Monthly Archives: February 2021

Photo: Fernando Ortiz

Sludge-caked guitars, brutally slow tempos and unsettling premonitions of imminent doom rule the day onThe Event backed with Abuse, the latest from Nashville experi-metalers My Wall. Out Friday via drummer Carlos Ortizs No Sabes label, the 45-RPM 12-inch follows Aprils longformMine, which consisted of five trudging, gnarly tracks inspired by Sunn O))) and the mighty Electric Wizard among other nihilist noise-mongers, splayed across 46 minutes.

My Wall serves up a smaller dose of doom this time around, yet sounds even more troubled and feral than before. I want people to hear it and say That was bleak and fucked up, Ortiz tells theScene.To mark the release, the trio will perform a virtual gig from The 5 Spot Friday at 8 p.m. Below, hear the new tracks and put in an order via Bandcamp, and check out my talk with Ortiz, bassist Vaughn Walters and guitarist-vocalist Frank Hand.

Where are each of you from?

Vaughn Walters, bass: West Virginia.

Carlos Ortiz, drums: South Nashville.

Frank Hand, vocals and guitar: Born in Birmingham, but went to high school here in Nashville.

How did you discover the type of music My Wall plays?

FH: I was really into grunge growing up Nirvana, Soundgarden, Melvins, all that Northwest stuff. Bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana, thered always be a song that was heavier than the others like the Pumpkins The Aeroplane Flies High, which is super heavy and slow basically a doom song. But when Id get on Pandora and type the titles of those songs in, it would just give me more 90s alternative stuff. No! I want wholebandslike thatThen, in college, I got turned onto Electric WizardsDopethroneand was like Whoa, OK,thisis what I was looking for.

VW: Give me something like Smashing Pumpkins, but more satanic. [laughs]

Is there a difference between doom and sludge, to you?

FH: I think doom is more broad, and sludge is generally dirtier closer to hardcore punk.

Carlos, you grew up here in Nashville. What was your musical upbringing like?

CO: My dad was always into rock music, 105.9 The Rock and stuff. The first shop I ever went to was Phonoluxe. Thirteen was when I really started getting into music that was heavier, faster, weirder collecting CDs and trying to learn every instrument I could. I just wanted to keep pushing my limits, my musicianship, as much as possible. But I didnt start taking drums seriously till way later, when I started my first band Negra and met Frank.

FH: I was in a band called Poodle when Carlos was in Negra. He and I were talking at a show and were like Where are all the doom bands in this town? We saw an opportunity, so we took it.

CO: I also had this band Magmar that was sort of an offshoot of Negra a bass-and-drums duo, Lightning Bolt-type thing. That was a different sort of heaviness, but my approach was the same letting as much out as I could, just at a different pace. With this band, I just want to be as aggressive and as heavy as I can, naturally.

How do you get yourself in the proper headspace to play music that is so intense?

FH: We all focus on mindfulness in our lives in some way.

VW: Where mindfulness meets nihilism.

FH: We all really like this type of music, [even] if some people find it depressing or whatever.

What do your families think? Too loud?

VW: Theres basically nobody who doesnt think its too loud. [laughs]

FH: Carlos mom got really concerned this one time while I was recording vocals in his shed.

CO: Yeah, she was grilling outside and he was going at it in there.

FH: It was one of these new ones, Abuse I think, and she thought something was really wrong, that someone was in real danger. She came in to check, and I could see it in her face. I had to talk her down in Spanish. Todo bien grabando. [Its OK, we were recording.]

Have you been happy with the response My Wall has received in Nashville up to now?

FH: From the people who give it a chance, yeah. Weve played a lot of shows at Bettys to four people. I love Bettys. Weve played there more than anywhere else, and really shaken that place.

Outside the band, whats some music thats helped get you through the last year?

VW: Sharon Van Ettens first record,Because I Was In Love.

CO: This label called Analog Africa, out of Hamburg, Germany. Theyve rediscoveredall this psychedelic cumbia, funk-soul stuff from Ghana and different sections of Africa. Sick label.

FH: I just picked up the Emma Swift record,Blonde on the Tracks. Listened to it earlier tonight and probably will again after this. Its perfect.

Read the original here:

My Wall: The Cream Interview - Nashville Scene

Is it true that it doesn't matter who wins, that our government has an agenda so firmly set in stone that it will tick on no matter which party is in power? (CBC)

This column is an opinion on the N.L. electionby William Ping, who lives in St. John's. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

When the Newfoundland and Labrador election wasannounced, I asked everyone I knew what were their main concerns for the upcoming race.

I heard a variety of responses;people were concerned with taxes or the vaccine rollout, or even the province's over-reliance on oil and gas. But the one sentiment I heard from everybody was, "It doesn't matter who wins, everything will be the same anyway."

I'll admit, I can feel that way too.

Would the turnover to a new regime create an impact we could actually feel? My first instinct would be to say "no," and then point toour national neighbours to the south and say, "Now that's where the results of an election matter."

Butsurely this must be wrongheaded, short-sighted thinking.

Is it true that it doesn't matter who wins, that our government has an agenda so firmly set in stone that it will tick on no matter which party is in power?

I think back to the election of Dwight Ball in 2015 and the calamitous fallout when the province's budget was announced in 2016. None of us can forget the protests following that budget, with angry public confrontations and posters ordering Ball's resignation taped to poles throughout the city.

While the blame fell squarely on the shoulders of Ball, then finance minister Cathy Bennett and the Liberal party, was there really anything else they could do?

The economy they inherited already had its drastic pitfalls and their onslaught of taxes was perhaps the only way out of it. That said, there was an unfair advantage given to Newfoundland's upper class: the Bay-geoisie, if you will.

But if Paul Davis and the PC Party had been re-elected in 2015, would it have not been his face on the posters when the eventual budget was announced?Would we have not blamed him for the same things?

And what of the epic boondoggle that is Muskrat Falls? The disastrous project remains to be the root of many problems in the province, and while the Danny Williams-led government can be made to blame, it must be noted that it is unlikely that this project would have unfolded exactly the same way under the leadership of another party.

After all, every premier since Frank Moores in 1972 had attempted to start a Lower Churchill project and none had succeeded until Williams. If another governing body had been the one to establish the project, perhaps things could have unfolded differently.

Conjecture like this is admittedly somewhat pointless. Not only is there little value in fixating on what could have been but also we must consider that sometimes defining moments during a premiership are not related to campaign promises or the issues we are thinking about on voting day.

Sometimes the lastingeffects of government are related to decisions and problems that none of us could have seen coming.

Certainly two years ago, none of us would've said, "I think Dwight Ball will handle the upcoming global pandemic well."

It is entirely possible that if the government were in someone else's hands that our response to the dangers of the novel coronavirus could have gone more poorly. The province's well-handled response to COVID, greatly aided by the isolation of our province formerly something that rarely worked in our favour can likely be just as credited to the efforts of Dr. Janice Fitzgerald and John Haggie, perhaps even more so thanBall.

The efficiently managed COVIDresponse is certainly one major boon for Furey and the Liberal party in this election, although the spectre of the Moya Greene report looms large over this election.

Even when defending the as-yet non-existent report, Furey makes its unknown nature sound scary, saying in turn that there is no "frightful" budget ahead and that there is "no bogeyman" hiding in the pages of Greene's report.

Of course, we have heard this song and dance before, when Ball was on the campaign trail promising no job cuts as well as future tax cuts. Furey's opposition leader,Ches Crosbie, is leaning on the "secret" nature of the report, with his campaign website alleging that the report contains plans to have "deep cuts" to services like "ferries and hospitals" while simultaneously alleging that the Liberals have "no plan."

While I agree with Crosbie's general suspicion of the Greene report, I think his attack lines fall flat, as we know them to be both contradictory and opportunistic. Crosbie's own suggested plans include tax cuts for big businesses like Loblaws, the same company that has already besmirched their local employees of an extra two dollars an hour. Indeed, it would appear that no matter which party wins, the Bay-geoisie will continue to profit.

So does the election matter? Would the candidates affect our lives if elected?

Despite the nihilism, of course the answer is yes, elections matter, and yes, different governing bodies will lead to different outcomes for the province.

While there would likely be no immediately felt change at the moment a regime changes, the change can be felt over time.

When Muskrat Falls comes online and power bills spike, we will have finally felt what it meant to have Williams as premier, albeit not until several years after he left office.What are we, the average citizens, to do about it?

Perhaps the way forward is for citizens to raise issues and push the candidates towardideas and goals that we desire.

Take for example, Furey's recent suggestion that school washrooms should provide tampons to whoever may need the product. This is a common-sense initiative, and although it does carry the potential to be divisive, when prodded on the matter Crosbie said he"probably" could support it. An underwhelming support of the issue, yes, but at the very least the issue is now part of the conversation.

It is up to the citizens to push and direct the conversations that the party leaders are having, and while our future seems to be one of precarity and hollow campaign promises, we must engage in democracy.

For despite all the campaign attack lines, there is one thing we know to be true: the province is in dire financial straits and big changes will have to be made. Changes that will likely please few.

No matter who winner is, the province loses.

Money, that is.

Indeed, that's all there ever is.

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador

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Does the election even matter? Here are my reasons to silence your inner nihilist - CBC.ca

The institutions are functioning. This phrase has been repeated, with or without a question mark, in the United States for over four years and, since the end of the military dictatorship, it has not been used as much in Brazil.

Its hard to believe the institutions are working when we wake up to news that a rogue QAnon spokesperson manages to hold the Republican leadership hostage in the House in Washington, and that a distraught extremist has won the leadership of the powerful Constitution and Justice Commission in Brasilia.

The functioning of the institutions does not depend solely on the independence of the three powers. In the American case, more than two centuries of unbroken constitutional rule have been crucial in stemming the lawless wickedness of Donald Trump. He had neither the time nor the competence to undermine the entire institutional apparatus of the federal government. But he has tried and achieved successes that will mark the legislature and the bench, in addition to Joe Bidens tenure.

The funeral ceremony at the Capitol Roundabout on Wednesday (3), when MPs and Senators paid tribute to policeman Brian Sicknick, murdered during Trumps invasion of the House, spoke of the contrast to the violence and chaos that reigned supreme in the same room. , January 6th. A sign that the institutions are functioning?

The presence of Republican leader Mitch McConnell at the roundabout does not eclipse the fact that he has spent the past two weeks maneuvering to obstruct the Senate committee scrutiny that Democrats have rightfully won at the polls. The nihilism of the party is still personified by the leadership of McConnell, who, despite hating Trump, decided the former president was a useful idiot.

The tenuous Democratic control of the Senate 50 seats plus Vice President Kamala Harris tie-breaker vote at a time when the Republican Party does not decide whether it wants to be the bunch of lunatics and renegades that instigated the Capitol breach , makes it more urgent. question: does the Senate work?

In the mythology of American exceptionalism, a clich coined in the 19th century describes the Senate as the greatest deliberative body in the world. No one demoralized this pride more than McConnell himself by declaring in 2010 that his only mission was to make Barack Obama president for one term.

The composition of the Senate is often criticized as a guarantee of minority power, a modern Republican electoral project since the years of Richard Nixon. Since every state, regardless of its population, has the same right to send two senators to Washington, the 50 Democratic senators today represent 41 million more Americans than the 50 Republican senators.

Tuesday (9) we will have another opportunity to ask ourselves whether the Senate serves American democracy or the power projects of its members. Unfortunately, there is no suspense in sight. It will be impossible to rally Republican voices to condemn Donald Trump in the second and unprecedented impeachment trial.

If in the first trial a year ago hypocrisy was barely disguised as absolving the presidents criminality, this time the senators who insisted Biden stole the election are more difficult.

How can a large deliberative body go unpunished for a president who launched the terrorist invasion, which barely claimed the lives of its members?

LINK PRESENT: Did you like this column? The subscriber can release five free accesses from any link per day. Just click on the blue F below.

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Trump's impunity is another sign of the degradation of the US Senate 02/03/2021 Lcia Guimares KSU | The Sentinel Newspaper - KSU | The Sentinel...

There was a lot to unpack in the deluge of news this week about GameStop, the stock market, Reddit groups, trading apps and hedge funds. If it all seemed like too much, we can't blame you for tuning out.While we don't know just how the so-called Reddit rebellion will change the future of investing, it's safe to say Wall Street will never be the same.Here are five key things you need to know about Wall Street's wild week.1. IT'S A DAVID VS GOLIATH STORYAt the heart of the GameStop saga is a struggle between two drastically different groups of investors: A band of amateur day traders versus a bunch of Wall Street pros known as short-sellers.The Davids, in this case, are the mostly young day traders who congregate on the Reddit page WallStreetBets aka the Reddit army, or the Reddit mob, depending on your point of view. "They have seen the rich get extremely rich by taking advantage of cheap money, and they want to get their piece as well," said Richard Fisher, the former president of the Dallas Federal Reserve.Their mission has two main goals: Drive up stock prices to score profits for themselves, and at the same time, force the establishment investors to abandon bearish bets against struggling companies such as GameStop, AMC, Macy's and several others.The Goliaths are mostly hedge funds who are shorting those stocks in other words, big-shot investors placing bets that those shares will crash. They are also the Wall Street elite upon whom millions of investors rely to make smart decisions to boost their portfolios. But working in an industry associated with the house-of-cards system that created the 2008 financial crisis, these giants are not exactly beloved. Posts on the WallStreetBets subreddit openly relish watching short-sellers lose billions of dollars.2. HOW THE GAMESTOP RALLY STARTEDThe WallStreetBets community, which now boasts some 5 million followers, has been around since 2012. Describing itself as if "4chan found a Bloomberg terminal," the forum's giddy nihilism, inscrutable language and acerbic memes have fueled a war on a perceived corrupted mainstream.The group noticed that GameStop, the struggling brick-and-mortar video game retailer, was heavily shorted by hedge funds. (The consensus on Wall Street seemed to be that GameStop would soon go the way of Blockbuster.)Reddit investors took a different view from the short-sellers, however, and began buying up shares of the company that they believed were undervalued.3. WHY IT BLEW UPAlthough it had been building for a while, the rally really took off on Monday, Jan. 11, when GameStop announced three new directors would join its board, including Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen. Investors liked Cohen brought digital experience to the table, something GameStop desperately needs, as video games go digital and malls continue their unrelenting slump into irrelevance.GameStop's stock rose a little less than 13% that day. But this wasn't a normal, momentary stock surge. Two days later, it rose 57%. Then 27%...and so on. The Reddit crowd also drove huge jumps in AMC, BlackBerry, Macy's and other stocks that were heavily shorted.As of Friday, GameStop's stock was up a jaw-dropping 1,587% since the beginning of January.For perspective: One year ago, a single share cost about $4. It's now about $150.The surge ultimately had little or nothing to do with GameStop's strength as a business. As investors following the Reddit group bought a ton of GameStop options, short-sellers were forced to buy shares to cover their losing bids thus boosting the share price even further. This is what's known as a short squeeze.Millions of people, including Elon Musk, chimed in.It quickly became "a populist uprising armed with no-fee brokerage accounts instead of pitchforks," as CNN's Christine Romans put it. And the only ones crying foul were the "sophisticated" Wall Street players."The irony is delicious," Romans writes. "An online flash mob beats Wall Street insiders at their own game." 4. THE ROBINHOOD BACKLASHOn Tuesday, GameStop was the most traded stock on the planet. Then Robinhood crashed the party.Thursday morning, citing extreme volatility, the free trading app favored by millions of amateur investors suspended trading of the red-hot Reddit darlings. That left the WSB crowd with just two options: hold or sell. Meanwhile institutional investors, who don't need Robinhood to execute trades, were able to carry on.GameStop shares lost more than 44% of their value on Thursday after surging nearly 40% at one point earlier in the day.The backlash was swift. Those who'd been minting money on their GameStop stock positions were, to put it mildly, furious. The consensus on social media seemed to be that Robinhood, which built its brand on "democratizing" investing, appeared to be caving to pressure from powerful institutions on Wall Street.Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the decision "unacceptable." One Reddit user swiftly filed a class-action lawsuit, claiming Robinhood rigged the market against its customers.Robinhood relented Thursday night, saying it would resume "limited" buys on the stocks the next day. It also tapped $1 billion in cash from its private investors, signaling it was short on cash.On Friday morning, the GameStop euphoria was back. The stock opened up roughly 100%.5. THE BUBBLE WILL BURST...EVENTUALLYThere's an argument to be made that GameStop was undervalued, but hardly anyone believes that GameStop, BlackBerry, Macy's, AMC or any of the other companies that the Reddit crowd is promoting have the fundamentals to support such sky-high prices. At some point, reality will set in.But that's the problem with bubbles get out too early, and you lose at a chance to cash out on top. So GameStop keeps surging ... until it doesn't."Someone is going to get hurt," said Fisher, the former Dallas Fed president. "As happens with crowd behavior, you end up having people come in at the end at a very high price and getting burned."The Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency that regulates Wall Street, said it will "closely review" actions by trading platforms to restrict transactions.

There was a lot to unpack in the deluge of news this week about GameStop, the stock market, Reddit groups, trading apps and hedge funds. If it all seemed like too much, we can't blame you for tuning out.

While we don't know just how the so-called Reddit rebellion will change the future of investing, it's safe to say Wall Street will never be the same.

Here are five key things you need to know about Wall Street's wild week.

At the heart of the GameStop saga is a struggle between two drastically different groups of investors: A band of amateur day traders versus a bunch of Wall Street pros known as short-sellers.

The Davids, in this case, are the mostly young day traders who congregate on the Reddit page WallStreetBets aka the Reddit army, or the Reddit mob, depending on your point of view. "They have seen the rich get extremely rich by taking advantage of cheap money, and they want to get their piece as well," said Richard Fisher, the former president of the Dallas Federal Reserve.

Their mission has two main goals: Drive up stock prices to score profits for themselves, and at the same time, force the establishment investors to abandon bearish bets against struggling companies such as GameStop, AMC, Macy's and several others.

The Goliaths are mostly hedge funds who are shorting those stocks in other words, big-shot investors placing bets that those shares will crash. They are also the Wall Street elite upon whom millions of investors rely to make smart decisions to boost their portfolios. But working in an industry associated with the house-of-cards system that created the 2008 financial crisis, these giants are not exactly beloved. Posts on the WallStreetBets subreddit openly relish watching short-sellers lose billions of dollars.

The WallStreetBets community, which now boasts some 5 million followers, has been around since 2012. Describing itself as if "4chan found a Bloomberg terminal," the forum's giddy nihilism, inscrutable language and acerbic memes have fueled a war on a perceived corrupted mainstream.

The group noticed that GameStop, the struggling brick-and-mortar video game retailer, was heavily shorted by hedge funds. (The consensus on Wall Street seemed to be that GameStop would soon go the way of Blockbuster.)

Reddit investors took a different view from the short-sellers, however, and began buying up shares of the company that they believed were undervalued.

Although it had been building for a while, the rally really took off on Monday, Jan. 11, when GameStop announced three new directors would join its board, including Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen. Investors liked Cohen brought digital experience to the table, something GameStop desperately needs, as video games go digital and malls continue their unrelenting slump into irrelevance.

GameStop's stock rose a little less than 13% that day. But this wasn't a normal, momentary stock surge. Two days later, it rose 57%. Then 27%...and so on. The Reddit crowd also drove huge jumps in AMC, BlackBerry, Macy's and other stocks that were heavily shorted.

As of Friday, GameStop's stock was up a jaw-dropping 1,587% since the beginning of January.

For perspective: One year ago, a single share cost about $4. It's now about $150.

The surge ultimately had little or nothing to do with GameStop's strength as a business. As investors following the Reddit group bought a ton of GameStop options, short-sellers were forced to buy shares to cover their losing bids thus boosting the share price even further. This is what's known as a short squeeze.

Millions of people, including Elon Musk, chimed in.

It quickly became "a populist uprising armed with no-fee brokerage accounts instead of pitchforks," as CNN's Christine Romans put it. And the only ones crying foul were the "sophisticated" Wall Street players.

"The irony is delicious," Romans writes. "An online flash mob beats Wall Street insiders at their own game."

On Tuesday, GameStop was the most traded stock on the planet. Then Robinhood crashed the party.

Thursday morning, citing extreme volatility, the free trading app favored by millions of amateur investors suspended trading of the red-hot Reddit darlings. That left the WSB crowd with just two options: hold or sell. Meanwhile institutional investors, who don't need Robinhood to execute trades, were able to carry on.

GameStop shares lost more than 44% of their value on Thursday after surging nearly 40% at one point earlier in the day.

The backlash was swift. Those who'd been minting money on their GameStop stock positions were, to put it mildly, furious. The consensus on social media seemed to be that Robinhood, which built its brand on "democratizing" investing, appeared to be caving to pressure from powerful institutions on Wall Street.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the decision "unacceptable." One Reddit user swiftly filed a class-action lawsuit, claiming Robinhood rigged the market against its customers.

Robinhood relented Thursday night, saying it would resume "limited" buys on the stocks the next day. It also tapped $1 billion in cash from its private investors, signaling it was short on cash.

On Friday morning, the GameStop euphoria was back. The stock opened up roughly 100%.

There's an argument to be made that GameStop was undervalued, but hardly anyone believes that GameStop, BlackBerry, Macy's, AMC or any of the other companies that the Reddit crowd is promoting have the fundamentals to support such sky-high prices. At some point, reality will set in.

But that's the problem with bubbles get out too early, and you lose at a chance to cash out on top. So GameStop keeps surging ... until it doesn't.

"Someone is going to get hurt," said Fisher, the former Dallas Fed president. "As happens with crowd behavior, you end up having people come in at the end at a very high price and getting burned."

The Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency that regulates Wall Street, said it will "closely review" actions by trading platforms to restrict transactions.

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Confused about this GameStop saga? Here are the 5 things you need to know - WAPT Jackson

Until a half century ago or so, there was a moral consensus, however fraying, that informed and shaped the exercise of freedom in the Western world. The self-determination of human beings, of citizens in self-governing political orders, presupposed a civilized inheritance that allowed free men and women to distinguish, without angst or arduous effort, between liberty and license, good and evil, honorable lives and dissolute and disgraceful ones. Few would have suggested that liberty and human dignity could long flourish without a sense of moral obligation and civic spirit on the part of proud, rights-bearing individuals.

Since this moral consensus could be readily presupposed, Americans (and other free peoples) could and did abridge the language of politics to give priority to rights over duties, choice over the content of what was chosen, and the pursuit of happiness over the pursuit of truth and virtue. But this was precisely an abridgement because the other half of the equation was always more or less presupposed. The American Founders, for example, were in no way moral relativists, let alone moral nihilists. Rejecting religious sectarianism and the forceable political imposition of religious truth, they nonetheless appealed to honor, civic virtue, and the honorable determination of a free people to govern themselves. Facile relativism or easygoing nihilism, where all values are created equal, would have appalled them. The idea that moral judgments are utterly arbitrary, that distinctions between right and wrong, and better and worse ways of life, are wholly subjective, was completely alien to them. Almost all of them spoke of a human moral sense without which freedom degenerates into moral anarchy and despotic self-assertion.

Unlike the French Revolutionaries, they did not repudiate Christianity or begin the world anew with some ideological Year Zero (neither 1776 nor 1787 became the first year in some new revolutionary calendar). The vast majority of the Founding generation remained religious believers and combined a belief in natural rights with deference to the natural moral law. For them, rights without duties were unthinkable, freedom without self-limitation unlivable. Such was the American consensus.

All the prominent Founders were fundamentally anti-utopian (even Tom Paine), and had, as Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out, an acute sense of human sinfulness and imperfection. They were not the Puritans or Calvinists of old, but neither did they endorse the materialism and reductionism of the radical Enlightenment or its misplaced belief in an ideology of Progress. They still believed that human beings had souls and were much more than matter in motion. They had no trouble rejecting both the theocratic temptation in politics and a relativism that severed the essential connections between truth and liberty, freedom and the pursuit of the good life. Moral subjectivism (Whos to say what is right and wrong?) was wholly alien to their hearts and minds, precisely because they were civilized men and women.

We now live in a different moral universe, and by no means a better one. Of course, inspired by Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and the early civil rights movement, we have made considerable progress in overcoming racial injustice, and the legacy of the great injustice that was chattel slavery. That is all to the good. But an emphasis on inclusiveness, however necessary and legitimate, does not define or exhaust the moral foundations of democracy. Today, even religious believers habitually speak of morality in terms of values, a term derived from economics which suggests that something is good because we value or choose it (its modern use was made famous by Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Weber). Whether people who use that language know that they have succumbed to what C.S. Lewis derided as the poison of subjectivism is largely beside the point. As Allan Bloom argued in The Closing of the American Mind over 30 years ago, the language of values, and the language of right and wrong, are by no means the same thing; they ultimately point in different directions. The latter partakes of confidence in the reality of moral facts, the former of thoroughgoing relativism and subjectivism. Language matters, and the language of values is, whether we like it or not, the language of moral relativism, even moral subversion. Of course, some thinkers of note use the language of values and disvalues while dissociating those terms from a framework of moral relativism. But there is peril in that path.

It is not just a question of nomenclature. There is a deep ambiguity inherent in the modern categories of self-determination and popular sovereignty themselves. I dont believe that the architects of our political order believed in human self-sovereignty in the strict sense. They did not endorse the truly radical and subversive idea that human beings should repudiate a Higher Power, a superintending principle of Justice or Goodness as Hamilton called it, above themselves. They were not political atheists and did not believe that men should aspire to be gods. This is the great divide that separates the Founders as prudent revolutionaries, in Ralph Lerners phrase, from the proto-totalitarianism already apparent in the Jacobin phase of the French Revolution (1792-1794). The Declaration of Independence invokes not only Natures God but also God as Creator, Providence, and Supreme Judge. It thus readily accommodates, and draws together, deists, theists, and believers in the biblical God, while fully tolerating skepticism or atheism as a private belief. The new order of the ages that our currency appeals to took for granted civilizational and moral continuity. Americas prudent revolutionaries were in that important sense conservative revolutionaries, too.

Let us return to the ambiguity to which I referred. Political emancipation, even the self-determination of a free people, quite logically gives rise to more radical claims about human beings governing themselves without any natural, metaphysical, or moral restraints getting in their way. Today, many people thinkers, theorists, and ordinary citizens alike speak breathlessly about human autonomy or even self-ownership of rights without duties, of freedom without any deference to the moral law or a natural order of things. Of course, Tocqueville already noted at the beginning of the second volume of Democracy in America that democratic men and women readily succumb to inertia, to vertigo or moral panic, when they are obliged to choose but have no star and compass to guide them but the imperative of choice itself. The result is either a debilitating passivity or a creeping conformity where distraught men and women take their bearings from the predictable uniformity of the crowd. Promethean declarations of independence, of radical self-sufficiency, give way to immersion in petty and paltry pleasures and a small-minded democratic conformity. But as the bitter experience of the twentieth century suggests, autonomy understood as the rejection of Nature and Natures God can also give rise to an inhuman totalitarianism, where political atheism wars with the natural order of things. That is the path of tyranny and terror.

There is, of course, a more noble and constrained view of autonomy and self-determination. Kant, the great moral philosopher of modernity, heralded obedience to the moral law, to the categorical imperative to treat every human being as an end, not as a means to our own purposes, as a defining trait of the morally serious person who governs himself. And if one reads his Metaphysics of Morals (1797), it is apparent from page one that Kant adhered to a demanding morality that required a good deal of self-command. But Kant, for all his philosophical profundity, fatally separated morality from any ground in nature. And so latter-day Kantians, academic philosophers and law professors, think respect for the dignity of human beings requires that we not only tolerate but esteem every life-style choice no matter how base, self-absorbed, self-destructive, vulgar, or ignoble. Autonomy has been divorced from self-command and self-respect. The new moral dispensation refuses to tolerate only those who still live up to the humanizing and civilizing requirements of the moral law. This convoluted use and abuse of autonomy is a powerful impetus behind political correctness and the soft totalitarianism that inspires the cancel culture. We are now authorized to cancel those who still believe in God and the moral law, who still believe in moral self-command. The old restraints, the old absolutes, are now seen as the enemy of human freedom.

Today, we still appeal to human rights, ever more expansive, ever more indiscriminate, ever more bereft of prudence while the old idiom of natural rights, which largely presupposed natural law or the natural moral sense, can barely be heard. How else could we arrive at the conclusion that biological nature can be dismissed at will and that human beings inhabit 73, or is it 153, different genders? This is the reductio ad absurdum, the farcical concluding stage, of the view that human beings create themselves and are beholden to no standards above, or outside, the human will. This is a recipe, as we see all around us, for both moral anarchy and political self-enslavement.

Self-government and autonomy, so understood, will remain forever incompatible. But there is a complication that we defenders of the American Founding are obliged to acknowledge. The ambiguity of which I have spoken has been retrospectively read back into the Founding documents themselves. The Founders were torn between the idiom of the state of nature, bequeathed by political philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and their own richer subordination to superintending principles of Goodness and Justice that transcend the will of men, or the founding of civil society. We all agree today that no man should be governed without his consent. But as Orestes Brownson had already pointed out in The American Republic, published in 1865, some locate this prohibition against despotic rule in the absolute autonomy of the individual, rather than in light of a more traditional understanding of what Tocqueville eloquently called liberty under God and the law. This is the ultimate root of the culture wars: whether liberty demands permissive egalitarianism, a life without law, or whether self-government is inseparable from rationally ascertainable moral and civic virtues. That is the great divide within the heart of liberalism, and liberal democracy more broadly.

We need to make explicit a moral-political-philosophical premise presupposed but not emphasized by our great forebears: Man is not God, independent, self-existing, and self-sufficing, as Brownson strikingly put it. In an age where toxic relativism and toxic moralism coexist and merge, we need to theorize, to emphasize, to stress, what our forebears could still largely take for granted. In contrast to their situation, the moral capital of Western civilization can no longer be taken for granted since it is depleting by the hour. Against the poison of subjectivism and its ugly twin, unthinking moralistic and egalitarian rage we must renew the Great Tradition with its reasonable confidence in self-rule and self-command. Our civic and civilizational renewal must be informed by moral facts and truths inherent in our nature and ultimately bequeathed to us by the divine source of our rights and obligations. Such is the great unspoken presupposition that gives life to the American civic tradition.

Excerpt from:

Op-Ed: Civic virtues as moral facts recovering the other half of our founding - The Center Square

The anti-reforms protest by farmers of Punjab, Haryana and some parts of western Uttar Pradesh, targeting the three laws enacted by Parliament to make agriculture more market-friendly and offer more remunerative choices to cultivators, has transmogrified into a #hashtag campaign on social media. This completes the by-now-familiar cycle of disruptive and insurrectionary dissent in the times we live in. There is nothing either amusing or asinine about this #hashtag campaign, especially after the violence on Republic Day when protesters ran riot at Red Fort.

In keeping with global trends, the #hashtag campaign is vicious and inflammatory. A hateful #hashtag, containing the word genocide, that was promoted and trended on social media platforms, bears out this point. With prominent foreign political and social media personalities, who are not known to have demonstrated any interest in or knowledge of Indian affairs in the past, wading in to bump up their numbers and grab eyeballs, the edge of the campaign has got sharper and more malicious, prompting a formal response from the Government of India.

In many ways, the evident disruptive anarchy in the guise of democratic dissent, which is not unique to India as recent events in the US and other countries would bear out, is reminiscent of the original Naxalite Movement and its subsequent avatars in various forms, spanning multiple shades of ideology and political impulses. The common thread binding them together has been the defiance of the Indian state and rejection of its constitutionally-mandated institutions.

Like the 2020s, the 1960s too were a decade of global turmoil. India was not untouched by the ferment. In 1967, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), born of a split in the Communist Party of India three years earlier, splintered with the Marxist-Leninist faction led by Charu Majumdar calling for an armed democratic revolutiona violent insurrection that would come to be known as the Naxalite Movement, named after remote Naxalbari in rural West Bengal, a place of which nobody had heard till then.

Majumdars aim was to ignite a prairie fire, fuelled by the Historic Eight Documents, encapsulating his Far Left extremist agenda of supplanting the Indian Republic with a revolutionary state. He was confident that the fire lit by him would sweep through Indias many villages and finally engulf the countrys too few towns and cities, and Robespierrean mimic men and women would seize power not through ballots but bullets.

The Peoples Daily, propaganda organ of the Communist Party of China, ran a lengthy editorial on July 5, 1967, extolling the virtues of the Naxalite Movement and exaggerating its power to bring down the Indian state. A peal of spring thunder has crashed over the land of India, it wrote, Our great leader, Chairman Mao, teaches us: The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution.

The China-inspired Naxalite revolution failed, and miserably so, as did its latter day Maoist reincarnation some three decades later. The road to world revolution, Lenin is believed to have said, lies through Peking, Shanghai and Calcutta. Much to the disappointment of the ultra-Left, the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) did not come marching in and the road to revolution stopped at Shanghai.

ALSO READ| Provocative Remarks on Farm Laws Are Part of A Larger Disinformation Campaign Against PM Modi Govt

But even in its failure the Naxalite Movement extracted a terrible price and left behind a dark legacy of anarchic extremism. Like an obstinately mutating virus, this extremism is persistent and its disruptive tactics continue to be invoked again and again, even as yesterdays revolutionary pamphlets have morphed into social media hashtags. Anarchy now rides along with dissent and protest. B.R. Ambedkar had warned the nascent Republic of India of the grammar of anarchy. That warning is coming true with disruptive regularity.

The Hashtag Naxal (#Naxal) is not necessarily a dyed-in-the-wool revolutionary motivated by Mao and the Marxist-Leninist ideology he espoused. But, like the pamphleteering Naxals of the 1960s, todays #Naxal is both a disruptor and an instigator of violence in varying forms, deftly exploiting the faultlines of democracy and of an incredibly diverse populace. The nihilism lives on like a stubborn cancer, seemingly incurable and un-excisable.

For Naxals of the age of ferment the state was the enemy and its organsthe Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciarywere to be mocked and ridiculed, the elected were to be replaced by the proletariat, and the comprador bourgeoisie were to be put against the wall. The #Naxal of the social media era remarkably thinks similarly and rejects the constitutional mandate to Government, Parliament and Judiciary, even as it seeks the privilege of constitutional rights. If in the times of Maos Little Red Book power flew from the barrel of a gun, it now flows from tweets with hashtags.

Yesterdays comprador bourgeoisie is todays corporate sector, to be reviled and despised by the #Naxal who may have nothing to show by way of any alternative offering that may have worked in a pluralistic society. In the 1960s, India was on the verge of being defeated by poverty, hunger and disease, desperately struggling to stay afloat. In 2021, its an entirely different India. It could be argued that the faultlines of democracy remain and divisions in society are real, but that would be true for all democracies. Yet they become the reason for debunking Parliament and diminishing Judiciary, as has been attempted, for instance, by successive agitations of recent years.

The disruptive anarchy we are witnessing stands in sharp contrast to the realities of India today where the Government with no external support has rolled out the worlds largest Covid-19 vaccination programme with a Made in India vaccine produced by an Indian enterprise and businesses. In the early-1970s, during another pandemic, it was abjectly dependent on the WHO for smallpox vaccine. Indian technology now sustains space science and indigenous drones. Indian fighter planes are set to add heft to Indias defence capabilities. India produces and procures more food than the country can consume. Indias growing entrepreneurial class creates millions of jobs and generates wealth for the humblest of homes.

The list is long, the comparisons well-known. That said, it is nobodys case that things must not be better, and that missteps and failings are not part of the national story. It is also no ones case that governance deficits are not aplenty. The answer, however, does not lie in weaponising either mass mobilisation in the streets or #hashtag mobilisations on social media platforms. Disinformation, irrespective of which corner it emerges from, is truly a curse in our otherwise exciting times.

The #Naxal is both unmindful of these realities and, as some would argue, willing to play the game of those who would want to see India halted in its tracks, weighed down by losses inflicted by anarchy that uses the Constitution as its shield. Make no mistake, this anarchy comes with a steep priceto be paid, ultimately, by the people. In the last three months the damage to strategic infrastructure has been incalculable, the losses of a single large Walmart store are reported to have crossed $8 million, and it will take months to calculate the losses on account of disruption of highway traffic.

ALSO READ| As PM Modi Unleashes Wave of Reforms, He is Going to Face Even More Resistance

Constitutional rights are now interpreted as a belligerent privilege to pollute the air the masses breatheor, rather choke onand the right to prevent the installation of smart electricity meters so as not to be deprived of the licence to consume power without paying for it. The entitlement stretches to disrupting Republic Day celebrationssomething never done beforeand bunkering down regardless of the consequent misery inflicted on millions of people. It was mind-numbing to see tweets by political actors urging their digital comrades to destroy economic infrastructure. It was frightening to note that there was complicity in most quarters in the acceptance of such #Naxal behaviour.

The 1960s Peoples Daily is todays Global Times which gleefully eggs on the #Naxal anarchy: Failing to tame the pandemic and maintain economic growth, the Modi Government is cornered now. Domestic dissatisfaction is surging. Its reported that thousands of farmers from several Indian states have been camping on the outskirts of New Delhi for weeks, rattling the administration China senses another Spring Thunder moment.

It is silly to recall, as is the flavour of this silly season, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhis satyagraha and compare the insurrections of our times with the Mahatmas protests, thus seeking to legitimise anarchy. Gandhi used Truth as a weapon in his many protests to bring down a colonial, unelected, unrepresentative Government whose sovereign head was the British Crown. What we are witnessing now is an insidious attempt to change the outcome produced through ballots by unleashing unrest on the streets through tweets that trend #hashtags.

Nihilism still rules. But ballots must prevail.

Disclaimer:Kanchan Gupta is a senior journalist and political analyst. Views are personal.

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Farmers Protest and #Hashtag Anarchy as Dissent in the Age of Social Media - News18

Welcome to Horrorscope, a monthly column keeping horror nerds and initiates up to date on all the genre content coming to and leaving from your favorite streaming services. Heres a guide to all the essential horror streaming in February 2021.

Smell that? Love is in the air. A loveof horror, that is!

Valentines Day may fall in February, but dont let the cheap chocolates and the gradually increasing daylight fool you: this months as spooky as the rest of em! After all, what could be more romantic than pledging your undying love for horror films? Passive entertainment remains a challenge as the world continues to burn (thanks, ongoing global pandemic!). So, if you can, give yourself and the genre a little love this month.

Speaking of which: February comes bearing blood-soaked gifts, from hotly anticipated new releases to old bangers waiting to be re-discovered. Weve got a body-swapping sophomore flick from Brandon Cronenberg, a nihilistic family haunting, an underrated British counterculture gem, and the best Dracula dance film ever made.

Be sure to peruse the complete list below, calendar in hand, for a full picture of what horror flicks are coming and going from your favorite streaming services this February.

Synopsis: Theres losing yourself in your work, and then theres this. Tasya Vos is an elite assassin; a corporate mercenary who commandeers the minds and bodies of unsuspecting victims to fulfill her deadly contracts. But when her latest assignment gets the better of her, Vos finds herself trapped in the mind of a hostile target that would see her destroyed.

Possessor makes good on the often unfulfilled promise of its peers. For a change, the gore actually lives up to the hype! The films two nightmares are devilishly compatible: an intrusive sense of dissociation coupled with a corpulent knockdown of chipped teeth and mangled flesh. While ultimately Possessor amounts to more of a concept than a narrative, its visceral gait is more than enough to get under your skin. The loss of bodily autonomy, a simultaneous crunch of bone and self, is more compelling than half of the lesser fare in Possessors elevated weight class.

Brandon Cronenbergs second film deftly quells any residual handwaving leftover from his wanting debut. There can be no doubt: he is a tremendous talent well worth watching. As Vos, Andrea Riseborough is as fantastic as weve come to expect; a cool killer who finds herself in the throes of an identity crisis at work and at home. Christopher Abbott has been fantastic for a long time (especially in 2018s Piercing), and I hope more directors follow Cronenbergs lead and give the man more starring roles. All told: Possessor is not above being genuinely queasy and disgusting. And I respect that.

Arrives on Hulu on February 1st.

Synopsis: In an otherwise peaceful English village, spoiled brat Tom Latham chooses to raise hell with his occult motorcycle gang. Sure enough, the goth apple doesnt fall far from the tree. Toms black-magic dabbling mother just so happens to know the secret to immortality. So, how do you cheat death? Frog magic and just plain deciding not to die, of course! Thrilled at the prospect of being an eternal public nuisance, Tom giddily sails off a bridge, only to burst out of his grave with a vengeance. Soon enough the gangs name, The Living Dead, takes on a more literal meaning.

Released as The Death Wheelers in the US, the 1973 film Psychomania is a bonkers example of a larger aesthetic shift in early 1970s British horror from the gothic chills to modern thrills. Of the bunch, Psychomania is perhaps the weirdest example of an attempt to cash in on the youth market. The kids love nothing more than pagan frog cults, zombies, and motorcycle culture. Right?

Psychomania was directed by Australian-born Hammer Films veteran Don Sharp (The Kiss of the Vampire), and he brings much of the black humor and efficient pacing that defined his marvelous work throughout the 1960s. Ted Moore, who shot seven of the James Bond films, contributes his professional touch. And the legendary John Camerons pre-synth score is as haunting as it is underrated.

Beryl Reid (Dr. Phibes Rises Again) and George Sanders (Village of the Damned) co-star as Toms Satan-worshiping mother and her spooky butler, respectively. All this amounts to a wonderfully offbeat gem with eccentricities to spare. There is no better film about a frog-worshiping, motorcycle death cult.

Arrives on Shudder on February 22nd.

Synopsis: In the late 19th century, a mysterious foreigner, Count Dracula, arrives in London. The unsuspecting socialite Lucy invites the stranger into her home. Her mistake proves fatal, and Dracula bites Lucy, who succumbs to the Counts curse. Her fianc entrusts her care to Dr. Van Helsing, who confidently diagnoses the vampiric source of her affliction. When Lucy dies under mysterious circumstances, Van Helsing and literatures preeminent himbo, Jonathon Harker, are on the case!

Look, Im Canadian. And there is nothing more Canadian than the government producing a silent-era-styled performance of the Royal Winnipeg Ballets adaption of Bram Stokers Dracula directed by our nations greatest weirdo, Guy Maddin. If this isnt already a Heritage Minute, it should be.

Dracula: Pages From a Virgins Diary is, as The New York Times astutely remarks, simultaneously beautiful and goofy. A fine line to walk, no doubt, but one which Maddin frequently, and graciously, skips across with ease. Here, Maddins reputation for stylish anachronism is on full display, with Dracula mimicking many of the aesthetic traditions and special visual effects of the era.

Amidst its delirious stylish flares, the film is impressively loyal to Stokers text, making it one of Maddins most accessible films. And yet, Maddins pointedly postmodern touch is undeniable. Notably, in casting Chinese-Canadian Zhang Wei-Qiang as the titular Count, Maddins Dracula underlines the xenophobic themes of Stokers text in ways past and future films have yet to match.

Think youre well-versed with the Dracula corpus? I implore you: this wildly sexy Canadian silent-era pastiche dance film is the Dracula film.

Arriving on The Criterion Channel on February 28th.

Synopsis: Drawn to their rural childhood home, a sister and brother visit their dying, bed-ridden father. Isolated on their secluded goat farm, the siblings grow increasingly paranoid and suspicious that something evil is targetting their family. After a horrific tragedy confirms their unease, the siblings are forced to confront their grief and lack of faith as the increasingly hostile presence strengthens its chokehold on their lives.

The Dark and the Wicked is a rare 2020 release in that it is a film that was released in 2020. What a concept. For a decidedly dark year, the film is, well, fittingly dark. There are enough jump scares to satisfy the contingent of genre ghouls who get off on a good jolt. But The Dark and the Wicked hits hardest when it leans into ambiguity and its admirably unrelentingly bleak atmosphere.

The film sits comfortably on the same shelf as other modern psychological family affairs like The Babadook and Mama. Though, if you take issue with the increasingly popular trauma-as-horror trend, your mileage may vary. But if youre a fan of nihilism (like our own Rob Hunter, who christened the film as one of the years best horror offerings), The Dark and the Wicked may just be worth a peek.

Arrives on Shudder on February 25th.

More here:

All the Horror You Need to Stream in February 2021 - Film School Rejects

The February 4announcement by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that President Biden would end U.S. support for offensive operations in Yemen was understandably met with celebration by those opposed to the war. Almost six years of the U.S.-SaudiU.A.E. war on Yemen have left the country devastated by humanitarian disaster and famine. Anti-war activists have spent these yearsfirst during the Obama-Biden administration, then the Trump-Pence administration, and now the Biden-Harris administrationagitating to end U.S. participation in the onslaught. It has been an organizing effort that often seemed like shouting into the wind, as the bombings of hospitals, factories and weddings piled up. The countless people who have been toiling in obscurity to end this war, and the people in Yemen who have joined in this effort even while surrounded by hardship and death, certainly deserve praise and gratitude for Thursdaysannouncement.

But Bidens foreign policy speech, delivered just hours after Sullivans teaser, unfortunately underscored that we must not celebrate the end of the war until we verify that it has actually, materially ended. That is because Bidens remarks leave just enough room for the president to gesture toward ending the war without actually halting all U.S. participation init.

Biden first noted that USAID will reach Yemeni civilians who have suffered unendurable devastation (the Trump administration suspended aid to much of Yemen in 2020) and declared this war has to end. He then added, We are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen including relevant arms sales. But the president continued, At the same time, Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks and UAV strikes and other threats from Iranian supplied forces in multiple countries. We are going to continue to help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and itspeople.

Unfortunately, qualifiers like offensive and relevant do not signal aclear commitment to ending all forms of support for the U.S. war in Yemen, which includes targeting assistance, weapons sales (the U.S. is the largest supplier of arms to Saudi Arabia), logistics, training, and intelligence sharing with the Saudi-led coalition. Labeling Yemens Houthis as Iranian supplied forces, and making acommitment to defending Saudi Arabias sovereignty, echoes President Obamas initial pretense for entering the war on Yemen in 2015. The White House statement that signaled Obamas illegal entry declared, In response to the deteriorating security situation, Saudi Arabia, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, and others will undertake military action to defend Saudi Arabias border and to protect Yemens legitimate government. In other words, from the outset, this onslaught was framed by the U.S. asdefensive.

Importantly, Sullivan noted that ending the war in Yemen does not extend to actions against AQAP, or Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. While sanctioned by the AUMF, its important to oppose this parallel U.S.-led war in Yemen that has also led to the killing ofcivilians.

Now, more than ever, it is vital to hold afirm line about what areal end to U.S. participation in the Yemen war means: an end to all U.S. assistance, including intelligence sharing, logistical help, training, providing spare parts transfers for warplanes, bomb targeting, weapons sales and support for the naval blockade (we still dont know the full extent of U.S. support for the latter). It also requires that the United States immediately reverse the Trump administrations designation of the Houthis as aForeign Terrorist Organization (FTO), adetermination that is cutting off critical aid to northern Yemen and significantly escalating the crisis of massstarvation.

Because these things have not yet come to pass, it is critical to keep up the pressure until the war is really ended. As much as we might welcome positive messagingno doubt aresult of the pressure exerted by dogged organizerswe must not rest until we have won actual materialrelief.

This is not to sow nihilism: It is significant that President Biden, whose own Obama-Biden administration first initiated U.S. involvement in the war, feels that he has to answer to anti-war activists. Aglobal day of action to end the war on January 25 saw people mobilize from streets to online forums demanding an immediate halt to the war, reflecting the growing power of an international movement to end theonslaught.

And the Biden administration has taken some steps. In the 24hours before leaving office, Trumps final act of war on Yemeni civilians involved signing a $23 billion arms sale to the U.A.E., in addition to the designation of the Houthis as an FTO. Two days after taking office, Bidens State Department launched areview of the FTO designation, citing deep concern about the designation that was made is that at least on its surface it seems to achieve nothing particularly practical in advancing the efforts against the Houthis and to bring them back to the negotiating table, while making it even more difficult than it already is to provide humanitarian assistance to people who desperately need it. And one week after taking office, Biden temporarily froze the sale of F35s included in the Trump deal, as well as precision-guided munitions destined for SaudiArabia.

But these temporary halts and reviews have not yet had any tangible effects, as the FTO has not been reversed and arms sales to Saudi Arabia and U.A.E. have not been cancelled. Indeed, acelebrated Wall Street Journal report from January 27 about the Biden administration pausing arm sales to Saudi Arabia subtly noted in paragraph three that the pause isnt unusual for anew administration and many of the [arms] transactions are likely to ultimately go forward. Still, these steps could indicate awillingness by the Biden administration to end U.S. involvement in the war onYemen.

But rhetoric and positive signals are not enough. We need amaterial end to all U.S. assistance now, before one more Yemeni dies, and we need to verify that this assistance has ended before we declare victory. The Trump administration claimed, at various points, that it was working toward the end of the war via a political solution. Of course, the Trump administration horrifically escalated the warrhetoric to the contrary did not shield Yemenis from U.S.-manufactured bombs, or the assault on the port city ofHodeidah.

Rep. Ro Khanna (DCalif.), in his January 25 address at the World Says No to War on Yemen Global Online Rally, noted his commitment to ending the war in Yemen by re-introducing the War Powers Resolution that Trump previously vetoed. Senator Sanders and Iwill be advocating and introducing again aWar Powers Resolution to stop any logistical supportany intelligence support, any military support to the Saudis in their campaign in Yemen, he said. Passing another War Powers resolution with these provisions would provide additional and significant pressure on the Bidenadministration.

The Obama-Biden administration made numerous announcements in 2012 and 2013 that it would end the U.S. war in Afghanistan by 2014. But we saw that declarations do not, in themselves, signify that the job is done, especially ones loaded with red-flag-raising qualifiers like offensive operations and relevant weapons systems. We should know in amatter of weeks what the details of Bidens plans for Yemen are. The job in the meantime is to maintain pressure, to ensure the Biden administration brings about areal end to the war that the president helped startand says he wants to bring to aclose.

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Biden Says He's Ending the Yemen WarBut It's Too Soon to Celebrate - In These Times