He treated Barrett like the least important person in the room at her own confirmation hearing. Which she was
— Read on www.thenation.com/article/politics/senate-whitehouse-leader/
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But hardworking Americans who aren’t buddies with billionaire benefactors know that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Now that Clarence Thomas’s true priorities are out of the shadows, he needs to be held accountable.”
— Read on www.levernews.com/thomas-pushed-to-kill-disclosure-laws-while-getting-secret-billionaire-gifts/ -
Tuesday 11 April 2023
Italy:
A number of high-level mafia figures have been arrested, and now, lover level mafia figures appear to be fighting a battle for who will control Rome’s cocaine trade.
Myanmar
The government has bombed an opposition location and killed over 50 people.
Afghanistan
The Taliban has issued an order for the UN not to employ women in Afghanistan. The UN is now in the position of deciding whether to withdraw from the country or to stop hiring women.
US: Georgia
The Coalition for Good Governance (CGG), an organization that has worked tirelessly to improve voting transparency in Georgia, has filed a formal petition seeking essential voting system security mitigations in response to a 2021 breach of the state’s voting system and software.
The work of the CGG is crucially important for Georgia and for other states whose voting systems have been installed and maintained by Republican controlled state governments. Like so many other charges made and popularized by the Republicans, the charge of vote tampering has been taken over by the Right. It is another example of loudly accusing Democrats of doing what they are doing.
Democrats are therefore, reluctant to make charges of vote tampering. Whenever I bring this issue up in casual conversation, I am accused of supporting the right. The Republicans have been successful in covering their own illegal behavior behind charges that the Democrats are the ones doing the vote fixing.
“Coalition for Good Governance (“CGG”) filed a formal petition today with the Georgia State Election Board seeking essential voting system security mitigations in response to the 2021 breach of the state’s voting system and software. Trump allies, funded by Sidney Powell, accessed and copied the state’s voting system software and Coffee County, Georgia’s electronic data from the November 2020 election and the January 2021 U.S. Senate runoffs. For months, the nation’s top cybersecurity and voting system experts have urged Secretary of State Raffensperger and the State Election Board to address the elevated risks and vulnerabilities of Georgia’s voting system, given that the state’s software is “in the wild” after the breach and can be used by bad actors to develop vote-stealing malware.”
The Georgia State Elections Board and Raffensperger have been aware of the software breach for well over a year and have been warned by experts that the system needs safeguards. They have ignored this information. The question is why?
US: The Right
Over on AMVO, Steve Bannon’s channel, they are showing a Hitlerian rant by Alex Jones. Both Jones and Bannon are issuing a call to war, literally.
• “They” are trying to ruin Trump’s business.
• Bannon: “We are at war.” “Their number one target is Donald Trump.”
• Jones: “We are in a war.” “Trump looked more John Wayne than John Wayne.” We wanted to “override the (vote) fraud” “People didn’t realize just how serious the situation was.” “We exposed the Soros mole.” “by half time, we lost via fraud.” “If people just get serious.” “donate” “take over peacefully your local government.” Put pressure on the governors to pardon people, “like what just happened with Texas.” We should have “viking war drums” “Steve Bannon should have been up there.” “We are in a war, we got to be serious.” “extremely life and death” “We are on the verge of nuclear war.” “We are on the verge of a Chinese invasion.” “The US. In at war with Russia.” “this is life and death people.”
• Bannon: How do we impose our will on the deep state to take our government back?
• Jones: “I am going to lose if you don’t get in the fight.” “Let the enemy know, you will never break us.” (Talking about football and movies, talking about shooting a woman). “stand up and win.”
- Bannon: “They’re trying to destroy you.” (Talking about Jones).
- Jones: “They had rigged courts.” “kangaroo court.” “harassing my family” “You are the real power.” “whether this world survives” “aggressively, make it fun” “enemy” “we are promoting freedom instead of tyranny” “the liberty movement” (Selling his book, pimping for his websites.) “we’re invincible.” “Only you can carry the ball” “make it the focal point of your life” “the globalists are evil.” “we are quiet professionals” “you gotta get serious…”
- Bannon: “Field Marshall Alex Jones” “take over the Republican party” “you have camaraderie you never had” “debt ceiling”
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I first encountered Jeff Sharlet watching a series on Netflix, “The Family.” Sharlet, out of interest in religious groups (and the request from a friend’s family to find out what the hell their son was doing in what they thought was a cult) agreed to spend some time with a Family of men living in the suburbs of Wasington, D.C.
This group of young males, in their twenties, gardened, cleaned up after and even cleaned toilets for the powerful men who came to stay at the Georgian mansion on the property. The work was said to be a way of humbling themselves in the eyes of God.
There were not many rules for the group, just constant bible talk, no sex, and a lot of basketball. But, there were enough comings and goings for Sharlet to get the image of what actually was going on in this Family Compound. The Family had national and even international visitors all well chosen to provide high-level deals. In a community with few rules, three of the most important were that the deals were not to be talked about, the group was not to be talked about and no one was to allow himself to be be identified as a member of the group.
Sharlet got enough information to write two books about The Family. Many on the inside considered him a turn coat, a plant, but Sharlet maintains in the documentary that he never intended to write a tell all story about them. It just happened. He felt that the men and the connections they had made and their potential power made them too important not to write about.
Sharlet has come out with a new book “The Undertow,” and is doing interviews. The following notes are on an interview he did with Democracy Now.
Podcast: Democracy Now
• https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/democracy-now-audio/id73802554
• Book: The Undertow
• Conspiracy theories form an appealing rabbit hole where you feel you have some kind of special knowledge.
• Sharlet is highly critical of the 60 Minutes – Interview of MTG.
• This interview, Sharlet maintains, is a masterclass in how not to tell stories about fascism. Lesley Stahl thinks she occupies the center and that her arched eyebrow can still effectively convey to an audience condemnation of someone like MTG and what she says in the interview. Polite disapproval is just not enough when you are dealing with fascists.
• MTG is not a rising a star, she is not trying to enter the same cosmos as someone like Lesley Stahl.
• You cannot fact check a myth. It is not based on a claim to reality. The power of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Trump is in spectacle.
• B-roll of Stahl strolling along looking at MTG’s lawn conveys the message: You thought she was dangerous, here I am walking along with her.
• People like MTG are going to remake this country in a fascist image.
• Ashley Babbitt, for example, was turned into a martyr.
• They aged her backyard. First she was over 30, then in her 20s, then 16, an innocent white girl killed by a black police officer. It is the lynching myth all over again.
• Babbitt has joined air force, motivated by 9/11. But, something around 2016, which gave her license to indulge. She was deep in debt and she gave in to this undertow. She gave in to the misogyny and racism. She felt free giving in to her worst impulses.
• This temptation to give in to the undertow is not unique Trump or the Trump movement. There’s fascism around the globe. Turkey, Brazil until recently, Myanmar. There is a global fascist moment.
• This is in part due to the failure of neoliberalism, the pandemic, the unprocessed grief associated with the pandemic, whites feeling as if they are losing their way of life, fears about climate change. All of this turns into rage.
• And, authoritarian leaders like Viktor Orban, of Hungary are part of a worldwide move toward fascism. Orban recently tweeted his support for Trump after the indictment in New York.
Book: The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War
Other Books by Jeff Sharlet
The Family (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_(miniseries)
2019 Article about The Family in the Atlantic
Frat House for Jesus, the New Yorker
The National Prayer Breakfasthttps://www.vox.com/2018/7/18/17586516/jeff-sharlet-maria-butrina-national-prayer-breakfast-the-family
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An Instant New York Times Bestseller. One of America’s finest reporters and essayists explores the powerful currents beneath the roiled waters of a nation coming apart. An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence. Across the country, men “of God” glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war—a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the Far Right, everything is heightened—love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our forty-fifth president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood. Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community, and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all. Exploring a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our precarious present that brings to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility.
— Read on books.google.com/books/about/The_Undertow_Scenes_from_a_Slow_Civil_Wa.html -
This image should be enough to shock anyone into taking action against the spigot of dark money that flows directly from billionaire donors into the court.
— Read on slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/04/clarence-thomas-broke-the-law-harlan-crow.html -
Faced with a new regulatory push, the industry spent over $65 million lobbying Congress and federal agencies in 2022.
— Read on truthout.org/articles/chemical-industry-spent-millions-lobbying-against-regulation-of-toxic-substances/ -
Harlan Crow also has a garden full of dictator statues.
— Read on www.washingtonian.com/2023/04/07/clarence-thomass-billionaire-benefactor-collects-hitler-artifacts/ -
Latest news from Ukraine today. Heavy losses among Wagner group force Russia to deploy elite army units to storm Bakhmut – Ukrainian military. Follow updates on Euromaidan Press.
— Read on euromaidanpress.com/2023/04/09/heavy-losses-among-wagner-group-force-russia-to-deploy-elite-army-units-to-storm-bakhmut-ukrainian-military/ -
www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/08/ukraine-russia-war-slovakian-mig-29-jets/
Slovakian MiG-29 fighter jets given to Ukraine are faulty and can’t fly combat missions because Russian technicians sabotaged them, Slovakia’s defence minister has said.
Law, Power, and Justice 