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Created
Sun, 23/06/2024 - 04:00
One of the biggest revelations in Watergate was the existence of Nixon’s enemies list. The episode was particularly dramatic because it was announced by CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr on live TV and as he was reading it he found his own name on the list. It was a tremendous scandal at the time which sounds downright quaint today what with the former president and current GOP nominee routinely calling the press the “enemy of the people” and publicly declaring his intention to prosecute his political rivals. New York Magazine helpfully drew up a partial list which they promise will be updated as the threats add up:Joe Biden and family, obviouslyManhattan District Attorney Alvin BraggNew York Judge Juan MerchanNew York Attorney General Leticia JamesNew York Judge Arthur EngoronSpecial Counsel Jack Smith and anyone involved in the federal Trump investigations/indictments Those are the obvious ones. But there are more.
Created
Sun, 23/06/2024 - 02:30
Anyone who doesn’t take this seriously is a fool That is the head of the Heritage Foundation which is pulling together Project 2025. He is very arrogant, very confident that they have the election in the bag and very proud of the work they are doing. First and foremost, he is obviously saying that they will not accept the results of the election if Trump doesn’t win. The rest is just as batshit crazy. QUESTION: Is your organization going to accept the results of the 2024 presidential election, regardless of the election results. ANSWER: Yes, if there isn’t massive fraud like there was in 2020. QUESTION: There wasn’t massive fraud. Where was it? ANSWER: no answer QUESTION: What is the plan for the deportation of undocumented immigrants in the interior, not at the border. ANSWER: We need to have the biggest mass deportation system in America. QUESTION: What are these people (undocumented immigrants) doing? ANSWER: A lot of them are committing crimes like murdering the 12-year-old girl in Houston. FACT: That’s one out of 11 million. In Texas, undocumented immigrants were 37.1 % less likely to be convicted of a crime.
Created
Sun, 23/06/2024 - 00:30
More smackdowns, please Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) brought some heat to her stumping in Nevada for Joe Biden this week. This, this is what I’m talking about. Behold: But what little coverage AOC’s appearance drew missed the fire. Las Vegas Sun: “For women and gender diverse people, it is life and death,” said Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., during a discussion about reproductive rights Thursday in Las Vegas. Ocasio-Cortez later appeared in downtown Las Vegas for a rally to support Biden’s reelection campaign. “It’s not hyperbole. It’s reality.” And Axios? Axios felt the need to both-sides Democrats, placing more emphasis on dissension in the ranks than on her message: AOC holds first 2024 rally for Biden as progressives rage over Gaza. This is what Democrats fight in convincing progressive voices and younger voters that their vote is their voice, that their vote is their power, that their power matters, and that Democrats have their backs. If there is media bias, it is against progressives’ most powerful voices. Democrats themselves are uneasy about putting up a public fight.
Created
Sat, 22/06/2024 - 23:00
Perfection rarely is A casual friend introduced me to his buddy at a public concert last night. The usual. Tom works with the Democratic Party, etc. The buddy replied with the familiar “fed up with both parties” bit. Rebecca Solnit wrote about that stance in 2016: Cynicism is first of all a style of presenting oneself, and it takes pride more than anything in not being fooled and not being foolish. But in the forms in which I encounter it, cynicism is frequently both these things. That the attitude that prides itself on world-weary experience is often so naïve says much about the triumph of style over substance, attitude over analysis. […] If you set purity and perfection as your goals, you have an almost foolproof system according to which everything will necessarily fall short. But expecting perfection is naïve; failing to perceive value by using an impossible standard of measure is even more so. Cynics are often disappointed idealists and upholders of unrealistic standards.
Created
Sat, 22/06/2024 - 19:00

The administration says the “Azov Brigade” is separate from the old, Nazi-linked “Azov Battalion.” The unit itself says they’re the same.

The post The U.S. Says a Far-Right Ukrainian Army Unit Can Now Get Aid. A Photo Shows Training Was Already Happening. appeared first on The Intercept.

Created
Sat, 22/06/2024 - 18:17
Palestinians have experienced 70 or 80 years of dispossession, occupation, and human rights violations.   Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On June 13, I analysed the report of The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel for the UN’s Human Rights Council, which found Hamas guilty of war crimes and found Continue reading »
Created
Sat, 22/06/2024 - 10:20

The army probe identified numerous examples of Israeli forces targeting Israeli civilians, as well as overreacting or failing to act on October 7. Mainstream media has smeared The Grayzone for exposing Israel’s “Hannibal Directive” scandal months ago. Editor’s note: The Washington Post and Israel’s Haaretz have published numerous scurrilous and error-filled attacks on The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and other colleagues for helping expose the Israeli military’s deliberate killing of Israeli civilians while held captive by Palestinian militants on October 7. […]

The post Israeli army probe finds multiple cases of friendly fire on October 7 first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Israeli army probe finds multiple cases of friendly fire on October 7 appeared first on The Grayzone.

Created
Sat, 22/06/2024 - 09:30
Two beluga whales are rescued from war-ravaged Kharkiv, Ukraine and taken to an aquarium in Spain. Salma Abdelaziz has more on their remarkable journey. pic.twitter.com/Tnll5fryp9 — Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) June 21, 2024   From the New York Times ( good news gift link for you!) It was a whale of an evacuation. Actually, two. In what experts said was among the most complex marine mammal rescue ever undertaken, the pair of beluga whales were extricated from an aquarium in the battered city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine and transported to Europe’s largest aquarium in Valencia, Spain, on Wednesday morning. As Russian aerial bombardments of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, have intensified, the evacuation of Plombir, a 15-year-old male, and Miranda, a 14-year-old female, came just in time, marine mammal experts said. “If they had continued in Kharkiv, their chances of survival would have been very slim,” said Daniel Garcia-Párraga, director of zoological operations at Oceanogràfic de Valencia, who helped lead the rescue. Belugas, whose natural habitat is the Arctic, need cold water to survive.
Created
Sat, 22/06/2024 - 08:00
This time it’s for “debauchery” This morning I wrote about the use of the Comstock Act and other zombie laws to help the right take America back to the 1890s. Get a load of this one: A government watchdog group filed suit in Delaware federal court this week, seeking to compel the Justice Department to produce records that may determine whether Hunter Biden should be further investigated under a 1910 law relating to “prostitution or debauchery.” The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project petitioned the same Wilmington bench where Biden was found guilty on gun charges this month, contending that there is a significant amount of evidence the first son was being probed on Mann Act grounds. The law, stemming from a time when prostitution was more prevalent in urban areas, states it is a felony to “knowingly transport… in interstate or foreign commerce… any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery.” The legal brief, obtained by Fox News Digital, includes part of a 2023 interview transcript from IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler before the House Ways & Means Committee.
Created
Sat, 22/06/2024 - 06:30
Trump keeps telling his fans that he doesn’t need any votes. He says he has more than enough. He says everything depends on stopping Democrats from “cheating” (by which he means voting.) So it makes sense that they wouldn’t be putting much effort into get out the vote. They figure they don’t really need it. Bill Sher at the Washington Monthly discusses the Trump “ground game” here and it turns out that they’re outsourcing it to a grifter. Yep: CNN reported that “Donald Trump’s campaign is taking a vastly different approach to 2024 compared with 2020, with plans for fewer staff and expenses [and instead] relying on wealthy conservative groups for data, infrastructure, and significant bank accounts.” It further noted that one of the most important of these groups is Turning Point Action, part of the Turning Point network that began with Turning Point USA.  Turning Point USA is a right-wing student group founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk, an 18-year-old soon-to-be college dropout, and Bill Montgomery, an elderly Tea Party activist.  You know about Kirk by now.
Created
Sat, 22/06/2024 - 05:39
The summer after I graduated college, a group of friends and I moved out west and lived together in Berkeley, California. There were about ten of us in Rochdale Village, a complex of student cooperative housing on Haste Street, just off Telegraph Avenue, not far from the Berkley campus. I hadn’t thought about those apartments, or their name, till this afternoon, when I was reading Marx’s chapter on cooperation (chapter 11) in the first volume of Capital. I’m reading Capital in a new and amazing translation by Paul Reitter; it’s edited by Paul North. Wendy Brown has a foreword, and Will Roberts has an afterward. It’s due out this September. I’ll be reviewing it. In the middle of chapter 11, […]