Alana Moceri

The fall of the man who invented Trump’s wall

“I know a predator when I see one,” Kamala Harris assured viewers during her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention this week. This thinly veiled reference to Trump gained even more relevance when Steve Bannon was arrested on Thursday. You know, the architect of Trump’s 2016 campaign, especially the central theme of building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Or perhaps you remember his more recent exploits here in Europe advising right-wing populist campaigns and even trying to create a Europe-wide populist ‘supergroup’. Yeah, that guy was arrested for defrauding donors to a foundation that promised to build, well, the wall.

This brings it to total of seven Trump advisors who have been criminally charged in one way or another, a testament to the breathtaking corruption of Trump and his minions. It took place the same day that Joe Biden accepted the Democratic nomination and just four days before the Republican Party kicks off its own convention. Most importantly, it puts into stark relief that Bannon’s big idea of building a wall across the Southern border of the U.S. with Mexico that he gifted to Trump was nothing more than a con.

 

¿Cómo definir la cultura de la cancelación y su ataque contra el debate matizado?

He aquí las claves para entender por qué más que buscar la definición sobre la supresión cultural, hay que trabajar los matices y los argumentos con datos en el debate público.

El problema de la cultura de la cancelación es que es difícil de definir. Intentar hacerlo es como meterse en un laberinto del que es muy complicado salir porque nos topamos constantemente con callejones sin salida, ramificaciones y situaciones de “mi palabra contra la tuya”. Cuesta incluso demostrar su existencia, porque depende de cómo se defina. Si es verdad que existe, es solo un nombre nuevo para un fenómeno tan antiguo como la humanidad: nos gusta pertenecer a un grupo y, antiguamente, el miedo a que nos expulsaran de nuestras tribus era todavía más una cuestión de supervivencia que hoy en día. Los grupos o tribus siempre han tenido normas éticas y culturales y el hecho de infringirlas puede llevar a esa expulsión, por lo que la gente trata de proteger su propia reputación para conservar su estatus dentro del grupo.

Este es básicamente el quid de la cultura de la cancelación: una persona dice, tuitea o cuelga en Instagram algo que otros consideran ofensivo y que critican en las redes sociales. Si se difunde suficientemente y se hace viral, puede acabar incluso en los medios tradicionales y amenazar con “cancelar” o anular la reputación y el sustento de la persona acusada, independientemente de que sea famosa o no. 

 

Its Economy Battered by COVID-19, Spain Tries a Guaranteed Minimum Income

MADRID—Tens of thousands of households in Spain began receiving checks last Friday under a new guaranteed minimum income program that was passed by parliament in early June. Plans to provide a guaranteed income had been part of the coalition agreement reached in January between the ruling Socialists and their junior coalition partner, the far-left Podemos party, but they were fast-tracked due to the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Spain is one of the hardest-hit countries from COVID-19, with nearly 300,000 confirmed infections and more than 28,000 deaths. Its GDP is expected to contract by more than 9 percent this year, with unemployment slated to rise from 14.4 percent to 19 percent. Long lines are forming at food banks across the country, as charities struggle to meet the spike in demand for their services. All of this has raised the stakes for Spain’s new policy, which, if implemented effectively, could provide a necessary layer of protection for the most disadvantaged Spaniards. (read article)

Morocco Is a COVID-19 Success Story. But at What Cost?

MADRID—In late March, about 100 Moroccan migrants living in Spain paid smugglers 5,400 euros each—roughly $6,100—to make the treacherous journey home in inflatable rafts. In a curious case of reverse migration, they desperately fled a wealthy country that had been crippled by the coronavirus and could not offer them work for the foreseeable future. Yet when they finally reached the beaches of Larache, on Morocco’s western coast, they were hunted by the Moroccan authorities, who were concerned that the migrants would spread the coronavirus. Police conducted a door-to-door search, and at least one migrant was found hiding in a clay oven to avoid detection, according to a report in the Spanish newspaper El Pais. (read article)

Twitter can’t stop Trump’s lies or racist calls for violence

Trump’s preferred lying platform, Twitter, can fact check him all it wants, it can label his tweets for violating rules against glorifying violence but none of this will stop him ever. Still, Twitter made an attempt to signal the mendacity of his tweets to the Twitterverse by including a small link below that tweet that led to more reliable information about the topic. Trump was railing against mail-in-ballots. Then he railed against Twitter for fact-checking him. But what came next was much uglier.

As the protests over the senseless killing of George Floyd spread from Minneapolis around the country, Trump tweeted: “….These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!” (read article / leer en Español)

Which woman will be Joe Biden’s VP?

Depending on how you see it, either Joe Biden, the Democratic Party or both were lucky in that the coronavirus lockdowns started kicking in just as he had cinched the nomination. Everyone, probably even most Republicans, knows that Biden can do the job. That wasn’t at issue in this primary where Democratic voters were hellbent on determining which candidate had the best chance at beating Trump. Both voters and other candidates coalesced behind Biden, who seemed to have the best chance at winning over moderate voters and perhaps even moderate Republicans in swing states. Much of this calculation has to do with a perceived comfort level with white man. Afterall, with the exception of one, all U.S. presidents have been white men.

Therefore, Biden is a comfort-zone candidate, but that comfort could also serve as a liability considering that Democrats love to fall in love with transformational candidates like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. They later fall out of love, but that is another story for another article. Biden lacks excitement and he promises little more than a third Obama term. (After these past two months, voters might just be hankering for a safe and boring president.) But, in the March Democratic debate, Biden committed to doing something that might add some freshness and vigor to his campaign: he committed to choosing a female vice-presidential running mate. Since then speculation has run high. The prospect of a female vice president is still a novelty for Americans, this will only be the third time that a woman has been chosen as the vice-presidential candidate for a major party.

The breaking point for US-China relations?

In a recent interview with Reuters Trump said that “China will do anything they can to have me lose this race.” The “race,” meaning, the race to be re-elected as president this November.  It’s been 48 years since U.S. President Richard Nixon made his famous visit to China to meet with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, opening up relations between the two countries. Since then, there have been some tough times for this relationship, most notably, Tiananmen Square, but this moment brings this relationship to an even lower point. Not just because the two countries are led by men with mega-sized egos (even by world-leader standards), but because this animosity has extended into public opinion, in no small part driven by the nationalism that these leaders have stoked.

Both Trump and Xi have engaged in a childish blame game over the coronavirus disinformation as they both have tried to shape the narrative over the origins of the pandemic. Both have their reasons for wanting to shift the blame, but it doesn’t excuse this behavior. Trump’s sluggish reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic has been widely criticized at home and as he came on board with it being an actual problem—even trying to defy reality by saying that he knew about it before everyone else—he fell on his favored tactic of blaming others. He’s repeatedly called it the “Chinese” virus, attacked the World Health Organization for purportedly helping China cover up the outbreak at its onset and most recently accused China of hoping that he’ll lose his reelection bid. This didn’t come out of the blue, bad blood has been building over time, particularly over ongoing trade tension, and is just reaching the boiling point now.

Trump tries to rebrand himself as a war president for a 2020 victory

The coronavirus is changing everything and that includes the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. Much of the U.S. and its president woke up to the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic in the weeks after Super Tuesday, just as former Vice President Joe Biden was consolidating his victory in the Democratic Presidential Primary. He and Senator Bernie Sanders held the first and last 2-candidate debate on March 15th before cameras but without a live audience and at a safe distance from each other. They had already stopped holding live campaign events five days earlier.

The coronavirus has certainly stolen the Democratic Primary’s and Biden’s rightful spotlight at this point in the 2020 election. U.S. presidential elections are the Super Bowl of elections, a spectacle that the whole world watches. Iowa, Super Tuesday, the capturing of the nomination, the conventions, the debates, rallies and visits to quaint diners, pressing the flesh—it’s a battle between two candidates with every moment captured by the constant presence of cameras. It’s the ultimate reality-TV but with much higher stakes.

The coronavirus is a deadly moment of reckoning for the American healthcare system

As Spanish schools and universities went online, my students made a mad dash for their home countries and towns and while it might be comforting to be with family at a time like this, I realized that I would be a fool to leave Spain for the my home country, the U.S. This is in part because I am covered by Spain’s world-class public health system and currently have no health insurance in the U.S. But it is also because Spain is in a much better position to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. While Americans are doing voluntary self-isolation, still freaking out over buying toilet paper and apparently purchasing guns (only in America), the people of Spain are doing the only thing that can stop the spread of this deadly virus, staying at home.

Why is Trump’s newly great-again America doing such a terrible job against the coronavirus? To be fair, he inherited this system, if you can even call it one, but he has also done things to make it worse. We’ll start with healthcare in the U.S., which is a fragmented, for-profit mess that doesn’t cover everyone, which is the first and most important point.

Sanders can concede to Biden or declare war against the Democratic Party

The Democratic Primary was really over after former Vice President Joe Biden won nearly all of the Super Tuesday states. But if that wasn’t clear enough to Senator Bernie Sanders, then the results on March 10^thshould have been. Yet here we are, with another primary Tuesday in Florida, Illinois, Ohio and Arizona, all states that are leaning strongly towards Biden in the polls. If this plays out as predicted, then it should be really put the crown firmly on Biden’s head. But it could also be the moment that Sanders declares an all-out war against the Democratic Party.

There is plenty of evidence the shows that Sanders has no intention of backing down. He certainly didn’t do so in his race for the nomination against Hillary Clinton in 2016. In fact, while there is a slight variation in states, at this same point in 2016 Clinton had 24% more pledged delegates (those that are chosen by voters) than Sanders. Right now, Biden has about 17% more pledged delegates than Sanders.