... as a movement strategist, he relied upon and advanced lies and bigotry—including falsehoods that fueled violence and an assault on our national foundation. That was not a side gig for Kirk. It was a core component of his organizing. He did not practice politics the right way. He used deceit to develop his movement and to weaken the United States. His assassination is heinous and frightening and warrants widespread condemnation. It should prompt reflection on what is happening within the nation and what needs to be done to prevent further political violence. It should not protect him or others who engage in such politics of extremism from critical review.
Education is, of course, in part a matter of schools and colleges and the formal information systems. That's true whether the goal of education is education for freedom and democracy, as Dewey advocated, or education for obedience and subordination and marginalization, as the dominant institutions require. The University of Chicago sociologist James Coleman, one of the main students of education and effects of experience on children's lives, concludes from many studies that "the total effect of home background is considerably greater than the total effect of school variables in determining student achievement." Actually, about twice as powerful in effect, he concludes from a lot of studies. So it's therefore important to have a look at how social policy and the dominant culture are shaping these factors, home influences and so on.
Leading the vengeful posse is Donald Trump, blaming 'radical left political violence,' before we even know who shot Kirk, ignoring Trump’s own long history of inflamed political rhetoric. True to this history, Trump is now promising to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it” (who knows how wide he will cast that net). Yet, five minutes research would make clear that the vast bulk of recent political violence in America comes from the right and much of it is in Trump’s name.
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Trump supporter Vance Luther Boelter murdered Democratic state Rep Melissa Hortman and her husband in June (incidentally, after that murder, Trump said he wouldn’t ‘waste time’ making a condolence call to “whacked out” Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz). Trump supporter Cody Balmer tried to murder Democrat governor Josh Shapiro, and his family in April. Cesar Sayoc, who sent pipe bombs to the homes of Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden was a Trump supporter. Solomon Peña, who was found guilty in March of orchestrating attacks against state Democrats, was a Trump supporter. David DePape, who tried to kidnap Nancy Pelosi and assaulted her husband with a hammer was a rightwing conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter. I can ignore the pathetically poor state of political discourse in the US because I don’t live there but I can’t ignore partisan garbage on my FB wall.
The murder of Charlie Kirk, graphically shown across X and other platforms, has triggered a tsunami of rightwing bile, blaming the 'left' (whatever that means) and threatening payback (I just saw Fox...
Working on a meme-sort of image with Erika E.'s photo and quotes from Albert Camus's _Myth of Sisyphus_ > A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock... There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn. --- Albert Camus in Myth of Sisyphus > Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth.
Not only do we need to oppose them; we need to be the opposite of them... "Kindness, compassion, generosity are often talked about as though they’re purely emotional virtues, but they are also and maybe first of all imaginative ones," and that imagination can be fed and encouraged--or starved... #DianeDiPrima , once said, "the only war that matters is the war against the imagination." #FarawayNearby #RebeccaSolnit #WarOnImagination
I and we are wildlife whose natural habitat is libraries, when it comes to physical space, because they contain books in which minds roam free through time and space, encounter Dogen and Dante and Sappho and Black Elk and others long since gone, meet…
Prune (I think) an outgoing hen...The first to run over to see if food is forthcoming.. She goes off on her own a lot.. Almost got eaten by a neighbors dog once while out in the garden by herself. Now the garden is so overgrown a dog on the street probably wouldn't notice her, and if the dog did chickens are probably much harder to catch in overgrown thickets..
Some birds might be fighers but these Silkies aren't. Even the big solid rooster just squawks with surprise and takes off as quick as any other bird when startled. Prune just happend to be out alone where she was visible. It probably makes her more vulnerable to big cats, and any big birds.. A falcon used to stop by so I did a search but I got the impression falcons don't go for things much bigger than pigeons. So it's just the chicks that are causes for worry. The same with crows. That's part of the reason my green curtain attempts stretch out over the rest of the yard too. Some of those strings were tied up over the yard to discourage crows and get my neighbor to relax. She worries about the birds more than I do. They work so hard and have so little time but were ready to tie their fishing line up around my yard. That got me moving quick with hemp string and some other fiber-based line... I'm hoping big turkeys will discourage cats.. I don't expect much to deter a decent-sized dog with hunting instincts. But there aren't many of them nearby.. I hear the little Japanese Chabo birds are fierce. I was reading that they are really Shamo birds with a recessive gene that makes their legs really short, but should verify that one day... It's hard to strike a balance though. It would be nice to have birds that can defend themselves, but it's nice that kids can hang out in the yard with the birds and not be frightened or threatened...
With friends like these who needs war criminals ? "You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making the rules" --- Bob Dylan Wake Up
In 2019, Trump impulsively ordered Navy SEAL Team Six on a covert raid into North Korea to a listening device. Before landing, the SEAL team believed that a nearby boat had spotted them, so, naturally, they killed everyone onboard. Then they sank the boat and used knives to puncture the lungs of the Koreans' bodies so they would sink as well. Then the SEALS aborted the mission. The crew of the boat were civilians who'd been diving for shellfish. There were no weapons on board the fishing boat. Leading members of Congress were told about this entire botched affair and said nothing for four years...
Members of Congress who've known about this since 2021 but never told the public: - Chuck Schumer - Nancy Pelosi - Adam Schiff - Mark Warner - Kevin McCarthy - Mitch McConnell - Devin Nunes – Marco Rubio
Fruitcaketocracy: the New American Experiment Supporters must see him as a grandmother 👵 off her rocker mumbling nonsense. I mean, you don't let anyone mess with her, that I understand, but you hand her the nuclear football either. Ya know?
Just absolute madness from beginning to end. Trump: “Newsom didn't allow the water to come from the Pacific Northwest. You know they have tremendous amounts of water in California, which most people don’t know. They send the water out into the Pacific Ocean. So I demanded that to be open. If that were open during the fire, you wouldn't have had the fire because all the sprinklers would've worked in the houses. They had no water. They had no water in the fire hydrants. They wouldn’t have had the fires. They would have been put out after one house, two houses. But he stopped the water from coming in. And I had to send in the military to have that water opened, after the fires. And now that water, but he should have more, because they still restrict it. There’s something wrong with these people. There’s something really wrong.” There’s something really wrong with Trump’s brain…
> 1. Ours is, above all, a *tragic* reality. Neither the most optimistic statistics nor the most ideologically contaminated explanations can disguise the situation of inhumanity and injustice in which our societies struggle. As long as we do not recognize the catastrophic state of certain societies in which the great majority of their people living if perpetual life-threatening situations, everything else, as a consequence, will be out of focus, and totally lack any semblance to reality.
--- Ignacio Martín-Baró (1974!!) in _Towards a Society that Serves its People: The Intellectual Contributions of El Salvador's Murdered Jesuits_ (1991)
Ashphalt Flowers!! Maron came over to help me enjoy and photo the SouthStyle NanBuShiki Moment, the sense of wonder I get fro seeing flowers blooming on asphalt and the inner soundtrack is comes to mind with DonDokoSho memories...
I put the little (big balled but in a good way) tanuki racoon dog figure down by the morning glory. It just seemed appropriate while having an 南部式 song running through my head, the group's Hyoto mask image is earthy-sexy(?) in the same sort of way as the Tanuki figures. It's hard to describe, maybe humor eros, keeping it real?? It took me decades over here to notice the characteristic Tanuki crotch: I had to read about it in an article or book or something. Too funny... > Like flowers blooming in asphalt/ we'll speak of love in abandoned fields/ Crusted guilt becomes nourishment/...
Flowers can be tough.. I used to wonder how "pansy" became an insult like weakling when I see them blooming in cold weather, they seem to be much more hardy than other flowers...
... The pretense that we will find out whether or not Donald Trump is a sexual predator if the Epstein files are released is itself a kind of cover-up, since we already know he is – though I’m all for finding out exactly what it is he’s so frantic to hide. He was found liable for sexually assaulting E Jean Carroll in a 2023 civil trial and has been credibly accused of groping, grabbing, and assault by numerous women. His worse-than-creepy behavior around the teenage girls in beauty pageants he managed is well-documented, as is his closeness to Epstein....
But in another sense the whole society is hiding something: that this violence is everywhere and it deeply shapes – or misshapes – our society. The statistics I cited above address the victims of specific crimes. But all girls and women are impacted by the reality that so many men want to harm us and these crimes could happen to any one of us. This violence affects the choices we make about where to go and when, what jobs to take, when to speak up, what to wear....
Systemic problems require systemic responses, and while I’m all for releasing the Epstein files, I want a broader conversation and deeper change.
> The wise parent, at the present day, is likely to choose, if he can, some method of education for his children which is not in fact universal, and for the sake of experiment it is desirable that parents should have the opportunity of trying new methods. But they ought to be such as could be made universal, if found to produce good results, not such as must from their very nature be confined to a privileged few. Fortunately, some of the best elements in modern educational theory and practice have had an extremely democratic origin; for example, Madame Montessori's work began with nursery schools in slums. In higher education exceptional opportunity for exceptional ability is indispensable, but otherwise there is no reason why any child should suffer from the adoption of systems which might be adopted by all.
Green Curtain? Multi-layered Canopy... It would be interesting if there was some way to measure how much cooler the yard and house are with mounds of green working their way up strings onto the house and over to bushes. Sure, they limit the view out to the chickens but in this climate cooling things down comes first! And the chickens eat the fallen flower petals. When kids come over we can pull off the fading pinkish flowers and feed some birds by hand... Multi-Purpose Morning Glories..
People comment about how big the leaves are on these vines. The vines come from seeds that have just fallen or been cast around for the past couple years. Maybe store-bought seeds are some sort of F1- hybrids ad these plants are working their way back to the original strains? Maybe they are adapting to their situation here? It''s just nice that, once they get going, the grow fast and provide a lot of shade with their big leaves. I hope they stay green shady and cool until October, it will probably be really hot until then..
These mid-sized birds should move on to a new home soon, 6 of them. There are 3 roosters and 3 hens. Too many roosters so wherever they go hopefully the people will be able to choose one rooster and then find someone to eat the other two I guess. Maybe the rooster should be chosen for a pleasant consent-seeking personality, or for Silky-features like a black flattened comb.. But you can see the smallest rooster with a more Silky-like coloring ignoring consent and riding Mangle in this series of photos.. I was so focused on trying to get this little boss rooster and as many other birds in the photo that it took me a while to notice and shoo over-eager rooster away... Poor Mangle...
I wonder though: Does the reveal of these tragedies actually excite the authoritarian MAGA?
Aren’t they so chock-full of misinformation that these are criminals beyond repair, they would cheer this as success? 🤔
80% of russians now support Putin, much more than when the war against Ukraine started. The brutality has only solidified his support. What if this is the same?
On a public “grooming standards” webpage aimed at prospective Customs and Border Protection agents, the agency advises that any tattoos and brandings must be concealed if they are “obscene or gang-related.” In other words, agents are allowed to have the very markings for which Caraballo and others were disappeared into a Salvadoran gulag — as long as they keep them out of sight. “It’s like saying ‘our gangsters are okay,’” Rosenow said. “But a young man fleeing persecution from his home country, a father of two little girls who likes to have ink on his body to commemorate his daughters, he is going to be subjected to this kind of horrifying shit?” theintercept.com/2025/07/16/cb…
Neither Victims nor Torturers/Executioners --- Albert Camus
Hateful Monger Miller should be put in a nice little sandbox not put into policy positions..
... I don’t think it’s necessary to kill them entirely We’re not a barbaric people. We respect life. Therefore torture is the way to go. Because tortured people can live. Torture is the celebration of life and human dignity. Ha, ha...
It's from a video that was posted on social media yesterday by Breakthrough News https://x.com/BTnewsroom/status/1945531629037850656
Ordinary rendition involves sending someone to another country after a formal request for extradition. Extraordinary rendition bypasses all the legal niceties and sends a prisoner to another country without any due process whatsoever. It’s important to call things by their proper names. Extraordinary rendition is what happened to Abrego García. During the “war on terror,” and once again today, such an act carries the risk of torture with it. ... Note that extraordinary rendition is illegal, both under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, where it is identified by the term “refoulement,” and under the U.S. Foreign Affairs Act of 1998, which states: “It shall be the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States.” That last clause relates to a practice known as “chain refoulement,” in which someone is first sent to a third country where the risk of torture is less, only to be sent on to the original prohibited destination.
I didn't want to write this article. In fact, I had something relatively uplifting planned: an Independence Day piece about the rich implications for the present moment to be found in the Declaration of Independence.
You could call these jokes, if you think killing people is funny. Or you could call them thought experiments. Liddle suggested as much in his column: “I am merely hypothesising, in a slightly wistful kinda way.” This “humour” permits obscene ideas to seep into the range of the possible. Academic researchers see the use of jokes to break taboos and reduce the thresholds of hate speech as a form of “strategic mainstreaming”. Far-right influencers use humour, irony and memes to inject ideas into public life that would otherwise be unacceptable. In doing so, they desensitise their audience and normalise extremism. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Since the 90s Chomsky was mentioning how the USA turn toward the sort of economy it urged onto "our backyard" (Latin American) "client states" was making a situation where the only jobs were security guards.... ' “The frustration isn’t yet producing mass resignations or major internal protests, but the officers and agents described a workforce on edge, vilified by broad swaths of the public and bullied by Trump officials demanding more and more.” "
... the American "we" is different. In both racial demographics and political norms, this is not the country it was fifty or sixty years ago. But under authoritarianism, it's often not that people normalize atrocities, but that they're afraid to speak up, which is why strong early action matters.
Arendt argued as early as 1951 that the concentration camps in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) served as a model for the Third Reich’s bureaucratic organisation of forced labour and systematic murder: to suppress an anticolonial rebellion, the Germans had killed a hundred thousand Ovaherero and ten thousand Nama. Both Arendt and Aimé Césaire, whose Discourse on Colonialism was published a year before The Origins of Totalitarianism, used the metaphor of the boomerang to describe the way violence that was once reserved for colonial subjects was turned on Europeans. For Mbembe, too, this history shows the West’s need for some racialised other – ‘a Negro, a Jew, an Arab, a foreigner’ – to make sense
> The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has, and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he can fall back upon another.
Though the Trump administration often refers to the AEA removals as deportations, they do not resemble the codified judicial process of deportation.
Rather than deporting the men removed under the AEA back to their country of origin, the Trump administration sent them to a country foreign to them to serve out an indefinite sentence without ever convicting them of a crime or giving them an opportunity to challenge their removal or continued confinement.
...
Multiple investigations have found that a majority of those removed by the Trump administration do not have criminal records in the U.S., Venezuela or El Salvador and never violated U.S. immigration laws.
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... the U.S. has paid El Salvador around $6 million to imprison the men for at least a year.
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El Salvador said that the U.S. had exclusive responsibility over the men.
“In this context, the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities, by virtue of international agreements signed and in accordance with the principles of sovereignty and international cooperation in criminal matters,” it said.
El Salvador told the United Nations that it has no legal authority over hundreds of Venezuelan men that President Donald Trump sent to a Salvadoran megaprison earlier this year.
Hard to imagine gangs coming to rescue vulnerable immigrants like a cheap novel or SalamiAI illustration.. Would be nice though....
... to understand the often surprising affinity between criminals, criminal gangs, right-wing political movements, and the armed representative state. Ultimately, they speak the same language. They create their own rules on the basis of force. As a result, they typically share the same broad political sensibilities. Mussolini might have wiped out the mafia, but Italian Mafiosi still idolize Mussolini.... > In Athens, nowadays, there’s active collaboration between the crime bosses in poor immigrant neighborhoods, fascist gangs, and the police. In fact, in this case it was clearly a political strategy: faced with the prospect of popular uprisings against a right-wing government, the police first withdrew protection from neighborhoods near the immigrant gangs, then started giving tacit support to the fascists. For the far-right, then, it is in that space where different violent forces operating outside of the legal order interact that new forms of power, and hence of order, can emerge.
The ICE Thug stuff is worse than the Golf Course Goobers, where's the _Falling Down_ guy snapping in the right way at first and then getting caught before doing evil? I wonder if the _Training Day_ guys are saying anything about this??
> “Minutes before, there were more than 20 kids playing — then, the MILITARY comes through,” she wrote. “The SECOND I heard about this, I went to the park to speak to the person in charge to tell them it needed to end NOW. Absolutely outrageous.” ... > One of the officials in the raid told the Associated Press that the raid was “going to be more overt and larger than we usually participate in,” though the news organization added that raid ended abruptly with no explanation. > Bass, City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez and Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson later decried the raids at a press conference on Monday afternoon.
I will take four characteristics which seem to me jointly to form the basis of an ideal character; vitality, courage, sensitiveness and intelligence. I do not suggest that this list is complete, but I think it carries us a good way. Moreover, I firmly believe that, by proper physical, emotional and intellectual care of the young, these qualities could all be made very common. I shall consider each in turn.
... 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.
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“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 …
> + 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…
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.
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:
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.
jt
in reply to Brian Small • • •Brian Small
in reply to jt • • •