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Nicolle Wallace presses House Democrat on President Biden’s debate performance
Off the botox, you're looking too much like the lizardman some
nutjobs say you are. Just grow old gracefully, Joe. Au naturale
Nicolle Wallace presses House Democrat on President Biden’s debate performance
Jon Stewart's Debate Analysis: Trump's Blatant Lies and Biden's Senior Moments | The Daily Show
Jon Stewart's Debate Analysis: Trump's Blatant Lies and Biden's Senior Moments | The Daily Show
Why would Trump agree to another debate. Oh, ego and the expectation of another bowl of nicecream? Maybe.
Lime Time, Good riddance. Oh, before you go could you give us a link to just one of the iHub boards you mention here
"There are other political discussion boards and much more active than
this one anymore that everyone goes to for a fun and active discussion."
A listless untruth from you on your way out is fitting. And one last for now:
Do America, yourself and your family a favor - do try to be better.
And when you are we'll look forward to another visit from a more honest, more positive you.
Lime Time, you want close minded, Trump says he won in 2020 and that he didn't call dead military men suckers and losers. The close mindedness of a goddamn cult that has nothing but projection as insult for those as we who see you for what you are. Outside your first sentence, there is not one ounce of truth in your,
"I wouldn't try to reason with these people here. They are the most closed minded individuals on the planet. They refuse to look at both sides to a topic. It's only one sided. There is no reason or logic allowed here. If you do, they sensor you and ban you from this board"
not one. You are obviously a liar, as is your enemy of America, cheating conman, abuser of women, cult shit-face ex-president.
And what of positive value have you contributed here. Nada.
Just know, lies from you as you put there will no longer be tolerated if repeated in any way shape or form by you.
Not one has ever been banned from this board for lack of reason or logic.
A number have been banned for repetition of crass, immature untrue insult as you posted there.
Vibrant Indonesian group. VOICE OF BACEPROT
Official Website
Young, Indonesian, hijab-wearing, female metal trio Voice Of Baceprot (VOB) firstly garnered prestigious global media attention when the video of the band, playing their own song "The Enemy Of Earth Is You" both in studio and local stages in Garut stormed the internet in 2017 when they were still in vocational school. Later in that year, the song have been played with a full orchestra (Erwin Gutawa Orchestra) in front of the audience in the capital city of Jakarta.
Consisting of Marsya (vocals and guitar), Widi (bass), and Siti (drums), the trio first met when they were still in Islamic Junior High School (Madrasah Tsanawiyah) students in their hometown of Singajaya, a small village two hours’ drive away from the city of Garut, West Java.
Their teacher Cep Ersa Ekasusila Satia (aka Abah Erza) who introduced & taught them musical instruments was also the one behind the name "Voice of Baceprot".
The word “Baceprot” comes from the Sundanese language meaning “Noisy”. It was chosen to represent the type of music that they play.
Since their formation, VOB have become a point of discussion for a host of renowned global media, including The New York Times, NPR, BBC, DW, Reuters and The Guardian, featuring them in the pages of their online publication. VOB were recently named by heavy metal and rock magazine Metal Hammer as “the Metal Band the World Needs Right Now”.
https://voiceofbaceprot.com/
Powerful video, yours repeat:
Israeli Intelligence Misses Again
"Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago
"Inside Israel’s war
"Witnesses of Aid Convoy Violence Describe Shooting, Panic and Desperation"""
Related:
""Once again it was proved that this isn’t how it is. A few hundred armed Palestinians breached the barrier and invaded Israel in a way no Israeli imagined was possible. A few hundred people proved that it’s impossible to imprison 2 million people forever without paying a cruel price. "
----------------
"On Saturday they were already talking about wiping out entire neighborhoods in Gaza, about occupying the Strip and punishing Gaza “as it has never been punished before.” But Israel hasn’t stopped punishing Gaza since 1948, not for a moment.""
---------------------------------------
Israelis Made to Suffer the Cruel Price for Oppression of Palestinians in Gaza
The threats of "flattening Gaza" prove only one thing: We haven’t learned a thing. The arrogance is here to stay, even though Israel is paying a high price once again.
Gideon Levy
Oct 10, 2023
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174391652
Emily Harding
Thursday, June 27, 2024, 1:49 PM
Revelations of Unit 8200’s failure to warn about the Oct. 7 attacks suggests that the Israeli intelligence apparatus is far weaker than its reputation.
Dr. Avishai Teicher (Pikiwiki Israel, CC BY 2.5 , https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PikiWiki_Israel_40574_IDF_headquarters_in_Tel_Aviv.JPG )
Emily Harding @EHarding_DC
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings
Last week, Israeli news outlets reported shocking revelations .. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-18/ty-article/report-new-evidence-reveals-idf-had-detailed-prior-knowledge-of-hamas-plan-to-raid-israel/00000190-2afb-d2de-af9e-6ffbdf700000 .. that once again called into question the elite reputation of Israel’s intelligence services. According to the report, weeks before the Oct. 7 attacks, the Israel Defense Force’s (IDF’s) premier signals intelligence group, Unit 8200, collected detailed information about Hamas training to invade Israel and take up to 250 hostages. Yet they failed to warn Israeli officials effectively. This failure puts them in company with several other units who also collected indications of an impending attack and suggests the Israeli intelligence apparatus is far weaker than its reputation.
For an intelligence officer, providing strategic warning is the most important no-fail mission. It happens in two parts: First, a service must collect information that a plot is afoot. Second, analysts must recognize the “so what” of the information, interpret its severity correctly, and then package that information to adequately convey alarm. “Adequately” is a tricky word—analysts do not want to be hyperbolic, lest they become the intel service that cried wolf. Conversely, when the threat is real, analysts need to speak clearly, persistently, and bluntly—even when others disagree.
The Pieces
In this case, it seems Israeli intelligence had accomplished the first task: They had collected key pieces of information .. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-18/ty-article/report-new-evidence-reveals-idf-had-detailed-prior-knowledge-of-hamas-plan-to-raid-israel/00000190-2afb-d2de-af9e-6ffbdf700000 , and at least some analysts had identified the activity as a threat. Unit 8200 observed a Hamas training exercise that contained all the elements of Oct. 7. The unit’s report, titled “Detailed End-to-End Raid Training,” describes Hamas conducting drills simulating infiltration .. https://www.haaretz.com/haaretz-explains/2023-10-17/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-first-hours-of-the-israel-hamas-war-what-actually-took-place/0000018b-38bc-d0ac-a39f-b9be58df0000 .. of a mock IDF outpost, including taking over on-base synagogues, communications headquarters, and soldiers’ quarters. The report contained warnings that Hamas was targeting kibbutzim .. https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-806754 .. and planned to take 200-250 hostages, alarmingly close to the 251 actually taken on Oct. 7.
The second piece—effectively communicating the threat—seems to be where things fell apart. Junior intelligence officials in Unit 8200 claim to have flagged the report for senior officers but say they were ignored .. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-18/ty-article/report-new-evidence-reveals-idf-had-detailed-prior-knowledge-of-hamas-plan-to-raid-israel/00000190-2afb-d2de-af9e-6ffbdf700000 .
Seniors not taking juniors seriously was far from an isolated issue. Several other stories have emerged of junior people flagging worrying occurrences but being largely ignored at higher levels. For example, Israeli surveillance soldiers serving on the Gaza border said they had raised concerns .. https://www.timesofisrael.com/weeks-before-oct-7-idf-said-to-have-been-warned-of-hamas-plan-to-take-250-hostages/ .. about suspicious activity but were ignored. In July 2023, a young, female noncommissioned officer “provided a warning .. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-27/ty-article/.premium/chilling-warnings-picked-up-by-israeli-intelligence-months-before-october-7-massacre/0000018c-1261-dd2e-a5ae-d36ba6240000.. to her commanders that Hamas intended to carry out a massacre in the Gaza border communities.” Over six months, she wrote three warnings to her superiors about Hamas training exercises simulating raids on civilians and military targets. Separately, over the course of the year before Oct. 7, a group of female observers reported suspicious activity .. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-20/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-women-soldiers-who-warned-of-a-pending-hamas-attack-and-were-ignored/0000018b-ed76-d4f0-affb-eff740150000 .. to their superiors about Hamas activity near the fence—including efforts to knock out security cameras; use drones, vans, and motorcycles; as well as practice shelling tanks.
Sources within the IDF give a slightly different version of events that highlights a dark truth little discussed outside the world of intelligence: just how much responsibility rests with junior people. Kan News reported that Unit 8200 “failed to draw clear conclusions .. https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-806818 ,” according to IDF sources, and did not distribute the document to “the highest-ranking officials.” On Oct. 1 ..https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-798692 , a junior intelligence officer in the Gaza Division discovered the document and recognized its significance, but did not escalate it to seniors, discussing it with more junior people instead. It is the job of senior intelligence officials to mind the big picture and use their years of experience to put warnings in context. They are meant to know when a threat looks serious, or more serious than others that were safely ignored. But senior officials are human, busy and biased as all humans are. It often falls to junior officers to make them listen.
The Hubris
A thorough investigation is needed to determine what senior intelligence officials knew and when they knew it, but sufficient evidence suggests an anchoring bias led to the failure on Oct. 7. In other words, leaders did not take warnings seriously because they did not see the threat as real. Seniors interpreted signs of Hamas training as demonstrations of intent but not capability. As with so many intelligence failures, those to blame are fighting over the adequacy of warnings. Government and military leaders are contending that they did not receive warnings of an “imminent planned invasion .. https://www.timesofisrael.com/weeks-before-oct-7-idf-said-to-have-been-warned-of-hamas-plan-to-take-250-hostages/ .” This standard is impossibly high for any intelligence service, even one as determined as Israel’s.
Further, military officials in particular seem to have leaned heavily on technology and the strength of the border wall .. https://www.timesofisrael.com/weeks-before-oct-7-idf-said-to-have-been-warned-of-hamas-plan-to-take-250-hostages/ .. as both a protection and a warning mechanism. The cameras and high-tech sensors were meant to provide sufficient security and time to defend borders. But on Oct. 7, Hamas made quick work of the barrier with explosives and bulldozers, and they knocked out the surveillance with low-cost drones.
The Consequences
People have called drowning a silent tragedy—the victim does not scream, or yell for help, because they cannot. Intelligence work is much the same. The impending disaster whispers its warning. It does not announce its presence. People say the system is “blinking red,” but that is a poor metaphor. Rather, it is only one’s imagination that blinks. Even when intelligence officers believe something is truly amiss, it is tempting to believe that someone else will speak the uncomfortable truth. After the fact, the signs appear far clearer. Kan News, the Israeli public broadcaster that broke the story of Unit 8200’s report, also reported that “[o]ne of the soldiers involved in the report wrote after October 7, ‘I feel like crying, yelling and swearing .. https://www.timesofisrael.com/weeks-before-oct-7-idf-said-to-have-been-warned-of-hamas-plan-to-take-250-hostages/ .’”
Investigations are underway in Israel about what really happened in the run-up to Oct. 7. It is not yet clear whether these investigations will be public, but the reports will likely find that collection was stronger than initially expected. Unit 8200’s “Detailed End-to-End Raid Training Report” appears to be a fine example of tactical warning. The bigger gaps are far more likely to be analytical and structural.
On the analytical failure, investigators should ask what kinds of training the analysts had received in writing warning assessments: How were they evaluating what was and was not a serious threat? A former Unit 8200 official has suggested that the organization has strayed .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/06/14/us-israel-intelligence-cia-hostages/ .. from analysis altogether. Instead, it has prioritized developing new technology and contributing information to a joint pool of intelligence information. The Washington Post reported .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/06/14/us-israel-intelligence-cia-hostages/ .. that “other current and former officials echoed this critique, saying that Israel’s electronic spies forgot how to do basic intelligence functions.”
The structural challenge will be the most difficult to untangle and the hardest to fix. Entrenched mindsets are hard to untrain. The Post described the generally accepted view in Israeli intelligence that Hamas “was more interested in getting rich and ruling Gaza than attacking Israel.” This type of mindset, or “conceptzia .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/06/14/us-israel-intelligence-cia-hostages/ ,” hearkens back to the intelligence failure of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the security apparatus was similarly surprised by an opponent. As the Post’s Shane Harris notes, “Officials ignored what, in hindsight, seem like obvious warning signs[,] … dismissed because they didn’t comport to the overarching theory about the group’s intentions.”
Investigators have a hard and heartbreaking job ahead. Their days will be fraught with images of what might have been, had one or two things gone differently. If senior officers had listened to juniors’ concerns, if policymakers had taken warnings seriously, if reports had been worded more strongly—perhaps one of the worst tragedies the region has ever seen could have been averted.
Emily Harding
@EHarding_DC
Read More
Emily Harding is the director of the Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Previously, she served as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, director for Iran at the National Security Council, and deputy staff director on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/israeli-intelligence-misses-again
As they walked into the jungle a thought appeared - guess in war a collective hate, otherwise
"I just did re-watch it a week ago, then this one; the equal of
it in every respect. And why not? Spielberg and Hanks, again."
a rejected negative in civilized people, must be positively incentivizing. The thought brought:
September 1, 2018
War Is Not Part of Human Nature
War may not be in our nature after all
By R. Brian Ferguson
Yuko Shimizu
Do people, or perhaps just males, have an evolved predisposition to kill members of other groups? Not just a capacity to kill but an innate propensity to take up arms, tilting us toward collective violence? The word “collective” is key. People fight and kill for personal reasons, but homicide is not war. War is social, with groups organized to kill people from other groups. Today controversy over the historical roots of warfare revolves around two polar positions. In one, war is an evolved propensity to eliminate any potential competitors. In this scenario, humans all the way back to our common ancestors with chimpanzees have always made war. The other position holds that armed conflict has only emerged over recent millennia, as changing social conditions provided the motivation and organization to collectively kill. The two sides separate into what the late anthropologist Keith Otterbein called hawks and doves. (This debate also ties into the question of whether instinctive, warlike tendencies can be detected in chimpanzees [see sidebar below].)
If war expresses an inborn tendency, then we should expect to find evidence of war in small-scale societies throughout the prehistoric record. The hawks claim that we have indeed found such evidence. “When there is a good archaeological picture of any society on Earth, there is almost always also evidence of warfare.... Twenty-five percent of deaths due to warfare may be a conservative estimate,” wrote archaeologist Steven A. LeBlanc and his co-author Katherine E. Register. With casualties of that magnitude, evolutionary psychologists argue, war has served as a mechanism of natural selection in which the fittest prevail to acquire both mates and resources.
This perspective has achieved broad influence. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote that the roots of recent wars and genocide go back for tens or hundreds of thousands of years among our hunter-gatherer ancestors, even to our shared ancestor with chimpanzees. Bradley Thayer, a leading scholar of international relations, argues that evolutionary theory explains why the instinctual tendency to protect one's tribe morphed over time into group inclinations toward xenophobia and ethnocentrism in international relations. If wars are natural eruptions of instinctive hate, why look for other answers? If human nature leans toward collective killing of outsiders, how long can we avoid it?
The anthropologists and archaeologists in the dove camp challenge this view. Humans, they argue, have an obvious capacity to engage in warfare, but their brains are not hardwired to identify and kill outsiders involved in collective conflicts. Lethal group attacks, according to these arguments, emerged only when hunter-gatherer societies grew in size and complexity and later with the birth of agriculture. Archaeology, supplemented by observations of contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures, allows us to identify the times and, to some degree, the social circumstances that led to the origins and intensification of warfare.
When did it Begin?
In the search for the origins of war, archaeologists look for four kinds of evidence. The artwork on cave walls is exhibit one. Paleolithic cave paintings from Grottes de Cougnac, Pech Merle and Cosquer in France dating back approximately 25,000 years show what some scholars perceive to be spears penetrating people, suggesting that people were waging war as early as the late Paleolithic period. But this interpretation is contested. Other scientists point out that some of the incomplete figures in those cave paintings have tails, and they argue that the bent or wavy lines that intersect with them more likely represent forces of shamanic power, not spears. (In contrast, wall paintings on the eastern Iberian Peninsula, probably made by settled agriculturalists thousands of years later, clearly show battles and executions.)
Weapons are also evidence of war, but these artifacts may not be what they seem. I used to accept maces as representing proof of war, until I learned more about Near Eastern stone maces. Most have holes for handles so narrow they could not survive one blow in battle. Maces also symbolize authority, and established rule can provide a way to resolve conflict without resorting to war. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to go to war without traditional weapons: in southern Germany around 5000 B.C., villagers were massacred with adzes that were also used to work wood.
Beyond art and weapons, archaeologists look to settlement remains for clues. People who fear attack usually take precautions. In the archaeological record, we sometimes see people who lived in scattered homes on low flatlands shifted to nucleated defendable villages. Villages across Neolithic Europe were surrounded by mounded enclosures. But not all these enclosures seem designed for defense. Some may mark off distinct social groups.
Skeletal remains would seem ideal for determining when war began, but even these require careful assessment. Only one of three or four projectile wounds leaves a mark on bone. Shaped points made of stone or bone buried with a corpse are sometimes ceremonial, sometimes the cause of death. Unhealed wounds to a single buried corpse could be the result of an accident, an execution or a homicide. Indeed, homicide may have been fairly common in the prehistoric world—but homicide is not war. And not all fights were lethal. In some burial sites, archaeologists frequently find skulls with healed cranial depressions but few that caused death. The findings suggest fights with clubs or other nonlethal resolution of personal disputes, as is common in the ethnographic record. When the skulls are mostly from females, fractures may reflect domestic violence.
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The global archaeological evidence, then, is often ambiguous and difficult to interpret. Often different clues must be pieced together to produce a suspicion or probability of war. But dedicated archaeological work—multiple excavations with good material recovery—should be able to conclude that war is at least suspected.
TRACES of war more than 5,000 years ago appear in an enhanced image of rock-shelter art found on the Iberian Peninsula. Credit: “Identification of Plant Cells in Black Pigments of Prehistoric Spanish Levantine Rock Art by Means of a Multi-Analytical Approach: A New Method for Social Identity Materialization Using Chaîne Opératoire,” by Esther López-Montalvo et al., in PLOS ONE, Vol. 1, No. 2, Article No. E0172225; February 16, 2017
On balance, though, are there really indications that humans have been waging war for the entire history of the species? If your sample consists of cases known for high frequencies of perimortem wounds (those occurring at or near the time of death), the situation looks pretty bad. That is how figures such as 25 percent of deaths by violence are derived. Misconceptions result, however, because of cherry-picking by popular media. Any discovery of ancient killings grabs headlines. The news items ignore innumerable excavations that yield no signs of violence. And a comprehensive screening of reports from a particular area and time period, asking how many, if any, show even hints of war, paints an entirely different picture. War is hardly ubiquitous and does not go back endlessly in the archaeological record. Human warfare did indeed have a beginning.
The First Hostilities
Many archaeologists venture that war emerged in some areas during the Mesolithic period, which began after the last Ice Age ended around 9700 B.C., when European hunter-gatherers settled and developed more complex societies. But there really is no simple answer. War appeared at different times in different places. For half a century archaeologists have agreed that the multiple violent deaths at Jebel Sahaba along the Nile in northern Sudan occurred even earlier, around 12,000 B.C. There severe competition among settled hunter-gatherer groups in an area with once rich but declining food sources may have led to conflict.
At a slightly later time, settlements, weapons and burials in the northern Tigris suggest war involving settled villages of hunter-gatherers between 9750 and 8750 B.C. Nearby, the earliest known village fortifications occurred among farming people in the seventh millennium, and the first conquest of an urban center took place between 3800 and 3500 B.C. By that date, war was common across Anatolia, spread in part by conquering migrants from the northern Tigris.
In stark contrast, archaeologists have found no persuasive evidence in settlements, weapons or skeletal remains in the southern Levant (from Sinai to southern Lebanon and Syria) dating to before about 3200 B.C. In Japan, violent deaths from any cause are rare among hunter-gatherer groups from 13,000 to 800 B.C.
With the development of wet rice farming around 300 B.C., violent fatalities became apparent in more than one in 10 remains. In well-studied North American sites, some very early skeletal trauma seems the result of personal rather than collective conflicts. A site in Florida contained evidence of multiple killings about 5400 B.C. In parts of the Pacific Northwest, the same occurred by 2200 B.C., but in the southern Great Plains, only one violent death was recorded before A.D. 500.
Why did it Happen?
The preconditions that make war more likely include a shift to a more sedentary existence, a growing regional population, a concentration of valuable resources such as livestock, increasing social complexity and hierarchy, trade in high-value goods, and the establishment of group boundaries and collective identities. These conditions are sometimes combined with severe environmental changes. War at Jebel Sahaba, for one, may have been a response to an ecological crisis, as the Nile cut a gorge that eliminated productive marshlands, eventually leading to human abandonment of the area. Later, centuries after agriculture began, Neolithic Europe—to take one example—demonstrated that when people have more to fight over, their societies start to organize themselves in a manner that makes them more prepared to go ahead and embrace war.
There are limits, however, to what archaeology can show, and we must seek answers elsewhere. Ethnography—the study of different cultures, both living and past—illustrates these preconditions. A basic distinction is between “simple” and “complex” hunter-gatherer communities.
Simple hunting and gathering characterized human societies during most of humanity's existence dating back more than 200,000 years. Broadly, these groups cooperate with one another and live in small, mobile, egalitarian bands, exploiting large areas with low population density and few possessions.
Complex hunter-gatherers, in contrast, live in fixed settlements with populations in the hundreds. They maintain social rankings of kin groups and individuals, restrict access to food resources by lines of descent and have more developed political leadership. Signs of such social complexity first appeared during the Mesolithic. The appearance of complex hunter-gatherers can sometimes but not always mark a transitional stage to agriculture, the basis for the development of political states. These groups, moreover, often waged war.
Insert: [...] While the start and end dates of the Mesolithic Period vary by geographical region, it dated approximately from 10,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE.
P - The Paleolithic was an age of purely hunting and gathering, but toward the Mesolithic period the development of agriculture contributed to the rise of permanent settlements.
https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Art/Art_History_(Boundless)/02%3A_Prehistoric_Art/2.03%3A_The_Mesolithic_Period ]
The preconditions for war are only part of the story, however, and by themselves, they may not suffice to predict outbreaks of collective conflicts. In the Southern Levant, for instance, those preconditions existed for thousands of years without evidence of war.
Why, though, was there an absence of conflict? It turns out that many societies also have distinct preconditions for peace. Many social arrangements impede war, such as cross-group ties of kinship and marriage; cooperation in hunting, agriculture or food sharing; flexibility in social arrangements that allow individuals to move to other groups; norms that value peace and stigmatize killing; and recognized means for conflict resolution. These mechanisms do not eliminate serious conflict, but they do channel it in ways that either prevent killing or keep it confined among a limited number of individuals.
If this is so, why then are later archaeological findings, along with explorers' and anthropologists' reports, so full of deadly warfare? Over millennia preconditions of war became more common in more places. Once established, war has a tendency to spread, with violent peoples replacing less violent ones. States evolved around the world, and states are capable of militarizing peoples on their peripheries and trade routes. Environmental upheavals such as frequent droughts aggravate and sometimes generate conditions that lead to war, and peace may not return when conditions ease. Particularly notable was the intensification of the Medieval Warm period, from roughly A.D. 950 to 1250, and its rapid transformation into the Little Ice Age beginning around A.D. 1300. In that period war increased in areas across the Americas, the Pacific and elsewhere. In most of the world, war was long established, but conflicts worsened, with mounting casualties tallied.
Then came European global expansion, which transformed, intensified and sometimes generated indigenous war around the world. These confrontations were not just driven by conquest and resistance. Local peoples began to make war on one another, drawn into new hostilities by colonial powers and the commodities they provided.
[And the earlier mention of more possessions more war comes wandering back into mind. ]
Interaction between ancient and recent expanding states, and the ensuing conflicts, encouraged formation of distinctive tribal identities and divisions. Areas still beyond colonial control underwent changes impelled by longer-distance effects of trade, disease and population displacement—all of which led to wars. States also stirred up conflict among local peoples by imposing political institutions with clear boundaries rather than the amorphous local identities and limited authorities they often encountered in their colonial forays.
Scholars often seek support for the idea that human willingness to engage in deadly group hostilities predated the rise of the state by looking for evidence of hostilities in “tribal zones,” where “savage” warfare seems endemic and is often seen as an expression of human nature. But a careful examination of ethnographically known violence among local peoples in the historical record provides an alternative perspective.
Hunter-gatherers of northwestern Alaska from the late 18th through the 19th centuries demonstrate the fallacy of projecting ethnography of contemporary peoples into humanity's distant past. Intense war involving village massacres lingers in detailed oral traditions. This deadly violence is cited as evidence of war by hunter-gatherers before disruption by expanding states.
Archaeology, however, combined with the history of the region, provides a very different assessment. There are no hints of war in early archaeological remains in the simple cultures of Alaskan hunter-gatherers. The first signs of war appear between A.D. 400 to 700, and they are probably the result of contact with immigrants from Asia or southern Alaska, where war was already established. But these conflicts were limited in size and probably intensity.
With favorable climatic conditions by A.D. 1200, a growing social complexity developed among these whale hunters, with denser, more settled populations and expanding long-distance trade. After a couple of centuries, war became common. War in the 19th century, however, was much worse, so severe that it caused decline of the regional population. These later conflicts—the ones that show up in oral histories—were associated with state expansion as a massive trade network developed out of new Russian entrepôts in Siberia, and they led to extreme territoriality and centralization of complex tribal groups across the Bering Strait.
Not a Fact of Life
Debate over war and human nature will not soon be resolved. The idea that intensive, high-casualty violence was ubiquitous throughout prehistory has many backers. It has cultural resonance for those who are sure that we as a species naturally tilt toward war. As my mother would say: “Just look at history!” But doves have the upper hand when all the evidence is considered. Broadly, early finds provide little if any evidence suggesting war was a fact of life.
[ Good. It's always been the feeling. ]
People are people. They fight and sometimes kill. Humans have always had a capacity to make war, if conditions and culture so dictate. But those conditions and the warlike cultures they generate became common only over the past 10,000 years—and, in most places, much more recently than that. The high level of killing often reported in history, ethnography or later archaeology is contradicted in the earliest archaeological findings around the globe. The most ancient bones and artifacts are consistent with the title of Margaret Mead's 1940 article: “Warfare Is Only an Invention—Not a Biological Necessity.”
What about Our Chimp Cousins?
Anthropologists are looking at whether closely related primates show an instinctive propensity toward group killing
Delving into the question of human predisposition to war often involves looking beyond our species to examine the experiences of our chimpanzee relatives. This is a topic I have been studying for many years, and I am now finishing the writing of a book about it, Chimpanzees, “War,” and History. I put quotes around “war” because intergroup conflict among chimps, though sometimes collective and deadly, lacks the social and cognitive dimensions essential to human war.
Human warfare involves opponents that often include multiple local groups that may be unified by widely varying forms of political organization. War is fostered by culturally specific systems of knowledge and values that generate powerful meanings of “us versus them.” These social constructs have no primate analogies. Despite these distinctions, some scientists have argued that chimpanzees demonstrate an innate propensity to kill outsiders, inherited from the last common ancestor of chimps and people—an impulse that still subliminally pushes humans as well into deadly conflicts with those outside their communities.
My work disputes the claim that chimpanzee males have an innate tendency to kill outsiders, arguing instead that their most extreme violence can be tied to specific circumstances that result from disruption of their lives by contact with humans. Making that case has required my going through every reported chimpanzee killing. From this, a simple point can be made. Critical examination of a recent compilation of killings from 18 chimpanzee research sites—together amounting to 426 years of field observations—reveals that of 27 observed or inferred intergroup killings of adults and adolescents, 15 come from just two highly conflicted situations, which occurred at two sites in 1974–1977 and 2002–2006, respectively.
The two situations amount to nine years of observation, tallying a kill rate of 1.67 annually for those years. The remaining 417 years of observation average just 0.03 annually. The question is whether the outlier cases are better explained as evolved, adaptive behavior or as a result of human disruption. And whereas some evolutionary biologists propose that killings are explained as attempts to diminish the number of males in rival groups, those same data show that subtracting internal from external killings of males produces a reduction of outside males of only one every 47 years, fewer than once in a chimpanzee's lifetime.
From comparative case studies, I conclude that “war” among chimpanzees is not an evolved evolutionary strategy but an induced response to human disturbance. Case-by-case analyses will show that chimps, as a species, are not “killer apes.” This research calls into question as well the idea that any human tendency toward bellicosity might be driven by an ancient genetic legacy from a distant ancestor of chimpanzees and humans. —R.B.F.
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MORE TO EXPLORE
War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare. Edited by R. Brian Ferguson and Neil L. Whitehead. School of American Research Press, 1992.
Beyond War: The Human Potential for Peace. Douglas P. Fry. Oxford University Press, 2007.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
Tribal Warfare. R. Brian Ferguson; January 1992.
R. Brian Ferguson is a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University–Newark.
His academic career has been devoted to explaining why war happens.
More by R. Brian Ferguson
Scientific American Magazine Vol 319 Issue 3
This article was originally published with the title “Why We Fight” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 319 No. 3 (September 2018), p. 76
https://www.democraticunderground.com/emoticons/hippie.gif
So it's not so much about hate per se but more about saving, protecting, preserving what one group has from encroachment threatening behavior by a 2nd group. Then both groups use hate as an incentivizing technique. As Trump and his people do.
Ok. Back to The Pacific and "Band of Brothers is the best WWII series ever, IMHO" .. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174668555 , two now (both via San Fran VPN to your Netflix) to encourage me to be more housebound this weekend than not.
As if war isn't sobering enough, watching them while dwelling on the one above adds a bit more sobering other.
Related:
The Specter of Nationalism
"Att: B402 - Understanding Today’s Populism as Ethnic Nationalism
"Far-Right Extremism Is a Global Problem
'What’s New About the New Authoritarianism?"
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174642887
Am leaving him in, hope he does well but doesn't catch Bhatia.
Yikes Yikes Yikes Yikes Yikes -- heartbreaking.
That's one helluva life. 99. Good on him. .
LOL Jon gets it right, too.
Agree, he's right. It hurts sometimes, but in the long run truth is the best road.
Bone Spurs Putin's friend fail, 2020 - Biden is ‘tougher’ on China than Trump, says former Morgan Stanley chair in Asia
[...]
“If anything, he’s been tougher,” Roach said of Biden. The Yale University faculty member and former chairman of Morgan Stanley .. https://fortune.com/company/morgan-stanley/ .. Asia spoke to Bloomberg TV in an interview this week.
[...]
The US and China could take resolving their conflicts “very seriously and adopt a new approach rather than clinging to the old approach,” he said.
China could also re-examine its stance to addressing structural issues within its economy.
“The need to shift from the structure from exports and investment to internal private consumption is vital,” he said, adding that the government needs to invest in social safety nets and pensions to give workers more confidence.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171481395
Good read. Two faces of future America - ‘The Justins’ Follow a Legacy of Resistance in Tennessee
The young Black Democrats expelled from the legislature bring an activist approach, and model themselves after civil rights leaders of the past.
[...]
Mr. Jones marched with supporters after the Metro Council voted to appoint him back to the legislature.
[...]
Mr. Pearson once lobbied his high school for more books.
[...]
On Thursday morning, after Mr. Pearson was reinstated, the pair embraced in the chamber. Mr. Pearson held his fist up high after retaking his oath of office. Almost immediately, the two men plunged into a heated debate with Republicans over an education bill they warned would stifle efforts to teach about racism and sexism in the United States. Republicans abruptly cut off debate over the bill, over the objections of Democrats.
“They really tried to silence those two young men like they have the rest of us, but they have a different way,” Mr. McKenzie said. “It’s just a different generation. They have a different way of communication. They have a different tolerance level. They’re more immediate, ‘I want my say right now.’”
Your -- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/14/us/justin-pearson-justin-jones-tennessee.html
It's gonna be a tough fight with much to enjoy for them.
She said 2y-olds -- Our ruling: False
We rate this claim as FALSE, based on our research. Nickelodeon has made public service messages in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and the LGBT community. But the network says it does not target them to programs intended for children under the age of 6.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/30/fact-check-nickelodeon-didnt-aim-blm-lgbqt-spots-toddlers/5541777002/
Trump lies. If you believe he believes all he says then you are saying he is far too stupid to be president.
Lime Time, Yours there is a lie. The advice was the vaccine would in most all cases deter serious illness and hospitalization. No vaccine is perfect. Your comment is misinformation and a guy who continuously put vaccination misinformation here has been banned. You should note that.
Lime Time, The biggest fact you ignore is that Trump does little but lie to you.
Lime Time, Your disregard for the truth in your support of a guy
who just lied continuously to you is nothing to be proud of.
It was terrible. Trump lied continuously, Joe was weak but told the truth. Joe clobbered him on substance, but how many would see that as most important. Your support of an habitual liar, again confirmed, is nothing to be proud of. Unfortunately for America more watching it would not have recognized Trump's lies, more might believe he was telling the truth. That's the sad thing about the situation.
Weak support, but if you had included it the post would have been left.
How could you believe anything from Veritas was actually from the diary.
hap0206, Making good policy and getting legislation through has nothing to do with
stage play. If a charade of lies is good for a president of yours then shame on you.
Agree.
rooster, Definitely in need of a supportive link, and none, so gone.
Encyclopedic. And that's no exaggeration.
Lies beginning to end. And i wish Joe did not feel he has to talk so fast. Some of the worst whack-jobs i know are the fastest talkers i know. Joe should speak at a rate comfortable to him. Re one of the lies you mentioned:
Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory and a Smear: Still, No Evidence of Trump Order for 10,000 Guard on January 6th
by Tom Joscelyn
March 12, 2024
Full disclosure: The author served as a senior professional staff member on the January 6th Committee. In that capacity, he worked with former Rep. Liz Cheney, whom he has known for more than two decades and continues to advise. In addition, the author was a principal drafter of the committee’s final report.
Former President Donald Trump and his loyalists have long claimed that he “ordered” the National Guard to be ready for deployment on Jan. 6, 2021. “As many as 10,000 National Guard troops were told to be on the ready by the secretary of defense,” Mark Meadows, Trump’s White House Chief of Staff, claimed during a Fox News interview just one month after the attack. “That was a direct order from President Trump,” Meadows said .. https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/mark-meadows-biden-administration-policies-put-america-last . The implication was clear: President Trump did not deserve blame for the violence that unfolded at the U.S. Capitol because he wanted the National Guard to keep the peace.
There’s just one problem: The claim is not true .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/12/15/no-trump-did-not-order-10000-troops-secure-capitol-jan-6/ .
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol thoroughly investigated this issue — questioning multiple witnesses about it and reviewing countless documents. The committee could not find any evidence to support Meadows’ claim. Indeed, Trump’s Acting Secretary of Defense at the time, Chris Miller, directly refuted ..
.. it in his testimony .. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000062444/pdf/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000062444.pdf .. under oath– explaining that the president did not issue any such order.To remove any doubt: Not only did Donald Trump fail to contact his Secretary of Defense on January 6th (as shown in our hearing), Trump also failed to give any order prior to January 6 to deploy the military to protect the Capitol.
— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) July 26, 2022
Here is Secretary Miller’s testimony— pic.twitter.com/joucnUHvBB
It was covered by all media comprehensibly.
61% is a good percentage.
Maria Bartiromo is one of Fox News’ worst conspiracy theorists. She may soon get a promotion.
"Trumpworld Has Convinced Itself That Joe Biden Will Be on Drugs at the Debate
It’s not just the usual suspects cranking out the tune on the house organ."
Nasty woman. She betrays the very idea of common decency. Worst role model for millions of children. And adults.
Bartiromo peddled misinformation on the Trump/Russia probe, coronavirus, and the election Big Lie
Written by Eric Kleefeld
Published 01/25/21 9:51 AM EST
Mountains more links
With Fox News ditching a whole programming block of its official “news” coverage — reportedly at the urging of Rupert Murdoch himself .. https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1348725445890625537 — in order to compete with its emerging far-right competitors .. https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/right-wing-medias-civil-war-setting-race-bottom , one name is standing out among the possible replacements for the new weeknight “opinion” slot: financial news anchor Maria Bartiromo.
Bartiromo is set begin her audition week tonight, though Business Insider reports that she is “having trouble getting CEOs” to appear with her, according to sources, due to concerns about how appearing on her show might affect their own images. One financial executive said: “Everything she does fuses into politics. She's become unmoored.”
By potentially elevating Bartiromo, Fox really would be going toe-to-toe with the top conspiracy theorists at Newsmax and OAN. Far from being a regular financial news reporter with conservative leanings, she has in fact used her show to promulgate some of the most outlandish — and repeatedly debunked — conspiracy theories of the Trump era, ranging from the Russia scandal at the dawn of his presidency in 2016 to the far-out tales of computer manipulation of votes in the election that ended it in 2020.
Bartiromo has already attracted media attention for the degree to which she has descended from a status as “respected finance reporter to Trump apologist .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/maria-bartiromo-fox-news-trump/2020/12/22/35520a90-3fb1-11eb-8db8-395dedaaa036_story.html .” But even as the network is still reportedly trying to pitch advertisers that she is part of a roster that brings “hard-hitting journalism,” the Fox Business personality is now one of several people set to have an audition run on the new opinion timeslot, which would effectively be a promotion into Fox News prime time from her weekday Fox Business gig, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo.
And according to The Washington Post .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2021/01/18/fox-news-shakeup-news-opinion/ , news division staffers aren’t happy about the move — especially in the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which was fueled by former President Donald Trump’s propaganda campaign against the election result. This campaign was also very much aided by Fox News itself .. https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/2-weeks-after-it-called-election-fox-news-cast-doubt-results-nearly-800-times .
“It is ludicrous and disheartening that we are rewarding [Bartiromo] with a prime-time spot,” one staffer told the Post, “knowing full well she is among the most responsible for propagating the big election lie.”
Bartiromo was a key promoter of Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell’s conspiracy theories about voting machines
Bartiromo gave multiple interviews in November 2020 to Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani and their ally Sidney Powell, who promoted a web of debunked theories alleging that machines from Dominion Voting Systems had altered votes for Trump in order to produce Biden’s victory. (Just to be clear: The hand recount of paper ballots .. https://www.ajc.com/politics/breaking-georgia-manual-recount-confirms-biden-victory/B7LNNHYZOVGKZBUVAT7NZT3VZE/ .. in the swing state of Georgia did not significantly change the results, affirming Biden’s narrow win in that state.)
---
* On November 8, Powell told Bartiromo that “there had been a massive and coordinated effort to steal this election from we the people of the United States of America,” using methods ranging from fraudulently created ballots to “an algorithm to calculate the votes they would need to flip, and they used the computers to flip those votes.” Bartiromo did not push back on these claims, instead credulously repeating Powell’s allegations and saying, “If this is true, this appears systemic.”
* On November 11, Bartiromo falsely asserted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) family had a financial interest in Dominion, while Powell claimed that China was behind the voting machines company and “has the greatest interest in the world in disrupting this election.”
* On November 12, Bartiromo asked Giuliani about Dominion’s finances: “Are you seeing money coming from places like Venezuela and Cuba?” Giuliani claimed that Dominion is “a foreign company — that raises questions immediately, why are we having a foreign company do our elections? It is Canada — maybe,” but by the end of the discussion he was calling it “a Venezuelan company that has Chinese parts in it.”
* On November 15, Giuliani alleged that Dominion was linked to another company, Smartmatic, which also became a subject of right-wing conspiracy theories about election fraud. In addition to alleging that the voting machines were a front for the Venezuelan regime of the late dictator Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro, Giuliani alleged a connection to another figure, who is frequently the target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories: “The chairman of Smartmatic is a close business associate of George Soros, I have to tell you more?”
* Also on November 15, Powell alleged on Bartiromo’s show that “President Trump won by not just hundreds of thousands of votes, but by millions of votes, that were shifted by this software that was designed expressly for that purpose.” She went on to accuse the public officials in states using Dominion voting machines of receiving “substantial sums of money” via their family members, with Bartiromo treating all of these absurd conspiracy theories as being credible allegations.
* On November 20, when a schism began to emerge .. https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/right-wing-media-feud-erupts-over-trump-lawyer-sidney-powells-bonkers .. in right-wing media over Powell’s many claims — brought into full public view by a feud with Fox News host Tucker Carlson — Bartiromo brought Powell on to tell her side of the interactions with Carlson and his staff. Bartiromo further asked Powell whether she would be able to provide all her evidence, to which Powell responded, “We can't even keep up with the witnesses that are calling in and wanting to give affidavits and provide evidence.” Powell then said that this was “very early in the stage of any case, aside from one of this massive magnitude,” calling the 2020 election “the biggest worldwide corruption fraud ever exposed.”
The Dominion company is now suing both Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, seeking damages of $1.3 billion from each of them. The company further states “there are mountains of direct evidence that conclusively disprove Powell’s vote manipulation claims against Dominion — namely, the millions of paper ballots that were audited and recounted by bipartisan officials and volunteers in Georgia and other swing states, which confirmed that Dominion accurately counted votes on paper ballots.” Many of Powell and Giuliani’s false claims referenced in the lawsuit were also aired on multiple Fox programs, including on Bartiromo’s shows.
[ Insert: Dominion lawsuits against Giuliani and Powell still active
By Reuters Fact Check
August 12, 2023 4:11 AM GMT+10Updated a year ago
https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/dominion-lawsuits-against-giuliani-and-powell-still-active-idUSL1N39S1UF/ ]
In addition, when various Fox programs ran a short segment correcting a number of falsehoods about the Smartmatic company — in response to a threatened lawsuit — Bartiromo added at the end of her own show’s airing of the clip: “We will keep investigating.”
Bartiromo insists “there was election fraud,” wants people sent to prison over Trump losing in 2020
* The morning after the election, Trump campaign pollster Jim McLaughlin accused the officials at a vote-counting center in Philadelphia of planning to manufacture enough votes for Biden to overcome Trump’s apparent statewide lead. Bartiromo’s response was to call for the Trump administration to mobilize police forces to interrupt the ongoing vote count: “Unbelievable. … Can they get away with that, Jim? I mean do you feel that the administration has the policing in place to make sure that America will feel that we have gotten a safe and fair election?”
* Bartiromo appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show on November 9 — two days after the national news media had collectively projected Biden as the winner of the election. Biden had even delivered a victory speech that weekend. But from Bartiromo’s perspective, this wasn’t over, because she said she hoped then-Attorney General Bill Barr might put a stop to it. “I have not given up on Bill Barr and his motivations,” she said. “I do believe he wants justice, and he will do the right thing. So, I am expecting a full-on investigation of these irregularities that we're seeing in terms of voting and the ballots. That needs to play out.” (In the weeks to come, Barr said there was no evidence of the scale of voter fraud that would change the outcome of the election, and “no basis” for the federal government to seize the voting machines, as Giuliani and other Trump allies had called for doing.)
* Bartiromo spoke on December 8 with Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich, who pushed a stream of debunked conspiracy theories about the vote counts in various swing states. Gingrich baselessly claimed the outcomes “were rigged” and that voting results “went through Barcelona, Spain, to Frankfurt, Germany to be counted. I mean, there're so many things wrong with this election, that it's astonishing.” Bartiromo responded: “Yeah, well, it really is. And people need to understand that any election fraud carries a 5 to 10-year jail sentence.”
* On December 14, the day that the Electoral College members across the country voted to formalize Biden’s win, Bartiromo made allegations that the Justice Department and other officials were deliberately letting all this malfeasance go by: “And I spoke with one source high up in the intel community, and he said this … ‘Trump did win. There was election fraud, but to prove it requires the FBI and the DOJ to drill down on all of the election fraud issues related to voter and ballot issues. They're not doing it because the wrong people run the place, and they didn't want Trump to win. Now they've run out the clock with the Electoral College here.’”
* Bartiromo spoke on December 18 with Trump supporter and former NFL player Herschel Walker, during which the two of them repeatedly discussed the need to send the alleged election thieves to prison.
VIDEO -- 11:13 Citation From the December 18, 2020, edition of Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria Bartiromo
HERSCHEL WALKER (FORMER NFL PLAYER): Well, it's exciting for me, you know, to have my son Christian, who has shown that — he has gotten so involved in this election, this was his first time voting. And that's the reason why I think the president's got to get it right, and the people that need to go to jail need to go to jail. Because this is his first time, and I was excited for him to vote. And now everything seems to be tainted because of all the bad players that have done things.
MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): I think you make such an important point, Herschel, because we all want to see accountability, in terms of the perpetrators who broke the law because they did not like Donald Trump.
Bartiromo refused to give up hope that the election would be “overturned”
* On November 16, over a week after the news media — including Fox — had projected Biden as the winner, Bartiromo confidently announced the Trump campaign’s message that “the 2020 election will be overturned.” Her sources for this news headline segment included an interview she had conducted with Powell the day before, as well as a Trump tweet that declared, “I concede NOTHING!”
* Bartiromo interviewed Trump on November 29, his first TV interview since the election. The defeated president offered a litany of false allegations about the election — which went unchallenged by Bartiromo, who went on to claim that Biden’s victory represented a set of “impossible statistics.”
* During that same interview, Bartiromo responded to Trump’s tirade against supposed voter fraud by declaring, “This is disgusting. And we cannot allow America's election to be corrupted. We cannot. So, you believe you can prove that the computers can circumvent any controls that are in place.”
* Then on December 14, the day when members of the Electoral College voted across the country, Bartiromo repeatedly claimed that an “intel source” had told her that “President Trump did in fact win the election.”
* Also that morning, she asked House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) about efforts by congressional Republicans to reject the electoral votes. “Is it the end of the line for the president's campaign to stop and overturn this election, as the Electoral College will meet,” Bartiromo asked, “or are you looking at January 6 as a pivotal date, or what?”
VIDEO -- 01:40 Citation From the December 14, 2020, edition of Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria Bartiromo
Not even the January 6 insurrection has put a stop to Bartiromo’s election conspiracy theories
Even in the aftermath of the violence on that “pivotal date” — so much of which was built on Trump’s and right-wing media’s propaganda campaign to delegitimize the election result — Bartiromo did not let up in her own efforts on that front.
* When she returned from vacation on January 10, Bartiromo asked Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones (R): “And what is your take on what just took place in Georgia? Seventy percent of Trump voters feel unsatisfied. They never got the investigation they wanted. They still believe the election was stolen. Let’s just be clear.” (Georgia’s Republican election officials had investigated and publicly debunked numerous allegations made by the Trump campaign.)
* On the January 11 edition of her Fox Business show, Bartiromo defended the congressional Republicans who had led the effort to reject the election result and tried to shift the burden of proof over to the Democrats: “This was simply to make sure that the 70-plus percent of Trump voters and the 36% of all voters who questioned the integrity of the election had an investigation that was real and that looked at those irregularities. So it’s a head-scratcher why they wouldn’t just want to see an investigation.”
* During the same discussion, she also denounced the ongoing decisions by major corporations to stop giving campaign donations to members of Congress who had supported the rejection effort. “And by the way, they are representing their constituents,” Bartiromo said of the affected Republicans. “You still have 50 million-plus Americans who do not believe in the election and say that there was irregularities and fraud.”
* Bartiromo has also helped Trump supporters deflect from the core issue of the violence at the Capitol by Trump’s supporters. The day after the House of Representatives impeached Trump on the charge of inciting the insurrection, she hosted Trump adviser Peter Navarro, who claimed that it was Democrats who “did violence to this country” by attacking Trump, “who I believe was legally elected on November 3.” In response, Bartiromo simply repeated the talking point about Trump supporters not believing the election result.
* On the weekend before the inauguration, Bartiromo repeated her talking point of Trump supporters feeling “robbed” in a conversation with Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) who was condemning the January 6 insurrectionists.
VIDEO -- 02:43 Citation From the January 17, 2021, edition of Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): There are a lot of people urging the president to pardon folks who participated in defiling the Capitol, the rioters. I don't care if you went there and spread flowers on the floor. You breached the security of the Capitol. You interrupted a joint session of Congress. You tried to intimidate us all. You should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.And to seek a pardon of these people would be wrong. It would be -- I think it would destroy President Trump. And I hope we don't go down that road.
They chose to go into that Capitol, defile the Capitol. President Trump never said, go into the Capitol and try to interrupt a joint session of Congress. That was the choice they make -- they made. And they need to live with that choice.
MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): The president obviously tried to send messages here, because many of his supporters continue to believe there was fraud in the election, and they feel robbed, Senator.
GRAHAM: Well, I tell you what. You can feel any way you want to. There was irregularities in mail-in voting. 66,000 people under 18 did not vote in Georgia. You did not have 8,000 felons, as claimed, voting from prison in Arizona.
The election is over. The Electoral College certified the elections. I'm disappointed in the outcome. I wish he would have won. I appreciate what the president said Thursday. We will reject violence. His movement is not about violence. It is about peace, and it is about policy. It is now time to move on to Joe Biden.
You talk about unifying the country. If you do not stand up against the impeachment of President Trump after he leaves office, you're an incredibly weak figure in American history.
[GULP! Hope you are enjoying these portraits of un-American Americans. ]
* And on the day before Biden’s inauguration, Bartiromo reported on security measures being taken to prevent far-right militants from infiltrating into the National Guard for the event, baselessly alleging that “Democrats infiltrated [the crowd of Trump supporters] two weeks ago and put on MAGA clothing.”
* On the morning of Inauguration Day, Bartiromo hosted Goya Foods CEO Bob Unanue, who spun an elaborate conspiracy theory about Biden’s victory “ushering in the dawn of a new world order, this Great Reset, with an unverified election” and falsely claimed that “80 million people” had voted for Trump. Bartiromo did not push back on any of these claims.
Bartiromo’s COVID-19 misinformation
* In March 2020, Bartiromo and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) repeatedly pushed the theory that the novel coronavirus had escaped from a laboratory in China — with the two of them citing the same prestigious medical journal that had previously denounced that theory. (Genome analysis has consistently shown that the coronavirus evolved naturally and was not man-made.)
* Bartiromo continued to promote the false claim that the virus came from a lab in China.
* In March 2020, Bartiromo promoted a “herd immunity strategy” to encourage the spread of COVID-19 throughout the population, rather than shutting down economic activity: “Move in herds, and everybody gets it.”
* In December 2020, Bartiromo again suggested that the coronavirus had been purposefully released, then parlaying this accusation to declare that the Supreme Court had to take up Republican legal challenges to throw out absentee voting changes during the pandemic — or else China would win: “And don’t forget, we know that China unleashed this virus on the world — they say it was accidental, but we don’t know if it was an intentional act or not. If the Supreme Court allows this to stay, in some way they are saying China was able to do what it wanted to do — causing chaos, forcing states to change the way we vote.”
Bartiromo’s long, obsessive quest for indictments against the Trump/Russia investigators
Bartiromo was known during the Trump years for her obsequious interviews with the then-president, praising him for being “tough” .. https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/how-maria-bartiromo-who-news-side-fox-interviewed-donald-trump .. and assisting him both before and after the 2020 election in waging a propaganda campaign against mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.
She also mounted a major push against all those investigations going on into Trump, weaving tales of the “deep state” and seeking to purge government figures who she saw as insufficiently loyal and not doing enough to discredit the investigations into Russian intervention in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf, which Bartiromo frequently refers to as a “hoax.”
* Bartiromo insisted in March 2019 that the Trump/Russia probe had “no predicate,” and had “nothing to base it on, other than the flimsy dossier” from Christopher Steele. In fact, the later Horowitz report confirmed .. https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf#page=5 .. that the 2016 probe was already underway before the Steele dossier even became known to investigators.
* Bartiromo has long repeated the claim that Joseph Mifsud, the missing Maltese professor believed to have been a connection between the Russian government and former Trump aide George Papadopoulos, was really a U.S. government source working as part of an elaborate entrapment plot against the Trump campaign. Bartiromo suggested this during an October 2019 interview with Papadopoulos, and in another interview with him again in December 2020. (The Horowitz report .. https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf#page=353 .. in December 2019 found no evidence to support this allegation.)
* In October 2019, Bartiromo ridiculed the impeachment inquiry into Trump over the Ukraine scandal, saying that “they are trying hard to come up with something against President Trump right now, and completely ignoring what we already know was some wrongdoing by some key players in our intel agencies back in the election year of 2016.”
* Axios recently reported .. https://www.axios.com/off-the-rails-trump-cia-kash-patel-6c5ea317-43e9-48da-993f-5c7ab823c4c1.html?utm_campaign=organic&utm_medium=socialshare&utm_source=twitter .. that Bartiromo’s coverage .. https://www.mediamatters.org/maria-bartiromo/foxs-maria-bartiromo-asks-mark-meadows-if-christopher-wray-and-gina-haspel-will-be .. helped to inspire Trump’s distrust in his own appointee, CIA Director Gina Haspel, after “publicly raising doubts in his mind about her” and contributing to efforts to force her to resign. For example, Bartiromo had suggested during an interview with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on October 13 that “Gina Haspel could be part of this conspiracy as well” because she was “blowing off your calls, from you and other Republican senators, to hand over Russiagate documents.” Then on October 14, Bartiromo further added: “We're literally 20 days from an election, four years after this coup started and we still don't have the documents that the FBI continues to sit on and that Gina Haspel at the CIA is trying hard not to release.”
* In her October 2020 interview with Trump, Bartiromo repeated the claim that “it was Hillary Clinton's idea to tie you to Russia in some way” — based on a selective declassification by Trump’s Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, which was previously rejected by both Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee “as having no factual basis” and being a piece of Russian disinformation .. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/29/john-ratcliffe-hillary-clinton-russia-423022 .. meant to distract from that country’s role in hacking the Democratic National Committee’s emails in 2016.
* Despite the mountain of evidence that the Russian government had supported Trump’s candidacy in 2016, Bartiromo has not given up hope of disproving it all. “There is also exculpatory evidence that shows Russia was not supporting Trump,” she tweeted this past October, alleging that this intelligence material “was supposed to be declassified but deep state is keeping it under wraps.”
* By December 2020, she was reaching her limit. “Who got to Bill Barr?” .. https://www.mediaite.com/tv/maria-bartiromo-asks-intel-chief-ratcliffe-who-got-to-bill-barr/ .. she asked Ratcliffe, regarding the continued delays in yet another special investigation into the Russia probes. “It seems like it’s an about-face, we were expecting a real investigation into what took place and why Crossfire Hurricane — the investigation into Donald Trump — still has no accountability.”
* On the final weekend before Biden’s inauguration, Bartiromo aggressively questioned Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) about whether he’d done enough to “declassify the Russiagate transcripts before the election. Was there anything you could have done differently to make people feel that there was accountability for an effort to take down a candidate and then a sitting president with the whole Russia hoax nonsense?” She also asked of Trump’s former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, “Will we see indictments in the Russia hoax criminal investigation?”
* On the morning of Inauguration Day, Bartiromo claimed that Trump was really the target of so many investigations because he had come so close to busting the vast corruption in Washington itself.
[You'll have heard the old pot calling the kettle black, well here you have it in spades.]
VIDEO -- 03:05 Citation From the January 20, 2021, edition of Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria Bartiromo
MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): Look, I think that President Trump came too close to corruption, too close to the fire that — you know, that many in Washington wanted him out as a result of that corruption around what was done in the Russia hoax in 2016, corruption in terms of China trying to undermine our democracy by luring in people to steal data and send it to the CCP. This was all part of his priority, hitting back at China.”
Bartiromo got warmed up for her big week — with a continued stream of conspiracy theories
And just a look at the latest episode her Sunday Morning Futures show can help to illustrate all these problems. The show included:
* A discussion with discredited columnist John Solomon, claiming that the entire Trump/Russia investigation from 2016 began as an orchestrated frame-up effort by allies of the Hillary Clinton campaign. (How it actually began: The FBI had received a tip from an official with a “Friendly Foreign Government” — now widely known to be Alexander Downer, then the Australian ambassador to the United Kingdom and a retired conservative politician — that Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos had told him that “the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama).”)
* During the same discussion, speculation that figures behind the Trump/Russia investigation will soon be indicted by special counsel John Durham — who is actually the second person tasked by the former Trump administration with investigating the Trump/Russia investigators, following two prior reports by Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
* Continued spreading of the conspiracy theory with Sen. Cotton that the coronavirus originated from a laboratory in China.
* Bartiromo then repeated to Cotton the claims made by former Trump administration Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, “accusing career analysts and Congress of under-playing the Chinese influence in the 2020 election as well.”
https://www.mediamatters.org/maria-bartiromo/maria-bartiromo-one-fox-news-worst-conspiracy-theorists-she-may-soon-get-promotion
LOLOL
hap0206, No she isn't. It's a meme. And you knew full well, long before now, that's how your non-presidential, drip candidate actually does flow:
We transcribed Trump's full comments and bolded the two parts omitted from the text of the Biden campaign's post. Just prior to the beginning of Trump's remarks about water, he referenced Biden and the Green New Deal, saying, "I will end 'Crooked Joe's' wasteful spending and rapidly terminate the green new scam. The green new scam. You know what the green new scam is?" He then continued:
No water in your faucets. You ever tried buying a new home and you turn it on? They have restrictors in there. You want to wash your hair. You want to wash your hands. You turn on the water and it goes drip, drip. The soap, you can't get it off your hand. So you keep it running for about ten times longer. You're trying. The worst is your hair. I have this beautiful, luxuriant hair, and I put stuff on. I put it in. Lather. I like lots of lather because I like it to come out extremely dry because it seems to be slightly thicker that way. And I lather up and then you turn on this crazy shower and the thing drip, drip, and you say, 'I'm gonna be here for 45 minutes. What?' They put restrictors and they put them on in places like here where there's so much water you don't know what to do with it. You know, it's called rain. It rains a lot in certain places. But, now their idea, you know, did you see the other day? They just, I opened it up and they closed it again. I opened it, they close it, washing machines to wash your dishes. There is a problem. They don't want you to have any water. They want no water.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/06/26/trump-water-faucets-rain/
LOL Abe's good memories shall endure.
Not true, and you know it - Weiner
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/25/anthony-weiner-21-months-prison-sexting-case .
Who could ever forget - Chattanooga Choo Choo - Glenn Miller Orchestra
Major pharmacy chains reject vape laws, signalling franchisees shouldn't sell vaping products
"Biden was right. Trump's junk science, non-regulatory, approach to vaping was as irresponsible as his admission that he downplayed the pandemic, which led to catastrophic consequences. And yeah a lot of new job creation in the vaping industry, my ass. if Trump had been a tobacco executive he too would have raised his hand and swore that he did not believe nicotine was addictive."
By political reporter Jake Evans
Posted 4h ago, updated 29m ago
Major pharmacy brands have rejected the government's vaping sales ban. (AAP: Lukas Coch)
* In short: Australia's major pharmacy chains have rejected the vaping sales ban passed by parliament on Thursday.
* They have signalled to franchisees that vaping products should not be sold without prescription.
* What's next? The sales ban will be in force from Monday, making chemists the only legal suppliers.
Several of Australia's largest pharmacy brands have indicated they will not move to stock vapes once their sale is outlawed outside of chemists, and a prescription requirement for adults is dropped.
In communications with their stakeholders, TerryWhite Chemmart, Priceline Pharmacy, National Pharmacies in South Australia and 777 Group in West Australia all voiced strong disagreement with new laws allowing the sale of vapes without prescriptions.
In a statement, The Pharmacy Guild of Australia said Blooms and thousands of independent pharmacies had also opposed the government's deal with the Greens to open access for adults from October.
Chemist Warehouse has told the ABC it is still looking at the implications of the decision and seeking more information on how it will work.
While those pharmacies have indicated they will not be moving to stock vapes, franchisors under the brands are technically able to make an independent decision to do so.
Many pharmacies under those brands already supply vapes nationwide, or are licensed to do so — the key dispute raised by them is the "downscheduling" of vapes from October .. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/what-you-need-to-know-about-australia-move-to-ban-vape/104016192 .. from requiring scripts to being available behind the counter for adults once they have had a conversation with their pharmacist.
Health Minister Mark Butler earlier this week said pharmacies would not be forced to stock vapes, and the government did not expect that all pharmacies would.
"Of course, pharmacies aren't owned by the government, so they can't be directed by the government what they sell. You know, some pharmacies choose to offer methadone treatment, some don't," he said,
"This will obviously be a decision by individual pharmacies.
"But I know pharmacists right around the country for a considerable period of time have been having careful, professional discussions with their customers about smoking cessation support — they do that now, they've done it for a very long time. This is an additional tool in the toolkit for smoking cessation."
Chemists raise liability, monitoring concerns
Among chemists' concerns are questions of liability if a customer later develops health issues from vaping, and received their vape under advice from a pharmacist.
Some young people hooked on vapes are turning to another alternative
Luke Walles says sometimes he feels better smoking a cigarette than vaping. For health experts, that's a problem.
Read more > https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-26/vaping-crackdown-nicotine-addiction-smoking-vape-ban/104012118
The Vaping Reforms bill passed by parliament does not include any indemnity measures for pharmacists providing vaping advice.
However the government believes existing liability insurance provides broad enough coverage already, and the vape policy should not impact their ability to be covered.
The Pharmacy Guild has also expressed concerns that there is no mechanism to monitor the issuing of vapes by pharmacies, meaning people could easily acquire multiple vapes for themselves or others by visiting separate pharmacies.
While prescriptions would allow that to be tracked, there are also systems for monitoring medications that can be obtained without prescription, such as Project STOP for pseudoephedrine.
"Pharmacists are healthcare professionals and community pharmacies do not want to supply this potentially harmful, highly addictive product without a prescription," The Guild's national vice-president Anthony Tassone said.
Greens claim pharmacy lobby's priority is not health
However Greens senator Jordon Steele-John, whose support was instrumental in passing the laws, poured scorn on the Pharmacy Guild's public commentary, telling the Senate he "cannot cop" suggestions they were concerned about safety.
Senator Steele-John claimed in meetings with the Guild they had lobbied him for even looser laws, requesting either that vapes be dispensed through prescriptions as "Schedule 4" items, or be available freely over the counter as "Schedule 2" items.
His implication was that the Guild's concerns rested not with the issue of vapes being dispensed without prescription, but rather the "Schedule 3" requirement for pharmacists to have a conversation with their customers.
"To come into this debate and propose that they oppose this scheduling because they are concerned about the safety of the substance is very disingenuous," Senator Steele-John said on Wednesday.
The Guild has categorically denied it lobbied for a weaker schedule for vapes.
In Question Time on Thursday, Mr Butler waved a vape around on the floor of the lower house, as he took a victory lap on passing laws that he said would stamp out a "public health menace".
"Every now and then, this place has a real opportunity to do something meaningful and lasting for the health of young Australians," Mr Butler said.
"And today was one of those days and we did it."
Mark Butler pulled out a vape during Question Time, as he discussed the recently passed vaping sales ban.
(Parliament House Sound and Visual Office)
The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA), which represents professionals in the sector, said in a statement the vaping sales ban was not its preferred approach, but they recognised a need for action.
"PSA will work with government to support the pharmacists who choose to be involved in the prescribing and dispensing of nicotine-containing therapeutic vapes. PSA will develop best-practice guidelines to describe how pharmacists prescribe products for smoking cessation products, including nicotine-containing therapeutic vapes," its national president Fei Sim said.
The federal government has claimed Australia once again is leading the world in smoking reforms, having done so on plain-packaging laws a decade ago.
Its vaping bill passed parliament on Thursday, and the sales ban will be in force from Monday.
A person who commits an offence of supplying vaping goods faces a penalty of seven years imprisonment or a fine of up to $1.57 million.
Related Stories
Here's what we know about Australia's move to restrict sale of vapes from next week
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-25/what-you-need-to-know-about-australia-move-to-ban-vape/104016192
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-28/big-pharmacy-brands-reject-vape-sales-ban/104031894
From what i've seen the debate is low on many what-to-do lists. There are two happily conspicuously less frequently here the last few days, perhaps we've finally opened a couple of eyes a bit more to the reality of what's going on. Or should that be always way beyond rational hope. Whatever, most importantly i love these quiet days. And you will be relieved to hear my golfers this week are doing better.