the network in 2016, Carlson received a reported $20 million settlement from her former employer over sexual harassment allegations against then-CEO Roger Ailes.
And she would very much like to be out of the NDA that was part of that settlement. [Tweet at the link]
So that’s what’s going on with that.
Of course, the judge ALSO just hit Fox News with sanctions for maybe being less than forthcoming about what role Rupert Murdoch plays at the network, which matters when it comes to what sorts of documents and communications they were required to turn over in discovery. Also there’s that new tape of Rudy Giuliani in November 2020 telling Maria Bartiromo that ACTUALLY he didn’t have any evidence Dominion machines could flip votes, and Fox News just turned that evidence over, which has really pissed off the judge.
So yeah, at least from what we can see, it doesn’t sound like Fox News is heading into this week with the wind at its back.
Stay strong, Dominion!
We wanna hear more on the stand from Tucker about how “passionately” he hates Donald Trump.
Rep. George Santos launched a personal attack against his potential Democratic rival, insulting Nassau County Legislator Josh Lafazan’s chin during a heated Twitter exchange. It backfired spectacularly.
Twitter users unleashed on the embattled GOP House member from New York and sided with Lafazan, who quickly fired back: “Corrective jaw surgery helped me breathe normally & saved my life. My insurance covered it, & it’s why I’m fighting so hard for universal health care”
Lafazan, who earned name recognition and a fundraising opportunity from the exchange, continued, “You are beneath the office you hold. And I can’t wait to replace you in Congress, in 2024 or sooner. Send postcards from jail”….
The nasty exchange started about a New York Post story reporting Santos is expected to announce his reelection campaign on Monday…
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) is continuing his quest to involve himself in Trump’s legal affairs, using his authority as a House chair to protect Trump and performatively investigate the investigators. In a new court filing, his legal team asserted that he has the right to undermine the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation.
The Ohio Republican asked a district judge on Monday to allow his House panel to subpoena Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office who’s since written a book about his work in that office investigating Trump.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office just brought 34 counts of falsifying business records against Trump. Last week, Bragg sued to block Jordan’s Pomerantz subpoena and to stop what he called a “campaign of intimidation” against his office. But Jordan’s attorneys asked U.S. District Court Judge Mary Vyskocil on Monday to throw out the suit on the grounds that the Speech or Debate Clause gave Jordan every right to subpoena the former prosecutor.
[…] They also argued that the Clause bars any inquiry into “the motivation for [legislative] acts,” so protections granted by it aren’t evaded by claims that a legislator “acted unlawfully or with an unworthy purpose.”
Citing the 1975 Supreme Court case Eastland v. U.S. Servicemen’s Fund, the attorneys argued that their subpoena is “absolutely” protected by the Clause because, the high court ruled back then, the statute provided “complete immunity” for the legislators in that case.
Lastly, Jordan’s team argued that Bragg’s request for a preliminary injunction lacked merit. If a subpoena by a member of Congress satisfies the Clause’s requirements as a legislative act, they argue, courts have held that that’s “the end of the matter.” [So says the doofus who refused the Jan 6. Committee’s subpoena.]
Monday’s filing is just the latest in Jordan’s ongoing attempts to use his House Judiciary chairmanship to do Trump’s bidding. In mid-March he sent Bragg a letter asking whether he was colluding with the Justice Department, just hours after the former president elevated conspiracy theories saying as much on Truth Social. Turns out, Trump’s team had been coordinating with top Republican Congress members, including Jordan, to defend him against Bragg’s probes.
He’d also started clawing at Pomerantz around this time, starting with a letter requesting his cooperation on March 22 that blossomed into a full-blown subpoena on April 6.
Pomerantz himself chimed in on Monday, only to support Bragg’s request for a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order.
“I believe that the Committee seeks my testimony not for any legitimate legislative purpose, but rather to impede and interfere with the District Attorney’s Office’s ongoing work, assist Mr. Trump in his defense, probe my political views, and harass me because I was the author of People v. Donald Trump, a book that Mr. Trump and some of his supporters do not like,” he wrote. “Even assuming, contrary to fact, that the Committee’s ‘oversight’ interests are not pretextual, and that I had information that was pertinent to a legitimate legislative purpose, the subpoena to me should not be enforced.”
To summarize. Ukrainians are ready for an offensive. We are ready to repel the blow. The best scenario of Russia’s healing in order to unite and become the Strongest State is the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in which no handiments and negotiations will be possible.
With Fox News Channel’s defamation trial set for this week, the network’s lawyers intend to cite its hiring of Kimberly Guilfoyle as the linchpin of an insanity defense.
Although such a defense is highly unorthodox in a civil case, Fox’s lawyers believe that the decision to put Guilfoyle on the air is conclusive proof that the network’s brass cannot be held responsible for their actions.
According to those familiar with the legal strategy, Fox’s lawyers plan to show the jury Guilfoyle’s ear-splitting performance at the 2020 Republican National Convention in its entirety.
At the conclusion of the video, they will ask the jurors if the executives who considered Guilfoyle an acceptable TV presence could possibly be deemed sane.
“Pleading insanity is a desperate gambit that almost never succeeds,” Professor Davis Logsdon, of the University of Minnesota Law School, said. “But this Kimberly Guilfoyle thing looks like a slam dunk.”
The following videos are reported to be confessions from Wagner “musicians” in Ukraine who detailed some of the horrendous war crimes they committed — including murdering civilians, torturing Wagner soldiers who disobeyed orders and murdering wounded soldiers by blowing them up and setting the pit they were in on fire.
This is just a small portion of the known evidence that Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin must be indicted as a war criminal and that the Wagner Group must be classified as a terrorist organization.
“There was an order to shoot everyone 15 and older. We shot about 10 of these 15, 16, 17 year olds. ”
Russian project Gulagu net published a video with the confessions of two convicts, ex-commanders of Wagner PMC subdivisions – Azamat Uldarov and ex convict Aleksey Savichev.
If it weren’t for Putin’s and Prigozhin’s complicity, these people would be imprisoned, but Russian authorities sent them to war instead, teaching them to kill other people beforehand.
[…] “There were about 60 people there. I was given an order: come, blow it up and set on fire.” – destroying a pit with wounded and those who decided to leave combat and refused to kill Ukrainians. […]
If Fox would finally admit that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, it would be very good for the defamation case Dominion Voting Systems filed against them, which is about … their pushing of Donald Trump’s lies about Dominion rigging the 2020 election against him.
Right on, sounds legit.
The judge already found that the claims made on Fox were false. It’s not even at issue in the trial.
Pierce R. Butlersays
Lynna… @ # 255: Maybe a native Russian speaker will enlighten us.
I hope such a person, or somebody, can also set us straight about the item Reginald Selkirk posted @ # 244: … she broadcasts with a cod “Russian” accent. (Sounds fishy to me…)
The FBI on Monday revealed what it said is evidence of expanding espionage and security activity by the Chinese government on U.S. soil, including in Lower Manhattan.
The Justice Department announced three cases suggesting more brazen activity by China inside the U.S. in the wake of the spy balloon controversy.
One case involves Chinese security officials allegedly spying on Zoom calls and then harassing Chinese dissident participants identified as targets.
Ten Chinese officials were charged with conspiracy along with an employee of a telecommunications company. Sources told ABC News the company was Zoom and the insider from China allegedly was able to disrupt meetings on Zoom.
Another of the cases involves Chinese security officials allegedly setting up a “police station” in New York City and using it as a base of operations to spy on, co-opt or intimidate Chinese dissidents living in the city and elsewhere.
The charges unsealed allege two defendants were operating an illegal overseas “police station” — the first ever in the U.S. — located in lower Manhattan, for a provincial branch of the Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Harry” Lu Jianwang, 61, of the Bronx, and Chen Jinping, 59, of Manhattan, were arrested earlier Monday morning at their homes in New York City.
The two suspects operated out a Manhattan office building in Chinatown at the direction of a Chinese police official, prosecutors alleged.
The police station – which closed in the fall of 2022 after those operating it became aware of the FBI’s investigation – occupied a floor in an office building in Chinatown.
The men engaged in a number of activities on U.S. soil, prosecutors said, including participating in counter protests and targeting specific Chinese dissidents for harassment. The men arrested were expected in a Brooklyn federal court later Monday.
If convicted of conspiring to act as agents of the PRC, the defendants face a maximum sentence of five years in prison. The obstruction of justice charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
The Justice Department also announced charges against 34 members of a specialized unit in China. The unit, run by the Chinese national police or Public Security Ministry, the U.S. said, allegedly created fake social media accounts, including on Twitter, to harass Chinese dissidents in the U.S. and to promote propaganda from China.…
An Indian couple has allegedly died by suicide by using a guillotine-like mechanism to decapitate themselves in a sacrificial ritual, police said Sunday.
Hemubhai Makwana, 38, and his wife Hansaben, 35, both died by decapitation after using a homemade bladed mechanism in a hut on their farm in the western state of Gujarat, police said…
Judge Eric M. Davis: “The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that [it] is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.”
Donald Trump’s rape trial will begin next week as scheduled after a federal judge rejected a request for a one-month delay, saying the former president cannot make public statements to promote pre-trial publicity and then claim it is prejudicial to him and reason to delay.
Lewis A Kaplan, a federal judge in Manhattan, said the civil trial on claims against Trump by the columnist E Jean Carroll will begin as scheduled on 25 April….
Kaplan rejected arguments by Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina that the former president’s recent indictment in New York state court on criminal falsification of business records charges created such negative publicity that a one-month cooling-off period was needed before the rape trial could begin.
…
Kaplan said a portion of coverage of Trump’s indictment was “of his own doing” as the ex-president made public statements on his social media platform, in press conferences and in interviews.
“It does not sit well for Mr Trump to promote pretrial publicity and then to claim that coverage that he promoted was prejudicial to him and should be taken into account as supporting a further delay,” the judge said, adding that he was also concerned that the request was a “delay tactic by Mr Trump”.
He noted that it was not necessary to find jurors who had never heard of Trump’s legal woes as long as jurors agreed to be fair and impartial.
…
Tacopina declined comment about Kaplan’s ruling and whether Trump will attend the rape trial. He is required to notify Kaplan by Thursday if Trump plans to show up.
In a footnote, the judge cited other legal threats Trump faces to show that a month-long delay in the trial stemming from Carroll’s lawsuit could make the climate to find a fair jury worse rather than better. [LOL]
…
Carroll sued Trump for defamation after he said she lied when she wrote in a 2019 memoir that he attacked her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in 1996. She brought a second lawsuit in November, after New York state allowed victims to temporarily sue over sexual assaults that occurred long ago.
Officials said on Monday that the engineer at the Dasu hydropower project in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was accused of blasphemy after he highlighted the “slow pace of work” during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn to sunset.
“The labourers said they were fasting but denied that work had slowed down, which led to an exchange of heated words” with the supervisor, a police official told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.
“Later, the labourers accused the engineer of making blasphemous remarks” and about 400 locals gathered to protest, he said.
A written complaint filed with the police identified him only as a heavy transport supervisor by the name of “Mr Tian”, and said that his remarks on Saturday “sparked tensions”…
“It does not sit well for Mr Trump to promote pretrial publicity and then to claim that coverage that he promoted was prejudicial to him and should be taken into account as supporting a further delay,” the judge said, adding that he was also concerned that the request was a “delay tactic by Mr Trump”.
GOP officials from McCurtain County, Okla. are being investigated by the FBI after they were caught on tape expressing their frustration about it not being socially acceptable beat up and hang Black people, as well as their desires to hire hit men to kill newspaper reporters.
The audio was published by print-only newspaper McCurtain Gazette-News, and it released transcript of a recording from a county commissioners meeting last month to the public that allegedly incriminates several public officials after disturbing comments were made. The full audio recording from Gazette-News reporter Bruce Willingham will be released by the newspaper at a later date.
After hundreds came out in protest, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) has called for the resignation of McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy (R), District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings (R), Investigator Alicia Manning and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix for their comments in the meeting. District 3 Commissioner Robert Beck (R) is also cited in the audio.
The transcript suggests that the group first started discussing a recent fire which killed a woman and her two dogs. The group joked about the woman’s body parts falling off her body, and that it is similar to eating barbecue.
“So we get her in the body bag and Kyler goes, ‘You do know what we gotta do right?’ Faith goes, ‘No, what?’ He goes, ‘You gotta pre-heat the oven 350 degrees, leave her in there for 15 minutes,’” said Clardy.
Later in the transcript, Jennings and Clardy had a racist exchange and went back and forth about society making it unacceptable to lynch Black people.
“I’m gonna tell you something. If it was back in the day, when that when Alan Marshton would take a damn Black guy and whoop their ass and throw him in the cell? I’d run for f—ing sheriff,” Jennings said.
After Clardy said things aren’t like that anymore, Jennings continued.
“I know. Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damn rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They got more rights than we got.”
Jennings supposedly went on to say that he knows of two large pre-dug holes “if you ever need them,” referring to disposing the remains of Bruce Willingham and his son, Chris, also a Gazette-News reporter. Jennings also said that he knows of “two or three hit men, they’re very quiet guys.”
Manning chimed in and claimed nobody would care if two of the Gazette-News’ reporters were harmed. “Yeah, but here’s the reality,” Manning allegedly said. “If a hair on his wife’s head, Chris Willingham’s head, or any of those people that really were behind that, if any hair on their head got touched by anybody, who would be the bad guy?”
The trio was supposedly frustrated with the Gazette-News portraying the sheriff’s office unfavorably in their reporting.
Republicans like the fact that Feinstein is not there to help Democrats confirm Biden’s nominees.
The Senate returned from a long spring recess Monday to the beginnings of a major fight. Senate Republicans have declared that the war over the federal judiciary is back on, even if it means breaking the essential Senate norm of respecting colleagues and acting with a minimum of decency toward them. They are already lining up to tell Sen. Dianne Feinstein to stuff it. The California Democrat asked last week to be temporarily replaced on the Judiciary Committee while she recovers from a health setback. Her absence has hindered the committee–and the Democrats–from doing their main job for the next two years: confirming Biden’s nominees.
Republicans, of course, realize that and now see that they can achieve their primary goal for the next two years–stopping Biden from getting judicial nominees. Feinstein’s request was blood in the water for the likes of the repugnant Tom Cotton, a Judiciary Committee member. The Arkansas Republican was the first out of the block to say he’d oppose the move, tweeting “Republicans should not assist Democrats in confirming Joe Biden’s most radical nominees to the courts.”
He was quickly joined in that opposition by Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who tweeted “I will not go along with Chuck Schumer’s plan to replace Senator Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee and pack the court with activist judges.” Ah, yes. Activist judges. Like those who have declared that they know more about drug safety than the Food and Drug Administration. That’s her excuse for stabbing her fellow committee member in the back.
Feinstein has been away from the Senate since early March, after hospitalization from a case of shingles. Her absence has created a major headache for Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Dick Durbin, chair of the Judiciary Committee. With her absence from the committee, Democrats don’t have a majority on the committee and can’t easily advance President Biden’s nominees, which was basically the one job they had for the next two years.
[…] Feinstein requested that she be temporarily replaced on the committee with a fellow Democrat until she’s cleared by her doctors to return. That, however, is subject to the agreement of the whole Senate because that’s how committee assignments are approved. In the pre-McConnell days, it would have been done with unanimous consent by the Senate because that was just how it worked. Not anymore.
[…] Never mind that committee assignments have never been subject to partisan fights in the Senate. Each party conference decides among members who is going to be on which committee and those decisions are respected by the whole Senate. “You just don’t screw with a conference or caucus’ decision” on committee assignments, one longtime Senate aide told Politico. You do if you’re Mitch McConnell.
This sets up yet another filibuster fight. When Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asks for unanimous consent for another member to fill in for Feinstein, Cotton or Blackburn or any of the other assholes from the Judiciary GOP—and it has more than its share of them—will say “no.” Then Schumer will have to send it to the floor, where it will require 60 votes. That means finding 10 Republicans to help. There won’t be 10 Republicans to help.
At this point, Schumer could try to break the filibuster by invoking the so-called nuclear option, making a motion that a simple majority of 51 votes can be used to make committee assignments. That requires the presence of Vice President Kamala Harris to cast the 51st vote. It also requires anti-filibuster reform Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to agree. [OMG, unreliable Manchin and Sinema.]
The other option is to continue to try to do judicial confirmations the way they did it last session, when the Senate was divided 50-50. That required Schumer to have extra votes. When the committee deadlocked on a vote for a nominee, Schumer had to schedule a vote to discharge the nominee from the committee and then votes to move that nominee to the floor. It significantly slows the confirmation process and, thus, the number of Biden nominees the Senate has time to get confirmed.
If Biden’s goal of remaking the federal judiciary is going to be realized, Schumer and the Democrats really only have one option: forcing the issue and getting another Democrat on the committee by whatever means necessary.
johnson catmansays
The trio was supposedly frustrated with the Gazette-News portraying the sheriff’s office unfavorably in their reporting.
Apparently, the unfavorable reporting was justified.
She should back it up by saying “if I cannot be replaced I will simply resign and allow Gov Newsome to fill my seat” — that should unstick things
———————
No, that doesn’t help, not if the GOP is willing to filibuster adding a new member to the Judiciary Committee. They could do that after Newsom replaces Feinstein. If they are willing to stoop this low, then either the filibuster is broken or it isn’t.
————————
As a Californian this is infuriating. DO WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to get a sitting senator on the judiciary committee g’dammit
————————
If the GOP can block Schumer from naming a replacement now, they can still do it after Feinstein is replaced.
————————
f your enemies are the ones who want you to stay around…..
[…] The House Judiciary Committee, led by Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, held a field hearing Monday near Bragg’s offices to examine the Democrat’s “pro-crime, anti-victim” policies.
New York City has “lost its way when it comes to fighting crime and upholding the law,” Jordan said. “Here in Manhattan, the scales of justice are weighed down by politics. For the district attorney justice isn’t blind — it’s about advancing opportunities to promote a political agenda — a radical political agenda.”
Democrats said the hearing was a partisan stunt aimed at amplifying conservative anger at Bragg, Manhattan’s first Black district attorney.
“It is really troubling that American taxpayers’ dollars are being used to come here on this junket to do an examination of the safest big city in America instead of focusing on the real over-proliferation of guns that we have witnessed,” said Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat and former police captain.
Adams called the hearing an “in-kind donation” to the Trump campaign. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, called it “a circus.” [Both correct.]
New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said: “Jim Jordan engages in a lot of political theater in Washington, but he should know better than to take his tired act to Broadway. New Yorkers see through this transparent attempt to defend Donald Trump at all costs while ignoring the real public safety needs of our community.”
Interrupted several times by outbursts from protesters, Monday’s hearing was the latest salvo in Jordan’s weekslong effort to use his congressional powers to defend Trump from what he says is a politically motivated prosecution.
[…] in reality, the city’s violent crime rate remains substantially below the U.S. average.
[…] The House Judiciary Committee didn’t invite Bragg to testify, nor was anyone from his office expected to participate. Instead, the committee heard from crime victims, the head of the city’s detectives union, the head of an anti-gun violence group and a crime policy expert who — under questioning by Democrats — ticked off a long list of cities and states with higher violent crime rates than New York and Manhattan.
[…] Jose Alba, a former convenience store clerk, testified about his arrest after stabbing an attacker to death in his shop. Bragg dropped the charges but critics said he should have done so sooner. Madeline Brame blamed Bragg for seeking long prison sentences only for two of four people involved in her son’s killing. Jennifer Harrison — whose boyfriend was killed in New Jersey in 2005, outside Bragg’s jurisdiction and long before he took office — spoke as a victim advocate and Bragg critic.
“I want to thank all the witnesses including the victims of crime,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, said. “I fear that you were being used for a political purpose despite your sincerity.”
A very literally creative translation there: I couldn’t find “handiment” in three dictionaries
From #229: Daily Kos
The best scenario of Russia’s healing in order to unite and become the Strongest State is the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in which no handiments and negotiations will be possible.
The best scenario for healing Russia so that it rallies together and becomes the strongest state is the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in which no handouts and negotiations will be possible
“I’m going to start something which I call ‘Truth GPT’ or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Mr. Musk said in an interview on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight”
Musk: Understanding the nature of the universe “might be the best path to safety, in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe, it is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe”…
Trying to pin down the size of the Ukrainian armed forces is a difficult task. The Ukrainian government hasn’t released any official figures, for all the obvious reasons. Why give Russia any information to inform their own plans? So that leaves a cacophony of often contradictory information that likely suits Ukraine just fine. But it makes our jobs as analysts harder to consider.
The current number floating around pro-Ukraine media is that Ukraine has 175 combat brigades […] At 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers per brigade, that’s somewhere between 500,000 and 875,000 soldiers. I’ve also found references to a podcast in which a Ukrainian government official supposedly claimed that Ukraine has 1.2 million men and women under arms. That is plausible, given the various elements of the Ukrainian military: Territorial Defense Forces, Border Guards, National Guard, and even paramilitary police units we’ve seen on the front lines.
Now let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that this number is inflated for misinformation purposes, or to freak out the Russians. Let’s also assume that tens of thousands would remain stationed on the Belarus and Russian borders to protect against invasion or sabotage. A great many more would continue to man defenses in places like Bakhmut, no matter where the counteroffensive took place. Also, remember that only about 15-20% of all troops pull a trigger or press a button that fires something; everyone else is playing supporting roles.
So let’s say Ukraine has only 100,000 combat arms troops available for the counteroffensive.
If that’s the case, and if those troops have effectively learned combined arms warfare … well then, Russia is kinda f’d. [Tweet and video at the link]
This map features Russia’s current defensive lines: [Tweet and map at the link]
The active front line is around 1,000 kilometers. Russia may have up to 350,000 troops in Ukraine. That estimate is likely high, but let’s use that number for argument’s sake.
Assuming equal distribution, that would amount to 350 Russians per kilometer of active front. Except that those trench lines extend beyond the active front, and we can assume some Russians will be manning them (lest Ukraine catch them sleeping again, like they did in the Kharkiv offensive). Furthermore, Russia is most concerned about losing its precious “land bridge” to Crimea. The map above reflects that priority, with layers of defenses heading south toward Melitopol and the port city of Berdyansk.
That means that certain areas of the front will have a higher density of Russian defenders than others. Ukraine will have to decide whether the more thinly defended path toward Svatove and Starobilsk in northeastern Ukraine is worth the effort, or if they’ll punch hard to sever the land bridge and slice Russia’s army in half.
Furthermore, Russia will presumably hold units in reserve in the rear, ready to rush toward Ukraine’s main thrust, ready to plug any holes that Ukraine may open and attempt to exploit. That means those trenches will have even fewer defenders as a first line. And complicating things for Russia, Ukraine can freely move its troops around its internal lines of communication, while Russia has to move theirs the long way, around the perimeter:
Let’s say that down in Zaporizhzhia oblast, en route toward Melitopol, that Russian defensive density is around 500 soldiers per kilometer—most of them poorly equipped untrained mobiks.
This is where combined-arms warfare comes into play. Ukraine can’t mimic the Russian tactic of randomly sending armor toward defensive positions. It also can’t send human waves. Ukraine has made mincemeat of both Russian approaches. It certainly can’t do American-style combined-arms breaching maneuvers, as Ukraine lacks the air power, but it has to approximate it as best it can. [Combined Arms Breach video at the link]
Recent arms shipments from its allies have been heavy on engineering equipment (systems to clear mines, mobile bridges, etc), and American trainers have been working with Ukrainian units on combined arms maneuvers in Germany. Those units are now continuing their training in Ukraine, presumably sharing their new expertise with other Ukrainian units.
Over 1,000 new pieces of Western armor are currently flowing into Ukraine, supplementing Ukraine’s already large inventory of Soviet-era equipment—both their own and that captured from the Russians. [Tweet and image of Bradley IFVs]
Everyone is so focused on tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, yet the most important tool in this battlefield, given the absence of air power, remains artillery. And Italy has stepped up in a big way. [Tweet and video at the link]
Italian media is reporting that 60 of these self-propelled artillery guns are headed toward Ukraine, part of over 100 that were sitting in storage, all committed to Ukraine. Back in 2019, they were sold to Pakistan, but the Trump Administration blocked the transfer because Pakistan had also ordered hundreds of Chinese-made howitzers and MLRS rocket artillery. Donald Trump finally made a decision that worked out!
Of course, Ukraine is having serious issues procuring enough ammunition, currently the most alarming bottleneck. But given the extensive wear and tear on Ukraine’s existing stock, having additional guns available should help in this offensive. And the last two American arms announcements to Ukraine were uncharacteristically heavy on ammunition.
If we have 100,000 Ukrainian troops, with artillery, armor, air defense, electronic warfare, engineering, and drones (for the air component) all working in combined fashion, facing Russian trenches with several hundred low-morale defenders per kilometer … well, you start getting a sense of what’s possible.
Ukraine caught Russia sleeping in Kharkiv oblast, and it liberated much of Kherson oblast and its capital by cutting off the two bridges supplying Russian forces in the area. Russia is no longer sleeping, and it’s not so easy to cut logistics to occupied Ukrainian territory. This will require Ukraine to do what it hasn’t done before, and what Russia never managed: massing forces to punch through defensive lines.
Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, asserted that Russia is “interested in ending the war in Ukraine as fast as possible”.
Democratic U.S. Senator John Fetterman returned to work on Monday after weeks of treatment for depression, bringing a crucial vote back to a Senate narrowly controlled by Democrats…
Russians are so desperate for Western goods that they keep coming up with hilarious facsimiles: [Tweet and video, showing Swed House, a Belarusian furniture company that sells items intended to look like those from IKEA […] IKEA halted all operations in Russia in response to the war in Ukraine. The video has English subtitles.]
It’s extra funny because by copying Ikea’s colors, they are using Ukraine’s.
[Tweet, images and video at the link: “Tucker Carlson pushed a fake version of a U.S. intelligence document about Ukrainian war casualties. It was doctored by a fraud podcaster who claimed to be a Russian woman from Luhansk. In reality, Sarah Bils is a former U.S. Navy clerk from New Jersey—and she pocketed all the money she claimed to raise for Russian causes.”]
On the plus side, she solicited donations for Russian troops, then pocketed the cash. If you’re going to grift, grifting from Russia lovers makes it much better. On the other hand, having helped disseminate those stolen documents, she is now under investigation.
Rachel Maddow covered this story tonight. Tucker Carlson was awful … he was a Russian propaganda stooge. He read from a doctored document and concluded that “Ukraine is losing the war.” He also stated as if was fact that Ukraine is losing 7 soldiers to every 1 Russian soldier. Also, that document was not just altered, it was crudely altered, and was thus an obvious fake. Very lazy and/or stupid of Fox News to not factcheck that.
[Tweet and video of Russian forces attacking Ukrainian positions in Bakhmut with incendiary munitions.] These incendiary munitions look both beautiful and nasty, but they can’t possibly be that effective if these Ukrainian soldiers inside a warehouse seem totally protected. It’d be nasty to be caught outside when these balls of fire float down, but there seems to be plenty of advance notice for anyone caught under one of these barrages.
[Tweet and video of incendiary munitions being used in Vuhledar.] Given we’ve seen these munitions over towns like Adviika and Vuhledar for months that remain in Ukrainian hands, I just don’t see the value of them beyond attempting to terrorize defenders. (And it doesn’t work, if you can sit in a warehouse safe and sound.)
…an AI that cares about understanding the universe, it is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe…
Or maybe it will kill us because that simplifies the universe and therefore makes it easier to understand.
But frankly, the biggest threat to humanity isn’t from AI, it’s from people like Musk.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Vladimir Putin has visited military headquarters in Russian-occupied areas Ukraine, the Kremlin has said. Putin was shown on Russian state television disembarking a military helicopter in Russian-held Ukraine and greeting senior military commanders. It was not stated when the visit took place.
…
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has appeared in court to appeal on Tuesday against his detention in Moscow on charges of espionage. The court will hear a complaint filed by Gershkovich against the decision to keep him in custody in Lefortovo prison while the case is being investigated. The hearing is essentially procedural covering how Gershkovich should be detained as he awaits trial, not about the substance of the charges.
Poland and Ukraine will resume negotiations early on Tuesday to try to reopen the transit of food and grains, the Polish agriculture minister told public radio station PR1. The two countries held talks on Monday over bans by central eastern European countries seeking to shelter their farmers from the impact of an influx of cheaper Ukrainian grain.
Russian forces are stepping up their use of heavy artillery and air strikes in the devastated eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces said on Tuesday….
Only a tiny fraction of primary care physicians provide abortion care. Dr Joan Fleischman believes that training them in a simple and easy abortion method might be the best way to offset the war on access…
You might be feeling that artificial intelligence is starting to seem a bit like magic. Our guest this week points out that AI, once the subject of science fiction, has seen the biggest rise of any consumer technology in history and has outpaced the uptake of TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. As we see AI becoming more of an everyday tool, students are even using chatbots like ChatGPT to write papers. While automating certain tasks can help with productivity, we’re starting to see more examples of the dark side of the technology. How close are we to genuine external intelligence? Kate Crawford is an AI expert, research professor at USC Annenberg, honorary professor at the University of Sydney and senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research Lab in New York City. She’s also author of “Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence.” Crawford joins WITHpod to discuss the social and political implications of AI, exploited labor behind its growth, why she says it’s “neither artificial nor intelligent,” climate change concerns, the need for regulation and more.
I don’t like the way Hayes speaks at some points about consciousness and animals – he mentions “projecting” an inner life onto dogs, I think even uses the phrase “human uniqueness,” and so on. Reasserting the nature of human thought in contrast to these technologies is necessary, but shouldn’t be done by disparaging the thought of other animals. Talking about animals in this disparaging way ignores the embodied and social foundations of human thought that Crawford notes. I recommend Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind. (I still haven’t read Ed Yong’s An Immense World, but I’m still excited to.)
Russia’s state-owned news agency Tass reports that the ambassadors of the US, UK and Canada have been summoned to the foreign ministry over their comments about the sentencing yesterday of opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Tass quotes the ministry saying:
In connection with gross interference in the internal affairs of Russia and activities that do not correspond to diplomatic status, the ambassadors of the US, Britain and Canada have been summoned to the foreign ministry.
…
As #240 above notes, Kara-Murza is also a British citizen.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has visited Ukrainian troops in Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine, according to officials from the country who released video footage of the trip. The president of Ukraine heard reports from military commanders on the situation on the battlefield and handed out awards to soldiers.
A Russian judge has rejected an appeal by the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich against the decision to hold him in detention before his trial on charges of espionage.
Gershkovich, 31, is the first US journalist to be detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the cold war and, if found guilty, could face up to 20 years in prison.
Russia’s FSB security service has accused him of collecting state secrets about Russia’s military for the benefit of US intelligence, charges that have been roundly condemned as political and unfounded.
Hearings in his case are being held in closed sessions because of the nature of the charges, but cameras were briefly allowed into the courtroom before Tuesday’s hearing started. The court was only deciding on the decision to hold Gershkovich in pre-trial detention, not on the substance of the case.
It was the first time the outside world has seen proper footage of Gershkovich since his arrest at the end of March. The reporter was standing inside a glass case known informally as an “aquarium”, where defendants in Russian court cases are often held. He appeared calm and was pictured smiling. Marks on one of his wrists appeared to show where he had been kept in handcuffs.
Security concerns have prompted Russian authorities this year to cancel traditional nationwide victory day processions where people carry portraits of relatives who fought against Nazi Germany in the second world war, Reuters report a lawmaker said on Tuesday.
Since 2012, the “immortal regiment” processions have become a major feature of national celebrations on 9 May, a public holiday when Russia honours the 27 million Soviet citizens [many of whom were Ukrainian] who died in the struggle to defeat Adolf Hitler’s invasion [which wouldn’t have succeeded without huge amounts of aid from the US].
But Tass news agency quoted lawmaker Yelena Tsunayeva as saying the marches would not take place this year since a number of regions, including Russian-annexed Crimea, had pulled out “because of the threat”.
Tsunayeva did not specify a threat, although Russia has claimed that Ukraine has been behind bomb attacks on Russian soil….
birgerjohanssonsays
Astronomy.
The Star HD 19467 -a G star of approximately the sun’s mass and luminosity 100 light years away has been confirmed having a Brown dwarf companion 50 AU away, mass ca 50 Jupiter masses.
(The system is about 7 billion years old, so any planets closer to the sun-like star may still have some tectonic activity if they are not enough)
There are closer systems with Brown dwarf companions but I find sun-like stars more interesting.
southpaw on Twitter: “Twitter, which has generally made itself a haven for far right accounts since Musk’s takeover, suspends Ali Alexander’s account @ali after @willsommer’s story about Alexander soliciting nudes from teen boys.”
We had wondered how the Danny Masterson retrial might be different than the first trial, which ended in a hung jury on November 30. And wow, on day one of the retrial yesterday, we really got some confirmation that the differences could be pretty stark….
Essentially, in the first trial, “the defense had argued for excluding any mention of Scientology from the trial at all.” In this one, they’re going to be “turning it into a spectacle about Scientology.”
Our journalism is impartial and independent. To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on @Twitter. | Notre journalisme est impartial et indépendant. Prétendre le contraire est faux. C’est pourquoi nous suspendons nos activités sur @Twitter.
Ukraine’s government has criticised Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for his efforts to broker a peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow, and invited the Brazilian leader to visit the war-torn country and see for himself the consequences of the Russian invasion.
The comments came a day after Russia’s minister of foreign affairs, Sergei Lavrov, visited Brasília, and praised Lula’s calls for a negotiated settlement.
A spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that Kyiv was watching Lula’s efforts to resolve the conflict “with interest” but criticised the Brazilian government for giving equal weight to “the victim and the aggressor”.
The spokesperson, Oleg Nikolenko, confirmed that Lula had been invited to visit Kyiv “to understand the real causes of Russian aggression and its consequences for global security”.
Lula has refused to supply weapons to Ukraine and suggested that Brazil could lead a “peace club” of neutral countries to mediate discussions between the two sides, as part of his efforts to return the South American country to international relevance after the isolation of the Jair Bolsonaro years…. [Going great so far!]
I still can’t figure out how a machine translation could come up with a word apparently not found in any dictionary.
For that matter, I don’t understand how the word “handout” would apply to putative negotiations between two nations at war Special Military Operation – an allusion to “hand out” meaning an invitation to a handshake, maybe?
whheydtsays
Re: Pierce R. Butler @ #291…
I would read “handout” as a gift, such as just for showing up at the negotiation table.
Fox News Channel’s much anticipated defamation trial was unexpectedly delayed after the network’s anchors required five hours to have their makeup done.
Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, both expected to testify during the proceedings, were behind closed doors having what was described as “several substantial coats” of foundation, bronzer, and blush slathered onto their faces.
Judge Eric Davis called the delay “unacceptable,” reminding Fox’s attorneys that the trial was not even being televised.
But Dan Webb, Fox’s lead attorney, argued that, without their makeup, “Mr. Hannity and Mr. Carlson would be totally unrecognizable to the jury.”
The trial suffered yet another delay when the anchors finally entered the courtroom and three jurors passed out from hair-spray fumes.
Trump has repeatedly sought to delay his trial in the E. Jean Carroll case where she accuses him of rape and defamation. The judge has grown weary of denying these motions for the trial set to begin on April 25th, a week from today. The weariness was evident in the a decision from the judge yesterday denying yet another Trump request to delay the trial. The decision is truly a joy to read.
Trump sought to delay the trial for a month as a “cooling off period” after his indictment in the courthouse next door. Trump claimed the extensive publicity surrounding his indictment created a media circus so that any potential jury in his case with Carroll would have fresh in their minds his criminal charges.
The judge’s first reason for denying Trump’s request is one I noted right away. In a month, there’s likely to be another criminal indictment, and a month later yet another. If criminal indictments are a basis to delay Carroll’s trial it may not happen till next year. […]
As the judge politely put it:
“postponements in circumstances such as this are not necessarily unmixed blessings from the standpoint of a defendant who is hoping for the dissipation of what he regards, or says he regards, as negative publicity. Events happen during postponements. Sometimes they can make matters worse . . . Mr. Trump faces a number of criminal and civil investigations and litigation including . . .”
The judge then lists the pending investigations against Trump that could lead to more criminal charges. It’s a lengthy footnote.
Towards the end of the decision the judge points out that much of the publicity surrounding Trump’s indictment was generated by Trump.
“it bears emphasis that at least some portion of the recent media coverage of Mr.Trump’s indictment was of his own doing. There has been no shortage of recent news articles focused on Mr. Trump’s own public statements on his social media platform and in press conferences and interviews he has given about his indictment. It does not sit well for Mr. Trump to promote pretrial publicity and then to claim that coverage that he promoted was prejudicial to him and should be taken into account as supporting a further delay.”
For those hoping Trump’s big mouth would be used against him in court, read it and smile. Further, this is the second time in just this case. As I previously wrote, the same judge applied a treatment for Trump, normally given to mafia bosses, in ruling that Trump’s long history of attempting to intimidate courts, witnesses, and even individual jurors justified keeping the names of jurors in this case anonymous.
A curious toddler on Tuesday earned the title of one of the tiniest White House intruders after he squeezed through the metal fencing on the north side of the executive mansion.
U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division officers, who are responsible for security at the White House, walked across the North Lawn to retrieve the tot and reunite him with his parents on Pennsylvania Avenue. Access to the complex was briefly restricted while officers conducted the reunification. Officers briefly questioned the parents before allowing them to continue on their way…
Paul Ksays
SC #284: ‘I still haven’t read Ed Yong’s An Immense World, but I’m still excited to.’
I just signed in to respond to this: It is soooo good! I love a book with footnotes, but this one has dozens that would make fantastic topics for books all their own. Yong set out to attempt to look at the way other living things experience the world, not as something to teach us about ourselves, but for those living thing’s sake themselves. He succeeds. It’s wonderful!
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has such a tenuous grip on his own conference that the debt-ceiling hostage-taking he is attempting to pull off has all the hallmarks of the bumbling kidnapping capers you see in the movies:
– The House GOP can’t agree amongst themselves what to ask for as ransom.
– They can’t get the White House to take them seriously enough as a ragtag band of kidnappers to engage in negotiations.
– They keep threatening dire consequences for not taking them seriously but are repeatedly hobbled by their own lack of consensus.
At this point, McCarthy wants the House to vote by the end of the month on a package that combines the debt ceiling with draconian spending cuts, but he clearly doesn’t have (i) internal agreement on those cuts or on how much to raise the debt ceiling by; or (ii) the votes to push a package through as early as next week.
McCarthy is preparing to bypass the House committees altogether and cobble together a package on the floor himself […] If wishing and hoping were a plan …
One word of warning: Political reporters are doing McCarthy a favor by calling what he’s presenting publicly, including in his speech yesterday to the NYSE, a “plan.” It’s not a plan yet. It skews the coverage to pretend it is a plan. McCarthy is taking advantage of this journalistic failure to try to leverage pressure on the White House. The White House ain’t stupid and isn’t biting.
McCarthy doesn’t have a plan or the votes. Until that changes, that’s really all you need to know.
The fake GOP electors in Georgia that former President Donald Trump recruited as part of his failed attempt to stay in power are starting to point fingers at each other, court documents revealed on Tuesday.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area prosecutor who’s investigating Trump’s effort to upend American democracy there, laid out the details in a legal memo to a state judge—one that hints at criminal indictments to come.
According to the memo, prosecutors in July last year dangled immunity deals for “alternate electors” who were willing to cooperate with the investigation—but their defense lawyer is now accused of never telling them about the potential deal.
If their attorney is selling them out due to some other interest – say Trump’s – that attorney could be in trouble.
Following a special purpose grand jury recommendation in December that the DA seek indictments against some people involved in the fraudulent scheme, investigators have turned up the pressure.
It turns out, these Republican officials and political operatives are now starting to squirm, identifying illegal behavior by their colleagues while trying to save their own skin—a sudden pivot that came when Willis’ investigators met with these fake electors last week…
But that situation has created what Willis calls “an impracticable and ethical mess,” because 10 of these fake electors are being represented by a single Atlanta defense lawyer—who can’t possibly advocate for clients who are simultaneously ratting each other out. The DA’s office is using those details to make the case that the judge should intervene and disqualify that defense lawyer, Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow, citing a conflict of interest…
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday voiced his strong opposition to allowing Democrats to temporarily replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on the Judiciary Committee, stymieing a move sought by Democrats to strengthen the party’s hand in confirming judicial nominees during Feinstein’s extended absence.
During remarks on the Senate floor, McConnell argued that nominees by President Biden that enjoy some Republican support are still able to move forward through the committee as Feinstein recovers from shingles in California.
Adding another Democratic vote in the meantime would only serve to allow Democrats to “force through their very worst nominees,” McConnell said.
“The supposed emergency is the Senate Democrats are unable to push through the small fraction of their nominees who are so extreme, so extreme and so unqualified, that they cannot win a single Republican vote in committee,” McConnell said.
[…] replacing Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee would take 60 votes to approve given GOP objections. This means at least 10 Republicans would need to back the measure — a number that appeared out of reach even before McConnell delivered his first public remarks on the issue on Tuesday. […]
Posted by a reader of the article:
“Moscow Mitch” has some chutzpah in refusing the Democrats leave to replace an ailing Diane Feinstein on the Senate Judicial Committee… considering the shimmying and sliding […] he has performed in order to push through the confirmation process his hand-picked and (mostly) unqualified conservative judges.
Poland has begun building a state-of-the-art electronic barrier at its land border with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave to monitor and counteract any illegal activity, the Polish interior minister said Tuesday.
The barrier, which will be equipped with 24-hour monitoring cameras and motion detectors, will run for 210 kilometers (130 miles) and is due to be completed in the fall…
Last year, Poland, which is an EU member, built a wall on its border with Belarus, a Russian ally, to stop a massive illegal inflow of migrants. Warsaw said the crossings were organized by the Belarus and Russian authorities to destabilize Poland and the rest of the EU…
“There is and has been an ongoing investigation into multiple, significant violation(s) of the Oklahoma Security of Communications Act … which states that it is illegal to secretly record a conversation in which you are not involved and do not have the consent of at least one of the involved parties,” according to the statement.
Joey Senat, a journalism professor at Oklahoma State University, said under Oklahoma law, the recording would be legal if it were obtained in a place where the officials being recorded did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Bruce Willingham, the longtime publisher of the McCurtain Gazette-News, said the recording was made March 6 when he left a voice-activated recorder inside the room after a county commissioner’s meeting because he suspected the group was continuing to conduct county business after the meeting had ended in violation of the state’s Open Meeting Act.
Willingham said he twice spoke with his attorneys to be sure he was doing nothing illegal…
Paul K @ #297, thanks for signing in! OK, that does it – I’m going to have to move it back to the top of my reading list, especially since almost everything I’ve read lately has been making me angry.
There has been a decidedly downbeat mood among many U.S. analysts when it comes to the potential of any Ukrainian military counteroffensive and to the ultimate outcome of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion. Some of those analysts are now raising proposals that are invariably pitched as a means of generating “lasting peace,” but all of which come down to rewarding Vladimir Putin and limiting future U.S. support for Ukraine.
Some of these negative assessments point to one of the documents reportedly leaked by Massachusetts Air National Guard service member Jack Teixeira which was covered in The Washington Post. That report expresses significant reservations about Ukraine’s ability to restore the integrity of its territory, pointing to several areas where its forces are short of the necessary equipment and training to make a major breakthrough. That document is now several months old and was clearly intended not as an outright evaluation of Ukraine’s chances, but as a guide to things that needed to be addressed before any such advance was launched.
Almost every analysis seems to make the same assumptions and come to the same conclusions: Ukraine will attack to the south, trying to sever the “land bridge” between Russia and Crimea. That attack, even if it is successful in reaching the shores of the Sea of Azov, won’t lead to any kind of general failure of the Russian military. What happens next will be a new phase of the war. For many analysts, the best guide to what that phase will be like is what’s happening in Ukraine right now, creating a choice between a bad peace and a bloody stalemate.
A perfect example of this kind of analysis is featured in this editorial on Foreign Policy.
If those leaked documents from the Pentagon are to be believed—and I think they are—the United States needs a plan B for Ukraine. As much as we’d all like to see the swift liberation of Ukrainian territory, the under-equipped, under-trained Ukrainian forces now gearing up for a spring offensive are unlikely to make far-reaching gains against Russia’s defenses. The administration’s bold promises of an eventual Ukrainian triumph will probably not be borne out, and Ukraine will suffer additional damage in the meantime. What Ukraine needs is peace, not a protracted war of attrition against a more populous adversary whose leader does not much care about how many lives are sacrificed in the maelstrom.
That article authored by a Harvard professor, follows another Foreign Policy article from five days ago that seems to start out from a more hopeful position.
After just over a year, the war in Ukraine has turned out far better for Ukraine than most predicted. Russia’s effort to subjugate its neighbor has failed. Ukraine remains an independent, sovereign, functioning democracy, holding on to roughly 85 percent of the territory it controlled before Russia’s 2014 invasion.
But that’s the end of the good news. From there, the article takes the position that Russia’s “numerical superiority likely gives it the ability to counter Ukraine’s greater operational skill and morale, as well as its access to Western support. Accordingly, the most likely outcome of the conflict is not a complete Ukrainian victory but a bloody stalemate.”
Because of all this, both articles come ultimately to the same conclusion: The West needs to prepare for Ukraine to be unable to force Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territory. Not just from territory held since 2014, but from thousands of square kilometers captured since February 2022. And in the end, it all comes down to this …
The second prong of the West’s strategy should be to roll out later this year a plan for brokering a cease-fire and a follow-on peace process aimed at permanently ending the conflict. … as the war’s costs mount and the prospect of a military stalemate looms, it is worth pressing for a durable truce, one that could prevent renewed conflict and, even better, set the stage for a lasting peace.
What does such peace look like? With much talk about the “end of this fighting season” and how Ukraine should not continue to win “Pyrrhic victories,” it boils down to Ukrainian territory being divided between Ukraine and Russia with a demilitarized zone in-between. If that sounds familiar, it’s because this is exactly what Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was targeting from the outset.
As The Guardian reported in March 2022, “Vladimir Putin is seeking to split Ukraine into two, emulating the postwar division between North and South Korea, the invaded country’s military intelligence chief has said.”
But, even if that’s where all the smart people think this is going, there’s an alternative to drawing up that plan for a Zaporizhzhia DMZ: Let’s wait and see what Ukraine can accomplish.
Taking the ugliest, most hard-hearted, most selfish view imaginable, it’s hard to see how anyone could view what’s happened over the last year in Ukraine as anything but an enormous win for the United States and the West. For the cost of just over one-tenth of a single year’s Pentagon budget, and with shipments of equipment that was largely headed for some of those endless desert storage fields—if not the scrapyard—the ability of Russia to project military power overseas has been all but eliminated.
Who would not take that bargain? Bonus points as it was someone else who actually had to pay the enormous cost in blood and loss to make it happen, while the biggest concern in the U.S. was the price of eggs.
Oryx verifies that Russia has lost over 1,900 tanks. Ukraine puts the number over 3,600. The same set of leaked documents that includes the apparently gloomy assessment of a Ukrainian counteroffensive sets the number around 2,300. Whichever number you take, that’s about one-half of all the rolling stock available. And the quality of what remains is seriously degraded. The bulk of Russia’s T90s are gone. The T-80s are gone. The T-72s that have been the workhorse of the Russian military for four decades are gone. They’re bringing in not just T-62s and T-64s, there are verified sightings of T-55 tanks creaking into Ukraine in all their geriatric glory.
It’s not just tanks that are gone, it’s tank crews. It’s all the other experienced soldiers who accompanied those tank crews. A generation of Russia’s most capable soldiers and up-and-coming officers lay dead on the field at Bakhmut, and at places like Lyman, Snihurivka, and Bohorodychne, where Russia fought long, bloody battles. And lost.
Not only are the Russian tanks in the field now older and less capable, but the Russian troops in the field are also less experienced. When the invasion began, almost all those who crossed the border into Ukraine were in the Russian military by choice. Now such units are a rarity.
[…] On a tactical level, Russia is fighting more effectively now than when it waded into Ukraine expecting Georgia or Syria 2.0, dress uniforms at the ready. Russia is making better use of drones, and if it hasn’t learned to stage large-scale actions effectively, it’s learned how to at least heap small-scale actions into the same general area.
Even all those defensive lines—from “dragon’s teeth” to trenches—which seemed ridiculous when Russia started digging them months ago, look like a recognition that Russia doesn’t have the firepower to stand up to a direct assault. Recognizing that and preparing lines well back from the current front shows that Russia has a much greater self-awareness of its own capabilities and shortfalls than it did when rolling that “40km convoy” toward Kyiv.
Even if Ukraine fully integrates all the new Western gear; even if they make good use of Western training and tactics; even if they are immediately successful in driving for the coast (or Starobilsk, or Donetsk, or…) It may actually be impossible for Ukraine to shatter Russian forces so thoroughly that they drive Russian forces from their territory in the next few months.
What Ukraine deserves then is … more months. Months in which any suggestion that a solution less than full defeat of the Russian military is at all acceptable, must come from Ukraine. It is way too early to talk about handing over more of Ukraine to Putin and giving him the weakened, divided Ukraine he wanted a year ago.
If the West slackens in supplying Ukraine, or pressures the government in Kyiv to look for a peace plan that they don’t want, we won’t just be failing the people who have done yeoman’s work in making the whole world a better place, we’ll be extending a lifeline to Putin, and to the whole concept of war for territorial gain.
What the West has given to Ukraine, and what the West owes Ukraine are vastly different things. If there’s anything we need to plan for, it should be how we recognize that when this is all over.
Siberia was on a cooling trend for 7,638 years before the industrial revolution. Today the vast frozen region at the top of the world is warming four to seven times faster than the rest of the planet, which is directly linked to greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. […]
That is not the only problem in Siberia; Vladimir Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine have stopped all international climate research in the frozen but rapidly thawing carbon-rich permafrost. The Siberian climate researchers and activists have been labeled as foreign agents, and many have fled to the West to avoid arrest or murder by Russian Authorities.
Yale 360 writes about the unprecedented temperatures and ramifications of wildfires, rapid permafrost thaw, and rising sea temperatures in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean are scaring the daylights out of climate scientists as the world flies blind in a highly significant region of the earth climate system. [video at the link]
Scientists analyzed tree rings in partially fossilized wood from Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula to track summer temperatures over the last 7,638 years — tree rings tend to be wider in warm, wet years and thinner in colder, drier years. The wood samples, collected in expeditions carried out over the last four decades, revealed a multi-millennial cooling trend that abruptly reversed at the onset of the Industrial Revolution.
The long-term decline in Siberia’s summer temperatures is consistent with changes in the Earth’s orbit, while the recent warming trend reflects the sudden rise in heat-trapping carbon dioxide over the last 150 years. Today, Siberian summers are warming faster that at any time in the last 7,000 years, reaching unprecedented temperatures. The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications. […]
Scientists say the rapid rise in Arctic temperatures is setting the stage for larger and more intense fires. Over the last two decades, wildfires in boreal forests accounted for 70 percent of fire-related forest loss globally. So far this year, wildfires in Siberia have burned more than 8 million acres of forest, an area roughly the size of the Netherlands. More ferocious wildfires and permafrost loss threaten to unleash more greenhouse gases, spurring further warming.
[Before the invasion into Ukraine, Russia used soldiers to fight wildfires.]
[chart at the link: shows rapidly warming temps at from the start of the Industrial Revolution to now.]
Russia has half of the Arctic land mass within its borders and jurisdiction over most of the Arctic Ocean.
How Tensions With Russia Are Jeopardizing Key Arctic Research
“So much of what we need to know about these impacts is being lost,” Regehr says. “It’s hard to see how we are going to be able to resume the science without the government and non-government funding [for] us and the Russians, and without us being there to work with their scientists.” […]
Scientists from around the globe have collaborated in the Arctic at least since the Cold War. Three years after the Cuban missile crisis, representatives from the Soviet Union attended the first of many circumpolar meetings on the study of polar bears, which were in serious decline from overhunting. The Soviet Union was a signatory to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, which went into effect in 1973, and the five-nation Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears, which went into force three years later.
The Russians have also been intimately involved with the International Maritime Organization and the World Meteorological Organization, […]
[Tweet, and video of climate protest in Moscow.]
‘Foreign agents’: Inside the Russian climate movement taking the government to court
The climate case was submitted on 11 September. Five days later, Russia withdrew from the European Convention on Human Rights. This case may turn out to be the last the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) hears from the country.
18 individuals and two organisations filed the lawsuit, despite considerable risks from crackdowns on state opposition.
Russian politicians accused those behind the lawsuit of using the “myth” of climate change to launch a “large-scale legal sabotage”. Chairman of the Just Russia party Sergei Mironov called it a “direct preparation for a new propaganda campaign against our countries and outright blackmail of the Russian leadership”. [Bullshit, bullshitting propaganda, also, it is right wing nonsense.]
[…] Aleksandra Koroleva from Ecodefense! says there are now 70 organisations on the list of foreign agents, 19 people on the register of individuals and 172 people and organisations recognised as media foreign agents. […] by 2021, 22 of the 32 environmental organisations that were initially added to the list had closed. Others have struggled to survive by adapting to tightening restrictions on their operations.
Russia, of course, is not alone in demonizing the climate movement. [Tweet and video from the UK.]
‘Violent’ Climate Activists Next Global ThreatSays Lobbying Group Funded by Russia and Big Oil
[…] Vladimir Putin’s aim is to sow chaos in Europe. That is why it’s particularly significant that this British national security lobbying group funded by four giant oil and gas firms, several NATO members, along with the Russian Government, is warning that climate activists will turn to “violence”.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies […] is funded by some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel majors – including BP, Chevron, Shell and Equinor, as well as the British Army, US military, other Western governments, private military contractors, and authoritarian Gulf regimes.
It also receives funding from the Russian Government – the biggest oil and gas exporter in the world.
However, this detail was quietly removed from the IISS’ website without notice, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Its new paper claims that “violent” climate activism is among the world’s top climate-related security threats.
Hoping to repeat his past success with NFTs, former President Donald Trump has launched a second collection of digital trading cards, with tens of thousands of new collectibles now available for mint. But prices for the controversial politician’s original NFT set have quickly plummeted now that the total supply has more than doubled…
ondrbaksays
@295
“Подачка” in the original text is not just a handout, it’s a kind of handout that costs nearly nothing to the giver and taking it is humiliating to the receiver. The origin of the term is leftover food thrown to dogs. The term implies very unequal status of the parties in the exchange and is often used by the receiving party when rejecting the ‘handout’ precisely on the grounds that it is humiliating.
I’m not entirely sure what Prigozhyn meant by the word in that particular sentence, but reading the preceding paragraphs when he speculates about the US/West being more interested in the slow decline of the quality of life and consequently the moral or the russian population which could lead to general acceptance of some kind of negotiations and of giving away occupied territories in exchange for something that would improve the quality of life, I think “подачки” refers to whatever the US/West will propose in exchange for russia’s withdrawing its troops, which would presumably be something trivial for the US/West and insulting to the russian lives lost and therefore humiliating to russia and therefore “подачка”.
Federal investigators say BNSF railroad is analyzing a section of fractured rail after last month’s fiery derailment that prompted evacuations in southwest Minnesota, but they didn’t say definitively that the broken rail caused the crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board issued its preliminary report Tuesday on the March 30 derailment that forced about 800 people from their homes in Raymond, Minnesota, after 10 ethanol cars derailed and several of them caught fire from the fuel additive leak. Those ethanol cars were among 23 cars that came off the tracks shortly before 1 a.m. that day…
A TALE OF TWO VISITS
This morning, there are reports that Vladimir Putin is visiting occupied areas in Ukraine. For Putin, that apparently means arriving by helicopter in an area at least 150 km away from any active front. There Putin shook hands with one (count ‘em) officer and walked one (count ‘em) block along a street in an area where there seems to have been no fighting or damage.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was back at the front, visiting with soldiers in Avdiivka, a suburb of occupied Donetsk, which has been on the front every single day since Russia invaded. Avdiivka has been second only to Bakhmut in Russia’s ongoing efforts to capture the town, but it, and the rest of the lines around Donetsk, have held firm.
It’s genuinely astounding that every day of this invasion, Ukraine has been less than 10km away from one of the “regional capitals” of Russia’s occupation. It says something about the two sides’ relative goals: While Ukraine has certainly fired into military targets in and around Donetsk, it has made no effort to flatten the city as Russia has to every village, town, or city on the Ukrainian side of the front. [video at the link]
DON’T PULL THE TRIGGER UNTIL THE GUN IS LOADED
This morning, there are more good signs that, while a counteroffensive is coming, it may not be coming for several more weeks. The Canadian military provided some nice pictures this morning of the last Leopard 2 tanks being loaded for delivery. Because of flight limitations, it’s likely these tanks actually made their way to Poland or Germany, and are threading into Ukraine by rail. [Image of Leopard 2 tank being transported on a royal Canadian Air Force plane.]
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials seem anxious to test out the capabilities of the speedy AMX-10rc (which I know we’ve all agreed not to call a tank because it has wheels, but certainly seems like a light tank … with wheels). [Tweet and video at the link: “[…] we agreed to call the AMX-10 the “sniper rifle on the fast wheels.”
Seeing this hardware on the ground in Ukraine is certainly a good signal that a counteroffensive is on the way. However, assuming that Western hardware is going to play a significant role in that counteroffensive (which is, after all, far from a sure thing), the fact that we’re still seeing images of transport and training shows that this equipment hasn’t yet been kitted out for the front lines and integrated into Ukrainian units.
And then there is this less-than-happy signal from training on Leopard 2 tanks in Poland. [Tweet and images at the link]
That’s a pretty painful sight. It hopefully didn’t result in any injuries to members of a Ukrainian tank crew, but it’s a good signal of just how early these guys are when it comes to driving vehicles that are of a wholly unfamiliar design and operation.
As people keep making predictions about the Ukrainian counteroffensive, here are some unpredictions:
– It won’t necessarily happen in the south.
– It won’t necessarily involve much, if any, Western hardware.
– It won’t necessarily happen in the next few weeks.
RUSSIAN ASSAULTS TICK UPWARD
After weeks of a downward trend, the Ukrainian General Staff reported repelling at least 70 Russian attacks in their latest situation report. Not only did there seem to be an increase in activity, but there were also reports of assaults in areas that have been relatively quiet over the last few weeks.
Kupyansk: Russia reportedly tried to attack the town of Synkivka. In some ways, this is a good sign, as several analysts had written this town off as Russian-occupied some time ago. Ukraine, it seems, is still there. Also of interest, there are some signals of fighting far to the north, near the Russian border at the edge of the Kharkiv oblast.
Spirne: This town, which is about halfway between Severodonetsk and Bakhmut, is an interesting case. Ukraine actually made an assault to the east two weeks ago, liberating an area that penetrated about 1km into Russian-occupied territory. So far, they’ve held this little spike of land against repeated Russian assaults.
Bakhmut: In addition to fighting in the city, Russia reportedly made another unsuccessful run at Ivaniske. Russian sources report that Ukraine is “massing forces” north and south of Bakhmut. No confirmation that this is true.
Avdiivka: The town Zelenskyy visited today was also the center of another Russian assault. Which failed. Not for the first time, the Ukrainian president probably got a firsthand look at some active fighting.
Marinka: Reportedly, there were numerous assaults on this location, which comes right behind Bakhmut and Avdiivka in the number of Russian attempts over the last month. No gains by Russia.
Vuhledar: Russia did not attempt to attack Vuhledar. That seems worth noting.
The number of locations shelled also seemed to tick up in the last 24 hours. Does that mean Russia has unearthed another collection of old artillery shells (which, in some reports, have a detonation rate of less than 50%), or is this a temporary bump? Stay tuned.
FAREWELL FROM SWEDEN
Time for another of those videos in which trainers are giving a send-off to the troops who have been training with them for the last weeks or months. [video at the link]
ondrbak @309, thank you for that additional information:
[…] it’s a kind of handout that costs nearly nothing to the giver and taking it is humiliating to the receiver. The origin of the term is leftover food thrown to dogs. […]
Sounds like something Prigozhyn would typically say. I think he is full of braggadocio and also thin-skinned at the same time. Sounds a bit like Trump.
Wonkette: “FDA Approves Second Bivalent Booster Shots For Some”
The Food and Drug Administration has approved a second dose of the updated COVID booster shot that came out last fall, for older people and folks with compromised immune systems. That would be the “bivalent” boosters that were developed to protect against the original virus and the Omicron variant of the virus. The booster will be available to people over the age of 65 four months after their last dose, and to those with weakened immune systems two months after their last shot. Those guidelines apply to both the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech boosters.
On top of that, the FDA authorized making the updated vaccines the standard for all COVID vaccines from here on in, which means that anyone who hasn’t been vaccinated yet will get a single dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine instead of the two-dose vaccines that were originally rolled out in December 2020.
Next, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet with its vaccine advisory panel on Wednesday; once the CDC signs off on the new second dose plan, boosters can begin being given immediately.
As always, anti-vaxxers are still recommended to take a daily helping of STFU.
So far, the CDC says that only around 42 percent of Americans over 65 have received a first dose of the bivalent booster, and while virtually all Americans are able to get it, fewer than 17 percent of us have done so.
The Washington Post notes that the health agencies “will not formally urge that people get a second booster. Instead, the ‘permissive’ policy says they may get a second dose if they want.”
Experts have expressed differing views on the necessity of a second bivalent dose. While some say little data exists to justify it, others believe the extra shot is a good option for high-risk individuals. The United Kingdom and Canada already are offering spring booster shots for vulnerable individuals.
Since the effectiveness of the COVID vaccine wanes over time, you may as well get the second bivalent booster if you qualify, and you should definitely get a first one if you haven’t yet, since the vaccine has a good safety record and does a good job of protecting against hospitalization and death.
NBC News points out that while the two Omicron subvariants the bivalent vaccines were designed to protect against are no longer circulating in the US, the vaccines still offer pretty good protection against the current prevalent strain, another Omicron subvariant called XBB.1.5:
A CDC report published in January found that the updated Covid boosters reduced the risk of Covid infection from the XBB.1.5 subvariant by nearly half. Another study, published by Israeli researchers in the Lancet this month, found that the Covid boosters reduced the risk of hospitalization in people 65 and older by 72%. Neither study, however, looked at the effects of receiving two doses of the bivalent booster.
Going forward, the Post says that the FDA still plans to recommend that people get a COVID vaccine annually, in the fall when they get their flu vaccine [Good plan.]:
The FDA and its advisers hope the simplified schedule will encourage more people to get coronavirus vaccine doses. Officials will select a reformulated dose in coming months based on which coronavirus strain scientists think is most likely to be circulating in fall and winter.
Under that blueprint, most people, whether vaccinated or not, would be urged to receive a single annual dose of a coronavirus shot.
Even though Congress hasn’t authorized updated funding for COVID programs, the Post reports the shots will remain free of cost regardless of whether eligible people have insurance or not, since the “government has an ample supply.” Should that supply be exhausted, people with health insurance will still get free shots, but people on private insurance will want to make sure their providers are in network. The uninsured may have to pay, though, unless more funding comes from Congress. Freaking America, man.
Get your free booster shot now.
tomhsays
Fox/Dominion have settled their lawsuit, after the jury was seated and opening statements were about to begin. Term are not known.
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #313…
Saw that news earlier today. As soon as the second booster approvals clear the CDC and become official, I’ll get one. What with being 74. Then a third of whatever formulation they come up with in the Fall.
Tethyssays
From the train derailment article in #310
The fire from those leaking ethanol cars damaged the gaskets on three other ethanol cars nearby, causing them to leak as well, even though the gaskets were rated to withstand temperatures up to 225 degrees Fahrenheit (107.2 degrees Celsius).
I hope this is an error. Fires generally exceed the boiling point of water by far more than 13 degrees. Even if they meant the gasket is rated to 225 Celsius/ 432 Fahrenheit, the fire safety issue is obvious. I fact checked Ray Bradbury to be sure of my numbers, and the top result confirms that paper combusts at Fahrenheit 451.
“The ignition temperature of paper is 451 degrees Fahrenheit, or 233 degrees Celsius. Many people know this value from the Ray Bradbury novel, Fahrenheit 451, an anti-utopian tale about a society where firemen are in charge of burning books instead of stopping fires.”
Ethanol fires are considerably hotter than that.
Reginald Selkirksays
@314: Very exciting, interested to see the details. I imagine it is much closer to Dominion’s position than Fox’s.
KGsays
Another senior SNP official – the party treasurer, Colin Beattie – has been arrested today in connection with the party’s funding, overshadowing Humza Yousaf’s attempted relaunch in the Scottish Parliament. You have to wonder if the timing was entirely coincidental. Beattie apparently supported multi-bigot Kate Forbes against Yousaf in the leadership election.in the
As an Army program tries to improve service members’ mental—and spiritual—well-being, nonbelievers see a chance to address bias
KGsays
Disappointed to learn Dominion have reached a settlement with Fox. The latter will undoubtedly retrun to their lies as soon as they think they can get away with it.
Contemporary atheism is not simply a denial of all religions; it’s really an ideology… Here are five essential points to enrich a Christian’s knowledge, and to realize that atheism is not so open-minded to evidence as it claims…
tomhsays
Re: Dominion
The settlement includes a $787.5 million payment from Fox, according to Dominion’s lawyers.
The $787.5 million payment cited by Dominion represents roughly half of the $1.6 billion that the company initially asked for in damages. Fox is still facing a similar defamation suit from another plaintiff involved in voting technology, Smartmatic.
A Smartmatic spokesman said in a statement: “Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign. Smartmatic will expose the rest.”
Reginald Selkirksays
@320: A settlement will come with terms. These terms are not yet known. I would presume that Fox desisting from repeating claims against Dominion are a baseline requirement.
What I think Fox News will learn from this settlement is: we can lie all the time if that’s what we like … we just have to avoid connecting those lies to the name of a specific company.
Tucker Carlson lied recently about the status of the war in Ukraine.
Fox did issue a statement. “We acknowledge the Court’s finding” sounds like weasel words to me.
[…] Fox issued a statement addressing the settlement, which briefly admits that it aired falsehoods:
“We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards. We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”
Fox has never had a “commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”
tomhsays
NYT:
Under the terms of the settlement, Fox News will not have to apologize or admit to spreading false claims on network programming, according to a person familiar with the details of the agreement.
Dominion may have settled this suit, but its legal pursuits are far from over. The company still has defamation suits related to allegations of election fraud pending against Fox competitors Newsmax and OAN, as well as against the MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne, and against Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, both former lawyers for Donald J. Trump.
Fox News won’t have to issue on-air retraction for Dominion comments
Fox News, as part of a settlement reached Tuesday that resolves Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit, will not have to issue an on-air correction or apology for the false statements made about the voting technology company in the weeks and months after the 2020 election, according to two people close to the network.
NYT:
Here are the other legal cases Fox is entangled in.
SMARTMATIC
Smartmatic, another election technology company, filed a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox in February 2021, accusing the news network of falsely implicating the company in a bogus narrative about vote rigging in the 2020 election.
“Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign,” a Smartmatic spokesman said in a statement on Tuesday. “Smartmatic will expose the rest.”
Smartmatic said in its complaint that Fox knowingly aired more than 100 false statements. A day after the suit was filed, Fox Business canceled the show of Lou Dobbs, who was named as a defendant.
In February, a New York appeals court denied Fox’s request to dismiss the case, and last month a New York judge agreed the case could proceed. A trial date has not been set.
A Fox News spokeswoman said in a statement: “We are confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected while the damages claims in this case are outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis. ”
ABBY GROSSBERG
On March 20, Fox News producer Abby Grossberg, who had worked with the hosts Maria Bartiromo and Tucker Carlson, filed two lawsuits against the company, in Delaware and in New York, saying that Fox’s lawyers had pushed her to give a misleading deposition in the Dominion case and alleging a hostile and discriminatory work environment. Ms. Grossberg was fired after filing the complaints.
“We will continue to vigorously defend Fox against Ms. Grossberg’s unmeritorious legal claims, which are riddled with false allegations against Fox and our employees,” a Fox News spokeswoman said.
CRIKEY NEWS
In this case, filed in August 2022, Lachlan Murdoch, the C.E.O. of Fox Corporation, is the one suing for libel.
Mr. Murdoch has accused Crikey News, a small Australian website, of defaming him after it published a column linking a “Murdoch” to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots as an “unindicted co-conspirator.”
Crikey recently amended its defense to include documents and testimony from the Dominion case. The lawsuit is expected to go to trial in Sydney, Australia, in October.
Pierce R. Butlersays
ondrbak @ # 309 – Thanks!
KG @ # 320: … Fox… will undoubtedly [return] to their lies as soon as they think they can get away with it.
Return? When did they depart? I must’ve blinked and missed it.
SpaceX is launching another batch of Starlink […] (April 19)
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 21 […] “V2 mini” satellites
[…]
SpaceX already has over 4,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, […] The company has regulatory approval to launch up to 12,000 more Starlink craft and is seeking permission to add a whopping 30,000 more.
[…]
the company’s massive Starship rocket [is scheduled for April 20].
[…] the billionaire space race has absolutely destroyed my love of rockets.
10 years ago, I definitely would have been paying close attention to the current giant SpaceX launch. But because I know it’s going to be used to launch hundreds of unregulated, unsafe, polluting, for-profit Starlink satellites at once, I just can’t look. […]
A Tennessee man and his mother were convicted on Tuesday of charges that they stormed the Capitol, where they brought plastic zip-tie handcuffs into the Senate gallery as a mob attacked the building, court records show.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth convicted Eric Munchel and his mother, Lisa Eisenhart, on all 10 counts in their indictment, including a charge that they conspired to obstruct Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory on Jan. 6, 2021. The judge is scheduled to sentence both of them Sept. 8.
Lamberth decided the case without a jury after a “stipulated bench trial,” an unusual legal proceeding in which defendants do not admit guilt to charges but agree with prosecutors that certain facts are true. At least three dozen Capitol riot defendants have resolved their cases that way — which allows defendants to preserve their right to an appeal — rather than opting for a traditional trial or pleading guilty…
New York’s Senate confirmed Rowan Wilson as the state’s first Black chief judge Tuesday, two months after lawmakers dealt Gov. Kathy Hochul a political defeat by rejecting her initial nominee for the top court post…
“Big energy in liberal media corridors as Fox News is punished for foolish coverage of the 2020 election,” O’Reilly said in a statement on his website. “This is what happens when money becomes more important than honest information. Since I left FNC (Fox News Corp), the template changed from ‘Fair and Balanced’ to ‘tell the audience what it wants to hear.’”…
“Tide goes in, tide goes out.”
Or is it “Garbage in, garbage out”? I can never keep those two straight.
A Northern California man was found guilty Monday of assaulting officers with bear spray and obstructing the certification of 2020 election results at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Sean Michael McHugh could serve up to 20 years in prison and three years of supervised release because of his role at the insurrection, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates said during the half-day bench trial on Monday. McHugh, 35, also could pay up to $250,000 in fines and other penalties…
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog:
The Patriot air defence systems the Ukrainian government had called for to help the country defend itself from air attacks have arrived, according to Ukraine’s defence minister.
Oleksii Reznikov posted on Twitter that “our beautiful sky becomes more secure because Patriot air defence systems have arrived in Ukraine”.
He thanked the US, German and Dutch governments for providing them. Reznikov said he had first lobbied for the Patriots in August 2021, before the invasion, in a visit to the US.
The lack of a considerable Ukrainian air force since the early stages of the invasion has meant Ukraine has been laid bare to Russian air attacks by jets.
Ukrainian government ministers were still urging foreign powers to provide the missile systems as recently as December, as the US drew up plans to supply them.
The Dutch government then agreed in January to also send the batteries.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has visited the Volyn region of Ukraine which borders with Belarus and Poland, where he praised the work of border guards.
In a video posted on Telegram he said: “There are many important issues – equipment and protection of the state border, socioeconomic and current security situation in the region, arrangement of fortification and defence engineering structures.
“It is an honour for me to be here today to thank our border guards for protecting the state border,” Ukraine’s president wrote under footage showing him meeting and addressing border guards.
Audrey Dutton at Idaho Capital Sun is reporting an Idaho judge issued a civil arrest warrant on Tuesday for Ammon Bundy after he repeatedly failed to appear in court or respond to a lawsuit filed by St. Luke’s Health System.
Ada County Judge Lynn Norton found probable cause that Bundy committed contempt and set his bail at $10,000.
In May 2022, St. Luke’s filed a lawsuit against Bundy, his gubernatorial campaign and other business entities, as well as his friend, Diego Rodriguez and Rodriguez’s organizations.
The health system alleges protests over the hospitalization of Rodriguez’s infant grandson last year that resulted in redirection of emergency services and a lockdown of the downtown Boise campus were simply a “grift” to enrich themselves and boost their own publicity.
It could take several days for Bundy to be arraigned.
Norton considered a few other motions made by St. Luke’s legal team, including a request for a “discovery referee” to help compel Bundy and Rodriguez, his co-defendant, to produce documents and other records that can be used at trial. Norton said she would rule on the request at a later date.
Norton also ordered that Bundy, Rodriguez, as well as other business entities controlled by one or the other, are required to appear for depositions.
Nearly six years after a gathering of white nationalists in Charlottesville erupted in violent clashes with counter-protesters, a grand jury in Virginia indicted multiple people on felony charges for carrying flaming torches with the intent to intimidate.
The Albemarle county commonwealth’s attorney said in a news release that the indictments relate to events on 11 August 2017, when white nationalists carrying torches marched through the campus of the University of Virginia.
Some chanted: “Jews will not replace us.”
Donald Trump, who was then president, set off a firestorm of criticism when he said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the clashes between white nationalists and anti-racist demonstrators in Charlottesville.
On Tuesday, the commonwealth’s attorney, James Hingeley, did not say how many people had been indicted.
According to court records, three indictments have been unsealed. They are against William Zachary Smith, of Nacona, Texas; Tyler Bradley Dykes, of Bluffton, South Carolina; and Dallas Medina, of Ravenna, Ohio.
Each is charged with a single count of burning an object with the intent of intimidating a person or group of people. The charge carries a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison.
…
The indictments, issued in February but only recently unsealed, come almost six years after the largest gathering of white nationalists in a decade….
So just how explosive is this C4 data set? An analysis of the scraped data from The Washington Post Wednesday shows C4 mostly relied on some heinous sources for its text. The top four most-used sites were Google Patents (making up .46% of all tokens), Wikipedia (.19%), Scribd (.07%), and The New York Times’ website (.06%). At the same time, C4 used large swaths of text from Russian propaganda site Russia Today and the ultra-right-wing Breitbart. Both those were in the top 200 sites trawled for text…
The Post’s report is all the more enlightening considering just how hard it is to actually find information about AI training.
I think it’s Kate Crawford in the interview @ #284 who talks about how they can scrape these garbage sites, and then the tool generates content reflecting that, which then goes online and is itself scraped, potentially leading to an endless spiral of wrongness.
Sweden’s public radio said Tuesday that it would stop being active on Twitter, but it did not blame new labels that Elon Musk ’s social media platform has slapped on public broadcasters, leading some major North American outlets to quit tweeting.
Sveriges Radio said on its blog that Twitter has lost its relevance to Swedish audiences. National Public Radio and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, meanwhile, have pointed to Twitter’s new policy of labeling them as government-funded instititutions, saying it undermines their credibility…
He cited a recent study showing only some 7% of Swedes are on Twitter daily and said the platform “has simply changed over the years and become less important for us.” …
SC @342, “[…] an endless spiral of wrongness.” Yep. Very aptly put. Repetition is known to be one of the factors in convincing people that disinformation is truth.
Sounds sort of like Fox News. On their website they do not really inform their readers about the Dominion lawsuit.
Fox News has an article on its website right now about a thing that happened. It says there was a settlement of some kind between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems […] How much settlement? It does not say.
What exactly was this lawsuit about? Oh let’s not get lost in the weeds.
It says the judge told the lawyers for both sides that they did a very good job of lawyering! “I have been on the bench since 2010. … I think this is the best lawyering I’ve had, ever,” [Judge Eric] Davis said, adding, “I would be proud to be your judge in the future.”
The article says the settlement happened as as a trial was starting. It says a lot of people were interested in the trial!
It says some people on Donald Trump’s legal team made “false and unsubstantiated claims” about Dominion.
The end! Good 162-word article on regular journalism website Fox News!
It was written by a reporter named Joseph Wulfsohn, and it says at the bottom that if you have any hot news tips for him, you can send them on. […]
Such has been Fox News’s coverage ever since it was announced that the network had settled with Dominion for $787.5 million […] Dominion brought the case because Fox News hosts and guests blatantly and knowingly and constantly lied about the 2020 election, including advancing brazenly bullshit conspiracy theories and claims about Dominion voting machines being used to steal the election from Donald Trump.
See, Mr. Wulfsohn? Writing words is possible!
Here are some more words: There’s still a $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox News coming down the pike from voting machine company Smartmatic.
Wonkette will have more words today on the settlement itself. In this post, we’re just clowning on them trying to avoid talking about The Thing That Happened. […]
Spoiler, the story is that the primetime hosts didn’t even mention it one time. What, you thought there would be an apology? LOL. […]
[…] “Today’s settlement of $787,500,000 represents vindication and accountability. Lies have consequences,” Dominion lawyer Justin Nelson told reporters on the courthouse steps. His colleague Stephen Shackelford agreed: “Money is accountability, and we got that today from Fox.”
And before you go whining that Dominion should have refused a settlement and gone to trial for America, that’s not what corporations are for. The company is largely owned by private equity, which valued it at about $80 million in 2018. Under the most generous valuation (i.e., the number Fox’s lawyers ran with), it’s worth $220 million today. How could you justify to shareholders risking three quarters of a billion dollars on the whims of 12 anonymous strangers in service of some larger civic goal? The answer is you couldn’t. And even a $3 billion dollar verdict wouldn’t have put Fox out of business, since that represents less than one quarter’s profits for the company.
But in two years of discovery, Dominion has given us an unprecedented look inside Fox, and all those documents remain in the public record. Meanwhile, Dominion’s competitor Smartmatic has a pending $2.7 billion suit against Fox in New York, shareholders are suing the Murdochs for recklessly risking profits by airing all this defamatory shit, and Dominion is still suing OAN and Newsmax, as well as various Big Lie purveyors like Mike Lindell.
It sucks that we’re not going to get the show trial we all wanted and deserved, but we got a lot out of this case. And the bloodletting isn’t over.
With the 11th meeting of allies in support of Ukraine beginning at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday, Ukraine is already sending a clear message about what it needs from the Western nations. Despite what most people assume, the top of that list isn’t more tanks, or even highly desired modern fighter jets. It’s more air defenses.
Ukraine has asked for, and received, multiple air defense systems over the course of the invasion. Those systems have shot down hundreds of Russian missiles and hundreds more Iranian-made drones. However, before it launches any counteroffensive, Ukraine needs to improve its air defenses, not just in the few cities where defenses are now emplaced, but everywhere along the line.
It’s not just the longer-range systems to protect its cities that Ukraine is after this time. It has a particular interest in shorter-range systems that can take out drones and aircraft as well as help to protect against incoming missiles. Because as Ukraine moves closer to its much talked about counteroffensive, preventing Russia from having anything that approaches air superiority is critical to Ukraine’s success. [Image of Patriot Missile Defense system on its way to Ukraine.]
On March 9, Russia directed a massive barrage of 81 missiles at Ukrainian cities, largely targeting civilian infrastructure and apartment buildings. That attack included cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and six of Russia’s hypersonic Kh-47M2 Kinzhal missiles. Despite the donations of air defense systems that have reached Ukraine over the last year, only 34 of those missiles were shot down before reaching their targets. Multiple people died in at least four cities, and half of Kyiv was once again without power for days following the attack.
That attack, now over a month ago, was the last large-scale missile attack Russia has launched against Ukraine–which is notable. Before last month, attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure were coming with much greater frequency. There were six such strikes last October alone as well as three in November, five in December, three in January, three in February, one in March, and then … pause.
But it’s not as if Russia’s missiles have gone silent. Smaller attacks continue almost daily, most of them using a mix of the S-300 missiles that constitute much of Russia’s remaining stock, often supplemented by Iranian-made drones. On Tuesday night in Ukraine, there were four reported missiles launched by Russia, causing explosions in Odesa and Vovchansk that resulted in at least two deaths. [tweet and image at the link]
In addition, shorter-range weapons were fired into towns and villages near the border in at least 60 locations. That’s a typical night—and exactly the kind of thing Ukraine needs to stop if it’s going to protect both its people and its infrastructure.
This week, Ukraine has received more major air defense systems that will help to protect cities and towns against this kind of attack. That includes both additional U.S.-made MIM-104 Patriot Missile Defense systems and German medium-range IRIS-T SLM systems. These systems will join a growing network of overlapping systems that have been centered around Ukraine’s major cities. [Map showing airspace that various air defense systems of the Ukrainian Armed Forces can cover.]
However, not only are some missiles continuing to run this gauntlet of defenses, Russia seems more than willing to expend a multimillion-dollar missile to knock down a few homes or take out an electrical substation in a small village. So long as that’s true, it’s unlikely Ukraine will ever have enough air defenses. There will always be gaps, places where Russia can drop a warhead that takes lives and damages property. The localized air defense systems allow Ukraine to be quite effective against any kind of strategic attack. They don’t allow Ukraine to protect from the sort of terror attacks Russia is delivering.
The decline in major Russian missile attacks may mean that phase of the war is over, though it’s almost certain Russia still has enough missiles, especially S-300 missiles, to launch many more significant attacks. The nightly horror in places like Vovchansk may continue so long as Russia’s invasion continues—or Russian forces are pushed back out of range of the town.
Ukraine will be seeking still more of these air defense systems at Ramstein as it attempts to minimize the impact of Russian missiles. […]
What Ukraine really wants–in large quantities and soon–from its Western allies are systems that are short-range and portable. That primarily consists of two kinds of systems:
– Anti-aircraft guns, such as the Soviet 2K22 Tunguska.
– Surface to air missile systems, such as the American MIM-23 Hawk.
– Man-portable air defense systems, such as the French Mistral.
So far, documented losses show that Ukraine has lost nine anti-aircraft guns and 91 surface-to-air systems. In addition, they’ve expended hundreds, if not thousands, of the man-portable missiles. Their record for all this is pretty good, with at least 79 Russian jets and 81 Russian helicopters recorded as down. But when it comes to a counteroffensive, Ukraine needs to step up its anti-aircraft game.
Recent attacks around Bakhmut show that Russian pilots have become more daring in attacking close to Ukrainian positions rather than firing missiles from a distance. That doesn’t mean they’ve become immune to any of the anti-aircraft systems, including the skillful use of anti-aircraft guns. [Tweet about Ukrainian forces shooting down aircraft and helicopters.]
[…] There are already some systems, like the British Stormer HVM and U.S. AN/TWQ-1 Avenger, present in Ukraine in some quantities. Other systems are there in quantities of one or two. It’s likely Ukraine is going to be seeking more of what it already has since this seems like a poor time to be introducing another element to its logistical spaghetti, or to be sending crews off to train on a new system. The highest priority of all may simply be refilling the numbers of man-portable systems, which have been used heavily against aircraft, helicopters, and drones.
Ukraine has received fresh Mig-29 fighters to bolster its air force, but as it moves forward it will be moving into areas where Russia is able to scramble numbers of aircraft that will exceed anything Ukraine can get into the sky. That includes Russian jets that can stand well back from the front to deliver missiles aimed at advancing troops. Russia has also been sending messages that it intends to get out the equivalent of daisy cutters to hit Ukrainian forces.
Kremlin fantasist Sladkov says that Javelins, Abrams, Patriots, and drones are nothing in comparison with Russian aerial bombs which will soon be dropped by 40 Russian planes simultaneously.
Ukraine needs protection from Russian aircraft to break Russian lines, make significant gains, hold them, and retain enough force to do it again the next day. Giving them these systems is likely to be one of the least controversial asks that the allies have fielded.
The questions are going to be what they can get, and how fast can it arrive?
A pretty good rundown on how conservatives are ignoring what just happened. One really good quote, from the National Review article:
If you choose to believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen, you must believe Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion in a settlement, rather than present any of that evidence. You must believe that Fox News had a quick and easy way to win this lawsuit and simply refused to use it — even though the news distributor had more than 700 million good reasons to point to this evidence, if it existed.
Reginald Selkirksays
If you choose to believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen, you must believe …
Inability to believe wild things is not a problem for these folks.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave itself more time to decide whether a key drug that has been used by millions of women to terminate early pregnancies should remain available nationwide, its first major abortion-related controversy since overturning Roe v. Wade’s constitutional guarantee of abortion rights last year.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who had earlier put on hold until 11:59 p.m. Wednesday a lower court’s decision that imposed additional restrictions on the use of mifepristone, extended the stay until Friday.
The justices are considering a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that rolled back the FDA’s actions since 2016 — allowing patients to get mifepristone through the mail, authorizing prescriptions by medical professionals other than doctors and approving the drug’s use up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy, instead of seven.
The appeals court action followed U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s recent ruling in Texas to undo the FDA’s approval of mifepristone more than two decades ago. More than 5 million women have since used the drug — in combination with a second pill, misoprostol — to end their pregnancies.
The Biden administration, pharmaceutical companies and abortion rights groups called the legal challenges to mifepristone from anti-abortion groups an unprecedented attack on the expertise of the FDA, which relied on data from dozens of clinical trials when it approved the drug.
Minnesota State Senator Eric Lucero, a Republican, unveiled the newest Republican plan to Protect Our Children. And it’s such a doozy that it really can’t be explained by anyone but the man himself, so take it away … senator? [video at the link]
Well now, that’s a yikes and a half.
Lucero here is promoting his proposed amendment to HF-1999, Amendment A-1, which the chyron here helpfully identifies as “Prohibiting funds to be used for any activities related to the occult, divination, necromancy, soothsaying, Santanism, pedophilia.” We’ll assume that “Santanism” is a typo […]
What the banana-coated Republican was proposing was simple enough. He doesn’t want state funding to be used for any form of “art” that could be used to “channel” any of those things:
Sin is real. Sin. S-I-N. Is real. Sin is evil. Sin can exist in any institution. And we need to work hard, as the Minnesota Senate, to protect our young, vulnerable children’s minds against these terrible, wicked, evil practices.
And unfortunately, because all humans are subjected to potentially being corrupted by sin, we need to examine ALL institutions to prohibit such funds.
There are practices out there that seek to groom and corrupt the minds of young children, to engage in sexual perversion. And those wicked people manifest themselves in many different areas of our society.
One of those areas that they have manifested themselves is in the areas of the arts, and I want to make sure that taxpayer dollars do not fall into the hands of these wicked, vile people that push sexual perversion, gender confusion, that might come to our capital and in displays of abomination, parade themselves around the rotunda.
And I do not want pictures, plays, theater, sculptures, or any other type of art, to be used to channel the occult, to promote the occult or any of its variations, Satanism, and the wicked, evil practice of grooming young children such as pedophilia.
It goes without saying that religious conservatives believe more strongly in the occult than anyone else in America. Not even Satanists believe in Satan as much as midwestern Christians do […]
It also goes without saying that Bananadude is also quite vigorous in his belief that “gender confusion” and “necromancy” are essentially the same problem, which is … remarkable? Is that the word we’re looking for?
Ah, batshit. The word for it is batshit. The man’s intent is clearly to punish the “vile people” that believe “gender confusion” might be a thing, the people who come to his office to parade around the rotunda, but according to him, those people are indistinguishable from pedophiles, Satanists, Ouija board purchasers, and people who attend certain plays.
That is not, however, why we are here today. We are here because Minnesota State Senator Eric Lucero is yet another Republican who claims to support small government and hate government overreach, only to like government overreach just fine when it comes to retaliating against groups he doesn’t like.
I’m referring here, of course, to necromancers.
[…] it’s probably notable that while his little speech was full of buzzwords like “gender confusion” and “grooming,” his actual amendment went heavy on prohibitions against “the occult,” “divination,” and “necromancy.” You’re not allowed to “channel” any of those things in art, […] no raising the dead, communicating with the dead, or asking the dead for lottery numbers.
If you are going to do any of those things, the state is strictly banned from providing funding for your “activities.” You will raise the dead on your own dime, Minnesota necromancers […]
There will be no public performances of “Hamlet” in Eric Lucero’s Minnesota, and no “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” “Hamlet” is unmistakably a story of the occult, complete with talking ghost; “Midsummer” is absolutely riddled with fairies. Neither of these plays is the sort of thing Banana Fits wants to expose Minnesota children to. It goes without saying that the 1990 Patrick Swayze film “Ghost” is out; those damn Narnia books that were omnipresent in school libraries will finally be put under lock and key. “The Wizard of Oz” was devil worship to begin with, and “Sesame Street” and its talking animal-monster-things were already on thin ice for decades of promoting math.
Lucero’s amendment doesn’t just strip funding for actual divinations and necromancy, but from any “art” attempting to “promote” those things. Handing out Halloween candy on state property would appear to be a violation […]
And yet none of that is as enraging as Lucero’s demand that actual divination and necromancy be stripped of state funding. Do you know how hard it is to make ends meet as a necromancer? Do you have any idea?
[…] making no attempt to distinguish between actual necromancy or spirit-raising and the merely attempted kind. This is the sort of thing that is enraging to professional necromancers […]
What about CPR? Does Lucaro intend to withhold public funds from CPR training? If not, where does he intend to draw that line instead?
In much the same way that pandemic pseudo-experts are popping out of the woodwork to tweetsplain “gain of function” research to the world’s top biologists, Minnesota Republicans are now attempting to pass laws premised on an understanding of the occult that would lump performances of Hamlet in with “gender confusion” and ninth-order magic circle construction. It’s the same anti-science, anti-book-learning nonsense we’ve always gotten from state Republicans. I’m not saying you need to have successfully reanimated a corpse before you’re allowed to even weigh in on these things, but it’s notable that Lucero was apparently unable to find even one professional necromancer or spiritologist to solicit testimony from.
[…] Famous necromancers like the very wealthy Peter Thiel are, quite literally, researching the methods of immortality. They want to go beyond current medical science to explore post-medical possibilities.
[…] According to the Minnesota senator, none of this matters. It is the equivalent of pedophilia in his mind. He imagines necromancers and their employees “parading around the rotunda” in “displays of abomination.”
Listen, bananacoat. Have you ever tried digging a six-foot hole in the ground? Necromancers work harder in a single night than you’ve done in your whole off-the-rack life.
[…] He finds some things to be “abominations” and other things not to be, and Minnesota citizens ought to think long and hard about whether they want to trust the cultural instincts of a man who owns a lemon-yellow suit.
Perhaps Lucaro could at least talk to a Minnesota-crafted zombie, before deciding who is or isn’t an “abomination.” Perhaps Lucaro has a few things to learn about how not to be rude.
Fortunately for those Minnesota citizens, they have some time to think about that. Lucero’s amendment failed, though not by much. Thirty senators voted to adopt the amendment prohibiting state funding for necromancers; 34 voted against it. The necromancers won the day.
But State Senator Eric Lucaro does not sound like a man who will take no for an answer, when it comes to deciding who in Minnesota is an “abomination” and who isn’t. We can expect to hear from him again.
The Honor Squad from Ukraine’s DaVinci Wolves battalion has filmed 11 minutes’ worth of a first-person experience in the trenches outside of Bakhmut. In this video, the members are trying to clear trenches and protect the area east of Khromove along what has been called alternately the “Road of Life” and the “Road of Death.” It’s the only paved road that can bring men and materiel in and out of the area of Bakhmut still in Ukrainian hands. However, it’s also under fire control from Russian forces to the north, making every run down the road a contest against a rain of artillery shells while dodging the burned-out hulks of vehicles that failed.
Take a deep breath before watching this, because it’s intense. And here’s a big and serious warning: There is some very close-range exchange of fire in this video. People get shot. People get killed. Those people are sometimes up close and in daylight, not distant shapes on a thermal screen. Combat takes place at a shockingly short range. All of it is set on a nightmare landscape where not a leaf on a tree or a blade of grass has survived. [Video at the link]
Even with everything this clip reveals, some of the soldiers who participated say that this was only a tiny fraction of the action that unfolded. That day also reportedly included the Honor squad enduring what was described as “the most intense artillery bombardment” ever seen around Bakhmut.
There’s a reason this group has become famous, even among all those fighting in the beleaguered city. [More video]
MIXED DOUBLES
It’s been clear that the mixture of equipment being sent to Ukraine was going to create some odd pairings. It’s not as if the U.S. has simply loaded up a battalion, or the British asked the Coldstream Guards to politely move aside so all their gear could be packed up. Systems have come in fits and starts, and they’ve been delivered in odd numbers. Sometimes, as with older M113 armored transports, those numbers support wide deployment; other times it means tucking a few oddballs into an existing unit. Often, those low-number bits of hardware won’t actually go to the front because the added complexity to the logistics chain isn’t worth it. They’ll get the honor of holding off the Belarus jugglers.
However, some of the pairings are kind of … unexpected. Like the newly formed 47th Airborne Assault Brigade, which has paired U.S. Bradley fighting vehicles with upgraded T-55 tanks given to Ukraine by Slovenia. [Tweet and video at the link]
Yes, these are the same 1950s era T-55s that we’ve been laughing over as Russia began bringing them into Ukraine to replace their destroyed T-72 fleet. However, the M-55S includes some highly significant upgrades. It’s not just a T-55 with new paint and a nicer radio. It’s a super upgraded tank with new armor, a new engine, and perhaps most importantly, a new gun that can punch way above the weight of a regular T-55.
Be watching for the exploits of the 47th Airborne. It should be interesting.
Russia may have thermobaric bombs, but Ukraine has brought their own terror weapon to Bakhmut, April 18, 2023. [Image of Ukrainian playing an accordion]
HOW A 15-YEAR-OLD KID HELPED WIN THE BATTLE OF KYIV [Tweet and video at the link]
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In his first on-air appearance since Fox News Channel settled Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit, Tucker Carlson reported that Fox News Channel did not settle Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit.
“This just in,” Carlson began his program. “Fox News Channel has not paid $787.5 million to settle the defamation lawsuit against it.”
“By not paying this money, Fox News Channel is not acknowledging that we reported any inaccurate information about the 2020 election,” he added. “In addition, we are demonstrating that we had a very, very strong case and would not have writhed like snivelling scoundrels on the witness stand.”
“Finally, Dominion Voting Systems has apologized for giving us so much grief, and, to compensate us, they’ve agreed to pay Fox News Channel $787.5 million,” he said. “Case closed.”
Carlson then discussed the network’s “huge victory over Dominion” with the Fox legal analyst and former federal judge George Santos.
If you choose to believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen, you must believe Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion in a settlement, rather than present any of that evidence.
No, they don’t. They, in fact, do not have to believe anything that isn’t convenient to them. That’s the central dogma of American Republicanism.
I get the idea of arguing from a standpoint of reason, but at some point we also have to admit that the other side simply isn’t reasonable, never wanted to be, and that pretending they are is just giving them more chances to fuck the rest of us over even harder.
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #350..
At least he didn’t go after the bane of all costumers, the Satinists. As in the cry, “Get thee behind me, Satin.”
A Florida judge rejected by voters after denying a teenage girl an abortion citing her poor school grades is in line for a seat on the state supreme court as the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, continues to turn the bench to the right.
Jared Smith will be interviewed alongside 14 others next month by a nominating commission that will make recommendations to DeSantis, who last week signed a six-week abortion ban into law.
The governor appointed Smith to the newly established sixth district court of appeal in December, four months after voters in Hillsborough county ousted him from the circuit court following his controversial ruling…
Democrats twice sought to strike remarks from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) during a Tuesday hearing, with the House Homeland Security Committee failing to reprimand her for accusing a colleague of an extramarital affair while agreeing to withdraw her comments accusing Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of being a liar.
It was a rare instance of Republicans agreeing to block Greene from speaking, an action Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) seemed to do unknowingly, appearing not to immediately realize a move to “take down” her comments versus striking them from the record terminates rights to speak in the hearing…
I just checked and I’m not surprised that she was divorced back in December.
$20 says it was due to infidelity. These people aren’t imaginative enough to accuse someone of something they haven’t done themselves.
Randy Fine (R-FL) introduced a “drag is child abuse” bill. His wife performs in a burlesque fundraiser for children, and his campaign is sponsoring the event. (Link)
whheydtsays
Re: CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ #362…
Just tell Randy Fine that you want to see his wife dance to the last section of Offenbach’s overture to Orpheus in the Underworld.
StevoRsays
Excellent positive encouraging Al Jazeera Op-ed by Andrew Mitrovica here :
Journalists are supposed to stand up to bullies. Pardon the pun, but bully for NPR and PBS. I hope more journalists and news organisations follow laudable suit.
Bit by encouraging bit, enlightened America is, to borrow a phrase, taking back its dazed and disoriented country from the grifters and charlatans who have disfigured it for notoriety and cash.
Could be confronting but interesting documentary screening on SBS TV tonight – 8.30 pm channel 3 at least for Adelaide residents. Trailer here:
SBS’s ground-breaking documentary series Asking For It explores the sexual revolution we’re all living through: one that’s taking us from the ‘sexual liberation’ of the 1960s and ‘70s to the era of ‘enthusiastic consent’. Journalist Jess Hill, (See What You Made Me Do) returns to SBS with Asking For It, reigniting a national conversation about the epidemic of sexual violence impacting millions of Australians. From schools to universities, aged care and in institutions – this series asks: how can we change our rape culture into a consent culture?
Researchers said on Wednesday they have discovered that parts of the brain region called the motor cortex that govern body movement are connected with a network involved in thinking, planning, mental arousal, pain, and control of internal organs, as well as functions such as blood pressure and heart rate.
They identified a previously unknown system within the motor cortex manifested in multiple nodes that are located in between areas of the brain already known to be responsible for movement of specific body parts – hands, feet and face – and are engaged when many different body movements are performed together.
The researchers called this system the somato-cognitive action network, or SCAN, and documented its connections to brain regions known to help set goals and plan actions…
I expect this research to be overhyped and misinterpreted.
Reginald Selkirksays
Ibid:
“Modern neuroscience does not include any kind of mind-body dualism. It’s not compatible with being a serious neuroscientist nowadays. I’m not a philosopher, but one succinct statement I like is saying, ‘The mind is what the brain does.’ The sum of the bio-computational functions of the brain makes up ‘the mind,'” said study senior author Nico Dosenbach, a neurology professor at Washington University School of Medicine.
“Since this system, the SCAN, seems to integrate abstract plans-thoughts-motivations with actual movements and physiology, it provides additional neuroanatomical explanation for why ‘the body’ and ‘the mind’ aren’t separate or separable,” Dosenbach added.
Another reason “the body” and “the mind” aren’t separate is that the supernatural doesn’t exist. But at least they’re leaning in the right direction.
Yeah I don’t do dualism. It’s more like how many parts of your mind and body do you want to develop awareness of and understand? The part that’s just you and experiences. The parts that store everyone else and their effects.
These touretteic sensations are something computational. Pieces of something we tend to talk of as a whole.
This paper makes sense. Whole body movement specific control and individual parts. There’s short-range cortical over connectivity in TS, I wonder how this research might relate to that? My whole body programs are, not so whole.
House Republicans’ plan to raise the debt limit would block President Joe Biden’s signature student debt cancellation program and take a hammer to his administration’s other student loan policies.
The bill unveiled on Monday by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and GOP leaders would nullify Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 of debt per borrower and end the freeze on monthly payments and interest…
A proposed change to next year’s Montana U.S. Senate primary that was aimed at undermining Democratic Sen. Jon Tester’s reelection chances is likely dead after a state legislative committee shelved the GOP-backed measure Wednesday…
quotetheunquotesays
@Reginald Selkirk #369
From the linked story:
Nevertheless, SpaceX officials on the webcast hailed the feat of getting the Starship and booster rocket off the launch pad for the first time, declaring the brief episode in that sense to be a successful test flight.
If that’s their idea of a “successful test flight”, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be around for one of their failures…
johnson catmansays
re quotetheunquote @372: When I heard the cheers for the explosion of the rocket, I wondered why they were cheering. Like you, I didn’t consider the destruction of the vehicle a success. And if I was scheduled to take a ride on it, I would remove my name from the list completely.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was ordered on Wednesday to pay $5 million to Robert Zeidman, a 63-year-old Trump voter who debunked Lindell’s claim that China interfered in the election based on data Lindell provided.
It’s a strange story. It started in August 2021 when Lindell claimed during a “cyber symposium” in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, that he had data proving China interfered in the election. He announced he would pay $5 million to anyone who prove him wrong, dubbing the contest, naturally, the “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge.” …
tomhsays
Since 1979 Mississippi has not allowed religious exemptions for vaccines for school immunization requirements. No more.
U.S. District Judge Sul Ozerden handed down the decision Monday in a lawsuit filed last year by several parents who say their religious beliefs have led them to keep their children unvaccinated and out of Mississippi schools.
The lawsuit, funded by the Texas-based Informed Consent Action Network, argued that Mississippi’s lack of a religious exemption for childhood vaccinations violates the U.S. Constitution.
“The State of Mississippi affords a secular exemption to those with medical reasons that prohibit vaccination, reflecting that it can accommodate students that are unvaccinated,” the network said in a statement. “It has simply chosen to not accord an exemption when it is someone’s immortal soul that a parent believes would be at risk.”
[…]
One of the families who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit believe “God has created humans with functioning immune systems that were well designed to counteract threats,” the lawsuit said…
Mississippi once had a religious exemption for childhood vaccinations, but it was overturned in 1979 by a state court judge who ruled that vaccinated children have a constitutional right to be free from associating with their unvaccinated peers.
Over the last several years, Mississippi legislators have rejected proposals to allow religious exemptions for childhood vaccinations. Health officials have argued that allowing more exemptions could lead to the spread of preventable diseases.
This leaves only California, Connecticut, Maine, New York and West Virginia with no religious exemption for school immunization requirements.
The SpaceX rocket launch was too a success. It allowed Musk to prove, once again, that private enterprise is always better and more efficient and more better and even more efficienter UNLESS it is regulated. And I would not be at all surprised if Musk and his sycophantic Musketeers claim that the reason the rocket blew up was because, somehow, of government interference and/or financing.
MANHATTAN (CN) — The Second Circuit entered a late-night reprieve Wednesday for the former assistant district attorney facing a congressional subpoena in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s criminal indictment.
Absent the emergency stay from U.S. Circuit Judge Beth Robinson, Mark Pomerantz was due to appear Thursday morning before the House Judiciary Committee. Representative Jim Jordan, who chairs that panel considers the testimony of the former Mafia prosecutor essential as it investigates the unprecedented charges that Trump faces in Manhattan.
Pomerantz had previously led the probe that culminated with the grand jury indictment late last month, but he quit the office in early 2022 when Alvin Bragg took over the Office of the Manhattan District Attorney previously held by Cyrus Vance Jr.
At Bragg’s instruction, Pomerantz has cited the ongoing criminal investigation as a reason not to testify before the committee.
The prosecutor sued last week to block Pomerantz’s subpoena, but a Trump-appointed federal judge denied Bragg’s request for a temporary restraining order on Wednesday afternoon.
Hours later, Robinson called for the matter to go before the “the first available panel” of the Second Circuit.
“It is herby ordered that an administrative stay of the return date of the subpoena is granted so that a three-judge panel may consider the motion seeking a stay pending appeal of the district court’s order…”
Courthouse News Service
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 375
Does this mean that Kent Hovind needs to pay up as well?
What can we say about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running for president? Nobody cares about that demented weirdo, starting with the Kennedy family, which is still obviously ridin’ with Biden.
But we guess he did his official “campaign announcement” yesterday (LOL), and like all Democrats do at the beginning of their campaigns, he went to see Tucker Carlson last night. Tucker: He’s the real new Iowa caucus.
[…] Tucker licked all over Kennedy like Kennedy was hiding a Snausage in his hand, but we shouldn’t take that as anything besides trolling. Tucker licked all over Donald Trump the other night, and according to Tucker’s own mouth, he hates that guy “passionately.”
“Bobby Kennedy is one of the most remarkable people we have met,” jizzed Tucker […]
Tucker gushed and gushed, and he moaned that Kennedy is being treated unfairly and “censored.” He angrily played clips of people in the media calling Kennedy a bugfuck anti-vaxxer, just because of how he is a bugfuck anti-vaxxer. He called Kennedy “Joe Biden’s leading primary opponent,” as if those words currently have any meaning.
We know one thing Tucker was excited about, and it was that when Kennedy announced his campaign, he babbled out Russian propaganda</b? like he was spitting after gargling it directly from Putin's medicine cabinet. It was the first clip Tucker played of Kennedy's speech. He said he thinks Joe Biden's interest in Ukraine is in "prolonging the war." He called it "The Ukraine" over and over and over again. (Nobody with any credibility calls it "The Ukraine." You know why?) He suggested Biden’s real goal is “regime change” in Russia. Hey, know who else gargles from the same bottle of mouthwash?
When interview time came, it was Russia time again. [video at the link]
Kennedy falsely claimed Joe Biden said “we” were in “The Ukraine” to “deplatform, to depose Vladimir Putin.” (Those are two different things, “Bobby.” Are we banning him from YouTube or are we conquering his regime?) He lied and said “we’re killing a lot of Ukrainians as pawns in a proxy war between two great powers.”
All of this is Russian propaganda, and it’s incredibly insulting to the Ukrainian people whose country was invaded by an evil genocidal lunatic and who are fighting like hell for its survival. Indeed, it denies their agency and plays right into Russian lies about how Ukraine is not even a real country.
The funniest thing we heard Kennedy say was toward the end of that clip above, when he bemoaned that there are seven Ukrainians dying for every one Russian. The way he phrased it was “seven-to-one to eight-to-one ratio.”
Wait, where have we heard that before?
Oh that’s right, we remember! That was Russian propaganda that came from doctored versions of documents that came out of the Discord leaks, which were spread around by Russian propagandist bad actors on their weirdo loser parts of the internet, which Tucker IMMEDIATELY started regurgitating on his showlast Thursday.
The original documents did not say seven Ukrainians were dying for every one Russian. (They said basically the opposite. […])
“Nobody talks about this,” said Kennedy to Tucker, which was funny because he was talking about Russian propaganda Tucker literally barfed into him through his television last week.
“What we’re being told about this war is just not true,” Kennedy concluded.
“No, it’s not true,” Tucker agreed, sounding more disappointed than surprised.
Can’t wait for RFK Jr.’s next appearance when he announces his running mate Tulsi Gabbard and his press secretary Glenn Greenwald. (We are just spitballing here.)
That’ll totally give Joe Biden a run for his money, for sure.
Not sure whether Russia has the cash on hand to finance any more presidential campaigns in 2024, though.
Additional information:
“Ukraine is a country,” says William Taylor, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009. “The Ukraine is the way the Russians referred to that part of the country during Soviet times … Now that it is a country, a nation, and a recognized state, it is just Ukraine. And it is incorrect to refer to the Ukraine, even though a lot of people do it.”
So that’s why Marjorie Taylor Greene and Robert Kennedy Jr. keep saying “the Ukraine.”
[…] The bill protecting innocent gun businesses from legal liability passed Tuesday on a vote of 19 to 9.
While gun makers and dealers already have considerable liability protection under federal law, Republicans are very unhappy that some lawsuits still get through against the suppliers of the holy instruments for Second Amendment worship, so the Tennessee bill further restricts the circumstances under which gun bidnisses can be sued […].
A person could only sue if the dealer or manufacturer was directly involved in a crime that gave rise to the lawsuit. Someone could also sue if the other party is facing federal charges, or […] for “negligent entrustment” [if the seller knew the buyer was likely to harm someone else — Dok].
A person could also sue if the gun was made or sold in a way that violates a state or federal statute, or if there was a breach in the gun’s warranty. They could also sue if there is a defect in the gun that led to a death or injury.
Before the vote, Democratic state Sen. London Lamar said pushing the bill through so soon after a school shooting was “disrespectful timing,” particularly considering that protesters were at that moment marching outside the state Capitol to call for action to limit guns. Lamar said, “I am challenging you not to pass this bill because we need to do more to protect citizens from gun violence than the people making the guns that people can use to kill more people.” […]
Last year, Remington, which made the AR-15 rifle used by the Sandy Hook gunman, settled with victims’ families for $73 million over its irresponsible advertising practices, which included placements of its guns in first-person shooter video games and that infamous “Consider Your Man Card Reissued” ad for the very model used by the killer.
And as the AP ‘splains,
in February, families of those killed and injured in a 2018 Texas high school shooting settled a lawsuit they filed against a Tennessee-based online retailer, Lucky Gunner, that was accused of illegally selling ammunition to the student who authorities say fatally shot 10 people. The owner of the company, Jordan Mollenhour, sits on the Tennessee State Board of Education. The company was accused of failing to verify Dimitrios Pagourtzis’ age — he was 17, at the time — when he bought more than 100 rounds of ammunition on two occasions before the May 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School.
Well it was sure nice of the Tennessee Lege to help out an upstanding Tennessee entrepreneur who happens to have been appointed by Bill Lee to the Ed Board and confirmed last year by the Senate.
But there’s always going to be grumblers, like state Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D), who said before the vote,
“There are people that we should be going out of our way to protect this week. And we’ve been receiving emails and calls, people are holding up signs, telling us to go out of our way to help those people. Not one of those signs says to protect the gun manufacturers.”
Well maybe if people want the same protections from guns that Tennessee gives to guns, they should make a bundle of money and get themselves appointed to a position of influence. That’s how you get things done.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Article: SpaceX’s Texas Rocket is Going To Cause A Lot More Damage Than Anyone Thinks
SpaceX used modeling data from early 2019 to seek approval for the launches […] thrust was estimated at 61.8 meganewtons (MN). Today, […] a 20% increase in size.
[…]
[A Fish And Wildlife Service] employee measured […] 110 decibels three miles from the launch site […] in February. [e.g., jackhammer or power saw; below a thunderclap] between 10x and 100x more powerful than […] SpaceX’s models. […] the February static test […] was done at just 50% of total thrust.
[…]
Nearby cities […] are under 5 miles away […] the FAA didn’t even consider property damage […] because “[…] 111 dB and 120 dB may be used as a very conservative threshold for potential risk of structural damage claims.”
[…]
SpaceX convinced FAA to approve a site that would host launching the Largest Rocket in History under [a process] saved for projects that do not have a “significant impact” to the environment.
[…]
SpaceX does not have a flame trench, nor do they have a water deluge system used to suppress heat and sound energy from any launches […] No large rocket complex on the planet: not in Russia, nor China, and certainly not in the US, exists that doesn’t contain one or both […] SpaceX’s orbital pad, by way of comparison, is but a 30 ft tall stand situated 400 feet away from Methane storage tanks and 500 feet away from ecologically sensitive low tidal flats.
[…]
biologists I spoke with were stunned at some of the language used in FAA’s justification […] “Noise from the Raptor engines would cause a startle response of animals and would effectively direct them away from the area and reduce the risk of being affected by the heat of the plume”
[…]
I expected more from our agencies, from the press, and frankly from SpaceX itself. I still am in shock that a rocket system, the largest in history, will be fired off, from an inadequate facility, in the middle of an endangered species habitat, by a company that revels in the beautiful failure of explosions with seemingly no guardrails and no respect for the real danger this operation presents to the public.
[…] Hopped over to Twitter […] Seeing folks post photos and videos of:
– Damage to vehicles belonging to onlookers
– A crater left under the launch stand (which has no trench)
– Extensive damage to the launch support infrastructure
Holy shit […] they didn’t even bother building infrastructure to safeguard their own launch equipment! Let alone the populated areas 5 miles from the site!! […] I really want to see human spaceflight advance forward. It’s genuinely exciting! But fuck SpaceX’s utter recklessness.
TALLAHASSEE (The Borowitz Report)—Facing backlash from Republican donors, Ron DeSantis has abruptly ended his feud with Disney and launched a scorched-earth campaign against the Smurfs.
Harland Dorrinson, DeSantis’s top political aide, called the Florida governor’s pivot to the Smurfs a “strategic masterstroke.”
“Ron has the anti-Smurf lane all to himself,” he said.
In a major policy speech, DeSantis accused the Smurfs of spreading a message of “blue supremacy” and vowed to ban the teaching of Smurf studies from his state’s schools.
“Florida is where Smurfs come to die,” he declared.
Early in my mining career, I was driving an enormous water tanker—the truck used to spread water on the mine roads to keep dust down—when the brakes failed. In an effort to get the truck to stop before I collided with a haul truck or something even larger, I ended up getting the tanker into reverse. Then I got a tire off the side of the road. Slowly, unstoppably, the massive truck and its huge water tank rolled over on its side, leaving me dangling from the steering wheel a good 20’ in the air.
It was my last day at that mine, and it seemed like just about the ultimate bad driving story. However, I admit defeat.
S400 missile system fell into a ditch on a highway near Tula, Russia.
This happened in the morning but reportedly, the vehicle is still lying there.
The value of such missile system is about $160 million. [Tweet and video at the link]
Whoo boy. I am glad that this video does not last one second longer.[Tweet and video at the link: “A Ukrainian FPV kamikaze drone take Russian infantry by surprise.”]
If we wait long enough, the entire Russian army will be wrecked along this one road into Vuhledar. [Tweet and video at the link: “Absolutely mind-boggling how those Russian lemmings keep on coming, in vain.”]
No one has really managed to give a better list of the reasons that the United States stands so strongly behind Ukraine than Secretary of State Tony Blinken did in a speech to the U.N. back in September 2022.
Defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is about much more than standing up for one nation’s right to choose its own path, as fundamental as that right is. It’s also about defending an international order where no nation can redraw the borders of another by force. If we fail to defend this principle, when the Kremlin is so flagrantly violating it, we send a message to aggressors everywhere that they can ignore it, too. We put every country at risk.
Blinken’s speech was calmly delivered, but clearly heartfelt. It worked unflinchingly through a list of Russian crimes in Ukraine, dealt with Russia’s repeated nuclear threats, and looked at how Russia’s war in Ukraine affected the whole planet, including raising the cost of food everywhere. It’s a speech that deserves to be remembered. This point near the end, while certainly not original, was quite powerful:
Here’s the reality. None of us chose this war. Not the Ukrainians, who knew the crushing toll it would take. Not the United States, which warned that it was coming and worked to prevent it … One man chose this war. One man can end it. Because if Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.
As Russian sources keep making clear, that’s not just true of the nation of Ukraine. It’s also true of the people of Ukraine.
With the latest round of peace proposals being pressed by multiple analysts, it’s worth remembering that all these supposed solutions for “lasting peace” are actually formulas for three things:
Dividing Ukraine
Preventing Ukraine from entering NATO
Giving Russia a chance to rebuild their military
Proposals like those put forward at Foreign Policy assume that sometime later this year, after “the fighting season” ends, the United States and Europe will get tired of supporting Ukraine. […]
Ultimately, the solution requires what seems very close to the ultimate irony. The U.S. and others who have so studiously stood aside while Ukraine sacrificed tens of thousands in the fight against Russia and refused every call from Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “close the skies,” should actually put boots on the ground to stop Ukrainian forces from attacking Russian invaders. As that highly realpolitik Foreign Policy proposal puts it. [JFC!]
Ideally, both Ukraine and Russia would pull back their troops and heavy weapons from the new line of contact, effectively creating a demilitarized zone. A neutral organization—either the UN or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe—would send in observers to monitor and enforce the cease-fire and pullback. The West should approach other influential countries, including China and India, to support the cease-fire proposal.
Something about that solution seems a lot less than ideal. And that something is not just that it rewards Russia by allowing it to keep some of what it took by force, punishes Ukraine by removing territory and its autonomy to defend itself, and benefits China by elevating its position in the settlement. It’s also ignoring what Russia has done in Ukraine. The mass graves scattered from Irpin to Izyum. The torture. The beheading. The theft of children from multiple occupied cities. The mass deportation of citizens from Mariupol. How can these things be dissolved by drawing a line? [Photo of the Year by WorldPressPhoto of a woman being evacuated from a maternity home that Russia attacked. The baby was later stillborn and the woman died half an hour later.]
Ukraine might want these things addressed, but “Putin would surely reject these demands out of hand” and “ideally, the cease-fire would hold,” leading to a stable division of Ukraine like Korea. Which, again, was what Putin said he wanted.
But assuming that Ukraine can be divided into two stable factions, no matter how unsatisfactory or immoral that may seem, is ignoring more than just the war crimes Russia has committed. It’s ignoring the war crimes Russia wants to commit.
Calls like this one, for the “liquidation” of Ukrainians, aren’t hard to find. They’re present both in the statements of Russian officials and in the daily propaganda shows that blanket Russia. [Tweet and video at the link: “The Nazi state called Ukraine, in its current state, must be liquidated!”]
If the Kansas City man who shot a young Black man for knocking on the wrong door was hardened by years of listening to “fear and paranoia” from Fox News and OAN, Russian citizens are getting absolutely drenched, not in the idea that Ukraine needs to be defeated on the battlefield, but that Ukraine needs to be erased as a nation and as a people.
As detailed in this thread from journalist Tadeusz Giczan, the Russian people are being instructed that it’s not just the Ukrainian government who are Nazis, but the majority of Ukrainian people. In fact, they’re being told that “Ukrainian Nazism is far more dangerous to the world than Hitler’s Nazism.” The only possible solution is to destroy Ukraine.
Denazification means de-Ukrainianisation. Ukrainians are an artificial anti-Russian construct. They should no longer have a national identity.
The Russian article that Giczan cites calls for this “denazification” to go on for at least “a generation,” or until no one thinks of the “liberated and denazified territory” as Ukraine.
This sort of genocidal speech is directly connected to the bodies on the streets of Bucha. It’s right there in that Russian pilot’s decision to drop a bomb on children sheltering in the theater at Mariupol. It was vividly illustrated by two men carving off the head of a screaming Ukrainian prisoner [….] and putting him in a pile with others who faced similar treatment.
It’s certainly not unusual for any nation to try and dehumanize its opponent in war. World War I recruiting posters in the United States and the U.K. treated Germans as barbaric “Huns.” World War II propaganda in America was genuinely disgusting in its characterization of the Japanese.
But Russia has harnessed the zeitgeist of the moment, the easy ability to use false reporting and social media to elicit fear, evoke anger, and cement raw hate, to create a policy of genocide toward Ukraine. If the U.S. gets frustrated enough with the progress of the war to forget this, then we’re guilty of losing touch with every aspect of that speech by Blinken. A speech that really needs to be remembered.
On Thursday afternoon, a bipartisan ethics committee in the Tennessee legislature found that Republican Rep. Scotty Campbell officially violated the chamber’s sexual harassment policy. He resigned shortly thereafter, according to local station NewsChannel5. Just two weeks ago, Campbell made headlines for condemning three of his fellow state lawmakers for breaking decorum while protesting for gun control laws…
The committee’s investigation revealed that Campbell, 39, made inappropriately crude and suggestive comments to an intern who lived nearby him. According to an email from one 19-year-old victim provided by a family member, after she and a fellow intern entered their apartment building, Campbell later “made comments about how…he was in his apartment imagining that we were performing sexual acts on one another and how it drove him crazy knowing that was happening so close to him.” He also offered her weed gummies and told her how lonely he was, despite her insistence that he stop.
“I told him absolutely not, and he begged me for several hugs,” the email read…
Stated as a temporary measure, the goal is to identify the land and building owners and determine whether they are subject to sanctions.
RCSC officials have three weeks to confirm, starting from the date of the seizure (April 11).
Russia is prevented from disposing of the seized property, or transferring it, until a final decision is made.
The total area of the seized plot is 3326 square meters (35,800 square feet).
Seven apartments of persons sanctioned by the EU were also seized in Helsinki. Three of them are located near the RCSC. The area of the seized apartments ranges from 36 to 175 square meters (from 388 to 1884 square feet), with their values estimated between EUR 200,000 to 300,000 ($218,000-$328,000)…
Oggie: Mathomsays
On Thursday afternoon, a bipartisan ethics committee in the Tennessee legislature found that Republican Rep. Scotty Campbell officially violated the chamber’s sexual harassment policy.
Amazing. I guess that Campbell’s offense was offensive enough that the ethics committee decided that yes, the rules apply to conservatives. At least this time.
whheydtsays
Re: Oggie: Mathom @ #392….
Most likely reason was that the intern that was harassed was White.
UKRAINE SHOOTS DOWN A UFO AS RUSSIAN MISSILE ATTACK FIZZLES
If you watched this video, which was added as an update to Wednesday’s Ukraine Update, you might have noticed that it looked … different. [video at the link]
An air raid siren sounded in Kyiv as the object flashed overhead, but it appears that it was not hit by any sort of air defense. According to the Ukrainian military and city officials, the air defenses did not fire.
The immediate impression is that the video strongly resembles some of the meteors on their way to becoming meteorites seen in this video. [video at the link]
But the odds of a meteor breaking apart in the sky above Kyiv, right now, seemed like too big a coincidence to believe. It’s little wonder that the odd video immediately generated concern about some new form of Russian weapon—and jokes about aliens joining the war.
There were even a series of reports last night that the object had been a satellite returning to Earth. The target of those reports was the RHESSI satellite, which was once used to observe solar flares, but was decommissioned after having technical problems in 2018. That satellite was expected to re-enter the atmosphere this week, so it wasn’t a bad candidate for the object breaking up above Kyiv. By early Thursday morning, this seemed to be the accepted wisdom, and both officials and Ukrainian news sources repeated that claim.
The only problem with this is that, according to NASA, the RHESSI satellite is still up there at the time of the flash above Kyiv. It was also nowhere near Ukraine. It probably did reenter sometime overnight, unseen, over the Middle East. No other satellites appear to be missing.
All of which leads to the probability that the flash over Kyiv was a sizable meteor coming apart as it streaked toward the Earth. It’s possible, though unlikely, that some portion of the meteor may actually have impacted. It may seem unlikely—it certainly is unlikely—but this is the best guess on what happened.
Still, the UFO memes were a lot of fun. [UFO memes available at the link.]
Meanwhile, that “UFO,” which came at the same time as an actual Russian missile was shot down near Odesa, helped to trigger fears that Russia was about to break its streak of relatively slack days with another major missile barrage. That turned out not to be the case. According to the Ukrainian general staff, Russia launched just three missiles at targets in Ukraine overnight, none of them appears to have reached its target. [Good]
In addition, there was a wave of 26 Iranian-made Shehad drones, all of which seem to have been directed at the southern cities of Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro. According to Ukrainian defenses, 21 of those drones were shot down. However, there is reported damage to civilian buildings.
The bigger source of destruction to civilian targets came from air strikes and MLRS rockets directed into cities along the Russian border as well as those near the front.
Q & A WITH ‘WITCH’
I missed this when it ran at the end of March. If you’re like me, and hadn’t seen the Ukrainian service member who goes by the call sign “Witch” since she was last pictured walking through the ruins of Bakhmut in early February, you may have been worried that she was among the many lost in the defense in that city. Happily, the answer is “nope.” Looks like she (like some of the other figures who frequently appeared in Bakhmut videos earlier) has been rotated out for training and is currently catching a break from the front lines after so long being literally under the guns every day. [video at the link]
Among the answers she provides in this Q&A session is one very interesting one about a system that Ukrainian programmers have developed that combines knowledge of the terrain, weather conditions, shells, and the wide variety of artillery systems now in use by the Ukrainian Army to help those operating the big guns get better accuracy and use less ammo to accomplish their mission.
Finding this video was a real relief. It’s very easy to get both attached to and concerned about the folks we see so often in harm’s way. We will remember them for years–and hopefully check up on them in peacetime.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
[as whheydt posted @ #395] A Russian warplane has accidentally fired a weapon into the city of Belgorod near Ukraine, causing an explosion and damaging buildings, the Tass news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying. Late on Thursday, local authorities reported a large blast in the city, which lies just across the border from Ukraine. Belgorod’s regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said two women had been injured and four apartment buildings and four cars damaged. Announcing a state of emergency, he said on the Telegram messaging app there was a “huge” crater 20 metres (65ft) wide in the city centre.
Secretary general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, on Friday reaffirmed Nato’s committment that Ukraine would eventually join the military alliance. Speaking ahead of a meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group at Ramstein airbase in Germany, Reuters reports he also told the media that, once the war in Ukraine ends, Kyiv must have “the deterrence to prevent new attacks”.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, posted that he had a “fruitful” bilateral meeting with his US counterpart at Ramstein airbase in Germany on Friday morning….
Suella Braverman has been condemned by a group of MEPs over the arrest in London of a French publisher who was interrogated by counter-terrorist police about his political views and “anti-government” contacts.
Twelve MEPs wrote to the home secretary to express their outrage at the “scandalous treatment” of Ernest Moret, who was detained for almost 24 hours and whose iPhone and laptop remain in the hands of the British police.
The European politicians accused the British government of infringing basic human rights and abusing anti-terrorism laws.
The French government is also being urged by French MPs to explain its role in the arrest of Moret in London on Tuesday.
Moret, 28, a rights manager at the radical publisher Éditions la Fabrique, had travelled to London for a book fair. He was quizzed by police about participation in a recent protest in France and asked if he supported Emmanuel Macron, in what his lawyer, Richard Parry, condemned as an “abuse of power”.
In their letter to Braverman, the MEPs – including politicians from France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal and Spain – accused the British government of complicity in the French government’s crackdown on protest.
They wrote: “The police officers claimed that Ernest had participated in demonstrations in France as justification for this act – a quite remarkably inappropriate statement for a British police officer to make and which seems to clearly indicate complicity between French and British authorities on this matter.”
They added: “We consider these actions to be outrageous and unjustifiable infringements of basic principles of freedom of expression and an example of the abuse of anti-terrorism.
“This assault on the freedom of expression of a publisher is yet another manifestation of the slide towards repressive and authoritarian measures taken by the French government in the face of widespread popular discontent.”
Meanwhile, two leftwing French MPs, Aurélie Trouvé and Hadrien Clouet, have written to France’s minister of justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, asking him to “shed full light” on the French government’s role in Moret’s arrest.
They said they hoped it was not the “result of an agreement between the British and French services to repress participation in demonstration”.
Trouvé accused the French of outsourcing intimidation to the British. She said: “Ernest’s account of his interrogation suggests that the British authorities were really acting on a request, with a script, from the French police authorities, as the questions he was asked concerned exclusively his political and intellectual activities in France.
“The French men and women who demonstrate and mobilise have been under pressure and repression for weeks, but this is a totally unprecedented case, which marks a very serious transgression. We do not intend to leave it at that.”
…
It is understood there is no evidence to suggest Moret posed any risk to the UK.
Moret, who had more than 30 appointments arranged at the London book fair, returned to Paris on Wednesday, two days earlier than he planned. He was ordered to report back to counter-terrorist police in London next month.
Moret’s employers published a French translation of a book on direct action called How to Blow up a Pipeline, which was recently made into a film. Its Swedish author, Andreas Malm, joined international condemnation of Moret’s arrest.
He said: “Being asked to name ‘anti-government authors’ is obviously scandalous in the extreme.
“This has to be understood in the context of developments in France, which has seen a groundswell of popular protest in recent weeks and months – on both social and environmental issues – and the ever-more ferocious response from the French state.
“With the arrest of Ernest Moret, the French state has clearly outsourced the ongoing crackdown to the British state. Apparently Brexit hasn’t stopped the police services from collaborating across borders.
“The British police here teamed up with the French in a blatant assault on the freedom of expression.”
The admiral of Russia’s Pacific fleet has left his position after a check of its combat readiness. Adm Sergei Avakyants left his post as commander as it was announced he will oversee a new centre for military sports training and “patriotic education”. Units from the Pacific fleet had been taking part in inspection exercises that were announced by the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, last week.
Scores of rightwing extremists were defeated in school board elections in April, in a victory for the left in the US and what Democrats hope could prove to be a playbook for running against Republicans in the year ahead….
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has nominated a far-right politician who once boasted that she is “proud to be a racist” as his country’s top diplomat in New York.
The appointment of May Golan was swiftly denounced by Israeli and American former diplomats, and the head of the largest Jewish denomination in the US, as an affront to the US and damaging for Israel….
…Murdoch said he was confident he would have won but he “does not wish to further enable Crikey’s use of the court to litigate a case from another jurisdiction that has already been settled and facilitate a marketing campaign designed to attract subscribers and boost their profits”….
…Because this is all so ridiculous, it’s easy to miss the tragedy: Turning meat into a culture-war issue both creates new, tribal ideals of consumption and undermines the political and systemic change needed to create a healthier and more sustainable food system—one where more Americans could afford to eat well, where waterways didn’t get poisoned by runoff, where superbugs aren’t bred in feedlots, and where food workers aren’t routinely exploited and maimed. Despite culture warriors’ iconoclastic and anti-elite posturing, the biggest beneficiaries of the meat culture war are the incumbent business and political interests that already play an outsize role in setting the menu of the American diet. Among the biggest losers are ordinary consumers.
…
All this bile, hyperbole, and conspiracy theorizing has an actual, material effect: to reinforce a status quo dominated by unaccountable global multinational corporations. Under the guise of empowering average people to eat “real” meat, the meat culture war winds up reinforcing precisely the players that are pumping the nuggets full of exotic additives, all the while celebrating common and conventional dietary choices as some sort of edgy iconoclasm. “I’m going to eat meat, like 95 percent of my countrymen, both Democrat and Republican, in the country that already eats the most meat per capita in the world, most of it produced and processed by huge agribusiness conglomerates, because I am a rebellious, independent freethinker who rejects globalist dogma and control,” is not a coherent statement. But when you ratchet up the combative victimhood narrative, somehow this position takes on a life of its own….
A slain protester who opposed construction of a vast law enforcement training center near Atlanta was shot at least 57 times in a police confrontation, an autopsy revealed Thursday.
The wounds suffered by Manuel Paez Teran, 26, were so extensive that a loose round “fell from the left sleeve of one of the shirts” as coroners were undressing the body for examination, the DeKalb County medical examiner said.
The activist known as “Tortuguita,” whose full name was Manuel Esteban Páez Terán, was “shot multiple times during an altercation with law enforcement officials from different jurisdictions” in January, said the report signed by the chief medical examiner, Dr. Gerald T. Gowitt.
The report, dated March 14, was made widely available to the public only this week.
The proposed Public Safety Training Center, set to include a shooting range and a mock city that will be used for police training, has been dubbed “Cop City” by opponents, and it drew protesters to its future site in a forested area of DeKalb County outside Atlanta.
A multiagency operation to clear out an encampment of protesters was conducted the morning of Jan. 18.
According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, officers found Tortuguita in a tent and said they “did not comply” with law enforcement’s commands. Tortuguita is alleged to have shot and wounded a state trooper, and then officers opened fire.
Relatives and friends have insisted that Tortuguita had their hands raised and was no threat to police.
[ABC and Axios report that the ME didn’t find gunpowder residue on their hands.]
Tortuguita identified as nonbinary and used they/them pronouns.
“We are devastated to learn that our child, our sweet Manny, was mercilessly gunned down by police and suffered 57 bullet wounds all over their body,” Tortuguita’s mother, Belkis Teran, said in a statement.
The family and its representatives said they still have too many unanswered questions.
…
A spokesperson for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said Thursday that state authorities have completed their probe and referred all questions to the prosecutor appointed to the case, Mountain Judicial Circuit DA George Christian.
Christian said Thursday it would be “premature” to discuss any findings of investigators and didn’t give a timeline for any decision to seek charges against officers who opened fire….
Deliverance from demons is a booming practice among evangelical Christians, promising freedom from afflictions ranging from addiction to cancer. Elle Hardy reports from a session in Arizona…
I’m not sure if I’ve heard this term before: “Brother Mike keenly avoids my questions about his political views, but his radio shows leave little doubt that he’s firmly on what’s been called the ‘cosmic right’ – the conspiracy-fueled edge of conservative politics that fuses the material and spiritual worlds.”
An appeals court has rejected a bid by the Arizona Republican Party and its lawyers to undo $18,000 in attorneys’ fees that they were ordered to pay for bringing one of the party’s failed lawsuits challenging President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state.
In an order Thursday, the Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of the party’s lawsuit, concluding that evidence supported a lower-court judge finding that the party’s legal claims were groundless and rejecting its allegation that the judge stuck them with the attorneys’ fees for primarily political motives…
A Pennsylvania Republican-majority county government where two commissioners secretly allowed a third party to copy voting-machine data last year to help former President Donald Trump overturn his 2020 reelection defeat received contempt sanctions Wednesday from the state’s highest court.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against Fulton County commissioners Stuart Ulsh and Randy Bunch — and their lawyers — for their behavior late last fall during pending litigation…
I hate abusive behavior more now. A decade ago I thought this might be a thing when reading about inherited trauma. The idea that you can hurt someone so bad their descendents feel it changes me.
“Epigenome-wide meta-analysis of prenatal maternal stressful life events and newborn DNA methylation” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-023-02010-5
Paris Marx is joined by Aaron Benanav to discuss OpenAI’s claims that generative AI will take our jobs, how previous periods of automation hype haven’t resulted in mass job loss, and why we need to ensure it doesn’t further empower employers.
Aaron Benanav is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and the author of Automation and the Future of Work….
Incitación a delatar a una mujer que quiere abortar, falta de independencia judicial, limitaciones en el uso de la píldora, obligación de oír el latido del feto u objeción de conciencia son algunos de los obstáculos a los que se enfrentan las mujeres en Polonia, Hungría y ciertas regiones de Italia. Justyna Wydrzynska es la primera activista polaca juzgada en su país por facilitarle a otra mujer pastillas para abortar. Un recorrido con los compañeros de Internacional, Gloria Rodríguez-Pina y Daniel Verdú.
Hace unos años los expertos acuñaron el término ‘dismorfia de Snapchat’ para hablar del trastorno que causaba a algunas personas, jóvenes y no tanto, verse constantemente en imágenes a través de filtros de realidad aumentada que modifican los rasgos en las redes sociales. Según Snapchat, más del 90% de las personas jóvenes en Estados Unidos, Francia y Reino Unido usan este tipo de tecnología. Hoy, otras aplicaciones de moda, como Instagram y TikTok, han perfeccionado su técnica y ya son prácticamente indistinguibles al ojo humano. El último filtro es Bold Glamour, que suaviza las facciones, alisa los poros de la piel y agranda ojos y labios. Se lanzó en febrero y ya tiene más de 16 millones de descargas.
En los peores casos, la dismorfia lleva a desarrollar un trastorno de la conducta alimentaria o a necesitar terapia psicológica. Incluso, algunas personas recurren a la cirugía. Aunque no solo afecta a jóvenes, las más vulnerables son las chicas adolescentes. Hablamos con varias.
Fox Corporation chief executive Lachlan Murdoch on Friday dropped his defamation lawsuit against the publisher of Crikey, the scrappy Australian news and commentary site, after it published an article last year that called him an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the January 6 attack, his lawyer said….
The decision comes just days after Fox News, which is controlled by the Murdoch family, settled a defamation case with Dominion Voting Systems for $787 million, in the largest publicly known defamation settlement involving a US media company. And follows another settlement last week with a Venezuelan businessman who had accused Fox News of making false claims about him and the 2020 election.
Crikey explored admitting some of the revelations from the Dominion lawsuit as evidence in its own case, a move that Murdoch’s lawyer referenced in the Thursday statement.
Private Media said the retreat was “a substantial victory for legitimate public interest journalism.”
“We stand by our position that Lachlan Murdoch was culpable in promoting the lie of the 2020 election result because he, and his father, had the power to stop the lies,” the company said in a statement. “How do we know? Because Dominion sued Fox News for promoting the lies and Fox just paid 1.17 billion [Australian dollars] to Dominion to settle the case.”
[…]
Had the case gone to trial, it would have put Murdoch in an uncomfortable position. Not only would he have been ensnared in another high-profile defamation case, his camp would have had to make effectively the opposite arguments it has made in the United States in regard to defamation law.
A bipartisan group of political operatives — spanning the ideological spectrum from former members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus to a Democrat who challenged Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia — has started a political action committee aimed at “stopping MAGA” and eradicating what the operatives call an authoritarian streak among some Republican lawmakers.
The group, Mission Democracy PAC, will challenge far-right members of Congress in their often deep-red home districts, running ads and messaging campaigns that accuse the politicians of holding anti-democratic and extreme positions.
Mission Democracy PAC begins with just over $500,000 in the bank, but the advisers say they hope to raise $18 million for the coming election cycle, and plan to spend all of it within the targeted congressional districts.
Who’s behind the group? The leaders are former Rep. Denver Riggleman of Virginia, who once belonged to the Freedom Caucus but has since left the Republican Party and spoke out against conspiracy theories from the House floor; Olivia Troye, a former official in Donald Trump’s administration who has been critical of him; and Marcus Flowers, an Army veteran and Democrat who lost heavily to Greene last year…
French police fired teargas Thursday in a village in southern France where President Emmanuel Macron visited a school, a day after he was booed and heckled over his unpopular pension reform.
After facing angry voters on Wednesday in eastern Alsace, the 45-year-old head of state travelled to the southern Herault region on Thursday to discuss education.
The trips outside Paris are intended to signal his desire to turn the page on his unpopular pensions changes and demonstrate he is not hiding from voters, many of whom have been outraged by the way the legislation was passed.
Saying he wanted to “acknowledge and pay teachers better”, the 45-year-old former investment banker announced at a school in the village of Ganges that they would receive between 100-230 euros ($110-250) more a month after tax from September.
In the run-up to his speech, police fired teargas when hundreds of people shouting “Macron, resign!” and blowing whistles tried to advance towards the school.
Local authorities also announced a ban on “portable sound equipment”, which a spokesman said was meant to target amplifiers and speakers.
But the regional head of the CGT union, Mathieu Guy, told AFP that protesters had also been prevented from entering the secure area close to the school with pans as well as local flutes, known as “fifres”.
Macron’s left-wing political opponents urged their supporters to bash pans during Macron’s televised address to the nation on Monday evening and the age-old protest tactic appears to be becoming an audible sign of discontent at Macron’s policies.
The apparent pan ban led to ridicule on Thursday, with Communist party spokesman Ian Brossat saying he “couldn’t wait for the legislation which will ban the sale of saucepans.”
“Is it possible to leave a democratic crisis behind by banning saucepans?” asked leading Greens MP Sandrine Rousseau….
Ukraine’s millennial minister leads digital fight against Russia
Ukraine’s youngest Cabinet member knows there is more than one way to beat Russia in the war — and the tech-savvy Minister of Digital Transformation is fighting back on several virtual fronts.
From overseeing a project securing drones to the rollout of public service apps and combating Russia in the cyber sphere, Mykhailo Fedorov is defending Ukraine in ways its military cannot. And that includes in the propaganda war.
“Our information resources are under attack constantly,” Fedorov told The Hill during an exclusive interview this week. But “we are teaching Ukrainians the basic digital literacy, [and] our media are working efficiently.”
“It’s an unprecedented thing, and we are keeping Ukrainians united and unified in the information field,” he continues. ”Everything is working.”
And the millennial digital minister is not just on the defensive. Last year, he organized a vast information technology (IT) army made of about 200,000 volunteers who are engaged in cyberwarfare with Russia. [Good idea.]
The hackers, who communicate on Telegram, target Russian infrastructure and websites to hit back against Moscow, which has waged a steady campaign of online warfare and has knocked out critical services in Ukraine.
Fedorov says this volunteer IT army has been massively successful in the effort to “distract the attention of Russian hackers from our information systems,” and has picked up lots of global attention.
“This project has a very big and bright future,” he says.
[…] He was tapped to lead the Ministry of Digital Transformation when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky formed the department in 2019 with the goal of fully digitizing Ukraine’s public services.
But when Russia invaded in February 2022, Fedorov had to react swiftly to the new reality of war.
From the ground up, he built a digital campaign pressuring companies like Microsoft and Apple to cut off services to Russia.
Fedorov also helped shape Ukraine’s online campaign to shame Russia and call out its alleged abuses on Twitter and other social media platforms.
And he spearheaded the creation of the IT army within weeks of the invasion. Similarly, he quickly helped seal a deal with billionaire Elon Musk for the deployment of thousands of Starlink satellites, which have become the communication backbone of Ukraine’s military.
Fedorov has plenty of support. He pointed to startup tech companies that are innovating with military tech and beating Russia with new hardware and software at every move.
[…] Fedorov is moving up the ladder in Kyiv. Last month he was appointed as deputy prime minister of Innovation, Education, Science and Technology Development.
[…] Fedorov also manages the crucial link between the federal government and the Ukrainian people across several digital platforms.
The roots of this effort can be found in a web portal and phone app called Diia, which around 19 million Ukrainian citizens use to quickly and easily access public services. Ukrainians are using it to get information about Russian movements, make payments or secure loans for damaged property, with more services rolling out all the time.
[…] “An opportunity to interact with the citizen in several clicks is fundamental during any crisis,” he adds. “We saw it during COVID. And during the full-scale invasion, confirmed again.”
Fedorov has also employed an air raid alert app that warns Ukrainians of an incoming Russian missile or drone strike. […] One feature of the app includes Mark Hamill, the legendary “Star Wars” actor who portrayed Luke Skywalker, warning residents of incoming strikes.
[…] Fedorov says he has raised more than $320 million from online donations across the world supporting Ukraine’s military, medical field or reconstruction efforts.
Through a website, donors to the initiative get to choose which category they want to put money toward. […]
Another major part of the fundraising initiative is the Army of Drones project — which Hamill is also the face of — and Fedorov said that effort has resulted in more than 3,000 drones for the Ukrainian military. At the same time, Ukraine is building up its domestic production of drones, he says.
When the dust settles, Ukraine will have to rebuild a war-torn country.
Kyiv will need at least $1.8 billion to repair its telecommunications infrastructure […]
Fedorov is working on this issue, too, and says he’s a supporter of Rise Ukraine, an international coalition dedicated to creating a digital reconstruction management system that keeps track of projects and provides accountability and trust to stamp out corruption and address potential misuse of funds. [good idea]
“That is why digitization is incredibly important here. It’s the foundation for this transparency and anti-corruption,” he said.
“We are pitching the recovery of Ukraine because we need to reconstruct better than it used to be.”
When Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy previewed the House Republicans’ debt ceiling and budget cuts proposal at the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, he insisted that “we make sure that our veterans and our service members are taken care of.” The bill he introduced Wednesday that ties lifting the debt limit to draconian budget cuts absolutely, positively hurts veterans and service members and their families. This when both groups are already struggling to put food on the table and to get the health care and services they need.
There are many complex reasons why the military community is more vulnerable to food insecurity than the general population. The pay isn’t awful for a single person, but for many active duty families, the only paycheck is from the service member. The Department of Defense itself has set a floor for military pay at 130% of federal poverty guidelines, or about $29,940 a year for a three-person family, but that’s often all they have to live on. The frequent moves families have to make mean that military spouses have a hard time finding work, much less establishing careers.
Reentry into civilian life is hard for veterans, who are more likely than the general population to experience mental illness, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, or to have other disabilities as a result of their service. This all makes them likelier to be unhoused and have low-wage jobs, and less likely to receive regular, adequate health care than the civilian population.
.@SecVetAffairs told me cutting the VA to ’22 levels would lead to 13m fewer healthcare visits, longer benefit wait times, & VA staffing cuts.
Now Speaker McCarthy announced a budget plan at ’22 levels, but claims it somehow won’t hurt my fellow veterans.
His math doesn’t add up.
Almost 25% of active duty troops say they live with food insecurity, according to a 2022 Defense Department report included in a Wall Street Journal analysis. Department of Agriculture data shows that about 11% of working-age veterans experience food insecurity. Almost 14% of veterans in rural areas experience food insecurity, according to a Veterans Affairs study.
McCarthy’s bill would slash spending across the board to fiscal year 2022 levels. That would mean about $130 billion of spending cuts for 2024 overall. Veterans Administration Secretary Denis McDonough testified to Congress this week that going back to 2022 funding would mean as much as a $26.7 billion reduction for his agency. That translates into 13 million fewer health care visits, longer benefit wait times, and staffing cuts that would delay and reduce all veterans programs. […]
Media: Military summonses distributed at Moscow State University dormitory
Military summonses were being handed out to graduate students in a dormitory at Moscow State University, independent Russian media outlet Doxa reported on April 21.
The students were informed to appear at a military enlistment office “for events related to military service conscription,” according to Doxa.
According to Russian law, students are supposed to be able to avoid conscription before graduation.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin signed a bill introducing electronic summonses for conscripts into law in mid-April.
Draftees who fail to respond to summonses will now be required according to Russian law to appear voluntarily at the military enlistment office within two weeks of the next draft.
Those who fail to comply will then likely face restrictions, including being prohibited from leaving the country. Later on, they may also be restricted from performing various basic societal functions such as buying real estate, registering a business, or taking out a loan.
I can’t predict how this will go in Russia, but one of the problems the US Army encountered during the Viet Nam War was “friction” between college-educated draftees and high school educated non-coms.
The autopsy of murdered climate activist Manuel Esteban Paez Teran revealed that Teran was shot fifty-seven times. Details of the autopsy reveal Teran’s arms were in the air at the time of his shooting. Contrary to police claims that they were protecting themselves from an armed shooter who shot an officer, there was no residue of gunpowder on his hands.
Despite Judy Eledge’s history of inflammatory comments and social media posts, Alaska’s governor has awarded her public money and a national role. What’s more, city and state agencies meant to protect Alaskans’ civil rights have been hamstrung.
Alaska governors and mayors have at various times appointed Judy Eledge to the state Board of Education, the Anchorage Health and Human Services Commission and the Alaska Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee. She stood at the side of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a personal friend, on the night of his 2018 Republican primary victory.
When it was time for the state to cast its Electoral College votes in the 2020 presidential election, Eledge was one of the three people representing Alaska. And in his annual State of the State speech earlier that year, Dunleavy asked her to stand for an ovation because she exemplified “the heart of Alaska.”
But on March 14, 2022, in a surreptitiously taped conversation with a co-worker in her office on the top floor of one of Alaska’s largest public libraries, a different side of Eledge came out. As visitors waited in the lobby for a meeting with the city of Anchorage’s deputy library director, she lowered her voice to a whisper.
Eledge said she had spotted one of the workers she supervised removing books that contained the word “Eskimo,” a term that is now seen by many as unacceptable. […]
“I happened to live in Barrow,” she said, referring to the mostly Inupiat city that residents in 2016 renamed Utqiagvik. “They consider themselves Inupiat Eskimos but they got a bunch of woke, liberal, I consider racist Native people, young people. … It’s all about, ‘We stole their land.’ Which is bullshit!”
Eledge, 76, seamlessly moved from topic to topic, sharing her disgust with the use of Indigenous land acknowledgements and the sharing of pronouns. She called transgender people “very troubled” and said she was surprised that her recent public testimony against transgender girls participating in girls school sports had not made the front page of the Anchorage Daily News.
“Equitable, to me, is a racist word,” she said to her subordinate, who recorded the conversation because she feared no one would believe her about how Eledge interacted with her colleagues. At one point, Eledge noted that library employees were working to “wipe out everything white in the world.” [JFC]
It’s not the first time Eledge has made controversial remarks. She lost a 2021 campaign for the Anchorage School Board after images of her social media posts criticizing people of color, transgender people, Alaska Natives and Muslims circulated online. […]
Eledge continues to hold an active role in Alaska conservative politics. Once described by a columnist as “one of the Alaska GOP’s grande dames,” […] serves as president of the Anchorage Republican Women’s Club […]
Dunleavy and Bronson have awarded her power and public money. What’s more, the Daily News and ProPublica found that the city and state agencies meant to protect Alaskans’ civil rights have been hamstrung. […]
“When people aren’t able to report these issues, they go unaddressed and signal to the agencies causing harm that these things are OK,” di Suvero said. […]
Eledge made no secret of her beliefs. Over a one-month span in September 2020, for example, the following posts appeared on her Facebook page:
– “How sad that people of color seem to have no self esteem! If so why all the focus on color?”
– “This is a slippery slope we began with gay marriage. Next was transgender so of course pedophile is next.”
– “I wonder if [actress] Cynthia Nixon, who I believe is gay really has a son who is transgender or just confused on male/female role models. Does she feel bad about encouraging her son into something that has a very high rate of suicide? Does she feel bad when she gave her son puberty blockers to ensure her son became a ‘woman?’ Does she feel bad about telling her son a lie? Final question. Does she feel bad for the child abuse she is doing to her son?”
On Nov. 9, 2020, as Alaska’s COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths hit then-record highs, Eledge urged parents to “get on the phone and call your doc and local hospitals and tell them to tell the truth about hospital capacity! Bullcrap on overwhelmed!” The same week, she suggested Alaska should “stop the damn testing” for the virus.
[…] Some of her most inflammatory remarks involved Alaska Natives, according to Cole. “She said, ‘I worked in an Alaska Native village. If it wasn’t for the white man and his oil money, they’d still be raping their daughters in caves.’”
[…] Eledge will represent Alaska’s educators as a member of the national Education Commission of the States. Dunleavy in March appointed her to the commission, where she joins governors, state legislators and heads of state education boards tasked with steering U.S. education policy.
In the meantime, Eledge has continued her advocacy against LGBTQ+ protections. Just last week she testified before the Alaska Legislature in support of a “parental rights” bill, proposed by Dunleavy, that would restrict the rights of transgender students.
More at the link, including details that show Eledge is not qualified for the job:
Eledge didn’t have a library science degree either. The Alaska Library Association raised concerns in a letter to the Anchorage Assembly, saying that appointing someone who is not a librarian and does not meet the qualifications for library director would be like appointing a fire chief who’d never fought a fire.
HAWTHORNE, CA (The Borowitz Report)—One day after SpaceX’s first test flight of its Starship craft, Elon Musk claimed that the rocket exploded in midair because it insisted on working remotely.
“Starship was performing perfectly well when it was on the launchpad,” Musk said. “The trouble began when it left.”
“I urged Starship against working remotely, but it insisted,” he added. “Well, who was right?”
The SpaceX C.E.O. said that Starship’s misadventure should be a lesson to all those employees who insist on working from home.
“If you work remotely, you, too, will explode,” he warned.
These are such tiny, ordinary, everyday events that they should be forgotten in a moment. That guy next door? Sorry, I don’t remember. What was his name again? Except they turn into trauma, or injury, that can last a lifetime. Or they cut that lifetime hugely short. The guy who thought you turned in front of him at the stoplight becomes the most important figure in your life, and the life of your family. Because, when you add a gun, every momentary loss of control is a murderous rage.
While the Ukrainian military is no longer reporting the over 100 attack days that dominated February and the first part of March, the decline in Russian assaults appears to have leveled off to the extent that I changed the trend line from a simple linear trend to a polynomial curve, which gives a better sense of how things are now going.
There have been some notably low days, but in general, Ukrainian forces are facing down between 60 and 70 assaults each day, most of which are around Bakhmut and Aviidrivka. As with a leveling off of reported artillery firing from 60,000 shells/day peaks down to around 5,000-10,000 shells/day, this may represent a situation where Russia is now operating close to the line of what it’s current logistics and manpower can provide.
Before dawn on Thursday, Russian statement media outlet TASS admitted that as an Su-34 fighter-bomber was flying over the city of Belgorod, “there was an accidental discharge of aviation ammunition.” What they actually mean is that the Russian plane dropped a massive bomb onto the Russian city. One that, according to the Associated Press, left a 20-meter crater in the center of a residential neighborhood and had such force that it blew a car onto the roof a nearby building.
It wasn’t the first such incident in the Russian city of nearly 340,000. Last September, a Russian missile being directed into Ukraine failed on launch. Instead of climbing out to the west, it zipped across Belgorod at just-above-treetop level before exploding in the city. And there were smaller incidents, like a Russian officer who decided to discipline his own troops at a base in Belgorod by throwing a live grenade at them, killing three and wounding 16 others.
TASS is reporting just three injuries in the latest explosion. It’s hard to know if that’s anywhere close to correct. Considering the apparent size of the bomb, Russia should consider themselves very lucky if that’s the actual butcher’s bill. In the wake of the explosion, Russian military sources and social media immediately blamed Ukraine and called for “retribution.” But it’s not clear what Russia could do to Ukraine that it’s not already doing. [Tweet and video of russian bomb that detonated in Belgorod.]
Russia is likely lying about the extent of the injuries resulting from this bomb, but the bigger question might not be “Why is Russia bombing Belgorod?” It’s “Why isn’t Ukraine bombing Belgorod?”
One thing should be clear right from the start—if Ukraine wanted to destroy the Russian city of Belgorod, or at least cause enormous damage and kill many Russian civilians, it could do so. The city is located within 30 km of the border in an area Ukraine fully controls. It’s less than 50 km from Kharkiv. Between Belgorod and Kharkiv is a checkpoint on the M20/E105 highway, which, before the invasion, was the busiest port of entry between Russia and Ukraine. Ukrainian forces are right there, right now, holding that point against any possible return of Russian forces. They are within sight of the nearest Russian town.
Since the beginning of the invasion, Russia has used MLRS systems, missiles, and aircraft stationed at bases outside Belgorod to launch almost daily attacks into Kharkiv. The bases around the city have served as the staging point for troops and weapons heading to all areas of occupied Ukraine. The rail lines through the city and the big switching station in Belgorod make it a critical transportation hub that sends ammunition, fuel, and vehicles all along the front.
And it is just outside of Ukraine; very definitely within reach of Ukrainian weapons.
Back in April of last year, Ukraine conducted a spectacular operation in which two helicopters, flying at high speed incredibly close to the ground, zipped into the center of Belgorod and surgically hit a fuel depot before turning around and leaving. [video at the link]
In October of last year, Ukraine fired what appeared to be HIMARS rockets into an ammunition depot at Belgorod, resulting in a fairly spectacular series of explosions. This was done at the same time as Ukraine was hitting ammunition depots in Crimea, near Kherson, and elsewhere around Ukraine in an effort to reduce Russia’s supply of artillery shells, and to force Russia to move their depots further away from the front lines, generating strain on Russia’s always underperforming logistical operations. On one other occasion, Ukraine reportedly hit an electrical substation near Belgorod with drones.
But why hasn’t Ukraine done more? This is a map for just one day’s worth of Russian shelling, as reported on Thursday morning in Ukraine. [map at the link]
Honestly, this doesn’t really begin to cover it all. For example, reports indicate that at least 40 locations were shelled in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts, but barely a dozen of those locations are on this map. During the day on Thursday, officials in Sumy Oblast reported that Russia had shelled 44 locations around the city of Sumy. Included in this were 25 mortar shells fired into the town of Bilopillya. That town is almost 9 km from the Russian border. That means Russia placed mortars almost on the borderline to be able to lob those explosives into Bilopillya.
While the map of Russian artillery strikes certainly indicates just how heavy the firing is from the area around Bakhmut down to the line west of Donetsk, what’s also clear here is that Russia is repeatedly, day after day, throwing shells into towns that have nothing to do with winning a battle or even setting the stage for a tactical move. In Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv oblasts, Russia is repeatedly hammering small towns and villages in areas where there is not, has not been, and will not be in the foreseeable future, any on the ground fighting.
Why shell these locations? Because they can. Because it kills people. Because it causes suffering and misery for Ukrainians. Because even when Russia has had to slow the rate of fire around its biggest strategic targets over a reported shortage of ammunition, it can still spare a few hundred shells to crush the home, or the lives, of some rural babushka.
But, as the map shows, there are many Russian towns and cities that are just as easily within range of Ukrainian weapons. Ukraine’s limited supply of HIMARS rockets has kept them firing just an average of around 35 a day, which suggests that using them to take out apartment buildings in Volokonovka wouldn’t be the best application of resources. Still, there are many more conventional weapons, including Ukraine’s plain old Soviet-era BM-37 mortars, that could reach out and share the misery with Russian communities all along the many hundreds of kilometers of shared border.
Kharkiv is hit by rockets, artillery, MLRS, and drones almost every day. Why not Belgorod? Surely the people in these border towns must be beyond angry. Surely they want to strike back at the places that have robbed them of homes, family, and any illusion of peace. Surely they want revenge.
Some part of that is concern over the United States and other NATO allies that have expressed qualms over the possibility that any weapons they give to Ukraine might be used in Russia, leading to some kind of escalation of combat. But with 97% of the Russian military already engaged in Ukraine, and Russia launching every missile it can aim toward Ukrainian cities, it’s unclear what form any escalation could take.
The simplest reason is that Ukraine doesn’t do it, because they don’t think we would like it. In this case, “we” isn’t just the United States, and really not even limited to those nations supplying Ukraine with weapons to fight against the invasion. It’s everyone.
Ukraine’s restraint in not attacking Russian towns and cities, when it very much could, is in part because it wants to maintain the moral high ground. No matter how much the West shares with Ukraine, or how foolishly Russia wastes its men and materiel, Ukraine is still the underdog in this fight. Maintaining the moral high ground is important to how Ukraine presents itself to the world. Russia brought this fight to Ukraine, not the other way around. Ukraine doesn’t want to do anything that makes them appear as the aggressor, even if it’s plain old retaliation.
Ukraine is defending its nation from an illegal, unprovoked invasion. Period.
Surely, Ukrainians in Kharkiv must want to see the Russians across the border in Belgorod suffering the way that they have suffered. That’s called “being human.” But they, and their government, have displayed an incredible restraint in protecting the moral high ground. They defend that moral integrity and the nation’s standing in the world with a level of determination that may actually exceed the tenacity shown in the trenches around Bakhmut.
They treat it as the most valuable real estate in Ukraine. But the temptation … has to be great.
On Thursday, the Texas Senate approved a bill that would require public schools in the Lone Star state to display the Ten Commandments. From the Bible, in case you were wondering. As an added bonus, Republicans added a second bill that would force schools to provide a “period of prayer.” […]
The bill is authored by ALEC-supported state Sen. Phil King, and demands that a “durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments” be displayed in “a conspicuous place.” The poster must be no less than “16 inches wide and 20 inches tall,” it must begin with “I AM the LORD thy God,” and it must appear in every single public school classroom.
This is the newest aggressive move made by Texas conservatives toward a Christian-tinged fascism. In 2021, Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, with a lot of support from King (and other Texas Republicans), succeeded in creating a law forcing public schools in the state to display donated “In God We Trust” posters. The “conspicuous place” language appeared in that bill, as well.
[…] During hearings on the bill, state Sen. King blustered that the Ten Commandments are a part of American heritage, saying, “[The bill] will remind students all across Texas of the importance of the fundamental foundation of America.”
[…] Just to bring you up to speed on conservatives’ vision for public education: You can’t mention anything about being married. You cannot mention anything about the various races and cultures that make up our country. Discussing slavery or race or women or sex in any capacity is verboten. Buutttt you can have kids from the ages of 4 through 18 sit in a room where they will be forced to ponder and discuss:
Murder
Adultery
Stealing
Coveting
Graven images.
But this isn’t about American history: It’s about bigotry, hidden by a thin gauze of moral hypocrisy. And while it reads as a push for a theocracy, it’s really just the politics of fascism. The state Senate’s approval means the bill has been sent to the state House for consideration. If passed there and subsequently signed by the governor, both bills would take effect next school year.
[…] Senate Bill 1396 will require “every campus of the district or school to provide students and employees with an opportunity to participate in a period of prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious text on each school day in accordance with this section.”
The bill will also require parents to sign a permission slip stating that they know their child has a “choice” to participate or not, that they don’t “object to the student’s or employee’s participation in or hearing of the prayers or readings offered during the period,” and that it is “an express waiver of the person’s right to bring a claim under state or federal law arising out of the adoption of a policy under this section, including a claim under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or a related state or federal law, releasing the district or school and district or school employees from liability for those claims brought in state or federal court.”
So basically it’s “It should be totally fine to establish religion in a public school, just as long as everyone goes ahead and signs away their First Amendment right for the government to not establish religion in a public school, which is definitely a thing you can do.”
The awkward thing here is that the Establishment Clause is not actually about an individual right to not have the government foist religion upon them, it is about the government not actually being allowed to foist religion on people whether they want it or not. It’s not an option. There are lots of people out there who would love to have the government enforce their religion, to celebrate their religion, but that is not something they get to have.
[…] According to the Texas Tribune, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said that both bills are wins for religious freedom in Texas, despite the fact that they are literally the exact opposite of that.
[…] Christian Nationalism has become a popular idea among America’s wackiest Republicans, including people like Marjorie Taylor Greene who is about to publish a book titled The Case for Christian Nationalism, ghostwritten by Milo Yiannopoulos. After all, how are they supposed to be able to enjoy their religion if they can’t force it on other people?
An estimated 20 percent of Russia prisoner recruits are H.I.V. positive. To some, the front lines seemed less risky than prisons where they said they were denied effective treatments.
In Russian prisons, they said they were deprived of effective treatments for their H.I.V. On the battlefield in Ukraine, they were offered hope, with the promise of anti-viral medications if they agreed to fight.
It was a recruiting pitch that worked for many Russian prisoners.
About 20 percent of recruits in Russian prisoner units are H.I.V. positive, Ukrainian authorities estimate based on infection rates in captured soldiers. Serving on the front lines seemed less risky than staying in prison, the detainees said in interviews with The New York Times.
“Conditions were very harsh” in Russian prison, said Timur, 37, an H.I.V.-positive Russian soldier interviewed at a detention site in the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine, and identified only by a first name, worried that he would face retaliation if he returned to Russia in a prisoner swap.
After he was sentenced to 10 years for drug dealing, the doctors in the Russian prison changed the anti-viral medication he had been taking to control H.I.V. to types he feared were not effective, Timur said.
He said he did not think he could survive a decade in Russian prison with H.I.V. In December, he agreed to serve six months in the Wagner mercenary group in exchange for a pardon and supplies of anti-viral medications.
“I understood I would have a quick death or a slow death,” he said of choosing between poor H.I.V. treatment in prison and participating in assaults in Russia’s war in Ukraine. “I chose a quick death.”
Timur had no military experience and was provided two weeks of training before deployment to the front, he said. He was issued a Kalashnikov rifle, 120 bullets, an armored vest and a helmet for the assault. Before sending the soldiers forward, he said, commanders “repeated many times, ‘if you try to leave this field, we will shoot you.’”
Soldiers in his platoon, he said, were sent on a risky assault, waves of soldiers with little chance of survival sent into battle on the outskirts of the eastern city of Bakhmut. Most were killed on their first day of combat. Timur was captured.
[…] Those with H.I.V. or hepatitis C were forced to identify their status in a very public manner.
When captured by Ukrainian soldiers, many wore red or white rubber wristbands, or both, signifying they had either disease, both widespread in the Russian prison system. They were made to wear the wristbands ostensibly as a warning to other soldiers in case they were wounded, although they would not necessarily be infectious if properly medicated.
Anti-viral medication can indefinitely treat H.I.V. and suppress the virus to the point where an individual is not infectious. Ukraine allows those who are H.I.V. positive to serve in combat roles with approval from their commanders. The United States does not allow people who are H.I.V. positive to enlist, but lets soldiers who become infected continue to serve while receiving treatment.
“If a person is in treatment, and continues treatment, the virus can be undetectable and he can serve, he can work and is not dangerous to those around him,” said Dr. Iryna Dizha, a medical adviser to 100 Percent Life, an H.I.V. advocacy group in Ukraine.
[…] Another H.I.V.-positive prisoner of war who fought in the Wagner group, Yevgeny, said that he had suffered a gunshot wound a month before his capture by Ukrainian forces, according to a videotaped interrogation by Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency that was reviewed by The Times. He had received timely medical help despite wearing a red bracelet, he said, but was treated in a hospital where he felt doctors were careless about infecting other patients.
“There were no conditions for the H.I.V. infected,” he said. “We were all treated together, the healthy and the unhealthy.”
[…] The Ukrainian authorities provide anti-viral medicine to H.I.V.-positive prisoners of war.
H.I.V., hepatitis C and tuberculosis, including drug-resistant strains, are prevalent in Russian prisons and penal colonies. About 10 percent of Russia’s incarcerated population is H.I.V.-positive, said Olga Romanova, the director of Russia Behind Bars. About a third of the total inmate population has at least one of those three infections, she said.
In interviews, H.I.V.-positive prisoners of war said they were asked only to do push-ups before a recruiter to prove their fitness to serve.
Ruslan, 42, had served one year of an 11-year sentence for drug dealing when he joined Wagner in December. The medications he received in a penal colony were not suppressing the virus, he said, and he feared for his life. […]
THE TREND OF DECLINING DAILY ASSAULTS HAS LEVELED OFF
Over the last two months, I’ve been charting the number of daily assaults by Russian forces reported by the Ukrainian military. Friday was one of those rare days when Ukraine failed to issue a morning situational update, so it seemed a good day to revise the graph I hadn’t updated in the last two weeks. [chart at the link]
While the Ukrainian military is no longer reporting the over 100 attack days that dominated February and the first part of March, the decline in Russian assaults appears to have leveled off to the extent that I changed the trend line from a simple linear trend to a polynomial curve, which gives a better sense of how things are now going.
There have been some notably low days, but in general, Ukrainian forces are facing down between 60 and 70 assaults each day, most of which are around Bakhmut and Aviidrivka. As with a leveling off of reported artillery firing from 60,000 shells/day peaks down to around 5,000-10,000 shells/day, this may represent a situation where Russia is now operating close to the line of what its current logistics and manpower can provide.
UKRAINE FORCES CONTINUE TO STOP ASSAULTS AROUND DONETSK
This video shows a Russian BMP being taken out along the road just west of Pisky, one of several suburbs of Donetsk. [video at the link]
Not only is this happening just 5 km outside of a regional capital for Russian-occupied Ukraine, but the line in this area has also barely moved a meter since the invasion began. In fact, this explosion took place almost exactly on the line between Ukrainian and Russian forces that I drew up from the best sources almost seven months ago.
Despite Russia’s continued efforts, they have not been able to break through Ukrainian lines in this area and have not been able to shift Ukrainian forces away from Donetsk—which is another city that could easily be in Bakhmut-style ruins if Ukraine were operating the way that Russia has. But Ukraine expects to get Donetsk back, and they’d like it as close to intact as possible.
Of all the places where Russia has built extensive, multi-tier lines of defense over the last 14 months, Donetsk … is conspicuously not one of them. If Ukraine wants to surprise all those folks who are convinced they’re about to roll on Meltipol when the counteroffensive begins, just driving straight east into Donetsk seems like a worthy alternative.
RUSSIA TRIES TO SNEAK NEW WARSHIPS INTO THE BLACK SEA
Ukrinform reports that Russia has brought additional warships into the Black Sea over the last few days, including some that carry Kalibr cruise missiles. These ships reportedly entered through the Kerch-Yenikal Strait with ship transponders silent.
A total of nine warships are now active in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Together with one ship in the Sea of Azov, they could potentially volleys of eight Kalibr missiles toward Ukraine.
RAMSTEIN MEETING UNDERWAY, ZELENSKYY WILL ATTEND NEXT NATO MEETING
Friday marks the start of another round of talks in support of Ukraine at Ramstein military base in Germany. Considering Ukraine’s vocal requests for air defense systems over the last two weeks, don’t be surprised if updates today include announcements for those systems, as well as additional ammunition.
Meanwhile, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg has invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to attend the next meeting of NATO commanders when they convene at Vilnius in July. Zeleneskyy says he will attend the meeting in person.
Let’s hope that, by July, that attendance comes on the heels of much good news from the counteroffensive.
Tomorrow we’re going to begin a review of some training efforts that Ukraine has been carrying out since the early months of the war and how that fits with the potential for a counteroffensive. Until then … [video at the link]
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the most commonly used abortion pill in the U.S. to remain widely available.
The court blocked in full a decision by Texas-based U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on April 7 that invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s longtime approval of mifepristone, handing a sweeping victory to abortion opponents.
Two of the nine justices — conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — said they would have let part of Kacsmaryk’s ruling go into effect.
The Justice Department and Danco Laboratories, which makes the name brand version of mifepristone, Mifeprex, had asked the justices to step in after a federal appeals court kept in place a number of provisions in Kacsmaryk’s order that would have imperiled widespread access to the drug, including restrictions on distributing the pill to patients by mail.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, issued a temporary stay of Kacsmaryk’s ruling April 14, which was extended for two days Wednesday while the justices considered what steps to take.
[…]
The court’s decision means women can still obtain mifepristone by mail, use it at home, and use it up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy, as litigation continues in the lower court. The generic version of the drug, made by GenBioPro, will also continue to be available.
Today, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed a seven-year lawsuit against Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International brought by Resolute Forest Products. After Greenpeace exposed Resolute’s unsustainable forestry practices, the Canadian logging company sued Greenpeace offices for $100 million in an attempt to silence and bankrupt their critics.
Ebony Twilley Martin, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA, said: “For seven years, Resolute Forest Products has sought to silence Greenpeace USA, simply because we exercised our First Amendment right to expose their destructive business practices. We are beyond grateful the Court defended the right to call out corporations that prioritize profit over people. Because the truth is, this fight was never just about Greenpeace: it was an attempt to silence all those who speak truth to power. And we need the right to raise our voices now more than ever–against toxic chemical spills, against oil wells in our communities, and against attacks on our democracy. We will not be silenced.”
Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), like Resolute v Greenpeace, are legal tactics taken by powerful corporations to shut down criticism from activists, academics, journalists, whistleblowers, and everyday people. They are increasingly used to stifle environmental advocacy. The decade long legal case Resolute has brought against Greenpeace Canada is ongoing and will hopefully be dismissed on similar grounds.
Over the past ten years, the fossil fuel industry has used SLAPPs to target more than 150 people and organizations, with 50 such cases being introduced in the last five years alone. Resolute — which originally alleged that Greenpeace offices violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) — illustrates the extreme lengths to which large corporations will resort in order to stifle free speech. There is an urgent need for federal and state protections against this type of corporate intimidation. […]
CHRIS HAYES (HOST): Fox News has settled the defamation suit brought against them by Dominion Voting Systems, but the underlying problem — and it’s a deep and profound one — is not going anywhere. And now Fox has to pay 787 million dollars for a bind they got themselves into. It’s a bind that the whole country is in, in a certain way, but what I’m talking about is the problem, which is that tens of millions of our fellow citizens live in such a constrained informational environment and are so distrusting of any alternative sources of information, they operate in what is basically an entirely separate informational sphere.
I think the best way to understand this is just to look at some data, right? The spectrum of sources, for instance, that the median Republican primary voter consumes versus the median Democratic voter. So, Democrats consume and trust a wide variety of sources — The New York Times, The Washington Post, this network — a broad spectrum of the mainstream media, the progressive media, across the board. The spectrum of what Republicans consume is way, way smaller. First and foremost, they trust Fox News. That is their dominant source along with just a few others, like talk radio and OAN. It’s a very, very small universe of ideologically partisan-aligned sources of information.
And here’s the thing, that didn’t happen by accident. That is the product of a successful effort by Fox News and others, a lot of other conservatives who have waged a decades-long war — going back to the 1960s — on the mainstream media and any other trusted American institutions.
[…] But here’s the thing. Disconnecting their audience from other possible sources of authority has also left Fox vulnerable. They’re vulnerable to someone else who is even more of a grandiose liar, an even more effective demagogue coming along and winning over their audience’s trust. And this is precisely what happened with the phenomenon of Donald Trump.
[…] The base decided they trusted Trump more than they trusted Fox. And again, here’s — this is what’s key here, Fox themselves had produced a situation in which they were helpless to do anything, right?
[…] Angelo Carusone is the President and CEO of Media Matters For America — a watchdog group for right-wing media — and he joins me now. How much, do you think — we played that Ben Smith clip in the opening — when it comes to the Dominion case itself, Fox has put it on the air for about a few seconds, maybe a few minutes. There’s a very funny graphic of their website in which it’s just like utterly buried and there’s just 200 words and doesn’t name the settlement figure. How much have they just kept their viewers away from this entire story?
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT) Oh, entirely. They’ve just entirely kept them away. Even when they’ve mentioned it, they haven’t mentioned the settlement to their audience, like the number, they just sort of say “settled.” And when they talked about it, to your monologue, they actually talk about it in the context of “It’s gonna sure disappoint the rest of the news media that was so excited for this trial to take place.” That’s how they framed it for their audience. They actually frame it within the context of the Four Corners of Deceit.
So, there’s no acknowledgment — even that little bit of acknowledgement they gave to the court that said, “Well, we acknowledge what the court said, that maybe some of the things we said were false,” they don’t even give that statement to their audience. So, they are keeping them pretty far away from it.
And the other parts of the right-wing media, because there is this sort of resorting, reshuffling that’s happening right now. You know, they’ve been waiting for Fox to be on the ropes too because it meant bigger audience share and more power for them. Other parts of the right-wing media, like the Daily Wire and elsewhere, which is sort of the closest analogue to a Fox competitor, an emerging Fox competitor, they mention it, but barely.
[…] now, it’s starting to transcend well beyond just misinformation and false ideas and false narratives. There’s a bloodthirstiness within the right-wing media. Because, keep in mind, in 2022, it was the first time in a quarter century that Rush Limbaugh wasn’t the single largest name in the get out the vote operation in the country. Fox News has been on its heels for the past year and a half because they’re trying to figure things out. And the entire right-wing echo chamber’s resorting.
There’s a bloodthirstiness right now, and Fox News just got a license to lie. They are going to satisfy that bloodthirstiness, because they’re back off their heels and they need to shore up that power, fast. Before somebody else comes in and hijacks it.
See the link for the rest of the transcript and the video.
StevoRsays
Happy (?) Earth Day y’all.
22nd April (today) is Earth Day.
A pale blue dot that is two thirds covered by salt water.
Much of the remaining third is frozen ice, seas of dunes and barren rock, some expansive grassland plains, some dense jungle, some woodland and increasingly too much city, degraded and polluted.
We know of no other planet like ours. Not confirmed, not for sure. For sure, not nearby or accessible to us at least for now and likely forever.
This is our only home. Our collective home that we share with every other human being and every other living thing we know of.
Let’s look after it, hey?
Incidentally, just a couple more days until World Tapir Day now too!
StevoRsays
Breaking news. Vale Dame Edna, Sir Les & Barry Humphries, trinity of classic satricial characters and thankyou. Australia has just lost a national treasure and queer icon :
A team of explorers announced it found a sunken Japanese ship that was transporting Allied prisoners of war when it was torpedoed off the coast of the Philippines in 1942, resulting in Australia’s largest maritime wartime loss with a total of 1,080 lives.
The wreck of the Montevideo Maru was located after a 12-day search at a depth of over 4000 meter (13,120 feet) — deeper than the Titanic — off Luzon island in the South China Sea, using an autonomous underwater vehicle with in-built sonar…
The service will decommission two nuclear aircraft carriers, and two Independence-class Littoral Combat Ships will go up for sale to foreign militaries. The USS Nimitz will leave the service in 2026, while the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower will retire a year later. It’s part of a long-term effort to modernize the current fleet of approximately 485 ships…
‘Terrestrial Layer System’ (TLS) …
a new fleet of tracked and wheeled armored vehicles that will help spy on and jam enemy communications, hack into their computers, throw off the aim of incoming missiles, smart bombs and guided artillery projectiles, and bring hostile surveillance and kamikaze drones crashing to the ground without firing a shot.
In other words, TLS is a suite of ground-based electronic warfare systems—including signals intelligence (both for listening in on enemy communications, as well as identifying and geolocating transmitters), electronic attack (jamming and satellite navigation spoofing) and cyberwarfare capabilities—that were formerly on separate platforms. They’re integrated into an open-architecture system using common standards (CMOSS) that should allow easy future updates.
In development for several years, the Pentagon seriously stepped up with funding over the last month. In March and April respectively, they awarded Lockheed-Martin $33.6 million and $35.4 million to install TLS on three of its eight-wheeled Stryker troop-carrier vehicles at a facility in Syracuse, NY. These are specifically the 18-ton M1133 armored ambulance model, due to its extra electrical-generating capacity. Those awards supplement $58.9 million awarded to Lockheed last July for the work.
An operational test of the Stryker TLS is planned for around September, 2023…
The research shows that the OCA2 gene codes play a key role in the production of melanin, the pigment that colors hair, skin, and eyes. Eiberg’s theory is that a mutation occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago that switched on the ability for the gene to dilute brown eyes to blue…
“From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor,” Eiberg says. “They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA.” …
StevoRsays
Oh FFS. Now I learn :
This weekend the trans community set their Days Without Cisgender Nonsense counter back to zero, when UK magazine The Spectator published an interview with Australian comedian Barry Humphries in which he called trans activists “ratbags”, trans identity a “fashion”, and said he feels children are being “taught [it] in schools by crazy teachers”.
A big blot on his legacy here. I expected and thought a lot better of him than that. How can someone who does drag be such a transphobe? Yet he was. Ouch.
Well, sort of. I think that headline is overstating things a bit.
[…] Mark Pomerantz could refuse to answer certain questions, citing legal privilege and ethical obligations, and Jim Jordan [House Judiciary Committee chair Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican] would rule on those assertions on a case-by-case basis […] If Jordan were to overrule Pomerantz and he still refused to answer, he could then face a criminal referral to the Justice Department for contempt of Congress, but that wouldn’t happen immediately […]
Details regarding how the immediate impasse was resolved:
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg agreed Friday to let Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee question an ex-prosecutor about the criminal case against former President Donald Trump.
Under the agreement, committee members will be able to question Mark Pomerantz under oath next month in Washington. The deal resolves a lawsuit in which Bragg had sought to block Pomerantz from testifying, ending a legal dispute that escalated to a federal appeals court […]
Pomerantz will be accompanied by a lawyer from Bragg’s office, an accommodation the committee said it would have allowed even without Friday’s agreement.
Bragg’s office and the Judiciary Committee reached the agreement after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay Thursday that temporarily halted enforcement of a House subpoena which had called for Pomerantz to testify.
The appeals court had been scheduled to hear oral arguments in the dispute on Tuesday.
Bragg’s office said the agreement, delaying Pomerantz’s testimony until May 12, preserves the district attorney’s “privileges and interests” in his ongoing Trump prosecution.
“Our successful stay of this subpoena blocked the immediate deposition and afforded us the time necessary to coordinate with the House Judiciary Committee on an agreement that protects the District Attorney’s privileges and interests,” Bragg’s office said in a statement.
“We are pleased with this resolution, which ensures any questioning of our former employee will take place in the presence of our General Counsel on a reasonable, agreed upon timeframe. We are gratified that the Second Circuit’s ruling provided us with the opportunity to successfully resolve this dispute,” Bragg’s office said.
[…] Russell Dye, a spokesperson for committee chair Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, said in a statement, “Mr. Pomerantz’s deposition will go forward on May 12, and we look forward to his appearance.”
Pomerantz once oversaw the yearslong Trump investigation but left the job after clashing with Bragg over the direction of the case. He recently wrote a book about his work pursuing Trump and discussed the investigation in interviews on “60 Minutes” and other shows. […]
A committee lawyer, Matthew Berry, said at that hearing that Congress has legitimate legislative reasons for wanting to question Pomerantz and examine Bragg’s prosecution of Trump, citing the office’s use of $5,000 in federal funds to pay for Trump-related investigations.
Congress is also considering legislation, offered by Republicans in the wake of Trump’s indictment, to change how criminal cases against former presidents unfold, Berry said. One bill would prohibit prosecutors from using federal funds to investigate presidents, and another would require any criminal cases involving a former president be resolved in federal court instead of at the state level.
[…] Trump was indicted last month on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments made during the 2016 campaign to bury allegations of extramarital sexual encounters. He has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.
Posted by readers of the article:
one of the goals of this “investigation”, give donnie’s lawyers a sneak peak of the evidence against him.
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The first question for I would like to have heard Congress have answered is, if their interest in the case is regarding future law-making, and not political interference in a NY state criminal case, why then do they need to insert themselves right now, before evidence has been presented in court, and can’t wait until the after the evidence so to protect the the integrity of justice in the case? Otherwise, their action not only appears unconstitutional, it looks a lot like obstruction of justice.
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Jordan is just going to use this to create edited sound bites for Faux to “prove” the “entire” DA’s office was out to get Turmp. It will be a shit show…
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I expect the Republicans will end up totally embarrassed by this. Pomerantz will make them look silly and all he has to do is go down the list of Trump crimes, and when confronted just talk about the evidence.
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Am I missing the part where any of this is actually a ‘win’ for Bragg and the Manhattan DA’s office? It seems to me that the Congressional Republicans are getting all they want.
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I would not go so far as this is ALL they want. All they want would include Bragg declining to prosecute Trump.
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Keep in mind that Pomerantz resigned because he didn’t think the DA was being aggressive enough about charging Trump. He wrote a book about it. Many commenters on MSNBC were actually excited that Pomerantz was going to testify. Bring it on. Jordan is opening the blast furnace and is certainly going to get burned. Jordan vs Pomerantz will be a thing of beauty. Bragg’s only concern was that their legal strategy might be exposed too soon, but I think their legal strategy is pretty obvious.
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They want former Presidents to be immune from State crimes as long as there isn’t an equivalent Federal crime?
Wouldn’t “former Presidents are immune from State crimes” be in the Constitution if that is what the FF wanted?
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A better way for presidents to protect themselves from state prosecutions after leaving office: avoid the criming.
For months now, the most prominent images put out daily by the Ukrainian military haven’t been scenes from the front, they’ve been images of Ukrainian troops training for the next phase of the war. Not only has Ukraine been getting additional troops ready to go to the front, many of those who had been fighting for weeks or months were pulled back to train on new systems and new tactics. Challenger 2 tanks, Leopard 1 tanks, Leopard 2A tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, AMX-10rc wheeled gun platforms, what seems like an endless variety of armored transports, anti-aircraft guns, artillery, and support vehicles—they are all coming to Ukraine. Ukrainian troops trained both in their own country and in Poland, Germany, France, Sweden, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. And I’ve surely missed several countries in making that list. [Impressive.]
That Ukraine was planning a counteroffensive to push back Russian forces in the spring was never in doubt. That Russia was unsuccessful in its attempts at conducting an offensive over the winter was a huge blessing, making Ukraine’s task more straightforward and helping to maintain global support. But in recent weeks analysts have been pouring a flood of doubt onto the possibility of Ukrainian success. Not only did one of those leaked secret documents from back in early February highlight areas where Ukrainian forces were lacking, military pundits have been pumping out analyses insisting that the best Ukraine can achieve is localized victory, leaving Russia in control of most of the field.
Right now in Ukraine, General Mud is still setting the speed of operations along much of the front. But in three weeks, four at most, the wheat fields and woodlands of Ukraine are going to be dry. And we’re finally getting some news about what Ukraine will bring forward when the time is ready.
Friday was the first day of the latest Ramstein conference among the nations assisting Ukraine. This was the 11th meeting and over 50 nations were present. Following the first rounds of meetings, Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Miley spoke publically after hearing from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. What they had to say was largely encouraging. [video at the link]
In addition to promises of support vehicles, mine removal equipment, and air defenses, Austin spoke to the commitment to increase production of ammunition—over not just the short term, but for “the long haul.”
“Putin made a series of grave miscalculations when he ordered the invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago. He thought that Ukraine wouldn’t dare to fight back, but Ukraine is standing strong with the help of its partners. Putin thought that our unity would fracture, but Russia’s cruel war of choice, has only brought us closer together.”
Austin pointed out that Finland was present as a member of NATO, not just an observer, and said he expected Sweden to soon follow. And then he said something that ought to be carved in the street outside the Kremlin.
“Putin’s war is not the result of NATO enlargement. Putin’s war is the cause of NATO enlargement.” [True!]
When Miley came to the microphone, he gave some interesting numbers about the amount of ammunition and weapons systems that have already been delivered to Ukraine. But more importantly, he gave the number of Ukrainian forces who have trained with United States troops stationed in Germany. Miley broke those down as 2,500 currently in training; 8,800 who have completed training, and 65 more who have just begun training on the Patriot missile defense system.
Better than 11,000 Ukrainian forces training with American troops in Germany alone is an impressive number, but when the question and answer session began, Sec. Austin’s first response might have been the most illuminating, because it confirmed numbers that have been seen elsewhere.
Asked about the U.S. attitude toward the possibility of success for a Ukrainian counteroffensive, Miley was largely upbeat, while understandably refusing to talk about details of what Ukraine will do next. Then he said this:
“Our task and our commitment to Ukraine was to provide the training and the equipment for up to nine brigades, armored mech brigades, to conduct either offensive or defensive operations. Those brigades are trained, they’re manned, and they’re equipped.”
That description of nine brigades matches statements that have come from sources inside Ukraine. It may not represent the total of the force that Ukraine could deploy in any counteroffensive, but it certainly represents the minimum force that Ukraine can direct at the front in an effort to liberate occupied territory.
So how much is that?
In the United States, a brigade traditionally ranged from 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers and their associated vehicles and gear. A mechanized armor brigade was at the high end of this number, so nine brigades might be almost 50,000 troops. However, the U.S. recently reorganized into brigade combat teams that are between 4,000 and 4,500. Nine of those would be around 38,000 troops.
In the past, Ukraine’s brigade sizes have been … erratic, might be the best description. Before the invasion, many of the official brigades fit comfortably into that 3,000-5,000 range, but some were no larger than about 1,600 troops.
Hedging bets against what Ukraine has done in the past, a good minimum for the size of the force now prepared to go might be around 35,000 troops, 1200 Armored vehicles (including tanks, APCS, etc.), 450 artillery & mortars.
It’s quite likely that this is not the full size of the force that Ukraine intends to deploy in a counteroffensive. For one thing, the whole of the Ukrainian army at the outset of the war was around 245,000 people. Much of that army is, of course, currently deployed at the front line, including what’s thought to be somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 in the vicinity of Bakhmut.
Much of that Ukrainian force now along the front will likely remain in place during any counteroffensive to make sure Russia doesn’t attempt to match Ukraine with an offensive of its own. However, some troops will almost certainly roll into the counteroffensive group. In addition, assuming that Miley’s nine-brigades represent those units that have trained with NATO forces, there are certainly additional forces which had been training in western Ukraine for the last several months. Based on reports from many of those who spent time earlier in Bakhmut but who were rotated out of that area for additional training, there are, at least, tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops being trained elsewhere in the country.
On Wednesday, Financial Times took a look at some of those troops in training. They found survivors of horrific situations at Bakhmut, as well as newbies who had yet to see combat.
Aged from their 20s to their 60s, the former lawyers, interpreters, programmers and retired factory workers are now part of Ukraine’s big push to train up less experienced and completely new troops for its much-anticipated counter-offensive against Russia’s occupying forces.
That may make it seem as if all those involved were fresh from the streets of Kyiv or Odesa, but according to an officer quoted in the article, the average trainee had seven and ten months of combat experience. So not exactly raw recruits. This training is more about strategy and tactics of combined arms warfare than learning which end of the gun to point at the enemy.
According to the article, as Russia was struggling to launch an offensive over the winter, Ukraine was conducting a recruitment drive that netted around 40,000 additional volunteers. Some of those volunteers will finish their training and go to the front anywhere from the hellhole of Bakhmut to relatively quiet locations to the north or south. Others will join the force being prepared for the counteroffensive.
Some Ukrainian forces are training to operate the so-called “army of drones” [image at the link]
The force that eventually drives into the Russian line could well be around 50,000 soldiers backed by about 400 tanks of both Western and Soviet designs, riding to battle in a plethora of different APCs and fighting vehicles, preceded by a wave of drones, and accompanied by the thunder of a hundred guns. When compared to the greater than 250,000 Russian troops that may be in Ukraine at the moment, that force doesn’t seem overwhelming. But Ukraine doesn’t need to crush every Russian soldier everywhere at once. It only has to crush the force that’s in front of it.
Nine brigades is enough to lead a counteroffensive. However, it’s definitely not enough to sustain that offensive and turn it into a general rout of Russian forces. To make that happen, Ukraine needs more. A lot more. Let’s hope that’s what all those “lawyers, programmers and retired factory workers” are going to be doing. Let’s hope there are, oh, around 100,000 of them.
Of course, Russia may respond with a quick redeployment, getting troops to the battlefront and blocking Ukraine before it can make a significant breakthrough. Secretary Austin had something to say about that.
“Russians lack leadership, lack will, their morale is poor, and their discipline is eroding.”
The Canadian government “would work to provide” access to medical abortion drugs if it is banned in the U.S., an official said in a television interview Thursday.
Families Minister Karina Gould said Canada would assist Americans in getting access to abortion medication in line with its national laws if American law were to change.
“What concerns me … is where you see laws in states where they’re actually criminalizing women (who) cross state borders to access reproductive health care,” Gould said.
“And so, you know, we need to be very thoughtful about how we do this to make sure that we don’t further endanger, you know, American women who are seeking access to reproductive health care and services, as well as health-care providers,” she added.
On Friday, the Supreme Court paused a federal judge’s order to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone. The 5th Circuit Court is currently considering a case to prevent access to the drug after a Texas judge ruled that it should not be allowed.
Reproductive rights advocates say the original ruling, and questions over the drug’s legality, are actually more damaging to people who live in states where abortion is already legal.
“This judicial ping-pong game is impacting the accessibility of a safe, effective, decades-long approved medication and is causing chaos and confusion,” Carrie Flaxman, senior director, public policy litigation & law at Planned Parenthood, said during a recent briefing.
The battle over mifepristone is the latest in a series of efforts to reduce access to reproductive care, including abortions. […]
Announcing his candidacy for US Senate this week, Trump-affiliated Ohio businessman Bernie Moreno gave a great big speech about how white people should get reparations because they died in a war to “save Black people.”
This is probably a good move for the luxury car dealership owner and aspiring politician, given that his fellow Ohio Republicans might be a little wigged out by his last name and the fact that he’s an immigrant. Showing fealty by claiming white people deserve reparations is certainly one way to put them at ease. Unless, of course, they take offense to saying the Civil War was about slavery in the first place instead of state’s rights — specifically a state’s rights to allow people to own slaves. [video at the link]
Moreno said:
We stand on the shoulders of giants, don’t we? We stand on the shoulders of people like John Adams and James Madison and Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. This group of people that took on the largest empire in history. That said “No! We will not stand for this!” And won.
That same group of people, later — white people — died for Black people.
It’s never happened in human history before, but it happened here in America. That’s not talked about in schools very much, is it? They make it sound like America is a racist, broken country. Name another country that did that, that freed slaves, that died to do that. You know, they talk about reparations, where are the reparations for the people in the North who died to save the lives of Black people? I know it’s not politically correct to say that, but we gotta stop being politically correct. We gotta call it how it is.
The rule if you are a Republican is that you can say any stupid thing and then just say “I know it’s not politically correct to say that” and people will agree with you.
Actually, white people have been given reparations before. In 1892, year after a bunch of xenophobic lunatics lynched 11 Italian immigrants who were acquitted of the murder of New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy (who were largely chosen at random after Hennessey whispered with his dying breath that “[slur against Italians]” killed him), President William Henry Harrison gave the families of those victims $2,211. That would be about $73,336 today.
It wasn’t because anyone felt badly about it, mind you. The city outright refused to arrest those responsible, and Teddy Roosevelt famously called it “a rather good thing” in a letter to his sister. It’s more that Italy was pissed to the point that they were considering declaring war on the United States over it and Harrison didn’t want to deal with it anymore. But whatever the intentions were behind it, surely if the US had to dole out the equivalent of $73K to the family of every Black person who was lynched, things might be a lot different for a lot of people today.
Reparations are meant to be given to correct an injustice, not as a “thank you for your service.” The people who fought in the Civil War were paid for their service. It was also an almost all volunteer army — only two percent were conscripted. Slaves, on the other hand, were not paid and were forced to serve against their will. This would be why it makes sense to pay reparations to the descendents of slaves but not to the descendents of Union soldiers. […]
Alas, it does not seem as though his argument set the room on fire. It probably would have been more effective if he got up there and whipped himself and apologized for moving here from Columbia at five but not officially becoming an American citizen until he was 18 like some kind of Dreamer.
Moreno will be fighting Ohio state Sen. Matt Dolan in the GOP primary for the privilege of losing to Sen. Sherrod Brown in the 2024 Ohio Senate election.
During a climate meeting with world leaders Thursday, President Joe Biden announced he plans to increase US funding to help Brazil fight deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, and to help developing countries transition away from fossil fuels and survive the challenges of a warming planet. In a virtual meeting of the “Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate,” Biden pledged $500 million over five years to the Amazon Fund, an international fund to help cut deforestation in Brazil, and another $1 billion to the UN’s Green Climate Fund, which would be double the current US commitment.
The Catch-’23 is that Congress would have to approve any such funding, and Republicans in the House are dead set against spending money on foreign aid, especially not on climate aid, because the GOP refuses to accept that climate change or other countries are even real.
The amounts Biden pledged are simultaneously 1) not in any sense a budget buster, 2) more than the US has ever pledged for international climate aid, 3) only a drop in the bucket of what’s needed to do the job, and 4) far too much for Republicans, who doubtless think developing countries should pay us for helping entire coastal cities become beachfront property.
Biden urged the world leaders in the meeting, whose nations are responsible for about 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, to step up aid to developing countries, which will be hardest hit by climate change:
All of you know as well as I do: The impacts of climate change will be felt the most by those who have contributed the least to the problem, including developing nations.
As large economies and large emitters, we must step up and support these economies. […]
Together, we need to strengthen the role of multilateral development banks in fighting climate crisis as well, starting with the World Bank. Because climate security, energy security, food security, they’re all related. They’re all related.
Biden touted the progress his administration has made toward addressing the climate crisis, primarily through the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which are projected to reduce US greenhouse emissions by 40 percent of 2005 levels by 2030 — possibly more, even, since some of the investments can’t be modeled. (When the people in your life ask you what Joe Biden has ever done, that’d be a good one to keep in your back pocket!) He asked the other leaders to also do more to decarbonize by transitioning to clean energy, to preserve and restore forests, to reduce non-CO2 greenhouse gases like methane, and to work on developing carbon capture technologies to scrub carbon from the atmosphere.
The New York Times notes that Biden’s call for greater support for the Amazon Fund comes as Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has been working closely with Biden on climate issues. The fund was founded in 2008, with the largest chunks of money coming from Norway and Germany, but was suspended under former President Jair Bolsonaro, who actively rolled back protections for the Amazon rainforest and indigenous tribes living there. Deforestation in the Amazon basin has reached levels that threaten to change the region’s weather systems, and which could in turn convert much of the rainforest to savanna. Already, the Times points out, “as trees are cut down, parts of the forest now emit more carbon dioxide than they absorb.”
Thank goodness Republicans are here to be assholes about all this; Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) dismissed Biden’s call for increased international climate commitments, pointing out that in recent congressional testimony, the head of the US Forest Service said the agency didn’t have enough money to adequately manage US forests. (Why does the Forest Service not have sufficient funding? Probably not because Democrats hate trees, buddy!)
“Why are they now sending half a billion U.S. taxpayer dollars to Brazil for theirs?” Mr. Barrasso asked. “The higher priority would be to take care of our own resources first, or better yet, save taxpayers the pain of ever watching President Biden splash American treasure around the globe to chase his environmental agenda.”
Barrasso then presumably lit a cigar with a burning capybara.
Still as the Times explains, Republican intransigence may not entirely doom Biden’s pledge of climate help to other countries:
Last year, Republicans cut funds that the administration had pledged to the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations-led program to help poor countries transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and increase resilience to climate disasters. On Thursday the administration said it would deliver $1 billion to the fund, tapping discretionary funds within the State Department, according to an administration official.
Seems a hell of a lot better use of already appropriated funds than stealing funds from Defense Department schools for children of military families to build WALL, that’s for damn sure.
AIR DEFENSES ARE KEY
In a speech two weeks ago, Zelenskyy made it clear that the number one item on his shopping list was now ground-based air defenses: Anti-aircraft guns, missile defense systems, and man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS). He brought that message to Ramstein on Friday, and it appeared to be heard.
As part of his speech following the meetings, Sec. Austin repeated that the most needed item in Ukraine was more air-defenses. “That is what is most important in the immediate future,” said Austin. He said that these systems were necessary so that Ukrainians have the ability to protect citizens, infrastructure, and troops on maneuver. [Image of Ukrainian servicemen firing an S60 anti-aircraft gun near Bakhmut.]
[…] the purpose of the call for more air defenses is specifically to support what Ukraine sees as a real concern for the counteroffensive. With Russia constructing extensive, multi-tiered fortifications at many points along the line, Ukrainian forces are going to be slow in their initial advance, even in the best of circumstances. Russia could bring in helicopters and fighters to strike into Ukrainian forces while they’re picking their way past “dragon’s teeth” and bridging tank-sized trenches.
Air defenses are necessary to keeping Ukraine moving forward, and the availability of these systems may be as important as the weather when it comes to determining when the Ukrainian effort will begin.
RUSSIA FORCES REPORTEDLY PREPARING FOR “BIG PUSH” AT BAKHMUT
Two weeks ago, there were widespread reports that Ukraine was building up forces to the north and south of Bakhmut. However, even as those reports were coming in, it was clear no one knew if this represented an intentional buildup, or was the result of a declining ability to actually move forces in and out of the city.
Also two weeks ago, Russia first captured the area around the train station at the heart of Bakhmut, surrendered it for a day, then came back to capture it again. Since then, hard fighting has continued inside the city, and Russia has continued to advance, but the pace of that advance has definitely been slower than it was in the weeks leading up to the capture of the station. [map at the link]
Russian forces have clipped off another couple of blocks on the north of the area held by Ukraine, and have continued to consolidate their gains in other areas. The most consequential attacks may not actually be on the city itself, but assaults and artillery directed at the T0506 road through Khromove. Together with Russian forces pressing up against the T0504 highway to the south, Ukraine no longer appears to have any paved route in and out of Bakhmut. Everything that reaches the city has to come in along some dirt roads between these two routes—mud or no mud.
That’s an ugly situation in terms of supplying and sustaining Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut, and it explains why some worry that the buildup of Ukrainian forces on the flanks is more traffic jam than tactical move.
There’s another factor. In the last few days, as Russian attacks in the city have declined, there have been reports that Russia is building up both ammunition and forces for a major push into the western area of Bakhmut. The idea seems to be to catch the remaining Ukrainian forces in the city at a time when they have no means of a quick exit and aren’t in a great position to defend. Russia has cleared the obstacle of the river. They’ve pushed beyond the rail lines. Now there’s not great defensive line for remaining Ukrainian forces and nowhere left to retreat without falling under fire from those Russian forces north and west of the city.
So the reports are that Russia is stocking up for one last push to capture all of Bakhmut, a push that could come within days.
Should Ukrainian forces survive that push, Russia might have actually culminated at Bakhmut, at least for the moment. Also, every Russian plan to conduct a “big push” so far has broken down into disconnected, small unit actions which often fail to support each other. What was it Sec. Austin said again? “Russians lack leadership, lack will, their morale is poor, and their discipline is eroding.” That.
But before anyone can think about what happens after, Ukraine first has to survive this push, if it comes. Honestly, the current situation looks like a whole lot of Not Great. If we’re here again next Saturday, and the map in Bakhmut doesn’t look much different, I’m going to be very relieved.
HOW HAPPY IS THIS GUY TO HAVE HIS LEOPARD 2 TANK IN UKRAINE?
[video at the link] I would guess he’s about as happy as the former driver of this Russian T-90A is unhappy. But hey it does make a decorative pizza tray. [video at the link]
WE DON’T HAVE TO GUESS ABOUT UKRAINE’S FUTURE, BECAUSE IT’S IN GOOD HANDS
You know what these young Ukrainian Plast Scouts are doing? Not field stripping a kalashnikov and pretending to murder people. [A reference to Putin’s recent changes to educational curricula.] [Photo of little Ukrainian girls participating in a scouting program.]
[…] Scouting has a long tradition in Ukraine, but under Soviet occupation it was repressed, or turned into a recruiting tool for the Soviet military. As the Soviet Union began to fall apart, Ukrainians formed clandestine scouting groups for their kids. The first gathering of such scouts in 1989 was raided by the KGB, with children beaten and arrested.
The scouts persisted. They are still there. Like Ukraine.
Last night the Supreme Court stayed a ruling by Texas federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk which would have banned the common medication abortion drug mifepristone. Also last night, Justice Sam Alito showed his whole ass. Again.
In a four-page tantrum, he railed against his fellow conservatives for failing to support him an in exercise of raw power, unmoored from facts, law, or precedent. To call his histrionics unbecoming of a federal judge is like saying Elon Musk’s rocket encountered some turbulence on landing. It was, in a word, disgusting. Only Justice Clarence Thomas would have joined Alito in allowing the Fifth Circuit’s modified version of Kacsmaryk’s ban to go into effect, and even he wasn’t willing to sign on to Alito’s screed.
Justices aren’t required to register their opinions on emergency orders — that’s why they call it the shadow docket. It’s entirely possible that, among the seven justices who apparently acquiesced to the stay, a couple of the conservatives will vote to ban mifepristone when the issue comes back around. But judging from Alito’s broadside, in which he obliquely attacked not just liberal Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, but also Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett, there is major skepticism about this case, even among the court’s conservatives. As well there should be! The theory of standing here is ridiculous, as we’ve said before.
With their 6-3 majority poised to roll back fifty years of social policy in ways which are wildly unpopular with the American public, the Supreme Court’s conservative wing has been broadly criticized for using the shadow docket to enact policy by stealth. […]
Perhaps mindful of the danger of showing the public that the Supreme Court has become just another tool for Republicans to enact their countermajoritarian Christian nationalist agenda, the three Trump-appointees appear to have joined Chief Justice Roberts in attempting to salvage the last vestige of the court’s legitimacy. So instead of blessing the lower courts’ rulings and allowing three assholes named Matt, Andy, and Kurt to drastically remake social policy through facially preposterous legal theories and outright lies, they pumped the brakes last night. And because Alito can’t very well say “You guys, I thought we all agreed to play dumb and let the Fifth Circuit ban abortion now that we have all the power,” instead he attacked them for using the shadow docket to do it. Something he himself has been doing all along.
“In recent cases, this Court has been lambasted for staying a District Court order ‘based on the scanty review this Court gives matters on its shadow docket,’” he began, citing a dissent by Kagan to a shadow docket decision in 2022 which shitcanned a lower court’s ruling that Alabama’s electoral maps were illegally discriminatory. [snipped other examples]
[…] without explaining how the policy which he angrily defended is somehow illegitimate when used by people he doesn’t like.
“At present, the applicants are not entitled to a stay because they have not shown that they are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the interim,” he goes on, breezily waving away the reality that even the Fifth Circuit’s modified stay would result in every single package of mifepristone being “mislabeled”, ban the generic version of the drug, and force women to take three times the currently recommended dosage by reversing the latest medically-approved dispensing protocol. Alito blames the DOJ for the regulatory chaos that would be unleashed by allowing the Fifth Circuit’s order to go into effect while a federal judge in Washington has ordered the FDA to do exactly the opposite within the 17 states plus DC which sued to keep mifepristone on the market. The Justice Department was obliged to appeal the Washington ruling, he insists, citing no particular precedent.
Sure, we know Alito’s not going to recognize the FDA’s interest in carrying out its statutory mandate to regulate drug manufacture and distribution in this country, much less the right of women to access medication abortion. But you’d think he’d accept that barring Danco, the pharma company which markets mifepristone, from selling its product would rise to the level of a cognizable legal harm. Well, you would if you’d just woken up from a two-decade coma and expected Supreme Court justices to act with even a modicum of legal consistency. Instead Alito suggests that Danco wouldn’t be harmed because the FDA would likely exercise its enforcement discretion not to curtail Danco’s sale of the drug, and anyway “the Government has not dispelled legitimate doubts that it would even obey an unfavorable order in these cases[.]”
Why, yes, he did just accuse the Biden administration of lawlessness, because the man is out of his fucking gourd. And lest we forget, the plaintiffs’ standing in this case is based on the theory that some anti-choice doctor somewhere will have to save the life of a woman who got prescribed mifepristone by mail and had a bad reaction.
From here, the case goes back to the Fifth Circuit for an expedited briefing on the merits. It will get a different three-judge panel, although the pool is stacked with lunatic Trump appointees so don’t get your hopes up. Or maybe, hope a little, since the tea leaves suggest that there’s no real appetite at the Supreme Court to use this particular case to ban medication abortion nationwide.
The mother lode of winter storms has sent water blasting through rock crevices and rivers in the Sierra Nevada, leading to more glittering discoveries by prospectors.
Albert Fausel spends his days at the family hardware store sorting through boxes of bolts and pacing the old, creaking floorboards to greet his loyal clientele. But on a recent sunny afternoon, he threw on his wet suit and diver’s mask and inserted himself face down in the shallow creek near his home.
An amateur gold seeker, Mr. Fausel used his gloved fingers to sweep aside the sand and gravel at the bottom of the creek and then, still under water, let out a cry that was audible through the tube of his snorkel: “Woooo-hoo-hoooo!”
He emerged with what gold seekers call a picker — not quite a nugget, but big enough to pinch in your fingers — and he delicately handed the glinting object to his fellow prospector, a friend with a long white beard who goes by Uncle Fuzzy. In just 20 minutes of rooting around the creek bed, Mr. Fausel had found about $100 worth of gold.
There’s a fever in California’s gold country these days, the kind that comes with the realization that nature is unlocking another stash of precious metal. California’s prodigious winter rainfall blasted torrents of water through mountain streams and rivers. And as the warmer weather melts the massive banks of snow — one research station in the Sierra recorded 60 feet for the season — the rushing waters are detaching and carrying gold deposits along the way. The immense wildfires of recent years also loosened the soil, helping to push downstream what some here are calling flood gold.
It has been nearly 175 years since the Gold Rush that drew countless wagons and ships filled with prospectors, but the foothills of the Sierra Nevada are still home to a quirky group of gold seekers, heavy on beards and flannel, who pore over old maps for the site of a now-vanished saloon or walk the back country searching for nuggets and other artifacts.
Placerville is a 15-minute drive from the valley where James Marshall, a carpenter from New Jersey, was building a sawmill in January 1848 along the American River when something shiny in the water caught his eye. “Some kind of mettle,” wrote one of his workers in his diary in the quirky spellings of the time, “that looks like goald.”
The big chunks of the easy-to-find gold that had been lolling around in rivers for millenniums were gone after the first years of the Gold Rush, and Marshall himself died penniless. But miners resorted to spraying powerful jets of water onto hillsides and sorting through what flowed down, leaving giant piles of mining residue still visible today.
That kind of extraction is now heavily restricted in California, yet gold seekers say the recent battering of successive winter storms has produced a similar effect. It is as if Mother Nature had aimed a pressure washer onto the hills and delivered some of the precious minerals still embedded in the rock and dirt.
[…] Placerville Hardware, lays claim to being the oldest continuously operating hardware store west of the Mississippi River. It sells gold panning equipment like sluice boxes, plastic pans with ridges to trap gold, metal detectors and small glass vials to preserve any pickers and flakes that amateur prospectors might find.
Security guard, fitness trainer, taxi driver: All important jobs in peacetime but, in wartime Russia, these are not for “real men.”
That’s the message the Kremlin is hoping will help boost recruitment efforts and replenish forces depleted by more than a year of grueling conflict in Ukraine.
The Russian Defense Ministry released a new advertising campaign this week centered on the idea, part of a broader push to entice military-age men to join the fight in large numbers and avoid the need for a new wave of conscription […]
A video that appeared across the ministry’s social networks Wednesday features three men going about their daily lives and working seemingly mundane jobs.
As dramatic music plays in the background, all three appear to ponder their life choices, imagining themselves instead in army uniforms, with an arm patch prominently featuring the letter “Z,” which has become the symbol of what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
“Did you dream of becoming this kind of a defender?” the advertisement asks as it shows the security guard manning an entrance to a grocery shop, next to a produce stand. “Is your strength really in this?” it asks while showing the fitness trainer helping a client lift a weight. “Is this the path you wanted to choose?” it asks a taxi driver as he drops off a passenger.
All three then appear looking stern while walking through thick fog in what appears to be a battlefield, wearing uniforms and carrying assault rifles in their hands.
“You are a real man. Be one,” a message on the screen tells viewers, before cutting to a graphic from the ministry that calls for men to sign up as contract soldiers with a promised monthly salary starting at 204,000 rubles (nearly $2,500) — a significant sum for most Russian families and more than triple the average salary, according to official statistics from 2021.
[…] Last week, Russian lawmakers hastily approved new legislation allowing authorities to deliver conscription notices electronically, making it almost impossible to avoid getting drafted.
[…] Recruitment posters have been popping up around Moscow since the beginning of the invasion but have become more commonplace in recent weeks.
[…] Its appeal for “real men” to join the fight plays into the stereotype of masculinity that has been venerated under Putin — who has admitted he himself once drove a taxi to earn extra money after the collapse of the Soviet Union. For more than two decades, the Kremlin has been cultivating the “macho” image of the Russian leader, who has been often photographed bare-chested, swimming in wild rivers and riding horses while on his summer vacations in Siberia.
[…] It’s no wonder that in its latest recruitment campaign, the Kremlin is trying to tap into that kind of “emotional motivation” and appeal to the “inner macho” in Russian men, said Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The use of the narrative dating from the Soviet era sounds “pretentious and noble, while hiding the necrophilic essence of using people as cannon fodder, without regard to the needs of the economy and the decline in the working population,” he told NBC News.
Abbas Gallyamov, a Russian political analyst and former Putin speechwriter, wrote on Facebook that the ad alluded to terminology used “in the criminal world, whose code of conduct is used by Russia’s ruling class.” In that world, he said, the word “muzhik” (meaning “real man,” in Russian) is synonymous with “the one who suffers and tolerates.”
“So this video turned out to be much more telling than originally planned,” he added.
[…] A bitterly sarcastic headline in the Kyiv Post on Friday read: “Russian Video Campaign Calls for ‘Real Men’ to Replace Enlisted Cannon Fodder.”
Meanwhile, the Unian news agency said on the Telegram messaging app Wednesday that the ad is the latest “cringe” from Russian propaganda and is trying to sell Russian men on the idea that it’s better to become a “corpse or disabled” than be a security guard or a fitness instructor.
StevoRsays
Via Aussie ABC news – excerpt / intro :
When comedian, cabaret star and drag artist Reuben Kaye made a joke on Channel 10’s The Project in February, he didn’t anticipate the level of backlash he was about to cop.
It was a simple pun, in his trademark boundary-pushing style, about Jesus getting nailed to the cross, but it led to an apology from hosts Waleed Aly and Sarah Harris and 277 submissions to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Even now, two months later, the Daily Mail continues to publish articles about Kaye that trigger an influx of hateful messages and death threats. Yet it didn’t take him long to mine these traumatic events for comedic gold — in his latest show, Live and Intimidating, which is playing at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival before touring to Perth and Brisbane.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have demanded answers from Beijing, after a senior Chinese diplomat questioned the sovereignty of post-Soviet states.
In an interview with French network TF1, Lu Shaye, China’s ambassador to France, said former Soviet republics have no “effective status” in international law.
“In international law, even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have the status, the effective status in international law, because there is no international agreement to materialise their status of a sovereign country,” Lu said, in an interview broadcast on Friday…
KGsays
In an interview with French network TF1, Lu Shaye, China’s ambassador to France, said former Soviet republics have no “effective status” in international law. Reginald Selkirk quoting Yahoo quoting Lu Shaye@455
Logically, that must apply to the Russian Federation as much as to the other 14 successor states of the USSR. So what was Xi Jinping doing making a state visit to a quasi-state with “no effective status in international law”? Was Lu perhaps warning that China might de-recognise Putin as a legitimate head of state? Probably not, but if Lu wants somehow to claim that the Russian Federation is different from the other 14, he might note that the Russian Federation has signed treaties with most of the ex-Soviet states, notably including Ukraine. As has China (Xi signed a bilateral treaty with Ukraine in 2013, thus clearly recognising it as a sovereign state).
@451. Lynna, OM : “Toxic: The Kremlin wants ‘real men’ to prove themselves by joining the fight in Ukraine.”
How many bullets does it take to kill a “real” Russian man? One in the right spot same as everyone else. Obvs answer.. Ironically an imaginary Russian soldier or any imaginary soldier could take more bullets if you imagine it right..
@446. Lynna, OM : Ohio Republican Demands Reparations For White People
But what often gets forgotten by those who oppose reparations is that payouts for slavery have been made before – numerous times, in fact. And few at the time complained that it was unfair to saddle generations of people with a debt for which they were not personally responsible.
There is an important caveat in these cases of reparations though: The payments went to former slave owners and their descendants, not the enslaved or their legal heirs.
For 111 years, Ohio voters have lived with a set of rules for amending their state constitution through citizen initiative. The requirements have not changed and the threshold for enactment has always been 50 percent plus one. Today, Republicans in the legislature want to change that. The reason is abortion, and the maneuvering underway there adds to a bigger story about the Republican Party.
The story in Ohio is somewhat convoluted, as legislative and parliamentary processes often are. But the motive is clear: Facing the possibility that abortion rights could be enshrined into the state constitution by a vote of the people later this year, Republicans want to change the rules by making it tougher to pass such amendments by requiring them to receive 60 percent of the vote.
The effort is as transparent as it is cynical. Some proponents of the rule change will not specify that abortion politics is the reason they are rushing to do this. They offer alternative explanations for their thinking, such as protecting the integrity of the state constitution from nefarious special interests and keeping the constitution from being mucked up with all manner of minor or narrow amendments. Proponents of the abortion rights amendment, however, say those explanations are hollow and hypocritical.
This is part of a broader pattern that spreads beyond Ohio and the issue of abortion. It speaks to the state of contemporary politics and the mind-set of many Republican elected officials, who are using their power in state legislatures to undo rules that they see as unfavorable to them. Early and mail-in voting regulations are prime examples of such action. As seems to be the case with abortion in Ohio, Republican lawmakers are trying to change rules when public opinion appears to be against them.
After the 2020 elections, Republicans decried changes made during the pandemic that expanded early and mail-in voting, which has tended to favor Democrats. In some states, they moved to shorten the period for early voting and tighten rules for mail ballots. When Democrats thumped Republicans in early voting again in 2022, some Republican leaders began to acknowledge that they had a problem of their own and that they must learn how to compete more effectively against Democrats in turning out early voters.
Where Democrats appear to have an advantage in popular-vote elections, many Republicans still favor steps to lessen those advantages. Recently, Cleta Mitchell, a conservative legal strategist, told a gathering of donors that Republicans should look for ways to tighten the rules on campus voting, where the party is getting swamped both by lopsided margins for Democrats and higher turnout, as well as mail ballots.
[…]
Proponents of abortion rights in Ohio have drawn up a proposed constitutional amendment patterned on the one approved in Michigan. They are in the process of gathering enough signatures to qualify the initiative for the November ballot…
If they succeed, they will need the support of 50 percent of voters plus one to make it part of the state constitution. Ohio has recently moved toward the Republicans, but the majority of public opinion appears to favor abortion rights, as is the case nationwide. Still, it is doubtful the abortion ballot measure could achieve a three-fifths majority.
Shortly after last November, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state Rep. Brian Stewart, both Republicans, called for raising the threshold for passage of proposed amendments to the constitution to 60 percent. LaRose did not talk about the issue during his reelection campaign. Nonetheless, he and other proponents recommended the state legislature move swiftly to enact the change during a lame-duck session.
LaRose said the proposal was designed “to help protect the Ohio Constitution from continued abuse by special interests and out-of-state activists.” Later, Stewart said explicitly in a letter to fellow Republicans in the state House that the reason for the new proposal was because the left was trying to do “an end run around us” to put abortion rights into the state constitution and to give “unelected liberals” and allies on the state Supreme Court power to draw legislative districts.
[…]
There is one other wrinkle in all this. Ohio recently did away with its August elections (except in a few cases) on the grounds that they were costly and generally resulted in low turnout. Having failed to enact the rules change measure in the lame-duck session late last year, the first opportunity to take this to the voters would be next November, in which case it would not apply to the reproductive rights amendment.
So now, proponents of raising the threshold for passage of constitutional amendments also want to authorize an August election. State Senate President Matt Huffman (R) said recently that spending $20 million on an August election is worth the money “if we save 30,000 lives as a result.” The Ohio Health Department reported that there were less than 21,820 abortions performed in the state in 2021.
[…]
[video of child greeting her father when he returns from the war] can never watch enough of these. I just want the ones where dad doesn’t have to return to the front lines ever again, because the war is over.
Also, notice how we don’t see videos like this from the Russian side? I actually went looking, just in case they were in some corner of Telegram I’d missed. Nope, we just get the stuff I posted earlier, about Russia’s greatness and ability to suffer and manifest destiny to rule the world. Touching vignettes of reunited families just don’t fit their vibe.
This isn’t Putin’s war. The bulk of Russian society is rotten. [video of Russian lady discussing what is wrong with the world. Her reply is that it is all Russian and should be given back to Russia. Plus a a link to more russian videos of likeminded doofuses.]
Good thread from George Barros on the confirmed Ukrainian bridgehead across the Dnipro river from the (still destroyed) Antonov bridge.
Unpacking this assessment in our change of control of terrain around the Dnipro River delta.
This assessment uses a combination of multi-sourced Russian-provided textual reports about Ukrainian activity in this area as well as available geolocated combat footage. [maps within the thread]
Russian milbloggers have provided enough geolocated footage and textual reports to confirm that Ukrainian forces have established positions in east (left) bank #Kherson Oblast as of April 22 though not at what scale or with what intentions. […] Russian milblogger Rusfleet claimed on April 18 that the Wagner-affiliated Grey Zone Telegram channel is right and that Ukrainian forces are concentrating in left bank Kherson Oblast and that Ukrainian forces are capable of crossing the Dnipro River near Kakhovka.
[…] The critical mass of current Russian reporting characterizes Russian forces’ presence in the delta areas as fundamentally degraded from where it was six months ago.
These reports indicate that Russian forces no longer fully control this area.
It should not be discounted. […]
This is what’s called a “diversion.” According to Russian sources like Rybar, Russia has emptied the area of any forces. Ukraine wants to draw them back in, to thin out more important areas of the front.
Can you feel the buzz in the air? Ukraine’s big counteroffensive is coming! And just like mock drafts before NFL draft day, war analysts (and Russian generals, maybe) are poring over maps, trying to divine Ukraine’s gambit. […]
We’ve discussed this before. There are two obvious moves.
STAROBILSK
The first would liberate most of the empty steppe in northeastern Ukraine, all of it in Luhansk oblast. [map at the link]
The circled city is Starobilsk, where literally all the roads and rail lines in this vast region meet. It’s the logistical hub of Russia’s war effort in the region. Remember how liberating Kupiansk forced Russia to retreat from all of Kharkiv oblast? Liberate Starobilsk, and Russia will be forced to abandon most of Luhansk Oblast. Meanwhile, key supply lines from Belgorod and other Russian cities to Ukraine’s north would need to be rerouted.
Ukraine would need to punch through Svatove, to Starobilsk’s west, while putting pressure on Kreminna to keep Russia from overcommitting to the north. Now here’s the interesting part. Take a look at the map of Russian fortifications: [map at the link]
As you’ll see down below, Russia has built layer upon layer of defenses in the south. Yet here … just one line. Given the terrain and lack of roads, Ukraine would have to fight through the city of Svatove, and then punch through the line on its eastern side. But after that? Nothing but clear sailing, all 62 kilometers to Starobilsk.
Two possibilities are at play here: Either Russia doesn’t think Ukraine will push to Starobilsk, or it doesn’t care if Ukraine does. Maybe logistics have already been shifted elsewhere. Or maybe Russia has limited capacity for manning defenses, and it is merely prioritizing its biggest prize—the land bridge connecting mainland Russia to Crimea.
THE LAND BRIDGE
The most obviously strategic direction is also the most heavily defended one. The goal here would be to push south to sever Russia’s land bridge to Crimea. Check out Russia’s defenses in this area: [map at the link]
That’s layer upon layer upon layer. The strategic cities of Tokmak and Polohy are literally surrounded by defensive works. Russia doesn’t want them outflanked. The entire E105 highway down to Melitopol is one long trench. In a war in which failed Russian generals have yet to be lined up against a wall and shot, no one wants to be the guy who tells Putin they lost Melitopol—and with it, the land bridge.
Starobilsk may be lower-risk, but much lower-reward. This? This could be the ballgame. So what are Ukraine’s options? [map at the link]
I’ve offered three possible approaches in this direction. Ukraine might pick one, or two, or all three, depending on the level of actual resistance and troops available.
The Tokmak approach would be the most decisive. Check out this great community story by RO37 on the importance of Tokmak:
Tokmak is essentially the lynchpin that holds the Western and Eastern wings of the Russian army together. Capture Tokmak, and the two wings fall apart into 2 independent armies no longer capable of supporting each other directly
Seriously, go read it. With Tokmak liberated, Russia’s ability to respond to Ukrainian moves toward Melitopol, Berdyansk, Mariupol, or anywhere else along this front will be severely compromised. Ukraine knows this, and Russia knows this, which is why it has created multiple layers of defenses around the town. [map at the link]
Polohy is another possible direction, and the reason is apparent with this close-up: [map at the link] Those dark black lines are rail lines. If Ukraine liberates Polohy, it would have a critical rail hub to simplify its logistics as it pushed further south. Now, you may ask yourself, “Wouldn’t Russia just shell that rail line and keep it out of commission?” You’d think that! But Russia would rather aim its artillery and rockets at civilian apartment buildings and power plants than at critical military infrastructure.
Polohy is also the first step toward Berdyansk. There is one defensive line south of Polohy, but then … nothing for the next 100 kilometers toward the strategic port city. And why is Berdyansk critical? For one, it severs the M14 highway that runs along the Azov Sea coast. Remember, we’re cutting the land bridge. But there’s a second critically important reason: Control of the M14 highway puts the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to Russia in range. [map at the link]
The GLSDB rockets Ukraine will be getting later this year have a published range of 150 kilometers. Usually, actual range is beyond any publicly published specs, so the Kerch Bridge might be in range from Berdyansk itself (164 kilometers away). But drive along the coast a bit, toward Prymorsk, and the bridge is inside the GLSDB rockets’ public specs.
At that point, Ukraine can do to Crimea what they did to Kherson—cut all supply routes—from the land bridge and from the Kerch Bridge. Ukraine’s stash of Harpoon anti-sea missiles can threaten attempts to resupply Crimea’s from the sea. Air supply is possible, but unsustainable to support large-scale combat operations.
Another possible approach is toward the small town of Rozivka. Look at the maps above, and you’ll see that it’s also a rail hub, intersecting with a major highway, the T0803. That makes it a strategically important logistical hub. It does much of what Tokmak does: split the Russian army in two, without having to punch through the kind of defensive works protecting Tokmak. [map at the link]
This wouldn’t be a cakewalk, with extensive defenses to the north around Novopetrykivka, but that’s one line of defense versus at least three around Tokmak. And then look at that nice clean approach toward Mariupol.
So everyone assumes Ukraine will push south, with some speculation that Starobilsk would be an enticing target up in the northeast. But what if it’s neither?
DONETSK CITY
This is purely unfounded speculation based on nothing except looking at a map, and some published drone footage, but what if Ukraine shocked everyone by going toward Donetsk City? [map at the link]
Donetsk city is the capital of Donetsk oblast, one of the two oblasts in the Donbas, which Russia pretends to have annexed. Losing one of their capitals would be a propaganda catastrophe. And not only is the city lacking the kind of defenses Russia has scattered elsewhere, but Ukraine is already just a few kilometers from its outskirts. [map at the link]
Indeed, this front looks barely changed after 14 months of war, as Russia has been utterly incapable of pushing deeper into Donetsk’s suburbs to give themselves a cushion.
Now, Donetsk is a city of 1 million. We’re not talking a walk in the park. But with Russian forces arrayed everywhere but here, there’s a chance for the kind of lightning strike that could catch the city’s defenders unaware. And the local Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) militia that featured heavily in the first six months of the war is mostly gone. You know how Russian Wagner mercenaries treat their prisoner recruits as cannon fodder, sending them unprepared head-on against Ukrainian defenses? That’s the role that Russia’s two Donbas militias played during the first half of the war. Just about every single member of Donetsk’s militia was either killed or wounded.
The separatist DPR began Russia’s wider war on Ukraine in February with around 20,000 men in six light infantry brigades. By November, the army had lost 3,746 killed in action and 15,794 wounded in action, according to the DPR’s ombudsman.
While the DPR obviously expanded their militia with forced mobilization, we don’t see them anywhere in the fight anymore. Their units are so gutted that Russian mobiks (mobilized conscripts) are being used to replace losses in these DPR units. In a bit of gruesome revenge, those DPR commanders are now using those Russians as cannon fodder. [Tweet and video at the link, showing mobilized Russians complain about DPR officers.]
Is there much of a defense in Donetsk city? At least one person is taking a gander. Remember Maygar, who posted all those drone videos from Bakhmut counting dead Russians? He now has a whole command post flying drones over Donetsk city: [Tweet and video at the link. video with English subtitles here.] Is this psyops? Is this merely keeping an eye out for ammunition and fuel dumps and enemy reinforcements passing through? Or is this part of the reconnaissance necessary before any major operation?
Donetsk city’s strategic value couldn’t be greater. [map at the link]
In addition to the incalculable propaganda value of liberating a city of 1 million under Russian control since 2014, it would effectively split the Russian army into northern and southern halves. It would deprive Russia of a key source of cannon fodder. A key logistics distribution center, it would cut the only rail line from Russia to Mariupol and the rest of the occupied land bridge (at least until the Kerch Bridge rail line is operational again, which still isn’t the case).
Furthermore, as you can see in the maps with the Russian defensive lines, that entire rear is empty. If Ukraine pushes into Donetsk, that entire rear is open for havoc. They can cut off Russian units all along the Donbas front, including Bakhmut, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, and everything in between from the rear. Manage to liberate Starobilsk, and suddenly it’s Ukraine doing a pincer maneuver on Russian defensive lines along the entire Donbas front.
It would look like this, and it would be glorious: [map at the link]
If Ukraine liberated the Donbas in this fashion, it would leave Russia clinging to only southeastern Ukraine and Crimea, and a completely reshaped strategic picture.
The Wagner Group is moving aggressively to establish a “confederation” of anti-Western states in Africa as the Russian mercenaries foment instability while using their paramilitary and disinformation capabilities to bolster Moscow’s allies, according to leaked secret U.S. intelligence documents.
The rapid expansion of Russia’s influence in Africa has been a source of growing alarm to U.S. intelligence and military officials, prompting a push over the past year to find ways to hit Wagner’s network of bases and business fronts with strikes, sanctions and cyber operations, according to the documents.
At a time when Wagner leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin has been preoccupied with Kremlin infighting over the paramilitary group’s deepening involvement in the war in Ukraine, U.S. officials depict Wagner’s expanding global footprint as a potential vulnerability.
The Discord Leaks: Dozens of highly classified documents have been leaked online, revealing sensitive information intended for senior military and intelligence leaders. In an exclusive investigation, The Post also reviewed scores of additional secret documents, most of which have not been made public.
One document in the trove lists nearly a dozen “kinetic” and other options that could be pursued as part of “coordinated U.S. and allied disruption efforts.” […]
And yet, there is little in the trove to suggest that the CIA, Pentagon or other agencies have caused more than minor setbacks for Wagner over a six-year stretch during which the mercenary group, controlled by Putin ally Prigozhin, gained strategic footholds in at least eight African countries, among 13 nations where Prigozhin has operated in some capacity, according to one document.
[…] The most significant American attack against Wagner was near Deir al-Zour, Syria, in February 2018, when U.S. airstrikes killed several hundred Wagner fighters who were attacking several dozen Delta Force soldiers, Rangers and Kurdish forces next to a gas plant.
Overall, the trove portrays Wagner as a relatively unconstrained force in Africa, expanding its presence and ambitions on that continent even as the war in Ukraine has become a grinding, if not all-consuming, problem for the Kremlin.
As a result, “Prigozhin likely will further entrench his network in multiple countries,” one of the intelligence documents concludes, “undermining each country’s ability to sever ties with his services and exposing neighboring states to his destabilizing activities.”
[…] a resurgence of authoritarianism, said Anas El Gomati, director of the Tripoli-based Sadeq Institute think tank.
Wagner, he said, “are a solution to the kind of problems that African dictators find themselves in: Democratic pushback? No problem. We’ll help you with that, whether it’s tampering with ballots, or whether it’s literally fighting brutal kind of insurgencies like they have in [the Central African Republic] and in southern Libya.”
“If you’re suffering trying to get your resources and minerals out of your country, ‘not only can we bring [those] services to you, but we’ll put those dollars in your bank and no one will be any the wiser’ — because they operate these massive networks of shell companies,” he said, referring to Wagner. [chart and map at the link]
Prigozhin entities have not only accelerated operations in Africa over the past year, according to the assessments, but appear to be operating with expanded ambition and authority — “shifting his approach from taking advantage of security vacuums to intentionally facilitating instability,” according to one of the documents. […]
More at the link.
If Wagner leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin is forced out of Bakhmut in Ukraine, I suspect he will just move more of his mercenary forces to Africa.
Britain and France were among the nations that also moved to evacuate their diplomats on Sunday. Sudanese nationals continued to flee as fighting in the capital, Khartoum, stretched into a second week.
U.S. military Special Forces flew three chinook helicopters into Sudan’s capital early Sunday morning, under cover of darkness, to rescue embassy personnel, some United Nations diplomats and even pets. No shots were fired.
The ghost of the Confederacy hangs heavily over the Tennessee Legislature.
[…] On Feb. 3, 2023, two state senators issued a formal proclamation commemorating April 2023 as and encouraging “all Tennesseans to increase their knowledge of this momentous era in the history of this State.”
One of the signers is Senate Speaker Randy McNally, who is also the state’s lieutenant governor […] Though not considered in legislative session and not listed on the Legislature’s website, the proclamation holds an official stature: It was issued on Senate stationery and stamped with the Tennessee state seal.
The proclamation’s wording closely follows that of a proclamation issued by Virginia’s Gov. Robert McDonnell in April 2010, with one striking exception. McDonnell’s proclamation in final form included a paragraph, inserted after protests to an earlier version, stating “that it is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war.”
The Tennessee proclamation, which includes eight introductory clauses celebrating “the cause of Southern liberty,” says nothing of slavery at all. Rather, it declares that Confederates conducted “a four-year heroic struggle for states’ rights, individual freedom, local government control, and a determined struggle for deeply held beliefs.”
[…] As we historians of the Civil War have tirelessly pointed out, the documentary record speaks clearly of the motive behind that “heroic struggle.”
Both official proceedings and private utterances prove abundantly that there was only one reason to secede from the United States and create a new Confederacy. That was to safeguard racial slavery from the threat posed by the election of an antislavery Northerner, Abraham Lincoln, as president of the United States.
[…] The record of the state’s reasons is easy to find, and would have been available to the authors of the recent proclamation. In 2021, the University of Tennessee Press published “Tennessee Secedes: A Documentary History.” It shows that in Tennessee, as elsewhere, the protection of slavery was the sole motive for secession.
In 1861, Gov. Isham Harris convened the state’s Legislature with a message denouncing the North’s “systematic, wanton, and long continued agitation of the slavery question,” crowned by the insulting election of a president who “asserted the equality of the black with the white race.” […]
Some 50,000 Tennesseans, white and Black, spurned the Confederacy and fought for the United States – more than from any other Confederate state. The proclamation silently erases not only their struggle and sacrifice but their very existence.
[…] many Confederate acolytes, the proclamation’s sponsors among them, seem to have difficulty confronting what the Confederacy actually stood for. Hence, citizens serving in government – who upon entering their offices take a solemn oath to uphold and defend the United States Constitution and begin their daily sessions by pledging allegiance to “one Nation indivisible” – chose to officially exalt a failed attempt to overthrow that Constitution and dismember the nation that it bound together. […]
Images and text showing historical documents are available at the link.
The Biden administration announced more than $80 million in funding Thursday in a push to produce more solar panels in the U.S., make solar energy available to more people, and pursue superior alternatives to the ubiquitous sparkly panels made with silicon.
[…] Community solar refers to a variety of arrangements where renters and people who don’t control their rooftops can still get their electricity from solar power. […]
Now it is set to spend $52 million on 19 solar projects across a dozen states, including $10 million from the infrastructure law, as well as $30 million on technologies that will help integrate solar electricity into the grid.
The DOE also selected 25 teams to participate in a $10 million competition designed to fast-track the efforts of solar developers working on community solar projects.
The Inflation Reduction Act already offers incentives to build large solar generation projects, such as renewable energy tax credits. But Ali Zaidi, White House national climate advisor, said the new money focuses on meeting the nation’s climate goals in a way that benefits more communities.
“It’s lifting up our workers and our communities. And that’s, I think, what really excites us about this work,” Zaidi said. “It’s a chance not just to tackle the climate crisis, but to bring economic opportunity to every zip code of America.”
[…] Jones-Albertus said she’s particularly excited about the support for community solar projects, since half of Americans don’t live in a situation where they can buy their own solar and put in on the roof.
[…] The U.S. has 5.3 gigawatts of installed community solar capacity currently, according to the latest estimates. The goal is that by 2025, five million households will have access to it — about three times as many as today — saving $1 billion on their electricity bills, according to Jones-Albertus.
The new funding also highlights investment in a next generation of solar technologies, intended to wring more electricity out of the same amount of solar panels. Currently only about 20% of the sun’s energy is converted to electricity in crystalline silicon solar cells, which is what most solar panels are made of. There has long been hope for higher efficiency, and today’s announcement puts some money towards developing two alternatives: perovskite and cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cells. […]
Joshua Rhodes, a scientist at the University of Texas at Austin said the investment in perovskites is good news. They can be produced more cheaply than silicon and are far more tolerant of defects, he said. They can also be built into textured and curved surfaces, which opens up more applications for their use than traditional rigid panels. […]
Cadmium telluride solar can be made quickly and at a low cost, but further research is needed to improve how efficient the material is at converting sunlight to electrons.
Cadmium is also toxic and people shouldn’t be exposed to it. Jones-Albertus said that in cadmium telluride solar technology, the compound is stable and encapsulated in glass and additional protective layers.
[…] “One of the most important ways we can make sure CdTe remains in a safe compound form is ensuring that all solar panels made in the U.S. can be reused or recycled at the end of their life cycle,” Jones-Albertus explained.
Recycling solar panels also reduces the waste from solar and can provide materials for new panels. Eight of the projects in Thursday’s announcement focus on improving solar panel recycling, for a total of about $10 million.
[…] One solar project in Shungnak, Alaska was able to eliminate the need to keep making electricity by burning diesel fuel, a method sometimes used in remote communities that is not healthy for people and contributes to climate change.
“Alaska is not a place that folks often think of when they think about solar, but this energy can be an economic and affordable resource in all parts of the country,” said Jones-Albertus.
The Twitter accounts for late celebrities are being marked as subscribers of the platform’s new Twitter Blue service, sowing further confusion for users after legacy verification check marks were removed from accounts last week.
The accounts of late Lakers star Kobe Bryant, actor Chadwick Boseman, rapper Mac Miller and journalist Anthony Bourdain all appeared with the Twitter Blue checkmark as of Sunday evening. The explanation on each page read that the accounts were “verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.” […]
There are a lot of things that separate the Left and the Right in this country. Basic human decency is a big one. Another is grifters. We just don’t really have the same amount of grifters on our side. No one is really out there trying to sell us commemorative “gold” coins or Biden-themed pretend credit cards or food buckets or their own brand of nootropics. We also don’t have a lot of complete randos trying to sell themselves as love gurus.
Thanks to the horrors of Twitter as we now know it, I have discovered that there are far, far more right-wing grifters out there trying to earn a living selling themselves as dating and romance experts than I had previously imagined. […]
[…] they are taking many of the the bizarre beliefs and theories that incels have developed after years in their own online echo chambers, and trying to sell those beliefs as actual dating advice.
And if you follow this advice, you, too, could be like this woman, with a neckbeard of your very own to cherish and love. [Tweet and image at the link]
This particular thread (from one of these grifty romance gurus that now has a checkmark and is therefore algorithmically boosted into the feed) has been going around Twitter this week, largely because of its bizarre claim that vaginas are capable of vacuuming a penis up into them, if the person with the vagina is sufficiently in love with the person on the other end of the penis.
“If the woman really loves the man, as soon as her genitals reach the man’s, she silently sucks up his organ within herself,” the user claims. “The man has no need to make any effort. If the woman’s love is strong, her body sucks up his organ as air is sucked up into an empty space.” [Tweet and image at the link]
As anyone who has ever had sex before can tell you, that is definitely not a thing.
“This is a very astonishing fact that only a few wise men know,” the user continues “If this does not come about, the only reason is that the woman does not love this man; therefore, her body does not perform the act of suction. As a result, all men’s actions are aggressive and all women’s are passive.”
[…] Another astonishing fact, according to this aspiring love guru, is that women “can have endless sex in a night while men must wait several hours to regain some energy after each ejaculation.” Yes. Several hours. This is because, you see, women are basically succubi who steal all of the man’s energy from him while having sex. Because men are “givers” and women are “receivers.”
One of the most popular theories among incels is that when a woman has sex with a man, his DNA is absorbed into her body and it changes her psychologically — which means that the more men a woman has sex with, the “crazier” she becomes. […]
This guy, however, puts a new spin on that theory by going back to Sanskrit — and as we all know, if it’s in Sanskrit, it has to be true.
Runanubandha” – The Honey Trap of Physical Memory: Women’s bodies absorb a lot of masculine energies and memories of those with whom they had sex (especially the very first) because of their soft bodies and passive receivers of sexual energies.
In Sanskrit, this physical memory of the body is called runanubandha Runanubandha is the physical memory you carry within you. Wherever there is physical intimacy—particularly of a sexual nature—the body registers the memory deeply.
And so the arrangement of committed relationships in any society is based on a bedrock of profound intelligence.
The logic is simple: since a significant exchange of memory occurs in any physical encounter, if you confuse the body’s memory with too many physical impressions, your system grows confused, resulting in an unhappy marriage and family life Once your memory system becomes complicated, it could take a lot more work to settle your life.
That’s why it’s always advised to marry young and virgin girls to ensure that she is mentally fit and doesn’t come with any baggage of physical memory to her husband’s life.
Is it always advised? Is this by everyone or only by people who think women in love have magic vacuum vaginas? Or perhaps just by people who don’t want their future spouse to notice that they are very bad in bed?
None of this, of course, applies to men, who can have sex with all the women they want without magically absorbing anyone’s physical memory.
Sex with multiple partners has less of an impact on men than it does on women.
Listen. The sexual act creates maximum runanubandha between people.
In this exchange, the female body, being more receptive and soft, registers physical intimacy much more deeply than the male.
When the woman bears a child, a large part of this memory is downloaded onto her offspring. If she complicates her system further by having sex with too many men, the suffering can be enormous for her and her future child.
Well that is just science! And definitely not a weird revenge fantasy desperately grasped onto by sexless, misogynistic men who want to believe that, by having sex with men who are not them, women are psychologically tortured and rendered forever miserable.
It’s also worth noting here that the Twitter profile for Incels.is — the site that replaced PUAHate, the forum that radicalized mass murderer Elliot Rodger — also now has a blue checkmark and is boosted in people’s feeds and in comments.
[“Involuntary Celibate” chart at the link]
This is the kind of quality philosophical discourse that Elon Musk wants to algorithmically boost on Twitter. […]
The top regulatory agency for nuclear materials safety in the U.S. voted unanimously to regulate the burgeoning fusion industry differently than the nuclear fission industry, and fusion startups are celebrating that as a major win.
As a result, some provisions specific to fission reactors, like requiring funding to cover claims from nuclear meltdowns, won’t apply to fusion plants. (Fusion reactors cannot melt down.)
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the top governing body for nuclear power plants and other nuclear materials, announced the results of its vote on April 14.
“Up until now, there was real uncertainty about how fusion would be regulated in the United States — this decision makes clear who will regulate fusion-energy facilities, and what developers will have to do to meet those regulations,” Andrew Holland, CEO of the industry group, the Fusion Industry Association, told CNBC. “It is extremely important.”
Other differences include looser requirements around foreign ownership of nuclear fusion plants, and the dispensing of mandatory hearings at the federal level during the licensing process, Holland said…
StevoRsays
Elon Musk’s revamp of Twitter’s blue tick service has hit another hurdle after it emerged that several dead celebrities and other high-profile users appeared to have been signed up to the verification service. .. (snip)… has created a subscription service, charging users US$8 a month ($11.90) for the blue tick.
While some high-profile users declined to pay and had their ticks removed, others, including some who have been dead for years, appeared to still have their checks.
Verified Twitter profiles which appeared to belong to dead celebrities included Marvel actor Chadwick Boseman, basketballer Kobe Bryant and Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington.
There was also a blue tick on a profile appearing to belong to Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist killed by Saudi agents in Istanbul in 2018.
When someone hovers over the blue tick next to the user’s name a statement pops up which says: “This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.”
It was unclear if the dead Twitter users’ agents or other third parties had paid the subscription fee.
Upset fans tweeted their disappointment and confusion.
Russian-appointed authorities in Crimea said the military fended off a Ukrainian strike on the port of Sevastopol on Monday, while a drone was also reportedly found in a forest near Moscow — attacks that come as Ukraine is believed to be preparing for a major counteroffensive.
The Moscow-appointed head of the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said the military destroyed a Ukrainian sea drone that attempted to attack the harbor in the early hours. He said another drone blew up without inflicting any damage…
A new poll out of Arizona by a well-trusted, independent national pollster, Public Policy Polling, shows that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I) stands to lose re-election badly in virtually any potential matchup this November and is deeply unpopular among voters.
The survey results, first obtained by Jezebel via an internal Ruben Gallego campaign memo, show that just 27 percent of voters in the state view Sinema favorably and want her to run again, compared to 50 percent of Arizonans who view her unfavorably and 54 percent who say she shouldn’t run again. Rep. Gallego (D-Ariz.), her likely Democratic challenger, has a net positive favorability, with 39 percent of voters approving of him and 28 percent disapproving…
Ten miles of hardened bike lanes — separated from motor vehicles with barriers of concrete or other dense materials — are among a series of bicycle safety measures city officials plan to unveil on Monday…
Additional protected bike lanes — which are typically separated from motor vehicle traffic with soft barriers or a line of parked cars — are also planned this year…
TMZ reported today (April 21) that the “Crazy Rap” MC filed paperwork with the Federal Elections Commission to run for the country’s highest (no pun intended) office next year. According to the documents obtained by the outlet, his presidential committee is named “Joseph Afroman Foreman for President” and he’ll be running as an Independent. His platform will emphasize the national legalization of marijuana, though his positions on other national and international matters remain unclear…
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
…Russia has switched to defensive positions in all its areas of combat apart from Bakhmut, according to the Ukrainian head of intelligence Kyrylo Budanov. In an interview with RBC Ukraine, he said: “They have completely switched to positional defense everywhere. The only places on the frontline where they are making attempts are in the city of Bakhmut, an attempt to cover the city of Avdiivka from the north, and localized fighting in the city of Marinka. Both in Avdiivka and Marinka the tactics are identical to those in Bakhmut – just an attempt to wipe the settlement off the face of the earth.
A woman charged withkilling a pro-war Russian military blogger using explosives has been denied bail by a Russian court. Darya Trepova, 26, is accused of killing Vladen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, on 2 April. He was presented with a statuette containing a bomb while giving a talk at a cafe in St Petersberg.
…
Ukraine’s military has set up positions on the eastern side of the Dnipro River near Kherson city, the Institute for the Study of War cites Russian military bloggers as saying. Infiltrating the area could be a first step towards trying to dislodge Russians from positions they are using to shell and shoot at Kherson.
The prime minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas is visiting Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Ukraine. Kallas said that Ukraine should be admitted into the EU and Nato, and signed a joint declaration on her visit. She said that she supports Ukraine getting more ammunition, arms and training which is why she proposed the EU move to provide 1 million shells to Ukraine.
China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said China respects the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries and upholds the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter. The comments come after the Chinese ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, made comments on Friday which cast doubt on the sovereignty of former Soviet states including Ukraine. France’s foreign ministry says it will discuss the issue with the ambassador on Monday.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed confidence on Monday that the bloc would finalise a plan within days to buy ammunition for Ukraine after Kyiv expressed frustration at wrangling among EU member states. “Yes, still there is some disagreement. But I am sure everybody will understand that we are in a situation of extreme urgency,” Borrell told reporters as he arrived for a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
Also from there:
Ukrainian authorities say Russian troops are “forcibly evacuating” civilians in the area of Kherson region that they still occupy, a day after it was claimed that Ukrainian forces had established a bridgehead on the east bank of the Dnipro River.
“I have information that the evacuation starts today [Sunday] with an excuse of protecting civilians from the consequences of heavy fighting in the area,” said Oleksandr Samoylenko, the Ukrainian head of Kherson’s regional council. Russian troops were “trying to steal as much as they can” as they withdrew, he added.
The claim cannot be verified, but it comes amid an apparent uptick in Ukrainian military activity in the south of the country that some analysts have interpreted as a potential precursor to Kyiv’s long anticipated counter-offensive.
Today a wind energy summit of countries surrounding the North Sea is taking place in Ostend, Belgium. The EU countries participating are Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen also attending. Norway and Britain will also participate.
At the start of the meeting Reuters reports Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo has said security will be a key issue.
“The topic of security will be centre stage, as North Sea infrastructure such as wind turbines and other installations are vulnerable to espionage and sabotage,” he said.
Last week a joint investigation by the public broadcasters of several Nordic countries alleged that Russia had established a state-run programme using spy ships disguised as fishing vessels aimed at giving it the capability to attack windfarms and communications cables in the North Sea.
The former Louisville police officer who fatally shot Breonna Taylor has a new job in law enforcement in a county north-east of the Kentucky city.
The Carroll county sheriff’s office on Saturday confirmed the hiring of Myles Cosgrove, who was fired from the Louisville Metro police department in January 2021 for violating use-of-force procedures and failing to use a body camera during the raid on Taylor’s apartment, WHAS-TV reported.
Taylor, a Black woman, was killed on 13 March 2020 by police executing a narcotics search warrant. None of the three white officers who fired into Taylor’s home were charged by a grand jury in connection with her death.
…
A protest in Carroll county was planned on Monday in response to his hiring.
Investigators said that Cosgrove fired 16 rounds into the apartment after the front door was breached and that Taylor’s boyfriend fired a shot at them. Federal ballistics experts said they believe the shot that killed Taylor came from Cosgrove.
…
In news involving a separate high-profile police killing, the former Minnesota officer convicted of manslaughter after the shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright during an April 2021 traffic stop was released from prison after serving 16 months in custody, according to ABC News.
Potter is white, and Wright was Black. Prosecutors had sought a much stiffer punishment for Potter before she was sentenced.
Police in eastern Kenya have recovered 58 bodies from mass graves, thought to be those of followers of a Christian cult who believed they would go to heaven if they starved themselves.
The death toll has been increasing steadily over the past two days as exhumations have been carried out and could rise further, as the Kenyan Red Cross has said 112 people have been reported missing to a tracing desk it operates.
The leader of the Good News International Church, Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, was arrested after a tipoff suggested there were shallow graves containing the bodies of at least 31 of his followers in the Shakahola forest…. [He’s since been released on bail, they report.]
Gillian Branstetter (of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and LGBTQ & HIV Project) returns to Know Your Enemy for an episode on the strange case of Ron DeSantis: what is his ideology and vision for America? And why do his political aspirations involve inflicting wanton cruelty upon LGBTQ children and adults in his home state? For our sins, we read DeSantis’s new book — a campaign book, though he has not yet formally announce his presidential run — The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival. (You heard it here: it sucks.)
Along the way, Gillian provides an update on the conservative war on so-called “gender ideology” and “wokeness,” how organizations like hers are fighting back, and why superficial expressions of sympathy for trans people by major corporations and banks — which so outrage the right — are themselves a trap and a means of evading real justice. We also discuss Sam’s New York Times piece on DeSantis as an anti-woke technocrat, an embodiment of the twin cults of expertise and meritocracy, even as he disavows and demonizes the “ruling class” and it’s irksome cultural mores.
Finally, we identify the violent underpinnings of DeSantis’s political impulses, discussing his alleged involvement in detainee abuse at Guantanamo Bay. As Gillian summarizes DeSantis’s worldview, “It’s just cold efficiency and shared enemies. That’s what he’s selling. It’s like getting a moral lecture from a gun.”
In September of 2021, Alicia Santurio and Baywatch actor Alexandra Paul rescued Jax and Ethan, two gravely ill chickens, from a transport truck heading for a slaughterhouse owned by Foster Farms. The activists faced misdemeanor charges for petty theft, and this March, they stood before a 12-person jury as part of a nine-day trial, previously unheard of for such charges.
Alexandra and Alicia join us to discuss the rescue and how they ultimately chose to take the case to trial despite being offered five different plea deals. They describe the importance of shining light on the cruelty in animal agriculture through court trials and the “necessity defense” as it relates to animals in the eyes of the law. We also get into Alicia and Alexandra’s thoughts about personhood for animals and how organizations can help promote ethical choices….
On March 20, the final installment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth assessment report (AR6) was released. Its message is clear: we have this decade to get a good start on major changes to our food and energy systems to avoid climate and ecosystem-induced societal destabilization.
The good news is we largely know what we need to do. The bad news is some industries are working overtime to keep these solutions under wraps….
It’s no secret that climate change discourse is shrouded in obfuscation, disinformation, greenwashing and lies, both outright and of omission. But a recent leak of a draft of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released on March 20 has been particularly enlightening when it comes to just how much how delegations negotiate, watered down, and delete scientists’ findings.
Micheal Thomas, who writes the climate newsletter Distilled, outlined the shift in wording driven by Brazil and Argentina, countries with large and influential beef industries. As Thomas points out, the IPCC report’s authors initially recommended a shift to plant-based diets, stating that “plant-based diets can reduce GHG emissions by up to 50% compared to the average emission-intensive Western diet,” according to a draft leaked by Scientist Rebellion.
In the published report, the line was changed to “balanced, sustainable healthy diets acknowledging nutritional needs,” skirting a direct mention of beef and dairy, what a sustainable diet actually looks like, or any reference to the Western and largely wealthy countries that should most urgently start eating less meat.
While Monday’s IPCC report was the result of synthesizing years of research, Brazil and Argentina have been diligently pushing to delete references to “plant-based diets,” meat as a “high-carbon” food, and “Meatless Mondays” for years, according to a previous draft leaked in 2021 and analyzed by Unearthed, Greenpeace’s investigative outlet….
larparsays
@Reginald Selkirk #476
Of the declared candidates, so far, he’s got my vote. : )
Fox News has cut ties with Tucker Carlson, the conservative commentator whose show was often rated as the most-watched cable news program, according to a statement from the network.
“FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor,” the network said, noting Carlson aired his final show last Friday.
The company gave no reason for Carlson’s departure. Last week, Fox agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5mn to settle its lawsuit alleging the network defamed it by repeatedly promoting Donald Trump’s baseless lies about the 2020 election.
Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News, effective immediately. This is an earth-shaking moment in cable news.
I have tried calling and texting Tucker Carlson for comment on his stunning departure from Fox. No response yet.
The biggest “tell” in Fox’s press release about Tucker Carlson’s exit is that he is not getting a final show. No chance to say goodbye on his own terms or point people to his next home. Fox says “Carlson’s last program was Friday April 21st.”
When CNN ended “Reliable Sources,” I was offered a final episode, a chance to sign off on my own terms. I really appreciated that. I think viewers did too. Tucker leaving Fox WITHOUT even saying goodbye? Stunning.
This replacement for Tucker will not rate as well as he did: “Fox News Tonight will air live at 8 PM/ET starting this evening as an interim show helmed by rotating FOX News personalities until a new host is named.”
Tucker Carlson became, for a time, BIGGER than Fox News. His disappearance will ripple through Fox, the wider TV world and the GOP. One of the many impacts is $$$: Fox is pushing for higher carriage fees from distributors right now, and without Tucker, Fox has less leverage.
It seems difficult to believe, but Tucker Carlson is no longer with Fox News. The network released this press statement a short while ago:
“FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor. Mr. Carlson’s last program was Friday April 21st. Fox News Tonight will air live at 8 PM/ET starting this evening as an interim show helmed by rotating FOX News personalities until a new host is named.”
To put it mildly, this was completely unexpected. There’d been no rumors about Carlson leaving Fox, making today’s announcement something of an earthquake in the world of cable news.
Indeed, by some accounts, as recently as this morning, the network was still promoting Carlson’s program and an interview he was scheduled to air this evening. On Friday night, which we now know was his final Fox broadcast, the far-right host told his audience, “We’ll be back on Monday.”
Evidently not.
Fox News has not yet specified the reason for the break-up, and a spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email from NBC News.
It’s also worth noting for context that over the last couple of decades, Carlson has now parted ways with CNN, PBS, Fox, and MSNBC (my employer).
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.
I’ve already seen some speculation that something damaging about Carlson is going to become public. It seems kind of unlikely given what Fox News has let him get away with.
timgueguen @ #485, if there is something I hope it’s that he’s been taking money from Orbán andor Putin to act as a foreign agent and will soon be indicted.
Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive against Russia’s occupying forces could begin very soon. What are the lessons from the grueling battle for Bakhmut? How has Ukraine’s defense of Bakhmut affected its ability to go onto the offensive? And what will be Kyiv’s primary goals as it mounts the attack?
The former Commanding General of the US Army in Europe, Ben Hodges, analyzes Ukraine’s strategy in an extended interview with DW’s Richard Walker.
Oz Katerji: “Today is a truly sad day for every bought and paid-for Putin shill in the USA, Carlson was the only mainstream ‘news’ channel that ever frequently platformed their atrocity revisionism.”
Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch ordered Tucker Carlson’s firing over a discrimination lawsuit filed by a former producer on his show, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Murdoch was also “concerned” about Carlson’s insistence that undercover government agents were involved in the January 6 insurrection, an allegation that has no factual basis, according to the Times.
In March, Abby Grossberg, a producer who formerly worked on Carlson’s show, filed a suit saying that lawyers for the network “coached” and “intimidated” her into giving misleading testimony in the lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems. She also alleged a culture of sexism and misogyny at the network, and that executives tried to blame her and host Maria Bartiromo for the airing of 2020 election conspiracy theories.
While the Times reports that the dismissal wasn’t related to the Dominion lawsuit, it notes that comments made about managers at the network, which were revealed in the case’s discovery process “may have also played a role” in his ousting.
One segment on 60 Minutes last night, as they noted earlier, was an interview with Ray Epps and his wife, who talked about Carlson’s “obsession” with him and how they’ve had to sell their house and go into hiding because of the threats and harassment resulting from the constant accusations.
SAN FRANCISCO (The Borowitz Report)—His net worth plummeting after the explosion of SpaceX’s Starship, Elon Musk has fallen below Clarence Thomas on the list of the world’s richest people.
Musk now finds himself lumped in with others who are less wealthy than Thomas, including Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and the Sultan of Brunei.
Speaking to reporters, Musk was “livid” at being surpassed by Thomas, who, he complained, has done “almost nothing” to earn his fortune.
“If Clarence wants eight billion dollars, all he has to do is climb aboard some dude’s yacht,” Musk said. “I have to persuade a billion idiots to buy a blue check mark.”
The long and winding racist, anti-immigrant, homophobic, invective-strewn road of Tucker Carlson at Fox news has come to an unceremonious end. It is a perfect finish to the rage-filled tenure of a ginormous windbag who has done so much to harm the public discourse since his show premiered in 2016.
Tucker Carlson and Fox parting ways set the news ablaze, and the reactions came in sizzling and fast.
[…]
Seems like a perfect day to remind everyone of the time Tucker Carlson got called “the worst human being known to mankind” straight to his face. [video at the link]
Many more examples are available at the link, including Carlson ranting about non-binary M&M’s candy, Tucker Carlson’s connections to Russian TV, and many images of AOC laughing delightedly.
[…] there’s more grotesquery from Carlson that could have contributed to his downfall. Such as…
– Fox News Senior Racist, Tucker Carlson, is Terrified that Black Voters Will ‘Flood the Suburbs’
– Putin Puppet Tucker Carlson Spews Russian Propaganda in Defense of the Intelligence Leaker
– Tucker Carlson Warns that Trump’s Indictment Makes This ‘Not the Best Time to Give Up Your AR-15’
– Fox News Hack Tucker Carlson Rants that Prosecuting Trump Would Forever End Democratic Elections
– Tucker Carlson Spins January 6th Insurrection Videos to Spread Blatant Lies, Trump Praises Him
– Tucker Carlson is APPALLED By All the Black Women Biden Appointed to Federal Courts – Illegally?
– Tucker Carlson Wants the U.S. to Invade Canada to ‘Liberate’ it So it Doesn’t ‘Become Cuba’
– Tucker Carlson Finally Admits that ‘I Have No Freaking Idea What Goes On in American Politics’
Actually, the examples above would probably have endeared Carlson to Fox News and their viewers. So the most plausible explanation for his getting canned remains his betrayal of Trump and Fox in the emails and texts that Dominion uncovered.
Carlson was also a devoted supporter of some of the world’s most heinous dictators, especially Vladimir Putin. For instance…
– Tucker Carlson of Fox News Rattles Off His Ridiculous Reasons for Why You Shouldn’t Hate Putin
– Fox News Senior Putin Apologist, Tucker Carlson, Pleads to Keep the Russian Dictator in Power
– Only on Fox News: Russian Foreign Minister Praises the Network’s Pro-Putin Propaganda
This may still be just the beginning of the Dominion lawsuit fallout. The jobs of Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro, and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, are likely in jeopardy. Time will tell.
One thing is for certain though: Fox News isn’t going to change their ultra-rightist editorial bias. Remember that Carlson was the replacement for Bill O’Reilly when he was axed for sexual misconduct. And the replacements for Carlson and others may actually be worse. So there’s is no reason to give Fox any credit for throwing their biggest legal liabilities overboard.
The “Special Military Operation” got off to a bad start—Russian armed forces crossed into Ukraine and found themselves stuck in the mud, low on fuel and provisions, surrounded by a hostile civilian population. Then it slogged along in an apparently ceaseless meat grinder for the next calendar year.
But many people in Russia support it. While countless men fled the country when mobilization was ordered, others willingly reported to draft offices, boarded the busses, and headed to the front, seen off by their women and children. The federal government first promised the mobilized men 300,000 rubles for signing up, then rescinded the offer and instructed regional governments to support their families instead. Governors gave what they could: cash and cabbage, flour, and firewood. Packs of frozen dumplings. In Tuva, families of the mobilized were provided with one live sheep. Friends, family, volunteer organizations, religious organizations, and members of the public were asked to help out. And they did, chipping in to scrounge up what the mobilized needed: sleeping bags and combat boots, first aid kits and bullet-proof vests, underwear, and socks. Images of patriotic old women selflessly knitting socks for the boys at the front peppered the public imagination.
Some of those who had been mobilized soon found themselves locked in at training camps without adequate food, reliant on families to feed them through the camps’ chainlink fences. […]
Mobilized men posted video statements online entreating anyone who would listen. “We’re near Belgorod right now,” said a man in one viral video, “there’s about 500 of us here, we’re all armed but no one’s been assigned to a regiment. We’ve spent a week living like animals, and we don’t know where we’re going. We’ve had to buy food with our own money. We’ve got weapons but they’re not registered to us.” The video was published by a patriotic telegram channel with over a million subscribers. These men, the channel’s editors explain, “are burning with desire, they want to defend their homeland, but they don’t understand what is happening. We’ve said this before: this is the fault of systemic problems in the Ministry of Defense.”
The Special Military Operation is a bloody fiasco—that much is obvious. Terms like “the Bakhmut meat grinder” are now idiomatic. And yet it’s a fiasco that the people support. Anglo-American commentators turn to familiar totalitarian tropes to explain this curious fact: they write that Russians are brainwashed, depoliticized, and terrified of police repression.
[…] But while such tropes are comforting, they cannot explain why people support this Special Military Operation at the same time that they openly criticize its leadership, methods, and goals. Online and in daily life, in formal state petitions and in viral streams, people in Russia complain about political and military leaders’ criminally incompetent actions and policies. They denounce the military’s infrastructure, tactics, and strategies.
[…] An active online public of military bloggers rabidly criticizes state leaders and policies, calling for more war, more imperialism, and more violence. Holding the legal order in certain disdain, the mil-bloggers lend their patriotic support to the image of a Russian-Soviet empire, glorified not least for its gritty soulfulness, and its illiberal collectivist values. “Let the people handle this!” the mil bloggers say to the old army generals. “Leave it to the mavericks.”
[…] This is the riddle: People support the Special Military Operation even while they criticize it. They criticize it because they support it, and the more they criticize the more they support. When asked why it’s necessary, supporters typically bring up two reasons. The first is that the Motherland is in danger. Here, discussions of NATO advancements slide easily into the themes of linguistic chauvinism and culture-war social claims: the Motherland is an amorphous concept, more about language and social relations than national borders and laws. The second reason is that we can’t let our guys down, we’re in this together. More than simply the natural reaction of people helping each other get by in hard times, this sentiment is central to the state’s propaganda.
So as the officially stated aims of the Special Military Operation keep changing—to cleanse Ukraine of Naziism, to protect Russia from NATO, to protect Russian speakers from linguistic oppression, and to fight Satanism—its official slogan remains the same: svoikh ne broasem, we do not abandon our own!
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is making a ransom demand. His hostages are the economy and America’s credibility. Mr. McCarthy has threatened that House Republicans will refuse to raise the federal government’s debt ceiling, potentially triggering a global financial crisis, unless President Biden agrees to deep cuts to education, health care, food assistance for poor children and other services.
Mr. McCarthy repeatedly invoked the threat of Chinese competition as justification. The speaker is right that this debate has significant national security implications — just not the way he says.
With Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine grinding into a second year, tensions with China continuing to rise and global threats looming, from future pandemics to climate change, the world is looking to the United States for strong, steady leadership. Congressional brinkmanship on the debt ceiling sends the opposite message to our allies and our adversaries: that America is divided, distracted and can’t be counted on.
Let’s start by dispelling a myth. The debt ceiling debate is not about authorizing new spending. It’s about Congress paying debts it has already incurred. Refusing to pay would be like skipping out on your mortgage, except with global consequences. Because of the central role of the United States — and the dollar — in the international economy, defaulting on our debts could spark a worldwide financial meltdown.
Republicans in Congress have consistently voted to raise the debt ceiling with little drama when a fellow Republican is in the White House — including three times under President Donald Trump. But during Democratic administrations, they have weaponized the debt ceiling to extort concessions, despite the danger of default.
I was secretary of state during the debt ceiling crisis of 2011, so I saw firsthand how this partisan posturing damaged our nation’s credibility around the world.
I vividly remember walking into a Hong Kong ballroom that July for a conference organized by the local American Chamber of Commerce. Congressional Republicans were refusing to raise the debt ceiling, and the prospect of a default was getting closer by the day. I was swarmed by nervous businessmen from across Asia. They peppered me with questions about the fight back home over the debt ceiling and what it would mean for the international economy. The regional and global stability that America had guaranteed for decades was the foundation on which they had built companies and fortunes. But could they still trust the United States? Were we really going to spark another worldwide financial crisis? And the question that no one wanted to ask out loud: If America faltered, would China swoop in to fill the vacuum?
I tried to reassure those businessmen the same way I did when I spoke with anxious foreign diplomats throughout that summer, confidently promising that Congress would eventually reach a deal. I repeated a quip sometimes apocryphally attributed to Winston Churchill: You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else. Privately, I crossed my fingers and hoped it was true.
Later that day, I headed to a villa in mainland China for a meeting with my counterpart, State Councilor Dai Bingguo. Over the years, I had heard monologues from Mr. Dai about America’s many supposed misdeeds, his criticisms at times bitingly sardonic but usually delivered with a smile. So I was not surprised when he, too, turned the conversation to the debt ceiling, barely containing his glee at our self-inflicted wound. I was not in the mood for lectures. “We could spend the next six hours talking about China’s domestic challenges,” I told Mr. Dai.
Fortunately, Congress and President Barack Obama finally reached an agreement to raise the debt ceiling before careening into the fiscal abyss. But the S&P still fell 17 percent, consumer and business confidence nose-dived, and the government’s credit rating was downgraded for the first time ever. After another crisis in 2013, the lesson was clear: Negotiating with hostage-takers will only embolden them to do it again.
Fast forward a dozen years, and Republicans are playing the same game. Except now, the risks are even higher.
Today the competition between democracies and autocracies has grown more intense. And by undermining America’s credibility and the pre-eminence of the dollar, the fight over the debt ceiling plays right into the hands of Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia. […]
If Congress keeps flirting with default, calls for dethroning the dollar as the world’s reserve currency will grow much louder — and not just in Beijing and Moscow. Countries all over the world will start hedging their bets.
It’s a sad irony that Mr. McCarthy and many of the same congressional Republicans seemingly intent on sabotaging America’s global leadership by refusing to pay our debts are also positioning themselves as tougher-than-thou China hawks. They talk a good game about standing up to Beijing, yet they are handing a major win to the Chinese Communist Party.
Republicans should stop holding America’s credit hostage, shoulder their responsibilities as leaders and raise the debt ceiling.
Bragg Sues Jim Jordan in Move to Block Interference in Trump Case
In the category of Yes, it’s about damn time:
Manhattan’s top prosecutor [Alvin Bragg] sues to stop Republican [douchebag insurrectionist Jordan] ‘intimidation’ in Trump case.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/manhattan-district-attorney-sues-republican-lawmaker-jim-jordan-over-trump-case-2023-04-11/
Lol, I’ve crossposted with Reginald. I’m so very sick of Rethuglicans thinking they can flout all the laws, while mumbling partisan claims about law and order.
Gary Hart didn’t even cheat on his wife, have multiple sugar babies, or pay off any women during his campaign for POTUS. One photo of a strange women sitting on his lap was enough to sink it.
Thank you, Tethys and Reginald Selkirk.
.
For your amusement.
God Awful Movies found this gem.
-I now know the next thing Fox News will scare the viewers with once people have lost their fear of the gay and the trans people: evil zombie rabbits!
GAM 399 Night Of the Lepus.
https://youtu.be/EPLAzQ-L34M
(I posted this item on the previous thread too, but hours later this new thread went up)
https://kyivindependent.com/military-current-number-of-wagner-mercenaries-will-last-2-months-with-ongoing-tactics/
Wow! Excellent Choice!
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-12/nasa-pale-blue-dot-goddard-space-flight-centre-makenzie-lystrup/102212224
Their typo in the headline not mine! (For once.)
birgerjohansson
In the top 10 of my favourite movies.
Re: SteveoR @ #6…
I’ve long wanted to quiz people running for President of the US and one question would be, “What is the ending clause of the oath of office, as specified in the Constitution.” Anyone who answers, “so help me God” should be automatically disqualified.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65239093
Talk about a juicy target for hacking… Just start sneaking in call-up notices for politicians and their family members…
‘This is the real reason why the US wants to ban TikTok.’
Some brutal footage in there!
https://twitter.com/hilaryagro/status/1643981590354350088
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian UK liveblog. From there:
Guardian – “Climate models warn of possible ‘super El Niño’ before end of year”:
Meduza:
“Alexey Navalny needed ambulance due to unexplained symptoms. His lawyer suspects slow poisoning.”:
“Russian digital development minister says registry of draft-eligible citizens won’t be launched before annual fall conscription”:
Popular handgun fires without anyone pulling the trigger, victims say
The Guardian is now liveblogging Biden’s speech at Ulster University:
Also from there:
“This interview is just an hour-long exercise in complete humiliation for Tucker:…”
Video clip at the (Twitter) link. The Republican Party is sick.
Mysterious dark matter mapped in finest detail yet
Ukrainian hackers say they have compromised Russian spy who hacked Democrats in 2016
Guardian liveblog:
Judge lectures Fox attorneys over dual roles for Rupert Murdoch
Mehdi Hasan tweeting a screenshot of a Carlson tweet promoting the interview @ #18:
Guardian liveblog:
Texas county weighs closing local library after federal judge orders banned books returned to circulation
Good news – kinda?
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-12/santos-urged-to-apologise-for-using-image-of-aboriginal-elder/102213092
Bad news :
A Chinese woman has become the first person to die from a type of bird flu that is rare in humans, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, but the strain does not appear to spread between people.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-12/china-records-world-s-first-human-death-from-h3n8-bird-flu-who/102214650
Plus spaaace neeewws : https://www.space.com/europe-juice-jupiter-mission-lauch-april-13-highlights
Hopefully coming up soon if plans work as planned
Sigh.. Guess y’all can guess which bit in my # 26 was meant to be in blockquotes but wasn’t..
Another space news story :
https://www.space.com/hot-jupiter-dwarf-star-new-exoplanet
The TESS exoplanet finder satellite has discovered TOI-4127 b, a “warm Jupiter” which may yet heat up and is double Jove’s mass in a 56 day orbit around a star more massive than ours.
I linked to this France 24 article in the previous thread, but they now have it in English translation – “Egypt’s female social media influencers face arrest, jail on ‘morality’ charges”:
They note that she was jailed previously in 2020 for a photo shoot at the Saqqara Necropolis that local media said involved “exploiting the cultural value of the antiquities in inappropriate Pharaonic clothes.”
As reported in the French edition, tomorrow (Thursday, April 13) will be the 12th day of mobilization against Macron’s neoliberal pension age hike, on the eve of the Constitutional Council meeting on Friday on the policy (they evidently announce their decision at the end of the day).
Ken Klippenstein at the Intercept – ““How to Blow Up a Pipeline” Movie Poses Terror Threat, Kansas City Intel Agency Claims”:
Follow-up to a post in the previous Thread – “A Palestinian envoy to the United Nations honors the life and work of Nuremberg war crimes tribunal prosecutor Ben Ferencz, who passed away last week…”
Video at the (Twitter) link.
With NATO entry blocked, Sweden turns hopeful eye toward Turkey’s presidential elections
Ted Cruz Tweet Ages As Badly As Possible After Louisville Shooting
“News: NPR becomes first major news org to stop using Twitter, saying that the Elon Musk-owned platform ‘is taking actions that undermine our credibility’.
‘We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility…'”
Leaked intelligence document shows that Egypt, a longtime US ally, secretly planned to provide Russia with 40,000 rockets and gunpowder: report
International anger as air strikes kill dozens in Myanmar
Video shows a Russian YouTuber striking himself in the face with a Western anti-tank weapon after holding it the wrong way
NBC – “Shelby County council to vote on returning ousted Democrat Justin J. Pearson to the Tennessee Legislature”:
Ex-Fox Producer: There Are Secret Rudy Giuliani Recordings About Dominion
Crossposting from the grift thread.
Rishi Sunak- corruption & waste
https://youtu.be/swvcfWqfU6I
Rupert Murdoch, Jerry Hall’s Divorce Agreement Bars Her From Giving Story Ideas to ‘Succession’
Ukraine Update: There’s a video. Don’t watch it
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Link
Followup to SC’s comment 18.
Aaron Rupar’s thread concerning the Tucker Carlson interview of Trump:
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1645940484378963968
Excerpt:
Video snippets are available at the link.
Excerpt:
Tucker kissing ass:
LMAO
Excerpt:
Re: Lynna, OM @ #41…
Hmmm… Trivial item…if the average lifespan in Russia is 71 years, I’ve made it 3 years past that.
Followup to comment 41.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
whheydt @44, I’m sure that Putin would find you fit enough to conscript you into his trench-digging forces.
During WWII there were quite a few Russian women serving in the military. I don’t see Russian babushkas digging trenches … yet, but I wouldn’t put it past Putin to start recruiting women.
According to this resource: The United States Military Academy (2015). West Point History of World War II. Vol. 1. Simon and Schuster. p. 235. ISBN 978-1-4767-8273-7, There were 800,000 women who served in the Soviet Armed Forces during the war, which is roughly 5 percent of total military personnel.
Wewll, this isn’t much, just implications of world as we know it ending :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/oceanoxia/2023/04/10/research-suggests-were-on-track-for-3-degrees/
Going largely unotied yet again..
^ Un-noticed that is.. Sigh.
Nice video:
Excerpt from the English-subtitled video:
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1646138209271676928
Mark Sumner quoted in Lynna’s #41:
Hundreds of thousands of people protested across the nation for several months over the retirement-age increase in Russia in 2018, where even then it was far harder to protest than in France. I covered it here on the thread.
“in May you’re going to see some of the disciplinary hand of God come down upon those people”
GOP Seeks To Shield Trump From All Future State Prosecutions
Who decides whether a prosecution is “politically motivated”?
SC @50, good point.
In other news, here are some responses from readers of the article quoted in comment 51:
NBC News
Fox News sanctioned for withholding evidence in Dominion defamation case
By Jane C. Timm and Amanda Terkel
Wonkette: “Florida Bigot Unclear On Concept: Are Trans People ‘X-Men’? Because Those Guys Are Awesome!”
“Is technology-based intelligence more likely to evolve on land or in water?”
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-technology-based-intelligence-evolve.html
Followup to SC @18 and me @43.
80-year-old segregation wall finally comes down in Baltimore
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Followup to comments 42 and 22.
Judge in Dominion lawsuit appoints ‘special master,’ sanctions Fox News for concealing evidence
Update: Expelled Black lawmaker Pearson to return to Tennessee House
Link. Video at the link.
Wonkette: “Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Sues Jim Jordan”
Bragg’s lawsuit against Jordan will also allow for discovery, during which Bragg can request evidence that shows Jordan coordinating with Trump.
Expelling Rep. Liz Harris almost restores my faith in the Arizona Legislature (almost)
Colombia president removes police chief who cited exorcisms
Trump sues ex-lawyer Michael Cohen after grand jury testimony
Helping a client to commit a crime is not protected by attorney-client privilege, so I don’t think there is any valid basis for Trump’s lawsuit. IANAL.
Followup to comment 43.
Witness calls ‘b——-’ on Trump’s claims people were ‘crying’ at arraignment
video at the link.
Alberta woman desperately trying to get rid of 133,000 Rum & Butter chocolate bars
Racist threats have been ‘pouring into’ Manhattan DA Bragg’s office since Trump’s arraignment
To be fair, we have seen video of Lindsey Graham crying for Trump. That was during Graham’s straight-to-camera plea for people to send money to Trump.
What? Say what now?
Link
Some Reasons That You Might Own a Collection of Fancy Third Reich Table Linens, by Bruce Handy
New Yorker link
Some podcast episodes:
Why Is This Happening? – “What’s Behind Israel’s Unprecedented Protests with Edo Konrad”:
Citations Needed – “News Brief: Media’s Credulous ‘Labor Shortage’ Reporting Helps Lay Groundwork For Repealing Child Labor Laws”:
The War On Cars – “103. Why Does Hollywood Hate Bikes?”:
Michael & US – “#418 – Of Shoes and Men”:
(I can get annoyed with this podcast, but this episode is fun.)
Tweet o’ the day.
Rep. Khanna tweeted:
Josh Marshall tweeted:
It depends on whether people have tried to speak with her previously. Seems like she should have been aware of the problems long before this.
Trump is suing Cohen for $500 million. Now, what the lawyers filed and what Trump says, well, if Trump does his usual, Trump will likely look at obstruction charges, as Cohen’s long been on the witness list.
Trump really needs to learn, if you want to get out of the hole, first put down the shovel. He keeps digging in deeper.
I can easily see him talking himself away from just the likely fines and straight into a prison cell.
So sad, too bad.
Richmond, Indiana has a major recycling plant fire, unknown releases, dense smoke, expected to burn for days, only a half mile around the fire evacuated. Based on aerial photos, I’d have went with a mile. Plastics alone generate some really nasty stuff.
Wagner founder wants Russian society to be fully mobilized for war. I’m sure the other oligarchs will find that a wonderful idea, right up there with going bankrupt, experiencing a firing squad and calling Putin crazy to his face.
Dominion judge sanctioning Fox for withholding evidence. Oops, now a special master to investigate for misconduct.
Jim Wright of the Stonekettle Station blog has a typically brilliant fb post on the disturbing state of the USA & its now openly fascist party here :
https://www.facebook.com/Stonekettle/posts/pfbid047z7oGebhFyD9Ra3hhLM2MK64V9WQNqtyBgp9hoVs1ESYtRPdUn8DbCCAFFHMvyCl
Washington Post:
Ha! It would be a real schadenfreude moment if Trump was not allowed to keep all that money he raised.
Commentary:
Business Insider link to article “Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump told Mark Meadows ‘I don’t want people to know that we lost’ 2020 election court case.”
Feinstein asks for Judiciary replacement after calls for resignation
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Investment
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/investment
“Pentagon leaks linked to young gun enthusiast who worked at military base – report”:
Guardian – “Indian government agency investigates BBC over foreign exchange rules”:
Here’s a link to France 24’s English France-protest liveblog:
Here’s a link to the French liveblog:
France 24 – “‘Unprecedented’ situation as two African countries report outbreaks of Marburg virus.”
France 24 – “Three possible scenarios as French court prepares to rule on constitutionality of pension reform”:
Re: #79 “Feinstein asks for Judiciary replacement after calls for resignation”
NYT:
Guardian liveblog:
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian US liveblog. From there:
In other Florida news – CNN – “Fort Lauderdale airport to remain closed until Friday morning after the rainiest day in the city’s history causes severe flooding”:
Guardian liveblog:
Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces and other troops deploy HIMARS to strike Russian jamming station
British Politician Under Investigation By His Own Party After Recording Surfaces of Him Reportedly Saying ‘All White Men Should Have a Black Slave’
“this is quite the word salad from Tim Scott on a national abortion ban…”
Word-salad video at the (Twitter) link.
Tweet o’ the day, because LOL. (They can leave most of the policies back in 1996, though.)
Toot:
Congressional Record: Rep Mink (D-Hawaii) (2000-12-13)
Leah Litman:
Ukraine Update: The Washington Post article on the leaker may be the single worst article I’ve read
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Spaaeace neeeeeewsNot yet in space news :https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/juice-mission-launch-delayed-due-to-lightning-risk-new-launch-date-announced-article-99468931
But hopefully soon :
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/13/world/esa-jupiter-juice-mission-launch-scn/index.html
See also the European Space Agency page here :
https://www.esa.int/
Which notes :
Wish I knew what time that was in Aussie – specifically Adelaide time.. Guessing 15th probly when I’m inevitably asleep or out?
Followup to SC @93.
Wonkette: “LOL! Tim Scott … LOL! … Running For POTUS … LOL! No, Seriously!”
Bellingcat and the NYT are reporting a name for the suspected leaker, but I won’t post it until it’s officially confirmed or he’s been arrested.
“Tucker’s starting tonight’s show with a wildly racist rant about @justinjpearson:…”
Video clip at the (Twitter) link. I share the reaction in several responses: Holy shit.
Followup to comment 97.
More Ukraine updates:
SC @101, OMG. Tucker is really swimming in the racist sludge. He likes it. He even offhandedly says that Justin Pearson probably got into Bowdoin College not on his own merit, but because he is black.
In other news, here is a followup to comments 97 and 102.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
PBS Joins NPR, Becomes Second Major News Org To Stop Using Twitter Over Musk Label
Guardian liveblog:
NBC10 Boston reporter: “#BREAKING: Police have a house surrounded in North Dighton, MA.
@NBCNews reporting a 21-year-old w/ possible ties to this area is a MA National Guard member and the suspected leaker of a trove of classified military documents.”
Guardian liveblog:
Link
Teixeira has reportedly been arrested.
Laura Rozen:
This is like the 2023 version of Pamela Smart.
Aspiring Right-Wing Terrorists Are Targeting The Power Grid Amid Rise In Accelerationist Extremism
More at the link.
“Revenge” for what?
ProPublica – “Billionaire Harlan Crow Bought Property From Clarence Thomas. The Justice Didn’t Disclose the Deal.”:
More at the link.
Guardian liveblog:
Jackson Crawford talks about the rhunic alphabet.
https://youtu.be/VsYb8fQb16I
or possibly
https://youtu.be/VsYb8fQb16l
Alissa Walker:
Ukraine Has Captured Three of Russia’s Giant Engineering Vehicles. They’re About To Become Very Useful.
In Tit-For-Tat Move, Russia Sanctions Another 333 Canadian Citizens
Driver says he threw $200,000 cash out car window to ‘bless’ others, Oregon cops say
Followup to SC @109, Ukrainian updates:
Link
TikTok: Decoder – Substack CEO faceplants interview, excerpt
Full Podcast/Transcript: Decoder – Is Substack Notes a ‘Twitter clone’? (1:10:00)
* Excerpt came from 47:40.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-14/long-covid-experience-shared-in-british-medical-journal-research/102217016
Ccylone Ilsa coverage :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-14/live-updates-tropical-cyclone-ilsa-hits-western-australia/102217818
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-14/qld-alrc-submissions-school-leaders-sexuality-presbyterian/102222474
Fucking Christian bigots.
@102. Lynna OM :
I don’t recall reading that in the Bible & wonder which prophet and atrocity he is referring to there? Anyone know?.
@113. SC (Salty Current) : How is Thomas NOT yet impeached or forced to resign after all this? At least if not outright arrested fro treason and considered a domestic enemy of the state with his wife and sure he knew about her involvement in the Jan 6th attempted Coup and seems very likely was right with her if not behind her actions and words there. It just … aaarrghhh!
@98. Sure enough seems like the launch will be happening about 3 or 4 am ish my time. Dammed Amercian timezones! Bring back Pangea I say! (1 second lauch window apparently – and for over the rest of April too.)
@ ^ See : https://www.space.com/juice-jupiter-mission-launch-april-2023-livestream
Whilst in other astronomy news, our picture of the Supermassive Black Hole at the core of Messier 87 has been improved :
https://www.space.com/first-ever-black-hole-image-ai-makeover
Meanwhile in zoological science news :
Hmm .. Amphibians generally are in massive trouble globally so I hope those newly discovered – and still undiscovered species – are okay.
@StevoR #123:
Article: Drunk with Blood, God’s Killings in The Bible
* I think the personal throat-sliting is specific to the “New American Bible” (Catholic / Episcopal).
Verse: NAB – 18:40
* I confirmed at least one Russian Bible with the personal throat-slitting. That priest wasn’t anomalously citing an American text while speaking Russian to a Russian audience.
* It wasn’t the “Russian Synodal Bible”. A little odd, cuz that seems popular. (Wikipedia: “commonly used by the Russian Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic, as well as Russian Baptists and other Protestant communities in Russia.”)
Because our illustrious, infallible Founding Fathers made it so the process for removing a corrupt judge requires impeachment from the House followed by a 2/3rds majority vote in the Senate to convict and remove. In the current climate, this requires Republicans to support such removal and that isn’t going to happen.
As for forcing them him out, forget it. The SCOTUS is a lifetime appointment who are answerable to no one.
All the more reason why the Constitution needs to be scraped.
StevoR @ #124, do you have a link for the frog report? I especially want to check out the “one with a bird-poo-like appearance.”
:)
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Also from there:
A poor excuse for an article in the Guardian – “Bob Lee knew his killer. But that won’t ease the pressure on San Francisco.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Trashed For Cooking Up Wild Defense Of Alleged Leaker
Definitely the one who is illegally leaking classified information. Thanks for asking.
Russian tank captured by Ukrainian forces turns up at Louisiana truck stop
Republican Group Mocks Trump’s Love Of Dictators With Sexy New Video
Beatriz Flamini: Athlete emerges after 500 days living in cave
Parler Has a New Owner and They’re Putting the Platform on Hiatus
@128. SC (Salty Current) :
Certainly – here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-04-14/bird-poo-frog-five-new-species-papua-new-guinea-png/102207720
Mea culpa , apologies. Thought I’d included that link in the original comment but, nah, I fucked up.
@ 125. & next comment CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain : Cheers. Thanks for that. very much appreciated.
@127. Akira MacKenzie : “As for forcing them him out, forget it. The SCOTUS is a lifetime appointment who are answerable to no one.”
Time that changed. long overdue. Not acceptable. Traitors on SCOTUS? No. Time that was called out, stopped, reversed and punished and the Federalist society treated as the perverting the course of justice traitors at the very least in spirit if not letter of law that they are.
Said before, will say again, Biden and the Democratic party absolutely need to do something about SCOTUS ideally arresting perjurers and corrupt traitors and drunken rapists on it, starting impeachment proceedings and publicly, directly personally, calling out the Trump cultist & perjury apppointed traitors on there for what they are.
So disappointed and disgusted that they haven’t done so already even knowing the Congress numbers.
Also scrappping the EC same deal – again so very long overdue. One vote, one value. Fuck the flyover, rural, Trumpist Suprmacist Slaver states and their bigoted minority of deluded extremists. One person, one vote. Now. Please.
Why isn’t there more pressure for more necessary reforms over in the US of A? For .. fucks sake,.
StevoR @ #136, thanks! So cute! And very cool:
It still is!
Oh & seems my timing was wrong with the JUICE mission too as it is flying towards Jove and its moons now :
https://www.space.com/europe-launches-juice-mission-jupiter-ocean-moons
Having been successfully launched. Timezones ..FFS. Sigh. Wish i’d seen it but glad it has happened and wishing they get there sfe’n’smooth as possible and all the science and more as planned Congrats & best wishes to all those who made this spaceprobe fly.
France 24 – “France’s Constitutional Council upholds raising of legal retirement age to 64.”
There’s no story yet – just the breaking news.
Florida Gov. DeSantis signs 6-week abortion ban
By Steve Contorno, CNN / April 14, 2023
The White House issued a statement sharply criticizing the bill.
Turning carbon dioxide into a value-added product
https://www.phys.org/news/2023-04-mochas-greenhouse-gas-value-added-product.html
Guardian liveblog:
Recent episodes of Tech Won’t Save Us:
“ChatGPT Is Not Intelligent w/ Emily M. Bender”:
“What Drives Architects to Design Saudi Megaprojects? w/ Kate Wagner”:
Re: tomh @ #142…
Looks like it’s time for a Lysistrata action in Florida.
Ukraine Update: Victory Day parades cancelled in Russia as Putin faces a shortage of tanks [Headline is misleading for this part of the update, which mostly concerns Jack Teixeira. I will post the actual Ukraine updates separately.]
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
@ 137
Yeah, it’s almost as if that the Dems make a lot of promises they never intend to keep while enforcing voter loyalty with scare stories about what the mean old Republicans will do if the Dems lose.
Followup to comment 147.
More Ukraine updates:
Link
Even more Ukraine updates coming soon.
Followup to comments 147 and 149.
More Ukraine updates:
More details concerning the guy that Greg Abbott is planning to pardon:
Link
House GOP finally comes up with a debt limit offer, and it’s ridiculous
Four die in pastor-led fasting: Kenya police
Leaked audio: Tennessee House Republicans are upset because they made themselves look ‘racist’
Finland starts fence on Russian border amid migration, security concerns
Bosnia Serb leader Dodik threatens to declare indepdendence
Missouri Attorney General Singlehandedly Bans Care For Trans Adults Too, No Law Required
I see Sarah Michelle Gellar aka Buffy the vampire killer turned 46 today.
Article: IndyStar
Abortion pill: Justice Alito pauses mifepristone restrictions as Supreme Court weighs appeal
@159:
A Computer Generated Swatting Service Is Causing Havoc Across America
Ron DeSantis Mocked for ‘Pudding Fingers’ in New MAGA Ad, Escalating Trump’s Feud with Florida Governor
Glad to see Republicans addressing the serious issues.
Billionaire linked to Sarah Ferguson accused of financing sex trafficking ring
Crow eh? You’ll never guess who his brother is.
Speaking of Crow, this from the link @ #113 was interesting:
Who? Why? Was it for free security for Thomas’s mother? Some other reason?
This was in the Guardian a couple days ago but I haven’t seen anything else about it – “World Bank staff were told to give special treatment to son of Trump official”:
Much more at the link.
Followup to comments 108, 109, 120, Reginald @131, and comment 147.
Right-wing pundits and politicians are trying to make a hero out of document leaker Jack Teixeira
What news is being covered on Fox?
Link
NBC – “El Chapo’s sons among 28 Mexican cartel members charged by Justice Department in fentanyl crackdown”:
Corrupt Republican in the Tennessee legislature:
Link
Hannah Kaviani on Twitter:
A response: “Even in the recent religious nights of Ramadhan women took part in the ceremonies without hijab.”
Followup to comment 71. More discussion about Hasan Crow’s collection of Nazi memorabilia, etc.
Ex-Fox News producer supercharges lawsuit, alleges network’s lawyers deleted evidence from her phone
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Tweet o’ the day.
BBC – “Texas dairy farm explosion kills 18,000 cows”:
Anything in brackets other than “[it]” is my editorializing. What are we doing here?
“Florida GOP newsletter out today highlights DeSantis awarding transportation $ and a new Buc-ee’s. No mention of abortion bill.”
Screenshot at the (Twitter) link.
Lydia Polgreen on Twitter:
Through a random chain of links and events I ended up doing cursory internet research on 17th- and 18th-century British history, and, in a moment of anti-drag laws, came across
To my unfathomable disappointment, there is no citation for this claim. However, there’s a painting at the (WP) link.
“@JoeBiden is given a rapturous welcome as he arrives on stage outside St Muredach’s Cathedral in Ballina, Co Mayo”
Video at the (Twitter) link. I was wondering why the Dropkick Murphys were trending!
Bonnie Raitt vs. John Campbell, 1st Earl of Breadalbane and Holland.
Wagner Group Leader calls on Putin to declare end of war
Pakistan arrests woman for claiming to be Islam’s prophet
Capitol rioter who crushed officer with shield gets 7 years
Ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not running for president
Oh bullshit. He had his people run some polls and found out there was no way he could win.
Russian agent caught looking for “weak points” on border in Sumy Oblast
Fabián Basabe, who skipped vote, blames Democratic ‘bullies’ for 6-week abortion ban
“The party of personal responsibility”
Kenya chess: Male player dons disguise to compete as woman
Montana Just Passed the First State Tiktok Ban
The Wagner decapitation videos just adds to their laundry list of war crimes, not that it matters much, as mercenaries aren’t protected by the Geneva or Hague Conventions, but still representing Russia, opens Russian forces up to reprisals for violation of the conventions.
The last reprisal actions I can recall are of Waffen SS troops, who summarily executed civilians and Allied troops being summarily executed themselves.
Teixeira, he’s an Air National Guard service member on federal duty as a systems administrator. Shitty reporting claims that he should have had access to the documents, but that’s not best business practices in civilian or military environments where least privilege is the standard. The system account and specific applications, as well as the backup job accounts need access, not the SA’s. So, a shit ton of people were, again, not doing their fucking job and some idiot kid will end up paying the price, while they all move forward in their dereliction of duty filled careers, rather than sharing a cell block with him.
Manning’s case had a different dereliction of duty, deleterious personnel action was pending and by regulation, access should have been immediately terminated and wasn’t. The termination of access, to prevent precisely what happened from happening.
I was a senior NCO and after retiring, an SA/NA and later, IA (Information Assurance, information security title in the US DoD). Both were and remain utterly unacceptable.
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #188…
One wonders just how the Montana state government plans to enforce their ban…
Maybe they’ll have the Montana National Guard march to China and invade?
Or they’ll incarcerate every kid in the state that uses their site and/or client software?
Seriously, this is like trying to repeal the law of gravity. You can try to, but it’s utterly unenforceable.
@ ^ 190 whheydt & #191. wzrd1 : Cyberwarfare of some kind? A compulsoryu TikTok destroying program – software that is maybe?
.***
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-15/us-police-shoot-man-dead-after-responding-to-wrong-address/102227592
Ukraine hails GPS-guided Excalibur artillery shells that can hit a target 25 miles away with pinpoint accuracy
Tragic loss of an unknown number of brave lives :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-15/desperate-for-new-lives-they-took-to-the-sea/102222888
Seems something is happening in Sudan – quite possibly a coup :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-15/sudan-coup-clash-in-khartoum/102227850
More Russian atrocities in Putin’s attack on Ukraine :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-15/russian-strike-kills-people-including-toddler-in-eastern-ukraine/102227900
Whilst in good if long time coming news :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-14/portrait-of-aunty-shirley-peisley-unveiled-at-adelaide-council/102222410
Josh Marshall, quoting from a Wall Street Journal article:
You’re Just Jealous Your Own Hitler Collection is Comparatively Unimpressive
Followup to comment 67.
Link
A rather extraordinary story about the search for an intriguing meteorite that fell in PNG back in 2014 here albeit soem pretty wild speculation on its possible nature :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-15/rare-interstellar-png-meteor-investigated-by-harvard-scientist/102212078
In other astronomy & space news – helicopter drone Ingnuity is still flying in martian skies having now made a milestone 50 flights – see :
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-nasa-ingenuity-mars-helicopter-50th.html
Plus a venus sized exoplanet found around a red dwarf toolcose and likely lacking an atmosphere I’d guess from similar worlds including the closest of the Trappist 1 worlds:
See : https://phys.org/news/2023-04-tess-venus-sized-exoplanet-orbiting-nearby.html
Which I’d argue is somewhat stretching the “nearby” term given LHS 475 b is 40 light years aaway.
Ukraine Update: Bakhmut has held Russia back for eight months, but is that enough?
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Followup to comment 200.
More Ukraine updates, (and news from Sudan is included).
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
Far-Right Judge Who Blocked Mifepristone Failed to Disclose Anti-Abortion Article
South Dakota governor says her two-year-old grandchild has several guns
Marjorie Taylor Greene spent more than $65,000 in campaign funds on home fence
Followup to comments 200 and 201.
Additional Ukraine update:
Link
API changes leave thousands of Twitter services broken, millions of users frustrated
More details at the link.
Followup to comments 195 and 201.
Rival Generals Unleash Fighting in Sudan, Dashing Dreams of Democracy.
New York Times link
One of Africa’s largest countries is spinning out of control, as weeks of mounting tensions between two military leaders erupted in battles in the capital, Khartoum, and in other cities.
@203. Reginald Selkirk : Quoting South Dakota Republican governor Kristi Noem
What the.. ?!
No gov, a two year old infant needs none of those things least of all deadly firearms. The pony is nice but not exactly necessary and at two years old.. F ing L!
What does she think her kid is going to be needing and doing and is that the sort of world she thinks she’s running and contributing to making? Just .. expletives. Wow.
I expect that this governor would have plenty of secuity measures and bodyguards and protection which.. can’t imagine they’d be impressed with her obvious lack of faithinthem too..
@ ^ Fix : her obvious lack of faith in them ..
What does she think – that her professional security will be total failures but her 2 year old toddler will save herself by riding away on a pony firing a rifle and shotgun simultanously and that’ll work?
More trouble for Clarence Thomas: Now questions being raised about thousands in income tied to real estate firm managed by wife Ginni’s sister
If this person was municipal dog catcher, he would have been tossed out on ethical grounds by now. But since he has one of the most powerful jobs in the country, he is somehow exempt from ethical oversight. It makes no sense.
The largest rocket ever built, the SpaceX Starship, is possibly going to launch tomorrow~ish my time or aftermorrow in USA timezones. Monday anyhow. See :
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-spacex-powerful-rocket-monday.html
Plus Scott Manley’s clip here where the Starship section starts at the 5 minute 40 seconds mark and totals 7 mins 21 secs although not all on that obvs* and see as well this rocket size comparison which is almost 3 mins long.
.* Including a chart of marine mammals in the splashdown zone with sea turtles and the very rude sounding Phocid pinniped listed separately at the 9 min 47 secs mark.
Re: #210
Even before these latest revelations, Slate had an excellent piece on Thomas and how he has clearly broken the law. It also points out how for years, in various decisions, he has railed against all sorts of disclosure laws. Not to mention it’s also perhaps the best pun in an article title ever….Quid Pro Crow.
Followup to comments 210 and 212.
Link
More details at the link, including a closer look at Ginger, Ltd. and Ginger Holdings, LLC. Excerpt:
MT Greene attempts to explain climate change is fake – it goes badly
https://twitter.com/tomaspueyo/status/1647026136298209281
The GIF showing the “World Mercator projection with country going to true size” is available at the link.
Excerpts from the rest of the thread, ( keep in mind that illustrations are included):
Much more at the link.
QAnon Psychic Makes Case For Bland Food And Dirty Bums
Posted by readers of the article:
Russians boasted that just 1% of fake social profiles are caught, leak shows
Washington Post link
Iowa to spend millions kicking families off food stamps. More states may follow.
Washington Post link
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their closing summary:
Alex Lockwood in the Guardian – “Why did we protest at the Grand National? To finally make Britain talk about our treatment of animals”:
More here – “Over 40 activists de-arrested after Grand National protest, campaign group says.”
Some podcast episodes (they appear disconnected, but intersect in interesting ways):
Tech Won’t Save Us – “Don’t Fall for the AI Hype w/ Timnit Gebru”:
This is kind of the earlier companion episode to the one with Emily Bender @ #145 above.
This is an open letter by Gebru, Bender, and others from a couple of weeks ago: “Statement from the listed authors of Stochastic Parrots on the ‘AI pause’ letter.”:
Tech Won’t Save Us – “How Tech is Remaking the Food System w/ Jim Thomas”:
Our Hen House – “Farm Sanctuary’s ‘Food Systems Shift’ w/ Aaron Rimmler-Cohen”:
Radio Free Humanity – “Episode 90: The Quack Attack on Americans’ Healthcare (interview with Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling)”:
FUUUUUUUUCK.
Thoughts and prayers, everyone.
Alabama this time, home of George Wallace and a million second amendment enthusiasts.
Elon Musk Sounds New Alarm About San Francisco
Elon Musk Says Germany Is Making a Dangerous Mistake (by closing nuclear power plants)
Why is anyone asking Elon Musk’s opinion on anything?
https://news.yahoo.com/air-national-guardsman-arrested-applying-224233068.html“>Air National Guardsman arrested after applying to work as hitman, FBI says
How stupid do you have to be to believe that rentahitman.com is either a joke or a sting?
Tweet o’ the day.
^ “not”
Yet another scheme to make it harder to vote in Florida
Elon Musk Wants to Cut Your Social Security Because He Doesn’t Understand Math
Ukraine Update: Wagner chief calls for end to Russia’s offensive actions, wants to lock in gains
India may tip this year to a wet-bulb temperatures threshold that will test human survival.
Followup to birgerjohansson @222.
‘Outrageous and unacceptable’: Biden slams GOP for standing with NRA in wake of Alabama, Kentucky gun violence
Narrator: They were not ready to repel the blow.
I love this phrase, especially since he’s referring to mutinous thoughts.
I think reporters shouldn’t just ask after a mass (or other) shooting what type of gun was used. Reporting on every one should specify not just the kind of gun but the manufacturer of the gun, the politicians who take money from and promote them, and the advertising companies and influencers who hawk their products.
On the Media – “Inside Russia’s Crackdown on Journalists”:
It’s so strange how Kondratyev talks about his fears of Russian cities being attacked. Just a bizarre thing to fear. Ukraine doesn’t want to attack Russia. “Western” countries don’t want to attack Russia. This isn’t a reasonable concern.
Moliy, “Ghana Bop.”
(From DKos, “Black Music Sunday: Give a listen to MVP Harris’ Africa trip music playlist.”)
Ecologistas en Acción – “Recurren la sentencia que avala la Operación Chamartín”:
I’m not familiar with this organization or the strength of their legal case, but WTF to this whole project.
Brian Stelter on Twitter:
Starship launch live on youtube here scehduled to start happening in 3 hours time from now.
Can’t stand Musk but SpaceX is absolutely awesome.
Starship launch live coverage youtube via NASA Spaceflight sicne the otherone seems tohave an issue now.
BBC news on this here : https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65294084
Plus wikipage here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship_orbital_test_flight
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Also in today’s Guardian:
“Lavish ancient Roman winery found at ruins of Villa of the Quintilii near Rome.”
“Andalucía accused of pandering to far right over plans for Spanish wetlands.”
“Chile takes on ‘moral duty’ of finding the disappeared of Pinochet regime.”
Marc Elias tweeted: “I’ve offered the GOP a deal. If they stop suppressing the right to vote, I will stop suing them for suppressing the right to vote.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene fires back at Lindsey Graham by posting Photoshopped pic of senator hoisting a Bud Light with trans influencer’s image
Totally a serious person.
Pro-Russia propagandist unmasked as New Jersey tropical fish seller
The rocket launch has been scrubbed.
The YT livefeed commenters are not happy.
Judy Blume clarifies statement on J.K. Rowling: “I stand with the trans community”
“Workers at Tesla’s Shanghai factory are speaking out about the death of one of their coworkers and management withholding wages.
Last year, Musk was praising how hard they worked and for ‘burning the 3am’ oil while he said US workers were ‘trying to avoid going to work at all’.”
Screenshot at the (Twitter) link.
“We firmly believe that as a globally renowned company, Tesla should have higher social responsibility and corporate moral standards.”
More re #248 – Reuters – “Angry Tesla Shanghai workers vent to Elon Musk over bonus cuts.”
Oops! Team Thomas Offers Baffling Explano For Ethics Lapse
Link
Lynna… @ # 229 quoting kos quoting Google Translate quoting Prigozhin: … no handiments and negotiations will be possible.
A very literally creative translation there: I couldn’t find “handiment” in three dictionaries and a general Web search.
George Santos’ personal insult against his potential Democratic opponent backfires spectacularly
Jordan Asserts He’s Within His Right To Undermine Bragg’s Prosecution of Trump In New Filing
Pierce @252, yes, that struck me as really odd.
Here again is the context:
Maybe a native Russian speaker will enlighten us.
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Russian prisoners recount murdering civilians, wounded soldiers; plus Russian stuff blowing up
Much more at the link.
The judge already found that the claims made on Fox were false. It’s not even at issue in the trial.
Lynna… @ # 255: Maybe a native Russian speaker will enlighten us.
I hope such a person, or somebody, can also set us straight about the item Reginald Selkirk posted @ # 244: … she broadcasts with a cod “Russian” accent. (Sounds fishy to me…)
ABC7NY – “DOJ accuses China of using ‘police station’ in Manhattan to spy on dissidents inside US”:
Couple beheaded themselves with homemade guillotine in ritual sacrifice, police in India say
IS truffle picker attacks: At least 26 killed in Syrian desert ambush
Judge Eric M. Davis: “The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that [it] is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.”
Guardian – “Judge rejects Trump request to delay rape trial over negative publicity”:
Chinese engineer charged with blasphemy in Pakistan
Re: Lynna 254
They’re really milking presenting interference and harassment as “free speech” at every social level.
Text quoted by SC @264:
So true. LOL.
FBI investigating GOP Okla. officials caught on tape talking about lynching Black people, murdering newspaper reporters
More at the link.
Feinstein needs to go, Republicans say no
Republicans like the fact that Feinstein is not there to help Democrats confirm Biden’s nominees.
Apparently, the unfavorable reporting was justified.
Followup to comment 269.
Posted by readers of the article:
Link
@Lynna, OM #255:
@Pierce R. Butler #252:
From #229: Daily Kos
Article: Deutsche Welle
Reginald Selkirk @ #223, He is such a dipshit:
WSJ link at the (Twitter) link.
Title of the WSJ piece: “Elon Musk Says His AI Project Will Seek to Understand the Nature of the Universe.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @273, Thank you. That makes sense.
In related news, here is the Ukraine update: The next offensive is coming, and Russia may be f’d
More updates coming soon.
Russian Foreign Minister speaks of “ending war as fast as possible”
Great, then get the f*** out of Ukraine.
US Senator Fetterman returns to Senate after depression treatment
Followup to comment 276.
More Ukraine updates.
Rachel Maddow covered this story tonight. Tucker Carlson was awful … he was a Russian propaganda stooge. He read from a doctored document and concluded that “Ukraine is losing the war.” He also stated as if was fact that Ukraine is losing 7 soldiers to every 1 Russian soldier. Also, that document was not just altered, it was crudely altered, and was thus an obvious fake. Very lazy and/or stupid of Fox News to not factcheck that.
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
I keep thinking that, just to drive Putin nuts, Ukraine should start their big offensive on May 9.
Or maybe it will kill us because that simplifies the universe and therefore makes it easier to understand.
But frankly, the biggest threat to humanity isn’t from AI, it’s from people like Musk.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Also in today’s Guardian:
“‘A gamechanger’: this simple device could help fight the war on abortion rights in the US”:
“Indian government labels same sex-marriage ‘elitist’ as supreme court hearing begins”:
“New Zealand feral cat hunting competition for children prompts backlash”:
WTF?!
New episode of Why Is This Happening? with Chris Hayes – “AI: ‘An Exponential Disruption’ with Kate Crawford”:
I don’t like the way Hayes speaks at some points about consciousness and animals – he mentions “projecting” an inner life onto dogs, I think even uses the phrase “human uniqueness,” and so on. Reasserting the nature of human thought in contrast to these technologies is necessary, but shouldn’t be done by disparaging the thought of other animals. Talking about animals in this disparaging way ignores the embodied and social foundations of human thought that Crawford notes. I recommend Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind. (I still haven’t read Ed Yong’s An Immense World, but I’m still excited to.)
Guardian liveblog:
As #240 above notes, Kara-Murza is also a British citizen.
Astronomy.
The Star HD 19467 -a G star of approximately the sun’s mass and luminosity 100 light years away has been confirmed having a Brown dwarf companion 50 AU away, mass ca 50 Jupiter masses.
(The system is about 7 billion years old, so any planets closer to the sun-like star may still have some tectonic activity if they are not enough)
There are closer systems with Brown dwarf companions but I find sun-like stars more interesting.
southpaw on Twitter: “Twitter, which has generally made itself a haven for far right accounts since Musk’s takeover, suspends Ali Alexander’s account @ali after @willsommer’s story about Alexander soliciting nudes from teen boys.”
The Underground Bunker on Substack – “Day one at the Danny Masterson retrial was wild, what’s in store for day two?”:
Essentially, in the first trial, “the defense had argued for excluding any mention of Scientology from the trial at all.” In this one, they’re going to be “turning it into a spectacle about Scientology.”
Musk went after CBC, too.
They tweeted:
Guardian liveblog:
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ # 273 – Thanks!
I still can’t figure out how a machine translation could come up with a word apparently not found in any dictionary.
For that matter, I don’t understand how the word “handout” would apply to putative negotiations between two nations at
warSpecial Military Operation – an allusion to “hand out” meaning an invitation to a handshake, maybe?Re: Pierce R. Butler @ #291…
I would read “handout” as a gift, such as just for showing up at the negotiation table.
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
Link
Judge Finds Trump Ringleader Of Media Circus: Denies Motion
@291 and that whole discussion
Google translate agrees on “handouts”, but Chat-GPT suggests “bribes”.
Littlest intruder: Toddler crawls through White House fence
SC #284: ‘I still haven’t read Ed Yong’s An Immense World, but I’m still excited to.’
I just signed in to respond to this: It is soooo good! I love a book with footnotes, but this one has dozens that would make fantastic topics for books all their own. Yong set out to attempt to look at the way other living things experience the world, not as something to teach us about ourselves, but for those living thing’s sake themselves. He succeeds. It’s wonderful!
This Is The Dumbest Debt Ceiling Fight Ever
Link
Trump’s Fake Georgia Electors Are Now Ratting on Each Other
If their attorney is selling them out due to some other interest – say Trump’s – that attorney could be in trouble.
Followup to comments 74, 75, 79, 87, 269, and 271.
McConnell opposes allowing Democrats to replace Feinstein on Judiciary Committee
Posted by a reader of the article:
Poland building electronic barrier on border with Russia
Oklahoma sheriff says recording of killing talk was illegal
Paul K @ #297, thanks for signing in! OK, that does it – I’m going to have to move it back to the top of my reading list, especially since almost everything I’ve read lately has been making me angry.
:)
Back to the Mines: Iowa Senate Moves to Legalize Child Labor in Pre-Dawn Session
Ukraine Update: Experts worry about what comes after the counteroffensive
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
“German government confirms that Patriot air defense system is already in Ukraine.
Excellent timing.”
Global heating in Siberia is so extreme that it reversed a 7000-year cooling trend.
Trump Drops More NFTs—And Now the First Batch Is Plummeting in Price
@295
“Подачка” in the original text is not just a handout, it’s a kind of handout that costs nearly nothing to the giver and taking it is humiliating to the receiver. The origin of the term is leftover food thrown to dogs. The term implies very unequal status of the parties in the exchange and is often used by the receiving party when rejecting the ‘handout’ precisely on the grounds that it is humiliating.
I’m not entirely sure what Prigozhyn meant by the word in that particular sentence, but reading the preceding paragraphs when he speculates about the US/West being more interested in the slow decline of the quality of life and consequently the moral or the russian population which could lead to general acceptance of some kind of negotiations and of giving away occupied territories in exchange for something that would improve the quality of life, I think “подачки” refers to whatever the US/West will propose in exchange for russia’s withdrawing its troops, which would presumably be something trivial for the US/West and insulting to the russian lives lost and therefore humiliating to russia and therefore “подачка”.
Fractured rail found after fiery Minnesota derailment
Followup to comment 305.
More Ukraine updates.
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
ondrbak @309, thank you for that additional information:
Sounds like something Prigozhyn would typically say. I think he is full of braggadocio and also thin-skinned at the same time. Sounds a bit like Trump.
Wonkette: “FDA Approves Second Bivalent Booster Shots For Some”
Get your free booster shot now.
Fox/Dominion have settled their lawsuit, after the jury was seated and opening statements were about to begin. Term are not known.
Re: Lynna, OM @ #313…
Saw that news earlier today. As soon as the second booster approvals clear the CDC and become official, I’ll get one. What with being 74. Then a third of whatever formulation they come up with in the Fall.
From the train derailment article in #310
The fire from those leaking ethanol cars damaged the gaskets on three other ethanol cars nearby, causing them to leak as well, even though the gaskets were rated to withstand temperatures up to 225 degrees Fahrenheit (107.2 degrees Celsius).
I hope this is an error. Fires generally exceed the boiling point of water by far more than 13 degrees. Even if they meant the gasket is rated to 225 Celsius/ 432 Fahrenheit, the fire safety issue is obvious. I fact checked Ray Bradbury to be sure of my numbers, and the top result confirms that paper combusts at Fahrenheit 451.
“The ignition temperature of paper is 451 degrees Fahrenheit, or 233 degrees Celsius. Many people know this value from the Ray Bradbury novel, Fahrenheit 451, an anti-utopian tale about a society where firemen are in charge of burning books instead of stopping fires.”
Ethanol fires are considerably hotter than that.
@314: Very exciting, interested to see the details. I imagine it is much closer to Dominion’s position than Fox’s.
Another senior SNP official – the party treasurer, Colin Beattie – has been arrested today in connection with the party’s funding, overshadowing Humza Yousaf’s attempted relaunch in the Scottish Parliament. You have to wonder if the timing was entirely coincidental. Beattie apparently supported multi-bigot Kate Forbes against Yousaf in the leadership election.in the
Atheists in Foxholes
Disappointed to learn Dominion have reached a settlement with Fox. The latter will undoubtedly retrun to their lies as soon as they think they can get away with it.
More Christians pretending to understand and explain atheism:
Dear Christian: 5 things to know about atheism
Re: Dominion
The settlement includes a $787.5 million payment from Fox, according to Dominion’s lawyers.
The $787.5 million payment cited by Dominion represents roughly half of the $1.6 billion that the company initially asked for in damages. Fox is still facing a similar defamation suit from another plaintiff involved in voting technology, Smartmatic.
A Smartmatic spokesman said in a statement: “Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign. Smartmatic will expose the rest.”
@320: A settlement will come with terms. These terms are not yet known. I would presume that Fox desisting from repeating claims against Dominion are a baseline requirement.
KG @ 320
I agree.
.
The religion of the scythians and their genetic heritage
https://youtu.be/Xsowwl7s4Q0
What I think Fox News will learn from this settlement is: we can lie all the time if that’s what we like … we just have to avoid connecting those lies to the name of a specific company.
Tucker Carlson lied recently about the status of the war in Ukraine.
Fox did issue a statement. “We acknowledge the Court’s finding” sounds like weasel words to me.
Link
Fox has never had a “commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”
NYT:
Well, fuck.
Washington Post link
NYT:
Here are the other legal cases Fox is entangled in.
ondrbak @ # 309 – Thanks!
KG @ # 320: … Fox… will undoubtedly [return] to their lies as soon as they think they can get away with it.
Return? When did they depart? I must’ve blinked and missed it.
Nothing says highest journalistic standards like paying out an $800 million defamation settlement after a judge finds you lied.
Article: Space.com
Toot: Prof. Sam Lawler
* An astronomer currently fighting for satellite regulation.
Mom, son who took zip ties into Senate convicted in 1/6 riot
1st Black chief judge for New York state confirmed
Consider the source:
Bill O’Reilly criticizes Fox News following settlement: ‘The nightmare will continue’
“Tide goes in, tide goes out.”
Or is it “Garbage in, garbage out”? I can never keep those two straight.
California man who hit police officer with bear spray at Capitol insurrection found guilty
He was just reporting on what groups were calling Dr. Tiller.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog:
Also in the Guardian – “Severe heatwave engulfs Asia causing deaths and forcing schools to close”:
CBS2 IdahoNews – “Judge issues warrant for Ammon Bundy for ignoring St. Luke’s lawsuit”:
Guardian – “White nationalists who carried torches in Charlottesville in 2017 indicted”:
Meta’s AI Is Partially Trained on Breitbart and Russia Today, Study Finds
From the link @ #341:
I think it’s Kate Crawford in the interview @ #284 who talks about how they can scrape these garbage sites, and then the tool generates content reflecting that, which then goes online and is itself scraped, potentially leading to an endless spiral of wrongness.
Sweden public radio exits Twitter, says audience already has
SC @342, “[…] an endless spiral of wrongness.” Yep. Very aptly put. Repetition is known to be one of the factors in convincing people that disinformation is truth.
Sounds sort of like Fox News. On their website they do not really inform their readers about the Dominion lawsuit.
https://www.wonkette.com/how-did-fox-news-cover-dominion-settlement
Followup to comment 344.
More commentary from Wonkette:
Ukraine Update: To make the counteroffensive work on the ground, Ukraine needs more help in the air
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
National Review Issues Scathing Indictment of Fox Settlement: ‘Disgraceful Situation’ Conservatives Are ‘Quietly Mortified By’
A pretty good rundown on how conservatives are ignoring what just happened. One really good quote, from the National Review article:
Inability to believe wild things is not a problem for these folks.
WaPo:
Supreme Court delays decision on abortion pill restrictions until Friday
By Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow / April 19, 2023 at 3:19 p.m. EDT
Wow. Just wow.
Minnesota Republican wants to protect children from zombies
Followup to comment 346.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
New Yorker cartoon: “Great show! We’ll need $787.5 million in the ‘Lie Jar.’ ”
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
Tweet (thread) o’ the day.
No, they don’t. They, in fact, do not have to believe anything that isn’t convenient to them. That’s the central dogma of American Republicanism.
I get the idea of arguing from a standpoint of reason, but at some point we also have to admit that the other side simply isn’t reasonable, never wanted to be, and that pretending they are is just giving them more chances to fuck the rest of us over even harder.
Re: Lynna, OM @ #350..
At least he didn’t go after the bane of all costumers, the Satinists. As in the cry, “Get thee behind me, Satin.”
LOL.
Judge who denied girl abortion over grades shortlisted for Florida’s top court
Marjorie Taylor Greene silenced in committee after accusing Mayorkas of lying
I just checked and I’m not surprised that she was divorced back in December.
$20 says it was due to infidelity. These people aren’t imaginative enough to accuse someone of something they haven’t done themselves.
Mehdi Hasan on How to Argue and Win
Randy Fine (R-FL) introduced a “drag is child abuse” bill. His wife performs in a burlesque fundraiser for children, and his campaign is sponsoring the event. (Link)
Re: CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ #362…
Just tell Randy Fine that you want to see his wife dance to the last section of Offenbach’s overture to Orpheus in the Underworld.
Excellent positive encouraging Al Jazeera Op-ed by Andrew Mitrovica here :
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/4/18/american-patriots-stand-up-to-bullies-and-theyll-cower
Could be confronting but interesting documentary screening on SBS TV tonight – 8.30 pm channel 3 at least for Adelaide residents. Trailer here:
Source : https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/video/2185669699600/Asking-For-It-Trailer
Scientists identify mind-body nexus in human brain
I expect this research to be overhyped and misinterpreted.
Ibid:
Another reason “the body” and “the mind” aren’t separate is that the supernatural doesn’t exist. But at least they’re leaning in the right direction.
Yeah I don’t do dualism. It’s more like how many parts of your mind and body do you want to develop awareness of and understand? The part that’s just you and experiences. The parts that store everyone else and their effects.
These touretteic sensations are something computational. Pieces of something we tend to talk of as a whole.
This paper makes sense. Whole body movement specific control and individual parts. There’s short-range cortical over connectivity in TS, I wonder how this research might relate to that? My whole body programs are, not so whole.
SpaceX’s Starship rocket launched on first test flight, then explodes
House GOP debt limit plan would block Biden’s student loan agenda, prohibit future relief
Montana shelves GOP proposal to alter US Senate primary
@Reginald Selkirk #369
From the linked story:
If that’s their idea of a “successful test flight”, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be around for one of their failures…
re quotetheunquote @372: When I heard the cheers for the explosion of the rocket, I wondered why they were cheering. Like you, I didn’t consider the destruction of the vehicle a success. And if I was scheduled to take a ride on it, I would remove my name from the list completely.
Fox’s Massive Dominion Settlement Is Tax Deductible
Mike Lindell Ordered to Pay $5 Million to Trump Voter Who Debunked His Election Lies
Since 1979 Mississippi has not allowed religious exemptions for vaccines for school immunization requirements. No more.
Mississippi Must Grant Religious Exemptions To School Vaccination Requirements
Emily Wagster Pettus / April 19, 2023
This leaves only California, Connecticut, Maine, New York and West Virginia with no religious exemption for school immunization requirements.
BuzzFeed News Is Shutting Down
Repeat of @377, I messed up the link
BuzzFeed News Is Shutting Down
The SpaceX rocket launch was too a success. It allowed Musk to prove, once again, that private enterprise is always better and more efficient and more better and even more efficienter UNLESS it is regulated. And I would not be at all surprised if Musk and his sycophantic Musketeers claim that the reason the rocket blew up was because, somehow, of government interference and/or financing.
Jeff Bezos’ New $500 Million Megayacht Didn’t Have a Helipad So He Bought a Support Yacht
GOP blocked in subpoena of lawyer who used to helm Trump probe
Josh Russell / April 20, 2023
Courthouse News Service
@ 375
Does this mean that Kent Hovind needs to pay up as well?
Love To Watch RFK Jr. Tell Tucker Russian Propaganda Tucker Told RFK Jr. Literally Last Week
https://www.wonkette.com/robert-f-kennedy-tucker-carlson-interview
Additional information:
So that’s why Marjorie Taylor Greene and Robert Kennedy Jr. keep saying “the Ukraine.”
Following School Shooting, Tennessee Swiftly Protects Gun Businesses
Article: SpaceX’s Texas Rocket is Going To Cause A Lot More Damage Than Anyone Thinks
Toot:
Charges dropped against Alec Baldwin in fatal on-set ‘Rust’ shooting
US Senate panel seeks Supreme Court’s Roberts testimony on ethics
Sorry, that was not an accurate quote from Roberts, it was my subconscious leaking through.
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Ukraine Update: Russia is fighting for territory, Ukraine is fighting for its life
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Lawmaker Who Voted to Eject ‘Tennessee 3’ Resigns After Sexually Harassing Intern
Finland seizes Russian Scientific and Cultural Center land and building in Helsinki
Amazing. I guess that Campbell’s offense was offensive enough that the ethics committee decided that yes, the rules apply to conservatives. At least this time.
Re: Oggie: Mathom @ #392….
Most likely reason was that the intern that was harassed was White.
Followup to comment 389.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
There is a report on the BBC about a Russian jet having fired on the Russian city of Belgorod leaving damaged buildings and a 20m crater.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Guardian – “MEPs condemn Suella Braverman over arrest of French publisher”:
From yesterday’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog – update to #240:
Also from the Guardian:
“James Cleverly defies Tory right’s push to leave ECHR”:
“Trump rebuked by judge over jury request in New York civil rape trial”:
“Rightwing extremists defeated by Democrats in US school board elections”:
More from the Guardian:
George Monbiot – “Costa Rica restored its ravaged land to health. The rich UK has no excuse for such complete failure”:
“Israel: self-proclaimed ‘racist’ politician nominated as New York consul general”:
Hahaha – “Lachlan Murdoch drops defamation proceedings against independent Australian publisher Crikey”:
Today’s Guardian UK liveblog – “Dominic Raab resigns as deputy prime minister and justice secretary in wake of bullying report.”
They link to a tweet from shadow justice minister Ellie Reeves responding to his resignation letter:
The New Republic – “”:
Sorry – the title of the piece @ #402 is “Why Right-Wingers Are So Afraid of Men Eating Vegetables.”
NBC – “Protester of ‘Cop City’ near Atlanta was shot by police at least 57 times, autopsy says”:
Guardian – “Demons be gone: inside the American spiritual warfare movement”:
I’m not sure if I’ve heard this term before: “Brother Mike keenly avoids my questions about his political views, but his radio shows leave little doubt that he’s firmly on what’s been called the ‘cosmic right’ – the conspiracy-fueled edge of conservative politics that fuses the material and spiritual worlds.”
Arizona GOP loses bid to undo $18K in fees over 2020 lawsuit
Pa. county sanctioned over copying 2020 voting machine data
I hate abusive behavior more now. A decade ago I thought this might be a thing when reading about inherited trauma. The idea that you can hurt someone so bad their descendents feel it changes me.
“Epigenome-wide meta-analysis of prenatal maternal stressful life events and newborn DNA methylation”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-023-02010-5
Should say “changed”, not “changes”.
New podcast episodes:
Tech Won’t Save Us – “Chatbots Won’t Take Many Jobs w/ Aaron Benanav”:
If Books Could Kill – “The 5 Love Languages”:
(Another term I think is new to me: “ambient evangelicalism.”)
The Register posted this https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/20/shkreli_ai_medicine/ article about “Pharma Bro” Shkreli’s latest venture, an AI medical advice chatbot.
The obvious retort is from the on line comic strip, Doc Rat, today (21 Apr 2023): https://www.docrat.com.au/comic/chat-gp/
New episodes of Hoy (El País):
“Cómo dificultan los gobiernos de ultraderecha europeos el aborto sin tocar la ley”:
“‘Verme en una foto sin filtro de Instagram o de TikTok me causa rechazo'”:
CNN
Lachlan Murdoch drops defamation suit against Australian outlet Crikey in wake of massive Dominion settlement
By Oliver Darcy, CNN / April 21, 2023
A Super PAC Targets Greene, Gaetz, Boebert and Others on the Far Right
Michigan Republicans Vote To Keep Law Barring Unwed Couples From Living Together
France 24 – “Police block protesters as Macron faces down hostile crowds in rural France”:
Ukraine’s millennial minister leads digital fight against Russia
Link
House Republican bill will screw over veterans
More at the link.
https://kyivindependent.com/media-military-summonses-distributed-at-moscow-state-university-dormitory/
I can’t predict how this will go in Russia, but one of the problems the US Army encountered during the Viet Nam War was “friction” between college-educated draftees and high school educated non-coms.
Georgia police executed climate activist, autopsy results show.
More at the link.
In Secret Recording, A Top Library Official Calls Alaska Natives ‘Woke’ And ‘Racists’
Despite Judy Eledge’s history of inflammatory comments and social media posts, Alaska’s governor has awarded her public money and a national role. What’s more, city and state agencies meant to protect Alaskans’ civil rights have been hamstrung.
More at the link, including details that show Eledge is not qualified for the job:
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Mark Sumner at DKos – “America discovers the true meaning of ‘an armed society is a polite society.'”
This struck me:
“EXCLUSIVE: Trump atty Cleta Mitchell discusses her 2024 presidential targets for voter suppression methods against overseas & youth vote, early voting, etc…
NV-Clark; AZ-Maricopa; GA-Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb; NC-Wake, Durham, Mecklenburg; VA-Fairfax, Loudon; WI-5 cities; NH; AK
This video provides a lot more context to yesterday’s blockbuster reporting in WaPo from @AmyEGardner
and @jdawsey1:…”
Audio and WaPo link at the (Twitter) link. They’re especially coming after student voting.
Re: SC (Salty Current) @ #424…
I see she doesn’t have the cojones to go after anywhere in California. Probably considers us a lost cause.
Ukraine Update: Russia accidentally bombs itself. Again
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Link
Followup to comment 427.
Commentary from Wonkette:
https://www.wonkette.com/texas-senate-votes-to-shove-ten-commandments-down-schoolkids-throats
‘A Quick Death or a Slow Death’: Prisoners Choose War to Get Lifesaving Drugs
New York Times link
An estimated 20 percent of Russia prisoner recruits are H.I.V. positive. To some, the front lines seemed less risky than prisons where they said they were denied effective treatments.
Followup to comment 426.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
NBC News
Supreme Court allows abortion pill to stay on the market for now
By Lawrence Hurley and Laura Jarrett / Apr. 21, 2023
Poodle saved by Narcan after it was found unconscious in Pennsylvania, shelter says
Greenpeace USA Defeats $100 Million Lawsuit
More at the link.
Angelo Carusone and Chris Hayes discuss Fox News.
Media Matters link
See the link for the rest of the transcript and the video.
Happy (?) Earth Day y’all.
22nd April (today) is Earth Day.
A pale blue dot that is two thirds covered by salt water.
Much of the remaining third is frozen ice, seas of dunes and barren rock, some expansive grassland plains, some dense jungle, some woodland and increasingly too much city, degraded and polluted.
We know of no other planet like ours. Not confirmed, not for sure. For sure, not nearby or accessible to us at least for now and likely forever.
This is our only home. Our collective home that we share with every other human being and every other living thing we know of.
Let’s look after it, hey?
See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day
On Earth Day seems apt to share this :
https://interestingengineering.com/science/40-facts-about-planet-earth
List of facts plus this boldly titled aticle here :
https://www.space.com/54-earth-history-composition-and-atmosphere.html
As well as this view from Juno on its way to Jove looking at Earth and moon in a fly by lasting 2 mins 20 seconds, er, the video of it here anyhow.
Incidentally, just a couple more days until World Tapir Day now too!
Breaking news. Vale Dame Edna, Sir Les & Barry Humphries, trinity of classic satricial characters and thankyou. Australia has just lost a national treasure and queer icon :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-22/barry-humphries-dies-aged-89/102236144
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-22/barry-humphries-comedian-behind-dame-edna-everage-dies/6962192
Dame Edna Everage performing stand up here.
Explorers find WWII ship sunk with over 1,000 Allied POWs
The Navy Is Decommissioning Two Nuclear Aircraft Carriers in a Row
The Army Is Readying Armored Vehicles That Spy, Jam, and Hack Enemy Drones
Everyone With Blue Eyes May Descend From a Single Human Ancestor
Oh FFS. Now I learn :
Source : https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/pride/agenda/article/2018/07/25/why-we-need-stop-giving-bigots-barry-humphries-platform
A big blot on his legacy here. I expected and thought a lot better of him than that. How can someone who does drag be such a transphobe? Yet he was. Ouch.
House Republicans, Manhattan DA end fight over Trump inquiry
Well, sort of. I think that headline is overstating things a bit.
Details regarding how the immediate impasse was resolved:
Posted by readers of the article:
Ukraine Update: Nine mechanized brigades are ‘trained, manned, and equipped’ for counteroffensive
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Canada!
Link
Ohio Republican Demands Reparations For White People
On Climate, Joe Biden Gets The Whole GLOBAL Thing
Followup to comment 444.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
Justice Alito SO MAD YOU GUYS That Fellow Conservatives Won’t Sell Their Whole Souls To Ban Abortion
The mother lode of winter storms has sent water blasting through rock crevices and rivers in the Sierra Nevada, leading to more glittering discoveries by prospectors.
New York Times link
Photos, and more details, at the link.
Toxic: The Kremlin wants ‘real men’ to prove themselves by joining the fight in Ukraine
Via Aussie ABC news – excerpt / intro :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-23/reuben-kaye-australian-artist-drag-comedy-cabaret/102214780
Re: SteveR @ #452…
Did he use…
Q: Why didn’t Jesus get into college?
A: He got nailed on the boards.
@whheydt #453:
Video: The clip of Reuben Kaye’s joke (0:42)
Baltic countries fume as China’s envoy in France Lu Shaye questions sovereignty of post-Soviet states
Logically, that must apply to the Russian Federation as much as to the other 14 successor states of the USSR. So what was Xi Jinping doing making a state visit to a quasi-state with “no effective status in international law”? Was Lu perhaps warning that China might de-recognise Putin as a legitimate head of state? Probably not, but if Lu wants somehow to claim that the Russian Federation is different from the other 14, he might note that the Russian Federation has signed treaties with most of the ex-Soviet states, notably including Ukraine. As has China (Xi signed a bilateral treaty with Ukraine in 2013, thus clearly recognising it as a sovereign state).
Spaaace neeewws :
https://www.space.com/nasa-lucy-spots-asteroid-targets-first-time
Ok not getting there til 2027 but still cool.
@453. whheydt : LOL. Good un.
@451. Lynna, OM : “Toxic: The Kremlin wants ‘real men’ to prove themselves by joining the fight in Ukraine.”
How many bullets does it take to kill a “real” Russian man? One in the right spot same as everyone else. Obvs answer.. Ironically an imaginary Russian soldier or any imaginary soldier could take more bullets if you imagine it right..
@446. Lynna, OM : Ohio Republican Demands Reparations For White People
Has someone told that not-the-F1-racer Moreno (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Moreno) ’bout this? :
Source : https://theconversation.com/there-was-a-time-reparations-were-actually-paid-out-just-not-to-formerly-enslaved-people-152522
Also : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-to-know-about-calls-for-reparations-for-britains-legacy-of-slavery-in-the-caribbean
WaPo:
Ohio Republicans try to change rules to defeat abortion rights amendment
Dan Balz / April 22, 2023
Ukraine Update: So many counterattack options, but here’s one that could break Russia
Wagner Group surges in Africa as U.S. influence fades, leak reveals.
Washington Post link
More at the link.
If Wagner leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin is forced out of Bakhmut in Ukraine, I suspect he will just move more of his mercenary forces to Africa.
U.S. and Other Countries Evacuate Embassy Staff From Sudan.
New York Times link
Britain and France were among the nations that also moved to evacuate their diplomats on Sunday. Sudanese nationals continued to flee as fighting in the capital, Khartoum, stretched into a second week.
U.S. military Special Forces flew three chinook helicopters into Sudan’s capital early Sunday morning, under cover of darkness, to rescue embassy personnel, some United Nations diplomats and even pets. No shots were fired.
Tennessee Sen Quietly Names April ‘Confederate History Month’
Images and text showing historical documents are available at the link.
Biden administration pushes solar investment, innovation and community projects
Twitter Blue marks show up for dead celebrities, sowing confusion
Right-Wing Grifters Repackage Incel ‘Science’ As Dating Advice
https://www.wonkette.com/vacuum-vaginas-twitter
Bed Bath & Beyond files for bankruptcy after failed turnaround plans
Nuclear fusion will not be regulated the same way as nuclear fission — a big win for the fusion industry
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-24/elon-musk-verifies-dead-celebrities-on-twitter-blue-tick/102258586
Looks like those paid for blue ticks sure mean a lot and can actually be taken as guaranteeing they are who they say they are right?
South Africa’s envoy to Canada was interviewed by Dylan Robertson of the Canadian Press over the weekend, and isn’t happy with Canada providing military support to Ukraine.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/south-africa-envoy-urges-ukraine-peace-talks-says-canada-stance-on-war-shocking
@455:
China respects ex-Soviet states as sovereign nations – foreign ministry
“That thing that we said- actually we meant the opposite.”
Drones attack Sevastopol, crashed drone found near Moscow
Skepticrat 198 Defoxify edition
https://youtu.be/AVhNwLGVfvk
Kyrsten Sinema Has a Net Favorability of -23, Per New Statewide Poll
NYC plans 10 miles of hardened bike lanes, other safety improvements as bicycling fatalities rise
Afroman announces 2024 presidential bid
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Also from there:
Also in today’s Guardian:
“Officer who fatally shot Breonna Taylor hired by sheriff’s office in Kentucky”:
“Kenyan police recover 58 bodies of suspected starvation cult members”:
Highly recommended podcast episodes:
Know Your Enemy – “Ron DeSantis Wants to Make America Florida (w/ Gillian Branstetter)”:
Our Hen House – “The Foster Farms Rescue and Trial, w/ Alexandra Paul and Alicia Santurio”:
They also discuss (among other interesting items) this report from Plant Based News – “Global Climate Report (IPCC) Accused Of Burying Plant-Based Diet Recommendations: 5 Key Takeaways”:
And from one of their links – Quartz – “The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet”:
@Reginald Selkirk #476
Of the declared candidates, so far, he’s got my vote. : )
Big surprise this morning. Tucker Carlson and Fox News are parting ways.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/tucker-carlson-leaving-fox-news-network-says/ar-AA1aheiX
From the Guardian US liveblog:
The Guardian links to a Twitter thread by Brian Stelter:
Followup to comments 481 and 482.
Yep. Hard to believe. It seems difficult to believe, but Tucker Carlson is no longer with Fox News. The announcement was confirmed by the network this morning.
I’ve already seen some speculation that something damaging about Carlson is going to become public. It seems kind of unlikely given what Fox News has let him get away with.
timgueguen @ #485, if there is something I hope it’s that he’s been taking money from Orbán andor Putin to act as a foreign agent and will soon be indicted.
Perfect. (Twitter link)
Tweet o’ the day.
Don Lemon fired by CNN. Must be the season.
Maybe it’s a “Freaky Friday” switch. Tucker Carlson goes to CNN, and Don Lemon moves to Faux.News.
Hahaha, eat shit Tucker. Easily the best news of the day.
DW (YT link) – “The next stage of the war in Ukraine: Analyzing Kyiv’s strategy”:
22-minute interview.
Oz Katerji: “Today is a truly sad day for every bought and paid-for Putin shill in the USA, Carlson was the only mainstream ‘news’ channel that ever frequently platformed their atrocity revisionism.”
Guardian liveblog:
One segment on 60 Minutes last night, as they noted earlier, was an interview with Ray Epps and his wife, who talked about Carlson’s “obsession” with him and how they’ve had to sell their house and go into hiding because of the threats and harassment resulting from the constant accusations.
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Rachel Maddow tweeted: “See you tonight, 9PM Eastern, on MSNBC…”
Many more examples are available at the link, including Carlson ranting about non-binary M&M’s candy, Tucker Carlson’s connections to Russian TV, and many images of AOC laughing delightedly.
Link
Link
Report From Russia: The Country’s “Special Military Operation” Is a Bloody Fiasco
Hillary Clinton: Republicans Are Playing Into the Hands of Putin and Xi
New York Times link
More at the link