Interview with Noam Chomsky on the State of the World Noam Chomsky Interviewed by C. J. Polychroniou May 26, 2023. Global Policy. We live in a world facing existential threats while extreme inequality is tearing our societies apart and democracy is in sharp decline. The U.S., meanwhile, is bent on maintaining global hegemony when international collaboration […]
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Noam Chomsky on Why This Is the Most Dangerous Point in Human History Noam Chomsky Interviewed by C. J. Polychroniou May 27, 2023. Common Dreams. We live in a world facing existential threats while extreme inequality is tearing our societies apart and democracy is in sharp decline. The U.S., meanwhile, is bent on maintaining global hegemony […]
Current US policies toward China are outrageous: Noam Chomsky Noam Chomsky Interviewed by Global Times June 6, 2023. Global Times. Editor’s Note: At 94 years old, Noam Chomsky (Chomsky) is as vocal as ever. As a renowned American linguist and public intellectual, he constantly appears on the media talking about US foreign policy with his strong […]
Meanwhile, this is happening in the US Congress: Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) on Monday challenged a labor union president to a physical fight in response to some mean tweets. The senator and Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien have been feuding since March, when O’Brien referred to Mullin, a business owner, as a “greedy CEO” during a Senate committee hearing. Mullin brought up the exchange during another Senate hearing last Wednesday, prompting O’Brien to respond online, where he called the senator “JohnWayne” and a “moron” in one tweet, and a “clown” and a “fraud” in another. “Quit the tough guy act in these senate hearings,” O’Brien wrote in a tweet that mocked Mullin’s height. “You know where to find me. Anyplace, Anytime cowboy.” After apparently thinking about it for five days, on Monday, Mullin suggested they set a date and location for a mixed martial arts showdown ― “for charity.” “An attention-seeking union Teamster boss is trying to be punchy after our Senate hearing,” Mullin wrote.
She’s a pariah even among the wingnuts: House Freedom Caucus members took a momentous vote Friday on Marjorie Taylor Greene’s future with the group, according to three people familiar with the matter — but it’s not yet clear whether she’s been officially ejected. The right-flank group took up Greene’s status amid an internal push, first reported by POLITICO, to consider purging members who are inactive or at odds with the Freedom Caucus. Greene’s close alliance with Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and her accompanying criticism of colleagues in the group, has put her on the opposite side of a bloc that made its name opposing GOP leadership. While her formal status in the conservative group remains in limbo, the 8 a.m. Friday vote — which sources said ended with a consensus against her — points to, at least, continued strong anti-Greene sentiment. A spokesperson for Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) declined to comment on the group’s vote as well as the official status of Greene’s membership.
Stevens understood the meaning of ethics. The right wingers never have apparentrly: This isn’t the first time Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas have faced pressure to recuse themselves from cases over the activities of their relatives, their relationships with involved parties or their financial interests. Newly released and previously unreported court documents that belonged to Justice John Paul Stevens, who led the marble palace’s liberal wing, show just how aware the justices were of charges that the appearance of impropriety could shake the public’s faith in the institution. They also show just how quick they were to push back against these concerns. The Library of Congress opened the papers to the public on May 2. The issues the justices wrestled with back then echo the controversies engulfing the court today. Although the court often puts up a united front in public, the documents provide a rare glimpse into its inner workings and show that at least one justice — Stevens — found Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s rationale for not recusing himself from a major case to be insufficient.
The firehose of falsehood still spews Missed some things while on the road over the weekend. Something about an aborted revolt in Russia, was it? Jay Rosen’s comment on Anne Applebaum’s essay at The Atlantic made me look. Russian citizens along the Wagner Group parade route to Moscow came out to gawk, shake hands, and take selfies with Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenaries. “Nobody seemed to mind, particularly, that a brutal new warlord had arrived to replace the existing regime,” Applebaum writes: The response is hard to understand without reckoning with the power of apathy, a much undervalued political tool. Democratic politicians spend a lot of time thinking about how to engage people and persuade them to vote. But a certain kind of autocrat, of whom Putin is the outstanding example, seeks to convince people of the opposite: not to participate, not to care, and not to follow politics at all. The propaganda used in Putin’s Russia has been designed in part for this purpose.
The right’s dictator references are nothing new After the Hamilton County, Indiana, chapter of the “extremist” Moms for Liberty placed a Hitler quote on the front page of its June newsletter, they received unwanted attention and blowback. The Hill: The quote, believed to be from a 1935 speech by Hitler, reads, “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.” The Nazi Party trained young people through school and summer camps to indoctrinate them into Nazi ideology. Paige Miller, chairwoman of the chapter, apologized in an updated version of the newsletter after initially giving an explanation that the quote “should put parents on alert.” “We condemn Adolf Hitler’s actions and his dark place in human history,” Miller said. “We should not have quoted him in our newsletter and express our deepest apology.” Maybe not so deep. Maybe not so sincere. I asked last week why the MAGA right keeps Hitler quotes so handy. “Moms” are not alone. Hitler resurfaced again over the weekend at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority Policy Conference” at the Washington Hilton.
Well, that was quite a weekend wasn’t it? For a while there it looked as if Russian president Vladimir Putin might be overthrown by a monstrous mercenary warlord named Yevgeny Prigozhin. If that wasn’t strange enough, after taking over a couple of cities en route to Moscow, the plan was abruptly aborted and the warlord was quietly sent packing to Belarus while his mercenary troops were cordially invited to join the Russian army. Nobody knows why. Now it just remains to be seen if the Putin regime has been permanently damaged or whether it was just another surreal moment in the increasingly surreal era. Meanwhile, back in the equally surreal USA, the Republican presidential candidates all attended the annual conservative evangelical gathering, The Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference. By all accounts the crowd was very excited to see all the candidates make their pitch, but the keynote speech by former president Donald Trump was the star event by a mile.
Media Mzatters took a deep dive into this tragic relationship. It’s not pretty: Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has spent nearly two years promoting anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and Democratic presidential primary candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his War Room podcast in a mutually beneficial relationship that could have disastrous public health consequences for the country and the world. Both men have used their substantial platforms to spread incorrect information about vaccines and COVID-19, which could now reach an even wider audience given Kennedy’s longshot campaign. Bannon reportedly encouraged Kennedy to run against President Joe Biden in the Democratic Party primary, believing he could be “both a useful chaos agent in [the] 2024 race and a big name who could help stoke anti-vax sentiment around the country,” according to CBS’ Robert Costa. Other right-wing pundits have similarly exploited Kennedy’s run as an attempt to undermine Biden’s support among Democrats with the aim of weakening him in the general election.