December 2, 2023

Vice President Harris says 'too many innocent Palestinians have been killed' as fighting picks up in southern Gaza

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/02/israel-bombards-southern-gaza-as-residents-fear-new-ground-offensive.html



U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said too many innocent Palestinians had been killed in Gaza as Israeli war planes and artillery bombarded the enclave on Saturday following the collapse of a truce
with Hamas militants.

Residents feared the barrages were a prelude to an Israeli ground operation in the south of the Palestinian territory that would pen them into a shrinking area and possibly try to push them across into Egypt. The Gaza health ministry said at least 193 Palestinians had been killed and 650 wounded since the truce ended on Friday morning - adding to the more than 15,000 Palestinian dead since the start of the war.

Speaking in Dubai, Harris said Israel had a right to defend itself, but international and humanitarian law must be respected and “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed”. “Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering, and the images and videos coming from Gaza, are devastating,” Harris told reporters.

She also sketched out a U.S. vision for post-conflict Gaza, saying the international community must support recovery and Palestinian security forces must be strengthened. “We want to see a unified Gaza and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian voices and aspirations must be at the center of this work,” she said, adding that Hamas must no longer run Gaza.

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Netanyahu and his band of ultra RW supporters are perhaps going to try and drive them into Egypt, which would be textbook ethnic cleansing.

December 2, 2023

Geert Wilders and Dutch coalition prospects

The election victory in the Netherlands for the Party for Freedom fits into a wider picture of European radical-right populism.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/geert-wilders-and-dutch-coalition-prospects



The results of the Dutch election, in which Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom emerged as victors, have sent shockwaves through the political establishment. For the first time in Dutch history, a party of the extreme right is the largest in the national parliament. Wilders is an eccentric politician, known for his inflammatory rhetoric. He advocates the Netherlands leaving the European Union and has called Islam a ‘fascist’ religion. In a 2016 trial, he was found guilty of inciting discrimination (but received no penalty for the crime).

Partners needed

While polling leading up to the election had suggested that the Party for Freedom could become the largest, it had appeared to be running practically neck and neck with the parties of the mainstream left and right. But the polls were wide of the mark and Wilders ended up taking the most seats by a comfortable margin, even if he will need to seek coalition partners to form a government. The right-wing newcomers of the New Social Contract also did very well. Like the Party for Freedom, this party sees immigration as one of the reasons for problems such as the Netherlands’ stressed public services and lack of affordable housing.

However, Pieter Omtzigt, the New Social Contract’s leader (and a former member of parliament for the more centre-right Christian Democratic Party), is critical of some of Wilders’ more inflammatory rhetoric. Omtzigt would nevertheless seem the most likely candidate to form a coalition with Wilders, together with the former party of the now-departed prime minister, Mark Rutte [its new leader has ruled this out]. But it will be some time before it is clear if such a partnership is achievable. Coalition in the Netherlands is the work of months rather than weeks. These talks will be all the more complex thanks to Wilders’ personal profile. He may hold the greatest number of seats, but the controversy that has surrounded him for so many years may yet rule him out of the role of prime minister, even were he to be part of a governing coalition.

Should a coalition be formed, questions about the Netherlands’ place in the EU will inevitably come to the fore. Wilders wants a Brexit-style referendum and, even if this doesn’t materialise, we can expect him to bring a more Eurosceptic stance to any government in which he participates. This could have considerable consequences for the EU. Even when extreme-right parties in Europe differ on the question of exit, they agree on transforming the EU into a more intergovernmental body, taking power away from Brussels.

Example from Italy.................................

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December 2, 2023

Minor glitch since the new patch: When I get a reply and my Posts button turns yellow, so does my Inbox button

That happens every time despite no new inbox messges.

December 2, 2023

Why is the mainstream media peddling the gun lobby's fake stats on Black gun ownership?

https://prospect.org/power/2023-11-24-guns-race-stats-three-deadliest-weapons/



For nearly three years, headlines have warned that, as The Hill put it, “Gun Ownership Among Black Americans Is Soaring,” up 58.2 percent. At least 20 of America’s most popular news outlets, including eight of its ten most trusted, have reported this statistic. Appearing in outlets like The Wall Street Journal as far back as August 2020, this so-called “research” has continued to be cited by outlets like Bloomberg as recently as October 2023. And all of these articles conclude that, in the words of Time magazine, “Racial Tensions in the U.S. Are Helping to Fuel a Rise in Black Gun Ownership.”

As it turns out, the dozens of articles implying that “Black Americans Flock to Gun Stores and Clubs” can be traced back to a gun lobbying group’s demonstrably meaningless promotional materials. In other words, the widely reported “58 percent” statistic is a sham—but its impact is real. The false narrative it props up will lead to more gun purchases by anti-Black racists, more accidental and self-inflicted gun deaths in Black communities, and more unjustified fears of Black Americans. All of the articles I found either imply or conclude that Black people in particular began buying far more guns than usual in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

They all also suggest that scientific evidence supports this story. I was skeptical of both claims, so as an anti-racist data scientist, I decided to investigate their statistical basis. What I found was disconcerting. In July 2020, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) released an infographic based on a survey it conducted on some of its members. (It didn’t release any data or survey text from the study, just the infographic.) The NSSF is a trade association that, according to its most recent public tax records, spends about ten times as much as the NRA on gun lobbying efforts. Its tax registration as a business league means that, according to the IRS, “its purpose must be to promote this common business interest”: to sell guns.



This may explain why the NSSF didn’t ask thousands of Americans whether they owned a gun, as reputable research organizations sometimes do. Using this approach, Pew Research found no change in Black gun ownership rates from 2017 (24 percent) to 2021 (24 percent). Similarly, peer-reviewed research published by members of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found no change in gun ownership among Black Americans across 2019 (21 percent), 2020 (21 percent), and 2021 (21 percent). But instead of taking the approach used by Pew and Harvard, the NSSF simply asked about 100 of its own member gun dealers to estimate how their overall customer base may have changed. And even those retrospective guesses—which do not, on their own, tell us anything about gun ownership—were reported deceptively.

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December 2, 2023

Euthanize This (Merger)

https://prospect.org/health/2023-12-01-euthanize-this-merger/



Earlier this year, a federal judge in Washington state unsealed a whistleblower lawsuit I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. The plaintiff was a nurse practitioner named Maxwell Ollivant who worked from 2019 to 2020 for Optum, the physician services subsidiary of the health insurance giant UnitedHealthcare, as a primary care practitioner. Ollivant’s patients were nursing home residents insured by a UnitedHealth Medicare Advantage plan. In theory, his job was to monitor their symptoms proactively enough to keep them from being admitted to the hospital unnecessarily. In practice, many of his patients desperately needed hospitalization: One had a stroke and later gastrointestinal bleeding; another needed a blood transfusion. But Optum bosses, according to the lawsuit, did everything in their power to stop Ollivant and his colleagues from hospitalizing patients suffering from obvious, emergent life-threatening conditions, instead directing its employed nurse practitioners to see their “mission” as convincing patients to essentially waive their rights to medical treatment by signing do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders or “comfort care” agreements.

On Tuesday, the former Cigna executive turned health care whistleblower Wendell Potter broke the news that his former employer was planning a merger with HMO giant Humana, which would create an insurance behemoth, with nearly $300 billion in revenue in 2023. Both Cigna and Humana have been under fire recently for alleged efforts to deny reimbursement claims for routine and often urgent medical care. A ProPublica/Capitol Forum investigation earlier this year revealed Cigna was using an algorithm called PXDX to illegally issue blanket denials on hundreds of thousands of claims that would have previously been reviewed by physicians (and in all likelihood, approved). Similarly, Humana has been under congressional scrutiny over its massive “prior authorization” bureaucracy, which requires doctors to obtain up-front permission to treat its Medicare Advantage customers at a rate of 2.8 times per patient per year, the second-highest in the business.



At UnitedHealth, which employs or contracts exclusively with 90,000 physicians and untold thousands of physician assistants and nurse practitioners like Ollivant, bosses can skirt the messiness of prior authorization and denial, and the attendant litigation and regulatory scrutiny involved, by simply pressuring its clinical workforce to deny care out of the gate. Such are the perks of “vertical integration,” through which the country’s largest insurer has turned itself into a one-stop walled garden for health care, and increasingly for its denial.

https://twitter.com/bobjherman/status/1729856562829590546
It’s a brilliant business model. UnitedHealth is now the fifth-biggest company in America by revenue, with operating income approaching $25 billion and a market capitalization of a half-trillion dollars, largely on the strong growth of its Optum medical empire and the one-stop shop for Medicare Advantage patients they serve. And it’s also pretty obviously what Cigna and Humana are hoping to replicate with their merger, so long as antitrust authorities don’t get in the way. The two companies are likely betting that whatever resistance Biden’s DOJ exercises to the deal will be undone by a future Trump administration.

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December 1, 2023

Posh English types ordering their eggs 'over easy' - no wonder Americans love 'Saltburn'

UK film critics have shown antipathy towards this loose Brideshead reboot, but here in the US, many are besotted

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/30/posh-english-types-eggs-over-easy-americans-love-saltburn



I had been quite looking forward to hating Saltburn, the loose Brideshead Revisited reboot and second movie by Emerald Fennell that has been exciting wild animosity online. In the US, where the movie has been more generously received, the English national sport of automatically loathing something from a class to which one doesn’t belong is baffling. But in England, people have been going bananas. To credit the film-maker with an intention she almost certainly didn’t have, one might almost say this was a clever part of the film’s mission.

If you go looking for problems with this movie, of course you will find them. But the first half of the film, set in mid-2000s Oxford, is funny and well-observed, motored by a nostalgia for college that I found largely spot on. OK, it behaves as if, in 2006, people from “Merseyside” would have been received by the elite as visiting aliens, a theme returned to in the drawing room of Saltburn – the eponymous stately pile to which the young protagonists retreat – when the wacky concept of “Liverpool” is raised. Scenes like these, ostensibly poking fun at the posh people, perhaps reveal more about the narrowness of the film-maker’s own lane. Still, I laughed a lot.

And in the first hour, there is a lot to praise. The setup of a beautiful rich student – played by Jacob Elordi – obsessively courted by a poor, rough one (Barry Keoghan) is an archetype for good reason: it works. Around the edges of that central relationship there are some astute observations. The depiction of friendless people banding together for want of other options but secretly hating each other is on the money. Rosamund Pike as lady of the manor and Carey Mulligan as the addled houseguest who won’t leave are both fine comic renderings. In this half of the film, Saltburn sits comfortably alongside Gosford Park as a decent addition to the category Posh People Say the Funniest Things.

This is how many of the American critics have received the film – as a “provocative and fun thriller,” to quote NPR, or an “aristo-gothic sexy thriller” as the Washington Post put it – namely a silly enterprise with some good laughs and nothing whatsoever to say about the world. That Saltburn was very obviously made for the American market (at one point, a British person orders his eggs “over easy”) perhaps explains some of its broadness and its power to irritate viewers at home. The New Statesman hammered Fennell for being too nostalgic about her upper-class world, which I thought unfair; people are allowed to be affectionate about their own experience and those scenes were very well done. Elsewhere, however, she founders.

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December 1, 2023

Project 2025: A Threat to Global Democracies

https://www.europeaninterest.eu/project-2025-a-threat-to-global-democracies/



The United States, once called the ‘beacon of democracy’ is facing a new and dangerous threat of authoritarianism and Christian Nationalism. And, if some of the groups behind this far-right movement have their way, European democracies would be next. The far-right Heritage Foundation, with the support of more than 80 influential organizations — many well-known for their extreme positions and pushing hate — earlier this year published their Presidential Transition Project, otherwise known as Project 2025, intended for the “next conservative president.” Project 2025, self-described as “building now for a conservative victory through policy, personnel, and training,” is nothing less than a blueprint for authoritarianism in the U.S. Our organization, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, has done a deep-dive analysis into Project 2025 and identified how the plan threatens Americans’ civil and human rights, and is an attack on its very democracy.

The plan, under the guise of religious freedom, would impose on all Americans extreme policies pushed by Christian Nationalists, including draconian and reactionary measures when it comes to sexual health and reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ equality, racial equity, public education, the climate, and would preference an exclusionary interpretation of Christianity, stripping rights from other communities. More than 80 groups, many with global influence and programs, are supporting this plan to dismantle a thriving, inclusive democracy, including the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), where the new U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson cut his teeth on using the courts to marginalize women, LGBTQ+ people, and others and impose his version of Christianity onto all. ADF was instrumental in recent U.S. court cases that denied women a right to their own bodies and secured the right to discriminate based on one’s religion. One of their clients even denied adoption to a couple because they were Jewish. Many other Project 2025 supporters are also well-known for their extreme positions and for pushing hate and Christian Nationalism.

This plan would also dangerously expand the executive branch’s powers including stripping the independence of the Department of Justice and FBI and politicizing their investigations by placing them in the hands of the president. This is a staggering threat as illustrated by Trump’s Nazi-inspired words, “we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream.” This authoritarian plan should concern those outside the US as well. Extremist, far-right movements — from hardcore racist groups to more “mainstream” political movements — are increasingly transnational. For example, CPAC events, a U.S.-based organization of which many of Project 2025’s supporters are sponsors, are well-known gatherings of global far-right players who push anti-LGBTQ+, anti-woman, and anti-immigrant agendas. Another example is Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni who said, “The U.S. is of course a point of reference for our alliances…We have networks connecting us, our think tanks work with the International Republican Institute, with the Heritage Foundation, we do cultural exchanges.”

Project 2025 supporter ADF and its global arm, Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADFI), has strong international ties and is well known for exporting their anti-reproductive freedom and anti-LGBTQ+ equality agenda from the U.S. to countries across Europe and using the courts to push its agenda. Despite its hateful platforms, ADFI is accredited and uses its collective influence at the UN, EU, Council of Europe, OSCE, European Court of Human Rights, and other international bodies. Another supporter of Project 2025, Family Research Council, has resources for “international religious freedom,” on their website. And the Institute for Women’s Health is committed to the global promotion of the anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ+ Geneva Consensus Declaration introduced by the Trump administration and forged between primarily authoritarian states that seek to undermine sexual and reproductive health and rights. The Geneva Consensus is not legally binding, and the U.S. and others have since withdrawn, however Project 2025 would see a return to the Trump administration’s focus on forging consensus “among like-minded countries in support of human life, women’s health, support of the family as the basic unit of human society, and defense of national sovereignty.”

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December 1, 2023

Rightwing personalities use X to bring antisemitic theories to light in US

Experts say figures like Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson bringing ‘great replacement’ theory mainstream signals growing extremism

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/21/great-replacement-theory-antisemitism-racism-rightwing-mainstream



The racist and antisemitic “great replacement” theory is encroaching out of the far right and more visibly into mainstream US politics in the wake of its platforming by major figures like Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, in a move experts believe shows the growing extremeness of rightwing politics in the US. High-profile users of Twitter/X including rightwing personality Carlson and the platform’s proprietor Musk, are helping to mainstream extremist narratives that are increasingly prevalent on the site, experts and advocates say. Despite Musk’s aggressive responses to organizations that criticize X for promoting extremism, white nationalists and other extremists last week took to the platform to celebrate the role of Musk, his platform and star attractions including Carlson for “shifting the Overton Window” on antisemitism.

The “great replacement” is a racist conspiracy narrative that falsely asserts there is an active, ongoing and covert effort to replace white populations in current white-majority countries. In many versions – such as those rehearsed in the manifestos of mass shooters in Christchurch, New Zealand; El Paso, Texas; and Buffalo, New York – the purported replacement is being coordinated by Jewish people. From the middle of last week through the weekend, events on X followed a pattern that has become increasingly familiar since Musk assumed control of Twitter in October 2022: extremist remarks from Musk and other high-profile users received widespread criticism, more advertisers abandoned the platform, and Musk furiously portrayed his critics as unfairly picking on him.

On Wednesday, Musk described another user’s claim that Jewish people had pushed “hatred against whites” and implied they were responsible for “hordes of minorities … flooding” western countries. The comments drew condemnation from Jewish groups, media commentators and even the White House. Heidi Beirich, extremism expert and co-founder of the Global Project on Hate and Extremism (GPAHE ), pointed to Twitter’s response to a 31 October GPAHE report showing that members of the white supremacist Generation Identity (GI) movement had returned to Twitter after widespread bans in 2020. Following the report’s publication, 31 GI accounts were suspended, but 26 were reinstated within 24 hours. “Somebody was trying to content moderate according to the rules and had the decision reversed,” Beirich argued. “I don’t know if that’s Musk or [X CEO] Linda Yaccarino or someone else, but clearly they don’t care to impose their own rules any more when it comes to this type of hate content,” she added.

Last week, on Carlson’s self-produced show which has run on X since his acrimonious exit from Fox News, he and guest Candace Owens discussed what they called the hypocrisy of pro-Israel donors in threatening college funding over pro-Palestinian protests after allegedly remaining silent during Black Lives Matter protests and the implementation of diversity initiatives. At one point Owens – on the show to discuss her public feud with the Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro over Israel’s actions in Gaza – claimed that discussions of race on college campuses were designed to “breed white people out of the population”. Carlson asked donors: “Where were you the last 10 years when they were calling for white genocide?” Carlson later added: “You were paying for it, actually … You were calling my children immoral for their skin color, you paid for it.”

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December 1, 2023

Melissa Barrera showed solidarity with Palestinians. Hollywood showed its persistent double standard.

https://www.latimes.com/delos/story/2023-11-30/melissa-barrera-scream-israel-palestine-scream-noah-schnapp-stranger-things

https://archive.is/fYj7A



Mexican actor Melissa Barrera was credited with revitalizing the “Scream” horror franchise before she was suddenly dropped from her lead role in the upcoming seventh installment. Fans speculated that her firing had something to do with her vocal support for Palestinians on social media, and last week, they were given an answer. Spyglass Media Group, the production company behind the campy films, said in an official statement to Variety that Barrera had been let go for material posted to her social media that they characterized as antisemitic.

Barrera’s firing is a sad reminder of how historically marginalized groups, like Latinas, are forced to walk a tightrope when advocating for social causes, and of how fragile “representation” is in Hollywood. According to Variety, Spyglass took issue with Barrera resharing a post accusing Israel of “genocide and ethnic cleansing,” as well as a Jewish Currents article about the distortion of the Holocaust to bolster the Israeli arms industry. It should be mentioned that the article was written by Raz Segal, a respected Israeli historian who has written multiple books about the Holocaust. A cursory glance at his body of work shows his dedication to preserving the memory of the Holocaust. He has, for example, written on Bulgaria whitewashing its role in the atrocity.

But Barrera wasn’t afforded the luxury of nuance. There was no slap on the wrist. Retribution was swift. “We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech,” a Spyglass spokesperson said in the company’s statement to Variety. Again, the Holocaust distortion in question can be attributed to an Israeli scholar. For her part, Barrera has held her ground, condemning antisemitism while reaffirming her solidarity with Palestinians. “I will continue to speak out for those that need it most and continue to advocate for peace and safety, for human rights and freedom. Silence is not an option for me,” she wrote on Instagram.

Antisemitism is a real, pernicious evil. I recall the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, which is only the visible tip of an issue that’s deeply entrenched in our country. But Barrera being smeared as antisemitic and unceremoniously dropped from a leading movie role highlights a persistent double standard in Hollywood and beyond. Marginalized individuals, when expressing their support for a cause, must assuage the anxiety of their peers before speaking up. They must promise that they aren’t a threat, must be exceptionally articulate, must cover all their bases, and even when all these conditions are meticulously met, punishment can come anyway.

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December 1, 2023

Sweden's far north sees sun for last time this year