Chris Hedges:

Blow by blow autocratic power is being solidified by this monstrous Christian fascism which is bankrolled by the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism. It looks set to take control of the U.S. Congress in the midterm elections. If Trump, or a Trump-like clone, is elected in 2024, what is left of our democracy will likely be extinguished.

We have a Democracy. This Democracy is in danger. If <insert condition here> happens at <definite point in time which as it is approached reliably advances further into the future>, Democracy will be gone.

Unclear here whether Mike Pence is Democracy’s heroic savior or the Antichrist. I imagine he may be flexible enough to fill the role that is offered.

BBC:

The UK, US, Canada and Japan will ban imports of Russian gold in an effort to hit Moscow’s ability to fund the war in Ukraine.

The UK says the measure will „strike at the heart of Putin’s war machine“.

Inzwischen war Jonny Löhr das zweithöchste Tier in der National-Demokratischen Partei Deutschlands (NDPD), einer sogenannten Blockpartei, die er im Auftrag der SED 1948 gegründet hatte. Diese Pseudoparteien sollten aussehen wie echte Parteien in einer echten Demokratie. In Wirklichkeit waren sie Attrappen.

—Wolf Biermann, »Warte nicht auf bessre Zeiten!«, (Berlin: Propyläen, 2016), 53.

This seems somehow strangely familiar…🤔

Spiegel:

Scholz und Biden beenden Gespräch mit Small Talk für die Presse

10.45 Uhr: Nach ihrem bilateralen Gespräch sind US-Präsident Joe Biden und Kanzler Olaf Scholz vor die Presse getreten – oder besser gesagt: Sie haben sich für ein Foto auf zwei Stühle vor einer vorbereiteten Fahnen-Kulisse gesetzt. Inhaltliche Statements zu dem vorangegangenen Gespräch gab es nicht. Wer beim Livestream aber ganz genau hinschaute, konnte ein paar Gesprächs­fetzen einfangen, die natürlich nur wirkten wie spontaner Small Talk (Scholz: »Ich gehe gerne wandern« – Biden: »Es ist wunderschön. Ich bin lange nicht mehr Ski gefahren«).

SZ:

Wo Schwangerschaftsabbrüche nun verboten sind und wo nicht

Leslie Rutledge, die Generalstaatsanwältin in Arkansas, unterzeichnet die Zertifizierung des Supreme-Court-Urteils. Damit tritt in dem Bundesstaat ein bereits vorgefertigtes weitgehendes Abtreibungsverbot in Kraft. (Foto: Stephen Swofford/AP)

Der Supreme Court hat den Weg für Abtreibungsverbote freigemacht, die ersten Staaten setzen entsprechende Gesetze in Kraft. In weiten Landstrichen der USA haben Frauen nun kaum die Möglichkeit zum legalen Schwangerschaftsabbruch. Der Überblick.

Wikipedia:

The flag of Arkansas, also known as the Arkansas flag, consists of a red field charged with a large blue-bordered white lozenge (or diamond). Twenty-nine five-pointed stars appear on the flag: twenty-five small white stars within the blue border, and four larger blue stars in the white diamond. The inscription „ARKANSAS“ appears in blue within the white lozenge, with one star above and three stars below. The star above and the two outer stars below point upwards; the inner star below points downwards. The flag was designed by Willie K. Hocker of Wabbaseka, a member of Pine Bluff Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

In 1912, the Pine Bluff Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution decided to present the newly commissioned battleship USS Arkansas with an official state flag. Upon learning from Secretary of State Earle W. Hodges that there was no state flag, the society members urged him to hold a contest for the design of one. A committee was appointed, and it asked for designs to be submitted for consideration. Hocker’s design was „a rectangular field of red, on which is placed a large white diamond, bordered by a wide band of blue. Across the diamond is the word ‚ARKANSAS‘,“ (placed there by request of the committee) „and the blue stars, one above, two below the word. On the blue band are placed 25 white stars.“^[1] This flag was adopted by the Arkansas legislature on February 26, 1913.^[2]

My daughter-in-law recommends The Birth Dearth. Richard Morris’s review tells a frightening tale. At the time his review was written the LA Times reminds us Mr. Morris had recently published a book on The Nature of Reality.

FAZ:

Die Linke hat in Erfurt eine neue Parteispitze gewählt. Die Ko-Vorsitzenden Janine Wissler und Martin Schirdewan gelten als zentristische Politiker – für linke Verhältnisse.

BBC:

„The world continues to watch America become unrecognisable,“ wrote Dr Jennifer Cassidy on Twitter, a university lecturer who was in Dublin in 2018 when jubilant crowds celebrated as the Republic of Ireland voted to decriminalise abortion.

Guardian:

“I feel misled,” the Maine senator Susan Collins told the New York Times.

…

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the lone Democrat to back Kavanaugh, voiced similar sentiments. “I trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh when they testified under oath that they also believed Roe v Wade was settled legal precedent and I am alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans,” the Times reported him saying.

Susan Collins, and Joe Manchin, claim to feel they were misled by Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, and the Guardian reports this seemingly without irony. Although maybe there’s irony here. There easily could be, and I’m just not getting it.

On the morning of February 9 the Americans presented a short document entitled Declaration on Liberated Europe. First brought up for discussion by Stalin that afternoon and approved the following day, it was a peculiar document, open to different interpretations. No piece of paper approved by the Big Three became more prominent immediately after the conference or in the course of the long and frosty Cold War, and received less attention during the actual deliberations. The declaration set forth principles to which all three powers agreed to adhere in their treatment of the countries liberated from the Nazis, which, at the time of signing, the British were openly violating in Greece and the Soviets in Poland.

—Serhii Plokhy, Yalta, (London: Penguin, 2010), 263.