politics UnderpantsWeevil • 6 hours ago • 99%

That video was a viral hit, spread by X accounts with as a many as a half-million followers, despite first appearing on a newly minted San Francisco news outlet that soon vanished. Posts featuring the video racked up 7 million views on X alone, and were also on Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. Another video manufactured an assault on an attendee of a rally for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, garnering millions of views, Microsoft said. One depicted a fake New York billboard with vulgar messages saying Harris wanted to change children’s gender. It drew hundreds of thousands of views on X. In all, Microsoft called out three Russian government-backed groups in addition to those described in federal charges last week against employees at propaganda network RT. One group was “adept at grabbing headlines with its outlandish fake videos and scandalous claims,” Microsoft said, while another “will likely only escalate its targeting of the Harris-Walz campaign in the lead-up to Election Day.”

News UnderpantsWeevil • 3 days ago • 98%

www.nbcnewyork.com

Police opened fire on a subway platform in Brooklyn during a confrontation with an alleged fare-beater, striking the man cops said was armed with a knife, two straphangers caught in the fray, and one of the firing officers, NYPD officials said Sunday. One of those two passengers hit by the cops' bullets, a 49-year-old man, was hospitalized in critical condition after he was hit struck in the head, according to the NYPD. The two officers who opened fire were assigned to patrol the Sutter Avenue subway stop in the 73rd precinct when they spotted a man skip the station turnstile and walk through an open gate toward the train platform, Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey explained at an evening press conference from Brookdale Hospital.

World News UnderpantsWeevil • 6 days ago • 97%

www.newarab.com

The Palestine Authority's envoy, Riyad Mansour, sat at a table marked 'State of Palestine' between UN member states Sri Lanka and Sudan. The Palestinian Permanent Mission to the UN shared a clip on social media of the Ambassador of Egypt and the President of the General Assembly confirming the new seating arrangement for the State of Palestine delegation. ... Israel was not happy with the move, claiming the move was influenced by political favouritism and that membership privileges should be reserved for member states only. "Any decision and or action that improves the status of the Palestinians…is currently a reward… for terrorism in general and the Hamas terrorists in particular," said Jonathan Miller, deputy Israel ambassador to the United Nations.

politics UnderpantsWeevil • 6 days ago • 100%

Multiple city, county and school buildings around Springfield were closed Thursday after a bomb threat “to multiple facilities throughout Springfield,” according to a city statement released Thursday morning. Springfield City Hall was evacuated around 8:30 a.m. Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said everyone who was in the City Hall building was moved out and is safe. Rue would not comment on the precise language of the threat but said it came from someone claiming to be from Springfield, and mentioned frustration with the city related to Haitian immigration issues. All Clark County buildings were also closed to the public, “out of an abundance of caution,” which includes all commission departments, the Department of Job and Family Services, the Common Pleas Court, the Board of Elections and the A.B. Graham Building, according to a statement released at 11:45 a.m. The county said it would update the public with more closures “as they become available.” Drivers license bureaus in Clark County were also closed Thursday morning in relation to the threats, according to Clark County Clerk of Courts Melissa Tuttle. Springfield City Schools evacuated students from Fulton Elementary on Thursday morning. Parents said they were told to pick up their children, and a police officer outside Fulton told concerned parents that their children had been moved to Springfield High School. Springfield City Schools issued a brief statement at 10:40 a.m. “Based on information received from the State Fire Marshal, Fulton students were evacuated from their building to Springfield High School this morning,” school officials said. “Students and staff are safe; however, the district is in the process of a controlled release to safely dismiss students to their parents.”

World News UnderpantsWeevil • 1 week ago • 96%

www.theguardian.com

The Caribbean island state became the first in the region to win its independence in 1804 after a revolt by enslaved people. But in a move that many Haitians blame for two centuries of turmoil, France later imposed harsh reparations for lost income and that debt was only fully repaid in 1947. The group of about 20 non-governmental organisations currently in Geneva for a UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) are seeking a new independent commission to oversee the restitution of the debt, which they refer to as a ransom. ... The amount paid to France is disputed by historians although the New York Times estimated Haiti’s loss at $21bn. The proposal’s backers say the amount is much higher. “It’s $21bn plus 200 years of interest that France has enjoyed, so we’re talking more like $150bn, $200bn or more,” said Jemima Pierre, professor of global race at the University of British Columbia. Clesca said she hoped the recommendation and others would be part of the UN forum’s conclusions due on Friday. Last year, the PFPAD suggested that a tribunal should be formed to address reparations for slavery.

politics UnderpantsWeevil • 2 weeks ago • 100%

www.levernews.com

On Sept. 1, Texas is slated to open its new business courts, a brand-new legal system backed by Big Oil — and several of the court’s main judges have in the past represented fossil fuel companies as lawyers, The Lever has found. The judges were hand-picked over the last two months by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a major recipient of oil industry cash — and many can be quickly replaced if they hand down decisions he opposes, a judicial design that he championed. The courts consist of 11 regional business courts and a new statewide court of appeals to hear appellate litigation, which are expected to have immediate impacts on environmental cases in the state. As Public Health Watch, an independent investigative news organization, reported last month, a suite of cases involving state environmental authorities will now be transferred from a generally liberal appeals court to the state’s new Fifteenth Court of Appeals, created to oversee the business courts. There, these cases will be decided by a panel of conservative judges historically friendly to industry — particularly oil and gas interests, a powerful force in Texas.

News UnderpantsWeevil • 2 weeks ago • 98%

www.cnn.com

The contract between Boeing and the International Association of Machinists is due to expire at 11:59 pm PT on September 12. Without a new contract, the workers who build its planes in Washington state are set to start the first strike at the company in 16 years. And right now, the chances of a deal don’t look good, according to the head of the union local. “We’re far apart is on all the main issues — wages, health care, retirement, time off,” Jon Holden, president of IAM District 751, told CNN this past week. “We continue to work through that, but it’s been a tough slog to get through.” It’s just the latest in a series of serious and high-profile problems at a company that has dealt with fatal crashes traced to a design flaw in its best-selling jet, accusations that it put profits and production speed ahead of quality and safety, tanking aircraft sales, an agreement to plead guilty to criminal charges that it deceived regulators, and massive financial losses covered by soaring levels of debt. ... The company said that wages for IAM members have increased 60% over the last 10 years due to general wage increases, cost-of-living adjustments and incentive pay. But the union is still angry over the earlier concessions. It is also seeking improved time off and also better job guarantees so it won’t be faced once again with the threat of losing work to nonunion plants. “We cannot go through another period where a year or two from now where our jobs are threatened,” Holden said, Numerous unions, including the Teamsters at UPS and the United Auto Workers union at GM, Ford and Stellantis, won double-digit wage increases in recent union deals. But in those and many other cases, they were negotiating with companies making record profits and with plenty of resources to satisfy union demands. By contrast, the problems at Boeing have resulted in $33.3 billion in core operating losses over the course of the last five years, forcing the company to go deeply into debt. It is in danger of having that debt downgraded to junk bond status, but Holden insists that the union still has leverage in these talks.

World News UnderpantsWeevil • 2 weeks ago • 96%

www.wired.com

China has positioned itself as the main car supplier in Mexico, with exports reaching $4.6 billion in 2023, according to data from Mexico's Secretariat of Economy. The Chinese automaker BYD surpassed Honda and Nissan to position itself as the seventh largest automaker in the world by number of units sold during the April to June quarter. This growth was driven by increased demand for its affordable electric vehicles, according to data from automakers and research firm MarkLines. The company's new vehicle sales rose 40 percent year over year to 980,000 units in the quarter—the same quarter wherein most major automakers, including Toyota and Volkswagen, experienced a decline in sales. Much of BYD's growth is attributed to its overseas sales, which nearly tripled in the past year to 105,000 units. Now BYD is considering locating its new auto plant in three Mexican states: Durango, Jalisco, and Nuevo Leon. Foreign investment would be an economic boost for Mexico. The company has claimed that a plant there would create about 10,000 jobs. A Tesla competitor, BYD markets its Dolphin Mini model in Mexico for about 398,800 pesos—about $21,300 dollars—a little more than half the price of the cheapest Tesla model. ... > That tariff-free access is part of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (T-MEC), an updated version of the North American Free Trade Agreement that, as of 2018, eliminated tariffs on many products traded between the North American countries. Under the treaty, if a foreign automotive company that manufactures vehicles in Canada or Mexico can demonstrate that the materials used are locally sourced, its products can be exported to the United States virtually duty-free. MAGA strikes again

politics UnderpantsWeevil • 2 weeks ago • 100%

The pushback from the right has relied heavily on anti-trans rhetoric, a line of attack that internal polling shows has proven persuasive to voters in battleground House districts, three people who have reviewed the data told POLITICO. They were granted anonymity to discuss the inside information. Without a well-funded campaign to defend and bolster the equality amendment, deep blue New York could reject a referendum in support of abortion rights — with dire national political implications for Democrats. ... In addition to cementing protections for reproductive health care and LGBTQ+ rights in the state constitution: It includes language also meant to bolster rights based on age. On LGBTQ+ protection it specifies: sexual orientation, gender, gender expression and gender identity. Republican candidates for the House and state Legislature warn the amendment would lead to trans people playing in women’s sports or weaken statutory rape laws — claims supporters of the amendment have said are false and amount to fearmongering. GOP candidates running statewide on an anti-abortion platform have not been successful, but their approach to the amendment is different. And Democrats competing in battleground House seats acknowledge that unanswered attacks against it could be effective. ... One Democratic consultant who has reviewed internal polling found voters in battleground House districts are susceptible to the argument that the amendment would harm kids. Voters generally support abortion rights and the rights of LGBTQ+ people, the polling found. “But if you add in the far-right talking points about this — boys competing in girls’ sports — support erodes quickly, and in these swing districts it can dampen the enthusiasm for the candidates who are running on a support position,” said one Democrat who reviewed the data and was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the internal polling.

Technology UnderpantsWeevil • 2 weeks ago • 36%

Deciding the equipment vendor is a dastardly Chinese threat, successive US governments have struck it with multiple sanctions that would have finished off a lesser company. Yet Huawei, after a difficult few years of shapeshifting, looks almost rejuvenated. Its performance is entirely at odds with that of Ericsson and Nokia, its traditional rivals, and not what anyone would have expected a few years ago, when Donald Trump – orc leader, from Huawei's perspective – landed the first damaging blows. Last week, it reported a 34.3% year-over-year increase in revenues for the first six months of the year, to 417.5 billion Chinese yuan (US$53.1 billion), building on the 9.6% growth it reported for 2023. Defying expectations, profitability has rebounded. Huawei's net profit margin surged from just 5.5% in 2022 to 12.3% last year before hitting 13.2% for the recent first half. The main purported goal of sanctions was to impede Huawei in the market for 5G network equipment, the stated fear being that its products could include Chinese government malware for surveillance or worse. Yet their main impact was on Huawei's handset business. Generating 54% of Huawei's revenues in 2020, it was cut off by US legislation from both Google software and cutting-edge chips, far more important to smartphones than they are to network products. Revenues halved in 2021 with the sale of Honor, a handicapped smartphone unit, and they fell another 12% in 2022. But last year they rose 17% and a continued revival probably explains most of Huawei's sales growth so far this year. A new handset called the Mate 60 Pro has proven a big hit in China. Teardowns have horrified US hawks by apparently revealing 7-nanometer chips, presumed to have no longer been available to Huawei. The received wisdom was that a chipmaker would need a technology called extreme ultra-violet (EUV) lithography to produce them. ASML of the Netherlands enjoys an EUV monopoly and Dutch authorities have prohibited sales to Chinese foundries. Nor, thanks to US sanctions, can Huawei buy EUV-made chips from Taiwan's TSMC or South Korea's Samsung. The workaround, say experts, has been an older technology called deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography combined with a technique called multiple patterning. It is thought to be inefficient, even unprofitable, producing much lower yields, the percentage of functional chips derived from a single wafer. When SMIC, the Chinese foundry used by Huawei, saw its gross margin shrivel 6.4 percentage points for the recent second quarter, to 13.9%, and its cost of sales spike 31.5%, to more than $1.6 billion, some analysts blamed efforts to produce 7-nanometer chips with DUV technology. Profitable or not, it seems to have worked.

World News UnderpantsWeevil • 2 weeks ago • 98%

The Secretary General of Israel's national workers union, the Histadrut, announced a general strike to protest against the Netanyahu government and called for an immediate hostage-release and ceasefire in Gaza deal. The strike will begin on Monday morning. ... The workers union decision came several hours after the IDF announced it recovered the bodies of six hostages from Rafah in southern Gaza. * The Israeli National Forensic Institute examined the bodies and said in a statement that the hostages were murdered in the last 48 to 72 hours and were shot from close range. * Israeli officials said at least three of the hostages who were killed were supposed to be released in the first phase of the hostage-release and ceasefire deal that is currently being negotiated, if an agreement would have been reached. * The general strike will begin on Monday at 6:00 a.m. local time and Ben Gurion International Airport will shut down at 8:00 a.m. local time. * Many of the country's largest private sector companies announced they will join the strike.

politics UnderpantsWeevil • 2 weeks ago • 16%

www.middleeasteye.net

The new survey, part of a report published on Thursday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), shows that the majority of Muslim-American voters have decided against voting for either Republican candidate Donald Trump or the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris. Twenty-nine percent of those Muslim voters polled said they were planning to cast their votes for Stein, leader of the Green Party who has made ending Israel's war on Gaza and its occupation of the West Bank a key policy priority. "We're grateful for the strong support of Muslim voters who share with us an ironclad determination to end genocide in Gaza, as well as the endless wars in the Middle East, and the discrimination and injustice faced by our Muslim neighbours, immigrants and refugees," Stein said in a statement provided to Middle East Eye. ... The poll also showed that around 11 percent of Muslim voters surveyed are planning to vote for Donald Trump, while four percent are choosing third-party candidate Cornel West and 16 percent are still undecided. The survey consisted of responses from more than 1,000 registered Muslim voters and was conducted after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week. The survey is part of a larger Cair report chronicling the political attitudes of Muslim voters. This report included an additional survey that polled 2,850 Muslim voters between May and July, prior to Biden dropping out of the race.

World News UnderpantsWeevil • 3 weeks ago • 86%

africacenter.org

The Africa Center is an academic institution within the U.S. Department of Defense

politics UnderpantsWeevil • 3 weeks ago • 97%

www.newyorker.com

On the morning of November 19, 2005, a squad of Marines was travelling in four Humvees down a road in the town of Haditha, Iraq, when their convoy hit an I.E.D. The blast killed one Marine, Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas, and injured two others. What followed would spark one of the largest war-crime investigations in the history of the United States. During the next several hours, Marines killed twenty-four Iraqi men, women, and children. Near the site of the explosion, they shot five men who had been driving to a college in Baghdad. They entered three nearby homes and killed nearly everyone inside. The youngest victim was a three-year-old girl. The oldest was a seventy-six-year-old man. The Marines would later claim that they were fighting insurgents that day, but the dead were all civilians. After the killing was over, two other Marines set off to document the aftermath. Lance Corporal Ryan Briones brought his Olympus digital camera. Lance Corporal Andrew Wright had a red Sharpie marker. Briones and Wright went from site to site, marking bodies with numbers and then photographing them. Other Marines, including one who worked in intelligence, also photographed the scene. By the time they were done, they had made a collection of photographs that would be the most powerful evidence against their fellow-Marines. -------- In 2020, our reporting team at the In the Dark podcast filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Navy, seeking records that included the photos. We thought that the photos would help us reconstruct what happened that day—and why the military had dropped murder charges against the Marines involved. The Navy released nothing in response. We then sued the Navy, the Marine Corps, and U.S. Central Command to force them to turn over the photos and other records related to the Haditha killings. We anticipated that the government would claim that the release of the photos would harm the surviving family members of the dead. Military prosecutors had already made this argument after the trial of the final accused Marine. While we were fighting with the military to get the photos, a colleague and I travelled to Iraq to meet with family members of the victims of the killings. They recounted what had happened on November 19, 2005, and their efforts to seek justice, all of which had failed. “I believe this is our duty to tell the truth,” Khalid Salman Raseef, a lawyer who lost fifteen members of his family that day, told me. Another man, Khalid Jamal, was fourteen when his father and his uncles were killed. He told me that he’d spent years wondering what happened in his family members’ final moments. “Did they die like brave men? Were they scared?” he said. “I want to know the details.” We asked the two men if they would help us obtain the photos of their dead family members. They agreed, and we entered into an unusual collaboration—an American journalist and two Iraqi men whose family members had been killed, working together to pry loose the military’s secrets. I worked with the lawyers representing us in our lawsuits against the military to draft a form that the surviving family members could sign, indicating that they wanted us to have the photos. Raseef and Jamal offered to take the form to the other family members. The two men went house to house in Haditha, explaining our reporting and what we were trying to do. At one house, Jamal told the father of one of the men who was killed while trying to get to Baghdad, “Of course, I am one of you.” Jamal asked him to sign the form, saying, “Things that happened in the massacre will be exposed.” The father, Hameed Fleh Hassan, told him, “The drowning man will cling to the straw. . . . We sign. We sign. I will sign it twice, not once.” Raseef and Jamal collected seventeen signatures. Our attorney filed the form in court as part of our lawsuit. In March, more than four years after our initial FOIA request, the military relented, and gave us the photos. The New Yorker has decided to publish a selection of these photos, with the permission of the surviving family members of those depicted, to reveal the horror of a killing that the military chose not to punish. The photos are graphic. They show men, women, and young children in defenseless positions, many of them shot in the head at relatively close range.

World News UnderpantsWeevil • 4 weeks ago • 96%

apnews.com

Hunger and desperation were palpable Friday in the tent camp along the Deir al-Balah beachfront, after a month of successive evacuation orders that have pressed thousands of Palestinians into the area that the Israeli military calls a “humanitarian zone.” The zone has long been crowded by Palestinians seeking refuge from bombardment, but the situation grows more dire by the day, as waves of evacuees arrive and food and water grow scarce. Over the last month, the Israeli military has issued evacuation orders for southern Gaza at an unprecedented pace. At least 84% of Gaza now falls within the evacuation zone, according to the U.N., which also estimates that 90% of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents have been displaced over the course of the war. ... Water has been another casualty of the evacuations. The U.N. says the water supply in Deir al-Balah has decreased by at least 70% since the recent wave of evacuations began, as pumps and desalination plants are caught within evacuation zones. The lack of clean water is causing skin diseases and other outbreaks. The U.N.'s main health agency has confirmed Gaza’s first case of polio in a 10-month-old baby in Deir al-Balah who is now paralyzed in the lower left leg. Meanwhile, aid groups say it is only growing more difficult to offer help. U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Thursday that the World Food Program lost access to its warehouse in central Deir al-Balah because of a recent evacuation order.

World News UnderpantsWeevil • 1 month ago • 95%

www.nytimes.com

As the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has stretched into its 11th month, Israel has increased its military activity against what it terms suspected terrorism in the occupied West Bank, and violent settler attacks have surged at the same time. Far-right ministers in Mr. Netanyahu’s government — particularly Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, who are both West Bank settlers — have espoused divisive rhetoric and advanced policies to expand Israel’s hold on the territory. The West Bank is home to about 2.7 million Palestinians and more than 500,000 settlers. Israel seized control of the territory from Jordan in 1967 during a war with three Arab states, and Israelis have since settled there with both tacit and explicit government approval. The international community largely considers settlements illegal, and many outposts also violate Israeli laws. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which tracks violent incidents in the West Bank, said in its latest update on Wednesday that Israeli settlers had carried out 25 attacks against Palestinians in the previous week. Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that set off the war in Gaza, the agency has recorded around 1,250 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their property. “There has been an uptick in vigilante attacks by a minority of settlers,” David Makovsky, director of the Koret Project on Arab-Israel relations at the Washington Institute, said in an interview. “The West Bank is a tinderbox.” Few attacks, however, have generated the kind of immediate reprobation from Israeli officials that followed the storming of Jit.

politics UnderpantsWeevil • 1 month ago • 97%

houstonlanding.org

‘Worst nightmare of my life’: Solitary confinement rises at Houston-area ICE detention center Houston Landing / by Anna-Catherine Brigida / Aug 12, 2024 at 4:06 AM MONTGOMERY DETENTION 0322 Sitting in a small, windowless cell at the Montgomery Processing Center, Salvador Bautista was ready to give up. Bautista was placed in solitary confinement for disciplinary reasons for six weeks, a length in isolation considered torture by the United Nations. “They are driving me crazy here,” he wrote in Spanish in a letter sent from his cell in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention to his sister, Mayra Bautista Cerda, dated Feb. 18. Bautista, 40, prepared to abandon his immigration appeal and be deported to Mexico. His plan included divorcing his wife — to free her of the burden of having a deported husband — and leaving behind his three children, ages 2, 5 and 8, and the country he called home most of his life, he wrote his sister from his cell. Despite an oversight policy implemented by ICE in 2013 meant to prevent detainees like Bautista to be placed in isolation as a last resort, the Montgomery Processing Center, has had the highest number of cases of solitary confinement in the Houston area, according to the most recent data released by ICE.

politics UnderpantsWeevil • 2 months ago • 98%

www.mediamatters.org

When men want women on this kind of basic animalistic, just life level, to reproduce. Right? So the most obvious way to distribute women is to give all the women to the strongest man. Right? So you get — reproduce from the strongest person. That's the way gorillas — many gorillas, silverbacks live. The one guy gets all the girls. And the problem with that is it sounds like a good idea, but it's unstable because, obviously, all the other guys finally get think to themselves, oh, I know what we'll do. We'll get together and we'll kill the main guy, the alpha guy, and we'll steal the woman. And that's why those governments are unstable. That's how you get Magna Carta where the aristocrats, the most powerful people, go to the king and say, we want power too. That is, kind of, the human way of acting out that gorilla system. Ultimately, other men want women. When you have a democracy, the best system is monogamy. Right? One per customer. Everybody gets a woman. And it sounds like that means that weak people will be allowed to breed, but it turns out it's actually a pretty good system because it favors diversity. Because a lot of times, the smartest guy in the room and the strongest guy in the room are two entirely different people. So you want the strongest guy to reproduce, but you also want the smartest guy to reproduce, and that is how humanity advances. In fact, monogamy, one per customer, is a really good basis for a society. However, it goes against the gorilla code, and the gorilla code is written into our DNA.

Lemmy Shitpost UnderpantsWeevil • 2 months ago • 95%

It's not true, folks. The lying liberal media wants you to think he'd shag a settee. That he'd bone a book stand. That he's creamied on the credenza. Don't trust them. My beautiful boy JD, he'd never do it! He's chaste with the chaises. He's never loved a loveseat. My VP would never fuck furniture.

News UnderpantsWeevil • 2 months ago • 94%

sfstandard.com

Mayor London Breed said a “very aggressive” sweep of San Francisco homeless encampments will start in August, after a recent Supreme Court ruling cleared the path for widespread enforcement. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that enforcing rules against homeless people for sleeping outside doesn’t violate the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause. On Thursday, Breed celebrated the ruling and said the city plans to change its protocols and may begin issuing criminal penalties against homeless people. “Thank goodness for the change in the Supreme Court decision,” Breed said at an election debate hosted by a local firefighter’s union. “Effective August, we are going to be very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments, which may even include criminal penalties.”

politics UnderpantsWeevil • 2 months ago • 3%

www.spectator.co.uk

When Ronald Reagan was shot on 30 March 1981, his wound was not immediately noticed. It wasn’t until he started bleeding from the mouth that the car was diverted from the White House to the hospital. The story goes that upon arrival, the president said to the surgeons, ‘I just hope you’re Republicans.’ A doctor is said to have replied: ‘Today, Mr. President, we’re all Republicans.’ ... American politics has sunk so low into the cesspit of political despair, there will be a rare few who can’t bring themselves to say this. Rather than muster up the humour of Reagan, or the humanity of the doctors, they won’t hesitate to keep pouring petrol onto a nation already ablaze. Those takes won’t be received very well. If there is anything left tying America’s national fabric together, it’s that such instances of violence can’t be tolerated.

politics UnderpantsWeevil • 2 months ago • 56%

https://stephensemler.substack.com/p/military-spending-is-up-social-and

World News UnderpantsWeevil • 2 months ago • 95%

www.washingtonpost.com

Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman, said in a statement that U.S. troops tried to reconnect the floating pier to the shoreline Wednesday but were unable to do so because of “technical and weather-related issues.” The pier and its support vessels were taken back to the Israeli port of Ashdod, where they had sheltered amid the latest spell of rough waves, and will remain there until further notice, Ryder said. ... The operation has delivered nearly 20 million pounds of food ashore since it began on May 17. It’s a fraction of what humanitarian groups say is needed as Palestinians trapped by the fighting between Israel and Hamas face starvation and Israeli officials resist U.S. and international demands to let more aid into Gaza via land routes. Moreover, distribution from the pier has been challenged by aid groups’ fears for their workers’ safety as the war’s staggering number of civilian casualties continues to climb. Until recently, arriving supplies were left to pile up in a staging area along the beach. A U.S. defense official familiar with the issue, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss recent developments, said a significant amount of that aid has been moved to other locations, leaving room for new deliveries if the pier can get up and running again. The U.S. Agency for International Development, which coordinates with the humanitarian groups working in Gaza, will continue to use all available routes into the territory to get food and medicine to Palestinian civilians in need, an official there said. Those groups have begun using the port at Ashdod, north of Gaza, for additional aid deliveries, the official said.

politics UnderpantsWeevil • 3 months ago • 97%

The over 900-page document, commissioned by the people expected to run another Trump White House, is a laundry list of the far-right's most politically toxic ideas, from banning abortion nationwide to mass firing federal officials who believe in protecting public health and safety. One would think that Trump and his allies would try to keep their sinister plans out of public view. Instead, Team Trump published their fascistic blueprint on a website for anyone to read,. They even proudly display the menacing "Project 2025" label on the front page. ... On Sunday, actress Taraji P. Henson took a break during the BET Awards, which she was hosting, to speak out about Project 2025. "The Project 2025 plan is not a game. Look it up!" she told viewers. "I’m talking to all the mad people that don’t want to vote. You’re going to be mad about a lot of things if you don’t vote." The clip went viral, amplified by other celebrities like Mark Ruffalo. So the MAGA forces swung into action on social media, accusing Henson and Ruffalo and other progressives of making it all up. "Is Project 2025 in the room with you?" a blue-checked user sneered under Ruffalo's tweet. These efforts at gaslighting people run against a real problem, however: The drafters of Project 2025 seek to promote their authoritarian playbook. Thus, a simple Google search generates a slew of explainers from various news organizations, with even more coming out rapidly, as a response to the rising number of people asking, "What's Project 2025?" "We received a flood of reader inquiries asking if Project 2025 was a real effort," the fact-checking team at Snopes wrote in their lengthy explainer published Tuesday. Google Trends confirms that the number of searches for "project 2025" has grown dramatically in recent days.

politics UnderpantsWeevil • 3 months ago • 92%

www.kenklippenstein.com

The 4th of July feels like a sad holiday to me. We celebrate an independence won over two centuries ago, like an out of shape former athlete reminiscing about his glory days on the high school football team. What we need independence from today isn’t the British — who seem about as threatening as a glass of warm Ovaltine — but from modern tyrannies like big business and, of course, the national security state.

politics UnderpantsWeevil • 3 months ago • 87%

www.newsweek.com

A group of undecided Latino voters said they would vote for President Joe Biden after watching his Thursday night debate with former President Donald Trump. ... A clip posted on X shows the group being interviewed by a journalist. One man said he would vote for Biden because "Trump sounded like a crazy liar," according to Matt A. Barreto, professor of Political Science and Chicana/o & Central American Studies at UCLA. The man being interviewed said Trump "said the same thing time after time" and was not answering questions or "saying how he would fix things," according to a Newsweek translation. He went on to admit that "Biden was indeed a bit slow in talking," saying the president "has a stutter" but believes Biden explained "what he has done and what he is still doing while president. "After being undecided for a little while, I think today, I switched to Biden," he added.