When South Africa came close to civil war

During the time that I was a student in Sri Lanka, South Africa was an apartheid state. Nelson Mandela was an iconic figure for us as a freedom fighter, along with Che Guevara, but he had been languishing in prison since 1962, his arrest reportedly facilitated by the CIA. (The US for a long time supported the apartheid state of South Africa while giving lip service to human rights.) White supremacy was so deeply entrenched that I thought it would never yield unless there was a violent uprising by the Black and colored population that would result in enormous bloodshed. I expected Mandela to die in prison. So the peaceful transition to a democracy that resulted in majority rule and Mandela being elected president was one of the big surprises that taught me that one should never discount the possibility of things turning out better than one might have realistically expected.

The architects of that transition were Mandela and F. W. de Klerk, the president of that apartheid regime. de Klerk had the foresight to see that apartheid had to end one way or the other and that it was better to be part of the transition than being forced out. He saw the writing on the wall more clearly than his white predecessor presidents and so he released Mandela from prison in 1990.
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Extraordinary developments in Haiti

Haiti has been going through a hell of a time in the recent past but especially since its former president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021 and the prime minister Ariel Henry took power. The subsequent governments have been weak and as a result, armed gangs have started taking over in parts of the country, especially its capital Port-au-Prince, terrorizing he population.

People seem to have finally had enough and as a result vigilante groups of citizens have struck back at the gangs.
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Credibility is the key issue in Carroll case

In the sexual assault and defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll against Donald Trump that is currently underway in a New York courtroom (the grim details of which can be read here), Carroll has faced the toughest part and that is the cross-examination from Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina.

In a case like this that took place over 30 years ago and for which there is no physical evidence or witnesses to the event, it all hinges on how jurors judge the credibility of the person making the allegations. In this case, Carroll did not scream or report the rape to the police and waited a long time to come forward with the allegations, all which Tacopina focused on to cast doubt on her testimony. However, she did tell two friends of hers at that time about what happened and they will be called to testify. The infamous Access Hollywood tape where Trump was caught boasting of his habit of grabbing women by their genitals will also be played. There may also be testimony from two other women who have publicly claimed that Trump sexually assaulted them as well.
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Disney decides to play hardball with DeSantis

The Disney corporation and Florida governor Ron DeSantis have been in a tit-for-tat escalation ever since Disney criticized Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws which DeSantis has been using as his signature issue to highlight his ‘anti-woke’ credentials that he clearly hoped would propel him to the Republican nomination for president, even though he has not formally declared himself as a candidate yet.

The Disney corporation has now escalated it even further by suing DeSantis.

Disney sued Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and presumed challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, on Wednesday, saying he had subjected it to “a targeted campaign of government retaliation”.

The entertainment giant wants a court to overturn state efforts to exert control over Walt Disney World in Orlando. The lawsuit was filed within minutes of a DeSantis-appointed oversight board voting to override agreements made in February that allowed the company to expand the theme park and maintain control over neighboring land.

Disney called the state government’s action “patently retaliatory, patently anti-business and patently unconstitutional”.

It added: “At the governor’s bidding, the state’s oversight board has purported to ‘void’ publicly noticed and duly agreed development contracts, which laid the foundation for billions of Disney’s investment dollars and thousands of jobs.

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They really, really hate transgender people

Recently there was a ridiculous fuss raised by the usual suspects whenever transgender issues come up. This was when the beer company Anheuser-Busch featured a trans woman influencer in an online promotion. On his show Last Week Tonight John Oliver describes the absurdity that ensued. (For some reason the full clip was not available anywhere but it can be found split into two parts.)

The sexual assault case against Trump began yesterday

The first day saw opening statements by lawyers for E. Jean Carroll, a writer who was an advice columnist for Elle Magazine, and Donald Trump.

Carroll accuses Trump of assaulting her in a dressing room of the New York department store Bergdorf Goodman in 1996 after they ran into each other at the entrance and he asked for help in choosing a present for a friend.

Carroll sat stony faced at the front of the courtroom as her lawyer, Shawn Crowley, told the jury that Trump manoeuvred her client into a dressing room and then attacked her. The lawyer said Trump banged Carroll’s head against the wall, pinned her arms back with one hand, pulled her tights down with the other and then rammed his fingers into her vagina.

Crowley said that Carroll kicked Trump and tried to knee him off but he was too strong for her.
“He removed his hand and forced his penis inside her,” the lawyer told the jury.
…

But Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, told the jury of three women and six men that Carroll filed the lawsuit for political ends, to sell a book and for public attention.

Tacopina said that the rape accusation was invented by Carroll and two other women who are expected to testify that she told them about the assault shortly afterwards.

“They schemed to hurt Donald Trump politically,” he said.

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Harry Belafonte (1927-2023)

The singer, actor, and activist has died at the age of 96. All his life, he was an untiring fighter for civil rights and social justice and an opponent of US imperialism, as you can see from this brief biography.

As well as performing global hits such as Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), winning a Tony award for acting and appearing in numerous feature films, Belafonte spent his life fighting for a variety of causes. He bankrolled numerous 1960s initiatives to bring civil rights to Black Americans; campaigned against poverty, apartheid and Aids in Africa; and supported leftwing political figures such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
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What to expect after Carlson’s departure

The circumstances that led to the firing of Tucker Carlson by Fox News are still murky. Neither he nor Fox have made any statement as to the precise reasons but speculation is that the abrupt nature of the firing in the absence of any obvious factors suggests that something serious had emerged to cause the rupture between them. We will have to see what that is. The one thing you can be sure of is that this was not a split caused by a clash of high-minded principles because neither party has any. It will be because of some grubby and tawdry issues. What I would like to see is a bare-knuckle brawl where they air each other’s dirty laundry.

As to what happens next, media analyst Jack Shafer says that nothing will really change after the departure of Carlson because what Fox does is not create shows around individuals but around certain types of people and it is easy replace a type. In fact, Fox has a deep bench of people who can step into Carlson’s shoes and pick up where he left off in targeting white nationalists and in incendiary rabble-rousing around culture war issues as well as race and gender.
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Fox News splits with Tucker Carlson

Fox News announced this morning that the network had severed ties with Tucker Carlson who attracted the biggest audience for the network during his nightly 8:00pm show. The network said that starting today, his time slot will be hosted by a rotating panel until a permanent host is found. A clue that the parting was not amicable can be seen in the fact that Fox said that his last show was the one he gave last Friday, which means that he will not be given the opportunity to say farewell to the many racist, bigoted, and white supremacist fans that tuned in to watch his daily message of hate. His ended his show on Friday saying “We’ll be back on Monday”. Famous last words.

I am as surprised by the development as anyone. While the lawsuit brought by Dominion had devastating internal messages by him that undoubtedly contributed to Fox settling for a massive $787.5 million instead of going to trial, he was by no means the only one fingered as systematically lying. Since the network was not required by the settlement to give an on-air apology, I thought that they would simply go back to lying as before, except leaving Dominion out of it and being more careful not to name entities that were powerful enough to sue it. In other words, just basically stick to their business model of pandering to racists and bigots by attacking marginalized groups.
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