Friday, June 13, 2025
Authoritarianism looms, Israel and Iran, and RFK Jr.'s projected death toll jumps.
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Ice Ice Baby: Authoritarianism Looms
The evolving federal response to protests in Los Angeles (and now elsewhere) is among the most important stories presently in the news. In broad strokes: ICE targeted Los Angeles for a program of particularly cruel and inflammatory immigration raids, provoking protests that were overwhelmingly but not entirely peaceful. Using the limited lawbreaking as an excuse, the Trump administration (illegally) ordered 2000 members of the National Guard and 700 Marines into LA over the objections of the California governor, the LA mayor, and the LAPD chief, who all generally agreed that the federal troops were not only unnecessary but in fact likely to make things worse, which they did. The BBC has a decent basic overview of events.
When Senator Alex Padilla from California tried to ask a question of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference, he was manhandled out of the room, pulled to the floor, and handcuffed. True thuggery. The video is worth watching.
There’s a fair amount of sentiment that the National Guard and the Marines, ostensibly there to protect federal property and ICE operations, were sent to provoke further unrest, which could then be used by Trump as a pretext for invoking some sort of martial law. For example, here is a senator from Connecticut:
And here is a senator from California:
We’re teetering on the edge of dictatorship.
Israel attacks Iran
Israel attacked Iran early Friday with a barrage of airstrikes that took out top military officers and hit nuclear and missile sites, calling it just the beginning and raising the potential for an all-out war between the two bitter Middle East adversaries. It appeared to be the most significant attack Iran has faced since its 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran quickly retaliated, sending a swarm of drones at Israel as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned of “severe punishment.” Iran had been censured by the U.N.'s atomic watchdog a day earlier for not complying with obligations meant to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
The concerns here are (1) a more active war between Israel and Iran, (2) a wider war in the Middle East, and (3) this will encourage further military adventurism, including from China directed to Taiwan.
The most recent update I've seen has Iran retaliating by hitting Israel with missiles.
RFK Jr. continues vaccine roll back
Anti-vaccine crackpot and US Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK Jr. fired all 17 members of a scientific committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control on vaccines. He says he’ll replace them with picks of his own.
Vaccines are possibly the greatest advance in the history of public health, and RJK Jr. is a credulous idiot who admits he falls for online misinformation “all the time” and whose family members have said has relished torturing animals, lied and cheated his way through life, and encouraged others to develop drug addictions alongside him. If we’re lucky, we’re on a path that will cause only 10 of 1000s of unnecessary deaths.
Coda
I’ll be hitting the streets of Seattle to protest tomorrow, and, for my US readers, I hope you’ll be out on the streets too. The Trump administration and any potential collaborators need to know how many people they'll have to kill to pull it off.
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