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... 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



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…


#uspol #ICEThugs #USAImmigration



... 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.


meditationsinanemergency.com/o…

#RebeccaSolnit #Cuomo #NewYorkCuomo #SexualHarassment



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. ...


facebook.com/share/p/16crMoEHL…

#MouinRabbani #WarOnIran



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