The News Thread

[CiG]

Former President Donald Trump lashed out at Fox News in a written statement after the network reported that an Associate Press investigation found only 182 potentially fraudulent ballots out of 3 million votes cast in Arizona during the 2020 presidential election.

lmfao.

I saw some moments from Trump's Phoenix rally the other day, he's truly unhinged over this election fraud shit.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...table-justice-department-just-increased-odds/



so now can we just arrest Trump on some sort of income tax evasion and/fraud so that he'll be in prison when the 2024 presidential election day happens??

 

[CiG]

Looks like Andrew Cuomo is doneski. Now even Biden is calling for him to resign over having allegedly sexually harassed 11 women.

 

[Einherjar86]

His brother should be doneski too.

In other news, Andy Ngo once again distorts reality:

https://twitter.com/RevChuckCurrie/status/1424198038390599680

I think it's key here that the truth is more nuanced than either Ngo or Currie make it out to be. What's happening is a manipulation of language for the purpose of softening the reality that far-right militias are occupying the streets and laying down their version of the law. This doesn't mean there aren't anti-fascist protestors or Christians praying, but that the driving factor here is right-wing extremism. The others simply congregate around it--antifa as a combative reaction, and Christian prayer groups as an effective smokescreen.

Relatedly, from Sue Halpern, for the New Yorker: "The insurrectionists, in calling themselves patriots, had absorbed a fundamental lesson from the Trump presidency--how to pervert language so that the things you say are the opposite of what they actually mean."

 

[Bloopy]

HS2 security alarm with a Northern Ireland accent almost gave Coventry walker a ‘heart attack’

Dystopian enough to rival the movies.

 

[Einherjar86]

New IPCC report is out. The full report is almost 4000 pages long.

Findings won't surprise anyone, but the panel has finally moved away from its prior hedging rhetoric and shifted to full-blown crisis mode. It's about fucking time.

 

[CiG]

Nothing will ever be more entertaining than American politics. Mike Lindell (CEO of MyPillow) is a lunatic and his attempts to prove Trump had the election stolen from him while also trying to sell his pillows have been comedy gold thus far. Also he's being sued into oblivion by Dominion for slander.

For example he thinks someone in China hacked the system in Delta County (MI) and changed 3215 Trump votes into Biden votes, so they interview a Republican county clerk there and she's like "our system is never connected to the Internet."

 

[Einherjar86]

On a darker note, I'm legitimately worried about the Arizona audit. I know these accusations are absurd, but they're being funded by big money. As hard as election officials and experts might try, people believe this bullshit. People think Lindell is for real and that election officials are concealing the truth. It won't matter if the screenshots are meaningless. Most people can't tell one way or another; and if they're primed to buy it, it will be next to impossible to convince them otherwise. If the privately funded audit claims to have found evidence, it will open the door to dangerous legislative changes.

Here's an excerpt from a recent New Yorker piece on "Big Money and the Big Lie":

Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and one of the country’s foremost election-law experts, told me, “I’m scared shitless.” Referring to the array of new laws passed by Republican state legislatures since the 2020 election, he said, “It’s not just about voter suppression. What I’m really worried about is election subversion. Election officials are being put in place who will mess with the count.”

Arizona’s secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, whose office has authority over the administration of elections, told me that the conspiracy-driven audit “looks so comical you have to laugh at it sometimes.” But Hobbs, a Democrat, who is running for governor, warned, “It’s dangerous. It’s feeding the kind of misinformation that led to the January 6th insurrection.” QAnon followers have been celebrating the audit as the beginning of a “Great Awakening” that will eject Biden from the White House. She noted, “I’ve gotten death threats. I’ve had armed protestors outside my house. Every day, there is a total barrage of social media to our office. We’ve had to route our phones to voice mail so that no one has to listen to it. It can be really traumatizing. I feel beaten up.” She added, “But I’m not going to cave to their tactics—because I think they’re laying the groundwork to steal the 2024 elections.”

 

[CiG]

Afghanistan is already pretty much completely back under Taliban control. What a fucked up situation.

 

[zerostatic]

9/11 feels like a lifetime ago. And you are right it is fucked up. Just a few days ago I read a news story estimating that Afghanistan may hold off the Taliban for another 60 or even 90 days, but I don't think the country lasted 60 hours. I always thought US involvement in Afghanistan and later Iraq was misguided, especially since the US seemed to ignore Pakistan and Saudi Arabia's involvement and funding of the Taliban.

 

[Dak]

Afghanistan is already pretty much completely back under Taliban control. What a fucked up situation.

What's fucked up about it?

 

[CiG]

What's fucked up about it?

It's fucked up for several reasons.

We had to withdraw, even though we knew this would happen the moment we did, but because Afghanistan's military is so insufficient (to put it into perspective over the last 20 years Taliban casualties are about 70k and the total size of Afghanistan's military is like 190k active members, so Taliban casualties alone are about 1/3 of the entire Afghan military) the US effectively gave the Taliban about 14k pieces of equipment when they left it for the Afghan military to use. Predictions for how long the Afghan government could hold out were hilariously optimistic.

Pushing the withdrawal date back gave the Taliban the excuse they needed to break the agreement, putting any negotiations from us on the back foot. Now since retaking Afghanistan was so quick and easy for them (with the president stepping down and fleeing the country) they're claiming that they're willing to come to the table again and talk, but we'll see how real that disposition is.

All the social progress is seriously in jeopardy now, which was one of the few positive side effects of the US/UK/AUS presence there. Girls will probably be banned from attending school again, male escorts and full body covers for women again, severe oppression of disabled people could be a reality again. So on and so on.

Edit: Also important to mention all the people fleeing Afghanistan, for example Canada has pledged to take in 20k vulnerable Afghans. Then there are all the document and flag burnings to frantically erase any connection to the US so they don't get executed, same with military service members surrendering in the hopes they won't be executed. There are videos of Taliban executions floating around the Internet already, hard to predict for just how long there will be Taliban witch-hunts for people who collaborated with the US going on.

Not sure how it could be described any other way but "fucked up" tbh.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

https://www.essence.com/articles/nichelle-nichols-conservatorship/

 

[Dak]

It's fucked up for several reasons.

We had to withdraw, even though we knew this would happen the moment we did, but because Afghanistan's military is so insufficient (to put it into perspective over the last 20 years Taliban casualties are about 70k and the total size of Afghanistan's military is like 190k active members, so Taliban casualties alone are about 1/3 of the entire Afghan military) the US effectively gave the Taliban about 14k pieces of equipment when they left it for the Afghan military to use. Predictions for how long the Afghan government could hold out were hilariously optimistic.

Pushing the withdrawal date back gave the Taliban the excuse they needed to break the agreement, putting any negotiations from us on the back foot. Now since retaking Afghanistan was so quick and easy for them (with the president stepping down and fleeing the country) they're claiming that they're willing to come to the table again and talk, but we'll see how real that disposition is.

All the social progress is seriously in jeopardy now, which was one of the few positive side effects of the US/UK/AUS presence there. Girls will probably be banned from attending school again, male escorts and full body covers for women again, severe oppression of disabled people could be a reality again. So on and so on.

Edit: Also important to mention all the people fleeing Afghanistan, for example Canada has pledged to take in 20k vulnerable Afghans. Then there are all the document and flag burnings to frantically erase any connection to the US so they don't get executed, same with military service members surrendering in the hopes they won't be executed. There are videos of Taliban executions floating around the Internet already, hard to predict for just how long there will be Taliban witch-hunts for people who collaborated with the US going on.

Not sure how it could be described any other way but "fucked up" tbh.

What was the better alternative?

Also lol "we". Australia's contribution in Afghanistan was never more than a token force. Not that that's a bad thing.

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parlia...y/pubs/BN/1011/MilitaryInvolvementAfghanistan

 

[CiG]

What was the better alternative?

There wasn't one you autist, that's part of why it's such a fucked up situation.

 

[Dak]

There wasn't one you autist, that's part of why it's such a fucked up situation.

Oh, well, I disagree. Liberals used to believe in self-determination. The Afghans have chosen themselves over colonizers, twice over, at significant cost. I don't begrudge them this. The Biden administration eating the turdburger of the withdrawal is something interesting tbs.

 

[CiG]

Not sure how any of that makes it a not fucked up situation.

 

[crimsonfloyd]

This is easily the best thing Biden has done as President. It wasn’t perfect, and they should have got our allies out way earlier, but this war needed to end. The war was lost for years now. No more lives, money or resources wasted on this futile imperialist project. As for the Afghan people, they can determine their own future now, hopefully without world superpowers interfering. Hopefully we don’t start sanctioning the shit out of them and give them a chance to rebuild.

 

[CiG]

UK is already hinting at sanctions but honestly it won't mean much now that the US has left and China is keen to move in and deepen relations and help reconstruct the country.

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm fine with the U.S. leaving Afghanistan, but not with leaving people behind to suffer in a politically and socially volatile situation. We've been clamoring to find countries will to take in refugees, but it seems like the U.S. ought to be responsible for most of them... I realize that's unrealistic, but the time to be realistic was twenty years ago. Now we're dealing with surreal repercussions.