Notices by Anne Applebaum (anneapplebaum@journa.host), page 6

From Graeme Wood, on the settlers using the Gaza war as an excuse for violence https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/israel-settlers-violence-netanyahu-government/675755/

Massive turnout was the most important gamechanger: 74%, highest ever. In big cities, more than 80%. In the Warsaw neighborhood where a friend of mine votes, 91%. Anger was a big motivation: nepotism and corruption, a byproduct of the authoritarian assault on the state, finally made people angry.

Also, women voted, in larger numbers than before, and for the three democratic opposition parties. One possible inspiration was harsh abortion restrictions that inspired big protests in 2020 and 2021, especially after a woman died of sepsis after being refused an abortion.

Amidst a sea of bad news, here's something cheerful: Poland's far-right ruling party tried every conceivable trick to hold onto power, but with a massive turnout voters rejected the effort

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/poland-parliamentary-election-autocracy-tusk/675656/

This is what I've been thinking, but George Packer just said it better

If this is Israel’s 9/11, it can learn from America’s mistakes:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/israeli-government-response-hamas-attack-gaza-9-11-lessons/675622/

"X users were presented with video game footage passed off as footage of a Hamas attack, images of fireworks in Algeria presented as Israeli strikes on Hamas & old video from the Syrian civil war repurposed to look like it was taken this weekend"

https://www.wired.com/story/x-israel-hamas-war-disinformation/

This article brilliantly describes the aggression and violence experienced by an opposition MP campaigning in eastern Poland. People shout she is a "traitor" or "Russian" or "German," reciting slogans directly from state TV.

Read it with google translate if you don't speak Polish:

https://lublin.wyborcza.pl/lublin/7,48724,30273934,marta-wcislo.html

wise words

https://www.dogshirtdaily.com/p/how-not-to-respond-to-a-terrorist?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Stalin had punishment battalions. Putin has Storm-Z https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/theyre-just-meat-russia-deploys-punishment-battalions-echo-stalin-2023-10-03/

"March of a million hearts" today in Warsaw - opposition demonstration, largest since 1989 #MarszMilionaSerc

Biden's speech from yesterday sought to invoke bipartisan support for the Constitution, and for democracy.
Once didn't seem like a hard thing to do, but now it really is

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/09/28/remarks-by-president-biden-honoring-the-legacy-of-senator-john-mccain-and-the-work-we-must-do-together-to-strengthen-our-democracy/

"The October 15, 2023 Polish parliamentary election will not be fair"
on PiS's use of state companies, media, money, courts and prosecution services to tilt the playing field.
from @gmfus

https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/red-lines-around-a-free-and-fair-polish-election/

anneapplebaum2000

"The idea that Western civilization is collapsing—and the only thing that can save it is an autocratic power—works on the far right in the way that the ideal of communism once worked on the far left."

my conversation with Charlie Sykes on the Bulwark podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bulwark-podcast/id1447684472?i=1000628038613

Polish ruling party apparatchiks took bribes to help migrants enter Europe and the US. A scandal that has everything - greed, subterfuge and, above all, hypocrisy

https://apnews.com/article/-poland-visas-bribe-election-b6cdeadfc6a3935d0fbdb779947dad78

Thought this was a parody, but apparently not https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/14/karin-kneissl-austria-ex-foreign-minister-moves-to-russia

Last October, Ukrainian sea drones hit several Russian ships in Sebastopol, occupied Crimea. Instead of World War III, the attack helped reduce violence, protect commerce, and maybe even ensure that some people outside Ukraine didn’t go hungry.
Crimea is now an armed camp, stocked with ammunition, artillery and missiles that will be aimed at Ukrainian cities. Ukraine has to destroy these objects if it wants to survive.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/elon-musk-let-russia-scare-him/675282/

Never forget

“The Republican Party used to always support the military, but today, they are undermining the military. The senior senator from Alabama, who claims to support our troops, is now blocking more than 300 military [nominations] with his extreme political agenda."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/28/biden-tuberville-military-clash/

In which I ask: is Tennessee a democracy? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/tennessee-republican-partisanship-one-party-state/674732/

Tennessee is, in effect, a one party state. But that doesn't satisfy the ruling party:
"As in Hungary or Poland or as in Venezuela, the experience of radicalism can make people more radical. Total control of a political system can make the victors not more magnanimous, but more frustrated, not least because they learn that total control still doesn’t deliver what they think it should...