#Martin Pengelly
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New York win Major League Rugby championship game against Seattle
New York win Major League Rugby championship game against Seattle
This article titled “New York win Major League Rugby championship game against Seattle” was written by Martin Pengelly at the Red Bull Arena, New Jersey, for theguardian.com on Saturday 25th June 2022 21.04 UTC
Warming-up for the Major League Rugby championship game, Rugby New York wore t-shirts proclaiming themselves “Iron Workers”, a team identity built on the blue-collar battalions who…
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Martin Pengelly at The Guardian:
Protesters calling for Israel to cease fire in its war with Hamas who have disrupted US public events and infrastructure are practicing “leftwing fascism” or “leftwing totalitarianism”, a senior US House Democrat said, adding that such protesters are “challenging representative democracy” and should be arrested.
“Intimidation is the tactic,” said Adam Smith of Washington state, the ranking Democrat on the House armed services committee. “Intimidation and an effort to silence opposition … I don’t know if there’s such a thing as leftwing fascism. If you want to just call it leftwing totalitarianism, then that’s what it is. It is a direct challenge to representative democracy now.”
Smith was speaking – before the outbreak this week of mass protests on US college campuses, many producing arrests – to the One Decision Podcast and its guest host Christina Ruffini, a CBS News reporter.
Ruffini asked Smith about protests in his district, including vandalism at his home and a town hall meeting disrupted by protesters demanding an end to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza prompted by attacks by Hamas on 7 October.
Disruptive, aggressive protests are “illegal … completely wrong … and enormously dangerous”, Smith said, adding: “I really want people to understand – and I put out a statement after they shut down a town hall meeting that I was trying to have [in March] – what’s going on here.
“And everyone’s like, ‘Well, you understand their passion and all that. And I do understand that, I do. This is a life-or-death situation. It is certainly not the only life-or-death situation that I and all policymakers deal with. But it is one that is important. But that’s not what [the protesters are] doing.
“What they are trying to do is they are trying to silence opposition and intimidate decision-makers. I’ve been doing town hall meetings for 34 years now, in some pretty hotly contested environments … [but] I have never had a town hall that I couldn’t keep under control enough so that people had the chance to say their piece.
“But [the protesters’] goal and their objective was not to get their point across. It was to silence anyone who dared to disagree with them, to make sure that only one voice was heard. And their other goal was to intimidate. That’s why they’re showing up at member’s houses.”
[...]
“I got two words into it and they started screaming at me again. So this is a different thing than your standard protest. In my view, the solution to it is if they are committing a crime – which by the way, shutting down a freeway, shutting down an airport, intimidating people, there’s a crime – [they] ought to be arrested.”
Protesting at public figures’ homes should also be subject to arrest, Smith said.
“The point of it is intimidation. And I think it is harassment. It’s a crime, and I think [they should] be arrested for it.
“… But you know, when you are shutting down freeways, shutting down airports, frankly putting people’s lives at risk – If you’re an ambulance trying to get through to hospital – then that’s going beyond getting your point across, and you’re trying to intimidate and silence people in a way that I think is troubling.”
Excuse me, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA)?! Pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses are not the ones silencing the opposition, but pro-Israel Apartheid apologists like you are the ones squelching freedom of speech.
Your call to arrest the protesters reeks of fascism!
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"I'm not a U.S. representative, but I play one on television."
Martin Pengelly writing for The Guardian: Marjorie Taylor Greene says: “I’m not a doctor, but I have a PhD in recognising bullshit when I hear it.”
Oy vey.
"On Capitol Hill on Thursday, Greene attended a hearing staged by the House oversight select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic.
The expert Greene responded to, Dr Peter Marks, the director of biologics evaluation and research at the Food and Drug Administration, also described how at the height of the pandemic in the US, 'about 3,300 [people], about a World Trade Center disaster a day', were dying of Covid-19, contributing to a death toll of more than 1.1m."
Greene went on to spend her allotted time reiterating a slew of conspiracy theories and claims that "peer reviewed" studies had shown the exact opposite of what Dr. Marks had stated--that vaccines in fact caused multiple problems.
California Rep. Robert Garcia followed Greene with "I’m sorry you all had to go through that. That was a lot of conspiracy theories ...debunked by medical science. We should be clear that vaccines work and have saved lives...."
Dr. Marks also apologized to the public at large for having to have put up with the conspiracy theories and they damage they've caused: "...to the thousand or so parents of children under four years of age who have died of Covid-19, who were unvaccinated. Because there were deaths and there continue to be deaths among children, and that is the reason why they need to get vaccinated..."
Full story
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Headed Straight to the Worst Part of Hell! Criminal Boak Bollocks Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State to Richard Nixon, Dead at 100. Stay, Rest, Rot and Burn 🔥 in Hell Forever.
A Republican party giant and Nobel peace prize winner, the former national security adviser was a key architect of US foreign policy
— Martin Pengelly in New York | The Guardian USA | November 29, 2023
Henry Kissinger after receiving an award at the Pentagon in 2016. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
The War Criminal Henry Kissinger, who was national security adviser and secretary of state to Richard Nixon before becoming an eminence grise of world affairs, has died. He was 100.
His consulting firm Kissinger Associates announced his passing in a statement on Wednesday evening, but did not disclose a cause of death.
A giant of the Republican party, Kissinger remained influential until the end of his life, in large part thanks to his founding in 1982 of Kissinger Associates, a geopolitical consulting firm based in New York City, and the authorship of several books on international affairs.
He even made an appearance in Siege, Michael Wolff’s Trump exposé which was published in 2019. According to Wolff, Kissinger regularly advised Jared Kushner. At one point, the book said, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser even suggested that Kissinger, well into his 90s, should return as secretary of state.
Wolff also quoted Kissinger as being witheringly critical of a Trump foreign policy “based on a single unstable individual’s reaction to perceptions of slights or flattery”.
Kissinger was a Harvard academic before becoming national security adviser when Nixon won the White House in 1968. Working closely with the president, he was influential in momentous decisions regarding the Vietnam war including the secret bombing of Cambodia in 1969 and 1970. That was part of what Nixon called the “madman theory”, an attempt to make North Vietnam believe the US president would do absolutely anything to end the war.
As secretary of state, Kissinger did achieve peace in Vietnam, although not before initiating a heavy bombing campaign at Christmas 1972, while talks continued.
He survived Nixon’s downfall in the Watergate scandal and served Gerald Ford, leaving government after Jimmy Carter’s election win in 1976. Kissinger’s policy towards the Soviet Union was not confrontational enough for the Reagan administration, precluding any thought of a 1980s comeback.
Famously, the Singer-satirist Tom Lehrer Responded: “Political Satire Became Obsolete When Criminal Henry Kissinger Was Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
On the political and intellectual right and left, Kissinger’s legacy differs.
On the right, he is seen as a brilliant statesman, a master diplomat, an exponent of power politics deployed to the benefit of America, the country to which his family fled on leaving Germany in 1938.
On the left, hostility burns over his record on Chile, where the CIA instigated the overthrow of Salvatore Allende; on Pakistan, where he and Nixon turned a blind eye to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands; on the Middle East; on Cyprus; on East Timor and more.
In the early 2000s, Kissinger supported the administration of George W Bush in its invasion of Iraq.
Another supporter of that war, the Journalist Christopher Hitchens, famously wrote that Kissinger should be tried for war crimes.
In fact, for negotiating the Paris treaty which ended the Vietnam war, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded a shared Nobel prize, although the North Vietnamese negotiator refused to accept the honour.
Famously, the Singer-satirist Tom Lehrer responded: “Political Satire Became Obsolete When Henry Kissinger Was Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
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By Martin Pengelly
The Guardian
April 8, 2023
From the article:
[....]
Critics questioned that, given Crow’s seat on the board of the American Enterprise Institute, a right wing think-tank which regularly files amicus briefs with the court.
Outraged Democrats promised investigations and, in the case of the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, threatened to introduce articles of impeachment.
Thomas is the senior conservative on a conservative-dominated court that has issued controversial rulings including Dobbs v Jackson, which last year removed the federal right to abortion.
But impeachment and removal is highly unlikely. Supreme court justices effectively govern themselves. Only one has ever been impeached, in 1804, before being acquitted. Republicans hold the House, where impeachment would start.
Still, news of Crow’s far-right memorabilia seemed bound to add to Thomas’s embarrassment – perhaps in part because Thomas has written that arguments for abortion rights spring from theories of eugenics, as espoused by Hitler and the Nazis.
Read more.
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Victor Navasky Explores the Power of Political Cartoons
Columbia University
Victor Navasky, award-winning author and editor of the Nation, dies at 90
Martin Pengelly in The Guardian obituary for Navasky quotes Christopher Hitchens, "His core is quite hardline, very tenderly presented." That's such a good sentence and a reminder that as much as Hitchens irked me, I appreciated his writing a lot. The work of editors for the most part isn't public. Navasky work with some of the best writers and journalists over a long career. He made a big difference.
Victor S. Navasky
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‘Losing the plot’: Trump mocked after announcing superhero card collection
Martin Pengelly in New York
Thu, December 15, 2022 at 1:02 PM·3 min read
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Mitch McConnell to step down as Republican leader in US Senate
The Guardian
By Martin Pengelly
February 28, 2024
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky will step down as Republican leader in the US Senate at the end of this year, a move that will shake up US politics yet more in a tumultuous election cycle.
McConnell is 82 and the longest-serving Senate leader in history. He is also a highly divisive figure in a bitterly divided America and the subject of fierce…
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Comment:
So-called 'national interests' are always in the eye of the beholder, subject to different perceptions, interpretations - the 'fit' between the Biden administration's interests and those of Kyiv will always be shifting, uneasy. And then there's the play of personalities, and how well-briefed they are, and how skilled in making relevant arguments.
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30 August 2023
Martin Pengelly
Extract 1:
In a development likely to cause consternation in Washington and Kyiv, an eagerly awaited new book says Volodymyr Zelenskiy “bombed” his first Oval Office meeting with Joe Biden.
The two men reportedly failed to establish a rapport as the Ukrainian leader’s demand to join Nato and “absurd analysis” of alliance dynamics left the US president “pissed off”.
“Even Zelenskiy’s most ardent sympathisers in the [Biden] administration agreed that he had bombed,” Franklin Foer, author of The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future, writes of the meeting in September 2021.
Extract 2:
The author also says Zelenskiy regarded Biden as weak, particularly over his decision earlier in 2021 to waive sanctions against a Russian company building Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline to Germany, a move Zelenskiy saw as undermining Ukrainian economic and security interests.
Biden granted Zelenskiy a meeting but “didn’t think much” of him, Foer reports, particularly over friendly relations the Ukrainian president had struck up with the hard-right Republican Texas senator Ted Cruz, over the Nord Stream decision.
Extract 3:
The official transcript of Biden and Zelenskiy’s remarks to reporters before their 1 September Oval Office meeting shows declarations of mutual respect and policy aims. But according to Foer, once the meeting began properly, Zelenskiy “seemed oblivious to Biden’s doubts” and “almost wilfully unaware of Biden’s moral code”.
Biden expected expressions of gratitude for US support, Foer writes. Zelenskiy “crammed his conversations with a long list of demands”. Chief among them: “He needed to join Nato.”
Extract 4:
Russia had been stoking fighting in Ukraine since 2014 and was widely thought to be preparing a full-scale invasion.
Foer writes: “Zelenskiy’s frustration occluded his capacity for logic. After begging to join Nato, he began to lecture that the organisation is, in fact, a historic relic, with waning significance. He told Biden that France and Germany were going to exit Nato.
“It was an absurd analysis – and a blatant contradiction. And it pissed Biden off.”
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Oppenheimer biographer supports US bill to bar use of AI in nuclear launches
Kai Bird, author of American Prometheus, says technology is ‘too dangerous to gamble with’ and supports senator’s attempt to bar it
Guardian, Martin Pengelly 21 Jul 23
A biographer whose Pulitzer prize-winning book inspired the new movie Oppenheimer has expressed support for a US senator’s attempt to bar the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear weapons launches.
“Humans must always…
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Martin Pengelly at The Guardian:
A New York appeals court judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to delay his 15 April hush-money criminal trial while he fights to move the case out of Manhattan.
The decision came Monday, a week before jury selection was set to start.
Trump’s lawyers had argued at an emergency hearing that the trial should be postponed while they seek a change of venue to move it out of heavily Democratic Manhattan.
Trump was ready on Monday to sue the judge in his New York hush-money case a week before the start of the much-anticipated trial, the New York Times reported, detailing yet another attempt by the former president to delay legal proceedings against him.
Citing court records indicating the filing of sealed documents and two unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter, the paper said the aim was to delay trial and challenge a gag order imposed by the judge.
“Mr Trump’s unorthodox move – essentially an appeal in the form of a lawsuit – is unlikely to succeed, particularly so close to trial,” the paper said.
Facing 34 criminal charges related to hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who claimed an affair with him, Trump has pleaded not guilty.
He has repeatedly attacked the judge in the case, Juan Merchan, and members of his family, alleging political bias.
The trial is set for Manhattan next Monday and will be the first criminal trial involving a former US president.
Trump, the Times said, was also expected to ask an appeals court to move the trial out of Manhattan, his home borough before his post-presidency move to Florida but a heavily Democratic area.
That gambit was also deemed unlikely to succeed.
[...]
Trump faces 54 other criminal charges: 40 in Florida, over his retention of classified information after leaving office, and 14 over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election – 10 in Georgia and four in Washington DC.
Trump also faces multimillion-dollar penalties in two civil cases, both in New York, one concerning tax fraud and the other for defamation arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.
Denying all wrongdoing and claiming political persecution, Trump is attempting to delay all cases against him until after the presidential election in November.
If he were to defeat Joe Biden and return to the White House, he could ensure the dismissal of federal charges in the classified information case and in four charges of election subversion. State charges would be tougher to deal with.
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan quashed 88x indicted Donald Trump's bid to delay the start of the New York v. Trump hush money/election interference criminal trial that is set to start next week. Trump is also seeking a venue change out of Manhattan, but likely won't be granted that request.
#Donald Trump#People of New York v. Trump#Trump Indictment#Alvin Bragg#Judge Shopping#Stormy Daniels#Juan Manuel Merchan#Donald Trump Trial
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Billionaire Paul Singer gifted Justice Samuel Alito with Alito sitting on Singer case
The GuardianFollow
Samuel Alito did not declare gifts from billionaire with case before US supreme court
Story by Martin Pengelly in New York
The US supreme court justice Samuel Alito accepted a seat on a private plane owned by the conservative billionaire Paul Singer, flying to Alaska for a luxury fishing trip hosted by another rightwing businessman, then did not declare such gifts or recuse…
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Защо червената драсканица на Англия разкъсва традициите в ръгбито
Защо червената драсканица на Англия разкъсва традициите в ръгбито
Хората на Стив Бортуик ще излязат в събота с една от най-лошите ръгби флан��лки на всички ��ремена. Това не биваше да се случва
Martin Pengelly
Хората на Стив Бортуик ще излязат в събота с една от най-лошите ръгби фланелки на всички времена. Това не биваше да се случва
Комикът Робърт Нюман веднъж обсъжда защо английският футболен отбор носи бяло. Той каза, че след като са измислили футбола, англичаните първи са избрали цветовете. И те избрали бялото, натоварено със смисъл и сила, чисто и екзистенциално.
Нюман не цитира…
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Jessica Burbank hosts. The Guardian Breaking News Editor Martin Pengelly joins to discuss the bombshells revealed in Mike Pompeo's latest book. Race Forward Executive VP Eric Ward breaks down the harassment, threats, and violence Democratic lawmakers are facing from the right. 230124__TC by The Young Turks
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