cdarwin

cdarwin, 6 hours ago to random

Despite entering hospice care over a year ago, Jimmy Carter refuses to miss an election.

At 99 years of age, the former president cast a mail-in ballot for the May primary election this week, grandson Jason Carter said Wednesday on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Monica Pearson Show.
“He’s not going to miss an election!” the younger Carter said. “It’s important to him. I mean, that’s the person he is.”
Jason Carter said he confided in his grandfather last weekend that he’s never sure how to respond when asked how the former president is doing.
“He kind of laughed a little bit, and he looked at me, and he said: ‘I don’t know myself,’” Jason Carter said. “But I think he’s OK.
You know, he’s hanging in there, and he knows he’s not in charge. So he’s just waiting for what’s next.”
Over the past year, Jimmy Carter celebrated his 99th birthday in October and attended the annual peanut festival.
He entered hospice care in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, just over a year ago. He also mourned the loss of his wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who passed away last November at age 96.
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/jimmy-carter-voted-in-georgia-primary-and-is-doing-ok-in-plains-grandson-says/

cdarwin, 15 hours ago to random

Biden threat to stop Israel arms shipments welcomed by Democrats and criticized by Israeli officials and Republicans – live

US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York,
said that “[Biden]’s historic shift to include Israel in US standards makes the world safer and our values clear.”
“President Biden enforcing conditions on US military aid and holding the Israeli gov to the same bar we hold all our allies to is the responsible, secure, and just thing to do,” she added

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2024/may/09/biden-israel-arms-republican-democrat-trump-latest-updates?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

cdarwin, 16 hours ago to random

Debate rages over the extent to which the Gaza protests on the political left constitute coded or even direct attacks on Jews.
But far less attention has been paid to a trend on the right:
For all of their rhetoric of the moment, increasingly through the Trump era
many Republicans have helped inject into the mainstream thinly veiled anti-Jewish messages with deep historical roots.

The conspiracy theory taking on fresh currency is one that dates back hundreds of years and has perennially bubbled into view: m
that a shady cabal of wealthy Jews secretly controls events and institutions contrary to the national interest of whatever country it is operating in.
The current formulation of the trope taps into the populist loathing of an elite “ruling class.”
“Globalists” or “globalist elites” are blamed for everything from Black Lives Matter to the influx of migrants across the southern border,
often described as a plot to replace native-born Americans with foreigners who will vote for Democrats.

The favored personification of the globalist enemy is George Soros, the 93-year-old Hungarian American Jewish financier and Holocaust survivor who has spent billions in support of liberal causes and democratic institutions.
This language is hardly new
— Mr. Soros became a boogeyman of the American far right long before the ascendancy of Mr. Trump.
And the elected officials now invoking him or the globalists rarely, if ever, directly mention Jews or blame them outright.
Some of them may not immediately understand the antisemitic resonance of the meme, and in some cases its use may simply be reflexive political rhetoric.
But its rising ubiquity reflects the breaking down of old guardrails on all types of degrading speech,
and the cross-pollination with the raw, sometimes hate-filled speech of the extreme right,
in a party under the sway of the norm-defying former, and perhaps future, president

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/us/antisemitism-republicans-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

cdarwin, 1 day ago to random

This post is a good way to start thinking about the information economy that led us to a place where
a Republican judge helps delay accountability for stealing nuclear documents and storing them in a closet normally storing campaign swag.

This information economy creates an environment in which a former prosecutor like Aileen Cannon
either believes, or claims to believe, outlandish claims of bias and ill-treatment
solely because career national security officials — rebranded by Trump as the Deep State — did their job.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/05/08/how-we-got-to-a-place-where-right-wingers-cheer-stealing-nuclear-documents/

cdarwin, 1 day ago to random

The world must reject Russia’s nuclear posturing – but not ignore the danger

In 2014, Putin’s covert operation to seize and then annex Crimea shocked the world.

In 2015, Russia launched a surprise military intervention into Syria.

The following year Putin directed an unprecedented operation to sway the US presidential elections.

He did the same in Europe in 2017.

Then he tried to kill off an enemy by poisoninghim on British soil, attacked the US with cyberweapons, and, finally, carried out a full-scale invasion of a neighboring country – Ukraine.

Who can know with enough confidence when a reckless autocrat like this,
surrounded by yes-men,
might decide the time is right to teach the West a lesson with a tactical nuclear strike?

Internal Russian documents, as well as the latest Kremlin statement, suggest Russia’s threshold for using a nuclear weapon is fairly high
but getting lower.

Putin’s nuclear redlines are nearly impossible for Ukraine, Nato, or anyone outside Putin’s innermost circle to know with the certainty needed in light of the gravity of the issue.

That Russia has not used nuclear weapons yet offers little confidence that it won’t do so in the future.

It’s not hard to imagine circumstances in which using a nuclear weapon might seem like the rational choice from the Kremlin’s point of view,
especially if faced with a rapid reversal of the gains for which Russia has paid dearly,
or if confronting western escalation that only nuclear weapons can match

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/08/russia-nuclear-posturing-nato-ukraine?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

cdarwin, 2 days ago to random

New York Times editor Joe Kahn says defending democracy is a partisan act

and he won’t do it
https://presswatchers.org/2024/05/new-york-times-editor-joe-kahn-says-defending-democracy-is-a-partisan-act-and-he-wont-do-it/

cdarwin, 3 days ago to random

In Connecticut immunization rates have risen for two straight years,
exceeding pre-pandemic levels.

During the 2022-2023 school year, more than 97 percent of Connecticut kindergartners were vaccinated against measles,
up from 95.7 percent the year before and 95.3 percent the year before that.

Why?

The answer can be found in a 2021 law that ⭐️eliminated the state’s religious exemption to vaccination.⭐️

Immunization rates of 95 percent or higher are required to provide herd immunity against measles.
When rates drop,
which is true in many states that now offer either religious or philosophical exemptions,
measles comes back.

The most dramatic example being an outbreak in Philadelphia in 1991
that centered on two fundamentalist churches that refused vaccines.
During a three-month period, measles virus infected 1,400 people in the city and killed nine.
All the deaths were in young children.
https://dianeravitch.net/2024/05/06/good-news-connecticut-eliminates-religious-exemptions-for-vaccines/

cdarwin, 3 days ago to random

Israel-Gaza war live:

Ceasefire talks to resume in Cairo;

Over the last few hours, Hezbollah says it has carried out a drone attack on an Israelimilitary position near the northern Israeli town of Metula on Monday according to Reuters.
The Israeli military later confirmed two soldiers were killed in the attack.
Hezbollah also says it has sent dozens of rockets towards military targets across the border with Israel.
Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in daily cross-border strikes over the past six months, in parallel with Israel’s war in Gaza.
Hezbollah has so far restricted its attacks to a strip of northern Israel, seeking to draw Israeli forces away from Gaza, explains Reuters.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/may/06/israel-gaza-hamas-ceasefire-updates?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

cdarwin, 3 days ago to random

After Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, some German Americans formed groups to support the Nazi party in Germany and attempt to influence American politics.
The most notorious of these groups was
the 🔸German-American Bund🔸, which tried to model itself as an American arm of Hitler’s Third Reich.
Although these groups wore uniforms and touted swastikas, in reality, they had few ties to Nazi Germany and their support among the larger German-American community was minimal.
Nevertheless, the group strongly promoted hatred for Jews and strove to bring Nazi-style fascism to the United States.
Initial support for American fascist organizations did come from Germany.
In May 1933 Nazi Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess gave authority to German immigrant
👉Heinz #Spanknobel to create an American Nazi organization.
Shortly thereafter the 🔸Friends of New Germany🔸was created with help from the German consul in New York City.
The organization was based in New York but had a strong presence in Chicago.
The organization led by Spanknobel was openly pro-Nazi and engaged in activities
such as storming the German-language New Yorker Staats-Zeitung with the demand that Nazi-sympathetic articles be published,
and the infiltration of other non-political German-American organizations.
Spanknobel was ousted as the leader and subsequently deported in October 1933 when it was discovered he had failed to register as a foreigner agent.

The organization existed into the mid-1930s, although it always remained small, with a membership of between 5,000-10,000.

Mostly German citizens living in America and German emigrants who only recently had become citizens composed its ranks.

The organization busied itself with verbal attacks against Jews, Communists, and the Versailles Treaty.

Until 1935 the organization was openly supported by the Third Reich, although soon Nazi officials realized the organization was doing more harm than good in America and in December 1935 Hess ordered that all German citizens leave the Friends of New Germany;
also, all the group’s leaders were recalled to Germany.

Not long after the Friends of New Germany fell out of favor with the Nazis and was dismantled,
a new organization with similar goals arose in its place.

Formed in March 1936 in Buffalo/New York and calling itself the ♦️German-American Bund ♦️or Amerikadeutscher Volksbund,
the organization chose Fritz #Kuhn as its Bundesleiter.

The organization was soon filled with those calling themselves “Germans in America” and dreamed of the day when Nazism would rule the United States.

Although they were instructed not to accept German citizens in their organization,
they were not about to turn down anyone interested and many immigrants joined.

It is estimated that around 25% of Bund members were German nationals
—the rest being mostly first or second-generation Germans.

The Bund soon began to hold rallies filled with swastikas, Nazi salutes, and the singing of German songs.

The Bund created recreational camps such as Camp Siegfried in New York and Camp Nordland in New Jersey.

It also established Camp Hindenburg in Wisconsin and the group met frequently in Milwaukee and Chicago beer halls.
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/american-nazis-german-american-bund-1930s/

cdarwin, 3 days ago to random

Aaron Sorkin confirmed during a live recording of “The Town” podcast that
he is currently working on some kind of sequel to “The Social Network,”
David Fincher’s acclaimed 2010 drama about the creation of Facebook that won Sorkin the Oscar for best adapted screenplay.

“Look, yeah, I’ll be writing about this,” Sorkin said about the social media company’s recent years.
“I blame Facebook for January 6.”
Sorkin would not answer why he blamed Facebook for Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol, but he teased:
“You’re going to need to buy a movie ticket.”.
“Facebook has been, among other things, tuning its algorithm to promote the most divisive material possible.
Because that is what will increase engagement.
That is what will get you to
— what they call inside the hallways of Facebook
— ‘the infinite scroll’ …
There’s supposed to be a constant tension at Facebook between growth and integrity...
There isn’t.
It’s just growth.”

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/aaron-sorkin-social-network-2-sequel-january-6-facebook-1235983390/

cdarwin, 3 days ago to random

Accused Canadian serial murderer admits killing four Indigenous women

Jeremy Skibicki, charged with four counts of first-degree murder, is believed to have left bodies of at least two victims in a landfill
#mmiwg2s #redress

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/06/canada-serial-killer-indigenous-women-landfill?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

cdarwin, 3 days ago to random

The office of International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan issued a statement Friday
denouncing threats of retaliation
after Israel’s prime minister and U.S. lawmakers attacked the intergovernmental body over reports that it is preparing arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials related to the war on Gaza.

The ICC statement, which does not mention any individual or country by name, says
the court’s “independence and impartiality are undermined” when “individuals threaten to retaliate against the court or against court personnel should the office, in fulfillment of its mandate, make decisions about investigations or cases falling within its jurisdiction.”
“Such threats, even when not acted upon, may also constitute an offense against the administration of justice under Art. 70 of the Rome Statute,” the statement continues.
“The office insists that all attempts to impede, intimidate, or improperly influence its officials cease immediately.”
https://truthout.org/articles/icc-denounces-threats-of-retaliation-as-possible-netanyahu-arrest-warrant-looms/

cdarwin, 3 days ago to random

Judge Merchan threatens Trump with jail time for gag order violations in hush-money trial

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial on Monday held him in criminal contempt for the 10th time and warned he could face jail for continued violations of a gag order.

“Mr Trump, as you know the prosecution has filed three separate motions to find you in criminal contempt,” Merchan said. “It appears that the $1,000 fines are not a deterrent.”
Merchan continued: “The last thing I want to do is put you in jail. You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well ... but at the end of the day, I have a job to do and part of that job is to protect the dignity of the judicial system.”
He also said that Trump’s actions “constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue”.
“So as much as I do not want to impose a jail sanction,” Merchan added sternly, “I want you to understand that I will, if necessary and appropriate.”

Judge Merchan’s admonition to Trump came in response to the Republican presidential frontrunner’s repeated commentary on trial witnesses and jurors, which flouts the judge’s order barring him from speaking about those who are testifying at the high-profile proceedings and panelists weighing his fate.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/06/trump-hush-money-trial-day-12?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

cdarwin, 4 days ago to random

The Founders drew a line between peaceful protest and armed insurrection

Today, armed protesters believe they are evoking the spirit of the Founders,
yet, the history of the Whiskey Rebellion offers a different perspective,
showing the Founders made a clear distinction between public assembly and protest
— protected by the federal Constitution
— and threats of insurrection.

The Founders were also weary of a tyrannical government,
after all they had just fought a war against King George III and Parliament over the issue.

But, figures like George Washington understood that armed protests and domestic violence threatened the young republic.

Shays’ Rebellion of 1786-1787 in Western Massachusetts exposed the weakness in the Articles of Confederation and spurred on the creation the federal Constitution.

When unrest started to brew in Western Pennsylvania, just years after the formation of the new federal government,
Washington made it clear the boundaries of acceptable protest.

The Whiskey Rebellion started outside Pittsburgh after the federal government passed a new excise tax in 1791,
which became called the “Whiskey Tax.”

Many local small farmers were also distillers and they considered the duty an unfair tax on their livelihood.

Over the course of several years, their protests became bolder and more violent.

Resistance came to a head on July 16, 1794,
when an armed mob of about 500 protesters attacked and burned the Pittsburgh home of tax collector John Neville.

The incident became known as the Battle of Bower Hill,
and although casualty numbers are unclear,
one of the leaders of the rebellion, Major James McFarlane,
died during the firefight and became a martyr to the rebel cause.

Many frontiersmen saw McFarlane’s death as murder by the federal government and further radicalized the countryside.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/30/founders-drew-line-between-peaceful-protest-armed-insurrection/

cdarwin, 4 days ago to random

The Nazis believed in “good blood” that ought to be sought out, preserved, and expanded,
and in “bad blood”, which was to be identified, then ruthlessly eradicated.
The latter gave us the horrors of the Holocaust.
The former led to the 💥Lebensborn💥(“Spring of Life”) program,
which went to bizarre and often sinister lengths in an attempt to increase the stock of “racially valuable” Germanic children.
Partly a human selective breeding program,
partly a massive child kidnapping policy,
it was another dark chapter in the history of the Third Reich.

To say that the powers-that-be in the Third Reich were obsessed with
race and racial purity would be an understatement.
Most are familiar with the darkest manifestations of that obsession: the Holocaust and the murder of millions of racial undesirables.
Another sinister manifestation, can be glimpsed in the lengths the Nazis went to in order increase the numbers of the racially desirable.
In 1935, the Schutstaffel (SS) implemented a program known as #Lebensborn to increase the “racially pure” population by increasing the “Aryan” birthrate.
Much of that amounted to a selective breeding program, just like breeding prize cattle,
whereby unmarried “pure” Aryan women were matched up with pure SS members.
Upon impregnation, they were often housed in SS-run maternity homes until they gave birth.
The offspring were often adopted by pure Aryan families, particularly from the SS.
https://historycollection.com/heres-what-to-know-about-lebensborn-the-nazi-human-selective-breeding-and-child-abduction-program/

cdarwin, 4 days ago to random

Amazon provides free communication monitoring technology to prisons that monitor all of their phone calls.

They thenutilize that communication data to build out their AI systems,

creating massive profit for Amazon and zero compensation for communities who are unaware of their role in their own forced labor.

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/us-prisons-jails-ai-mass-monitor-millions-inmate/story?id=66370244

cdarwin, 4 days ago to random

Thousands of Israelis take to streets of Tel Aviv
to demand cease-fire
and Netanyahu’s resignation

Protesters are demanding the government reach a deal to bring the hostages back from Gaza,
for new elections
and the resignation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The demonstration took place as a delegation of the Palestinian militant group Hamas was in Cairo for cease-fire talks with Israel

https://apnews.com/video/israel-government-israel-hamas-war-israel-protests-and-demonstrations-benjamin-netanyahu-80fa94064ad4429ebb52531ad3ca12dc

cdarwin, 4 days ago to random

This Welsh lawmaker is trying to make it illegal for politicians to lie
If passed in the Welsh parliament, law criminalizing dishonesty in politics would be the first of its kind

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/welsh-politicians-lying-vote-1.7192025

cdarwin, 4 days ago to random

In the Room Where German Tycoons Agreed to Fund Hitler’s Rise To Power

“And there they stand, affectless, like twenty-four calculating machines at the gates of Hell.” –Éric Vuillard, The Order ofthe Day
The invitations, sent by telegram four days earlier, left no doubt.
The capital was calling.
On Monday, February 20, 1933, at 6 pm, about two dozen of Nazi Germany’s wealthiest and most influential businessmen arrived,
on foot or by chauffeured car,
to attend a meeting at the official residence of the Reichstag president,
Hermann Göring, in the heart of Berlin’s government and business district.

The attendees included Günther Quandt, a textile producer turned arms-and-battery tycoon;
Friedrich Flick, a steel magnate;
Baron August von Finck, a Bavarian finance mogul;
Kurt Schmitt, CEO of the insurance behemoth Allianz;
executives from the chemicals conglomerate IG Farben
and the potash giant Wintershall;
and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, chairman-through-marriage of the Krupp steel empire.

Three weeks earlier, Adolf Hitler had seized power in Germany
after concluding a backroom deal that led the Reich president, Paul von Hindenburg,
to appoint Hitler as chancellor.

Now the leader of the Nazi Party wanted to “explain his policies”
to the group of industrialists, financiers, executives, and heirs,
or at least that’s what he’d led them to believe.

The businessmen were hoping for reassurance concerning the direction of Germany’s economy under this new government.
They would not get it.
Hitler had his own plans for the meeting, and the country.

The businessmen arrived on time at Göring’s palatial sand-red residence on the south bank of Berlin’s Spree River, next door to the Reichstag.
But they were kept waiting
— not something that the impatient tycoons were particularly used to or fond of.
Göring, their host, didn’t greet them until fifteen minutes after the scheduled start time.
In tow was Walther Funk, the dumpy and balding chief press officer for Hitler’s government.

The new chancellor arrived even later,
accompanied by Otto Wagener, his main economic adviser.
The master of ceremonies was Hjalmar Schacht, formerly president of the Reichsbank.
(As it turned out, Funk, Schacht, Göring, and Schmitt,
four of Hitler’s future ministers of economic affairs, were all present.)

The meeting was the culmination of years of careful groundwork laid by Hitler’s officials
—years of cultivating relationships with the tycoons to build up enthusiasm for the Nazi cause.

After shaking hands with the businessmen, Hitler launched into a rambling ninety-minute speech,
delivered without notes or pauses.
But instead of the policy talk that had been promised,
Hitler gave a sweeping diagnosis of the current political moment.
The year 1918 had been a catastrophic turning point in German history,
with the defeat of the German Empire in World War I and the revolution in Russia,
during which the Communists came to power.
In Hitler’s eyes, the time had come to settle the struggle between the right and the left once and for all.

Hitler didn’t speak about abolishing labor unions, rearmament, war, or the removal of Jews from German life.
But he did provide a glimpse of what was to come:
“We must first gain complete power if we want to crush the other side completely.”
Hitler argued that, in supporting his rise as führer, the moguls would in effect be supporting themselves, their firms, and their fortunes.
💥“Private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy,” 💥the forty-three-year-old chancellor said.
“It is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality. 🔸Everything positive, good and valuable, which has been achieved in the world in the field of economics and culture, is solely attributable to the importance of personality.”🔸

Near the end of his speech, Hitler laid out how that would happen.
In only two weeks, on March 5, the people of Germany would determine the country’s future by casting their votes in the national election
—“the last election,” according to Hitler.
One way or another, democracy would fall.
Germany’s new chancellor intended to dissolve it entirely and replace it with a dictatorship.
“Regardless of the outcome,” he warned,
“there would be no retreat.
There are only two possibilities,
either to crowd back the opponent on constitutional grounds
or a struggle will be conducted with other weapons, which may demand greater sacrifices.”

🔥If the election didn’t bring Hitler’s party into control, a civil war between the right and the left would certainly erupt, he intimated. 🔥
Hitler waxed poetic:
“I hope the German people recognize the greatness of the hour.
It shall decide the next ten or probably even hundred years.”

https://lithub.com/in-the-room-where-german-tycoons-agreed-to-fund-hitlers-rise-to-power/

cdarwin, 5 days ago to random

It wasn’t so long ago that the uneven distribution of wealth had distributed itself somewhat evenly across the Mountain West:
Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Sun Valley, Idaho; Telluride, Colorado.
But as Nick Bowlin sketches out in this Harper’s feature, nothing quite stacks up to Big Sky, Montana.
A private resort socked away above the town counts numerous billionaires among its members,
and even down below the average home price clocks in at $2.5 million.
Boom times for the Gulfstream crowd aren’t the real point, though.
Instead, Bowlin chips away the private-equity varnish to reveal the chasm between the haves and the have-nots.
Big Sky has always run on the labor of ski-resort employees,
but now, those employees are pushed into company-owned converted motels or faraway towns where they still need to work multiple jobs to keep a foothold as the cost of living rises precipitously.
Meanwhile, the town itself isn’t really a town at all, but a hodgepodge of homeowners’ associations and other organizations that approximate the work of a mayor or city council
—neither of which exist in Big Sky.
This is what a company town looks like in the 21st century:
not just a place where inhabitants live and work for a corporate behemoth,
but where they scrape by in service of the Tres Comas Club in exchange for access to the natural resource that drew them there in the first place.
https://longreads.com/2024/05/03/the-top-5-longreads-of-the-week-514/