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Amnesty’s new report accusing Eritrea’s government of gruesome war crimes relies heavily on anonymous testimony, grainy satellite images, and zero field investigation. It is the latest salvo in the West’s campaign to topple the country’s independent government. Eritrea is a small country with a geostrategically significant coast on the Red Sea. Fiercely independent, it is one of only two African nations that refuse to collaborate with AFRICOM, the US Africa Command. Committed to an incremental, self-reliant development strategy, it has […]

The post Amnesty International pushes regime change in Eritrea with dubious, unverifiable report first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Amnesty International pushes regime change in Eritrea with dubious, unverifiable report appeared first on The Grayzone.

Remember the “red tsunami”? If you’re like me, you don’t answer the phone if you don’t recognize the number or, lately, the spoofed names. Which begs the question: Who does? People willing to speak with pollsters, I’d wager. Pollsters themselves will explain how they control for this bias, to be sure, but polling itself seems more and more a sucker’s game. Remember predictions last fall of a “red tsunami”? Chris Hayes made that point on Wednesday that the only polls that really matter are the ones voters participate in when they vote. Last night, people voted in elections in two different states. “Those results tell us way more about the state of our democracy and the political strength of the pro-democracy forces in this country than all of today’s other political headlines put together,” says @chrislhayes. pic.twitter.com/SVUPFJ3q1L — All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) September 21, 2023 What special elections around the country tell us is that the GOP is in a hole. And they’re still digging.

Here’s the latest on maneuverings to out-maneuver the MAGA crazies: The long-shot idea that Democrats could bail out the beleaguered Speaker Kevin McCarthy is suddenly getting real. Small groups of centrist Democrats are holding secret talks with several of McCarthy’s close GOP allies about a last-ditch deal to fund the government, according to more than a half-dozen people familiar with the discussions. The McCarthy allies engaging in those conversations are doing so out of serious concern that their party can’t stop an impending shutdown on its own, given the intransigence of a handful of conservatives. Lawmakers involved in the talks — who mostly belong to the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, the Republican Governance Group or the centrist New Democrat Coalition — have labored to keep their work quiet. Many Republicans involved are incredibly worried about revealing their backup plan, wanting to wait until every other tool in McCarthy’s arsenal has failed. That moment may not be until next week, just ahead of the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.

It sure looks like they’re going to shutdown the government. What comes next should be very fun: President Biden has steered clear of the chaos in the lower chamber, but his aides have instead urged McCarthy to stick to the spending deal he struck with Biden back in May. One such aide said, “We agreed to the budget deal…House GOP should abide by it,” and added that their “chaos is making the case that they are responsible if there is a shutdown.” Gaetz was all too ready to lay the blame at McCarthy’s feet should a shutdown occur. On Wednesday afternoon, he said, “We will have a government shutdown and it is absolutely Speaker McCarthy’s fault. We cannot blame Joe Biden for not having moved our individual spending bills. We cannot blame House Democrats. We can’t even blame Chuck Schumer in the Senate.”  Does Gaetz think he’s going to be the speaker? I’m beginning to think he does. Which is ridiculous. What does Gaetz want McCarthy to do? He wants him to defund the Jack Smith Special Counsel. He is only following orders: I think there’s a typo.

It’s been years since I raged at Joe Klein, mostly because I blessedly never come across anything by him anymore. Unfortunately, he has a substack and it came to my attention today. Nothing has changed. He’s still the hippie bashing piece of work he always was. Get a load of this: A metaphor that applies to my current political dismay: I am annoyed by Joe Biden but I am appalled by Donald Trump. Why is that a metaphor? Because I am annoyed, chronically, by the Democratic Party but appalled, mortally, by the Republicans. Which raises a question: I haven’t toted up the word count, but I suspect that I spend a lot more space criticizing Dems than GOPs. Why is that? Well, because it seems in these DysTrumpian times, the Democrats are the only hope of saving our democracy, despite their idiot array of indulgences. They are misguided, but not fundamentally irrational. They believe in our institutions, even those—like the Supreme Court and the electoral college—that are weighted against them; even those—like the military—that they really don’t believe in.

Sic transit gloria mundi The Guardian on Wednesday: Rupert Murdoch loathes Donald Trump so much that the billionaire has not just soured on him as a presidential candidate but often wishes for his death, the author Michael Wolff writes in his eagerly awaited new book on the media mogul, The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty. According to Wolff, Murdoch, 92, has become “a frothing-at-the-mouth” enemy of the 77-year-old former US president, often voicing thoughts including “This would all be solved if … ” and “How could he still be alive, how could he?” CNBC Thursday (today): Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chairman of the board of both Fox Corp. and News Corp., the company said on Thursday. The move will be official in November. Murdoch, 92, will be appointed chairman emeritus of each company. Lachlan Murdoch, one of his sons, will become sole chairman of News Corp and will continue as Fox Corp.’s executive chair and CEO. “Our companies are in robust health, as am I,” the elder Murdoch said in a note to employees.

The mystery as to why a top prosecutor working on the Durham investigation abruptly resigned has been solved. It is exactly what we thought it was: A former federal prosecutor who helped investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe said Wednesday she left the team because of concerns with then-Attorney General William Barr’s public comments about the case and because she strongly disagreed with a draft of an interim report he considered releasing before the election. “I simply couldn’t be part of it. So I resigned,” Nora Dannehy told Connecticut state legislators during her confirmation hearing as a nominee to the state Supreme Court. It marked the first time Dannehy has spoken publicly about her sudden resignation from the probe overseen by former special counsel John Durham. Durham, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut, was appointed in the spring of 2019 by Barr to investigate potential wrongdoing by government officials and others in the early days of the FBI probe into ties between the Trump 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.

Stay on message “How they do it,” Digby’s post and comments on “Tough Love For the Democrats” from Rick Wilson’s substack, blew up my Mastodon feed last night. Quite a fewf people agree it’s time for Democrats to stop farting around and treat the fight with MAGA as what it is: a fight. Wilson shares the GOP’s two rules: Rule 1: Just win, baby. Rule 2: Stay on message. Chuck your “almost religious belief that policy wins elections,” Wilson advises. Quit trying to win on fact-checking. This is a bare-knuckles brawl. Wilson credits Joe Biden for declaring MAGA Republicans a threat in 2022, that what was at stake is democracy and liberty. It still is. Next year’s elections are about “whether the American government is a tool for opportunity or one of oppression.” “Get on and stay on this message, Democrats,” Wilson insists. Biden has gotten results. The former Republican consultant names Biden “arguably the most successful Democratic President since FDR, taken in total.” A friend with Clinton White House experience concurs.

The questioning of Merrick Garland before the House Judiciary Committee is enough to make you give up on democracy if this is what we have as leaders BIGGS: Is it consistent with DOJ policy to give people a heads up so they can move boxes of information? GARLAND: You’re asking me to comment on a particular case BIGGS: Forget Delaware and what they did GARLAND: I’m sorry, I thought you were asking about Mar-a-Lago pic.twitter.com/WUmgxVQo6O — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 20, 2023 Jim Jordan’s latest galaxy-brain conspiracy theory is that Biden decided to let a Trump-appointed US attorney stay on as part of a plot to protect Hunter Biden pic.twitter.com/yco8QkqR9l — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 20, 2023 Huh? This makes no sense. Massie asked how many. How does indicting Epps give the answer to how many? My gawd this is so stupid. https://t.co/Dkt0Ao4nVa — Armando (@ArmandoNDK) September 20, 2023

Speaker McCarthy: “It’s hard to pass anything in this place. We started out in a five-seat majority. I got one member who’s now resigned, we’ve got a couple of members who are out as well. Anything we do is pretty tough” pic.twitter.com/bYkJcjsjvc — Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotcnn) September 18, 2023 It seems like only yesterday that we were on the cusp of defaulting on the debt and many of us were predicting that the kamikaze Freedom Caucus was going to make it happen. They sure sounded serious. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was unable to keep that extremist right flank under control and they were threatening to unseat him under the rule they insisted he adopt in order to get the votes he needed to attain office if he didn’t meet their demands. With a four vote margin he had almost no room to maneuver. After the interminable 15 rounds of voting and all the backroom deals he had to make to get the gavel back in January the prospects for a deal looked very slim.