Gilead
Right-wing militias
Police White supremacist gangs
Fig. 1. Photograph by Lorie Shaull, April 1, 2021, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
.jpg){kind=link}
In which a Black white supremacist gangster learns that Black Lives Matter folks are right:
[F]or [Bernard] Robins, a three-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran, the Aug. 27 episode shook him deeply, forcing him to experience again what it is to be a Black man in South L.A., not a Black cop. . . .
After a stint in West L.A., he returned to Southwest. While some colleagues there treated people with compassion, he said, others went out of their way to hassle people of color or talk to them disrespectfully. Officers tended to stop them more often for ticky-tack traffic violations or make them show a driver’s license when just walking down the street — which he likened to formerly enslaved people being asked for their freedom papers.
“It’s modern-day slave patrols,” Robins said.
Some cops, he said, seemed to relish trying to goad young, usually Black or Latino, men into foot chases by driving up and startling them — knowing that if the youngsters bolted that would give police probable cause to detain and search them.[1]
Libor Jany and Richard Winton, “A Black LAPD officer wanted to make a difference. Then, he says, he was racially profiled by his own department,” Los Angeles Times, July 5, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-07-05/black-lapd-officer-was-making-film-while-off-duty-then-he-says-he-was-racially-profiled-his-own-department
Fig. 2. “Elon Musk shared a video of his entrance on his Twitter account.” Photograph attributed to Elon Musk, October 26, 2022, via the New York Post,[2] fair use.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, “Twitter was locked in a chaotic doom loop. Now it’s on the verge of collapse,” Guardian, July 5, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/05/twitter-elon-musk-verge-of-collapse
Donald Trump
Coup attempt
Fig. 3. “Jake Angeli (Qanon Shaman), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15.” Photography by TheUnseen011101 [pseud.], October 15, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
[Lin] Wood is the latest [Donald] Trump lawyer to fall. John Eastman, who also worked on the election fraud cases, is facing disbarment in California. Jenna Ellis was censured by the Colorado Bar for making false statements about the 2020 election. Sidney Powell is also facing disbarment, and was sanctioned in Michigan for alleging election fraud, the same case that saw Wood sanctioned.
Longtime Trump lawyer and ally Rudi Giuliani had his law license suspended for his efforts to overturn the election. He and Powell have been sued by voting machine companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic for falsely claiming the machines were involved in election rigging.[3]
Tori Otten, “Pro-Trump Lawyer Cowardly Quits Rather Than Face Disbarment Trial,” New Republic, July 5, 2023, https://newrepublic.com/post/174087/pro-trump-lawyer-cowardly-quits-rather-face-disbarment-trial
Imperialism
Israel
Palestine
Fig. 4. The ruins of a terminal at the Gaza airport. Image by Said Khatib (Agence France-Presse) on September 9, 2018, via the Times of Israel,[4] fair use.
Residents of the Jenin camp blame the Palestinian Authority for failing to defend them against the Israeli Defense Forces. For its part, Israel claims the operation was meant to enable the Authority to reassert control.[5]
Steve Hendrix et al., “Israel’s raid left the Jenin camp in ruins. Palestinians blame their leaders,” Washington Post, July 5, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/05/israel-jenin-aftermath-attacks/
Russia
Ukraine
Fig. 5. “Destroyed Russian military vehicles located on the main street Khreshchatyk are seen as part of the celebration of the Independence Day of Ukraine in Kyiv, August 24.” Photograph by Gleb Garanich for Reuters, August 24, 2022,[6] fair use.
Russia depends on China to evade sanctions, but that seems to be the limit of China’s leverage in stopping Vladimir Putin from using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. A fear remains that those weapons are Putin’s final defense against a catastrophic defeat.[7]
For its part, the Kremlin denies that Xi Jinping personally warned Putin against using nuclear weapons,[8] which I guess is to be expected: It makes Putin look subordinate to Xi. Following the Wagner mutiny, that wouldn’t be a good look.
Max Seddon et al., “Xi Jinping warned Vladimir Putin against nuclear attack in Ukraine,” Financial Times, July 4, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/c5ce76df-9b1b-4dfc-a619-07da1d40cbd3
Pjotr Sauer, “Kremlin denies China’s president urged Putin not to use nuclear arms in Ukraine,” Guardian, July 5, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/05/kremlin-china-president-xi-jining-vladimir-putin-nuclear-weapons-ukraine-russia
Electric vehicles
Fig. 6. “A Toyota bZ4X electric sport utility vehicle: EVs currently on the market are fitted with batteries that use liquid lithium-ion electrolytes.” Photograph by Kiyoshi Ota, n.d., via Financial Times, fair use.
Patrick George, “The Bitter Conclusion of Trump’s Failed Flirtation With Electric Vehicles,” New Republic, July 3, 2023, https://newrepublic.com/article/173989/fallout-trumps-failed-flirtation-electric-vehicles
Peter Campbell and Kana Inagaki, “Between hope and hype for Toyota’s ‘solid-state’ EV batteries,” Financial Times, July 4, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/457269a7-9500-43ed-bfb7-f729d19de5ee
Kana Inagaki, “Toyota says solid-state battery breakthrough can halve cost and size,” Financial Times, July 4, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/87cb8e92-8e82-4755-8fc3-2943f8f63e1d
- [1]Libor Jany and Richard Winton, “,” Los Angeles Times, July 5, 2023, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-07-05/black-lapd-officer-was-making-film-while-off-duty-then-he-says-he-was-racially-profiled-his-own-department↩
- [2]Thomas Barrabi, “Elon Musk barges into Twitter HQ as deal nears: ‘Let that sink in,’” New York Post, October 26, 2022, https://nypost.com/2022/10/26/elon-musk-barges-into-twitter-headquarters-as-deal-nears/↩
- [3]Tori Otten, “Pro-Trump Lawyer Cowardly Quits Rather Than Face Disbarment Trial,” New Republic, July 5, 2023, https://newrepublic.com/post/174087/pro-trump-lawyer-cowardly-quits-rather-face-disbarment-trial↩
- [4]Agence France-Presse and Times of Israel, “20 years after its opening, destroyed Gaza airport embodies grounded peace hopes,” Times of Israel, September 12, 2018, https://www.timesofisrael.com/20-years-after-its-opening-destroyed-gaza-airport-embodies-grounded-peace-hopes/↩
- [5]Steve Hendrix et al., “Israel’s raid left the Jenin camp in ruins. Palestinians blame their leaders,” Washington Post, July 5, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/05/israel-jenin-aftermath-attacks/↩
- [6]Reuters, “Ukraine puts destroyed Russian tanks on display in Kyiv,” August 25, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ukraine-puts-destroyed-russian-tanks-on-idUSRTSALV9Q↩
- [7]Max Seddon et al., “Xi Jinping warned Vladimir Putin against nuclear attack in Ukraine,” Financial Times, July 4, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/c5ce76df-9b1b-4dfc-a619-07da1d40cbd3↩
- [8]Pjotr Sauer, “Kremlin denies China’s president urged Putin not to use nuclear arms in Ukraine,” Guardian, July 5, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/05/kremlin-china-president-xi-jining-vladimir-putin-nuclear-weapons-ukraine-russia↩