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Wow, just wow 😂

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Hurry comrade, shoot the policeman, the judge, the boss. Now, before a new police prevent you.

Hurry to say No, before the new repression convinces you that saying no is pointless, mad, and that you should accept the hospitality of the mental asylum.

Hurry to attack capital before a new ideology makes it sacred to you.

Hurry to refuse work before some new sophist tells you yet again that ‘work makes you free’.

Hurry to play. Hurry to arm yourself

Armed Joy

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Mosquitoes may be contaminating ecosystems with tiny bits of plastic 

Mosquito larvae are remarkably unfussy eaters. They glide through the ponds and puddles they live in, creating currents that draw tiny particles of food into their mouths—but miniscule plastic morsels can easily slip down the hatch as well. New research shows these “microplastics” stick around in the mosquitoes’ bellies even after they emerge from the water as flying adults, putting their land predators in danger of ingesting the contaminants.

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dear caretakers of children: stop telling kids “I don’t care who started it!”. you’re teaching children to ignore unequal power balances. that leads to legitimate belief in things like reverse racism, misandry, heterophobia, etc. you’re teaching children that it’s wrong to retaliate when they are wronged. “who started it” is very, very relevant.

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-Laurie Penny, Unspeakable Things

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If you want just one (of many) valid reasons to hate how the Disney company handled the story of Pocahontas, know this:

When Pocahontas was kidnapped, she fell into a deep depression after enduring mental, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her captors. 

She was in such poor condition that her captors thought she was going to die, so they allowed her sister Mattachanna and brother-in-law Uttamattamakin to come to Jamestown to take care of her and nurse her back to health. This is when she confided to her sister that she had been raped several times (by more than one person) and believed she was pregnant. Mattachanna and Uttamattamakin were also with her when they sailed to London and were the ones who had to tell her father of her death (possible murder).

Pocahontas and Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World leave out Mattachanna entirely, but this is how they chose to depict Uttamattamakin:

Disney knew enough about this man to actually add him in a film and call him by his name (which also becomes a running joke because everybody fucks it up throughout the film), and THIS is how they portray him.

If that doesn’t make you sick to your stomach I really don’t know what will.

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can you explain the difference between leftism and liberalism

Yes, but it’s a secret.

(jk)

Liberalism is based on the Enlightenment idea of individualism, that it the individual is the ‘subject’ of liberal thought.  While this seems innocuous and correct to us, a quotation from Anatole France can show how this can rapidly fall into absurdist conclusions: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”  Treating unequal groups as if they were equal, and then only looking at individuals within those groups, can lead to a focus on individual behaviors rather than environmental factors as the ‘reason’ behind oppression.  

To refer to a question a bit earlier, the liberal conception of oppression as being just a thing that people do rather than something which is done leads to analysis which equates oppression and privilege with “being an asshole”.  It also leads to that group of people who think that if we just stopped thinking about race/sex/etc that racism/sexism would disappear, because if racism/sexism is something that people do then all we need to do is stop doing it.

Leftism is a broad term and includes anarchism, Marxism, democratic socialists and a hoard of subcategories, but at its core leftism’s analytic subject is the systems which form the basis of oppression.  Oppression isn’t just acts, it’s a concrete system of acts, behaviors, and institutions which limit people’s freedom.  A ‘post-racial’ world where people don’t use racial slurs and aren’t mean to other races won’t solve mass incarceration of people of color; a world where people are nice to women can coincide with male-only suffrage; a world with less homophobia still has space for workplace discrimination against non-heterosexual sexualities.  

Furthermore treating oppression on an individual basis often leads to questions about the oppressed reproducing oppression through their own behaviors.  The idea that black people think too much about racism, that poor people are only poor because they made bad decisions (and are thus wholly illegitimate as people), that women want sexism to have something to complain about, all arise from the idealist (that is as opposed to materialist) and individual focused nature of liberalism.  Individualist theory, in the end, erases the existence of systemic oppression.

Note that talk of 'freedom’ and 'liberty’ came in nowhere in this discussion.  This is because the liberal talking point that liberalism cares more about liberty over equality falls apart when you consider that true 'freedom’, of thought, of speech, of religion, falls apart under material circumstances.  Nominally I have the same freedom of speech as a billionare, which is roughly as good as our equally applied right to sleep under bridges.  Nominally I have freedom of thought but I have no ability to fully exercise that when I’m stressed 24/7 about affording food, rent, and utilities.  Nominally Muslims and Jews have freedom of religion in France, they’ve still been attacked and those attacks still haven’t been dealt with by the police.  It’s no coincidence that a large number of existentialists were leftists, because true freedom is impossible in an unfree system.

Mod R

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terrible things

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Naturalized US citizens are reporting that the DHS website is listing them as “not a citizen”.

From Funmilayo Celestina Ekundayo:

So i just got this message when i attempted to update my voter registration. This is a lie. I became a naturalized citizen in 2005. Drove all the way to Memphis Tennessee for the ceremony. I have voted in 2 elections; i have an American passport I’ve traveled with, and i have gone to the Department of safety and homeland security to update all information, last time i did was 2 years ago when i needed a copy of my social security card. So, a warning to all naturalized citizens inTennessee , check your status now!! https://ovr.govote.tn.gov/Registration Something is happening. *update* I have confirmed others that are having this issue. Folks, this is Not a drill!! Check your statuses. *update 2* Still trying to find answers. After calling the Department of homeland security and safety, i was told by the representative that he didn’t know what was happening and would like to refer me to an “immigration officer”. The wait time is 57 minutes. The office closed in 17 minutes. I will try again on Monday. Until then, i am taking my passport with me Everywhere!! EVERYWHERE!!!

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HR: if they work 40 hours a week u have to give them benefits

Big company: hmm okay. They shall work 39

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Trump is not “blaming democrats,” he’s threatening them and using child separations as leverage.

I really hate how Trump’s comments which he blames democrats for child separation is being characterized that he’s literally blaming them for creating and enacting this policy. This whole controversy surrounding these comments is simply pitting him as a liar who is trying to shift the blame. All the news I’ve read and watched is correcting his tweets and comments by pointing to Jeff Sessions’ “zero tolerance,” policy to prove that Trump is bullshitting, but that’s not what he’s saying! What he’s implying is much, MUCH worse.

What’s happening here is that he’s using this children for leverage and he’s telling the democrats that this is on their hands until he gets what he wants (the wall funding, stricter immigration policies, visa changes, etc). His seemingly non-sensical statements make more sense when you look at it this way too…

This is About His Immigration Bill

Trump has said several times that the democrats are the ones who have the power here and they’re the ones that are stalling immigration reform, despite republicans being the majority. This is because the GOP has been trying to draft and discuss bills on immigration for months now. Trump’s reaction is to blame democrats which we’ve seen him do this before when his healthcare bill failed to pass! This is a tweet back in May when Trump first started to “blame democrats”:

This tweet specifically was reported on as if Trump’s first and second sentence were opposite statements. On one hand he says the democrats must end the “law,” on the other he demands stricter immigration policy. But what he’s actually doing is using Jeff Sessions’ zero tolerance policy as leverage for the wall, ending catch and release, chain migration, and the lottery visa. These are all explicitly what his State of the Union mandate listed as the requirements for him to sign immigration reform which a vote is now coming up for. 

Now, it’s important to look at the immigration bill that his own administration helped draft to fully understand this tweet and his “blame the democrats” comments. The “compromise bill” is supposed to get the republicans to all agree on a yes vote. There has been a divide amongst moderate and conservative republicans who have not been able to agree on immigration reform. He blames the democrats because none of them side with either GOP path, meaning there haven’t had enough votes to move anything along. Again, he’s blaming the democrats in the same way he did during the healthcare vote.

Stephen Miller, who helped draft this bill, has been trying to convince hesitant republicans that Trump will support this bill and that it won’t hurt them during reelections. It took days of work to draft and campaign this bill and Trump fucked that up when he told Fox News that he definitely wouldn’t sign the compromise bill. Later, the White House had to correct his statement because he didn’t know what he was talking about. Conservative republicans got scared off by Trump’s flip flopping and it became more unlikely that the bill will pass. So he targets democrats. This because he’s trying to sway them to vote with his administration’s bill and he’s using the threat of family separation to do so.

The GOP Bill is Big Fucking a Lie

The “compromise bill” has been getting semi-positive media attention because it claims to end family separation and will create a pathway for Dreamers. However, the GOP bill summary doesn’t reflect what’s actually in the bill - instead it will just allow kids to be detained like adults. And THIS is what Trump has wanted. Children and families will lose the extra legal protections they have in detentions which includes the rule that says they should not be detained any longer than necessary. Instead they would be kept with their families but held in detention indefinitely. 

Trump signed a memo earlier this year to prepare for this adjustment because it would mean more detainees. The memo ordered the government to progress on the moves to end the practice and requested a list of facilities, including military facilities, where additional detainees could be held. Which we now know is happening at military camps, and we know there’s plans for expansion.

Now if we look at Trump’s comments we will see that he’s trying to threaten pressure on democrats to vote with this compromise bill. The bill getting positive attention is exactly what helps Trump and as long as people believe this bill will help stop child separations there WILL be pressure on democrats to vote for it. Note that the bill also give Trump the money and increased security for his border wall he’s been demanding. It will eliminate the “diversity visa lottery,” curb family-based immigration, and in an effort to reduce the number of asylum seekers, the bill will make initial screenings harder and allow the US to turn back asylum seekers who come through Mexico. There’s a reason the GOP has been trying to sell this lie that the bill will end family separations, because what’s actually in it is bullshit. 

It’s About Leverage

This shouldn’t even be a surprise since Trump tried to pull the same move with DACA. He ended the program explicitly to use them as leverage with the democrats to get funding for his wall and implementing stricter immigration policies. And here’s what a White House official said about using family separation to force negotiations: “The president has told folks that in lieu of the laws being fixed, he wants to use the enforcement mechanisms that we have. The thinking in the building is to force people to the table.” He’s been playing with people’s lives for a while now and that’s exactly what’s happening here.

What Trump is implying becomes a bit more clear when you see several tweets on the subject:

See? He’s not literally blaming them for the policy, he’s telling them that it’s their fault the family separation practice continues because they won’t give him what he wants. He’s saying that these actions will continue as long as democrats hold out on voting for his immigration reform. He dehumanizing Black and brown bodies so much that he just views them as a bargaining chip and it doesn’t matter who is killed or hurt in the process. Because that’s what he does; Trump wants something so he creates a problem, he tells you that he can stop the problem if you just give him what he wants, and if you don’t then he blames you for the problem he helped create.

And it’s so fucking annoying that the news is quick to jump on this “haha Trump is stupid and says things that make no sense,” they don’t look at what his administration is actually doing or saying. Hell, Jeff Sessions said it outright this morning:

"If we build a wall, we pass some legislation, we close some loopholes, we won’t face these terrible choices.”

He’s talking about his own policy! He’s openly holding these children hostage in exchange for stricter immigration policies!  

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Lewis died a short time later at the Byrd Regional Hospital. It was his birthday.

An investigation into the accident is pending, including routine toxicology tests. But it’s what happened after the crash on Snapchat that has people especially outraged.

Screenshots of a Snapchat message have begun circulating online in which a man alleged to be Martin called Lewis “some nigger” and discussed the damage to his truck.

When someone asked how Martin’s truck was, the user responded, “fucked it up pretty good lol.”

Awful. Disgraceful. Despicable. Condolences.

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People in their early twenties still refer to people older than them as “adults”. When do you think they stop… and realize… they are adults

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holy shit i just learned about the “proxy strike” tactic in france in which radicals blockade or occupy a workplace, allowing workers to strike without losing their wages. that’s brilliant, wow