Lessons of History and Trying To Avoid the Same Mistakes

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

The United States of America has a long, painful history with indigenous people, and the fight for their recognition, rights, and representation is far from over.

The renaming of the Subcommittee for Indian and Insular Affairs in Congress is just one example of how even the language used to refer to Native Americans can perpetuate harmful stereotypes and diminish their inherent sovereignty and status as nations.

For years, Native American advocates have pushed for a name change to the Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples of the United States, which accurately reflects their preferred terminology and recognizes their unique and complex relationship to the land they have lived on for centuries.

This name change finally occurred with the help of Representative Raul Grivjala, but now MAGA Republicans in Congress have changed the name back to the Subcommittee for Indian and Insular Affairs.

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

City Life, Culture Wars and Conspiracy Theories, Paul Krugman, The New York Times

I’ve noted before that there’s an unwritten rule in American politics that it’s OK for politicians to disparage big cities and their residents in a way that would be considered unforgivable if anyone did the same for rural areas. Trump’s false claims about crime weren’t that unusual. There seems to be a widespread sense that only people living a car-centered lifestyle, or a pickup truck-centered lifestyle, are real Americans.

And this in turn feeds into conspiracy theorizing. Making walkable cities possible requires both loosening and tightening restrictions on urban development: Localities would have to allow more construction of multifamily housing and multistory buildings, while restricting car traffic in certain areas.

Remarkably, the right manages to view both looser and tighter regulation as leftist plots.

(full article online()

Opinion | City Life, Culture Wars and Conspiracy Theories

When walkability meets grievance and paranoia.

www.nytimes.com

 

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/9/2157174/-Rep-Jamie-Raskin-eviscerates-GOP-on-the-truth-versus-lies-and-how-Trump-has-infected-their-party?detail=emaildkre&pm_source=DKRE&pm_medium=email

 

[Sixties Fan]

The fear and fury of these Florida parents, Caitlin Gibson, The Washington Post
The effects are already far-reaching: The Parental Rights in Education Act — widely referred to by critics as “Don’t Say Gay” — prohibits educators in kindergarten through third grade from addressing gender or sexual orientation in class, and restricts what teachers in upper grades can say on the topic. The Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act — or Stop WOKE — bars the teaching of critical race theory, an academic framework for examining systemic racism. Books for students of all ages have been removed from public school media centers and classroom libraries after a new state law mandated that all material made available to students be age-appropriate, free of “pornography” and “suited to student needs,” without providing clear guidelines about how those standards are to be applied. Just before the start of Florida’s legislative session this week, GOP lawmakers introduced a slate of new bills that would further overhaul both K-12 and higher education — expanding the limitations on teaching gender or sexual identity through eighth grade, and requiring teachers to use pronouns that match a child’s sex as assigned at birth, among other proposals.

Beyond the public school system, Florida has moved on several fronts. Its medical boards have imposed rules barring transgender children from receiving gender-affirming medical care. On abortion, state law now prohibits the procedure beyond 15 weeks’ gestation, with few exceptions, and a new bill would tighten that restriction to six weeks. And on guns, lawmakers are pushing for legislation that would allow Florida residents to carry firearms without a state license.

At the center of all of this are families trying to navigate the transforming legal landscape of their home state. Parents who do not support these measures describe feeling both fearful and furious. Some have embraced activism for the first time, while longtime advocates have grown more outspoken. Others are just trying to manage what this new reality means for their families and futures.

(full article online)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2023/03/08/florida-laws-parents/?link_id=5&can_id=6e84143cce349aec0c9a0b4e4a28c9c6&source=email-revealing-fox-news-texts-point-to-the-rights-long-war-on-the-truth&email_referrer=email_1840657&email_subject=the-fear-and-fury-of-these-florida-parents

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Other Children in the DeSantis Culture War, Charles Blow, The New York Times
It’s midday on Saturday in Orlando’s Greenwood Cemetery, and just up an incline from an algae-covered pond a group of students encircle a grave. Many are holding a book — some clutching it to their chests the way a preacher holds a Bible.

That book, “A History of Florida Through Black Eyes,” was written by Marvin Dunn, an emeritus professor at Florida International University, who is among those gathered. He quiets the group before telling the gripping story of the man beneath the tombstone. The man was Julius “July” Perry, a Black voting rights activist who was killed — arrested, then dragged from jail by a white mob and lynched — on Election Day in 1920 during the Ocoee Massacre, the culmination of a tragic chain of events set in motion, according to accounts, by a Black man attempting to vote.

The stop at the cemetery was part of the second “Teach the Truth” tour, a field trip to historic Black sites in Florida, organized by Dunn in response to the threat to teaching comprehensive Black history posed by the anti-woke hysteria of the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.

“Teach the Truth” is full of visits to the graves of Black people killed by white racists, cases Dunn told me he focuses on “because those are the ones that are easiest to forget” — the “hard stories” that are, as he says, the ones most in need of preservation.

Opinion | The Other Children in the DeSantis Culture War

Ron DeSantis’s censorship craze centers the feelings of white children. But what about children searching for a history that includes them?

www.nytimes.com

 

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Record 6,700 white supremacist propaganda incidents reported in US in 2022 — ADL

Group's researchers say hate campaigns including fliers, banners and graffiti jumped by 38%, occurred in 49 states

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

The $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News has uncovered even more damning evidence that Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham knowingly lied to their viewers about false claims of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

But there’s one key group of people who haven’t heard the revelations about Fox News: Fox News viewers themselves.

There’s been a near-total blackout of the story on Fox News, and Fox host Howard Kurtz has confirmed that Fox higher-ups have issued orders to ignore the story. Fox has even rejected paid ads that would have alerted viewers about the lawsuit. Other Rupert Murdoch-owned properties, like the New York Post, are also keeping their readers in the dark.

But Fox viewers need to know the truth, and Inequality Media is one of the few organizations with the ability to reach millions of people with videos and other content, across the partisan divide. We’ve spent years building a massive following across social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and we know from data analytics that our audience includes an unusual number of conservatives.

We’re pushing out shareable videos, graphics, and other content alerting Fox viewers and others about the lies revealed by the Fox defamation lawsuit. And if we can help convince even a small percentage of Fox’s audience to turn it off, that could be hugely consequential.
Laura Ingraham called Trump lawyer and leading election denier Sidney Powell “a complete nut,” and still had her on her show. Tucker Carlson said, “Sidney Powell is lying… It’s insane” and that he hates Donald Trump “passionately.” Carlson even demanded that a Fox reporter be fired for fact-checking a false voter fraud claim, saying, “It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

But it wasn’t just the hosts who knew Fox was lying. The cynicism and deceit at Fox News went all the way to the top.

Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch said that Trump was going “increasingly mad” and described Trump’s claims of election fraud promoted on his own network as a “myth.” Jay Wallace, the president of Fox News, said of Fox Business News host Lou Dobbs that “the North Koreans do a more nuanced show.” David Clark, another senior Fox executive, admitted under oath that the Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson shows are “not credible source of news.”

These revelations are incredibly damaging, and that’s why Fox is working so hard to keep their viewers in the dark, banning their reporters from covering the lawsuit and even rejecting paid ads about the lawsuit.

But we can help break through the Fox News bubble by reaching people directly via social media. We’re using proven-effective messages to educate Fox viewers and others across the media spectrum about the network’s lies.


Robert Reich

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ The Republican love affair with deregulation ]

 

[j-mac]

https://twitter.com/MarkJacob16

With all the arguments over whether MAGA Republicans are fascists, I reread William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” to see how much the rise of Hitler and the rise of MAGA smell similar. Conclusion: They do. This thread lists 10 ways. Please take a look.

1. A big lie about treachery is used to foment resentment. Nazis: We didn’t really lose World War I. It was a “stab in the back” by Jews and other "November criminals." MAGA: We didn’t really lose the 2020 election. It was a “steal” by politicians and Blacks in big cities.




2. There’s an obsession with purity of the culture. Nazis: “Racial mixture” was a threat to Aryan culture, Hitler wrote. MAGA: “Great replacement theory” says immigrants threaten white culture.



3. Chaos is something to be exploited, not addressed. Nazis: Economic distress is a great political opportunity. MAGA: Economic distress is a great political opportunity.



4. The super-rich bankroll the right-wing seizure of power. Nazis: Thanks to I.G. Farben, Deutsche Bank, Thyssen, Krupp, etc. MAGA: Thanks to the Mercers, Uihleins, DeVos, Thiel, etc.



5. Some people think the fascist threat is overblown. Nazis: While Hitler posed a major threat, some said he "ceased to be a political danger.” (2 weeks later, he was chancellor.) MAGA: While Trump poses a major threat, many people think it’s “just politics,” no worries.


6. There’s a cult of personality. Nazis: The German army made a pledge of loyalty to Hitler personally. MAGA: Trump’s supporters bill him as “the most moral president” in U.S. history.



7. Christianity is used to legitimize the movement. Nazis: “The party stands for positive Christianity.” MAGA: Trump is described as the “Chosen One” protecting American Christianity.





8. Books are the enemy. Nazis: Any book that “acts subversively on our future” must be burned. MAGA: “I think we should throw those books in a fire,” says a Virginia school board member.




9. An independent news media is the enemy. Nazis: Any newspaper that “offends the honor and dignity of Germany” must be banned. MAGA: The press is the “enemy of the people.”



10. Educators are pressured to be politically compliant. Nazis: Teachers took an oath to “be loyal and obedient to Adolf Hitler.” MAGA: Florida’s DeSantis accuses teachers of “indoctrination” and pressures them to avoid references to America’s racist history and LGBTQ people.



I'm not saying that MAGA will end up as horrifically as Nazism. I am saying that America 2022 feels too much like Germany 1932, and I don't want to take the risk of watching MAGA cultism play out. We have to stop it now.



Why did Twitter put a “sensitive” warning on this thread? Who knows? My only theory is that it has a “hateful symbol”—a swastika on the cover of Shirer’s book about Nazism.

So many Logical Fallacies, so little time....

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

In 2018, ignoring the vocal warnings of experts and advocacy groups, the then-Republican-controlled Congress passed legislation that weakened post-financial crisis regulations for banks with between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets, sparking fears of systemically risky failures and more taxpayer bailouts.

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the California-based firm that collapsed on Friday, controlled an estimated $212 billion, leading analysts and lawmakers to argue that the 2018 law made the institution's market-rattling failure and resulting federal takeover more likely.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who was an outspoken opponent of the deregulatory measure, said in a statement Friday that "President Trump and congressional Republicans' decision to roll back Dodd-Frank's 'too big to fail' rules for banks like SVB—reducing both oversight and capital requirements—contributed to a costly collapse."

But the GOP wasn't alone in its support for Sen. Mike Crapo's (R-Idaho) Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which critics dubbed the Bank Lobbyist Act.

As Warren noted as the bill was flying through Congress, a number of Democrats—including Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), and Jon Tester (D-Mont.)—were integral to the legislation's passage, which led almost immediately to more bank consolidation.

Prior to the enactment of the Crapo bill, which then-President Donald Trump signed into law on May 24, 2018, banks with more than $50 billion in assets were subject to enhanced liquidity mandates and more frequent stress tests aimed at ensuring they could weather economic turmoil.

The 2018 law raised the threshold for the more stringent regulations to $250 billion or higher, a gift to banks like SVB that had been working for years to gut post-crisis regulations implemented under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. The diminished oversight, some argued, is at least partly to blame for SVB's crisis.

"The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank was totally avoidable," Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) wroteon Twitter. "In 2018, Wall Street pushed a deregulation bill that allowed banks like SVB to take reckless risks. It passed, even as I and many others warned of the risks. I am writing legislation to reverse that law."

As The Leverreported Friday, SVB specifically pushed Congress in 2015 to hike the regulatory threshold to $250 billion, with the bank's president touting its "strong risk management practices."

"Three years later—after the bank spent more than half a million dollars on federal lobbying—lawmakers obliged," the outlet noted.

The collapse of SVB, a major lender to tech startups, was the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history and the biggest since the 2008 crisis. SVB's failure came days after it announced it sold $21 billion worth of bonds at a substantial loss, triggering fears about the firm's health and a run on the bank that was intensified by venture capitalists' calls for startups to pull their money.


(full article online)

Trump-Era Deregulation Deemed a Key Culprit in Failure of Silicon Valley Bank

"President Trump and congressional Republicans' decision to roll back Dodd-Frank's 'too big to fail' rules for banks like SVB—reducing both oversight and capital requirements—contributed to a costly collapse," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

www.commondreams.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Ringo]

Here's a lesson:
Dear United States warmongers,
You waited too long to try to use your military, dollar and propaganda to attempt to destroy Russia and China. How about you just accept that you no longer rule the world and if not cooperate, just try to compete with them with your ideas? Ideas of sexual perversion would be best.

When the sanctions failed the U.S. had to realize their dream of destroying Russia and removing Putin would fail. They then decided that they might as well keep the war going, blow up the pipeline, make Europe dependent on them for energy and sell more weapons.

In other words the U.S. Government doesn't give a shit about Ukraine.
People of Ukraine are dying and their country being destroyed for United States geopolitical goals and desperation to maintain hegemony

 

[Sixties Fan]

Last week, Donald Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he could have stopped the invasion of Ukraine by allowing Russia to “take over” parts of the country.

“I could have negotiated. I could’ve made a deal to take over something,” Trump said in a radio interview Monday. “There are certain areas that are Russian-speaking areas, frankly, but you could’ve worked a deal.” The Daily Beast reported last week that Hannity left those newsworthy remarks out of excerpts of the interview that he played that night on his primetime show.

What seems most notable here is that Trump is explicitly saying he might have given Russian president Vladimir Putin something the leader has sought since 2016.

The deal Trump said he could’ve “worked” sounds a lot like the “peace plan” that Konstantin Kilimnik, who the Senate Intelligence Committee described as a “Russian intelligence officer,” pressed on Paul Manafort, then Trump’s campaign chief, in a secret meeting in August 2016 at a New York City cigar bar. The two men continued to discuss the plan until 2018, according toSpecial Counsel Robert Mueller.

Manafort famously gave Kilimnik some of the Trump campaign’s polling data to pass on to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was known to be close to Putin. What gets less attention is what else happened in the same meeting. Kilimnik also asked Manafort to seek Trump’s support for a plan to end fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists, along lines highly favorable to Russia. The idea was to create an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving the Kremlin sway over a valuable industrial area, along with continued control of Crimea, which Russian troops seized in 2014. Kilmnik later said in an email to Manafort that the plan needed only “a very minor ‘wink’ (or slight push)” from Trump if he won in 2016.

Remember: Russia was helping Trump through its hack and leak of Democratic emails. (Kilimnik himself “may have been connected to the hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” the Senate Intelligence Committee report said.) The Trump campaign—both Mueller‘s investigation and the Senate’s found—worked to capitalize on Russia’s leaks. That makes Trump’s comments especially interesting. Andrew Weissmann, a Mueller deputy who prosecuted Manafort, later wrote that the plan for an autonomous republic outlined to Manfort by Kilimnik was the “quo” Putin wanted for the “quid” of assisting Trump against Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.

It seems all of this fell through. We do not know exactly what Manafort did after the Kilimnik meeting. Manafort agreed in 2018 to cooperate with Mueller, but that deal fell apart after prosecutors learned Manafort had continued to lie to them about the “peace plan,” among other things. Manafort was evidently working to stay in Trump’s good graces in a bid to receive a pardon. He later got one. As a result, exactly what Manafort may have told Trump about the proposal remains uncertain. Manafort has claimed he never mentioned the autonomous republic to Trump. And no clear evidence has emerged showing otherwise.

But the explosion of the Russia scandal in the media after Trump won may have been more important, too. Trump, as he himself often complained, was hampered in his dealings with Putin by all the public scrutiny. Left to his own devices, would Trump have given Russia the autonomous region they asked for in 2016? Or would Trump, if he’d won a second term and was freed from ever again facing voters again, have given Putin what he launched a war to seize? Maybe more importantly, what will Trump do if wins again in 2024?

Trump said he might have let Russia "take over" parts of Ukraine. Fox News edited it out.

That's what Russia secretly asked for in 2016.

www.motherjones.com