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Following the attempt on President Donald Trump’s life, Anya Parampil offers a detailed look back at the failed assassination of Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro, and Washington’s role in the plot, in her new book, “Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire.” Editor’s note: Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro reacted to the July 13, 2024 attempt on Donald Trump’s life at a Pennsylvania rally by declaring, “I want, on behalf of all of Venezuela and our people, to reject, repudiate […]

The post Corporate Coup assassination excerpt: Venezuela’s Maduro on John Bolton’s plot to kill him first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Corporate Coup assassination excerpt: Venezuela’s Maduro on John Bolton’s plot to kill him appeared first on The Grayzone.

I know most of you probably spared yourselves the pain of watching the right wing Trumpfest last night. Here are a few of the more indicative moments of the “unity” convention: It was awful. Of course it was.

Even after Trump’s assassination attempt, Milwaukee can’t ban guns at the Republican convention — thanks to the gun lobby’s use of powerful state preemption laws.

The image of a bloodied Trump pumping the air with his fist was instantly iconic - but it also symbolises the power of the mainstream media

Trump, Vance, Project 2025 Zack Beauchamp over at Vox reflects on his encounter with Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) in 2022. In 20 words or less: “He was friendly, thoughtful, and smart — much smarter than the average politician I’ve interviewed.” Also, Vance’s “worldview is fundamentally incompatible with the basic principles of American democracy.” Donald Trump selected Vance as his election-denying 2024 running mate on Monday. A mere 18 months into his first-ever elected office, Vance is another in the line of “best people” Trump has selected, and ready to step into the Oval Office when Trump is gone. A second Trump administration, Vance suggests, should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat” in the US government and “replace them with our people.” And if a court objects, Trump should ignore the law. It’s a king’s divine right. Vance is an admirer of authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

It began with Aaron Bushnell and a visceral response of mine: Why would anyone do such a thing? Bushnell was the 25-year-old active-duty airman who set himself ablaze on February 25th in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., to protest that country’s brutal war in Gaza. The first question was tough enough, but his dramatic and deadly action also brought to mind other questions that have occupied my thinking, research, and writing in these last several years: What spurs someone to such an unyielding, ultimate commitment to a cause? What kind of political action is actually effective? When the campus protests over the bloodbath in Gaza exploded shortly after Bushnell’s act, those questions came to seem even more... Read more

Source: When Too Much Is Not Enough appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Democrats have the better turnout operation Minutes before the Pennsylvania shooting on Saturday, Markos Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos, argued before a Netroots nation audience in Baltimore that the fundamentals of this presidential election still favor Democrats. Don’t panic. Whatever the progressive left thought in 2020, Black voters in South Carolina “picked the least inspiring, most boring candidate” in the Democratic field. What we got for that choice was a win that November and, unexpectedly, “a great president.” Many Democrats who should have second-guessed themselves in 2020 are failing to do it again in 2024. Every day we focus on Biden’s age is a day Donald Trump wins the news cycle. Meantime, Democrats have overperformed the polls in special elections. They’ve won abortion-related ballot initiatives everywhere while Trump underperformed in his primaries. Republicans tell pollsters they support Trump, Markos reminded, but then don’t show up for him. Voters proved polling favoring the right wing wrong in India, in Poland, and in France. You don’t have to be Simon Rosenberg to have Hopium.

“‘I am not a senator, a governor or a former cabinet secretary,’ J.D. Vance wrote on the first page of ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ by way of establishing his regular-guy bona fides. That was all true in 2016, when Vance was a former Marine and Yale Law School graduate with ‘a nice job, a happy marriage, a comfortable home and two lively dogs.’ His memoir reads a little differently now.” – Critic A.O. Scott, New York Times, 7/15/24

“What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives Peter Thiel’s money and how willing you are to lie for it. Yet the message of the right is increasingly: It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s the Left’s fault. And it is.”

Social media users branded the post "outrageous" and it was slammed by the National Black Police Association

Yes, you can use Signal without sharing your personal phone number. Here’s how I did it.

The post How I Got a Truly Anonymous Signal Account appeared first on The Intercept.

We’re often taught to live according to our values, but this is easier said than done without pausing to reflect deeply

- by Valerie Tiberius

Read at Psyche

Nation-states are no longer fit for purpose to create a habitable future for humans and nature. Which political system is?

- by Jonathan S Blake & Nils Gilman

Read at Aeon

A letter, coordinated by the UK Open Government Network, has been sent to the Prime Minister offering him support and requesting a meeting

Trump's selection of an anti-Ukrainian, anti-British politician for Vice President, means the UK must urgently look to Europe for our security

Starting in 2009 and especially after Citizens United, I’ve been advising Americans who can get out to do so. I recognize that many people can’t: you have to “shelter in place”, but for those who are able to leave America and haven’t, well, the advice is the same, but more urgent.

The US is no longer meaningfully a Democracy. The funneling of wealth and income to oligarchs continues unabated and even accelerated during the pandemic. Official economic statistics from the US are now almost entirely fantasy based: completely unrelated to reality due to how inflation and other statistics are “calculated” and due to the over-reliance of GDP, which is no longer tracking welfare.

The massive increases in necessities like food is a very very bad sign.

The possibility of civil war is real, and so is the chance of collapse. Nothing is going to get better for the majority of Americans; everything is going to get worse.

Trump’s vice presidential pick pressured regulators to let police access the records of people who cross state lines for abortions.

This is frighteningly close to reality.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Trump is getting so cocky. He picks Vance which was a mistake. And then this: Uh huh. Honestly, this surprises me. I thought he’d have her at the convention sitting in the audience for his speech. And maybe he will. But not to have called her immediately was a huge error.