The Stuttering Lede, Vol. VII
"Russian aggression has no limits unless we set them ourselves.” Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky
Today in History
On this day in 1939 Nazi Germany staged the Gleiwitz incident. After accusing Poland of ethnic cleansing against his countrymen, Hitler staged a false flag to justify invasion and genocide.
On this day in 1994 the last Soviet troops left Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. I'm sure some of these are in Ukraine right now.
2024 Elections
Slate thinks that the Supreme Court just signaled what it will do if the election is close. Were they not paying any attention to the Supreme Court until now? I'm actually surprised since one of the authors of the piece is Norm Eisen.
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In private they say they'd be better off without Trump. Yup, that's exactly how we get fascism.
Is everything and everyone okay at the New York Times? An actual article critical of Trump? What?!
A Trump rallygoer "stormed into the press area" and was subdued by police "moments after Trump criticized major media outlets for what he said was unfavorable coverage and dismissed CNN as fawning for its interview" with Harris and Walz. He was teased. The rallygoer, not Trump. Will Bunch is right, “this is the textbook example of stochastic terrorism.”
Trump says removing 11 million undocumented immigrants would save the US. In fact, it'd be a disaster. The fascist ex-president's plot would crash the economy, separate children, and hurt the very population he claims to want to uplift—the American worker.
Trump wants to hide his attempt to assassinate Mike Pence from voters.
Trump origin story The Apprentice has been acquired by Briarcliff Entertainment and is set for a pre-election release, hitting theaters Oct. 11. Originally, Trump is likely going to judge shop in the 11th district.
Dangerous and un-American: new recording of JD Vance’s dark vision of women and immigration.
People ask Jared Yates Sexton a lot what they can do to fight authoritarianism. This Labor Day, take the time to start healing from the abuses of capitalism and exploitation and believe that you and the people you love deserve a better world.
Politics
University of Virginia suspends campus tour for acknowledging that Thomas Jefferson...owned slaves.
Colonial Williamsburg, the largest living museum is taking a radical approach to our national divides. Take this with a grain of salt. This is Politico that proudly updated their openly racist headline with another openly racist headline last night.
Callback to analysis of Jared and Ivanka’s official financial disclosures revealed that while they were working at the White House, they reported between $172 million and $640 million in outside income. Long overdue for a congressional investigation.
As the semester begins, the American Association of University Professors is increasingly alarmed at the ramifications of the wave of new campus restrictions on speech & peaceful protest.
This is an incredible story. Border Patrol refuses to help a man who broke his leg falling from Trump’s wall, so a local fire chief orders her department to cut through it and come to his aid.
US is an outlier on growth, not inflation.
Israel killed 50 people today in airstrikes on Gaza, right as polio vaccination starts.
Israeli journalist Gideon Levy describes the conditions in which 61-year-old Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar is being held by Israel. She is in total isolation. She has been accused of no crime since she was arrested a year ago. “Her cell has no windows. There is no air, no fan, only a concrete bed and a thin mattress as well as a toilet that has no water most of the day. This week she told her lawyer that in order to breathe a bit, she lies down on the floor and tries to draw in a bit of air from the crack under the cell door. She doesn't drink much, in order to avoid having to use the toilet, which emits a horrific stench.”
"This article argues that proportionality should be subordinated to a requirement of justice.” A very old and very ugly argument that as long as your cause is just you can forget the rules. Every nation in history believed that their war was just. This is shameful.
Investigation by Hagar Shezaf reveals wartime spike in sexual abuse of Palestinian women and girls at IDF checkpoints, including flashing, verbal abuse, and forcing school students to show private photos on their phones.
Poland’s government has published guidelines for when and how abortions can be carried out, to ensure that doctors and prosecutors “take the woman’s side” when making decisions. “If we won’t change the law, we will change the reality,” says President Donald Tusk.
Education
University of Florida spent hundreds of thousands on travel for highly paid GOP hires of then-President Ben Sasse, who permitted them to work from home in other states while commuting periodically to school's campus.
Tech
In a completely “shocking” move, Microsoft, Apple, and NVIDIA are ready to bail out OpenAI.
Robert Reich believes this is how to rein Elon Musk in. Not a bad start but getting a few thorough investigations by a number of ICs will do the trick better and faster. Though yeah, don't buy Tesla.
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Alan Rusbridger writes: “According to a new book about Musk’s takeover of Twitter by two New York Times journalists, the platform’s new owner wanted Twitter/X to be more like Pavel Durov’s Telegram, which had an user base of 800m and only 30 staff. Durov’s arrest, in Musk’s mind, is an act of censorship rather than one of law enforcement—because, in the Tucker Carlson/Musk world, free speech trumps all, and there are absolutely no harms that should be weighed in the balance against it. A platform with three staff per 100m users is literally a lawless public space. Good luck with John Stuart Mill’s “free and open fight” for truth there.’
Gil Duran is right, when tech bros decry the drug crisis, remember: “Cryptocurrency has played an increasingly important role in the global fentanyl trade over the last decade, facilitating the manufacturing and trafficking of fentanyl – and making it easier for cartels to launder their funds."
How it started:
Climate
Russia
Rise of " military-patriotic camps" in Russia. This is so bloody familiar.
Truth on trial in Russia: 8 yrs prison for reporting the atrocities in Bucha.
With rumours of Sergei Lavrov’s demise circulating, let’s remember when he had a heart attack in Bali, the MFA denied it, and then he posted a video of himself next to a pool geolocated at a hospital.
A chronic shortage of military vehicles has left the Russian army in Ukraine dependent upon civilian vehicles. This is leading to conflict – sometimes with weapons drawn – between Russian troops and military police, who are trying to confiscate the vehicles.
Entertainment
Napoleon: The Director’s Cut is out. Should I watch it and if I do would it be torture for me or you, dear reader, once I'm forced to write another review about how horrible the movie is.
Humor
“It’s amazing what lies people can sustain behind the mask of their real faces.”
Philip Roth
