milestogo

milestogo's Journal

April 14, 2025

The rise of end times fascism

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
Sun 13 Apr 2025 07.00 EDT

The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them.

The movement for corporate city states cannot believe its good luck. For years, it has been pushing the extreme notion that wealthy, tax-averse people should up and start their own high-tech fiefdoms, whether new countries on artificial islands in international waters (“seasteading”) or pro-business “freedom cities” such as Próspera, a glorified gated community combined with a wild west med spa on a Honduran island. Yet despite backing from the heavy-hitter venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, their extreme libertarian dreams kept bogging down: it turns out most self-respecting rich people don’t actually want to live on floating oil rigs, even if it means lower taxes, and while Próspera might be nice for a holiday and some body “upgrades”, its extra-national status is currently being challenged in court. Now, all of a sudden, this once-fringe network of corporate secessionists finds itself knocking on open doors at the dead center of global power.

The first sign that fortunes were shifting came in 2023, when a campaigning Donald Trump, seemingly out of nowhere, promised to hold a contest that would lead to the creation of 10 “freedom cities” on federal lands. The trial balloon barely registered at the time, lost in the daily deluge of outrageous claims. Since the new administration took office, however, would-be country starters have been on a lobbying blitz, determined to turn Trump’s pledge into reality. “The energy in DC is absolutely electric,” Trey Goff, the chief of staff of Próspera, recently enthused after a trip to Capitol Hill. Legislation paving the way for a bevy of corporate city-states should be complete by the end of the year, he claims.

Inspired by the political philosopher Albert Hirschman, figures including Goff, Thiel and the investor and writer Balaji Srinivasan have been championing what they call “exit” – the principle that those with means have the right to walk away from the obligations of citizenship, especially taxes and burdensome regulation. Retooling and rebranding the old ambitions and privileges of empires, they dream of splintering governments and carving up the world into hyper-capitalist, democracy-free havens under the sole control of the supremely wealthy, protected by private mercenaries, serviced by AI robots and financed by cryptocurrencies.

One might assume that it is contradictory for Trump, elected on a flag-waving “America first” platform, to lend credence to this vision of sovereign territories ruled over by billionaire god-kings. And much has been made of the colorful flame wars between the Maga mouth-piece Steve Bannon, a proud nationalist and populist, and the Trump-allied billionaires he has attacked as “technofeudalists” who “don’t give a flying fuck about the human being” – let alone the nation state. And conflicts inside Trump’s awkward, jerry-rigged coalition certainly exist, most recently reaching a boiling point over tariffs. Still, the underlying visions might not be as incompatible as they first appear.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk

February 9, 2025

Trump Plan for Gaza "Worse Than Ethnic Cleansing," Says UN Human Rights Expert

Unlawful deportation or transfer of a population constitutes both a war crime and a crime against humanity.

By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout
Published February 9, 2025

Displaced Palestinians cross the Netzarim Corridor as they make their way to the northern parts of the Gaza Strip on February 9, 2025.

Donald Trump’s outrageous plan to remove the Palestinian people from Gaza, assume U.S. ownership of the Gaza Strip and make it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” reveals his intent to commit a war crime and a crime against humanity. What Trump proposed during a February 4 news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House is “unlawful, immoral and irresponsible,” Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, said at a February 5 press conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. “This is worse than ethnic cleansing. It’s forced displacement … which is an international crime.”

The unlawful deportation or transfer of a population constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC). Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention classifies unlawful deportation or transfer as a grave breach, which is considered a war crime by the U.S. War Crimes Act. Article 49 of Geneva says that individual or mass forcible transfers and deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of any other country, whether occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on July 19, 2024, that Gaza is occupied territory and that the occupation violates international law.

Moreover, forcible transfer or deportation committed as “part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack” is a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute. Israel, with U.S. complicity, has been committing a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian people in Gaza since October 7, 2023. “Deportation or forcible transfer of population” is defined as the displacement of people by expulsion or other coercive acts from the area where they are lawfully present.

On January 26, 2024, the ICJ found that Israel is plausibly committing a genocide in Gaza and ordered it to prevent the commission of genocidal acts. “Forcible displacement and dispossession in the context of a genocide,” Albanese noted, “will strengthen the complicity in the crimes that Israel has been committing over the past 15 months and before.” Trump’s plan would elevate U.S. aiding and abetting of Israel’s genocide to a new level. “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump declared at the press conference with Netanyahu. “We’ll own it … get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area … do something different, just can’t go back, if you go back, it’s gonna end up the same way it has for 100 years.” Albanese replied that “no one has the right to say how Gaza will be rebuilt, other than the Palestinians.”

https://truthout.org/articles/trump-plan-for-gaza-worse-than-ethnic-cleansing-says-un-human-rights-expert/

October 27, 2023

How the Gun Became Integral to the Self-Identity of Millions of Americans

Not a new article, but its pertinent.

Over the past 150 years, American gun owners have gone from viewing their weapons largely as utilitarian farm tools to weapons that provide both a feeling of physical security and a sense of psychological solace. Guns’ importance to their owners now goes much deeper than merely being implements of self-defense.

University of Wisconsin–Madison researcher and assistant professor Nick Buttrick studies the psychological relationship that millions of Americans have with their guns. Buttrick’s research builds on the historical record to show that in the U.S.—the only country with more civilian firearms than people—white Southerners started cultivating the tradition of the home arsenal immediately after the Civil War because of insecurities and racial fears. During the rest of the 19th century, those anxieties metamorphosized into a fetishization of the firearm to the point that, in the present day, gun owners view their weapons as adding meaning and a sense of purpose to their lives.

Buttrick, who gave a talk on his research at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) earlier this month, contends that gun owners see their world as an increasingly tumultuous place and that guns have become a tool for keeping that perceived chaos at bay. Scientific American spoke with Buttrick about the psychological roots of the gun culture that has contributed to the more than 100 mass shootings that have occurred in the U.S. so far this year.

...

What are the roots of the U.S.’s obsession with gun ownership? And when did the motivation for having guns move from largely using them for utilitarian purposes and sport to using them as a tool for protection?

The historical literature shows that in the early American period in the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, we had a different relationship with guns than we do today. A gun was treated as a tool for hunting, pest control and other tasks around the farm. The advertisements of the time painted guns as something that helped you live your life rather than something used for protection. While there was an armed militia to ward off foreign invaders, guns were centrally stored in an armory, not kept individually.

Read more: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-gun-became-integral-to-the-self-identity-of-millions-of-americans/

April 6, 2023

Beautiful lion cub photos...

More at: https://blog.londolozi.com/2023/04/05/my-favourite-moments-with-the-new-lion-cubs-captured/

January 21, 2023

Economic advice from Robert Reich:

https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1615852033889763329

https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1616130831017472003

https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1615423491838447616

https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1616587632733028357

August 7, 2022

Public Display of Affection in Flight

https://twitter.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1556032741568909313

July 16, 2022

Is it Fascism yet?

It seems to me that we are still living in a functioning democracy, with a democratically elected government.

But there are more and more disturbing signs that we are losing our freedoms, and that our institutions do not serve the people who they ought to serve.

I see the word fascism more and more. I'd like to know what DUers think about the current state of democracy in the US.

July 3, 2022

Timothy Snyder on Putin's plan

June 25, 2022

Fuck you, Amy Coney Barrett

What kind of woman joins in an attack on women's rights?

You are despicable.

June 21, 2022

Whenever I hear or see Adam Schiff I get the feeling

that everything is going to be ok.

He's so calm, so confident, so measured, so intelligent.

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