Komunitas
lemm.ee
Stop acting like America is the only nation that has misbehaved throughout history. Plenty of people died during the Cuban Rebellion, and European countries are responsible for plenty of atrocities around the world during their imperial stages. Belgium did lots of ugly stuff in Africa, France did lots in Indo-China, the Spanish unleashed a plague on the Native Americans that wiped out 90% of them before the rest of the Europeans showed up and finished the job. England brutalized nearly all of the world for centuries, just ask the Indians or the Chinese. They treated the indigenous Australians every bit as badly as the Native Americans were treated. And let’s not forget Germany’s multiple attempts at world domination. All this stuff happened at the exact same time as the American atrocities were happening. Your part of the world is no less complicit in the ugliness of history. Before all that, we had Romans and Khans and Huns and Vikings, etc. murdering entire cities and nation states. America isn’t responsible for all the bad in the world, CIVILIZATION is. Blaming other nations, and perpetuating the hatred, xenophobia, and violence isn’t going to make the world the better place you purport to want.
Komunitas
lemmy.world
So then can I ask why did you think comparing trans people to rats led by a piped piper was the way to engage the community if your goal was to promote understanding and inclusivity? I didn’t compare trans people to rats - only likened their actions of those who dance around this flag. And can you think of a better analogy? Rats are pretty awesome and intelligent creatures by the way. Just because they got some bad publicity over the plague which may or may not have been fake news. Why would people tell trans people “this is your flag” if not for commercial reasons? I think the GLBTQ community is unfortunately being very exploited at the moment - with social media being the main driver - not all attention is good attention. I was even listening to Skin from Skunk Anansie say the same the other week (gay black singer) compared to the 90s.
Komunitas
yiffit.net
I feel you on the deepthroating shit. It’s a great game, no doubt about it. But some of these articles act like it’s the second coming of Christ, and if I am to be entirely honest… It’s not quite as good as the original games. It’s lacking a lot of depth in the story telling (it’s almost entirely voiced so there’s more brevity in any given conversation than the pages upon pages of text even a random nobody can give you in BG2), but makes up for it with mechanical depth. I agree it’s a big deal for a major release to not have MTX or a season pass or other bullshit, and that should definitely be applauded. But some of the things I’ve seen said about the game are out right fraudulent. Like an article the other day saying it is the most polished AAA game in over a decade, which is absurd. The game is plagued with issues and the polish is literally the one thing I can not give it praises for. It even feels amateur in a lot of ways. Like it has many little issues I would not expect from a seasoned developer, and many bugs ranging from minor inconveniences to full blown game breaking stuff like scripts firing wrong leading to an outcome you didn’t choose to take or characters becoming comoletely broken being unable to move or be interacted with. Story is great. It actually feels like a remix of the first Baldur’s Gate story. Characters are some of the best I’ve seen in a long time. The combat is super fun, especially when you try to do weird random shit just to see if it works; cuz 90% of the time it does. There is a depth to the changes you can have on the world at large that are extremely cool and haven’t been done on such a scale before in all the RPGs I’ve played over the years… Although that last part is where the previous talk about bugs really starts to drag the experience down. There have been so many points in my two playthroughs of the game where I took one path, but got the dialogue and changes to the world of another path. Like currently, my party keeps talking about one of the companions killing another. But they didn’t; I stopped that from happening. So now this character is standing around in the background while other characters talk about her death. And that’s not even the worst one I’ve encountered.
Komunitas
lemmy.world
Yes, the one with Bauhaus playing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” in the opening scene! This is a weekly event, I usually post these announcements on [email protected] and sometimes cross-post to a relevant community. Apparently this movie “is popular with some segments of the goth subculture” so finally I can cross-post here! Anyway details are below, but if you don’t know what a watch party is, on Oct 12 9pm Eastern US time, open two web browser windows: https://miru.miyaku.media/ https://mastodon.social/tags/monsterdon and watch a bunch of fediverse wits and weirdos chat about a movie that we’re all watching at the same time. cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37158022 The Hunger (1983) is the movie for this Sunday’s “monsterdon” watch party over on Mastodon, our fediverse sibling! Just start watching that movie this Sunday, Oct 12 at 9pm ET / 8pm CT / 6pm PT which is 1am Monday UTC and follow #monsterdon over on mastodon for live text commentary. For example, you can follow that hashtag here: https://mastodon.social/tags/monsterdon I usually open two web browser windows side-by-side on a computer. But you could follow the mastodon commentary on a phone app while watching the movie on TV or something. How to watch the movie: tubi (availability varies by country): https://tubitv.com/movies/100045171/the-hunger uBlock Origin adblocker on Firefox should work for that tubi link archive (low video quality?): https://archive.org/details/the-hunger-1983-catherine-deneuve-david-bowie-susan-sarandon someone usually streams it on https://miru.miyaku.media/ at that time. if you want to pay and/or watch ads, look here: https://nobraincellsleft.github.io/JustWatch-Search/title/tm60122 or here: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-hunger-1983 The Hunger is a 1983 erotic horror film … Its plot concerns a love triangle between a doctor who specialises in sleep and ageing research ([Susan] Sarandon) and a vampire couple ([Catherine] Deneuve and [David] Bowie). … The Hunger was nominated for two Saturn Awards for Best Costume and Best Make-up, while receiving mixed reviews upon its release: its pacing and plot were felt to be unsatisfactory, with more emphasis seemingly being placed on cinematography and atmosphere. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times described the film as “an agonizingly bad vampire movie,” remarking that the sex scene between Deneuve and Sarandon is effective, but that the film is so heavy on set design and scene cuts that any sense of a story is lost.[10] In a brief review in Rolling Stone, Michael Sragow similarly called it “A minor horror movie with a major modern-movie problem: director Tony Scott develops so many ingenious ways to illustrate his premise that there’s no time left to tell a story.”[11] Christopher John reviewed The Hunger in Ares Magazine #15 and commented that “Beautifully filmed, but boringly void of substance, The Hunger is (was) a film to be avoided like the plague.”[12] Camille Paglia wrote in Sexual Personae (1990) that while The Hunger comes close to being a masterpiece of a “classy genre of vampire film”, it is “ruined by horrendous errors, as when the regal Catherine Deneuve is made to crawl around on all fours, slavering over cut throats”, which Paglia considered an inappropriate focus on violence rather than sex.[13] Critic Elaine Showalter called The Hunger a “post-modernist vampire film” that “casts vampirism in bisexual terms, drawing on the tradition of the lesbian vampire…Contemporary and stylish, [it] is also disquieting in its suggestion that men and women in the 1980s have the same desires, the same appetites, and the same needs for power, money, and sex.”[14] David Bowie later commented about the film that “the first twenty minutes rattle along like hell – it really is a great opening.”[a] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, The Hunger holds a 59% approval rating based on 39 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The consensus reads: “Stylish yet hollow, The Hunger is a well-cast vampire thriller that mistakes erotic moments for a satisfying story.” … The Hunger has been listed as a cult film.[18][19] A retrospective review of the film by Film at Lincoln Center concluded: “With its famously bold visual aesthetic—featuring high-intensity lighting, expressionistic production design, and thrillingly intimate perspectives—and the melodramatic intensity of the three lead performances, the film is an ultra-stylish time capsule, an archetype of the high-gloss, high-concept storytelling mode that prevailed in early 1980s Hollywood.”[20] The film is popular with some segments of the goth subculture and inspired a short-lived TV series of the same name, although the series has no direct plot or character connection to it.[21] The film has been cited by publisher Fred Berger as an influence on the creation and direction of his gothic subculture zine Propaganda, and by showrunner Bryan Fuller on his television series Hannibal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_(1983_film)
Komunitas
lemmy.world
The Hunger (1983) is the movie for this Sunday’s “monsterdon” watch party over on Mastodon, our fediverse sibling! Just start watching that movie this Sunday, Oct 12 at 9pm ET / 8pm CT / 6pm PT which is 1am Monday UTC and follow #monsterdon over on mastodon for live text commentary. For example, you can follow that hashtag here: https://mastodon.social/tags/monsterdon I usually open two web browser windows side-by-side on a computer. But you could follow the mastodon commentary on a phone app while watching the movie on TV or something. How to watch the movie: tubi (availability varies by country): https://tubitv.com/movies/100045171/the-hunger uBlock Origin adblocker on Firefox should work for that tubi link archive (low video quality?): https://archive.org/details/the-hunger-1983-catherine-deneuve-david-bowie-susan-sarandon someone usually streams it on https://miru.miyaku.media/ at that time. if you want to pay and/or watch ads, look here: https://nobraincellsleft.github.io/JustWatch-Search/title/tm60122 or here: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-hunger-1983 The Hunger is a 1983 erotic horror film … Its plot concerns a love triangle between a doctor who specialises in sleep and ageing research ([Susan] Sarandon) and a vampire couple ([Catherine] Deneuve and [David] Bowie). … The Hunger was nominated for two Saturn Awards for Best Costume and Best Make-up, while receiving mixed reviews upon its release: its pacing and plot were felt to be unsatisfactory, with more emphasis seemingly being placed on cinematography and atmosphere. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times described the film as “an agonizingly bad vampire movie,” remarking that the sex scene between Deneuve and Sarandon is effective, but that the film is so heavy on set design and scene cuts that any sense of a story is lost.[10] In a brief review in Rolling Stone, Michael Sragow similarly called it “A minor horror movie with a major modern-movie problem: director Tony Scott develops so many ingenious ways to illustrate his premise that there’s no time left to tell a story.”[11] Christopher John reviewed The Hunger in Ares Magazine #15 and commented that “Beautifully filmed, but boringly void of substance, The Hunger is (was) a film to be avoided like the plague.”[12] Camille Paglia wrote in Sexual Personae (1990) that while The Hunger comes close to being a masterpiece of a “classy genre of vampire film”, it is “ruined by horrendous errors, as when the regal Catherine Deneuve is made to crawl around on all fours, slavering over cut throats”, which Paglia considered an inappropriate focus on violence rather than sex.[13] Critic Elaine Showalter called The Hunger a “post-modernist vampire film” that “casts vampirism in bisexual terms, drawing on the tradition of the lesbian vampire…Contemporary and stylish, [it] is also disquieting in its suggestion that men and women in the 1980s have the same desires, the same appetites, and the same needs for power, money, and sex.”[14] David Bowie later commented about the film that “the first twenty minutes rattle along like hell – it really is a great opening.”[a] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, The Hunger holds a 59% approval rating based on 39 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The consensus reads: “Stylish yet hollow, The Hunger is a well-cast vampire thriller that mistakes erotic moments for a satisfying story.” … The Hunger has been listed as a cult film.[18][19] A retrospective review of the film by Film at Lincoln Center concluded: “With its famously bold visual aesthetic—featuring high-intensity lighting, expressionistic production design, and thrillingly intimate perspectives—and the melodramatic intensity of the three lead performances, the film is an ultra-stylish time capsule, an archetype of the high-gloss, high-concept storytelling mode that prevailed in early 1980s Hollywood.”[20] The film is popular with some segments of the goth subculture and inspired a short-lived TV series of the same name, although the series has no direct plot or character connection to it.[21] The film has been cited by publisher Fred Berger as an influence on the creation and direction of his gothic subculture zine Propaganda, and by showrunner Bryan Fuller on his television series Hannibal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_(1983_film)
Komunitas
ibbit.at
Depiction of the Book of Life by unknown greek painter – Public Domain A Dissident Reform Jew’s Yom Kippur Message to My Predominantly Jewish Facebook Friends Amidst Our Co-Religionists’ Abhorrent Genocide of the Palestinian People Part of the U’Netanneh Tokef, Jewish High Holidays prayer composed circa the 12th century reads: ——— On Rosh HaShanah it is written down, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed … Mi yichyeh u-mi yamut … Who will live and who will die, Who shall see ripe age and who shall not, Who shall perish by fire and who by water, … Who by hunger and who by thirst, Who by earthquake and who by plague … ,” and who by [various other misfortunes]… Who shall be at rest and who shall wander, Who shall be serene and who shall be disturbed, Who shall be at ease and who shall be afflicted , Who shall be poor and who shall be rich, Who shall be humbled and who shall be exalted. But penitence, prayer, and deeds of mercy annul the severity of the judgment.” ——— October 2, 2025: Each theistic American Jew born in the 20th Century or beyond who ever supported or acquiesced in (or does today) the hyper-criminal project of Zionism—the barbaric militarized mass-murderous theft of Palestinian land, property and lives by sociopathic European Jewish colonizers beginning in earnest in 1948—3 years AFTER the Allies had vanquished Nazism in WW2—ought to personally acknowledge and fervently seek atonement from God for their failure to understand what modern Judaism IS and what it calls on them to do and not do. I very much count myself in this category and also hold my fellow American Reform Jews (I was confirmed in LA’s Reform Jewish Temple Emanuel in my youth) chiefly responsible for the terrible moral capitulation American Jewry made to Zionism during the 20th Century and beyond, which has culminated in the genocidal world-historical civilizational collapse that began in October 2023 and continues today as we fast and pray. Here is the link to Reform Judaism’s late 19th Century restatement of modern Judaism’s Principles in what-is-known-in-shorthand as their 1885 Pittsburgh Platform: https://www.ccarnet.org/rabbinic-voice/platforms/article-declaration-principles/ Judging from the care its drafters took in crafting it and the eloquence of the finished product, this seminal text was plainly meant to restate Reform Judaism’s creed with reasonable brevity while preserving vitally necessary depth. Of the 8 platform planks in their historic restatement, formally titled “Article – Declaration of Principles – Central Conference of American Rabbis,” of greatest pertinence is its Plank 5, which staunchly declares (in sum) that MODERN JUDAISM IS A DIASPORA RELIGION ONLY: ——— We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel’s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men. WE CONSIDER OURSELVES NO LONGER A NATION, BUT A RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY, AND THEREFORE EXPECT NEITHER A RETURN TO PALESTINE, NOR A SACRIFICIAL WORSHIP UNDER THE SONS OF AARON, NOR THE RESTORATION OF ANY OF THE LAWS CONCERNING THE JEWISH STATE. ——— In a corollary statement expressing the same 19th Century Reform Jewish ethos Viennese rabbi Adolf Jellinek famously replied to a Jewish state advocate that Jews did not have any national characteristics, as such, but “thanks to their universalism they adapt and absorb qualities from the nations in whose midst they are born and educated. We are at home in Europe and regard ourselves as children of the lands in which we were born and raised, whose languages we speak, and whose cultures make up our intellectual substance. We are Germans, Frenchmen, Magyars, Italians, and so forth, WITH EVERY FIBER OF OUR BEING. We have long ceased to be true, thoroughbred Semites, and we have long ago lost sense of Hebrew nationality. ——— Just so. And US Jews are Americans WITH EVERY FIBER OF OUR BEING. Let’s now flash-forward 140 years: All 7 OTHER 1885 Pittsburgh Platform planks deftly articulate the sensibility of the vast majority of diaspora Reform Jews TODAY and dovetail with their generally non-conservative, left-liberal political, social and cultural worldviews. Eg. Planks 6. – 8. eloquently state: ——— We recognize in Judaism a progressive religion, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason. We are convinced of the utmost necessity of preserving the historical identity with our great past. Christianity and Islam, being daughter religions of Judaism, we appreciate their providential mission, to aid in the spreading of monotheistic and moral truth. We acknowledge that the spirit of broad humanity of our age is our ally in the fulfillment of our mission, and therefore we extend the hand of fellowship to all who cooperate with us in the establishment of the reign of truth and righteousness among men. We reassert the doctrine of Judaism that the soul is immortal, grounding the belief on the divine nature of human spirit, which forever finds bliss in righteousness and misery in wickedness. We reject as ideas not rooted in Judaism, the beliefs both in bodily resurrection and in Gehenna and Eden (Hell and Paradise) as abodes for everlasting punishment and reward. In full accordance with the spirit of the Mosaic legislation, which strives to regulate the relations between rich and poor, we deem it our duty to participate in the great task of modern times, to solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society. ——— But tragically, the staunchly anti-Zionist Plank 5 is jarringly incongruous with the nightmare belligerent Zionist Jews’ created in the 140 year interim: The sinful racist, ruinous, ruthless and sadistic colonialist occupation of Palestine since 1948 and the cruel continuous genocidal expropriation from- and oppression of the Palestinian people ever since–Palestinians who had no responsibility WHATSOEVER for the Holocaust the Nazis perpetrated against European Jewry. In the wise old adage widely attributed to Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing.” Alas, the overwhelming but far-too-silent majority of good American- and other diaspora Reform Jews allowed villainous Jewish and Christian Zionists to succeed in creating and maintaining for 77 years an evil, genocidal Jewish majority apartheid Zionist state that NEVER SHOULD HAVE COME INTO EXISTENCE! Lacking the resolve and gravitas of their 19th Century forbears Reform Jewish leaders gradually succumbed to what Karl Marx accurately called the inverting “power of money” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/power.htm Zionists employed to portray the maniacal immorality of European Jewish settler colonialism as moral. Today, as the Israeli sociopaths continue to remorselessly perpetrate a genocide in Gaza of the unspeakable perverse caliber and dimensions the Nazis inflicted on Jews and others in WW2 (see https://x.com/ecjla/status/1973444160800903623) each Jewish person must implore and hopefully (somehow) merit and receive God’s forgiveness for our cardinal sins in NOT USING ALL OUR INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE INFLUENCE AS US JEWS TO END FORTHWITH ISRAEL’S EXISTENCE in an orderly way that provides for the safe resettlement of all Israeli Jews to Western countries and returns the Holy Land to its rightful owners, the Palestinian people. Otherwise our odds of God granting us another year of longevity are less than optimal. Unhappy Jewish New Year to all. ——— PS. This is an edited (and amplified) version of my message originally composed (while fasting) and posted on my main Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/eric.jacobson.562 on Yom Kippur in hopes of influencing my mostly Reform Jewish FB friends to recognize Zionism as the harebrained, abominable and genocidally evil Jewish religious apostasy that it is, and by so doing to seek and earn inclusion in The Book of Life. The post It’s In The Book appeared first on CounterPunch.org. From CounterPunch.org via this RSS feed
Komunitas
ibbit.at
On Friday the Minnesota Star Tribune reported a conversation on the messaging app Signal between one of Stephen Miller’s top deputies, Anthony Salisbury, and a senior advisor to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Patrick Weaver. Stephen Miller is the deputy White House chief of staff and is widely identified as the figure directing the administration’s attacks on immigrants and diversity initiatives. Salisbury was in Minnesota to attend a funeral. His Signal chat was clearly visible to bystanders, one of whom provided images of it to the Minnesota Star Tribune. The two men were discussing a plan to deploy the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army to Portland, Oregon. Since World War I, the elite 82nd Airborne has specialized in parachute assaults into hostile areas. But President Donald J. Trump had apparently not signed off on the plan. Weaver told Salisbury that Defense Secretary Hegseth wanted Trump to give him a clear order to send troops into Portland. “Between you and I, I think Pete just wants the top cover from the boss if anything goes sideways with the troops there,” Weaver wrote. As Adam Gabbatt of The Guardian reported, Weaver said Hegseth preferred to send in the national guard owing to potential backlash over using the famous 82nd. “82nd is like our top tier [quick reaction force] for abroad,” Weaver wrote. “So it will cause a lot of headlines. Probably why he wants potus [Trump] to tell him to do it.” This conversation raises the question of how involved Trump is in the decisions his administration is making about the use of the military. On September 29, Hugo Lowell of The Guardian reported that Miller has taken the lead in the administration’s strikes on boats in the Caribbean, vessels the administration claims are Venezuelan drug boats although it has offered no evidence either to lawmakers or to the public for that claim. A White House spokesperson said in a statement that Trump directed the strikes and that he oversees all foreign policy. The statement said: “The entire administration is working together to execute the president’s directive with clear success.” But that raises echoes of the conversation on March 15, 2025, also on Signal, in which Hegseth and Vice President J.D. Vance included editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic in a discussion about whether to strike the Houthis in Yemen. Miller ended the March discussion simply by invoking Trump: “As I heard it,” he wrote, “the president was clear: green light….” And the attack was on. As Dan Froomkin spelled out last week in Press Watch, Trump has been focused on the misguided idea that Portland, Oregon, is a war zone ever since he apparently watched a September 4 Fox News Channel special report that passed off footage from the violence of 2020 as happening now. About twenty people protest every night outside an ICE facility, but while the protesters are insulting (they have been “ICE fishing” with donuts on fishing poles), the protests have been peaceful, with very few arrests. On September 25, Trump asserted that “nobody’s ever seen anything like it every night and this has gone on for years. They just burned the place down…. These are professional agitators. These are bad people and they [are] paid a lot of money by rich people….” He claimed Portland was plagued by “anarchists” and “crazy people” who were trying to “burn down buildings, including federal buildings.” Two days later, on Saturday, September 27, Trump’s social media account posted: “At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists. I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Oregon governor Tina Kotek told Trump his impression of Portland was wrong. On Sunday morning, Trump told NBC White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor: “I spoke to the governor, she was very nice. But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.” The same day, Hegseth federalized 200 National Guard personnel from Oregon to “protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other U.S. Government personnel who are performing Federal functions.” Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield and the city attorney of Portland immediately sued to stop the mobilization, saying it is unlawful, infringes on Oregon’s state sovereignty and police powers, and would violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids federal troops from being used for law enforcement. On October 1, Trump’s social media account posted that in Portland, “conditions continue to deteriorate into lawless mayhem…. We will never allow MOBS to take over our streets, burn our Cities, or destroy America. The National Guard is now in place, and has been dedicated to restoring LAW AND ORDER, and ending the Chaos, Death, and Destruction!” On Friday, U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut, a Trump appointee, heard arguments in the case. As Alicia Victoria Lozano of NBC News reported, deputy assistant attorney general Eric Hamilton said that the administration had called out troops to defend against “cruel radicals who have laid siege” to the ICE facility in Portland and who, this past summer, threw rocks at law enforcement officers. Lawyers for Portland pointed out that local police had handled the situation and that the order for deployment had come several months later. Senior deputy city attorney Caroline Turco told the judge: “We ultimately have a perception-versus-reality problem. The perception is that it is World War II out here. The reality is that this is a beautiful city with a sophisticated resource that can handle the situation.” Judge Immergut said she would rule by Saturday, but before she ruled, Hegseth activated the 200 National Guard troops. Shortly after, Immergut handed down her decision blocking the deployment. She declared “the President’s determination” that law enforcement could not execute the laws of the United States “was simply untethered to the facts.” “[T]his is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” Immergut wrote. The administration has “made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power—to the detriment of this nation.” Miller called her decision “[l]egal insurrection.” He posted: “This is an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers, and the deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself.” Troy Brynelson and Alex Zielinsky of Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that after Immergut’s ruling, federal officers showed force. They pushed protesters “hundreds of yards down city streets and fired tear gas, flash-bang grenades and pepper balls without any clear signs of provocation.” Brynelson and Zielinsky noted that the troops “were flanked by videographers, toting professional equipment and wearing high-visibility vests. They filmed from behind the lines of officers, capturing the show of force. At least two drones swept over the scenes.” At 7:56 on Saturday morning, Homeland Security Secretary Noem posted a video that appeared to show the federal raid on a Chicago apartment building on September 30. The video used that raid to show a fantasy military-style invasion that misrepresented the actual event in which federal agents arrived with a Black Hawk helicopter and large vehicles and dragged the unarmed residents out of their beds. Agents took all but one of the residents outside in zip ties before trashing the apartments. Their targets included U.S. citizens and children, some of whom were separated from their parents and all of whom were terrified. Over the video, Noem commented: “Chicago, we’re here for you.” Later on Saturday morning, Border Patrol agents wounded a woman on Chicago’s Southwest Side. DHS immediately claimed agents had fired “defensive shots” after being “rammed by 10 cars,” but no reporter has been able to confirm that story. Later, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker posted that Hegseth had called him. “This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will. It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will,” he wrote. Pritzker added that the administration planned to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard. “They will pull hardworking Americans out of their regular jobs and away from their families all to participate in a manufactured performance—not a serious effort [to] protect public safety. For Donald Trump, this has never been about safety. This is about control.” On Saturday afternoon, a spokesperson for the White House said Trump has “authorized” the deployment of 300 Illinois National Guard members. Later, Pritzker said he had been informed that members of the Texas National Guard would be deployed to Illinois. On Saturday afternoon, Miller posted: “The issue before us now is very simple and clear. There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.” Blocked from deploying Oregon National Guard troops in Portland, the administration on Sunday deployed 300 California National Guard troops to Portland instead. California governor Gavin Newsom broke the news, adding: “This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power. The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words—ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents.” Governor Kotek confirmed that troops had arrived. “This action appears…intentional to circumvent yesterday’s ruling by a federal judge,” she said. “The facts haven’t changed. There is no need for military intervention in Oregon. There is no insurrection in Portland. No threat to national security. Oregon is our home, not a military target. Oregonians exercising their freedom of speech against unlawful actions by the Trump Administration should do so peacefully.” Both California and Oregon asked Judge Immergut to stop the Trump administration from taking this end-run around her initial ruling. Tonight, Judge Immergut held an emergency hearing on the administration’s deployment of National Guard troops from California to Oregon. She forbade the deployment of any federalized National Guard troops from any state to Oregon for 14 days. After staying out of the public eye since his performance last Tuesday in front of the nation’s top military leaders and the press conference later that day, Trump spoke to sailors in Norfolk, Virginia, today. The president arrived an hour late and delivered a meandering, political address much like the one he gave on Tuesday. — Notes: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/04/us-military-portland-oregon-trump-administration https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/29/stephen-miller-venezuela-drug-boat-strike https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/signal-group-chat-attack-plans-hegseth-goldberg/682176/ https://presswatchers.org/2025/09/trump-am-i-watching-things-on-television-that-are-different-from-whats-happening/ https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ord.189270/gov.uscourts.ord.189270.1.0.pdf https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/portland-fears-violence-national-guard-deployed-rcna235047 https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ord.189270/gov.uscourts.ord.189270.56.0_1.pdf https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna235726 https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/03/us/chicago-apartment-ice-raid https://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/05/federal-tactics-on-protesters-escalates-hours-after-judge-rules-against-trump/ https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/chicago-national-guard-trump-deployment-portland-rcna235625 https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2025/10/04/shooting-involving-federal-agents-in-brighton-park-under-investigation https://www.npr.org/2025/10/05/nx-s1-5563170/trump-national-guard-chicago-portland-illinois-oregon-pritzker https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/05/politics/trump-says-us-military-members-will-still-be-paid-despite-shutdown https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/05/newsom-sue-trump-california-national-guard-oregon-00594527 https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/05/president-trump-calling-up-300-illinois-national-guard-immediately-to-protect-ice-buildings-for-60-days/ X: StephenM/status/1974534850334933179 StephenM/status/1974647432299327904 Sec_Noem/status/1974443512017178924 RonWyden/status/1974984195647926686 Bluesky: davidcorn.bsky.social/post/3m2f6vaf2jc2w mollyjongfast.bsky.social/post/3m2hcy7cdts2m govpritzker.illinois.gov/post/3m2f6l2t6h22k [citizensfedup.bsky.social/post/3m2hzrofpos2t](https://bsky.app/profile/citizensfedup.bsky.social/post/3m2hzrofpos2t%5C) 4polarsprite.bsky.social/post/3m22ecasrcc2e queenmazakeen.bsky.social/post/3m263uvlprs2g atrupar.com/post/3m2hv34u7ow2s joshuajfriedman.com/post/3lzwi3hwim22i annabower.bsky.social/post/3m2inr7zjn22g joshuajfriedman.com/post/3m2im36sxlc2o yasharali.bsky.social/post/3m2ijnjstpy2b kvetch.gay/post/3m2dfpy7lhc2m Share From Letters from an American via this RSS feed
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Nuwa Refining Rocks to Patch the Sky by Ren Yi (Chinese, 1840 - 1896) Nüwa, also read Nügua, is a mother goddess, culture hero, and/or member of the Three Sovereigns of Chinese mythology. She is a goddess in Chinese folk religion, Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. She is credited with creating humanity and repairing the Pillar of Heaven. Overview In Chinese mythology, Nüwa (女媧) is considered to be the first being with the ability to procreate and is the creator of all mankind. Ancient Chinese society was fiercely matriarchal, so Nüwa, being the mother of all humans, was considered a very important deity. She has a hand in a number of stories but is most commonly associated with China’s creation myth and for saving humanity by mending a hole in the sky after a great flood. Today, Nüwa is still a popular deity and is usually prayed to by women who need divine assistance with marital affairs or fertility issues. In art, she’s usually depicted as a supernatural creature with a human face and a long serpentine body but is also sometimes simply drawn as a woman dressed in traditional Chinese hanfu. Etymology Nüwa’s name, 女媧, is made up of the Chinese character for woman, nǚ (女), and a character that is completely unique to her name, wā (媧). In other styles of romanization, her name is sometimes written as Nü Gua or Nü Kua. Nüwa is also sometimes referred to respectfully as wā huáng (媧皇) which translates literally as “Empress Wa.” Mythology There are two widely told versions of China’s creation story. The most commonly told one is where Nüwa crafts humanity from river clay. The People of Clay After Pangu (盤古) emerged from his mythical egg and created the physical universe, the earth separated from the heavens and became a beautiful place full of lush, green vegetation, vast rivers, tall mountains, and all sorts of animals. One day, Nüwa decided to go for a walk in the woods among the mountains and animals. As she walked along, she was suddenly overcome with loneliness. Even though everything around her was strikingly beautiful, Nüwa had no one to keep her company. She decided to pause along the banks of a river and began to make figures out of clay from the mud. At first she began to make easy shapes like chickens and sheep, and though they amused her, she soon became bored with them. Gazing into the river and seeing her reflection, she was struck with inspiration. Why not make clay figures that looked like her? She began to shape the mud into figures with faces, arms, hands, and legs. To her delight, they began to dance and talk with her when she put them on the ground. She decided to name them humans (人). Nüwa was so excited by her creation that she made clay figures until her hands hurt. She took the end of a rope, dipped it in the mud, and began to swing it around her head forming blobs of sticky mud around her. It is said that highborn, noble people are descendants of those that Nüwa created by hand, while working class people were formed from the rope. Mending the Pillars of Heaven The world of the first beings was very different from ours now. The earth was just in its infancy and was only separated from the sky by four very large pillars. One day, Gonggong (龔工), the god of water, and the god of fire, Zhurong (祝融) became locked in a massive battle that would determine the ruler of heaven. Wildfires raged and floods plagued the countryside. Gonggong, who was motivated by evil, ultimately lost the fight. Gonggong was so angered that he bashed his head against Buzhou mountain—one of the four pillars holding up the heavens. The earth began to tremble and the pillar collapsed and ripped a hole in the sky. At this point, the earth was completely in tatters from Zhurong and Gonggong’s epic battle. Fires had scorched the earth, water was pouring incessantly from the hole in the sky, and the heavens no covered longer the earth. Seeing how her children were suffering, Nüwa immediately sprang to action. She went to the sky turtle, Ao, and begged him to grant her a miracle to save her children. The turtle obliged and used a sword she had given him to cut off his own four legs. Nüwa then gathered five colored stones and melted them together to fix the hole in the sky. She used Ao’s legs to replace the four broken pillars all the while holding up the sky with her back while rain poured down upon her. The ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian (司馬遷), recorded the following account of Nüwa’s heroic deed: The pillars of Heaven were broken and the corners of the earth gave way. Hereupon Nü Kua melted stones of the five colours to repair the heavens, and cut off the feet of the tortoise to set upright the four extremities of the earth. Gathering the ashes of reeds she stopped the flooding waters, and thus rescued the land. One version of the story says that after she was done, she was so tired that she laid to down to rest and died from exhaustion. Another version says that while she was working, she discovered there wasn’t enough stone to fix the sky, so she sacrificed herself to use her body to fill the last bits. Either way, order was restored to earth and humanity was able to live peacefully once again. Although she did her best, Nüwa couldn’t get the sky and earth to align exactly the way it had before. The earth became permanently tilted and that’s why it’s said that all of the rivers in China run in a Southeastern direction. article from here Nüwa repairing the pillar of heaven by Xiao Yuncong (1596–1673) 🐻Link to all Hexbear comms https://hexbear.net/post/1403966 📀 Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube](https://live.hexbear.net/c/movies 🔥 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread https://hexbear.net/post/6148937 ⚔ Come talk in the New Weekly PoC thread https://hexbear.net/post/6145795 🏳️⚧️ Talk with fellow Trans comrades in the New Weekly Trans thread https://hexbear.net/post/6343546 👊 New Weekly Improvement thread https://hexbear.net/post/6342233 🧡 Disabled comm megathread https://hexbear.net/post/6345502 ☕ Parenting Chat https://hexbear.net/post/6344898 🐉 Anime & Manga discussion thread https://hexbear.net/post/6011723 reminders: 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears 💜 Sorting by new you nerd 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog Links To Resources (Aid and Theory): Aid: 🌈 LGBTQ+ Resource Post 🍉 Resources for Palestine 🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee Theory: ❤️Foundations of Leninism ❤️Anarchism and Other Essays Empress Wa
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Image by Mohamed Nohassi. The Trump administration is smashing the domestic and international order the U.S. set up after the Second World War. It is attempting a full scale authoritarian, nationalist transformation of our society, the U.S. state, and its position in the international order. But it has faced mounting opposition from the majority of the U.S. population. Having lost the consent of the governed, Trump has turned to coercion to advance his far-right agenda. He has seized on the assassination of Charlie Kirk and used his funeral to launch a McCarthyite witch hunt against the Left and liberal organizations, particularly the NGOs that have been central to the resistance. Despite the loss of popular support and amidst a slowing economy, with growing class inequality and intensifying oppression, the Trump administration is more, not less, dangerous. It has made clear its intent to turn to even more dictatorial means to impose its agenda. Remember, Trump promised to be a dictator on “day one” of his presidency. Faced with this assault, the Left must argue for a united front of unions, social movement organizations, and political groups to defend all those under attack. We should be actively seeking opportunities for this type of organizing. For example, the Left should be supporting the call of the May Day Strong coalition to hold conferences to educate, train, and organize for mass disruptive actions, including political strikes to protect our democratic rights, along with our jobs, wages, and benefits. Trump: authoritarian, incompetent, and unpopular Before Kirk’s assassination, Trump’s regime was headed into a crisis. His attempt to implement Project 2025’s program ran into growing opposition, not from the Democrats and corporations, but in opinion polls and mass protests. Overall, 57 percent disapprove of Trump and 62 percent think the country is headed in the wrong direction, record popular opposition against a president at this point in their term. Majorities even oppose him on his two signature issues—immigration and the economy. They also disapprove of Trump’s tariffs, his support of Israel’s genocidal war, and his abandonment of Ukraine. That mass opposition in sentiment has driven people into enormous protests, from Hands Off! to May Day, No Kings, Labor Day, and mass mobilizations against ICE and the National Guard in cities across the U.S. Nonetheless, Trump has gone full speed ahead in implementing his authoritarian agenda. Abroad, he has trashed the so-called rules-based international order, treating both friends and foes in a transactional manner and imposing tariffs supposedly for the benefit of U.S. capital. He also sold Ukraine down the river to Russia, while he has greenlit Israel’s genocide in Palestine, all while lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize. At home, Trump has purged the U.S. state of liberal bureaucrats, weaponized its retooled structures against workers and oppressed groups, and launched an all-out class war: cutting taxes for billionaires, shredding regulations on businesses, and gutting programs for workers and the poor. That has made a mess of an already crisis-ridden society of the Gilded Age class and social inequality with all their attendant maladies. The combination of tariffs, mass deportation of migrant workers, and wild policy swings has produced the predicted results—labor shortages, increased prices, a drop in manufacturing investment, and a slowing economy at risk of recession. The nightmare of stagflation that plagued U.S. capitalism in the 1970s looks set to return. The administration’s assault on the state bureaucracy threatens its competent provision of essential economic and social services. DOGE’s cuts have ravaged programs like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which provides early warning of hurricanes, putting people’s lives in jeopardy amidst growing climate catastrophes. And Robert Kennedy Jr.’s attacks on science, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, and vaccine protocols puts millions of people’s lives at risk. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill threatens a fiscal crisis of the state. It will drive up spending, especially on the Pentagon and ICE, while it cuts revenues through tax cuts for the rich. That will guarantee austerity measures from this and future governments, no matter which capitalist party is in power. Every social institution has been put in the regime’s cross hairs, especially higher education, whose flagship institutions, like Harvard, that reproduce the ruling elite that staff the corporate elite and the state, have been defunded and subject to political purges. And a growing number of cities starting with Los Angeles and Washington D.C. have had ICE and the National Guard deployed to carry out Trump’s racist war on migrants, stop an imaginary crime wave, and act as provocateurs to justify further repression. Unpopular, split into factions, and mired in the Epstein crisis This strategy of rule or ruin not only turned the majority of the country against Trump’s regime and its domestic and international agenda. The Trump coalition also began to splinter into factional conflicts, best symbolized by the president’s bitter divorce with Elon Musk. Other divisions have started to emerge over everything from the Big Beautiful Bill to foreign policy. But by far the largest conflict has been over the revelations of Trump’s long-term relationship with convicted pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. All this threw the MAGA base into turmoil. Trump himself fueled this madness, promising on the campaign trail to release Epstein’s so-called client list. But after his attorney general, Pam Bondi, told him he was named in the files, he blocked their release. Feeling betrayed, MAGA leaders like Marjorie Taylor Greene denounced Trump, Bondi, and the addled FBI director Kash Patel. The MAGA faithful even disrupted Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA Student Action Summit to demand the release of the client list. Desperate to divert attention from the metastasizing scandal, Trump staged an increasing number of “Wag the Dog” actions designed to re-galvanize his base, from state terrorist attacks on motorboats off the coast of Venezuela to threats to deploy the National Guard in Chicago and Memphis. Kirk’s assassination: A political gift to Trump Amidst this crisis, the assassination of Charlie Kirk was a political gift to Trump and his regime. Trump seized on it as an opportunity to galvanize the far right’s factions, turning Kirk’s funeral into a far-right political rally to announce a holy war to avenge Kirk’s death. With over 100,000 attending and millions watching on TV, Trump, Vance, and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller whipped the crowd into a frenzy. As the crowd waved “Never Surrender” placards, Miller declared war on “our enemies” with an “army” prepared to fight to “save this civilization, to save the West, to save this republic” and “defeat the forces of darkness and evil.” While Kirk’s widow forgave the alleged shooter, Trump contradicted her (at her husband’s funeral!): “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.” The last thing Trump wants is reconciliation; he wants revenge for the loss of one of his holy warriors. Kirk was no run-of-the-mill propagandist exercising his First Amendment rights to engage in debate on college campuses. As Ta-Nehisi Coates documents, he used “debate” as a cover to spew racism, sexism, transphobia, antisemitism, islamophobia, xenophobia, and every other imaginable form of bigotry against the oppressed. He called George Floyd “a scumbag,” denounced Martin Luther King as “awful,” declared the Civil Rights Act “a huge mistake,” championed the racist “great replacement theory” that Democrats are replacing white people with immigrant people of color, and promised that Trump would “liberate” the country from “the enemy occupation of the foreigner hordes.” He proclaimed that “Jewish donors have been the No. 1 funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions and nonprofits. This is a beast created by secular Jews.” Kirk built his group, Turning Point USA—with its $80 million budget and 250,000 student members—to intimidate and coerce people, especially teachers. It established The Professor Watchlist and encouraged its members to document and expose instructors that “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Kirk also endorsed and organized violence. For example, he encouraged groups of men to form a line to prevent trans swimmer Lia Thomas from competing and say, “Hey, tough guy, you want to get in the pool? ’Cause you’re gonna have to come through us.” He demanded Joe Biden be “put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.” And he threatened that the new Trump administration would use state power to repress dissent, warning, “playtime is over. And if a Democrat gets in our way, well, then Matt Gaetz very well might arrest you.” He embraced racist vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two and wounded another in a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kirk called him “a hero to millions” at the far-right conference, AmericaFest. On top of that, he threw support behind Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election on January 6th. He boasted that Turning Point was “Sending 80+ buses full of patriots to D.C. to fight for this president.” Kirk was more than an ideological hitman and organizer for Trump; he was an ex officio member of the regime deeply integrated into the daily operations of the White House. Trump looked upon him as a loyal consigliere who stood by him after the failed insurrection, helped attract 46 percent of the youth vote, and assisted him in winning the presidency for a second time. J.D. Vance even credited Kirk with securing his appointment to the Vice Presidency. Trump has held the “radical left” responsible for political violence and even Kirk’s assassination. It is not. In reality, as even the CATO Institute documents, the far right, including both organized and unorganized individuals, is the main source of political violence. But Trump cynically ignored such facts, not even mentioning attacks on Democrats, including the murder of two politicians in Minnesota. Trump’s claim to be combating political violence reeks with the stench of hypocrisy. His regime is, to borrow a phrase from Martin Luther King, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”; he has inked a $1 trillion Pentagon budget, launched state terrorist attacks on Venezuelan boats, greenlit and armed Israel’s genocide in Palestine, hired thousands of new ICE agents to detain and deport migrants, and deployed troops to repress Black and Brown people in L.A., D.C., Chicago, and Portland. Escalating the New McCarthyism Even before Kirk’s assassination, Trump had launched a purge of institutions and workplaces of the Left and liberal organizations. In doing so, Trump is building on the work of the Biden administration, liberal university bosses, and corporations who had initiated the New McCarthyism by repressing Palestine solidarity activists on campuses and in workplaces across the country. Trump has escalated the Democrats’ attack, sending ICE agents to arrest, detain, and attempt to deport activists like Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and Mohsen Mahdawi. He has used the cover of charges of antisemitism to defund universities, compel them to suspend and fire faculty, and rewrite their curriculum to conform to his far-right agenda. After the assassination, Trump has thrown this McCarthyism into overdrive. The hypocrisy of his attacks boggles the mind. In his inauguration speech, Trump promised to “immediately stop all government censorship and bring free speech back to America” and announced that “never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.” Despite this promise, Trump has declared war on the left, threatening to “beat the hell out” of “radical left lunatics,” whose “rhetoric is responsible for the terrorism we’re seeing in our country today.” He promised, “We’re going to get that problem solved.” He strangely singled out antifa, which is not a group and barely exists even as a movement, and designated it a terrorist threat as a prelude to an attack on all progressive organizations. Stephen Miller went so far as to claim the Left is behind “a vast domestic terror movement,” and threatened, “we are going to use every resource we have . . . throughout the government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks.” Vice President J.D. Vance expanded the target list to include liberal organizations, especially those backed by the Ford Foundation and George Soros, which he alleged get “generous tax treatment.” He raged, “We’re going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that “visa revocations are underway” for visitors, workers, and international students who are “cheering on the public assassination of a political figure.” He warned those found guilty by his personal star chamber, “Prepare to be deported. You are not welcome in this country.” On Charlie Kirk’s podcast, Vance called on people to spy on and report one another to the state and their bosses. “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out,” he raged. “And hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility, and there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.” Thus, the far right, which campaigned against so-called cancel culture and used free speech as cover for their bigotry, harassment, and campaign of intimidation against oppressed groups, is now using state power to censor, fire, and silence their opposition. Already, Trump has issued an executive order designating antifa a “domestic terrorist organization.” Trump followed that up with a National Security Directive ordering the state to target organizations and individuals for thought crimes like advocating anti-racism and anti-capitalism. At his bizarre speech before a mandated meeting of all the military’s generals and admirals, he promised to enforce these orders by deploying US soldiers domestically against “the enemy within.” This is just the beginning of an assault on everyone in the resistance and the entire population. All our democratic rights are now in jeopardy. Socialists oppose terrorism Against Trump’s bizarre claim that the Left is to blame for Kirk’s assassination, we must state very clearly that no organized group on the Left and no liberal organizations support individual acts of terrorism and certainly do not condone Kirk’s murder. That is a lie that can find no factual corroboration anywhere. As socialists, we advocate collective organizing, protests, and strikes to advance our democratic demands. We exercise such popular power to win immediate reforms and to build confidence among the working masses to demand even more from our rulers. Socialism is fundamentally about deepening our collective democratic rights. Individual acts of terror do not advance such organizing, but in fact set it back. State bureaucrats, corporate bosses, and far right zealots are all replaceable. And the established powers will use their murders to launch campaigns of repression like the one we are currently suffering. As Leon Trotsky wrote, the capitalist state does not base itself on government ministers and cannot be eliminated with them. The classes it serves will always find new people; the mechanism remains intact and continues to function. But the disarray introduced into the ranks of the working masses themselves by a terrorist attempt is much deeper. If it is enough to arm oneself with a pistol in order to achieve one’s goal, why the efforts of the class struggle? If a thimbleful of gunpowder and a little chunk of lead is enough to shoot the enemy through the neck, what need is there for a class organization? If it makes sense to terrify highly placed personages with the roar of explosions, where is the need for the party? Why meetings, mass agitation and elections if one can so easily take aim at the ministerial bench from the gallery of parliament? In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes towards a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission. In the case of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, had no relationship to the organized Left or liberal organizations. He was not trained by left-wing professors in radical ideas, having dropped out after one semester at one of the most conservative schools in the country, Utah State University. He grew up in a conservative Mormon family, headed by a father who is “diehard MAGA,” that was awash in the gun culture of the far right. That intolerant and violent background trapped Robinson in a horrible contradiction between his far-right political environment and his relationship with his transitioning partner. That seems to have driven him to kill Kirk, admitting “I had enough of his hatred.” These conditions, of course, do not excuse or justify the murder, but they do explain it. As Malcolm X argued when asked about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in the context of U.S. imperialist war-mongering, especially in Vietnam, the chickens have come home to roost. The assassination was blowback triggered by bigotry. It had nothing to do with the Left. Liberals fall for the trap of civility Much of the liberal commentariat and Democratic Party politicians have capitulated before Trump’s witch hunt. They accept the right’s framework that Kirk was a practitioner of civic debate, ignoring the fact that he used free speech as a cover to carry out bigoted harassment and intimidation. Columnist Ezra Klein penned a column entitled “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way.” Seriously? Kirk resurrected racist bigotry and antisemitism from the pre-Civil Rights era. Kirk and Turning Point, as Ta-Nehisi Coates argues, “endorsed hurting people to advance his preferred policy outcomes.” Barnard College’s President Loren Ann Rosenbury repeated Klein’s arguments practically verbatim in “Now is the Time for Colleges to Host Difficult Speakers.” Rosenbury argued for civil dialogue about differences including with hate mongers like Kirk, but she is no principled defender of students’ right to organize and speak. She like other university presidents across the country expelled scores of Palestine solidarity activists for protesting genocide. For such people Kirk is within the bounds of civility, whereas students protesting Israel’s neofascist government and its crimes against humanity are not. Democratic Party politicians similarly fell for the Republicans’ civility trap, joining the chorus legitimizing Kirk’s bigotry. They started to do this even before his assassination as part of their lurch to the right to curry favor with centrist and right-wing voters. Liberal heartthrob, Gavin Newsom, invited Kirk on his podcast. After his murder, the Democrats joined the sacralization of the hatemonger with moments of silence. Democratic senators, including Bernie Sanders, backed Republicans in a unanimous vote to make October 14th a “National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk.” Rather than fight Trump’s McCarthyism, the Democratic Party establishment is adapting to it and throwing the oppressed groups targeted by Kirk under the bus. For instance, former senate leader Harry Reid just launched a new think tank, the Searchlight Institute, that demands the party downplay issues like trans rights and limit the influence of progressive organizations. Beware the bosses and bureaucrats’ opportunistic compliance Instead of standing up for freedom of speech, state officials, bosses, and university administrators have obeyed Trump’s injunction to fire, suspend, and censure scores of workers for statements, articles, and social media posts. This should surprise no one. Most bosses and top bureaucrats are political centrists or conservatives. They have only conceded better wages, working conditions, programs, and reforms under pressure from below. They are therefore predisposed to practice “opportunistic compliance” with Trump’s McCarthyism, just as they did during the 1950s when they purged the Left from workplaces and universities. The administration’s threat of defunding, denying certification, and cancelling contracts has driven them to complete capitulation. The government put many state workers on leave; ABC temporarily suspended comedian Jimmy Kimmel; the Washington Post fired its only Black woman columnist, Karen Attiah; universities fired and suspended faculty and workers and also expelled students; airlines grounded pilots; and hospitals even fired healthcare workers. And in one of the most ominous developments, Berkeley, the birthplace of the 1960s Free Speech Movement, forked over the names of 160 professors, including Jewish anti-Zionist Judith Butler, and their investigation into them for alleged antisemitism. All this has sent a chill through higher education not seen since the 1950s. Don’t adapt to the New McCarthyism The Left must reject the right’s framework of civility, refute its preposterous allegations against our organizations, and win forces of resistance to a united defense of everyone’s democratic rights. Unfortunately, some on the reformist Left have conceded ground to the right. In “Charlie Kirk’s Murder is a Tragedy and a Disaster,” Ben Burgis and Meagan Day initially make a straightforward case against political violence and rightly point out how such acts give the right an excuse and justification to carry out repression. But they then go on to mimic the liberal establishment’s call for civility, warn about the danger of “tit for tat violence” and “our political cultures descent into dehumanizing tribalism,” and chide people on the left for displaying “a lack of empathy” for Kirk and his family. To characterize political polarization between the right and the Left as “tribalism” is problematic, not only because of the racist and colonialist connotations of the term, but also because it implies that the conflict between the regime and the Left could be resolved by more “adult behavior,” debate, discussion, and democratic elections. That is at best naïve. To repeat, the right is not engaged in civil dialogue or any kind of normal bourgeois electoral politics; they are carrying out a political counter-revolution to establish an authoritarian state and roll back all the gains won by the labor and social movements in the 1930s and 1960s. The right has made this abundantly clear. Stephen Bannon raged on his podcast, the War Room, “people are contacting me saying, ‘Hey can you get on here to debate about the First Amendment?’ We ain’t debating anything. We’re taking action.” He went on to warn, “now we have a scalp in Jimmy Kimmel. And there are gonna be many, many, many more scalps.” We should not be debating people like Kirk as Newsom and Burgis did. We are not having a reasoned exchange of ideas with them; we’re in an existential struggle with a far-right regime that is weaponizing the state to carry out a McCarthyite war against the Left and the remnants of democracy. We should instead stage protests and strikes to defend our rights and jobs. Moreover, the Left should not be demanding empathy from the oppressed for their oppressors, especially ones like Kirk who spewed bigotry, engaged in harassment and intimidation, and supported Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Nor should we by chiding people for making angry social media posts, especially when the right is using those as justification to fire people en masse. We should be clear; the overwhelming majority of political violence comes from the right’s organized forces and unorganized individuals. Authoritarianism without consent Our task is to build the resistance. Trump may now have a re-galvanized base and a solid minority of support in the country, but we have the majority, and the polls especially among young people prove that on everything from immigration to the economy and even Palestine. That dissatisfaction will only grow over time. Why? Because Trump has and will make the lives of the vast majority worse. As the Center for American Progress has documented, his policies will only benefit the top one percent at the cost of the lives and living standards of the 99 percent. Thus, Trump is in a weaker position than other autocrats like Viktor Orban, who swept to power with 68 percent of parliamentary seats in 1998 and maintained support until recently for his authoritarian transformation of Hungary. Trump, by contrast, is profoundly unpopular, has razor thin majorities in congress, and his support has further declined since the assassination of Kirk. Yet, while Trump’s authoritarianism and his policies will only deepen the crises in U.S. society there is no guarantee as to which forces will benefit most from popular discontent. Instead of fighting Trump, the capitalist establishment and its political representatives in the Democratic Party have for the most part capitulated, either currying favor with the regime or adopting James Carville’s possum strategy of playing dead in the run up to next year’s midterm elections. Under pressure from below, however, the Senate Democrats finally stood up over the budget, opting to shut the government down in defense of Biden’s subsidies to Obamacare. But they may have fallen into a trap set by Trump and his OMB director, Russ Vought, who have shown no signs of backing down. Instead, they’re promising to use the shutdown to fire tens of thousands of federal workers permanently. The Democrats have walked into a knife fight, brandishing pleas for civility, dialogue, and compromise. These will fall on deaf ears. Their hope is that the shutdown will benefit them in the midterms, but regardless of the outcome of this fight, it is far from certain that they will win back Congress next year. The Democrats are less popular than Trump. And even if they did secure a majority in the House or Senate—no shoo-in given the regime’s plans for gerrymandering and voter suppression—the bulk of those elected would be clones of Hakeem Jeffries and Harry Reid. These are forces who are at best committed to restoring the status quo ante and, in order to secure centrist votes, have adapted to and in some cases adopted the right’s positions. Even if Democrats’ miraculously find the will to fight, Trump has shown that he’s willing to override the Constitution’s so-called checks and balances and rule by executive order. And the Left politicians that do want to fight are a tiny minority trapped in a hostile Democratic Party. We also can’t assume that the Left, unions, and resistance will fill the vacuum. That depends on what political positions, strategy, and tactics we adopt. The bulk of the trade union officialdom, NGO leadership, and most of the Left remain predominantly focused on elections. They assume that holding office is the same as having the power to enact reform. In reality, when elected even the most genuine reformists find themselves trapped by the confines of the capitalist state and its dependence for revenue on capitalism’s growth and profitability. As a result, they find themselves unable to deliver on their promises. That applies especially to those elected to executive office like mayors of cities. Chicago’s mayor Brandon Johnson, for instance, has been unable to deliver on most of his promises, initially accommodated forces to his right including the police, and now faces relentless attacks from Trump and the business class. All this has caused Johnson’s approval rating to plummet to 26 percent. And it is not at all clear that the experience of the Johnson mayoralty has strengthened the forces of the Chicago Left. Without mass class and social struggle from below, and the type of organizing that this presupposes, anyone elected to executive office will face the same sad fate, including Zohran Mamdani if he wins the New York’s mayoral race. For mass class and social struggle That’s why the organized working class—unionized workers—and social movements are of decisive importance. Only our class power—our ability to shut the system down with strikes—can stop Trump, defend democracy, and secure reforms. But some unions, rather than fight, have accommodated Trump, most significantly the UAW and Teamsters. UAW president Sean Fain has mistakenly backed Trump’s protectionism in the hopes of securing jobs, while the Teamsters’ Sean O’Brien went so far as to speak at the far right hate fest, aka the Republican National Convention. Such accommodation will backfire, opening desperate workers worried about their jobs and living standards to Trump’s racist and xenophobic arguments, sowing divisions in our class. Even worse, without the power of organized workers, the social movements and the broad resistance will be weaker. Instead, we need mass disruptive protests and most importantly political strikes like those in South Korea that blocked their president’s attempted coup and similar actions currently shutting down France to block Emmanuel Macron’s undemocratic appointment of a prime minister to impose austerity on workers. We must make this country ungovernable to stop Trump’s authoritarian power grab. But we are not yet in a position to stage these kinds of political strikes. The most promising development that has the potential to organize such mass working-class resistance is May Day Strong; it is the key united front of unions, social movements, and broad resistance formations like 50501. It played a critical role in supporting May Day and Labor Day demonstrations nationally, both of which were among the largest in recent history but still far from the size and militancy needed for this moment. To deepen and expand its network, May Day Strong has called for regional conferences to bring together unions, social movements, and resistance formations for education, training, and coalition building. The plan is to forge an even larger and more rooted united front capable of calling mass disruptive protests in the run up to job actions and even political strikes on May Day 2026. Everyone on the Left and in the broad resistance should heed their call. If we fight we can win. Take Jimmy Kimmel as an example. After his suspension, five Hollywood unions protested in defense of freedom of speech and planned mass rallies while actors signed a mass petition, and consumers threatened to boycott Disney. After its stock dropped by 2.39 percent costing nearly $5 billion in market value, the company relented and placed him back on air. In another case, after Texas State fired professor Tom Alter without due process for giving a talk at a socialist conference, students, faculty, and unions united in protests, issued petitions, staged press conferences, and won a court case granting him a temporary reinstatement. But with the administration launching formal procedures to fire him, the fight is far from over. Eyes on the prize May Day Strong is crucial for galvanizing such struggles. It is not without problems and debates, however. At this point, the coalition’s calendar of action only extends through May Day 2026. This likely reflects the unions and NGOs’ orientation toward the midterms, which will go into full swing after May Day. Socialists inside the May Day Strong coalition, and within all the resistance formations, must argue against shifting our strategy away from building mass struggle to campaigning in the midterms. We must keep our eyes on the prize of organizing mass protests and strikes right through the election calendar. Such actions must be our top collective priority, no matter what individuals do at the ballot box. Any time, money, and energy diverted from struggle to campaigning for the Democratic Party will set the resistance back, not advance it. The Left must also challenge the argument that the resistance must downplay issues like Palestine and trans rights to broaden the movement. Such accommodation to the right is based on a mistaken reading of mass consciousness and an assumption that taking up these issues will divide us. In fact, polls show that most people have shifted radically to the left on these so-called wedge issues. Take Palestine. In August, a Quinnipiac poll found that 60 percent of Americans oppose the U.S. sending arms to Israel, and 77 percent of Democrats believe Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. Based on these facts, we should challenge class-reductionist arguments that claim that we can only build a mass working class movement by putting forth so-called “universal class demands” and downplaying the demands of the oppressed. In reality, the working class is made up of oppressed groups from trans people to people of color, migrants, and our siblings in other countries, especially Palestinians. An injury to one is an injury to all The only way to unite such a multigendered, multiracial, and multinational class is by championing the demands of the oppressed. If we do not, we risk excluding key contingents of the class struggle, alienating whole social movements, and making our side vulnerable to Trump’s strategy of divide and conquer. Trump is using attacks on Palestinians and trans people to carry out class war on us all. Therefore, we must be symmetrical in opposition, defending all those targeted and embracing their demands. We must bluntly declare, if you try to attack any of us, you have to come through all of us. We must debate all this out in a manner that does not burn bridges and that resolves disagreements in democratic formations of struggle. Solidarity, even amidst differences, is essential, because no one is coming to save us, but us—our unions, social movements, and the Left we have inherited from the past with all their strengths as well as faults and weaknesses. We are in the fight of our lives. We must unite, argue, organize, and wield our power in mass protest and strikes to defend our democratic rights, along with our jobs, wages, and benefits. We must build the working-class resistance based on the classic slogan of the labor movement, “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Only such solidarity with all those under attack and without exception can unite us to defeat the Trump regime. [Content truncated due to length…] From CounterPunch.org via this RSS feed
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Monday marks the start of a week of planned chaos. Trump is panicking, running from the Epstein files and his cratering approval ratings. His answer is to incite chaos, sow confusion, and offer distraction to the easily distracted press. We must be the anchor in the storm. Look past the noise and confusion. See the arc of history bending to our will. Slowly, painfully, fitfully, but bending, nonetheless. Trump controls the pulleys and rigging of spectacle—the military, the Oval Office, executive orders, shouted press briefings in the rotor wash of Marine One, a vanity social media platform, and a White House press corps fighting for scraps of disinformation to broadcast to an anxious world. It is all for show. Sound and fury signifying nothing. We must remain steadfast. We must not amplify the chaos. Do not credit speculation or hearsay designed to generate fear-based revenue for tech giants and social media billionaires. Maintain perspective. With our hard work, America will emerge from this challenging period and return to the rule of law and the constitutional republic that has endured for over two centuries. Yes, Trump is creating hardship for millions of Americans. He is curtailing liberties and marginalizing the vulnerable. He is corrupt beyond measure. But he will not defeat us. The power of the presidency is ours; it derives from the consent of the governed. We can and will reclaim it. Remember that truth as we navigate through the artificial fog of the coming week. We have the momentum as we head toward the 2026 elections, the first measurement point that will grade Trump’s disastrous second term. Four mass shootings start the week. Four mass shootings occurred on Sunday, September 27-28, 2025. Guns are a plague upon America’s soul. The senseless massacres will not stop until we control guns. There will always be madmen and zealots who abuse the easy access to guns in America to kill and injure their enemies, real and imagined. Trump ignored the problem of guns when he addressed one of the mass shootings (in Michigan). He blamed animosity toward Christians. (“This appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America.”) See Fox News re Michigan mass shooting. See BBC re Southport, North Carolina mass shooting. See KNOE8, Bourbon Street shooting leaves 1 dead, 3 injured See KSAT, Texas: 2 killed, 5 injured in shooting at Lucky Eagle Casino. In any other country, each of these stories would dominate the headlines for weeks. Sadly, in the US, none of them will be front-page stories on Monday. Indeed, the latter three stories were mostly absent from the national press. Guns kill people. We must control guns. The “shutdown” is about a constitutional crisis, not “Which party will get the blame?” Democratic leaders are scheduled to meet with Trump on Monday. The Guardian, Trump to meet with US congressional leaders in last-ditch effort to avoid shutdown. He cancelled the last meeting because he said Democratic demands (obey the Constitution, reduce healthcare premiums) were “ridiculous.” The demands by Democrats haven’t changed, so it is unclear why Trump wants to meet. The current spending authority expires on Tuesday. The political press is missing the point by obsessing over which party will be “blamed” for the shutdown. See Politico, Republicans’ shutdown blame game is fracturing. The real story is that Trump is violating the Constitution every day by refusing to spend funds appropriated by Congress—a course of conduct that makes any proposed budget meaningless. The Democrats have one point of leverage: the Senate filibuster. If they do not use that leverage to force Trump to obey the Constitution, passing a new budget is a silly waste of time. The concept of political “blame” has no relevance to demanding that Trump faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress—including appropriations bills. Any analysis of the upcoming shutdown that includes “which party will get the blame” is the type of “horse-race” political reporting that helped normalize Trump and propel us into our present constitutional crisis. Trump will crash Hegseth’s meeting with 800+ military officers on Tuesday When Trump realized that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would use 800+ admirals and generals as extras in a video starring Hegseth, Trump couldn’t stand it. Trump announced that he will crash the event. See HuffPo, Trump To Attend Hegseth’s Opaque Meeting With Pentagon’s Top Generals. Trump’s attendance is most likely motivated by his vanity. In Trumpworld, no one is permitted to occupy a spotlight that Trump believes rightfully belongs to him. Remember when Trump took over Dr. Anthony Fauci’s daily briefings on Covid and ended up suggesting that people inject bleach to fight the virus? Trump’s last-minute plan to attend the meeting has incited a frenzy of baseless speculation about Trump’s “real” reason for meeting with 800 senior officers in the military. I will not repeat or link to those stories because they are wildly irresponsible. Suffice it to say that the stories all end with some version of “and then Trump imposes martial law.” That claim is ridiculous. Look, Trump couldn’t even fire a comedian from his late-night show with the help of an FCC Chair doing his best impression of Michael Corleone in The Godfather. Why did Trump fail? Because tens of millions of people rose to protest Trump’s move. The American people would be significantly more passionate about an attempt to impose martial law than about their right to listen to jokes from the comedian of their choice. More to the point, if Trump ordered the generals and admirals to impose martial law, he would have a global mutiny on his hands. Many senior officers would refuse to follow those illegal orders, as would hundreds of thousands of enlisted personnel and officers. The illegal command to impose martial law would fracture leadership and destroy unit cohesion and “good military order” within the ranks. The military brass understands this fact—and has undoubtedly communicated it in blunt terms to Trump’s henchmen. We must be more disciplined and steely-eyed when Trump rattles sabers. The saber-rattling is reprehensible, period. But we must distinguish between the saber-rattling and the reality of Trump’s follow-through. For example, Trump seems to be second-guessing his deployment of 200 National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon. See 11Alive, Trump seemed to cool on Portland military plan before moving forward. Although the deployment went forward despite Trump’s hesitation, he seemed to acknowledge that what he was “seeing on TV” was different than what he was being told by his staff. Per 11Alive, Trump said on Sunday, Trump referenced a weekend conversation with Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, and he alluded to being told by Kotek that the reality in Portland is different from what’s being portrayed to him. “I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump said. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.” The initial response to the deployment was to mock Trump by showing Portland as the peaceful, beautiful city that it is, rather than the war-ravaged city described to Trump by staff. We should continue to mock Trump for deploying 200 National Guard Troops to a city that is at peace. If Trump declares martial law on Tuesday during his meeting with the generals and admirals, I will issue a full and abject apology and then head for the barricades. In the meantime, we have a democracy to save; standing around speculating about things that are unlikely to happen isn’t helping us achieve our goal. In fact, it is counterproductive. Clarence Thomas suggests that the right to same-sex marriage is at risk In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the Supreme Court revoked a constitutionally recognized right—the right to reproductive choice. The legal reasoning in Dobbs suggested that the Court’s recognition of the right to same-sex marriage was in peril. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion to assure nervous Americans that said, “Don’t worry, nobody is thinking of revoking the right to same sex marriage.” Justice Kavanaugh wrote, “Overruling Roe does not mean the overruling of [other precedents], and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents.” Despite Kavanaugh’s assurance, Justice Thomas suggested over the weekend that the Supreme Court might reverse Obergefell, the case establishing the right to same-sex marriage. See The Guardian, Clarence Thomas says precedent might not determine cases on upcoming supreme court docket. The Supreme Court has before it a petition for certiorari that challenges the holding in Obergefell. On cue, Justice Thomas said, I don’t think that … any of these cases that have been decided are the gospel.” . . . And I do give perspective to the precedent. But … the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition, and our country and our laws, and be based on something – not just something somebody dreamt up and others went along with. It certainly sounds like Thomas is suggesting that Obergefell will be overruled. I hope I am wrong, but the reasoning in Dobbs rescinding the right to reproductive liberty applies directly to the right to same sex marriage recognized in Obergefell. On the one hand, highly respected commentators have stated that the Roberts Court is unlikely to overturn Obergefell. See The 19th, Supreme Court isn’t likely to overturn marriage equality. (“The Supreme Court is unlikely to take up [Kim Davis’s] case, they say. And even if they did, the justices probably wouldn’t rule in her favor.”) On the other hand, the Supreme Court landscape has undergone significant changes over the past few weeks. As Josh Marshall points out, last week the Supreme Court recognized a Trump legal theory (pocket rescissions) that was “comical.” See Talking Points Memo, It’s Completely Trump’s Supreme Court Now, And He Knows It. The Roberts Court has completely surrendered to Trump. Will the Court overrule Obergefell? The answer to that question depends on what Trump wants—because whatever he wants, the odds are 90%+ that the Court will grant Trump the relief he seeks. Concluding Thoughts Readers of the newsletter were out in force over the weekend! Keep up the good work. When enough of us raise our voices, we protect democracy for all of us! Photos of Protests and Rallies Four photos below: Portland, Oregon Below: Canvassing for Prop 50 in Lake Tahoe, CA Below: Berkeley, CA Below: St. Paul Visibility Brigade Below, Chicago Below, N Montpelier, VT—a powerful, evocative photo. Below, Downtown Portland, OR Daily Dose of Perspective From Today’s Edition Newsletter via this RSS feed
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🚨🎧Fliperama de Boteco #493 – Bucky O’Hare (Arcade) 🔗Bora ouvir: https://bit.ly/46FSTUV No mais novo episódio do Fliperama de Boteco, Guilherme Ferrari, Lili, Guilherme Dellagustin e Dr. Marcos Melo exploram o obscuro, mas incrível, Bucky O’Hare, lançado pela Konami exclusivamente nos arcades em 1992. Inspirado no desenho animado e na HQ homônima, o jogo coloca os jogadores no comando de Bucky e sua tripulação em uma luta épica contra os malignos Sapos do Império Toad. 💥 O beat ‘em up traz o DNA clássico da Konami, com jogabilidade frenética, visuais coloridos, humor cartunesco e até aquele estilo caótico que fez a empresa ser lembrada nos fliperamas. #FDB #FliperamadeBoteco #BuckyOHare #Konami #ArcadeClassics #RetroGaming #BeatEmUp #ArcadeGames #90sGaming #RetroGames #OldSchoolGaming #CoinOp #Fliperama #RetroArcade #ClassicGames #GamerRetro #GamePodcast #podcast
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This article by Dulce Olvera originally appeared in the September 25, 2025 edition of Sin Embargo. Mexico City. Religious associations, banks, real estate agencies, large companies such as Coca-Cola and Kimberly Clark, as well as golf courses, agribusinesses, and individuals such as former governors and even former President Vicente Fox Quesada have abused the over-concessioned water concession titles thanks to the legal framework established by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, which is seeking to be reformed by the government of Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo , who has undertaken a review of the 536,000 titles held by Conagua. Since 2012, groups have promoted a General Water Law initiative to prioritize human use of water over industrial or service use, but it has remained frozen by Congress ever since. “During the neoliberal period, a model was promoted to grant concessions to our national waters and to treat water as a commodity. This has generated a whole series of impacts, including hoarding, over-concessioning, significant infrastructure deterioration, and perhaps one of the most acute impacts is the unequal distribution of water in our country,” Efraín Morales López, Director General of the National Water Commission (Conagua), explained on Wednesday. SinEmbargo has revealed how 3,000 large private users monopolize the concessions granted by Conagua, including Kimberly Clark and Banco Azteca, companies owned by millionaires Claudio X. González Laporte and Ricardo Salinas Pliego, as well as FEMSA, Bachoco, Herdez, Lala, the mining companies GoldCorp, and Buenavista de Grupo México, owned by the other millionaire Germán Larrea Mota-Velasco, according to the study by the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM, 2020) The Water Millionaires. These same data obtained from the Conagua public registry show that the same user can hold multiple concessions in the name of relatives, partners, and/or nominees, as in the case of Coca-Cola and the Tricio family of Grupo Lala. Even religious associations have accumulated 127 water concessions totaling 7,483,756 cubic meters per year, according to data from Conagua. Some of these were granted for agricultural use, even though the users have retirement homes that provide lodging services. This is shown by an analysis of the Public Registry of Water Rights conducted by Rubén Juárez Zapatero, a member of the Citizen Movement in Defense of La Loma. Likewise, it has become known how politicians from all parties who have governed their states have benefited from concession titles to exploit the country’s water resources. This is the case, for example, of Guillermo Padrés Elías (Sonora), Diego Sinhué Rodríguez Vallejo (Guanajuato), Miguel Márquez Márquez (Guanajuato), Jaime Rodríguez Calderón (Nuevo León), Luis Armando Reynoso Femat (Aguascalientes), Francisco Ramírez Acuña (Jalisco), Ángel Aguirre Rivero (Guerrero), Rutilio Escandón Cadena (Chiapas), and also former President Vicente Fox Quesada, who was also Governor of Guanajuato. Dead fish in laguna de Bustillos, a result of drought. Politicians Squeeze Resources Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s Coordinator of Deputies, who describes his passion as “working for the country.” A particular example of how the political class has benefited from water concession titles is that of the Monreal family, the Zacatecas political clan that holds several water concessions for agricultural use in an overexploited aquifer in the state, according to Conagua. The data in this case show that Father Felipe Monreal Huerta (who died in 2002), as well as the Governor of Zacatecas David Monreal, Senator and former mayor Saúl Monreal, Cándido and Elías Monreal Ávila – all brothers of Morena Deputy Ricardo Monreal Ávila – have obtained concessions for “agricultural use” and “different uses” between 1999 and 2020. They are not the only ones. Sonora water concessions of the Padrés family. REPDA In Sonora, the family of former governor Guillermo Padrés Elías holds, according to the Public Registry of Water Rights (REPDA), six concession titles in the names of Guillermo Padrés Dagnino, son of the former PAN governor, and Miguel Padrés Molina, the former governor’s nephew. Proceso magazine reported in May 2015 that the dam was built on Padrés’ ranch between late 2011 and early 2012, benefiting only Padrés Dagnino and Padrés Molina. The building was demolished, as was the case with the El Saucito ranch, located in the municipality of Balleza, Chihuahua, owned by former PRI governor César Duarte Jáquez. The property had been seized from him and was recovered during the administration of PAN Governor Maru Campos, with whom he has long been associated. In Chihuahua, there is a hydromafia made up of former state officials from Conagua (National Water Commission), which has allowed—through lawsuits, false concession titles, and trafficking of certificates—an alleged front man for former PRI governor César Duarte to overexploit the Llano de Gigantes aquifer to produce walnuts. This network has also allowed Mennonite producers and the agro-industrial apple producer La Norteñita to overexploit the Laguna Santa María aquifer, according to the state citizen comptroller’s office. Jaime Rodríguez Calderón’s two concessions. REPDA. Also in the north of the country, former governor of Nuevo León, Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, owns a communal land in Paredón, Coahuila. For agricultural use, it has 184,000 m3/year of groundwater, which he received from Conagua in November 2006, when he was already a local PRI deputy and years later became mayor of García. He obtained another concession in October 2020, when he was governor, according to the REPDA. In Aguascalientes, the same data from the Public Registry of Water Rights shows how Luis Armando Reynoso Femat, a member of the National Action Party (PAN), is currently facing charges of tax fraud, embezzlement, and misuse of public office. He and his siblings, Graciela, Felipe, Laura, Olga Irene, Lourdes, and Óscar, have three agricultural use concession titles granted between 1996 and 1998, each of which allows them to obtain more than 200,000 m3 of water annually. Concessions of the Fermats, associated with PAN. REPDA In Jalisco, former governor and current PAN Senator Francisco Ramírez Acuña holds an agricultural concession he obtained in 1999, two years before assuming the state governorship and while serving as Mayor of Guadalajara. This permit allows him to use 25,000 m3 of groundwater per year from the Lerma-Santiago-Pacific Basin. Meanwhile, in Guanajuato, three former PAN governors and their families hold different concession titles. This is the case of the family of former President Vicente Fox Quesada, who enjoys 18 concessions in San Francisco del Rincón, Guanajuato, which allow them to supply water to their various companies, and at a special price due to a government subsidy that must be allocated only to small producers, as SinEmbargo reported in 2023. Former Governor Miguel Márquez Márquez also holds three concession titles: one granted by the local Conagua Directorate in Guanajuato in January 2000 when he was a Deputy in the state Congress, which allows him to extract 150,000 m3 of groundwater per year; another title in the Lerma-Santiago-Pacific Basin, obtained in March 2001 when he was Mayor of Purísima del Rincón; and the most recent, from January 2013, also in the Lerma-Santiago-Pacific Basin, when he was already Governor of the state, which allows him to extract 90,000 m3 of groundwater per year. Water concessions held by former President Vicente Fox. REPDA In the same state, the outgoing Governor, Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo, a member of the National Action Party (PAN), obtained an agricultural land use permit during his administration, allowing him to extract 5,000 cubic meters of groundwater annually. In Guerrero, former Governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero, who left office following the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa student teachers, and his wife, Laura del Rocío Herrera, have registered a concession title for agricultural use granted in January 2019 that allows them to extract 51,609 m3 of groundwater per year. Former Governor Rutilio Escandon Cadenas obtained an agricultural concession title in 2001, when he was a Senator, to extract 198,806 m3 of groundwater from the Southern Border Basin. The Ángel Aguirre Rivero concession. Image: REPDA Other Chiefs Added to this is the group of local bosses who control the agricultural irrigation districts, which control 67 percent of the water rights granted. Elena Burns, a member of Agua para Todos (Water for All), explained to this media outlet how the main monopolists and speculators are the real estate industry, banks, irrigation districts, agribusinesses, and individuals who have managed to obtain more than one million cubic meters annually for agricultural use, a use exempt from payment of fees that can later be sold for industrial or other lucrative uses. Since 1993, Conagua has encouraged the Irrigation District modules to form civil associations. Since then, the governing boards of the ACs have controlled water distribution and their user lists, managing the self-sufficiency fees collected from users. The ACs’ governing boards were grouped into Limited Liability Companies (LLCs). When federal funds reach these corporations, there is no transparency in their management, and those who control the water end up selling or renting the surplus (to real estate companies, steel companies, the CFE [state electrical utility], among others). The head of Conagua, Efraín Morales López, explained precisely that because the current Salinas Law (1992) allows a scheme of transmissions between individuals – where they can sell their concession titles from one person to another – a “black market for water” has been created to speculate with the resource. “Part of the regulation we’re trying to put in place is to put an end to this black market and return this unused water to the nation’s domain, so that the nation can determine the feasibility of granting these titles,” he said. Concession Forgery Mauricio Rodríguez Alonso, Deputy Director General of Water Administration, explained on Wednesday how a detailed review of each of Conagua’s 536,000 water titles revealed 58,938 inconsistencies. “What are the most common incidents we encounter? Titles with no clear validity date. Alleged forgery or duplication of titles. A use other than that for which the title was granted. And location coordinates that are incorrect or don’t correspond to the location where the title was issued,” he said. The falsification of concession titles has been identified in Chihuahua. According to Elena Burns, former deputy director of Administration at Conagua, the then-Chihuahua Conagua delegate and PRI member Alex Le Baron, in meetings with his legal representatives held in October 2014, issued “certificates of work” to 395 applicants for water supply certificates, even though they did not have wells, as required by presidential decree. Mennonite communities in Mexico have met strong criticism over poor practices like deforestation and also overexploitation of water concessions by fraud. These 395 people, of Mennonite origin, then collectively used these “apocryphal records” to sue Conagua to grant concession titles for undetermined volumes, despite the extreme overexploitation of the aquifers. Water Misuse The deputy director of Conagua stated that agricultural titles do not pay for water because they produce food; however, they found titles that are identified as agricultural, but are for industrial complexes, spas, a golf club, and there is also the issue of the sale of sunflower seeds. An example of a different use than the one for which the title was granted takes place in Mexico City. There, in the 1990s, Conagua granted a concession “for agricultural use” to the Bosques Golf Club, a residential site located in the Cuajimalpa municipality. Conagua’s data records show that the concession title for the Bosques Golf Club (13DFE100012/26AGDA16) was granted by the Valley of Mexico Basin Authority on November 6, 1995, under the National Salinist Water Law, which has allowed land grabbing in areas with low water availability to date. The concession for this golf club is 365,040 m3/year of surface water, which is for human consumption. Furthermore, it is registered for “agricultural use”—for which no user fees apply—despite being a residential golf club, as described on its website. The Citizen Comptroller’s Office of the Valley of Mexico identified this anomaly and asserts that it uses potable water instead of treated water to keep golf courses green, a sport associated with the political and business elite. Residents of Santa Úrsula Coapa have fought against water looting by the Azteca stadium, questioning why the Morena government granted the concession in 2019. Similarly, since 2019, as shown by the REPDA, the Azteca Stadium (Televisa) has had a concession for the 2026 World Cup, while the neighboring Indigenous town of Santa Úrsula Coapa is experiencing water shortages and has been demanding its cancellation for four years. Mayor Clara Brigada stated on May 7 that the Televisa well was returned to the Mexico City government to guarantee water for the towns surrounding the Azteca Stadium on the road to the 2026 World Cup. However, in the Conagua registry as of Wednesday, September 24, concession title 811078, granted to the owner of the sports facility on June 27, 2019, for 450,000 m3/year of groundwater, is still visible. Water Privatization Finally, regarding the concessions registered for urban public use already used by private individuals, they have been registered in Puebla since 2014, when the Morenovallista government was in power. The public water system operator transferred its urban public use concessions to the company Concesiones Integrales, which has received complaints about water rationing, supply cuts, and high rates, the Puebla Autonomous Comptroller’s Office notified Conagua. “We have concessions [197] that are registered for urban public use and are used by private individuals; that is, urban use is granted to municipalities so they can provide water to the population, and we have titles where private individuals are registered. What did we do in that case? We went to check, we did the inspection. And they are, indeed, private individuals, and we have to see what’s going on there. We’ve already conducted the review; in some cases we’re correcting only the title, in other cases we’re investigating what it’s all about,” explained the Deputy Director of Conagua at the morning press conference. SinEmbargo previously reported that the privatization of this human right is permitted under the Salinas-led National Water Law in cities in Quintana Roo, Veracruz, Coahuila, and Aguascalientes, where users also suffer from arbitrary charges, disconnections due to non-payment, and water rationing. In Querétaro, the local Congress approved a law in 2022 that allows the granting of a service concession to a company. Dulce Olvera is a reporter on the climate crisis, human rights, and the economy. She hosts Dos con Todo with Monserrat Antúnez. She graduated from the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at UNAM. Analysis USMCA Fetishism September 25, 2025September 25, 2025 The history of NAFTA, and subsequently of USMCA, is the largest transfer of wealth from Mexico to the US in their shared history since the 19th century. Analysis | Interviews | Labor What Propels Us Into the Streets for Gaza? September 25, 2025September 25, 2025 An interview with José Luis Hernandez Ayala of the Mexican Union of Electricians (SME) on the Mexican trade union movement in solidarity with Palestine, its organizing and demands. Analysis 11 Years Without the 43 Ayotzinapa Students’ Whereabouts September 23, 2025 On the 11th anniversary of their children’s disappearance, the families still have no reason to hope for long-awaited truth and justice. The post Corporations, Political Clans & Even Religious Groups Have Monopolized Water in Mexico appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media. From Mexico Solidarity Media via this RSS feed
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Hackers (1995) is a film I somehow never saw until now—wild, considering I lived through the real events it riffs on. Only 30 years later did I finally sit down to watch it. This is a film I should’ve been more familiar with, seeing how it really cuts close to home. And I know some of you might find it unlikely that Hackers has real-world connections, but I’m telling you the truth. The whole thing about free long distance was real. Back then we called it blue boxing. And in 1988, a young university student released what wasn’t exactly a virus but came to be known as the Morris Worm. It shut down a big chunk of the early internet. So while the movie exaggerates with a 12-year-old wunderkind, the inspiration was there. Several characters were analogues to real people. Joey was based on a guy known as Fry Guy. And I’m pretty sure Nikon, the Black hacker in the movie, was based on John Threat—who in the 80s and 90s went by the handle Corrupt. I actually know John—great guy. And yes, a lot of cybercrime investigations were really handled by the Secret Service. People forget their original purview was financial crime. Protecting the president came later. So I’m shocked it took me until yesterday to actually see this movie. I remember it being a big deal—it touched youth culture and fashion. But let me tell you, hackers didn’t dress like that. Not before the movie came out. We were computer science nerds in labs. Nobody thought hacking or phreaking was cool. Then overnight, with the movie’s leopard prints, fur, and pink neon side holsters, suddenly computer nerds were “the coolest kids in school.” Angelina Jolie helped with that one—plenty of girls suddenly wanted to get into computer science. The plot is simple. A bunch of teenagers access file systems remotely, one stumbles onto something bigger, and suddenly they’re caught in a cyber-security conspiracy. The tagline nailed it: “Their only crime was curiosity.” But the bad guy? Come on. A multimillion-dollar corporation hires as its CSO a dude who insists on being called “The Plague”? And the Secret Service wants to work with him instead of arrest him? No CSO walks into a boardroom with a skateboard and demands everyone call him by his hacker handle. That is the most unbelievable part of the movie. Well, that and the hacking itself. Real hacking is just terminals and text. In Hackers, it’s skyscraper file systems and sci-fi UIs. Fun to look at, but nothing like reality. Same with the VR headset The Plague uses. VR existed in the 90s, but it sucked. Cool as an idea, but nobody was actually doing anything with it. Same goes for the laptops. In 1995, laptops didn’t have the horsepower or fast built-in modems for serious hacking—if they had modems at all. They were impractical bricks. What the movie did predict, though, were translucent machines. Those became all the rage later with Apple’s iMacs. In the 90s, our machines were beige or sometimes black—never cool, never translucent. So that influence stuck. Other details are hilarious in retrospect. At the end, all the kids run to phone booths to hack. Why? Anonymity? Not really—now people can see you standing in a booth, typing furiously. I used to mess with phone booths as a kid, routing calls around the world just because I could. That was phreaking. And one of the characters even goes by “Phreak”—spelled with a PH—which is a nod to that world. But almost never did I bring a laptop into a phone booth, not with them being so heavy and lacking battery power. I realize I’m not treating this as just a movie. Hard to do, because this was my life. I’ve been in the tech industry for decades, and watching this is like a cop watching Bad Boys or a doctor watching House. It’s a story first, accuracy second. They wanted hacking to look cool. My life wasn’t that cool. I didn’t have Angelina Jolie hanging off my arm. No woman has ever been impressed with my technical skills. Trivia skills once got me laid—technical skills, never. I can’t believe I waited 30 years to finally watch this film. I watched it with my kid. She liked it. Then she asked me if that’s really what the 90s were like. I had to tell her no. Sorry to disappoint you, kid. But yeah—what a trip. @[email protected]