NATIONALISM = FASCISM

Bulgarian nationalists protest against NATO bases, want government out

Anti-government protest organised by Bulgaria's ultranationalist Revival party, in Sofia

Thu, September 21, 2023 

By Stoyan Nenov

SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgarian police on Thursday scuffled with supporters of the ultra-nationalist Vazrazhdane (Revival) party protesting against the policies of the pro-Western government, calling for the government to resign and for the closure of NATO military bases.

Hundreds of protesters opposing the EU member's support for Ukraine in its war with Russia gathered in front of the parliament building, waving Bulgarian and Russian national flags, blowing whistles and demanding an early election in the country which has gone through five polls in the past two years.

Many shouted "Resignation", while fully equipped riot police protected the government buildings, including the defence ministry at which some protesters threw eggs.

Bulgaria, which has sent arms to Ukraine, lifted its ban on Ukrainian grains last week.

"Bulgarians do not want to participate in the war between Russia and Ukraine, we want to be a neutral country," said Neli Tyulekova, 60, a businesswoman. She said that Bulgarians opposed sending arms to Ukraine, "which incites the war further".

Some protesters carried placards reading "American bases out! Bulgaria is a zone of peace", referring to the opening of a new military base in the NATO member.

"The last instruction that came from the masters of Bulgaria, from the U.S., is for Bulgaria to make a new military base," Kostadin Kostadinov, the leader of the Revival, told the crowd. "NATO Out!"

The protesters ended their walk in front of a monument to the Soviet army, and clashed with police trying to stop them from getting close to the monument that has been put under scaffolding for security reasons.

The government has decided to remove the monument.

Neli Balabanska, 51, an electric engineer, said she hoped the protests will force the government out.

Separately on Thursday, Bulgaria expelled one Russian and two Belarusian nationals and barred them from entering Bulgaria in the next five years by order of the State Agency for National Security (SANS), local media reported.

(Reporting by Stoyan Nenov; Writing by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Jan Harvey)

Federal Judge Declines To Stop Drag Show Ban at Texas College

C.J. Ciaramella

 Reason.com

Fri, September 22, 2023

Michaal Nigro/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom

A federal judge ruled today that a ban on drag shows at a Texas public university can remain in effect while a lawsuit challenging it proceeds, writing that drag performances are not categorically protected under the First Amendment.

U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, denied a motion for a preliminary injunction against West Texas A&M University from banning future drag shows on campus. Kacsmaryk also granted the university president, Walter Wendler, qualified immunity from the lawsuit, filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

"Because men dressed in attire stereotypically associated with women is not 'overtly political' in a category of performative conduct that runs the gamut of transvestism… it is not clearly established that all drag shows are inherently expressive," Kacsmaryk wrote.

And even if the performance in question did implicate the First Amendment, Kacsmaryk continued, the university was not forbidden from regulating obscene conduct.

"The First Amendment does not prevent school officials from restricting 'vulgar and lewd' conduct that would 'undermine the school's basic education mission'—particularly in settings where children are physically present," Kacsmaryk wrote, citing conservative sources such as the Manhattan Institute's Chris Rufo and Gays Against Groomers.

The legal battle began earlier this year, when a student group at West Texas A&M University, Spectrum WT, tried to schedule a charity drag show on campus in late March to raise money for LGBTQ+ suicide prevention.

However, Wendler canceled the event. In a blog post, he made it clear that he was personally offended by drag shows, claimed they degrade women, and compared them to blackface minstrel shows. Wendler also alluded to the fact that he was likely on the wrong side of the Constitution.

"A harmless drag show? Not possible," Wender wrote. "I will not appear to condone the diminishment of any group at the expense of impertinent gestures toward another group for any reason, even when the law of the land appears to require it."

FIRE filed a lawsuit in March on behalf of Spectrum WT against Wendler and several other Texas A&M University officials, arguing that drag performances are inherently expressive acts protected by the First Amendment. The suit called Wendler's edict banning drag shows "textbook viewpoint discrimination" that chills student speech.

Kacsmaryk's ruling only applies to early-stage motions in the lawsuit, which will continue. FIRE said in a statement today that it plans to appeal.

"FIRE strongly disagrees with the court's approach to First Amendment analysis and its conclusions," FIRE senior attorney JT Morris said in a press release. "We will appeal, and our fight for the expressive rights of these brave college students will continue."

America’s Worst Judge Declares War on Drag

Mark Joseph Stern

Slate.
Fri, September 22, 2023

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is a proud Christian nationalist who flatly refuses to apply binding Supreme Court precedent when it conflicts with his extremist far-right beliefs. It is therefore no surprise that Kacsmaryk, a Donald Trump appointee, handed down a decision on Thursday refusing to protect Texas college students’ right to host a drag show. In a break with other (conservative) courts, Kacsmaryk found that drag is likely not protected expression under the First Amendment, but rather “vulgar and lewd” “sexualized conduct” that may be outlawed to protect “the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.” In short, he concluded that drag fails to convey a message, while explaining all the reasons why he’s offended by the message it conveys.

From almost any other judge, the ruling in Spectrum WT v. Wendler would be a shocking rejection of basic free speech principles; from Kacsmaryk, it’s par for the course. This is, after all, the judge who sought to ban medication abortion nationwide, restricted minors’ access to birth control, seize control over border policy to exclude asylum-seekers, and flouted recent precedent protecting LGBTQ+ equality. He is also poised to bankrupt Planned Parenthood by compelling them to pay a $1.8 billion penalty on truly ludicrous grounds. And he is not the only Trump-appointed judge substituting his reactionary beliefs for legal analysis. We have reached a point where these lawless decisions are not only predictable but inevitable, and they show no sign of stopping: Their authors are still just settling into a decadeslong service in the federal judiciary.

The controversy in Spectrum WT v. Wendler began last spring when Spectrum, an LGBTQ+ student group, planned a drag show on campus at West Texas A&M University. They arranged the event to raise money for the Trevor Project, which combats LGBTQ+ youth suicide. The school’s president, Walter Wendler, promptly banned the show, decrying drag as “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny.” He compared it to “blackface” and said it constitutes discrimination and harassment against “womanhood.” In light of Wendler’s ban, Spectrum held the show off campus but filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction protecting their right to hold a future drag show at the school. It should have been a slam-dunk case: Judges in Florida, Montana, Tennessee, and Utah—who range from moderate to very conservative—have recently blocked drag bans on First Amendment grounds. The Supreme Court has long prohibited restrictions on “expressive conduct,” including not only live performances but also actions like flag burning; it applies especially stringent scrutiny to any regulation that targets expression because of its content and viewpoint.

As Judge Thomas Parker, a Trump appointee, noted when enjoining Tennessee’s drag ban, these laws expressly discriminate against performers “who wish to impersonate a gender that is different from the one with which they are born.” A drag queen or king conveys the message that gender identity is artificial or fluid—an arbitrary bundle of stereotypical traits that calls out for subversion. These performers reject strict adherence to sex assigned at birth, mocking the very existence of a gender binary. Laws that forbid such performances target expression because of its content (subversive mockery of gender expression) and viewpoint (a critique of gender stereotypes). So they cannot possibly survive First Amendment scrutiny.

But the case landed in Kacsmaryk’s court, and he saw things differently. Before joining the bench, the judge worked as an anti-abortion activist and served at the hard-right First Liberty Institute, which opposes abortion, In vitro fertilization, contraception, LGBTQ+ equality, and other supposed products of the “sexual revolution.” Kacsmaryk has brought that same energy to the bench, and this decision is no exception. He began by dismissing the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s modern free speech jurisprudence, writing that courts should instead deploy a “historical analysis. “Specifically, Kacsmaryk invoked the Comstock Act of 1873, a notorious law that enabled mass censorship of publications that questioned Puritanical views of sex and gender relations, including early feminist literature. (The law also banned the mailing of contraception and abortion-related medications, which Kacsmaryk cited as justification to prohibit abortion pills.) He then criticized SCOTUS for departing from the Comstock Act’s censorious approach to free speech, citing a book by arch-conservative the Rev. Carl Trueman that blamed today’s free speech doctrine for the mass “sexualization” of culture.

With this prelude, Kacsmaryk effectively announced that he would not apply binding precedent, which explains why the remainder of the opinion bears little resemblance to a judicial ruling. It is, rather, a broadside against drag, which the judge pilloried as inherently “vulgar,” “offensive,” and “harmful to minors.” He endorsed Wendler’s claim that a drag show could somehow constitute unlawful discrimination and harassment against female students, in the same way that blackface could constitute discrimination against Black people.

Kacsmaryk also gestured toward precedents allowing censorship of “indecent” speech at high schools. But he failed to acknowledge that legal adults on a college campus have far greater First Amendment rights than minors. (The right to host objectionable speech on campus actually flows from a victory won by the conservative legal movement.) Nor did he accept the fact that Spectrum’s planned “PG-13” performance falls far short of indecency. Instead, he complained repeatedly about “biological men ‘performing’ while dressed in attire stereotypically associated with women,” which he denounced as inherently offensive and arguably obscene.

To support this last proposition, Kacsmaryk favorably cited Gays Against Groomers, quoting its claim that drag shows involve “the sexualization and indoctrination of children.” A hate group that stokes violence and fury, Gays Against Groomers endorses the malicious falsehood that transgender people and drag queens seek to “groom,” “sexualize,” and “recruit” children. It also supports gag laws that force LGBTQ+ teachers to remain closeted at school. In addition, Kacsmaryk cited an article by right-wing agitator Christopher Rufo alleging that drag promotes “perversions” that were “born in the sex dungeons of San Francisco” and now seek to corrupt children.

Finally, Kacsmaryk questioned whether drag even qualifies as “expressive conduct” deserving of First Amendment protection. Drag shows, he wrote, do not “obviously convey or communicate a discernable, protectable message.” Even if they did, a ban on drag would not discriminate on the basis of content or viewpoint, because it does not target “the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker.” It only targets “offensive” and “lewd” conduct with no expressive value. So Spectrum is not entitled to an injunction and cannot even sue Wendler, because they likely have no First Amendment claim at all.

Here lies the ultimate irony of the opinion: The judge all but admits that he finds the ideas behind drag to be insulting, and endorses efforts to stamp out those ideas through censorship. He is aggrieved by the meaning of the performance and the views that it communicates about gender and sexuality. Put simply, Kacsmaryk is disgusted by drag shows. But the Supreme Court has declared that “disgust is not a valid basis for restricting expression.”

What now? Spectrum will probably appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the ultra-far-right court where law goes to die, whose conservative ideologues will presumably affirm Kacsmaryk. With a sharp split between courts in different states, SCOTUS will have to step in. And it is hard to see a majority of justices siding with the censors here. Despite the court’s swift shift to the right, most justices still profess a belief that arguably offensive speech remains constitutionally protected, even in an education setting. Justice Brett Kavanaugh may not want his daughters attending a drag show, but he is smart enough to understand that Kacsmaryk’s reasoning would grant the government sweeping power to suppress ideas it doesn’t like—a power that blue states could wield against conservatives.

This term is shaping up to be one in which SCOTUS must clean up the mess made by extremist judges like Kacsmaryk. What may be dispiriting is the reality that, no matter how many times these judges get reversed, they will hold their jobs for decades to come. We may spend the rest of our lives watching the Constitution get trashed by robed fundamentalists out to settle scores.

Biden ESG rule survives challenge from 25 red states

Zack Budryk
Fri, September 22, 2023 

A federal judge sided with the Biden administration Thursday on an administration rule that would allow retirement advisers to include climate and environmental factors in their calculations.

In the ruling, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas, a Trump appointee, granted the administration’s petition to dismiss a lawsuit by 25 Republican state attorneys general, led by Texas’s Ken Paxton and Utah’s Sean Reyes.

Kacsmaryk’s 14-page ruling rejects the red states’ argument that the environmental and sustainable governance (ESG) rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Employment Retirement Income Security Act, which regulates retirement plans. He wrote that the Biden administration rule still complies with those statutes, because it prioritizes financial considerations over environmental ones and thus has no “overarching regulatory bias in favor of ESG strategies.”

“[W]hile the Court is not unsympathetic to Plaintiffs’ concerns over ESG investing trends, it need not condone ESG investing generally or ultimately agree with the Rule to reach this conclusion,” he wrote.

The Biden administration had earlier sought to move the lawsuit to Washington, D.C., but the Northern District denied that motion in April.

Paxton hailed the decision at the time as “an important victory in my ongoing fight to protect Texas from an unconstitutional Biden Administration rule that exposes retirees’ savings to politically-motivated ESG investing in violation of federal law.”

ESG investing and regulations at the federal and state level have become a major target of Republicans, who have argued they violate fiduciary obligations to place financial considerations first.

Earlier this year, Congress passed a Congressional Review Act resolution undoing another Biden rule allowing consideration of ESG, with Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Jon Tester (Mont.) joining Senate Republicans. Biden vetoed the resolution.

“We are disappointed by the judge’s decision. Together with 25 other states, we filed this suit to ensure that the Department of Labor follows the law in requiring retirement and pension plans to make decisions for the benefit of plan participants, not social or political priorities,” a spokesperson for Reyes’ office told The Hill.

“We are evaluating next steps, including potential appeal. We will continue to fight on all fronts to protect the interests of investors and all Utahns against the ESG agenda,” they added.

The Hill also reached out to Paxton’s office for comment.

X social media's India, South Asia policy head Gupta resigns-sources



Fri, September 22, 2023 
By Aditya Kalra

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Social media platform X's head of policy for India and South Asia, Samiran Gupta, has resigned, two sources said, a top departure that comes ahead of India elections and as the company fights a court battle with New Delhi over content removal.

Gupta was the most senior India employee for X, formerly known as Twitter, and responsible for "key content-related policy issues" and "defending Twitter's position with new policy developments and support in-country sales organization," according to his LinkedIn profile.

Gupta, who was designated as X's Head of Global Government Affairs for India and South Asia, declined to comment to Reuters. X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gupta's tenure at X ended in September, according to Gupta's LinkedIn profile, which said he "enabled transition leadership for Twitter post acquisition by Elon Musk led X-Corp."

He had joined the company in February, 2022, eight months before Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter Inc.

X counts India as a key market, with around 27 million users. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other government officials are regular users of the platform.

There are roughly 15 X employees in functions like compliance and engineering in India, said one of the sources, but Gupta was the only executive engaging with the government and political parties.

Interaction between X and government and party officials would intensify typically during the run up to polls, and a national election is due to take place in India next year.

X is appealing against an Indian court ruling that it had failed to comply with government orders to remove certain content, arguing it could embolden New Delhi to block more content and broaden the scope for censorship.

India in September told a court X is a "habitual non-compliant platform" and for years has not followed many orders to remove content, undermining the government's role.

(Reporting by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Elon Musk keeps publicly begging celebrities to post on X and gets pouty if they choose other platforms

Katie Balevic
Sat, September 23, 2023 

Elon Musk. ALAIN JOCARD/AFP via Getty Images

Elon Musk, the embattled CEO of X (formerly Twitter), keeps tweeting at celebs to use his platform.

Musk suggested Taylor Swift post her music on X and complained that Russell Brand was using Rumble.

Under Musk, X (formerly Twitter) has lost half its ad revenue and is bleeding users.

Elon Musk, the embattled CEO of X, formerly Twitter, is starting to look a little bit desperate.

While Musk has touted X's views and engagement numbers — as if to prove to the haters that everything is fine, just fine — it's actually been a rough year for the company. Twitter, now X, has lost half its ad revenue and a majority of its workforce since Musk bought Twitter in October 2022.

It's apparently so bad that he's now begging celebrities high and low to post to the recently rebranded platform.

In a reply to Taylor Swift's announcement earlier this week of the re-release of her album "1989," Musk replied on X: "I recommend posting some music or concert videos directly on the X platform."

Musk also bragged that Tucker Carlson, the primetime anchor who was fired from Fox News in April, had received more views since streaming episodes on X.

"Views for his episodes on X now exceed the population of the United States. Talk to Earth via X!" Musk tweeted.

Musk's platform has faced criticism over its view counts, however. They are not unique, meaning a single viewer could be responsible for multiple views if they look at a tweet repeatedly, Insider previously reported.

The CEO also seems to get publicly pouty if celebrities don't do his bidding. Musk threw his support behind British comedian Russell Brand, who was recently accused of sexual assault by several women. Brand denied the accusations in a video he shared on X the day before the investigation into the accusations was published.

Brand later took to Rumble, another social media platform, urging his fans to follow him there and support him "directly." This seemed to annoy Musk.

"It is rather disappointing that he is exclusively pushing Rumble when X has supported free speech just as much," Musk lamented in the replies.

A request for comment made to X was met with an auto-reply that read: "Busy now, please check back later."

 CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Goldman Sachs Fined $6 Million to Settle SEC Charges of 'Blue Sheet Data' Violations

By 

BILL MCCOLL

 

Published September 22, 2023

Michael M. Santiago / Staff / Getty Images

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The SEC fined Goldman Sachs $6 million for failing to provide complete and accurate trading information.
• Regulators indicated the violations of "blue sheet data" rules took place over approximately 10 years.
• Goldman Sachs also settled similar charges brought by FINRA.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it settled charges against Goldman Sachs (GS) for “failing to provide complete and accurate securities trading information” for about a decade and fined Goldman Sachs $6 million fine to settle the matter.

The SEC indicated over that time, Goldman Sachs made more than 22,000 deficient submissions of what is known as “blue sheet data” to regulators.1 Officials said as a result of 43 different kinds of errors, at least 163 million transactions contained missing or inaccurate trade information. The Commission also found the company “lacked adequate processes to verify the accuracy of its electronic blue sheet submissions.”

Thomas Smith Jr., the SEC’s associate regional director in the New York Regional Office, explained that blue sheet data “is vital to the Commission’s ability to carry out its enforcement and regulatory functions and to protect investors and maintain market integrity.”

The SEC added that along with the fine, Goldman Sachs agreed to be censured and take steps to correct and improve its blue sheet reporting systems and controls.

The statement noted that separately, the bank reached a settlement over related conduct with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

RETURN OF THE CITY STATE
US farmers, tech tycoons square off over plans for utopian city

Glenn CHAPMAN
Thu, September 21, 2023 

Swaths of rural land between San Francisco and Sacramento, in the western US state of California, were secretly purchased by tech tycoons keen on building a new city 

(JOSH EDELSON)

A stealth campaign by Silicon Valley elites with a dream of turning a swath of California farmland into a new age city has ranchers who live here challenging their tactics and their motives.

The project first surfaced when a mysterious buyer started snapping up parcels of land in this rural outback between San Francisco and Sacramento.

The buyer, first revealed by The New York Times in August, turned out to be a secretive outfit called Flannery Associates, the brainchild of a former Goldman Sachs wunderkind, Jan Sramek.

Flannery Associates said on its recently launched website that it has acquired more than 50,000 acres (20,200 hectares) of land for its California Forever project, whose backers include LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Steve Jobs's widow Laurene Powell Jobs and star tech investor Marc Andreessen.


According to court documents, the tycoons have already shelled out more than $800 million to fulfill their vision of building a city in the middle of nowhere.

"This doesn't just happen at Burning Man one night, doing some mushrooms," Solano County property owner John Sweeney told AFP while standing on a lot surrounded by land bought by Flannery.

The group started covertly buying parcels in Solano County between the city of Fairfield and Travis Air Force Base about five years ago, according to residents interviewed by AFP.

Cassandra Dana said the first unsolicited offer she got from Flannery to buy her ranch came in 2018, and she's been called relentlessly in subsequent years.

"It's at the point of when they do call and they say who they are, I basically just hang up," Dana said of Flannery.

"They've actually reached out to my oldest daughter and asked her... to sell it from underneath me."

Neighbors in the tight-knit community have been targeted with a gamut of tactics, according to Sweeney.

He said he was contacted five years ago on behalf of a group purportedly interested in buying his property to preserve it for agriculture.

"They pulled all sorts of different tricks," Sweeney said.

"It was pretty underhanded in general."

According to the project's website, the new city would host the "agriculture and green energy industries that sustainably feed and power our state, strong middle-class communities and our nation's busiest Air Force base."

Nestled between Sacramento, the California Delta, San Francisco and Napa Valley, it "would include a variety of land uses: a new community, but also solar farms and open space, including both agriculture and habitat conservation."

The road ahead however will not be easy for this tech-age, utopian project.

Flannery has filed a half-billion-dollar lawsuit against some land owners in federal court, accusing them of conspiring to get higher prices for their properties.

"Their lawsuit makes it sound like there were some big meetings where people were talking about how to screw Flannery," said Sweeney.

"Well, no. Everyone just knew that if you waited longer, you'd get more money; that's logical."

Flannery declined an interview for this story, with a spokesperson telling AFP that the company might have a response in several months.

- Dream or delusion? -

Fairfield Mayor Catherine Moy told AFP her community just learned a few weeks ago of the campaign to buy up nearby agricultural land.

"We're trying to find out everything we can," Moy said.

Flannery has bought land around the air force base, which is a main transport hub for supplies headed to Ukraine and other parts of the world, according to Moy.

"At this point, I'm opposing it. Anything that threatens Travis Air Force Base threatens my city and the country."

For now, that land is occupied by livestock, wind turbines and farmers and ranchers who have long been in harmony with the base, Moy said.

"This proposed city situation, it just breaks my heart because it's gonna ruin all of our rural area," Dana said as she tended to a small herd of goats.

"It's just open land and it's beautiful."

Moy said she has written a letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom expressing concerns.

Newsom, for his part, said earlier this month that the California Forever project, after its exposure by US media, was a surprise to him as well, and that he planned to meet with a representative from the group.

And while the project’s website presents a heady vision, there are no details concerning things such as concrete plans for where the new city would get its water supply.

"The 'Forever,' or as we call it, the 'Never Project,' would change the countryside into, I guess, a modern San Francisco," property owner Sweeney mused.


The CEO of Flannery Associates says he envisions very few cars in this new city that will bring good-paying jobs, sustainable infrastructure and clean energy to the area.


Opinion

What the billionaires planning a new Bay Area city can teach us about California housing

Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox
Sat, September 23, 2023

Cattle and wind turbines in California's rural Solano County, where Silicon Valley billionaires are plotting to build a city from scratch. 

(Terry Chea / Associated Press)

A cadre of Silicon Valley elites is drawing fierce criticism from local residents and environmentalists for planning a new city on the outskirts of the Bay Area, a project dubbed “California Forever.” But the effort should be applauded for revealing a truth about California’s failed housing policies.

This group of California’s most influential wants to build one or more new towns on the urban fringes, having spent about $900 million to buy an area roughly twice the size of San Francisco some 60 miles east of the city. The project breaks with the philosophy of the state’s housing policy, which has long been focused on urban densification.

Despite the state’s efforts to encourage residential development, California’s housing markets remain among the least affordable in the country. The homeownership rate is near the nation’s lowest. To afford a house at the median price today in Southern California, a family needs an annual income of $180,000, twice the region’s median.

Read more: Opinion: The $1-million home is becoming the norm in L.A. This is an outrage we could have prevented

Some housing advocates insist that the solution is to force growth into existing neighborhoods. Yet the state’s supposedly pro-development new housing laws have yet to produce more homes at a scale sufficient to address the affordability crisis, and recent data suggest an accelerating decline in housing production.

Over the last five years, California has consistently lagged in construction not just of single-family housing but of multifamily housing as well. Not one California metropolitan area was among the top 50 in housing growth last year; Texas had six areas on that list, Florida 11. Los Angeles, the state’s dominant metropolitan area, didn’t crack the top 200.

Clearly we need a new approach that is more aligned with market demands. A recent report by London Moeder, a San Diego real estate consultancy, noted that California regulations make it difficult to build the kinds of housing people are looking for, particularly multi-bedroom homes that can accommodate families.

Research by Jessica Trounstine at UC Merced similarly found that “preferences for single-family development are ubiquitous. Across every demographic subgroup analyzed, respondents preferred single-family home developments by a wide margin. Relative to single-family homes, apartments are viewed as decreasing property values, increasing crime rates, lowering school quality, increasing traffic and decreasing desirability.”

Read more: Opinion: California housing development remains abysmal despite reforms. Here's what's missing

Opposition to densification of existing neighborhoods remains staunch in many cities, with some threatening a voter initiative to restore municipal control of zoning.

California’s focus on increasing density in urban areas is also at odds with the national shift toward remote work and retail and office growth in more suburban, lower-density areas.

A sensible California housing policy would respond to these trends and consumer desires, much as the Bay Area project promises to do. This does not mean we will need sprawling growth.

California’s population is dropping and is not expected to increase in the next four decades, which alters projections of future housing needs. The solution lies in strategic growth. Rather than force growth in places that are declining in population and resistant to development, including Los Angeles County and San Francisco, the state needs to look at the parts of California that are growing, places such as Riverside and Yolo counties.

Read more: Opinion: California has passed more than 100 housing laws since 2016. Are any of them working?

To encourage growth where it’s happening naturally, the state could create a “Housing Opportunity Area” comprising the Central Valley and Inland Empire, subject to more liberal rules than the coast. Land costs are far lower in the interior of the state than in metropolitan Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and San José. Policies that support inland development could help stem the outbound migration of Californians.

The rise of remote work means development away from urban centers is far more plausible and less environmentally toxic than in the past. Indeed, the International Energy Agency suggests that if everybody able to work from home worldwide were to do so just one day a week, it would save around 1% of global oil consumption for road transport per year. That would prevent 24 million metric tons of annual carbon dioxide pollution, equivalent to the bulk of greater London’s emissions. And roughly 40% of California’s jobs, including 70% of its higher-paying ones, could be done at home, according to research by the California Center for Jobs and the Economy.

Equally promising, many new suburbs are being designed in consciously more sustainable ways, as MIT professor Alan Berger suggests. Sophisticated systems for controlling energy and water use can make suburban and exurban communities more environmentally responsible. Another promising innovation is broader use of manufactured housing, which has the potential to speed construction by as much as 50%, according to a 2019 McKinsey & Co. report. A single-family subdivision is under construction by 3-D printer in suburban Austin.

There are still opportunities for innovative housing production in dense urban cores such as downtown San Francisco and Manhattan. New York Mayor Eric Adams is seeking to quickly add 20,000 housing units through office building conversions. He has also proposed a larger program to convert more than 130 million square feet of office space to residential use, though he needs state legislation to reach that goal.

Read more: Opinion: How L.A. can build more housing without looking like New York

More such promising opportunities may lie in old, underused retail spaces in both cities and suburbs, which have the advantage of simple floor plans, ample parking and presence across metropolitan California. A recently announced plan to replace Buena Park’s vacant Sears building with 1,100 housing units could represent one piece of our housing future. Flagging malls in Orange County and throughout California provide similar possibilities.

Such developments are critical to our increasingly diverse middle and working class. Older, overwhelmingly white Californians have achieved high rates of homeownership, but the rates among millennials, African Americans and Latinos are well below the national average.

If they don't leave the state entirely, younger generations will tend to continue to migrate outward in search of affordable suburbs. The majority of people of color in California live in suburbs, accounting for virtually all suburban growth over the past decade. Communities could be built in the exurbs and beyond for senior citizens, too, helping to produce new housing opportunities for young families near job centers. The outer suburbs and exurbs are the future homes of most Californians.

We have the land for such a new vision. While other populous states have devoted as much as a third of their land to urban development, California’s developed lands constitute only 6% of the state. A “7% solution” to the California housing crisis would free up 1 million more acres to build the new communities that we largely stopped building around 2000, when we had 5 million fewer people.

Relying on billionaires to build new cities in the hinterlands isn’t a generally sustainable answer to California’s housing crisis. But the California Forever project does rightly suggest that our solutions must build on the state’s penchant for innovation, capitalism and a distinctly suburban lifestyle.

Joel Kotkin is the presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. 

Wendell Cox is the principal of Demographia, a public policy consulting firm.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

One year on, Nord Stream sabotage remains a mystery

FUEL FOR CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Michelle FITZPATRICK with Pierrick YVON in Berlin
Fri, September 22, 2023 

View of the Nordstream gas pipeline terminal -- the twin pipelines were sabotaged a year ago (JOHN MACDOUGALL)

The September 26, 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream pipelines cut off a major route for Russian gas exports to Europe and fuelled geopolitical tensions already running high over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

But one year on, and despite investigations in three countries, the question of who was responsible for the brazen act of sabotage remains unanswered.

In the absence of hard evidence, different theories have emerged pointing the finger at Ukraine, Russia or the United States. All have denied involvement.

- What happened? -

Late last September, a series of underwater blasts ruptured three of the four pipelines that make up Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, spewing gas into the Baltic Sea.

Russian energy giant Gazprom had in August already halted flows through Nord Stream 1, the main conduit for Russian natural gas to Germany, amid disputes over the war in Ukraine.

The newly completed Nord Stream 2 twin pipelines never opened as Berlin pulled the plug on the project days before Russian troops entered Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

The 10-billion-euro ($10.6 billion) Nord Stream 2 had long been opposed by Ukraine, the US and eastern European countries who feared it would give Russia too much influence over Germany's energy security.

- Tight-lipped investigators -

Because the leaks occurred in their exclusive economic zones, Denmark and Sweden opened probes into the attack, as did Germany.

All three countries have kept a tight lid on their investigations, which analysts say is unsurprising given the potential diplomatic fallout of what they might uncover.

Sweden's public prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist has said the "primary assumption is that a state is behind it".

Sweden was now "in the final phase of the investigation", he told AFP this week.

German federal prosecutors searched a sailing yacht in January that may have been used to transport the explosives. They seized objects from the vessel and found traces of explosives.

They have refused to comment on media speculation that a team of five men and one woman chartered the "Andromeda" sailing yacht from Rostock port to carry out the operation.

"The identity of the perpetrators and their motives" remain the subject of ongoing investigations, the federal prosecution's office told AFP.

- Ships and CIA tip-offs -

Investigative journalists have been carrying out their own research to solve the Nord Stream whodunnit, leading to sometimes sensational -- if unconfirmed -- reports.

Dutch military intelligence warned the CIA of a Ukrainian plan to blow up the pipelines three months before the attack, Dutch broadcaster NOS and Germany's Die Zeit and ARD said in June. The Washington Post made a similar claim.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly denied his country was behind the sabotage.

"I would never do that," he told Germany's Bild newspaper in June, adding that he would "like to see proof".

The New York Times wrote in March that US officials had seen intelligence indicating that a "pro-Ukrainian group" was responsible, without Zelensky's knowledge.

German media have focussed their attention on the "Andromeda", with reporters from Der Spiegel magazine and broadcaster ZDF recreating the journey they believe was made by the six-person crew.

According to their reporting, a forged passport used to hire the sailboat leads back to a Ukrainian soldier while the charter fee was paid by a company registered in Poland with ties to a woman in Kyiv.

However, Danish media have reported that a Russian naval vessel specialised in submarine operations, the SS-750, was photographed near the site of the blasts days before the attack.

A claim by US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in February that the US was behind the attacks and that Norway assisted was dismissed as "fiction" by the White House.

- False flag? -

Experts have not ruled out a "false flag" operation by Russia, with clues deliberately placed to pin the blame on Ukraine.

Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies, sees Russia as "the most likely" culprit.

Any suspected involvement by Kyiv in an attack on Europe's energy infrastructure could threaten the support of allies, which would benefit Russia.

At the same time, the destroyed pipelines could help Gazprom avoid compensation claims for undelivered gas, even though the company displayed a reluctance to keep the taps open before the blasts.

Moscow may have sought "to kill two birds with one stone", Umland said.

The Kremlin has strongly denied responsibility.

“El Conde” director breaks down his vampire Pinochet movie and that wild narrator reveal
Christian Holub
Fri, September 22, 2023 at 2:51 PM MDT·5 min read


EL Conde. Jaime Vadell as El Conde in El Conde.
Pablo Larraín / Netflix Jaime Videll as Augusto Pinochet in 'El Conde.'

Warning: This article contains spoilers for El Conde.

Fifty years ago — Sept. 11, 1973 — a violent coup d'etat in Chile by the country's military forces overthrew democratically-elected President Salvador Allende with the support and encouragement of the U.S. government. The coup ended decades of electoral democracy in the South American country, replacing it with a military dictatorship headed by General Augusto Pinochet. Thousands of people were killed or "disappeared" without a trace during the years of the dictatorship, while even more were imprisoned and tortured for the crime of wanting a more equal economy.

Chilean director Pablo Larraín has delved into his country's dark political history before — his 2012 film No covered the 1988 plebiscite in which Chilean citizens finally voted to oust Pinochet, while 2016's Neruda was about the Nobel Prize-winning poet who (recent forensic evidence has confirmed) was among those murdered by Pinochet's regime. But in his new movie El Conde, which hit Netflix just days after the coup's 50th anniversary, Larrain finally tackles the dictator head-on — by turning him into a black-and-white vampire.

"I've made movies related to this subject in the past, but those movies were always around more peripheral characters that dealt with the consequences of the dictatorship, but I had never really made a movie about Pinochet himself," Larraín tells EW. "It's challenging, because you want to face the character without creating empathy. You want to try to understand evil, and figure out a way to shoot it. So the satire, the dark humor, the vampire, the black-and-white were all ingredients to achieve that while having the right distance."

El Conde. (L to R) Antonia Zegers as Jacinta, Diego Muñóz as Manuel, Catalina Guerra as Luciana, Amparo Noguera as Mercedes, Marcial Tagle as Aníbal in El Conde.

Pablo Larrain / Netflix Pinochet's children — played by (L to R) Antonia Zegers, Diego Muñóz, Catalina Guerra, Amparo Noguera, and Marcial Tagle — in 'El Conde'

Larraín has already delved into the lives of other iconic historical figures. His two English-language films, 2016's Jackie and 2021's Spencer, were fascinating biopics of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Princess Diana. But the experience of making those movies (and then watching them alongside audiences) convinced Larraín that he needed to take a different approach to Pinochet. In order to ensure that viewers did not have any empathy with the brutal dictator, Larraín decided to make Pinochet's monstrousness literal by portraying him as a 250-year-old vampire for El Conde.

"Screenwriters and filmmakers all over the world have different tricks to create empathy bridges, but I think that empathy will always happen when there's any form of humanity in front of the screen," Larraín explains. "So in order to avoid it or to have the right distance, you need to be very specific with the behavior of that person — it should represent what they did on this planet. So it was a conversation not only with Guillermo [Calderón], who wrote the script with me, but also with the actors and how we shot it. We want you to be a witness of what's going on, while not necessarily sharing what the character is trying to do. That creates the possibility that the audience can reflect on it and can have a nervous laugh when necessary, but that's the right distance. We cannot cross that wall because then the movie would be impossible and would have a moral problem."

El Conde. Paula Luchsinger as Teresita in El Conde
Pablo Larrain / Netflix Paula Luchsinger in 'El Conde'

El Conde addresses the basics of Pinochet's coup and rise to power, but also dresses them up in metaphor and genre. A more straightforward account of Allende's overthrow can be found in Patricio Guzman's three-part documentary The Battle of Chile (a new restoration of which is currently playing in theaters in select cities). But El Conde's depiction of a 250-year-old vampire still preying on the people of his country can be relevant to the politics of other countries as well — say, America, where the two leading presidential candidates and multiple powerful senators are more than 75 years old.

"I hope the movie could land in different countries or different societies and ring the bells of elements that are universal," Larraín says. "Hopefully you can learn certain things that happened in my country, but then you could probably relate to the reality of your own society, since we're seeing the rise of extreme right-wing movements, candidates, and ideas again. We should know that a fascist is not just someone who is yelling in German. They can come in all different forms."

Speaking of that…Netflix viewers may notice that even when you switch the audio track on El Conde from the English dub to the original Spanish, the narration is still in English. The final act of the film reveals why: The narrator is none other than Margaret Thatcher, here reimagined as another vampire. In fact, she's Pinochet's vampiric mother. It's a powerful reminder that Pinochet wouldn't have gotten anywhere without money, weapons, and encouragement from Anglophone leaders.

"You can feel this patronizing attitude from politicians in Europe and the U.S. They act like they always have something to teach us," Larraín says. "We used to be a colony, and they still have this feeling of superiority that is exhausting. So we had fun with that character. At different points, we considered bringing in Kissinger or Nixon, who supported Pinochet. Nixon was the one who said they should 'make the economy scream' in Chile. I think that relationship is an interesting thing to observe."

El Conde is streaming now on Netflix.

Guinea junta leader denounces Western democracy amid wave of coups

Reuters
Thu, September 21, 2023 

78th UNGA General Debate at UN HQ in New York

DAKAR (Reuters) - Guinea's military leader Mamady Doumbouya told the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday that the Western model of democracy does not work for Africa, as evidenced by a recent wave of coups.

Doumbouya took power in a coup in 2021, which was one of eight in West and Central Africa in the last three years. Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Gabon are also run by military officers.

The coups have been strongly condemned by the United Nations and Western powers such as the U.S. and France, which have urged democracy to be restored as soon as possible. Doumbouya criticised their response, saying it was racist and condescending.

"Africa is suffering from a governance model that has been imposed on it... a model that is good and effective for the West but is difficult to adapt to our realities, our customs and environment," he told world leaders gathered in New York.

"It is time to stop lecturing us and stop treating us with condescension like children," he said, adding that Africans were mature enough to design their own models of governance.

Doumbouya's government proposed a two-year transition to elections in 2022 after negotiating with regional bloc ECOWAS, but has shown little sign of moving to organise a vote.

Western countries such as France have been particularly concerned by the coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, where the military governments have moved to cut ties with their former colonial ruler and strengthen relations with Russia.

Doumbouya said that African countries were being unfairly placed into boxes and forced to take sides in an ideological battle from the Cold War era, which was not relevant to their current-day relations.

Africans are neither pro- nor anti- American, Chinese, French, Russian or Turkish, he said, they are "simply pro-African".

"Placing us under the influence of this or that power is an insult. It is contempt and racism towards a continent of more than 1.3 billion people."

Doumbouya took power by overthrowing Alpha Conde, Guinea's then 84-year-old president who had changed the constitution to run for a third term, sparking widespread protests.

"The real putschists, the most numerous and those who avoid any condemnation, are also those who plot and scheme... in order to stay in power eternally," Doumbouya said.

(Reporting by Bate Felix; Writing by Nellie Peyton; Editing by Alex Richardson)