Tag: Paul

Rand Paul riles his GOP colleagues again — this time over TikTok

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As the outspoken Kentuckian sees it, Republicans could “continuously lose elections for a generation” if they alienate young people by trying to ban an app that claims it has 150 million users in the U.S. Paul added in an interview that his GOP colleagues may not have “thought that through,” connecting it to what he described as his bigger worries about the constitutional and other legal ramifications of government-mandated TikTok limits.
“We are in a political world,” Paul said. “We shouldn’t be completely oblivious to the fact that a lot of young people are on there and it is, frankly, their freedom of speech.”
While Paul is only one voice in Congress’ broader debate over banning TikTok, some fellow Republicans see merit in his political concerns, on top of the legal questions that legislative restrictions might raise. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) favors the proposal with the biggest momentum in the Senate right now, a plan from Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John Thune (R-S.D.) to give the executive branch new powers to ban technologies from places like China that could eventually apply to TikTok.
But Cramer acknowledged that “Rand’s probably right that we get blamed” by young voters if apps ultimately get restricted or banned.
“This is why you have to go out and make a case, too,” he said. “There are political ramifications for sure, but there are also serious, I believe, national security ramifications and cultural ramifications to [doing] nothing.”
Republican backers of a TikTok ban openly scoff at Paul’s case. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who got into a heated floor debate with Paul in March after the Kentuckian blocked his bill to swiftly ban TikTok, shot back that Paul’s argument about turning off young voters was “ridiculous” and “so silly I don’t think it’s worth responding to.”
“Listen, if we can’t win younger voters because we’re not on TikTok, we got serious problems in this party,” Hawley said.
Recent polling suggests that young people take a nuanced view of TikTok, controlled by Chinese company ByteDance. A narrow majority of 51 percent of Gen-Z and millennial voters in a March NPR-PBS Newshour-Marist poll opposed a federal ban, while 48 percent supported it.

That’s a much narrower divide than among the general public where the poll found just 36 percent of people opposed a ban, compared to the 57 percent who supported one.
“I’ve got my own focus group of teenagers at home,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who recently introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at limiting young people’s social media use. “A lot of teenagers know that their addiction to screens is not healthy. I think there are actually a lot of teenagers out there looking for help.”
Lawmakers have taken tentative steps toward curbing the app’s influence as they continue to debate the feasibility and legality of a ban. TikTok was blocked from federal devices as part of a government funding bill last year, and the Biden administration has pushed the app’s owners to sell it to American owners or face an outright blockade.
Over in the House, the Foreign Affairs Committee advanced a bill in March along party lines that would effectively ban the social media app. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has voiced support for a ban on the app, while Hakeem Jeffries has backed efforts to find consensus on “appropriate measures” to address “real national security concerns” with TikTok.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also suggested last week that the bipartisan Warner-Thune legislation would be considered for inclusion as part of new China competitiveness legislation he’s pursuing.
Still, Republicans aren’t alone in their anxiety and uncertainty about how restrictions or a ban would play politically. Some Democrats have also expressed fears of a youth backlash if Congress tried to ax the app.
Most Republicans, importantly, said they were unsure if Paul was right about a ban’s effect on young voters but that any political pain would be worth it to combat what they call the clear national security threat of ByteDance’s ties to China.
“The consideration ought to be: Does this represent a risk to national security?” Thune, the chamber’s second senior-most Republican, said in an interview. “The political implications of it, to me, shouldn’t be the primary consideration.”
For Warner’s GOP counterpart on the Senate intelligence committee, it’s not a close call.
“What’s more important: Our national security and the threat that [TikTok] poses to our national security, especially in the long term and the ability to manipulate society?” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who’s introduced bipartisan legislation to ban the app. “You have to weigh that against what you might think the electoral consequences are.”
So despite their awareness that Paul may be correctly predicting their future if they try to ban TikTok, senior Republicans see a greater risk in TikTok’s potential harm to young children and all users whose personal data might be accessed by the Chinese Communist Party via the app’s parent company.
“Believe it or not, sometimes in politics, you have to try to do the right thing,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “Regardless of the political price that you pay.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

May 8, 2023
Pope John Paul II and pedophile priests becomes Poland’s top political issue

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WARSAW — War? Inflation? Corruption? Nope, the big subject dominating Poland’s politics ahead of this fall’s parliamentary election is the legacy of John Paul II.
Although the canonized Polish pontiff has been dead since 2005, he’s become the hottest subject in Poland following an explosive documentary aired by the U.S.-owned broadcaster TVN, alleging that when he was a cardinal in his home city of Kraków, he protected priests accused of sexually molesting children.
That caused a collective meltdown in the ranks of the ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which is closely allied with the powerful Roman Catholic Church.

U.S. Ambassador Mark Brzezinski was even summoned (later toned down to “invited”) to appear at the foreign ministry.
In a statement, the ministry said it “recognizes that the potential outcome of these activities is in line with the goals of a hybrid war aimed at causing divisions and tensions within Polish society.”
PiS also pushed through a parliamentary resolution “in defense of the good name of Pope John Paul II.”
“The [parliament] strongly condemns the shameful campaign conducted by the media … against the Great Pope St. John Paul II, the greatest Pole in history,” the resolution said.
The government and its affiliated media have launched a wide-ranging campaign about John Paul II. A gigantic picture of the pope was projected on the façade of the presidential palace in Warsaw. Public broadcaster TVP is now airing a daily papal sermon.
Papal politics
It’s all a political play, as PiS has found what it hopes will be electoral rocket fuel ahead of the election, said Ben Stanley, an associate professor at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw.
“Defending John Paul II offers PiS an opportunity to show they’re on what they claim is the right side of a dispute that poses authentic Polish values against something inauthentic and suspicious,” Stanley said.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki over the weekend accused the opposition of  “being ashamed of the most important countryman in the history of the republic.”
POLAND NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS
For more polling data from across Europe visit POLITICO Poll of Polls.
The party has a track record of finding wedge issues ahead of elections.
In 2015, during the refugee crisis, the party’s leader accused migrants of importing “all sorts of parasites and protozoa” into Europe.
In 2020, PiS-supported President Andrzej Duda helped galvanize his reelection campaign by launching attacks on LGBTQ+ activists as supporting an ideology that was inimical to Polish values.
In recent months, state-backed media has latched on to climate concerns from opposition politicians by accusing them of aiming to force Poles to drop their beloved pork cutlets and replace them with edible insects.
“You will notice that the debate about eating insects and living in 15-minute cities has all but disappeared now. John Paul II has a lot more potential,” Stanley said.
Although Poland is secularizing, with a steady fall in new priests, a decline in people attending Sunday mass, and large numbers of pupils abandoning religious education, the country is still one of the most Catholic in Europe. The Church still has an outsized influence among the elderly and those in smaller towns and villages — PiS’s electoral strongholds.
The JP2 gambit caught the opposition flat-footed; many of their supporters tend to be more secular, but the parties can’t risk offending religious voters if they hope to win power this fall.
Powerful pontiff
The late pope is often credited with helping cause the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe; his pilgrimages to his home country were seen as a key factor in the rise of the Solidarity labor union in 1980. He remains a revered figure across the country.
Civic Platform, Poland’s biggest opposition party, sat out the vote on the papal defense resolution. The party accused PiS of playing politics with the issue.
“You don’t want to defend John Paul II, you want to sign him up to PiS!” Paweł Kowal, an MP for Civic Platform, said during the parliamentary debate on the resolution.
While the opposition dithered, Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, the head of the country’s conference of bishops, denounced the reports on John Paul II as “shocking attempts to discredit his person and work, made under the guise of concern for the truth and good.”
Uncomfortably for the Polish church, Pope Francis put out a pretty lukewarm defense of his predecessor | Andreas Solaro/AFP via Getty Images
It’s not just TVN accusing John Paul II of turning a blind eye to clerical pedophiles.
Similar allegations are made in a new book by Dutch journalist Ekke Overbeek, “Maxima Culpa: John Paul II Knew,” which says when he was a bishop, John Paul II moved pedophile priests from parish to parish to keep them from being discovered.
Both the book and the TVN documentary are being attacked for relying on communist-era secret policy archives.
TVN, owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, responded by saying: “The role of free and reliable media is to report the facts, even if they are painful and difficult to accept.” It also stressed that the author of the documentary didn’t only rely on archived files, but also contacted people who had been abused by priests.
Uncomfortably for the Polish church, Pope Francis put out a pretty lukewarm defense of his predecessor.
“It is necessary to place things in their time …  at that time, everything was covered up,” he told Argentina’s La Nacion newspaper.
With several months to go before the vote, PiS will now watch to see if John Paul II is gaining traction as an issue, Stanley said.
“Pushing it too hard is potentially risky because it’s no longer the early 2000s and it’s not so clear this time if that many people, especially the young people, will spring to John Paul II’s defense,” he said.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

March 14, 2023
This Other Eden by Paul Harding review – paradise lost

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Some writers discover a territory and mine its riches: think Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, Elizabeth Strout’s Maine, Colin Barrett’s small-town Mayo. Paul Harding is one such novelist. His first two books, Tinkers, which won a Pulitzer prize, and Enon, were both set in New England, and within the same family: the Crosbys, descendants of early European settlers on America’s eastern seaboard. In This Other Eden, Harding returns to the same coast. This time, though, he takes us just offshore to Apple Island – and here, “hardly three hundred feet across a channel from the mainland”, we’re among folk his readers will only have glanced in his fiction before.
Harding’s island is named after the apple trees planted by the first settler: “Benjamin Honey – American, Bantu, Igbo – born enslaved – freed or fled at fifteen, only he ever knew – ship’s carpenter, aspiring orchardist, arrived on the island with his wife, Patience, nee Rafferty, Galway girl, in 1793.” The story proper opens more than a century later, in 1911, with Esther, the great-granddaughter of Benjamin and Patience, and now matriarch of her own clan of Honeys, dozing in her rocking chair, grandchild on her lap, snow falling outside on a chill spring morning.
A handful of other people now live alongside the founding family. Based on the historical Malaga Island off the coast of Maine, home to a racially mixed fishing community from the civil war up until the early 20th century, Harding’s island is peopled by descendants of freedmen and Irish, of “Penobscot grandmothers and Swedish grandpas”, some still recognisably Angolan or Congolese in heritage, others like the Lark family “drained of all colour”. In their veins “run blood from every continent but Antarctica”.
Their lives are precarious. The Honeys live – just about – on carpentry; the McDermotts, who make their home in the shell of a beached schooner, by taking in washing. Esther’s nearest neighbour, Zachary, is a drifter and civil war veteran who spends his days carving scenes from the gospels into a hollow tree. Even the island itself is marginal, subject to flood tides of biblical proportions, the worst of which took the original orchard, Benjamin’s “half-remembered Eden no sooner restored than carried off by wind and rain”.
The islanders are proud, though. The supplies shipped over by well-meaning mainlanders are a puzzle to them: the shingles sent to repair their shacks are inferior to Zachary and Eha Honey’s handiwork, and Esther uses them for stove wood. The island’s children have free range, too, exploring and wandering long into the evenings, “the summer constellations humming, their light pulsing in time with the revolution of the planet”. So there is beauty here, and grace, and – crucially – refuge. Harding’s message is clear: only at the margins could such a community establish itself.
Whether islander or mainlander, child or adult, each voice is wonderfully clear and distinct
The mainland has also sent a minister. Matthew Diamond, “a courteous, plain white man”, strikes up a friendship of sorts with Esther. Surprised at her quick mind, he takes to sitting on her stoop, discussing scripture and Shakespeare. In Ethan, her grandson, Diamond sees an extraordinary talent for drawing.
For all his kindness and best intentions, Diamond wrestles with himself. His faith tells him “all men are brothers, all women his sisters”, but he still feels a “visceral, involuntary repulsion in the presence of a living Negro”. His attentions have also alerted others on the mainland. Journalists turn up to report on the “little rock’s queer brood”. Photographers make postcards to sell to the curious. Men come with callipers to measure heads, their interest eugenics, their intention to assess “the band of Nature’s problem children drifting off our shore”.

Through Diamond’s intercession, Ethan is offered tutelage on the mainland. As his drawing talent is undeniable and his skin light enough to pass, Esther knows this is a rare chance for her grandson. The potential reward is great, the risk equal: thus the scene is set for the further story’s unfolding.
Harding too is a risk-taker. Told in third person, but inhabiting multiple and often competing viewpoints, This Other Eden takes us inside Esther’s defiant penury, Zachary’s visions, Diamond’s “skewed, inexcusable heart”. Whether islander or mainlander, child or adult, each voice is wonderfully clear and distinct.
Harding’s use of time is equally deft. Tinkers was told over a dying man’s last hours: as George Crosby’s adult children gathered around him, he returned in visions to his own childhood, reconciling in memory with the father who long ago abandoned him. In Enon, the narrative opened with the death of Charlie Crosby’s young daughter, the story of his fatherhood and his family’s wider history revealed over the first raw year of his mourning. In This Other Eden, Harding takes a more elliptical approach. The three parts of the novel jump through time, from the opening among the island families, to Ethan’s new life on the mainland, and then back again, exploring the consequences of Diamond’s intervention not just for the boy, but for the whole island. Harding’s lightness of touch is masterful.
This Other Eden is a story of good intentions, bad faith, worse science, but also a tribute to community and human dignity and the possibility of another world. In both, it has much to say to our times.
This Other Eden is published by Hutchinson Heinemann (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 16, 2023
Jake Paul v Tommy Fury set to face on February 26 in Saudi Arabia

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Riyadh: The highly anticipated fight between Jake Paul and Tommy Fury has been officially announced on February 26 in Saudi Arabia.
This will be the first time that YouTube star-turned-boxer Jake Paul and Tommy Fury, half-brother of two-time world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury,will fight in Saudi Arabia.
The details were made official by Jake Paul on Friday, January 27, via Instagram.
After multiple failed attempts to get Tommy Fury in the ring, the moment of truth has finally arrived.
Fumbles has no excuses now. Baby is born. Money is massive. Immigration is not an issue. Sunday February 26, Paul vs Fury is live on ESPN+ PPV in the US and BT Sport Box Office in the UK.
Tyson Fury has promised he and Papa John will make Tommy retire from boxing and change his last name forever if he can’t beat the YouTuber. Saturday (tomorrow) I’m coming to London to look at all three Fury’s in the eye and shake on that promise.
Alhamdulillah! @mostvaluablepromotions
The two arch-rivals boxers have seen scheduled encounters fall out twice, but are finally ready to go head-to-head after the two camps fell to a grudge match in Riyadh.
Paul (6–0) and Fury (8–0) were scheduled to face each other for the first time in December 2021, but Fury pulled out due to a medical issue. The match was then rescheduled for August 2022 in New York. However, the British boxer ran into visa problems while trying to enter the United States.
The Jake Paul vs Tommy Fury match will take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It will air on ESPN+ PPV and BT Sport Box Office. Boxing fans can also watch the fight via cable and satellite pay-per-view providers.
According to what Most Valuable Promotions posted on Twitter, the match will be held in Diriyah as part of Diriyah Season activities. Unfortunately, more details, such as ticket prices, exact location and time, have not yet been revealed.
Jake Paul vs Tommy Fury is official. The Truth wil be revealed and the talk is over on Sunday, February 26.
From Riyadh, Saudi Arabia live on ESPN+ PPV in the US and BT Sport Box Office in the UK.
Tomorrow they face off for the first time.#PaulFury pic.twitter.com/7ihueuspLp
— Most Valuable Promotions (@MostVpromotions) January 27, 2023

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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 31, 2023
New video, audio show attack on Paul Pelosi in excruciating detail

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Prosecutors say DePape broke into the Pelosis’ San Francisco home in late October and struck Paul Pelosi on the head with a hammer after demanding to know the whereabouts of the congresswoman, who was in Washington, D.C. A bevy of state and federal charges could send him to prison for life.
A press coalition that includes POLITICO sought the release of body camera footage from responding San Francisco Police Department officers, audio of Paul Pelosi’s 911 call, surveillance footage from the Pelosi home and audio of DePape’s police interview.
The body camera footage shows Paul Pelosi and DePape both grasping a hammer when officers arrived at the Pelosi residence in the early morning hours of Oct. 28. Officers order the men to drop the hammer, and DePape says “nope” before turning it and swinging at Paul, after which both men topple to the floor and an officer calls for a medic.
In footage from a Capitol Police surveillance camera, DePape can be seen taking a hammer and what appears to be a handful of zip ties out of the bags he brought with him. DePape told officers he intended to kidnap Nancy Pelosi. At the end of the video, DePape can be seen repeatedly swinging the hammer against the exterior of the Pelosi residence and then climbing inside.
In a police interview shortly after the attack, DePape describes his anger toward Nancy Pelosi as “leader of the pack” of political figures who were “lying on a consistent basis,” including by seeking to undermine former President Donald Trump. He planned to kidnap the congresswoman and break her kneecaps if she did not tell him the truth.
He accuses Democrats of “spying on a rival campaign” and “submitting fake evidence” to advance that effort, in a seeming reference to an investigation into the Trump campaigns ties to Russia.
“The person who was on the TV lying every day was Pelosi,” DePape said.
DePape is calm and lucid in the interview, although he appears to fight tears when describing his animosity toward Democrats. He said he knew officers would be on the way after the 911 call but decided to stay anyway, likening himself to American revolutionaries. “When I left my house, I left to go fight tyranny,” he said. “I did not leave to go surrender. “

Officers were summoned to the house after a call from Paul Pelosi. In audio from that call, Paul Pelosi says “there’s a gentleman here just waiting for my wife to come back, Nancy Pelosi.” He says he does not know DePape and ends the call shortly after noting DePape is telling him “not to do anything” and “to just put the phone down and do what he says.”
One of the responding officers testified in December that he saw Paul Pelosi lying face down with a “pool of blood” blooming around his head. The 82-year-old underwent surgery for a skull fracture and injuries to his head and arm. Nancy Pelosi told CNN’s Chris Wallace this month that her husband was still working to “get back to normal” after the head injury.
The break-in and attack stunned San Francisco and reverberated through national politics, punctuating a torrent of violent rhetoric directed at Nancy Pelosi and other elected officials.
DePape, who entered a not guilty plea, said he targeted the congresswoman because she was second in line for the presidency and that she embodied “evil in Washington,” revealing his plans to break her kneecaps, according to prosecutors’ evidence.
He also told police he wanted to go after others including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Hunter Biden, the president’s son.
DePape’s online history shows him becoming immersed in extremist and Trump-aligned narratives like the QAnon conspiracy theory. He is being held without bail pending a trial, with a date likely to be set in February.
The San Francisco District Attorney’s office and DePape’s public defender sought to prevent the evidence from being released to media organizations by asserting it could undermine his ability to get a fair trial. They argued it could be manipulated and foment conspiracy theories.
“The evidence of the crime could easily, once released into the public, be changed so that members of the jury pool would see an inaccurate piece of evidence from this trial before the trial even starts,” assistant district attorney Phoebe Maffei argued.
Judge Stephen M. Murphy disagreed, saying such arguments amounted to “speculation.”
“I fail to see, in this case, how release of these exhibits will impact the defendant’s right to a fair trial,” Murphy said.
Conspiracy theories have shrouded the case from the beginning, as unsupported assertions about a coverup or an undisclosed third person in the home proliferated on social media.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has warned about misinformation, and DePape’s attorney Adam Lipson on Wednesday lamented “the myriad of false conspiracy theories that have been propagated regarding this case already.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 27, 2023