US President Donald Trump’s decision to sign off on the latest $900 billion COVID relief bill has the stock market soaring. Ordinary Americans? Not so much, considering they will now get $600 checks instead of the $2,000 checks Trump was demanding when he said he would veto the bill.

Trump Flip-Flops on $2,000 Checks

After complaining about the bill’s chunks of money for foreign aid and various wasteful government programs, Trump eventually signed off on it. Unemployment insurance temporarily lapsed over the Christmas weekend as a result of Trump’s delay in signing the bill into law. It was already previously approved by the House and Senate.

Senator Bernie Sanders called the delay “unbelievably cruel” due to the fact that the bill contained provisions protecting people from eviction and other measures, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Trump’s waffling was a sign of incompetence and disregard for the American people. Now that the bill is law Pelosi claims it will help “the millions more struggling to stay afloat during this historic pandemic and economic crisis.”

Other Democrats sounded off even more loudly about the threatened veto, with Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia saying Trump played “Russian Roulette with American lives.”

In addition to helping pay for the $600 to most Americans, the bill reups jobless benefits, help for small businesses, airlines, farms and other industries as well as money to pay for vaccines and education budgets. The attached Omnibus spending bill will keep the government running until the end of this coming September and avoid a federal government shutdown.

Specifically, the bill also gives $100 a week extra to self-employed and regularly employed workers whose self-employment income isn’t factored into the size of their unemployment checks. The bill will give $300 extra per week to unemployed people, down from $600 extra per week that ended this summer. In terms of eviction protection it will give $25 billion in help to tenants who are facing eviction.

Why Did Trump Back Down on His Demands?

Legislation being pursued by Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri and Sanders to get Americans more help during the pandemic typifies the converging economic populism of the Trump right and the Bernie / AOC left. Both wings were thoroughly beat down by Congress: AOC said the 5,593-page bill was too long to read and signed off anyway, while Trump said it was a “disgrace” and still backed down and signed it.

Why?

The first answer is likely simple pragmatism: in order to keep the government running and avoid an unemployment and eviction crisis right now the President and Congress passed the buck and signed off on the pork barrel-laden bill.

Trump — who is back stumping for the two Republican candidates in the upcoming Georgia runoff elections which could determine the balance of power in the Senate — seems to have been reined back into Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Randian establishment GOP zone of comfort. In addition, Trump may have signed off because a potential check increase can be discussed in the future now that the bill is law, even though it’s unlikely to pass.

Similarly, Trump’s previous veto of the NDAA defense bill — that he disliked for limiting troop withdrawal options, focusing on Confederate name removal from monuments and doing little to take on the monopolistic and speech policing of Big Tech — was overridden by the House by 322 to 87 votes — handing Trump two big losses on his way out the Oval Office. As in so much of his presidency, Trump’s populism is a lot of talk without much action, blocked both by his own mercurial and erratic style of governance and the malicious economic ideologies represented by key GOP powerbrokers.

Kentucky Senator McConnell — a smooth political operator if there ever was one — is married to Elaine Chao whose family-owned Foremost Maritime Inc. has strong ties to the Communist Chinese government. The McConnells are worth over $34 million combined. Foremost received a bulky loan worth more than $417,000 as a result of The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act which was passed by Congress earlier this year in March.

McConnell said that even though the $900 billion relief bill isn’t “perfect,” it will do “an enormous amount of good for struggling Kentuckians and Americans across the country who need help now.”

Perhaps McConnell would like to trade and get just $600 while he can divide up the 400K at a local food bank in Kentucky, which has over 700,000 people living in poverty including 21% of its childhood population. More than 10% of Kentucky’s population also has no healthcare coverage.

Congressional Hypocrisy Rises to New Heights

A number of other budget hawks and Democrats who signed off on this $600 check relief bill also got major cash and loans via CARES, including Republican Representative Vern Buchanan of Florida (estimated worth $73 million) who got a $2.8 million loan for four of his companies. Republican Devin Nunes of California got $2.95 million from CARES for two wineries and farms that he has a stake in, while Democrat Earl Blumenaeur of Oregon (estimated worth $4.5 million) got $432,000 for two of his companies and Democrat T.J. Cox of California (estimated worth $11.8 million) nabbed $609,000 for two of his enterprises.

Many members of Congress have businesses and are in leadership at private firms and organizations. This is permitted under US law as long as the company is not publicly traded. Handing themselves handouts from money meant for businesses going under is the height of hypocrisy, particularly in cases such as that of Republican Carol Miller of West Virginia.

Miller works as a legal assistant to her husband car dealership chain, which got over $3 million in CARES loans even though West Virginia’s Governor Jim Justice said dealerships were essential in March, calling into question why they would need an emergency infusion of loan funding.

What Happens Now?

There is the chance of negotiating higher additional checks in the future, although the timetable means that for now most people will be getting only $600. The Democrats have a majority in the House and used it Monday to approve the CASH Act bill for $2,000 checks — and was later brought forward in the Senate for unanimous consent as Chuck Schumer has said he would do. This action has the potential to throw the GOP into disarray as well as potentially humiliate and undercut Trump. The Republicans hold a majority in the Senate and thus are in the awkward position of voting down a popular proposal that Trump had previously backed if it ever goes to vote.

Members of the party like Hawley and Representative Elise Stefanik clearly feel differently than McConnell and Co., however, with Stefanik saying that $2,000 checks are a must-do in order to address the “dire need of relief” among the American people. It remains to be seen if enough Republicans split off that the increased checks can pass.

The McConnell wing of the GOP has a deep donor list and long reach. They are not interested in handing out bigger checks or expanding into anything resembling populism. Although they are fine funding wasteful defense contracts — with rare exceptions such as Rand Paul and recent GOP defector Justin Amash — the thought of ordinary Americans having more money makes the McConnell crowd balk.

As Republican Mo Brooks of Alabama said recently: “it’s money we don’t have, we have to borrow to get and we can’t afford to pay back. Someone’s got to show me how we’re going to pay for it. How far before we all go into debilitating insolvency and bankruptcy?”

Sanders said he will object to McConnell’s attempt to override Trump’s veto on the defense bill in the Senate, which would throw a wrench and delay into proceedings and put pressure on McConnell to sign off on the $2,000 checks.

The outcome of this dramatic, chaotic and tragic transition of power and political crisis remains to be seen, as 2020 goes down in the record books as the deadliest year in American history.

L'articolo Why Did Trump Back Down on COVID Stimulus Bill? proviene da InsideOver.

Brazil held municipal elections on Sunday, Nov. 15, with a runoff round set to take place Nov. 29. The votes are a helpful way to assess the relative strength of Brazil’s right-wing populist President Jair Bolsonaro, who rode to victory on a surge of push-back against Brazil’s left in 2018.

Four Bolsonaro-backed candidates in the cities of Sao Paulo, Manaus, Recife and Belo Horizonte lost their races, leading Tom Phillips of the Guardian to characterize the results as a “setback” for the firebrand leader. In total the elections saw 5,500 mayors and 57,000 city councilors elected to power.

Despite the President’s son Carlos Bolsonaro winning re-election to city hall in Rio de Janeiro, the overall effect of this election is a resurgence of Brazil’s left-wing parties and a drift from Bolsonaro.

But naysayers should be careful about writing off Bolsonaro just yet, and the upcoming 2022 presidential election is still well within his grasp.

Bolsonaro’s Background

Brazil’s national populist leader — who holds the rank of Captain in the Brazilian Army — has been under sustained attack by mainstream media in the country before and after his 2018 election to lead the 209.5 million-population South American nation. Bolsonaro was almost stabbed to death in the summer of 2018 while running for office during a campaign stop in Juiz de Fora by a mentally ill, left-wing fanatic associated with Brazil’s Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (Socialism and Liberty Party, PSOL).

Bolsonaro lost around half of the blood in his body but survived, going on to win the presidency. He was boosted in part by feelings of solidarity from his sharing of his daily recovery process with voters.

Like US President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro successfully engaged in a process of disintermediation, cutting out the middle man and the polite language of political discourse and communication, instead talking directly in whatever way he wanted through social media and in person. He shouted, swore and said whatever he felt like, ranting against Brazil’s ascendant left, and millions of Brazilians rose up and joined him.

While maintaining a friendly relationship with Trump and attempting to shore up Brazil’s economy from the effects of a coronavirus lockdown, Bolsonaro has been repeatedly smeared in the media and had his outlandish comments on race, homosexuality, crime and his support for extrajudicial killings of communist militants blared across the front page in frantic condemnation. He expressed a desire to punch a reporter for O Globo newspaper in the face this August and recently complained about the cowering attitude of the country in the face of the coronavirus, which Bolsonaro has previously survived.

So far 5.8 million Brazilians have contracted the coronavirus and 165,658 have died of COVID-19-related illness, according to the World Health Organization.

Brazil is Divided

Brazil is certainly divided between those who tend to be more pro-Lula (former left-wing President Luiz Lula da Silva) and those who favor Bolsonaro, but the country is also losing a lot of middle ground to center parties and a mixture of other candidates. Despite losing almost half of its prefectures, Brazil’s Marxist Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, PT) and similar left-wing parties still have considerable. Brazil’s 14 percent unemployment and high national debt coupled with hard choices ahead about deep cuts in spending that could be necessary may be keeping Bolsonaro up at night, however at the end of the day he is still in a very strong position.

The runoff round on Nov. 29 will provide a better snapshot, but at this time it’s clear that Bolsonaro can’t “coast.” Nonetheless, he’s still got millions of very energized citizens in his base and is likely to keep showing up for him. Even if Bolsonaro keeps losing power in urban areas, smaller cities and the countryside will – by and large – rally to his side for God and country when push comes to shove and those numbers are sure to add up. After all, as Bolsonaro has exclaimed: “God is Brazilian!”

Support for Bolsonaro Remains High

Although Brazil’s left would like to argue that Bolsonaro is a lame duck slated for the back pond come 2022, the truth is that support for him remains high. His 2018 campaign slogan: Brasil acima de tudo, Deus acima de todos (“Brazil above everything, God above everyone”) still has power to rally many Brazilians to the voting booth. The idea that Bolsonaro’s authoritarian statements and tendencies have alienated voters is far from certain and many still remember the corruption of Lula and past leftist politicians with bitter specificity.

Brazil’s PT party went too far for many citizens under Lula and his successor and former Marxist guerrilla fighter Dilma Rousseff who was impeached in 2016. The PT was seen by many center and right-leaning Brazilians to be too close to instituting a dictatorship and as a deeply corrupt money-laundering apparatus leeching off the nation.

Bolsonaro, despite scandals which have arisen with his sons and certain dealings in government, was widely regarded as a fresh start and a push back against the dominant left of Brazil which is often hard-line and informed by militant Marxist ideology, including parties who are friendly to terrorist organizations such as Colombia’s narco-terrorist Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) group.

Although the state elections won’t have much direct effect on federal proceedings, Bolsonaro will be facing more headaches as his state governments continue to erode to the left and center. In addition, Trump’s apparent loss in the United States, the results of which Bolsonaro questions, puts him in a weaker position. Indeed, Joe Biden has directly threatened to punish Brazil’s government over problems in the Amazon. But to assume these local election results mean Bolsonaro is done in 2022 is far from a sure bet.

L'articolo What do Brazil’s Local Election Results Mean for Bolsonaro Going Forward? proviene da InsideOver.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris swooned as a drone swarm spelled out “BIDEN” in the shape of the continental United States, lighting up the night sky above Wilmington, Delaware on Nov. 8. Coldplay’s “Sky Full of Stars” blared as supporters cheered. Biden spoke of national unity and being a president for all Americans. It seemed almost like a return to regularly-scheduled programming: back to the type of generic commander-in-chief from the movies with his practiced turns of phrase, comforting gestures and grand rhetoric.

The Biden-Harris victory rally was accompanied by celebrations of many Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans, Independents and neoconservatives, all of them busy cheering on the impending departure of the “Cheeto King”. Former US National Security Adviser and Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration Condoleezza Rice — who previously motivated support for America’s military mission in Iraq by claiming that a lack of action would result in nuclear attacks on American cities — called for “respect” and “empathy” in celebration of Biden’s win.

A ‘Win for the World?’

The Biden-Harris win was supposedly a “win for the world.” (Insert “arc of justice” phraseology, smirking European self-righteousness and other overblown silliness here). No more mean tweets or largely rudderless, erratic leadership characterized as “authoritarianism”: the world is saved. There’s even support for Biden from former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Tik Tok users posted about how different it was to watch Biden’s typical speech after “four years of fascism.” No word on why anyone would feel safe to express such views in a truly fascist system, especially if the handover of executive power has not yet taken place. It’s almost like the Trump administration is just enough fascism to be scary and super bad and show that you’re an incredible person for opposing it but not quite enough to actually result in you being shoved you in an unmarked van and disappeared for dissident speech. Interesting.

Voter Fraud Allegations

Overly credulous support for allegations of widespread voter fraud have been just as disquieting as smug certainty that there was no voter fraud. It’s clear that at least some voter fraud against Trump and the Republican party did take place. Although it seems accurate that Trump is drawing out the situation in order to leverage political capital and hang on to an illusory hope of still winning in the courts, it is true that he could still end up victorious in Arizona and Georgia. Some kind of miracle recount comeback in Pennsylvania (despite some claims of mass fraud) and Wisconsin seems like pie-in-the-sky, but the Trump team’s attempt isn’t as completely insane as some pundits have asserted.

The idea that controversy is purely imaginary is somewhat presumptuous, and — even despite that — the millions of Americans who still believe the election was stolen and will continue to believe that regardless of what transpires in the coming weeks presents a major roadblock to Biden’s supposed “unity” and healing. Should Trump concede? At this point the chance of actually overturning the election look miniscule, so yes he should. Will he? Likely not for some time yet, and don’t hold your breath to see Trump at Biden’s inauguration, either.

What’s Next in America?

The Civil War touted by many is nowhere to be found. Gun stocks have even been falling because of the lack of all-out chaos some were predicting. It’s been a bathetic outcome so far. Stop the Steal rallies have been largely harmless, despite some incidents. What would have happened if Trump had won is a far different story, and one can only imagine suburbanite BLM activists boosting the antifa and left-activist hardliners in intensifying the chaos that already swept the nation after the death of George Floyd.

The 242,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19 are undoubtedly the main reason Trump lost the election. Although 96% of those who have died also had underlying health conditions, officials have been alarmed at the surge in excess deaths caused by the comorbidity of the coronavirus and caution that most of the 96% likely would not have died without contracting coronavirus.

Trump owns the grassroots of the GOP despite his loss. Record high voter turnout shows that Americans are engaged and energized by the electoral process, and record high minority votes for Trump also show that Democratic narratives about the president fell flat for many Hispanic, Black and other minority voters. Politics increasingly seems to be equally or as much about generalized class and cultural confrontation as specific policy beliefs.

Conservatives Have an Opportunity

The Biden Administration won’t have carte blanche. With Mitch McConnell still heading up the Senate Biden is going to have to compromise on many core legislative proposals. His plan to create “millions” of jobs with green and renewable energy projects could pay off, but Biden’s continuing flip-flopping on the bizarre “Green New Deal” calls into question exactly what his mass projects would entail and how they would affect fair competition with existing industries.

Conservatives also have an opportunity to push back on everything from critical race theory to overwrought woke dictates in education and other sectors that are likely to come from the Biden administration. The new president will be in a largely awkward position where it’s near impossible to pass meaningful leftist legislation but his base wants results and eventually tires of repeating that Harris is the first woman of color female vice-president. As Biden attempts to satiate its foaming-at-the-mouth hard-left base by giving them socially-left-wing cotton candy while as much as possible avoiding any real systemic economic or corporate reform this will present a growing field of opportunities for conservatives to push back institutionally and legislatively.

The Future of the GOP

There is no reason to believe the GOP will remain fundamentally united following this defeat. It is increasingly likely that partisan politics will continue on a trajectory of inter-partisan politics, with the Trump and national populist wing of the Republican party splitting off and forming its own media empire, platform and candidates and the establishment “polite” wing of the GOP currying favor at the Biden administration and trying to carve out a new slice of the electorate that’s not fully liberal on all issues but shies away from the red meat of full-on Trumpism.

As stated, Trump now owns the activist base of the GOP and Reaganism is not coming back at the grassroots level. Trump has re-appealed to minority, working class and forgotten voters who had drifted from the GOP and his legacy could ostensibly be used to build a national populist coalition of socially conservative and economically populist voters who disagree with establishment Republican and Democratic cosmopolitanism and economic free market dogma.

Despite losing, the fact that there was no “Blue Wave” is promising for the Republican party once midterms and 2024 roll around.

The Future of the Democrats

By gaining power the Democrats have been able to temporarily patch over their own fractured party, at least for now. The idea that the American center and left has truly formed a grand coalition is, of course, pure fantasy. The far left still wants “Death to America” and to think they will be assuaged by a Biden-Harris administration is absurd.

Nonetheless, the Democrats will likely be able to keep the corporate train rolling despite clashes that are likely to continue to occur in the future in places like Portland. Presumably some mix of identity politics, coronavirus panic measures and papered-over neoliberalism with occasional nods to environmentalism and pro-abortion rhetoric will manage to satiate their activist left base and allow them to continue sidestepping actual positive reforms for the working class. Essentially the Democrat’s win means they can now fake it for four years, whereas the broken Republican party no longer has that luxury.

The longer-term view, however, is one in which the Democratic party increasingly starts losing immigrants, minorities and social democrats who are no longer satisfied by woke rhetoric or agree with the Democrats on some issues but find their compliance with foreign military adventurism and strident intolerance of socially conservative views off-putting.

Party On?

The Big Tent concept of American politics is barely holding together. Look for hyper-partisan politics to increasingly become inter-partisan politics, with surging numbers of voters disillusioned with both major political parties. The Sanders and Trump voters have burned their memberships at the Donkey & Elephant Country Club and there’s not much chance of getting them to rejoin.

L'articolo Party in the USA proviene da InsideOver.

Tuesday night’s presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was an all-out brawl of incoherent insanity.

Banana Republic Brouhaha

Held in Cleveland, Ohio, the debate “moderated” by Fox News‘ Chris Wallace was supposed to be focused on the candidates’ records as well as the pandemic, the Supreme Court, economic performance, ongoing violence and racial tension across the country.

Instead the evening was focused on trying to hear what anyone was actually saying over the constant interruptions from Trump – and occasionally from Biden – and the endless, rapid digressions, accusations and lies.

It’s hard to overstate the manic meltdown that occurred during the debate. The bumbling brouhaha seemed more fitting to a banana republic and had about as much substance as peeling wallpaper. At times watching the verbal assault taking place onstage was genuinely nauseating.

Trump thoroughly overpowered Biden, heckling him minutes into the debate and undercutting everything he said two or three words into every sentence.

“Will you shut up, man?” Biden said at one point, cowering.

One-Way Bullet Train to Crazytown

The two gabbling garrulous gerontocrats duked it out onstage in front of an audience just under 100 who had been carefully screened for coronavirus at a clinic across the street. Trump, who was recently nominated for a third Nobel Peace Prize faced down the Delaware Senator as the debate went steadily off the rails into crazytown.

Sticking by standard politics and doing the “talking to the folks back home” tactic simply wasn’t effective in the hyperspeed schoolyard antics on display. Politics has becoming pro wrestling and the Hunter S. Thompson-esque fever dream of Tuesday night was sincerely alarming – not for reasons of “civility” and “norms” but because of how unintelligible most of it was even for political insiders.

This was even a step up from the 2016 Trump vs. Clinton debates which at least had some genuine repartee. This debate, by contrast, was like watching a scrolling stream of angry and nonsensical YouTube comments posted by howling monkeys.

Trump had several strong moments such as when talking about Democratic conspiring to take down his presidency which has now been revealed in documents and Biden fumbled several softballs such as lying about Hunter Biden taking money, flip-flopping on whether he supports the Green New Deal and refusing to answer about court packing, but most of the debate was just half-cocked statements from the President and attempts to redirect the discussion into personal attacks on Biden and his family.

This included a near-constant stream of misinformation and throwaway one-liners from Trump such as his bizarre lie that he has made insulin “so cheap, it’s like water.”

Not Learning the Lessons of 2016

The Democrats have apparently not learned much from 2016. Biden had several strong moments but mostly seemed out of his element as he was assailed constantly the whole night and let himself be bullied and talked down by Trump.

During the last election Trump partly one by making the race visceral and instinctive rather than rational or conversational. The Democratic inability to understand that and come up with a more aggressive candidate than Biden shows a remarkable lack of will to win or a perception of what politics has become.

Respectability politics is out and garbled answers on antifa and street violence aren’t going to cut it or reassure voters. However, more to the point, whose minds will actually be changed by watching this debate? If anything it will simply add new worries to Biden voters that he’s not up to the job and that his administration will simply be a Trojan horse for other people’s policies — which, incidentally was a core insinuation of many of Trump’s accusations during the “debate.”

Biden is stuck in an unwinnable political position between the progressive left and the center during a time of crisis. He may still win the election but if he does it will only be by default.

The Big Loser

The big loser of Tuesday night was indisputably Chris Wallace who managed to be completely overpowered by Trump despite trying to placate him (by telling Trump certain questions would make him “happy”) and then visibly siding with Biden on multiple occasions.

Wallace also interjected with his own opinions frequently, incorrectly referring to critical race theory as “racial sensitivity training” when in fact it’s a jobs program for radicals. Wallace also frequently regurgitated stale Democratic talking points to try to give Biden a lift as he flailed behind the podium.

Despite these hands up, Biden had many misses, failing to explain what it means to “reimagine” the police and blaming Trump for lack of economic growth while also saying more should have been done to shutdown to fight the coronavirus.

What’s Next?

Next up, there will be a debate between Vice-President Mike Pence and Vice-Presidential nominee Kamala Harris on October 7 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

For those with a strong stomach, the next presidential debate is set for Oct. 15 in Miami with a final presidential debate to be held ten days prior to the election on Oct. 22 in Nashville, Tennessee.

L'articolo Biden Debates Trump in Banana Republic Brouhaha proviene da InsideOver.

The crux of the US case against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is simple: he put American and allied lives at risk through his exposure of classified material from military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The proof of this claim is where the problem arises for the prosecution. Because there isn’t any solid proof.

Assange is in ill health and reportedly a high suicide risk. According to a psychiatric assessment Assange has resigned himself to die if the British court ultimately decides to extradite him to the US and he has already made his confession to a Catholic priest and started writing goodbye letters to family in the event that extradition is ordered.

The Assange Case

Assange started Wikileaks in 2006 and it entered the spotlight after releasing troves of material in 2010 relating to US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan accessed by US Army intel analyst Chelsea Manning. These included videos showing US military members killing Reuters journalists. Further material also exposed numerous lies and misleading actions taken by the Obama Administration and intelligence community and exposed worldwide diplomatic corruption.

Assange was accused of sexual assault in Sweden in 2010 although the case was eventually not pursued. Assange fled the charges and the mounting political firestorm around his work at Wikileaks by hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he was given asylum so that he wouldn’t be extradited to the United States as a result of his publishing actions pertaining to the US national security establishment.

In 2016 Wikileaks put out another massive release of Democratic National Committee documents that were partly credited with helping Donald Trump win the presidential election. This anti-Hillary Clinton move lost Assange many of his former progressive backers and has left him out to dry politically, abandoned by the left who formerly loved his work exposing the Bush Administration and on the target list of the Trump Administration and the GOP. Nonetheless it is fair to say Assange currently has much more backing among Trump supporters than among most mainstream progressives and centrists.

Despite 2018 charges against Russian spies from Special Counsel Robert Mueller over working with Wikileaks to release the DNC material, Assange has stated that he never cooperated with Russia.

Assange’s 2019 Arrest

Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in April, 2019 and given 50 weeks in prison for breaching bail. He was charged with violating the Espionage Act by the US the next month. His trial over extradition to the US began in May, 2019 and he is currently jailed at HM Prison Belmarsh in the UK.

An unsealed indictment in 2017 charged Assange with working with Manning to cover her tracks after hacking classified materials and US grand jury hit him with 17 more spying charges last year.

Assange’s lawyers warn of up to 175 years behind bars if he is convicted of all 18 charges.

What’s Behind the Additional Charges?

The additional 17 charges against Assange stretch back to the Obama Administration’s fervent pursuit of hacking groups, particularly Assange and Wikileaks. The charges are also part of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s ongoing crusade to punish Wikileaks at all costs.

The charges are mainly cobbled together from past investigations and are full of holes where evidence should be and timeline irregularities. It’s quite apparent that the main purpose of the additional charges is to get charges which will be severe enough to prompt an extradition to the US.

Trump called for Assange to be executed in 2010, praised him during the 2016 election for utilitarian reasons, later claimed to not have much idea who Assange is in any case and has since softened into hoping Assange just stays “quiet” in jail. Trump-supporting congressman Dana Rohrbacher reportedly offered Assange an end to the extradition proceedings and a presidential pardon in a 2017 meeting at the Ecuadorian embassy if he would name his source on the DNC leak and thereby exonerate Trump of Russian collusion. Assange refused.

Potential Extradition to the United States

Assange and Wikileaks provided Americans and people all over the world with valuable information about what their governments and military leadership were doing. Now that he faces potential extradition to the United States it’s worth asking why there isn’t more media attention.

One of the few individuals who’s been reliably chronicling the proceedings is historian and former ambassador Craig Murray. His work has shed a lot of light on the monkeying around that is going on in the case and the actions of Judge Vanessa Baraitser which he has witnessed first-hand. As Murray wrote on Sept. 24:

“It has been clear to me from Day 1 that I am watching a charade unfold. It is not in the least a shock to me that Baraitser does not think anything beyond the written opening arguments has any effect. I have again and again reported to you that, where rulings have to be made, she has brought them into court pre-written, before hearing the arguments before her. I strongly expect the final decision was made in this case even before opening arguments were received.”

Amnesty International monitors have not been allowed to observe the ongoing hearings, despite in the past being allowed to observe human rights situations from Guantanamo Bay to Turkey.

Assange’s legal team is correct in arguing that the charges against him are political and should not potentially trigger extradition. The evidence that the campaign against Assange is political is evident to anyone who takes even a cursory glance at his case and the bipartisan witch hunt against him by what Trump terms the “Deep State.”

The Assange Case is an Assault on Transparency

Every reputable news organization lists methods for sources to leak to them securely and without being caught. It’s called journalism. Encryption in journalism is not a crime, in fact it’s basic source protection.

Assange’s help of Manning to get around being caught was not criminal, and the argument that Wikileaks is not actually a publisher and doesn’t deserve journalistic protections is bogus as well. Trying to arbitrarily separate them out as not a publisher is mere sophistry and it doesn’t even matter, anyway.

The First Amendment and press freedom is not some specialized club that just applies to the Washington Post. It’s for the right to print words short of incitement that reveal information and hold the government accountable. If we regress to an increasingly blinkered view of who is a journalist or not the free press will be even more impacted – and less respected – than it is in today’s currently tense environment.

Progressives and anti-Trump conservatives seem very alarmed and angry about Trump’s attacks on the press and criticism of unfriendly journalists. Every day seems to be a new “how dare he!” But when it comes to Assange you can almost hear the birds chirping at most mainstream outlets.

Trump’s mean words about Jim Acosta make headline news, but a man rotting away in a jail cell for publishing material in the public interest is nowhere to be found on CNN. In fact, even some progressive journalists like Intercept founder Glenn Greenwald have only been given platforms on shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight now that MSNBC and other outlets have moved so far into the corporate wing of the Democratic party they even won’t give alternative views a hearing.

The Obama Administration’s previous pursuit of Edward Snowden reflects a similar pattern of executive overreach. Trump’s musing of potentially pardoning Snowden shows that despite his past harsh statements on Assange he’s aware of how these cases are being prosecuted to protect the system of endless war and the perpetual bolstering of the military-industrial complex.

If Assange dies in prison with hearings stretching out interminably or is extradited to face additional charges and prison time in the United States it will be a clear signal to journalists and truth-tellers everywhere to shut up about anything important or face similar consequences. Trump should pardon both Snowden and Assange and upset James Clapper, Susan Rice, John Brennan and James Comey’s self-righteous dinner party. Why side with the very people who oppose him?

Whether you support Assange and believe he’s pursuing a noble and necessary mission or think he’s a pretentious stooge hopped up on Russophilia, the underlying fact remains: the prosecution of Julian Assange is a threat to the free press.

As the character Tyrion says in Game of Thrones: “When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”

L'articolo The Prosecution of Julian Assange is a Threat to the Free Press proviene da InsideOver.

The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Sept. 18 has shaken up the 2020 election and is sure to plunge an already dramatic election year into a raging political firestorm. Already dealing with riots, massive forest fires, economic problems and a global pandemic, the United States now faces an election that might actually be the most important in many people’s lifetimes — and not just in the way that the line has been previously employed for the sake of political rhetoric to get voters to the polls.

A conservative replacement will be appointed soon. US President Donald Trump will reportedly nominate a woman to SCOTUS this coming week.

RBG’s Record

Ginsburg took her seat on SCOTUS in 1993 under President Bill Clinton and served there almost three decades. She was often part of the dissenting opinions as conservatives held a 5-4 voting majority for many years, bolstering the image of her as a feisty fighter and underdog.

RBG was a committed progressive who was staunchly in favor of abortion rights and legislating for increased labor protections and rights protections for women and minorities. Her dissenting opinions became well-known for their fiery conviction about gender equality, including landmark rulings on a women’s right to administer estates and get survivor benefits when their husband died.

Cases such as these and more made RBG into a feminist and progressive icon as she rose up the ranks and became prominent in the national eye.

Who Will Trump Pick?

Trump will most likely select Barbara Lagoa or Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacant SCOTUS seat. Both picks have various advantages. Both are socially conservative, devout Catholics, but there are some compelling reasons in favor of each from the right-wing perspective.

Barrett works for the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago since being put there by Trump in 2017 and previously clerked for Justice Scalia. She’s a former law professor who is believed to be committed to overturning landmark abortion ruling Roe vs. Wade. 

Lagoa has more judicial experience than Barrett and was put on the 3rd District Court of Appeals by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush in 2006. She moved to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th District in 2019 under orders from Trump. Lagoa is conservative, but is not as strongly opinionated on Roe vs. Wade. As a Cuban-American from Miami, however, she could also help solidify Trump’s growing support among Hispanic Americans and help him win the key state of Florida.

Left characterizations of Barrett as a “Catholic extremist” tend to tip the scales in favor of her being chosen by Trump. Furthermore, choosing Barrett would allow Trump to jeopardize much of the media and Democratic party’s emphasis on Biden’s Catholic faith. Is Hunter Biden also a “Catholic extremist” for having a large family? Is Biden a “good Catholic” for being liberal but Barrett is a “bad Catholic”? These are exactly the kind of litmus tests that will further sink the already disastrously falling support for Democrats among Hispanics and other portions of the electorate.

Republicans Want to Fill RBG’s Seat ASAP

Trump is promising that RBG’s seat will be filled quickly, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has pledged to confirm Trump’s appointee, although there’s no guarantee that will happen before election day on November 3. In order to confirm the pick the Republicans would have to be singularly unified without losing more than three party member confirmation votes.

Senators do not like being pressured on SCOTUS appointees and generally like to take their time to make a lifetime appointment to the vitally important court, and there’s a chance that the GOP could lose more votes than it could afford from Senators who are already finishing up their political career anyway, don’t support the pick, and don’t care any longer about the political suicide of not voting to confirm a new conservative justice.

Regardless, progressive fury at the perceived Republican hypocrisy will be intense. President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in the spring of 2016 was declined by the Republican-controlled Congress who insisted that the presidential election must be finished before a SCOTUS nomination could move forward. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch was put in the seat in 2017.

McConnell wouldn’t move forward then on the other party’s pick, but he will now on his own party’s selection.

This should not surprise anyone, particularly as federal politics has slid into an all-out brawl in the past few years and Democratic tactics have become increasingly intense and gloves-off as they seek to oust Trump from office. There is no reason to expect the GOP to play fair or adhere to standards of political civility at this point.

Biden has already emphasized that the nomination should not take place until this presidential election is decided, but has declined to put out a list of who he would potentially nominate were he to become president. It is also possible that Democrats will put through some legislation to make it easier to pass laws in the Senate and allow them to possibly expand the Supreme Court and end the impending Republican power play.

More Possible Choices to Replace Ginsburg

Although reports say Trump has narrowed it down to Barrett or Lagoa, other women on the shortlist include Bridget Bade from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Martha Pacold from the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Sarah Pitlyk from the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, deputy White House counsel Kate Todd, Joan Larsen of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Britt Grant of the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and Allison Jones Rushing of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

It is always possible that Trump will go with one of these women instead, as he is known for his unpredictability and has already changed his mind on a SCOTUS pick, having previously remarked he’d put Senator Ted Cruz in but recently announcing that it will be a woman instead.

Political Calculus

The Republicans could have held off on naming a replacement in order to further intensify the election and boost evangelical and socially conservative turnout. Making the 2020 election a referendum on Roe vs. Wade and whether the GOP would get the chance to put a conservative on the bench under a re-elected President Trump would have strongly enthused many right-leaning voters.

However, naming a replacement now has several advantages for the GOP. Firstly it can be seen as another feather in Trump’s cap and another win for voters to reflect on when they cast their ballot. Secondly, the Democratic party and left-leaning electoral meltdown that is sure to come as a replacement is named and vetted will likely provide unrest, dramatic rhetoric and behavior that will actually decrease support for the Democrats in crucial swing states and boost Republican voter turnout.

RBG’s reported statement prior to her death that she wishes above all that a replacement not be appointed until a new president is “installed” will further inflame angry progressives and intensify their threats and accusations of rank hypocrisy from Republicans for their previous refusal to allow Garland to proceed forward onto SCOTUS.

Various celebrities and establishment liberal figures have already made outlandish and possibly illegal statements inciting violence and promising that they’ll die before they allow the GOP to put in a replacement for RBG and “burn the entire f–ing thing down,” in the words of TV host Reza Aslan, for example.

What’s Next?

If Trump nominates Barrett the media and national uproar will be considerable. The hearings will be intensely partisan and bitter, but the election would be clearly tipped in Trump’s favor. Even a less contentious pick than Barrett is likely to result in a meltdown by coastal elites and progressives. Look for late night talk shows and other broadcast mediums for coastal folks to go absolutely bonkers, and don’t be surprised to see increased street-level agitation and unrest.

The United States is now in the unenviable position of melting down over race relations and politics with a contentious Supreme Court hearing on the horizon. No matter what happens, the death of RBG is likely to go down as a pivotal point in US history and what comes next is likely to be dramatic on the political and popular level.

Trump got a major boost in 2016 with the chance to fill the Supreme Court with a conservative justice, and his later appointments of Gorsuch to replace Scalia and Brett Kavanaugh to replace Anthony Kennedy helped bring many evangelicals and social conservatives over to his side and see him as a winner who gets things done. The death of RBG is likely to be what wins Trump the 2020 election and assists his administration in reshaping the federal bench to become more conservative across the board.

L'articolo RBG’s Death and the 2020 Election proviene da InsideOver.

A recent report in Wall Street Journal notes that Venezuela is entering a post-oil era, and now produces only 10% of what it did two decades ago. From one of the original co-founders of OPEC to a sanctions-ravaged nation that’s also struggling with the coronavirus pandemic and endemic poverty.

The Current Situation

Over five million Venezuelans have found ways to leave the country in the past five years and the remaining population mostly lives below the poverty line. Gas shortages are common and many houses don’t have enough propane to cook food with their rudimentary propane tank stoves.

The biggest American company still operating in Venezuela is Chevron – which has been active in the country for almost a century – but the others took the exit door more than a decade ago when former leader Hugo Chávez amended their contracts to terms they did not agree with. Chevron will be closing up most of its in-country operations by December of this year due to increasing sanctions pressure which will also hit other key oil companies which have been helping Venezuela turn its crude oil into dollars.

Brief Historical Snapshot

In the 1970s, Venezuela had the highest GDP in South America, but still had festering poverty and income inequality between its booming upper class and everyone else. When military man and committed socialist Chávez took the helm in the late 1990s he distributed oil income to the people and subsidized the cost of gas to make it cost almost nothing.

Chávez also strengthened ties with Cuba and by 2006 he began using legislation and contract amendments that hiked royalties to make doing business in Venezuela unprofitable in order to force foreign oil firms to turn over their wells to the state oil behemoth Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PdVSA). Most did turn over control and summarily left the country.

Corruption by government insiders and a failure to really pay attention to the vast oil infrastructure under PdVSA control led to a revenue decline and after Chávez’s death in 2013, the global oil price drop in 2014 delivered the knockout punch to the Venezuelan economy.

Chávez’s successor Nicolás Maduro — facing ongoing US and Western efforts to install Juan Guaidó as president in his stead including by new US envoy to Venezuela and war criminal Elliott Abrams — has taken action to get around sanctions by selling to allies like Cuba and getting help from Iran, as well as cracking down strongly on domestic dissent. The Trump Administration put a $15 million bounty on Maduro several months ago.

As some turn against Maduro and blame him for the poverty and political repression in the country, others support his government more strongly and agree with him that Western imperialism is at the root of Venezuelans’ suffering.

Income Implosion

The Venezuelan government is now faced with taking in significantly less money than it has in the past, with their lack of input to OPEC quickly being made up by other members and rising US refinery production quickly offsetting any Venezuelan gap.

Cars, buses and trucks are seen much less on the roads now that gasoline is being sold at near market prices. Despite plans to fix the industry, so far it continues to suffer under sanctions and the Venezuelan economy is in ruins. Private industry was significantly weakened by government seizures and policies and

Has the Bolivarian Revolution Lost Popular Support?

Problems of getting enough food, electricity, running water, medicine, medical care and the loss of the good times under Chávez have certainly taken their toll, and the growth of opposition groups in the country can’t only be ascribed to foreign meddling, but also as a reaction to the dire situation in the country, rash of extrajudicial killings and a lack of coherence within the ruling United Socialist Party.

Many farmers aren’t even harvesting most of their fields, since there’s not enough gas to get it to market in the cities and many essential workers are also having trouble getting to work because of the cost of gas. Maduro is facing international isolation on an intense scale, and the US is still working hard to put Guaidó in charge via a “transitional government” structure that would sponsor transparent elections.

Chávez formed a strong base of support through an authoritarian military-led socialist government, but without the economic underpinnings to sustain support it’s fair to say that Venezuelans are far from united around the current government.

Status Quo and Collapse

If the status quo continues, full collapse is possible and more emigrants rushing to leave is a likely scenario. If allies can help get Venezuela’s government through this time and money from drugs and black market mines flows sufficiently along with a heavy hand by security forces that stay loyal then collapse could be averted. Still, if nothing is done it is fully possible Venezuela will become a power clash between many different groups and see increased intervention from Russia and Cuba.

Another option is for Maduro to use the US transition mechanism to bargain for time, talk more to the opposition and buy himself time. This could also be used by Washington as a way to slowly oust him from power and bring about regime change, although it could also lead to the current government digging in its heels even further or leading to a cobbled together government of Chávista (including anti-Maduro Chávistas such as Somos Venezuela “We are Venezuela” who have grown disillusioned with his government) and opposition elements trying to keep the country together as it continues to buckle under sky high inflation that neared 10 million percent by the end of last year.

What Does the Future Hold for Venezuela?

Another option US analysts consider possible is for a temporary government to be set up that would hold fair elections where Maduro, Guaidó and others could run for office in return for lifting sanctions and helping out financially with the country. Armed colectivos enforcing government dogma must also be disarmed in order to prevent chaos breaking out.

The truth is that cynicism against US involvement in Latin America and world affairs has become so high – for partly valid reasons – that bad actors around the world are able to exploit fear of change or transition to cling to power. In order to truly believe in a free or fair scenario, the current government and array of opposition groups would have to trust in a range of conditions including justice and an independent judiciary that will be there for the victims of the current government and inclusion of as many different voices as possible who will agree to non-violent and non-corrupt involvement.

For such trust to happen, however, the regime would have to see more of an upside to relinquishing a grip on power than to holding on, which is quite unlikely at this point.

The current disintegration of Venezuela’s oil economy is part of a broader portrait of a country in collapse.

L'articolo Venezuela’s Oil Sector Grinds to a Halt proviene da InsideOver.

A new book by Wall Street Journal reporters Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck exposes the blatant hypocrisy and corruption of Saudi politics and its crown prince, deputy prime minister and minister of defense Mohammad bin Salman (MBS).

Welcome to the Party

Bin Salman’s over the top behavior and ruthless actions are part of a wider pattern of many Gulf elites who act out their hard-partying fantasies in lavish playgrounds around the world and pursue money and power at any cost.

Hope and Scheck’s book Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman’s Ruthless Quest for Global Power details some jaw-dropping incidents of corruption and bin Salman’s partying, such as a 2015 trip to the Maldives with a small group of other friends and colleagues where the entire island of Velaa was rented out for $50 million for a month-long celebration. Bin Salman insisted that no modern smartphones be used and took extra precautions that the time on the island would be private and would not leak to the press.

Bin Salman was 29 at the time and had 150 gorgeous women flown in from around the world and famous musicians Pitbull, Afrojack and the Korean rapper Psy. The women were tested for sexually transmitted diseases before bin Salman and his friends met them and copious alcohol, which is illegal in Saudi Arabia, was served. At one point bin Salman got excited during an Afrojack show and jumped onstage to take over the DJ table from him as his compatriots cheered.

The planned celebration was cut short before one week was up, however, after it leaked to the local press and bin Salman and his entourage packed up and quickly departed.

Getting Rich

This is just one episode in the life of MBS, who owns a 439-foot yacht and numerous homes worth in the hundreds of millions including a $300 million chateau near Versailles, France. He worked his way up to becoming extremely wealthy despite growing up as not overly rich by royal standards because of his father King Salman’s indebtedness to various princes and corporate figures.

The first way MBS reportedly made a lot of money was by selling off expensive gold coins and lavish watches given to him as presents, a trick that earned him $100,000. He went on to found a garbage disposal company and real estate company and got the nickname “Father of the Bullet” after sending a bullet to a man who wouldn’t sell him a piece of land he wanted.

MBS is close to Jared Kushner and his country is a close ally of the US. Due to Muslim beliefs, Saudi Arabia has strict penalties for drinking alcohol, taking drugs, premarital sex and many of the other behaviors which members of its family have engaged in abroad.

Money Talks

The Saudi royal family is the richest family on the planet and is worth an estimated $1.4 trillion. That is more than 16 times more than the British royal family. Oil is the main source of revenue for the 15,000-member royal family who inhabit luxurious villas and palaces around the country.

Furniture made out of high-grade gold is very popular among members of the royal family, as is dabbling in other pastimes like art collection. MBS paid $450 million for the painting Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World) by Leonardo da Vinci in 2017 and he also has plans to buy a soccer team. 

While the royal family is massively rich, many Saudis are not. It is a common misconception that because the government is well off the people must be as well, but in fact 20 percent of Saudis live in poverty and many can’t afford to buy a home. The country has a significant and growing problem with income inequality. As Scheck and Hope outline in their book, this is one of the reasons MBS wanted his time on Velaa kept secret because he is aware of the Saudi people’s disgust at the behavior of the royal family buying expensive cars in the UK or throwing outlandish parties.

Corruption Central

Like the nearby United Arab Emirates, which is also suffused with corruption, Saudi Arabia is a den of greed and double-dealing bolstered by huge oil reserves and a very powerful military. Saudi Arabia is the largest importer of weapons in the world and has one of the strongest military forces in the Middle East as well as a powerful foreign lobby which often shields royals who make mistakes abroad and works to abduct dissidents who are living abroad.

Royals who go against the grain aren’t safe either, and in the past Prince Sultan bin Turki, Prince Saud bin Saif and Prince Turki bin Bandar were abducted because of their criticism of the government, as well as the 2018 murder of journalist and American resident Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

Riyadh helps its own citizens escape justice when they commit crimes in other nations such as the US, which happened in the case of Saudi citizen Abdulrahman Noorah who sped through a school zone and killed a 15-year-old student in 2016. Riyadh posted $100,000 bail for Noorah, who faced a charge of manslaughter. Despite giving up his passport and wearing an ankle monitor, however, Noorah disappeared and a week later was back in Saudi Arabia beyond the reach of American justice, since Riyadh has no extradition treaty with Washington.

According to declassified FBI documents, Riyadh “almost certainly” helps Saudis get out of the US who have done crimes including manslaughter, rape and possession of child pornography. Ali Alhamoud is another Saudi citizen who escaped back to Saudi Arabia after being charged with multiple sexual assault charges in the US. Saudi authorities deny all accusations that they help citizens escape charges abroad.

Another of the many, many cases occurred in 2015, when Saudi Prince Majed Abdulaziz al-Saud fled after a three day party at a mansion he was renting in Beverley Hills, where he was accused of raping multiple women including a bleeding woman who was found trying to escape.

The Bottom Line

The partying and wealth of Saudi royals like bin Salman exposes deep hypocrisy but is also a veneer on an unjust society. Saudi Arabia has a growing problem with poverty and most people don’t have good access to education, healthcare or even fully functioning sanitary systems and housing.

The country is also full of numerous abusive practices, such as domestic maids often brought in from Southeast Asia and stripped of their passports. Some maids report being made to work 18 hours a day and sexually and physically abused. Thousands of maids become so desperate they run away and try to do anything to escape; 5,000 ran away between 2013 to 2014 alone.

Hope and Scheck’s book documents MBS’ rise to power and the culture of greed and ruthlessness which surrounds him and which he embodies. Western countries who want strong economic and military ties with Saudi Arabia may not care much, but helping prop up a corrupt oil monarchy is not something that should be high on the list of any self-respecting nation.

L'articolo New Book Showcases Saudi Crown Prince’s Blatant Hypocrisy proviene da InsideOver.

Massive crowds of protesters rallied in central Berlin on Saturday, Aug. 29 to protest coronavirus lockdown measures. Police ordered the crowd to disperse for breaking distancing rules and at least 300 arrests have been made.

How Big Was the Protest?

There were only 18,000 protesters present according to Deutsche Welle and 38,000 according to Reuters, although one protester who was at the protest called Andrea, who preferred that her full name not be used, said she estimated there were definitely hundreds of thousands and as many as 500,000 protesters. She believes the mainstream media was deliberately downplaying the amount of support for the protest.

Andrea said she and other protesters walked 8 kilometers around the city center because there were so many people and police had cordoned off the overcrowded central area and blocked a planned parade from taking place.

“At the main demo there was a huge crowd of people around the Brandenburg Gate,” Andrea said. “It was really dramatic because when we came past the embassy of the Americans and the Russians there were people outside who were demanding a peace treaty and a new constitution for Germany. Police came and arrested some of them and the others went away.”

Who Organized the Protests?

As a fairly grassroots protest there were various groups involved, but the main initiator of the protest was a Stuggart-based group called Lateral Thinking 711 which mobilizes followers online via social media like Facebook and Telegram.

The event had protesters from across the political spectrum from right to left and had a common theme of not believing that restrictions on freedom are necessary or valid and that the government is lying about many aspects of coronavirus and the reasons for the lockdown.

Protester: ‘Last Chance for Germany and the World to Remain Free’

Andrea said she attended because she no longer trusts her government to uphold basic democratic freedoms and does not believe the virus is as dangerous as health authorities claim.

“We could end up in authoritarian or even totalitarian surveillance and hygienic state without freedom and humanity. We need free media, but nobody listens, so we demonstrate,” Andrea said. “For me this is the last chance for Germany and the world to remain free, for our children to remain healthy and not get vaccinated, not get forced under a mask, not get quarantined all the time, locked down, not get all our basic economy and basis of living destroyed even further by all these lies the media and politicians tell us. They are all very corrupt.”

“This is the last chance for our freedom. If it doesn’t work out now, we are lost,” she added.

RFK Jr.: Lockdown Part of a Shift Toward a ‘Totalitarian’ World System

Remarks were made by Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the son of the late RFK and nephew of JFK, who stated that a powerful medical lobby wants to force unsafe vaccines on children and citizens and that the demonstration in Berlin was the site of an uprising against the new totalitarianism of worldwide surveillance and tyrannical global government which RFK Jr. terms a “bio-security agenda” run by Bill Gates and powerful political and corporate figures.

“They are in the process of shifting us towards a digital currency, which is the beginning of slavery,” Kennedy told the assembled thousands. “Because if they control your bank account, they control your behavior.”

Kennedy made further remarks that the pandemic is being intentionally used by plutocrats to crush the middle class.

“The pandemic is a crisis of convenience for the elites who are dictating these policies. It gives them the ability to obliterate the middle class, to destroy the institutions of democracy, to shift all of our wealth to a handful of billionaires to make themselves rich by impoverishing the rest of us,” Kennedy stated.

Germany and Coronavirus

Germany has recorded 240,986 cases of coronavirus and 9,289 deaths, many occuring with comorbidities. The country has seen less coronavirus-related fatalities than other European nations of a similar size.

Experts have credited this to Germany’s high testing rate, strong institutional and hospital capacity, rapid response once outbreak occurred and emphasis on preventing elderly patients from contracting the disease.

L'articolo Germans Flood the Streets of Berlin to Protest COVID-19 Restrictions proviene da InsideOver.

In law, boilerplate is copy-paste legal language that’s often used as the basis for drawing up standard contracts and other documents. In politics, boilerplate is the current state of the major American political parties: the Republicans and Democrats.

Miracle Economy Spring Water and Fighting Internalized Whiteness

Nowithstanding the obvious changes brought about by COVID-19 restrictions and the ensuing virtual nature of this year, the conventions were both oddly fake in their own ways, with political rhetoric spouted like ads from an all night infomercial or a Scientology grand world conference of some kind (Karen Bass might have been into it if Biden hadn’t gone for Kamala Harris instead).

Whether it’s miracle healing water that will fix anything under the sun and make the economy dance a jig or pious sermons on how to heal from whiteness and offer boilerplate pseudo-compassion-talk it all just seems like products trying to force a new market to exist.

You wake up with a headache and you don’t buy the product. All you want to forget is that it ever existed or that other people still buy it.

The word we’re looking for here is cringe.

Republican Rebranding

Still, there have been noticeable shifts in messaging. The GOP is clearly aimed at branding itself the new party that cares about working people and hitting Biden’s strong points of coming from a working class family and being from a less technocratic and older wing of the Democratic party.

And it could definitely work for them to score a repeat of 2016’s success in breaking the Democrats’ blue wall.

Still, though. It’s just so transparent.

One more infomercial about steelworkers or small farmers screwed over by the Obama Administration and you could form a new Republican film genre: Blue Collar-sploitation. “Hey, uh, Jim? Can you get the mood a bit more down, but like also determined? Turn your face more in profile.”

Calluses on hands, check. Hard-won, wry smile, check. Reluctance to get into politics but conviction that Donald Trump will still save us all from greedy Chinese people and deranged Democrats by saying provocative things, check.

Please, Just No

Between Kimberley Guilfoyle breaking the glass ceiling of volume in a speech to a bizarre, hyper-speed speech from Don Trump Jr. and boilerplate rhetoric from many other suave suits it was Alice in Republican-land. What new actual policies will be put in place or efforts to improve the country from the Republicans? The main focus instead was on socialism and saying the word socialism as many times as possible in a menacing tone of voice like you were just burning the cover of a covert spy overseas (oops, Trump already did that last year).

The convention advanced a fake version of Trump’s response to the coronavirus and overall seemed like a CPAC convention more than a political convention.

Nonetheless, the President pulled off a speech that will fire up the base despite its rambling, utopian boasts and there were also some powerful messages from pro-life activist Abby Johnson and Cuban escapee Maximo Alvarez. There was also a message from hounded Covington Catholic School student Nick Sandmann who brought up some important points while managing to look and sound like a robot or a character from a Lifetime movie that replays every night at 3 a.m.

In a seeming dig at Trump, who is often mocked by the mainstream media for bringing up how important ratings are, the New York Times noted that the first night of the GOP convention had lower viewership than the Democratic convention’s first night.

Democratic Dabbling

The Democrats, for their part, have a mottled platform that dabbles in some democratic socialism but caters more to Wall Street. Their convention showcased a party that is full of words and grand statements with little actual substance apart from keeping donors happy and spending and making sure Bill Clinton can talk about ethics with a straight face.

While candidate Joe Biden received praise for an energized and well-delivered speech that made some tough claims and bristled with emotion and conviction, the majority of other remarks and speakers were entirely forgettable, with former President Barack Obama using his abilities as a gifted orator to deliver a hypocritical, annoyingly unctuous speech.

Indeed, the slickly produced Democratic convention was full of the kind of virtue signalling pablum that is just a mirror image of Republican “freedom and liberty” rhetoric. For the Democrats the bad guys are all racist, hate-filled or religious wackos. They hold their convention using Biden as a pretext to inhale their own rhetorical flatulence and pat each other on the back in their rarefied party world of mock solidarity and pretend change.

Dullards Acting Out

The Democrats desperately want to pretend to be for the “little guy.” They are a Broadway Show live-staged on Pennsylvania Avenue full of pomp and circumstance that ultimately means next to nothing and is more like a surrender to cultural degeneration and political inertia.

“We’re the rebels,” they insist, while collecting checks from Goldman Sachs and rubbing shoulders with large, suddenly very woke corporations. They bring up all the old Iraq War boosters like John Kerry and Colin Powell to talk about “decency” and line up their new Republican muppets onstage to say some version or other of “my goodness, how horrid.” They buy full page newspaper ads of all the national security officials who support Biden.

This doesn’t win elections, to say the least, although focusing on how the “establishment” supported Clinton was one of the big ways that Trump managed to seize victory in 2016 despite his dire lack of experience or readiness.

The Script is Getting Old

For the Republicans, the Democrats are comprised of self-satisfied hypocrites and elitists as well as manipulated minorities and nagging nobodies who are obsessed with policing language, being offended and eating vegan food while talking about socialism. On the Republican side they compare Biden to Fidel Castro (seriously, what?) and have this shiny apple version of bowtie conservatism whose time has already come and gone.

Rightist politics is orange now because people didn’t want that polished schoolboy image anymore. Leftist politics is Bernie now because people didn’t want the neoliberal veneer. Both sides will do their best to talk about their embrace of their activist bases while making sure not to implement many of the major policies.

More voters will lose interest in the coming years and eventually split off from the national populist right and democratic socialist left. It’s a neverending cycle.

Drive-Thru Politics

I call it drive-thru politics. You pick a buzzword and a color and you munch down on the delicious political pickles and extra mustard and talk about how lame the other guy’s burger tastes. You get a momentary jolt of satisfaction: “I’m right and they’re wrong! Forget those idiots!” Then in a few hours you’re hungry again, however. The meal you ate had no substance, it just gave you a temporary food buzz.

You crave more high sugars and a delicious industrial sized bucket of freedom fries to fill the hole you just created by drinking a bunch of Coke and scarfing fries, so you let Nikki Haley fill you with puerile neoconservative political propaganda and Hillary Clinton whine about her disapproval of the electoral college system and how unfair the 2016 election was.

You try to feel that jolt of righteous anger. How dare they say that! But soon it dies down and you need a new jolt (this is not an energy drink endorsement of Jolt).

People are Smarter Than This

The truth is that people are smarter than this. Some of them, anyway.

A growing number of Americans are politically unaffiliated for a reason. They know the fix is in and that politicians are mostly heavily compromised. These “forgotten men and women” often turned up to vote for Trump, or Bernie Sanders, or any politician they felt could shake things up in the past. Boilerplate political conventions and signalling from both sides while American cities like Kenosha are engulfed in chaos and racial tensions are at a vicious high won’t bring over many new voters.

The new virtual era we’re in exposes a drive-thru politics that’s always – in some form – been a drive through politics. A veneer on real life and a self-stylized representation of scripted empathy that spiked even further after the introduction of television into politics in the 1960s. In fact, Richard Nixon was even convinced he lost his first race to JFK because of the latter looking better on TV in their debate, and it could be partly true.

Zooming Towards the Digitized Virtual Horizon

It’s a time of screens as we Zoom towards ever more fake virtual horizons, trying to drum up some inspiration from a broken system by legions of the people who helped break it. Many on the left will say Biden may not be perfect but he is much better than Trump; many on the right will say the exact same thing about Trump vs. Biden.

Then there’s everyone else.

The voters who aren’t a fan of either party and don’t feel represented or convinced by drive-thru politics may indeed show up to cast a ballot for Trump this November, but for many it will be because they don’t know what else to do other than stay home. The same will be true for many who show up to say yes to a Biden-Harris presidency.

The upcoming election will be like a kid being picked for a sports team because nobody else is left to pick, except this is picking the next most powerful person in the world.

Is it just me or is a telephone book selection system looking mighty tempting right about now?

L'articolo A Tale of Two Conventions proviene da InsideOver.