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What you want to say – 12th June 2024 June 12, 2024

Posted by guestposter in Uncategorized.
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

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1. Tomboktu - June 12, 2024

Sitting on the bus mulling about where we’ve been stuck for a few minutes: isn’t Bachelors Walk a great name for a street in the capital?

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Tomboktu - June 12, 2024

Though it turns out that like so many streets in Dublin, it is named after a person. <Romantic interlude over>

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2. Wes Ferry - June 13, 2024

US conservatives have a blueprint for a second Trump term dubbed Project 2025.

The 900-page proposal, produced by a right-wing think tank, The Heritage Foundation, would expand the power of the president, fire thousands of federal employees, install loyalists into positions of power, overhaul government agencies including the FBI, dismantle the Department of Education, crack down on reproductive rights, and add religious tests to strict immigration laws — all within six months of Trump seizing power.

Democrats are feverishly working on plans to stop this from happening.

A group of House Dems led by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) announced The Stop Project 2025 Task Force on Wednesday. The group’s strategy is still in development. But the group aims to begin by serving as a hub of information for lawmakers and voters about Project 2025 and counter-proposals on immigration, reproductive rights and more.

Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation, scoffed at the idea, telling the Associated Press: “Project 2025 will not be stopped.”

Crooked Media, USA

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3. Wes Ferry - June 13, 2024

Cancelled!!! Hot news from the USA.

Star competitive eater Joey Chestnut has been banned from Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest after he signed a brand deal with the plant-based brand Impossible Foods.

NPR, USA

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4. Paul Culloty - June 13, 2024

The inflection point has now been reached in UK GE polling after YouGov gave Reform a one-point lead over the Tories:

https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1801331705720279108

In recent days, the Labour percentage has also dipped slightly, with some of its voters tactically switching to the Lib Dems.

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5. banjoagbeanjoe - June 13, 2024
6. pettyburgess - June 14, 2024

The 2024 ecosocialist summer camp, organised by RISE, is on in Glendalough from 2-5 August.

https://www.letusrise.ie/camp24

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7. banjoagbeanjoe - June 14, 2024

Just watching and listening to Flower of Scotland before the first game of Euro 2024. Them Scots can sing their anthem.

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banjoagbeanjoe - June 14, 2024

They can sing but they can’t play 😦

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8. Paul Culloty - June 14, 2024

The Danish Social Democrats, who European media constantly acclaim as leftists taking a hard line on immigration, have reached a record low in polling, a week after the European result was 6% lower than in 2019:

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1801683566721384659

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WorldbyStorm - June 14, 2024

There’s a lesson there.

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9. Tomboktu - June 14, 2024

This is a fascinating Dr Hannah Fry clip on how austerity came about by an error in a spreadsheet……

https://x.com/DickMackintosh/status/1801316315157889227?t=E37zlMH1EHH8FMG2q4TZuw&s=19

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Et Pluribus - June 16, 2024

I have a bridge to sell anyone who genuinely believes in this explanation, or for that matter the ‘error’ in the numbers for a departed wild-haired libertarian climate denialist economist who used to frequent these shores.

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10. roddy - June 14, 2024

According to RTÉ news, a Laois woman has been convicted of claiming her father-in-law’s pension for 28 years after he died.

The authorities became suspicious when enquiries concluded that there were no 110-year-old men residing in County Laois. When officials visited her home, she showed them a man in bed with his shoes on who seemed “younger” than 110 and who turned out to be her husband.

Why am I not outraged by this assault on public finances?

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11. Wes Ferry - June 15, 2024

Donald Trump rounds up.

The 80+ chief executive officers who attended a meeting with Trump in Washington Thursday told reporters they found him uninformed and unfocused.

Christina Wilkie and Brian Schwartz of CNBC noted that the attendees dislike the Biden administration’s enforcement of antitrust laws, its price caps on drugs and medical products, and its promise of progressive tax policy and like Trump’s promise to slash regulations and cut taxes, so they went into the meeting hoping to support him.

One CEO left the meeting with the takeaway that “Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” and several, Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC reported, said that he “was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought [and] was all over the map.” He could not explain how he planned to accomplish any of the policies he was proposing.

When asked why he had chosen a policy of bringing the corporate tax rate down to 20%, he allegedly answered: “Well, it’s a round number.” 

Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American

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WorldbyStorm - June 15, 2024

He’ll certainly make America something again.

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12. Paul Culloty - June 15, 2024

In an instance of “broken clock being correct twice daily”, John McGuirk has faced down most of his social media following, and defended Rhasidat Adeleke from the Twitter ghouls.

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WorldbyStorm - June 15, 2024

Hmmmm… checks outside to see if pigs are flying across the sky. What prompted this unexpected courtesy and humanity on his part?

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Michael Carley - June 15, 2024

I’ve had a look: the response is foul.

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WorldbyStorm - June 15, 2024

Generally I try to avoid anything to do with that micro ecosphere of the hard and far right completely. There’s so little there there that one can predict the lines on this or that from the get go.

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WorldbyStorm - June 15, 2024
13. Tomboktu - June 15, 2024

List of random surnames and their origin:

  • Barrett – Norman
  • Pepper – Anglo Saxon
  • Blighe – English
  • Steenson – Norman/British
  • Reynolds – Anglo Norman
  • Heasman – Anglo Norman
  • Waters – English
  • Power – Norman
  • Fitzsimmons – Norman

https://x.com/_FeachNews/status/1802065039592956183?t=x5u4M7B7_xpinI4PDgA3Tg&s=19

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14. roddy - June 16, 2024

Some interesting facts . . .

  • Over 70 British Labour Party MPs are listed as”Friends of Israel”.
  • The % vote for the Left Group in the Euro elections across Europe was 7%; in Ireland it was 23%, miles ahead of any other country – 23%.

Next time someone bemoans “backward Ireland” as opposed to “progressive” Britain, present them with those statistics.

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Et Pluribus - June 16, 2024

The BLP also has a reactionary control freak bent to dissent that would put old stalinist parties like our own WP to shame. The new successor to the ‘antisemitism problem’ as a way to punish internal opposition is the Orwellian-named Jo Cox Civility Commission, which will undoubtedly primarily be used as a bludgeon in defence of imposed Starmerite election candidates

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Tomboktu - June 16, 2024

23% of 14 is 3.22. Luke Ming, Boylan and Function. Yep, that stacks up, number wise.

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15. Et Pluribus - June 16, 2024

It looked at that point that IALPA would announce details of its planned industrial action but there was another twist to come.

On Friday morning, in an update to members, the union said it would be conducting another ballot, this time a paper, in-person vote as opposed to the previous electronic poll.

Aer Lingus had queried the validity of the original electronic ballot.

IALPA said there was no question around the integrity of the vote but rather than spending weeks fighting about it in court, it would instead conduct a paper ballot.

[…]

Aer Lingus has expressed concerns about the speed at which this new in-person ballot is being carried out so it may also question the validity of this vote when the results are announced.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/0616/1454835-aer-lingus/

By this point I’d really rather prefer that the English corporate ghoul wearing Aer Lingus’s corpse wrap it all up and retire the brand of what was once a fine State institution.

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16. Paul Culloty - June 17, 2024

Interesting to note on Slugger that Bacik and Cairns shared a political panel at an Ireland’s Future event at the weekend – perhaps co-operation while remaining separate was discussed on the sidelines?

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17. sonofstan - June 17, 2024

The bit of north Yorkshire that the PM calls his constiuency (for now) really has the maddest place names – Thornton le Beans, Patrick Brompton and, in among the Nether Stiltons etc, a village called Londonderry.

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Colm B - June 17, 2024

On the road from Stirling to Perth there’s a sign for a village that goes by the magnificent name of Findo Gask! Sounds like a place hobbits might live?

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18. tomasoflatharta - June 17, 2024
19. Paul Culloty - June 17, 2024

Labour pull out of talks to build a left alliance on Dublin City Council, due to disagreements with SF and PBP on the local property tax – SD and the Greens, AFAIK, also believe it should be maintained, but evidently don’t consider the issue a deal-breaker:

https://www.thejournal.ie/dublin-city-council-progressive-alliance-labour-6412250-Jun2024/

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20. Wes Ferry - June 18, 2024

Chiquita Brands, the largest banana distributor of bananas in the US, has been ordered to pay $38.3million to the families of victims in Colombia killed by a far-right paramilitary group.

A Florida court recently ruled that Chiquita Brands International knowingly provided “substantial” support to the group “to a degree sufficient to create a foreseeable risk of harm to others”.

The company claims it paid the guerrillas – known as the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC – under duress to protect its operations, and plans to appeal. Still, the verdict marks the first time a big US corporation has been found liable for human rights abuses in a foreign country, according to lawyers who spoke with USA Today.

Large multinational fruit corporations have a century-long history of misdeeds in South and Central America… from joining with the CIA to overthrow the democratically-elected leader of Guatemala, to an anti-labor massacre in Colombia and political interventions in Honduras. But this new verdict suggests there could be more to follow. 

Crooked Media, USA

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21. sonofstan - June 18, 2024

I guess it’s no wonder the Tories hate academics:

“Sixty-four per cent of participants [academics in a Times Higher education survey] who have already made up their minds ahead of the 4 July election say they will opt for Sir Keir Starmer’s party, far more than the next most popular option – the Green Party – which received 12 per cent. The Liberal Democrats received 11 per cent and the Conservatives 4 per cent. Thirteen per cent of respondents say they are yet to make up their minds”

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22. Vingtras - June 18, 2024

Macron has dissolved the National Assembly in France and called new parliamentary elections. The first round is next weekend.

The far-right Rassemblement National is leading in the polls, having scored a record 31% in the European vote (with another 5% for the even harder right Reconquete).

There is thus a high chance that France will have a far-right prime minister by next month–for the first time in the history of the Republic (Vichy was another matter). Under the French system, the prime minister actually has more power than the president when the former belongs to a different party as part of a so-called “co-habitation”. Business leaders are already cosying up to the RN. They are predictably untroubled by the RN’s racism but worry about some of their “populist” economic policies, which include slashing duty on petrol by three-quarters.

The Left has formed a “Popular Front”, spanning the Trotskyist New Anti-Capitalist Party to the centre-left Socialists (ex-President Hollande is even running for his old parliamentary seat). That alliance may prevent the Far Right from winning an overall majority but is unlikely to come first. The political centre of gravity has shifted to the Right in France, with the Left reduced to around a third of the electorate.

The Popular Front is also riven with discord. Melenchon has purged several MPs from his own France Unbowed party, who had been critical of his authoritarian leadership. Melenchon has also taken to making indelicate remarks on antisemitism (a “residual” phenomeon, says he).

Macron’s own extreme-centre grouping seems destined, in any event, to suffer a heavy defeat and come third.

In the event of a hung parliament, the Extreme Centre may nonetheless hold the balance of power. Will they strike a deal with Le Pen? I fear they will. When push comes to shove, so-called liberals tend to back “order” over “revolution” (or even reformism!), as in 1848 and in 1920s Italy.

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Donal - June 18, 2024

Let’s not indulge the sham debate in France which claims that Melenchon has made ‘indelicate remarks’ – he has caused controversy because he and his party offer wholehearted solidarity to Palestinians facing a genocidal assault, while expressions of virulent anti-Palestinian racism are considered perfectly okay in the French political mainstream.

There is an anti-Palestinian bloc that unites the centre with the far right and they hate Melenchon and LFI for challenging that; they dress up their own racism in the costume of anti-racism, falsely claiming that LFI refused to criticise the October 7 attacks (in fact, they accused Hamas of committing war crimes, but that’ll never be enough for their opponents when they also take a clear stand with the Palestinian people).

Macron is desperately trying to use false claims of antisemitism to drag down the left alliance and claw back lost ground; in this as in so many other respects, he’s a fully conscious handmaiden and collaborator of the far right, working to bring Le Pen to power.

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Donal - June 18, 2024

An article from the FT today demonstrates what is actually at stake in France:

“France’s corporate bosses are racing to build contacts with Marine Le Pen’s far right after recoiling from the radical tax-and-spend agenda of the rival leftwing alliance in the country’s snap parliamentary elections.

“Four senior executives and bankers told the Financial Times that the left — which polls suggest is the strongest bloc vying with Le Pen — would be even worse for business than the Rassemblement National’s unfunded tax cuts and anti-immigration policies.

“The RN’s economic policies are more of a blank slate that business thinks they can help push in the right direction,” a Cac 40 corporate leader said of Le Pen’s party, which is ahead of other groupings in the run-up to the two-round vote on June 30 and July 7. “The left is not likely to water down its hardline anti-capitalist agenda.”

They go into more detail about what they consider a “hardline anti-capitalist agenda” (remember, this alliance includes the Socialist Party, which was the governing party just seven years ago):

“Le Pen has sought to reassure business. “Financial markets don’t really understand the National Rally’s project,” she told Le Figaro on Sunday. “They have only heard the caricature of our project. When they read about it, they find it rather reasonable.”

“The leftwing NFP alliance has not made similar overtures. But it depicts its economic plans as more responsible because of billions of euros in planned tax rises to pay for the increased spending. 

“We will finance this programme by dipping into the pockets of those who can most afford it,” said Olivier Faure, head of the Socialist party.

“The NFP’s programme includes scrapping Macron’s pension reforms, increasing public sector salaries and welfare benefits, while raising the minimum wage by 14 per cent and freezing the price of basic food items and energy.

“It would reintroduce a wealth tax, scrap many tax breaks for the better-off and raise income tax for the highest earners. 

“Corporate bosses recoil at such ideas. “The left’s economic programme is totally unacceptable and would amount to France leaving the capitalist system,” said a high-profile entrepreneur anguished over the choice in the election. “Bardella may look reassuring but the far right represents a threat to democracy, not only the economy.”

https://www.ft.com/content/e28f9753-1770-4c8c-91d8-e7bb7ed44feb?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0fKQf1ZlRtIh64vzG-VBi32OBbp7eTS1Ac_gs5PSCUX04auTDksXTrWm0_aem_I1p79WKce96EPncYtqnWRg

You really have to feel for the poor darlings, don’t you? On the one hand, a party they recognize to be a threat to democracy itself; on the other, wealthy people might have to pay a bit more tax, the minimum wage would be higher, and workers would be able to retire at the same age as they could five years ago (which apparently “would amount to France leaving the capitalist system”—it must not have been capitalist before Macron became president, I suppose). No wonder these suffering martyrs are “anguished over the choice in the election”, but I’m sure they’ll wrestle successfully with their conscience and come down hard on Le Pen’s side.

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Vingtras - June 18, 2024

Antisemitism can be both real and instrumentalized. And it’s not a residual phenomenon in France or anywhere else.

I don’t think Melenchon is an antisemite, but he lacks both political and personal sensitivity on the question. He accused one Jewish politician of “camping in Tel-Aviv”, another of betraying the principles of “the left wing of Judaism”.

Such comments create a rod for his own back, and he’s been rightly criticized for them by other leftists.

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Dolores - June 18, 2024

I don’t think Melenchon is an antisemite, but he lacks both political and personal sensitivity on the question. He accused one Jewish politician of “camping in Tel-Aviv”, another of betraying the principles of “the left wing of Judaism”.

And round and round we go. Left-wing Jewish politicians in both the UK (Greens) and the US (Dems) have been ludicrously accused of being ‘anti-semites’ by rightwing non-Jews in recent weeks, because Israel, and nodding heads like to nod along and give this stuff oxygen.

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roddy - June 18, 2024

On Radio Ulster today ,a panel of media types discussed their memories of Section 31 and it’s BBC equivalent. .How could this be possibility enforced ever again on this island when for over 6 months supporters of the Gaza genocide have been given free reign to defend the slaughter including former Irish govt ministers.j

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Donal - June 18, 2024

Isn’t it just amazing how any left-wing politician who consistently supports Palestinian rights always turns out to have created a rod for his or her own back, from Jeremy Corbyn to Rashida Tlaib? There always turns out to be some comment they’ve made that proves to be unacceptable when it’s fed through the interpretation machine.

I can remember Britain’s commentariat clutching their pearls and rending their garments in horror because the Unite leader Len McCluskey had, in the way you’ve presented Mélenchon’s comments, “told a Jewish politician to count his gold”—except the politician in case was Peter Mandelson, who has indeed used his political career to become fabulously wealthy by, for example, setting up meetings between Uber and pro-Kremlin oligarchs in Moscow, and who shouldn’t be protected from scathing comments about that record of carpetbagging simply because he happens to have Jewish heritage.

Seriously, we don’t have time to indulge this endless cycle of bad faith smears directed at every single left-wing politician who stands up for Palestinians—there are no exceptions to the rule; there is no way of avoiding it, no matter how carefully you choose your words. In Britain, Faiza Shaheen thought she could avoid it by keeping her head down and agreeing that Corbyn only had himself to blame for being excluded as a Labour candidate; then she was excluded as a Labour candidate after exactly the same bad faith procedure was applied to her, and she’s now running as an independent. Amazingly, it turned out that the Greens in Britain had a problem with antisemitism at the exact moment when they posed an electoral challenge to Labour, in part because of their opposition to the war on Gaza. Who would have imagined such a thing …

In France right now, you have the direct political descendants of the Vichy collabos in pole position to form the next government, yet their leader is making disgusting claims that there will be pogroms against French Jews if the left alliance wins the election. It’s a nauseating spectacle, but the road to this point has been paved with far too much indulgence of bad-faith allegations from political actors who will gladly form an alliance with the Euro-American far right if that’s what it takes to maintain uncritical support for anything Israel does, up to and including genocide.

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23. Wes Ferry - June 18, 2024

Top Dems Sign Off On Biggest Weapons Sale To Israel To Date

The Washington Post this morning has reported that the top Democrats on the Armed Services Committees — Rep. Gregory Meeks (NY), and Senator Ben Cardin (MD) — have finally given their nod on the biggest arms sale to Israel since Oct. 7.

In fact, after holding it up for months they gave their approval “weeks ago.” Now Congress will be formally notified.

The package includes 50 F-15s that won’t arrive in Israel for years, along with surface-to-air missiles and Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, which retrofit unguided bombs with precision guidance, according to the paper. The package is worth $18 billion.

The two Democrats had been resistant to give their nods (the ranking Republicans gave their approval months ago) due in part to the continued blocking of aid in the strip. Meeks, according to the Post, told CNN in April that “I don’t want the kinds of weapons that Israel has to be utilized to have more deaths…I want to make sure that humanitarian aid gets in. I don’t want people starving to death, and I want Hamas to release the hostages. And I want a two-state solution.”

What changed his mind is a mystery . . .

Responsible Statecraft

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