Tag: Protests

This is Literally the Least We Can Do as a Society

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You know, when people make their fortunes off the misery of the rest of society, we should be able to do more than just make it difficult for these malefactors to green-wash their names.

The fact that the Louvre has removed the Sackler family name from its Oriental Antiquities wing, and artists are withdrawing from the Whitney Art Museum’s biennial art show over a board member’s business supplying tear gas used on asylum seekers.

I am not enough of an optimist to think that this is the start of something.

Instead, I see this as a marker of our impotence as a society to deal with the immorality and misdeeds of our billionaire class. 

It’s their world, and we just live in in at their sufferance.

I Expect to See Chinese Tanks in Hong Kong

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While Beijing may be loath to kill the goose that laid the golden egg, but there is one thing that will make the PRC crack down on Hong Kong, and that is if it results in fallout with Taiwan.
It now appears that the Hong Kong protests are now stoking the fires in Taiwan, and while the Chinese do not currently have the resources to enforce their will across the Taiwan Straight, they do .

Basically, anything indicating a move toward a Taiwanese declaration of sovereignty, and the People’s Republic will completely lose their sh%$, and if they tie this to Hong Kong protests, I would expect a military intervention there:

The protests in Hong Kong which have reverberated around the world have had more impact on Taiwan than anywhere else.

The anxieties they triggered about Beijing’s intentions toward Taiwan came to the boil in demonstrations in Taipei. On Sunday June 23, for example, a rally by around 5,000 mostly young people against Hong Kong’s controversial extradition bill was followed by a much larger protest involving hundreds of thousands criticizing Chinese influence on Taiwan’s media.

They urged the government to take action against the so-called “Red Media,” a reference to local outlets purchased by business people with interests in China.

While the Red Media are at the front of the Taiwanese protesters’ complaints, the extradition law is clearly not far behind. The fear that Beijing is tightening its grip on the former British colony exacerbates Taiwanese people’s fears about their own futures — and brings Taiwanese and Hong Kongers closer together.

I have a bad feeling about this.

Follow the Money

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You know those people wringing their hands over the “incivility” on college campuses?

They are bought and paid for by the Koch Brothers, so we know that they are not paid to tell the truth:

There is a war on free speech, and the front lines are YouTube ads.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that, following the outcry of politicians and commentators over YouTube’s temporary decision to demonetize the videos of conservative pundit Steven Crowder, who makes money from the ads provided by YouTube’s platform. Crowder had been called out by Vox journalist Carlos Maza for a long history of homophobic abuse, including calling Maza “a lispy queer” and selling T-shirts that say “Socialism Is for Fags.”

The incident set a certain set of free-speech warriors ablaze. Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, and other pundits who have made their name online for defending free speech—particularly those organized under the umbrella of the so-called “Intellectual Dark Web,” or IDW—have made Crowder a martyr of a pernicious war on civil discourse.

You’ve probably heard their arguments before: They claim to be opposed to censorship, “no-platforming” (when people are excluded from online or offline forums because of the views they express), and any attempts to discourage the open expression of ideas. These figures—who self-identify as classical liberals, conservatives, and libertarians—say that their project is completely non-ideological: It’s just about giving everyone a fair hearing.

………

TO UNDERSTAND THE origins of the free-speech movement, its priorities, and its funding, you have to start not at today’s social media battlefields, but at college campuses. The narrative that has emerged in recent years is familiar: College campuses have become ground zero for a new generation of intolerant leftists.

………

These actions go far beyond mere personal animus. In peeling back the curtain on the funding networks that have popularized the IDW’s cause, an even more nefarious picture emerges: a coordinated, strategic effort by right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers to extinguish any opposition to their political, economic, and social agenda.

Don’t take my word for it—Richard Fink, president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, has openly bragged about it. According to his “Structure of Social Change” philosophy, the goal of the Koch Foundation’s philanthropy is to make grants in a strategic way so as to best affect public policy and influence broader social change. And what does Fink insist is a key part of this strategy? You guessed it—college campuses. Koch money is all over organizations that advocate for campus free speech, like the infamous astroturf group Speech First.

But it goes much deeper than the obvious, ideological nonprofits—many members of the IDW are directly involved with Koch cash.

Dave Rubin’s influential podcast, The Rubin Report, for example, has a financial partnership with Learn Liberty, a think tank started by the Koch-funded Institute for Humane Studies (IHS), where Charles G. Koch himself sits on the board. When the Canadian government denied Jordan Peterson funding for his work, Rebel Media—a group funded with Koch money and headed by Ezra Levant, a far-right Islamophobe with ties to the Koch network—raised cash for him (Peterson has since returned the favor, fundraising for the IHS). Ben Shapiro has collected speaker fees from the Koch-funded Young America’s Foundation and Turning Point USA. And Bret Weinstein was hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Stout’s Free Speech Week, a project of their Center for the Study of Institutions and Innovation—funded by, you guessed it, the Charles G. Koch Foundation.

It’s not just the IDW itself: Some of its key popularizers also get Koch funding. Bari Weiss and The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf—who has been one of the most visible defenders of Peterson in the mainstream media—have both received cash prizes from the Koch-funded Reason Foundation, where David Koch himself sits on the board of trustees. And remember “The Coddling of the American Mind”? Well, one of its co-authors, Greg Lukianoff, is the head of that campus free-speech watchdog, FIRE. That organization is funded, of course, by the Koch brothers (for good measure, the Charles Koch Institute also did a laudatory write-up of the piece).

The Atlantic is perhaps the worst offender. Last year it launched “The Speech Wars,” a reporting project that seeks “to understand where free speech is in danger and where it has been abused.” Even though the magazine had just been bought by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs and was seeing all-time high circulation and web traffic, The Atlantic solicited funding for the project from none other than the Charles Koch Foundation (the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Fetzer Institute are also underwriters).

………

The mission of the free-speech movement, from its IDW evangelists to its Koch funders, is to advance right-wing ideas, to marginalize those on the left who challenge them, and to mobilize useful idiots of the center as political cover. It’s tempting to dismiss this as conspiracy, but the Kochs have left a paper trail of their designs on suppressing the speech of any who disagree with them. Documents released last year by George Mason University—a hotbed of libertarian scholarship—show that in exchange for giving millions of dollars to the university, Koch-controlled entities were given influence over academic affairs, including faculty appointments and hires, and even student admissions. A similar controversy had emerged years earlier over a Koch Foundation gift to Florida State University. With the Koch brothers estimated to have spent over $250 million on more than 500 colleges and universities, it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to see the impact that could have on suppressing left-wing speech.

It’s not just the Kochs. FIRE, for example, has also received funding from the right-wing billionaire Olin and Scaife families. Through the right-wing media sites The Daily Wire and PragerU, the billionaire Wilks brothers have helped bankroll the rise of IDW stars Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan. In the U.K., William Davies has written about how the right wing promotes its agenda under the guise of “free speech” in the exact same way. And as investigative reporters like The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer have shown, this isn’t just about a couple of billionaires throwing some money around: It’s an organized project by an elite class to preserve its power in the face of an existential threat from the left.

………

What makes the free-speech movement most nefarious is it takes those of us best equipped to stop this trend—the left and marginalized communities—and claims that we, who have for so long been silenced by those in power, are the real threat to free speech. That’s an issue far greater than Steven Crowder and YouTube ads, and one that we must all work to fight. Our very freedom—to speak, to protest, to challenge power and live dignified, fulfilled lives—is at risk.

If you think that this is tin foil hat, you have not been paying attention to what the right wing has been doing since August 23, 1971.

I Drink Your Milkshake

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Matt Gaetz got milkshaked in Pensacola pic.twitter.com/yqz3bPgjw5

— jordan (@JordanUhl) June 1, 2019


She is thinking of Daniel Day-Lewis in this Mug Shot

Milkshaking, protesting by tossing dairy beverages at racists, appears to have moved from the UK to the United States.

Representative Matt Gaetz just got milkshaked.

I do not support milkshaking. I think that is unAmerican.

In the United States, we favor “2nd amendment solutions”, so put down the milkshake, and pick up the gun:

A newly minted British tradition—throwing milkshakes at idiot conservatives—has arrived on the shores of the New World at last. That’s right: milkshaking has come to the good old US of A.

 The target of said milkshake attack, which conservatives are already bemoaning as a sign of the end of civilization, was Rep. Matt Gaetz, who was pelted with a shake in his Florida district on Saturday, according to WKRG. Don’t worry, there’s video. 

At the time of the milkshake attack, Gaetz was leaving a town hall in Pensacola, FL. As he walked outside, the Congressman was surrounded by protestors. Then one of them absolutely nailed him with a milkshake.

Police arrested Amanda L. Kondrat’yev, a 25-year-old protester who allegedly threw the milkshake, and charged her with battery. Her mugshot is pretty good.

I am amused, and I can think of no target more deserving in the House of Representatives:  Gaetz is currently under investigation by the Florida bar for witness tampering by threatening Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen.

Tweet of the Day

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Police detained a young man holding a blank poster in central square in Uralsk, Western Kazakhstan today. They released him shortly after as they couldn’t figure out what he would be charged with pic.twitter.com/nLtIneIsr6

— Dina Baidildayeva (@baidildayeva) May 6, 2019

I don’t know that is going on here, either someone has just went a little crazy, or they are being profoundly subversive.

I want to know the rest of the story.

H/t naked capitalism

And the Dems Draw a Target on Their Shoes and Take Careful Aim

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Across the country, College Democrat chapters are boycotting the DCCC over the blacklist of consultants who work for primary challengers:

DCCC to meet with progressives over controversial ‘blacklist’ policy:

Young Democrats at more than 30 colleges nationwide plan to boycott the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) in protest of a new policy critics say is intended to freeze out challengers to incumbent representatives.

 The policy, launched in late March, would require consultants and strategists to pledge not to work for candidates challenging a sitting Democratic member of Congress or be left off a list of vendors approved to work with the DCCC.

 The Harvard College Democrats are leading the coalition, which initially featured 26 chapters nationwide but which Harvard Democrats President Hank Sparks confirmed to The Hill currently stands at 42. Participants include groups based at Arizona State University, Dartmouth College, Michigan State University, Rutgers University-Newark, University of Virginia and Spelman College.

 “Primary challengers are essential to ensure that the Democratic Party is continually held accountable to the needs of our constituents. This blacklist policy is undemocratic and antithetical to our values of inclusion and diversity,” the Harvard Democrats said in a letter Wednesday. “Challengers to incumbents have been essential to making the Democratic Party an institution that truly reflects the progressive values and diverse identities of the people it claims to represent.”

The DCCC’s policy is stupid and counter-productive, but the goal is not to create success, it is designed to ensure that those who control the party remain in control, even if it harms the party.

It is the Iron Law of Institutions writ small and petty:

The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution “fail” while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to “succeed” if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

HOnestly, these groups should not be calling for a reversal of the policy, they should be calling for DCCC head Cheri Bustos.

Otherwise, the policy will continue on the down low.

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One: A Polish Nationalist Goes to a Demonstration ………

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Polish nationalists demonstrated in Manhattan Sunday against a proposed U.S. law that would provide compensation to victims of the Holocaust who had their property seized during the war. Their contingent of several dozen protestors was met by a counter-protest group.

The demonstration comes as there has been considerable pushback from Poland and the Polish government against the historical evidence of Polish participation in the carrying out of the Holocaust in Poland. Last year, Poland passed a law effectively making it illegal to blame Poland or the Polish people for Nazi crimes. The law passed amid widespread sentiment in the country that Poland has been falsely accused of playing a role in the Holocaust, and its government has insisted that international media not use phrases like “Polish death camp” when referring to Auschwitz, which is in Poland.

On Sunday, several protestors carried signs reading “Holocaust Industry,” “Treat anti-Polonism like anti-Semitism” and “Stop slandering Poland in the media.” Others spoke to the considerable losses that the Polish population endured under Nazi occupation.

………

Jewish author and artist Molly Crabapple reported hearing anti-Semitic comments from the protestors.

“There were over a hundred Polish nationalists out- everyone from the elderly to mothers with little kids,” Crabapple wrote on Twitter. “One woman touched my arm and told me the Jews of Warsaw were mostly killed by other Jews.”

Crabapple also noted that one person told her that the Jews were responsible for Russian invasions of Poland.

There are so few Jews left in Poland.

Why can’t the knuckle draggers find someone else to hate?

Seriously, Reality Outstrips My Wildest Hallucinations

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At the confirmation hearing for David Bernhardt, Trump’s nominee to replace the fabulously corrupt Ryan Zinke as Secretary of the Interior, a protester donned a “Creature from the Black Lagoon” mask:

A protester dressed as a “swamp creature” was escorted out of a confirmation hearing for Interior Secretary nominee David Bernhardt Thursday morning.

The protester remained seated for two hours before being escorted out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.

A protester dressed as a “swamp creature” was escorted out of a confirmation hearing for Interior Secretary nominee David Bernhardt Thursday morning. The protester remained seated for two hours before being escorted out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.

Bernhardt, a former oil and gas industry lobbyist, reportedly helped block the release of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service study outlining the effects of pesticides on endangered species while working as a deputy Interior secretary under Ryan Zinke, according to The New York Times.

An Interior Department spokesman told the Times that Bernhardt’s actions had been “governed solely by legitimate concerns regarding the legal sufficiency and policy.”

Seriously weird:

Can Any Francophiles Comment on This Analysis?

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I do not that massive and disruptive protests are very much a part of French political culture.

I do think that part of this comes from centuries old cultural traditions, but André Sapir makes a cogent argument that this is an artifact of France’s highly centralized government presided over by its imperial Presidency:

Outside France, many economists tend to ascribe the yellow vest movement to the fact that the French are rebellious and that France is politically unmanageable. But what is special about France is not its people but its institutional system, which differs vastly from those of other European countries. Three dimensions seem to me particularly relevant in the current context.

The first concerns the political system. Under the current constitution, power is far more personalised than elsewhere. France is not a parliamentary democracy like Britain or Germany. Sure, all three have a lower and an upper chamber, but political parties play a fundamentally different role in France.

There, the dominant party is a creation of the president – like the RPR was a creation of Jacques Chirac, the Socialist party was created by François Mitterrand, and La République en Marche is the creation of Emmanuel Macron, around whom the party entirely revolves.

Elsewhere, the history of the major political parties is clearly distinct from the persona of their current leader. The CDU in Germany or the Conservative party in Britain are not the creation of Angela Merkel or Theresa May.

The second French peculiarity concerns the role of intermediate institutions, and in particular labour unions. Among the large European countries, France is where the rate of union membership is the lowest. In 2015, it was 36% in Italy, 25% in Britain, 18% in Germany, 14% in Spain, 12% in Poland and barely 8% in France. And the current practice further weakens the role of labour unions in the management of social conflicts.

………

Despite this situation, France is the most centralised of the six biggest EU countries. According to the OECD, the share of sub-national entities in total public expenditure is only 20% in France against 50% in Spain, 47% in Germany, 32% in Poland, 30% in Italy and 26% in Britain.

The conclusion is incontestable. France is the European country where there is the most rebellion against its leader, because his power is the most personalised and the most centralised among the six big EU countries.

The personalisation of power, the weakness of Parliament – with a dominant party dominated by a single person – and the weak role of intermediate bodies like labour unions all combine to create a situation where citizens have no recourse to make their voice heard other than taking to the streets and demanding the resignation of the president.

………

Many French economists rightly favour reforming France’s social model towards greater flexibility and greater security, like in Scandinavian countries. But they should remember that these countries have very high unionisation rates (67% in Denmark and Sweden) and extensive territorial decentralisation of public expenditures (with sub-national entities accounting for 65% of such expenditures in Denmark and 50% in Sweden). Attempting to copy the Scandinavian social system without changing the French institutional system would not be very productive.

France is not unmanageable. It simply needs a better governance. Why not start with a greater decentralisation of public expenditures? A reasonable objective could be to increase the share of sub-national entities in public expenditures from 20% to 30% by 2025, and further to 40% by 2030. But this cannot be done without a substantial institutional reform to ensure that decentralised public expenditures are both efficient and of good quality.

I think that a lot of this is history, mass protests in France have been a feature of their political economy since (at least) the French Revolution, but I do think that the weakness of political parties and the centralization of the government have exacerbated this phenomenon.

H/t naked capitalism.

Charming to the Last

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Protesters who supposedly gathered to express outrage after Amazon dropped plans for a Queens headquarters included mercenary activists paid to turn up, according to video and some participants.

The crowd picketed outside the retail giant’s brick-and-mortar store on West 34th Street Feb. 15 in a protest spearheaded by Long Island City landlord Sammy Musovic, who said he’d borrowed money to renovate his four-story apartment building in anticipation of the company’s arrival.

Flanking Musovic was a group of about 10 men holding up signs reading “Boycott Amazon!” and “Amazon Left Us!”

But two of those participants told Patch they had responded to a Craigslist post recruiting people to hold signs for $30 an hour. A video obtained by Patch shows a man handing out cash to a group of protesters after the event.

………

Musovic denied any knowledge of the Craigslist post and the payments. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said by phone. “We were just trying to get Amazon back on the table.”

When a reporter described the video documenting the payments, Musovic repeated the denial and hung up.

I believe that the term for this is “Manufacturing Consent.”

Did You Know That Oregon Once Banned Black People, or That It Was the Most Klan Dominated State Ever?

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If you knew this, then you are probably not surprised that the Portland police department has been collaborating closely with white nationalist terrorists:

Hundreds of texts between Portland police and right-wing organizer Joey Gibson reveal the extent to which law enforcement officers talked to and even coordinated with right-wing activists in order to police protests in 2017 and 2018.

 The texts, obtained by WW through a public records request, show that Portland Police Lt. Jeff Niiya had a friendly rapport with Gibson, frequently discussing Gibson’s plans to demonstrate in Portland and even joking at times.

 Gibson’s events, occurring regularly in the Pacific Northwest since President Donald Trump’s election, have alarmed and enraged Portlanders—even prompting the mayor to propose new rules restricting protests. That’s because the rallies have attracted white supremacists and other extremists, and are often thinly veiled pretexts for Gibson’s group, the Vancouver-Wash-based Patriot Prayer, to wage violent street fights with masked antifascists.

 Niiya is the commanding officer for the Portland Police Bureau rapid response team that patrols protests. That makes him one of the primary officers collecting intelligence about protest groups in Portland.

 Niiya and the Portland Police Bureau have good reason to collect intelligence from right-wing organizers. Yet some of Niiya’s texts raise questions about whether Portland Police help Patriot Prayer supporters to evade arrest during events.

 ………

 Several texts involve Gibson’s longtime adjunct, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, who often brawls with antifascist protesters, has allegedly assaulted people who were not protesting, and has been arrested multiple times in Portland.

 On Dec. 8, 2017, Niiya asks Gibson if Toese had “his court stuff taken care of,” referring to an active warrant for Toese’s arrest. Niiya goes on to say officers ignored the warrant at a past protest and tells Gibson that he doesn’t see a need to arrest Toese even if he has a warrant, unless Toese commits a new crime.

 ………
WW asked Gibson for comment on his relationship with Niiya and the texts. His response was brief: “Sweet,” he texted.

 ………

 Portland Police have taken criticism from left-leaning activists for appearing to favor right-wing protesters in the past. Drafts of an Independent Police Review analysis of police actions at a June 4, 2017 protest noted that at least one officer viewed the right-wing protesters affiliated with Gibson’s Vancouver, Wash. group, Patriot Prayer, as “much more mainstream” than left-wing antifascist groups.

Niiya also attaboyed Gibson over his run for office.

I would note that this fort of tacit support for white supremacists is very much the rule, and not the exception, among law enforcement.

In related news:

Mayor Ted Wheeler says he directed Police Chief Danielle Outlaw [No, really, that is her name, no kidding] to conduct a “thorough investigation” of bureau communications with Patriot Prayer, a right-wing protest group that has frequently drawn white supremacists and other extremists to its rallies.

Here’s hoping that this Niiya loses his job.

They Will Always Be J. Edgar Hoover’s Boys

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And now, we discover that, in response to KKK and neo-Nazi violence, the FBI went after the people protesting against them.

Call me old fashioned, but I find being on the side of the KKK and Nazis vaguely un-American:

The FBI opened a “domestic terrorism” investigation into a civil rights group in California, labeling the activists “extremists” after they protested against neo-Nazis in 2016, new documents reveal.

Federal authorities ran a surveillance operation on By Any Means Necessary (Bamn), spying on the leftist group’s movements in an inquiry that came after one of Bamn’s members was stabbed at the white supremacist rally, according to documents obtained by the Guardian. The FBI’s Bamn files reveal:

  • The FBI investigated Bamn for potential “conspiracy” against the “rights” of the “Ku Klux Klan” and white supremacists.
  • The FBI considered the KKK as victims and the leftist protesters as potential terror threats, and downplayed the threats of the Klan, writing: “The KKK consisted of members that some perceived to be supportive of a white supremacist agenda.”
  • The FBI’s monitoring included in-person surveillance, and the agency cited Bamn’s advocacy against “rape and sexual assault” and “police brutality” as evidence in the terrorism inquiry.

The FBI’s 46-page report on Bamn, obtained by the government transparency non-profit Property of the People through a records request, presented an “astonishing” description of the KKK, said Mike German, a former FBI agent and far-right expert who reviewed the documents for the Guardian.

………

Shanta Driver, Bamn’s national chair, criticized the investigation in a statement to the Guardian, saying, “The FBI’s interest in BAMN is part of a long-standing policy … Starting with their campaign to persecute and slander Dr. Martin Luther King, they have a racist history of targeting peaceful civil rights and anti-racist organizations, while doing nothing to prosecute the racists and fascists who attacked Dr. King and the movement he built.”

The FBI launched its terrorism investigation and surveillance of Bamn after white supremacists armed with knives faced off with hundreds of counter-protesters, including Bamn activists, at a June 2016 neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento. Although numerous neo-Nazis were suspected of stabbing at least seven anti-fascists in the melee, leaving some with life-threatening injuries, the FBI chose to launch a inquiry into the activities of the leftwing protesters.


I really do believe that the FBI needs to to be fumigated to get the cockroaches descended from Hoover out of the organization.

Qu’ils Mangent De La Brioche — — AGAIN

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It looks like Emanuel Macron is a man who emulates the Bourbon kings, he has learned nothing, and he has forgotten nothing, to paraphrase not-Tallyrand.

He is now calling the yellow vest protesters a hateful mob, all because they have the audacity to object to his policy to benefit the haves at the expense of the have nots.

He is blind in a way that the now-incarcerated Sarkozy could never:

Emmanuel Macron last night delivered a combative New Year’s address, vowing to push forward with economic reforms despite two-month long protests from what he termed a “hateful mob”.

The French President, whose televised address was broadcast form the Elysee Palace, acknowledged that “anger over injustices” lay behind the yellow vest movement that has scarred his second-year in office.

………

But the 41-year-old also strongly condemned protest-leaders. “Those who claim to speak for the people, but in fact speak for a hateful mob – attacking elected representatives, security forces, journalists, Jews, foreigners, homosexuals – are quite simply the negation of France,” he said.

………

Alexandra Schwarzbrod, an author and political analyst, argued that the President still lacked a common touch.

“He did a creditable job in terms of his political communication, but he still appeared fairly distant from the everyday problems the ‘yellow vests’ have injected into the political agenda,” she said.

Of course he seems distant.

He had a privileged childhood, the child of a doctor and a professor, and went to elite schools, and he has nothing but contempt for people who lack the initiative to have well-off parents.

Marine le Pen must be feeling very confident about her future right now.

First, You Burn down Parliament, and THEN You Go with Slave Labor

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It appears that Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has moved too quickly to make slave labor a reality in his country:

Viktor Orban, the far-right prime minister of Hungary, has been confronted by an unusually persistent wave of street protests after pushing through a bill this month that could require workers to put in up to 400 hours of overtime — a measure that opponents call a “slave law.”

 About 5,000 demonstrators took to the streets of Budapest again on Friday, after President Janos Ader signed the bill into law. In a radio interview Friday morning, Mr. Orban dismissed opposition to the changes as “hysterical shouting.”

 Since re-entering office in 2010, Mr. Orban has made a series of moves that have set off alarms among European allies and others in Hungary: curbing judicial independence, restricting news media freedom and plurality, and blatantly enriching his business allies. But few of his actions have ignited such anger as the changes to the labor law.

 What does the law say?

 The amendments to the Hungarian labor code passed by the governing majority in Parliament raise the yearly cap on overtime to 400 hours from 250, and gives companies three years instead of one to pay for the work.

 In some cases it also lets them avoid paying extra for overtime, allowing them to compensate some employees at their regular hourly rate instead, experts said.

………

Analysts say the labor law changes have struck a rare chord among ordinary Hungarians, including outside the opposition heartland of the capital, Budapest, because the issue affects their daily lives.

………

Why did the government take this step?

The government needs Hungarians to accept longer hours because the country is running out of workers.

As many as 350,000 Hungarians, or more than 5 percent of the country’s working-age population, are working in another part of the European Union, according to Mr. Kollo.

These people have left to work elsewhere because pay is complete sh%$ in Hungary.

You have people voting with their feet.

Opponents of the changes argue that they were passed as a favor to multinational companies like German automakers, which have built plants in the country in recent years and whose economic model depends on a cheap and flexible work force.

And there you have it:  It’s a desperate race to the bottom, and this is a (possibly the) core EU value, which, ironically enough, has denied Orban the freedom of action that (for example) Mussolini had in the 1920s.

It will be fascinating to see where this ends, but my guess is that it’s time for the ordinary Hungarian to get the f%$# out of Dodge.

Qu’ils Mangent De La Brioche

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The French police are seriously considering joining the gilets jaunes protesters because of how they have been treated:

The French government is desperately trying to keep its exhausted police force onside following weeks of violent protests demanding economic reforms, improved living standards and the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron.

On Wednesday, French officials met with police trade union leaders to work out a deal to soothe anger in law enforcement ranks regarding overwork, unpaid overtime and difficult working conditions, Le Monde reported.

………

Police have accumulated some 23 million hours of overtime that is yet to be paid. According to The Local France, police union leader Frédéric Lagache explained, “Faced with this irresponsibility [of the government], we are forced to be irresponsible in our actions.”

It really is remarkable just how badly Macron is screwing this all up.

I’m waiting for him to start a speech with, well, you know.

Understanding the Yellow Vest Movement

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We can talk about what is, and is not, causing this phenomenon, but at its core, it boils down to this statement, “France’s Gas Tax Disaster Shows We Can’t Save Earth by Screwing Over Poor People.”

French President Emanuel Macron has been cutting taxes on the rich, and raising taxes on everyone else, ever since entering office.

This is a well deserved smack-down of an investment banker who has seen his role as making life easier for other investment bankers.

More of This

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Acero, a large public school chain in the Chicago area, has the dubious distinction of being the first charter school in the nation to have its teachers strike:

Hundreds of educators at Chicago’s Acero charter schools walked off the job Tuesday morning, halting classes for 7,500 predominantly Latino students and launching the nation’s first strike over a contract at the independently operated campuses.

Backed by affiliates at the Chicago Teachers Union, the charter network’s teachers said they would not return to work after what they described as a series of fruitless negotiations with management.

“We’re going to stay on strike until we get educational justice for the people who work in Acero charter schools,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said outside the charter network’s empty Zizumbo elementary school campus as dozens of picketers settled in. “We’re going to stay on strike until the students at Acero charter schools get the resources into their classrooms that they need to do their jobs.”

The charter network cancelled all classes, athletics and extracurricular activities. School buildings will remain open with group activities supervised by nonunion staff members, though parents were encouraged to keep children at home or at nearby parks and community facilities.

Acero’s chief executive blasted the walkout as the product of an “anti-charter political agenda.”

………

The CTU has said key issues include reduced class sizes, maternity and paternity leave, a revamped teacher evaluation system and better pay. The union said they were also unable to secure commitments on special education services and guaranteed protections for undocumented students and families.

I am surprised that this has taken so long.

The underlying business plan of most charter schools is to treat their teachers like garbage.

I Approve of this Flag Burning

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Burning this flag is a good thing

Democratic candidate for Georgia governor Stacy Abrams, participated in a burning of the Georgia flag in 1992 because of its extremely prominent placement of the racist confederate flag:

Just 30 or so people attended the 1992 protest on the steps of Georgia’s State Capitol — a smattering of student activists but mostly reporters and a few Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents, snapping photos of demonstrators lighting a state flag on fire.

In the center of an Atlanta Journal-Constitution photo chronicling the event was a Spelman College freshman named Stacey Abrams, who, 26 years later, finds herself locked in a race that could make her the nation’s first black female governor — and who is unapologetic about her role in the demonstration.

In a statement Tuesday, Abrams’s campaign said she was part of a movement to remove the Confederate emblem from the Georgia flag.

“During Stacey Abrams’ college years, Georgia was at a crossroads, struggling with how to overcome racially divisive issues, including symbols of the confederacy, the sharpest of which was the inclusion of the confederate emblem in the Georgia state flag,” her campaign said in a statement about the photo, which resurfaced Monday. “Stacey was involved with a permitted, peaceful protest against the confederate emblem in the flag. This conversation was sweeping across Georgia as numerous organizations, prominent leaders, and students engaged in the ultimately successful effort to change the flag.”

Good.  Embrace this.  You were right then, and you are right now.


It got caught on tape

She still has a tough row to hoe to win, she’s black, she’s a woman, she’s unabashedly progressive, it’s Georgia, and her opponent is the Georgia Secretary of State and has been recorded saying that he wants to suppress the vote:

Brian Kemp, Georgia Secretary of State and the Republican nominee for Georgia governor, expressed at a ticketed campaign event that his Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams’ voter turnout operation “continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote,” according to audio obtained by Rolling Stone.

 An attendee of the “Georgia Professionals for Kemp” event says they recorded 21 minutes and 12 seconds of the evening, held last Friday at the Blind Pig Parlour Bar near Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood. As proof of their attendance, the source shared with Rolling Stone a receipt of their donation, which granted access to the gathering.

 Not long after Kemp began his remarks, the candidate expressed worry about early voting and “the literally tens of millions of dollars that they [the Abrams camp] are putting behind the get-out-the-vote effort to their base.”

 Kemp then asserted that much of that Abrams effort is focused on absentee ballot requests. “They have just an unprecedented number of that,” he said, “which is something that continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote — which they absolutely can — and mail those ballots in, we gotta have heavy turnout to offset that.”

 ………

 It is fairly typical for a political candidate expressing confidence in his campaign to lament his opponent’s efforts to increase turnout. But Kemp’s position as Georgia’s Secretary of State clouds his statements. While it is not uncommon for someone in such a position to be on a ballot during an election that he or she oversees — they do have to run for re-election, after all — the state’s top elections official speaking of “concern” about increased early and absentee voting raises further questions about a conflict of interest.

Kemp’s recent decision to suspend more than 53,000 voter applications, 70 percent of which were filed by black residents, for violating the state’s “exact match” verification standard has drawn attention to his penchant for restrictive voter laws and purging of voter rolls. American Public Media reported last week that Kemp purged an estimated 107,000 voters last year simply because they didn’t vote in the prior election. He is also being sued for leaving more than 6 million Georgia voting records open to hacking.

………

 Reached for comment, Abigail Collazo, Director of Strategic Communications for the Abrams campaign, said, “Brian Kemp is barely trying to hide the shameful fact that his strategy is to win through voter suppression. The idea that he, as Secretary of State, would be ‘concerned’ that hardworking Georgians are exercising their right to vote is disgraceful and outrageous.”

If there is any justice in the world, Brian Kemp will spend the rest of his life in prison for this, but Republicans approve of him, and Democrats lack the guts to go after rat f%$#s like him, so he’ll die surrounded by his loved one, as opposed to being shanked in a prison laundry, which is what he deserves.