#The Trump interviews: what he said about Brexit

[eretzyisrael]

by Brendan O'Neill

In his stride now, Rushdie chides the radicals who have failed to distance themselves from Hamas. This is a ‘terrorist organisation’, he reminds them, and it is ‘very strange for young progressive student [activists] to kind of support a fascist terrorist group’. Indeed. It’s been mindblowing to watch the self-styled anti-fascists of the bourgeois left either stay schtum or even try to rationalise Hamas’s fascistic attack on the Jews of Southern Israel. These are the kind of people who think everything is ‘like the 1930s’ – Brexit, Trump, gender-critical feminism – and yet when there was a pogrom that was genuinely reminiscent of the 1930s they essentially said: ‘Well, what do you expect…?’

Rushdie then commits a secular blasphemy – he questions the chant of our times: ‘Free Palestine.’ He himself supports the creation of a Palestinian state, but what would a ‘Free Palestine’ look like in 2024, he wonders? ‘Right now, if there was a Palestinian state, it would be run by Hamas and that would make it a Taliban-like state…It would be a client state of Iran. And is that what the progressive movements of the Western left wish to create?’

I find myself wondering this all the time. What did it mean when so-called progressives waved the Palestinian flag in the immediate aftermath of 7 October? Was that solidarity with the people of Gaza or Israelophobic triumphalism following Hamas’s vile, bloody invasion of kibbutzim? And when activists holler ‘Globalise the intifada’, what are they saying? The only ‘intifada’ we’ve seen in recent years was the racist pogrom of 7 October. Globalise that? Rushdie is right to call for deeper thought, to muddy with pesky nuance the juvenile rage against Israel that has swept the Western world.

There is something undeniably haunting about Rushdie making his plea for reason from his battered, injured face. In the interview the right lens in his spectacles is blacked out, hiding the eye he lost to the savage knife attack he suffered in August 2022. There’s scar tissue on his face. His lower lip droops to one side. When it comes to radical Islam, this man knows whereof he speaks. The inhumanity of this ideology is literally etched on his face. These are the punishments for ‘blasphemy’ in the 21st century: a severed eye, a deformed mouth. And yet still he sees, still he speaks.

[bopinion]

2024 / 26

Aperçu of the week

"A little less conversation, a little more action!"

(Elvis Presley)

Bad News of the Week

It was a foreseeable accident: the first presidential debate on US television. With a candidate who is known to lie and cheat shamelessly. And a candidate who was doubted to be fit enough for one of the most demanding jobs in the world. Both have been impressively demonstrated. The problem with this is that Donald Trump's potential voters are not deterred by this. But Joe Biden's potential voters will be put off by it.

In an interview on the street after the debate, a young man said: "We are more than 300 million. And that's the best choice we have?" That sums it up well. On the one hand, a guy with "the morals of an alley cat" - Biden is right about that. On the other hand, a deserving statesman who has both feet on the ground of the constitution and is committed to democratic values. But who clearly lacks the physical fitness for a second term in office - Trump is right about that.

According to media reports, "panic is spreading" among many Democrats. And yet Joe Biden is the only one who could take himself out of the race. Because a sitting president is sacred - if he wants to run, he will. Period. Should he actually do so and the warning voices prove to be right, the Democrats will be as much to blame for Trump's re-election as the Republicans. We can only hope that the election itself does not turn into an accident that could have been actually foreseen.

Good News of the Week

Sir Keir Rodney Starmer will be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. After years of chaos under various Conservative leaders, the mood in the country is clear: fundamental change, please. Brexit was botched, the healthcare system is still not working, the labor market is down, inflation is high. The Tories had their chance and blew it. Rishi Sunak's flight forward with early elections will backfire just like French President Emmanuel Macron's.

Labour's party leader Starmer is seen by many as wooden and colorless, a political robot without dynamism. Charisma or ego are alien to him, his nickname is "Mr. Boring". More and more Britons seem to welcome the fact that this is a pleasant contrast to, for example, loudspeaker Boris Johnson, the last actually elected prime minister. Here is someone who simply wants to do his job. He has made his party electable again for the middle of society - because ultimately elections are won everywhere there - and prescribed a new program for it. With small, pragmatic steps, without a grand vision. Functional and straightforward like himself.

It is worth taking a look at his CV. The working-class son from a humble background, whose parents perhaps not coincidentally named him after the first Labor Party leader Keir Hardie, has worked his way up. As a human rights lawyer, Starmer defended environmental activists against McDonald's, fought for compensation payments for miners and represented defendants sentenced to death in Commonwealth countries. As uncompromising prosecutor, he spared no controversial cases and earned a knighthood. As party leader, he also proved that attitude mattered to him, for example by summarily kicking out members with anti-Semitic tendencies.

Starmer says he went into politics "to make the world a better place". With his background, that is credible. And the rather uncreative election campaign slogan "Change" takes on more meaning because of him. A down-to-earth guy from the middle of society with a solid moral compass, who doesn't want to shine but wants to do things, is probably exactly what the UK needs right now. And certainly not the right-wing populists of Reform UK. I wish him every success.

I couldn't care less...

...that 16 US Nobel laureates in economics have warned that Trump is a threat to "the position of the USA in the world". It is almost a tradition that science is rarely listened to in the land of unlimited opportunity. Unfortunately.

It's fine with me...

...that Steve Bannon now has to go to prison for four months. The appeal by Trump's sleazy ex-advisor against his conviction for "Disregard of Congress" was rejected. In my opinion, Bannon has disregarded much more - for example democracy, truth, decency, responsibility, style, etcetera...

As I write this...

...the hottest day of the year so far, 34 degrees Celsius, is followed by a quite cooler 11 degrees Celsius. And it's raining cats and dogs again. In places so heavy that there were flood victims in Switzerland and France and in Italy (!) hailstones with a diameter of 10 cm (!) fell. The next time a climate change denier crosses my path, he'll be lucky if I don't hit him with my umbrella.

Post Scriptum

The new top staff of the European Union is in place. Germany's Ursula von der Leyen will remain Commission President, former Portuguese head of government António Costader will become President of the body of heads of state and government and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas will be Foreign Affairs Commissioner. These are all comprehensible, balanced and sound decisions made by the European heads of state. Formally, however, they are only proposals, as the European Parliament still has to approve the personnel tableau in a secret ballot. It will be interesting to see which concessions will be made to which political groups. But that's how the political business works: you have to organize majorities.

On the other hand, there is a stronger, albeit still fragmented, right-wing in Parliament and Viktor Orbán as President of the Council for the next six months. In this respect, a strong Commission - whereby the individual Commissioners, i.e. heads of department, have not yet been determined as they are nominated by the individual states - is an important foundation for the start of the new legislative period. Viva Europa!

[julialouisdreyfest]

Mr. Dad Interview

Mr. Dad is a band from Minot, North Dakota. They are very good. They stopped playing for a while but like the phoenix of Arizona, they are rising from the desert of not playing shows to play shows again. One of those shows is Dreyfest, and we are very grateful for this. They answered some questions that we asked them as well. They also mentioned that "The following interview may or may not be a product of AI technology."... Read on!

Q: Who is Mr. Dad?

A: Mr. Dad is an American indie rock band from Minot, North Dakota, known for their blend of alternative and indie rock influences. Their music often features introspective lyrics and dynamic arrangements. The band has gained a following for their energetic performances and distinctive sound.

Q: Why is Mr. Dad?

A: The band Mr. Dad takes its name from the title of a book written by Dan Brown. The name evokes a sense of familial or personal reflection, aligning with the band's introspective and emotive musical style. The choice of name might also hint at themes explored in their music, such as personal identity, relationships, and emotional experiences.

Q: How is Mr. Dad?

A: He’s on Lipitor, using Rogane, curving his drinking habits and has acquired a gym membership. His joints are stiff, but he is losing weight. He will be a huge piece of shit for many years to come. Spry, focused and “fat-fit”.

Q: Last time I saw Mr. Dad, Barack Obama was president - what’s happened in the eight, politically inconsequential years since then?

A: Over the past eight years, from 2016 to 2024, the world has seen significant developments:

Pandemic: The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted global health, economies, and daily life, leading to widespread disruptions and a major shift towards remote work and digital interaction.

Political Changes: Various countries experienced political upheaval, with significant elections, leadership changes, and shifts in policy. Notable events include Brexit and the presidency of Donald Trump, followed by Joe Biden's administration in the U.S.

Technological Progress: Rapid advancements in technology, including AI, renewable energy, and digital innovation, have transformed industries and daily life.

Social Movements: Increased focus on social justice issues, including racial equality, gender rights, and climate change activism, has shaped public discourse and policy.

Geopolitical Tensions: Ongoing conflicts and rising geopolitical tensions, such as the Russia-Ukraine war, have contributed to global instability.

These years have been marked by significant challenges and changes, shaping the current global landscape.

Zach thought he was gonna just get through his Vanity Plate interview without talking about the bombshell revelation that he is indeed a tech on the iconic 80s Australian rock band Men at Work - what the heck’s that like??? Zach says “It is pretty cool.” Any Men at Work shows at the All Seasons Arena coming up soon? Zach says “He doesn’t think so, but he will ask.”

Q: What’s the Minot scene like these days - all I remember is Hamms and some guy named Duffy…?

A: It’s about the same, you can actually still buy Hamms at the store! And that guy named Duffy? Doug Burgum is his name now.

Q: I am unapologetically going to ask a question I never ask b/c it’s so annoying…but what are your guy’s influences musically?

A: Bob Seger and the Last Heard. Just to maybe get some people a sense of the kind of shenanigans they’ll get into? But he is drunk and getting arrested for public indecency.

Q: My grandparents met at the North Dakota State Hospital Psychiatric Ward in Jamestown, North Dakota, and my favorite baseball player of all time, Darin Erstad, is also from Jamestown. That said, I have always thought about moving to Jamestown, half as a goof, half as a fulfillment of my destiny. Is this a bad idea?

A: Yes, but let’s weigh the positives versus the negatives. Here are some fun facts about Jamestown, North Dakota:

World's Largest Buffalo: Jamestown is home to the World's Largest Buffalo Monument, a 26-foot-tall, 60-ton statue that has become a popular tourist attraction.

Bison Symbol: The National Buffalo Museum in Jamestown houses a live bison herd, and its mascot, named "Buffy," is a significant symbol of the city's history and culture.

Pioneer Days: The city celebrates its pioneer heritage with the annual "Pioneer Days" festival, which includes reenactments, parades, and a variety of historical displays.

Unusual Neighbor: Just outside Jamestown is a small town called "Lakeside" that has only a few residents, making it one of the smallest incorporated places in the area.

Film Location: Parts of the 2008 film "The Longest Yard" were shot in Jamestown, adding a bit of Hollywood flair to this small North Dakota city.

Community Spirit: Jamestown has a strong community spirit and hosts various local events throughout the year, including the annual "Jamestown Civic Center Car Show" and local farmers' markets.

St. James Basilica: The St. James Basilica, a historic church in Jamestown, is known for its beautiful architecture and stained glass windows, making it a notable landmark in the city. The negative would be that Jamestown North Dakota is located in Jamestown North Dakota. Your Grandparents met at the mental institution and I presume, got the treatment they needed and promptly left? And baseball also no longer lives in Jamestown, North Dakota, as it is not conducive to sport, merriment or life.

Q: Other than the Blue Rider, what is the best dive bar in Minot?

A: Olive Garden all day, all night.

Q: What’s the maddest you’ve ever gotten at your job?

A: Sometimes I get so mad I think I could just quit! But nothing beyond the average existential dread of toiling away everyday for nothing meaningful. I wish I was a race car. I’d drive the less formulate [sic] to Olive Garden whenever they wanted. At Texas Road House, you can ask for bread and they will give it to you, even if you aren’t eating there. That’s not where I work, where I work I ask for bread and they give me shit.  When I was 17 I worked at Burger King. My first day there my Juggalo coworkers handcuffed me to some storage racking in the back room and blew marriuana [sic] smoke into my face. I don’t think I was mad though; I think I was surprised that work was like that. “Welcome to the working week!” Am I right?! I mean like punching bags of frozen fries in the walk-in freezer at Wendy's when you're 17…not that I would know anything about that.

Q: Favorite 80s horror movie?

A: Evil Dead 2

Q: Favorite 70s dad rock album?

A: Comus “To Keep From Crying”

Q: Favorite video game from childhood?

A: 007 The World Is Not Enough.

Q: What are Mr. Dad’s plans for the future?

A: A corporate fast food tie-in perhaps? Retirement and that sweet RV life.

Q: What can we expect for Friday’s set on August 9th at Craft Local at 9:45 PM MST 2024?

A: You can expect us to try our very best. Thank you for this opportunity to share our music with your community once again.

No, thank YOU, Dad, for sharing your music with our community once again. See them at Craft Local at 9:45 on Friday!

[newstfionline]

Monday, January 4, 2021

Is a Home Office More Productive? Some Workers Think So. (WSJ) Some Americans have a new outlook on remote working: They prefer it. In June and July, a group of 1,388 people working from home were asked for their impressions of the experience by workplace consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics and video technology company Owl Labs. The new arrangement, it turns out, suited many of them. While roughly 27% said they would have considered such a setup to be ideal before the coronavirus pandemic started, 80% said they would like to continue working remotely for three days of the week or more once the pandemic is over. Many of these people said they would prefer remote work all five days of the workweek. Another set of 10,000 employees surveyed by the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago say they felt the work-from-home situation was either just as productive or more so than the office. Some told the researchers that home was 30% more productive. “On average, workers and employers have been pleasantly surprised by productivity when working from home,” says Steven Davis, one of the study authors and a University of Chicago business and economics professor. “Reality exceeded expectations.”

Reflecting on cyberdefense failure (NYT) General Paul Nakasone and other American officials responsible for cybersecurity are now consumed by what they missed for at least nine months: a hacking, now believed to have affected upward of 250 federal agencies and businesses, that Russia aimed not at the election system but at the rest of the United States government and many large American corporations. Three weeks after the intrusion came to light, American officials are still trying to understand whether what the Russians pulled off was simply an espionage operation inside the systems of the American bureaucracy or something more sinister, inserting “backdoor” access into government agencies, major corporations, the electric grid and laboratories developing and transporting new generations of nuclear weapons. At a minimum it has set off alarms about the vulnerability of government and private sector networks in the United States to attack and raised questions about how and why the nation’s cyber-defenses failed so spectacularly. Those questions have taken on particular urgency given that the breach was not detected by any of the government agencies that share responsibility for cyber-defense—the military’s Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, both of which are run by General Nakasone, and the Department of Homeland Security—but by a private cybersecurity company, FireEye.

Drug price inflation (WSJ) The pharmaceutical industry is raising the prices of many products in the new year, albeit at a rate slightly below the past couple of years. GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi SA are among the companies that raised the prices of hundreds of drugs by an average of 3.3%, according to a new analysis. Pfizer, which has a large portfolio of products, led the way with the most increases, raising prices by 5% or less on more than 200 products. The drug industry normally sets prices for its therapies at the start of the year and again in the middle of the year. In all, about 70 drugmakers raised prices in the U.S. on Friday, according to an analysis from Rx Savings Solutions, which sells software to help employers and health plans choose the least-expensive medicines. The average increase of 3.3% included changes to different doses for the same drug, according to the analysis.

Congress opening new session as virus, Biden’s win dominate (AP) Congress is preparing to convene for the start of a new session, swearing in lawmakers during a tumultuous period as a growing number of Republicans work to overturn Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump and the coronavirus surge imposes limits at the Capitol. Democrat Nancy Pelosi is set Sunday to be reelected as House speaker by her party, which retains the majority in the House but with the slimmest margin in 20 years after a November election wipeout. Opening the Senate could be among Mitch McConnell’s final acts as majority leader. Republican control is in question until Tuesday’s runoff elections for two Senate seats in Georgia. The Capitol itself is a changed place under coronavirus restrictions. Several lawmakers have been sickened by the virus. A memorial was held Saturday for newly elected Republican lawmaker Luke Letlow, 41, of Louisiana, who died of complications from COVID-19 days before the swearing in. The Office of the Attending Physician has issued several lengthy memos warning lawmakers off meeting in groups or holding traditional receptions to prevent the spread of the virus.

In recorded call, Trump pressures Georgia official to change election results (Reuters) U.S. President Donald Trump pressured Georgia’s top election official to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in the southern state, according to a recording of the hour-long call released by U.S. media on Sunday. The Saturday call was the latest move in Trump’s two-month effort insisting that his loss to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden in the Nov. 3 election was the result of widespread voter fraud, a claim that has been widely rejected by state and federal election officials as well as multiple courts. Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, came as some of Trump’s allies in the U.S. Congress said they plan to object to the formal certification on Wednesday of Biden’s victory. The former vice president won by a margin of 306-232 in the state-by-state Electoral College, and by more than 7 million votes overall. The Washington Post, which first reported the call, said that Trump alternately flattered, begged and threatened Raffensperger with vague criminal consequences in an attempt to undo his loss. There is a strong case that Trump violated a Georgia law against soliciting election fraud, as well as a similar federal law, according to Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University.

Fleeing Lockdown, Americans Are Flocking to Mexico City (NYT) At first, life in lockdown was OK, between working from home, exercising with his roommate and devouring everything on Netflix. But as the coronavirus pandemic wore endlessly on, Rob George began to find the confinement in his West Hollywood home unbearable. So when a Mexican friend said he was traveling to Mexico City in November, George decided to tag along. Now, he’s calling the Mexican capital home—part of an increasing number of foreigners, mainly Americans, who are heading to Mexico, for a short trip or a longer stay to escape restrictions at home. They are drawn partly by the prospect of bringing a little normalcy to their lives in a place where coronavirus restrictions have been more relaxed than at home, even as cases of COVID-19 shatter records. Some of them are staying, at least for a while, and taking advantage of the six-month tourist visa that Americans are granted on arrival. In November, more than half a million Americans came to Mexico—of those, almost 50,000 arrived at Mexico City’s airport, according to official figures. It’s unclear how many are tourists and how many are relocating, at least temporarily. Some may be Mexicans who also have U.S. passports and are visiting family. But walking the streets of Mexico City’s trendier neighborhoods these days, it can sometimes seem like English has become the official language.

Tougher lockdown restriction likely on the way, says UK PM Johnson (Reuters) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday that tougher lockdown restrictions were probably on the way as COVID-19 cases keep rising, but that schools were safe and children should continue to attend. Much of England is already under the toughest level of restriction set out in a four-tier system of regional regulations designed to stop the spread of the virus and protect the national healthcare system. But Johnson, asked in a BBC interview about concerns that the system may not be enough to bring the virus back under control, said that restrictions “alas, might be about to get tougher”.

British unhappy with both major parties (The Guardian) The British public are deeply unhappy with the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the Brexit negotiations, a damning new poll suggests. The poll predicts that if a general election were held tomorrow neither the Conservatives nor Labour would win an outright majority. Disturbingly for Boris Johnson, the survey says the Conservatives would lose 81 seats, wiping out the 80-seat majority they won in December 2019.

3rd body found after landslide in Norway; 7 still missing (AP) Rescue teams searching for survivors four days after a landslide carried away homes in a Norwegian village found no signs of life Saturday amid the ruined buildings and debris. Three bodies have been recovered but searchers are still looking for seven more people believed to be missing. The landslide in the village of Ask is the worst in modern Norwegian history and has shocked citizens in the Nordic nation.Search teams patrolled with dogs as helicopters and drones with heat-detecting cameras flew amid harsh winter conditions over the ravaged hillside in Ask, a village of 5,000 people 25 kilometers (16 miles) northeast of Oslo.

Mafia bosses work on their digital brands (Financial Times) Before his incarceration in 2017, Vincenzo Torcasio, a boss of a clan of the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, Italy’s most powerful mafia, spent five years building up a sizable online following. His digital offering provided an unlikely mix of kitsch images of roses and hearts, quotes from the writer Paulo Coelho, and occasional nuggets of grizzled gangster wisdom. For mafia experts, Mr Torcasio’s decision to become a social media influencer is an example of how some Italian mafia bosses, who generally maintain a low public profile to avoid attention from the authorities, have embraced a digital strategy to grow their criminal brands.

In the battle over India’s history, Hindu nationalists square off against a respected historian (Washington Post) Romila Thapar is the preeminent historian of ancient India, an octogenarian feted the world over for her scholarship excavating answers to questions at the heart of the country’s past. She holds honorary doctorates from top universities including Oxford, is the recipient of the Kluge Prize—akin to the Nobel in social sciences—and has lectured at colleges across the world. Those decades of research and accolades have turned her into a prime target. At the age of 89, Thapar is the subject of attacks by supporters of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, who view her as an opponent to be discredited. “In the early days, I used to get a little upset,” she said. Accusations of ignorance about ancient Indian history quickly devolve into “pornographic and sexist” remarks. “But it’s happened so frequently and regularly that it doesn’t distress me anymore,” she said. At stake is India’s sense of self. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pursuing an agenda that emphasizes Hindu primacy in India—a vast, multireligious democracy founded on secular ideals. History is a key part of that vision. For Hindu nationalists, India’s past consists of a glorious Hindu civilization followed by centuries of Muslim rule that Modi has described as a thousand years of “slavery.” Thapar considers such assertions both simplistic and incorrect. Based on extensive research of Sanskrit and Prakrit texts and drawing upon archaeological data, she presents a more complex picture of Indian history. Her research and writings undermines the ruling party’s efforts to project a unified Hindu tradition stretching back thousands of years and to paint Muslim rulers of India as nothing more than invaders or tyrants.

‘Overwhelmed’ Zimbabwe tightens COVID-19 restrictions, orders most businesses closed (Reuters) Zimbabwe extended a nationwide curfew, banned gatherings and ordered non-essential businesses closed for a month on Saturday in an effort to curb a surge in coronavirus infections. Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who is also health minister, said some of the tighter restrictions were effective immediately and included a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew and a ban on inter-city travel. From Tuesday, non-essential businesses would also be suspended, he said. “People must stay at home save for buying food and medicines or transporting sick relatives,” Chiwenga told a news conference. “Only essential services are to remain open such as hospitals, pharmacies and supermarkets, with only essential staff allowed to come to work,” Chiwenga said, adding such services would have reduced hours and be subject to the night curfew.

[problematicwelshman]

Michael Sheen on Good Omens, sex scenes, and why Brexit led to his break-up

28 NOVEMBER 2018 • 4:18PM

Michael Sheen may be 49, and sporting a grey beard these days, but mention Martians and the actor reverts to a breathless, giddy teenager.

It all stems back to one evening when Sheen was about 12 years old. “It was a significant moment in my life,” he tells me over coffee in a London hotel. “My cousin Hugh was babysitting, and he put on Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds.

“I remember us lying there, listening in bed in the dark. It absolutely terrified me, but I got obsessed with it. I’m worryingly into it. I know every single note, every word.”

Wayne’s 1978 rock opera has had a similar effect on countless fans, even if it prompts a bemused shrug from non-converts. Without ever topping the charts, it has slowly become one of the best-selling British albums of all time, and this Friday begins a stadium tour featuring a 35-foot fire-breathing Martian and a 3D hologram of Liam Neeson. It’s a geeky novelty, but one of epic proportions.

When Wayne asked Sheen if he would star in a new radio drama-style version for the album’s 40th anniversary, alongside Taron Egerton and Ade Edmondson, the Welsh actor “bit his hand off”. It had always been his dream. For decades, whether doing serious political dramas such as Frost/Nixon or the great roles of classical theatre – Hamlet, Henry V – the one part Sheen really wanted involved Martians saying “ulla-ulla”.

“When I was doing Caligula at the Donmar [in 2003], I was filming The Deal during the day – which was the first time I’d played Tony Blair,” he says. “I’d be so tired, to wake myself up [before the play] I would do whole sections of War of the Worlds.” He can even beatbox the sound effects, he adds proudly. “The other guys in the dressing room would all be really pissed off with me - but I was playing Caligula, so they had to put up with it.”

Enthusing about an outtake on a collectors version of the album where you can hear Richard Burton coughing, Sheen briefly slips into an impression of the late actor. It’s eerily spot-on. Burton played the role he takes in the new version, which feels apt; growing up in Port Talbot, Sheen was aware of following in his footsteps.

“Coming from the same town as him really helped,” he says. “It’s place you wouldn’t necessarily think would be very sympathetic to acting – it’s an old steel town, very working class, quite a macho place – but because of Richard Burton, and then Anthony Hopkins, there’s the sense that it’s possible [to be an actor], and people have a respect for it.

“Ultimately, though, we’re very different actors - Burton was very much a charismatic leading man, and I’m probably more of a character actor. He wasn’t known for his versatility.” Sheen, by contrast, is a chameleon, as he proved with a remarkable run of biopics from 2006-9, playing Tony Blair, David Frost, Brian Clough, Kenneth Williams and the Roman emperor Nero on screen in the space of just four years.

He concedes that he may have made a “partly conscious” decision to avoid biopics since then. “I’ve been offered quite a few I didn’t do. I did feel, for a bit, it was probably good for me to move away from it – certainly from playing Blair at least, because that’s the one I became synonymous with. I’d quite happily play real people again, but it’s hard to find good scripts and it takes a lot of homework. With some parts I’ve been offered, you might only have a few weeks to prepare for it - and you can’t do that with Clough or Kenneth Williams.”

Despite his best intentions, Sheen is playing another Blair in his next film – The Voyage of Doctor Doolittle, where he’s the nemesis of Robert Downey Jr’s animal-loving hero. “I don’t know if they did that as a joke or not,” he says. “He’s Blair Müdfly – there’s an umlaut that he is very specific about. He was at college with Doolittle, and hates him, and becomes the antagonist because of his jealousy of Doolittle. Müdfly is employed to try and stop him from finding... what he wants to find.” As the film isn’t out for 13 months, Sheen is tight-lipped about further plot details – but he hints that Müdfly is “a villain in the tradition of Terry-Thomas villains.”

It’s the latest in a series of quirky, eyebrow-raising roles. After playing a vampire in the Twilight films and a werewolf in the Underworld franchise, Sheen says he would often be asked in interviews why a “serious classical actor” was wasting his time on fantasy films.

“There’s a lot of snobbishness about genre,” he says. “I think some of the greatest writing of the 20th and 21st centuries has happened in science fiction and fantasy.” While promoting the films, he would back up that point by citing his favourite authors – Stephen King, Philip K Dick, Neil Gaiman. “Time went on, and then one day my doorbell rang and there was a big box being delivered. I opened the box up and there was a card from Neil saying ‘From one fan to another’, and all these first editions of his books.”

It was the beginning an enduring friendship, which recently became a professional partnership: Sheen stars in Gaiman’s forthcoming TV series Good Omens, based on a 1990 novel he wrote with the late Terry Pratchett. Set in the days before a biblical apocalypse, its sprawling list of characters includes an angel called Aziraphale (Sheen) and a demon called Crowley (David Tennant) who have known each other since the days of Adam and Eve.

“I wanted to play Aziraphel being sort of in love with Crowley,” says Sheen. “They’re both very bonded and connected anyway, because of the two of them having this relationship through history - but also because angels are beings of love, so it’s inevitable that he would love Crowley. It helped that loving David is very easy to do.”

What kind of love - platonic, romantic, erotic? “Oh, those are human, mortal labels!” Sheen laughs. “But that was what I thought would be interesting to play with. There’s a lot of fan fiction where Aziraphale and Crowley get a bit hot and heavy towards each other, so it’ll be interesting to see how an audience reacts to what we’ve done in bringing that to the screen.”

Steamy fan fiction aside, it’s unlikely Good Omens will match the raunch levels of his last major TV series, Masters of Sex (2013-16), a drama about the pioneering sexologists Masters and Johnson. In the wake of the last year’s #MeToo revelations, HBO has introduced “intimacy co-ordinators” for its shows - but, Sheen tells me, Masters of Sex was ahead of the curve in handling sex scenes with caution.

“It was a lot easier for myself and Lizzy [Caplan, his co-star], as we were comfortable in that set-up, because we had status in it. But for people in the background, or doing just one scene, it’s different,” he says. “It became clear very quickly that there needed to be guidelines for people who didn’t have that kind of status, who would probably not speak up. We started talking about that, and decided there need to be clear rules.”

Sex scenes, he continues, “should absolutely be treated the same way as other things where there’s a danger. If you’re doing stage-fighting, or pyrotechnics, there are rules and everyone just sticks to them. Whether it’s physical danger, or emotional, or psychological, it’s just as important.”

Despite having several film and TV parts on the horizon, Sheen says he is still in semi-retirement from acting. In 2016 he hinted that he might be quit for good to campaign against populism. “In the same way as the Nazis had to be stopped in Germany in the Thirties, this thing that is on the rise has to be stopped," he said at the time. But now things are less cut. “I have two jobs now, essentially,” he says. "Acting takes second place."

While many celebrity activists limit their politics to save-the-dolphins posturing, Sheen has been working with a range of unfashionable grassroots groups aiming to combat inequality, support small communities and fight fake news. As well as supporting Welsh credit unions, and sponsoring a women’s football team in the tiny village of Goytre, he tells me that he's been “commissioning research into alternative funding models for local journalism”.

If he returns to the stage any time soon, he says it’s likely to be in a show about “political historical socio-economic stuff, a one-man show with very low production values”. It’s clear he’s not in it for the glamour.

Sheen was inspired to become more politically active by the Brexit referendum – which also indirectly led him to break up with his partner of four years, the comedian Sarah Silverman. At the time, they were living together in the US. “We both had very similar drives, and yet to act on those drives pulled us in different directions – because she is American and I’m Welsh,” he explains.

“After the Brexit vote, and the election where Trump became president, we both felt in different ways we wanted to get more involved. That led to her doing her show I Love You America [in which Silverman interviewed people from across the political spectrum], and it led to me wanting to address the issues that I thought led some people to vote the way they did about Brexit, in the area I come from and others like it.”

They still speak lovingly of each other, which makes their decision to end a happy relationship for the sake of politics look painfully quixotic. Talking about it, Sheen sounds a little wistful, but he’s utterly certain they made the right choice. “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it did mean coming back here – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.”

[olehistorian]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-interview-imelda-staunton-is-tight-lipped-on-playing-the-crowns-future-queen-pkzpb76b2

Have you watched Vera Drake lately? Obviously, you have to be in a certain Saturday-night mood to turn off The Masked Singer and choose to put on Mike Leigh’s tale of a big-hearted backstreet abortionist in the East End in 1950. But it’s worth another visit. It’s one of the great British films and turbo-boosted the careers of many a character actor. Leading the ensemble cast in the title role — in an Oscar-nominated, Bafta-winning performance — was Imelda Staunton, who would become queen of them all. And possibly even the Queen. We’ll come to that.

“Just the best, best, best job of my life,” is how Staunton reflects on Vera Drake now. “Yeah, it was very hard to continue after that.”

After Vera Drake, Staunton had the little-old-lady role pretty much sewn up. The “little” is unavoidable. She’s 5ft nothing. In the hotel sideroom in which we meet, she fidgets on the edge of an armchair, sipping a juice a similar shade of green to her blouse and trench coat, which she keeps on throughout the interview. The “old” is perhaps more unfair: she was in her forties when she played Drake. We meet the day before her 64th birthday. “I think a lot of women now don’t think about their age because it’s changed for women, hasn’t it?”

She did “harrowing” again last year in ITV’s true-crime A Confession, playing the mother of Sian O’Callaghan, the 22-year-old from Swindon who was murdered in 2011. But otherwise, of late, she’s been — in the nicest way possible — British cinema’s arch biddy: in the gay-rights drama Pride; in Nanny McPhee; in the Downton Abbey movie alongside her husband, Jim Carter, who plays the long-suffering butler Carson; and as Professor Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter films. It all comes back to Mike Leigh. “I wouldn’t have got Harry Potter if my profile hadn’t been upped with Vera Drake,” she says. “They might have wanted me, but I wasn’t, you know, hot enough.”

At the end of last year, it was reported that the ultimate little-old-lady part was coming Staunton’s way: succeeding Olivia Colman as the Queen in series five and six of The Crown. Netflix played it down as “speculation”. But at a charity event at the Ivy before Christmas, Grant Tucker, the Sunday Times entertainment correspondent, asked Staunton’s husband, Carter, what it was like being married to royalty. “Thankfully I don’t have to start bowing to her for another two years,” he replied, “so I have plenty of time to practise.” So it’s true? Staunton’s reply is immediate, polite and professional: “I can’t discuss anything to do with that.” Which isn’t, you’ll note, a no.

She tells me she woke up at 4am today, thinking about her next big gig — Hello, Dolly! at the Adelphi Theatre. It isn’t on until August. Rehearsals don’t start until June. But “to me, that’s 10 minutes”, she says. “I just know the process is beginning. As Jim said, ‘This is the rest of the year, is it?’ I think about it and think about it. ‘How the hell am I going to do that?’ [Past success] means nothing at all, because it’s the next challenge. The more people say, ‘Ooh, it’s going to be great,’ the more I just get so depressed.”

And what success. In the West End, she’s busted free of the twinsets to become a bona fide, big-lunged musical star — a pocket rocket with a trail of five-star reviews and awards in her wake. Her first Olivier was back in 1991, for Into the Woods. In 2013, she won one for Sweeney Todd, in which she appeared alongside Michael Ball. Stephen Sondheim saw her performance and told her she should take on a revival of Gypsy next. The 2016 Olivier followed for that.

Her dog, Molly, a terrier, appeared on stage with her in the early performances of Gypsy, at the Chichester Festival Theatre. One time, during the West End run, a mouse snuck into her costume. “I did the whole first 20 minutes with a mouse inside the sleeve of my coat, singing the song, carrying on the scene. It’s good what your head can cope with, isn’t it?” It’s not the sort of thing that should happen to a Harry Potter star, surely? “That’s what you want. That’s the reality of the glamour of the thing.”

Staunton grew up in Archway, north London, above her mum’s hairdressing shop. Her dad was a labourer. Her mum, a first-generation Irish immigrant, was a big fan of the Queen. She died just before her daughter received her Oscar nomination for Vera Drake, and before Staunton collected her OBE and later CBE from the palace. “She’d have bloody loved all that,” she says.

She went to a convent school — “a really nice one because we had a lot of lay teachers”. Her report cards read: “Imelda could try harder, but she was very good in the play.” Her elocution teacher, Mrs Stoker, pushed her towards Rada, where contemporaries included Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall and Juliet Stevenson. When she got her first job in London, in 1982, it was in a musical: Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre. Staunton, by now used to lead roles, was only in the chorus. “I was thinking, ‘I just played Electra, what am I doing? Oh God.’” But Ian Charleson, Bob Hoskins, Julie Covington and Julia McKenzie were higher up the bill. “That’s what I was doing there: learning, really, really learning. That was wonderful.”

Also in the cast, seven years her senior, was Jim Carter. They married the following year. In 1986 they appeared together in Dennis Potter’s classic TV musical The Singing Detective. But, until the Downton movie, their working lives seldom intersected. “We don’t ever try not to work together — we just haven’t,” she says. “On the Downton film, we got completely overexcited, as we went to work for three days at the same time. What was lovely was doing the publicity together: travelling, just being in a hotel. We made sure we enjoyed ourselves.”

They have had a long-standing pact not to spend more than a couple of weeks apart, a rule Staunton broke to film Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock (no, me neither). “I think it was five weeks: I was in America and thought, ‘Yep, that’ll do.’”

She enjoyed last summer filming Flesh and Blood, a new four-part ITV drama, on the coast near Eastbourne. “The sea does do something different to you, doesn’t it? I do think it would be brilliant to have somewhere by the sea, but it’s not going to happen.” She’s happy at home in Hampstead with Carter, walking the dog, spending days at the Test match and doing the gardening: “That’s probably an older person’s thing to say. Well, f*** it, you know? It’s healing, really healing. Having a stable place to come back to is quite necessary for me and for Jim, I think. It nourishes us. It allows us to go into a place that isn’t comfortable because you know you can get back to a more comfortable place.”

Flesh and Blood is an example of good parts being written for older people, especially women. “I’m encouraged by it,” says Staunton. “Very encouraged.” It’s not so much a whodunnit as a whodunnwot. In its rather gripping first episode, there’s a mystery body on a beach and a recent widow (played by 74-year-old Francesca Annis) starting a new life with a new fella who has a whiff of the gigolo about him. Staunton is back as the little old lady, Mary, a creepy next-door neighbour with a pair of binoculars and penchant for opening other people’s mail. This primetime drama does contain scenes of pensioners smooching.

“It’s not just for the sake of it,” says Staunton. “This isn’t trying to be ‘Oh, we’re beautiful things having sex later in life.’ There’s a loving relationship developing. The fact that [in one of Annis’s scenes] the dressing gown slips off is not extraordinary.” Would Staunton ever want a crack at being the older woman getting the, ahem, action? “I don’t think that would be required,” she replies. “I don’t think so, no — not unless it was funny.”

We talk about the trial of the film producer Harvey Weinstein. What experience has Staunton had of that grim — and criminal — casting- couch culture? “None. Absolutely none,” she says. “I’m not surprised [that it goes on], but I’ve always been in situations where women are treated equally. In the rehearsal room, women behave as they wish to behave and are listened to, and that’s normal. I never thought, ‘Oh, isn’t this marvellous, somebody’s listening to me?’ I’ve never witnessed it, but I hope good will come out of this. The irony of that” — she pauses to choose the word carefully — “situation is that that man [Weinstein] has made good things happen now. Hurrah.”

It won’t come as too much of surprise that she voted Labour in last month’s election — her MP, Tulip Siddiq, has a 14,000-vote majority in Hampstead and Kilburn, Glenda Jackson’s old seat. Staunton voted for remain. She also featured in a video last year for Extinction Rebellion, organised by Richard Curtis. “It was a friend who said, ‘Could you come along, they’re just doing it today, this bit of filming.’ Well, I was doing nothing else. I’m not climbing up the side of a building, so I’ll go and do that. If I can help, I’ll do that. As much as we can all do, every little bit helps.”

Does she worry about putting her head above the parapet like that? “No, not at all. That’s the only bloody point of any slight fame: you’ve got to use it, to put it to good use.” She has also provided the voice for some polar bears for Greenpeace. “Trump is just an absolute … It’s just a nightmare, and the climate’s a nightmare and Brexit’s a nightmare. And yet I wake up thinking about Hello, Dolly!”

At 64, Staunton seems to recognise that a Vera Drake or Hello, Dolly! might not roll round again. Even Harry Potter was, she says, “a very serious piece of work, weirdly”. She feels lucky that an actor’s life goes on. So no plans to retire? “I don’t think people do, do they? Name me an actress! No, you won’t get bloody Maggie Smith retiring. It’s a very nice job, if you can get it.” Plus, she’s still hoping someone will cast her alongside her 26-year-old daughter, Bessie, also an actress. “I’d love that. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

I hope they do give her the Queen job. If there’s anyone who could add some plausibility and empathy to the madcap past 12 months of royal history, from Megxit to the sweat-free antics of Prince Andrew, it is Staunton. I would pay good money to watch her, in standard-issue HRH lemon-yellow frock and tight-curled wig, look up, fix her aide with a stare and utter the words: “A Pizza Express … in Woking?”

Flesh and Blood is on ITV in February

[keepingupwithlinmanuel]

Lin-Manuel Miranda interview: from Hamilton to His Dark Materials

I know Hamilton remains wildly popular more than four years after it premiered on Broadway because of the intense response to my Instagram post boasting I have tickets to watch it the evening before meeting its creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda. "It's one of my absolute favourite things in the world ever!" raves one correspondent. "It's WONDERFUL and I defy you not to download the soundtrack afterwards," adds another. "I went last night! Second time. You're gonna love it."

The problem, however, is that I'm not sure I will love it. When theatre is great, it's the best thing on the planet, but when it is bad, as I have learnt from the bitter experience of watching three-hour open-air adaptations of Dickens' novels, it is the worst. Musicals are especially challenging: in my experience, you either like them or you don't, and given one of the few I have enjoyed was Avenue Q, which subverted the form, I'm in the latter camp.

Then, on top of this, there is the pressure of hype (and Hamilton has been more hyped than anything this side of the moon landings), and the challenge of taking hip-hop, which I love, out of an urban setting. It can easily go a bit Wham Rap!, or even worse, if you've seen the video, Michael Gove performing Wham Rap!.

It is, however, pretty good. The last thing the world needs is another long review of Hamilton, and I can't say I downloaded the soundtrack afterwards or that I didn't look at my watch occasionally, but using rap to retell the dry story of the founding fathers is inspired, and I'm so relieved that I blurt out my review to the 39-year-old writer and performer when I meet him in a restaurant in Fitzrovia. "I do find that with both Hamilton and In the Heights, my first show," responds the award-winning composer, lyricist and actor, "I get a lot of people who say to me, 'I don't really like musicals, but I loved this.' I attribute that to a very simple thing: my wife, who doesn't really like musicals. She didn't grow up going to see them, or doing theatre. She's a lawyer; when we met, she was a scientist. I have a higher bar to clear than most composers, because my first audience is my wife, and it can't just be a pretty tune."

You might recognise his wife, Vanessa Nadal, whom he met at high school, from the video of the couple's wedding reception in 2010, which like everything Miranda touches, went viral, and shows him performing the Fiddler on the Roof song To Life to his beloved.

Even my withered heart may have been momentarily lifted by it. She has accompanied her husband with their two young sons, aged one and four, to Britain, where he is filming a part in the BBC's slick new adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, though the reason he is in London today is that he has just been the subject of an episode of Desert Island Discs. The New Yorker takes a takes a swig of his coffee, which he tells me he chose as his luxury on his island ("I'm so basic"), adjusts his yellow baseball cap and asks me a question about the unsolicited review: "Why did you feel the need to say it?" There follows the most painful recording I've ever had to listen back to, as I make a bunch of ludicrous generalisations about musicals, speculating that perhaps they divide men from women, or the working classes from the middle classes, or straight people from gay people, or white people from brown people. It only strikes me a few minutes in that not only is Miranda living proof that the generalisations are nonsense, but I am essentially explaining musicals to a world expert in the form - a man who, before the age of 40, has a Pulitzer prize, three Tony awards, three Grammys, an Emmy, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Kennedy Center Honor, two Olivier awards, one Academy award nomination and two Golden Globe nominations to his name.

"Where do you want to start?" he responds with what is, in retrospect, startling patience. "You brought in all this cultural baggage and you're laying it at my feet and I don't know which bag to open." Another swig of coffee. "I think with musicals, it has to do with the way in which you interact with music in your own life. I grew up in a culture where dancing and singing at weddings was supercommon. So, if that's corny to you growing up, or you're taught to believe that's corny or unbelievable, then of course you're not going to like musicals."

...

He spent much of those years doing a bunch of badly paid, disparate jobs, which, given his nature, he nevertheless enjoyed. They included working as an English teacher at his former high school. ("I loved my curriculum. The class was exhilarating once I realised the less I talked, the more they learnt. I saw a future in which I taught at my old high school for 30 years and was very happy.") He wrote for a local paper as a columnist and restaurant reviewer. ("What kind of restaurant reviewer was I? Not very discriminating. If a new restaurant opened, I would go and eat some stuff and say, 'Hey, we have a Thai restaurant. I get to eat first at it. This is great!' ") And he made guest appearances on a number of TV shows including The Sopranos and House. What kind of roles was he being offered at the time? "I wasn't getting any roles! I was always the Latino friend of the white guy in the lead. And so centring ourselves in the drama, telling our own stories, is a big part of In the Heights, my first musical."

An unexpected thing about meeting Miranda is how instinctively he turns to the topic of his first musical, In the Heights, rather than Hamilton - not least when he talks about how he spent one month each year as a child with his grandparents in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, and was inspired by the gap between his worlds. "In Puerto Rico we were doctors and lawyers. And we're cabbies in New York; we're for the most part the poorer segment of society, and on TV we were always thieves and we were always the Sharks. In the Heights was a response to that. It was, 'Are we allowed to be on stage without having a knife in our hands?' " But then he has spent part of the summer filming a movie version of that musical, which is set over the course of three days, involving characters in the largely Hispanic-American neighbourhood. It is also the project that changed his life most dramatically. The more recent success of Hamilton rather eclipses the fact that his first show, which he began writing in the late Nineties when he was still a student at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, was also wildly successful. After success off-Broadway, the musical went to Broadway, opening in March 2008 and ending up being nominated for 13 Tony awards, winning four, including best musical and best original score.

...

Miranda, described as "a fantasy of the Obama era", has since been active in politics, lobbying and fundraising for Puerto Rico and performing with Ben Platt at the March for Our Lives anti-gun-violence rally in Washington DC on March 24, 2018. Does he feel demoralised by the drift of politics to the far right? "The thing about us all being connected online is that you can read all of the worst news from all over the world and be overwhelmed. You can't let it all in; just act on what you can act on." Should Trump be ignored or fought every step of the way? "It's hard to even discuss it, right, because Trump will have outraged us on two new things in the next [few hours], as soon as he wakes up, and it won't be relevant by the time we're having this conversation. And the same with Brexit, which is just as uncertain."

What did he make of Trump's revival of the phrase "Get back to where you came from" in relation to Democrat politicians? "It's unacceptable. Just because he said it doesn't mean it's acceptable." He leans back in his seat. "Here's my fear of getting into this with you: every time I've done a UK interview, I've said incredible shit and Trump's always the headline, even if I've only said two lines about it. So I'm happy to talk about it, but I'm really scared it's going to be the headline."

I risk another question. Would Miranda ever run for office? "It's funny - I remember when I was a teenager, my dad got approached by pretty serious people about running for a state Senate seat, and he said no. I asked, 'Why?' He said, 'I don't want to have to watch my mouth.' And for me, it's similar. I also have seen in my life, first-hand, the people who get addicted to running, and it's like their moment passed, but they're still running for something, because they're chasing that thrill of winning, and it's about much more than representing the constituents. I would never want to get stuck in that cycle or that pattern. It's more fun writing songs than doing any of that."

Read the rest here behind the Times paywall.

[political-fluffle]

Brexit Party leader Farage wants Johnson to form a “Leave Alliance” with the most zealous Brexit backers

Political rabble-rouser and talk-radio host Nigel Farage announced Friday that his potentially vote-splitting Brexit Party will field candidates for every seat in Britain in the December general election — unless Prime Minister Boris Johnson agrees to abandon the withdrawal deal he negotiated with European leaders and form an alliance with the most zealous Brexit backers.

Farage flung the ultimatum at Johnson at a Brexit Party campaign launch, staged just a few blocks away from the House of Commons, which party chairman and real estate tycoon Richard Tice disparaged as this “stinking, rotten borough of Westminster.”

Farage had already made some election news with a Thursday evening radio interview with a caller from the White House. In that call, President Trump disparaged Johnson’s Brexit plan, saying it could nix a free trade deal with the United States. But he also praised the British prime minister and urged Farage and Johnson to form an electoral pact, saying the duo would be an “unstoppable force.”

Many observers said the U.S. president didn’t seem to know what he was talking about — and that a dynamic duo between Farage and Johnson would ruin the Tory party. 

Johnson on Friday ruled out an alliance with Farage or any other party, “because I don’t think it’s sensible to do that.”

He also delicately dismissed Trump’s assertion about trade.

“I don’t wish to cast any aspersions on the president of the United States, but, in that respect, he is patently in error,” Johnson told Sky News. “Anybody who looks at our deal can see that it’s a great deal.” (...)

Farage wants Britain to crash out of the European Union’s trading club without a deal and do business with Europe, its closest economic partner for 40 years, as a “third country” under World Trade Organization rules. (...)

Corbyn tweeted, “Donald Trump is trying to interfere in Britain’s election to get his friend Boris Johnson elected.” (...)

Trump, Farage and Boris: Russian assets stick together. The only thing separating Boris from Farage right now is the MI6.

[go-redgirl]

The Perfect Choice’: Trump Brings Warrior Mark Meadows into White House as Election Year Chief of Staff

President Donald Trump has fortified his White House with a new chief of staff, former House Freedom Caucus chairman and retiring Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC).

On Friday night, the president named Meadows his new incoming White House chief of staff, announcing that his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney would become the new special envoy to Northern Ireland.

✔Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump·Mar 6

I am pleased to announce that Congressman Mark Meadows will become White House Chief of Staff. I have long known and worked with Mark, and the relationship is a very good one....

✔Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump·Mar 6

....I want to thank Acting Chief Mick Mulvaney for having served the Administration so well. He will become the United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland. Thank you!

Meadows served as the second chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, taking the reins from the group’s founder and his close ally, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). Together, Meadows and Jordan have been a pair of the president’s fiercest defenders in the House, but even before President Trump’s 2016 election, the soft-spoken firebrand conservative from western North Carolina has helped pave the future path of the Republican Party—pulling the GOP away from swamp deals and failed establishment politics towards populist, grassroots conservative policies that are much more popular with the electorate.

Meadows’ success in Congress has won him many friends among top conservatives and even across the aisle, with a huge swath of Trump allies on Friday evening telling Breitbart News that the president could not have made a better choice going into his re-election campaign.

“Congressman Meadows has been one of the most effective advocates for the MAGA movement for years now,” Donald Trump, Jr., President Trump’s eldest son, told Breitbart News. “There are some major battles ahead and I can’t think of anyone more equipped to fight alongside the President for the future of our country.”

“Meadows is cut from the same cloth as the President; he’s a fighter and will do what it takes to win,” Cliff Sims, a former Trump White House official and outside ally of the president, added. “He’s the perfect choice to lead the White House staff through election season. A brilliant choice by President Trump.”

“Mark has great political instincts and, to put it bluntly, is just a total killer,” Andy Surabian, a GOP strategist and also a former White House official, added. “He’s exactly who President Trump needs by his side in an election year.”

“Mark being chief of staff is a massive win for the MAGA movement,” Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of Turning Point USA, told Breitbart News.

“Mark Meadows is the right person at the right time to serve as President Trump’s Chief of Staff,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told Breitbart News as well. “After enduring Establishment operatives undermining his efforts since his inauguration, the President will now have a fearless warrior on the inside to promote and safeguard his agenda.”

Meadows was a back-bencher second-term congressman when he filed a “motion to vacate the chair” in the summer of 2015, a bold move that would have forced a vote on whether then-Speaker John Boehner would be allowed to remain in his position.

When Meadows did it, most of the Washington establishment wrote him off and considered the effort unserious, but quickly and quietly he—working with his fellow House Freedom Caucus members—amassed the votes necessary by September 2015 to knock out Boehner. When Boehner realized Meadows had succeeded, he resigned before a public spectacle tanked him on the floor of the House in order to avoid embarrassment.

While most of the rest of the media ignored him, Breitbart News traveled to his district that August recess to profile him and provide a detailed report on his then-quixotic effort to change Congress for the better by removing someone who, as Speaker, had pushed a variety of deals with now former President Barack Obama that left the country worse off.

In the interview he gave during that trip to his district in western North Carolina, Meadows explained how so many people come to Washington, DC, and forget why they were elected in the first place—but how he wanted to be different.

“I think everybody starts out doing that, because they’re real sensitive to the fact that they just got into office and say, ‘Golly, I want to be a voice for the people,’” Meadows said when asked if enough members of Congress listen to their constituents.

“The longer they’re there, the less likely you are to listen. For me, I’ve had to redouble my effort and not say, okay, pay attention to what are the priorities in Washington, D.C., but really try to listen to what are the priorities here? There are some of them that have been difficult for me. A prime example is on the Syrian invasion, where really they were bantering back and forth on should we invade Syria or not? I had my own personal view, the fact I believed that ISIS was going to continue to grow and that we had to go in and put an end to it right away, really quickly. I was war weary, but I felt like we needed to do that. 

My district started calling the office and sending in surveys and other things as well—87 percent of the people that contacted us, or it could have been 82 – 82 or 87 percent of the people said, ‘We don’t want you to do that.’ We’re tired of wars. It shifted where we were to saying, “Just listen, the people back home…” and it wasn’t just Republicans. 

It was Democrats, independents, everyone. For us, it’s just about trying to have an open ea, then going to Washington, D.C., and voting the way the people here want you to vote. When you do that, it sometimes puts you at odds with what is deemed pragmatic in Washington, D.C., or ‘the practical thing to do,’ but I try to conduct at least a couple days of really listening every time I come back – especially if it’s for a week or longer where I’m just listening to people. Both the good and the bad. We’re going to continue to try to get better,” Meadows said.

Listen to his constituents he certainly did. After he toppled Boehner—a remarkable achievement for a then-second-term congressman—Meadows soon after became the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, replacing its first chairman and founder Jim Jordan. 

Meadows weaponized the Freedom Caucus, leveraging the group’s approximately 40 members in the GOP majority for the last year plus of Obama’s administration and for the first two years of Trump’s first term to steer the party away from now former Speaker Paul Ryan’s failed visions for Republicans and to guide the party toward successes on major issues ranging from taxes to healthcare to immigration.

Supporters of Meadows say that they should expect Trump’s new chief of staff to continue to listen to the constituents who put both of them in office—rather than special interests or lobbyists.

Healthcare was not the only major policy fight in which Meadows helped President Trump against leftist Democrats and establishment Republicans. On everything from ending endless wars to fighting against open borders amnesty pushes to battling for the Trump tax cuts and more, Meadows has been one of Trump’s go-to allies in the House since the president took office—and the two speak on the regular.

Meadows was also critical in helping Trump fight back one of the most vicious and unhinged conspiracies against a sitting president in history, which ultimately ended in the president’s acquittal by the U.S. Senate after the Democrat-led House impeached him.

 A member of the president’s team of House members fighting back against the coup attempt by the deep state, Meadows was critical in securing the president’s position and holding back the plotters. The coup attempt started out with various leftist and media attacks claiming Russian “collusion” with Trump’s 2016 campaign that eventually led to the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that cleared Trump in the en, which then led to the renewed attacks on the Ukraine front.

The Ukiraine accusations led to the House impeachment effort and, finally, the president’s acquittal. Every step of the way, Meadows was at Trump’s side, fighting back against the leftists and fake news attacks that ended up failing to take Trump down.

For all of these reasons and more, Meadows has lots of allies in the conservative movemen. FreedomWorks Vice President Noah Wall told Breitbart News that his group could not be happier with the choice Trump made here.

“FreedomWorks could not be more proud that the former House Freedom Caucus chair and strong constitutional conservative will help support President Trump through this critical election year,” Wall said.

Rick Manning, the president of Americans for Limited Government, added that “Mick Mulvaney did a great job of leading the White House through impeachment and has proven to be an extraordinary utility man for the President as OMB Director and the head of the CFPB.”

“He will be a trusted problem solver who is able to help Northern Ireland transition through the difficulties of Brexit,” Manning said.

But Meadows, Manning added, is “a fighter who has the President’s trust.”

READ MORE STORIES ABOUT:

Politics Donald Trump Donald Trump Jr. Mark Meadows Mick Mulvaney Paul Ryan White House White House chief of staff

[wellthatwasaletdown]

"really glad Matty Healy said this 👍🏼" someone asked what Niall was doing as if he never speaks, here's the response: * Brexit vote* Irish referendum on same sex marriage* Irish referendum on abortion* Critical of Trump and gun violence in the US* Equal opportunity for women in professional sports, Niall also did a recent interview with @ThatOliviaJones in which he talked about his ~journey of understanding~ about the climate crisis, and what he is doing to try to help."

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[viralhottopics]

The Trump interviews: what he said about Brexit, Putin, Israel, Syria … and Twitter

The key points covered in Donald Trumps interviews with the UKs Times and the German tabloid Bild

Donald Trump gave an interview to two newspapers the UK Times and the German tabloid Bild in his office in the Trump Tower in New York. The interview covered a wide range of issues and was reported in the respective papers although there was a variation on what each concentrated on. Heres the best from both.

On Brexit

The Times: Trump said he believed Brexit was going to end up being a great thing because people wanted to reclaim their identity from the European Union. Other countries would leave as well and it would be hard to keep the EU from falling apart under the pressure of immigration, he said. The refugee crisis which started in 2015 had been the straw that broke the camels back in terms of popular support for a unified Europe. If they hadnt been forced to take in all of the refugees, so many, with all the problems that it . . . entails, I think that you wouldnt have a Brexit. This was the final straw that broke the camels back. . . I believe others will leave. I do think keeping it together is not gonna be as easy as a lot of people think.

The EU was basically a vehicle for Germany, he said, and thats why I thought the UK was so smart in getting out.

On trade deal with UK

The Times: Playing up his British ancestry, Trump said his Scottish mother had been so proud of the Queen and said he was eager to get a trade deal done quickly.

Im a big fan of the UK, were gonna work very hard to get it done quickly and done properly. Good for both sides. Well have a meeting [with Theresa May] right after I get into the White House and . . . were gonna get something done very quickly.

Donald Trump with Michael Gove, who interviewed the US president-elect for the Times along with Bilds Kai Diekmann. Photograph: Twitter

On Angela Merkel

Bild: Donald Trump has called Angela Merkels open door policy to refugees a catastrophic mistake which he said Germany would pay for.

Trump said whilst he had great respect for Merkel, who is standing for a fourth term as chancellor next autumn, calling her magnificent and a fantastic chief, she had made an utterly catastrophic mistake by letting all these illegals into the country. He told Bild: Do you know, letting all these people in, wherever they come from. And no one knows where they come from at all. You will find out, youve had a clear impression of that, he said, referring to the December attack in Berlin in which 12 people were killed when a lorry driven by an asylum seeker from Tunisia careered into a Christmas market.

So I am of the opinion that she made a catastrophic mistake, a very serious mistake. But putting that aside, I respect her, I like her. But I dont know her, he said, when asked whether he would be willing to support her reelection, as his predecessor Barack Obama said he would. So I cant say anything as to who I might support, in the case that I would support anyone.

It was also put to Trump in the interview that Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin know each other well, that the Russian president speaks fluent German and she speaks fluent Russian. Trump was asked which of the two he trusted more.

Trump replied: First and foremost, I trust both of them. Lets see how long this goes on for. Maybe it wont last for long.

On Nato

The Times: Trump repeated his criticism of Nato, one of the mainstays of American foreign policy for decades, calling it obsolete for failing to contain the terror threat in western countries. Her also complained that some countries dont pay what they should pay. However, he added that Nato is very important to me.

On manufacturing tariffs

Bild: In remarks that will likely disturb German car manufacturers, Trump said he would look to realign the out of balance car trade between Germany and the US. If you go down Fifth Avenue every one has a Mercedes Benz in front of his house, isnt that the case? he said. The fact is that … there is no reciprocity. How many Chevrolets do you see in Germany? Not very many, maybe none at all … its a one-way street. It must work both ways. As a result, US manufacturers were losing $800bn a year in trade. That will stop, he said. Under Wilbur Ross, the incoming trade minister, he said, change could be expected.

BMW plans to build a factory in Mexico and export the cars to the US. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Trump proposed a 35% tax on every foreign car sold in America which was produced elsewhere seen as a particular dig at BMW which plans to build a new plant in Mexico from which it would export to the US market. He urged manufacturers to shift their production to the United States instead.

On Iran

The Times: Trump said he would not reveal the details of his policy I just dont want to play the cards but reiterated his attack on Barack Obamas landmark deal with Iran on nuclear weapons. Im not happy with the Iran deal, I think its one of the worst deals ever made, I think its one of the dumbest deals Ive ever seen . . . Where you give . . . $150bn back to a country, where you give $1.7bn in cash. Did you ever see $100m in hundred-dollar bills? Its a lot. $1.7bn in cash. Plane loads.

On Russia and nuclear weapons

The Times: Trump floated the idea of reviewing sanctions on Russia if Vladimir Putin was prepared to move away from confrontation. They have sanctions on Russia lets see if we can make some good deals with Russia. For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, thats part of it. But Russias hurting very badly right now because of sanctions, but I think something can happen that a lot of people are gonna benefit.

Bild: Asked if he understands why eastern Europeans might fear Putin and Russia, Trump responded: Of course. Indeed. I know that. I mean, I understand whats going on there.

On Syria

The Times: Trump was critical of Obama for failing to restrain Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and Putin in their war on rebel forces in the country. The US could have made them stick to a line in the sand but now it was too late and the lack of western intervention had helped create a humanitarian crisis. Aleppo was nasty. I mean when you see them shooting old ladies walking out of town they cant even walk and theyre shooting em it almost looks like theyre shooting em for sport ah no, thats … a terrible situation.

A woman carries a child in the ruined streets of al-Rai north of Aleppo . Photograph: Khalil Ashawi/Reuters

Bild: Trump said he thought security zones should have been set up in Syria. That would have been considerably cheaper. And the Gulf states should have had to pay for them. After all, they have money like hardly anyone else has. The whole thing would have been considerably cheaper than the trauma that Germany is now going through. I would have said: create security zones in Syria.

On Iraq

The Times: The invasion of Iraq in 2003, he said, was possibly the worst decision ever made in American history. Its like throwing rocks into a beehive.

On Afghanistan

Bild: US policy in Afghanistan had not succeeded despite a long military intervention, he said. Nothing is going well. I believe weve been there for almost 17 years. But when you look at the whole region in all fairness we didnt let our people do what they were tasked to do.

I have just looked at something… Oh, I should not show you it at all, because its secret but I have just taken a look at Afghanistan. If you look at the Taliban there … Theyre just getting bigger and bigger and bigger every year. And you ask yourself whats going on there?

On Europe and Germany

Bild: Asked if there could be restrictions on Europeans who want to travel to the US in the future, Trump said: That could happen, but well see. I mean, were talking here about parts of Europe, parts of the world and parts of Europe, where we have problems, where they come in and cause problems. I dont want to have these problems.

Asked in the interview conducted on Friday in New York city, whether there was anything typically German about him, Trump, whose grandfather was German, said: I like orderliness. I like it when things are dealt with in an orderly way. Thats what the Germans are quite well-known for. But I also like order and I like strength.

On the Middle East and Jared Kushner

Bild: Trump said that he would appoint Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, to broker a Middle East peace deal. Asked what role Kushner would play, Trump said: You know what? Jared is such a good lad, he will secure an Israel deal which no one else has managed to get. You know, hes a natural talent, he is the top, he is a natural talent. You know what Im talking about a natural talent. He has an innate ability to make deals, everyone likes him. Kushners wife, Trumps daughter Ivanka, would not have any role in government, he said. She currently has the kids and was busy buying a house in Washington.

He said the Obama administrations decision to abstain in the UN security council vote on Israeli settlements in December was terrible and said that Britain should have vetoed the resolution instead of voting in favour. He said he was hopeful that Britain would veto an upcoming resolution on Israel that could be presented this week. I would hope for a British veto. I think it would be great if Great Britain would place a veto, because Im not sure if the US would do so extraordinarily enough. They wont do it, right? Do you believe the US will place a veto? I have Jewish friends who organised a donor event for Obama. I say to them: What on earth are you doing? Okay – what are you doing?

He refused to be drawn on whether he would move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Im not going to comment on that. But well see.

On the Russia dossier sex allegations

The Times: Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent believed to be behind the dossier alleging that Trump took part in tawdry sex acts in a Russian hotel, should be looked at because the allegations were false. Trump said the widely reported suggestion that Steele had been hired by Republicans and Democrats seeking to discredit the president-elect was also false.

He said that he tore up the report. I dont even want to shake hands with people now I hear about this stuff.

On Twitter use

The Times: Trump boasted about his 46 million followers for his handle @realDonaldTrump and said that despite the criticism that he used Twitter too much he hinted that he would continue to use his account when president. Id rather just let that build up and just keep it @realDonaldTrump, its working and the tweeting, I thought Id do less of it, but Im covered so dishonestly by the press so dishonestly that I can put out Twitter and its not 140, its now 280 I can go bing bing bing . . . and they put it on and as soon as I tweet it out this morning on television, Fox Donald Trump, we have breaking news.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

.@NBCNews is bad but Saturday Night Live is the worst of NBC. Not funny, cast is terrible, always a complete hit job. Really bad television!

January 15, 2017

Read more: http://ift.tt/2iBNAih

from The Trump interviews: what he said about Brexit, Putin, Israel, Syria … and Twitter

[thisislizheather]

The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West - A Review

I’ve been waiting for this book of essays to come out for months and it was so, so worth the the wait. I know it’s asking a lot, but can this woman please just write a book every year? Or every six months? That’d be great, thanks. Favourite parts ahead!

“This moment in history is about more than individual interactions between individual people. Those matter, too - it matters how you made your subordinate feel with that comment, and it matters quite a lot that the woman on the bus went home and sobbed after you groped her - but, as Rebecca Traister wrote in December 2017 on The Cut: “This moment isn’t just about sex. It’s about work.” It’s about who feels at home in the workplace and who feels like an outsider - which, by extension, dictates who gets to thrive and ascend, who gets to hire their replacements, who gets to set their children up for success, who gets credit and glory, and who gets forgotten. It’s about who feels safe in public spaces and who doesn’t. Which is to say, it’s about everything.”

“We gobble up cable news’ insistence that both sides of an argument are equally valid and South Park’s insistence that both sides are equally stupid, because taking a firm stance on anything opens us up to criticism.”

“We kept letting Adam Sandler make more movies after Little Nicky, because white men are allowed to fail spectacularly and keep their jobs.”

There’s literally an entire chapter on Adam Sandler movies that is perfection. You have to read it. Seriously, just pick this up at a bookstore and read that one chapter, if nothing else.

I loved all of her points about how there was endless discussion about The Ted Bundy Tapes when it came out earlier this year and how we debated whether this murdering monster was handsome or not. And how that same type of debate is somehow in the same arena as when people debate whether Elizabeth Warren is “likable” or not.

There’s a part in the Ted Bundy special where the judge sympathizes with Bundy and goes on a ridiculous tangent about how it’s “such a shame” that he turned out that way when he had so much potential, it’s truly disgusting to see a judge commiserate with a rapist and murderer, but it happened and it’s wild to see. “That anecdote is often held up as evidence of Bundy’s charisma - even the judge sentencing him to death was seduced by that smirk, that finger wave. But it is the most blatant, overwhelming evidence we have for the opposite. Men don’t need charisma to succeed. It doesn’t matter if men are likable, because men are people who do things, who don’t have to ask first, whose potential has value even after it is squandered.”

“Chasing likability has been one of women’s biggest setbacks, by design. I don’t know that rejecting likability will get us anywhere, but I know that embracing it has gotten us nowhere.”

Absolutely in love with the fact that she loves the movie Clue as much as I do.

I really liked the chapter that she discussed Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP, even if I did wish that she went in on her/the brand harder.

So in love with the chapter where she talks about South Park and its creators. I’ve always hated that show, it’s never been good, and I can’t understand who the hell would be into it. It’s never been funny, edgy, smart. Insane that it’s still on.

Maybe I’m really reading into it, but there’s a tiny part where she mentions that PETA sucks and I can’t stop all my little inside screams - it’s hard to find somewhere who dislikes all the same stuff as you.

“Men think that misogyny is a women’s issue; women’s to endure and women’s to fix. White people think that racism is a pet issue for people of color; not like the pure, economic grievances of the white working class. Rape is a rape victim’s problem: What was she wearing? Where was she walking? Had she had sex before?“

“Whenever talk turned toward solutions, the panel came back to mentorship: women lifting up other women. Assertiveness and leaning in and ironclad portfolios and marching into that interview and taking the space you deserve and changing the ratio and not letting Steve from accounting talk over you in the morning. During the closing question-and-answer period, a young woman stood up. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice electric with anger, “but all I’ve heard tonight are a bunch of things women can do to fight sexism. Why is that our job? We didn’t build the system. This audience should be full of men.”

“Sexism is a male invention. White supremacy is a white invention. Transphobia is a cisgender invention. So far, men have treated #MeToo like a bumbling dad in a detergent commercial: well intentioned by floundering, as though they are not the experts. You are the experts. Only 2.6 percent of construction workers are female. We did not install that glass ceiling, and it is not our responsibility to demolish it.”

When talking about what men can actually do to help women: ”“Do you ever stick up for me?” sounds childish, but I don’t know that gussying up the sentiment in more sophisticated language would enhance its meaning. It isn’t fun to be the one who speaks up. Our society has engineered robust consequences for squeaky wheels, a verdant pantheon from eye rolls all the way up to physical violence. One of the subtlest and most pervasive is social ostracism: coding empathy as the fun killer, consideration for others as an embarrassing weakness, and dissenting voices as out-of-touch, bleeding-heart dweebs (at best). Coolness is a fierce disciplinarian. A result is that, for the most part, the only people weathering those consequences are the ones who don’t have the luxury of staying quiet. Women, already impeded and imperiled by sexism, also have to carry the social stigma of being feminist buzzkills if they call attention to it. People of color not only have to deal with racism; they also have to deal with white people labeling them “angry” or “hostile” or “difficult” for objecting. What we could use is some loud, unequivocal backup.”

“I know there’s pressure not to be a dorky, try-hard male feminist stereotype; there’s always a looming implication that you could lose your spot in the boys’ club; if you seem too opportunistic or performative in your support, if you suck up too much oxygen and demand praise, women will yell at you for that, too. But I need you to absorb that risk. I need you to get yelled at and made fun of, a lot, and if you get kicked out of the club, I need you to be relieved, and I need you to help build a new one.”

The entire chapter about the complications with Joan Rivers is such a great one.

“You can hate someone and love them at the same time. Maybe that’s a natural side effect of searching for heroes in a world not built for you.”

Okay, so the only thing that we strongly disagree on is her previous love for Adam Carolla. Always hated that man.

““Common sense’” without growth, curiosity, or perspective eventually becomes conservatism and bitterness.”

“There are pieces of pop culture that you outgrow because you get older. Then there are pieces of pop culture that you outgrow because you get better.”

“Art has no obligation to evolve, but it has a powerful incentive to do so. Art that is static, that captures a dead moment, is nothing. It is, at best, nostalgia; at worst, it can be a blight on our sense of who we are, a shame we pack away. Artists who refuse to listen, participate, and change along with the world around them are not being silenced or punished by censorious college sophomores. They are letting obsolescence devour them, voluntarily. Political correctness is just the inexorable turn of the gear. Falling behind is preventable.”

Talking about Ricky Gervais:” “People see something they don’t like, and they expect it to stop,” he said. “The world is getting worse. Don’t get me wrong, I think I lived through the best fifty years of humanity, 1960 through 2015, the peak of civilization for everything. For tolerances, for freedoms, for communication, for medicine! And now it’s going the other way a little bit.” “Dumpster fire” has emerged as the favorite emblem of our present sociopolitical moment, but that Gervais quote feels more apt and more tragic as a metaphor: the Trump/Brexit era is a rich, famous, white, middle-aged man declaring the world to be in decline the moment he stops understanding it.”

“Adam Carolla isn’t angry because he’s being silenced; he’s angry because he’s being challenged. He’s been shown the road map to continued relevance, and it doesn’t lead back to his mansion. He’s angry because he’s being asked to do the basic work of maintaining a shared humanity or else be left behind. He’s choosing the past. Gervais and Carolla are not alone in presenting themselves as noble bulwarks against a wave of supposed leftwing censorship. (A Netflix special, for the record, is not what “silencing” looks like.)”

Talking Louis CK: “Less than a year after his vow to retreat and listen, CK made the laziest and most cowardly choice possible: to turn away from the difficult, necessary work of self-reflection, growth, and reparation, and run into the comforting arms of people who don’t think it’s that big a deal to show your penis to female subordinates. Conservatives adore a disgraced liberal who’s willing to pander to them because he’s too weak to grow. How pathetic to take them up on it.”

“Like every other feminist with a public platform, I am perpetually cast as a disapproving scold. But what’s the alternative? To approve? I do not approve.” - This is probably my most favourite line in the entire book

“Not only are women expected to weather sexual violence, intimate partner violence, workplace discrimination, institutional subordination, the expectation of free domestic labor, invisible cuts that undermine us daily, we are not even allowed to be angry about it.”

“I’d been taught that when ordinary people try to do activism, they look stupid. Of course now I know that there is no effective activism without the passion and commitment of ordinary people and it is a basic duty of the privileged to show up and fight for issues that don’t affect us directly. But maintaining that separation has served the status quo well. It keeps good people always just shy of taking action. It’s tone policing. It’s the white moderate. But it’s changing.”

“Diet culture is a coercive, misogynist pyramid scheme that saps women’s economic and political power.”

Definitely the best thing I’ve read all year. GO BUY!

[bountyofbeads]

Brittany Kaiser’s work with Cambridge Analytica helped elect Donald Trump. She’s hoping the world will forgive her.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/02/brittany-kaisers-work-with-cambridge-analytica-helped-elect-donald-trump-shes-hoping-world-will-forgive-her/

Brittany Kaiser’s work with Cambridge Analytica helped elect Donald Trump. She’s hoping the world will forgive her.

By Craig Timberg and Rosalind HELDERMAN | Published August 02 at 1:13 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted August 2, 2019 7:40 PM ET |

Brittany Kaiser first emerged in last year’s Cambridge Analytica scandal as a seemingly nefarious figure, an insider steeped in the dark secrets of a new kind of voter manipulation powered by Facebook data. To make matters worse, news reports also raised questions about Kaiser’s mysterious dealings with WikiLeaks mastermind Julian Assange at a time when he remained holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London.

For Kaiser — at the time a 30-year-old Democrat from Texas who’d become business development director for Cambridge Analytica, a firm created to elect Republicans — the massive wave of critical news reports about the company threatened to deliver catastrophic damage to her reputation and even made her fear possible arrest.

So she did something drastic: Kaiser fled to Thailand, and she let a crew of filmmakers tag along.

What followed was a highly public — and still unfinished — quest for moral redemption that has played out across the globe and, now, in a Netflix documentary called “The Great Hack,” released July 24. It includes images of Kaiser up to her shoulders in a giant pool under an impossibly blue sky in Thailand, uncertain what to do. And it later depicts Kaiser, in a far more determined frame of mind, testifying before the British Parliament about the many unsavory deeds of her former employer and warning of the ongoing privacy threats posed by Facebook, whose dealings with Cambridge Analytica resulted in July in more than $5 billion in U.S. fines.

But two important elements are missing from the film. The first is Kaiser’s private meetings with British and U.S. prosecutors, including those from then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s office, which she recently detailed in interviews with The Washington Post. In these she also explained her visit with Assange in 2017 and how close she came during the hottest days of the Cambridge Analytica scandal to turning over the entirety of her hard drive to WikiLeaks for publication online.

The second missing element is a decisive moment of reckoning for Kaiser, during which she fully acknowledges her role in matters she now regards as wrong and possibly illegal. She repeatedly calls herself a “whistleblower” but viewers of the film may wonder: Why didn’t she blow the whistle a little sooner — ideally before Cambridge Analytica’s misdeeds had become front-page news worldwide?

It’s a question, Kaiser told The Post, that she still struggles with herself.

“I used to make so many excuses to myself,” she said. “I used to make excuses to my friends and family on why I was there and that it was okay to be working with these people and that what they were doing wasn't all that bad, and I was just doing my job. I look back at some of it, and it's shocking.”

Kaiser’s efforts to wrestle with this legacy in such a profoundly public way shoots a charge of emotional electricity through a film otherwise devoted to distinct heroes and villains. She occupies a middle ground of moral complexity while she seeks to emerge from what she now depicts as a fever that consumed more than three years of her life.

“She knew before the story blew up that the rights of Americans had been violated,” said David Carroll, an associate professor of media design at the New School in New York and a hero in the film for his dogged legal battle to gain access to the data Cambridge Analytica had collected on him. He is among those who would think better of Kaiser had she spoken up about her qualms with Cambridge Analytica before the scandal erupted.

“Once that’s out, it’s hard to be a whistleblower,” Carroll said. “You’ve missed your chance.”

But whistleblower or not, Kaiser’s story is a compelling one for the insights it offers into the dark heart of Cambridge Analytica, the unregulated market for our personal data and also — and perhaps most importantly — what happens when questionable decisions get thrust to the center of the world’s white-hot gaze.

A JOB OFFER IN THE U.K.

Kaiser was a graduate student in international human-rights law at Middlesex University in London when she met Alexander Nix, the now-disgraced chief executive of Cambridge Analytica. The company had been created by Republican strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who served as the company’s vice president, with money donated by conservative financier Robert Mercer. And while the parent company, called SCL Group, meddled in elections across the world, Cambridge Analytica had a more specific brief — to use the emerging science of Big Data to help Republicans win U.S. elections.

Like the company’s well-known whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, who helped British journalist Carole Cadwalladr of the Observer expose Cambridge Analytica’s misdeeds, Kaiser was no conservative. She had dabbled in Democratic politics and at one point had aspired to work for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.

Nix, who appears in the film and in much of the news coverage as a particularly skilled manipulator of his fellow humans, lures Kaiser to join his company with the unforgettable line: “Let me get you drunk and steal your secrets.”

Kaiser, whose parents suffered serious financial troubles that led to the loss of their home the same year she started working at Cambridge Analytica, appears to fall hard for the unmistakable scent of money and power that wafts through the conservative political world Kaiser soon inhabits. The film shows her in a series of exotic locations, dressed in pearls with a champagne glass in hand and on shooting weekends with her new associates. During this phase, she even joined the National Rifle Association, a group seemingly at odds with her traditional political views.

“The Great Hack” also details how Cambridge Analytica gathered up data on a massive scale, using an online app to collect information on tens of millions of Facebook users — everyone who used the app and all of their friends — and also from data brokers. The goal was targeting them with messages designed to work on voters’ underlying psychologies. Perhaps the most appalling moment in the film comes as SCL Group orchestrates a voter suppression campaign in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago that succeeds in helping a candidate of South Asian descent triumph when poorer, darker-skinned supporters mysteriously fail to cast ballots.

SCL Group reportedly also had a role in an operation in Nigeria in which an Israeli firm obtained private emails from that nation’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, when he was a candidate for office in 2015, according to Cadwalladr’s reporting that also tied Kaiser to the effort. (The article appeared in the Guardian, the sister paper of the Observer.) Those emails, like those of Democrats working to elect Clinton in 2016, mysteriously emerged online during the election season, hurting Buhari’s candidacy. Kaiser told The Post that she won the account for SCL but did not have a direct hand in the collecting or deploying of the emails.

But these events have kept Cadwalladr from regarding Kaiser’s efforts to redeem herself as entirely convincing, especially given that Kaiser decided to flee to Thailand shortly after the article about SCL’s meddling in Nigeria appeared, naming her. “I think it’s hard to know if she’s sincere or not because of the circumstances in which she chose to blow the whistle: the day after we revealed her role at center of particularly problematic election,” Cadwalladr said in an interview.

Kaiser has repeatedly portrayed her actions after leaving Cambridge Analytica as well-intentioned, driven by rising revulsion at the things she’d witnessed and a determination to speak out — classic whistleblower motives. Now that some official investigations are wrapping up, Kaiser says she’s eager to tell the full story. On Tuesday, Parliament released new documents that she had furnished on Cambridge Analytica’s role in the early days of the Brexit campaign, underscoring the importance of her cooperation.

That all of this coincides with the release of a largely sympathetic film and a Kaiser memoir, to be published by HarperCollins in October, only makes Cadwalladr warier — though she also praised Kaiser for providing evidence to authorities and said she wished others from Cambridge Analytica would follow Kaiser’s example.

“The problematic thing for me is her monetizing and exploiting this role, essentially,” Cadwalladr said. “There is this sort of hero-ization of her as a character, and that’s tricky given the many important still-unanswered questions.”

A MOMENT OF CLARITY

Kaiser said she began turning away from Cambridge Analytica and its sharply conservative, Fox News-driven world the night of Trump’s victory, which came as both a surprise and a shock to her political and moral sensibilities. For all of Cambridge Analytica’s claims about the power of its precise voter targeting, nobody knew how well it would work in the U.S. presidential election.

“I was then, like, ‘Wow, I was part of something that I shouldn't have been part of. I never thought that the campaign is actually going to win. Oh my God.’ He actually won through this, you know, racist, sexist rhetoric that has divided a country that was actually doing quite well,” Kaiser said.

Soon after, she found herself in a conflict with her bosses over her role in the company. A promotion she sought to Cambridge Analytica’s executive ranks didn’t come through. A hoped-for job in opening the company’s offices in Mexico City went to somebody else — a man — reactivating her feminist sensibilities.

“That's when the disillusionment really sunk in. And I realized these people could be doing a lot more than I know about, because they're cutting the corners that I see, and I'm not an executive of the company. So what else is going on?”

This dawning realization, however, was gradual enough that Kaiser still found herself hobnobbing around victory parties the night before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. She dropped by one hosted by Britain’s Brexiteers and even made what she said was a brief appearance at the Deploraball, an event including members of what was then called the alt-right, who reveled in the strident, racially charged rhetoric of Trump’s campaign.

Inside the event, Kaiser said, she recoiled at a painting of George Washington wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat.

“It was so offensive,” she recalled. “I went in there. I recognized some of the people around. Once I got inside and recognized some of the people that were there … I had to leave.”

She watched the inaugural the following day, at another party, atop the W Hotel overlooking the White House with a cocktail in her hand.

A MEETING WITH JULIAN ASSANGE

The event that would make Kaiser herself newsworthy happened a few weeks later, in February 2017.

She had a long-standing admiration for Assange and, in 2011, had donated about $200 worth of bitcoin to the group in honor of its work revealing a secret trove of U.S. military files related to the Iraq War. Kaiser had cited its work in her master’s thesis on war crimes.

But what ultimately brought Kaiser and Assange together was the death of well-known human rights lawyer John R.W.D. Jones, who was hit by a London train in an apparent suicide. Kaiser considered Jones, who had represented Assange, a mentor. When a mutual friend suggested that Kaiser and Assange meet to commiserate, she agreed in concept but was unable to arrange a meeting quickly. The Jones death happened in April 2016, as Cambridge Analytica’s campaign work was accelerating. In the aftermath of Trump taking office, with Kaiser increasingly questioning her life choices, the idea of meeting Assange gained traction.

But first she had to get through Assange’s gatekeeper, a gray-haired British man whom she knew only as “James.”

He and Kaiser met over tea at Harrods, the iconic London department store. The next day Kaiser visited with one of Assange’s lawyers for a second round of vetting. The third day, Kaiser, in the morning before heading to work at Cambridge Analytica’s London offices, walked up to the Ecuadoran Embassy, suddenly aware that she almost certainly was being watched, her name entered into the files of at least one government’s intelligence agency.

She also entered with full knowledge of the allegations that Assange had worked with Russians in manipulating the U.S. election but, at the time, dismissed the claims as hyperbole.

“All of this, to me it sounded, I hate to use the term, but it just sounded like ‘fake news.’ It sounded like a way to discredit what could have been credible information,” Kaiser recalled. “And so, unfortunately, the information bubble that I was in, actually being surrounded by Republicans and being surrounded by conservative messaging all of the time, looking back on it, I realized I was a lot more affected than I would have liked to believe at the time.”

By this point, Assange had been in the embassy, avoiding arrest, for more than four years and would be there for two more before authorities rousted him this past April. Kaiser, encountering him for the first time, was immediately struck by how pale he was — somehow paler even than the white, buttoned shirt he was wearing.

Yet despite his appearance — and a rambling conversation she recalled as mainly devoted to Assange monologues on several geopolitical subjects — Assange mustered enough charisma to calm Kaiser’s rising unease about the role Cambridge Analytica had played in electing Trump. Assange assured her Trump was a better choice than Clinton would have been, referencing some of the decisions she had made as secretary of state. “The one who didn’t have blood on his hands won the election,” Assange told her, according to her recollection.

The comment succeeded in soothing her, at least for a time. “I kind of viewed that as, well, Julian knows more than I do,” Kaiser said. “So maybe I should be calm about that.”

FLIGHT TO THAILAND

But Kaiser was decidedly not calm, more than a year later, when the Cambridge Analytica stories broke in the Observer and the New York Times, triggering a global scandal. A few days later came the story, under Cadwalladr’s byline, about the SCL operation in Nigeria and Kaiser’s role in landing the contract.

James, her WikiLeaks contact, messaged that same day, through an encrypted app, wanting to talk, she said.

She was visiting San Francisco at the time and getting worried that authorities in both the United States and England might be looking to talk to her. She knew a lot about the role Cambridge Analytica had played in Trump’s election and also in the first phases of the Brexit campaign. But she wasn’t sure the official inquiries would be friendly. With the possibility of arrests in the back of her mind, Kaiser headed to the airport and off to Thailand for an unplanned vacation.

Kaiser agreed to meet with James a few weeks later when she was back in London, feeling a bit less in immediate peril.

In this second meeting, James made an intriguing offer: Why not turn over her laptop computer for publication online so that journalists, investigators and anyone else searching for the truth could simply crawl their way through the data and reach their own conclusions? Kaiser was desperate to clear her name. James said this was the best way to do it.

“He said, ‘Well, we can help you with that, but we publish indiscriminately,'” she recalled James saying. “'Nothing will be held back. Nothing will be redacted. We’ll publish the entire thing. Your whole hard drive.'”

So tempted was Kaiser by this offer that she made arrangements to take that step remotely — from wherever in the world she happened to be when she made the decision.

“I left a copy of my computer in London in a safety deposit box,” Kaiser recalled. “I had trusted people that had the password. And I knew that if I did make the decision, that someone in London would be able to pass it” to James and WikiLeaks.

And this is where the filmmakers, having trailed her all the way to Thailand and back, played a crucial role.

TELLING HER STORY

The team behind “The Great Hack” are Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, a married couple who already were working on a film on the dangers of modern technology when the Cambridge Analytica story broke, giving them an ideal frame for telling the story. They found Kaiser quickly upon her emergence in the coverage, and it was Amer who put her in touch with a contact he knew at the FBI.

That connection, which eventually brought her into contact with Mueller’s investigation and other ones in the United States, ultimately provided the most convincing act of redemption in Kaiser’s story.

“Her story is one that’s about power, about how power seduces and how power shapes us,” Amer said.

What he finds redemptive is the decision, however belatedly, to speak up.

“She didn’t need to do any of the things she did” in cooperating with authorities and the film. “She could have just walked away into the wilderness and never been heard from again, like so many people did at Cambridge Analytica.”

Kaiser sat for many hours of interviews with Mueller’s staff, as well as joint visits with investigators for the FBI, Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Trade Commission. Kaiser talked about Cambridge Analytica. She talked about Facebook. She talked about WikiLeaks and meeting with Assange and the donation. She even gave investigators the number she had for James, which she presumed no longer worked.

The FTC and the SEC together levied more than $5 billion worth of fines against Facebook, and the FTC also sanctioned Cambridge Analytica’s Nix and the app developer from whom Cambridge Analytica bought the Facebook data. The British Information Commissioner’s Office, meanwhile, is in the final phases of a year-long investigation, with the help of Kaiser and others. She also turned over her laptop computer to U.S. investigators — and not to WikiLeaks — along with hundreds of thousands of emails and other documents.

Cambridge Analytica, meanwhile, dissolved in infamy.

The extent of the danger to Kaiser was underscored not long after she first established contact with the U.S. authorities. Another article came out — again by Cadwalladr — about Kaiser’s meeting with Assange.

The story was not a flattering one, and Kaiser disputes the characterizations in it, if not the basic facts. The article reported that Kaiser and Assange met “to discuss what happened during the US election” and that Kaiser claimed to have “funneled money” to WikiLeaks.

In her interviews with The Post, Kaiser said the election barely came up in her one meeting with Assange and the only thing that may have qualified as “funneling” was the bitcoin donation in 2011, before Cambridge Analytica was founded.

Cadwalladr, in speaking to The Post, said of Kaiser’s criticisms, “We sent her a formal right to reply which set down specifically and in detail what we knew and were planning to say and gave her the chance to respond and she didn’t. We therefore based the story on what we knew. We updated it later to reflect her later statements.”

All of which brings back the question of Kaiser’s reputation, which she has worked so hard to rehabilitate. What of it now?

Kaiser wants to be remembered more for what happened after Cambridge Analytica imploded — for working with investigators and, in the interest of not disrupting investigations, holding her tongue on sensitive matters until they could conclude their work. Some questions about her actions, she said, would have been clearer sooner if she had felt free to speak out. That was part of the price of working with authorities, she said, and that price was worth it to her.

“I definitely made the right decision,” Kaiser said. “A lot of the investigations are still ongoing. So I’m really hoping that we’re going to have a result where if people did commit crimes, that they are held to account. As of right now, there are multiple people that I think should be held to account that haven’t yet, and so we’ll see where that goes.”

As for what happened before, she sometimes speaks as if it were another person — or another version of herself — that fell so deeply into a world she now openly despises. The fever, she knows, held her far longer than it should have.

“It started to break down gradually,” she said. “I’m sad that it took me so long to erode this outer shell that I had developed from working there.”

If that falls short of the abject apology that some viewers of “The Great Hack” may crave, she offered this in her interviews with The Post:

“I’m incredibly sorry about letting the wool be pulled over my eyes,” Kaiser said. “I think of myself as intelligent and strong and principled. And look what happened. If it happened to me, it could happen to anyone.”

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Trump Expected to Order Troop Withdrawal (Foreign Policy) U.S. President Donald Trump is set to order a dramatic and rapid cut in the number of U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia as he seeks action from loyalists newly installed at the U.S. Department of Defense. A perception that Mark Esper, the previous U.S. Secretary of Defense, would not agree to further troop reductions on so quick a schedule, was seen as one of the reasons for his removal from the post shortly after the U.S. presidential election. Although the numbers are not yet public, several media reports signal a halving of current troop levels in Afghanistan from the 4,500 troops currently stationed there. A reduction in Iraq would be less severe, but almost all of the 700 U.S. troops stationed in Somalia are expected to return to the United States. Although Republican leaders are wary, a troop withdrawal appears to be popular among the American public. According to a YouGov poll commissioned by the libertarian Charles Koch Institute in August, 76 percent Americans supported withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, with almost half of respondents strongly supporting withdrawal. The number supporting U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq was 74 percent. The desire to end America’s wars in the Middle East and South Asia is felt similarly among U.S. military veterans. An April poll by another Koch-backed group found 73 percent of veterans surveyed supported a full withdrawal from Afghanistan, an almost 13 percent increase from the previous year.

Covid-19 origin remains a mystery (South China Morning Post, Tumori Journal) The virus that causes the Covid-19 disease has now infected more than 54 million people across the planet, but the question of just where it came from remains a mystery. Researchers may have found a new link in this puzzle after discovering evidence suggesting the pathogen had infected people across Italy as early as September last year, or months before it was first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The unexpected finding “may reshape the history of [the] pandemic”, said the team led by Dr Gabriella Sozzi, a life scientist with the National Cancer Institute of Milan, in a peer-reviewed paper published last week in the Tumori Journal.

Hurricane Iota bashes Nicaragua, Honduras after Eta floods (AP) Hurricane Iota battered Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast and flooded some stretches of neighboring Honduras that were still under water from Hurricane Eta two weeks earlier, leaving authorities struggling to assess damage after communications were knocked out in some areas. By late Tuesday, Iota had diminished to a tropical storm and was moving inland over northern Nicaragua and southern Honduras, but forecasters warned that its heavy rains still posed a threat of flooding and mudslides. The storm passed about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south-southwest of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, where rivers were rising and rain was expected to intensify. In mountainous Tegucigalpa, residents of low-lying, flood-prone areas were being evacuated in anticipation of Iota’s rains, as were residents of hillside neighborhoods vulnerable to landslides.

Boris Johnson, in self-quarantine, says he’s ‘bursting with antibodies’ (Washington Post) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson boasted that he was “fit as a butcher’s dog” and “bursting with antibodies” as he began two weeks of self-quarantine after having close contact with a lawmaker who contracted the coronavirus. Johnson was infected with the virus in March—and struggled to breathe in an intensive care unit for three days. His staff did not say on Monday whether he had been tested this time, but cases of coronavirus reinfection have been incredibly rare. Johnson on Monday said that he felt great and that because he previously had the disease he was “bursting with antibodies” but that he would self-quarantine for two weeks as “we got to interrupt the spread of the disease.” He added that he would continue to govern by video conference.

After Trump, Europe aims to show Biden it can fight for itself (Reuters) The Donald Trump era may be coming to an end. But European Union ministers meeting this week to discuss the future of the continent’s defence will say the lesson has been learned: Europe needs to be strong enough to fight on its own. EU foreign and defence ministers meeting by teleconference on Thursday and Friday will receive the bloc’s first annual report on joint defence capabilities, expected to serve as the basis for a French-led, post-Brexit, post-Trump effort to turn the EU into a stand-alone military power. “We aren’t in the old status quo, where we can pretend that the Donald Trump presidency never existed and the world was the same as four years ago,” a French diplomat said. The EU has been working since December 2017 to develop more firepower independently of the United States. The effort has been driven mainly by France, the EU’s remaining major military power after Brexit.

Hungary and Poland Threaten E.U. Stimulus Over Rule of Law Links (NYT) When European Union leaders announced a landmark stimulus package to rescue their economies from the ravages of the coronavirus, they agreed to jointly raise hundreds of billions of dollars to use as aid—a bold and widely welcomed leap in collaboration never attempted in the bloc’s history. But that unity was shattered on Monday when Hungary and Poland blocked the stimulus plan and the broader budget. The two eastern European countries said they would veto the spending bill because the funding was made conditional on upholding rule-of-law standards, such as an independent judiciary, which the two governments have weakened as they defiantly tear down separation of powers at home. Their veto has thrown a signature achievement of the bloc into disarray, deepening a long-building standoff over its core principles and threatening to delay the stimulus money from getting to E.U. member states, if a new agreement can be reached at all.

Armenia seethes over peace deal (Foreign Policy) Armenia’s government is under strain after signing a cease-fire agreement with Azerbaijan in a Russian-backed deal a week ago. On Monday, Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan resigned after a public disagreement with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan over the direction of peace talks. Pressure on Pashinyan has shown no sign of easing in recent days: 17 opposition parties have called for his resignation as street protests against his leadership continue.

Kissinger Warns Biden of U.S.-China Catastrophe on Scale of WWI (Bloomberg) Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said the incoming Biden administration should move quickly to restore lines of communication with China that frayed during the Trump years or risk a crisis that could escalate into military conflict. “Unless there is some basis for some cooperative action, the world will slide into a catastrophe comparable to World War I,” Kissinger said during the opening session of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum. He said military technologies available today would make such a crisis “even more difficult to control” than those of earlier eras. “America and China are now drifting increasingly toward confrontation, and they’re conducting their diplomacy in a confrontational way,” the 97-year-old Kissinger said in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. “The danger is that some crisis will occur that will go beyond rhetoric into actual military conflict.” U.S.-China relations are at their lowest in decades. As President Donald Trump stepped up his criticism of China, blaming it for the spread of the virus and the death toll in the U.S., each side also has ramped up moves the other sees as hostile.

Hundreds of fraudulent votes were discovered. Then a fat green parrot was elected. (Washington Post) A plump, waddling parrot has soared past its competition to claim victory in New Zealand’s Bird of the Year contest, a tense race marked by attempted voter interference during a divisive month of campaigning. In what event organizers conceded was “a stunning upset,” the critically endangered kakapo flew into first place to steal the title—ruffling the feathers of those who say the bright-green parrot unfairly secured a second term as chosen bird. The bird-of-the-year controversy took flight after data analysts working with Forest & Bird discovered that roughly 1,500 fraudulent votes had been cast. The “illegal votes,” which were submitted using a suspicious email account and came from the same IP address in Auckland, briefly pushed the country’s tiny kiwi pukupuku bird into the lead, a brazen meddling attempt that sent officials and campaign managers into a flap. Those votes were immediately disregarded, organizers said. “It’s lucky we spotted this little kiwi trying to sneak in an extra 1500 votes under the cover of darkness!” Laura Keown, spokesperson for Bird of the Year, said in a statement Nov. 10, adding that officials did not “want to see any more cheating.”

Israelis Take On Netanyahu And Coronavirus Restrictions In Wave Of Civil Disobedience (The Intercept) Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having been at the helm for over 11 consecutive years. He is also the first sitting prime minister to be indicted, currently on trial in three cases of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, arising from abusing his authority to grant favors for, among other things, favorable media coverage. While there have been small but stubborn protests against Netanyahu since investigations into his corruption first opened in late 2016, it was not until the coronavirus paralyzed Israel’s economy that people—many of them in their 20s and 30s—starting coming out in droves. For more than 20 weeks now, tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to call on Netanyahu to recuse himself for corruption, for failing to manage the pandemic, and for what many describe as his megalomania—doing whatever it takes to evade trial. They have been convening in massive numbers in front of his official residence, many carrying homemade signs, chanting in unison “Go!” and “We won’t leave till Bibi resigns.”

Protests that historically bring out large numbers of Jewish Israelis have long been dominated by Israel’s left-leaning peace camp, and a decade ago, others drawing attention to the high cost of living. What is happening now is different: With over a million people unemployed in a country of 9 million, culture and nightlife all but dead amid the pandemic, and people’s ability to travel outside the country severely restricted, a nationwide movement of disgruntled Israelis, spanning ages and to an extent sociocultural backgrounds, is practicing civil disobedience. The government has responded with relative force against a segment of the Jewish population that is largely unfamiliar with police brutality and has not had their individual rights violated. At the same time, the government has all but ignored incitement and incidents of violence against the protesters. The official response is giving Jewish Israelis a tiny window into what it has always been like for Palestinians, both in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza, whose protests are, prima facie, treated as suspect.

Ethiopia bombs Tigray capital (Foreign Policy) Ethiopia’s air force began bombing the Tigray region’s capital, Mekelle, on Monday in another escalation of the country’s civil war, now entering its third week. In a tweet he later deleted, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called for the two sides to negotiate and halt the conflict “lest it leads to unnecessary loss of lives and cripples the economy.” Redwan Hussein, a government spokesman, said the war would be a “short-lived operation,” and that mediation offers from Uganda or another country were not being considered.

Amazon opens online pharmacy, shaking up another industry (AP) Now at Amazon.com: insulin and inhalers. The online colossus opened an online pharmacy Tuesday that allows customers to order medication or prescription refills, and have them delivered to their front door in a couple of days. The potential impact of Amazon’s arrival in the pharmaceutical space rippled through that sector immediately. Before the opening bell, shares of CVS Health Corp. fell almost 9%. Walgreens and Rite Aid both tumbled more than 10%. The big chains rely on their pharmacies for a steady flow of shoppers who may also grab a snack, or shampoo or groceries on the way out. All have upped online services, but Amazon.com has mastered it, and its online store is infinitely larger. Amazon will begin offering commonly prescribed medications Tuesday in the U.S., including creams, pills, as well as medications that need to stay refrigerated, like insulin. Shoppers have to set up a profile on Amazon’s website and have their doctors send prescriptions there. The company said it won’t ship medications that can be abused, including many opioids. Most insurance is accepted, Amazon said. But Prime members who don’t have insurance can also buy generic or brand name drugs from Amazon for a discount. They can also get discounts at 50,000 physical pharmacies around the country, inside Costco, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and other stores.

R.I.P. whoopsie (Euronews) French broadcaster RFI has apologized after a bug on its website triggered the publication of obituaries of Queen Elizabeth II, Pelé, Jimmy Carter, Brigitte Bardot, Clint Eastwood and about 100 other prominent (and still alive) celebrities. RFI said in a statement that a “technical problem” led to the erroneous publications. Broadcasters often prepare obituary material in advance to publish it promptly when a death is announced.

[altpress]

GET YOURS AT: https://ift.tt/2CCCh33 What the hell is YUNGBLUD, anyway? Is it a sassy stage name for British-born Dominic Harrison to wave his freak flag and pink socks under? Is it a musical vehicle that has absolutely no allegiance to genre as much as it does to getting the message across? Or is it a school of thought where the world’s youth can stand united to hasten the destruction of all the social, political and cultural barriers designed to separate them? If you said, “all of the above,” Harrison is ready to give you a big hug, an anthem or three and the empowerment to change the world, one person at a time. “This is what I’ve always wanted to create,” Harrison tells writer Jake Richardson in the next issue of AP. “I grew up with ADHD, and because of that, a lot of people misunderstood my intentions. I didn’t fit into a box that society was accepting of. If you’ve ever felt like you’re outside of that box, you’ll know how awful it is—that feeling of inadequacy permeates your brain. “I wanted to build something that would defy what was suppressing me, and that’s what YUNGBLUD is—it’s creating a community of people who are themselves no matter what,” he continues. “You are safe to be yourself here: Regardless of what the fuck is going on outside, for the length of the show or the time we’re connecting online, you can be you and forget about all the bullshit.” Heralding the recent release of his live album YUNGBLUD (Live In Atlanta), this month’s cover story finds Harrison candidly discussing everything from his roots, the darker periods of his life (“If you’re depressed, there will be a rope hanging in front of your face somewhere: Don’t fucking hang yourself with it. Grab it and climb it”), pissing off old people on British TV and his conviction toward the power of his generation. Because unlike most rockers, Harrison doesn’t want you to worship him: He wants to light your inner fuse to do great things. GET YOURS AT: https://ift.tt/2CCCh33 “I believe in my generation because we’re so fucking smart,” he announces. “Yeah, we’re a bit arrogant, but that’s because we’ve got to be when you look at what’s going on around us: Brexit, Trump, war, privatized health care, racism, gender inequality, homophobia. We know the future we want to be a part of, and this isn’t it. We’re being held back by old ideologies that don’t understand us, but we’re gonna get that future we want to see.” Discover what Team YUNGBLUD wants to see in the world in the next issue of AP, available right here... GET YOURS AT: https://ift.tt/2CCCh33 ALSO IN THIS MONTH’S ISSUE Tatiana Shmailyuk, vocalist from head-swiveling metal outfit JINJER, had to pass several armed guard checkpoints to finally arrive at a computer for her Skype interview with AP. Any band in America bemoaning their purported “struggle” can drink an icy-cold tall boy of STFU right about now. On their new album Morbid Stuff, Toronto outfit PUP deliver punky pop that’s couched in wit, wry observations and more heart than a flipped Hallmark semi-truck packed with Valentine’s Day cards. That’s why we asked the v. cool JEFF ROSENSTOCK to blow the breeze with the guys before their national television debut. Another round of IPAs and beard oil for the table, please… NEW YEARS DAY frontwoman Ash Costello is one of the nicest people with an address on Earth. But on NYD’S new album, Unbreakable, she’s breaking the floodgates wide open, addressing what people expect from her and what she’s going to give them. In this month’s photo special, we’re perusing the portfolio of photographer ASHLEY OSBORN, who you may have seen hard at work capturing the action on one awesome tour or another. Besides picking all the great images (better get an extra copy to hang on the wall), Osborn shared all the stories behind each one—and the pleasure was all ours. AP ARCHIVES is all about the nü metal this month, with stories revealing who escaped certain death at a DEFTONES shoot; KORN’s state of mind during their first magazine cover; and who the most awesome member of LIMP BIZKIT was. (Hint: He doesn’t wear a red baseball cap.) BLACKBEARBLACK BEAR told us about all the soul searching and beat-crafting behind the making of his new album in ALBUM ANATOMY. Mikaila Delgado from the wondrous trio YOURS TRULY wasn’t going to let illness curtail her from seeing the world and rocking out, and her story is living proof regarding how IT GOT BETTER. Oh, and because we’ve been rockin’ that new YUNGBLUD live album a little too much, we picked 10 ESSENTIAL songs to listen to while you’re raising hell and evading law enforcement. Did we mention awesome photos, inspiring fan art and 12 recommended bands waiting to cozy up to your ear canals? Let’s go! GET YOURS AT: https://ift.tt/2CCCh33 by Alternative Press

[berniesrevolution]

When I think about that morning last summer, when London awoke to television images of a West Kensington tower-block engulfed in flames, one interview constantly bubbles in my mind. A young man told the BBC that the fire felt like a foreseeable moment: the culmination of years of being made to feel like the city wanted them gone.

“[They] put them shoddy plastic things on there that set alight, because they want more reasons to knock these blocks down,” he raged. “I’m not even so sure that was totally an accident.” He spoke as if some cabal of corrupt councillors and property developers had thrown a lit rag through the letter-box.

His conspiracy theory was a crazy notion, issued in the heat of fury and grief. However, as we began to learn about the truth of the fire last June—about the inferno that fed on cheap flammable cladding; about the confluence of municipal neglect, outsourcing, and value-engineering that permitted 71 people to die in their homes—it was easy to feel sympathy for the man‘s sense of victimhood. For the outside world, the Grenfell Tower fire was a horrifying tragedy, and a blight on the conscience of those who let it come to pass. But for many Londoners, it exposed something rotten in the marrow of London itself. For us, the fire was an instant and terrible symbol of a city in a tight spiral of dysfunction, where the ideas that once defined it are breaking down beyond repair.

In the fifteen months since disaster befell Grenfell Tower, the condition of the British capital has seldom been out of the national conversation. As is with most topics of commentary in deeply divided post-Brexit Britain, London tends to be presented either as a paradise or a hell-hole, depending on your point of view. To idealistic liberals, it remains the ur-city, a cradle of tolerant coexistence, the place where multiculturalism works. It is the rainbow city that would have given Trump hell had he dared to show his face here. To hysterical conservatives, by contrast, the city is “Londonistan,” governed by a Muslim mayor, benighted by terror-attacks, no-go zones, and spiraling crime. In April, when the press marked 50 years since the Tory firebrand Enoch Powell made his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech on the apocalyptic dangers of multiculturalism, there were many who pointed to this year’s escalating murder rate as evidence of Powell’s prophecy come to pass.

The truth, of course, is somewhere in between. London is not a Powellian bloodbath. But it is no longer possible for a lifelong London resident like me to pretend that the city is a united, happy, and enviable place, either. The questions that surfaced in the aftermath of Grenfell haven’t gone away: Why did this tragedy hold such terrible resonance for the people in this city? Why, for millions of us, did anger about the circumstances surrounding the fire transcend its immediate context, feeding a growing sense that London no longer functions for the good of the people who live here, due to forces far beyond its citizens’ ken and control?

For decades, London’s rare achievement was its mixed-income communities. These came into being thanks to a post-war history of town planning, which set out to ensure that no area of affluence could become an island, aloof from the hoi polloi. Some of the resulting mix was deliberately engineered, and some of it was accidental. In recent years, however, it has been plain to see that this covenant—which envisioned people of different means, from different walks of life, living in the same communities as neighbors—has started to crumble.

In my other life, I do occasional work as a landscape gardener, tending the lawns and flower-beds of south London’s more affluent inner-suburbs. Last month, a neighbor wandered up to me to complain about the homogenization of her neighborhood. Next door to where I was working, a newcomer to the street had commissioned an overhaul of their recently-acquired semi, and the excavation conveyors were churning all day long, puking up London clay to make space for a new basement. “When we moved here 40 years ago, I was a junior legal researcher, my husband was an assistant lecturer,” the neighbour said, over the din of the machinery. “This road was all teachers and police officers. Public servants. Now it’s just bankers, bankers, bankers. What the hell’s happened?”

(Continue Reading)