What To Do When Racists Try To Hijack Your Religion / White supremacists are misappropriating Norse mythology / Norse Mythology and Nazi Propaganda

University of Colorado Boulder

What To Do When Racists Try To Hijack Your Religion

Sorry, Nazis, you’re not going to Valhalla, when you die! You’ll be going to Hell! I hate when people co-opt stuff! FYI, I’m wearing the letters H and J, from the runic alphabet, and not because I’m racist!

Related:

White supremacists are misappropriating Norse mythology, says expert

Norse Mythology and Nazi Propaganda

[2008] When the Left Was Right

The ghosts of 1968 are haunting Barack Obama, which is tremendously unfair, I say as his coeval, given that our cohort spent the Chicago Democratic Convention sticking baseball cards in our bicycle spokes rather than pelting Mayor Daley’s finest with porcine epithets. But guilt by association is ironclad in these days when American political discourse is controlled by hall monitors and tattletales. Obama’s friendship—acquaintance?—with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn is about to get extended play as the Republicans contrast Obama’s Weatherfriends with their nominee’s stint in the Hanoi Hilton.

When the Left Was Right

Democrats Beg for Calm in Chicago Over Escalating Israel-Hamas Protests

CHICAGO — Chicago has long been held up by Democrats as a blend of diversity, progressive policies and a union stronghold, which made it a natural host city for the party’s 2024 presidential nominating convention. But escalating tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas are disrupting the city and dividing Democrats as they prepare to show unity in nominating the president to a second term next summer.

Israel-Hamas protests disrupt life in Democrats’ convention city

Previously:

Vladimir Putin Promotes Traditional Culture over “Cancel” Culture – English Subtitles

Michael Rossi Poli Sci

Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses the plenary session of the 9th St Petersburg International Cultural Forum – the Forum of United Cultures.

His opening remarks note the value of traditional national culture in forms of art, literature, music, language, and values, while noting the growing trend in Western countries of “cancel culture” that, in his view, deviates from historical development and contribution.

This opening address is part of a two-hour segment devoted to the St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum, which Putin was the main guest at the Plenary Session.

The remaining parts will be uploaded in 25 – 30 minute segments that include questions and comments from participating members of the audience.

The whole series is available in a new Playlist “2023 St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum“.

In original Russian with English subtitles

Recorded November 17, 2023

Original video and transcript

Vladimir Putin Promotes Traditional Culture over “Cancel” Culture – English Subtitles

Wisconsin Republicans withhold university pay raises in fight over school diversity funding +

WisPolitics

Wisconsin Republicans withhold university pay raises in fight over school diversity funding

Related:

University of Wisconsin is shutting down in-person instruction at two branch campuses

Wisconsin Senate passes $2B tax cut package, though Evers veto likely

Evers had called on the Legislature to pass a package that included $365 million in new child care funding; a $65 million boost in University of Wisconsin funding; $200 million to pay for a new engineering building at UW-Madison; $243 million to create a new 12-week family medical leave program for Wisconsin workers and millions more for workforce education and grant programs.

The Republican bill would also create a state tax credit for families paying for child care; increase income tax deductions for private school tuition; make professional credentials granted to workers in other states valid in Wisconsin; and prohibit state examining boards from requiring counselors, therapists and pharmacists pass tests on state law and regulations. 😳

U.S. can ‘certainly’ afford military support to both Israel and Ukraine, meanwhile…

U.S. can ‘certainly’ afford military support to both Israel and Ukraine, Janet Yellen says

“America can certainly afford to stand with Israel and to support Israel’s military needs and we also can and must support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia,” Yellen said, adding that the U.S. economy is doing “extremely well.”

“Inflation has been high and it’s been a concern to households, it’s come down considerably. At the same time, we have about the strongest labor market we’ve seen in 50 years with 3.8% unemployment. And at the same time, America, the Biden administration, has passed legislation that is strengthening our economy in years to come for the medium term.”

Related:

Ticking Time-Bomb: Food Inflation Is Crushing Millions Of Low Income Americans (archived)

And so the debate circles round and round. The US, the “most wealthy nation on the planet”, has a food security problem and is on the verge of an inflationary calamity for millions of low income citizens, all while it spends hundreds of billions of dollars on pointless climate change programs, diversity and inclusion initiatives and proxy wars. Something has to give, and the chances are growing that it will be the American consumer.

President Biden should not run again in 2024

President Biden should not run again in 2024

Biden has never been good at saying no. He should have resisted the choice of Harris, who was a colleague of his beloved son Beau when they were both state attorneys general. He should have blocked then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which has done considerable damage to the island’s security. He should have stopped his son Hunter from joining the board of a Ukrainian gas company and representing companies in China — and he certainly should have resisted Hunter’s attempts to impress clients by getting Dad on the phone.

He shouldn’t have overthrown a democratically-elected president!

Florida’s DeSantis puts billboards in Illinois to recruit officers

Florida is putting billboards in Illinois’ “Greater Chicago area” to recruit law enforcement officers from the state, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday.

Florida’s DeSantis puts billboards in Illinois to recruit officers

Related:

No, new Illinois law will not let people in US illegally become cops, deputies

The law says noncitizens applying for those jobs must be legally allowed to possess guns. People living in the U.S. illegally don’t qualify because federal law bars them from owning guns, according to experts and lawmakers.

People living in the country illegally may not legally obtain firearms, a federal appeals court ruled in 2012, and both experts and lawmakers say that makes them ineligible for law enforcement positions.

“Anyone who is saying that an illegal alien can become a police officer or sheriff’s deputy is either, one, misinformed, or two, giving you a baldfaced lie,” said state Rep. John Cabello, a Republican co-sponsor of the law and a Rockford police officer.

Illinois will allow some non-citizens to be police. But only those authorized to work and own a gun

Soros Foundation to End Most EU Operations in Radical Shift

Soros Foundation to End Most EU Operations in Radical Shift

The foundation will also continue to fund initiatives promoting human rights, democracy and accountable government across eastern Europe and central Asia, particularly in non-EU members Ukraine, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, and the Western Balkans, the spokesperson said. The focus of grants in the new model will be determined in the coming months.

In the EU, OSF financed a wide range of philanthropic programs in the bloc’s eastern former communist members, including Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and elsewhere.*

Regime Change coming to Ukraine, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia, and the Western Balkans soon?!

H/T: SDer Friedensstifter

Related:

Soros Foundation to be restructured to focus on non-EU countries

They will also continue to support NGOs in Europe, including groups working on the EU’s foreign policy, the Roma community, and human rights, democracy and accountable governance in the region, and the spokesperson specifically mentioned Ukraine, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan and the Western Balkans here.

*NGOs, “Unions”, & Media Outlets in the Service of Imperialism

Biden’s ally in Guatemala?

CHIUL, Guatemala − Life in Bartolo Báten’s village has been defined by corruption: A teacher who can’t get a job at the school until she pays a bribe. A water project that runs out of money before the pipes reached town. Sick residents who can’t afford the medicine that’s available elsewhere.

Insurgent candidate tells Guatemalans: Stay, don’t go to the U.S. This time, they’re listening. (archived)

Related:

Seven Decades After Guatemala Coup, Bernardo Arévalo Sees a Dramatic Rise (Will Freeman, CFR)

Arévalo and Semilla are centrists—but in a country where politics habitually skews right, they are often described as center-left. “Semilla has a social democratic element, but its program is centrist, and it also has some center-right followers,” said Lucas Perelló, a political scientist who has spent time studying the party’s formation. Arévalo says he wants to gradually universalize existing social assistance programs to include a greater share of poor Guatemalans, reduce the cost of medicines and healthcare, and link isolated parts of the country through new infrastructure—doable tasks, given Guatemala’s exceptionally low share of debt as GDP, and necessary ones, given the country’s soaring poverty and malnutrition rates.

On security issues, another major concern for Guatemalans, Arévalo promises to increase state presence in crime hotspots, reclaim jails from gangs, and use intelligence-gathering to dismantle mafias. He says Bukele’s anti-gang strategy is not applicable to Guatemala. He is also critical of human rights abuses in Venezuela and Nicaragua and Putin’s war on Ukraine and has no stated plans to recognize China over Taiwan. Asked for a leader he admires, he named the ex-president, José Pepe Mujica, of Uruguay, where he was born during his father’s exile.