Behind the music – Ratios – RTE.ie

Posted on by

Kildare/Wicklow indie-rock trio Ratios have released their new single, Wait Some Time. We asked them the BIG questions . . .

Ratios are lead singer Dan O'Shaughnessy, Liam Brady and Mike O'Sullivan. They began as a two-piece and released their first single Yellow Ribbon in March 2022.

We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences

Speaking about Wait Some Time, they say, "The main guitar riff was written eight years ago but was never developed until recently. The song quickly came together quickly over two rehearsal sessions when the main riff was played, and ideas began to flourish.

"The song itself portrays a delusional state of mind and the struggle to break through a maze of uncertainty and indecisiveness. Whilst trying to break through barriers, waiting on oneself to do so seems like the only key.

We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences

"The song is energy driven from start to finish. That was our aim from when we began to write it. We wanted to create something different that we feel stands out from others. We blended indie-rock elements and an energy driven punk chorus to portray an eclectic mixture of our creative influences."

Tell us three things about yourself . . .

We are fresh, hip and happening.

How would you describe your music?

Energetic with influences being drawn from punk, alternative rock and indie-rock. We like to play loud and aggressively and thrive during our live shows.

Who are your musical inspirations?

Tonnes. We all seem to come from different musical backgrounds and influences but we also all share a love for grunge, alt-rock, punk etc. Lately we have been listening to a lot of Gilla band, Wolf Alice, Viagra boys, QOTSA, Arctic Monkeys to name a few. Performance wise, we aspire to play loud energetic shows and are inspired by the lives shows from our favourite bands.

What was the first gig you ever went to?

Dan - Nickelback at the RDS Simmonscourt with support from Creed.

Liam - Green Day in 2009.

Mike - Avenged Sevenfold in 2014.

What was the first record you ever bought?

Dan - The Temptations' Greatest Hits.

Mike - Rage against the machines live album.

Liam - Iowa - Slipknot.

Whats your favourite song right now?

Dan - Sports - Viagra Boys.

Liam - At the moment, my favourite song is Tourettes by Nirvana.

Mike - Eight Fivers by Gilla band.

Favourite lyric of all time?

Dan - "Blame, whats to blame? Its an argument no one can win, 'Cause at best, we don't know, And its wearing us thin." Stare at The Sun by Mutemath. Its genius.

If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Dan - Sports - Viagra Boys. Its a real heavy hitter.

Liam - Birdie - The Scratch.

Mike - Kashmir - Led Zeppelin.

Where can people find your music/more information?

On Instagram at @ratiosband, on Facebook also. We are also on Spotify, Deezer and Apple Music. We just recently released our newest single, Wait Some Time, which can be streamed on all platforms. We also have an accompanying Music vid coming out on the 8 September. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel and within the next few months we will be uploading more content there.

Read the original post:

Behind the music - Ratios - RTE.ie

Seeking help from readers in Canada, the UK, and beyond – Patheos

Posted on by

Im asking a favor from readers of this blog who live, move, and have their being outside of the United States of America.

Recently, during our extensive travels overseas (which are, alas, far from over for the year), Ive been made aware of limitations in the distribution of Witnesses and Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon that I had not expected. It turns out that streaming rules vary in surprising ways from country to country. And that DVDs that are playable here in the States are not always playable elsewhere. In recent weeks, weve learned about problems in both Canada and the United Kingdom, both of which represent reasonably large potential audiences for the two films. (Were not expecting to reap profits from those audiences; we simply want people to see the films.)

So Im posing a question, particularly to those of you who might be in the United Kingdom or Canada, but also, I think, to any of you who happen to be in such locations as Australia and New Zealand and, for the matter, in Asia, on the European continent, and so forth:

Do American DVDs or BluRays work where you are? Are you able to stream Witnesses or Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon where you are? The former, in particular, is now available for streaming via Living Scriptures, Deseret Video+, and Amazons Prime Video. But it seems that those streaming services work differently in different countries, leaving me somewhat unsure of where our two films are actually accessible to those who want to see them.

Im interested in feedback on this question because Im about to make contact with a distribution company based in the Los Angeles area that should be able to help in this regard. And I need to know exactly where we need help.

Nibley Lectures: Time Vindicates the Prophets Two Ways to Remember the Dead

Between 7 March 1954 and 17 October 1954, Hugh Nibley delivered a series of thirty weekly lectures on KSL Radio that were also published as pamphlets. The series, called Time Vindicates the Prophets, was given in answer to those who were challenging the right of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to call themselves Christians.

This lecture is a discussion of better ways to remember the dead.

Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me Old Testament Lesson 38: A Marvellous Work and a Wonder: Isaiah 1314; 2430; 35

Stephen O. Smoot is the guest for the Interpreter Radio Roundtable on Come, Follow MeOld Testament Lesson 38,A Marvellous Work and a Wonder on Isaiah 1314; 2430; 35. He joined the panelists for the roundtable, who were Neal Rappleye, Jasmin Rappleye, and Hales Swift. The roundtable has been extracted from the 7 August 2022 broadcast of the overall Interpreter Radio Show, with commercial and other interruptions removed, and is now available for your edification and delight. The complete two-hour 7 August 2022 program can be heard, at absolutely no charge (were a volunteer organization that functions very frugally on the basis of donated funds) at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-August-7-2022/. The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings, each and every week of every year, from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640. Or, if that doesnt work for you, you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com. Please be aware that we have had some technical difficulties with this show. We will replace this recording with a clearer version as soon as it becomes available.

Come, Follow Me Old Testament Study and Teaching Helps: Lesson 38, September 1218: Isaiah 1314; 2430; 35 A Marvellous Work and a Wonder

Once again, Jonn Claybaugh has generously shared notes for teachers and students of the Churchs Come, Follow Me curriculum.

And now for some links to items that have recently caught my notice:

Hanna Seariac delves into one of the great mysteries of the faith:

Deseret News:Why do Latter-day Saints make funeral potatoes? Latter-day Saints love funeral potatoes, there is no doubt. But why do they make them?

Ive read at least one of his books, and I very much admire what hes accomplished. I think that there may be useful lessons to be learned from his success:

Wall Street Journal:Pastor Timothy Keller Speaks to the Head and the Heart: The founder of New Yorks Redeemer Presbyterian Church preaches conservative Christianity to a cosmopolitan flock

I dont think that Im going to be able to attend. But it sounds interesting. Perhaps theyll record it and/or stream it:

Holy Envy: Living Faithfully with Religious Difference (Wednesday, September 07)

It turns out I must have been out of town and missed the memo that it was, in fact, arson:

In arson investigation, AFT offers $5K reward for info on Orem Utah Temple fire: Flames on the upper floor resulted in little fire damage, but the temple suffered extensive smoke damage throughout

What a mess. And, it increasingly seems, a wholly unjustified one:

Deseret News: BYU on trial in the court of public opinion: BYU volleyball incident made national headlines, but where do we go from here?

As the old Chinese curse is supposed to have read, May you live in interesting times. And we do:

National Review: Irish Teacher Imprisoned for Continuing to Teach after Refusing to Use Gender-Neutral Pronouns

National Review: Trans Toddlers and Secret Abortions: Elite NYC Private Schools Use Summer Reading Lists to Push Radical Agenda

DailyWire.com: I Underwent Gender Transition Surgery: Heres What The Media Doesnt Tell You

Cassandra Hedelius on substack: A video is worth a million words: The term family friendly is not among those words. (This is a follow-up to her article What You Didnt Hear About the LGBT Pamphlet at BYU: BYU was right to remove an LGBT resource pamphlet from freshman welcome bags, but the public doesnt understand why. It disturbingly promoted a drag show and gender transition to students. By the way, I was able to see the YouTube videos by simply clicking on the relevant Watch on YouTube links.)

The Daily Beast:Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories Are Going Mainstream: A prominent professor speculated that the assassination attempt on Salman Rushdie could have been part of an Israeli conspiracy. What should we call that?

More here:

Seeking help from readers in Canada, the UK, and beyond - Patheos

Spokane mother who filmed herself sexually assaulting her 3-year-old daughter gets 20 years in prison – The Spokesman Review

Posted on by

A Spokane mother in a gray jail jumpsuit told a federal judge Wednesday there will never be an excuse for her decision to film herself performing a sexual act on her own daughter, then sending it over the internet to at least 10 people.

I will live every day with the knowledge that I caused your pain, Jessica Barrington, 31, said in remarks directed to her child, who was not present in a federal courtroom Wednesday.

The admission of guilt and pledge to improve herself convinced U.S. Senior District Court Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson to reject the federal prosecutors office request that Barrington, previously known as Jessica Cunnington, spend 28 years behind bars. Instead, Peterson sentenced her to 20 years on a charge of production of child pornography. Barrington pleaded guilty in April.

After a frequently contentious back-and-forth with Assistant U.S. Attorney Dave Herzog concerning other child sexual abuse cases brought in the district, Peterson said she saw no value in imprisoning Barrington for another eight years based on her motivation to seek treatment while in jail since January 2019.

In one particularly heated moment, Herzog told Peterson that her decision to sentence Barrington to a decade of supervised release following imprisonment violated the terms of the plea agreement, in which federal prosecutors, Barringtons defense attorney and the county prosecutors who had charged her with child rape had agreed to a lifetime of supervision. Peterson then said shed change her ruling on supervision to life, telling Barrington that she could petition to have it removed for good behavior after her release.

That will look better in the press release, Im sure, Peterson said, looking at Herzog.

Herzog said because of Barringtons actions, her children will not know their mother, and asked Peterson to send a message with her verdict.

The community should know, if you assault your child, the consequences are severe, Herzog said.

Amy Rubin, Barringtons attorney, told Peterson that her client was not a monster, and argued for Peterson to give the mother a chance to reform herself. She said Barrington had been housed in an area of the Spokane County Jail reserved for female offenders awaiting trial for similar sexual offenses, sitting in solitary confinement in a section known as the dog pound.

As an infant, Barrington watched her father bludgeon her mother to death, Rubin said. Four psychologists met with her in prison and found that she suffered from anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, but that she was treatable.

Barrington said she still physically recoils from confrontation and was not encouraged in her adopted home to talk about the death of her mother.

I do not cognitively remember her death, Barrington told Peterson on Wednesday. But my body does.

Herzog said prosecutors considered Barringtons past trauma in their request for 28 years. She could have been facing a life sentence, he said. Herzog argued that the evidence showed Barrington was reaching out online for attention.

I do not understand why children had to come into it, Herzog said.

Authorities were alerted to the online activity in December 2018, after a friend of Barringtons and her then-husband, Jason Cunnington, told police the mother of three had admitted to filming the sexual acts with her toddler and shared them online. The FBI, meanwhile, was already involved in a sting in California involving a man named Tim Marchini when they discovered messages between him and Barrington, as well as the images Barrington had taken of her daughter.

Investigators recovered at least one image of Barrington performing oral sex on her 3-year-old daughter, according to court records, recorded in August 2018. The messages between Barrington and Marchini, who had previously been convicted on child sex charges, discussed additional sexual acts involving Barringtons other children, all under the age of 7, according to court records.

Marchini pleaded guilty in May 2020 to a single count of possession of child pornography. Peterson sentenced him to 10 years in prison in August 2020.

At the time of the criminal activity, Barrington was married to Cunnington. The two have since divorced. Cunnington was in the courtroom Wednesday and told Barrington that her daughter had told friends at school that her mother was dead.

You are no longer part of our lives, Cunnington said.

Peterson let Barrington, led by U.S. Marshals, listen to the statement of her ex-husband about the crimes effect on their children in another room, through a door that was cracked open.

A row of friends and family, including Barringtons adoptive parents, sat behind her Wednesday morning as she delivered an at-times tearful admission of guilt for an act she called reckless and selfish.

The most important part of all this is how my children have been affected, and how they will hopefully heal, Barrington said.

Peterson said the 20-year sentence would give Barrington a chance to continue to improve herself.

I agree with Ms. Rubin, Peterson said. People can be fixed. People can be redeemed.

Rubin and Barrington shared an embrace after the verdict. The 31-year-old was then led from the courtroom in handcuffs.

View post:

Spokane mother who filmed herself sexually assaulting her 3-year-old daughter gets 20 years in prison - The Spokesman Review

Fillmore Central football team prepares for Rushford-Peterson this week – KIMT 3

Posted on by

HARMONY, Minn. - The Fillmore Central Falcons face the Rushford-Peterson Trojans this week.

These teams met in the Section 1A Championship game last year and the Trojans won by just a touchdown.

But it's a new year.

Fillmore Central won their first game of the season, blanking Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton 14-0.

Falcons Head Coach Chris Mensink says he wants them to clean up the pre-snap penalties, but the offense scored touchdowns on the first two drives of the game.

This matchup is always a big one for both teams.

"The feeling is always pretty intense, getting ready for the game. There's a little bit of butterflies. It comes with the game. You've got to deal with it," says Jayce Kiehne.

"When we play Rushford, and just like any other team, I think consistency. The team that executes and the team that makes the fewest mistakes and doesn't turn the ball over. Those things win football games. So just as it comes down to every year, whoever makes the play and whoever makes the fewest mistakes is going to win that ball game. So that's our focus right now," says Coach Mensink.

The Falcons are making the trip to Rushford-Peterson on Friday night to take on the Trojans.

Kickoff is set for 7.

View post:

Fillmore Central football team prepares for Rushford-Peterson this week - KIMT 3

Patrick Peterson is enjoying the ride — and the grind – Sports Illustrated

Posted on by

EAGAN When cornerback Chandon Sullivan signed in Minnesota as a free agent, he went to Patrick Peterson with some questions.

He wanted to know why Peterson keeps playing.

When I first got here I asked Pat P, You have all the accolades, youve been doing this for such a long time at a high level even going back to college, what keeps you going? Sullivan told Purple Insider during Mondays open locker room session at TCO Performance Center.

Peterson told Sullivan that he wants a ring. Thats the only thing he doesnt have in his trophy case. He has eight Pro Bowls, three All-Pros and was named to the Hall of Fames All-2010s team. According to Pro-Football References Hall of Fame Monitor, the comparable defensive backs to Peterson are Richard Sherman and Darrell Green. One of those guys has a gold jacket and the other will soon. Those guys have rings though.

Sullivan also wanted to know how Pat P keeps going as he enters Year 12 in the NFL.

What does it take? Sullivan inquired. Statistically youre only supposed to be in this league for a few years and Im like, for you to be going that long and playing corner, which is arguably one of the hardest positions, how do you train your body to still be fast and quick and be able to move? I asked all his secrets.

Well, Peterson treats his health and conditioning like a game within the game.

I love grinding, Peterson said, standing on the hot concrete outside the Vikings locker room. I love putting my body in positions to where Im getting ready for the season. I love when I run seven miles to see how my endurance is. I love waking up early in the morning to see if I can get through this workout. I love putting my body in certain situations [during training camp] to where when those situations pop up during a game or in the season Ive already mentally prepared myself and been through those processes so its second nature.

Sullivan uncovered some of the why and how with the future Hall of Famer, but theres a lot more to the story with Peterson than ring chasing and knowing how to keep his body right. Peterson has something in his DNA that he cant pass down with words of wisdom. It cant be taught or learned. It just has to be there in order to play 12 years and keep going.

My wife tells me all the time Youre probably the only person that I know that still has the same love and passion for the game since I met you as a rookie, Peterson said. Its how deep the game runs in my blood.

Passion for the game takes different forms for different players. Some get a thrill from gameday but end up being bogged down by the endless workouts, tape watching, waking up early, commitment to eating the right way, and always trying to stay one step ahead. Some players dont like much about football except for all of the things that come along with it i.e. money, fame, purpose.

Peterson enjoys all of it.

He remembers the first time he felt indefatigable when it came to football. When he first started playing little league, he would work out with his dad after games rather than playing video games or watching TV. Improving his game was Patricks favorite hobby.

I always wanted to find ways to get better, always wanted to find ways to work at my craft, Peterson said. Thats just how I was, its just how Im built, its just instilled in me. Ive done it for so long that when I wake up in the morning my body already knows what to do.

Throughout his life in football Peterson has constantly been setting the bar higher and then trying to reach it. Petersons cousin Bryant McFadden, a former Pittsburgh Steeler who now co-hosts the All Things Covered podcast for CBS Sports with Peterson, remembered issuing him a challenge in high school.

When I came out of high school I was the number one corner I remember when he was in high school and at that time I was in the [NFL] I said: I need you to do everything that I did plus more, McFadden said. Hes like, I got you. He said it so casually like it was easy. A year-and-a-half or two years later hes the number one corner in the country, hes the number one player in the country.

Scroll to Continue

Peterson had a choice of any college program he wanted. At that time LSU was not known as Defensive Back University that was probably Florida State or Ohio State but he wanted to blaze his own path at the position.

He put on that number seven and took it to a whole other level, McFadden said. That was one of the main reasons he wanted to go to LSU. He wanted to create something for that university that was never done before and that was magnifying cornerback play.

McFadden isnt exaggerating when he says Peterson took the No. 7 to a different level. His excellence at LSU kicked off a tradition of the university giving that number to an exceptional playmaker. It has been handed down from Peterson to Tyrann Mathieu to Leonard Fournette to DJ Chark and so on since he starred for the Tigers.

You know about the rest of his career but some of it is so crazy good that it bares repeating. Peterson was first-team All-Pro as a rookie. He returned four punts for touchdowns in his first season in the NFL, which is inconceivable. He intercepted seven passes in Year 2. In 2015 opposing quarterbacks only completed 47.7% of passes into his coverage (per PFF), the second lowest mark in the NFL that year to peak Darrelle Revis.

But all of that is in the past. The new bar that hes set is playing effectively into his latter years. He has a chance to prove that hes better than those final seasons in Arizona when there were whispers of age catching up with him.

This might be the most Ive seen him fired up for a season that Ive seen in quite some time, McFadden said.

Peterson says he thinks he has four more years in him. Thats not impossible since other Hall of Fame corners like Deion Sanders and Darrell Green played until age 38. Champ Bailey was 35 in his final season. Peterson just turned 32 and is coming off a year in which he was solid for Minnesota. He allowed under 60% of passes his way to be completed and a shade under a 90 quarterback rating when targeted, good for 38th out of 91 starting CBs (per PFF). Opposing QBs also didnt go after him that often. Peterson ranked 16th best in snaps per target.

My mind is still all into the game, my passion and my love is still all into the game, Peterson said. As long as my body continues to hold up, Im going to continue to play. I still feel like I can play at a high level.

The Vikings absolutely need him to play at a high level. Mostly unproven Cam Dantzler will start opposite of the NFL legend and Sullivan is set to play the nickel. At safety the Vikings will have the promising but inexperienced Cam Bynum alongside Harrison Smith. When it comes to the toughest matchups, those will often rest on the shoulders of Pat P.

While hes working to maintain his body and push himself to prepare for every situation, Peterson also commented in minicamp that the Vikings approach to player health can help him feel more fresh as the season goes along. He thinks that defensive coordinator Ed Donatells system will help too.

I think its going to help me out a lot having the opportunity to play with my eyes a little bit more versus being in the receivers face and having more stress on my body and having to guard every route, Peterson said. Now I can let everything unfold in front of me.

He understands the challenge of the assignment and how difficult winning a ring will be but he isnt hesitant to say that hes taking some time to smell the roses on the back nine of his career. Maybe thats part of the why and how as well.

Definitely enjoying the ride, Peterson said. Enjoying every practice that I have every opportunity to lace the cleats up for. The road trips with my brothers. Those nights out for dinner before the game, the Thursday night games that we watch at someones houseIm in a great state of mind.

So what did Sullivan learn from talking with Peterson about what has allowed him to stick around for this long?

I think its more cerebral, Sullivan said. Its all about whats between his ears. He has all the intangibles that make him great but its also his mindset.

Amazing guy, Sullivan added.

Continue reading here:

Patrick Peterson is enjoying the ride -- and the grind - Sports Illustrated

Cant We Come Up with Something Better Than Liberal Democracy? – The New Yorker

Posted on by

If Purdy does not have a very detailed plan, he has at least a plan for a plan. He wants to transform American life through mass participation in engaged and shared decision-making, of the sort presaged by Zuccotti Park. To get where we need to go, he argues forcefully for a reformed Supreme Court and a new Constitutional Convention every three decades, to rewrite the whole damn thing.

The familiar parts of Purdys polemic have familiar rejoinders. Occupy Wall Street was a marginal, not a mass, movement, never gaining popular support, and Sanders ran twice and lost twice. Purdy blames market colonization for the Supreme Courts reactionary decision-making, but the Courts most reactionary decisions have little to do with the desires of capitalism or, anyway, of capitalists: the Goldman Sachs crowd is fine with womens autonomy, being significantly composed of liberal women, and would prefer fewer gun massacres. And though the struggle to maintain democratic institutions within a capitalist society has been intense, the struggle to maintain democratic institutions in anti-capitalist countries has been catastrophic. We do poorly, but the Chinese Communist Party does infinitely worse, even when it tilts toward some version of capitalism.

For that matter, would our democratic life really be improved by a new Constitutional Conventionto which Alex Joness followers, demanding to know where the U.F.O.s are being kept, are as likely to show up as Elizabeth Warrens followers, demanding that corporations be made to pay their fair share of taxes? The U.S. Constitution, undemocratic though it is, is surely an additive to the problem, not the problem itself. Parliamentary systems, like Canadas, have also been buffeted by populist and illiberal politics, while Brexit, a bit of rough-hewn majoritarian politics in a country without a written constitution, shows the dangers of relying on a one-night plebiscite.

Purdys basic political position seems to be that politics would be better if everyone shared his. Those of us who share his politics might agree, but perhaps with the proviso that the kind of sharing he is cheering for has more to do with the poetics of protest than with politics as generally understood. Politics, as he conceives it, is a way of getting all the people who agree with you to act in unison. This is a big part of democratic societies. Forming coalitions, assembling multitudes, encouraging action on urgent issues: these are all essential to a healthy country, even more than the business of filling in the circle next to a name you have just encountered for an office you know nothing about.

But the greatest service of politics isnt to enable the mobilization of people who have the same views; its to enable people to live together when their views differ. Politics is a way of getting our ideas to brawl in place of our persons. Though democracy is practiced when people march on Washington and assemble in parkswhen they feel that they have found a common voicepolitics is practiced when the shouting turns to swapping. Politics was Disraeli getting one over on the nineteenth-century Liberal Party by leaping to electoral reform for the working classes, thereby trying to gain their confidence; politics was Mandela making a deal with de Klerk to respect the white minority in exchange for a peaceful transition to majority rule. Politics is Biden courting and coaxing Manchin (whose replacement would be incomparably farther to the right) to make a green deal so long as it was no longer colored green. The difficulty with the Athenian synecdoche is that getting the part to act as the whole presupposes an agreement among the whole. There is no such agreement. Trumpism and Obamaism are not two expressions of one will for collective action; they are radically incommensurable views about whats needed.

Purdys faith in collective rationality as the spur to common actionhis less mystical version of Rousseaus general willleaves him not entirely immune to what could be called the Munchkinland theory of politics. This is the belief that although the majority population of any place might be intimidated and silenced by an oppressive forcecapitalism or special interests or the Churchthey would, given the chance, sing ding-dong in unison and celebrate their liberation. They just need a house dropped on their witch.

The perennial temptation of leftist politics is to suppose that opposition to its policies among the rank and file must be rooted in plutocratic manipulation, and therefore curable by the reassertion of the popular will. The evidence suggests, alas, that very often what looks like plutocratic manipulation really is the popular will. Many Munchkins like the witch, or at least work for the witch out of dislike for some other ascendant group of Munchkins. (Readers of the later L.Frank Baum books will recall that Munchkin Country is full of diverse and sometimes discordant groupings.) The awkward truth is that Thatcher and Reagan were free to give the plutocrats what they wanted because they were giving the people what they wanted: in one case, release from what had come to seem a stifling, union-heavy statist system; in the other, a spirit of national, call it tribal, self-affirmation. One can deplore these positions, but to deny that they were popular is to pretend that a two-decade Tory reign, in many ways not yet completed, and a forty-nine-state sweep in 1984 were mass delusions. Although pro-witch Munchkins may be called collaborators after their liberation, they persist in their ways, and resent their liberators quite as much as they ever feared the witch. Of course, I never liked all those scary messages she wrote in the sky with her broom, they whisper among themselves. But at least she got things done. Look at this place now. The bricks are all turning yellow.

Purdys vision of democracy would, of course, omit the bugs in the Athenian model: the misogyny, the slavery, the silver mines. But what if the original sin of the democratic vision lies right therewhat if, by the time we got to Athens, democratic practice was already fallen and hopelessly corrupted, with the slaves and the silver mines and the imperialism inherent to the Athenian model? This is the hair-raising thesis advanced by the illustrious Japanese philosopher Kjin Karatani. In his book Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy, Athenian democracy is exposed as a false idol. He does not see this from some Straussian point of view, in which Platos secret compact of liars is a better form of government than the rabble throwing stones at Socrates. On the contrary, he is a staunch egalitarian, who believes that democracy actually exemplifies the basic oppressive rhythm of ruler and ruled. His ideal is, instead, isonomia, the condition of a society in which equal speaks to equal as equal, with none ruled or ruling, and he believes that such an order existed around the Ionian Islands of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E., before the rise of Athens.

If Purdy is susceptible to the Munchkinland theory of social change, Karatani is tempted by what might be called the Atlantis theory of political history. Once upon a time, there was a great, good place where life was beautiful, thought was free, and everyone was treated fairly. This good place was destroyed by some kind of earthquakeperhaps visited from outside, perhaps produced by an internal shaking of its own platesand vanished into the sea, though memories of it remain. The Atlantis in question may be Platos original idealized island, or it may be the pre-patriarchal society of Europe, or the annual meeting of Viking peasants in nightless Iceland. In every case, there was once a better place than this one, and our path to renewal lies in renewing its tenets.

Karatanis Atlantean view is plausibly detailed. The settlement around the Ionian Islands in the centuries after Homer (but before the imperial ascent of Athens) was marked by an escape from clan society; the islands welcomed immigrants of all kinds. Free of caste connections and tribal ties, the Ionians were able to engineer a new kind of equality. They didnt become hunter-gatherers, but they recuperated nomadism by the practice of foreign trade and manufacturing. Like fourteenth-century Venice or seventeenth-century Amsterdam, Ionia was a place where there wasnt much land to till, let alone a landed aristocracy to own and exploit the terrain and its tillers, and so people had to earn a living making and trading things. As a result, they were open in ways that mainland Greece was not.

A key point, in Karatanis account, is that Ionian trade wasnt captured by a state monopoly but conducted through networks of makers and traders. The earnings of trade, under those conditions, were more evenly distributed, and the freedom of movement put a limit on abusive political arrangements. The reason class divisions multiplied under the money economy in Athens was that from the outset political power was held by a land-owning nobility, he writes. That kind of inequality, and ruler-ruled relation, did not arise in Ionia. That is to say, isonomia obtained. If in a given polis such inequality and ruler-ruled relation did arise, people could simply move to another place.

For Karatani, working in a Marxian tradition, ideas tend to mirror the economic exigencies of their contexts, and he thinks that in Ionia they did. The line of philosophers who came of age around the islands, usually called the pre-Socratics, were notably unconcerned with hierarchy or with religious mysticism. They imagined the universe as governed by material, transactional exchanges. Thales, who lived in the Ionian city of Miletus and thought that everything was made of water, was making an essentially empirical attempt to understand the world without recourse to fate or divine supervision. (So, for Karatani, was Heraclitus, a century later, who thought everything was made of fire.) Karatani insists that the pre-Socratic physics is inseparable from an Ionian political ideology. Ionian physics posited an equilibrium of forces, not a hierarchy of them with a mystical overseer. Anaximander, Thales protg, introduced the principle of justice (or dik) as the law governing the natural world. The play of forces in the physical world, fluid and forever in exchange, mimicked and governed the forces in the social world. Isonomia was at the root of it all.

Isonomia in Ioniait has therhythm of a song lyric. One feels again the shape of a familiar and accurate historical meme: trading and manufacturing centers tend to be markedly more egalitarian than landholding ones. Democratic practices of one kind or anotherthough limited and oligarchic in Venice, bloodied by sporadic religious warfare in Hollandusually take root in such places, only to be trampled as power consolidates and an lite takes hold.

You said it. I heard it. Theres no taking it back, Harold!

Cartoon by David Sipress

Was Karatanis Atlantis, that utopia of isonomia, actually anything like this? Early on, he cheerfully admits that there are almost no historical or archaeological materials to give us an idea of what Ionian cities were really like. But he suggests that we can argue by indirect evidence and by drawing inferences in world history from cases that resemble Ionia. These turn out to include medieval Iceland, also a refuge for exiles, with its famous ingvellir, or meeting place, and pre-Revolutionary New England, settled by refugees as well, and marked by its isonomic townships and town meetings.

It is an odd way to argue history and has odd results. In Iceland, you can visit the ingvellir, where the Viking democrats gatheredand the next thing you are shown is the drowning pool, where women were executed. The drowning pool came into use later, to be sure, but is part of a similar social inheritance. Rough justice, the sagas make plain, is as much an Icelandic tradition as shared goods are. And one has only to read Hawthorne to have a very different view of life in those New England townships, especially for people who did not quite fit the pattern.

Karatanis historical approachprojecting his ideals upon an idealized pasthas other confounding consequences. What are we to make, for instance, of his insistence that the poems of Homer, the bard of Ionia, are not aristocratic? In truth, the force of the occasional protests against aristocratic practices in Homer are moving because of their rarity, rather like the cries of the peasants in King Lear. Blood will tell is pretty much the motto on every inspired page. But Karatani needs Homer to be isonomic and will make him so. More practically, how did Ionians resolve the perpetual fact of political conflict? Perpetual secession seems to be the answer; when things get bad, simply go to another island. (The old liberal huff Im moving to Canada! is more serious when Canada is just a rowboat ride away.) This is not always ridiculous advicea series of successive secessions in New England is how we got Rhode Islandbut it doesnt seem like much of a plan for settled modern countries.

Greek islands before the rise of Athens, chilly and isolated medieval Iceland, the New England townships of the Colonial era: these sound like oddly sparse and remote spots to build a dream on. Perhaps all such dreams can be built only so. Reading Karatanis account of ancient Ionia, one recalls the parallel dream of ancient Sparta, the militaristic state that so inspired authoritarians from Plato to Hitler. An isonomic Ionia is infinitely preferable to an authoritarian Sparta but seems of the same imaginative kind. We cant build back better from a place that didnt really exist. Certainly, from what little we do know, the Ionians seem not to have been egalitarian at all in the sense we mean and have gone far toward achievingthe aim of equality between the sexes, or among religious groups, or among ethnicities or sexualities. Yet the basic inquiry into the possibility of human relationships that Karatani undertakes is moving, even inspiring. Though he doesnt cite them, his Ionians most resemble the classic anarchists, of the Mikhail Bakunin or Emma Goldman kind: repudiating all power relations, ruler to ruled, in a way that shames more timid liberal imaginations.

The rest is here:

Cant We Come Up with Something Better Than Liberal Democracy? - The New Yorker

Letter: If you agree with these principles, you might be a liberal – INFORUM

Posted on by

We often see and hear some of our fellow Americans labeled as "liberals" and certain viewpoints or opinions sometimes disparaged as "liberalism." The Latin root of those words is "free." Here is how liberalism is actually defined:

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual , liberty , consent of the governed and equality before the law . Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights ), liberal democracy , secularism , rule of law , economic and political freedom , freedom of speech , freedom of the press , freedom of religion , private property and a market economy .

Most of this sounds pretty good to me, and you may also support most or at least some of those rights. If so, as Jeff Foxworthy would say You miiiggghhhttt be a liberal!

David Stene lives in Pelican Lake, Minn.

This letter does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Forum's editorial board nor Forum ownership.

Read the original post:

Letter: If you agree with these principles, you might be a liberal - INFORUM

Newsom departs from his liberal image with controversial wins at the Capitol – Los Angeles Times

Posted on by

SACRAMENTO

In a subtle departure from his national image as a liberal champion, Gov. Gavin Newsom successfully pushed state lawmakers to support a series of tough policies in the final weeks of the legislative year that bucked progressive ideals and ultimately could broaden his appeal beyond California.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers at the state Capitol heeded his call to extend operations at Diablo Canyon, reversing an agreement environmental groups drove six years ago to shut down Californias last remaining nuclear plant out of safety concerns.

The governor won support for his plan to provide court-ordered treatment for unhoused Californians struggling with mental illness and addiction amid outcry from powerful civil rights organizations.

Newsom vetoed legislation to allow supervised drug injection sites in pilot program cities, drawing criticism that his decision was politically motivated as speculation swirls around his prospects as a potential presidential contender.

He is making political calculations on all of these decisions in a very deep and nuanced way that considers where he wants to go next, said Mary Creasman, chief executive of California Environmental Voters. That doesnt mean he doesnt care about these issues. I think he does. Hes making political calculations around how to still move the needle for climate while also protecting some of the political interests.

Newsom successfully lobbied the Legislature to approve a $1.4-billion forgivable loan for Pacific Gas & Electric in order to continue operations at Diablo Canyon through 2030. He said the bill was critical to the states ability to avoid rolling blackouts during heat waves, which have caused problems for California and presented political challenges for the governor. Newsom signed that legislation into law Friday.

He balanced the controversial ask with a package of bills to address climate change that Creasman and other environmentalists celebrated.

The marquee policy in Newsoms climate package, which he announced just weeks before the end of the legislative session, created health and safety buffer zones between homes, schools and public buildings and new oil and gas wells. That also squeaked by this session after lawmakers had tried and failed to pass those restrictions for years without his intervention. Other more contentious legislation addressed carbon capture technologies, which some environmental organizations argue only perpetuates oil extraction.

That was 100% strategic, Creasman said. Its strategic because he wants the headlines to be about climate action versus about these other things hes doing, which I get. But hes doing both. The authentic story is both. There were some really phenomenal things and there were some really tough things.

Newsom pressed for the climate legislation amid a clash with the oil industry that drew national attention. As part of a campaign to call out Republican governors and make himself a resonating voice for Democratic voters across the country, Newsom ran ads in Florida contrasting that states restrictive policies on abortion rights and education with Californias more liberal positions.

Western States Petroleum Assn. responded with its own advertisements in Florida warning about the cost of Newsoms climate policies.

Creasman said being seen as a climate leader is smart if Newsom has national ambitions. Though the term climate change has been politicized, voters nationwide want the government to do more to mitigate increasing drought, wildfires, pollution and extreme heat. Its also the only issue that will give Newsom a global spotlight, she said.

Since his sound defeat of the Republican-led recall attempt last September, advisors to Newsom have said his decisions are less motivated by politics and are instead a reflection of the confidence he feels to govern in a more nuanced way. The strong support he received from the electorate gave him the freedom to stray from a strictly progressive agenda that many in his party want him to follow.

In an interview with The Times in July, Newsom said that his first term has gone by in a flash and that he wants to take advantage of the time he has left.

If Im privileged to have a second term, you guys will be writing my obituary within six months and whos the next person coming behind me, Newsom said. I know how limited my time is and I just dont want any regrets. I dont want to look back and join some panel of ex-governors saying, I woulda, coulda, shoulda. Im not going to do that.

Robin Swanson, a Democratic political strategist, said Newsoms also practicing pragmatic politics.

She compared his legislative approach to that of former Gov. Jerry Brown. When Brown returned to the governors office in 2011 for his third term, he was a more seasoned politician with less adherence to a strict political ideology.

I think this is part of his growth as governor, Swanson said. When youre managing a state of 40 million people, you have to do what matters and what works in that moment whether that aligns 100% with what you would do in a perfect world. Those solutions often are a little more center, more middle of the road.

Newsom disappointed many of his allies last month when he vetoed Senate Bill 57, legislation to allow Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland to set up supervised injection site pilot programs. Moderate Democrats and Republicans, who characterized the bill as government authorization to use lethal drugs, applauded the decision. They urged Newsom to pour more resources into treatment and rehabilitation programs instead.

But advocates and addiction specialists said the veto would lead to more deaths amid an opioid overdose crisis.

Mike Herald, director of policy advocacy for the Western Center on Law and Poverty, said the governors rejection of the bill was disappointing because it seemed like the type of first-in-the-country bold action he gravitates toward.

Herald also suggested hewing toward the middle is not new for Newsom. While he was a county supervisor and then mayor of San Francisco, Newsom championed Care Not Cash, a policy to reduce welfare for single homeless adults and instead spend the funds on shelters, housing and services.

Im just not as surprised as some when hes more conservative-leaning on certain issues, Herald said.

Newsom also faced fervent opposition from civil rights groups for his Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Court proposal, a far-reaching plan to provide court-ordered treatment for thousands of Californians suffering from a mix of severe mental illness, homelessness and addiction.

A coalition that included the American Civil Liberties Union, Disability Rights California and the Western Center on Law and Poverty groups with which Democrats in the Capitol often align spent the legislative session castigating the proposal as an inhumane effort to criminalize homelessness and strip people of their personal freedoms. The Legislature overwhelmingly approved it, with Republicans and Democrats celebrating its passage.

It runs completely counter to truly progressive ideals, said Susan Mizner, director of the ACLUs Disability Rights Program. Its a throwback to an era in which we punish people for being poor and we punish people for having mental illness.

Homelessness and crime were among the top three concerns for California registered voters in a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll conducted this spring, and Newsom is well aware of the potential political liabilities he faces if he fails to address those issues.

Despite the criticism from the left, Newsom isnt expected to face much, if any, retribution from California liberals when he comes up for reelection in November. A recent poll found that Newsom led his challenger, state Sen. Brian Dahle (R-Bieber), by more than a 2-1 margin. Many of the conservative Republicans policy positions, including his opposition to abortion rights and government mandates of COVID-19 vaccinations and restrictions, are denounced by Democrats.

Newsom and Democratic lawmakers this year did notch big wins on gun control legislation, an issue embraced by the left, after a wave of mass shootings this spring and summer shocked the nation.

Newsom and legislators pledged swift action on more than a dozen gun control bills, including one modeled after Texas vigilante abortion law that will allow private people to sue anyone who imports, sells or distributes illegal firearms in California. Nearly every measure passed, and Newsom has already signed the majority into law.

But Newsom couldnt win over enough state lawmakers to pass a concealed-carry proposal. He made national headlines in June when he introduced the legislation alongside California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and state Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-La Caada Flintridge) in response to the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling against restrictive open-carry laws in New York, California and other blue states.

Senate Bill 918 would have designated dozens of places as sensitive, meaning off-limits to carry firearms, and added new licensing criteria to determine whether applicants presented a danger to themselves or others. The proposal fell two votes shy of passage early Thursday morning, after several moderate Democrats either abstained or voted against the measure.

He wants to be a player in national Democratic politics, said Jack Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College. He also has to attend to the mundane business of running California. And both of those things are on his mind.

Newsom surely remembers what happened to the last blue-state governor who won the Democratic presidential nomination, Pitney said. Michael S. Dukakis took positions that looked good in Massachusetts but made him vulnerable to GOP attacks in the 1988 presidential race.

Read the original post:

Newsom departs from his liberal image with controversial wins at the Capitol - Los Angeles Times

Economy and affordability on the table as Liberal cabinet meets in Vancouver – The Chronicle Journal

Posted on by

VANCOUVER - Federal cabinet ministers are mulling over how to help Canadians shoulder the weight of inflation but Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is warning that any help from the government will target the most vulnerable and must be fiscally responsible.

The Liberal cabinet is in the midst of a three-day retreat in Vancouver this week as ministers prepare for the fall sitting of the House of Commons. Underlying every discussion right now is the difficulty Canadians are having paying their bills.

Freeland said she spent the summer travelling to meet with Canadians for the first time since COVID-19 hit, and the feedback she heard is that while people are confident in the long-term picture, the current cost-of-living turmoil is a real challenge.

"It was really important for me to get that kind of direct fingertip feel of what is happening in the Canadian economy and what Canadians are feeling," she said before heading into the second day of the retreat Wednesday.

Wednesday's sessions included a briefing from economists about the cost-of-living conundrum, just hours after the Bank of Canada raised its key interest rate for the fifth time in seven months in its continued effort to get inflation under control.

Inflation is starting to ease the rate fell to 7.6 per cent in July after hitting a 39-year high of 8.1 per cent in June largely because the price of fuel began to drop. But that did little to ease the cost of basic needs like groceries, which was almost 10 per cent more than a year ago. Gas prices are still on average 12 per cent higher than they were in September 2021.

In much of Ontario, natural gas rates went up 20 per cent or more in July.

A report this week by Equifax Canada said Canadians are starting to rack up debt to stay on top of their bills, with a 6.4 per cent increase in credit card balances between the first and second quarters of this year.

Internationally many governments have moved to ease the pain of inflation. Germany this week produced its third aid package of the year, worth another C$72 billion, including direct payments to seniors and students to help with soaring energy bills and a reduced rate for some electricity used by most households.

In August France passed a $26-billion aid package that increased pension and welfare payments and hiked the gasoline rebate implemented in the spring from about 24 cents to almost 40 cents.

In Canada, the Liberals have been reluctant to introduce similar measures, fearing that flooding the economy with money could drive up demand at a time when supply chain issues are a key driver of inflation.

Freeland's $8.9 billion "affordability plan" published in June mainly included measures promised long before inflation began its sharp climb, and which Freeland has said were already included in Canada's budget plan.

That includes child care agreements with provinces that will slash daycare bills for many families starting this year, increases to the Canada Workers Benefit and old age security pension promised in the 2021 budget, and annual increases to GST rebates and the Canada Child Benefit.

On Wednesday Freeland opened the door to doing more, saying she knows "the most vulnerable in our society need to be supported" but warning that any aid plan will be balanced with maintaining fiscal controls.

"I think that's going to be a very important subject of our discussions today and tomorrow," she said.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, whose own caucus is having a pre-session retreat in Halifax this week, said Canada needs to follow the example set by other countries in doing more to bring the cost of living down.

"People are having an incredibly difficult time putting food on the table, paying their bills," he said.

Singh said the government needs to impose taxes on corporations that are taking advantage of rising prices, and use that money to help struggling families.

That has been the approach in several places, including Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom, which imposed temporary "windfall taxes" on some companies to pay for affordability aid packages.

For months, Singh has been asking the federal government to double the GST rebate and provide a one-time increase to the Canada Child Benefit.

The Liberals are expected to introduce the first step in a national dental care program soon, which was promised as part of the Liberal-NDP supply and confidence agreement reached last winter.

A $500 aid payment for low-income renters is also expected this fall.

Keeping the NDP happy is only one political problem for the Liberals this fall. As of Saturday, they'll also be facing another new Conservative leader.

Ottawa-area MP Pierre Poilievre is widely expected to win that contest, and he has spent much of his campaign arguing the Liberals are directly to blame for inflation.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 7, 2022.

See original here:

Economy and affordability on the table as Liberal cabinet meets in Vancouver - The Chronicle Journal

Welcome to the 2022 midterms: Let the liberal media spin begin – Washington Times

Posted on by

OPINION:

With Labor Day 2022 now in our rear-view mirror, Election 2022 is officially here, a nine-week run to decide who controls Congress and more than 35 state governorships.

For the past several months, pollsters and politicos have been saying that Republicans are poised for big wins on Nov. 8. But all that has changed as the liberal media seek to recast the races as tight.

Could unexpected Democratic gains foil a midterm Republican victory? The Guardian reported last week. Red wave crashing? GOP momentum slips as fall sprint begins, wrote the Associated Press. From a Republican tsunami to a puddle, opined CNN.

It was a referendum. Now its a choice, read the CNN analysis by Ronald Brownstein. For political professionals in both parties, thats the capsule explanation for why the Democratic position in the midterm elections appears to have improved so much since summer began.

While Mr. Brownstein cited evidence suggesting more voters are treating the election as a comparative choice between the two parties, the piece offered mostly anecdotal claims. But one, from a Republican pollster, put forward an interesting notion.

It is a really unusual election, Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies told the liberal outlet. Republicans have significant advantages on their set of issues (inflation, economy, crime, border security) and Democrats enjoy significant advantages on issues of concern to their voters (abortion, climate change, guns, health care).

There is no overlap, no competitive issues. This means each party has an unusual opportunity to try to create their own narrative to their own voters on what this election is about, he wrote.

The pollster sought to put those sets of issues on the same level which they most definitely are not. Soaring inflation especially sky-high gas and food prices is the top issue, while things like climate change and Second Amendment rights poll well down the list of issues in nationwide surveys.

Take a piece from PBS last month, headlined: Inflation, personal expenses rise sharply as election priorities, poll suggests.

Concerns about inflation and personal finances have surged while COVID has evaporated as a top issue for Americans, a new poll shows, marking an upheaval in priorities just months before critical midterm elections, said the article from another liberal news outlet.

YouGovAmerica found much the same in a July poll. Twenty-four percent put soaring prices as the top issue, with 12% saying jobs and the economy as No. 1. Concern about health care fell to just 10%, while abortion dropped to 6% and guns to 5% despite a headline this week from The Washington Post that read, In sprint to November, Democrats seize on shifting landscape over abortion.

Meanwhile, media outlets have all gotten out the same talking points over the last month: President Joe Bidens doing better. The presidents approval rating had been hovering in the mid-to-high-30s, but over the past month climbed back into the 40s.

But that is already starting to change again. Biden approval falls, holding near low end of his presidency, Reuters wrote on the last day of August.

U.S. President Joe Bidens public approval rating fell modestly this week, a poor sign for his Democratic Partys hopes in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed on Tuesday. The two-day national poll found that 38% of Americans approve of Bidens job performance, the news agency wrote.

Same as it ever was.

And the numbers on another key barometer were even worse, according to a running average compiled by Real Clear Politics. Just 23.2% of Americans think the country is moving in the right direction, while a whopping 70% think its all moving in the wrong direction.

Its worth noting that the party in the White House almost always loses congressional seats in the presidents first midterm election. While Ronald Reagan lost 26 House seats, Trump 40, Bill Clinton lost 52 and Barack Obama 63. Only George W. Bushs Republican Party picked up seats eight in his first midterm, which came after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the bottom line is simple: Americans vote with their wallets, choosing the candidates who are best for them financially. While they may still care deeply about other issues, their state most often decides which way they go on Election Day.

And for the record, it was former President Bill Clintons own campaign guru who spelled out that fact in just four words: Its the economy, stupid, James Carville said in 1992.

Despite the breathless predictions now that the election will be close (a few months ago, prognosticators had been predicting a 50-60 seat pickup by Republicans), the economy will be the key issue and the GOP routinely polls better on that issue.

And judging from the number of Democrats dodging appearances with Mr. Biden, few want to get his stink on them.

Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl

Link:

Welcome to the 2022 midterms: Let the liberal media spin begin - Washington Times

Why the Left Is Learning to Love the Military – The Atlantic

Posted on by

In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Harlems Riverside Church to a crowd of thousands that flowed out the door as far as 120th Street. King publicly condemned the Vietnam War because it had broken and eviscerated the civil-rights and anti-poverty movements at home. The American government was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.

Read: Martin Luther King Jr. on the Vietnam War

In 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invoked another MLK speech while asking Congress to help his country repel the Russian invasion. I have a dream. These words are known to each of you today. I can say, I have a need: I need to protect our sky. Two months later, Democrats voted unanimously in favor of a $40 billion package of arms and other assistance to Kyiv.

These two moments capture an important shift in how the American left thinks about the U.S. military and war more generally. Progressives typically see war as inherently murderous and dehumanizingsapping progress, curtailing free expression, and channeling resources into the military-industrial complex. The left led the opposition to the Vietnam War and the Iraq War and condemned American war crimes from the My Lai massacre to Abu Ghraib. Historically, progressive critics have charged the military with a litany of sins, including discrimination against LGBTQ soldiers and a reliance on recruiting in poor communities.

Meanwhile, for decades, the right embraced Americas warriors. Defense hawks were one of the three legs of the Reagan stool, along with social and fiscal conservatives. The military itself leaned right. One study found that from 1976 to 1996, the number of Army officers who identified as Republican increased from one-third to two-thirds. In 2016, according to a poll in the Military Times, active service members favored Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by a margin of nearly two to one.

In the past few years, however, these views have started to change. From 2021 to 2022, the share of Republicans who had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the military fell from 81 to 71 percent, whereas for Democrats, the number increased from 63 to 67 percentcutting the gap from 18 points to four. And the militarys views shifted in tandem. In 2020, dozens of former Republican national-security officials endorsed President Joe Biden because Trump had gravely damaged Americas role as a world leader. In one poll before the 2020 election, more active service members backed Biden than Trump (41 to 37 percent).

Why has this happened? Two big reasons are Trump and Ukraine.

Trump saw the military as a symbol of power and surrounded himself with a phalanx of generals. But when he realized they were not a Praetorian Guard that would do his bidding, defend him against all enemies foreign and domestic, and keep him in office by force if necessary, he soured on the military. Trump trampled on its most sacred beliefs and rituals, saying that U.S. generals were dopes and babies who want to do nothing but fight wars. Americans killed in battle, he said, were losers and suckers. Trump suggested that Gold Star families had spread COVID at the White House. He railed against American prisoners of war: I like people who werent captured. He pardoned three service members accused or convicted of war crimes, even though military leaders said it would erode the militarys code of justice. In his testimony to Congress, Trumps acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, said that Trump had told him to ready the National Guard to protect his supporters on January 6, rather than Congress itself. All of this created a fundamental clash with the militarys code of honor and its commitment to the Constitution. Trump wondered why American generals couldnt be more like Hitlers generalsby which he meant the loyalist fanatics who battled in the ruins of Berlin, not the Wehrmacht officials who tried to assassinate the Nazi dictator.

Since he left office, Trump has fueled the conservative belief that Biden is indoctrinating the armed forces with liberal ideas. Republican Senator Ted Cruz said the U.S. military is suffering from a woke cancer and is in danger of becoming a bunch of pansies. The Fox News host Laura Ingraham suggested defunding the military until it abandons its diversity programs: Go after their budget.

Its true that the military has moved left, and not just because of Trump. After George Floyd was murdered in 2020, Kaleth Wright tweeted: Who am I? I am a Black man who happens to be Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. Last year the Pentagon warned, To keep the nation secure, we must tackle the existential threat of climate change.

This shouldnt be so surprising. The military is the epitome of big government, with egalitarian wages, socialized medicine, and the best government-run child-care system in the country. No wonder General Wesley Clark joked that its the purest application of socialism there is. Now progressives are expressing a new gratitude for an institution that understands the value of diversity, cares about the rule of law, and was willing to stand up to Trump when the future of democracy was most in danger. At a time of rampant conspiracy theories like QAnon, liberals appreciate that the military operates in a world of tangible threats and complex logistics and has a basic respect for reality. George Orwell said people often cling to falsehoods until the lie slams into the truth, usually on a battlefield.

Then came Russias invasion of Ukraine. No foreign conflict since the Spanish Civil War has so captured the imagination of the left. Nearly a century ago, many progressives saw Spain as a pure fight between democracy and fascism. Ernest Hemingways novel For Whom the Bell Tolls and Pablo Picassos painting Guernica captured the horror at fascist brutality. About 3,000 Americans traveled to Spain to fight in the international brigades. Today, many on the left see Ukraine as another contest between fascism and democracy, and that rare thing: a good war. Thousands of Americans have gone to join the struggle.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is the antithesis of everything the left stands for. Not only did he launch an unprovoked attack on a sovereign democratic nation, but he has also disparaged LGBTQ rights, multiculturalism, and immigration, and claimed that the liberal idea has outlived its purpose. Zelensky, in contrast, has built bridges with the global left. He addressed the Glastonbury music festival, in the U.K., where the revelers chanted his name to the tune of The White Stripes Seven Nation Army. In Germany, the Green Party led the charge to supply weapons to Kyiv, overturning decades of German wariness about intervening in foreign wars. LGBTQ protesters in Berlin also demanded that Germany step up arms shipments to Ukraine, so that a Pride parade can, one day, be held in the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol. Ukrainian liberalsartists, translators, teachers, filmmakershave joined the struggle. As one writer put it: All our hipsters in Ukraine fight.

To be sure, theres a leftist fringe in the United States that still considers America the worlds evil empire and remains deeply hostile to its military power. That fringe includes the linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky, who praised Trump as a model statesman for pushing for a negotiated peace in Ukraine. But the bulk of the left has shown remarkable solidarity with the Ukrainian cause. Liberals who once protested the Iraq War now urge Washington to dispatch more rocket launchers to defeat Russian imperialism. Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York, a member of the progressive caucus, tweeted: We unequivocally stand with the global Ukrainian community in the wake of Putins attack.

The main opposition to helping Ukraine has come from the right. Trump, who has long praised Putin as a genius, questioned why Americans were sending so much money to Ukraine. Most congressional Republicans backed the aid package to Kyiv in May, but 11 Republican senators and 57 House Republicans opposed it. Republican Representative Matt Gaetz tweeted that if the GOP takes the House in the upcoming midterms, support for Ukraine will end. The Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed that Ukraine is an American puppet state, and that his real enemies are not in Moscow but on the American left: Has Putin ever called me a racist?

In March, Democrats were 10 points more likely than Republicans to say that Washington has a responsibility to protect and defend Ukraine from Russia. By July, this gap had grown to 22 points. Another recent survey found that Democrats were more supportive than Republicans of sending weapons to Ukraine as well as of accepting Ukrainian refugees in the United States. A remarkable 42 percent of Democrats favored deploying American troops to Ukraine, versus 34 percent of Republicans.

Progressives have always viewed foreign conflicts and domestic struggles as connectedwith war being either a dangerous contagion or a righteous crusade. A poster from the Spanish Civil War showed the image of a dead child: If you tolerate this, your children will be next. A generation later, the pendulum swung, and King saw intervention in Vietnam as a threat to civil rights in America. Today, the pendulum has swung back, and the left sees the march for freedom in America and the battle to defend Ukraine as elements of the same global fight for democracy. After all, the aggressor in UkrainePutinalso meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump.

Will the alliance between the left and the military last? Progressives may grow nervous about escalation in Ukraine or lose interest in the war. The economy remains the most pressing issue for most Americans. Perhaps, like Orwell in Catalonia, some American volunteers in Ukraine may decide that the struggle is not as pure as they thought. The lefts underlying concerns about the U.S. military have hardly disappeared. Republicans may one day shove Trump offstage and try to get the 80s band back togetherdefense hawks, social conservatives, and fiscal conservatives.

But for now, Trump remains the dominant force in the Republican Party. The Ukrainian cause remains resonant. And the left may worry about another authoritarian great power that threatens a smaller democracy: China mobilizing against Taiwan.

An era of liberal hawkishness should not mean an unthinking embrace of the military. America needs a strong progressive voice to check the rampant waste in the military-industrial complex (which ran to hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan). The military has very real problems, like the crisis of sexual assault. It doesnt benefit from the sort of soft-focus Thank you for your service reverence that has prevented people from asking tough questions about Americas disastrous wars in the past. On Ukraine, liberals can channel Washingtons policy in a more progressive direction, stressing human rights, pressing for investment in green technology to reduce reliance on Russian energy, and going after Moscows dirty money.

In the end, the U.S. military is the worlds anti-fascist insurance policy. The insurance premiums may be outlandish. And most of the time we dont need the policy. Until one day we do. If you need to ship M777 howitzers to Ukraine, the military-industrial complex has its uses.

In 1967, King was right to see Vietnam as a catastrophe for America, at home and abroad. If Americas soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. But today we face a different world, and a stark choice. Zelensky, Ukrainian progressives, and the European Union? Or Putin, Trump, and Tucker Carlson? The left picked the right side.

Read more:

Why the Left Is Learning to Love the Military - The Atlantic

Three-party race in Verdun could spell the end of Liberal reign – CTV News Montreal

Posted on by

For decades the riding of Verdun has voted Liberal, but this election might be different.

Quebec Solidaire and the CAQ are leading polls, with the Liberals a close third place.

Housing is a significant issue in the riding, with real estate prices and rents have soared in recent years in Verdun.

Quebec Solidaire candidate Alejandra Zaga Mendez will focus a major part of her campaign on housing and the environment.

Zaga Mendez says she lives with a roommate because rent is too costly.

"Housing is a big issue because people are not able to afford the price of the apartments at this point," she said.

The race to win Verdun could be one of the most exciting in Montreal.

"When we talk about ridings on the island of Montreal that the Liberals have held for a long time and that could really fall, I think Verdun is like the poster child of that riding," Daniel Bland, a political science professor at McGill, said.

Liberal party candidate Isabelle Melancon is feeling confident. She's won two elections in Verdun.

"I went to the Verdun legion, at the Dawson community centre, and the reception is very good," Melancon said. "The English community knows I'm an ally, and I will always work for my citizens."

She isn't the only candidate with prior political experience. Veronique Tremblay is running under the CAQ banner and is currently a city councillor in the riding.

"I've learned a lot about the issues for Verdun, so I know Verdun very well," Tremblay said. "I know the citizens. I know the needs. I think lots of issues share the solutions between the municipal and the provincial."

The election is Oct. 3.

Go here to read the rest:

Three-party race in Verdun could spell the end of Liberal reign - CTV News Montreal

Liberal made cost-of-living crisis gets worse as interest rates rise again – Conservative Party of Canada

Posted on by

Ottawa, ON Dan Albas, Conservative Shadow Minister for Finance, and Grard Deltell, Conservative Shadow Minister for Innovation, Science and Industry, today released the following statement after the Bank of Canada increased interest rates by 75 basis points:

Todays 75 basis point interest rate hike means more pain for Canadians struggling to keep up with record cost of living pressures.

Despite being warned that out-of-control spending would continue to put enormous upward pressure on inflation and interest rates, Justin Trudeau and his NDP allies have refused to change course. As a result of continuing with their reckless tax and spend agenda, Canadians are now being forced to contend with a fourth consecutive outsized interest-rate hike.

For Canadians, this means less of their hard-earned money in their own pockets. Canadians with mortgages will see a sharp increase in their payments, while those looking to buy a house for the first time will see the dream of homeownership slip out of reach.

Anyone who has taken on debt to afford basics like food, rent, and utilities will see their purchasing power eroded by increased debt repayment. Unfortunately, the Liberals and their NDP allies have rejected Conservative proposals to reduce inflationary pressure by getting their reckless government spending under control.

Instead, the Liberals and their NDP partners seem to be out-of-touch with the cost-of-living crisis Canadians are facing. As a result of their failure to control spending and provide cost-of-living relief, Canada appears poised to face a significant economic downturn.

Canadians deserve a government that will fight the cost-of-living crisis and make life more affordable. That is why Conservatives will continue to call on the government to tackle inflation by getting reckless spending under control.

Conservatives will continue to fight to leave more money in the pockets of hard-working Canadians, protect the value of the money that they earn, and end the governments inflation-fueling reckless spending.

Read the original:

Liberal made cost-of-living crisis gets worse as interest rates rise again - Conservative Party of Canada

Teletherapy Leader Partners with 16th Liberal Arts College in 2022 – PR Newswire

Posted on by

Gettysburg College launches teletherapy solution, Uwill, to increase capacity and provide after-hour support

GETTYSBURG, Pa., Sept. 7, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Uwill, the leading teletherapy solution for colleges and students, today, announced a partnership with Gettysburg College to support the counseling services available on campus and increase capacity. As the need for mental health support increases nationwide, Uwill's solution utilizes need and preferences to immediately match students with a diverse team of licensed and available counselors.

"Our goal is to provide comprehensive mental health and wellness services campus wide, for all Gettysburg students. We needed to remove barriers such as service hours, and to create an array of opportunities for all students to access quality care. Uwill will help ensure an experience where students can learn, lead, and succeed inside and outside of the classroom," said Krista Dhruv, Executive Director of Counseling and Wellness at Gettysburg College. "By providing the necessary mental health resources, we hope to support each and every student, providing them a sense of balance, and the ability to excel."

Gettysburg College is launching this teletherapy option at a time of increasing mental health challenges reported on campuses nationwide, where 95% of students felt their mental health negatively affected them within the past year. "At a time where mental health support is of paramount importance, Gettysburg's partnership with Uwill shows their dedication to student wellbeing and success," said Michael London, Founder and CEO of Uwill.

Utilizing its proprietary technology and counselor team, Uwill pioneered the first Higher-Ed therapist matching platform and wellness environment. The solution offers an immediate connection to an available licensed counselor based on student preferences, all modalities of teletherapy, 24/7/365 crisis connection, wellness programming, detailed reporting and support. Uwill partners with more than 100 institutions worldwide including the UC Santa Barbara, Berklee Online, Xavier University, and Morgan State University to ensure their mental health and wellness environment meets student needs.

About Uwill

Uwill has become the leading mental health and wellness solution for colleges and students. The most cost-effective way to complement a college's mental health offering, Uwill partners with more than 100 institutions including Boston College, University of Michigan, American Public University System, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Uwill is also the teletherapy education partner for NASPA. For more information, visit uwill.com

SOURCE Uwill

See original here:

Teletherapy Leader Partners with 16th Liberal Arts College in 2022 - PR Newswire

While the Bank of Canada tries to kill inflation, the Liberal government risks giving it new life – Toronto Star

Posted on by

Two major things are happening to Canadians on the cost-of-living front this week.

The Bank of Canada is raising its key interest rate by another giant leap of 75 basis points, pushing up borrowing costs and slowing down the economy in a relentless attempt to stifle inflation.

And the federal Liberals, holed up in Vancouver for their annual summer cabinet retreat, are gearing up to announce funding and legislation for dental-care support, roll out a housing subsidy and perhaps even contemplate a GST rebate for low-income people, the Star has learned.

If it were a contest for who is more effective at targeting inflation, the Bank of Canada would get the prize.

But theres a brutal downside to the sharp interest-rate hikes coming at a precarious time in the economy: they undermine growth, and thats in short supply right now. The central bank risks provoking a recession, not the soft landing for which weve all been hoping.

So if there were a contest for who is more focused on dealing with the fallout of higher prices, the federal Liberals and their NDP collaborators who have been pushing for these measures would get that prize, as long as theyre careful.

The policy and money the government puts toward easing the day-to-day costs of low-income households through helping them with housing or paying their dental bills are far more nuanced than the blunt instrument that is interest rates.

For the Liberals, dental and housing benefits also have the added bonus of partially meeting the NDPs requirements for political co-operation, keeping that party onside and avoiding an election anytime soon. The agreement with the NDP saw the Liberals commit to a $500 top-up for recipients of the Canada Housing Benefit and dental care for children under 12 in families making less than $90,000 a year.

While a GST rebate isnt on the NDPs formal list of demands, leader Jagmeet Singh has made the case for it incessantly over the past few months. He argues that corporations are profiting handsomely from higher prices, while low-income families cant make ends meet. A GST rebate for low-income households would help offset the extra costs for the most vulnerable.

Theres a downside to those measures too, of course.

For one, they could bulk up the deficit, and that could be inflationary. However, the government is running a surplus so far this fiscal year, compared to a $37-billion deficit at this time last year. Revenues from corporations are rolling in thick. Most but not all of the cost of the dental and housing announcements has been booked in the fiscal framework already.

And the spending on affordability could fuel consumption, which is also inflationary, at least in principle. However, wages are not keeping up with inflation these days, and low-income families are especially pinched.

So the design and scope of the government plans are very important. The benefits of helping low-income households with affordability need to outweigh the costs of possibly exacerbating inflation. Narrowly targeted government help that is geared to income and not too costly could meet the test.

Its a tension that will be with the government and Bank of Canada for many months to come.

The central bank served notice on Wednesday that it will continue to drive interest rates up until its satisfied inflation is well under control and settling back down to the two-per-cent range. Economists are revising their projections for growth and interest rates as we speak, but generally they anticipate a couple more small rate hikes, and then a yearlong wait while those higher rates work their way through the economy. In the meantime, we could well topple into a recession, with the weak job market and financial pain that word implies.

Thats a long, long haul for households already facing extra costs.

Number-crunchers are outdoing themselves with math to emphasize how significant the streak of oversized rate hikes will be for Canadian households. Royal Bank and Desjardins doubled down on their projections of a mild recession next year, especially as housing markets continue to soften. Credit analysts at Equifax figure the average family needs an extra $400 a month to cover inflation plus the expense around rising interest rates. Mortgage brokers at Ratehub.ca say a selected homeowner with a variable-rate mortgage will pay $236 more per month on mortgage payments because of Wednesdays rate increase.

And thats by design. The Bank of Canada makes no bones about wanting to zap the housing market and pour cold water on consumers. Its goal is twofold: soften demand so it can match struggling supply, and keep inflation expectations in check.

Looming large in the background behind this dance between the Bank of Canada and the political decision makers is the Russia-induced energy crisis that has consumed Europe and threatens to engulf much of the world in hard times. All of the best-laid plans of the Bank of Canada to push inflation down to two per cent, and the federal governments best intentions to keep spending well targeted and geared to income, could easily be thrown into disarray come winter.

The real contest will be to see who is the most nimble in the face of perpetual crisis.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Anyone can read Conversations, but to contribute, you should be registered Torstar account holder. If you do not yet have a Torstar account, you can create one now (it is free)

Sign In

Register

Originally posted here:

While the Bank of Canada tries to kill inflation, the Liberal government risks giving it new life - Toronto Star

Joe Oliver: Liberals risk drowning in the Poilievre wave – Financial Post

Posted on by

Breadcrumb Trail Links

The conventional wisdom that Poilievre cannot win a national election is wearing thin

Publishing date:

As the Conservative leadership campaign approaches what now seems certain to be Pierre Poilievres coronation, progressives are unnerved by the huge crowds of all ages he is attracting across the country, which point to an expanding Conservative base. Predictably, the Laurentian elite and their media loyalists have dissolved into full-blown derangement syndrome, while providing cover for Liberal missteps. Intriguingly, they are less protective of an increasingly unpopular prime minister.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

The conventional wisdom that Poilievre cannot win a national election is wearing thin. Inflation, which people intuitively understand was created and exacerbated by government profligacy, is the publics top concern. There is also widespread frustration with the governments maddening incompetence and multiple ministerial missteps: Omar Alghabra for the airport debacles, Marco Mendicino, for misleading Parliament about the Emergencies Act, Karina Gould for mind-boggling passport delays, Mlanie Joly for an official inexplicably attending a Russian diplomatic party, Ahmed Hussen and Pablo Rodriguez for the Marouf scandal, Chrystia Freeland for favouring out-of-control spending over growth.

Sign up to receive the daily top stories from the Financial Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.

A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.

The next issue of Financial Post Top Stories will soon be in your inbox.

We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

The prime ministers charisma has faded with his teams eroding credibility. Moreover, even die-hard Liberals are disillusioned by his own divisive tactics, hypocritical virtue-signalling, inability to deliver on priorities, tarnished brand abroad and, perhaps most important for them, 50 per cent disapproval rating.

The government is notoriously selective about treating people differently depending on their race, ethnic group, gender identity, sexual preference, age or country of origin. The most obvious case in point is that despite Laith Maroufs appallingly bigoted and anti-semitic comments he was paid half a million public dollars to provide anti-racism advice. The absence of even elementary due diligence is inexcusable. Worse, it took over a month for the responsible minister to act and even longer for the prime minister to comment, no doubt in part because he did not want to own up to his ministrys incompetence but perhaps also because Marouf hypocritically presented himself as a supposed ally in its core mission.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Had a racial minority or Aboriginal person been called a bag of feces or threatened with a bullet to the head the PM would quite rightly have expressed outrage, likely in minutes. He was appropriately quick off the mark when Chrystia Freeland was subject to unacceptable verbal harassment. Which makes the delayed reaction from the government and many in the media in the Marouf case even more disconcerting. The Jewish community is understandably disheartened by the blatant double standard. As a matter of basic decency, not to mention fundamental philosophical principle, governments should treat people equally and not discriminate based on twisted notions about identity or victimhood politics.

Pierre Poilievre clearly understands the widespread and growing anger about the disdain, condescension and snobbery a progressive elite have for working and lower middle-class Canadians. He empathizes with resentment about nanny-state intrusions, the politicization of science and the often bizarre ideas of left-wing ideologues, woke capitalists and expert academics. He agrees with people who rail against a government that allows faceless bureaucrats to infringe on their agency, curtail their freedom and damage their standard of living with heavy taxes and burdensome regulations.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Critics are torn between claiming Pierre Poilievre has no policies and denouncing these non-policies as extreme. He is decried as a populist because he seeks public support (as if the Liberal default position on just about everything is not to swing with public opinion). The Trump North label has failed to stick because he has been consistently pro-choice, supports gay marriage and favours immigration.

Liberals loath Pierre Poilievre because they fear he will dismantle excessive government intervention in society and the economy, reverse tax-and-spend policies, encourage natural resource development, defend free speech and genuine diversity of opinion, decry woke-ism, defund the CBC and undercut elite influence.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

But it is Pierre Poilievre, not Justin Trudeau, who reflects mainstream Canadian thinking about fundamental issues. He believes profoundly in personal freedom and is proud of our history. In contrast, Trudeau has called Canada systemically racist and guilty of genocide. He proclaimed it the worlds first post-national state and declared There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada. His far-left thinking manifests itself in a profligate government that creates more problems than it solves.

Trudeaus cultish climate obsession has wrought enormous harm to jobs, growth, national unity and the economic prospects of Indigenous peoples. Yet it has not achieved a single national GHG target or impacted global warming even minutely something that actually could be achieved if Canadian LNG replaced coal in energy-hungry Asia and Europe.

I expect Pierre Poilievre will reach out to his leadership rivals and their supporters the way Stephen Harper did as prime minister. He can easily do that without compromising conservative principles, policy priorities or authenticity. It would be the magnanimous and smart thing to do. He will then speak directly to Canadians about how he will represent their values and interests and pursue his vision for a prosperous, proud and fair country for everyone. No wonder Liberals are worried.

Joe Oliver was minister of natural resources and minister of finance in the Harper government.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. We have enabled email notificationsyou will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.

Excerpt from:

Joe Oliver: Liberals risk drowning in the Poilievre wave - Financial Post

Liberal Democrats were the first to call for energy prices to be frozen – Devon Live

Posted on by

RICHARD FOORD IS THE LIBERAL DEMOCRAT MP FOR TIVERTON AND HONITON

With the energy price cap rising to a staggering 3,549 this autumn, households are bracing for the impact. Many are already struggling to make ends meet and are faced with bills soaring by at least 80%.

Many of us swallowed hard back in April when the price cap rose to a sum just shy of 2,000 - now the situation is even more serious. People from across our part of Devon have been in touch with me to tell me how concerned they are about how they will cope with this huge rise in bills.

The Conservative Party has spent weeks talking to itself and playing brinkmanship with promises of ever larger tax cuts. The Liz Truss-led Government has now conceded that it will have to act, after months of pressure from opposition parties.

The Liberal Democrats were the first to call for energy prices to be frozen and have said all along that we would not fund this through borrowing, instead funding this vital relief with a windfall tax on the super-profits being raked in by energy companies.

We have relied for a long time on the generosity of all the wonderful people in our area who contribute to charities, but we cannot ask even more of them given that we are about to see the biggest hit to living standards in the UK for over one hundred years.

The Government must take drastic action to avoid people going under. Liberal Democrats have been saying for weeks that the Government must cancel the October energy price rise outright this would save households in our area more than 1,900 and provide people with some peace of mind.

This week Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey tabled a bill in Parliament to freeze bills. Now that Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have paused the civil war in the Conservative Party, we need Ms Truss to act and give people the reassurance they need.

But freezing bills alone is simply not enough. We need additional targeted support for vulnerable and low-income households. By doubling the Warm Homes Discount, extending it to all those who receive Pension Credit and investing in home insulation for customers who face fuel poverty, we can ensure that people in Devon and beyond can afford to stay warm this winter.

I have also been calling for additional support for those who live off-grid and are therefore more susceptible to rises in the price of heating oil. By capping the cost, we can protect the thousands of people who - by no fault of their own are more vulnerable to price fluctuations.

There is an additional benefit of investing heavily in insulation. By ensuring heat is not lost from our homes, we can cut back on how often we turn the heating on, help address the climate crisis and keep bills down.

This is an emergency. I hope that by the time you read this, the Government will have bowed to pressure from the Liberal Democrats and others to step in and help people across Devon by cancelling the planned rise in energy bills this October.

Read more:

Liberal Democrats were the first to call for energy prices to be frozen - Devon Live

Ukraine Holds the Future: The War Between Democracy and Nihilism – Foreign Affairs Magazine

Posted on by

Russia, an aging tyranny, seeks to destroy Ukraine, a defiant democracy. A Ukrainian victory would confirm the principle of self-rule, allow the integration of Europe to proceed, and empower people of goodwill to return reinvigorated to other global challenges. A Russian victory, by contrast, would extend genocidal policies in Ukraine, subordinate Europeans, and render any vision of a geopolitical European Union obsolete. Should Russia continue its illegal blockade of the Black Sea, it could starve Africans and Asians, who depend on Ukrainian grain, precipitating a durable international crisis that will make it all but impossible to deal with common threats such as climate change. A Russian victory would strengthen fascists and other tyrants, as well as nihilists who see politics as nothing more than a spectacle designed by oligarchs to distract ordinary citizens from the destruction of the world. This war, in other words, is about establishing principles for the twenty-first century. It is about policies of mass death and about the meaning of life in politics. It is about the possibility of a democratic future.

Discussions of democracy often begin with the ancient city-states of Greece. According to the Athenian legend of origin, the deities Poseidon and Athena offered gifts to the citizens to win the status of patron. Poseidon, the god of the sea, struck the ground with his trident, causing the earth to tremble and saltwater to spring forth. He was offering Athenians the power of the sea and strength in war, but they blanched at the taste of brine. Then Athena planted an olive seed, which sprouted into an olive tree. It offered shade for contemplation, olives for eating, and oil for cooking. Athenas gift was deemed superior, and the city took her name and patronage.

The Greek legend suggests a vision of democracy as tranquility, a life of thoughtful deliberation and consumption. Yet Athens had to win wars to survive. The most famous defense of democracy, the funeral oration of Pericles, is about the harmony of risk and freedom. Poseidon had a point about war: sometimes the trident must be brought down. He was also making a case for interdependence. Prosperity, and sometimes survival, depends on sea trade. How, after all, could a small city-state such as Athens afford to devote its limited soil to olives? Ancient Athenians were nourished by grain brought from the north coast of the Black Sea, grown in the black earth of what is now southern Ukraine. Alongside the Jews, the Greeks are the longest known continuous inhabitants of Ukraine. Mariupol was their city, until the Russians destroyed it. The southern region of Kherson, where combat is now underway, bears a Greek name borrowed from a Greek city. In April, the Ukrainians sank the Russian flagship, the Moskva, with Neptune missilesNeptune being the Roman name for Poseidon.

As it happens, Ukraines national symbol is the trident. It can be found among relics of the state that Vikings founded at Kyiv about a thousand years ago. After receiving Christianity from Byzantium, the Greek-speaking eastern Roman Empire, Kyivs rulers established secular law. The economy shifted from slavery to agriculture as the people became subject to taxation rather than capture. In subsequent centuries, after the fall of the Kyiv state, Ukrainian peasants were enserfed by Poles and then by Russians. When Ukrainian leaders founded a republic in 1918, they revived the trident as the national symbol. Independence meant not only freedom from bondage but the liberty to use the land as they saw fit. Yet the Ukrainian National Republic was short lived. Like several other young republics established after the end of the Russian empire in 1917, it was destroyed by the Bolsheviks, and its lands were incorporated into the Soviet Union. Seeking to control Ukraines fertile soil, Joseph Stalin brought about a political famine that killed about four million inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. Ukrainians were overrepresented in the Soviet concentration camps known as the gulag. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitlers goal was control of Ukrainian agriculture. Ukrainians were again overrepresented among the civilian victimsthis time of the German occupiers and the Red Army soldiers who defeated the Germans. After World War II, Soviet Ukraine was nevertheless subjected to a slow process of Russification in which its culture was degraded.

When the Soviet Union came to an end in 1991, Ukrainians again seized on the trident as their national symbol. In the three decades since, Ukraine has moved, haltingly but unmistakably, in the direction of functional democracy. The generation that now runs the country knows the Soviet and pre-Soviet history but understands self-rule as self-evident. At a time when democracy is in decline around the world and threatened in the United States, Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression provides a surprising (to many) affirmation of faith in democracys principles and its future. In this sense, Ukraine is a challenge to those in the West who have forgotten the ethical basis of democracy and thereby, wittingly or unwittingly, ceded the field to oligarchy and empire at home and abroad. Ukrainian resistance is a welcome challenge, and a needed one.

The history of twentieth-century democracy offers a reminder of what happens when this challenge is not met. Like the period after 1991, the period after 1918 saw the rise and fall of democracy. Today, the turning point (one way or the other) is likely Ukraine; in interwar Europe, it was Czechoslovakia. Like Ukraine in 2022, Czechoslovakia in 1938 was an imperfect multilingual republic in a tough neighborhood. In 1938 and 1939, after European powers chose to appease Nazi Germany at Munich, Hitlers regime suppressed Czechoslovak democracy through intimidation, unresisted invasion, partition, and annexation. What actually happened in Czechoslovakia was similar to what Russia seems to have planned for Ukraine. Putins rhetoric resembles Hitlers to the point of plagiarism: both claimed that a neighboring democracy was somehow tyrannical, both appealed to imaginary violations of minority rights as a reason to invade, both argued that a neighboring nation did not really exist and that its state was illegitimate.

In 1938, Czechoslovakia had decent armed forces, the best arms industry in Europe, and natural defenses improved by fortifications. Nazi Germany might not have bested Czechoslovakia in an open war and certainly would not have done so quickly and easily. Yet Czechoslovakias allies abandoned it, and its leaders fatefully chose exile over resistance. The defeat was, in a crucial sense, a moral one. And it enabled the physical transformation of a continent by war, creating some of the preconditions for the Holocaust of European Jews.

By the time Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, beginning World War II, Czechoslovakia no longer existed, and its territories and resources had been reassigned according to German preferences. Germany now had a longer border with Poland, a larger population, Czechoslovak tanks, and tens of thousands of Slovak soldiers. Hitler also now had a powerful ally in the Soviet Union, which joined in the destruction of Poland after invading from the east. During Germanys invasion of France and the Low Countries in 1940 and during the Battle of Britain later that year, German vehicles were fueled by Soviet oil and German soldiers fed by Soviet grain, almost all of which was extracted from Ukraine.

This sequence of events started with the easy German absorption of Czechoslovakia. World War II, at least in the form that it took, would have been impossible had the Czechoslovaks fought back. No one can know what would have happened had the Germans been bogged down in Bohemia in 1938. But we can be confident that Hitler would not have had the sense of irresistible momentum that gained him allies and frightened his foes. It would certainly have been harder for the Soviet leadership to justify an alliance. Hitler would not have been able to use Czechoslovak arms in his assault on Poland, which would have begun later, if at all. The United Kingdom and France would have had more time to prepare for war and perhaps to help Poland. By 1938, Europe was emerging from the Great Depression, which was the main force attracting people to the political extremes. Had Hitlers nose been bloodied in his first campaign, the appeal of the far right might have declined.

Unlike Czechoslovak leaders, Ukrainian leaders chose to fight and were supported, at least in some measure, by other democracies. In resisting, Ukrainians have staved off a number of very dark scenarios and bought European and North American democracies valuable time to think and prepare. The full significance of the Ukrainian resistance of 2022, as with the appeasement of 1938, can be grasped only when one considers the futures it opens or forecloses. And to do that, one needs the past to make sense of the present.

The classical notion of tyranny and the modern concept of fascism are both helpful in understanding the Putin regime, but neither is sufficient. The basic weaknesses of tyrannies are generic and long knownrecorded, for example, by Plato in his Republic. Tyrants resist good advice, become obsessive as they age and fall ill, and wish to leave an undying legacy. All of this is certainly evident in Putins decision to invade Ukraine. Fascism, a specific form of tyranny, also helps to explain todays Russia, which is characterized by a cult of personality, a de facto single party, mass propaganda, the privileging of will over reason, and a politics of us-versus-them. Because fascism places violence over reason, it can be defeated only by force. Fascism was quite popularand not just in fascist countriesuntil the end of World War II. It was discredited only because Germany and Italy lost the war.

Putin in St. Petersburg, Russia, January 2020

Although Russia is fascist at the top, it is not fascist through and through. A specific emptiness lies at the center of Putins regime. It is the emptiness in the eyes of Russian officials in photographs as they look into a vacant middle distance, a habit they believe projects masculine imperturbability. Putins regime functions not by mobilizing society with the help of a single grand vision, as fascist Germany and Italy did, but by demobilizing individuals, assuring them that there are no certainties and no institutions that can be trusted. This habit of demobilization has been a problem for Russian leaders during the war in Ukraine because they have educated their citizens to watch television rather than take up arms. Even so, the nihilism that undergirds demobilization poses a direct threat to democracy.

The Putin regime is imperialist and oligarchic, dependent for its existence on propaganda that claims that all the world is ever such. While Russias support of fascism, white nationalism, and chaos brings it a certain kind of supporter, its bottomless nihilism is what attracts citizens of democracies who are not sure where to find ethical landmarkswho have been taught, on the right, that democracy is a natural consequence of capitalism or, on the left, that all opinions are equally valid. The gift of Russian propagandists has been to take things apart, to peel away the layers of the onion until nothing is left but the tears of others and their own cynical laughter. Russia won the propaganda war the last time it invaded Ukraine, in 2014, targeting vulnerable Europeans and Americans on social media with tales of Ukrainians as Nazis, Jews, feminists, and gays. But much has changed since then: a generation of younger Ukrainians has come to power that communicates better than the older Russians in the Kremlin.

The defense of Putins regime has been offered by people operating as literary critics, ever disassembling and dissembling. Ukrainian resistance, embodied by President Volodymyr Zelensky, has been more like literature: careful attention to art, no doubt, but for the purpose of articulating values. If all one has is literary criticism, one accepts that everything melts into air and concedes the values that make democratic politics possible. But when one has literature, one experiences a certain solidity, a sense that embodying values is more interesting and more courageous than dismissing or mocking them.

Creation comes before critique and outlasts it; action is better than ridicule. As Pericles put it, We rely not upon management or trickery, but upon our own hearts and hands. The contrast between the sly black suits of the Russian ideologues and propagandists and the earnest olive tones of Ukrainian leaders and soldiers calls to mind one of the most basic requirements of democracy: individuals must openly assert values despite the risk attendant upon doing so. The ancient philosophers understood that virtues were as important as material factors to the rise and fall of regimes. The Greeks knew that democracy could yield to oligarchy, the Romans knew that republics could become empires, and both knew that such transformations were moral as well as institutional. This knowledge is at the foundation of Western literary and philosophical traditions. As Aristotle recognized, truth was both necessary to democracy and vulnerable to propaganda. Every revival of democracy, including the American one of 1776 with its self-evident truths, has depended on ethical assertions: not that democracy was bound to exist, but that it should exist, as an expression of rebellious ethical commitment against the ubiquitous gravitational forces of oligarchy and empire.

This has been true of every revival of democracy except for the most recent one, which followed the eastern European revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. At that point, as Russia and Ukraine emerged as independent states, a perverse faith was lodged in the end of history, the lack of alternatives to democracy, and the nature of capitalism. Many Americans had lost the natural fear of oligarchy and empire (their own or others) and forgotten the organic connection of democracy to ethical commitment and physical courage. Late twentieth-century talk of democracy conflated the correct moral claim that the people should rule with the incorrect factual claim that democracy is the natural state of affairs or the inevitable condition of a favored nation. This misunderstanding made democracies vulnerable, whether old or new.

The current Russian regime is one consequence of the mistaken belief that democracy happens naturally and that all opinions are equally valid. If this were true, then Russia would indeed be a democracy, as Putin claims. The war in Ukraine is a test of whether a tyranny that claims to be a democracy can triumph and thereby spread its logical and ethical vacuum. Those who took democracy for granted were sleepwalking toward tyranny. The Ukrainian resistance is the wake-up call.

On the Sunday before Russia began its latest invasion of Ukraine, I predicted on American television that Zelensky would remain in Kyiv if Russia invaded. I was mocked for this prediction, just as I was when I predicted the previous Russian invasion, the danger that U.S. President Donald Trump posed to American democracy, and Trumps coup attempt. Former advisers to Trump and President Barack Obama disagreed with me in a class at Yale University, where I teach. They were doing nothing more than reflecting the American consensus. Americans tend to see the war in Ukraine in the long shadow of the 9/11 attacks and the American moral and military failures that followed. In the Biden administration, officials feared that taking the side of Kyiv risked repeating the fall of Kabul. Among younger people and on the political left, a deeper unease arose from the lack of a national reckoning over the invasion of Iraq, justified at the time with the notion that destroying one regime would create a tabula rasa from which democracy would naturally emerge. The idiocy of this argument made a generation doubt the possibility that war and democracy could have something to do with each other. The unease with another military effort was perhaps understandable, but the resemblance between Iraq and Ukraine was only superficial. Ukrainians werent imposing their own vision on another country. They were protecting their right to choose their own leaders against an invasion designed to undo their democracy and eliminate their society.

The Trump administration had spread cynicism from the other direction. First Trump denied Ukraine weapons in order to blackmail Zelensky. Then he showed that a U.S. president would attempt a coup to stay in power after an electoral defeat. To watch fellow citizens die in an attempt to overthrow democracy is the opposite of risking ones life to protect it. Of course, if democracy is only about larger forces and not about ethics, then Trumps actions would make perfect sense. If one believes that capitalist selfishness automatically becomes democratic virtue, and that lying about who won an election is just expressing an opinion like any other, then Trump is a normal politician. In fact, he brazenly personifies the Russian idea that there are no values and no truth.

Americans had largely forgotten that democracy is a value for which an elected officialor a citizen, for that mattermight choose to live or die. By taking a risk, Zelensky transformed his role from that of a bit player in a Trump scandal to a hero of democracy. Americans assumed that he would want to flee because they had convinced themselves of the supremacy of impersonal forces: if they bring democracy, so much the better, but when they dont, people submit. I need ammunition, not a ride was Zelenskys response to U.S. urgings to leave Kyiv. This was perhaps not as eloquent as the funeral oration of Pericles, but it gets across the same point: there is honor in choosing the right way to die on behalf of a people seeking the right way to live.

For 30 years, too many Americans took for granted that democracy was something that someone else didor rather, that something else did: history by ending, alternatives by disappearing, capitalism by some inexplicable magic. (Russia and China are capitalist, after all.) That era ended when Zelensky emerged one night in February to film himself saying, The president is here. If a leader believes that democracy is just a result of larger factors, then he will flee when those larger factors seem to be against him. The issue of responsibility will never arise. But democracy demands earnest struggle, as the American abolitionist Frederick Douglass said. Ukrainian resistance to what appeared to be overwhelming force reminded the world that democracy is not about accepting the apparent verdict of history. It is about making history; striving toward human values despite the weight of empire, oligarchy, and propaganda; and, in so doing, revealing previously unseen possibilities.

On the surface, Zelenskys simple truth that the president is here was meant to undo Russian propaganda, which was claiming that he had fled the city. But the video, shot in the open air as Kyiv was under attack, was also a recovery of the meaning of freedom of speech, which has been forgotten. The Greek playwright Euripides understood that the purpose of freedom of speech was to speak truth to power. The free speaker clarifies a dangerous world not only with what he says but by the risk he takes when he speaks. By saying the president is here as the bombs fell and the assassins approached, Zelensky was living in truth, in the words of Vaclav Havel, or walking the talk, as one of my students in prison put it. Havels most famous essay on the topic, The Power of the Powerless, was dedicated to the memory of the philosopher Jan Patocka, who died shortly after being interrogated by the communist Czechoslovak secret police. Putin, a KGB officer from 1975 until 1991, extends the sadistic tradition of interrogators: nothing is true, nothing is worthy of sacrifice, everything is a joke, everyone is for sale. Might makes right, only fools believe otherwise, and they should pay for being fools.

After 1991, the nihilism of late communism flowed together with the complacent Western idea that democracy was merely the result of impersonal forces. If it turned out that those forces pushed in different directions, for example, toward oligarchy or empire, what was there then to say? But in the tradition of Euripides or Havel or now Zelensky, it is taken for granted that the larger forces are always against the individual, and that citizenship is realized through the responsibility one takes for words and the risks one takes with deeds. Truth is not with power, but a defense against it. That is why freedom of speech is necessary: not to make excuses, not to conform, but to assert values into the world, because so doing is a precondition of self-rule.

In their post-1989 decadence, many citizens of North American and European democracies came to associate freedom of speech with the ability of the rich to exploit media to broadcast self-indulgent nonsense. When one recalls the purpose of freedom of speech, however, one cares less about how many social media followers an oligarch has and more about how that oligarch became wealthy in the first place. Oligarchs such as Putin and Trump do the opposite of speaking truth to power: they tell lies for power. Trump told a big lie about the election (that he won); Putin told a big lie aboutUkraine (that it doesnt exist). Putins fake history of eastern Europe, one of his justifications for the war, is so outrageous that it provides a chance to recall the sense of freedom of speech. If one of the richest men in the world, in command of a huge army, claims that a neighboring country does not exist, this is not just an example of free expression. It is genocidal hate speech, a form of action that must be resisted by other forms of action.

In an essay published in July 2021, Putin argued that events of the tenth century predetermined the unity of Ukraine and Russia. This is grotesque as history, since the only human creativity it allows in the course of a thousand years and hundreds of millions of lives is that of the tyrant to retrospectively and arbitrarily choose his own genealogy of power. Nations are not determined by official myth, but created by people who make connections between past and future. As the French historian Ernest Renan put it, the nation is a daily plebiscite. The German historian Frank Golczewski was right to say that national identity is not a reflection of ethnicity, language, and religion but rather an assertion of a certain historical and political possibility. Something similar can be said of democracy: it can be made only by people who want to make it and in the name of values they affirm by taking risks for them.

The Ukrainian nation exists. The results of the daily plebiscite are clear, and the earnest struggle is evident. No society should have to resist a Russian invasion in order to be recognized. It should not have taken the deaths of dozens of journalists for us to see the basic truths that they were trying to report before and during the invasion. That it took so much effort (and so much unnecessary bloodshed) for the West to see Ukraine at all reveals the challenge that Russian nihilism poses. It shows how close the West came to conceding the tradition of democracy.

If one forgets that the purpose of free speech is to speak truth to power, one fails to see that big lies told by powerful people weaken democracy. The Putin regime makes this clear by organizing politics around the shameless production of fiction. Russias honesty, the argument goes, consists of accepting that there is no truth. Unlike the West, Russia avoids hypocrisy by dismissing all values at the outset. Putin stays in power by way of such strategic relativism: not by making his own country better but by making other countries look worse. Sometimes, that means acting to destabilize themfor instance, in Russias failed electoral intervention in Ukraine in 2014, its successful digital support of Brexit in the United Kingdom in 2016, and its successful digital support of Trump in 2016.

This philosophical system enables Putin to act but also to protect himself. Russians can be told that Ukraine is the center of the world and then that Syria is the center of the world and then again that Ukraine is the center of the world. They can be told that when their armed forces intervene in Ukraine or Syria, the other side starts killing its own people. They can be told one day that war with Ukraine is impossible and the next that war with Ukraine is inevitable, as happened in February. They can be told that Ukrainians are really Russians who want to be invaded and also Nazi satanists who must be exterminated. Putin cannot be backed into a corner. Because Russian power is equivalent to control over a closed media system, he can simply declare victory and change the subject. If Russia loses the war with Ukraine, he will just claim that he has won, and Russians will believe him or pretend to do so.

For such a regime to survive, the notion that democracy rests on the courage to tell the truth must be eliminated with violence if it cannot be laughed out of existence. Night after night, Kremlin propagandists explain on television that there cannot be a person such as Zelensky, a nation such as Ukraine, or a system such as democracy. Self-rule must be a joke; Ukraine must be a joke; Zelensky must be a joke. If not, the Kremlins whole story that Russia is superior because it accepts that nothing is true falls to pieces. If Ukrainians really can constitute a society and really can choose their leaders, then why shouldnt Russians do the same?

Zelensky at an event commemorating fallen Ukrainian soldiers, Lviv, August 2022

Russians must be deterred from such thoughts by arguments about Ukraine that are as repulsive as they are untrue. Russian war propaganda about Ukraine is deeply, aggressively, deliberately false, and that is its purpose: to make grotesque lying seem normal and to wear down the human capacity to make distinctions and check emotions. When Russia murders Ukrainian prisoners of war en masse and blames Ukraine, it is not really making a truth claim: it is just trying to draw Western journalists into reporting all sides equally so they will ignore the discoverable facts. The point is to make the whole war seem incomprehensible and dirty, thereby discouraging Western involvement. When Russian fascists call Ukrainians fascists, they are playing this game, and too many others join in. It is ridiculous to treat Zelensky as part of both a world Jewish conspiracy and a Nazi plot, but Russian propaganda routinely makes both claims. But the absurdity is the point.

Democracy and nationhood depend on the capacity of individuals to assess the world for themselves and take unexpected risks; their destruction depends on asserting grand falsehoods that are known to be such. Zelensky made this point in one of his evening addresses this March: that falsehood demands violence, not because violence can make falsehood true, but because it can kill or humiliate people who have the courage to speak truth to power. As the Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin has observed, to live inside a lie is to become the tool of someone else. To kill or die inside a lie is even worse, in that it enables a regime such as Russias to reconstitute itself. Killing for lies has generational consequences for Russia, even beyond the tens of thousands of dead and mutilated young citizens. An older Russian generation is forcing a younger one through a gauntlet, leaving the political terrain so slippery with blood that the young can never advance, and the old can hold their places until death. Ukraine is already governed by a generation that is accustomed to choosing its own leaders, an experience Russians have never had. In this sense, too, the war is generational. Its violence, in all its forms, is meant to eliminate the Ukrainian future. Russian state media has made Moscows genocidal aspiration plain, over and over again. In occupied territories, Russians execute male Ukrainian citizens or force them to go and die at the front. Russians rape Ukrainian women to prevent them from wishing to have children. The millions of Ukrainians forcibly deported to Russia, many of them women with young children or of child-bearing age, have to accept what they know to be false to avoid prison and torture. Less dramatic but still significant is Russias deliberate destruction of Ukrainian archives, libraries, universities, and publishing houses. The war is fought to control territory but also wombs and mindsin other words, the future.

Russia embodies fascism while claiming to fight it; Russians commit genocide while claiming to prevent it. This propaganda is not entirely ineffective: the fact that Moscow claims to be fighting Nazis does distract many observers from the fascism of Putins regime. And before North Americans and Europeans praise themselves for winning the battle of narratives, they should look to the global South. There, Putins story of the war prevails, even as Asians and Africans pay a horrible price for the war that he has chosen.

Putins propaganda machine, like the rest of his regime, is funded by revenue from oil and gas exports. The current Russian order, in other words, depends for its existence on a world that has not made the transition to sustainable energy. Russias war on Ukraine can be understood as a kind of preview of what uncontrolled climate change will look like: petulant wars waged by mendacious hydrocarbon oligarchs, racial violence instead of the pursuit of human survival via technology, shortages and famine in much of the world, and catastrophe in parts of the global South.

In Ukrainian history, political fiction accompanies political famine. In the early 1930s, when Stalin undertook what he called an internal colonization of the Soviet Union, much was expected of Ukraines fertile soil. And when his plan for rapid collectivization of agriculture failed, Stalin blamed a long list of ready scapegoats: first Ukrainian communists, then imaginary Ukrainian nationalists whom the communists supposedly served, then imaginary Polish agents whom the nationalists supposedly served. The Politburo, meanwhile, enforced requisitions and other punitive measures that ensured that about four million Ukrainians perished. Those abroad who tried to organize relief, including the Ukrainian feminist Milena Rudnytska, who happened to be of Jewish origin, were called Nazis. This list of fantasy enemies from 1933 is startlingly similar to Russias list today.

There is a larger historical pattern here, one in which the exploitation of the fruits of Ukrainian soil is justified by fantasies about the land and the people. In ancient times, the Greeks imagined monsters and miracles in the lands that are now Ukraine. During the Renaissance, as Polish nobles enserfed Ukrainian peasants, they invented for themselves a myth of racial superiority. After the Russian empire claimed Ukrainian territory from a partitioned Poland, its scholars invented a convenient story of how the two lands were one, a canard that Putin recycled in his essay last year. Putin has copied Stalins fantasiesand Hitlers, for that matter. Ukraine was the center of a Nazi hunger plan whereby Stalins collective farms were to be seized and used to feed Germany and other European territories, causing tens of millions of Soviet citizens to starve. As they fought for control of Ukrainian foodstuffs, Nazis portrayed Ukrainians as a simple colonial people who would be happy to be ruled by their superiors. This was also Putins view.

It appears that Putin has his own hunger plan. Ukraine is one of the most important exporters of agricultural goods in the world. But the Russian navy has blockaded Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea, Russian soldiers have set fire to Ukrainian fields, and Russian artillery has targeted grain silos and the rail infrastructure needed to get grain to the ports. Like Stalin in 1933, Putin has taken deliberate steps to risk the starvation of millions. Lebanon relies heavily on Ukrainian grain, as do Ethiopia, Yemen, and the fragile nations of the Sahel. Yet the spread of hunger is not simply a matter of Ukrainian food not reaching its normal markets. The anticipation of shortages drives up food prices everywhere. The Chinese can be expected to hoard food, driving prices higher still. The weakest and the poorest will suffer first. And that is the point. When those who have no voice die, those who rule by lethal spectacle choose the meaning of their deaths. And that is what Putin may do.

Whereas Stalin covered up the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s with propaganda, Putin is using hunger itself as propaganda. For months now, Russian propagandists have blamed a looming famine on Ukraine. The horror of telling such a lie to vulnerable African and Asian populations is easier to understand in light of the Putin regimes racist, colonial mindset. This is, after all, a regime that allowed an image of Obama fellating a banana to be projected onto the wall of the U.S. embassy in Moscow, and whose media declared the last year of the Obama administration the year of the monkey. Putin, like other white nationalists, is obsessed with demography and fears that his race will be outnumbered.

The war itself has followed a racial arithmetic. Some of the first Russian soldiers to be killed in battle were ethnic Asians from eastern Russia, and many of those who have died since were forcibly conscripted Ukrainians from the Donbas. Ukrainian women and children have been deported to Russia because they are seen as assimilable, people who can bolster the ranks of white Russians. To starve Africans and Asians, as Putin sees it, is a way to transfer the demographic stress to Europe by way of a wave of refugees fleeing hunger. The Russian bombing of Syrian civilians followed a similar logic.

Nothing in the hunger plan is hidden. At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2022, Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of the state-run network RT, said that all of our hope lies in famine. As the skilled propagandist understands, the point of starving Africans and Asians is to create a backdrop for propaganda. As they begin to die, Ukrainians will be scapegoated. This might or might not work. All past fantasies about Ukraine and its foodstuffs were at one time believed by influential people. Russian propaganda today has an edge in the global South. In much of Africa, Russia is a known quantity, whereas Ukraine is not. Few African leaders have publicly opposed Putins war, and some might be persuaded to parrot his talking points. Across the global South, it is not widely known that Ukraine is a leading exporter of foodnor that it is a poor country with a GDP per capita comparable to that of the countries it feeds, such as Egypt and Algeria.

There is some reason for hope. Ukrainians have been trying to communicate the reality of their position to people in the global South, so that they can speak the truth about Moscows hunger plan and thereby make it impossible. And as Ukraine has gained better weapons from the United States and Europe, Russias hold on the Black Sea has weakened. In July, Ukraine and Russia signed agreements with Turkey that should, in principle, allow some Ukrainian grain to leave the Black Sea and feed Africans and Asians. Yet the day after it signed the agreement, Russia fired missiles at the port of Odessa, from which Ukraine ships much of its grain. A few days after that, Russia killed Ukraines leading agribusinessman in a missile strike. The only sure way to feed the world is for Ukrainian soldiers to fight their way through the province of Kherson to the Black Sea and to victory.

Ukraine is fighting a war against a tyranny that is also a colonial power. Self-rule means not just defending the democratic principle of choosing ones own rulers but also respecting the equality of states. Russian leaders have been clear that they believe that only some states are sovereign, and that Ukraine is nothing more than a colony. A Ukrainian victory would defend Ukrainian sovereignty in particular and the principle of sovereignty in general. It would also improve the prospects of other post-colonial states. As the economist Amartya Sen has argued, imperial famines result from political choices about distribution, not shortages of food. If Ukraine wins, it will resume exporting foodstuffs to the global South. By removing a great risk of suffering and instability in the global South, a victorious Ukraine would preserve the possibility of global cooperation on shared problems such as climate change.

For Europe, it is also essential that Ukraine win and Russia lose. The European Union is a collection of post-imperial states: some of them former imperial metropoles, some of them post-imperial peripheries. Ukrainians understand that joining the European Union is the way to secure statehood from a vulnerable peripheral position. Victory for Ukraine will have to involve a prospect of EU membership. As many Russians understand, Russia must lose, and for similar reasons. The European states that today pride themselves on their traditions of law and tolerance only truly became democracies after losing their last imperial war. A Russia that is fighting an imperial war in Ukraine can never embrace the rule of law, and a Russia that controls Ukrainian territory will never allow free elections. A Russia that loses such a war, one in which Putinism is a negative legacy, has a chance. Despite what Russian propaganda claims, Moscow loses wars with some frequency, and every period of reform in modern Russian history has followed a military defeat.

Most urgently, a Ukrainian victory is needed to prevent further death and atrocity in Ukraine. But the outcome of the war matters throughout the world, not just in the physical realm of pain and hunger but also in the realm of values, where possible futures are enabled. Ukrainian resistance reminds us that democracy is about human risk and human principles, and a Ukrainian victory would give democracy a fresh wind. The Ukrainian trident, which adorns the uniforms of Ukrainians now at war, extends back through the countrys traditions into ancient history, providing references that can be used to rethink and revive democracy.

Athena and Poseidon can be brought together. Athena, after all, was the goddess not only of justice but of just war. Poseidon had in mind not only violence but commerce. Athenians chose Athena as their patron but then built a fountain for Poseidon in the Acropolison the very spot, legend has it, where his trident struck. A victory for Ukraine would vindicate and recombine these values: Athenas of deliberation and prosperity, Poseidons of decisiveness and trade. If Ukraine can win back its south, the sea-lanes that fed the ancient Greeks will be reopened, and the world will be enlightened by the Ukrainian example of risk-taking for self-rule. In the end, the olive tree will need the trident. Peace will only follow victory. The world might get an olive branch, but only if the Ukrainians can fight their way back to the sea.

Loading...Please enable JavaScript for this site to function properly.

Original post:

Ukraine Holds the Future: The War Between Democracy and Nihilism - Foreign Affairs Magazine

‘A bamboo toothbrush won’t save the planet’: Twiggy enlists cult cartoon Rick and Morty to sell green hydrogen – Crikey

Posted on by

Twiggy enlists cult cartoon Rick and Morty to sell green hydrogen Join us on socialNewslettersGet Access Code.

Enter your email address and Crikey will send a Verification Code

Enter the Verification Code sent to

to confirm your account.The Verification Code will expire in 1 hour.

Contact us on: support@crikey.com.au or call the hotline: +61 (03) 8623 9900.

We would absolutely love to know how much Andrew Forrest's Fortescue Future Industries paid for What The Green Energy, a new website spruiking green hydrogen featuring Rick and Morty.

In a combination of words that has no right to make any sense, mining billionaire Andrew Twiggy Forrest has enlisted the help of Rick and Morty to educate the public about green hydrogen. For those whove forgotten, Rick and Morty is a cult cartoon that the most irritating people imaginable made their entire personality for a few months in 2017. Fortescue Future Industries, the green energy wing of Twiggys Fortescue, has put together a website called What The Green Hydrogen, using the main characters to put forward the idea of renewables. Its, well, about as strange as it sounds, filtering the surreal, nihilistic aesthetic of the show through PR speak for example:

Before we join forces to save the planet, theres something you should know about us.

Were owned by a mining company. A really big one. Called Fortescue.

News done fearlessly. Join us today and save 50%.

It is one of the largest iron ore extractors in the world, and it is also a heavy carbon emitter.

But the planet isnt going to be saved by a bamboo toothbrush company. Its a little late for that. Our only hope is change on an industrial scale.

Predictably, the website tones down the horrific gore and relentless nihilism of the show although there is a fight scene involving a giant worm, with a great snapping head of interlocking cavernous maws, which gets decapitated (if 12-second marketing videos made by mining companies require spoiler alerts then spoiler alert, I guess). The sequence sums up the weirdness of the whole enterprise. Rick is just there, fighting a big worm in a mechanised suit, which someone has clearly had a lot of fun putting together. But aside from depicting a battle to save the planet, were not sure were making the connection to the rest of the campaign.

We would give anything to know how much the company paid for all this though we note that while theyve sprung for the image, they havent secured the voice talents of Justin Roiland (as far as we can tell), who voices both characters. We guess even Twiggy money has its limits.

The best way to support independent media is to become a member.

You can join us through our 50% off sale using promo code LETTERS. Or, if you have the means and want to help us even more (thank you!), you can take out a full price annual membership. It really makes a difference.

Peter FrayEditor-in-chief

Charlie Lewis

Tips and Murmurs Editor @theshufflediary

Charlie pens Crikey's daily Tips and Murmurs column and also writes on industrial relations, politics and culture. He previously worked across government and unions and was a researcher on RN's Daily Planet. He currently co-hosts Spin Cycle on Triple R radio.

Insert

" + _localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_title + "

" + _localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_text + "

Read more:

'A bamboo toothbrush won't save the planet': Twiggy enlists cult cartoon Rick and Morty to sell green hydrogen - Crikey

Nuke your city with this interactive map – Big Think

Posted on by

Rare color photo of the first nuclear explosion at Trinity Site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. Ever since, we have been living in the Atomic Age. (Credit: National Nuclear Security Administration / Public domain)

We tend to remember only the good things. That is why most 1980s nostalgia is rose-tinted. Rarely mentioned about that decade was the constant sense of dread, the ever-present knot in your stomach. Why? Because you knew that everything and everyone you knew could be over in a flash. So what, exactly, was the point of anything?

The nihilism of that age was nuclear-inspired. At the tail end of the Cold War, East and West pointed vast arsenals of atomic missiles at each other, powerful enough to destroy global civilization several times over.

Hanging over the world like an atomic Sword of Damocles was the military doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction MAD for short, and mad in essence. Its rather shaky foundation was that only a lunatic would start a nuclear war.

MAD had a few obvious flaws. What if one side made the rational calculation that the other side would not be fast enough to strike back? What if there was a system malfunction resulting in an accidental launch? Or a radar glitch falsely showing an attack? And what if a lunatic actually did seize power?

But then Boris Yeltsin climbed on a tank and the Soviet Union collapsed. With it, the nuclear nightmare vanished into thin air. Except that it didnt, really. Many happily confused the conclusion of the Cold War with the end of the Atomic Age. But that was wishful thinking. On July 16, 1945, when the first A-bomb went off in the New Mexico desert, humanity went nuclear, and we cant unring that bell.

We may not like to think about it, but the nuclear threat is here to stay. That became obvious after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Although as yet a conventional conflict, it has at least three atomic angles.

Subscribe for counterintuitive, surprising, and impactful stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday

First, there are Putins not-so-subtle hints that Russia may use nukes if the West gets too directly involved and/or the tide of war starts to turn against Moscow. Those threats may not be entirely credible, but nobody is in a hurry to find out. In other words, they have proved effective at limiting the shape and size of third-party responses to the war.

Second, there are the nuclear power stations on the front line being used as tactical chips in a high-stakes game of atomic poker. First Chernobyl, now Zaporizhzhia Europes largest such installation, reportedly used by Russians to store material and launch attacks, and which is regularly under fire (for which both sides hold the other responsible). A few days ago, according to Ukraines president Volodymyr Zelensky, a radiation accident was only narrowly avoided.

Finally, theres the sobering thought that this war might not have happened at all, had Ukraine not given up the nuclear stockpile it inherited from the Soviet Union. It did so in 1994, in return for security guarantees by the U.S., the UK, and Russia. Clearly, other countries now see what such guarantees are worth and may be considering going nuclear themselves as a precaution.

The worst solution to a seemingly intractable problem is to ignore it. A long, hard look is better at least the issue wont be trivialized, and perhaps there is hope behind the horror.

In that spirit, welcome to NUKEMAP. Using declassified info on the impact of various types of nuclear weapons, this web tool allows users to model a nuclear attack on a target of their choice. NUKEMAP was created in 2012 by Alex Wellerstein, a professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Professor Wellersteins particular field is the study of the history of nuclear weapons.

Talking to Newsweek, Professor Wellerstein said that NUKEMAP was meant to help people, himself included, understand the true impact of nuclear explosions: Some people think [nuclear bombs] destroy everything in the world all at once, some people think they are not very different from conventional bombs. The reality is somewhere in between.

He has described NUKEMAP as stomach-churning, but also as the most fun Ive had with Google Maps ever. Sounds a bit like your favorite rollercoaster ride, minus the long wait. Ready?

Go to NUKEMAP, pick a target location (the default is Lafayette Street in Manhattans Soho district), and then select your weapon of choice, with a variety of yields. The smallest is an unnamed North Korean weapon tested in 2006 (with a blast yield of a mere six tons that is, equivalent to six tons of TNT). You can also test the one that started it all, Little Boy (15 kilotons), which was dropped on Hiroshima, as well as the largest one, the Russian Tsar Bomba (100 megaton, but never used).

You can also pick whether youd like the bomb to explode in the air or on the ground and whether youd like to see the number of casualties and the fallout area (yes and yes, obviously). There are a bunch of more sophisticated settings, but by now your finger is itching to press DETONATE.

The effects are stomach-churning indeed: Large zones around ground zero are effectively vaporized. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions killed. Many more wounded.

Professor Wellersteins NUKEMAP has been around for more than a decade and has racked up more than 275 million detonations over that period. Unsurprisingly, there has been an uptick in visitor numbers since the start of the Ukraine War, with some days numbering more than 300,000 visitors.

But those visitors dont even see the worst effects of a potential nuclear war. Yes, they get a sense of the destruction and the casualties, but worse will come and were not even talking about radiation.

A recent study examining the climatic effects of nuclear war found that even a limited nuclear exchange say, an atomic war between India and Pakistan could send up enough soot into the atmosphere to reduce global calorie production by 50% and threaten more than two billion people with starvation. A worst-case scenario all out nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would result in a 90% drop for up to four years, which could result in global famine killing more than five billion.

That feeling youve got now: thats what I call proper 1980s nostalgia.

Strange Maps #1167

Got a strange map? Let me know at [emailprotected].

Follow Strange Maps on Twitter and Facebook.

Here is the original post:

Nuke your city with this interactive map - Big Think