The class war is now in the open

In response to Amazon withdrawing its offer to have its second headquarters in New York City following protests by local activists in the borough of Queens, a billboard appeared in Times Square blaming Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She immediately sent out a couple of tweets in response.


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The female breast as a threat to public order

The seal of the state of Virginia has an image of the Roman god Virtus wearing a gown that exposes one breast. While the state legislature was debating whether to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, ERA supporter and performance artist Michelle Renay Sutherland attended a rally where she was dressed as Virtus and recreated the image shown on the seal, thus also exposing one breast. The difference was of course that the figure on the seal was presumed to be that of a man so his breast exposure was considered acceptable. The breast was emphasized so much in the figure that at first I thought that Virtus was a woman, which is possible, and someone who is a classicist can enlighten me. But the sight of a female breast sent the authorities into a tizzy and they arrested Sutherland.
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Carlson gets his hat handed to him by Bregman again

I blogged yesterday about the interview that Fox News personality Tucker Carlson had with Dutch historian Rutger Bregman where he was reduced to hurling childish insults. The interview had actually taken place last week and it looks like Carlson had hoped to bury it. But Bregman’s side of the interview was recorded in a studio at his end and he released it, taunting Carlson to also release it. So now Carlson had to respond. And he did but rather than showing the interview on his show or even explaining why he would not to his audience, he took the cowardly way out and did it online.
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Rutger Bregman hands Tucker Carlson his hat

The Fox News host invited the Dutch historian on his show to discuss his comments at Davos about the need for higher taxes on the rich went viral. Carlson apparently was attracted by Bregman pointing out the hypocrisy of people flying in their private jets to Davos to discuss climate change but the interview went off the rails when Bregman described how Fox News and its on-air personalities were millionaires who had been bought off by the billionaire class to not talk about the need for higher taxes and instead talk about immigrants. Carlson clearly did not like being told to his face that he is a mere mouthpiece for the oligarchy and went on a profanity-laden tirade.
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Positive signs of the zeitgeist

I am constantly on the lookout for signs that attitudes are moving in more positive directions and in the last week I came across two. One is that the Trump administration is starting a global effort to end the criminalization of homosexuality.

The Trump administration is launching a global campaign to end the criminalization of homosexuality in dozens of nations where it’s still illegal to be gay, U.S. officials tell NBC News, a bid aimed in part at denouncing Iran over its human rights record.

U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, the highest-profile openly gay person in the Trump administration, is leading the effort, which kicks off Tuesday evening in Berlin. The U.S. embassy is flying in LGBT activists from across Europe for a strategy dinner to plan to push for decriminalization in places that still outlaw homosexuality — mostly concentrated in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean.

“It is concerning that, in the 21st century, some 70 countries continue to have laws that criminalize LGBTI status or conduct,” said a U.S. official involved in organizing the event.

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Amazon deal collapses and guess whom Amazon blames?

After much ballyhoo and getting cities all across the US to compete to offer incentives to locate their second headquarters in their region, Amazon finally chose New York City. The city and state had offered massive amounts of tax benefits to this company that has made its founder Jeff Bezos one of the wealthiest people in the world. But the local community was not pleased because the incentives offered to Amazon would come from money that would have gone to fund schools and other services and they organized protests.
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How Brexit happened and what lies next

Over the weekend I watched the film Brexit: An Uncivil War starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Dominic Cummings, the brains behind the original Leave campaign. I must admit that I had not heard of Cummings before I saw this film. He seems to be someone who keeps a low profile and after running the campaign has largely disappeared again, leaving others to pick up the debris. The film highlights the use of data-mining people’s online activities to find out what drives them and targeting ads to exploit their fears, especially those who had dropped out of the system and no longer voted.
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Intellectual anti-intellectuals

I long ago stopped reading whenever the name Jordan Peterson came up because it usually consisted of the same old pseudo-intellectual tripe. I have a similar reaction to Thomas Friedman or David Brooks. Chauncey De Vega interviewed Matthew A. Sears, an associate professor of classics and ancient history at the University of New Brunswick, about the role that right-wing intellectuals like Jordan Peterson are playing during the Trump era. Here is Sears’s reply to the question: “Why is Jordan Peterson so compelling for a certain type of man with a very particular political and social worldview?”
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We now need laws for government to practice basic human decency

Cody Fenwick writes that the government funding deal that was just signed by Donald Trump was much worse for him that what the media are generally reporting, though even they concede that it was pretty bad for him. What is telling is that the deal requires the government to treat detainees with basic decency, such as not putting them in wire enclosed cages that were so cold that the detained children called them ‘ice boxes’ and even the sandwiches they were given were frozen.

As Fenwick writes:
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Convicted liar Elliot Abrams angered when reminded about his lies

Elliot Abrams is an aggressive warmonger who oversaw US involvement in all manner of atrocities in Latin America going back to his time in the administration of George H. W. Bush. He was convicted in 1991 on two counts of withholding information to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair but was pardoned along with others because these people protect their own. He has now reappeared as Donald Trump’s point person to Venezuela, no doubt because of his expertise in subverting governments in that region.
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