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robertreich · 2 months

Video

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How Trump is Following Hitler's Playbook

You’ve heard Trump’s promise:

TRUMP: I’m going to be a dictator for one day.

History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships. When democracies fall, they typically fall completely.

In a previous video, I laid out the defining traits of fascism and how MAGA Republicans embody them. But how could Trump — or someone like him — actually turn America into a fascist state? Here’s how in five steps.

Step 1: Use threats of violence to gain power

Hitler and Mussolini relied on their vigilante militias to intimidate voters and local officials. We watched Trump try to do the same in 2020.

TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.

Republican election officials testified to the threats they faced when they refused Trump’s demands to falsify the election results.

RAFFENSPERGER: My email, my cell phone was doxxed.

RUSTY BOWERS: They have had video panel trucks with videos of me proclaiming me to be a pedophile.

GABRIEL STERLING: A 20-something tech in Gwinnett County today has death threats and a noose put out saying he should be hung for treason.

If the next election is close, threats to voters and election officials could be enough to sabotage it.

Step 2: Consolidate power

After taking office, a would-be fascist must turn every arm of government into a tool of the party. One of Hitler’s first steps was to take over the civil service, purging it of non-Nazis.

In October of 2020, Trump issued his own executive order that would have enabled him to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists. He never got to act on it, but he’s now promising to apply it to the entire civil service.

That’s become the centerpiece of something called Project 2025, a presidential agenda assembled by MAGA Republicans, that would, as the AP put it, “dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision.”

Step 3: Establish a police state

Hitler used the imaginary threat of “the poison of foreign races” to justify taking control of the military and police, placing both under his top general, and granting law-enforcement powers to his civilian militias.

Now Trump is using the same language to claim he needs similar powers to deal with immigrants.

Trump plans to deploy troops within the U.S. to conduct immigration raids and round up what he estimates to be 18 million people who would be placed in mass-detention camps while their fate is decided.

And even though crime is actually down across the nation, Trump is citing an imaginary crime wave to justify sending troops into blue cities and states against the will of governors and mayors.

Trump insiders say he plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to have the military crush civilian protests. We saw a glimpse of that in 2020, when Trump deployed the National Guard against peaceful protesters outside the White House.

And with promises to pardon January 6 criminals and stop prosecutions of right-wing domestic terrorists, Trump would empower groups like the Proud Boys to act as MAGA enforcers.

Step 4: Jail the opposition

In classic dictatorial fashion, Trump is now openly threatening to prosecute his opponents.

TRUMP: if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business.

And he’s looking to remake the Justice Department into a tool for his personal vendettas.

TRUMP: As we completely overhaul the federal Department of Justice and FBI, we will also launch sweeping civil rights investigations into Marxist local district attorneys.

In the model of Hitler and Mussolini, Trump describes his opponents as subhuman.

TRUMP: …the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country…

Step 5: Undermine the free press

As Hitler well understood, a fascist needs to control the flow of information. Trump has been attacking the press for years.

And he’s threatening to punish news outlets whose coverage he dislikes.

He has helped to reduce trust in the media to such a historic low that his supporters now view him as their most trusted source of information.

Within a democracy, we may often have leaders we don’t like. But we have the power to change them — at the ballot box and through public pressure. Once fascism takes hold, those freedoms are gone and can’t easily be won back.

We must recognize the threat of fascism when it appears, and do everything in our power to stop it.

#youtube #videos #fascism #Donald Trump #election #video #politics

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rudrjobdesk · 2 years

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Chanakya Todays Exit Poll: यूपी, उत्तराखंड में किसकी बनेगी सरकार? जानिए कितने बजे आएगा चाणक्य टुडे का 5 राज्यों का एग्जिट पोल

Chanakya Todays Exit Poll: उत्तर प्रदेश विधानसभा चुनाव 2022 के सातवें चरण के मतदान की समाप्ती के साथ शाम में एग्जिट पोल (Exit Poll 2022) आने शुरू हो जाएंगे। उत्तर प्रदेश, पंजाब, उत्तराखंड, गोवा और मणिपुर सहित पांच राज्यों में हुए मतदान के बाद सभी को 10 मार्च को आने वाले नतीजों का इंतजार है। असली नतीजों से पहले हम आपको सभी पांच राज्यों के चाणक्य टुडेज एग्जिट पोल (Chanakya Todays Exit Poll) के…

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hedgehog-moss · 1 year

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Update on May 1st protests and how the french goverment handled them?

^ The May 1st protests were pretty violent esp. in Paris; two cops were set on fire (they're ok, one has 2nd degree burns), lots of destruction in city streets, and hundreds of injured protesters. The French gov is sticking to its M.O. of denying any police violence against protesters, emphasising protesters' violence and portraying it as mindless anti-democratic savagery rather than the result of their own anti-democratic policies.

There were more people protesting in the streets on Monday than at any other May Day protest in the past 20 years (by a large margin—7 to 10x more people than usual.) And the numbers are still impressive in terms of this current social movement—there were about 1.2 million people at the first protest against the pension reform in January, 900K at one of the February protests, around 1.1M on March 7 and I think 1.2M on March 23rd... We're in May and there were 800K people in the streets on Monday (using the police's probably low estimate). The first marches earlier this year were peaceful; people started destroying shit in March after the 49.3 (=the gov not letting elected representatives vote on the reform); in the following weeks we saw a brutal escalation of police violence + suppression of just about any means of non-violent protest, which results in more violence.

The vast majority of protesters are still peaceful, but in terms of providing context for the increased violence, well—people protested peacefully, peaceful protests got banned. People banged pots and pans, pots and pans got banned and confiscated. People started a petition on the National Assembly website which got a record number of signatures, the petition was closed before its deadline and ignored. MPs asked (twice!) for a national referendum on the reform to be held, their requests were denied. Electricity unionists cut power in buildings Macron was visiting, now he travels around with a portable generator. Unions tried to distribute whistles and red cards (penalty cards) to football supporters before the French Cup finale last week, so the ones who wanted could use them if Macron showed up (he ended up hiding and greeting the footballers indoors rather than publicly on the stadium lawn); the police prefecture tried banning union members from gathering outside the stadium to distribute these items (although the ban was struck down by the judiciary as it was illegal, like most bans these days...)

Confiscating saucepans was already so absurd it felt like a gratuitous fuck you, but now they're trying to prevent the distribution of pieces of red paper. Cancelling petitions that would have had no real impact anyway. Prosecuting people for insulting Macron. Arbitrarily arresting hundreds of nonviolent protesters to intimidate them out of protesting (guess who's left then?). The French gov is systematically repressing democratic or nonviolent means of making your opinion heard, and when people get more violent they're like "This is unacceptable, don't these terrorists know there are other means of expressing dissent??" Where? This week a 77-year-old man was summoned to the police station and will be forced to take a "citizenship course" for having a banner outside his house that read "Macron fuck you" (Macron on t'emmerde). Note that he would have been arrested (like the woman who was arrested at her home and spent a night in police custody for calling Macron "garbage" on Facebook) but they decided not to only because of his age.

So that's where we're at; on Monday two cops caught on fire (well, their fireproof suit did) after protesters threw a Molotov cocktail at them. (The street medic who tried to help them with their burns ended up getting shot by a cop's riot gun a few seconds later—with French police no good deed goes unpunished!) The media talked a lot more about this incident than about the fact that the cop who got most severely injured on that day (broken vertebrae) was injured by an explosive grenade that a colleague of his meant to throw at protesters (you can see it at the end of the video below). If police with all their protective gear get so badly injured by their own weapons, no wonder the worst injuries have been on the protesters' side. (nearly 600 injured protesters on May 1st, 120 severely, according to street medics.) I'm not including images of these incidents in the video but on May 1st a protester had his hand mutilated by a police grenade + a 17 year old girl was hit in the eye by a grenade fragment, may end up losing it (during the Yellow Vests protests, Macron's first attempt at repressing a social movement, 38 protesters lost an eye or a hand).

What you see in the video: cops charging the front of a march to tear a banner off people's hands then retreating and drowning the street in tear gas when protesters throw paint bombs at them (protesters have umbrellas because of police drones); at 0:30, a journalist saying "They're not even arresting him, just kicking him when he's down—they kicked him right in the face!" then police spraying with tear gas protesters who try to fend them off; at 0:46 when a protester being arrested asks a journalist if he's filming and starts reading out loud a cop's ID number, another cop shoves the journalist and throws him to the ground; at 0:54, an Irish journalist runs away from the police tear gas grenades that you hear going off, at 01:08, the incident mentioned above when a cop drops a grenade he tried to throw, which explodes in his group, breaking another cop's vertebrae. There's a lot more I'm not including, like how CNN said "there's so much tear gas in Paris, our foreign correspondent can barely breathe", how another journalist was hit by a sting-ball grenade (he was also bludgeoned on the head so hard it broke his helmet—even though cops know the people wearing helmets are journalists...), and yet another journalist who was calling out a cop for aiming at people's heads with his riot gun (which is illegal) ended up having the guy aim the riot gun at his head from 2 metres away (getting shot with this "less lethal weapon" from that distance would be lethal.)

All of these videos are from May 1st (most of them from this account monitoring police violence.)

So yeah, nonviolent protests followed by violent police repression and bans of nonviolent means of protesting result in more violent protests. The French government responds by a) pikachu surpris, b) condemning violent protesters and praising violent police to the skies, c) continuing to ban everything they can think of. Confiscating saucepans didn't work but confiscating pieces of red paper will do the trick! Let's prosecute people for bashing or burning an effigy of Macron, because banning symbolic violence always works to prevent actual violence! And this week after the May 1st protests we learnt that the gov is thinking of making street barricades illegal, because that'll definitely solve everything. It's going to be interesting for history teachers to teach students about the 1789 revolution that allowed us to take down an absolutist regime and become a republic, under a government that banned barricades because they see them as terrorist anti-republican structures.

^ Statue symbolising the French Republic (on Place de la République in Paris) dressed with a 'Macron resign' shirt by protesters on May 1st.

#ask #frpol #left-wing MPs this week asked to hold a debate in the Assembly about the repression of this social movement #the Minister of the Interior (in charge of police) didn't come but sent his delegate instead #the delegate refused to admit to any problem with law enforcement and at some point walked out as a MP was asking a question #this happened 1 day after the UN Human Rights Council condemned the French gov's violent & racist law enforcement #god there's so much infuriating shit happening every single day

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purplelea · 1 day

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So. If you guys want some news from France.

European Parliament election results just dropped. Far-right is up to 37% and is getting as many seats out of 81 seats. In return the French President announced he wanted to dissolve the French National Assembly and organise a new election on June 30th.

This election would give the far-right control of the French National Assembly with between 243 and 305 seats out of 577. A far-right Prime Minister and government. In less than a month.

For some good news, the very first French-Palestinian MEP has been elected (Rima Hassan, international jurist).

Expect things to heat up in France again. We won't go down without a fight.

#it's terrifying. i was expecting this to happen in three years and not now #three weeks is such a short time #i have no idea what that fucking asshole (our president) is doing #france #élections européennes #eu elections

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justinspoliticalcorner · 24 days

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Sam Delgado at Vox:

It’s been another big week for the UAW. Over 5,000 auto workers at the Mercedes-Benz assembly plant in Vance, Alabama, have been holding their union election vote with the United Auto Workers (UAW); ballots will be counted when voting closes today.

It’s the UAW’s second election in their campaign to organize non-union auto workers, with a particular focus on the South — a notoriously difficult region for union drives. They won their first election with Volkswagen workers last month in Tennessee with 73 percent of workers voting to form a union. What makes the UAW’s recent success compelling is that they’re finding big wins at a time when union membership rates in America are at an all-time low. But each union drive is a battle: With our current labor laws, unionizing is not an easy process — particularly when workers are up against anti-union political figures and employers, as is the case at the Alabama Mercedes plant. So if the UAW can win another union election in a region that’s struggled to realize worker power, it could mean more than just another notch in their belt. It could offer lessons on how to reinvigorate the American labor movement.

What’s at stake in Vance, Alabama?

Unionizing nearly anywhere in the US will require some sort of uphill battle, but this is especially true for the South. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, most of the South had unionization rates below the national average in 2023. Alabama resides within one of those regions, at a union membership rate of 7.5 percent compared to a national rate of 10 percent. This is the result of historical realities (see: slavery and racist Jim Crow laws) that have shaped today’s legislation: Alabama is one of 26 states that have enacted a “right-to-work” law, which allows workers represented by a union to not pay union fees, thus weakening the financial stability and resources of a union to bargain on behalf of their members.

Prominent political figures in Alabama have been vocal about their opposition to the UAW, too. Gov. Kay Ivey has called the UAW a “looming threat” and signed a bill that would economically disincentivize companies from voluntarily recognizing a union. Workers say Mercedes hasn’t been welcoming to the union, either. In February, the CEO of Mercedes-Benz US International held a mandatory anti-union meeting (he’s changed roles since then). Back in March, the UAW filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board against Mercedes for “aggressive and illegal union-busting.” And according to a recent report from Bloomberg, the US government voiced concerns to Germany, home of Mercedes-Benz’s headquarters, about the alleged union-busting happening at the Alabama plant.

The combination of weak federal labor laws, a strong anti-union political presence, and a well-resourced employer can be a lethal combination for union drives and labor activity — and have been in Alabama. Recent examples include the narrow loss to unionize Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse, the nearly two-year long Warrior Met Coal strike that ended with no improved contract, and even past failed unionization drives at this Mercedes plant.

[...]

Where’s this momentum coming from — and where is it going?

The UAW is in a strong position after a series of wins. First they won their contract battle with Detroit’s Big Three automakers last year. Then they successfully unionized the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in mid-April (the first time a non-union auto plant in the South was unionized in around 80 years). Later that month, they ratified a contract with Daimler Trucks after threatening to strike, securing a wage raise and annual cost-of-living increases among other benefits. Where are these wins coming from? A big part of the momentum comes from Shawn Fain, the president of the UAW. He’s ambitious and a hard-nosed negotiator, isn’t afraid to break from the traditions of UAW’s past, and perhaps most importantly, is also the first leader of the UAW directly elected by members.

The UAW is leading a unionization drive at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama. Hope it wins. #UAWVance #UAW #1u

#UAW #United Auto Workers #Mercedes Benz #Vance Alabama #Mercedes Benz Vance #Unions #Labor #Workers' Rights #Unionization #Kay Ivey #Alabama #Shawn Fain

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mariacallous · 11 days

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India is in the middle of a 44-day exercise to elect its next government, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi tipped to return his Bharatiya Janata Party to power for a third consecutive term. Modi, who aims to win nearly three-quarters of the country’s 543 parliamentary seats, has surprised many observers by using dehumanizing anti-Muslim language on the campaign trail—rhetoric that is more direct than that of his past speeches.

So far, the BJP campaign has focused on creating an irrational fear among India’s Hindu majority that if Modi doesn’t return as prime minister, a share of their private wealth and affirmative action job quotas will be given to Indian Muslims. Modi and his party have doubled down on this narrative at a moment when reports suggest that their quest for a supermajority is unlikely to succeed. The brazen continuation of such anti-Muslim rhetoric differentiates this campaign from the two others that have put Modi in the prime minister’s office.

Hate speech is a criminal offense in India, and it is specifically barred during an election campaign. However, Modi chose the three leaders of India’s Election Commission, the agency charged with conducting free and fair polls, and it has ignored his flagrant violations of the election code. As a result, as the campaign continues through the end of May, so too will Modi’s anti-Muslim tirades. India is expected to announce its election results on June 4.

If the BJP wins and Modi is once again crowned prime minister, his Islamophobic rhetoric will not simply disappear. Many political leaders campaign in poetry and govern in prose, but hateful rhetoric has real-life consequences. Modi’s campaign speeches have put a target on Indian Muslims’ backs, redirecting the anger of poor and marginalized Hindu communities away from crony capitalists and the privileged upper castes. It underscores an attempt to make members of the Muslim minority second-class citizens in a de facto Hindu Rashtra, or state.

These social schisms need only a small spark to burst into communal violence, which would damage India’s global status and growth. Furthermore, Modi’s campaign rhetoric is matched by the BJP’s choice to not put up candidates in Muslim-majority Kashmir, reducing its stake in ensuring robust democracy in a region that New Delhi has ruled directly since 2019. His language will also have a direct bearing on India’s fraught ties with its neighbor Pakistan. Finally, the state-backed ill treatment will likely not be limited to Indian Muslims—meaning that other religious minorities, such as Christians and Sikhs, will also be affected.

Around 200 million Muslims live in India—the second-largest Muslim population in the world, after that of Indonesia. Few mainstream Indian political leaders have plummeted to such depths in castigating these citizens. Modi’s campaign rhetoric makes clear that if he is elected to a third consecutive term, the nation’s Muslims will stand politically disempowered, economically marginalized, and deprived of their constitutional rights.

Modi’s political rise came in the wake of significant violence against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, when he was the state’s chief minister. Due to his role in the violence, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States all temporarily barred his entry. Leading the party’s campaign to victory in the state assembly in the same year, his campaign speeches were full of crude language against Muslims. But the BJP’s electoral success in Gujarat—winning the next two assembly elections before the launch of Modi’s national campaign—ultimately gave Modi political credibility within an extreme fringe of the party.

By 2011, Modi had started reinventing himself as a business-friendly leader with an eye on a national role. By the time he became prime minister three years later, the narrative of a so-called Gujarat model of economic development concealed his anti-Muslim ideological moorings. Modi’s mask slipped occasionally, but he often spoke with a dog whistle. Mostly, the prime minister reiterated an imagination of India as a Hindu nation. In a post-9/11 world, Modi presented an alternative model of battling Islamic terrorism and consolidated a Hindu majoritarian voter base—delivering a stunning election victory in 2019 after an attempted airstrike against an alleged terrorist training camp inside Pakistan.

This year, Modi has not campaigned on his track record of the past decade or on the party manifesto for the next five years as often as he has attempted to further polarize Hindus and Muslims. In a speech given on April 21, Modi suggested that the opposition Indian National Congress party, if elected, would redistribute property to Muslims. The party would “calculate the gold with [Hindu] mothers and sisters” and transfer it “among those who are infiltrators and have more children,” he said—using terms by which his supporters regularly describe Muslims.

Elsewhere, Modi alleged that Congress was helping Muslims in a plot to take over India: “The opposition is asking Muslims to launch vote jihad,” he said in March. Speaking at a rally in Madhya Pradesh in early May, Modi said that voters would have to choose between “vote jihad” and “Ram Rajya,” the latter being a term referring to a mythical, idealized society that purportedly existed during the rule of Lord Rama, the hero of the famous Hindu epic Ramayana.

The prime minister’s economic advisory council soon released a paper that sought to stoke anxieties about a decline in the proportion of Hindus in India; during the period it covered—1950 to 2015—India’s population actually increased by five Hindus for every one Muslim citizen, but BJP leaders soon deployed the report to further demonize Indian Muslims.

The party’s official messaging has echoed Modi’s rhetoric. A now-deleted video posted on the Instagram account for the BJP’s Karnataka branch this month said, “If you are a non-Muslim, Congress will snatch your wealth and distribute it to Muslims. Narendra Modi knows of this evil plan. Only he has the strength to stop it.” It was followed by an animated clip depicting Congress leader Rahul Gandhi hatching a plan to benefit Muslims at the expense of Hindu groups.

Other Indian democratic institutions have done no better. Despite formal complaints from opposition parties and civil society groups, the election commission has neither punished nor restrained Modi. A petition in the Delhi High Court seeking immediate action against Modi for his “communally divisive speeches” was dismissed, with the judges arguing that it was “without merit” because the commission was already looking into the matter. “We can’t presume that they won’t do anything,” one judge said. But as the elections near the finish line, that is precisely what has happened.

Some observers are likely to dismiss Modi’s recent language as par for the course during an election campaign, when tempers run high. However, most surveys and polls have predicted an easy victory for the prime minister and the BJP; he has no need to resort to pandering to base emotions with toxic rhetoric. In an interview, Modi denied that he had uttered a word against Indian Muslims; he was proved wrong by fact-checkers and video evidence. India’s top political scientist said that through his denials in interviews, Modi is trying to influence the naive chroniclers while he continues with his anti-Muslim speeches for the masses and his supporters. Modi’s No. 2, Amit Shah, insists that the party will continue with this anti-Muslim campaign. By persisting with hateful speech, the BJP leadership is fueling a narrative that is likely to intensify discrimination against Indian Muslims during Modi’s rule.

As prime minister, Modi has spearheaded a project for the political disempowerment of Indian Muslims. For the first time in the history of independent India, the ruling party does not have a single Muslim member of parliament. In the current election, the party has put up just one Muslim candidate—on a list of 440—who is running for an unwinnable seat in Kerala. More broadly, religious polarization has made it difficult for Muslim candidates to win seats in areas without an overwhelming Muslim majority. During recent elections, there have been complaints of authorities barring voters in Muslim-majority localities in BJP-ruled states. Modi’s message to Indian Muslims is unequivocal: You do not matter politically.

India’s Muslims are economically disadvantaged, too. A 2006 committee under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress government found that the Muslim community faced high levels of poverty and poor outcomes on almost all socioeconomic indicators. India’s opposition parties have promised a new socioeconomic survey that could inform future policy without a focus on religion. Modi’s government, by contrast, opted to not conduct even the regular census in 2021—the first such instance in 140 years—due to COVID-19; it has not been conducted since.

Rather than relying on data, Modi and his supporters prefer an emotional response that pitches poor and marginalized Hindus against Muslims. India is a highly unequal country: About 90 percent of the population earns less than the average income of $2,800 per year. This gap has widened under Modi, with the richest 1 percent now owning 40 percent of India’s wealth. By othering Muslims, Modi puts them at risk of becoming the object of other deprived groups’ ire, which could lead to further communal violence. A Muslim man was allegedly lynched in Gujarat during the current election campaign, without making national headlines.

Islamophobia is at the core of the project to make India a Hindu state. Modi and the BJP frequently weaponize terrorism discourse to delegitimize critics and political opposition. In Kashmir, where the BJP is not running candidates this election, this tactic has fueled anger and hostility. The high turnout in the region seems to be an expression of rage against Modi’s 2019 decision to revoke its semi-autonomous status. When the ruling party leaders conflate Islam with terrorism, there is little chance of extending any hand of peace toward Pakistan, either. Modi and his ministers have vowed to take back Pakistan-administered Kashmir by force if necessary—no matter the grave risk of conflict between two nuclear-armed countries.

Finally, Modi’s rhetoric does not bode well for other religious minorities in India. In the border state of Manipur, the largely Christian Kuki community has suffered state-backed majoritarian violence for more than a year. In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populated state, Christian priests and worshippers are being jailed, beaten, and threatened by both Hindu majoritarian groups and state police. Meanwhile, the BJP has demonized the Sikh farmers who led protests against agricultural laws in 2020 and 2021, labeling them as separatist Khalistani terrorists. (Last year, Modi’s government was accused of involvement in the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in Canada as well as in an attempted assassination in New York.)

Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians are India’s biggest religious minorities; they make up nearly one-fifth of the country’s population. To disempower these groups would spell the end of the historical bond between India and ideas of universal justice, human rights, and democracy. A majoritarian Indian state—a Hindu Rashtra—would instead make a covenant with bigotry, discrimination, and violence. The bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has repeatedly asked Washington to blacklist Modi’s government for its suppression of religious freedom, but the Biden administration has refused to act so far.

However, the evidence is there for all to see—and Modi has further substantiated the charge of bigotry with his campaign speeches targeting Indian Muslims. No matter if the BJP achieves its supermajority, this rhetoric will have significant consequences for India. Modi is serving a warning. The world should take note before it is too late.

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argyrocratie · 3 months

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"I remember the beginning of 15M [the 15 of May movement of 2011] in Las Palmas of the Gran Canaria. Initially we were four anarchists who erupted into a quiet camp with leaflets that cried out against the elections or the possibility that parties demobilise the movement. The poor university students who then had the leading voice did not have much of an idea of what anarchism was, and those who knew of it, did not have the most favourable views regarding it. On the first day, an assembly was held to throw us out. Today I remember it with a big smile.

That experience was enough to stir things up, people with more political experience or with more empathy towards the persecuted defended us, our adversaries would rethink their supposed pluralism and their democratic convictions and the majority would ask “what the fuck is this anarchy about?”

In the end, the results were surprising: many people stopped judging us by their preconceived ideas and began to judge us by our actions; a few days later, anarchists began to emerge from hiding, everyone was or had been an anarchist but nobody dared to say it until we started the commotion; unpoliticised people began to take an interest in our ideas, to debate and to organise; many declared themselves anarchists without being previously (a group of 4 isolated anarchists became a group of 20, not counting supporters, with the ability to call demonstrations on their own); in a public square, anarchism was spoken of, as perhaps it had not been done in the Gran Canaria since the 1930s of the last century; black flags began to be an identifiable symbol for people (to think that the majority could speak of “mourning for democracy” [this is quite true], that began to appear on posters and statements, as a call to attract libertarians); the anarchists gave workshops or were involved in the commissions and in the resolution of conflicts; there were well-attended assemblies in which, without proposing it and to my surprise, the libertarians were the majority; and so, in a few months, the FAGC [Anarchist Federation of Gran Canaria] was born.

There was another important factor: the anarchists never hid the fact that they were anarchists, and rigthly or wrongly (I still think it was correct), we decided not to interfere in the assembly decisions collectively (there were no previous agreements on any common position in the voting) so as to preserve the autonomy of the movement. Other groups, on the contrary, especially those fishing politically, tried to manipulate the assemblies quite clearly, vetoing proposals and votes, or promoting votes in series, with strategic compulsive applause. In the end people could perfectly identify if the Humanist Party, DRY [Democracia Real Ya!], or whatever, was behind a proposal. The most curious thing is that many of the members of the different collectives or political parties did not openly identify as such, they mobilised under collective slogans, but without making explicit their links or affiliations. This generated some suspicion and animosity among many of the assembled. Is that the tactic that anarchism should follow, that of parachuting and infiltrating? I’ve always thought not.

We do not have to be naive. When we declared ourselves to be anarchists, the people from political parties, those who were there to make personal gains, aspiring journalists, those who were tied to institutions or those who sought to turn 15M into a party, they never stopped attacking us and trying to block or even sabotage any initiative launched by the anarchists. People can be influenced and manipulated, but not everyone and not all of the time. If the boycott of political parties could work when demonstrations without flags were called, and when they appeared, they were booed or taken down, these same people who protested were asking us for advice on what to do in case of arrest and celebrated with us when we blocked evictions with human walls, and when we solved the internal problems of coexistence in the encampment without resorting to the police, or when we resisted with our bodies the eviction of the Plaza de San Telmo. Finally, these same people, regardless of the fear that politicians tried to instill against us, approved by majority, without any orientation other than common sense, the proposal for the organisation of 15M that was based on the libertarian principles, laid out by a libertarian.

Discovering that the anarchists could not only stir things up, but also build, propose and reason, opened the eyes of many people, regardless of the weight of violent legends and the decades of television news, which had shaped their judgments. Based on close contact with us, they stopped evaluating us by what they had heard and began to value us for our activity."

-Ruymán Rodríguez, "Anarchist Identity" (2018)

#anarchism #Ruyman Rodriguez #15M #gran canaria

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kp777 · 4 months

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By Brett Wilkins

Common Dreams

Feb. 5, 2024

"Forty-seven percent of the voters are poor or low-wage," said one activist. "Getting that vote in is very important."

The Poor People's Campaign on Monday launched a 42-week nationwide mobilization of poor and low-income Americans to "wake the sleeping giant" of a voting bloc with the potential to determine the outcome of the 2024 elections.

"It is time for a resurrection and not an insurrection," Poor People's Campaign co-chair Rev. Dr. William Barber II said during a press conference in Washington, D.C. "We must engage poor and low-wealth people to change the political landscape."

"For far too long extremists have blamed poor people and low-wage people for their plight, while moderates too often have ignored poor people, appealing instead to the so-called middle class," he continued. "Meanwhile, poor and low-income people have become nearly half of this country and we are here today to make one thing clear: Poor and low-wage brothers and sisters have the power to determine and decide the 2024 elections and elections beyond."

"Economic justice and saving this democracy are deeply connected."

Poor People's Campaign co-chair Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis stressed that "economic justice and saving this democracy are deeply connected."

"In this rich nation that has the wherewithal to end poverty tomorrow where there's the political will, we must not overlook the voices and votes of poor and low-income people," she added. "We are mobilizing and organizing, registering and educating people for a movement that votes... for healthcare and debt cancellation. Votes for living wages and strong anti-poverty programs. Votes for fair taxes and demilitarization of our communities and our world. Votes for immigrant rights and more."

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said at the press conference: "In 2024, the election is going to be about mobilization... Democrats have an enthusiasm gap today and the progressive alliance and Democrats have fissures within their constituencies that make getting out the vote even more important."

"The biggest bloc of potential voters by far is low-income, low-wage voters," Lake noted. "Where the margin of victory is projected to be less than 3% in 2024, 30-45% of the voters are low-wage voters or low-income families... The turnout among low-wage voters and low-income voters today is... 20-22% below the average turnout. This is a huge bloc of voters, and it is a bloc of voters that votes 58-60%—at minimum—progressive, no matter how conservative the state."

"You're talking about a huge number—a game-changing number—of voters," she added.

The campaign's main scheduled events are a Mass Poor People's & Low-Wage Workers' Moral March to State House Assemblies on March 2 and a rally and march in Washington, D.C. on June 15.

"I have been struggling to pay my bills since I've been working at 16 years old. I work full time, 64 hours a week, seven days a week," said Beth Schafer of Raise Up for $15 during a video promoting the new campaign. "I am exhausted."

Crow Roberts, an organizer with the Indiana Poor People's Campaign, said in the video that "our government finds it necessary to ban abortion to say that they are saving our children, but more children die as a result of poverty in this country."

Guadalupe de la Cruz of the Florida Poor People's Campaign asserted that "we should not be cornered and forced to choose between one necessity or another."

Speaking at the press conference, Alabama activist Linda Burns said that "for three years I worked the assembly line at Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama. The work was grueling. We were expected to work like robots, moving like 1,000 pieces per hour."

"I got badly injured. My left arm," she continued. "I had two surgeries. I had to get a third surgery, but I didn't have no more insurance. Amazon, they cut my insurance off a year after. They let me go last October."

"Amazon let me go because I was helping organize the union," said Burns. "We didn't get the union in Alabama but I'm gonna do everything in my power to stand in solidarity. Organizing the union showed me just how many people were in the same situation I was. Not just in Alabama, but all over the world."

"Forty-seven percent of the voters are poor or low-wage. Getting that vote in is very important," she added. "We cannot settle for less, we've got to stand up for our rights. We are forward together—not one step back."

#poor peoples campaign #democracy #2024 elections #william barber #liz theoharis #poverty

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allthecanadianpolitics · 8 months

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Manitobans voted in a big group of rookies to the province's legislative assembly Tuesday night.

Fifteen PC MLAs who won seats in the 2019 election decided not to run for re-election, opening up those ridings to fresh faces. But a number of PC incumbents were also unseated by NDP candidates.

Here are the first-time MLAs who will be representing Manitobans across the province, according to unofficial results as of Wednesday.

Full article (with list of first-time MLAs)

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#cdnpoli #canada #canadian politics #canadian news #canadian #manitoba #manitoba election #MLAs #elections #election #NDP #progressive conservatives

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just-late-roman-republic-things · 4 months

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Power to the people! How democratic was Rome? And are we really in a position to judge? Today's notes, based on "Popular Power in the Roman Republic" by Alexander Yakobson:

Historians have argued for a long time about how democratic the republic was. Part of this is due to changes in what we know, but part of it also comes from our own expectations, biases, and current events. It is difficult not to project the political issues of our own time onto Rome.

The debate centers on whether Rome was effectively an oligarchy (rule by a small elite class), or if it had significant democratic elements, even if limited and flawed. This debate is as much about subjective interpretation, and what we think defines a "fair and representative government, as it is about Rome itself.

(Dēmokratia is also a Greek concept that doesn't quite correspond to ancient Roman values such as libertas, but Yakobson doesn't go into that.)

Yakobson asks whether we're comparing Rome to an ideal democratic system, and whether this is fair. He points out that both Rome and most modern democracies have similar flaws: wealth inequality; the wealthy holding most government offices; politicians being in bed with corporate interests; devices like gerrymandering and the electoral college to dilute the votes of certain groups; voters being pressured by social and economic connections; entire territories and underclasses without voting rights. Even in the most democratic countries today, how far is government and society actually shaped by the wishes of "the people"?

He also asks if ancient and modern democracies might both exemplify the iron law of oligarchy: the idea that every society, no matter its political system, eventually develops an elite class that controls most political power. Personally, I'm suspicious of that "law," and not just because its author Robert Michels eventually joined the Italian fascists because he thought democracy was obsolete. I think Michels overlooked the varying degree of accountability that different government structures promote, which can check abuses of power. E.g. in a democracy, regular elections can "punish" sufficiently unpopular politicians by voting in their opponents; autocrats have no such limitation.

(I'm surprised Yakobson quotes the iron law seriously, since he appears to be very pro-democracy and anti-war.)

Anyway, he provides a range of examples of Roman politicians behaving, and speaking, as if the popular vote does matter for their legislation and careers:

Contested elections mean that although the aristocracy as a whole controlled government offices, individual politicians were forced to compete for popular approval.

Popular assemblies repeatedly legislated against the Senate's will. (Strongly backed up by Erich Gruen's survey of assembly results in The Last Generation of the Roman Republic.)

I would also add that the Plebeian Assembly could pass legislation without senatorial approval, but the Senate could not pass legislation without the Plebeian Assembly affirming it.

The Conflict of the Orders, even if somewhat mythologized, does point toward a politically active lower class, and an aristocracy that was forced to grant them greater rights over time.

Aspiring politicians created public games, festivals, grain subsidies, and other "attractions" to secure popularity, and thus elections. Populares were generally not trying to subvert the Senate, but relying more strongly on this established electoral strategy.

Yakobson posits two opposing forces acting on Roman politicians: one pulling them to uphold elite interests and connections, the other pulling them to "break ranks" by winning over the common people. (You might say optimates and populares, though there's other definitions for those words too.)

Rome's lack of zoning meant that many politicians lived side-by-side with the middle and lower classes, and the size of one's posse was important to demonstrate influence. Unpopular politicians risked meeting with insults, protests, and even threats in the streets.

Contemporary documents like Cicero's On the Commonwealth show that Roman politicians saw the "popular mandate" as a strong force, and potentially a threat to the aristocracy's hold on government. Cicero in particular saw it as inevitable and needing to be integrated into the government, not suppressed, to ensure political stability.

Yakobson also points out several examples of "radical" tribunes long before Tiberius Gracchus, and a few commoners making it into the Senate. (LGRR is useful again, and Gruen lists a lot of non-senatorial families making it into the tribunate and quaestorship, especially.)

Rome had many plebiscites, contios (political gatherings), and public trials where people voted on legislation, expressed support or rejection, and could even intimidate politicians. E.g. Bibulus' fasces getting broken by a crowd in 59 BCE, which was probably a symbolic rejection of his authority. Or the troops Pompey had to station at Milo's trial to prevent jurors from being threatened by Clodius' supporters.

The plebiscites, especially, are a form of direct democracy that are rarer in many modern democracies!

Although patrons probably influenced clients' votes, the theory that patrons controlled client votes has been discredited, and fails outright after secret ballots were introduced in the 130s BCE.

Sulla's reforms that aimed to defang the tribunate indicate that tribunes could pose credible force against the Senate, and the reinstatement of tribunes' powers a decade later is a prime example of the Senate bending to popular pressure.

The supposed "harmony" of the decades pre-133 BCE may be an illusion caused by our paucity of sources, rather than an actual lack of tension between the Senate and common people.

Also, Yakobson doesn't discuss public rhetoric here, but Robert Morstein-Marx presents a strong argument in Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic that the legitimacy of Rome's government openly derived from popular support, and that politicians had to argue their case for popular approval, at least in contios and other public arenas.

Overall, Yakobson concludes that although there were big constraints to how "democratic" Rome actually was, there was some real popular influence in government, and that the Roman people were not passive entities under a "sham" democracy. In this he agrees with Gruen and Morstein-Marx.

Yakobson doesn't talk much about the limitations of Roman democracy, because he's mainly responding to arguments that Rome was purely an oligarchy in practice. But I want to list a few:

Only male citizens in Rome could vote. Women, slaves, and anyone unable to travel to Rome were disenfranchised.

The size of the voting areas and temporal constraints limited the number of voters to 20,000 people, max.

The Roman voting system gave a disproportionate weight to the rich, especially in elections for consuls and praetors.

The Senate could co-opt tribunes of the plebs to veto bills, even if the bill was popular. (This formed the crux of several showdowns for Tiberius Gracchus, Julius Caesar, and others.)

Augurs could call off a vote on account of bad omens (obnuntatio).

The Plebeian Assembly could only vote "yes" or "no," not amend bills or propose new ones. A magistrate had to introduce the bill first. From 82 to 70 BCE, the tribunes could not do this, so all legislation came from the Senate first.

Prior to 139-131 BCE, there was no secret ballot.

#jlrrt essays #roman government #roman politics #democracy #popular power in the roman republic #alexander yakobson #a companion to the roman republic #jlrrt reads

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pencil-peach · 5 months

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G Witch Onscreen Text: Episode 21

Welcome to part 22 of my attempt to transcribe and discuss all the onscreen text in G Witch, as well as discuss and analyze the series episode by episode. We've come to Episode 21: What We Can Do Now

<< To relive The End of Hope, click here to return to Episode 20 Or, you can return to the Masterpost

We'll figure it out together.

In the opening, we see Guston make a call, asking for something to be moved to the Benerit Group head office front. We learn later that this "something" is the Gundam Calibarn, which was confiscated by the Space Assembly League during the Vanadis Incident. (We'll discuss Calibarn in a bit, when it's being mentioned later.)

The first establishing shot we get of Asticassia's campus in this episode (Left) is the same as the establishing shot we got of it in Episode 1 (Right), that being a panning shot moving up right along its curve. Seeing the comparison side by side really puts into perspective the sheer magnitude of Norea's rampage.

This brief conversation between Suletta and Secelia before the OP is really sweet. At first glance, it's a bit difficult to parse what exactly about Suletta has changed. It's not a major change of her character that's occurred. She's always been kind, and Season 1 Suletta most certainly would have also done her best to help with the recovery. But the change comes in WHY she's doing it. When Secelia asks, her response is simply, "Because I can move around." Beforehand, she lived her whole life by her mother's motto: "If you run, you gain one. Move forward, gain two."

And she repeats that motto over and over, applying it to as many situations as possible. But when Secelia asks her now, she doesn't say it. She says something else. A motto that she's come up with for herself. Not one given to her.

This screen pops up when Kenanji is presenting the info on Thorn to Rajan. There's no new information here, it's the same information Prospera pulls up before she destroys the Lfrith Models.

The Pilot is listed as UNKNOWN, however, meaning that Prospera and Godoy managed to discover that information while Dominicus and Cathedra could not. (Although, maybe they couldn't find anything about the Pilot because they uh, eviscerated her into nothing. Looks at Kenanji.)

TEXT: All Front News Network DELLING REMBRAN'S DAUGHTER, MIORINE REMBRAN, IS THE NEW PRESIDENT OF THE BENERIT GROUP - MIORINE REMBRAN quickly suppressed two insurrections on Earth and in space.

It seems Miorine is now President of the Benerit Group. Elan was right, putting down the protestors on Earth won over the Spacian votes of the Benerit Group, securing her the election.

Since the election results have been declared, we could, with some confidence, place Episode 21 as being at least 10 days after episode 19-20, as the Earthian Negotiator tells Miorine that they'll "suspend all protests activities for 10 days...until the results of [her] election are clear." (I'll make a timeline of the show at some point lol)

Delling Rembran's rise to power was sparked by an indiscriminate slaughter of Earthians for the sake of his ideals. The Benerit Group was built upon and perpetuates itself through a cycle of sin and violence. Where Miorine went wrong was believing she could set the group in a new direction from within that cycle.

During the conversation with the Earthian Negotiators, she asks if they would trust her if she became the group's president. When asked if that's her intention, she responds, "I understand now that it's what I really need." But in accepting that what she needs is the Benerit Group's power, even if it's for altruistic means, she has no choice but to inherit the horrific violence by which the group attained and maintains that power.

Episode 19 is, in a way, a reflection of the Prologue.

Prior to the event that solidified their rise to power, both Rembrans were in attendance of a meeting determining the direction of the future. Both Rembrans' claims are dismissed by the attendants, but both persist in intervening, firmly believing that their ideals are for the betterment of humanity.

Miorine (About removing Earthians from space): "That's a demand I flatly reject...I don't claim to understand how enraged you Earthians feel...but even so, I seek dialogue." Delling: "So that humanity can remain in peace, we must wield the hammer of witches."

But whereas Delling sought a violent solution to achieve his ambition, Miorine is dedicated to a nonviolent solution. Delling is going down a dark path, whereas Miorine's plan for the future is a brighter one. (Notice the coloring of the two meeting rooms. The MS Dev Council's meeting room is dark blue, where as the Earthian Negotiation room is a light yellow. The colors are an inversion of the other.)

Despite Miorine trying to correct her father's mistakes though, both scenarios end the same way:

With the deaths of innocent people. With Vanadis, Delling began a cycle. A cycle of violence and death. And from that cycle he built the Benerit Group. And even after he himself has been removed, that cycle continues to spin. Miorine tried to inherit the cycle and correct it, believing that what needed to be changed was the direction it spun in, but it's not something you can fix. It is immutable. Delling's actions led directly to Prospera's desire for vengeance, which led to the incident at Quinharbor. It will continue to spin until it is broken.

Shaddiq and Miorine both had the right ideals, and they both tried to reach them in their own ways.

Shaddiq correctly understood that the system itself was unjust, and that it needed to be broken, but he tried to break it by making use of the same violence that instituted it in the first place.

Miorine also understood that the system was unjust, but believed that it simply needed to be set in a new direction, and tried to attain power within the system to change it from the inside.

Shaddiq chose violent methods, Miorine chose nonviolent methods, but both attempts simply led to more violence.

Some other minor things about their conversation is that there are some allusions to their last major conversation in Episode 9. Miorine calls him a fool in both conversations, and says the same thing both times, that being "ばかね" (Bakane) Both scenes also have a shot focusing on Miorine's eyes, looking downward.

During the scene where Suletta and Chuchu are handing out tomatoes, they're handing them out to their respective bullies. Suletta gives some to the girls who picked on her in Episode 1 (With the exception of the blonde girl, who's parents unenrolled her from the school shortly after the Rumble Ring attack)

And Chuchu gives some to the two girls who coated her and Suletta's mobile suits with the masking spray in Episode 4.

Suletta being full of love aside, I like how the Earth House students aren't very hostile when talking about Miorine. They still consider her a friend. Do you think Suletta wasn't eating any of the tomatoes she'd harvested after Miorine left.

When Guston approaches Suletta, he holds up his ID Badge: TEXT: SPACE ASSEMBLY LEAGUE INVESTIGATION DIVISION GUSTON PARCHE ID number: 0329-047-E-033

There's a couple of paragraphs underneath it but unfortunately it's so small as to be illegible.

TEXT (Right) THE SPACE ASSEMBLY LEAGUE HAS DECIDED TO FORCIBLY INTERVENE AGAINST THE BENERIT GROUP. AT THE SAME TIME, IT IS PARTNERING WITH THE PEIL COMPANY. THIS IS BEING SEEN AS AN ATTEMPT TO MINIMIZE THE DISRUPTION CAUSED BY ITS INTERVENTION.

Moving back to Miorine and the Benerit Gang, we see they're watching a livestream of the Space Assembly League, in which the Peil Company has jumped ship and sided with the League, calling for the forced intervention of the Group.

What's most interesting about their testimony is that they mention Quiet Zero by name. (Left) The Peil Witches have a habit of knowing more than they should,

such as in Episode 7 where it's revealed they know about the Schwarzette (Left), and in Episode 12 where they email 5lan detailed information about the Plant Quetta attack mere minutes after it ended, even mentioning the Dawn of Fold by name. (Right)

In Episode 5, Godoy tells Prospera, "Peil Technologies is making its move," to which Prospera responds, "It's sooner than we expected." The Peil Witches are professional moles, to the point that even Prospera was keeping an active eye on them specifically in order to work around their schemes.

It's easy to assume that Peil might have found out about Quiet Zero after the GUND-ARM merger with Shin-Sei, but I think it's just as likely that they've known about it for far longer than that, but didn't view it as any sort of tangible threat so they didn't act on it.

I've actually seen a lot of people be confused as to why Suletta suddenly knows everything about her and Eri's past and Prospera's plan, so just to clarify, it happened during her and Eri's conversation at the end of Episode 18, specifically when Eri blasts her with Permet. (During the sequence a series of images from the Prologue flash before the final memory plays, representing Eri showing her everything.)

That means that Suletta had known about everything during the entire period of time between Episode 19-21, but just didn't tell anybody about it. Which, yknow, makes sense, it's a bit of a difficult thing to just bring up randomly.

Here we get our first official introduction to Calibarn. We learn here that it was confiscated during the Vanadis Incident by the Space Assembly League, who'd seemingly been keeping it hidden away since then.

So, I don't think Guston literally means they confiscated it DURING the actual event at Vanadis, as the League weren't personally involved in the attack. It was Delling and a small platoon of Dominicus (which was operating under the MS Dev Council at the time) acting alone. And, more importantly, Folkvangr was bombed immediately after the massacre ended. If Calibarn was there, it would have been destroyed.

Calibarn's HG Gunpla Kit sheds some light in this regard thanks to its description in the manual:

"The Vanadis Institute developed countless prototype units in addition to Lfrith before the establishment of GUND FORMAT technology. Of these units, the Calibarn took the most strikingly different direction from that of Lfrith. Unlike the Lfrith, which could be operated with minimal impact on the human body within a certain permet score, Calibarn prioritized mobile suit performance to seek the utmost limits of GUND-ARM capabilities and adopted extreme measures that did not guarantee the pilot's life protection at all. After losing to Lfrith in the development competition, it is said that all records of the Calibarn were destroyed, and it was made off limits and sealed away. Although it aimed to become the mainstream of GUND-ARMs, the Calibarn could very well have been considered the most cursed of all Gundams from the public sentiments."

So, after it was decided to pursue the Lfrith model for Gundam development, the Calibarn's development documentation was destroyed and it was sealed off somewhere, presumably some Ochs Earth development site, and shortly after Vanadis, when the company was being forcibly dissolved and investigated, the Space Assembly League uncovered the Calibarn and confiscated it for themselves, without telling the outside world what it had found.

You might ask why Vanadis just sealed it off instead of destroying it, but remember, in Episode 7, Miorine estimates that disposing of the Pharact and the Development Team that made it would incur a loss of 120 billion. Mobile Suits (especially Gundams) are expensive to produce and expensive to destroy. It was probably just financially easier to hide it somewhere and pretend it didn't exist.

It's also probably why the League sat on it too. Without the development documents, they couldn't really reproduce it, and even if they could, the Calibarn is basically a giant human meat grinder. It's essentially inoperable by any normal person, and wasn't truly designed to be operated in the first place.

Anyway, just some interesting Calibarn things.

As Suletta resolves to pilot the Calibarn, she says "Even if I don't gain anything, I have to do what I can."

When she says this, she picks up a bright red tomato (Left). This is a followup to her and Miorine's argument back in Episode 16, in which Suletta is being reflected in an unripe, rotting tomato, symbolizing her lack of a personal identity outside of her Mother's influence. (Right)

Now, she's matured as an individual, and become fully actualized, living for her own sake and the sake of those she cares about.

A look at the League Ship's System UI When Quiet Zero is detected, the alert message reads: ALERT Unregistered PMET codes detected

Quiet Zero's introduction is truly harrowing. An entire FLEET was melted through like paper. There is no world where this thing is anything other than a apocalyptic superweapon. Eat your heart out Delling Rembran.

Anyway, the song that plays during this scene is "Quiet Zero" from the OST.

youtube

Another big personal favorite of mine, give it a listen!

Between Chuchu, Miorine, and Petra, Suletta just has a habit of befriending (and marrying) Meangirls. Good for her honestly. But it's really sweet just how protective Chuchu has become over Suletta. I like to imagine they spent a lot of time together in Season 2.

Common 5lan W.

It's easy to get annoyed at Lauda here, (which is because he is being annoying,) but if you think about it you can understand his rationale, as flawed as it is. Before, he blamed Suletta for everything in his life going wrong, but after Guel came back and defeated her, things...didn't go back to normal like he thought they would. Guel hasn't told him about what happened to him on Earth, he didn't tell him what happened to their Father, he hasn't even been telling him about what the hell is going on in his life in general, anymore. So from his perspective he just abandoned him.

After nearly losing Petra too, he can only rationalize it by blaming the common denominator: Miorine. He's wrong, and not seeing the bigger picture, but he CAN'T see the bigger picture because his Brother isn't telling him anything about it. He's confused and angry and lashing out. Normal little brother behavior. But I think if we can forgive Prospera's triple digit body count we can forgive Lauda for being kind of annoying.

And with that, the pieces are finally moving into place. The end is near.

>> Click here to go to Episode 22 Or go to the Masterpost.

#g witch #gundam the witch from mercury

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mattmoicetartiste · 15 hours

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For non french preople, here an explanation on why y'all can see so many french being angry, sad or worry or even the 3 at the same time , today :

We had european election (The European Parliament adopts laws that affect everyone: large countries and small communities, powerful companies and young start-ups, the global and the local so its really important) — There are many political party and one of them, Rassemblement National is a far right (created by ancients nazists and waffen ss 💀) who had 32% so : many places at the European Parliament AND SO , our president had announces the dissolution of the National Assembly which means we had to voted for new deputies but with the results he had just open the door to the fascists..

So, ofc we're so worried, like what do you mean people vote for a political party with nazists??? But after, I remember that Paris had authorized a neo nazists walk so..

#EU #european #european elections #france #the far right has so many voices this is so scary #we HAVE TO VOTE THE 30RD JUNE AND 7TH JULY #eu elections #non french #please read this-

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rudrjobdesk · 2 years

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यूपी में भाजपा कैसे जीती और क्यों कम हो गई सीटें? क्या कहता है पार्टी का एनालिसिस

उत्तर प्रदेश विधानसभा चुनाव में जीतने के बाद अब भारतीय जनता पार्टी में समीक्षा का दौर जारी है। खबर है कि भाजपा की प्रदेश इकाई ने प्रधानमंत्री नरेंद्र मोदी को एक विस्तृत रिपोर्ट भेजी है। कहा जा रहा है कि इस रिपोर्ट में भाजपा के सीटों के गणित से लेकर समाजवादी पार्टी के प्रदर्शन की जानकारी शामिल है। 10 मार्च को घोषित हुए चुनाव परिणाम में भाजपा ने 273 सीटें जीतने में सफलता हासिल की थी। वहीं, पार्टी…

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naturalrights-retard · 1 year

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Largest voter turnout in 30 years, and with 18 parties in Parliament, the Farmers party (BBB) got 30% of the vote, by far the highest--and Holland's current leaders will soon be out on their ear.

The BBB's huge election win is a direct challenge to Mark Rutte's coalition We are unlikely to win like this unless the ballot box is secure—Meryl

Dutch farmers protest against the Government’s farming policy this month. Credit: Getty.

With the highest turnout in 30 years, Dutch voters gave an extraordinary signal to their four-party Government on Wednesday: the Farmer Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging, or BBB) is set to come first in regional elections, which decide the make-up of the Dutch Senate.

In a long voting day, with locations from repurposed drive-through testing centres to ancient churches, an estimated 61% of Dutch people turned out. The result was astonishing, even though the party has been creeping up the polls, feeding on anti-establishment feeling after unpopular Covid lockdown.

Some analysts saw the election as a fight between two ‘moods’ in the Netherlands: a mood of (Right-wing) discontent, echoed also across other countries, versus the traditional consensus-driven Dutch mood. With 18 parties in parliament, politicians have typically found a way to muddle along, but this election was different thanks to the thorny issue of nitrogen compound pollution, which is tying the country in knots before a bill has even passed through parliament.

EU rules, Dutch laws, and court verdicts mean the country must reduce emissions of ammonia, nitrogen oxides and nitrous oxide from farming, transport and building machines. The question is who takes the hit — and whether 30% of productive farms should be shut, forcibly if necessary. The Netherlands, which feeds the world with its intensive farming and livestock-heavy agriculture, is at the sharp end of the international climate debate.

According to initial results, the BBB, headed by sole MP Caroline van der Plas, will be the largest party in the Senate — polling at more than 30% in some regions. Meanwhile, support for the Government has been slashed. The result is a direct challenge to Dutch PM Mark Rutte, who has been embroiled in a number of scandals, such as gas mining in Groningen at the expense of citizen safety, punishing innocent (often dual-national) citizens for childcare benefit fraud and ongoing Dutch farmer protests about nitrogen emissions. Small wonder, then, that 46% of voters said they were specifically voting against the current national administration.

The strength of green feeling here, both for and against, is a bellwether for the struggle to come in other countries and farming economies. But BBB should not be dismissed as ‘anti-green’; rather farmers are more of a lime green versus the dark green of the eco activists, both of whom claim they want to protect the land.

The reality of climate change mitigation or adaptation is playing out in the Netherlands right now, where these new provincial assemblies will need to come up with detailed plans to reduce nitrogen pollution by July. Meanwhile, there is a national housing crisis and this is one of the top personal issues for people in the Netherlands. Nitrogen rules are getting in the way. Still, the success of the BBB serves as a warning shot to Mark Rutte and his government.“This is a landslide we haven’t seen for years,” said CDA leader Wopke Hoekstra, a Government party whose traditional farmer support has evaporated. “It is an extraordinarily bitter pill.”

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head-post · 10 hours

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EP elections 2024: triumph of right-wing opposition, collapse of Greens, demand for change of course

Right-wing parties have made significant gains in the European Parliament elections. According to the first results provided by the EU, far-right parties will dominate the transnational parliament, while the Greens were the hardest hit.

French President Emmanuel Macron suffered a crushing defeat in exit polls, while Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party won a convincing victory that underlines her credibility as a candidate for the French presidency in 2027.

According to the first exit polls, the National Rally party won about 32 per cent of the vote, 10 points more than in the last EU elections in 2019, and about 17 points ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s party.

In Germany, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party came second behind the opposition Conservatives with 16.5 per cent of the vote, up from 11 per cent in 2019, according to exit polls released by public broadcaster ARD. The Greens lost the most in Germany on Sunday, dropping 8.6 percentage points to 11.9 per cent. Voters penalised them for the cost of policies to cut CO2 emissions – in line with expectations for environmental parties across Europe.

In the Netherlands, where voting took place on Thursday, polls showed that nationalist Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration party would win seven of the 29 seats in the EU assembly, just one less than the alliance of the Social Democrats and Greens.

Meanwhile in Austria, the right-wing Freedom Party is the likely winner of the vote, according to a poll conducted over the past week and released after polls closed on Sunday night.

After the polls closed in Greece, the first exit polls show the ruling New Democracy party in first place with between 28 and 32 per cent. The Greek Solution party is gaining between 7.6 and 10 per cent, while the ultra-conservative Niki is on top with between 2.9 and 4.9 per cent.

Spanish exit polls show Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) vying for the top spot with the conservative Popular Party (PP).

According to a poll by Danish national TV channel DR, SF, the Socialist People’s Party, which in English is called the Green Left, will get the most votes – 18.4 per cent – and three of the 15 Danish seats in the European Parliament.

Pro-European coalition is still in place

On the other hand, the new balance in the EU parliament shows that a stable pro-European coalition is a realistic scenario, despite the rise of the far-right across Europe.

The centre-right EPP, the EU Socialists and the liberal Renewal could form a majority of 403 seats.

The election result raises the possibility that the EPP candidate Ursula von der Leyen will be re-elected as head of the EU Commission. Christopher Glück, managing director at the political analysis firm Forefront Advisers, told Euractiv:

“The majority of the centrist three looks pretty solid […] probably ahead of 410 seats.”

This year’s European Parliament elections are the first since Britain left the EU. In total, more than 360 million Europeans could vote in the election of 720 MEPs. This year’s vote was closely watched around the world. It is predicted that a strong electoral performance by the far-right could reshape alliances in parliament and dramatically change the future of the entire European Union.