Wednesday, July 17, 2024
Sunday, July 14, 2024
On Our "Virtual Route 66" This Week: On Our World
It has been quite a week in our World, yet again as we present a curation of thoughts courtesy of the Economist of London, Zeteo and France 24:
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Did Donald Trump Just Win The Election?
BREAKING: Donald Trump injured in shooting at rally; “he is fine,” says spokesman; suspected shooter dead
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“Trump just won the election.”
That was the WhatsApp message I received shortly before 7pm from a friend in the UK. “What on earth is he talking about?” I wondered to myself, as I logged back onto Twitter, confused and concerned.
Within moments, like tens of millions of people around the world, I was staring aghast at a video on my phone from a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
There is Donald Trump, in his red MAGA hat, ranting and raving; there are the three or four popping sounds; there is Trump grabbing his right ear; there is Trump ducking behind the podium; there is the crowd screaming and crouching; and then there is the former president, surrounded by Secret Service agents, re-emerging from behind the podium, blood dripping from the side of his head, pumping his fist in the air, as the crowd cheers.
At least one rally attendee is believed to have been killed, as was the suspected shooter, while another attendee is reportedly in a serious condition in hospital. Thankfully, Trump is “fine,” says his spokesman, and is being “checked out at a local medical facility.”
The instantly-iconic image, from Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci, of the former president being carried by Secret Service agents under a U.S. flag, fist still in the air, blood spattered across his face, has gone around the world tonight. And the reaction to it from a whole host of Very Online folks from across the political spectrum? Trump just won a landslide victory in November, they say.
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To be honest, I’m not sure I agree that Trump has ‘won’ the election because of the violence today. We are in a chaotic moment, a truly historic and unprecedented moment, on multiple levels. Anyone who makes predictions about our political future right now risks making a fool of themselves, in my view.
Nevertheless, right-wing billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, decided that today was the day to “fully endorse” Trump for president:
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Some Republican activists have also been rather quick to point the finger of blame at their political opponents:
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Jason Meister, a member of the Trump 2020 Advisory Board, told the UK’s Sky News that “the media and the Democrats have blood on their hands.”
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They should be careful where they go with this particularly partisan and cynical line of argument. Remember the people who died on, or shortly after, Jan. 6, 2021 including multiple police officers, after a mob incited by Trump assaulted the Capitol? Does Trump have “blood on his hands”? Are we really going to play this (political) game?
If so, the list goes on and on. Remember the two different men, both Trump supporters, who were convicted of trying to kill Rep. Ilhan Omar, a constant target of Trump’s vicious abuse and (false) accusations? Remember the election denier who was convicted on assault and attempted kidnapping charges, after breaking into the home of Paul and Nancy Pelosi? Remember the Trump superfan who sent pipe bombs in the mail to a bunch of prominent Democrats ahead of the 2018 midterms, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton?
Look, to be clear, unlike the conservatives - including Trump! - who shamefully mocked Paul Pelosi when he was assaulted and badly injured, I for one am grateful that the Republican presidential candidate isn’t dead and wasn’t seriously hurt. I am also so sad that an innocent has been killed in Butler tonight - another tragic victim of gun violence. And I am, perhaps above all else, worried for the fate of my country.
These are dark times for the United States of America. Political violence has been normalized. There are more guns than people in this country. And the most consequential and divisive election of our lifetime is less than four months away.
Whoever the shooter was, whatever their motive may have been, once again, American democracy is the loser.
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10 Things You Should Know About Iran’s New PresidentWho is reformist Masoud Pezeshkian? An introduction from Zeteo.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has a new president. After Ebrahim Raisi, an arch-conservative elected to the presidency in 2021, was killed in a helicopter crash in May, Iran had to call a snap election. The winner? Sixty-nine-year-old reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian. So, as tensions continue increase across the Middle East, and with Iran-U.S. relations at a low point, here are 10 things you should know about the Islamic Republic’s new president. 1. Pezeshkian was one of only six candidates approved to run for president by Iran’s Guardian Council, which supervises the country’s elections, and the only reformist candidate among them. In Friday’s run-off, he defeated conservative hardliner Saeed Jalili, 53.7% to 44.3%. (Eighty people had tried to run for president but almost all of them were blocked by the Council, including former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.) 2. While his late predecessor Raisi was a trained cleric, Pezeshkian is a medical doctor - a heart surgeon, in fact. His political career began when he was appointed deputy health minister (1997-2001) and then health minister (2001-2005) in the government of the last reformist Iranian president Mohammad Khatami. He went on to become a five-term member of Iran’s parliament and a deputy speaker. 3. The new president takes a more liberal line on the enforcement of the compulsory headscarf in Iran. “If we want to ‘force’ hijab in the country,” he has said, “I don't think we will get anywhere.” After the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, Pezeshkian wrote that it was “unacceptable in the Islamic Republic to arrest a girl for her hijab and then hand over her dead body to her family.” 4. Pezeshkian’s campaign slogan is “For Iran,” which is believed to be a not-so-subtle reference to the popular anthem supporting the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests called “Baraye”, or “For.” Shervin Hajipour, the Grammy Awarding-winning Iranian singer-songwriter behind “Baraye,” was sentenced to more than three years in prison in March for “propaganda against the system” and “encouraging people to protest.” 5. The new president says he wants better relations with the West and the United States, in particular, and seems to also want a return to the nuclear deal that Barack Obama signed, Donald Trump tore up, and Joe Biden has refused to resurrect. Pezeshkian even deployed former Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, one of the architects of the deal, as a surrogate on the campaign trail.
6. Pezeshkian, nevertheless, like most Iranian politicians, has a long history of denouncing the United States (aka “The Great Satan”). In 2019, when Iran shot down an American drone, Pezeshkian said “the real terrorist is America” and described the targeting of the drone as "a strong punch in the mouths of the leaders of criminal America.” 7. Pezeshkian, a reformist, isn’t shy about defending the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, which has huge power and influence inside of Iran (and was controversially designated a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration). The Iran-Iraq War veteran even once wore an IRGC military uniform in parliament as a show of support for the organization, which he says is “different” to what it was in the past. 8. Persians are the ethnic majority in Iran, but Pezeshkian is the son of an Azeri father and a Kurdish mother, and fluent in both Azeri and Kurdish. "I am not voting for Dr Pezeshkian because I am a Turk,” one Azeri voter told IranWire, “but because if he is elected, he will be the president of the oppressed and discriminated minority of this country.” 9. Like President Joe Biden, who lost his wife and young daughter in a car crash in 1972, the new Iranian president also lost his wife and young daughter in a car crash in 1994. Unlike Biden, however, Pezeshkian “never remarried and raised his remaining two sons and a daughter alone.” 10. Pezeshkian may have won his race thanks to a late surge in voter turnout. The first round of the election saw the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic, just 40%. But on Friday, in the run-off, it bumped up to around 50%. For some Iranians, reported the Washington Post, “refusing to vote is an act of opposition in a country that quells political protests with violent force.” Others have embraced political apathy because of the failure of multiple presidents from across the political spectrum to effect social or economic change. Pezeshkian has acknowledged the challenge ahead. “I will do everything possible to look at those who were not seen by the powerful and whose voices are not heard,” he told supporters earlier this week. But what does “everything possible” look like for an elected Iranian president inside of a political system where most of the power remains in the hands of an unelected Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei? Can the Islamic Republic’s first reformist president for 19 years offer real hope or change to almost 90 million Iranians, more than half of whom are under the age of 30? That remains to be seen. And how will the United States respond to an Iranian leader who wants to mend ties with the West?
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