False stories in the aftermath of tragedy

Whenever there is a natural disaster that takes many lives, there is a tendency for people to seize upon conspiratorial thinking as to the cause or on stories of miraculous survival or rescue.

In the case of the recent flash floods in Texas that has resulted in over 100 deaths and over a 150 people still missing, we see the conspiratorial minded come out in full force. I am not talking about the more serious discussions as to whether the cuts by Trump in funding the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) resulted in less efficient weather forecasting and early warnings (and he is proposing further $2.2 billion in cuts to NOAA), but about stories that the floods were the result of the government efforts to manipulate the weather.

Some people, emerging from the same vectors associated with the longstanding QAnon conspiracy theory, which essentially holds that a shadowy “deep state” is acting against President Donald Trump, spread on X that the devastating weather was being controlled by the government.

“I NEED SOMEONE TO LOOK INTO WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS,” posted Pete Chambers, a former special forces commander and frequent fixture on the far right who once organized an armed convoy to the Texas border, along with documents he claimed to show government weather operations. “WHEN WAS THE LAST CLOUD SEEDING?”
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The implications of Mamdani’s win

The thin veneer that enables the political establishment to pretend that the Democratic and Republican parties represent any fundamental differences gets stripped away whenever someone with socialist leanings breaks through the space formed by the neoliberal Democratic party establishment and the right-wing extremist Republican party, which is where the political establishment lives. Thus the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s win on a populist platform in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary has sent shock waves through the political establishment.

Now that right wing alliance is gearing up to defeat Mamdani, using red-baiting, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, with the New York Times joining in the effort. It is at times like these that that newspaper sheds its superficially liberal or neutral mask and reveals itself for the establishment rag that it is. As evidence of this, Margaret Sullivan writes that the paper is trying to blow up a trivial story into something big.
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China opens up as the US shuts down

As the US increasingly restricts the people who can come to the US and hassles people at the border who come here and thus discourages visitors, China has gone in the opposite direction. It has added more than 70 countries to its list of those whose citizens can get visa-free entry for 30 days, thus promoting tourism. Many countries are excluded from this relaxation, including the US, UK, Canada, Russia..

In December 2023, China announced visa-free entry for citizens of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Malaysia. Almost all of Europe has been added since then. Travelers from five Latin American countries and Uzbekistan became eligible last month, followed by four in the Middle East. The total will grow to 75 on July 16 with the addition of Azerbaijan.

About two-thirds of the countries have been granted visa-free entry on a one-year trial basis.
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Those from 10 countries not in the visa-free scheme have another option: entering China for up to 10 days if they depart for a different country than the one they came from. The policy is limited to 60 ports of entry, according to the country’s National Immigration Administration.

The transit policy applies to 55 countries, but most are also on the 30-day visa-free entry list. It does offer a more restrictive option for citizens of the 10 countries that aren’t: the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Sweden, Russia, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Indonesia, Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

Aside from the U.K., Sweden is the only other high-income European country that didn’t make the 30-day list. Ties with China have frayed since the ruling Chinese Communist Party sentenced a Swedish book seller, Gui Minhai, to prison for 10 years in 2020. Gui disappeared in 2015 from his seaside home in Thailand but turned up months later in police custody in mainland China.

China is clearly seeking to take advantage of the US’s decreasing attractiveness as a tourist destination.

Balancing the universality of humanism with one’s specific ethnic heritage

I found this interesting short clip of the versatile physician, writer, director, documentarian, comedian, and public intellectual Jonathan Miller, who died in 2019 at the age of 85, talking with Dick Cavett about how he views his own Jewish ethnicity. I found completely relatable his views about subordinating the ethnic and religious heritage into which he was born to a more universal sense of humanity.

The exchange is well worth watching for anyone trying to navigate rejecting ethnic and religious sectarianism and embracing solidarity with the human race as a whole, without giving the impression that they are disowning or are even ashamed of being born into a specific heritage. As he said, the only time he feels it necessary to tell anyone that he is Jewish is when they turn out to be an antisemite.
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Steve Coogan blasts the UK Labour Party

Back in 1961, the ground-breaking British sketch comedy revue Beyond the Fringe featuring Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore took British comedy by storm, breaking old patterns and inspiring a new generation of comedians including the Monty Python troupe.

In the opening sketch, they had a commentary on America.

At the 2:57 mark, Jonathan Miller explains to Dudley Moore, who is on the eve of a trip to the US, the two-party system here, saying “They’ve got the Republican party, you see, which is the equivalent of our Conservative party and then there’s the Democratic party which is the equivalent of our Conservative party.”

That joke worked in 1961 because at that time there were significant differences between the Conservative and Labour parties in the UK, which were not reflected in the Republican and Democratic parties here.. It would not work as well now because, thanks to the neoliberalism of Tony Blair and now Keir Starmer, the Labour party is becoming indistinguishable from the Conservatives.

Actor Steve Coogan has blasted Starmer and the Labour party of betraying its supporters and warned that when angry voters see that neither party is looking after their interests, they will move towards Nigel Farage’s Reform party. His analysis rings true to what we see in the US as well.
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The terrible budget bill that just passed

Congress has passed Trump’s budget bill and, to no one’s surprise, it is an appalling piece of legislation that is reverse Robin Hood, taking from the poor and giving to the one-percenters, plus feeding his xenophobic passion to expel people whom he thinks do not belong here.

Here are the lowlights.

The wealthiest households would see a $12,000 increase from the legislation, and the bill would cost the poorest people $1,600 a year, mainly due to reductions in Medicaid and food aid, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House’s version.
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The bill would provide some $350 billion for Trump’s border and national security agenda, including for the U.S.-Mexico border wall and for 100,000 migrant detention facility beds, as he aims to fulfill his promise of the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history.

Money would go for hiring 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, with $10,000 signing bonuses and a surge of Border Patrol officers, as well. The goal is to deport some 1 million people per year.
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The threat posed by masked law enforcement

There have been a vast number of news stories and videos of masked plain clothes ICE agents going around in unmarked cars and grabbing people, striking terror with this death squad-like behavior. Astonishingly, the attorney general Pam Bondi claims that she is unaware of this practice.

The attorney general, Pam Bondi, professed ignorance of reports of immigration officials hiding their faces with masks during roundups of undocumented people, despite widespread video evidence and reports that they are instilling pervasive fear and panic.

Challenged at a Wednesday Capitol Hill subcommittee hearing by Gary Peters, a Democratic senator for Michigan, Bondi, who as the country’s top law officer has a prominent role in the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy, implied she was unaware of plain-clothed agents concealing their faces while carrying out arrests but suggested it was for self-protection.

“I do know they are being doxxed … they’re being threatened,” she told Peters. “Their families are being threatened.”

Bondi’s protestations appeared to strain credibility given the attention the masked raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents have attracted on social media and elsewhere.

Yes, she has the nerve to claim that the federal agents who are terrorizing ordinary people are the real victims and scared. Law enforcement officer have long had their names and badges visible so why are ICE agents so scared? It is because they know that they are doing wrong. They are probably ashamed to have their friends and neighbors know what they are doing.
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Great moments in legislation

The Republican controlled legislature of Louisiana has passed a bill that bans what they call ‘chemtrails’, the sinister sounding label given to contrails (short for condensation trails) that form, if the atmospheric conditions are right, when hot, humid air from the plane’s jet engines mixes with the cold, dry air of the upper atmosphere, causing the formation of ice crystals. 

Louisiana is not alone. Seven other states have passed similar bills.

Believers in chemtrails hold that the aircraft vapor trails that criss-cross skies across the globe every day are deliberately laden with toxins that are using commercial aircraft to spray them on people below, perhaps to enslave them to big pharma, or exert mind control, or sterilize people or even control the weather for nefarious motives.
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Despite the outlandishness of the belief and the complete absence of evidence, a 2016 study showed that the idea is held to be “completely true” by 10% of Americans and “somewhat true” by a further 20%-30% of Americans.

At least eight states, including Florida and Tennessee, have now introduced chemtrail-coded legislation to prohibit “geo-engineering” or “weather modification”. Louisiana’s bill, which must pass through the senate before reaching Governor Jeff Landry’s desk, orders the department of environmental quality to record reported chemtrail sightings and pass complaints on to the Louisiana air national guard.

While there are no penalties for violations, the bill calls for further investigation and documentation. Opponents fear it could be used to force airlines to re-route flights, challenge the location of airports and bring legal action against carriers.

There are many outlandish things that people believe and this may be one of the more harmless ones. But unlike many other wacky conspiracy theories, (like the moon lading being faked or alien spacecraft having crashed to Earth), this one requires a vast number of people to be involved, as this critic notes

In order to undertake such a conspiracy, literally tens of thousands of people across the globe would have to be in on it, including people manufacturing the fictional weather control chemicals and dispersing equipment, the baggage handlers standing there while the fake technicians are loading it into planes, pilots, plane mechanics, air traffic controllers, and political leaders of countries that don’t like each other. That’s not even considering the untold thousands of red-tape loving, approval stamp wielding bureaucrats needed to undertake such a feat.

But once you have swallowed the big idea, all these other things are seen as just minor details.

The moves to stop Zohran Mamdani have begun

The win by Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoralty Democratic primary has provided a much needed boost to the spirits of progressives everywhere and stunned political observers. Andrew Cuomo, with nearly $30 million dollars donated by wealthy people, had been comfortably in the lead until Mamdani started making gains in the closing weeks. Mamdani’s supporters had been hopeful of pulling off an upset win but even they expected it to be a drawn out affair, with Cuomo likely leading at the end of the first round of counting and Mamdani hoping to pull ahead with the second and lower preference votes of the other candidates, especially those of Brad Lander, who came in third. Few expected to have Cuomo concede as early as 10:00pm on election night.

It is astonishing that the Democratic party establishment decided that the candidate they would back should be a 69-year year old disgraced former governor who was forced to resign due to allegations of sexual harassment. Even after the election, party leaders like Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries have refrained from endorsing Mamdani. That shows how stuck they are in their old mindset, that they cannot not see that their time is over. But on the other hand, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez strongly backed him all through the campaign, and Jerry Nadler, a New York congressman and one of the city’s most prominent Jewish leaders, endorsed Mamdani after the election, though not before.
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