Maeve

We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I’m talking about the white masses, I’m talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don’t fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism. -Fred Hampton

Cross post from https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12171840

The first clue that Platner was a shitty person wasn’t his military service or his Blackwater stint or his tattoo or the sexual assault stuff, it was that he ran for high office in the US government under one of America’s two mainstream parties. That’s damning in and of itself.

I said this on Twitter today and some DSA guy told me the best way to make changes in US politics is to work within the Democratic Party to elect left-wing candidates and advance progressive agendas.

I said, “You guys have been trying that for ten years with nothing to show for it.”

I mean, how much longer is it going to take before people admit that the “change the party from within” strategy isn’t working? Do you want another twenty years? Another fifty? Do you need to spend the next century watching a handful of vaguely progressive imperialists getting elected to Congress and then getting primaried out by opponents with mountains of special interest funding before you admit that you’re not making any meaningful gains? Our planet could be lifeless before then.

The Bernie Sanders “revolution” was ten years ago. Large factions of the American left took up his call to take over the Democratic Party using primary elections throughout the nation, and ever since then it’s been a two-steps-forward, two-steps-back addition of zeros. The people never got President Bernie, and the few progressive gains made on Capitol Hill were either kicked out like Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman or went full pro-establishment like John Fetterman. The few who stuck around have turned out to be perpetually disappointing empire managers like AOC, who know how to straddle the line between left-wing lip service and status quo swamp monster.

Crosspost from https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12160078 by Tim Foley:

The first clue that Platner was a shitty person wasn’t his military service or his Blackwater stint or his tattoo or the sexual assault stuff, it was that he ran for high office in the US government under one of America’s two mainstream parties. That’s damning in and of itself.

I said this on Twitter today and some DSA guy told me the best way to make changes in US politics is to work within the Democratic Party to elect left-wing candidates and advance progressive agendas.

I said, “You guys have been trying that for ten years with nothing to show for it.”

I mean, how much longer is it going to take before people admit that the “change the party from within” strategy isn’t working? Do you want another twenty years? Another fifty? Do you need to spend the next century watching a handful of vaguely progressive imperialists getting elected to Congress and then getting primaried out by opponents with mountains of special interest funding before you admit that you’re not making any meaningful gains? Our planet could be lifeless before then.

The Bernie Sanders “revolution” was ten years ago. Large factions of the American left took up his call to take over the Democratic Party using primary elections throughout the nation, and ever since then it’s been a two-steps-forward, two-steps-back addition of zeros. The people never got President Bernie, and the few progressive gains made on Capitol Hill were either kicked out like Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman or went full pro-establishment like John Fetterman. The few who stuck around have turned out to be perpetually disappointing empire managers like AOC, who know how to straddle the line between left-wing lip service and status quo swamp monster.

Crosspost from https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12160078

Uganda’s military continues to lay siege on the country’s largest non-state newspaper, one of the largest private news broadcasters, alongside other channels and radio stations owned by Nation Media Group (NMG), the largest media conglomerate in East and Central Africa.

Troops raided its Ugandan headquarters and the broadcasting centers located at the Serena Hotel in the capital, Kampala, just after midnight, around 1 am on Sunday, June 28.

Its television stations, including NTV, one of the most viewed private news broadcasters in the country, and the Daily Monitor, Uganda’s largest independent newspaper, “are being shut down from today!” military chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba posted on X.

By 5 am, NTV Uganda and Spark TV went off air. The NMG-owned radio stations, KFM and Dembe FM, fell silent. The newspaper did not roll out of its printing press that morning.

“From now on ALL bad stories about Uganda have to be cleared by my office! In Uganda, I DO NOT believe in a free press!” declared Kainerugaba, who is also the son and heir apparent of Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda since 1986.

Earlier this January, Museveni won a seventh term in an election marred by “widespread repression and intimidation against the political opposition, human rights defenders, [and] journalists,” according to the UN.

Army chief threatens to kill opposition leaders; brags about abduction and torture
Soon after Museveni was declared the winner, his son unleashed the military on the opposition. “So far we have killed 30” and arrested 2,000 members of the main opposition party, the National Unity Platform (NUP), Kainerugaba had announced on X only days later. When its leader, Bobi Wine, Museveni’s main opponent, was forced underground and eventually into exile, Kainerugaba told his troops to “bring him in dead or alive!”

Crosspost from https://news.abolish.capital/post/62817

Uganda’s military continues to lay siege on the country’s largest non-state newspaper, one of the largest private news broadcasters, alongside other channels and radio stations owned by Nation Media Group (NMG), the largest media conglomerate in East and Central Africa.

Troops raided its Ugandan headquarters and the broadcasting centers located at the Serena Hotel in the capital, Kampala, just after midnight, around 1 am on Sunday, June 28.

Its television stations, including NTV, one of the most viewed private news broadcasters in the country, and the Daily Monitor, Uganda’s largest independent newspaper, “are being shut down from today!” military chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba posted on X.

By 5 am, NTV Uganda and Spark TV went off air. The NMG-owned radio stations, KFM and Dembe FM, fell silent. The newspaper did not roll out of its printing press that morning.

“From now on ALL bad stories about Uganda have to be cleared by my office! In Uganda, I DO NOT believe in a free press!” declared Kainerugaba, who is also the son and heir apparent of Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda since 1986.

Earlier this January, Museveni won a seventh term in an election marred by “widespread repression and intimidation against the political opposition, human rights defenders, [and] journalists,” according to the UN.

Army chief threatens to kill opposition leaders; brags about abduction and torture
Soon after Museveni was declared the winner, his son unleashed the military on the opposition. “So far we have killed 30” and arrested 2,000 members of the main opposition party, the National Unity Platform (NUP), Kainerugaba had announced on X only days later. When its leader, Bobi Wine, Museveni’s main opponent, was forced underground and eventually into exile, Kainerugaba told his troops to “bring him in dead or alive!”

Crosspost from https://news.abolish.capital/post/62817

This is why Obama denounced his pastor, and later abandoned his church membership, on the campaign trail.

This is why Obama denounced his pastor, and later abandoned his church membership, on the campaign trail.

Israel has installed 23 cranes mounted with remotely-operated machine guns in Gaza to shoot civilians, including at least two children, according to reports from human rights groups and Gaza-based journalists.

“Days ago, the Israeli army installed huge military cranes, each about 30 meters tall, on the eastern areas it controls. These cranes… fire randomly and almost continuously at tents, streets, and exposed neighbourhoods.”

He added: “There is no place to hide, and not a single moment of safety.”

Three people had been killed by the cranes in the space of two days, Nahed claimed, including a five-year-old girl playing near her home.

“We have become an open testing ground for their new weapons.” has installed 23 cranes mounted with remotely-operated machine guns in Gaza to shoot civilians, including at least two children, according to reports from human rights groups and Gaza-based journalists.

Crosspost from https://news.abolish.capital/post/61140

Israel has installed 23 cranes mounted with remotely-operated machine guns in Gaza to shoot civilians, including at least two children, according to reports from human rights groups and Gaza-based journalists.

“Days ago, the Israeli army installed huge military cranes, each about 30 meters tall, on the eastern areas it controls. These cranes… fire randomly and almost continuously at tents, streets, and exposed neighbourhoods.”

He added: “There is no place to hide, and not a single moment of safety.”

Three people had been killed by the cranes in the space of two days, Nahed claimed, including a five-year-old girl playing near her home.

“We have become an open testing ground for their new weapons.” has installed 23 cranes mounted with remotely-operated machine guns in Gaza to shoot civilians, including at least two children, according to reports from human rights groups and Gaza-based journalists.

Crosspost from https://news.abolish.capital/post/61140

I can't stop looking...

Crosspost from https://hexbear.net/post/8909479

...Laws were clearly broken; but the sentences turned on what the defendants said and believed, which the prosecution cast as proof of Antifa membership — a case that rested largely on one man: Shideler.

His job on the stand was to convince the jury of two things: that Antifa is a real, organized terrorist enterprise, and that these eight belonged to it. That task was complicated by the fact that the defendants had never actually called themselves Antifa..

Shideler was baptized into this worldview on the job. By his own account on the stand, he “lived over my parents’ garage for a little while” after college, took a job as a news director at a radio station “for a short period,” and did “some blogging and writing” before being recruited by Stand With Us, the Los Angeles pro-Israel group, where he was responsible for “managing their database of extremist groups and individuals.” From there he went to the Endowment for Middle East Truth, a foreign-policy nonprofit that bills itself as operating “from an unabashedly pro-America and pro-Israel stance,” where he studied Islamic movements “with a particular emphasis on the Muslim Brotherhood.”

In 2014 he was hired at the Center for Security Policy, the Frank Gaffney–founded think tank best known for promoting the Iraq War and claiming “Sharia law” is the leading domestic threat to the United States. He left for a stint at the Middle East Forum — a Philadelphia outfit whose stated mission is to “protect Western civilization from the threat of Islamism” — then returned to the Center in 2020, where he now directs Homeland Security and Counterterrorism research, which as far as I can tell means tracking left-wing Americans.

Under cross-examination, Shideler acknowledged he had authored an article on combating far-left extremism whose subtitle, a defense lawyer pointed out, was “A Roadmap for the Trump Administration.” It ran in The American Mind, a publication of the conservative Claremont Institute. He conceded his work isn’t peer-reviewed and rests on “open source research” — material one can “find on the internet” — which, he agreed, carries “both false information and true information.”

Somehow, some way, Shideler ended up being the Justice Department’s expert witness to explain “Antifa” and the grave threat it poses...

Crosspost from https://news.abolish.capital/post/60669