Ukraine Election: Volodymyr Zelensky, TV Comedian, Trounces President
Imagine America facing a choice between Trump and Pat Paulsen with joy.
The comedian Volodymyr Zelensky won a landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election, according to official results with nearly all of the votes counted, making a comic actor with no experience in government or the military the commander in chief of a country that has been at war with Russian proxies for over five years.
With more than 95 percent of ballots cast on Sunday counted, Mr. Zelensky had won 73.17 percent of the vote, compared with just 24.5 percent for Petro O. Poroshenko, Ukraine’s incumbent president.
Mr. Zelensky triumphed in every region, except for the area around the city of Lviv, a center of Ukrainian culture and nationalism in the west of the country.
Ukraine’s central election commission said that final official results might not be ready until April 30 because of the upcoming Orthodox Easter holidays.
Mr. Zelensky’s victory will give Ukraine its first Jewish leader and deliver a stinging rebuke to a political and business establishment represented by Mr. Poroshenko, a billionaire candy tycoon who campaigned on the nationalist slogan “Army, language, faith.”
Monday, April 22, 2019
Warren one-ups Bernie
Elizabeth Warren’s Higher Education Plan: Cancel Student Debt and Eliminate Tuition
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has structured her presidential campaign around a steady unveiling of disruptive policy ideas, on Monday proposed her biggest one yet: a $1.25 trillion plan to reshape higher education by canceling most student loan debt and eliminating tuition at every public college.
Ms. Warren’s sweeping plan has several planks.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has structured her presidential campaign around a steady unveiling of disruptive policy ideas, on Monday proposed her biggest one yet: a $1.25 trillion plan to reshape higher education by canceling most student loan debt and eliminating tuition at every public college.
Ms. Warren’s sweeping plan has several planks.
She would pay for it with revenue generated by her proposed increase in taxes for America’s most wealthy families and corporations, which the campaign estimates to be $2.75 trillion over 10 years.
In addition to eliminating undergraduate tuition at public colleges and universities, she would expand federal grants to help students with nontuition expenses and create a $50 billion fund to support historically black colleges and universities.
She would eliminate up to $50,000 in student loan debt for every person with a household income of less than $100,000; borrowers who make between $100,000 and $250,000 would have a portion of their debt forgiven.
. . . .
Ms. Warren has already offered proposals to provide universal child care and expand affordable housing, paid for by her new taxes on the wealthy.
She would eliminate up to $50,000 in student loan debt for every person with a household income of less than $100,000; borrowers who make between $100,000 and $250,000 would have a portion of their debt forgiven.
. . . .
Ms. Warren has already offered proposals to provide universal child care and expand affordable housing, paid for by her new taxes on the wealthy.
She has called for the elimination of the Electoral College, and promised to expand the role of the federal government in reining in unfettered capitalism, with separate proposals on breaking up technological giants such as Amazon and Facebook, new regulations aimed at protecting public lands, and reversing consolidation in the agriculture sector.
. . . .
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was credited with thrusting the issue of free college onto the national stage during his 2016 presidential run, but Ms. Warren has pushed the idea further, calling for the government to cancel debt in addition to expanding college affordability.
It is hardly a surprise that "scholars and educators" are all in.
. . . .
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was credited with thrusting the issue of free college onto the national stage during his 2016 presidential run, but Ms. Warren has pushed the idea further, calling for the government to cancel debt in addition to expanding college affordability.
It is hardly a surprise that "scholars and educators" are all in.
Not hard to guess how this will go
Supreme Court to Decide Whether Bias Law Covers Gay and Transgender Workers
The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would decide whether a federal law prohibits employers from discriminating against gay and transgender workers.
The law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, forbids employment discrimination based on sex.
The question for the justices is whether that language bars discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender status.
Most federal appeals courts have interpreted the law to exclude sexual orientation discrimination.
But two of them, in New York and Chicago, recently issued decisions ruling that discrimination against gay men and lesbians is a form of sex discrimination.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case from New York, Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, No. 17-1623, along with one from Georgia that came to the opposite conclusion, Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, No. 17-1618.
The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would decide whether a federal law prohibits employers from discriminating against gay and transgender workers.
The law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, forbids employment discrimination based on sex.
The question for the justices is whether that language bars discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender status.
Most federal appeals courts have interpreted the law to exclude sexual orientation discrimination.
But two of them, in New York and Chicago, recently issued decisions ruling that discrimination against gay men and lesbians is a form of sex discrimination.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case from New York, Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, No. 17-1623, along with one from Georgia that came to the opposite conclusion, Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, No. 17-1618.
"There was an international network"
Local Group Is Blamed for Attacks, but Sri Lanka Suspects ‘International Network’
Sri Lankan officials said on Monday that the coordinated bombings of churches and hotels across the country on Easter Sunday had been carried out by National Thowheeth Jama’ath, a little-known radical Islamist group, with help from international militants.
Rajitha Senaratne, the Sri Lankan health minister, blamed the group at a news conference in Colombo, the capital, adding: “There was an international network without which these attacks could not have succeeded.”
The government announced that it was asking other countries for help in uncovering international links, and that it was assuming emergency powers in order to investigate the attacks. A dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed for the second consecutive night.
Sri Lankan officials said on Monday that the coordinated bombings of churches and hotels across the country on Easter Sunday had been carried out by National Thowheeth Jama’ath, a little-known radical Islamist group, with help from international militants.
Rajitha Senaratne, the Sri Lankan health minister, blamed the group at a news conference in Colombo, the capital, adding: “There was an international network without which these attacks could not have succeeded.”
The government announced that it was asking other countries for help in uncovering international links, and that it was assuming emergency powers in order to investigate the attacks. A dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed for the second consecutive night.
Social media empower stupidity and hatred and cause violence
Sri Lanka Shut Down Social Media. My First Thought Was ‘Good.’
Subtitle: As a tech journalist, I’m ashamed to admit it. But this is how bad the situation has gotten.
Good, because it could save lives.
Good, because the companies that run these platforms seem incapable of controlling the powerful global tools they have built.
Good, because the toxic digital waste of misinformation that floods these platforms has overwhelmed what was once so very good about them.
And indeed, by Sunday morning so many false reports about the carnage were already circulating online that the Sri Lankan government worried more violence would follow.
It pains me as a journalist, and someone who once believed that a worldwide communications medium would herald more tolerance, to admit this — to say that my first instinct was to turn it all off.
But it has become clear to me with every incident that the greatest experiment in human interaction in the history of the world continues to fail in ever more dangerous ways.
. . . .
I noted this in my very first column for The Times almost a year ago, when I called social media giants “digital arms dealers of the modern age” who had, by sloppy design, weaponized pretty much everything that could be weaponized.
“They have weaponized civic discourse,” I wrote.
“And they have weaponized, most of all, politics. Which is why malevolent actors continue to game the platforms and why there’s still no real solution in sight anytime soon, because they were built to work exactly this way.”
. . . .
But while social media had once been credited with helping foster democracy in places like Sri Lanka, it is now blamed for an increase in religious hatred.
That justification was behind another brief block a year ago, aimed at Facebook, where the Sri Lankan government said posts appeared to have incited anti-Muslim violence.
“The extraordinary step reflects growing global concern, particularly among governments, about the capacity of American-owned networks to spin up violence,” The Times reported on Sunday.
Spin up violence indeed.
Just a month ago in New Zealand, a murderous shooter apparently radicalized by social media broadcast his heinous acts on those same platforms.
Let’s be clear, the hateful killer is to blame, but it is hard to deny that his crime was facilitated by tech.
. . . .
New Zealand, under the suffer-no-foolish-techies leadership of Jacinda Ardern, will be looking hard at imposing penalties on these companies for not controlling the spread of extremist content.
Australia already passed such a law in early April.
Here in the United States, our regulators are much farther behind, still debating whether it is a problem or not.
It is a problem, even if the manifestations of how these platforms get warped vary across the world.
They are different in ways that make no difference and the same in one crucial way that does.
Namely, social media has blown the lids off controls that have kept society in check.
These platforms give voice to everyone, but some of those voices are false or, worse, malevolent, and the companies continue to struggle with how to deal with them.
In the early days of the internet, there was a lot of talk of how this was a good thing, getting rid of those gatekeepers.
Well, they are gone now, and that means we need to have a global discussion involving all parties on how to handle the resulting disaster, well beyond adding more moderators or better algorithms.
Subtitle: As a tech journalist, I’m ashamed to admit it. But this is how bad the situation has gotten.
Good, because it could save lives.
Good, because the companies that run these platforms seem incapable of controlling the powerful global tools they have built.
Good, because the toxic digital waste of misinformation that floods these platforms has overwhelmed what was once so very good about them.
And indeed, by Sunday morning so many false reports about the carnage were already circulating online that the Sri Lankan government worried more violence would follow.
It pains me as a journalist, and someone who once believed that a worldwide communications medium would herald more tolerance, to admit this — to say that my first instinct was to turn it all off.
But it has become clear to me with every incident that the greatest experiment in human interaction in the history of the world continues to fail in ever more dangerous ways.
. . . .
I noted this in my very first column for The Times almost a year ago, when I called social media giants “digital arms dealers of the modern age” who had, by sloppy design, weaponized pretty much everything that could be weaponized.
“They have weaponized civic discourse,” I wrote.
“And they have weaponized, most of all, politics. Which is why malevolent actors continue to game the platforms and why there’s still no real solution in sight anytime soon, because they were built to work exactly this way.”
. . . .
But while social media had once been credited with helping foster democracy in places like Sri Lanka, it is now blamed for an increase in religious hatred.
That justification was behind another brief block a year ago, aimed at Facebook, where the Sri Lankan government said posts appeared to have incited anti-Muslim violence.
“The extraordinary step reflects growing global concern, particularly among governments, about the capacity of American-owned networks to spin up violence,” The Times reported on Sunday.
Spin up violence indeed.
Just a month ago in New Zealand, a murderous shooter apparently radicalized by social media broadcast his heinous acts on those same platforms.
Let’s be clear, the hateful killer is to blame, but it is hard to deny that his crime was facilitated by tech.
. . . .
New Zealand, under the suffer-no-foolish-techies leadership of Jacinda Ardern, will be looking hard at imposing penalties on these companies for not controlling the spread of extremist content.
Australia already passed such a law in early April.
Here in the United States, our regulators are much farther behind, still debating whether it is a problem or not.
It is a problem, even if the manifestations of how these platforms get warped vary across the world.
They are different in ways that make no difference and the same in one crucial way that does.
Namely, social media has blown the lids off controls that have kept society in check.
These platforms give voice to everyone, but some of those voices are false or, worse, malevolent, and the companies continue to struggle with how to deal with them.
In the early days of the internet, there was a lot of talk of how this was a good thing, getting rid of those gatekeepers.
Well, they are gone now, and that means we need to have a global discussion involving all parties on how to handle the resulting disaster, well beyond adding more moderators or better algorithms.
Sri Lanka attacks
Sri Lanka Was Warned of Possible Attacks. Why Didn’t It Stop Them?
The confidential security memo laid it all out: names, addresses, phone numbers, even the times in the middle of the night that one suspect would visit his wife.
In the days leading up to the devastating suicide attacks that killed nearly 300 people in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, the country’s security agencies had been closely watching a secretive cell of the National Thowheeth Jama’ath, a little-known radical Islamist organization that security officials in Sri Lanka now say carried out the attacks.
The security agencies had even been given specific intelligence that the group, also known by the spelling National Thowheed Jama’ath, was planning to bomb Catholic churches.
And within hours of when three churches and three hotels were bombed, Sri Lankan security services seized at least 24 suspects, implying that they knew exactly where this group was operating and were quickly able to locate their safe houses.
Why the security agencies failed to act before the bombings — and why some top officials, including the country’s own prime minister, didn’t even know about the intelligence that the agencies possessed — are enormous questions that have created a crisis in the Sri Lankan government.
A seriously huge clusterfuck.
A very thorough article.
Much further down we see this.
The National Thowheeth Jama’ath group emerged around 2015 in the aftermath of attacks against Muslims.
A majority Buddhist nation, Sri Lanka has been mostly spared the religious-driven bloodshed of other South Asian nations, such as India and Pakistan.
But in recent years some Buddhist monks have turned militant and incited followers to attack Muslims, their places of worship and some of their businesses, such as slaughterhouses.
The Sri Lankan government’s security services appeared to have turned a blind eye, allowing Buddhist mobs to act with impunity.
In 2014, scores were injured and three people were killed in Buddhist-Muslim clashes. In response, some Muslims joined radical Islamist groups that they believed would defend their faith.
. . . .
The group [National Thowheeth Jama’ath] had never attempted such a devastating, coordinated attack, with numerous suicide bombers striking different places nearly simultaneously.
“The target selection and attack type make me very skeptical that this was carried out by a local group without any outside involvement,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, a specialist in Sri Lankan extremism at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a counterterrorism research group in London.
“There’s no reason for local extremist groups to attack churches, and little reason to attack tourists.”
The confidential security memo laid it all out: names, addresses, phone numbers, even the times in the middle of the night that one suspect would visit his wife.
In the days leading up to the devastating suicide attacks that killed nearly 300 people in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, the country’s security agencies had been closely watching a secretive cell of the National Thowheeth Jama’ath, a little-known radical Islamist organization that security officials in Sri Lanka now say carried out the attacks.
The security agencies had even been given specific intelligence that the group, also known by the spelling National Thowheed Jama’ath, was planning to bomb Catholic churches.
And within hours of when three churches and three hotels were bombed, Sri Lankan security services seized at least 24 suspects, implying that they knew exactly where this group was operating and were quickly able to locate their safe houses.
Why the security agencies failed to act before the bombings — and why some top officials, including the country’s own prime minister, didn’t even know about the intelligence that the agencies possessed — are enormous questions that have created a crisis in the Sri Lankan government.
A seriously huge clusterfuck.
A very thorough article.
Much further down we see this.
The National Thowheeth Jama’ath group emerged around 2015 in the aftermath of attacks against Muslims.
A majority Buddhist nation, Sri Lanka has been mostly spared the religious-driven bloodshed of other South Asian nations, such as India and Pakistan.
But in recent years some Buddhist monks have turned militant and incited followers to attack Muslims, their places of worship and some of their businesses, such as slaughterhouses.
The Sri Lankan government’s security services appeared to have turned a blind eye, allowing Buddhist mobs to act with impunity.
In 2014, scores were injured and three people were killed in Buddhist-Muslim clashes. In response, some Muslims joined radical Islamist groups that they believed would defend their faith.
. . . .
The group [National Thowheeth Jama’ath] had never attempted such a devastating, coordinated attack, with numerous suicide bombers striking different places nearly simultaneously.
“The target selection and attack type make me very skeptical that this was carried out by a local group without any outside involvement,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, a specialist in Sri Lankan extremism at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a counterterrorism research group in London.
“There’s no reason for local extremist groups to attack churches, and little reason to attack tourists.”
Sunday, April 21, 2019
The Republicans have pretty good spinmeisters
Mueller's report looks bad for Obama
It happened on his watch.
When he learned about it he should have done more to stop it.
That's the line.
Look at that, not at the cesspool that's the Trump campaign and Republican Party.
Part of the defense is that when O took this to McConnell the senator said if he went public with it the GOP would call him a liar and say it was all a Democrat effort to take down Trump in advance.
That's your Republican Party.
I forget where I read that.
It happened on his watch.
When he learned about it he should have done more to stop it.
That's the line.
Look at that, not at the cesspool that's the Trump campaign and Republican Party.
Part of the defense is that when O took this to McConnell the senator said if he went public with it the GOP would call him a liar and say it was all a Democrat effort to take down Trump in advance.
That's your Republican Party.
I forget where I read that.
Watching Io
At the end, she goes to the Museum of Art and sees, next to a painting, Yeats' beautiful poem Leda and the Swan, an excellent sonnet about a very odd myth.
And about the Trojan War.
Io.
And about the Trojan War.
Io.
Nixon's last days in the White House
Watching a Tricky Dick episode about Nixon blaming the press for its reports as he went for weeks lying about the tapes, refusing to hand them over, after the Saturday Night Massacre.
The Supremes told him 8-0 that he had to hand over the tapes.
Some of today's Republicans are on record as holding that decision was an error and should be overturned, though I forget on what grounds.
It is a daunting question how the judges on today's court would have decided the matter.
Anyway, the next day the house began to put together impeachment articles.
Days later Nixon released a transcript of the "smoking gun" tape of Nixon ordering a call to the FBI to tell them to stop investigating the Watergate break in.
That convinced some of his last Republican defenders he was guilty of obstruction of justice and should be impeached.
It is interesting to reflect that many of today's Republicans, perhaps including Barr and certainly including Kavanaugh, accept a strong theory of the unitary executive according to which the president cannot commit obstruction of justice via exercise of his legitimate, constitutional authority, and that every executive office, department, or employee works for him and at his pleasure.
So the Saturday Night Massacre was not obstruction of justice, and neither was calling the FBI to tell them to drop their investigation of the Watergate break in.
Nixon went on TV on August 8th and resigned effective at noon the 9th.
He admitted no guilt, no involvement in the coverup.
So ended a term won by the greatest popular vote victory in American history.
In a later interview he said his resignation was the only apology there was going to be.
More than two years from the break in to the resignation.
If the house impeaches Trump the senate Republicans will not ask him to resign and not convict, despite the ocean of evidence we already swim in.
The Supremes told him 8-0 that he had to hand over the tapes.
Some of today's Republicans are on record as holding that decision was an error and should be overturned, though I forget on what grounds.
It is a daunting question how the judges on today's court would have decided the matter.
Anyway, the next day the house began to put together impeachment articles.
Days later Nixon released a transcript of the "smoking gun" tape of Nixon ordering a call to the FBI to tell them to stop investigating the Watergate break in.
That convinced some of his last Republican defenders he was guilty of obstruction of justice and should be impeached.
It is interesting to reflect that many of today's Republicans, perhaps including Barr and certainly including Kavanaugh, accept a strong theory of the unitary executive according to which the president cannot commit obstruction of justice via exercise of his legitimate, constitutional authority, and that every executive office, department, or employee works for him and at his pleasure.
So the Saturday Night Massacre was not obstruction of justice, and neither was calling the FBI to tell them to drop their investigation of the Watergate break in.
Nixon went on TV on August 8th and resigned effective at noon the 9th.
He admitted no guilt, no involvement in the coverup.
So ended a term won by the greatest popular vote victory in American history.
In a later interview he said his resignation was the only apology there was going to be.
More than two years from the break in to the resignation.
If the house impeaches Trump the senate Republicans will not ask him to resign and not convict, despite the ocean of evidence we already swim in.
Fake News Networks
MSNBC and FoxNews.
Endlessly repetitive and obsessive coverage of Trump, Russiagate, the elections, and related politics.
Same old same old.
And not a word about Sri Lanka.
CNN is on it.
Update.
Oddly, at 1658 hrs EDT, though the Times is still saying thirteen have been arrested, CNN is still saying seven.
Endlessly repetitive and obsessive coverage of Trump, Russiagate, the elections, and related politics.
Same old same old.
And not a word about Sri Lanka.
CNN is on it.
Update.
Oddly, at 1658 hrs EDT, though the Times is still saying thirteen have been arrested, CNN is still saying seven.
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