Texas Green Party "purge" or whatever we should call it

Texas Green Party didn't respond to me about this, but based on its current executive committee membership, indeed, TyKisha Murphy appears to have gotten the boot from that. Word I have is that she was up for a hearing of some sort, said that date didn't work, had the rest of the state party brass hold the hearing on that date without her and good-bye.

It's more puzzling yet because the Texas Greens' website list her as APPOINTED to the banking committee as of a July appointment date! And, nationally, she's listed as one of three Texas delegates to the Ballot Access Committee of the GPUS, BUT BUT BUT ... unlike the other two, no appointment dates listed.

Alan Alan and Bernardine Williams were also reportedly booted; unclear if that's from the state party or Harris County. Reasons unknown. Williams was at one time three years ago shunned if not booted from the Harris County Greens; David Bruce Collins and Brains disagreed on why.

Speaking of, DBC has nothing on these new events. Harris County Greens have a FB page, but a non-functional website.

Anyway, something has happened ... but how connected it is, or is not, to the Georgia Green Party's deaccreditation is unknown. Quite possibly there's little to no connection; it's easy to frame everything as a "purge," and claim it's connected when it's not. The Alaska GP getting the boot, and the Rhode Island GP withdrawing rather than getting the boot, are totally unconnected to Georgia, for example.

Update, Oct. 9, 2023: More weirdly yet, re Murphy, she's listed with GPUS as on the Ballot Access Committee. And, identifying as a Black Green, she got elected to a minor Galveston County position in 2022, and used the chance to diss state Greens and thank Dallas Greens.

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That said, there's a flip side. Five Greens involved with the "Dialogue not Expulsion" group are protesting the Nevada GP's resolution 1064 to "deaccredit" them as individuals. But??? Hugh Esco is already de facto disaccredited as he belongs to a no-longer-operative state party. (And, David Keil's term was scheduled to end at the end of this month or something anyway.)

And? All the five are gender-critical radical feminists, and they basically still don't accept that not everybody in the DnE wants to follow them down their road. That said, some in the DnE who don't want to go down their road are still fine with "politics makes strange bedfellows" as who they will include among intellectual support, rather than my stance that "sometimes the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy, including on the issue at hand, just an enemy from another angle."

To riff on Angel Eyes and Tuco in "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly," if you're not getting shot, I can still tell you to dig AND cut you out of any of the treasure afterward.

(Update: It looks like 1064 will fall short of its necessary two-thirds, but it will get a majority.)

So, are the Taliban really undisputed masters of Afghanistan now?

At Counterpunch, that certainly seems to be the opinion of Patrick Cockburn. He semi-sneered at the idea that ISIS-K and the Taliban were separate entities, even though the animosity between parent ISIS and the Taliban has been well known for years. For real insight about the Greater Middle East, you should start with James Dorsey. Dorsey wrote precisely about this same issue on the same date.

To some degree, Cockburn and Dorsey have different focuses. Patrick, like his brother, the late Alexander Cockburn, is in part trying to flog the U.S. bipartisan foreign policy establishment, and when the backside of the establishment is presented any tool becomes a whip, while Dorsey is focused on the Greater Middle East on its own terms. That said, for all the reflexive anti-Americanism both Cockburns show at times, why can't THEY on occasion do just that? Robert Fisk did. As part of that different focus, Dorsey also looks beyond just ISIS-K to other challenges the Taliban may face from alternative militant groups.

In all that, though, there's some degree of straight disagreement about how much the Taliban have to fear, Dorsey indicates it's more a real thing than Cockburn does. (And, although Dorsey doesn't go into it, this may be another reason why the Taliban put preconditions on surrendering bin Laden. They didn't really want to, because it might threaten their control over Afghanistan; preconditions gave them an out.)

Beyond all that, though, Cockburn can't be troubled, after his beating U.S. foreign policy with a cudgel, to understand Afghanistan much better or much further than the U.S. foreign policy establishment he hates.

In a new piece, Dorsey notes Iran has already cooled to the Taliban somewhat do to its freeze-out of ethnic Hazaris, who are also religiously Shi'ite and who comprise 20 percent of Afghanistan's population. Again, you won't likely find stuff like this in the more simplistic pages of Counterpunch.

Nor will you find nuance on great power or superpower issues at Counterpunch. But you will from Dorsey.

Dorsey writes about all the above in light of Iran's hope to move beyond observer status to full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization this weekend. Membership is by consensus vote, but any group that can include both China and Russia, and even more, both Pakistan and India, can surely make room for Iran.

As Dorsey notes, it probably won't help Iran's isolation much, nor cut sanctions much. After all, this IS a country that, after the election of Biden and some small loosening of relations, asked for all sanctions to be removed before talking about whether it would accept going back to the Obama nuclear control deal while at the same time, this summer, running the most rigged presidential election in its history — an election so rigged that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's Guardian Council booted former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad off the ballot, as well as Ali Larijani.

Dorsey adds that this may not be Iran's goal. Rather, if it gets full membership, since full membership is by consensus, it can then block Gulf Arab states from joining.

He also notes that the application process for the SCO is two years, and that if China, Russia, Pakistan, or the "-stans" of former Tsarist/Soviet Central Asia  have concerns about Iran in general or vis-a-vis Afghanistan in particular, they have two years to deal with that.

If Iran IS accepted, that would make Afghanistan totally surrounded by SCO states, another reason to reject Cockburn's thinking that it will "run wild."

Dorsey, who's on a roll recently, offers another reason to challenge Cockburn. At some point, Uyghur mujahideen, or hell, to riff on Reagan and kick Max Blumenthal in the nads, "freedom fighters," are going to flee to Afghanistan. What's the Taliban-led government going to do when Beijing knocks at the door, Dorsey wonders. 

This isn't idle speculation. Leaders in the former Afghan government claim Uyghurs gave major help to the Taliban.

It's not idle speculation for another reason. Contra Alex Cockburn, the Taliban has regularly resisted turning over outsiders that have given it assistance.

That said, the rhetorical question cuts both ways. Having seen both the U.S. and the Soviet Union get mired there, what will Beijing do if the Taliban says no?

Texas progressives and Abbott and Texas Dems and China and more

Texas Dems are still the gang that can't shoot straight, as misunderstandings and eventual acrimony about whether or not Dem Legiscritters should skip the second special session show. And, contra James Talarico, no "harm reduction" was achieved. Why did people like you bother to skip the first special session?

Socratic Gadfly used Labor Day and the end of extended federal unemployment benefits to talk about what's up next for restaurant and retail employees who still aren't going back, as well as larger labor issues.

Off the Kuff analyzed the 2020 election results for State Board of Education districts.

On medical ethics, turns out China's been treating the Uyghurs kind of like the US treated the Tuskegee Airmen. Waiting for an apology from Margaret Flowers and Max Blumenthal in  ...

Speaking of, does Michael Hudson actually believe some of the shit he writes? This one, claiming such equitable distribution of Chinese economic advances (setting aside whether the Uyghurs participate or not  if true) sounds like it could have come from Max's keyboard. (Or, more to the point, Richard Wolff's.)

The Bloggess looks back on a fateful September for herself. 

The Dallas Observer updates us on the latest move by conservative activists to restrict academic freedom.

Mary Tuma details the reasons why Greg Abbott's assertions about SB8 and rape are meaningless.

Steve Vladeck shows why the "shadow docket" was a big problem even before the cowardly SCOTUS ruling on SB8.

An argument against Basic Income — and for other ideas

And, it's not just by anybody, it's by Douglas Rushkoff, known as a left-liberal, if I put a label on him, analyst of class and socioeconomic issues. Rushkoff's argument (the piece is three years old, but Medium, like Pocket, in its "roundup" emails, will pull up some old stuff) is that if Silicon Valley if for it, the rest of us probably should be agin it.

More specifically, he says they're pushing it within a current structure of late era hypercapitalism, as a block to larger economic reforms. 

I think this is particularly true of Scott Santens versions of BI, ones that want to cut or even get rid of current social net programs to feed the maw of Silicon Valley. Rushkoff, at least as much as Jaron Lanier, has long been distrustful of Silicon Valley, unlike Santens.

And, "we" who know enough know this about Santens, even if some Greens like Laura Palmer don't. (Here's one of my more recent pieces about the many ways Santens is wrong.)

What we REALLY should do, Rushkoff says, is promote universal basic ASSETS, first. The idea is described in more detail here.

Second, promote employee ownership. (That said, I'm not as sold on this as he is, knowing that Walmart did this way back when, but Rushikoff is really saying we need to look at multiple angles on income inequality.)

This Atlantic piece, talking about local elites, especially in smaller metro areas lording it over a "region," and how their elitism is based on ownership of assets even more than ownership of wealth, underscores exactly what Rushkoff is talking about.

Coronavirus, week 75: Abbott and Paxton vs common sense

First, nearly 6,000 Texans have died of COVID in the past month. And, my county is still below 35 percent vaccination.

And yet, Kenny Boy Paxton is now suing school districts with mask mandates, even though he's essentially admitted elsewhere that he can't enforce Strangeabbott's executive order, and even though TEA isn't enforcing it. (One wonders if this is in part Wag the Dog territory, and if that in turn is because the FBI's investigation of Kenny Boy's corruption is heating up.)

And, Kenny Boy's lawsuits are happening also even though the Lege, though asked by Strangeabbott, refused to pass legislation banning mask mandates.

 

Vaccines are not the finish line, says a "breakthrough" infection sufferer.

Joe Pinsker says our current murky landscape is like Waiting for Godot.

Remember Sarah Palin's "death panels"? Arguably, the white wingnut state of Idaho now is one.

Katelyn Jetelina explains the Mu variant.

Michael Hardy looks at Dimmit County, where nearly everyone has either had COVID or been vaccinated for it.

With Dum Fuqs for Texas voters ...

That's my biggest takeaway from the latest "Should R.F. O'Rourke run?" piece.

Strangeabbott's continued relatively high poll ratings perplex me. A Jesuitical hair-splitter with a perpetually pouty face? I guess he looks good because he's placed next to the likes of Danny Goeb, Kenny Boy the Walking Indictment Paxton, and Jeebus Shot Sid Miller, on one hand, and the two-dimensional Pee Bush and the featherweight Dade Phelan on the other among statewide Republicans, while the relatively sane Glenn Hegar gets forgotten about.

With Joe Straus gone and two Speakers in two terms, you've got the featherweight new speaker, the featherweight of a family that seems ever. more featherweight, and wingnuts wingnuttier than Strangeabbott.

I mean, Abbott's poll approval numbers are high enough there has to be a few of the dreaded independent voters who like him to offset the set of Rethuglicans who either think he's not wingnut enough on some issues or who else hate him over the early months of COVID for "hating their freedoms."

That said, Texas Politics showed his numbers sagging a bit in late August and now officially underwater. Morning Consult shows him just slightly above. Both came out before the abortion bills shit hit the fan, though.

Newsweek has more on the Texas Politics poll. Abbott is slightly underwater on banning mask mandates in general and well underwater on banning school mask mandates, or trying to.

The second takeaway is "if not Beto, who?"

Seriously.

The Castrol brothers are both out.

Matthew Dowd has indicated interest in Lite Guv only.

The other Matthew, McConaughey, could wind up as Matthew McConman, either running as an indy or not at all. (Right now, my odds are 45 percent not at all, 30 percent indy, 25 percent Dem.) 

Harris County head Lina Hidalgo is a first-termer. Not enough statewide knowledge. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins is perhaps moderately better known, but not a lot.

We gonna get Conservadem MJ Hegar?

The third takeaway is the ongoing mystery of how Gilberto Hinojosa continues to be the head of the Texas Democratic Party.