Yet more good tweets

Historic photo noted

It's so hard to believe this has become necessary because of a con man like Trump and his fellow grifters who make money by selling conspiracy and vilification. 

Jonah's had enough

 

A constant pattern of disingenuous self serving propaganda

Lots of people complaining about Shapiro getting an article at Politico:

Yes, this fits into a pattern that the right wing commentary has been following for years:

 

a.    promote an alternative fact universe (often by promoting minority, crank views within a field of expertise) to their audience, and telling them that the Left or Centre of politics is malign and wants to "destroy your way of life"; 

 

b.   if polling indicates they are having some success with such promotion, tell the Left/Centre that if their views had more credibility, they wouldn't be losing so many people in the court of popular opinion; 

 

c.    when a Right wing populist like Trump wins, tell the Left/Centre it's their own fault for not listening to the genuine concerns of their "salt of the earth" audience, who always feel overlooked;

 

d.   when a Right wing populist loses, tell the Left/Centre that it would be against their interest to "punish" the common people by carrying out their campaign agenda because that would just confirm their view that no one listens to their grievances, and make them fearful the Left/Centre is about to destroy their way of life.  

 

 

It's completely self serving and disingenuous and prevents good faith political discussion, and continually encourages a victim mentality amongst the RW "base".

 

Usual rider:  yes, identity politics on the Left can encourage victim mentality on matters such as sexuality, gender, and race:   but the consequences of that are no where near as societally damaging as diving into a world of conspiracy belief on matters that harm everyone like climate change and pandemic response, which is what RW victimhood leads to.  

 

The state they're in

They helped create a monster, and now fear it.
 

Movie about another failed state noted

I don't think it has attracted as much critical attention as it deserves, but the recent Netflix movie Mosul, about the terrible fighting and danger in that city as a result of ISIS, is very good.  

An American made film but with Arabic/Iraqi dialogue (and without featuring one Western character), it's surprising to read that it's the first film directed by its writer Matthew Michael Carnahan.   I would guess he has a promising future. 

I also see that it was filmed mostly in Marrakesh.  (As with Extraction, it's sort of funny to imagine the residents of  a city being excited to see a big movie being made there, only to realise on viewing the final film that it was chosen to look a convincingly horrible dump of a place.)    I thought the opening drone shots of a destroyed city looked real though - perhaps Mosul itself?

Unfortunately, it's been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons:

There has been a continuing sense of unease and high alert from the stars and filmmakers behind Mosul, the Iraqi-language thriller based on the true tale of an Iraqi SWAT police squad that took to the streets to wipe out ISIS members to avenge the love ones that unit members lost at the hands of the terror organization. The film made a high-profile Thanksgiving debut on Netflix and became one of the most viewed movies on the site in Europe and the Middle East. Unfortunately with the film’s popularity, several of the stars of the film have seen their social media pages filled with unsettling threats of violence that purport to be coming from members and loyalists of the fractured ISIS organization.
 

Well worth watching. 

It may be propaganda, but it's very high quality propaganda

So, Youtube suggested this video for me (no doubt because of other building/architecture videos I have watched recently), and it was pretty interesting:

If you can't watch it now, it's about a very, very tall building in Shanghai which has been open a while but seems to have attracted criticism for its low tenancy. It is an innovative building, as the chief architect explains. (And honestly, his body and demeanour doesn't really fit my mental image of what most architects would look like.  I expect them to be slim and slightly dandified - more like Tom Wolfe than Jack Black.)  

Anyhow, I see that the channel the video is on has a lot of suspiciously pro-China sounding content (and in fact, there is a propaganda aspect to this video, where it is suggested that buildings made with government investment are more likely to take green innovation seriously because they can afford to wait for the return on energy use savings.)   

And yeah, I see that CGTN is a Chinese government owned news network with a reputation for controversial pro-China propaganda content.

Gee, the quality of their videos seems very high, though. 

Sort of funny

Actually, one of the turnarounds of the last year of the Trump administration was the realisation that Melania is no hostage of her marriage - she's a really unpleasant character, like her husband.   

The first lady vaguely condemned the attempted coup, saying she was “disappointed and disheartened with what happened last week.” She had much harsher words for those she accused of spreading “salacious gossip” about her, apparently referring to reports about her response to the events.

CNN first reported on Friday that the first lady was overseeing a photo shoot of decorative objects at the White House as deadly chaos consumed Washington last week following the president’s speech to his gathered supporters.

“I find it shameful that surrounding these tragic events there has been salacious gossip, unwarranted personal attacks, and false misleading accusations on me — from people who are looking to be relevant and have an agenda,” she said. “This time is solely about healing our country and its citizens. It should not be used for personal gain.”

 

Same for the Murdoch family, and anyone else who owns Right wing media

 

The appalling details of Trump's behaviour on (and after) 6 January start emerging

At Axios:

President Trump today privately — and falsely — blamed "Antifa people" for storming the Capitol, even though clear video and documentary evidence exists showing the rioters were overwhelmingly Trump supporters, Axios' Jonathan Swan reports.

Why it matters: Despite facing an impeachment vote for an assault he helped incite, the outgoing president is still sticking with his tried-and-true playbook of deflecting and reaching for conspiracies.

Behind the scenes: In a tense, 30-minute-plus phone call this morning with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Trump trotted out the Antifa line.

• McCarthy would have none of it, telling the president: "It's not Antifa, it's MAGA. I know. I was there," according to a White House official and another source familiar with the call.
• The White House official said the call was tense and aggressive at times, with Trump ranting about election fraud and an exasperated McCarthy cutting in to say, "Stop it. It's over. The election is over."

From the Washington Post:

Hiding from the rioters in a secret location away from the Capitol, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) appealed to Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) phoned Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.

And Kellyanne Conway, a longtime Trump confidante and former White House senior adviser, called an aide who she knew was standing at the president’s side.

But as senators and House members trapped inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday begged for immediate help during the siege, they struggled to get through to the president, who — safely ensconced in the West Wing — was too busy watching fiery TV images of the crisis unfolding around them to act or even bother to hear their pleas.

“He was hard to reach, and you know why? Because it was live TV,” said one close Trump adviser. “If it’s TiVo, he just hits pause and takes the calls. If it’s live TV, he watches it, and he was just watching it all unfold.”  .........

At 6:01 p.m., Trump blasted out yet another tweet, which Twitter quickly deleted and which many in his orbit were particularly furious about, fearing he was further inflaming the still-tense situation.

“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so ­unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long,” Trump wrote. “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

Will Wilkinson is right, again:

 

More about the continuing problem

More seriously:

They may have deleted, but polling indicates a huge number of Republicans agree with the sentiment.

The situation going forward:

About civil war, etc

Prompted by this:

 

I would have thought it obvious that a proper, full scale, civil war is just silly:  there is no political leadership for it, at all; the clearest political area divide is between rural areas and most city/urbanites - and one cannot last long without the other; and wanky militia are just culture war cosplay when it comes to fighting actually properly organised and armed governments for any length of time.   

But,  you would have to guess that the biggest danger - and one which is guaranteed to be freaking out the FBI at the moment - is a period of intensified Right Wing terrorism against government facilities, employees and politicians.

Noah Smith interviewed someone who set it out like this:

..I think the odds of an actual civil war in the US are low. Rich countries with large security apparatuses tend not to have these kinds of conflicts - they tend to have some combination of less-aggrieved populations and more effective deterrence and disruption of potential rebels. There are of course exceptions that matter (think Northern Ireland), so nothing is impossible. But what Aila Matanock and I argue in our Foreign Affairs piece is that it's more likely you see some degree on ongoing, but probably *comparably* low-level and sporadic, political violence linked to radical right-wing actors. We've seen plenty of this already, especially death threats and disrupted plots. The US security apparatus seems to be, in general, taking this stuff seriously now, though at points we've seen both local sympathizers and efforts at the federal level to downplay threats from the right. My fear is that this kind of low-level but potentially fatal dynamic could persist, especially linked to a Lost Cause myth of a stolen 2020 election, and fueled by Trump and his base. Even with sustained policing, this kind of thing could drag on, and could kill people, even if we never hit standard civil war definitional thresholds (much less 1864 America).

Thinking out loud here, and without making it sound like I hope RW terrorism takes place:   seems to me that the whole "election was stolen by massive Left wing fraud" conspiracy justification is only going to be seriously eroded if Republican leadership AND key right wing media outlets completely repudiate their former semi (or full) endorsement of it.

And I suspect the fastest way for that to happen would be for any  RW terrorist attack causing substantial damage (and, probably, death) to occur sooner rather than later.  

So if there is going to be (say) a - hopefully less deadly - mini McVeigh bombing, for example, it would honestly be better for it to happen now rather than in (say) 12 months time.

Don't get me wrong:  ideally, as soon as Trump is out of office maybe there will be a rush of Republicans to denounce him and all of the conspiracy rumours he promoted, and a unified turnaround of some key figures in the Right Wing universe might start to turn around the dangerous conspiracy believing base.

But I suspect it won't go that way, and its going to take more violence first.

Free market at play

Heh:

As I might have expected, Claire Lehmann has an opinion piece at The Australian: Censorship must be taken out of Big Tech’s hands.

She says, ridiculously:

 Almost all avenues of communication and commerce available to Donald Trump have been removed, virtually overnight.

He's a President with an entire Press Office, able to call press conferences at a drop of a hat and 200 journalists and TV cameras would come running to the White House to cover it.   Once he's no longer President, he's free to set how ever many private websites he wants, with frequent updates, video messages, live feeds from his toilet if wants.  Someone will host him. 

She goes on to allow this:

Trump’s permanent suspension may well be supportable from a national security point of view, if these companies, in concert with US law enforcement, have credible evidence of further political violence. 

Um,  aren't the hundreds or thousands of messages on (say) Parler about taking up arms to reverse the election enough evidence of a national security problem, without waiting for law enforcement to agree?

 She then says:

Yet the co-ordinated movement of these companies and their swift removal of Trump’s presence on the internet has chilled observers around the globe.

She cites two people.   Meh, I think she might just be exaggerating.  

As usual, she then complains about what Twitter hasn't taken action against.   This is typical Right Wing whataboutism - although I am not suggesting Twitter or other platforms are above criticism.   But it's irrelevant to the urgency to take action about Trump and the danger his lies and disinformation present to the nation. 

Her answer though is regulation of platforms:

In the absence of regulation that would help tech companies make decisions with transparency, and an appeals process, tech CEOs respond to public outcry with ad hoc censorship.

Sounds all enormously clumsy and costly to me.

I think it safer to leave this question up to the market.

 

Dumb or dangerous? Why not both?

So, on the weekend I was watching a PBS Newshour segment where a couple of female reporters who were in the Capitol during last week's wingnut invasion were on, describing their experiences.

My general impression was that they were the luckier ones, who didn't get amongst the worst of it (and didn't get threatened too severely).

One made the point that it was clear that, having got into the building, a lot of Trumpers didn't really know what to do.   She tried to interview a few, some of whom (typical dumbasses) were offended she was wearing a facemask, and when told she was from PBS told her it was fake news and stopped speaking to her.

It was pretty clear from some of the photos and video that the uncertainty as to what to do once inside the building was not restricted to one or two people.   It was not a massively well organised thing. 

There is also a very sarcastic article in The Atlantic which reads a bit like gonzo journalism:  Worst Revolution Ever.   It is good, and here is a sample:

Outside, a young woman named Elizabeth was weeping and holding a blue terry-cloth towel to her eyes, while a man beside her tried to comfort her. “I made it, like, a foot inside,” she told a reporter, her voice an admixture of misery and grievance, “and they pushed me out and they maced me!” She made it sound like this had happened to her at the Air and Space Museum. When the reporter asked her where she was from, she said, “Knoxville, Tennessee,” in an especially aggrieved tone, as though this was itself part of the outrage. Maced? A person from Knoxville?

Why had she come to Washington? “We’re storming the Capitol!” she whined. “It’s a revolution!” Patty Hearst was more up to speed on the philosophy and goals of the Symbionese Liberation Army before she got out of the trunk. These people were dressed like cartoon characters, they believe that the country is under attack from pedophiles and “globalists,” and they are certain that Donald Trump won the election. In other words, the Founders’ worst fear—that a bunch of dumbasses would elect a tyrant—had come to pass.

On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence of genuine danger and violence,  not only from the crowd crush entry (with that poor police officer stuck in the door way, and that or other video showing the rioters spraying mace at the police), but part of the invaders came prepared for something more.  As summarised in another Atlantic article It was supposed to be so much worse:

 A group led by a man in a QAnon T-shirt chased a police officer up to the second floor, chanting and demanding to speak with senators. Some wore tactical gear—helmets, armor, and black masks covering their entire face. It was easy to miss them with all the coverage of the costumes and poop-smearing and poses struck in Statuary Hall, but they were there, these military-styled men, carrying blunt instruments and fistfuls of zip ties, better known as flex cuffs, capable of restraining hostages. At least one was an Air Force combat veteran, The New Yorker reported. They seemed to act with purpose and knew their way around the Capitol. One carried a semiautomatic weapon and 11 Molotov cocktails. Later, police officers found the two pipe bombs. The devices were outside the buildings housing the Democratic and Republican National Committees, just blocks from the Capitol. Federal agents discovered a truck full of rifles, shotguns, and bomb-making supplies parked outside the RNC headquarters.

The article also makes mention of the Reuters photographer who I have already mentioned in a previous post:

A Reuters photographer on the scene said he heard at least three different rioters say they wanted to find and hang Pence, who supported certifying the results of the election.

There is actually video of the chant to "Hang Mike Pence", so there is no reason to doubt the Reuters guy at all.  

It seems to me that most reporting has actually underplayed the murderous malice that was part of the demonstration overall, with the photos of the gallows set up not getting, I think, quite as much publicity as it deserved:

 There was ore than one, too:

Besides all of this - people actually died in the melee.  How much more serious do right wing apologists want it to be??

Over at Catallaxy, where Australian wingnuts reign, we ever got these bit of ridiculous, offensive commentary from two of the "regulars":

 

They are idiots from way back, getting dumber and dumber over the years from living in the RW echo chamber, but this is just at the level of so stupid it's like performance art for other numbskulls.

CL has since been posting with his standard "whataboutism" with respect to the 1996 unionists riot at Australia's parliament house.   There are physical similarities, but that's about where it ends.   It was a shocking, obviously counterproductive bit of political violence that set the Labor Party back for many years.

Where it differed was this:  the grievance it was based did nothing to justify it, but it was not based on invented facts, such as the Right has been doing for years;  there was not the whole "we have to kill traitors to the nation" mental justification that goes with the American Right's years of bullshit now about it being literally a Socialist/end of the country panic mongering if the Democrats get into power;  it had no paramilitary and gun armed participants.    

So no, it was bad, Labor and the unions paid the price, as should the Repbulicans electorally for several election cycles.

But they probably won't, unless major changes happen to American political media scene, which will be the subject of a separate post.

Update:  here are extracts from tweet thread by someone liberal who was apparently amongst the crowd.  He makes a few points worth noting:

 

Not surprising

I'm also all in on this take:

The problem continues

First, let me predict that, with the large number of White House resignations yesterday, there is a lot more disclosure to come about Trump and his family's personal desire to see yesterday's historic  insurrection happen and succeed.

Secondly, here is some Twitter commentary worth preserving:

Yes, the theme of responsibility from within the GOP is the key distressing thing  here.  They (or at least half of them)  are still endorsing the RW alternative reality universe even after seeing the consequences in front of their gas masked faces.

But the larger scale issue is that they are willing and gullible pawns of the RW media alternative reality universe, which learnt nothing from yesterday:

Yes: the long term problem is the information alternative reality and hyperbolic political scare universe (in which formerly centrist positions are denounced as socialist suicide) originating in RW media that has brainwashed such a large part of the American voting population, including (it would seem) at least half of Republican politicians.

If moderate Republicans don't push back, the problem continues.

Not good

Well, I guess they figure no one from the US is going to be on the phone to them complaining (for the next couple of days, anyway).

 

I like the sarcasm

 

While we are waiting for events in Washington to play out...

....I offer a diversion:   Google suggested I watch this bit of real estate porn (not normally my scene, but I follow The All Knowing One's recommendations quite often.)   It's a pretty new apartment in a very skinny and tall building in New York:

You know the biggest thing that kept crossing my mind while watching it?   Those full length glass windows look so dirty.   The top of the building is still under construction, oddly, so maybe they haven't got their glass cleaning system going yet; but if I moved into a $28 million (USD) apartment and I was looking through scummy glass windows/walls all the time, I would be annoyed.

Anyway, I still don't care for the idea of being high in the sky and only full length glass walls keeping me from the elements (and falling 43 floors to my death).   The next time a sonic boom creating meteor passes over New York, I will feel vindicated.   

In a pickle

In December, I bought some red radishes at Mulgowie, and decided to pickle them (the first time in my life I had pickled anything, as it happens.)

There are many ways suggested on the internet, all involving various amounts and types of vinegar and sugar.  I went with this recipe, and I thought it worked pretty well.  I like eating them on sandwiches for the crunch, moisture and flavour they add.

 Oddly enough, no one else in the family thinks they are nice.   Now I have gone past the recommended "eat within two weeks", but I suspect any unhealthy growth in them is going to be pretty obvious.  (They are also in the fridge.)   But lots of sites say "eat within 1-2 weeks after opening".   I don't know - seems a tad overly cautious to me.