Will Trump make the USA a dictatorship?

This 30 September 2020 video from the USA about the debate between presidential candidates Trump and Biden says about itself:

While it was largely a mess, there was one debate moment that warrants a discussion.

By Joseph Kishore and David North in the USA:

Trump’s Operation Dictatorship: What the debate exposed

1 October 2020

The degenerate spectacle of Tuesday night’s debate between Donald Trump and Joseph Biden will be remembered in history as the United States’ moment of truth. The myth of an invulnerable and eternal American democracy has been shattered. Political reality has burst through the countless layers of deceitful propaganda of the corporate-financial oligarchy and exposed the undeniable fact that the White House is the political nerve center of a far-advanced conspiracy to establish a presidential dictatorship and suppress constitutionally guaranteed democratic rights.

The grunts and barks emitted by Trump on Tuesday night leave no doubt about his intentions. Trump is as serious about the threats he made during the debate as Hitler was about those he wrote down in Mein Kampf. Trump views the November election as a continuation of the political coup d’état that began last June in Washington, D.C, when he unleashed military and police forces against peaceful protesters.

Trump’s political strategy is fairly obvious and can be summed up with the infamous phrase: “Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war.” The conspiracy will unfold as follows:

First, during the remaining month of the election campaign, Trump will do everything he can to discredit the voting process with the intention of delegitimizing the counting of the ballots, which, as he fully expects, will show that he lost the election by millions of votes. He will use fabricated allegations of ballot fraud to incite fascist thugs, assisted by police and unidentified federal agents, to intimidate voters and carry out violent acts at polling stations.

Second, on election night Trump will declare that he is the winner, claiming that all ballots cast through the mail are illegitimate. He repeated during the debate his claim that the only way that he can lose is if the election is “rigged,” through the destruction of ballots and other forms of fraud. Even though he trails heavily in the polls, Trump is counting on a delay in the tally of mail-in ballots to give him the opportunity to declare victory in key battleground states.

Third, Trump will use the 10 weeks between Election Day on November 3 and the Inauguration on January 20 to mobilize his followers in the streets, while turning to a stacked Supreme Court to decide the election in his favor. On Tuesday he again said that he was “counting” on the court to “look at the ballots.” He has the full support of the Republican Party, which is pressing forward with the rapid confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, so that she will be in a position to cast a deciding vote in any court decision on the election.

Trump is also counting on support within the police and sections of the military, as well as his control over the Department of Homeland Security. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that DHS acting Secretary Chad Wolf, a Trump crony, is preparing immigration raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in “sanctuary cities,” such as Denver and Philadelphia, this month. Federal paramilitary forces will be mobilized in many major metropolises in advance of the election.

Finally, and most critical of all for the success of his conspiracy, Trump has factored in the spinelessness of the Democratic Party. He fully expects that the Democrats, apart from mouthing a few empty threats, will do nothing to stop him. …

Biden went out of his way to declare that he is not opposed to Supreme Court nominee Amy Barrett. He complimented her as “a very fine person,” even though Barrett, once on the Court, will be one of those who will drive a nail into Biden’s political coffin. …

Biden did not even respond to Trump’s verbal salute to the fascist Proud Boys. He pledged to demand that his own supporters “stay calm” as the election is contested, while Trump urged that they mobilize and challenge the results. …

Third is the staggering concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny layer of society. The 400 richest individuals in the United States now control $3.2 trillion, and the richest one percent have more wealth than the bottom 40 percent. A recent RAND Corporation study calculated that the stagnation of income over the past four decades for the bottom 90 percent of the population created an aggregate net loss of income of $47 trillion. Democracy cannot survive under conditions of such enormous levels of inequality.

All of these underlying conditions have been intensified by the pandemic, which has revealed in the starkest way the dysfunctionality of American society. Trump speaks and acts on behalf of a criminal financial oligarchy that will stop at nothing to protect its wealth. Its response to the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated its contempt for the lives and welfare of the population. Its demand for the reopening of schools is an essential component of its program of “herd immunity,” which has already led to the deaths of more than 210,000 people in the United States. While the federal bailout has sent share values on Wall Street soaring, tens of millions are unemployed, and the major corporations are planning mass layoffs.

The ruling class knows that it confronts mass social anger that will take an explosive and potentially revolutionary form. This is what imparts to Trump’s actions their frenzied and reckless character. Terrified of the development of social opposition, he sees in every protest and manifestation of opposition the danger of the “radical left” and “socialism.” The growth of working-class militancy, already apparent in the wave of strikes, has convinced a substantial section of the ruling class that they have no way out except through violence.

The lessons of the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s are of burning contemporary relevance. The examples of Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain demonstrate that the turn to fascism and dictatorship comes when the ruling class is no longer able, for reasons embedded in the character of capitalist society, to resolve its crisis through democratic means.

Millipede evolution, new research

This 2016 video says about itself:

My friend Dani sent me two unidentified Millipedes. After a bit of research and investigation they turned out to be European White Legged Snake Millipedes (Tachypodoiulus niger ) so i thought i would show a size comparison to my adult female African Giant Millipede (Archispirostreptus gigas)

From PLOS:

Genomes of two millipede species shed light on their evolution, development and physiology

September 29, 2020

Millipedes, those many-legged denizens of the soil surface throughout the world, don’t always get the recognition they deserve. But a new study by Jerome Hui of Chinese University of Hong Kong and colleagues puts them in the spotlight, sequencing and analyzing complete genomes from two very different millipede species. The study, publishing on September 29th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, provides important insights into arthropod evolution, and highlights the genetic underpinnings of unique features of millipede physiology.

Millipedes and centipedes together comprise the Myriapoda — arthropods with multi-segmented trunks and many legs. CentipedesHow centipedes walk and swim sport one pair of legs per segment, while millipedes bear two. Despite the apparent numeric implications of their names, different centipede species bear between 30 and 354 legs, and millipedes between 22 and 750. There are about 16,000 species of myriapods, including over 12,000 species of millipedes, but only two myriapod genomes have so far been characterized; a complete genome for the centipede Strigamia maritima, and a rough “draft” sequence of a millipede genome.

The authors of the new study fully sequenced the genomes of two millipede species, the orange rosary millipede Helicorthomorpha holstii, and the rusty millipede Trigoniulus corallinus, from two different orders, each distributed widely throughout the world. They also analyzed the gene transcripts (transcriptomes) at different stages of development, and the proteins (proteomes) of the toxin-producing “ozadene” glands.

The researchers found that two species have genomes of vastly different sizes — the orange rosary’s genome is 182 million base pairs (Mb), while the rusty’s is 449 Mb — which the authors showed was due mainly to the rusty millipede’s genome containing larger non-coding regions (introns) within genes and larger numbers of repetitive “junk” DNA sequences.

Homeobox genes play central roles in body plan formation and segmentation during animal development, and the authors found lineage-specific duplications of common homeobox genes in their two species, which differed as well from those found in the previously published millipede genome. None of the three, however, displayed the massive duplications seen in the homeobox genes in the centipede genome. They made further discoveries about the organization and regulation of the homeobox genes as well.

Many millipedes bear characteristic glands on each segment, called ozadene glands, which synthesize, store, and secrete a variety of toxic and noxious defensive chemicals. The authors identified multiple genes involved in production of these chemicals, including genes for synthesizing cyanide, as well as antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral compounds, supporting the hypothesis that ozadene gland secretions protect against microbes as well as predators.

The results of this study provide new insights into evolution of the myriapods, and arthropods in general. “The genomic resources we have developed expand the known gene repertoire of myriapods and provide a genetic toolkit for further understanding of their unique adaptations and evolutionary pathways,” Hui said.

Runaway teenage girls in songs

This 1979 video from England is the song Girl on the run by young punk singer Honey Bane.

Honey Bane herself was on the run from a Borstal-like prison.

Teenage girls sometimes have very good reasons to run away: domestic abuse, imprisonment, etc.

Then they often go from the countryside to cities.

However, in the cities, they may get new problems.

This 1982 music video from England is the song Strange little girl, by the Stranglers.

The song was written in 1975 but only came out seven years later. This means discrepancy between the song and the video. In 1975, there were not yet the punk girls with Mohican hairdos shown in the video.

There is also a discrepancy between lyrics like: ‘She’s feeling old/’Cause she found/All things cold’ and the video images of the runaway girl discovering new punk friends in the city. By the way, the tallest girl, with the red letters on her white t-shirt under her black leather jacket, on the right of the video: is the bass player/vocalist of Dutch band Cheap ‘n’ Nasty.