October 31, 2022

Flux Of Pink Indians - Neu Smell (Full 7", 45 RPM, EP) 1981

Label: Crass Records – 321984/2
Format: Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, EP, MPO Pressing
Country: UK
Released: 1981
Genre: Rock
Style: Punk

October 31, 2022

Chaos U.K. - Burning Britain EP 7" 1982

Label: Riot City Records – RIOT 6
Format: Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, EP
Country: UK
Released: 1982
Genre: Rock
Style: Punk

October 31, 2022

Flashback: DHS Report Warns Of Right Wing Extremists (April 2009)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dhs-report-warns-of-right-wing-extremists/

Conservatives are up in arms about a report from the Department Of Homeland Security entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic And Political Climate Fueling Resurgence In Radicalization And Recruitment." (Here it is, in PDF form.)

The report is "one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I'd ever read out of DHS," writes Michelle Malkin, who deems it a "piece of crap report" that serves as "a sweeping indictment of conservatives."

Coverage of the report presently occupies both the top spot on the Drudge Report and a prime second location on the site, where it comes with a picture of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the words "SHE IS WATCHING YOU."

The "Key Findings" section of the report opens with these words: "The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment."

More from the report:

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October 29, 2022

New Zealand has just passed a law that will revolutionise workers' rights. It probably won't last

Jacinda Ardern’s government has radically expanded unions’ collective bargaining power. But if she goes at the next election, so will this legislation

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/29/new-zealand-has-just-passed-a-law-that-will-revolutionise-workers-rights-it-probably-wont-last



Changes of government often entail less change than people expect. When Jacinda Ardern came to power in 2017 she did not renationalise the power companies John Key had partly privatised, or immediately force agriculture into the emissions trading scheme. When Key came to power in 2008 he ended up increasing and building on Helen Clark’s working for families programme, which he had previously called “communism by stealth”. And when Clark was elected in 1999 the major rightward shift enacted in the 1980s and 1990s largely survived.

New governments find it hard to really tear up changes that their predecessors have managed to bed in. The public service has a bias towards the status quo and the public generally don’t like the expense of radical shifts to existing policies. This is the case both for physical infrastructure projects (no one wants to stop work that is already under way and tear up contracts) and for complex policy programmes such as KiwiSaver or working for families. Too many people were already getting serious gains from these policies by the time Key was elected for him to get rid of them.

There are exceptions, however, and we look set to see one next year if the opposition National party win office, an outcome several polls are now predicting. On Wednesday night Labour finally enacted one of its promises from the 2017 election, passing fair pay agreements (FPAs) into law. Despite not attracting all that much coverage, FPAs are the most consequential change to employment law in decades, significantly shifting the balance of power from employers to employees, and bringing New Zealand’s system much closer to Australia’s “modern awards”. National are absolutely dead set on repealing them.

These FPAs are essentially collective agreements struck not between a union and a single employer, but a union and every employer in an industry. Employers cannot walk away from this bargaining completely, as if they do the Employment Relations Authority can simply impose terms on all employers in the sector. Workers lose their ability to strike while negotiating such an agreement. The idea is not that every employee in the country will suddenly be covered by an FPA, but that a floor for pay and conditions can be set in poorly paid industries with low union membership, particularly those where contracting and subcontracting make working out who actually employs who a nightmare – think security guards and cleaners.

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October 29, 2022

Kaliningrad: How Russia Got a Stronghold in Europe

Our historical documentary series on the history of the Cold War continues with a video on the Soviet takeover of Kaliningrad (Konigsberg) in Prussia and how it became the Russian stronghold in Europe in the aftermath of World War II and the expulsion of the Germans from the region.

October 29, 2022

Suspect in Pelosi home attack: From pro-nudity activist to QAnon conspiracy theorist

David DePape moved from Canada to California where he made hemp jewelry, protested naked, later embraced pro-Trump and antisemitic conspiracies

https://www.timesofisrael.com/suspect-in-pelosi-home-attack-pro-nudity-activist-to-qanon-conspiracy-theorist/



AP — The man accused of breaking into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California home and severely beating her husband with a hammer appears to have made racist and often rambling posts online, including some that questioned the results of the 2020 election, defended former US president Donald Trump and echoed QAnon conspiracy theories.

David DePape, 42, grew up in the city of Powell River in British Columbia, Canada, before leaving about 20 years ago to follow an older girlfriend to San Francisco. A street address listed for DePape in the Bay Area college town of Berkeley led to a post office box at a UPS Store.

DePape was arrested at the Pelosi home early Friday. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said she expected to file multiple felony charges, including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary and elder abuse.

Stepfather Gene DePape said the suspect had lived with him in Canada until he was 14 and had been a quiet boy. “David was never violent that I seen and was never in any trouble although he was very reclusive and played too much video games,” Gene DePape said.

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What we know so far about the man who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/28/paul-pelosi-nancy-pelosi-attack-david-depape

October 29, 2022

CNN's Jake Tapper Blames Certain 'Elected Officials' and 'TV Anchors' for Political Violence

Jake Tapper Blames Certain ‘Elected Officials’ and ‘TV Anchors’ for Political Violence: ‘They Dehumanize Opponents’

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/jake-tapper-blames-certain-elected-officials-and-tv-anchors-for-political-violence-they-dehumanize-opponents/

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The CNN host stated conservatives are hardly the only perpetrators of political violence.

“As much as Donald Trump is part of the problem here, you need to know these threats and horrific acts are not only from the right,” he continued. “Back in 2017, Republican congressman Steve Scalise was nearly killed after being shot during an attack on a congressional baseball game. Supreme Court justices are also under threat. This summer, a man traveled to D.C. From California armed to the teeth with the stated intention of killing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.”

He later added that these incidents aren’t one-offs and blamed certain politicians and media figures for fomenting violence:

We’re at a moment right now of extreme polarization, where calls for violence are leading to actual violence. We cannot pretend that these are all isolated, fringe events. There are people in mainstream accepted society – elected officials, TV anchors, others – who have been creating a permission structure that is helping to open the door to this violence, a permission structure created when they dehumanize opponents or smear them, or belittle or make light of acts or threats of violence against their perceived foes or spread conspiracy theories.

Watch above via CNN.

October 28, 2022

Eight National Election Denier Organizations to Watch

https://globalextremism.org/post/eight-national-election-denier-organizations-to-watch/



Since former President Donald Trump began his campaign against America’s elections in 2020, a whole new industry devoted to undermining faith in key democratic institutions, particularly voting, has emerged. A range of far-right and extremist organizations and individuals have become explicitly anti-democracy, rejecting the legitimacy of America’s elections regardless of a lack of proof of fraud or other electoral manipulation. Among these activists are members of militias and the white supremacist Proud Boys, often working hand-in-hand with far-right organizations to delegitimize election results and election infrastructure. Particularly worrying are anti-government organizations representing so-called “constitutional sheriffs” who falsely believe the federal government has no power over them. Major organizations representing hundreds of these anti-government sheriffs are now involved in election denial and have pledged to investigate and oversee election processes.

But the most important actors in this space are Trump former staffers, lawyers, and allies who have taken up the cause of election denialism and are planning to affect in a partisan manner the election infrastructure that undergirds our free and fair elections. They are already warning that the upcoming midterms will likely be rigged. “I just know that they’re [read Democrats] going to engage in massive election fraud,” conspiracy theorist and Trump ally Alex Jones said on an episode of his Infowars show this week. Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who has been sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress related to the January 6 hearings, is also stoking rage on the right, describing on his podcast the upcoming election as the “most important midterm election since 1862,” meaning during the Civil War. In the past year, Bannon has been advocating a “precinct strategy,” and far-right activists have inundated local precincts, signing up in large numbers to be poll workers and engaging in harassment of election management officials and volunteers, up to and including death threats.

As a result of these efforts, the 2022 midterm elections are shaping up to be the most dangerous and volatile of any in recent memory. In the last several months, we’ve seen white supremacists disrupting campaign events and armed activists showing up at election-related public events. Election workers are facing unprecedented threats and the Arizona secretary of state’s office referred a case of voter intimidation to the DOJ in October. An unidentified voter reported that they were approached and followed by a group of individuals while trying to drop off their ballot at an official drop box. The situation is so serious the FBI issued a warning in October about the threats to voters and election workers in the upcoming midterms. A Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) survey this past August found that Americans’ fears are suppressing participation in the democratic process. Most troubling, GPAHE’s survey found Black, Hispanic and young people fear violence at the polls, and that Black voters are more likely to leave without voting if intimidated at the polls, effectively suppressing the vote of a historically marginalized community.

The Trump-inspired election denial movement has already had great impact. In 2021, at least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting. According to the Brennan Center, state legislatures enacted far more restrictive voting laws in 2021 than in any year since the organization began tracking voting legislation in 2011. Even more troubling, legislators in multiple states introduced bills to allow partisan actors to interfere with election processes or even reject election results entirely. This effort has gone far beyond measures such as harmful voter identification laws and into more fulsome attacks on how elections work and on election workers themselves. And election deniers are dominating GOP tickets across the country. An analysis by FiveThirtyEight found that 60 percent of Americans will have an election denier on the ballot this November, and more than 100 election deniers will likely be elected to the House of Representatives. Some election deniers have made it clear that if they win, they will introduce partisanship into how elections are decided.

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October 28, 2022

The GOP's Plans For The Next Two Years Are Terrifying

Should Republicans take back the House, they have made it very clear how they intend to abuse their power — and it isn’t pretty.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/the-gops-plans-for-the-next-two-years



The press is back to gleefully predicting Republicans retaking the House in two weeks on the basis of inflation and gas prices. This is strange because inflation hasn’t gotten any worse in the last two months and gas prices have barely moved. It is almost like the press made a conscious choice to shift the conversation away from the collapse of the GOP’s economic messaging while simultaneously downplaying the egregious amount of racism and antisemitism Republicans have started to spew as their closing argument. Should Republicans take back the House, they have made it very clear how they intend to abuse their power — and it isn’t pretty.

https://twitter.com/peltzmadeline/status/1584255360767995908
Revenge

Revenge for what? Who knows? Losing? Trump being impeached twice because he’s a criminal? Not being allowed to murder Nancy Pelosi and overthrow democracy? Does it really matter? Trump showed Republicans that it is possible, even preferable, to govern entirely by grievance. Perpetual victimhood means you never have to actually do anything to solve America’s problems. You never have to make anything better or even try. All you have to do is blame someone you hate and make them pay. The economy is collapsing? Blame immigrants and make literal child abuse official government policy. Climate Change is wrecking huge swathes of the country? Blame blue states and threaten to withhold disaster relief.

President Lyndon Johnson once said of the right’s use of racial resentment as a political weapon, “If you can convince the lowest white Man he’s better than the best colored Man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” This is no longer quite true of the modern American right. Now, it’s not enough to look down on someone, they have to hurt them. The cruelty is the point and not just with words, there must be a tangible effect. The lives of the people they hate must be made materially worse in some way. Even if it’s just creating a permission system for others to do the hurting. In lieu of governing, expect a nonstop farce that will make the multiple Bengahzi “investigations” look sober and serious in comparison. Just look at what Matt Gaetz has up his sleeve.

Via Time Magazine:

“If we don’t engage in impeachment inquiries to get the documents and the testimony and the information that we need, then I believe that our voters will feel betrayed,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, recently told a conservative news channel. “That’s why it should be investigations first, and policy, bill-making to support the lobbyists and the PACs as a far, far diminished priority.”

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1574496931228680192
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October 28, 2022

'Get Armed While You Can': Far-Right Midterm Rhetoric Has Experts Alarmed

Conspiracy theories about election fraud, some being pushed by influential Republicans, have experts worried about the possibility of political violence.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmpma/midterms-violence-rhetoric-politics

A dangerous narrative is brewing online, particularly in corners where “Big Lie” conspiracies about the 2020 election remain gospel. Those communities have seized on some recent polls forecasting GOP wins in the November midterms to assert that a “red wave” is all but inevitable. And some have made vague threats about “taking action”—including “taking up arms” if things don’t go their way.

“God will take care of our midterms as promised,” one user on former President Donald Trump’s platform Truth Social wrote. “A massive, absolutely overwhelming Truth Tsunami of Continental proportions that will wash away the stench of rot and corruption from the world,” another wrote. “Nothing can stop what is coming.”

This narrative is coupled with the presumption that the only way Democrats could win in hotly contested races or maintain control of the House and Senate is if they commit election fraud—baseless claims that are being amplified by influential MAGA figures. And the prospect of yet another election being “stolen” is fueling threats of violence from the right.

Extremism watchdogs have been warning about the potential for political violence in the coming weeks. SITE Intel, which tracks international terrorist activity, recently put out a memo warning that “ultranationalist users on Telegram” were hinting at violent action if Democrats “steal votes again.” “I’ll vote and also build local groups of like minds to move from OBSERVERS to PATRIOTS taking Action,” one person wrote on Telegram, according to posts documented by SITE.

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