Stop the Idiocracy: Turkey

Showing posts with label Turkey. Show all posts

Thursday, August 13, 2026

Trump’s appointment of his personal lawyer as Attorney General is an old trick drawn from the timeworn playbook of tyrants

A lavish allegorical illustration depicts Lady Liberty amid the theatrical collapse of American civic institutions. Crowned with Liberty’s spikes and dressed in an ornate ivory corseted gown with translucent robes, she stands before a monumental empty throne, holding a small illuminated torch. Scores of women crowd the grand chamber, applauding, carrying towering stacks of documents, dismantling marble balustrades or handling heavy golden chains. Broken masonry, scales of justice and papers surround Liberty, while dark red liquid courses through cracks in the floor. Patriotic bunting and opulent architecture heighten the unsettling contrast between ceremonial grandeur and institutional disintegration.

image generated via ChatGPT

Ruth Ben-Ghiat — Todd Blanche, the latest tool: how autocrats use personal lawyers. {Lucid 11 August}

https://lucid.substack.com/p/todd-blanche-the-latest-tool-how

It required millions of enablers, distributed across nearly every sector of society, and an unprecedented mass brainwashing campaign, to make it happen: the now-former United States of America hath come to revolve entirely around the ego and ambitions of a single individual. Somehow, all of this hath been largely normalised, such that any earnest endeavour to correct course shall be met with violent resistance from a terrifyingly substantial — and heavily armed — segment of the general populace.

FTA: The appointment of President Donald Trump’s personal criminal lawyer, Todd Blanche, as Attorney General, is the latest sign that America is experiencing a form of personalist rule. This is a form of autocracy which organizes governance around the self-preservation of a leader whose private interests prevail over national ones in shaping domestic and foreign policy.

While it is more common in established regimes, personalist rule can emerge in degraded democracies, such as Italy under Silvio Berlusconi, and in countries in transition from democracy to autocracy, which is the case with today’s America.

Personalist leaders have no interest in public welfare or serving the people. Holding public office is a vehicle of private enrichment for them, their families, and their allies, and a means of finally solving their abundant legal, financial, and other problems once and for all.

Having the right custodian of justice, who real job is freeing the autocrat from the obligations and burden of obeying the law, is key to success.

‘Personalist rule’. Now, remember fellow #Muricans, you are deranged (afflicted with ‘TDS’), a Communist, and hate Jesus Himself if you perceive anything whatsoever amiss with the USA becoming Trumpistan. God bless President Trump — we would be unable to wipe our own asses absent his divine guidance and providential wisdom. Sarcasm aside, there hath not been a single day in the past ten years — including throughout the four years of his exile, during which we remained subjected to him in the media cycle around the clock nonetheless — upon which I have not shaken my head in disbelief and disgust. Revulsion partially towards Donald Trump himself, and even greater anger at all the people around us who have forced us to undergo this ordeal. And disbelief, always — for this extreme state of affairs is absurd to the nth degree, and all efforts to normalise it must be vehemently rejected.

Yet, it is only getting worse. Trump himself grows worse; the #MAGA rank-and-file grow worse; and the country is in the throes of a dystopian nightmare. Whilst an exceedingly modest number of his followers and enablers have latterly turned away — in certain of these instances, precisely because Trump hath not gone as far (yet) in the direction of totalitarianism as they would like, or because he is too cosy with Israel for their Jew-hating sensibilities — the vast majority are standing by their man, and the GOP is goosestepping in unison. We are not waking up from this nightmare anytime soon; and do not count on it being over by 20 January 2029, for the groundwork is being laid, quite unmistakably, to establish him as President-for-life.

What y’all voted for, #Murica. And I know, ‘y’all’ remain thoroughly pleased with yourselves. In due course, however, karma will come for thee.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Sunday, April 23, 2023

Global supplies of rice at a twenty-year low

Getty Images

The severe effects of climate change in Asia, the war on Ukraine, and export restrictions enacted by the Indian government lead to higher prices for one of the world’s most consumed staples. {CNBC 4/19}

Saturday, May 14, 2022

#Murica has a baby formula shortage, while one of its top basketball stars sits in a Russian prison; Turkey’s Erdogan threatens to use NATO veto power to block admission of Finland and Sweden, and the Philippines has a new leader much like an old one

Kaylee Greenlee Beal/Reuters

President Biden says he expects the baby formula shortage to ease in coming weeks - How the hell do we have a shortage of baby formula in the United States of America? Something about contamination of supply and there somehow only being four viable manufacturers of the stuff, I know, but all of this crap we’ve dealt with in the last couple of years ultimately traces back to gross incompetence. The dumbing down of America is nothing new, but now the pace at which the degradation is happening is moving forward at lightning speed. This is absolutely not the country I grew up in. (Reuters 5/13)

DPPI/Ann-dee Lamour/LiveMedia/Shutterstock

American basketball star Brittney Griner’s pre-trial detention in Russia extended by a month on charges of allegedly smuggling hashish oil (the horrors) into the country - This woman’s detention is 100% politically motivated, designed to enrage the American public into demanding their officials cede to Putin’s will. An American women’s basketball star was his easiest target, as many female stars play in Russia during the WNBA offseason to supplement the relative pittances the American league pays them. The problem with all of this, of course, is that the American public is indifferent to the plight of a black lesbian. Now, if this were Tom Brady in her shoes, the reaction would be more akin to what Putin is seeking. #JustSaying (ABC News 5/13)

Yves Herman/Reuters

Erdogan: Turkey would not be 'favorable' to Finland and Sweden joining NATO - The least trustworthy of all NATO powers, an autocracy that has been gradually embracing Islamic fundamentalism for the past two decades, but they’re going to lecture the Europeans on who should or should not be in NATO. Erdogan has had a love/hate thing going on with Putin for years, and has pivoted his country away from the West. He has also greatly harmed relations with Israel. The better question here is, ‘should Turkey remain a part of NATO,’ and not whether two of the most civilized, prosperous, and peaceful nations on earth belong. (Sky News 5/13)

Another blow for humanity: Son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos wins presidential election in the Philippines. (AP 5/10)

Thursday, February 3, 2022

The only good Islamist is a dead Islamist: ISIS leader killed by U.S. special operations forces in Syria

AP/Ghaith Alsayed

A hearty congratulations to the U.S. special operations forces involved, and to President Biden for authorizing the attack. America needed ‘a win’ of some sorts at this moment, not that I expect the ingrates that populate this country are going to give any credit where due. Nor is it likely that the vicious MSM – who twisted reality and turned the public against the president following the (successful, and necessary) withdrawal from Afghanistan – are going to give the president and the military any credit for anything. No matter, good prevailed for once in Syria. Via AP -

ATMEH, Syria (AP) — The leader of the violent Islamic State group was killed Thursday, blowing himself up along with members of his family during an overnight raid carried out by U.S. special operations forces in northwestern Syria, President Joe Biden said.
The raid targeted Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who took over as head of the militant group on Oct. 31, 2019, just days after leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died during a U.S. raid in the same area. Biden said al-Qurayshi died as al-Baghdadi did, by exploding a bomb that killed himself and members of his family, including women and children, as U.S. forces approached.
The operation came as IS has been trying for a resurgence, with a series of attacks in the region, including an assault late last month to seize a prison in northeast Syria holding at least 3,000 IS detainees, its boldest operation in years.
“Thanks to the bravery of our troops this horrible terrorist leader is no more,” Biden said. He said al-Qurayshi had been responsible for the prison strike, as well as genocide against the Yazidi people in Iraq in 2014.
About 50 U.S. special operations forces landed in helicopters and attacked a house in a rebel-held corner of Syria, clashing for two hours with gunmen, witnesses said. Residents described continuous gunfire and explosions that jolted the town of Atmeh near the Turkish border, an area dotted with camps for internally displaced people from Syria’s civil war.
Biden said he ordered U.S. forces to “take every precaution available to minimize civilian casualties,” the reason they did not conduct an airstrike on the home.
First responders reported that 13 people had been killed, including six children and four women.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said U.S. forces were able to evacuate 10 people from the building: a man, a woman and four children from the first floor and four children from the second floor. He said when al-Qurayshi detonated the bomb, he also killed his wife and two children. Kirby said that U.S. officials were conducting an assessment to determine whether American action resulted in any civilian deaths.
U.S. forces took fingerprints and DNA, which confirmed al-Qurayshi’s death, officials said.
Biden, along with Vice President Kamala Harris and senior national security aides monitored a live-feed of the operation from the White House Situation Room according to an official. The president was kept abreast of the commandos’ long flight out of Syria by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan overnight.
The operation marked a military success for the United States at an important time after setbacks elsewhere — including the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal — had led allies and opponents to conclude U.S. power globally was weakening. (Read more)

Saturday, May 1, 2021

Week in review, 04/24 - 04/30

Seems to me the majority of people are no longer interested in reading news articles (or reading, period), and most especially if their narrow worldviews are in any manner challenged. Echo chambers that demand no critical thinking are so much easier and provide far more entertainment for the masses. As the old saying goes, of course, 'the masses are asses.' Always been true, and truer still today in this unprecedented technological age. All the information in the world at our fingertips, yet blissful ignorance is always going to prevail …

In defense of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Efforts by the far-right to portray Dr. Fauci as ‘some bespectacled Beelzebub’ fall flat and are ultimately self-defeating

Not yet close to America’s death toll, but at the rate they’re going it may not be long: India passes 200,000 Covid-19 deaths as new cases spike to a world-record 360,960 in one day, ‘widespread shortages of medical oxygen and beds’

‘Russia has launched a major campaign using ministries, companies and pro-Kremlin media to promote the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine and spread fake news that the West and the European Union are trying to undermine the shot, an EU agency said in a report Wednesday’

‘The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines were found to be 94% effective at preventing hospitalizations among people ages 65 and over in a real-world study published Wednesday by the CDC’

Beware of Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, another huckster having great success peddling fear and disinformation about COVID vaccines to evangelicals and others predisposed to be anti-vaccine

‘A man and his three sons are facing criminal charges after they sold more than $1 million worth of toxic industrial bleach that was fraudulently marketed as a cure for COVID-19 and other serious medical conditions, federal prosecutors said’

‘The Border Patrol says it has insufficient time and space to conduct coronavirus testing at crowded processing stations.’ This obviously needs to be rectified. At the very least, it should be ensured those coming to this country are not spreading disease

If Florida sees a surge in COVID infections soon, we’ll know where it likely started: 15,269 pack Jacksonville arena for UFC event

Massachusetts surpasses 640,000 COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, with a statewide death total of 17,199; an estimated 30,000 active cases

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker announces the final phase of the Commonwealth’s reopening plan