All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Korath]

An Op-Ed on NYT about Hawley's religion-tinged worldview that's basically a kind of theocracy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/o...gtype=Homepage

That's a chilling read, but the article is so on the nose when it compared Haley's viewpoint with his obsession against Sharia... even if it doesn't make the final step which is to outright say that his vision is exactly like Daesh's only with Islam switched for Christianity (which is in a sense kind of dreadfully funny considering how divided Christianity as a whole is : would he support the Orthodox Church ? The Catholic ? Some Protestant Church of old or a new Evengelical one?). Still, the deep connection between politicians and right-wing Churches is terrifying, in no small part because of the geopolitical impact it can have.

Like when Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and basically gave up on the two states solution of Israel and Palestine (which, I'll be honest, I don't believe in either anymore, but I'd approach it from a fundamentally different way : if Israel seeks to remain a democratic country, it has to afford the exact same rights to all Palestinians in Gaza and Cisjordania /West Bank and drop the idea that it is a Jewish state only. Otherwise, only direr things will happen in the future). Of course, the US are mostly insulated from the real ripple effect of the policies in the Middle East, but for us Europeans, it's a lot easier to notice and endure it, and they have a direct impact on the growth of our own Far-Right movements.

In theory, people can go from Beijing to Damascus and then to Paris or Berlin without crossing waters; and the same goes for African migrants, even if the roads would be too long and even deadlier. That's why we have some years ago a million people who fled war, economic instability and the like entering Germany and many more elsewhere in Europe, why we have squalid camps for them in the Agean and the like. Europe is also to blame for a whole lot of things (ranging from neo-colonialism economic politics to outright colonial overgrowth in the French-speaking Africa by my very own country of course) but in terms of war, we remains very much at the beck and call of the US. Even for interventions unsanctioned by the UN... Looking at you Iraq.

[JCAll]

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but Parler has been taken down.

Oh it's so much better. Apparently, not only were they banned by their server host, and banned by the designers of the software they were using to administer the site, but they also suffered a massive AND I MEAN MASSIVE security breach. Every scrap of data on Parler was stolen. Every video link, every picture (including the metadata), every post (even deleted ones), and of course every user's personal date. Which would include names, phone numbers, addresses, apparently even some state issue IDs for some reason.

[Zelena]

A smile that reminds me this one:

[Revolutionary_Jack]

That's a chilling read, but the article is so on the nose when it compared Haley's viewpoint with his obsession against Sharia... even if it doesn't make the final step which is to outright say that his vision is exactly like Daesh's only with Islam switched for Christianity (which is in a sense kind of dreadfully funny considering how divided Christianity as a whole is : would he support the Orthodox Church ? The Catholic ? Some Protestant Church of old or a new Evengelical one?).

Let's not forget that the Crusades ultimately led the Catholic Army to sack the Orthodox Worshipping Byzantine Empire when they sacked Constantinople (a less well known, and far more damaging sack than the more proverbial one that happened centuries later at the hands of the Turks). In fact most of the deaths in the Crusades happened in Europe and not in the Middle East, whether it's the People's Crusade (which led to the first major anti-semitic pogroms of Europe), the Albigensian Crusade (against a heresy that resulted in a massacre that some have called the earliest example of a genocide), the crusades against pagans in the Baltic countries, and of course the 4th Crusade which I mentioned. The Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants killed far more people than the Crusades did.

Still, the deep connection between politicians and right-wing Churches is terrifying, in no small part because of the geopolitical impact it can have.

"it can have"?! It's already had that impact. Right wing evangelical preachers in Brazil, in Africa and other parts of the world have preached anti-Darwinian anti-science and other lies. Let's not forget that the War on Terror, the Iraq War and the never-ceasing ulcer of Afghanistan is all founded in the same Christian neo-conservative mentality voiced by W. and others downwards.

Donald J. Trump's steadiest voters and backers come from evangelicals who saw this man entirely without faith in anything other than himself as their agent against the forces of "secularism" all for the sake of a Christian hegemony in the government institutions.

Europe is also to blame for a whole lot of things (ranging from neo-colonialism economic politics to outright colonial overgrowth in the French-speaking Africa by my very own country of course) but in terms of war, we remains very much at the beck and call of the US. Even for interventions unsanctioned by the UN... Looking at you Iraq.

The war in Iraq and its aftershocks spirals ever wider, and the fact that Iraq vets number among the insurrectionists and in casualties, that's no accident or coincidence. The Iraq war was a major self-inflicted wound, a quagmire for which there was no political or military justification, where the drive to prevent Saddam from getting WMD led to North Korea to build WMD in response to what happened to Saddam.

Oh it's so much better. Apparently, not only were they banned by their server host, and banned by the designers of the software they were using to administer the site, but they also suffered a massive AND I MEAN MASSIVE security breach. Every scrap of data on Parler was stolen. Every video link, every picture (including the metadata), every post (even deleted ones), and of course every user's personal date. Which would include names, phone numbers, addresses, apparently even some state issue IDs for some reason.

Let's see where this goes then.

I don't think the dream of a right-wing leaning social media network will die just yet.

So let's not declare victory prematurely. But for the time being, gloat away.

[myownlittleusername]

https://www.ft.com/content/6146b352-...b-a34ad585b91a

Angela Merkel, German chancellor, has sharply criticised Twitter’s decision to ban US president Donald Trump, calling it a “problematic” breach of the “fundamental right to free speech”.

[babyblob]

Oh it's so much better. Apparently, not only were they banned by their server host, and banned by the designers of the software they were using to administer the site, but they also suffered a massive AND I MEAN MASSIVE security breach. Every scrap of data on Parler was stolen. Every video link, every picture (including the metadata), every post (even deleted ones), and of course every user's personal date. Which would include names, phone numbers, addresses, apparently even some state issue IDs for some reason.

I would find joy in this. but people like y aunt are already saying this was Antifa backed hack and that this will make it even easier to frame Trumpers for hostile acts like how they framed Trumpers on the 6th.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Some off-duty cops were among the people who stormed the Capitol Building.

https://www.theroot.com/surprise-sur...cou-1846029959

The notion of off duty cops taking part in last week’s insurrection disgusts me thoroughly. These scumbags need to be investigated, then fired for the crimes they committed, they need to be made an example of the high cost to be paid for having tarnished their badges by their actions.

[Tami]

Oh it's so much better. Apparently, not only were they banned by their server host, and banned by the designers of the software they were using to administer the site, but they also suffered a massive AND I MEAN MASSIVE security breach. Every scrap of data on Parler was stolen. Every video link, every picture (including the metadata), every post (even deleted ones), and of course every user's personal date. Which would include names, phone numbers, addresses, apparently even some state issue IDs for some reason.

Is there a news report on this? I haven't found one yet and I'd love to read more about this security breach.

Also, someone I know is really upset about this. He said that it was a sign that all personal freedoms were going to be taken away, including freedom of speech.

Of course, I'm like, seriously? I mean, if the CBR Community was shut down for no reason, I can understand people being upset. But Parlor had become a national security issue.

[Robotman]

Video shows Capitol mob dragging police officer down stairs. One rioter beat the officer with a pole flying the U.S. flag.

But Blue Lives Matter and all that.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

https://www.ft.com/content/6146b352-...b-a34ad585b91a

On this point I disagree with Merkel. Trump grossly and purposely abused that “fundamental right to free speech” with his endless lies regarding how the election had been “stolen” from him, inflammatory speech that riled up his base to a rabid frenzy, eventually leading to last week’s nightmare at the Capitol. As has been said time after time, the first amendment doesn’t allow one to yell “FIRE!” in a crowded theater which was basically what Trump had done, earning him that banishment from social media.

[SquirrelMan]

The lady having a weird accent (sounds slavic but not exactly Russian, to my years it sounds Movie!Transylvanian) is a little odd, but I guess some foreign tourists getting roped into this isn't impossible.

Hmm... I'm wondering how many of the insurgents have Eastern European girlfriends and wives that look a little... out of their league. Their own little Melania.

Like one of the Parler founders.

[batnbreakfast]

https://www.ft.com/content/6146b352-...b-a34ad585b91a

Being German I found it baffling that she has time for such a comment

[Zauriel]

If the Republicans were capable of a little self-reflexion they'd realize, "So this is how communists or Marxists feel when they say don't equate Marx with Stalin and Mao".

Unfortunately we have to do, even that, on their behalf, ventriloquize the tragedy and decay of the party of Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass into what it has become today.

In any case, the decay of the Republican party is a function of the weaknesses of the American party system which is really an American coalition system. The American party system is a coalition system...and the reason the party of Woodrow Wilson (the last 19th Century Dixiecrat scumbag) transformed eventually into a Civil Rights party is accident and circumstances rather than design or intent on any of the party founders or activists at the time. It's not the Dems had a change of heart and repented, it's just that social trends and situations eventually led the electorate to change the party from within and make it into something else. The same thing happened with the Republican party. Had situations been different, it could well have gone the other way and we would think of the Republicans as the Left Wing party it originally started out as. The party that Karl Marx in England praised as the working man's party and the abolitionist party. The decay of the Republican party has a tragedy to it because it's a mirror and warning about how something that started out with ideals and promises turned into sewage. It's the defining American example of that.

The Republicans are the party of the best and the worst President in American history. And in the entire history of the Republican party, I'd argue they produced maybe three great Presidents -- Lincoln, Grant, Teddy Roosevelt. Not saying that all of them did the right thing all the time but yeah lasting stuff and positive stuff happened under them. There's one decent and good President in Eisenhower after World War 2. But otherwise you have mediocrities, hacks, assholes (Herbert Hoover), frauds (Reagan), idiots (W.), crooks (Nixon), and now pure evil (Trump). I will say that Richard Nixon is genuinely interesting for doing some good things (his pro-Native government policy, EPA) but also appalling things (Watergate, dog-whistle campaigning, paranoia) at the same time, and Nixon symbolizes the divides and schisms of the entire legacy of this party. But Trump is just nihilism.

McKinley, Harrison, Chester Arthur, and Rutherford Hayes were mediocrities. Taft and Coolidge were decent.


The GOP is not the only party that's changed in the last century. The Democratic Party went from being the Party of Ku Klux Klan to being the Party of the Civil Rights Movement. They had Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Unfortunately they also had bad presidents Andrew Jackson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson. Woodrow Wilson is both good and bad POTUS. He helped France and UK end the World War I but he implemented the policy of racial segregation in the federal government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presid...rnment_offices

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Hmm... I'm wondering how many of the insurgents have Eastern European girlfriends and wives that look a little... out of their league. Their own little Melania.

Like one of the Parler founders.

The "mail order bride" for lonely middle-aged white guys, or older men and others looking for a hot trophy wife is not uncommon. But you have to wonder how easy it would be for Russian intelligence to make them into assets.

Not that I am saying that woman caught is a spy or agent necessarily. Not that I am saying that Putin himself would directly order or mastermind the Trump Putsch because I think doing it directly would be a step too far even for him. But encouraging and stoking as much disorder as possible, lighting as many fires as possible, yeah that's possible.

Trump is a Russian asset that much is clear, as is Rudy Giuliani. Those two are traitors and bankrupt in all senses of that word.

https://www.ft.com/content/6146b352-...b-a34ad585b91a

A private company can do as it pleases. If you want to make social media a public utility for free debate and so on...well Angela Merkel, go ahead and nationalize social media or push for a national social media in Germany, a Constitutional Democratic version of WeChat, why not.

To those in USA who have problems with Social Media regulating Trump and having power to tamp down an entire political ecosphere, well in that case, why don't you propose a bill to nationalize Facebook and twitter, and ask the Dems to sign on board.

[JCAll]

Is there a news report on this? I haven't found one yet and I'd love to read more about this security breach.

Also, someone I know is really upset about this. He said that it was a sign that all personal freedoms were going to be taken away, including freedom of speech.

Of course, I'm like, seriously? I mean, if the CBR Community was shut down for no reason, I can understand people being upset. But Parlor had become a national security issue.

I've mostly been watching it all fall apart on social media, so a lot of it is still rumors I guess, but I did find one thread with sources. I don't know how reliable the sources are, everything is moving so fast.
https://cybernews.com/news/70tb-of-p...y-researchers/