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#if the stakes are as dire as democrats claim they are
arpov-blog-blog · 3 months
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..."As we sit here a good 11 months before the election, there has been widespread bed-wetting over the incumbent. Buckets of liberal tears have been shed. And it all seems, in my humble, liberal opinion, a bit ridiculous.
I will never, ever, ever again utter the words, “There’s no way Donald Trump becomes president.” Fool me once, and all that.
Trump could absolutely win the 2024 election. He has a sizable swath of the voting public so thoroughly brainwashed they’d follow him into an active volcano. And there are plenty of Republicans who claim they loathe him and talk a good game about protecting democracy but would still push the button for him in the privacy of a voting booth.
Democratic voters shouldn’t rest or feel confident for a second between now and the minute the polls close. There’s too much at stake. The threat of a second Trump term and the dictator-y nightmares it might bring are too great.
... but which candidate would you rather be right now?
That said, it’s absurd to look at the two candidates and think for a moment one doesn’t have the edge, and not just because Biden faces 91 fewer state and federal felony charges than Trump.
Consider these facts:
The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit an all-time high Wednesday. The S&P 500 went up 8.9% in November, one of its best monthly jumps in decades.
In the most recent jobs report, unemployment dropped to 3.7% from 3.9%. In January and April, it hit a 54-year low of 3.4%.
Biden's accomplishments as president have been significant
But Biden is president, so Democrats, as they are wont to do, grouse and moan and fret and wonder if there’s a younger, more dynamic candidate out there.
While painted by the right as doddering and inept, Biden has enacted wide-ranging legislation, from a $1 trillion infrastructure bill to the Inflation Reduction Act. He appointed the first Black woman to ever sit on U.S. Supreme Court. He signed the Respect for Marriage Act protecting same-sex and interracial marriages. He united NATO over the war in Ukraine.
And last I checked, everyone is still allowed to say, “Merry Christmas.”
Now consider Biden's opponent, the guy who wants 'Muslim ban'
The man isn’t flawless by any stretch. His age shows. He has failed to tackle illegal immigration and the dire situation along the U.S.-Mexico border. And now some liberals are furious with him for his strong support of Israel in its war against Hamas.
But let’s examine the Republican fellow Biden will almost surely be running against. For starters, if you don’t like Biden’s handling of the Middle East, wait until you see what Trump would do. This is the man who created a Muslim travel ban and has said that he'd restart that immediately. He recently said that he'd send immigration officials to “pro-jihadist demonstrations” to arrest or deport “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners.”
Liberals need to stop panicking about Biden and start working
I am not now nor have I ever been a passionate fan of Biden. Frankly, I’m not a fan of any politician.
But I can say objectively that if someone asked me who I’d rather be right now as a political candidate – Joe Biden or Donald Trump – it would be Biden, and it wouldn’t be even remotely close.
Perhaps my fellow liberals should stop panicking, change their bedsheets and just focus on putting in the work."
Rex Huppke, USA TODAY
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nikkoliferous · 4 years
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Krystal Ball: The left doesn't owe Joe Biden their vote
If loyal Democratic voters want to cede their power before the fight is even halfway done. that’s their business.
Personally, I’m gonna continue to hold onto mine.
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robertreich · 3 years
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How to Stop Republicans from Stealing Elections
Republican-controlled state legislatures have introduced over 361 voter suppression bills in 47 states, and some states, like Georgia, have already enacted them into law. 
There’s only one way to stop this assault on our democracy. It’s called the FOR THE PEOPLE ACT, and the window for Congress to pass it is closing.
These Republican voter suppression bills are egregious —they shrink early voting periods, add onerous voter ID requirements, limit eligibility for mail-in ballots, ban ballot drop boxes and drive-through voting, and even make it a crime to give voters in line water.
The FOR THE PEOPLE ACT, on the other hand, would prevent these tactics and make it easier to vote. In addition, gerrymandering would be reduced and the power of small political donors would be amplified.
It could not come at a more critical time.
The Republican assault on our democracy is based on the lie that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Multiple recounts in battleground states like Georgia found nothing. Investigations by the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department found nothing. 61 out of 62 courts found nothing.
Republicans claim they’re just listening to the concerns of their voters and restoring “trust” in our elections. Rubbish. The real purpose of these restrictions is to hamper voting by Black people, people of color, young people, and lower-income Americans. 
After Black voters and organizers in Georgia flipped the state blue for the first time in decades, the GOP is pulling out all the stops to prevent the same from happening in other states. The situation is even more dire given the upcoming once-in-a-decade redistricting process, allowing Republican-controlled states to further gerrymander congressional districts.
Their assault on the right to vote is a coordinated, national strategy led by top party leaders and outside dark-money advocacy groups like the Heritage Foundation. That group is working directly with state legislatures to provide them with “model legislation” and gearing up to spend $24 million in eight states to advance these bills ahead of the midterms.
Unless the FOR THE PEOPLE ACT becomes law, these restrictive state bills will go into effect before the upcoming 2022 midterm elections, and entrench Republican power for  years to come. So it’s essential we protect voting rights now, while we still can. 
This is not a partisan fight. It’s a battle between forces that want to go backward to an era of Jim Crow, and the majority of Americans who want to build a more inclusive democracy.
Yet the FOR THE PEOPLE ACT faces an uphill battle in the Senate because of the archaic filibuster rule that requires a 60-vote supermajority to pass legislation.
The good news is Senate Democrats have the power to end the filibuster and thereby allow the FOR THE PEOPLE ACT to become law. It’s time for Democrats to unite on this, without hesitation. 
The stakes could not be higher. Simply put, it’s democracy or authoritarianism.
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mrx-bees-for-eyes · 2 years
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On leftist disunity
The blowout of Contrapoints and Lindsay Ellis is less the result of a lack of unity in leftist spaces, and more the aggravation of our already established disunity.
Leftists have rarely been unified in our own spaces throughout history. In fact, once a goal has been achieved, it's not uncommon for infighting to spring up between different leftist spheres because, in reality, there is a huge difference between marxist/lennonists, maoists, anarchist, and social democrats. We will butt heads, bicker, argue, and vote against each other. That's incredibly healthy for a functioning and progressing society as, the end result, older more outdated and ineffective ideas will eventually be removed and newer, more useful and progressive ideas take their place. What we have now in leftist spheres... is incredibly unhealthy and I think that's on purpose. There's an awesome video essay done by Thought Slime called "Why is Twitter so Toxic?" that dissects the dialectics of political discussion and twitter, (I'd also recommend "Bo Burnham vs. Jeff Bezos - Video Essay" by CJ The X) but in short, everything about the function of modern social media is designed to keep us clicking, yadda yadda, I won't cover what's already in the videos. The situation is dire, and growing worse by the day. Wealth inequality, the rights of minorities being stripped away, political representation plummeting more and more conservative despite a growing number of leftist/progressive populations, climate change... Stakes are so incredibly high between all demographics and the only ones who don't suffer from the effects are actively making it worse. (from this point on, I use "us" and "we" in regards to outrage culture. While I don't participate in mobbing or cancel culture, I think it's very important to claim that incredibly toxic side of our leftist spaces. We can't change it if we won't even take responsibility for it.) In the grand scale of political media, absolutely no popular news outlet, social media platform, etc, are on our sides (with the exception of a few, very small groups). Fox news may be your enemy, but CNN certainly isn't your friend, catch my drift? They're right of liberal at best. This is reflected everywhere in political online spaces and it's being utilized to make us fight and depressed. If you're afraid on main, you are a product and they're selling you your own fear. These private entities have way too much power on how we communicate with each other and it's pushing out outrage faster than we can even comprehend. We consume so much bad news without any advice on how to fix it, it's insane and it's driving us to take power where we can. Outrage. But don't get me wrong, we have no power over outrage. It's been packaged, shipped, and sold to us with a fancy little twitter logo on the box. It's been effective at removing some random celebrity out of a tv show we like, but it's shit at actual political change which is why outrage culture is encouraged and curated in the very algorithms of the online spaces we inhabit because it keeps people coming back. Brand name outrage culture is most controversial reply being the first reply you see every time you open a tweet. It's 90% of the "trending" page being bad and disheartening news. It's the controversial section. It's all of it. We are sold our fear the same way grocery stores manipulate you by putting oreos by the checkout. I think the eradication of leftists in online spaces is an inevitability. Whether it's by our own teeth, or by censorship altogether it will happen. And I don't have an ultimate solution to fix it. Boycotting social media only means that social media will primarily be consumed by those who utilize it for harm. Even if we were to coordinate, enmasse, away from social media we will lose connection to everyone and everything we hold dear. It would put us at a serious disadvantage and isolate us from each other and I can't think of any positives to that... we can't go back now. The world is too complicated and dependant on the internet to "cut out cyborg in us," so to speak. To tie this back to my point... social media can't be the only place you exercise political activism. In fact, I don't think
anyone should practice activism on popular social media sites, but that might be too extreme too soon (and a lot coming from someone writing an essay on a dying website, but I digress). At the very least. I recommend, as leftists like myself who can make a small difference we should turn our attention inward and out to our immediate community. Learn what you can do in the world around you, in your neighborhood, on your street, to make it a safe space for you and those who are marginalized. Vote progressively AND LOCALLY as well as federally (I don't mean to raise my voice, but most people don't even know who the mayor of their county is, but expects their state to magically turn blue if you're in the US). Campaign for change. Vote for the expansion of benefits and safety nets for marginalized families and progressive businesses. Vote to tax large corporations in your town, so they'll be forced to leave making space for more progressive economic structures. What we need, more than anything, especially right now, is a community ready to care for each other at our own doorstep. We may not be able to take the world by storm, but perhaps we can take it one neighborhood at a time.
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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
November 19, 2020
Heather Cox Richardson
Today Trump continued his assault on our democracy, trying to overturn what at this point is a very clear victory for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris.
Today, Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell alleged—without evidence—widespread fraud in the election and that Biden won because of “the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China and the interference with our elections here in the United States.” On his Fox News Channel show, personality Tucker Carlson noted that Powell refused to produce any evidence for any of her outlandish claims. The Washington Post described the press conference in which Trump’s lawyers made these allegations as “truly bonkers.”
Rick Hasen, an election law expert, wrote, “This is very dangerous for our democracy, as it is an attempt to thwart the will of the voters through political pressure from the President…. Even though it is extremely unlikely to work, it is profoundly antidemocratic and a violation of the rule of law. It's inexcusable.” And yet, the official Twitter account of the Republican Party endorsed Powell’s statements.
The goal of Trump’s team is not to make a coherent argument; they have lost 31 lawsuits so far, and have racked up only 2 quite minor wins that do not affect the outcome. They are simply creating a narrative to muddy the waters, apparently either to get legislatures to replace Democratic electors with Republican ones, or to delay the certification of ballots to throw the election into the House of Representatives, where they think Trump has a chance of winning. They are making no pretense that Trump is the choice of a majority of voters-- Biden is ahead by almost 6 million votes. Rather, they are trying to game the Electoral College.
This is a long shot that gets longer every day. Today, Trump invited to the White House Michigan lawmakers and the Republican canvass board members from Wayne County who first certified the ballots that elected Biden, and then, after Trump reached out to them, declared they wanted to “rescind” their approval of the ballot counts. But it was too late to change the certification of the ballots.
Tonight, the Republican secretary of state from Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, announced the result of the hand audit of ballots there, too. He confirmed that Biden has won Georgia. It turned out there were indeed some minor errors in the original count, but they were concentrated not in Democratic counties, but in Floyd County, which is Republican.
Today, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform called out Emily Murphy, the administrator at the General Services Administration responsible for refusing to acknowledge Biden’s victory. Her refusal has kept Biden’s people from access to intelligence and federal staffers who could help them prepare to hit the ground running when Biden takes office in January. The committee members wrote a letter pointing out that Biden has won by nearly six million votes and has been identified as the winner of the 2020 election by all major news media outlets. At this point, members of the committee say, “there is no conceivable argument that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are not ‘the apparent successful candidates for the office of President and Vice President,’” the standard the law sets for recognizing an incoming administration.
The committee wrote: “[T]here is no legitimate path forward for President Trump—regardless of how many baseless lawsuits he files or his irrelevant refusal to concede. He has now lost dozens of cases in multiple states as many of his own attorneys abandon his effort.” It went on, “Your actions in blocking transition activities required under the law are having grave effects, including undermining the orderly transfer of power, impairing the incoming Administration’s ability to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, hampering its ability to address our nation’s dire economic crisis, and endangering our national security.” The committee demanded Murphy brief them no later than Monday on why she is refusing to grant the Biden-Harris team access to the critical services and facilities required by law.
Trump’s attempt to steal this election is a fundamental attack on our democracy.
It is prompted in part, perhaps, by the fact that, as soon as he leaves office, Trump can no longer claim protection from indictments. Tonight the New York Times noted that two different investigations by the state of New York into Trump and his businesses have expanded to include tax write-offs for about $26 million in consulting fees, some of which appears to have gone to Ivanka Trump. She lashed out on Twitter, calling the investigation “harassment pure and simple… motivated by politics, publicity and rage.”
Even some Republican lawmakers are calling out Trump’s assault for what it is. Today Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said “It’s outrageous. It’s an assault on democracy…. It’s bad for the Republican Party.” Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) issued a statement pointing out that the president’s lawyers have refused to allege any fraud while under oath in a court, “because there are legal consequences for lying to judges.” “We are a nation of laws, not tweets,” he said.
Tonight on Twitter, Mitt Romney (R-UT) wrote, “Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the President has now resorted to overt pressure on states and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election. It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American president.”
Trump’s attack is not the first assault our democracy has withstood. In the 1860s, southern slaveowners sought to destroy the United States of America in order to create their own nation, based on the principle that white men were better than women and people of color, and naturally should rule over them.
On this date in 1863, at the dedication of a national cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for the men who had died there in a terrible battle the previous July, President Abraham Lincoln reminded Americans what was at stake. Packed in the midst of a sea of men in frock coats, he spoke for just two minutes.
Lincoln reminded the audience that America was “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The raging civil war was a test to see whether America, or indeed whether any nation based on that revolutionary principle, could survive.
Lincoln honored “the brave men, living and dead,” who had fought at Gettysburg, but noted that their struggle there had already consecrated the ground “far above our poor power to add or detract.”
Instead, he told the audience, the dedication ceremony was for the living. “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,” he said, “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
—-
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
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msclaritea · 3 years
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“Nearly 2,000 former U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys warned of possible election interference committed by Attorney General Bill Barr in an open letter published late Thursday.
“Each of us took an oath to defend the Constitution and pursue the evenhanded administration of justice free from partisan consideration,” the brief missive reads–noting that the numerous signatories have previously worked under both Republican and Democratic Party administrations.
The letter said that many of the lawyers whose names appear have previously issued similarly dire warnings based on the belief that President Donald Trump and Barr are “weaponizing” the DOJ in order to help advance the 45th president’s “personal interests.” This abusive use of the agency, the signatories say, has done “grave damage to the rule of law” and has sapped the DOJ’s “institutional credibility as an independent law enforcement agency.”
Thursday’s document says that, now, the stakes are effectively the highest they’ve ever been for the rule of law in America:
We speak out again now because we fear that Attorney General Barr intends to use the DOJ’s vast law enforcement powers to undermine our most fundamental democratic value: free and fair elections. He has signalled this intention in myriad ways, from making false statements about the security of mail-in voting from foreign hackers to falsely suggesting that mail-in ballots are subject to widespread fraud and coercion. Most recently, the Department made a premature and improper announcement of a mail-in ballot tampering investigation that the White House immediately used as a talking point in its campaign to discredit mail-in voting and to further the claim it will be rigged against President Trump...”
Read more
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newstfionline · 3 years
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Sunday, November 8, 2020
Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided US (AP) Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States on Saturday, positioning himself to lead a nation gripped by a historic pandemic and a confluence of economic and social turmoil. His victory came after more than three days of uncertainty as election officials sorted through a surge of mail-in votes that delayed the processing of some ballots. Biden crossed 270 Electoral College votes with a win in Pennsylvania. Trump refused to concede, threatening further legal action on ballot counting. Biden, 77, staked his candidacy less on any distinctive political ideology than on galvanizing a broad coalition of voters around the notion that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy. Biden, in a statement, said he was humbled by the victory and it was time for the battered nation to set aside its differences. “It’s time for America to unite. And to heal,” he said. Kamala Harris also made history as the first Black woman to become vice president, an achievement that comes as the U.S. faces a reckoning on racial justice. The California senator, who is also the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency, will become the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in government. Trump is the first incumbent president to lose reelection since Republican George H. W. Bush in 1992. Americans showed deep interest in the presidential race. A record 103 million voted early this year, opting to avoid waiting in long lines at polling locations during a pandemic. With counting continuing in some states, Biden had already received more than 74 million votes, more than any presidential candidate before him.
Elation and Anger: Catharsis in the streets as election ends (AP) As soon as the news buzzed on their phones, Americans gathered spontaneously on street corners and front lawns—honking their horns, banging pots and pans, starting impromptu dance parties—as an agonizingly vitriolic election and exhausting four-day wait for results came to an end Saturday morning. And for all that joy, there was equal parts sorrow, anger and mistrust on the other side. Across the United States, the dramatic conclusion of the 2020 election was cathartic. Just after The Associated Press and other news organizations declared that former Vice President Joe Biden beat President Donald Trump, fireworks erupted in Atlanta. In Maine, a band playing at a farmers’ market broke into the Battle Hymn of the Republic. In Manhattan, they danced in the streets, banged cowbells and honked their car horns. In Louisville, Kentucky, Biden supporters gathered on their lawns to toast with champagne. But Trump’s supporters, far from jubilant, were angry, defiant and mistrustful of the news. But for many Saturday, it was a relief to Biden’s supporters to celebrate victory, put bitter partisanship aside and dance in the streets, if only for one afternoon.
Trump supporters refuse to accept defeat (AP) Chanting “This isn’t over!" and “Stop the steal,” supporters of President Donald Trump protested at state capitols across the country Saturday, refusing to accept defeat and echoing Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations that the Democrats won by fraud. From Atlanta and Tallahassee to Austin, Bismarck, Boise and Phoenix, crowds ranging in size from a few dozen to a few thousand—some of them openly carrying guns—decried the news of Joe Biden's victory after more than three suspense-filled days of vote-counting put the Democrat over the top. Skirmishes broke out in some cities. In Atlanta, outside the state Capitol in the longtime Republican stronghold of Georgia, chants of “Lock him up!” rang out among an estimated 1,000 Trump supporters. Others chanted, “This isn’t over! This isn’t over!” and “Fake news!” Contrary to the claims of Trump supporters, there has been no evidence of any serious vote fraud. The utter rejection of Biden as the legitimate president by Trump and his supporters appears to represent something new in American political history, said Barbara Perry, presidential studies director at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. “We typically haven’t had a leader who loses the presidency who then tells his followers, ‘This is false. This has been stolen from us,'” Perry said. "Incumbent presidents have been mad, so mad they didn’t go to the inauguration, but not like this, where they are leading those people to say this is fraudulent.”
Nations long targeted by US chide Trump’s claims of fraud (AP) Demands to stop the vote count. Baseless accusations of fraud. Claims that the opposition is trying to “steal” the election. Across the world, many were scratching their heads Friday—especially in countries that have long been advised by Washington on how to run elections—wondering if those assertions could truly be coming from the president of the United States, the nation considered one of the world’s most emblematic democracies. “Who’s the banana republic now?” Colombian daily newspaper Publimetro chided on the front page with a photo of a man in a U.S. flag print mask. The irony of seeing U.S. Donald Trump cut off by major media networks Thursday as he launched unsubstantiated claims lambasting the U.S. electoral system was not lost on many. The U.S. has long been a vocal critic of strongman tactics around the world. Now, some of those same targets are turning around the finger. Along with the mockery comes dismay. Many people in Africa see the U.S. as a bellwether for democracy and, after troubled votes in Tanzania and Ivory Coast in recent days, they looked to what Washington might say. “We are asking ourselves, why is the U.S. democratic process appearing so fragile when it is meant to be held up to us in the rest of the world as a beacon of perfect democracy?” said Samir Kiango, a Tanzanian out in his country’s commercial capital Friday.
Second Mexican state to enter highest coronavirus alert level (Reuters) A second Mexican state will from next week enter the highest level of coronavirus alert as authorities bid to contain a recent jump in infections in the north of the country, the health ministry said on Friday. The northern state of Durango will as of Monday join Chihuahua, a neighboring region on the U.S. border, in the red alert phase following an increase in hospitalizations. Most of Mexico’s 32 regional governments are currently at the lower orange or yellow alert levels.
Guatemalan mudslides push storm Eta’s death toll near 150 (Reuters) The death toll from torrential downpours unleashed by storm Eta leapt on Friday as Guatemalan soldiers reached a mountain village where around 100 people were killed by a landslide, adding to dozens of other dead in Central America and Mexico. Many of those who lost their lives in the village of Queja in the central Guatemalan region of Alta Verapaz were buried in their homes after mudslides swallowed around 150 houses, army spokesman Ruben Tellez said. The devastating weather front brought destruction from Panama to Honduras and Mexico, which between them have registered more than 50 flood-related deaths.
Evo Morales to return from exile to Bolivia in 800-vehicle convoy (Guardian) Bolivia’s exiled former president, Evo Morales, is set to make a triumphant homecoming next week, leading an 800-vehicle convoy to the jungle-clad coca-growing region where he began his political career. The Bolivian newspaper Página Siete reported that Morales would cross from Argentina into the southern border town of Villazón on Monday morning before heading 600 miles north to the province of Chapare. Bolivia’s first indigenous president, who was driven into exile last November in what supporters called a US-backed coup, plans to arrive in the town of Chimoré on Tuesday, exactly a year after fleeing the same location on a Mexican airforce jet. The return of Bolivia’s first indigenous president comes after his Movement for Socialism (Mas) reclaimed the presidency last month when Morales’ former finance minister, Luis Arce, won a landslide election victory.
Trump berated and baffled European allies. They aren’t sad to see him go. (Washington Post) President Donald Trump called Europe a “foe.” He said the continent’s cities were migrant-ridden, dangerous “no-go zones.” He threw leaders into a panic with threats to withdraw from NATO. And as Europeans watched the United States elect Joe Biden as its next president, many embraced his promises to respect long-standing alliances and regain the world’s trust in his country. Few Europeans expect Inauguration Day to repair all the damage—the close election suggests Trumpism will endure in some capacity, and the divergence of U.S. and European interests is part of a long-term trend. But policymakers here say they will be glad for summits without Trump there to dominate the agenda. Trump spent four years dismantling U.S. policies that many Europeans consider key to their security interests. Sometimes, policymakers here felt, he made decisions specifically because he knew it would infuriate them. They were shattered when he pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accords. They have spent years holding together the Iran nuclear deal, which has been faltering ever since he denounced it and slapped new sanctions on Tehran. They have been exasperated by his admiration for authoritarian leaders and his distaste for them. Trump is not universally disliked in Europe. His 2016 election gave a jolt of energy to the continent’s populists. The right-wing leaders of Poland and Hungary—who have been sanctioned by the European Union for dismantling courts and undermining their opponents—get along well with him. But most leaders here will be glad to see Trump’s back and eager to trade him in for a more conventional counterpart.
Europe’s Hospital Crunch Grows More Dire, Surpassing Spring Peak (NYT) More Europeans are seriously ill with the coronavirus than ever before, new hospital data for 21 countries shows, surpassing the worst days in the spring and threatening to overwhelm stretched hospitals and exhausted medical workers. New lockdowns have not yet stemmed the current influx of patients, which has only accelerated since it began growing in September, according to official counts of current patients collected by The New York Times. More than twice as many people in Europe are hospitalized with Covid-19 as in the United States, adjusted for population. In the Czech Republic, the worst-hit nation in recent weeks, one in 1,300 people is currently hospitalized with Covid-19. And in Belgium, France, Italy and other countries in Western Europe, a new swell of patients has packed hospitals to levels last seen in March and April. Countries across Europe are scrambling to find solutions. Swiss authorities approved deploying up to 2,500 military personnel to help hospitals handle rising infections in the country, while others like France have postponed non-emergency surgeries. And in Belgium, staff shortages have led some hospitals to ask doctors and nurses who have tested positive for the virus but who don’t have symptoms to keep working.
Books? Hairdressers? Europeans split on lockdown essentials (AP) In times when a pandemic unleashes death and poverty, the concept of what is essential to keep society functioning in a lockdown is gripping Europe. Beyond the obvious—food stores and pharmacies—some answers in the patchwork of nations and cultures that make up Europe can approach the surreal. What is allowed on one side of a border can be banned just a brief stroll down the road, on the other. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that while it might seem fairest to just shut everything down, “it’s perhaps not the most practical” solution. That’s why Germany is keeping car dealerships open this time, after their closure in the first, spring lockdown hurt the country’s huge automobile industry. In Belgium, of course, chocolate shops are staying open. “Chocolate is very much an essential food around here,” said chocolatier Marleen Van Volsem at the Praleen chocolaterie south of Brussels. “It has to be. Because chocolate makes you happy.” In Italy, the country that coined the term “bella figura”—the art of cutting a fine figure—hairdressers are deemed essential. “Italians really care about their image and about wellness,”″ said Charity Cheah, the Milan-based co-founder of TONI&GUY Italy. “Perhaps psychologically, the government may feel that going to a salon is a moment of release from stress and tension, a moment of self-care, that citizens need.”
Nagorno-Karabakh says its two largest cities under fierce attack (Reuters) Three residents of Nagorno-Karabakh’s largest city were killed during overnight shelling by Azeri forces, the enclave’s ethnic Armenian-controlled Emergency and Rescue Service said on Friday, as the battle for control of its major settlements intensified. Two independent observers said fighting appeared to be moving deeper into the enclave, with Azeri troops stepping up attacks on its biggest two cities. At least 1,000 people—and possibly many more—have died in nearly six weeks of fighting in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but populated and controlled by ethnic Armenians. Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said allegations that it had shelled civilian areas were “misinformation”. It has previously accused Armenian-controlled forces of shelling cities under its control, including Terter and Barda, as well as Ganja, the second-largest city in Azerbaijan. Dozens were killed in those attacks.
Ethiopian air strikes in Tigray will continue, says PM, as civil war risk grows (Reuters) Ethiopian jets bombed the Tigray region on Friday and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed pledged more air strikes in the escalating conflict amid reports that Tigrayan forces had seized control of federal military sites and weapons. Civilians in the northern region should avoid “collateral damage” by not gathering outside as strikes would continue, Abiy said in a televised speech on Friday evening, defying international pleas for both sides to show restraint. The developments illustrate how quickly the days-old conflict is escalating, raising the threat of a civil war that experts and diplomats warn would destabilise the country of 110 million people and hurt the broader Horn of Africa.
Unemployed man finds new job by posting huge resume on truck (Fox News) It’s a full-time job to look for a job, but one man refused to let opportunity drive by, and found work after posting his resume on the back of a truck. James Pemblington of Nottinghamshire, England, was out of work in March when the theme park where he worked was forced to cut employees due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Annesley man applied for about 100 jobs and went on two interviews, but the opportunities ultimately, unfortunately, fell through. The determined dad kept striving, sending companies “edible” versions of his resume—i.e. packages of brownies featuring a QR code that linked to his website. No employers ate up the gimmick, but Pemblington’s luck changed when he won a contest to have his resume displayed on the back of an 18-ton truck. Two days after his CV hit the road, he was offered a new position by an employer who reportedly spotted his credentials while sitting in traffic.
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theliberaltony · 4 years
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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight
Welcome to a special edition of FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.
sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Earlier today, President Trump tweeted that the 2020 election should be delayed “until people can properly, securely and safely vote.”
Postponing the election, of course, is not something the president can legally do. But it’s also kind of besides the point. Trump has already been fighting to delegitimize the results come November, claiming that voting by mail can lead to mass voter fraud.
So let’s dive into that. How would you describe Trump’s efforts to throw November’s results into question? He did something similar in 2016 when facing Hillary Clinton. How is this different?
clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Well, in many ways it’s exactly what Trump was doing in 2016. It’s just that he’s president now. And thus, his words are even more damaging (and they were already very damaging in 2016).
geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): There’s also a very important distinction here. Before, Trump was just a candidate casting doubt on the election, but now he’s a sitting president doing that.
julia_azari (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): I’d characterize this as an exercise in control and influence over his party and the news cycle. Everyone is forced to respond to what he says, even if they’re not responding positively. Trump isn’t effective at that many aspects of the job, but he’s pretty effective at agenda control.
clare.malone: I would also say that calling for the delay of the actual vote feels VERY dictatorial in nature. Like, we’ve perversely gotten used to the “fake votes,” “fake news” stuff. But encouraging a change in the election date feels sort of explicitly over a line.
sarah: And to ask a somewhat obvious question — but one that has to be asked — this is another unprecedented, norm-defying and democratic-value jeopardizing moment, right? To put it another way, has another sitting president ever done this?
julia_azari: I’m always nervous about the “never” question with past presidents, but yeah, most presidents have not been willing to take on all the formal rules, the legal system and other branches of government while in office. Congress — which has the power to change the date of an election — used to be stronger, too, and there was no Twitter. My go-to example for this is we still had a presidential election in 1864, during the Civil War.
geoffrey.skelley: And in modern times, incumbents who have lost reelection have exited office without too much of a fuss. Take George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, or if we go further back, Herbert Hoover. Granted, incumbents don’t often lose. So it’s important to note that each of those incumbents lost decisively, meaning there wasn’t much to stand on even if they had wanted to fight the result. But it’s not like Gerald Ford created a stir in 1976 when he lost narrowly.
julia_azari: Candidates have also conceded even when the election was a mess. See Al Gore in 2000, Samuel Tilden in 1876.1
sarah: But on this question of actually changing the election date. How much power does Trump have to do that?
clare.malone: He does not have the power to change the date of the election.
julia_azari: None. It’s up to Congress, and elections are administered by the states.
clare.malone: Here’s my question, though: What happens if Trump refuses to leave the White House on Jan. 20, and there are no official election results at that point?
Like, in that dire scenario (Trump not leaving, no clear winner) does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi become president and someone has to haul him out of the building?
geoffrey.skelley: If for some reason the Electoral College hasn’t acted or the electoral votes haven’t been certified by Congress, Trump’s term ends on Jan. 20, according to the 20th Amendment. So there’d be an acting president, who would be the Speaker of the House per the order set out by the Presidential Succession Act — assuming congressional elections occurred.
But of course, that’s how it’s written, not how it might go.
sarah: Did someone mention
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julia_azari: I keep imagining this scenario, and I have to say, I have a hard time imagining that Trump refuses to leave office. I don’t want to be complacent, but like a lot of people on Twitter, Trump seems to be comfortable tweeting out bold ideas and not as great at standing firm under political pressure.
So as I see it, there would be a couple of components needed for this to actually happen. There would be the political pressure — what are advisors, including Jared and Ivanka, telling him to do? This would help us understand if there are people who have influence over Trump who have some interest in seeing the system remain intact and legitimate.
The second thing would be the actual formal power — does the Secret Service force him out? Does the military gets involved? These are wild scenarios.
I would be surprised if these institutions don’t have plans for this somewhere, even if they are not publicly known.
geoffrey.skelley: Not to take things down an even darker road, but in this scenario, I think it’s important to consider how other institutions like the military act and how the president’s supporters behave in the face of attempts to delegitimize the election results.
clare.malone: Totally. I think that’s where many people’s minds go, too. And as a country, I think we are deeply uncomfortable (and rightly so) with the military being involved with a power transition. I mean, I personally find it incredibly chilling to consider.
geoffrey.skelley: I’ve seen Seven Days In May. Great movie but, uh yeah, disturbing.
But it’s a sign of the times when you have Biden actually saying he thinks the military would escort Trump out of the White House if he refused to leave.
sarah: Because that’s the thing, as you’re all saying, there are mechanisms via the 20th amendment to ensure Trump leaves office. But there’s still a very real question of how some of this would actually be enforced if it came to this, right?
julia_azari: Exactly. The 20th amendment was ratified to shorten the period between the presidential election in November and the inauguration, which had been in March. There was growing instability around the time it was ratified, after the 1932 election, and that’s some of what it intended to deal with, but it wasn’t really designed with this problem in mind.
I’m trying to stake out the ground that acknowledges a lot of people won’t have much incentive to let Trump violate the rules in this way.
clare.malone: Julia, when you say that a lot of people won’t have incentive to let Trump act contrary to the rules, whom are you thinking of?
julia_azari: I guess I’m thinking of people who might want to run for president later.
clare.malone: Republicans?
julia_azari: Or make money off the Trump brand. This includes his kids, and yeah, other Republicans.
clare.malone: That is, people with sway over him. Got it.
julia_azari: Military leaders, too, as we saw many of them push back after the D.C. protesters incident in June.
sarah: So let’s talk about the other big doomsday scenario here: The results aren’t considered legitimate. What are the signs that that idea is already taking root?
julia_azari: That’s a good way to frame that, but I’m not sure there are signs that it’s taking root any more than it’s sorta been lurking in the conversation since 2016 — and even before.
geoffrey.skelley: In the face of COVID-19, states are expanding absentee voting and, in some cases, vote-by-mail. But the president is making the case that mailed ballots are illegitimate and highly vulnerable to fraud — this is not true, of course, but by casting aspersions, he’s setting up the potential for delegitimizing the results as they come in, on and after Election Day. And the after part is probably what really matters, especially if the election is close.
clare.malone: Yeah, I was going to say, we’ve spent the past 4 to 5 years conditioning a certain segment of the population to distrust most everything in American life, unless it comes from the president’s mouth.
Someone shared this 2017 survey that found that around half of Republicans would be ok with delaying the 2020 election. Granted, the question was framed around whether people would support delaying the election to make sure people weren’t voting illegally (a big claim of Trump’s in 2016). But I still thought that was surprising.
It’s especially striking when you get to 2020, and the questions revolve around the pandemic. I was shocked to see, for instance, the share of Republicans and Democrats who were willing to delay the election because of the pandemic (roughly 39 percent of Americans supported delaying the election, according to that survey from April).
sarah: Yeah … it is mind boggling. That finding is also at least somewhat corroborated in this paper FiveThirtyEight contributor Lee Drutman published with the Voter Study Group earlier this year. In an examination of democracy in the U.S., Drutman and his coauthors found that both Republicans and Democrats were open to their preferred presidential candidate “rejecting the legitimacy of the election if they claim credible evidence of illegal voting or foreign interference.” And in that vein, 29 percent of Republicans said it would be appropriate for Trump “to refuse to leave office because he claims that he has credible evidence of illegal voting.”
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julia_azari: One quibble with that study, though, knowing I have the utmost respect for Lee and his coauthors, is that each scenario lays out a justification for delaying the election, which I think makes it harder to say no. And I think people’s willingness to tolerate this in practice is conditional on their evaluation of that evidence, the credibility of the claims and the person making the claims. (E.g., Trump, who isn’t very popular.)
clare.malone: Totally fair.
I was pretty shocked in general to see how amenable people were to changing this very foundational thing! Even with the reasonings the survey questions provided them.
julia_azari: I was, too, but I think it’s not unreasonable for people to have limits on how much they trust elections if they think those elections were not administered fairly.
geoffrey.skelley: And if the election is close and a state or two is in doubt, any questions about administration could become explosive. See: the 2000 election.
julia_azari: Right. It’s actually amazing how explosive that wasn’t. But things are different now — I wonder how this plays out if we flip it around.
Let’s say Trump wins.
(I mean, this sorta already happened in 2016. Trump won, yet he went right ahead and tried to delegitimize parts of an election he had won.)
But let’s say it happens again, and he wins narrowly once again? Who questions the results? And would that be the right thing to do?
geoffrey.skelley: Yes, I wanted to bring this up! Trump said there were at least 3 million illegal votes in an election he won — conveniently undoing Clinton’s popular vote margin. And then he set up a task force to investigate fraud after he took office. It found nothing.
julia_azari: But there will likely be this question of “credible evidence,” as they cite in that Voter Study group paper. What if Trump wins, and people were standing in hours-long lines in Black neighborhoods in Ohio?
In other words, I think there will be a question of how much skepticism about elections is reasonable, and how much is chaos?
clare.malone: I think there is just going to be skepticism about this election, full stop.
geoffrey.skelley: I would not discount opponents of Trump taking to the streets in that scenario. A recent simulation by a group of experts about what could happen in these sorts of scenarios did not bring me much comfort. They found that every scenario — Trump winning or losing but someone defying the result — ended in street-level violence and political gridlock.
sarah: Oof. It’s interesting to me, though, that the desire to delegitimize results isn’t purely a Republican thing, as that Voter Study paper found. Democrats also showed signs of also being willing to reject the legitimacy of the election if it helps their preferred candidate.
clare.malone: Stacey Abrams’s non-concession concession speech in 2018 provided an interesting template for a potential Biden response (in case of a loss to Trump).
Though I do think Biden is such a conventional politician and institutionalist that he wouldn’t respond in the same way Abrams did, justified or not.
sarah: Yeah and Biden obviously isn’t waging a campaign of disinformation in the way that Trump is either. But perhaps one unintended effect of all this is, to Clare’s point, that skepticism of the election (depending on its margin) is going to be rampant.
julia_azari: Although Biden seems like … truly angry at times about the Trump presidency. It’s not obvious what the institutionalist move is in that scenario, IMO.
clare.malone: A good point!
julia_azari: I think there’s a strong possibility that skepticism is persistent and embedded in Trumpist ideology and among his followers, but not that widespread if the election is not close.
clare.malone: I mean, let’s go back to 2016.
If Trump had lost, we were all preparing for the launch of Trump TV, a perch from which he would rail for the impeachment of President Clinton.
I can sort of see something similar happening if Trump loses (unless, of course, he’s too tired to start the Trump TV experiment!)
geoffrey.skelley: OANN would love to have him.
julia_azari: Again, I don’t want to be complacent. I spend way too much time on politics Twitter. I spend all my time on politics Twitter.
But if Biden wins by a lot and Trump tweets a bunch, most Americans will just go on about their lives. That’s sorta how 2000 played out, and that was obviously really close and subject to questions, too.
geoffrey.skelley: Thing is, I can’t imagine Trump conceding in a 2000-esque situation in the way Gore eventually did.
clare.malone: Of course, 2000 is the election that a lot of people point to as the start of mistrust in elections as institutions. And like, the era of “voter fraud” alarmism really ramped up under George W. Bush.
julia_azari: But the angry minority has demonstrated that it can drive politics and policy to a great degree. So I don’t want to be complacent, but I do want to be specific in my fears.
clare.malone: So you could say people went on with their lives, but there were corrosive effects.
julia_azari: If he loses, I sometimes imagine that people around Trump will say, “People will say nice things about you if you do a good concession speech,” and so he does. But it’s not encouraging that that’s what it might come to.
clare.malone: Right, the integrity of democratic institutions might come down to a pep talk from “Javanka?”
sarah: So at the outset of this chat, I asked how Trump’s tweet to postpone the election was different from what he’s already done to try and delegitimize November’s result. And we’ve also pointed out that there have been prior points in American history where voters have mistrusted election results.
But I think given the abnormal aspects of Trump’s presidency, it’s easy to point to historical comparisons without really probing whether the moment we’re in doesn’t have a historical comparison, as historian Rick Perlstein did in his tweet, telling the media he didn’t want to do more interviews on how this moment might compare to 1968.
julia_azari: I think Perlstein is right, but I also think that we should be precise about how abnormal politics interacts with normal politics, because that has been the story of the Trump presidency IMO.
clare.malone: So, I mean, I take Rick’s point in this tweet; there’s this instinct that we have to comfort ourselves with history (i.e., American democracy has weathered much worse) but I do think that we sometimes dwell a bit in history without facing the new challenges that Trump presents us.
We sort of have to respect the new paradigm that’s been created and understand that there are limits to what history can teach us in this particular case; i.e., Twitter, plus Trump, plus 20 years of diminishing electoral trust.
geoffrey.skelley: It’s interesting that people would comfort themselves with history — I take little comfort from it. We’ve been on the brink before with the 1876 election, for instance.
julia_azari: I think that’s absolutely true. I don’t see history as a comfort but rather as a guide to how much luck and skill it takes to maneuver through this stuff.
I also think history is helpful because it shows what’s not normal. (And what shouldn’t be, but is.)
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antoine-roquentin · 5 years
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Media speculation over military intervention in Venezuela grew after Duque’s election in June 2018 and intensified following Jair Bolsonaro’s victory in Brazil in October. Venezuela’s two largest neighbours are both now run by neoliberal rightwing administrations bitterly hostile to chavismo. They in effect ensnare Venezuela in a pincer: Colombia from the west and Brazil from the south.
Besides opposition to the peace agreement, Duque’s election campaign was notable for vilifying Venezuela, exploiting the neighbour’s economic struggles to attack Duque’s progressive opponent, Gustavo Petro. In 2016, Duque’s party, the Democratic Centre, orchestrated the successful ‘no’ vote in the peace plebiscite, which partly explains his willingness to risk the agreement’s future to pursue Maduro’s overthrow.
Three days before Duque’s inauguration, Maduro survived an assassination attempt when a drone exploded above a speech he was giving in Caracas. Maduro blamed the Colombian government. With tensions heightening, Duque cast himself as a moderate compared to the hardline former president Uribe, Duque’s mentor, who many Colombians suspect is the true power behind the throne.
Since then, increased US pressure on Venezuela appears to have signalled a shift. Furthermore, on 17 January, a car bomb attack on a police academy in Bogotá killed twenty-one cadets. The National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia’s last guerrilla insurgency, subsequently claimed responsibility. Large demonstrations against ‘terrorism’ were held in Colombian cities and attended by Duque and other high-profile politicians. Many demonstrators demanded a tough response to the ELN. Colombian media accused Maduro of harbouring the group. The Colombian right was on the warpath, and it came just days before Guaidó’s self-proclamation in Venezuela. Sectors of Duque’s uribista political base now sense a monumental opportunity: to overthrow chavismo, crush the ELN and end the hated FARC peace deal.
In November 2016, the Juan Manuel Santos government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed an agreement to end over half a century of internal conflict. The agreement focuses not only on ending violence, but also tackling historic socio-political conditions that generated guerrilla insurgency. Unfortunately, the agreement has suffered from slow or non-implementation in important areas. In a recent report, the United Nations found that ‘peace faces serious obstacles to its consolidation,’ particularly around polarisation, reincorporation and legal challenges.
Most alarming is the chronic human rights insecurity across much of the country. Up to five hundred social activists and human rights defenders have been murdered since the agreement was signed. Impunity surrounds most cases. Even when the material killers are caught, the intellectual authors are rarely identified.
Violence is particularly concentrated in regions historically affected by poverty, underdevelopment, and conflict. Following the FARC’s withdrawal and reformation as a political party, armed groups have sought to fill resulting power vacuums. This has brought confrontation with communities resistant to illicit activities such as coca production, illegal mining and extortion. In 2018, coca production and forced displacement — both of which theoretically should be in decline — soared as armed groups made their presence felt.
This instability could escalate and spread if war breaks out in Venezuela. Under the shadow of conflict, familiar patterns of violence could target leftist political groups, substituting the old tag of ‘guerrilla sympathiser’ for ‘Maduro sympathiser.’ Long-established clientelist relations between elites and paramilitary groups could exploit conflict with Venezuela to consolidate ruling-class interests, targeting trade unionists, community leaders, and environmental defenders who would be labelled supporters of Maduro. ‘Stigmatisation against anyone who is associated with the Left will increase, and that will have a very negative impact,’ says Andrei Gómez-Suárez, a Colombian political analyst and author.
Colombia’s oil-producing border zones with Venezuela are wracked by instability. Regions such as Catatumbo and Arauca have high coca yields and are lucrative for whoever controls them. Strategically, the border location makes it easy to evade security forces and shift contraband. Historic state neglect compounds the difficult social conditions.
“Since President Duque’s arrival, we’ve seen an intensification in military force,” says Jhunior Maldonado of the Catatumbo Peasant Farmers Association, a regional human rights organisation that had five of its members murdered last year. ‘We’ve seen troop and tank mobilisations. The armed forces say its territorial control, or border exercises. But these movements are not normally seen on the border.’
Recently, new conflicts have emerged, involving a plethora of armed actors besides the army. These include right-wing paramilitary groups, so-called ‘FARC dissident groups’ that have not subscribed to the peace process and the ELN. Some are fighting each other, others against the state: mainly it’s a combination of both. Each would be inexorably sucked into conflict between Colombia and Venezuela and could help advance larger objectives free from the restrictive standards of international conduct.
This could produce a Syria-style situation in which right-wing paramilitaries are cast as ‘rebels’ and given US backing. Although officially demobilised in 2006, remnants of these groups remain active. In November, Colombian paramilitaries attacked an army base in Amazonas, southern Venezuela, killing three soldiers. A paramilitary campaign in Venezuela would occupy security forces, target chavismo’s popular base and spread terror and chaos. Experience of US-backed interventionist tactics elsewhere, from Central America to the Middle East, suggests these groups would not lack material and financial support.
However, groups that oppose the Colombian state may also sense an opportunity and ramp up their own military actions. Stretched Colombian security forces, already at war, would likely resort to serious attacks on human rights attempting to quell internal instability. Civil society would bear the brunt, especially in border zones.
Border communities often cross daily between countries for work. ‘In the case of [the Colombian border city] Cucutá, there is over 70 per cent unemployment or informal employment. State abandonment means many people depend economically on Venezuela,’ says Jhunior Maldonado. Closing the border, and restricting this vital economic lifeline, would cause social conditions to deteriorate further. Consequently, illegal economies could surge, enriching armed groups and providing them with a large recruitment pool.
Venezuelan migration into Colombia has played into hawkish hands. Stoked by media xenophobia, and with many Colombians already suffering from dire economic conditions, migrants are often unwelcome, viewed as an unsustainable burden.
Yet there is less focus on the millions of Colombians living in Venezuela, many of whom fled there during the armed conflict. With so many of either country’s citizens in the respective other, what would an outbreak of war mean? Would all these people be forced to abandon lives they have built, in some cases, over decades? Would they be expelled, or worse? Would they remain passive as the state where they reside threatened their homes and families? The potential blowback — social unrest and state repression driven by media hysteria over fifth columns — could engulf urban areas.
With Colombia’s security apparatus and economy inextricably beholden to US influence, the country is highly susceptible to Washington’s directives. That Colombia potentially would be a willing agent in its own catastrophe encapsulates the right-wing authoritarian model that uribismo, enabled by massive US military backing, has sought to impose on the country. Under the Right, Colombia’s conflict was lucrative for multinationals and domestic elites: indeed, a new war could further deepen capitalist enrichment and regenerate old accumulative practices of massacre, forced displacement, and forced disappearance.
While deadlock in Venezuela persists, the hawks will push ever harder for full invasion. The inferno of war in Venezuela would consume Colombia in its flames. With the future of both countries at stake, voices of reason must prevail.
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dailytechnologynews · 6 years
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Top Ten Predictions FOR 2050
Autonomous vehicles become widespread – this should happen well before 2050 in developed countries (perhaps by 2030). The global road toll, currently over one million deaths a year, will eventually decline by 90% or more. Car ownership will continue for rise for a time (especially in poorer countries) then eventually start to decline. More efficient, autonomous, Uber-like taxis come to dominate road systems. Owning a personal car will eventually be much more expensive (especially as human drivers become increasingly hard to insure). ‘Flying’ versions (of the sort recently trialled in places like Dubai, like small electric helicopters) slowly emerge as well, albeit reserved for the very wealthy.
Other wealthy people and car enthusiasts will continue to own (regular) cars a long way into the future (like horses today). However in many countries, humans may eventually be banned/severely restricted from driving on public roads due to safety concerns (despite how unimaginable this may seem today). In the developed world at least, one of the last holdouts will be the US, as conservative politicians trumpet the rights of law-abiding car owners.
The space program takes off, but slowly – given current plans (especially by private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin) I would give at least 50% odds we will have a man on Mars by 2030 (only 12 years away). In just the last few years SpaceX in particular has proven the feasibility of reusable rockets. Pretty much all the requisite technologies are now here and the pace will slowly pick up as costs come down.
By 2050 several countries/major companies are likely to have space stations in Earth orbit, bases on the Moon and even Mars. Like bases in Antarctica today, these will mainly serve research and tourism purposes (plus a purely geopolitical one in staking out future territory i.e. the US and China build separate bases on the moon and then each claim a hemisphere). More probes will continue to be sent to the outer solar system. The earliest human missions to Jupiter or Saturn space may be in their early stages by 2050. Early efforts to mine the resources of the asteroid belt may be under way. Space-based solar power might have become a reality around Earth (though I suspect that, like nuclear power before it, the public will be sufficiently terrified by the thought of giant space lasers that plans will be stymied even if the experts say the safety concerns are greatly exaggerated). Space elevators remain impractical.
The world successfully finds new sources of energy and copes with climatic changes – for decades many people (some of them highly educated) have predicted that something akin to ‘peak oil’ was imminent and that shortly afterward the world might plunge into a Mad Max-style dystopia. This is unlikely. Not only have the world’s oil, coal and natural gas reserves proven to be vast enough to likely last us generations, but even if all fossil fuels vanished tomorrow, the world has enough uranium to supply our energy needs for thousands of years. CO2 levels will continue to rise and with it global temperatures will continue to tick upwards. However, the industrial capacity and ingenuity of the human race rises much faster. In 2018 your odds of dying from a natural disaster are an order of magnitude less than in 1900. This trend will continue.
The world’s urban population doubles between 2010 and 2050 (from 3.5 to 7 billion). Major coastal cities eventually construct elaborate flood levees as sea levels rise maybe two or three feet by the end of the century. Even in poorer countries, better infrastructure majorly cuts down on deaths due to disease, famine, floods, storms and other disasters (in the long run earthquakes remain the most unpredictable and thus the most dangerous). The predicted ‘climate refugees’ largely fail to eventuate, though millions are always seeking to enter the first world to find higher paying work, especially as automation ramps up and ‘cheap labour’ is no longer the powerful driver of growth it once was.
Fossil fuels remain the primary source of energy in 2050. However, solar, wind, nuclear and now fusion power plants are rapidly coming on line. By 2050 several record breaking tunnels, including from Sicily-Tunisia and Korea-Japan, have been constructed. A number of buildings over 1km tall have been built, with the highest (likely built in a prestige-hungry African country) surpassing 1.5km.
Major confrontations between the US and China over Taiwan and the South China Sea – there will almost certainly be at least one more (and possibly several) sequels to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd ‘Taiwan Strait Crises’. This could take many forms. It might start with a Chinese blockade of the island, or an attempt to seize another, more minor Taiwanese asset (Taiping Island in the Spratlys stands out for instance, or possibly Kinmen and Matsu closer to the mainland). One such scenario is depicted here
Hard to be specific but I would predict better than 50% odds you will see Chinese and US warships shooting at each other at some point. However, I also think the odds are very low it will escalate into WW3. As both sides have nuclear-tipped ICBMs and the American and Chinese homelands are sufficiently far apart battles are likely to be confined to sea, air and fairly remote islands (though space and cyberspace are also likely). Other countries like Japan and Australia could easily get involved.
Hostilities may last for years but the eventual death toll will probably be in the thousands rather than the millions. More dire scenarios see a physical Chinese land invasion of Taiwan (though it is hard to see this succeeding) or a major escalation whereby one side tries to shoot down the other’s satellites, causing a chain reaction that destroys more or less everything in LEO. This, or a China-US trade embargo (10X worse than the current ‘trade war’) plus a prolonged shutdown of seagoing trade in the S. China Sea would cause severe economic disruption. However, again, probably no nukes and no WW3. My ultimate guess is that the US Navy prevails and in 2050 Taipei is still independent of Beijing (indeed – probably openly so).
Global politics will realign as demographic change and economic growth sees the rise of certain countries – in broad strokes this is fairly obvious, but we can take a stab at a few specifics. Despite earlier fears of runaway growth the global population is expected to increase from today’s 7.5 billion to maybe 10 billion in 2050 and thereafter stabilize. Also, despite much misinformation and fear-mongering the world today is much richer and healthier today than ever before.
The existing western world will maintain its dominance for some time yet. The United States in particular is projected to have healthy population growth well into the future. The US population should be around 400 million by 2050 (albeit increasingly diverse) and still third in the world (though Nigeria might overtake them towards the end of this century).
China since 1980 is the obvious model for other poor countries (though worth noting their streak of ‘10% annual GDP growth’ burned out in 2010, they have averaged 6-7% since). India’s economy is now growing faster than China’s and its population will overtake theirs by 2025 but it is starting from a much lower base. Despite many predictions, I suspect the US will remain no.1 in GDP at least until 2030 and will still be 1st or 2nd in 2050 (with China the only real competitor).
A complete implosion of China is possible. This could be caused by an economic crisis or a failed military venture abroad which destroys the legitimacy of the communist party and sparks a revolution calling for democratic and other reforms. Perhaps in tandem with this, North Korea implodes and is reunified with South Korea (this is unlikely to occur without a major change in China first, given their status as essentially a buffer state with the US-backed south).
One possible state that stands out as a future superpower is the ‘East African Federation’, an intended evolution of the existing ‘East African Community’ that now includes Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda and South Sudan. At present these states are very poor, with a combined GDP smaller than New Zealand. However, they are now growing at 6% a year. Linked by Swahili as a common lingua franca they are expected to have a population of 410 million by 2050 and 800 million by 2100 – not far behind India and China. If their political integration succeeds and their economic growth continues, the EAF could emerge as a major world power by mid-century.
Population declines and changing resource markets will cause the decline of other countries - on the flip side to the above, countries like Japan and Russia have a bleak demographic outlook. Russia in particular with anaemic economic growth and a growing Muslim minority may face substantial internal instability. The decline of oil (either due to the spread of new technologies or simply a global shortage) will also contribute. The country could even collapse entirely as depicted here
Individual European states face demographic and (relative) economic decline. However if the European Union survives as an institution (I would give better than 50% odds) its combined population of 450 million (even without the UK) and historical economic strength should help it remain a major world power well into the century. The anglosphere countries will continue to benefit from the rise of English to the global lingua franca.
In 2050 I suspect the Middle East, as in 2018 or indeed 1950, will continue to be something of a war-torn shithole. The brewing cold war between Sunni-Saudi Arabia and Shia-Iran is just beginning. Both could eventually get nukes (and then things get real interesting). The decline of oil, increasing calls for democracy/secularism/modernisation and ongoing ethnic tensions will all ensure continued chaos. An independent Kurdistan is likely to become a reality eventually. Turkey, now resurgent and by far the strongest country in the region, could take advantage of the weaknesses of the Arab states to advance south into its historical realm of influence (the entire region having been controlled by them until 1918).
On the whole Africa’s economic outlook is now improving and its demographics indicate that 40% of the world will be African by 2100. However, they still have a long way to go. Major wars, revolutions, epidemics and other disasters are likely to strike numerous times before then as they have in the previous 60 years since the withdrawal of the European colonial powers. I suspect in the next decade or two racial tensions in South Africa will also come to a head and the white minority will be forced to flee the country, i.e. Rhodesia in the 1980s.
Neural implants evolve from today’s smartphones – As we went from room-sized computers to PCs to laptops to smartphones (and maybe smartwatches and smartglasses as well) the ultimate result will be unobtrusive brain-computer interfaces that will quickly become universal (if not exactly mandatory – but trying staying employed without one). As with past computer technologies, the earliest adopters (from maybe the late 2020s) will be tech enthusiasts, time-pressed businessmen, and the young. Over another decade or so they will spread to the rest of the population in developed countries (with some inevitable holdouts, generally the elderly with little appetite to embrace more technologies and those with religious or other objections). Poorer countries (though now catching up) will be another decade or two behind. However, even in darkest Africa neural implants will probably be arriving by 2050 or so, as electricity and the internet already are today.
So what is a neural implant? Think of a smartphone but one that bypasses your ‘traditional’ senses. Rather than looking at a screen or listening via speakers, information will be beamed directly into your neocortex. Images/text/sounds and possibly other sensations will simply appear in your vision/hearing. This would apply to everything. When you walk down a shopping strip advertisements will flash up in your vision. When you want to communicate with someone, text/audio/video messages can be wordlessly exchanged via a little box popping up in the corner of your field of view. You can browse the global internet, check the weather, etc simply via thought commands. You can set a morning alarm that will wake up nobody but you! It’s at least as big a revolution in our lives as everything internet-related since 1990.
Of course, all this would come with staggering privacy concerns (i.e. the government or someone else being able to hack into your very nervous system and observe what you sense/observe – or perhaps even being able to ‘take control’ themselves depending on the nature of the implant). However, society finds ways to deal with these concerns, as we already have carrying smartphones around in our pockets. Expect to see a few neural-implant-Edward-Snowdens.
Major enhancements to the human body, either through gene therapy or surgery, start to become possible – neural implants are one thing, but just one element of our shift into what are essentially cyborgs. Artificial organs are already on the horizon. Designer babies are well on the way. Genetic doping in sports is probably already around. Genetically modified crops are already decades old.
Want to guarantee your kids will grow to be at least six foot? Have perfect vision and teeth? Such gene therapy will eventually not only be permitted, but calls will abound to make it free and universal (like education or healthcare today). On the plus side, our children and grandchildren will increasingly be free of the heavy burdens of genetic disease. On the other hand, if everyone’s kid has a perfect smile and can learn to play the violin with ease – how else does one stand out? Major social problems typical of a ‘modern’ society, such as obesity and drug abuse, will finally start to reverse after decades.
Of course, inequality will be a problem. Just as it is the world’s wealthy offspring who have access to braces or laser eye surgery today, the poor will have to do with their ‘natural’ bodies until such breakthroughs spread. A heart attack will prove fatal to an old man in Africa. In Europe it may mean the installation of a new heart and another decade of life. However, this is just the beginning.
Anti-aging efforts start to bear fruit – this one has many question marks attached, but I would expect that substantial progress will eventually be made. Global life expectancy is now 72 years, up from 67 in the year 2000 or 48 in 1950. Most of this has been as the ‘low-hanging fruit’ of vaccines, improved sanitation and nutrition and other changes have finally spread to the third world.
Modern medicine tells us the human body is an immensely complicated machine. Slicing and dicing our DNA is still proving immensely hard. Nonetheless, aging doesn’t seem to be an immutable law (like breaking the light barrier or time travel or anything). Once our understanding of the human body is sufficiently advanced, reversing every aspect of the aging process seems very possible. Maybe I’m falling into the usual trap of hoping for such developments before I get old (I will be nearing 60 in 2050) but I suspect we might finally be getting close. However, for a task of this magnitude, we might have to wait for the next step – the breakthrough to end all breakthroughs.
The singularity – this is the biggest question mark of all. While I feel the world until 2050 is relatively foreseeable (barring a nuclear war, solar flare, etc) the rise of superintelligent AIs is an event so overwhelming as to put all other predictions in doubt. Even if Moore’s law slows it is unlikely to stop, and current trends put the capabilities of silicon computers well ahead of anything our puny human brains can do by mid-century.
Suffice it to say I think the worst predictions about the singularity are unlikely to come to pass. Most apocalyptic scenarios about an AI taking over the world see a massive divide between that AI and the puny humans of 2018 (or earlier). By 2050 many humans will already be well on their way to becoming cyborgs. AIs of all shades will have been developed, doing everything from playing chess matches to playing the stock market. The gap between a ‘superintelligent’ AI and the rest of the world won’t be nearly as great, decreasing the odds that a single rogue entity will be able to hold the rest of the world hostage to its pre-programmed whims.
Nonetheless, the proliferation of superintelligence will strain every institution of our modern world. Major, apparently unassailable concepts like democracy and capitalism and the superiority of human life will come under question. Why bother with the cumbersome nature of a democratic legislature or the chaos of a free market, if a perfect AI can make better decisions? Why respect the world’s existing governments, if all their armies and weapons have suddenly been made obsolete by some godlike alliance of AIs? Why even bother with the ‘real’ world at all, if you can transfer your brain patterns to a hard drive smaller than your thumb and inhabit whatever virtual reality you please? In a world where humans as we’ve known them for the past 100,000 years have suddenly become obsolete, whatever will our silicon offspring do next?
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Thursday, December 10, 2020
GOP may wait for January to say Biden won (AP) Americans waiting for Republicans in Congress to acknowledge Joe Biden as the president-elect may have to keep waiting until January as GOP leaders stick with President Donald Trump’s litany of legal challenges and unproven claims of fraud. Tuesday’s deadline for states to certify their elections—once viewed as a pivot point for Republicans to mark Biden’s win—came and went without much comment. Next week’s Dec. 14 Electoral College deadline may produce just a few more congratulatory GOP calls to Biden. Increasingly, GOP lawmakers say the Jan. 6 vote in Congress to accept the Electoral College outcome may be when the presidential winner becomes official. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled Jan. 20 as the certain date when the country is “going to have the swearing-in of the next president.” The result is a risky standoff like none other in U.S. history. The refusal to agree upon the facts of the election threatens to undermine voter confidence, chisel away at the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency and restack civic norms in still-unknowable ways.
Last-ditch dinner (Foreign Policy) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called the likelihood of reaching a deal between his government and the European Union “very, very difficult” ahead of a make-or-break dinner meeting in Brussels with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen today. The prime minister’s trip comes as EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier told a closed-door meeting of the bloc’s ministers that it was now more likely that the United Kingdom would exit the Brexit transition without a trade deal. The British government has shown signs of a desire for compromise after it dropped controversial clauses in legislation that would have breached the initial Brexit terms. “Hopefully this is a signal that the British government is in deal-making mood,” Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said.
Bionic soldiers (Times of London) The French army has been given the go-ahead to develop bionic soldiers resistant to pain and stress and endowed with extra brain power thanks to microchip implants. The approval came from the ethical committee of the armed forces ministry, which said in a report that France needed to keep up with countries that were already working to produce super-soldiers. The committee gave details of some lines of research, including pills to keep troops awake for long periods and surgery to improve hearing. Other areas in the “field of study” involve implants which release anti-stress substances or “improve cerebral capacity.”
France to press on with law on “unrepublican” behaviour (Reuters) France’s government decided on Wednesday to press ahead with a law it says will crack down on practices that go against the values of the French Republic. Prime Minister Jean Castex told reporters the law would give authorities tools to “combat political and ideological undertakings which go against our values ... and sovereignty and sometimes go as far as criminal acts.” The debate around the law has become more charged since the Oct. 16 beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by a man who said he wanted to punish the teacher for showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a civics class. French officials say it is no longer enough to police acts of violence and that there is a need also to sanction behaviour which they say is not explicitly criminal but is out of step with the values of the French state. The proposed law includes tougher measures against online apologists for acts of violence, the risk of expulsion for foreign nationals with multiple wives, and checks on anyone who educates their child outside mainstream schools.
Europe’s ‘rule of law’ standoff with Poland and Hungary becomes test over defining values (Washington Post) Hungary and Poland appeared close to a deal with E.U. partners Wednesday to end an impasse that has blocked $2.2 trillion in funding and deepened a crisis in the 27-member bloc over the fundamental liberal democratic values it is supposed to represent. The contention for Poland and Hungary is a clause that links the money to upholding the “rule of law”—judicial and political norms that underpin democracies—at a time when Brussels is censuring both for letting it slide. The deadlock has come at a critical time when European economies sorely need the aid after months of lockdowns and closures. But more is at stake than delays to the $900 billion in emergency funding and a $1.3 trillion seven-year budget. The spat has struck at the heart of a rift in the European Union, engineered as a border-busting alliance of democracies that has struggled to deal with the question of what to do when member states stray from the shared values required to join. “It’s a fight for the soul of the E.U.,” said Heather Grabbe, director of the Open Society European Policy Institute. The confrontation between Hungary and Poland and the rest of the European Union has been brewing for years. Both governments have taken step after step to weaken the independence of the judiciary, undermine political opponents and entrench their own power and views, which include laws aimed at blocking refugees and erosion of press freedoms. E.U. money has helped fuel the takeover of the systems in both countries—with Poland the biggest net recipient of E.U. funding in recent years and Hungary not far behind.
Some perspective on immigrants (Internazionale/Italy) They carry disease. They live in overcrowded neighborhoods. They spend evenings listening to the sweet sounds of their music, but in filthy courtyards with rotting air. Their houses are small and rundown, where dozens of people share no more than two or three rooms. They come in waves, irritating people and attracting far too much attention. Sure we know they may have escaped bad governments, bloody wars, poverty. But they’ve arrived with strange superstitions and we’ve seen how they exploit their children, sending them on the streets to beg and forcing them to hand over whatever they make at the end of the day. And yet it’s true that when they do their agricultural work, they’re quite good. They are lean and muscular, capable of withstanding prolonged physical effort. They have a certain dexterity and a developed artistic sense. Their women are valued for their domestic virtues. Thanks to their sense of family, they are very generous with relatives who have stayed back in the home country. Still, their presence ultimately compromises our living standards and undermines the very quality of the nation. They share so little with a country that must seem to them the paradise of well-being. (The words you’ve just read were used in the international press between the 19th century and today to describe millions of those who had emigrated abroad from Italy.)
India’s Police Detain Opposition Leaders As Farmers’ Agitation Grows (NYT) Aligning themselves squarely with India’s angry farmers, opposition leaders on Tuesday accused the government of cracking down on dissent, saying they had been detained while seeking to join broadening protests against the country’s new pro-market agricultural policies. The growing agitation of India’s farmers, which is galvanizing support from nearly all sections of the heavily agricultural country, has increasingly rattled the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. For the last couple of weeks, hundreds of thousands of farmers from all over the country have been camping outside New Delhi to protest Mr. Modi’s new farm policies, which they see as his government’s effort to hand farmers’ land over to big business. The protests, which have gradually spread throughout the country and increasingly mirror the protests over a contentious new citizenship law, have become a test of Mr. Modi’s grip on power in the world’s largest democracy.
Trade record (Foreign Policy) Trump’s trade war with China has finally produced … a record high for the Chinese trade surplus, which hit $75.43 billion last month. China has failed to meet most of the goals set during the part one of the trade deal at the start of 2020, while tourism and education—which normally help the U.S. side of the balance sheet—have been shut down by the pandemic. Meanwhile, as Americans hunker down for the winter, they’re buying electronics and other Chinese goods in record numbers.
No stamps for you (Foreign Policy) Sometimes the affairs of state between great nations are weighty—but sometimes they are extremely petty. Amid the diplomatic crisis caused by the border killings earlier this year, China has canceled a set of stamps to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations with India. The move is another signal that Beijing has no desire to mend the many fences it’s trampled this year
Hong Kong democracy fighters face a dire choice: Go abroad or go to jail (Washington Post) Facing charges related to his activism, Ted Hui, a former Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker, flew to Denmark last week ostensibly to discuss climate and sustainability issues—topics innocuous enough for a court to release his passport and allow his departure. The climate talks were a ruse. Last Thursday, three days after landing in Copenhagen, Hui announced he would not return and would instead go into exile. Coming alongside daily arrests of democracy campaigners in Hong Kong, Hui’s flight demonstrated the stark choice now confronting those who have fought for freedoms here: Go abroad or go to jail. As China targets those who resist its crackdown on the city, stalwarts who have dedicated their lives to Hong Kong’s democracy struggle are increasingly opting to leave, along with numerous others. Even overseas, continued harassment and persecution are a testament to the reach of China’s new national security law for Hong Kong, which criminalizes vague acts such as “collusion with foreign forces” and which Beijing asserts applies to everyone, everywhere. “It is a grave situation, with what seems to be only two ways out: Either leave Hong Kong or stay here and wait to be arrested,” said Sam Yip, vice convener of the Civil Human Rights Front, a group that has organized massive pro-democracy marches. Its convener, Figo Chan, was among eight people arrested Tuesday.
U.S. Leaves Behind Afghan Bases—and a Legacy of Land Disputes (NYT) At harvest time, as neighbors and relatives reap their crops, 80-year-old Jamal Khan can only look in despair on the plot of land that was the source of his family’s livelihood—until the American forces arrived over a decade ago. Just before sunset one day, armored vehicles drove into fields of knee-high corn stalks, claimed about 30 acres that were co-owned by about as many families and quickly cordoned off the area with barbed wire. This was now Combat Outpost Honaker-Miracle, one of the roughly 1,000 military installations the United States and its coalition partners would prop up across Afghanistan. “In the whole vastness of the lord’s world, I had this plot of land and this house that I am living in and nothing else,” said Mr. Khan, who lives the Watapur District of Kunar Province, in eastern Afghanistan. “We told them this is our private land, how do you suddenly put up here? They said nothing.” Mr. Khan is one of countless Afghans whose land became a casualty of the U.S.-led war and the sprawling military infrastructure born from it. Despite the drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan from more than 100,000 in 2011 to fewer than 5,000, some of the property they occupied has not been returned. Instead, the bases and the land have been transferred to Afghan security forces. The Americans have left Watapur but Mr. Khan does not have his land back, and similar conflicts linger across wide swaths of the country.
Iraqis slowly rebuild Mosul, with little aid from government (AP) Anan Yasoun rebuilt her home with yellow cement slabs amid the rubble of Mosul, a brightly colored manifestation of resilience in a city that for many remains synonymous with the Islamic State group’s reign of terror. In the three years since Iraqi forces, backed by a U.S.-led coalition, liberated Mosul from the militants, Yasoun painstakingly saved money that her husband earned from carting vegetables in the city. They had just enough to restore the walls of their destroyed home; money for the floors was a gift from her dying father, the roof a loan that is still outstanding. Yasoun didn’t even mind the bright yellow exterior—paint donated by a relative. “I just wanted a house,” said the 40-year-old mother of two. The mounds of debris around her bear witness to the violence Iraq’s second-largest city has endured. From Mosul, IS had proclaimed its caliphate in 2014. Three years later, Iraqi forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition liberated the city in a grueling battle that killed thousands and left Mosul in ruins. Such resilience is apparent elsewhere in the city. Life is slowly coming back to Mosul these days: merchants are busy in their shops, local musicians again serenade small, enthralled crowds. At night, the city lights gleam as restaurant patrons spill out onto the streets.
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