Not Our First Rodeo—The Global Authoritarian Populism
Rule or perish
Political mafia, anti-meritocratic communitarianism
Narcissism, cognitive dissonance, victimhood
Genes and human agency
The Will of the People
What is to be done?
By Alfons López Tena
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are threatening to sue over a pair of
@ProjectLincoln
’s giant, side-by-side billboards in Times Square that blast the couple’s response to the coronavirus crisis
Protesters in Nigeria's Lagos are into the second day of a sit-in campaign calling on the government to scrap a notorious police unit that is accused by many of brutality. The hashtag
#ENDSARS
has been trending at no.1 worldwide today
Via
@BBCAfrica
Hong Kong reporter Chan Yu-hong has been diagnosed with chloracne, raising public health concerns about the widespread use of tear gas by the police—The condition is “rare skin eruption of blackheads, cysts and nodules, directly linked to dioxin exposure”
QAnon supporters have acted with dismay and confusion after Trump announced the dates of his upcoming fees-raising speaking tour with Bill O'Reilly, which coincides with when he is meant to have already been reinstated as president
Hong Kong’s white-collar workers join the ranks of protesters — Driven by anger at the authorities’ response to massive protests, and guilt that the burden of defending democracy has fallen on the city’s youth, a white-collar rebellion is rippling out
So far, Germany's fatality rate for coronavirus — 0.5% —is the lowest in the world, by a long shot. Experts say that's because they're testing early and often. One virologist estimates the country has been testing about 120,000 people a week
Cambridge Analytica, collaborating with a software company, has created a platform for US churches that targets the poor, the addicted, and the disabled — to radicalize them for far-right politics
“I was just doing my duty. Even if I was not in uniform, I would have done the same thing and every Indian should do the same,” said Uttarakhand sub-inspector Gagandee Singh.
As long as India may count on heroes like this brave man, there’s hope.
A couple of Roman skeletons known as the Lovers of Modena, because they are holding hands, were both males — The actual relationship between the males from the 4-6th Century CE is unknown, but the two adult males were intentionally buried hand-in-hand
Wuhan partygoers attending the HOHA Water Electrical Musical Festival over the weekend, around 15,000 — Wuhan has not had a local coronavirus case since mid-May, and about 9.9 million people in the city have been tested for the coronavirus
Israel’s Health Minister Yaakov Lizman, head of Agudat Yisrael party,
who weeks ago declared that coronavirus is a "divine punishment for homosexuality", has been infected. His wife too. This forces PM Netanyahu to have to isolate himself for another 15 days
To Trumpists in my TL: I don’t bear fools, abuse, smear, bullying, whataboutism. Your right to free speech does not include the right to have me as a willing audience. You’ll be blocked, keep on ranting and whining elsewhere, sore losers!
Spain has one the highest vaccination rates in the world – 79.2% of all residents are fully vaccinated, 89% of those over 12 yo– without government mandates or incentives. Here is what's behind the Spanish success story and what others could learn from it
Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is believed to contain the holiest Christian sites (Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, resurrection), has never been indefinitely closed in a millenia and a half, except
•In 1349, Black Plague
•Today, Coronavirus
“Testing is central because that leads to early detection”, says South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha about how her country has reversed the coronavirus spread
Uganda's dictator Museveni asked Google to block at least 14 YouTube accounts linked to the country’s main challenger in next month’s elections
@HEBobiwine
French jogger accidentally crosses US border from Canada and is jailed for two weeks — “It was just unfair that there was nothing, no sign at the border, it’s like a trap … anybody can be caught at the border like this.”
Wisdom, a 68-year-old Laysan albatross, world's oldest known wild bird to become a mother for the 37th time — She has laid another egg with her longtime lover Akeakamai at the Midway Atoll national wildlife refuge
GOP further and further into Trumpism: authoritarian, nationalist, highly regimented around the obedience to the Dear Leader. I am worried about the more competent, smart, presentable version of Trump, that's going to come in a few years
By
@TheRickWilson
Dead birds and rashes: Hong Kong residents fear teargas poisoning — Police have fired 10,000 canisters in protests, sparking health scare over possible harmful effects
Lord Heseltine on Johnson breaking the law:
The law is the law, no exceptions. You can’t say he’s bigger than everybody else—What does a tyrant do next? The law is the ultimate defence of the rights of every single one of us against tyranny, cruelty, abuse
The Hong Kong protest movement won the elections battle – but the war over our five demands is still ongoing. As encouraging as the victory was, we have a long way to go before we can turn our attention away from the central cause
By
@joshuawongcf
Donors are already mulling a Marshall Plan for Ukraine — To understand why it is worth trying to help Ukrainians rebuild, consider how difficult Europe’s economic recovery from the second world war actually was
Biden is quietly erasing one of Trump's cruelest legacies: imposing work requirements for Medicaid, on which 76 million Americans rely. This is a genuine achievement, in both symbolic and practical terms
Trump’s mass graves for poor coronavirus victims on Hart Island, New York — Workers burying bodies of people with no known next of kin or families unable to pay for funerals
This is how a Trump constitutional coup would unfold — A coup in the United States may sound absurd. But who would have thought the US would be in a position where the sitting president is refusing to concede defeat?
By Alfons López Tena in
@TRTWorld
Denmark's former immigration minister, Inger Stojberg, was sentenced to prison for ordering to separate underage married asylum-seekers, even if they had children. Her harsh migration policies were hailed by populist right-wing European parties
In Hong Kong, local entrepeneurs and the middle class champion the pro-democracy cause and help protesters financially — A new restaurant and shopping guide called the “Hong Kong’s Rice Pig Guide” (米豬蓮) identifies shops that support the protests
When your evolved brain misrepresents reality: This arrow by mathematician and sculptor 杉原厚吉 –Kokichi Sugihara– can’t point left while in a mirror it can’t point right. It’s made with a bunch of curves human brains don’t register
Hong Kong impasse shows China’s dictatorship’s strength, and weakness — Like a caged wild animal the Communist Party has taken to clawing at the bars, leading the leadership to believe that Hong Kong’s democracy movement can be crushed by brute force
What to expect if the shooter turns out to be:
Hispanic — Build the wall
Arab — Ban Muslims
Black — BLM are terrorists!
White — We need to ask ourselves how are we as a society failing these poor troubled young men? What kinds of movies, video games, and music are we making?
Imran Khan promised to reduce the army's influence over Pakistan's politics. The opposite has happened: Pakistan’s generals are ever more involved in running the country. And he seems ever more dependent on their backing
A mouse-sized elephant shrew that had been lost to science for 50 years has been discovered alive and well in Djibouti — The Somali sengi mates for life, can race around at 30km/h, and sucks up ants with its trunk-like nose
Nigeria’s Twitter ban harms people and democracy. It's a hissy fit, a childish tantrum exposing the president’s thin skin and authoritarian streak. This is not a democracy, and Buhari is no longer pretending that it is. It’s time we drop the pretense, too
Trumpers try to storm TCF hall to stop the count of ballots
Don’t miss the reply: “We’re not deterred. The Black vote in Detroit is higher than it’s ever been and we will determine the outcome, because we’ve gone from picking cotton to picking presidents”
Nigeria’s Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu has ordered all Assistant Inspectors-General of Police and Commissioners of Police to use force on peaceful protesters, warning that the Nigeria Police Force would not allow any form of protests
How to lose a country — The seven steps from democracy to dictatorship.
People will say: “It wouldn’t happen here”
Don’t worry.
I know it can because it happened to us.
It happened to me.
By
@ETemelkuran
A world dominated by the richest people, who wouldn’t be accountable to anyone for facts, truth, science or common good—That’s Musk’s dream. And Trump’s. And Putin’s. Of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth
By
@RBReich
Sweden’s top epidemiologist Tegnell has admitted his strategy to fight coronavirus resulted in too many deaths, after driving his country to avoid lockdown— Sweden’s mortality rate is among the highest globally and far exceeds that of neighboring countries
Khashoggi’s killing tape revealed: “Has the sacrificial animal arrived?” — An audio transcript obtained by a UN investigator reveals a minute-by-minute account of what happened the day journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Stage 1: NOTHING is going to happen
Stage 2: SOMETHING may happen, but we won't do anything about it
Stage 3: Maybe we SHOULD do something about it, but there's nothing we CAN do
Stage 4: Maybe there's something we COULD have done — but it's too late now
US photography professor who covered ongoing protests barred from Hong Kong —
@MatthewConnors_
, a professor in photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design
@MassArt
, was detained by immigration officials and expelled
Spreading coronavirus in India — Millions try to go back home after Modi ordered lockdown with no contingency plans and sent the police to beat people in the streets. This is the result.
Coronavirus outbreak from a gay bar in South Korea. Authorities’ message:
The virus does not discriminate. We should not discriminate each other. Discrimination and undermining could lead to significant harm and hinder our quarantine efforts going forward