... Eunisses Hernandez, a 35-year-old city councilmember who represents a quarter-million people in a majority-Latino district in northern Los Angeles.Many Angelenos who did not attend protests against the new Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids are doing other kinds of work, Hernandez said, like providing “know your rights” information to small businesses about interacting with law enforcement officials, or figuring out how to deliver food to immigrant families too afraid to leave home even to buy groceries.
Mutual aid networks created to help people affected by the January’s wildfires have been “reinvigorated” to respond to the Trump administration’s raids, Hernandez said.
“In this moment, while we’re seeing the worst of our federal administration, we are seeing the best here in the city of Los Angeles,” she said.
...
“Even with documents, people are afraid to go out. Even citizens are afraid to go out. People are afraid to encounter an Ice agent regardless of their status, because of the level of violence they have seen on social media or on TV,” she said.
Multiple US citizens in the Los Angeles area have reportedly been detained as part of immigration raids this month.
theguardian.com/us-news/2025/j…
#EunissesHernandez #SolidarityInLA #LASolidarity #ICEThugs #USAImmigration
‘We’re seeing the best of LA’: as Ice raids haunt the city, Angelenos show up for each other
With the largest undocumented population of any US city, much of LA locks in with fundraisers, mutual aid networks and grocery deliveriesLois Beckett (The Guardian)
New research from a recent PRRI survey of more than 5,000 adults shows that 61% of Americans oppose the U.S. government deporting undocumented immigrants to foreign prisons in El Salvador, Rwanda, or Libya, without allowing them to challenge their deportation in court, including 36% who strongly oppose.[1] At the same time, majorities of some specific groups — Republicans, white evangelical Protestants, and white Catholics, as well as Christian nationalism Adherents and Sympathizers — support these actions.Republicans (78%) are nearly eight times as likely as Democrats (10%) to favor the deportation of undocumented immigrants to foreign prisons without due process. Roughly one-third of independents (35%) support these immigration actions by the Trump administration.
prri.org/spotlight/new-prri-po…
... sexual harrassment in the workplace is not about out of control lust but about control itself, as an abuse of power and an exercise of it, meant to demonstrate the abuser can do whatever he wants, and the abused have no rights and what they want doesn't matter. Because we're a somewhat less hierarchical society than we once were, those abuses of power are (sometimes) less tolerated, and victims are (sometimes) more likely to have avenues in which to push back against violations of their rights. In other words, the line has been redrawn so that rights are more widely distributed, and while Cuomo surely knew this, he had also created a workplace in which he could get away with enforcing his own rules and overriding the law and the rights of others.
Iran could for example have directed its fury at Israel, which Iran views as responsible for its current predicament, or withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which unlike Israel Iran has ratified. It could additionally have chosen to prevent shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20-30 per cent of global energy exports pass, and coordinate efforts with AnsarAllah to similarly block Bab al-Mandab, shutting off the Suez Canal through which 10-15 per cent of global trade reaches its destination. While this would reduce Iranian oil exports to zero, and severely affect China (which imports most of its oil from the Persian Gulf), it would send prices at the pump in the US through the stratosphere at the height of the summer driving season. That won’t go down very well with the MAGA base which voted for Trump in significant part on account of his proclaimed opposition to costly and needless forever wars in the Middle East. ..
Iran is in a very unenviable position. Significantly weakened and still isolated, with strategic allies in Russia and China that are far less dependable than is the US for Israel, Tehran is damned if it acts, and damned – arguably more so – if it does nothing. At the same time Iran has spent many years preparing for precisely the scenario it is confronted with today, and it is most unlikely to prioritize self-preservation if the price is capitulation. Expanding the conflict to the region, and inflicting losses directly and indirectly on the US, appears to be its most likely course of action. In a calculated rather than impulsive fashion. ...
Serious questions must be asked as to the longer-term strategy here. While Israeli officials have articulated a need for strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent the Islamic Republic from getting a nuclear weapons capability, Iran is a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (although it has threatened recently to quit) and key officials have regularly declared that nuclear weapons have no place in Iran’s strategic portfolio. ..Israel is not a signatory to the treaty. In fact, it is thought to possess between 75 and 400 nuclear warheads. It’s hard to tell, as the country has maintained a steadfast policy of nuclear opacity, never actually admitting the extent of its nuclear capability...
The contours of global politics are changing before our eyes. Gone are the norms that have served as the bedrock of the so-called liberal international order. The risk is that while this period has itself featured tragedy and suffering on an almost unimaginable scale, tearing up the rule book will be far worse.
juancole.com/2025/06/israel-us…
#SimonMabon #GlobalOrder
#NPT #IsraelNukes #IranNuclearProgram #JuanCole #JuanColeSite
Iran’s military budget in recent years has expanded from $10 billion a year around $15 billion annually, making it 25th in the world for such expenditures and putting it in the same range as Singapore and Uruguay. Algeria and Turkiye spend more, and Israel spends twice as much. Even if the war causes Iran to double its spending, it would still only match the United Arab Emirates and Israel, and would not reach the level of Saudi Arabia. Moreover, Iran is a country of 92 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to some of these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population.
juancole.com/2025/06/things-st…
JuanCole #WarOnIran #IranMilitary
USA, more and more like Chile and other States under military dictatorship...
Locals praised the Dodgers when the team announced on social media that it had realized who actually buys their expensive tickets and sent Trump’s attack dogs on their way.
ICE and DHS, in contrast, have been snippy and defensive since they were shown the door and initially, and laughably, just posted tersely, “False. We were never there.” Then they admitted that Customs and Border Patrol were there as photos and videos flooded social media. Emily Phillips of an Echo Park Rapid Response network reported that the Feds said that they needed the stadium to process detainees since doing so out in the open at Home Depot would be “too dangerous.” It should frighten as well as offend everyone that such a cowardly, frightened group gets to be masked and armed and arrest people without warrant.
...
It would be a mistake to think that the Dodgers, whose ownership and (some) players visited the White House several months back and kissed the ring, are born again. This was done because of all the people who bravely stood up to the LAPD, the National Guard, the Marines, and whatever motley group of agencies have been diverted to California—a state that, like Greenland in the springtime, Trump clearly wants to seize. And yet the actions by the Feds here is also an escalation. They expect to be able to use a stadium to “process” those suspected of being undocumented—or even worse, that they can pull people out of the crowd at a ballgame and throw them into the backs of white vans. Given the history of stadiums being used across the globe as mass holding cells, with all kinds of small rooms perfect for “enhanced interrogations,” it would be particularly traumatizing for those connected to countries where sports arenas double as torture chambers.
thenation.com/article/society/…
#DavidZirin #LADodgers #DodgersStadium #ICEThugs
CounterSpin: We’ve always heard that racists hate quotas, yet Stephen Miller’s “3000 a day however which way” mandate is terrorizing immigrant communities—brown immigrant communities—around the country. The response from people of conscience can look many ways: linking arms around people in danger, absolutely; vigorously disputing misinformation about immigrants, whether hateful or patronizing, also. But another piece is gaining a deeper, broader understanding of migration. News media could help answer one implied question—“Why is anyone trying to come to the US anyway?”—by grappling with the role of conditions the US has largely created in the places people are driven from. We’ll talk about that largely missing piece from elite media’s immigration coverage with Michael Galant, senior research and outreach associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Professor Shocks Students Speaking Gen Alpha Slang youtube.com/shorts/oj4wYbiP6V8…Great one
#languageProfessor Shocks Students Speaking Gen Alpha Slang
I was invited by Westtown School to give a speech—as a language expert—about the importance of learning languages, in front of a full auditorium of high scho...YouTube
Tana Petruzzelli, a volunteer with Detention Resistance, a human rights group who regularly accompany migrants and refugees to their court hearings, said she noticed a difference in how the court and law enforcement acted when the religious delegation was in the building.
“They bailed as soon as they showed up,” Petruzzelli said, referring to ICE officers. In a video shot by Petruzzelli and shown to Courthouse News, six or so ICE agents, all completely masked with black face coverings, can be seen gathering toward an elevator.
> “What is the sense of all of the hatchery work and habitat restoration that we are doing as a Nation if 50 years from now the water temperature may be so high that none of the salmon will survive anyway?” I didn’t receive an answer from anyone that day...
> “Mr. Chairman you had asked us all a question about the relevance of hatchery & habitat work in spite of a future where the water temperature may be so high that nothing will survive. I apologize for not having an answer for you that day. I had to think long and hard about your question. The truth is the future of the salmon is so dark that we refuse to discuss it and we refuse to acknowledge it.”...
> Dam removal is the only option that exists in properly addressing the water temperature question.
counterpunch.org/2025/06/20/ro…
#SalmonFisheries #Dams #DamRemoval #ダムはムダ #JoDeGoudy #YakamaNation #ColumbiaRiver #ColumbiaRiverBasin #JeffreyStClair #RoamingCharges
Roaming Charges: Neo-Conned Again! - CounterPunch.org
Using Israel's logic for attacking Iran (to protect itself from (non-existent) Iranian nuclear weapons), every country in the Middle East (and beyond) would be justified in attacking Israel and destroying its (still undeclared) arsenal of 90 nuclear …Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch.org)
> + Last Saturday, the management of the Los Angeles Dodgers told the singer Nezza to “do the national anthem in English tonight.” Instead, Nezza put on a Dominican Republic t-shirt and sang the anthem in Spanish. (Nezza was born in the US and is an American citizen.) Word of the Dodgers’ attempt to suppress Nezza ignited outrage among many in the LA Hispanic community. This is, after all, the team that evicted a predominantly Mexican community of 300 families from their homes in Chavez Ravine (without compensation) to build Dodger Stadium. Nezza’s defiant act and the local response to it almost certainly prompted the Dodgers to take this action on Thursday…
counterpunch.org/2025/06/20/ro…
#Nezza #LaDodgers #DodgersStadium #DodgersStadiumICE #JeffreyStClair
Hope!? Despair!?
Despite being primarily a children’s game, Roblox has evolved into a sort of emergent civic theatre for kids online. The game is now where thousands of children go to process major world news events through highly intricate role play. These simulations are how many young people experience news events, representing a shift towards more participatory forms of media.
...
This is not the first time Roblox has gotten political. In 2020, teenage Roblox users replicated the wave of protests against racial injustice and police brutality following George Floyd’s murder. Roblox users have also protested Israel’s assault on Gaza, staging pro-Palestine virtual protests in the fall of 2023.
...
In-game activism also isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Even before Roblox, children mobilized in other game-centric communities. In 2016, Club Penguin users protested Donald Trump’s election. Some kids used their avatars to express political dissent at a time when they weren’t even old enough to vote. Players in Animal Crossing and Roblox also staged protest events pushing Hong Kong’s pro-democratic movement in 2020.
Roblox boasts about 85 million daily active users globally. In December 2022, more than four in ten Roblox gamers were 12 years old or younger, and 60% of users were under the age of 16, according to data from Roblox.
...
I predict that digital protests will also have greater offline political impact as the digital realm increasingly becomes default reality. And it will be interesting to see what effect digital political expression in games like Roblox has on young people as they develop their nascent political ideologies.
teenvogue.com/story/kids-are-p…
#Roblox #TeenVogue #VirtualProtest #DigitalProtest
In one of the No Kings protest photos there was a sign "If Kamala was President we'd be at brunch." Reading that it's hard not to think it might be true for a lot of people, there would still be genocide in Gaza and ICE working away but it would all be managed with a bit more tact or subtlety... Maybe?
> It’s too easy to point at the low-hanging moral fruit without doing the work that those who are supposedly on the side of the angels need to do. There’s all this talk of being on the right side of history, but what does that mean? ‘‘The arc of moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’’ Who’s bending it? What are we doing to further that? If you just get rid of Trump, that doesn’t end this. It’s too easy to say: ‘‘I support this other guy. Therefore, I’m part of the solution.’’ Or: ‘‘You support that guy. Therefore, you’re the problem.’’ Now, that is in no way exculpatory to the supporters of those policies or that regime. My point was: What does that judgment get you? What is the accountability that we have for those who really do believe this is unjust but still accept the tacit societal arrangements?
...
> But I still believe that the root of this problem is the society that we’ve created that contains this schism, and we don’t deal with it, because we’ve outsourced our accountability to the police.
A meme that I probably saw from a "walled garden" site prompted the search that turned up this 2020 article interview:
nytimes.com/interactive/2020/0…
#JonStewart #uspol #MoralArc #MoralUniverse #DoBendWell
Jon Stewart Is Back to Weigh In
In the five years since Jon Stewart left ‘The Daily Show,’ American politics has been in a state of constant turmoil and he has remained mostly out of the spotlight.David Marchese (The New York Times)
“To the Soldier Who Points a Gun at Me”You think I’m here to die.
You think that’s all we know how to do—
bleed, bury, break.But listen.
I grow things.
Tomatoes in rusted cans.
Hope in children who don’t know what the word means yet.
I build—walls, stories, mornings.
I fix roofs with one hand and hold my daughter’s hand with the other.And you?
You carry a gun like it’s your purpose.
But I’ve seen men become ghosts
long before the trigger is pulled.You call this land a threat.
I call it history .
The call to prayer. The school bell.
The pot of lentils boiling over.Don’t mistake my softness for surrender.
I don’t need to shout to be strong.
The fig tree in my yard
has stood through three wars
without raising its voice.You—
with your steel and fear,
your borrowed power—
you patrol streets looking for danger
and miss the beauty flowering between the cracks.You fear death.
I fear forgetting how to live.So if you shoot,
know this:
I wasn’t born to hate.
But I won’t vanish to make you comfortable.
I won’t flinch so you can sleep easier.I am not your victim.
I am not your enemy.
I am the reminder
that even under occupation,
a man can love too fiercely to be erased.
- Sameh Shahrouj
H/T Cadfa (Camden Abu Dis Friendship Association)
/HT #FilmsForAction FB account
#SamehShahrouj like #ThomasHardy
#TheManIKilled updated
> protesters associated with the anti-Trump movement—including those explicitly protesting ICE and Trump’s immigration policies—were extraordinarily nonviolent in their tactics.In over 99.5 percent of protest events in April and May, we recorded no injuries, arrests, or property damage — an unprecedentedly tiny fraction for a movement of this size and geographic dispersion."
wagingnonviolence.org/2025/06/…
#EricaChenoweth #AntiTumpProtestd #AntiIceProtests
#WorldSpring #EarthSpring #USASpring #米国紫陽花革命
> “I can’t believe I even have to talk about these people. That’s how ridiculous it is,” says Timnit Gebru, an electrical engineer and founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute. “They were like some fringe group that nobody took seriously,” she says of how the tech billionaires who talked up AGI were viewed by those who worked in her field. “Everybody sort of laughed at them out of the room. But because of the money, the billions of dollars that were going into it, they started slowly taking over. Fast-forward to now, this conversation about superintelligence is basically mainstream.”> Gebru argues, the conversation ignores what AI like ChatGPT really is: Not a form of intelligence — which, in and of itself, is almost impossible to define — but rather a large language model that simply scrapes the (inherently flawed) internet and predicts the most likely sequence of words. We are made to think that AI is “thinking,” but that’s just marketing, and misleading marketing at that. A machine that doesn’t really think at all can’t teach itself to think better. And it certainly can’t figure out how to alter the habitability of Mars.
> Likewise, though Altman claimed in January that nuclear fusion — potentially an inexhaustible source of energy — was only a few years away, the scientists working to bring it about scoff at that timeline (there’s a joke that it’s been 30 years away for the past 60 years). Crypto continues to have dubious (legal) utility as compared with other forms of currency, but in 2023, it gobbled up as much energy as the entire continent of Australia. In October, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, said the solution to the climate crisis was to use more energy: Since we aren’t going to meet our climate goals anyway, we should pump energy into AI that might one day evolve to solve the problem for us. (“Yeah, that’s a quote that he gave in public without, like, a mask over his face or anything,” says Becker. “And he still walks around, unashamed.”) In his first week in office, Trump invited Altman, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to the White House to gleefully announce the building of 20 more AI data centers.
rollingstone.com/culture/cultu…
#TinmitGebru #Broligarchs #SalamiAI #TechBillionaires #TechBillionairePsychology
by #AlexMorris
The Psychology Behind Tech Billionaires
Why Elon Musk and other tech billionaires have a different perspectiveAlex Morris (Rolling Stone)
> Ruling elites and power structures — from monarchies to military dictatorships to the U.S. corporatocracy — have routinely used “professionals” to control the population from rebelling against injustices so as to maintain the status quo. While power structures routinely rely on police and armies to subdue populations, they have also used clergy — thus, the need for liberation theology. And today, the U.S. corporatocracy uses mental health professionals to manipulate and medicate people to adjust and thereby maintain the status quo — thus, the need for liberation psychology.> The U.S. corporatocracy, in order to control other nations — be they in Latin America, Native America, or elsewhere — has provided power and prestige for both individuals and institutions which meet the needs of the corporatocracy. Martin-Baró observed the following about North American psychology: “In order to get social position and rank, it negotiated how it would contribute to the needs of the established power structure.”
> The actions by U.S. psychologists and psychiatrists that contribute to the needs of the power structure for social position and rank have gotten even more blatant since Martin-Baró’s death....
> Even more powerful than positive-psychology manipulations in subverting resistance by soldiers to the U.S. military-industrial complex is the use of psychiatric drugs. According to the Navy Times in 2010, one in six U.S. armed service members were taking at least one psychiatric drug, many of these medicated soldiers in combat zones...
> In contrast to mainstream psychology, liberation psychology — which Martin-Baró helped popularize — challenges adjustment to an unjust societal status quo and energizes oppressed people to resist injustices. Liberation psychology attempts to help subjugated and demoralized people regain the energy necessary to recover the power that they have handed over to illegitimate authorities (see Get Up, Stand Up).
> Martin-Baró knew that there are political consequences to mainstream psychology’s restricting its research to quantifiable variables. He pointed out that when knowledge is limited to only quantifiable facts and events, we “become blind to the most important meanings of human existence.” Human dimensions such as commitment, solidarity, hope, and courage cannot be simplistically quantified but are what enable human beings to overcome injustice.
madinamerica.com/2014/11/assas…
#BruceLevine with #IgnacioMartinBaro #LiberationPsychology
Why an Assassinated Psychologist — Ignored by U.S. Psychologists — Is Being Honored - Mad In America
On November 16, 1989 in El Salvador, liberation psychologist Ignacio Martin-Baró was murdered by a Salvadoran government’s “counter-insurgency unit” created at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas.Bruce Levine, PhD (Mad In America)
... "Just kill them" was the response to the questions "What should be done about the poor?" in a poll for elite(?) urban children in El Salvador in the 1980s. I can't remember if I read that in Noam Chomsky's Deterring Democracy or maybe it is in the book of writings by Ignacio Martin-Baro, and Ignacio Ellacuria?? It seems important now that the current USA regime is kidnapping people and sending them to a mass "concentration camp" prison in El Salvador: CECOT...
> ... in El Salvador. After the harsh repression of nonviolent activities, "the masses were with the guerrillas" by early 1980 in the judgment of José Napoleón Duarte, the U.S.-imposed figurehead. To bar the threat of nationalism responsive to popular demands and pressures, it was therefore necessary to resort to a "war of extermination and genocide against a defenseless civilian population," to borrow the terms of Archbishop Romero's successor a few months after the assassination. Meanwhile Duarte praised the army for its "valiant service alongside the people against subversion" as he was sworn in as civilian president of the military junta to provide a cover for active U.S. engagement in the slaughter, and thus to become a respected figure in Western circles.59The broader framework was sketched by Father Ignacio Mart�n-Baró, one of the Jesuit priests assassinated in November 1989 and a noted Salvadoran social psychologist, in a talk he delivered in California on "The Psychological Consequences of Political Terrorism," a few months before he was murdered.60 He stressed several relevant points. First, the most significant form of terrorism, by a large measure, is state terrorism, that is, "terrorizing the whole population through systematic actions carried out by the forces of the state." Second, such terrorism is an essential part of a "government-imposed sociopolitical project" designed for the needs of the privileged. To implement it, the whole population must be "terrorized by an internalized fear."
Mart�n-Baró only alludes to a third point, which is the most important one for a Western audience: the sociopolitical project and the state terrorism that helps implement it are not specific to El Salvador, but are common features of the Third World domains of the United States, for reasons deeply rooted in Western culture, institutions, and policy planning, and fully in accord with the values of enlightened opinion. These crucial factors explain much more than the fate of El Salvador.
In the same talk, Mart�n-Baró referred to the "massive campaign of political terrorism" in El Salvador a decade ago, conducted with U.S. backing and initiative. He noted further that "since 1984, with the coming of so-called democratic government in El Salvador under Duarte, things seemed to change a bit," but in reality "things did not change. What changed was that the terrorized population was reduced to only two options: to go to the mountains and join the ranks of the rebels, or to comply -- at least openly -- with the programs imposed by the government." The killings then reduced in scale, a development that occasioned much self-praise here for our benign influence. The reason for the decline, he observes, is that "there was less need for extraordinary events, because people were so terrorized, so paralyzed."
znetwork.org/wp-content/upload…
#IgnacioMartinBaro #NoamChomsky #LiberationPsychology #ElSalvador
> Prisoners in the camps in El Salvador are forced to sleep on the floor or in solitary confinement in the dark. Many suffer from tuberculosis, fungal infections, scabies, severe malnutrition and chronic digestive illnesses. The inmates, including over 3,000 children, are fed rancid food. They endure beatings. They are tortured, including by water-boarding or being forced naked into barrels of ice-cold water, according to Human Rights Watch. In 2023, the State Department described imprisonment as “life-threatening,” and that was before the Salvadoran government declared a “state of exception” in March 2022. The situation has been greatly “exacerbated,” the State Department notes, by the “addition of 72,000 detainees under the state of exception.” Some 375 people have died in the camps since the state of exception was established, part of El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s “war on gangs,” according to the local human rights group Socorro Jurídico Humanitario.
...
> “The first essential step on the road to total domination is to kill the juridical person in man,” writes Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” “This was done, on the one hand, by putting certain categories of people outside the protection of the law and forcing at the same time, through the instrument of denationalization, the nontotalitarian world into recognition of lawlessness; it was done, on the other, by placing the concentration camp outside the normal penal system, and by selecting inmates outside the normal judicial procedure in which a definite crime entails a predictable penalty.”
#ChrisHedges #CECOT #ELSalvador #ConcentrationCamps #HannahArendt
... let us also remember the tyranny of our corporate overlords who have been—perhaps more quietly but not less aggressively—eroding our democracy...
..political and cultural affirmation of the democratic vision that we should be a self-governing people, a vision that has never been fully realized...
.. Trump and his Project 2025 playbook represent one form of authoritarianism that, while distinct in some respects, intersects with another deeply entrenched form: corporate domination.
...corporate rule has been a slow, legalistic, never ending, and largely invisible seizure of power — not by individuals, but by artificial legal entities with little public accountability.
Corporations today define nearly every aspect of our lives:..
the We the People Amendment (HJR54). This is not about regulating corporations better. It’s about breaking the illegitimate foundation of their power and declaring that we should have the power and right to define corporate actions
commondreams.org/opinion/no-ki…
#MoveToAmend #CorporateRule #NaturalPersons
On FB twice I've seen a Frida Kahlo meme quoting her about love and blemishes. Maybe it's saved on the FoolPhone somewhere or will pass by again when there is leeway to post it into the Fediverse. In the meantime here are other discoveries... I should look for Japanese translationns of her words. When I get students to put drawings and sentences together I should "Picasso Time!" "Georgia O'Keefe Time!" "Frida Kahlo Time!" but no one seems to know who the women are...
> “Nothing is more valuable than laughter.”> “From the most evil year, the most beautiful day is born.”
> “Choose a person who looks at you like maybe you’re magic.”
bsmall2 reshared this.
> a strong claim to being the most ambitious American film ever made. According to its director Herbert J Biberman and screenwriter Michael Wilson, it was the "first feature film ever made in [the US] of labour, by labour, and for labour". More than that, it was "a film that does not tolerate minorities but celebrates their greatness".
theguardian.com/film/2014/mar/…
#SaltOfTheEarth #SaltOfTheEarthMovie
Salt of the Earth: Made of labour, by labour, for labour
Sixty years ago, a team of radical, blacklisted filmmakers made Salt of the Earth, a powerful representation of the agency of US workers. Sukhdev Sandhu celebrates a talisman of the American leftSukhdev Sandhu (The Guardian)
> The workbook we created was in the final editing stage when Trump started exaggerating property destruction at anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles to justify his own illegal power-grab. As Daniel writes in the introduction, “When dictators want to crack down on people speaking out, they hope for chaos. They want to make us look dangerous. They win when the story is about broken windows instead of broken systems.”...
> Some peacekeepers need to be reminded that it’s not their job to convince anyone, just defuse situations that could undermine the action’s goals.
wagingnonviolence.org/2025/06/…
#WagingNonViolence #BrokenSystems #BrokenWindows #PeaceKeepers
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Albert Camus's The Rebel suddenly came to mind while musing on the personalities driving so much destruction through the USA... It looks like his discussion takes a lot from Dostoeyevsky and Sade...
"Beginning with the premise of unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism." Complete freedom, which is the negation of everything, can only exist and justify itself by the creation of new values identified with the entire human race. If the creation of these values is postponed, humanity will tear itself to peices. The shortest route to these new standards passes by way of total dictatorship. "One tenth of humanity will have the right to individuality and will exercise unlimited authority over the other nine tenths. The latter will lose their individuality and will become like a flock of sheep; compelled to passive obedience, they will be led back to original innocence and, so to speak, to the....
...
> Unlimited freedom of desire implies the negation of others and the suppression of pity. The heart, that "weak spot of the intellect," must be exterminated; the locked room and the system will see to that. The system, which plays a role of capital importance in Sade's fabulous castles, perpetuates a universe of mistrust. It helps to anticipate everything so that no unexpected tenderness or pity occur to upset the plans for complete enjoyment. It is a curious kind of pleasure, no doubt, which obeys the commandment: "We shall rise every morning at ten o'clock"! But enjoyment must be prevented from degenerating into attachment, it must be put in parentheses and toughened. Objects of enjoyment must also never be allowed to appear as persons.
...
> ... insistence on complete freedom, lead to the total subjection of the majority. For Sade, man's emancipation is consummated in these strongholds of debauchery where a kind of bureaucracy of vice rules over the life...
...
> Their martyrdom consists in consenting to inflict suffering on others; they become the slaves of their own domination. For man to become god, the victim must abase himself to the point of becoming the executioner. That is why both victim and executioner are equally despairing. Neither slavery nor power will any longer..
...
The totalitarian theocrats of the twentieth century and State terrorism are thus announced. The new aristocracy and the grand inquisitors reign today, by making use of the rebellion of the oppressed, over one part of our history. Their reign is cruel, but they excuse their cruelty, 8 "He represented himself as man after his fashion, and then he gave up his idea." 9 "Slander and assassination in extreme cases, but especially equality." like the Satan of the romantics, by claiming that it is hard for them to bear. "We reserve desire and suffering for ourselves; for the slaves there is Chigalevism."
#AlbertCamus #TheRebel #CompleteFreedom #TrumpMusk #MuskDoge
2025
> ...especially galling because it's literally the same story Zuck has been telling for decades: "Facebook has built a mind-control ray out of Big Data, and we can sell anything to anyone":
- pluralistic.net/2021/09/30/don…
1932
> Since the greatest of virtues is business skill and since skill is shown in making people buy what they don't want rather than what they do, the man who is most respected is the one who has caused most pain to purchasers. All this is connected with a quite elementary mistake, namely, failure to realise that what a man spends in one direction he has to save in another so that bullying is not likely to increase his total expenditure.
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The text version at archiveDOTorg makes it quick to search for "military personnel" in the document: pages 138-139 and 555 seem to be the most relevant to the wacky use of the National Guard and active-duty military personnell for the LA protests.
> If all immigration agencies are not merged, including USCIS and ORR, then an appropriate third alternative would be to consolidate ICE and CBP to form a combined Border Security and Immigration Agency (BSIA)....
> The BSIA should establish clear mission requirements, responsibilities, and mandates under existing law regarding the persistent need for and utilization of U.S. military personnel and resources to assist BSIA with increasing whole-of-gov- ernment efforts and long-term strategy to secure our nation’s borders effectively. In addition, appropriate elements within the newly created BSIA should be designated as part of the U.S. National Security and Intelligence Community. pp138-139
> In addition to finalizing the southwestern land border wall, the next Administration should take a creative and aggressive approach to tackling these dangerous criminal organizations at the border. This could include use of active-duty military personnel and National Guardsmen to assist in arrest operations along the border—something that has not yet been done. A new and forceful approach to interdiction will have a ripple effect on the operations of these criminal organizations, which currently operate freely without concern for criminal prosecution, and will lay the necessary groundwork for initial prosecutions of these organizations and their leaders. -- p 555
- archive.org/details/project-20…
- static.heritage.org/project202…
#uspol #Project2025 #ContractOnAmerica #MilitaryArrestOperations #LAProtests
/HT @Happy Pride! Happy Summer! 🌈 😎
Project 2025; Mandate For Leadership Heritage Foundation : Heritage Foundation : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
A comprehensive policy guide for the next conservative U.S. president, the book pulls from the expertise of hundreds of political appointees, policy...Internet Archive
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Hater Miller
Going Around Coming Around..
> Nielsen, the Homeland Security secretary, was met with cries of “Shame!” while she dined at a Mexican restaurant in the midst of the family separation crisis in June. A woman at a bookstore in Virginia called Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, a “piece of trash.” (The owner called the police on her.) Press secretary #SarahSanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant by the owner last month.
... #StephenMiller is aligning himself with plenty of “uncivil” policies from the White House
vox.com/policy-and-politics/20…
#TrumpRegime #uspol #HatersRegime #USACivility
#HaterMiller
Maria Ressa: To Avoid Normalization of Kleptocracy
> “I didn’t want to be an activist, but when it’s a battle for facts, journalism is activism,” warns Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa, whose new site Rappler faced attacks from former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte.> I just came from Perugia, from the International Journalism Festival, where V-Dem, which does kind of a rating of all democracies globally — right? — their latest report now says that 72% of the world is under autocratic rule. Like, we have elected illiberal leaders in 72% — in these democracies around the world, right?
> The head of V-Dem publicly said that if the trends in America continue, that he expects democracy to die by the summer. Like, not just to wake you up, right? Like, literally. And actually, if we stop normalizing the death by a thousand cuts of rule of law, you can see this happening, right? For the Turkish grad student picked up from the streets from Tufts University, from all of the little things — we’ve talked here about the press. The press was attacked in the first Trump administration, right? Duterte echoed President Trump.
> ... we normalize new depths. Like, we should not be where we are, and yet that’s where we are. And what are you seeing being created? At the early days, in the first month, I called at the Filipinization of American politics. But I think it’s even worse, because what you’re seeing, not many mainstream covered the government pausing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — right? — saying, essentially telling Americans that it’s OK to be corrupt, because you need to be competitive.
> In 2018, MIT said that lies spread six times faster. That was before Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it to X and turned it into a human cesspool, even worse than it was in 2018. So, if lies spread six times faster, and fear, anger and hate — this is across the world — if you use fear, anger and hate, it spreads — and I hate to — I put rabbit ears on “information” — the post spreads virally, right? So, there are more ways. Online violence is real-world violence. The reason why 72% of the world today is now under authoritarian rule is partly because our public information ecosystem is corrupted. Good morning.
> ... the biggest lesson we learned is that you are at your most powerful at the beginning of the attacks. Every day you do not fight back, you lose just a little bit more of your rights. We normalize just a little bit more of this kind of pseudo-democracy, right?
> Right? Social media was used to attack us. And it’s like fertilizer. Saying you’re the enemy of the press then lets people believe. That’s astroturfing... And that sets the stage. It’s like fertilizer. So, social media, then media capture. And Robert talked about the chilling effect. Forget the chilling — it’s Siberia. And business interests. I talked about the three Cs: corrupt, coerce, coopt. For every single institution that is broken down — media, academe, NGO capture, state capture. And each step of the way as you go down, rule of law breaks down, and you lose — it’s death by a thousand cuts of your rights.
> I didn’t want to be an activist, but when it’s a battle for facts, journalism is activism. So, in our case, I said, “We hold the line. This is the line where the Constitution gives us our rights.” The Philippines, like the United States, has three branches, coequal branches of government. And the United States is following the Philippines, what happened under Duterte, a very powerful executive, a coopted legislature. And it took Duterte six months to crush the checks and balances of the Philippines, to get rid of institutional checks on his power.
> ... you talked about the 10 arrest warrants I have. Eight years later, we’ve won eight of the 10 cases, but I still have to ask for the Philippines — for approval to travel from the Philippines Supreme Court. What rights you lose today, you will not get back. Right?
> ... anyway, sorry, I could talk about this forever. I feel like I have PTSD and déjà vu all combined. You know, it’s shocking America is where it is today.
> .., what happened with Rappler? There were constant attempts to shut it down, but somehow you moved the servers abroad or you did something to make sure that, despite the crackdown on the media, you were able to continue running.
> ... we told our people very early on, when the government first tried to shut us down in January 2018, “You may not want to be here. This is going to be a different thing.” Everyone has a different risk appetite, right? So we gave our reporters the option to leave Rappler, because I said, “We’ll help place you in another news organization.” Not one reporter took that. Right?
> ... once you know who you are and what you stand for and you’re ready for the worst case, then you stand up for your rights. I think that’s the challenge today. In How to Stand Up to a Dictator, the question I asked Filipinos, and I now ask — the reason why I thought it was coming for every democracy around the world is this tech is global. You know, what it proved is that we could all be manipulated in the exact same way, regardless of country or culture. It was like looking at Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Oh my god! And we’re allowing this to happen. They’re doing it with impunity for profit. So, hold the line, don’t give up your rights, because you only get weaker over time.
> .... what’s at stake for the world today is whether or not an international rules-based order still exists, whether it’s Ukraine or Gaza or tech, right? And then, what the Philippines proved is that — and people will say, “Well, it’s power politics.” Everything is power politics. What the Philippines proved is that little Philippines actually honored an ICC — the very first time a Filipino president has been charged with crimes against humanity, when he was arrested. I was in the Philippines when that happened. We broke the story in Rappler for the arrest warrant. And when that happened, we didn’t know it was going to happen.
> I really want to tell Americans, that you take step by step towards the goal of your values, towards the rights you have. And you don’t know what will happen. It’s incredibly uncertain. There were times I thought I would go to jail. There were times I had to wear a bulletproof vest in the car. Right? But you hold tight. And I think that’s what — I lost my right to travel. Five times, I couldn’t travel. Then the Nobel Prize happened, and I could travel. But I’ve still lost some rights.
> Fear is real. I mean, in the Philippines, there were an average of eight dead bodies dumped on the sidewalk every night. We had one reporter going out every night, right? So, fear is real. And there were times I was angry at Filipinos for not doing more. But we kept going. And I think the Philippines shows you that it could take a while, but justice does happen. But it depends on what happens in America now — right? — where the world goes. It’s still true: What happens to America will — America catches a cold, so does the entire world. Right? So, look at the markets, as you’ve done. Anyway, hold on to your rights.
- democracynow.org/2025/4/24/tru…
#MariaRessa on #RodrigoDuterte #NormalizingKleptocracy #VDem
#FilipinizationOfAmerica
As Trump Attacks CBS, Maria Ressa Warns He Is Following Philippine Model to Crack Down on Free Press
As the Trump administration goes after universities, law firms and more, some argue that the free press will eventually become a target.Democracy Now!
The Onion:
> “Angelenos—don’t engage in violence and give the administration an excuse to inflict all the damage they have been inflicting carte blanche for months on end,” said Bass, adding that Trump and his team are just looking for a reason to respond with violence, as they would have done whether or not any of this happened. “Don’t fan the flame that has been fanned behind the scenes at the White House since day one of Trump’s term in office. You wouldn’t want them to start abducting people in broad daylight and deporting them, would you? No, so let’s not become scapegoats for the horrific violations of civil liberties that would have eventually landed at our doorstep regardless.” At press time, Bass warned that Trump was using the actions of protesters to justify sending in the National Guard that had been pre-deployed to the conflict days before it even began. ^1
The Atlantic:
> By militarizing the situation in L.A., Trump is goading Americans more generally to take him on in the streets of their own cities, thus enabling his attacks on their constitutional freedoms. As I’ve listened to him and his advisers over the past several days, they seem almost eager for public violence that would justify the use of armed force against Americans.... Second, as my colleague David Frum warned this morning, Trump is establishing that he is willing to use the military any way he pleases, perhaps as a proof of concept for suppressing free elections in 2026 or 2028. Trump sees the U.S. military as his personal honor guard and his private muscle.... ^2
- ^1 theonion.com/protesters-urged-…
- ^2 theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
#TheOnion /HT #RebeccaSolnit's FB post share
#TheAtlanticMagazine #LAProtests
Protesters Urged Not To Give Trump Administration Pretext For What It Already Doing
LOS ANGELES—Responding to escalating clashes between civilian activists and militarized immigration authorities, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass publicly urged protesters Monday not to give the Trump administration any pretext for what they’re already d…The Onion Staff (The Onion)
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> ... to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.> An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
- poetryfoundation.org/poetrymag…
#JeffreyStClair's FB post on #TerryMoran's honest depiction of #StephenMiller as hate-motivated kept these parts of the poem #PrayerForMyDaughter by #WBYeats in mind.
A quick search got me to some background without the need to sift through FB..
- axios.com/2025/06/08/abc-terry…
- https://x.com/brianstelter/status/1931728449497858066/photo/1
ABC suspends correspondent for calling Stephen Miller a "world-class hater"
"It's not brains. It's bile," he said. "Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He's a world-class hater."www.axios.com
🧵
> ... this crackdown is personal for Stephen Miller. As I report in my book, Hatemonger, when he was a high school student in Los Angeles, he frequently antagonized his Latino and immigrant classmates, telling them to, quote, “speak English” and to go back to their home countries. Back then, he was criticized for his views, and he has spent his career trying to punish the communities that rejected him.
democracynow.org/2025/6/10/los…
#DefendLA #JeanGuerrero #HateMongers #DefendPeople
@bsmall2@nerdica.net
Chaos & Cruelty: Trump Deploys Thousands of Soldiers to Put Down Anti-ICE Protests in Los Angeles
President Trump has inflamed tensions over immigration raids in Los Angeles, which his top adviser Stephen Miller described as an insurrection.Democracy Now!
🧵
> This is a vision of America where you are American only if you choose hate. And if you choose love or compassion, you are part of what is poisoning the blood of this country... not surprised to see the president coming after innocent people who are not just the immigrants in our communities, but the people who are defending them.. white.. Black..Brown.. all different colors,.. expressing their humanity.. compassion for the other.
#USAHate #AmericanHate #USACompassion
@bsmall2@fedibird.com @bsmall2@nerdica.net
> ... roughly $1 billion per year on programs that subsidize the purchase of commercial seeds and fertilizers. There is little publicly available documentation of impacts, from AGRA, the Gates Foundation, or donor governments that have supported the initiative. This paper attempts to fill some of that accountability gap. Because AGRA declined to provide data from its own monitoring and evaluation, we use national-level data to assess progress in productivity, poverty reduction, and food security in AGRA’s 13 countries. We find little evidence of widespread progress on any of AGRA’s goals, which is striking given the high levels of government subsidies for technology adoption. There is no evidence AGRA is reaching a significant number of smallholder farmers. Productivity has increased just 29% over 12 years for maize, the most subsidized and supported crop. This falls well short of doubling yields, which would be a 100% increase. Overall staple crop yields have grown only 18% over 12 years. Meanwhile, undernourishment (as measured by the FAO) has increased 30% in AGRA countries. These poor indicators of performance suggest that AGRA and its funders should change course. We review more promising approaches African governments and donors should consider.
sites.tufts.edu/gdae/files/202…
#GatesInAfrica #TimWise #AGRA #BillionDollarPolicyMistake #GatesBillionDollarMistake #BillGates #BillionDollarMistake ?
Anybody that reads a bit into food (FoodFirst! 12 myths^3) and agricultural policy (Vandana Shiva on the Green Revolution ) knows the corprate expensive-input high-debt approach is awful.. These intentional mistakes build around common misundersandings (unsupported myths) are just ways to capture organizations I imagine.
- tiksi.net/display/db9d525e-8d2…
- archive.foodfirst.org/publicat…
#HungerMyths #FoodFirst
> According to an external assessment by Timothy A. Wise of Tufts University, severe hunger in AGRA countries increased by 30% between AGRA’s founding and 2018. Crop yield increases have been modest, and where they exist, they haven’t always been enough to cover the higher cost of farming with commercial seeds and agricultural inputs. Dependence on fertilizer has increased the debt and financial precarity of the small farmers who make up the majority of farmers in Africa. In some cases the limited yield increases have also been temporary, as soil fertility has diminished due to monoculture farming and fertilizer use. For instance, Ethiopian farmers “will say that the soil is corrupted, meaning it cannot produce food” without synthetic fertilizer, reports Million Belay of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA).
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> Daniel Maingi, coordinator for the Kenya Food Rights Alliance, believes the Gates Foundation, working with its corporate partners, now has a license to test out new technologies in Kenya—with impunity— under the banner of charity...
> .. “Kenya becomes the testing ground…That is a big, big concern. It’s a big red flag.”..
> “In terms of food sovereignty, as we give Gates these privileges and immunities, Africa is going to be——not food sovereign, not seed sovereign—- we’re going to be slaves and masters of the big corporations,” Maingi told me.
timschwab.substack.com/p/diplo…
#GatesInAfrica #FarmingInAfrica #BigAgInAfrica #GatesFoundation #AGRA
> Although AGRA and other actors, such as the German government, have publicly stated that they are unaware of any cases of indebtedness of farmers participating in AGRA projects, the Ghana evaluation cites this problem very specifically. Farmers consider the AGRA approach extremely risky. There is substantial evidence showing that when harvests are poor, farmers regularly fall into debt. Farmers from Ghana said that even with good yields, they have to spend over 80 percent of their harvest income paying suppliers for seed and fertilizer. Others even question whether this model is worthwhile at all.
| 山によせて | Toward the Mountain |
|---|---|
| ひかりの箭をはなつ朝 | The Dawn releases the arrow of light |
| 山は霧のなかに生れ | The Mountain is born in mist |
| むらさきの山体は | The purple mountain body |
| こんじきの匂ひをもつ | has a golden smell |
| あたらしい日を信じ | Believing in a new day |
| あたらしい世界のきたるを信じ | A new world will come I believe |
| にんげんの哀しさも | neither our human sadness |
| 国の面する悲運のかげも | nor the shadow of bad fate over our country |
| 世界の精神的下降の現実も | nor the fact of the world's spiritual descent |
| わすれはてるわけではないが | do I forget but |
| いまこのあざやかな | now, in this clear |
| 朝のひかりにおぼれ | morning's light drowning |
| 悠々と非情の勁さにそびえている | to calmly rise in cruel strength |
| 山にまなぼう | learn from the mountain. |
bsmall2 reshared this.
> We hear a lot about what democracy means in America. In the case of the Cheri Honkala Green Party campaign for Sheriff of Philadelphia, what democracy means is recognizing that the selective enforcement of laws is a reality in our history and, then, offering voters the real choice of a sheriff who will not enforce foreclosure orders in a depressed economy. Honkala is a well-known poor people's activist in Philadelphia who, over the years, has organized large street demonstrations and even gotten herself arrested many times occupying homes and doing other actions to call attention to the plight of the poor.
- truthout.org/articles/philadel…
#PhiladelphiaSheriff #CheriHonkala #USASheriffs #uspol
"I shot the sheriff" --- Bob Marley (then, later Eric Clapton)
*The Balad of Gregorio Cortez* movie: It's a mare. Es una yegua buey!!
In many places - not in all states, but in many states - sheriffs can hire and fire at will. So it's not uncommon to hire relatives. It's a fairly common practice. And that allows them to set policy on all sorts of things. So everything from what people wear in jail - there was a sheriff in Georgia who forced people inside his jail to get up every morning and march around and sing a song about how great the sheriff was.
...
... this tradition persists today, which is why sheriffs among law enforcement officers still have a lot of pay-for-service mechanisms. In many places, for example, landlords pay the sheriff to evict tenants. It's just a flat fee. So among also those things was that they would take people and lease them out to white land owners. They didn't just lease them out for farming. They were sent to mines, to poultry processing plants. In Florida, they were sent to collect tar in the Everglades. And I think it can't be understated just how dangerous and violent convict leasing was.
bsmall2 reshared this.
... I happen to have a platform for some reason, and then it is my moral obligation to use that platform. And if my presence on this boat can make a difference, if that can show in any way that the world has not forgotten about Palestine, and to try once again to attempt to break the siege and open up a humanitarian corridor and deliver the extremely needed humanitarian aid, then that is a risk I am willing to take....We cannot just sit, sit around and do nothing and watch this like live-streamed genocide unfold in front of our very eyes. So we are doing this because we are human beings who care about justice. And when our complicit governments fail to step up, it falls on us, unfortunately, to do so....
We cannot have climate justice without social justice. The reason why I am a climate activist is not because I want to protect trees. I’m a climate activist because I care about human and planetary well-being, and those are extremely interlinked. For example, when we see the genocide in Gaza, of course, there are some very obvious links, that ecocide, environmental destruction is a very common method used in war and to oppress people...
AMY GOODMAN: Greta, as you attempt to bring in baby formula, medical kits, flour, prosthetics for kids with amputations, the Israeli military has threatened to block the Freedom Flotilla. The Israeli army says it’s prepared to raid your ship. We know what happened to the Mavi Marmara with the Israeli raid and the killing of nine activists on board. Ultimately, a 10th died. So, are you seeing drones? How are you prepared to deal?
GRETA THUNBERG: Yeah, yeah, we are seeing drones. Last night, there were two different moments where there were drones circulating above us. And we are — we have safety procedures that we will use, and we have different scenarios that we are prepared for to try to maximize our safety in a nonviolent way. So, we are trying to do our very best. And it shows quite a bit that peaceful volunteers who are carrying humanitarian aid necessary for survival is being threatened to be raided, intercepted or attacked. I think that says quite a lot about the priorities and approaches of Israel right now.
But we must also remember that this mission is not about us. It is not about the voyage or the people on board. This mission is about Palestine. It is about the genocide, the occupation, ethnic cleansing and the other methods of war and oppression that are being used by Israel against the Palestinians. And we do not only need humanitarian aid to be let into Gaza. We do not only need a ceasefire. We need an end to the occupation.
AMY GOODMAN: — South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham wrote on X, “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!” Your response?
GRETA THUNBERG: We can swim very well. It says a lot about their priorities, that in the face of genocide and systematic starvation of 2 million people, lawmakers, elected officials, whose responsibility should be to serve the people and to protect the people, that they, rather than ending their complicity in genocide and the massive slaughtering of civilians, are focusing on mocking people who are at least trying to do their bit. I think that says everything we need to know about their priorities.
democracynow.org/2025/6/4/gret…
#AmyGoodman #GretaThunberg #FreedomFlotilla #GazaGenocide #TheMadleen
Greta Thunberg Speaks from Aid Ship Heading to Gaza Despite Israeli Threats: It’s My Moral Obligation
As Gaza faces over three months of Israeli blockade, a group of 12 activists is sailing to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid.Democracy Now!
bsmall2
in reply to Brian Small • • •> “First, you kill the environment in the process of getting to so-called AGI, and then that AGI is going to somehow magically stop forest fires and storms and the wind?” Gebru asks, dumbfounded. “It doesn’t make any sense. There are no specifics of how this could happen.”
#TinmitGebru #AGI #Salami
@bsmall2@nerdica.net