Belgian court finds government negligent on climate in landmark decision



Issued on: 17/06/2021 - 
  

Serge de Gheldere, who launched the "Klimaatzaak" initiative, David Van Reybrouck (L) and Francesca Vanthielen (R) arrive for the start of the non-profit Climate Case against Belgium's climate policy on March 16, 2021, at First instance courthouse in Brussels. © James Arthur Gekiere, Belga, AFP

Text by:NEWS WIRES

A Belgian court on Thursday found state authorities guilty of negligence in its policies to tackle the climate crisis, in a judgment that activists hailed as historic.

The Court of First Instance in Brussels nevertheless decided not to impose a binding emissions reduction target on the federal and regional governments, to the disappointment of campaigners.

The environmental group Klimaatzaak ('Climate Case' in Dutch) launched legal action in 2015, hoping to match the success of similar efforts in the Netherlands and Germany.

More than 58,000 citizens joined the lawsuit and all were ruled to have a right to be heard, a unique victory in itself, according to the group's president, Serge de Gheldere.

In the ruling, the court found that in their climate policies the federal government and the three regions had "not behaved as generally prudent and diligent authorities, which constitutes an offence".

By not taking all necessary measures to counter the life-threatening effects of climate change they had breached the European Convention on Human Rights, the court declared.

(AFP)

COMMODORE 64
Hubble Space Telescope sidelined by issue with its 1980s computer

By Chelsea Gohd 

"There is no definitive timeline yet as to when this will be completed, tested, and brought back to operational status," the Hubble operations team said.

June 13, 2021, the Hubble Space Telescope shut down after an issue with a 1980s-era payload computer. Team members continue to work on the issue to get the telescope operational once again. (Image credit: NASA)

NASA is working quickly to fix the Hubble Space Telescope after an issue with a 1980s-era computer on board caused the famous orbiting observatory to temporarily shut down.

The Hubble Space Telescope, which in 2020 marked its 30th year in orbit, halted operations on Sunday (June 13) just after 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT) after problems arose with one of the telescope's computers from the 1980s. The Hubble operations team suspects that the trouble could be due to a degrading memory module, according to a NASA statement. The team is hard at work trying to correct the issue, switching to one of the telescope's several backup modules.

"Assuming that this problem is corrected via one of the many options available to the operations team, Hubble is expected to continue yielding amazing discoveries into the late 2020s or beyond," the operations team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland told Space.com in an email. However, "there is no definitive timeline yet as to when this will be completed, tested and brought back to operational status," they added.

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

More: The Hubble Space Telescope and 30 years that transformed our view of the universe

On Sunday, the telescope's main computer stopped receiving signals from the payload computer and sent an error message to the ground system back on Earth, which alerted the operations team that something was wrong, the team said.

"Analysis indicates the error is likely due to a degraded memory problem. Memory can degrade over time due to years of exposure to radiation in space. Issues like this are expected, which is why there are backup memory modules on the spacecraft," they added.

The computer that stopped working on Sunday is a payload computer that controls the observatory's science instruments as part of the telescope's Science Instrument Control and Data Handling module. The module was last replaced during the last astronaut servicing mission to the observatory in 2009. The payload computer is a NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 (NSSC-1) system that was built in the 1980s.

"The payload computer is from the 1980s, which is when Hubble was designed and built. Like all spacecraft hardware, the harsh environment of space can take its toll on electronics. That is why there are backup memory modules and a backup payload computer onboard the spacecraft that we can switch to if needed," the operations team members wrote in the email..

After the telescope shut down on Sunday, Hubble's main computer then automatically put all of its instruments into safe mode and, on Monday (June 14), team members at NASA Goddard restarted the payload computer that caused the shutdown. However, after the restart, the computer ran into the same problems that caused the initial shutdown.

The operations team is "currently in the process of switching memory modules onboard the spacecraft," the team said. Once this process is complete and the craft has been thoroughly tested, it will resume normal operations.

This is not the first time that Hubble has run into problems that needed fixing. Early in the telescope's lifetime, scientists found an error with the observatory's pointing-control system and issues with the shape of its primary mirror.

The first servicing mission was launched to work on the telescope in 1993, and missions to Hubble continued to launch throughout NASA's space shuttle program. On these missions, astronauts worked on many issues, including replacing batteries and the gyroscopes that allowed Hubble to point steadily at far-away spots in the cosmos.

Hubble has overcome problems more recently as well. This past March, for example, the telescope went into a protective "safe mode" after suffering an apparent software glitch but bounced back a few days later.

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Fol

Renewables Are the Cornerstone of Decarbonization, Report Says

The focus should be on renewable energy, not on unproven carbon capture technology or biofuels, researchers argue.

Eduardo Garcia

Writer

Chris Conway / Getty 

Massive investments in renewable energy and the wind-down of existing fossil fuel projects could prevent climate doom, a new report says.

Fossil Fuel Exit Strategy, a study by Sydney-based scientists, argues carbon emissions from fossil fuel projects already in operation will push our planet’s average temperature above the 1.5 degrees Celcius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold that scientists say will lead to catastrophic climate change.

The report, which was conducted by the Institute for Sustainable Futures, at the University of Technology, Sydney, estimates that by 2030, even without any fossil fuel projects, the world will produce 35% more oil and 69% more coal than is consistent with a 1.5 degrees C pathway.

The study’s findings are “alarming,” wrote lead author, Sven Teske, but also “give us a new reason to be hopeful.”

That’s because the report found two clear pathways to keep the global surface temperature from rising above dangerous levels: injecting huge amounts of capital into new renewable energy projects and winding down existing coal mines and oil and gas wells.

These findings are in line with those of the United Nation’s Production Gap Report, which concluded that in order to keep temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees C the world will need to decrease fossil fuel production by roughly 60% over the next decade.

This, of course, would require strong political will and huge investments in new solar and wind farms—the Institute for Sustainable Futures found this transition is “completely feasible” because the world’s renewable energy resources are plentiful and we already have the technology needed to harness those resources.

“The combination of renewable energies, storage technologies, and renewable fuels such as hydrogen and synthetic fuels will provide reliable energy supply for industries, future traveling as well as for buildings,” Teske said.

No Biofuels or Carbon Capture

The report comes on the heels of last month’s release of a roadmap in which the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 no new fossil fuel projects should be approved. 

The IEA set up 400 milestones to decarbonize the global economy and prevent temperatures from rising above the 1.5 degrees C target adopted during the Paris Agreement. 

Some of the reductions, the group said, will come “from technologies that are currently at the demonstration or prototype phase.” The IEA also advocates for a marked increase in the production of biofuels to power modes of transportation, including planes and ships, the replacement of natural gas with biomethane to produce electricity, and the use of carbon capture technology to prevent some emissions and remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. 

In fact, the IEA advocates for a dramatic increase in the use of carbon capture technology—from the current capacity of approximately 40 million tonnes a year to 1,600 million tonnes by 2030.

“This is quite unrealistic, because it means betting on expensive, unproven technology that’s being deployed very slowly and is often plagued by technical issues,” wrote Teske.

The Fossil Fuel Exit Strategy argues that planting crops such as rapeseed to produce biofuels will likely lead to deforestation and could take away agricultural land that would otherwise be used to grow food.

“Bioenergy should be produced predominantly from agricultural and organic waste to remain carbon neutral,” the authors argue.

Instead of increasing biofuel production and using unproven carbon capture technology, countries should focus on protecting forests, mangroves, and seagrass, which are considered “natural carbon sinks” because they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in the soil, the report says.

Whereas the IEA says nuclear should continue being an important part of the global energy mix, Fossil Fuel Exit Strategy argues nuclear should be phased out, too.

In sum, the report argues that if countries can slash energy demand by 27% by 2050 (thanks to less wastage and more energy efficiency) the world could potentially rely on solar and wind for the vast majority of its energy needs.

According to the Fossil Fuel Exit Strategy, solar and wind energy alone could power the world more than 50 times over.

“We believe the IEA underestimated the very real potential of renewable energy and relied on problematic solutions to fill what it sees as a gap in meeting the carbon budget,” the authors said.

Indeed, the IEA has long faced criticism from experts and environmentalists for allegedly downplaying the potential of the renewable energy sector.

GREEN CAPITALI$M

Japan's central bank announced its first investment fund for efforts to address climate change

Financial support measures for Japanese businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic have been extended 

Charly TRIBALLEAU AFP

Tokyo (AFP)

Japan's central bank on Friday announced its first investment fund for efforts to address climate change, as the government works towards its new target of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.

The scheme, likely to start this year, will be a successor to an existing programme aimed at promoting economic growth more generally, the Bank of Japan said after a two-day policy meeting.

"Climate change issues could exert an extremely large impact on developments in economic activity and prices as well as financial conditions from a medium- to long-term perspective," its policy statement said.

"The bank considers that supporting the private sector's efforts on the issues from a central bank's standpoint will contribute to stabilising the macroeconomy in the long run."

Financial support measures for pandemic-hit businesses were also extended by six months to the end of March 2022, a day after the government approved lifting a virus state of emergency in nine prefectures including Tokyo.

Slightly looser "quasi-emergency" restrictions will be set in the capital and six other areas until July 11, less than two weeks before the postponed Tokyo Olympics begin.

The extension of business support had been widely expected, said Naoya Oshikubo, senior economist at SuMi TRUST.

"Many companies are continuing to suffer financially from the Covid-19 state of emergency in a number of Japanese prefectures, as well as from the country's low vaccination rates," said Oshikubo ahead of the policy decision.

"The extended financial support package will be very effective in helping hard-pressed small and medium sized businesses in Japan as demand for business support loans is high," he added.

Japan's vaccine rollout started comparatively slowly, but has picked up pace in recent weeks. Just over six percent of the population is currently fully vaccinated.

The Bank of Japan left its monetary easing policy unchanged, reiterating that it "will closely monitor the impact of Covid-19 and will not hesitate to take additional easing measures if necessary".

Earlier Friday, official data showed Japan's consumer prices rose slightly in May for the first time in 14 months, largely because of a rebound in energy prices.

Japan has long struggled to hit a two percent inflation target seen as key to kickstarting the world's third-largest economy, despite a barrage of stimulus and monetary easing packages.

Yoshiki Shinke, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, said "the BoJ is not in a position to taper its easing policy" as demand in the service sector is still weak owing to the pandemic.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in October set a 2050 deadline for Japan to become carbon neutral, significantly firming up the country's climate-change commitments.

The nation has struggled to cut carbon emissions after shutting down reactors in response to the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

© 2021 AFP

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

34 women sue Pornhub in sex abuse video, trafficking case


They accuse Montreal-based MindGeek the controversial adult entertainment empire that runs Pornhub, of being a "classic criminal enterprise" with a business model based on exploiting non-consensual sexual content.

MONTREAL HAS A LARGE ORGANIZED CRIME ECOLOGY

Issued on: 18/06/2021 - 

The lawsuit accuses Pornhub of profiting from nonconsensual sex videos 

Ethan Miller GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

Los Angeles (AFP)

Nearly three dozen women have filed a lawsuit in California against adult video website Pornhub, accusing it and its parent company of knowingly profiting from footage depicting rape and sexual exploitation, including of minors.

Lawyers representing the 34 plaintiffs accuse the online giant -- one of the world's largest adult video websites -- of creating a teeming marketplace for child pornography and "every other form" of nonconsensual sexual content, and want the company to pay damages.

They accuse MindGeek, the controversial adult entertainment empire that runs Pornhub, of being a "classic criminal enterprise" with a business model based on exploiting non-consensual sexual content.


"This is a case about rape, not pornography," the complaint said, describing the website as "likely the largest non-regulatory repository of child pornography in North America and well beyond."

All but one of the plaintiffs, who reside both in the United States and abroad, wished to remain anonymous.

Fourteen said they were minors when they were filmed and should be considered "a victim of child sex trafficking".

Michael Bowe, a lawyer representing the women, told CBS News the court could order MindGeek to pay hundreds of millions to his clients.

Serena Fleites, the only plaintiff to be named, said that in 2014 she learned that "a nude, sexually explicit video" that her boyfriend had coerced her to make when she was only 13 years old had been uploaded to Pornhub without her consent.

The video remained online until the teen, posing as her mother, asked Pornhub to remove it.

Yet the video was not taken down for several weeks, the lawsuit said, and during that time it was downloaded and reuploaded by several different users, with each video requiring a fresh request to remove it.

The plaintiffs' lawyers accuse MindGeek of operating a "gaslighting campaign" online in a bid to discredit the victims, as well as making "threats of physical violence and death" against them.

They are also suing Visa Inc -- one of the world's largest payments processing companies -- for "knowingly" profiting from trafficking in providing merchant services to MindGeek.

Both Visa and Mastercard suspended processing payments for Pornhub in December, after a New York Times article accused the site of hosting illegal content, including child pornography and rape videos.

According to the suit, MindGeek owns more than 100 pornographic sites, including Pornhub, RedTube, Tube8 and YouPorn, and sees some 3.5 billion visits each month.

Montreal-based MindGeek described the suit's accusation that it is running a "criminal enterprise" as "utterly absurd, completely reckless and categorically false," according to US media.

Pornhub, which claims 130 million visitors a day, has denied allegations of trafficking and announced a series of measures to combat illegal content.

First person of color named to Canada's top court

FIRST BAHAI, FIRST INDO CANADIAN JUSTICE

Issued on: 18/06/2021 - 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau names Mahmud Jamal, 

the first person of color to the Supreme Court of Canada 

Ottawa (AFP)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday nominated the first person of color to the top court in Canada, a country in which nearly one in four people identify as a minority.

Mahmud Jamal has been an Ontario Court of Appeal judge since 2019, after having previously taught at two of Canada's top law schools and worked for decades as a litigator -- including appearing in 35 appeals before the Supreme Court.

"He'll be a valuable asset to the Supreme Court -- and that's why, today, I'm announcing his historic nomination to our country's highest court," Trudeau said on Twitter.

Jamal must still be vetted by the House of Commons justice committee, but this is a formality.

He was born in 1967 into an Indian family in Nairobi and raised in Britain before moving to Canada in 1981.

Canada is a multicultural nation with almost one quarter of its population of 38 million identifying in the last census as a member of a visible minority group.

But recent attacks on Muslims, its historical treatment of indigenous peoples -- labeled by a commission as "cultural genocide" -- and police brutality against Black people and other ethnic minorities have highlighted the ongoing legacy of racism in Canada.

Trudeau, who last year took a knee in solidarity with US protestors marching against racism, said many white Canadians had awakened "to the fact that the discrimination that is a lived reality for far too many of our fellow citizens is something that needs to end."

"Systemic racism is an issue right across the country, in all of our institutions," he said.

In a job questionnaire Jamal said that his hybrid religious and cultural upbringing and his experiences in Canada -- along with those of his wife -- "exposed me to some of the challenges and aspirations of immigrants, religious minorities, and racialized persons."

"I was raised at school as a Christian, reciting the Lord's Prayer and absorbing the values of the Church of England, and at home as a Muslim, memorizing Arabic prayers from the Quran and living as part of the Ismaili community," he wrote.

"Like many others, I experienced discrimination as a fact of daily life. As a child and youth, I was taunted and harassed because of my name, religion or the color of my skin."

His wife, he said, immigrated to Canada from Iran to escape the persecution of the Baha'i religious minority during the 1979 revolution.

"After we married, I became a Baha'i, attracted by the faith's message of the spiritual unity of humankind, and we raised our two children in Toronto's multi-ethnic Baha'i community," he said.

Jamal will replace Justice Rosalie Abella, the nine-person court's longest serving justice who is due to retire on July 1.

© 2021 AFP

EVEN THE SCOTS ACCOUNTANT GETS IT Cumbrian accountant welcomes G7's move to tax multinational companies

By Emma Walker

Reporter

News17th June

THE CUMBERLAND NEWS & STAR

Praise: Peter Ellwood, managing partner of robinson+co

 Picture: Tom Kay/Platinum Live PR


A CUMBRIAN firm has spoken out on Rishi Sunak and his G7 counterparts' historic deal, to make large multinational companies pay more tax in the countries they operate in.

On Saturday (June 12), the G7 group agreed on a minimum corporation tax rate of 15%, but some countries would like this to be higher.

For example, in the UK, the current corporation tax rate is 19%, which will rise to 25% by 2023 as the government tries to cover pandemic spending.

Peter Ellwood, managing partner at robinson+co, said: “For many years, multinationals have moved their branches to countries with low corporate tax rates, and declared most of their profits in that country.

"This means they only pay the local rate of tax, even if the profits mainly come from revenue made elsewhere. This is legal and commonly done."

With offices across West Cumbria, Robinson+co works with a range of businesses from sole traders to large corporations, and therefore knows the importance of large companies paying their fair share of corporation tax.

Mr Ellwood continued: “The deal announced on Saturday, between the US, the UK, France, Germany, Canada, Italy and Japan, plus the EU, could see billions of pounds flow to governments to pay off debts which have been incurred during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"This announcement, which has been years in the making, will now put pressure on other countries to follow suit, including the G20 (which includes China, Russia and Brazil) which meets next month.

“In the past, many countries have thought that this agreement was unobtainable. However, [they] now need to cover the cost of the pandemic, and they see this as a good starting point.

"There is still a lot of work to be done, but the G7 has made a good start.”

President Biden to Sign Bill Naming Pulse Nightclub a National Memorial

“Pulse Nightclub is hallowed ground.”


BY DE ELIZABETH

TEEN VOGUE

JUNE 13, 2021

GERARDO MORA/GETTY IMAGES

Five years after the mass shooting at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub, President Joe Biden has pledged to sign a bill that will name the LGBTQ+ establishment as a national memorial.

In a White House statement on Saturday, June 12, Biden reported staying in touch with the many families of victims and survivors. “In the coming days, I will sign a bill designating Pulse Nightclub as a national memorial, enshrining in law what has been true since that terrible day five years ago: Pulse Nightclub is hallowed ground,” the president said.

Pulse Nightclub was the site of the deadliest attack on LGBTQ+ people in the country’s history, with 49 people killed and an additional 53 others wounded during the mass shooting on June 12, 2016. A memorial has been in the works for some time, and the design for the tribute was unveiled after a contest in 2019. In a statement at the time, Pulse co-founder and onePulse Foundation CEO Barbara Poma told People that she hoped the memorial would “honor the 49 lives taken and all those affected while also educating visitors and future generations on the profound impact the tragedy had on Orlando, the U.S., and the world.”

BETTER TO DIE BY JIHAD THAN TO BE QUEER DAD SAID

When announcing the bill on Saturday, Biden emphasized the ongoing work that needs to be done when it comes to reducing gun violence in the United States, including closing loopholes surrounding background checks, banning assault weapons, and establishing extreme risk or “red flag” laws. The president also acknowledged the ways in which gun violence disproportionately affects LGBTQ+ people, adding, “We must drive out hate and inequities that contribute to the epidemic of violence and murder against transgender women – especially transgender women of color. We must create a world in which our LGBTQ+ young people are loved, accepted, and feel safe in living their truth.”

As Biden noted, there is a long road ahead to combat the epidemic of gun violence. In an interview with CNN, Pulse shooting survivor Brandon Wolf shared that while he is hopeful and optimistic about Biden’s gun reform agenda, he is “existentially exhausted” from the ongoing instances of violence. “I am so tired of statements," he said. "I am so tired of hashtags and thoughts and prayers. I am so tired of archaic senate procedure being used as an excuse to do nothing while people in our communities are dying. …. All I am asking is for the people that we have elected, the people we pay to get things done in Washington D.C. to actually do something.”

Wolf also noted that the grief and loss of his friends is something that he still carries with him, five years later. “The people that I lost, they're still gone tomorrow and the day after that,” he told CNN. “They're still missing faces at my birthday party. There are still empty seats at my dinner table.”

HATEWATCH

Texas Man Arrested on Charges of Terroristic Threats Ran White Power Telegram Channel

June 16, 2021
Cassie Miller and Hannah Gais


A Texas man arrested on charges related to an alleged plot to carry out a mass shooting at a Walmart ran a white supremacist Telegram channel enamored with terrorism, Hatewatch has learned.

Police arrested Coleman Thomas Blevins on May 28 in Kerrville, Texas. The Kerr County Sheriff’s Office stated in a press release that they had issued a warrant for Blevins’ arrest and charged him with making a “terroristic threat to create public fear of serious bodily injury.” Blevins’ connections to the white supremacist movement are blatant: Police published a photo displaying a number of texts associated with the white power movement, including William Luther Pierce’s “The Turner Diaries,” as well as a Confederate flag and another bearing a Sonnenrad, a type of sunwheel commonly used as a neo-Nazi symbol.

Blevins has a history of drug offenses. Police allege he had a stash of firearms, ammunition and concentrated THC at the time of his arrest. Authorities decided to hold Blevins in the Kerr County Jail on a $250,000 bond. Like many of the perpetrators or suspected perpetrators of some of the most recent acts of white supremacist terror, Blevins was immersed in a violent digital subculture where users can simultaneously affiliate with a variety of white power communities.


Coleman Thomas Blevins booking photo via Kerr County Sheriff's Office

The collection of extremist symbols also pointed to Blevins’ involvement with the online white power movement now flourishing on Telegram. Police showed evidence of two T-shirts, both bearing the logos of racist Telegram channels. One channel, which Hatewatch has elected not to name so as to reduce its visibility, uses a logo of a white syringe encircled by a shield. There, Blevins posted under the variations on the username “Korb.” Another T-shirt bears the logo of the National Partisan Movement (NPM), a youth-targeted neo-Nazi group with members in the U.S. and abroad, according to Hope Not Hate. While it is unclear whether Blevins was a member, he did say during a self-described “free speech” podcast recorded in March that his Telegram channel was “affiliated” with NPM, and his own channel has frequently shared their propaganda.

Blevins did not respond to a request for comment. As of the morning of June 17, Blevins' Telegram channel appeared to be banned for a violation of the platform's terms of service agreement.

Blevins’ case is indicative of a broader shift within the white power movement. Far-right extremists are increasingly congregating on decentralized online spaces such as Telegram. Dedication to white supremacy and accelerationist strategies – which presume terroristic violence to be the sole means of ushering in a white ethnostate – takes precedent over a commitment to any particular organized group.
Blevins’ footprint on Telegram

Following Blevins’ arrest, a number of channel operators on Telegram began posting in support of the arrested man, referring to him as “Korb.” Some far-right extremists – including from a channel claiming to be the Estonia-based neo-Nazi group Feuerkrieg Division – adapted Blevins’ mugshot into propaganda. In a channel belonging to a podcast associated with the white nationalist podcasting network The Right Stuff, a moderator claimed Blevins had tried to join one of their chatrooms in summer 2020 while posting under the username Kørb Seppükrieg. The post implied he was booted out for trolling.

Hatewatch identified Korb as one of the main contributors to that channel through chatter on Telegram after his arrest, the presence of a shirt bearing the channel’s logo, and the fact that his channel was set up to show the usernames of contributors whenever they posted to the channel. (Telegram allows channel moderators to show their usernames at the bottom of each post, in order to allow users to know exactly who has posted a piece of content.) Though Korb changed his display name on a number of occasions, all variations of the username included “Korb” in some capacity. Korb left other clues to his identity. In a video “Korbe” posted on the channel associated with one of the T-shirts police seized during Blevins’ arrest on April 10, a man wearing a skull mask said he was “ready to fucking die” in front of a stone wall with a cutout of the state of Texas, where Blevins lives. Another image, posted on April 30 by “Kørbe,” matched three of the books seized by authorities, including the same edition of “The Turner Diaries.”

Blevins’ Telegram channel was created on Feb. 1, after the company carried out a widespread purge of white supremacist channels on the platform in an apparent response to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. His group’s propaganda blended a variety of themes, using imagery associated with Hitler’s Germany, the “war on terror” and the Eastern Orthodox Church. In late February, Blevins began posting original content, featuring the group’s logo and name, created by a number of young female artists.

Blevins has used the “Korb” moniker outside Telegram as well. For instance, in March, he appeared on a podcast streamed live on Facebook and other platforms as a representative of the National Partisan Movement.
Accelerationism moves out of the fringes

Blevins’ views are in many ways representative of recent trends within the white power movement. His Telegram channel subscribed to the strategy of accelerationism, making several references to an impending bloody breakdown in society. “You know you want holy war now,” he posted on May 13. Accelerationism as a tactic embraces terroristic violence with the goal of sparking a revolutionary race war, and contradicts the wing of the white power movement that seeks political power through electoral politics.

While accelerationists sat at the fringes of the white power movement during the early years of Trump’s presidency, their ethos now occupies a prominent place within the movement, exemplified by the proliferation of cell-style groups and networks with explicitly revolutionary goals.

Telegram has become the preferred platform of white power accelerationists in recent years. There, administrators can create public “channels,” where they can post text, images and videos up to two gigabytes. Users can also join private and public encrypted chats with up to 200,000 members. Telegram and companies such as Apple have made some attempts to remove or quarantine violent white supremacist channels, either on the app or on specific devices. But, as SPLC research has shown, this has had minimal effect on these channels’ membership. Channel administrators have found simple workarounds, and many of the accelerationist channels that had been restricted in some way experienced triple-digit growth throughout 2020.

Blevins’ channel shared an aesthetic with a Telegram network that its followers call “Terrorgram.” That network, which started as only a few dozen channels, solidified on the platform around mid-2019. Users and channels associated with the network advocate for political terror, express reverence for past acts of white supremacist terrorism, venerate white supremacist killers such as Dylann Roof as “saints” and share information about how to construct explosives and homemade firearms through posts, PDFs, memes and videos. The platform has helped facilitate the emergence of an increasingly decentralized movement, where individuals can move fluidly between different groups and subsets of the white power movement without ever having to officially join an organization.

The diffuse nature of the movement has allowed individuals such as Blevins to claim they represent “a conglomeration of seemingly disparate creeds” – or, at the very least, seemingly disparate influences.

Eclectic religious influences with standard white power fare

Neo-Nazi paraphernalia and texts were seized during the arrest of Coleman Thomas Blevins. (Photo via Kerr County Sheriff's Office)

While he said that the group had no Muslim members, Blevins said that its “contributors” ranged from the violent white power group The Base “to the Mujahideen.” A professed “fanatic Christian,” Blevins has an online presence littered with references to jihadism, and a photo from the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office made public at the time of his arrest show officers found a Saudi flag in Blevins’ home alongside neo-Nazi paraphernalia. But right-wing extremists are opportunists who have, at times, co-opted revolutionary violence across the globe as their own, resulting in an apparent surface-level affinity for guerrilla fighters and international terrorist organizations originating in the Middle East. White power groups such as Atomwaffen Division and Feuerkrieg Division have used images of Osama bin Laden and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria propaganda videos, respectively, in propaganda of their own.

This same tendency toward eclectic influences extended to Blevins’ apparent interest in symbolism associated with the Eastern Orthodox Church. Police found a banner in the style of a calvary cross. The symbol is a variant of the Orthodox three-bar cross – which features three horizontal crossbeams instead of one – that is situated on a small platform intended meant to represent Calvary, the site where Christians believe Jesus Christ was crucified. The particular banner that police found in Blevins’ house “bears a striking resemblance to the garments worn by Russian Orthodox schema monks,” Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, a postdoctoral fellow in the “Recovering Truth” project at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University, told Hatewatch in an email. However, a commentator in a chatroom associated with Blevins’ Telegram channel noted shortly after his arrest, “To be honest, he could not distinguish Russia from Ukraine either.”

Riccardi-Swartz, whose forthcoming book studies American converts to Russian Orthodoxy in the United States, saw parallels to other far-right extremists who have taken an interest in the Orthodox Church, particularly among men.

“In the U.S. we see increasing interest from radicalized males (those who consider themselves white nationalists, America First groypers, neo-Southern secessionists etc.) in Russian Orthodoxy, in the Tsar Nicholas II, and in Vladimir Putin,” she noted.

“Part of this is a desire for authoritarian strongman rule, part of this is an expression of toxic masculinity and whiteness preservation, and part of this is existential angst over social changes and progressive social politics in the United States.”

However, many of the texts police found in Blevins’ possession are standard fare within the radical right. In addition to “The Turner Diaries,” Blevins had a copy of Italian philosopher Julius Evola’s "Revolt Against the Modern World." Evola’s 1934 book argues for “traditionalism,” built on social and racial hierarchy, and insists that “total catharsis and a radical ‘housecleaning’” are necessary responses to the modern world. Admired by Benito Mussolini, Evola has gained influence within the far right in the last decade, thanks in part to praise from Steve Bannon and to white nationalist presses who have republished his work.

The same police images showed that Blevins had a copy of “Harassment Architecture,” an accelerationist fantasy self-published by former Breitbart contributor Mike Mahoney (under the pen name Mike Ma). Mahoney’s 2019 book has made him a darling of accelerationists, as “Harassment Architecture” is full of violent fantasy and exhortations. “Kill someone important! Burn something down! Cut yourself for attention! Anything! The gas pedal is waiting to be stepped on,” he writes.
‘This is a doomsday cult’

Blevins described participation in far-right extremism as a remedy for personal suffering. “It is sobriety to enact the 14 words,” he said, speaking as “Korb” on a March podcast with the National Partisan Movement. The 14 words is a phrase popularized by neo-Nazi terrorist David Lane. He continued, “Extremism and purpose is the only way to abstain from bad habits.” He attributed the group’s logo to the fact that he envisioned it as an “extremist alternative to the Twelve Step Program.”

Though Blevins did not reference his own history with substances, public records indicate he has been charged three times in the past on drug-related offenses – first in February 2014, then in October 2015, and finally in late 2016. A news report from Blevins’ 2015 arrest said that authorities had found heroin in his car after they pulled him over for a traffic violation.

Far-right extremist groups do tend to use people’s hardships as a recruitment mechanism, claiming to offer a way to alleviate loneliness through racial camaraderie, explain personal shortcomings by blaming out-groups, and boiling down large societal changes to simple, conspiratorial explanations. Blevins’ self-help-inspired recruiting technique is not new within the world of far-right extremism, but spaces like Telegram may afford him a far larger audience than was available in the past.

On Telegram, his goals were more explicitly bound up in violent accelerationism.

“I’m grooming all of you for terrorism. This is a suicide cult because I hate most of my friends, but for the ones I like this is a doomsday cult,” Korb Taran wrote on Telegram on May 24, four days prior to Blevins’ arrest.

Photo illustration by SPLC

Chomsky: Republicans Are Willing to Destroy Democracy to Retake Power

Let's not discount the threat posed by the proto-fascist GOP,

 especially in the context of the global climate emergency.

JARED RODRIGUEZ / TRUTHOUT

BYC.J. Polychroniou, Truthout

PUBLISHED June 16, 2021

Today’s Republican Party is an extremist force that no longer qualifies as a mainstream political party and is surely not interested in participating in “normal” politics. In fact, today’s GOP is so wrapped around extreme and irrational beliefs that even Europe’s far-right parties and movements, including Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, seem conventional in comparison.

The GOP’s political identity has been dramatically shaped by former President Donald Trump, but these recent shifts would not have been possible if there weren’t already an array of groups across U.S. society and culture (including white supremacists, right-wing Evangelical Christians and Second Amendment activists, to name just a few) that have long embraced extremist and “proto-fascist” views about the way the country should be governed and the values that it should hold. For them, Trump was and remains America’s “great white hope.” In this context, Trump’s voting base — which continues to believe in the idea of a stolen election and to support Trump-led GOP efforts to stamp critical race theory out of schools and restrict voting rights — speaks volumes about the anti-democratic and threatening nature of today’s GOP.

In the interview that follows, world-renowned scholar and activist Noam Chomsky explains what has happened to the Republican Party and why even more than democracy is at stake if the “proto-fascist” forces inspired by Trump return to power.

C.J. Polychroniou: Over the course of the past few decades, the Republican Party has gone through a series of ideological transformations — from traditional conservatism to reactionism and finally to what we may define as “proto-fascism” where the irrational has become the driving force. How do we explain what has happened to the GOP?

Noam Chomsky: Your term “neoliberal proto-fascism” seems to me quite an accurate characterization of the current Republican organization — I’m hesitant to call them a “Party” because that might suggest that they have some interest in participating honestly in normal parliamentary politics. More fitting, I think, is the judgment of American Enterprise Institute political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein that the modern Republican Party has transformed to a “radical insurgency” with disdain for democratic participation. That was before the Trump-McConnell hammer blows of the past few years, which drove the conclusion home more forcefully.

The term “neoliberal proto-fascism” captures well both the features of the current party and the distinction from the fascism of the past. The commitment to the most brutal form of neoliberalism is apparent in the legislative record, crucially the subordination of the party to private capital, the inverse of classic fascism. But the fascist symptoms are there, including extreme racism, violence, worship of the leader (sent by God, according to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo), immersion in a world of “alternative facts” and a frenzy of irrationality. Also in other ways, such as the extraordinary efforts in Republican-run states to suppress teaching in schools that doesn’t conform to their white supremacist doctrines. Legislation is being enacted to ban instruction in “critical race theory,” the new demon, replacing Communism and Islamic terror as the plague of the modern age. “Critical race theory” is the scare-phrase used for the study of the systematic structural and cultural factors in the hideous 400-year history of slavery and enduring racist repression. Proper indoctrination in schools and universities must ban this heresy. What actually happened for 400 years and is very much alive today must be presented to students as a deviation from the real America, pure and innocent, much as in well-run totalitarian states.The Democrats have [failed] to provide a constructive alternative that answers to the needs and just aspirations of many of those who have flocked to the Trump banner.

What’s missing from “proto-fascism” is the ideology: state control of the social order, including the business classes, and party control of the state with the maximal leader in charge. That could change. German industry and finance at first thought they could use the Nazis as their instrument in beating down labor and the left while remaining in charge. They learned otherwise. The current split between the more traditional corporate leadership and the Trump-led party is suggestive of something similar, but only remotely. We are far from the conditions that led to Mussolini, Hitler, and their cohorts.

On the driving force of irrationality, the facts are inescapable and should be of deep concern. Though we can’t credit Trump entirely with the achievement, he certainly has shown great skill in carrying out a challenging assignment: implementing policies for the benefit of his primary constituency of great wealth and corporate power while conning the victims into worshipping him as their savior. That’s no mean achievement, and inducing an atmosphere of utter irrationality has been a primary instrument, a virtual prerequisite.

We should distinguish the voting base, now pretty much owned by Trump, from the political echelon (Congress) — and distinguish both from a more shadowy elite that really runs the Party, McConnell and associates.

Attitudes among the voting base are truly ominous. Put aside the fact that a large majority of Trump voters believe that the elections were stolen. A majority also believe that “The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it” and 40 percent take a stronger stand: “if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions.” Not surprising, perhaps, when a quarter of Republicans are reported to believe that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.”It’s hard to garner votes with the slogan “I want to rob you. Vote for me.” That leaves only a few options. One is to prevent the “wrong people” from voting.

In the background are more realistic concerns about the disappearance of “the traditional American way of life”: a Christian and white supremacist world where Black people “know their place” and there are no infections from “deviants” who call for gay rights and other such obscenities. That traditional way of life indeed is disappearing.

There are also elements of realism in the various “great replacement” theories that seem to consume much of the Trump base. Putting aside absurdities about immigration and elite plotting, a simple look at distribution of births suffices to show that white domination is declining.

It’s also worth remembering the deep roots of these concerns. Among the founders, there were two distinguished figures of the Enlightenment, one of whom hoped that the new country would be free of “blot or mixture,” red or black (Jefferson), while the other felt that Germans and Swedes should perhaps be barred entry because they are too “swarthy” (Franklin). Myths of Anglo-Saxon origin were prevalent through the 19th century. All of this is apart from the virulent racism and its horrifying manifestations.

Concerns about satanic cults are dangerous enough, but other deeply irrational beliefs are far more consequential. One of the most threatening revelations of recent days was a scarcely noticed observation in the latest report of a Yale University group that monitors attitudes on climate change — the euphemism for the heating of the planet that will end organized human life on earth unless soon brought under control. The report found that “Over the past year, there has been a sharp decline in the percentages of both liberal/moderate Republicans and conservative Republicans who think developing sources of clean energy should be a priority for the president and Congress. The current numbers are all-time lows since we first asked the question in 2010.”

Meanwhile every day’s news provides information about new potential disasters — for example, the June 11 release of studies reporting the accelerated collapse of a huge Antarctic glacier that might raise sea levels by a foot and a half — along with reminders by the scientists reporting the warning that “The future is still open to change — if people do what is needed to change it.”

They won’t, as long as the reported attitudes prevail. Unless overcome, they might be a kiss of death if the current strategy of the Republican Party succeeds in putting the wreckers back in power. The strategy is plain enough: no matter what the harm to the country, and to their own voting base, ensure that the Biden administration can do nothing to remedy severe domestic problems, and ram through Jim Crow-style legislation to block voting of people of color and the poor, counting on the acquiescence of the reactionary judiciary that McConnell-Trump have succeeded in installing.

The party is not a lost cause. The Democrats have helped by failing to provide a constructive alternative that answers to the needs and just aspirations of many of those who have flocked to the Trump banner. That can change. Furthermore, attitudes are shifting among younger Republicans, even among younger Evangelicals, a core part of the Republican base since the ‘70s.

Nothing is irremediable.

With regard to the political echelon, there is little to say. With fringe exceptions, they have abandoned any semblance of integrity. Current votes are a clear indication: Total Republican opposition to measures that they know are favored by their constituents in order to ensure that the Biden administration can achieve nothing.Trump has exhibited a certain genius in tapping poisons that run not far below the surface of American society and culture.

The most abject capitulation of the political echelon was on global warming. In 2008, Republican presidential candidate John McCain had a limited climate plank in his program, and congressional Republicans were considering related legislation. The Koch energy conglomerate responded in force, and any spark of independence was extinguished. That much was evident in the last Republican primaries in 2016, pre-Trump: 100 percent denial that what is happening is happening, or worse, saying maybe it is but we’re going to race toward disaster without apologizing (as said John Kasich, who was honored for his integrity by being invited to speak at the 2020 Democratic convention).

I can’t raise any objections whatsoever to what you say, but I am a bit baffled by Biden’s insistence in trying to reach out to Republicans on some of the major issues confronting the country. Isn’t bipartisanship a pipe dream?

Not entirely. Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer did manage a triumph of bipartisanship. Abandoning a prior commitment to legislation on global warming, Schumer teamed up with Republican Todd Young to conceal a limited industrial policy program within a “hate China” bill that appealed to shared jingoist sentiments. Republicans ensured that such significant components as funding for the National Science Foundation would be whittled down. Young celebrated the triumph by declaring that “when future generations of Americans cast their gaze towards new frontiers,” they won’t see “a red flag planted” there, but our own red, white, and blue. What better reason could there be to try to revive domestic manufacturing while trying to undermine the Chinese economy — at a moment when cooperation is a prerequisite for survival.

Meanwhile Biden’s Department of Defense is reorienting resources and planning to war with China, a form of madness barely receiving attention, analyzed in detail in Issue #1 of the Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy, June 11, 2021.

Trump has transformed the Republican Party into a cult of personality. Is this why Republican leaders blocked the creation of a commission to investigate the January 6 attack on Capitol?

Trump has captured the voting base, but the political echelon faces a quandary. For a long time, the party elite has been a rich man’s club, pandering to business power even more than the Democrats, even after the Democrats abandoned the working class in the ‘70s, becoming a party of Wall St. and affluent professionals. The business world was willing to tolerate Trump’s antics as long as he was loyally serving them — with some distaste, since he tarnished the image they project of “soulful corporations.” But for major sectors, January 6 was too much.

The McConnell types who run the party are caught between a raging voting base in thrall to Trump and the masters of the economy whom they serve. A commission of inquiry, if at all honest, would have deepened this rift, which they have to find a way to paper over if the party, such as it is, is to survive. Best then to cancel it.

Lies, propaganda, and restricting voting rights have become the governing principles of today’s GOP. To what extent will the new voting restrictions work to the advantage of the Republican Party, and how will they impact on the current political climate in general and the future of whatever is left of democracy in the United States in particular?

Trump’s highly effective strategy of legitimizing “alternative facts” was based on an endless flood of lies, but a few true statements floated in the debris. One was his comment that Republicans can never win a fair election. That’s a real problem for the rich man’s club. It’s hard to garner votes with the slogan “I want to rob you. Vote for me.” That leaves only a few options. One is to prevent the “wrong people” from voting. Another is to shape the party program so that policy is concealed by appeals to “cultural issues.” Both have been actively pursued. Trump gave the practices a particularly vulgar twist in his usual style, but he didn’t invent them.The party leadership is dedicated to the obstructionist strategy of sacrificing the interests of the country in order to regain power.

The current wave of Republican Jim Crow-style legislation is understandable: Trump’s observation is accurate, and is likely to be more so in the future with demographic changes and the tendency of younger voters to favor social justice and human rights, among Republicans as well. The efforts have become more feasible after the Roberts Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby decision in 2013, which “set the stage for a new era of white hegemony,” as Vann Newkirk rightly observed.

Displacement of policy by “cultural issues” traces back to Nixon’s southern strategy. With Democrats beginning to support mild civil rights legislation, Nixon and his advisers recognized that they could switch the southern vote to Republican by racist appeals, barely disguised.

Under Reagan there was little disguise; racist rhetoric and practices came naturally to him. Meanwhile the Republican Christian nationalist strategist Paul Weyrich easily convinced the political leadership that by abandoning their former “pro-choice” stands and pretending to oppose abortion, they could pick up the northern Catholic and newly politicized Evangelical vote. Gun-loving was soon added to the mix, by now reaching such weird absurdities as the recent Benitez decision overturning California’s ban on assault rifles, which are, after all, hardly different from Swiss army knives [according to Benitez]. Trump added more to the mix. Like his fellow demagogues in Europe, he understood well that refugees can be used to whip up xenophobic passions and fears. His racist appeals also went beyond the norm.

Trump has exhibited a certain genius in tapping poisons that run not far below the surface of American society and culture. By such means, he managed to capture the Republican voting base. The party leadership is dedicated to the obstructionist strategy of sacrificing the interests of the country in order to regain power. That leaves the country with one functioning political party, itself torn between the neoliberal leadership and a younger social democratic voting base.

Your phrase “whatever is left of American democracy” is to the point. However progressive it might have been in the 18th century — and there is much to say about that — by today’s standards American democracy is deeply flawed in ways that were already becoming clear to the leading Framer, James Madison by 1791, when he wrote to Jefferson deploring “the daring depravity of the times,” as the “stockjobbers will become the pretorian band of the government — at once its tools and its tyrant; bribed by its largesses, and overawing it by clamors and combinations.”

That could well be a description of recent years, particularly as the neoliberal assault achieved its entirely predictable consequence of placing government even more at the command of concentrations of private power than before. The “largesses” are too familiar to review. Ample research in mainstream political science has shown that the “clamors and combinations” have left the majority of voters unrepresented, as their own representatives heed the voices of the super-rich, wealthy donors and corporate lobbyists.

The most recent study, using sophisticated AI techniques, dispels “notions that anyone’s opinion about public policy outside of the top 10 percent of affluent Americans independently helps to explain policy.” Thomas Ferguson, the leading academic scholar of the power of the “tools and tyrants” of government, concludes: “Knowing the policy area, the preferences of the top 10 percent, and the views of a handful of interest groups suffice to explain policy changes with impressive accuracy.”

But some vestiges of democracy remain, even after the neoliberal assault. Probably not for long if neoliberal “proto-fascism” extends its sway.

But the fate of democracy won’t actually matter much if the “proto-fascists” regain power. The environment that sustains life cannot long endure the wreckers of the Trump era of decline. Little else will matter if irreversible tipping points are passed.