September 19, 2024

The Stuttering Lede, Sept. 19th 2024

47 days until we know if we can stop fascism

Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.” Susan Sontag

Today in History

23 years ago, President Bush signed the AUMF: 60 words authorizing military force against those responsible for 9/11. Even as successive presidents have interpreted it to apply to more and more groups, Congress has done nothing—abdicating its constitutional responsibility.

Election 2024

• Teamsters announced that they won’t endorse anyone in this election. Elie Mystal reminds, “In 2023 the Republican controlled Supreme Court, with the help of three Trump appointed judges, took a baseball bat to the right of Teamsters to strike. Joe Biden walked the picket line with them. But sure, sit this one out guys. What could go wrong.” Never underestimate the ability of racism to make people vote against their own interests. Never.

• The Teamsters thing is another hit to 'deliverism,' the idea that if you deliver economic goods to people through policy, you'll get their vote. The ARP literally bailed out 350,000 Teamsters pensions. But today's politics is the culture war.

• Meanwhile Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Philly, Central and Western PA Teamsters local went ahead and endorsed Harris.

• Trump and his family jump into crypto, which the FBI calls a hive of 'pervasive' criminality. Who’s dumb enough to think “Trump and crypto? How can I buy in?” The man bankrupted multiple casinos - an industry where the house always wins.

• Trump's delusional debate spin speaks volumes "Supporting Trump is like taking up permanent residence in Lewis Carroll’s storybook Wonderland where you must believe 9 impossible things before breakfast, no matter if they contradict each other."

• Trump now speaks of the audience reaction during the debate. There was no audience present.

• While they spew out xenophobic, racist anti-immigrant propaganda, Trump, JD Vance and Chris Rufo all married immigrants, in at least two cases “undocumented ones.”

• The Complicity of Usha Vance.

• Trump would-be assassin Ryan Routh said he was willing to fight and die for Ukraine. But after spending five months there, he came away embittered and resentful of the country.

• No matter how much they try, Trump is still not close to Obama’s record of 10 attempted assassinations. Claims of explosives at Trump’s Long Island rally are ‘unfounded’

• Trump’s concept of a plan to bring down grocery prices by increasing cost on imported food is not simply dumb and illogical, it’s also a way to create the American Holodomor.

• Local election officials throughout Georgia for months have been coordinating on policy and messaging to call the November election into question before a single vote is cast.

• “Before Republican VP nominee and Ohio Sen. JD Vance became a regular presence in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, he was using right-wing media to attack the Keystone State’s election integrity."

• The Trump campaign was told the racist lies about Springfield weren't true BEFORE Trump's debate: A Vance staffer called Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck. Heck told the staffer the rumors were false. But Vance had already posted about them and kept doing so after his staffer's conversation with Heck. Trump amplified the lies the next night.

• Racism is NOT a distraction.

• Isn’t it odd how the cases hurtling their way to SCOTUS look just like the Project 2025 agenda? The right-wing legal movement thinks it's really cute that the rest of us think we have a say in how our country is run. Here are the cases that they're flooding into courts across every issue in the expectation that this SCOTUS supermajority will agree:

  

• A South Florida newspaper refused to publish a political candidate’s ‘myths and falsehoods’ about stolen elections, saying “as a trusted media source, we cannot knowingly publish these falsehoods.

Politics

• Five years ago, an Australian journalist was stunned by a Trump press conference. "The shock I felt hearing half an hour of unfiltered meanderings from the president of the United States made me wonder whether the editing does our readers a disservice."

• Republicans are admitting they would side with Big Pharma and gut the Biden-Harris law that lets Medicare negotiate drug prices, if they win. They are literally, openly, for higher drug prices.

• When you have time read the excellent profile of the most important lawyer in America, Elizabeth Prelogar.

• The brutal truth behind Italy’s migrant reduction: beatings and rape by EU-funded forces in Tunisia.

• House Republicans are expected to derail their own plan to avert a government shutdown, leaving Congress without a plan two weeks before the deadline.

• Republicans block their own bill to find the government.

• Ohio is funding the construction of private Catholic schools, which refuse to educate LGBTQ students unless they remain in the closet, or students with LGBTQ parents.

• Andy Beshear, Kentucky's governor, has signed an executive order banning the use of "conversion therapy" on minors. The widely discredited practice tries to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through counseling.

• Investigation into the culture of non-stop surveillance and private investigators that has created a "climate of fear" on an Ivy League campus.

• Georgian parliament approves bill to curb LGBTQ rights.

• Why Trump’s Supporters Want The Long Con.

• Darfur 20 years later.

• The man quietly rewriting American privacy law.

• Hungary refuses to pay fines for breaking EU asylum rules. Brussels is taking the money anyway.

• While Biden makes history with 12th Senate-confirmed LGBTQ judge, major companies abandon an LGBTQ+ rights report card after facing anti-diversity backlash.

Ukraine/Russia

• Does the West actually want Ukraine to defeat Russia? It doesn’t look that way.

• Most Western governments do not appear to think of themselves as being at war with Russia. Russia, however, is at war with the West.

• While “Russians at War” is nothing but vile pro-Russian ethnofascism propaganda, Cate Blanchett has a powerful movie about the heroism of Ukraine.

• We might not consider ourselves to be at war with Russia, but Russia clearly considers itself to be at war with us.

• Armenia says it is investigating 7 people who were planning to stage a coup against Nikol Pashinyan. The Russian military base in Rostov-on-Don was being used to stage this coup attempt.

• Russian hackers have reportedly hacked into an Armenian government-operated database. Armenia has previously been the target of a number of cyberattacks by Russian hackers amidst an ongoing deterioration of its relations with Russia.

• France will deliver Mirage 2000-5 jets to Ukraine, which will be modified at Cazaux Air Base for ground-target strikes. There are indications that Ukraine could possible receive the first Mirage 2000 jets by the end of 2024.

• Two people killed today at "Wild Berries" headquarters in Moscow. It's the Amazon of Russia, the largest company in the country. The husband and wife co-owners are amidst a brutal divorce, with wife backed by Chechen warlord Kadyrov and husband backed by Putin cronies. Each now has an army fighting for the control of the company with police helpless.

• How Rosatom helps create cruise missiles.

• European countries supplying Ukraine with Indian ammo.

• Russians are told to make babies during work breaks to help stagnating birth rate.

• With an estimated 200,000 men killed so far in the Ukraine war, Russia's cemeteries are booming.

Middle East

• Second wave of exploding devices raises fears of wider Israel-Lebanon conflict.

• The Guardian view on Israel’s booby-trap war: illegal and unacceptable.

• Israel has blooding Hezbollah but now is stuck in a war of attrition.

• Israel’s attack on Hezbollah shows Iran’s weakness.

• How Israel built modern day Trojan horse.

• Exploding tech 'grey zone' attack is warning for governments.

• The firm linked to exploding Hezbollah pagers was hacked last year, exposing its supply chain.

Tech

• Employers who force staff back are dinosaurs.

• Unless you’re living in the EU, all LinkedIn users have been automatically opted into the platform’s shitty new program to use your data to train its shitty AI tool. Opt out steps: Settings and Privacy > Data Privacy > Data for Generative AI Improvement (OFF).

  

• NYC's public college system paid Oracle $600M to build course management portal. It's built on top of Oracle's PeopleSoft suite, which they refused to customize without an extra $400M. New Yorkers got the image below and pay $5M+ per year for *hosting*.

  

• Publishers try skinnier books to save money and emissions. This is while AI swallows glaciers whole to "summarize" emails.

Climate Change

• Flooding in Europe Is a ‘Clear Reminder’ of the Threat of Extreme Weather.

• Brazilian ranchers destroying forests with secret toxic herbicides.

• AI is “revitalizing the fossil fuels industry.” Bloomberg called it a "surprising resurgence" in gas-fired power plants when we were on the brink of a transition to clean energy. And big tech has nothing to say about it.

• Climate change is turbo-charging Somalia’s problems.

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• People in Iceland are collecting baby puffins and throwing them back into the ocean.

• Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and her philosophy of climate activism are exactly what people like me need.”

Misc.

• Slightly over 5% of all cancers in the United States were attributed to alcohol consumption in 2019. Fewer than one-third of women age 18 to 25 knew that alcohol use increases the risk of breast cancer.

• "Wear Proper Undergarments": Delta Airlines' new memo.

• “Alt-ac" comes full circle: here is an argument that humanities PhDs coping with the apocalyptic academic job market should consider the "surprising career option" of . . . advising humanities PhDs on how to find non-academic jobs.

• Andrew Lovisone, associate pastor at First Baptist Peculiar, has been charged with 2 counts of first-degree promoting child sexual abuse material.

• Teachers in England offered lie-ins to make job more appealing.

• I did not have this on my bingo card: ‘THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST 2’ will begin filming in early 2025.

• Health Care Leader Says Medical Systems Are Broken.

• How Work Has Changed for Women in Corporate America Over the Last 10 Years.

Humour