…ok folks…I know these often make a good case that I’m about a cup of coffee short of hitting this point
…but damn-it-all…it’s not my fault…well…not entirely, anyway…the ellipsis addiction doesn’t help, obviously…but can I just take a moment to point out that it’s mostly on account of the whole “events, dear boy, events” component?
…it’s broadly impossible to keep up with all of it
The underlying assumption is that Haitians cannot manage their own affairs. The government is corrupt or ineffective or both. Its people are ensnared in a “web of progress-resistant cultural influences”, as David Brooks was somehow allowed to opine in the New York Times just after the country’s giant 2010 earthquake. Left alone, Haiti would descend into chaos and humanitarian crisis: disease, violence, death. That’s when Haiti’s so-called international friends – chiefly the US, along with Canada and France – are forced to come to the rescue with their big guns and elite forces.
That’s the direction of the thinking today. The international community is deliberating the deployment of a “multinational rapid action force” to Haiti, followed in the medium term by yet another UN peacekeeping mission. Already, the US has sent personnel, armored vehicles and undisclosed “equipment” to aid Haiti’s police in battling a conglomerate of gangs who have taken control of the country. The US may well contribute troops to the rapid action force. Many innocent civilians will be caught in the crossfire, if history is a guide.
The view from Haiti is generally different: foreign intervention causes disaster. This idea can be counterintuitive and deeply uncomfortable to Americans, but it has the great virtue of being based on facts. Haiti, after all, was born of the determination of enslaved people to cast off the genocidal yoke of the French, AKA foreign subjugation. It has since suffered numerous invasions and intrusions, including a 19-year occupation by the US, from 1915 to 1934. The US occupation justified itself as being for Haiti’s own good. Its legacies included enriching American elites and laying groundwork for the rise of the Duvalier dictatorship.
[…]
In Haiti, foreign intervention and humanitarian disaster have become so intertwined that it is hard to tell one from the other. They are locked in a vicious cycle. Cholera is a glaring example. Although the UN apologized, it has never repaired its harms, despite numerous class action lawsuits. (These were dismissed in the US on grounds of the UN’s immunity.) The UN launched a $400m trust fund to help cholera victims and improve sanitation infrastructure, as a kind of voluntary reparation, but raised only a pittance of it.
More subtly, over the past decade, intervention – or the threat of it – has been used to prop up leaders who do not represent the will of the Haitian people. In 2010, the head of the UN mission in Haiti threatened President René Preval with forced exile unless he accepted the contested results of a first-round election. That election resulted in the presidency of Michel Martelly, whose administration was found to have misappropriated or mismanaged billions of dollars in aid from the PetroCaribe program.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/19/us-backed-foreign-intervention-disaster-haiti-un
…after a while it’s almost hard to tell what’s actually new & what’s just been simmering away seemingly forever
The Washington Post was first to report that the intelligence on Iran and China was found at Trump’s Florida residence and club during the FBI’s recent search of the property.
The Post reported, but NBC News has not confirmed, that “at least one of the documents seized by the FBI describes Iran’s missile program.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fbi-found-documents-containing-classified-intel-iran-china-mar-lago
…or how much doom is being harbingered
Former Chinese president Hu Jintao was “not feeling well” when he was escorted out of the closing ceremony of a congress of the ruling Communist party on Saturday, according to state media.
…under the circumstances I imagine I’d feel pretty unwell myself…you know…once the flunkies turn up in the middle of an insanely public political forum to make my condition known to me
The footage, published by AFP, showed a steward repeatedly trying to lift Hu from his seat, drawing concerned looks from officials seated nearby. Hu then put his hand on a sheet of paper placed on Xi’s folder but Xi quickly put his hand on the sheet.
[…]
Looking distressed, Hu appeared to resist leaving as the stewards escorted him out, turning back to his seat at one point. On his way out, he exchanged words with Xi and patted the premier, Li Keqiang – seated to the right of Xi – on the shoulder.
Video of the incident – highly unusual given the meticulous stage management of most such events – was widely shared on Twitter but could not be found on China’s heavily censored social media platforms. Twitter is blocked in China.
On China’s Twitter-like Weibo, a few social media users alluded to the incident by commenting on old posts featuring Hu, a common tactic used to evade cyberspace censors.
By Saturday evening, however, the comments section of almost all Weibo posts containing Hu’s name were no longer visible, according to a Reuters review.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/23/hu-jintao-not-feeling-well-when-he-left-china-congress-says-state-media
…nice stable world you got there…be a shame if something happened to it
Xi Jinping has been confirmed as leader of China for a precedent-breaking third term, after a week-long political meeting eliminated key rivals and strengthened his political power.
[…]
At a press event on Sunday, seven key Xi loyalists were revealed as members of China’s most powerful political body, the politburo standing committee (PSC), as they walked on stage in order of rank.
[…]
At the lead was Xi, confirming his reappointment as general secretary of the party for a third term. The long-speculated reappointment signalled Xi’s successful and overwhelming consolidation of power in Beijing, with retention of the role as chair of the military commission, controlling the People’s Liberation Army. It’s expected he will next year regain the less powerful title of president.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/23/xi-jinping-to-rule-china-for-precedent-breaking-third-term
…if these times get any more interesting I’m gonna be comparing notes with farscy about the best way to fit out a hobbit hole
Perhaps nothing captures the charge more eloquently than a three-word post that appeared on the official Twitter account for Republicans on the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee – ranking member Jim Jordan – on 6 October. It said, simply and strangely: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.”
The first of this unholy trinity referred to Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who has recently drawn fierce criticism for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt at Paris fashion week and for antisemitic messages on social media, including one that said he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE”.
The second was billionaire Elon Musk, who published a pro-Russian peace plan for Ukraine and denied reports that he had been spoken to Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin.
The third was former president Donald Trump, who wrote last weekend that American Jews have offered insufficient praise of his policies toward Israel, warning that they need to “get their act together” before “it is too late!” The comment played into the antisemitic prejudice that American Jews have dual loyalties to the US and Israel.
[…]
Republicans have long been accused of coded bigotry and nodding and winking to their base. There was an assumption of rules of political etiquette and taboos that could not be broken. Now, it seems, politics has entered a post-shame era where anything goes.
[…]
Beyond Republicans’ headline-grabbing stars, the trend is also manifest at the grassroots. In schools, the party has launched a sweeping assault on what teachers can say or teach about race, gender identity, LGBTQ+ issues and American history. An analysis by the Washington Post newspaper found that 25 states have passed 64 laws reshaping what students can learn and do at school over the past three academic years.
[…]
After a long courtship, Trump himself has in recent months begun embracing the antisemitic conspiracy theory QAnon in earnest. In September, using his Truth Social platform, the former president reposted an image of himself wearing a Q lapel pin overlaid with the words “The Storm is Coming”. A QAnon song has been played at the end of several his campaign rallies.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/23/republican-party-hate-racism-antisemitism-trump
…because it’s hard not to feel like we’re checking off an awful lot of boxes on the to-hell-in-a-handcart bingo card…& I for one would sincerely appreciate it if reality could go on ahead & knock that shit off
Russian non-military hybrid warfare takes many forms, all with an identical aim: the execution of “active measures” to harm, confuse, frighten, enfeeble and divide target states while maintaining plausible deniability. Thus the EU and US strongly suspect Putin ordered the Nord Stream sabotage as part of his undeclared energy war on Europe. But he denies it, and they have produced no proof.
As the realisation dawns that Russia’s president will stop at nothing, EU leaders wonder what he may do next to undermine support for Ukraine – and weaken their governments. Putin is losing on the battlefield and despite his nuclear threats, plainly fears a head-on conflict with Nato he knows he could lose.
Thinking ahead, it’s logical – and prudent – to assume a desperate, heedless Putin will increasingly turn to hybrid attacks in Europe.
[…]
But the UK looks unprepared. Adding to the jitters, the break in a subsea communications cable that left Shetland islanders isolated last week remains unexplained. The incident highlighted hybrid warfare’s potential domestic dimension.
[…]
Use of “active measures” is hard to prove. Nato declared in 2016 that “hybrid actions” against one or more allies would be viewed as an attack on all under article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty. But the problem is one of definition – what constitutes such an attack? Another problem is agreeing who is responsible.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/23/unseen-and-underhand-putins-hidden-hybrid-war-is-trying-to-break-europes-heart
…who’s responsible?
Boris Johnson could never be accused of wanting to be seen as politically engaged since announcing his resignation as prime minister in early July. Yet his apparent eagerness to abandon any pretence of parliamentary involvement would make grim reading for even his most ardent fan.
For about a quarter of the considerable time that has elapsed, Johnson appears to have been abroad, enjoying a series of luxury holidays as the UK lurches through economic tumult and a deepening cost of living crisis.
In addition, during the 108 days since he announced his resignation, Johnson has voted in parliament just once. For the record, that was a confidence vote on 18 July – into his own government.
During Liz Truss’s six-week tenure as PM, her predecessor did not bother to vote once. Neither did he make a single written parliamentary statement throughout her administration.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/23/boris-johnson-busy-post-resignation-schedule-of-luxury-holidays
…so…where do you suppose the wind he seems to have in sails might be coming from?
The UK is in a political crisis layered on top of an economic crisis, which itself has needlessly exacerbated an already dire cost-of-living crisis. The idea that the answer to a single part of this horror show is to bring back a morally degenerate financial incontinent who broke his own laws is something that tells you everything about the terminal sad-sacks who are so much as thinking of it. The formal parliamentary investigation into Johnson’s last truth-aborting period in office is about to begin; if it ends up censuring him for misleading parliament over the No 10 lockdown parties, as is perfectly likely, then we’d be in a constitutional crisis too. Maybe crises are cheaper when you buy in bulk.
The fact his name is even being mentioned suggests the Conservative party has failed to learn the lessons of the first wave of Boris Johnson, and to plan for the second. Any rays of light in the worst-case scenario? The return to power of Roman dictator Cincinnatus – famously mentioned by Johnson in his recent leaving speech – lasted just three weeks (by choice). Though if Johnson clocks up even that many days back in power, it’ll feel very much longer.
…recent in the sense of only feeling a few lifetimes ago…obviously
At the time of typing, many think that surely Johnson won’t get the numbers to run. Then again we passed “surely” three WTFs ago. Even his own backers couldn’t quite seem to believe it last night, with one anonymous acolyte telling the Telegraph: “It is too early. In autumn next year the party will be on its knees. He is walking into a shitshow he can’t control. They need to be on their knees.” On their knees! Unbidden, this reminds me of that moment in the documentary about the Fyre festival – another story of disastrous allegiance to a charismatic boss – where an otherwise sane-seeming man looks into the camera and says of a customs official refusing to release them some Evian water: “I got to his office, fully prepared to suck his dick.”
For now, we must bed in for days of Conservative MPs openly hissing about the damage other Conservative MPs are doing to “the party”, as though the crisis-convulsed country were some distant afterthought. That’s not just a hideously revealing way of talking but a profoundly warped way of thinking. It’s precisely this level of Conservative solipsism that got us here, and we all know the old lines. They simply can’t lose their reputation for competence. If they’re not careful people might just stop looking to them for stability. Only they can fix the mess they inherited from themselves. We’ve heard all this stuff so many times before that there are uncontacted Amazon tribes who know it backwards. Yet the next week will be taken up with yet another binfire of the vanities.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/21/the-tories-boris-johnson-crisis-conservatives
…at this point it’s possible you may be struggling to settle on a metric by which to guess the relative quality & quantity of the crazy involved here…after all, we’re only human…& this isn’t just the british we’re talking about but british politics of the conservative variety…a foundational component of which is a breadth & depth of obfuscatory effluvia that is very possibly unrivaled in its self-satisfied sycophantic syllogism
To use a technical term, this will be a pyramid of bollocks. It requires us to ignore how many figures from the Tory firmament either supported Ms Truss from the outset or sycophantically endorsed her once they calculated she was going to seize the throne. I mean you, Ben Wallace, Nadhim Zahawi and Sajid Javid. And you, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt. And I mean many more Tories than I have space to mention. Either they thought her wild gamble would come off, in which case their judgment is as cracked as hers. Or they knew she was a dangerous person with a reckless programme, but backed her nevertheless for career-serving reasons, which is even more disgraceful. She didn’t take Britain to the brink all by herself.
Ms Truss was a disaster, but she was not an accident. Something has gone fundamentally wrong with a party when it hands the premiership to someone so manifestly wrong for the job. And that’s twice in a row, remembering that she was preceded by Mr Johnson. And it will be a hat-trick of wilfully diabolical decisions if the Tories are so deranged that they re-crown the clown prince.
Ms Truss should be seen not as a freakish aberration, but as a fit with the trajectory of the Conservatives over their dozen years in office. It began in 2010 with a different kind of economic experimentation, the austerity imposed by David Cameron and George Osborne on the promise that gruel today would mean jam tomorrow. The financial markets liked their medicine, but it failed to rejuvenate the patient. This duo promised a thriving Britain that has never turned up. They ushered in an era of chronically low growth and stagnant or near-frozen living standards for everyone but the most affluent. This fuelled discontent and the anger found an outlet provided by the foolish Mr Cameron. He set the pattern for the Tory premierships of this period when he self-immolated by putting Brexit to a referendum he glibly believed he could not lose.
[…]
The toxic twins of Brexit and Borisology turned the Tories into a party prey to delusions. Competence and commonsense, qualities that Conservatives once regarded as the hallmarks of their party, were displaced by cakeism and cultism. Voices of reason were stifled or purged from their ranks. It became ever more conspicuous that Brexit was not delivering what was promised, but they couldn’t cope with that much reality, so they took refuge in the fairytales peddled by Ms Truss. She won the Tory leadership by telling the Conservative party things it wanted to hear, however obviously false they were. Thanks to Mr Johnson and the Brexit gang, the Conservative party had become pre-conditioned to prefer fantasy worlds to the real one and favour beguiling mendacities over tough truths.
[…]
He, more than anyone else, more even than herself, is culpable for the catastrophe of the Truss premiership. Dominic Cummings was the first to advance the idea that Mr Johnson backed her, and told his acolytes to do the same, in the belief that she would self-destruct, opening the door for him to return. Many thought that theory too outlandish; I didn’t. That’s exactly how his utterly cynical, absolutely selfish mind works, though I doubt he anticipated she’d blow up quite as rapidly as she did.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/23/if-tory-party-brings-back-boris-johnson-fit-only-for-straitjacket
…I’d say you couldn’t make it up
…except
…this shit has to be coming from somewhere
…so clearly somebody not only could but decided that was an idea to run with
…so…if you’ll excuse me
…I have a date with a job lot of red yarn I must have inadvertently ordered during a bout of sleep-deprived provisioning?
And yet, if going into the next election Boris Johnson is the leader of the Conservatives a Deltapoll has it that Labour will have a 26 seat majority. If Rishi, it’s Labour up 124 seats. If Penny Mordaunt, the Leader of the Commons but I think at this point is just famous for being famous, Labour leads with a majority of 216 seats.
Maybe Boris holds a Trump-like fascination on the UK but I don’t think that’s it, or at least not to the same effect that Trump has on his supporters. And who would serve in the Cabinet? They’ve all disgraced themselves, many by backing Liz Truss and serving in her Cabinet. Maybe Suella Braverman, who departed the Truss Cabinet under somewhat opaque circumstances, could hold more than one portfolio? What’s Tom Tugendhat been up to? Maybe Boris could abandon all pretense and scoop up Hugh Bonneville, my on-screen father-in-law Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham and Lord Downton. After all, he portrayed a serious man dealing with issues calmly and wisely, and Downton wasn’t nearly as controversial as The Crown has turned out to be, what with the death of the Queen and all.
…that’s just it…given that under any circumstances the idea of round #2 of bojo-fucks-it-up should be given the time of day is beyond insulting…but the last time they let people vote they voted for his bumbling ass in merry droves…& since it’s impossible to prove a negative there’s nothing to guarantee that his manifest lack of fitness for the role would actually stop him from being their biggest vote-getter
…mordaunt has her supporters…but they need 100 of their peers (in the sense of tory MPs rather than the lords) to chime in for them in order to be considered viable
…& although she declared before rishi did…he apparently has 134 of those spoken for…while she has a mere 23…to boris’ 55
…I’m more than a little alarmed by the sheer amount of credence a bid from boris is getting as a potentially viable move…there’s supposedly about 145 outstanding endorsements…so they could all wind up with the requisite triple-digits…but this is not a natural buoyancy being exhibited by johnson’s apparent fortunes…whatever kind of a court press you want to call the way they have him looming in the coverage…it is broad spectrum enough to beg some questions as to its coordination & presumable cost in blood, treasure or whatever the appropriate currency might be
…but I can’t imagine there’d be too many people happier to see the flop-haired fuckwit back in charge than one vlad “I double-dare you to” putin…the “you do it to yourselves” narrative just writes its fucking self…either way I’m fairly certain that if there were the equivalent to the federalist society in the UK about now would be when they’d release a paper about how the whole point of magna carta was to allow someone like boris to cosplay at wanting to compare himself to churchill while trying to go full henry viii in the paperwork
…as a smart lady once said “it’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it”?
I think what’s most astonishing about Boris Johnson is that he was Mayor of London for two terms. How? He really does kind of work electoral miracles.
…sort of the same thing…he didn’t like his chances trying to snatch the top spot but he could throw a lot of weight about for next to no accountability as mayor & it’s the sort of vote that gets less turnout & is easier to game out…it actually suited him a lot better because he could talk any old shit & people would line up with cameras & microphones…but he couldn’t directly do much that anyone could notice
…it’s kind of a a deft illustration of a bunch of electoral home truths a lot of london-dwelling people very much prefer to think are only applicable to rural brexit homelands…how quickly we forget, huh?
I suppose London has a “great middle” that you don’t really hear about, but I can’t imagine any of the college students voting for him (maybe some of the LSE folks) or anyone in the East End and certainly not The Great and the Good (the “luvvies”) in Islington and Notting Hill. As for the Conservatives, how many people who worked in the City, how many residents of the West End, would have voted for him? If you went to Eton or his Oxford college wouldn’t you want to keep him out of sight, out of sheer embarrassment? Although I suppose not, Etonians and Oxbridge grads have been clowning the British electorate for centuries and no one seems to mind.
That seems like a big piece of it. It’s the same issue that Trump had — he knew the basic equations of press coverage, and the press was either clueless or happy to play along.
But enough about British politics. Let’s enjoy a few pix of dogs in costumes from yesterdays’ Halloween parade in Tompkins Square Park:
https://gothamist.com/news/creatively-costumed-canines-at-nycs-2022-tompkins-square-halloween-dog-festival
There’s a slideshow up at the top, irritating, and a newish site design that is godawful, so I’ll apologize on WNYC’s behalf. But if you stay on the mainpage you get to the dog that is a bodega cat. It is uncanny. If you’ve never been to a NYC bodega, this is it in a nutshell. Everything is perfect, down to the universal shelving and the odd mismatch of products, especially the random packaged goods hanging off the sides of the shelving, making the extremely narrow aisles even more impassable. Print newspapers. The extremely sketchy non-bank-affiliated ATM. The candles that bring all sorts of good fortune and ward off evil. And the cat, of course. All that’s missing is the bodega-specific funk of opened and partially consumed snack foods and the lingering aroma of the refrigerated chests that haven’t been cleaned since the new owners took over in the 1970s.
Honest question…. Is there any chance that Truss was just a placeholder to take the heat off of Johnson for awhile, and she was never meant to succeed?
…to some extent only time will tell
…& to most people that’s not a great deal more plausible now than it was when the party membership voted her in to replace him
…I mean it’s not like a lot of people on the right (including some in the US) weren’t happy going to some pains to praise the proposals that blew up in her face…so some people definitely were true believers in her chances of success
…but to a “select” few…a cadre, if you will…& to boris himself…yeah…I think that’s very much one light they saw her in…to the extent that he wants (& doubtless thinks he’s entitled) to do to the position of prime minister what peter mandelson & michael gove have done with cabinet positions…resign in disgrace…wait out the goldfish memory span of the tabloid press…& slide back in as though there’s no contradictions involved or implied
…the classical allusion in his speech…the terminator quote that just screams a subliminal “I’ll be back” for the folks who won’t get the latin reference…& of course his delusional tendency to compare himself with churchill…a performance that demands a second stint
…so…yes…he could be exactly that high on his own supply…& have precisely that much consideration for the plight to which others would be victim in order to ease on down the path of his choosing
…anyone would think he’d never seen hamilton
“his delusional tendency to compare himself with churchill…”
Does Bojo smoke?
Because, if yes, I could *definitely* imagine the “drunk, smoker” parts being a thing that he definitely has in common…
‘Bout the only thing, other than that mutually-shared position, though!
I think it makes sense that the UK right wing and establishment elites knew a Johnson comeback was one possible outcome, and they’ve reached a point of nihilism and super short term thinking that they don’t care.
Stupid Olympics
US : subpoenas Trump at the latest possible moment, knowing full well he’ll just run out the clock.
UK :. Hold my beer.
Forgive me if I missed it, but did anyone cover the daycare shit that is going on? Where the workers put Ghost face masks on (scream) and where yelling and bullying tiny kids? Fuckinn gross.
That was so awful. I’m glad they’re being charged with child abuse.
Like the Brett Favre Mississippi grifting, this seems to have layers that spiral ever upwards, and it’s easy to get stuck on the lowest levels and leave behind the biggest monsters.
I have no doubt these employees were barely trained minimum wage (or slightly higher paid) workers, because of course Mississippi doesn’t believe in living wages or regulations, and their child care system ranks at the bottom of the country. Raise taxes to fix it? Impossible!
The center is a few hundred yards from a chemical plant that had a scary fire, and the owner is reported to have complained about chlorine fumes for years before.
https://cdispatch.com/news/2010-08-17/tronox-fire-rattles-neighbors/
Note how that article bent over backwards to note the amount of taxes the plant paid and how they reached a level of United Way giving of $10,000 a year. So it all balances out?
The owner of that plant, Tronox, is a corporation spun off by Kerr McGee to take on all of the toxic liabilities of its former parent, and the CEO was forced out after an SEC investigation for insider trading.
Tronox, of course, donates to the Mississippi GOP.
Of course, the press narrative misses any bigger context. Smoking gun video, look no further, and move on.
Washington Post ran an interesting article today about how more white people have been dying of covid in the US for awhile now.
It’s basically MURRICA! And freedom! And socialism!