Recent News Events
Ended up adding several more items than originally planned here. The first three and second-to-last were originally planned.
The Brennan Center for Justice wrote: Mass Purges Are the New Voter Suppression: Election deniers are trying to get huge groups removed from voter rolls.
“People move, die, change party identification, and so on. Election deniers want to exploit the cracks in the voter registration system to challenge legitimate registrations, initiate mass purges, and seek to weed the voter rolls of citizens they don’t like.” https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/mass-purges-are-new-voter-suppression
[…] “Their acolytes are launching mass challenges of voter registrations, sometimes 1,000 at a time. They say it’s a citizen-led effort to update the rolls and reduce the potential for voter fraud. Don’t believe it for a second.”
“For one thing, their efforts appear to be focused on precincts that lean Democratic or are home to large communities of color. This seems to be about politics, not voter-roll hygiene.”
Russian Oil Refineries Burning, Black Sea Denied to Russian Navy and Free to Ukrainian Food
💥💥Link is just to a section after 5 minues: He says they have about forty oil refineries. Haven’t been counting but I think they hit at least ten by now, and the one most recent accounted for a full 10% of production. Built with irreplaceable Western technology and software. In other news, a nation effectively without a navy has driven the russian navy out of the black sea and sevastopol with small sea drones, sinking many ships, and can freely export grain and prevented the weaponization of food inflation, crisis, and famine by russia all over the world.
But the Houthi movement in yemen is now doing much the same, not so much for famine but definitely for inflation due to shipping insurance cost and struck or sunk ships in the strait of the red sea (plus ecological catastrophe, oil slicks, and also fertilizer spill from the one sunk ship, described by the presenter as an ecological bomb for the local corals). Less firepower than russia but with their land based missiles drones and now sea drones they are right next to the Bab-el-Mandeb strait link the indian ocean to the suez canal by the red sea, not hundreds of kilometers away like Crimea is from Odessa where Russian ships now dare not venture the water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Red_Sea_crisis
Purged: Lara Trump is put in charge of the RNC and immediately purges about 60 employees. We imagine that gifts to the RNC will now go to Trumps legal expenses instead of down-ballot candidates, and they’re already in bad shape for fundraising.
The link is just for a section after 13 minutes.
“Growing Racial Disparities in Voter Turnout, 2008–2022”
“The gap is increasing nationwide, especially in counties that had been subject to federal oversight until the Supreme Court invalidated preclearance in 2013.”
This is a long report from the Brennan Center for Justice that I have only just started reading. I doubt if I’ll read the whole thing, but you may have more interest and patience. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/growing-racial-disparities-voter-turnout-2008-2022
The ICC has issued arrest warrants for the deliberate destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure
From Oleksandra Matviichuk (@avalaina on Twitter) https://twitter.com/avalaina/status/1765085490854998476 Cite: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/world/europe/international-court-russia-ukraine.html
“The ICC has today put an end to the debate over the deliberate destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure carried out by Russia last year, leaving millions of Ukrainians without electricity and heating during the winter. At a time when even more Ukrainians were forced to leave the country and become refugees, international human rights organizations were hesitant to call these acts crimes against humanity. I hope that arrest warrants will also be issued for the highest-ranking military officials, such as Shoigu and Gerasimov, as such a large-scale operation could not have been carried out without their direct approval and instructions. The top officials had the authority, knew, and did not prevent these crimes from being committed, therefore, the destruction of the energy infrastructure is the responsibility not only of these two officials, but also of their immediate superiors.”
“20 Days in Mariupol” free in the United States
The winner of the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary is streaming free on PBS and YouTube in the United States. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/20-days-in-mariupol/ :::::: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvAyykRvPBo Be warned there is a lot of extremely graphic and disturbing stuff here. Injured people, corpses, people in surgery, tears and despair. This is 100% real war footage, no Hollywood magic.
Kentucky Republicans approve a bill that would strip meal and rest break requirements from workers
This is actually slightly more complicated. It’s rolling back some old Kentucky labor law, but minimum federal rules would in theory still apply. But we all know Republicans want to strip those away if they can as well.
Featured Image: Photo [edited] by Matt Popovich on Unsplash; The Epoch Times is terrible, by the way. I’ve seen many YouTube ads from them.
Lost in Mist 