#even if it's worker elected executives

[clockworkprism]

My hot take: business degrees should exclusively be masters degrees. Cause there are legitimate skills to running a successful business, which would apply even outside of capitalism. Things like managing people, complicated finances, tax implications (granted right now it's more how to exploit people, ensure maximum profit, and tax avoidance). People get promoted to management or executive positions and then have to learn all this on the spot.

Ideally, an engineering firm will be run by engineers who get a year off to get real training in the skills they'll need to be an executive. But going to school ONLY to do business as a generic concept? Yeah that should be completely abolished.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon illegally interferes with an historic UK warehouse election

I'm in to TARTU, ESTONIA! Overcoming the Enshittocene (Monday, May 8, 6PM, Prima Vista Literary Festival keynote, University of Tartu Library, Struwe 1). AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Amazon is very good at everything it does, including being very bad at the things it doesn't want to do. Take signing up for Prime: nothing could be simpler. The company has built a greased slide from Prime-curiosity to Prime-confirmed that is the envy of every UX designer.

But unsubscribing from Prime? That's a fucking nightmare. Somehow the company that can easily figure out how to sign up for a service is totally baffled when it comes to making it just as easy to leave. Now, there's two possibilities here: either Amazon's UX competence is a kind of erratic freak tide that sweeps in at unpredictable intervals and hits these unbelievable high-water marks, or the company just doesn't want to let you leave.

To investigate this question, let's consider a parallel: Black Flag's Roach Motel. This is an icon of American design, a little brown cardboard box that is saturated in irresistibly delicious (to cockroaches, at least) pheromones. These powerful scents make it admirably easy for all the roaches in your home to locate your Roach Motel and enter it.

But the interior of the Roach Motel is also coated in a sticky glue. Once roaches enter the motel, their legs and bodies brush up against this glue and become hopeless mired in it. A roach can't leave – not without tearing off its own legs.

It's possible that Black Flag made a mistake here. Maybe they wanted to make it just as easy for a roach to leave as it is to enter. If that seems improbable to you, well, you're right. We don't even have to speculate, we can just refer to Black Flag's slogan for Roach Motel: "Roaches check in, but they don't check out."

It's intentional, and we know that because they told us so.

Back to Amazon and Prime. Was it some oversight that cause the company make it so marvelously painless to sign up for Prime, but such a titanic pain in the ass to leave? Again, no speculation is required, because Amazon's executives exchanged a mountain of internal memos in which this is identified as a deliberate strategy, by which they deliberately chose to trick people into signing up for Prime and then hid the means of leaving Prime. Prime is a Roach Motel: users check in, but they don't check out:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

When it benefits Amazon, they are obsessive – "relentless" (Bezos's original for the company) – about user friendliness. They value ease of use so highly that they even patented "one click checkout" – the incredibly obvious idea that a company that stores your shipping address and credit card could let you buy something with a single click:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Patent

But when it benefits Amazon to place obstacles in our way, they are even more relentless in inventing new forms of fuckery, spiteful little landmines they strew in our path. Just look at how Amazon deals with unionization efforts in its warehouses.

Amazon's relentless union-busting spans a wide diversity of tactics. On the one hand, they cook up media narratives to smear organizers, invoking racist dog-whistles to discredit workers who want a better deal:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/amazon-chris-smalls-smart-articulate-leaked-memo

On the other hand, they collude with federal agencies to make workers afraid that their secret ballots will be visible to their bosses, exposing them to retaliation:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-violated-labor-law-alabama-union-election-labor-official-finds-rcna1582

They hold Cultural Revolution-style forced indoctrination meetings where they illegally threaten workers with punishment for voting in favor of their union:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-union-staten-island-nlrb.html

And they fire Amazon tech workers who express solidarity with warehouse workers:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-fires-tech-employees-workers-criticism-warehouse-climate-policies/

But all this is high-touch, labor-intensive fuckery. Amazon, as we know, loves automation, and so it automates much of its union-busting: for example, it created an employee chat app that refused to deliver any message containing words like "fairness" or "grievance":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/doubleplusrelentless/#quackspeak

Amazon also invents implausible corporate fictions that allow it to terminate entire sections of its workforce for trying to unionize, by maintaining the tormented pretense that these workers, who wear Amazon uniforms, drive Amazon trucks, deliver Amazon packages, and are tracked by Amazon down to the movements of their eyeballs, are, in fact, not Amazon employees:

https://www.wired.com/story/his-drivers-unionized-then-amazon-tried-to-terminate-his-contract/

These workers have plenty of cause to want to unionize. Amazon warehouses are sources of grueling torment. Take "megacycling," a ten-hour shift that runs from 1:20AM to 11:50AM that workers are plunged into without warning or the right to refuse. This isn't just a night shift – it's a night shift that makes it impossible to care for your children or maintain any kind of normal life.

Then there's Jeff Bezos's war on his workers' kidneys. Amazon warehouse workers and drivers notoriously have to pee in bottles, because they are monitored by algorithms that dock their pay for taking bathroom breaks. The road to Amazon's warehouse in Coventry, England is littered with sealed bottles of driver piss, defenestrated by drivers before they reach the depot inspection site.

There's so much piss on the side of the Coventry road that the prankster Oobah Butler was able to collect it, decant it into bottles, and market it on Amazon as an energy beverage called "Bitter Lemon Release Energy," where it briefly became Amazon's bestselling energy drink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

(Butler promises that he didn't actually ship any bottled piss to people who weren't in on the gag – but let's just pause here and note how weird it is that a guy who hates our kidneys as much as Jeff Bezos built and flies a penis-shaped rocket.)

Butler also secretly joined the surge of 1,000 workers that Amazon hired for the Coventry warehouse in advance of a union vote, with the hope of diluting the yes side of that vote and forestall the union. Amazon displayed more of its famously selective competence here, spotting Butler and firing him in short order, while totally failing to notice that he was marketing bottles of driver piss as a bitter lemon drink on Amazon's retail platform.

After a long fight, Amazon's Coventry workers are finally getting their union vote, thanks to the GMB union's hard fought battle at the Central Arbitration Committee:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/04/26/amazon-warehouse-workers-in-coventry-will-vote-on-trade-union-recognition/

And right on schedule, Amazon has once again discovered its incredible facility for ease-of-use. The company has blanketed its shop floor with radioactively illegal "one click to quit the union" QR codes. When a worker aims their phones at the code and clicks the link, the system auto-generates a letter resigning the worker from their union.

As noted, this is totally illegal. English law bans employers from "making an offer to an employee for the sole or main purpose of inducing workers not to be members of an independent trade union, take part in its activities, or make use of its services."

Now, legal or not, this may strike you as a benign intervention on Amazon's part. Why shouldn't it be easy for workers to choose how they are represented in their workplaces? But the one-click system is only half of Amazon's illegal union-busting: the other half is delivered by its managers, who have cornered workers on the shop floor and ordered them to quit their union, threatening them with workplace retaliation if they don't.

This is in addition to more forced "captive audience" meetings where workers are bombarded with lies about what life in an union shop is like.

Again, the contrast couldn't be more stark. If you want to quit a union, Amazon makes this as easy as joining Prime. But if you want to join a union, Amazon makes that even harder than quitting Prime. Amazon has the same attitude to its workers and its customers: they see us all as a resource to be extracted, and have no qualms about tricking or even intimidating us into doing what's best for Amazon, at the expense of our own interests.

The campaigning law-firm Foxglove is representing five of Amazon's Coventry workers. They're doing the lord's work:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/05/02/legal-challenge-to-amazon-uks-new-one-click-to-quit-the-union-tool/

All this highlights the increasing divergence between the UK and the US when it comes to labor rights. Under the Biden Administration, @NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has promulgated a rule that grants a union automatic recognition if the boss does anything to interfere with a union election:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

In other words, if Amazon tries these tactics in the USA now, their union will be immediately recognized. Abruzzo has installed an ultra-sensitive tilt-sensor in America's union elections, and if Bezos or his class allies so much as sneeze in the direction of their workers' democratic rights, they automatically lose.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/06/one-click-to-quit-the-union/#foxglove

Image: Isabela.Zanella (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ballot-box-2.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[txttletale]

i am confused by some self described maoists opposing gun regulations and saying the proletariat must be armed, and i remember you once said most of this comes from misinterpreting one thing marx said about an already-armed proletariat, could you expand on that?

because my thinking is, 1) people are materially, demonstratively safer in places with less guns and less excuses for cops to shoot them and 2) ... it's not like places like the US seem any closer to a revolution unless I'm missing something, right? All of this to me sounds exactly like when some extremely online "communists" oppose a labour reform that will make material improvements for the working class because they perceive worse conditions as more conductive to a revolution, which is something that, if nothing else, is horrible optics for any communist to say since it sounds like they _want_ things to get worse, which rightfully would make any working person want to punch them

SRA and similar types drastically take the quote “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary” out of context in a very silly way, interpreting it as 'basically the 2nd amendment', as marx just saying that the working class should all own their own gun as individuals--when in fact marx said this in a very specific context, discussing an organized working class in the midst of a popular democratic revolution against feudalism (such as the february revolution in russia or the xinhai revolution in china) in which the proletariat and bourgeoisie were united against aristocratic and royalist elements, and the need of organized proletarian militias to maintain their weapons even after the success of such a revolution to guard against betrayal by the bourgeoisie of the sort marx wrote of extensively in the case of the french revolutions. here's the quote in its full context:

During and after the struggle the workers must at every opportunity put forward their own demands against those of the bourgeois democrats. They must demand guarantees for the workers as soon as the democratic bourgeoisie sets about taking over the government. They must achieve these guarantees by force if necessary, and generally make sure that the new rulers commit themselves to all possible concessions and promises – the surest means of compromising them. They must check in every way and as far as is possible the victory euphoria and enthusiasm for the new situation which follow every successful street battle, with a cool and cold-blooded analysis of the situation and with undisguised mistrust of the new government. Alongside the new official governments they must simultaneously establish their own revolutionary workers’ governments, either in the form of local executive committees and councils or through workers’ clubs or committees, so that the bourgeois-democratic governments not only immediately lost the support of the workers but find themselves from the very beginning supervised and threatened by authorities behind which stand the whole mass of the workers. In a word, from the very moment of victory the workers’ suspicion must be directed no longer against the defeated reactionary party but against their former ally, against the party which intends to exploit the common victory for itself. To be able to forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.

—Karl Marx, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League (emphasis mine)

it's a total and deeply unserious misinterpretation of what marx actually said, and imo it is indicative less of anything specific to maoism but of the usamerican individualist mindset, who cannot conceive of 'the proletariat' as conceiving of anything other than scattered individuals making personal purchasing and lifestyle decisions. to paraphrase the least annoying mcelroy brother, if you buy a glock you're not arming the proletariat, you're arming the justin. you and your SRA buddies owning guns is not an 'armed proletariat', it's an 'armed just some guys'.

& of course these people will make much hay about the black panthers' use of firearms while once again completely failing to understand what the black panthers actually were (an organization founded on marxist principles) and what they used those guns for (to patrol, in groups, around their neighbourhoods to prevent police from acting with impunity). not for personal 'self defence' but for organized, community self-defense. which kind of gets to the heart of it, a gun is not actually useful for 'self-defense', owning a gun doesn't make you safer, but because of this individualism the specter of the random street hate crime which you can epically john wick your way out of plays an oversized role in the political imagination of these people who, again, cannot envision what self-defense looks like on a community or class basis.

another argument that will be made is that "well, personal gun ownership isn't revolutionary action now, but if there's a revolution how do you expect the revolutionary party to become armed if not through preexisting individual gun ownership?" needless to say i think this is very silly. no revolutionary or guerilla movement in history has ever relied upon the personal gun ownership of its members, because that's a fucking stupid way to operate a serious fighting force.

now that doesn't mean i actually think that gun control legislation in the usa is prima facie a good idea -- i think if the last few years have hammered any point home it's that the cops don't need excuses to shoot people, and that any theoretical program of firearm confiscation would be accompanied by disproportional leniency for right-wing white gun owners and disproportional violence and brutality against latino and black gun owners. i don't think guns are ontologically evil, i think if you want to own a gun that's whatever--but i do think that SRA types are for the most part wilfully deluding themselves that their particular type of consumerism and hobbyism is serious revolutionary activism in much the same way that people who make a big deal out of buying from their local small business queer owned coffee shop are.

[trans-axolotl]

"Much ink has already been spilled on Harris’s prosecutorial background. What is significant about the topic of sex work is how recently the vice president–elect’s actions contradicted her alleged views. During her tenure as AG, she led a campaign to shut down Backpage, a classified advertising website frequently used by sex workers, calling it “the world’s top online brothel” in 2016 and claiming that the site made “millions of dollars from trafficking.” While Backpage did make millions off of sex work ads, its “adult services” listings offered a safer and more transparent platform for sex workers and their clients to conduct consensual transactions than had historically been available. Harris’s grandiose mischaracterization led to a Senate investigation, and the shuttering of the site by the FBI in 2018.

“Backpage being gone has devastated our community,” said Andrews. The platform allowed sex workers to work more safely: They were able to vet clients and promote their services online. “It’s very heartbreaking to see the fallout,” said dominatrix Yevgeniya Ivanyutenko. “A lot of people lost their ability to safely make a living. A lot of people were forced to go on the street or do other things that they wouldn’t have otherwise considered.” M.F. Akynos, the founder and executive director of the Black Sex Worker Collective, thinks Harris should “apologize to the community. She needs to admit that she really fucked up with Backpage, and really ruined a lot of people’s lives.”

After Harris became a senator, she cosponsored the now-infamous Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), which—along with the House’s Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA)—was signed into law by President Trump in 2018. FOSTA-SESTA created a loophole in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the so-called “safe harbor” provision that allows websites to be free from liability for user-generated content (e.g., Amazon reviews, Craigslist ads). The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that Section 230 is the backbone of the Internet, calling it “the most important law protecting internet free speech.” Now, website publishers are liable if third parties post sex-work ads on their platforms.

That spelled the end of any number of platforms—mostly famously Craigslist’s “personal encounters” section—that sex workers used to vet prospective clients, leaving an already vulnerable workforce even more exposed. (The Woodhull Freedom Foundation has filed a lawsuit challenging FOSTA on First Amendment grounds; in January 2020, it won an appeal in D.C.’s district court).

“I sent a bunch of stats [to Harris and Senator Diane Feinstein] about decriminalization and how much SESTA-FOSTA would hurt American sex workers and open them up to violence,” said Cara (a pseudonym), who was working as a sex worker in the San Francisco and a member of SWOP when the bill passed. Both senators ignored her.

The bill both demonstrably harmed sex workers and failed to drop sex trafficking. “Within one month of FOSTA’s enactment, 13 sex workers were reported missing, and two were dead from suicide,” wrote Lura Chamberlain in her Fordham Law Review article “FOSTA: A Hostile Law with a Human Cost.” “Sex workers operating independently faced a tremendous and immediate uptick in unwanted solicitation from individuals offering or demanding to traffic them. Numerous others were raped, assaulted, and rendered homeless or unable to feed their children.” A 2020 survey of the effects of FOSTA-SESTA found that “99% of online respondents reported that this law does not make them feel safer” and 80.61 percent “say they are now facing difficulties advertising their services.” "

-What Sex Workers Want Kamala Harris to Know by Hallie Liberman

[simply-ivanka]

Who’s Afraid of Project 2025?

Democrats run against a think-tank paper that Trump disavows. Why?

Wall Street Journal

July 29, 2024

By The Editorial Board

Americans are learning more about Kamala Harris, as Democrats rush to anoint the Vice President’s candidacy after throwing President Biden overboard. Ms. Harris wasted no time saying she’s going to run hard against a policy paper that Donald Trump has disavowed—the supposedly nefarious agenda known as Project 2025. But who’s afraid of a think-tank white paper?

“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” Ms. Harris tweeted shortly after President Biden dropped out. She’s picking up this ball from Mr. Biden, and her campaign website claims that Project 2025 would “strip away our freedoms” and “abolish checks and balances.”

***

Sounds terrible, but is it? The 922-page document doesn’t lack for modesty, as a wish list of policy reforms that would touch every part of government from the Justice Department to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The project is led by the Heritage Foundation and melds the work of some 400 scholars and analysts from an eclectic mix of center-right groups. The project is also assembling a Rolodex of those who might work in a Trump Administration.

Most of the Democratic panic-mongering has focused on the project’s aim to rein in the administrative state. That includes civil service reform that would make it easier to remove some government workers, and potentially revisiting the independent status of agencies like the Federal Trade Commission.

The latter isn’t going to happen, but getting firmer presidential control over the bureaucracy would improve accountability. The federal government has become so vast that Presidents have difficulty even knowing what is going on in the executive branch. Americans don’t want to be ruled by a permanent governing class that doesn’t answer to voters.

Some items on this menu are also standard conservative fare. The document calls for an 18% corporate tax rate (now 21%), describing that levy as “the most damaging tax” in the U.S. system that falls heavily on workers. A mountain of economic literature backs that up. The blueprint suggests tying more welfare programs with work; de-regulating health insurance markets; expanding Medicare Advantage plans that seniors like; ending sugar subsidies; revving up U.S. energy production. That all sounds good to us.

Democrats are suggesting the project would gut Social Security, though in fact it bows to Mr. Trump’s preference not to touch the retirement program, which is headed for bankruptcy without reform. No project can profess to care about the rising national debt, as Heritage does, without fixing a program that was 22% of the federal budget in 2023.

At times the paper takes no position. For example: The blueprint features competing essays on trade policy. This is a tacit admission that for all the GOP’s ideological confusion on economics, many conservatives still understand that Mr. Trump’s 10% tariff is a terrible idea.

As for the politics, Mr. Trump recently said online that he knew “nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.” That may be true. The chance that Mr. Trump has read any of it is remote to nil, and he doesn’t want to be tied to anyone’s ideas since he prizes maximum ideological flexibility.

The document mentions abortion nearly 200 times, but Mr. Trump wants to neutralize that issue. The project’s chief sponsor, Heritage president Kevin Roberts, also gave opponents a sword when he boasted of “a second American revolution” that would be peaceful “if the left allows it to be.” This won’t help Mr. Trump with the swing voters he needs to win re-election.

By our lights the project’s cultural overtones are also too dark and the agenda gives too little spotlight to the economic freedom and strong national defense that defined the think tank’s influence on Ronald Reagan in 1980.

***

But the left’s campaign against Project 2025 is reaching absurd decibels. You’d think Mr. Trump is a political mastermind hiding the secret plans he’ll implement with an army of shock troops marching in lockstep. If his first term is any guide, and it is the best we have, Mr. Trump will govern as a make-it-up-as-he-goes tactician rather than a strategist with a coherent policy guide. He’ll dodge and weave based on the news cycle and often based on whoever talks to him last.

Not much of the Project 2025 agenda is likely to happen, even if Republicans take the House and Senate. Democrats will block legislation with a filibuster. The bureaucracy will leak with abandon and oppose even the most minor reforms to the civil service. The press will revert to full resistance mode, and Mr. Trump’s staff will trip over their own ambitions.

Democrats know this, which is why they fear Trump II less than they claim. They’re targeting Project 2025 to distract from their own failed and unpopular policies.

[himbeereule]

Орлёнок (Eaglet)

Орлёнок (Eaglet) is an interactive story set in a country similar to 1910s-1920s Russia. You're a member of the overthrown Imperial Family, shaping the future of the Empire by virtue of arms.

It aims to be equal parts role-playing, dress-up and strategy game, with an emphasis on romance.

Although there will be no explicit nsfw scenes, it does include graphic descriptions of the horrors of war as well as personal tragedies, so please refer to the content warnings at the end of this post.

(as the project is still a wip, this overview is somewhat incomplete and will be gradually updated in tandem with the progress of writing)

DEMO: here (v0.0.2a, 21.06.2024)

Forum post: here

Number Spelling Function (IF writer resource): here

Secondary project: @a-dying-wish-if Tertiary (mini-)project: @perceptron-failure-if Quaternary project: [redacted]

The Empire of Nevetskiya - old, proud, and utterly dilapidated. While the Industrial Revolution has enabled other Monarchies - after a few quickly suppressed workers' uprisings - to become modern colonialist superpowers, exerting their influence all over the world, Nevetskiya is still overwhelmingly agrarian, and barely holding onto its outlying territories acquired in golden times long past.

Your Father Emperor, while ruling with an iron fist and unquestionable authority over the common people, is completely dependent on the shaky loyalty of the High Nobility, who frustrate any attempt to modernize the economy or administration, out of fear upstart merchants might, in time, replace the old Aristocracy.

When a sloppily executed coup d'etat eventually leaves your family dead and you a refugee, it becomes time you grab the reins of your destiny and amass an army to liberate and rebuild the country in the way you envision.

(this is meant to be a concise overview - a more exiting and detailed description of features can be found in the offical Interest Check Thread post)

extensive character customization

extensive army customization - both in a strategy and in a dress-up game sense

focus on story over stats - success is determined on the battlefield, not by your character's personality

five distinct regions with a wide cast of characters

complex personality system - for example, how your character actually feels and what they show to the world are separate things

several ways to rule - will you become a traditional Monarch, a Military Dictator, a democratically elected Head-of-State, or maybe proclaim yourself a Living Saint?

choose how much modernization is needed - will you allow women to bear arms, at the cost of offending the traditionalist nobles? Introduce tanks at the cost of foreign powers gaining influence?

how far will you go for victory? A political police, mass executions and the use of special types of weaponry might give you an edge, but is your vision really worth it?

a total of ten romanceable characters

(this naturally might contain slight spoilers)

The ROs

★ Yakov Tymofiyevich Sokolovskiy / Liliya Tymofiyevna Sokolovskaya ★

The Intelligence Director (gender-selectable)

One of your four original companions. As a member of the High Nobility, you've met them before - maybe you've even been childhood friends?

But even if you know them, it's hard to tell what they're truly like, as they seem to switch personalities effortlessly depending on the situation.

Their work is a mystery to seemingly everyone, but they always get results: as long as you let them act freely, no enemy agent has any chance to harm you or your cause.

Age: mid-20s

★ Semyon Ivanovich Orlov / Selena Ivanovna Orlova ★

The Cavalry Officer (gender-selectable)

One of your four original companions. A war hero and renowned expert when it comes to horses, the only reason they were not yet promoted to a lofty position in the War Ministry is their pragmatic approach to new developments, which hasn't mixed well with the typically very traditionalist views of the old Imperial officer corps.

Possessing a subdued but strong charisma and deeply respected by their soldiers as a wise parent figure, they are a solid pillar of support to you, and will reliably get things done - though some people might consider the cost for that too high sometimes.

Age: early 30s

★ Mikhail Pavlovich Voronin / Marina Pavlovna Voronina ★

The Young Visionary (gender-selectable)

One of your four original companions. They shot up through the ranks by impressing the War Ministry with bold new ideas for utilizing modern technologies and are hailed as a genius by many - though the older officers dismiss them as a dreamer at best and incompetent fool at worst.

With you, they hope to have found someone who'll appreciate their visions for the future - plus, their relative eccentrism has left them in dire need of a friend.

Their technical expertise might just prove to be the key to your success - if you can secure the foreign support needed to get the modern equipment needed to utilize it.

Age: early 20s

★ Leon Isayev / Leah Isayeva ★

The Noble Academic (gender-selectable)

One of your four original companions. Born to wealthy nobles, they graduated the Imperial Officer Academy with perfect grades, and feel honour-bound to your family.

They were the one to gather your initial force of loyalists and act as your primary advisor. But their loyalty is to the Imperial system, with you just a symbolic representative - can you convince them that you and your vision deserve their loyalty beyond that?

Age: late 20s

★ 'Little' Semyon/Selena Shvets ★

The Hero (gender-selectable)

A young cavalry officer and leader of your Southern Forces. A protegé of the "other" Semyon/Selena, they lack their cynical pragmatism, but make up for it with a firm belief in the triumph of a better world.

Some may call their optimism naive, and their personality has been mockingly compared to a Golden Retriever, but they have proven time and time again that underestimating them on the battlefield results in a crushing defeat.

Age: early 20s

★ Nikola ★

The Rebel (nb)

Leading an anti-authoritarian peasant uprising in the West, Nikola is more likely to be your enemy than your ally - but they don't seem to care enough about politics to refrain from flirting with you, so... there might be a basis of mutual understanding there?

Their personality is pretty sweet, at least - if you ignore the fact they'll cheerfully gun down prisoners if they feel like it.

Age: mid-20s

★ Rakhmil/Rakhilya Feldman ★

The Logistician (gender-selectable)

A member of the Western Rebel Army and best friend of Nikola's adoptive sibling, they've poured their soul (and countless nights without any sleep) into somehow maintaining the rebels' supply network in the face of their rapidly swelling numbers.

Unhappy with Nikola's carefree attitude, they might end up aligning with you instead in order to save their cause.

Age: late 20s

★ Arseniy Matveyevich Lebedev / Amaliya Matveyevna Lebedeva ★

The Enemy (gender-selectable)

Grand Duke Lebedev, the main leader of the Aristocrat faction, stood by and watched when your family was executed. Arseniy/Amaliya is their younger sibling, and serves as military commander of his personal forces that aid several warlords in their efforts to establish their own petty kingdoms.

But they're already uncomfortable with their brother's methods, and if you can convince them that you're not actually "an incompetent little puppet who's trying to ruin the country out of arrogant delusions", they might become a very valuable ally.

Age: mid-20s

★ Lyudmila Demyanovna Naumova ★ (f)

A minor noble who reluctantly turned into a Warlord in order to protect her territory and her people. All she wants is peace - but she'll not hesitate to fight if she believes it necessary.

Unfortunately, you can't just ignore her - all must choose a side in this war - but you have options how to deal with her. Will you subdue her by force? Or fall back on the age-old option of political marriage to secure an alliance?

Age: late 20s

★ Jan/Jana Novotný ★ (gender-selectable, under certain circumstances)

A member of your Personal Guard who has distinguished themself and eventually rises to become its commander. Others might betray or doubt you, but Novotný only cares about one thing - your continued, unharmed existence.

And they will go to any lengths to guarantee it.

Age: mid-20s

CONTENT WARNINGS

...will be added as they become relevant in the demo.

[palms-upturned]

For US unions like the UAW — which has thousands of members in weapons factories making the bombs, missiles, and aircraft used by Israel, as well in university departments doing research linked to the Israeli military — the Palestinian trade union call to action is particularly relevant. When the UAW’s national leadership came out in support of a cease-fire on December 1, they also voted to establish a “Divestment and Just Transition Working Group.” The stated purpose of the working group is to study the UAW’s own economic ties to Israel and explore ways to convert war-related industries to production for peaceful purposes while ensuring a just transition for weapons workers.

Members of UAW Labor for Palestine say they have started making visits to a Colt factory in Connecticut, which holds a contract to supply rifles to the Israeli military, to talk with their fellow union members about Palestine, a cease-fire, and a just transition. They want to see the union’s leadership support such organizing activity.

“If UAW leaders decided to, they could, tomorrow, form a national organizing campaign to educate and mobilize rank-and-file towards the UAW’s own ceasefire and just transition call,” UAW Labor for Palestine members said in a statement. “They could hold weapons shop town halls in every region; they could connect their small cadre of volunteer organizers — like us — to the people we are so keen to organize with; they could even send some of their staff to help with this work.”

On January 21, the membership of UAW Local 551, which represents 4,600 autoworkers at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant (who were part of last year’s historic stand-up strike) endorsed the Palestinian trade unions’ call to not cooperate in the production and transportation of arms for Israel. Ten days later, UAW Locals 2865 and 5810, representing around forty-seven thousand academic workers at the University of California, passed a measure urging the union’s national leaders to ensure that the envisioned Divestment and Just Transition Working Group “has the needed resources to execute its mission, and that Palestinian, Arab and Muslim workers whose communities are disproportionately affected by U.S.-backed wars are well-represented on the committee.”

Members of UAW Locals 2865 and 5810 at UC Santa Cruz’s Astronomy Department have pledged to withhold any labor that supports militarism and to refuse research collaboration with military institutions and arms companies. In December, unionized academic workers from multiple universities formed Researchers Against War (RAW) to expose and cut ties between their research and warfare, and to organize in their labs and departments for more transparency about where the funding for their work comes from and more control over what their labor is used for. RAW, which was formed after a series of discussions by union members first convened by US Labor Against Racism and War last fall, hosted a national teach-in and planning meeting on February 12.

Meanwhile, public sector workers in New York City have begun their own campaign to divest their pension money from Israel. On January 25, rank-and-file members of AFSCME District Council (DC) 37 launched a petition calling on the New York City Employees’ Retirement System to divest the $115 million it holds in Israeli securities. The investments include $30 million in bonds that directly fund the Israeli military and its activities. “As rank-and-file members of DC 37 who contribute to and benefit from the New York City Employees’ Retirement System and care about the lives of working people everywhere, we refuse to support the Israeli government and the corporations that extract profit from the killing of innocent civilians,” the petition states.

In an election year when President Joe Biden and other Democratic candidates will depend heavily on organized labor for donations and especially get-out-the-vote efforts, rank and filers are also trying to push their unions to exert leverage on the president by getting him to firmly stand against the ongoing massacre in Gaza. NEA members with Educators for Palestine are calling on their union’s leaders to withdraw their support for Biden’s reelection campaign until he stops “sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel,” marching from AFT headquarters to NEA headquarters in Washington, DC on February 10 to assert their demand. Similarly, after the UAW International Executive Board endorsed Biden last month — a decision that sparked intense division within the union — UAW Labor for Palestine is demanding the endorsement be revoked “until [Biden] calls for a permanent ceasefire and stops sending weapons to Israel.”

[ilguna]

im sorry, i know you are looking for some request from other fandoms, but this one just seemed so perfect :(

from piano sessions, my tears ricochet by taylor swift with finnick?

i promise i will send another request with a different fandom, and it's totally ok if you don't want to write this ❤️ and of course, CONGRATULATIONS!

☼ my tears ricochet pt1 (Finnick Odair) ☼

warnings; swearing, death mention.

wc; 2.5k

prompt; Piano Sessions: songfic, my tears ricochet by taylor swift.

part two.

—

When you briefly met Commander Paylor in District Two before the Capitol invasion, she struck you as more of a leader than President Coin. Which was odd, considering that Paylor was a textile worker, burdened with the responsibility of organizing rebel attacks.

She’s a polite person to be around, confident in the way she holds herself, speaking with unwavering authority. You didn’t feel the need to lower your voice in her presence, because she wanted to know what you had to say. It was a nice change from where you’d been under Coin in District Thirteen.

There, you felt like if you breathed too loudly, it would get back to her. The amount of times she called you into Command simply because you were badmouthing her to the former residents of District Twelve was a little ridiculous. You aren’t entirely sure who heard you and reported it, or why Coin cared so damn much.

She must’ve assumed that you had an influence on the people, which she was wrong about. The only times you brought up her flaws was when someone else asked you what you thought of her. Oftentimes, it was because they were too afraid to be the one to say it first.

You could see right through her, like a sheet of tracing paper. The steps she’d taken in order to preserve her own self-image were done out of insecurity. She was afraid that if someone rose too high, they’d sweep the power right from underneath her. That’s why she was so willing to let Katniss go into danger.

All she had to do was win the rebellion, and she’d get control over Panem. And once she did, she showed her true colors. You knew the moment she suggested a symbolic Hunger Games that she wasn’t the right person to be in that chair. Even if a few of the others agreed to letting her do that, you knew they were resentful that she wanted to punish the Capitol in the same way they’d punished the districts for seventy-five years.

She missed one important factor, though. There was a reason why you were following behind Katniss Everdeen and not her. You trusted Katniss to make the right choices, and she never failed you. That’s why you knew that she wouldn’t let Coin announce the proposition.

That same evening, Snow’s execution was to take place. Instead, she found herself humiliated, with an arrow through her cold heart. Katniss took out the only evil left in a position of power, knowing full well that she could’ve gotten killed by the rebels for it. 

Chaos followed this, an emergency election took place, where Paylor was given the position of President. In the weeks that followed, there was a televised trial, where everyone that was close to Katniss, was called to the stand to give statements on her character.

During this time, you weren’t allowed to go home to visit. You were forced to stay in the Capitol, because they could call for you to speak at any moment. And even worse, they’d placed you in a room with Finnick, because they were still under the assumption that you were together.

You weren’t. You and Finnick had been broken up for at least two and a half weeks, since the day that Boggs had died in the apartment complex courtyard. 

The argument wouldn’t come until hours later, when you’d made it several blocks down the street, holed up inside of a different apartment to catch your breath and sort out a plan. After you watched the Peacekeepers destroy the building on live television, announcing you all dead, Finnick said that he wanted to take a walk to get some fresh air.

You went with him, mostly for safety in numbers, but also because you knew he secretly wanted the company. You went halfway around the block without an issue, but when you were about to turn the corner, the armed vehicle pulled up beside you, and the Peacekeepers started flooding out. 

As you’d begun to curse the idea, Finnick started talking to the Peacekeepers, calmly, hands raised in the air. He told them that it would be a bad idea to kill you two on the street, because it would alert the others, and they’d run. However, he told them that if they tried to take you two by force, they’d find themselves in the same position.

You were morbidly curious on how Finnick would charm his way out of this one, when you realized that he wasn’t going to. He was giving them the information on how to catch you. He told them that the squad had off-handedly mentioned going into the sewers to evade the Pods. The best way to catch you guys would be, then. 

And as long as the Peacekeepers let you two go, and didn’t interfere between the time you got to the apartment and into the sewers, he wouldn’t tell the squad about this encounter. To your surprise, the Peacekeepers agreed, letting you go.

The way back to the apartment was quiet. You were too stunned to say anything, wondering how Finnick had gone from the person to sacrifice himself, to doing the opposite. He knew your silence wasn’t anything good, which is why he told you that he wouldn’t let anything happen to you. 

You weren’t upset by that. You weren’t scared that the Capitol was going to throw everything at you to either kill or capture you. You knew that when it came down to it, you’d keep yourself alive. It was the part after, when he told you not to say anything to the squad, did you finally crack.

You broke up with Finnick on the street.

To his credit, he upheld his promise of keeping you safe. The issue is that courtesy wasn’t given to any of the other squad members. Half of them died. Messalla, Jackson, Leeg, Castor and Homes were lost in the sewers. Something that didn’t need to happen, if he’d let you two get taken.

Whether or not he wanted to admit it out loud, Finnick was terrified that the topic would somehow get brought up in court. It was all he ever talked about when he got the chance. That there was a chance that the people you’d trusted for the past year could find out he betrayed them.

And against your better judgement, you told Finnick that what happened with the Peacekeepers would stay between the two of you. If it meant that he would stop worrying about it, you’d never breathe a word. Besides, if it did get out, it would destroy the both of you, not just him. 

He’d get it because he’s the one that told the Peacekeepers, and ensured that you all went into the sewers. You would go down because you didn’t say anything about it, despite having a whole hour to do so.

You should never have told him this, because it’s what sparked the idea for his stupid decision in the first place.

Finnick got questioned before you did. It was simple, straight-forward. They wanted to know Katniss’s mindset during your journey through the Capitol, if there was anything out of the ordinary. When he got to the part of the story after Boggs had died and you holed up in the apartment, he tried to completely skip over your walk outside.

The man that was asking the questions, didn’t let this slide. He knew the two of you had taken a walk. You think he was trying to make smalltalk, now that you’re looking back at it. But Finnick must’ve panicked, because he let everything spill, the same way he had when he exposed Snow for the victor prostitution.

The issue is that he spun the story.

Finnick turned the blame around entirely, and he did so effortlessly, as if he’d been rehearsing it for days in a row. He told the court that yes, you had gone on a walk together so he could clear his head. However, a Peacekeeper truck pulled up, and that’s when you talked your way out of getting captured, by offering Katniss up as a sacrifice.

The entire courtroom filled with silence when that word left his mouth. Dozens of pairs of eyes landed on you, but you were looking at Finnick. There was only one word that chanted through your mind, getting louder as the seconds ticked on.

Wrong.

Even the man that was questioning him was confused, asking him to elaborate. That’s when Finnick repeated the events, twisting the truth to put you in the hot seat. You were the one that calmly spoke to them with your hands raised. You were the one that told the Peacekeepers about the sewers. You were the one that threatened Finnick if he spoke about it.

He was the one that broke up with you out of fear.

“Wrong.” You breathed, getting to your feet. “You’re the one that did all of that, Finnick!”

The judge had you removed from the courtroom, while they wrapped up the trial without your statement. You were supposed to go on stand that same day, but they ruled you out, because you were too emotionally unstable to be seen.

Reasonably so, because it was only thirty minutes later, did you realize that the entirety of Panem had just watched Finnick lie straight through his perfectly white teeth. And you’d never get the chance to explain yourself to anybody, because they wouldn’t see you.

Finnick was removed from your mansion bedroom, leaving you here alone. No one saw you for several days on end, except to leave food at your door. You were stuck watching the trial from the television, and it ended yesterday, with the conclusion that Katniss was under so much pressure the day that she killed Coin, that she was deemed not mentally sound. 

And of course, you’ve received blame for that, too. If she hadn’t witnessed so many people get murdered in the sewers because of your actions to sell the squad out, she would’ve been able to think straight during the execution. In this situation, you’re the monster, and Finnick has been deemed the hero for coming forward with the truth.

You think that you can come back from this, though. The people around you just need time away, to cool down from the trial. Once it’s been a few months, you’ll come back with a proper explanation, appeal to Paylor, because she’s the level-headed one, after all.

Right now, you want to get home.

There’s a hovercraft waiting in the City Circle for the victors. It’ll be a long trip as you drop off the others on the way to District Four, but you don’t mind. You’ve been craving your bed ever since you got to District Thirteen. It’s been months since you’ve had proper time to relax.

Paylor is waiting in front of the front door with a couple of rebel guards. Once you get close enough, they move to block the way. Your eyes switch between them and her, confused.

“What’s happening?” You ask.

“I regret to inform you that you will not be able to go back to District Four.” Paylor tells you in a measured voice. “There were quite a few complaints regarding your actions, and the general consensus is that they wouldn’t feel safe if you were to arrive in District Four and choose to stay there.”

“They wouldn’t feel safe?” You ask, face contorting. “How many times do I have to tell you that Finnick is the one that told the Peacekeepers about the sewers?”

She closes her eyes. “We have no proof that you weren’t the one that told them. They want to be safe, rather than sorry.”

You side step, trying to see over the guard’s shoulders. You find that Finnick has stepped foot off the hovercraft, standing at the bottom of the ramp, hands in his pockets. You begin to shake your head at him.

“I want to speak to him.” You tell her, ignoring what she’s said. “I want to speak to Finnick before he gets to go home and I don’t.”

“Step back.” She orders you.

You listen to her, watching as she slips through the gap between the guard and the door. She walks down the runway, with Finnick meeting her in the middle. The two of them talk for a brief moment, where it ends with him nodding. Paylor motions to tell the guards to let you through.

They move aside, you go down the steps, heading straight for Finnick. He doesn’t move, allowing you to go to him. Paylor leaves to go back to the mansion, allowing you to speak privately.

“Finnick.” You snap, slamming your hands against his chest, hands gripping on the front of his shirt. You pull him forward. “You set me up. You son of a bitch. They’re not letting me get on!”

Finnick presses his hands to your shoulders, pushing you away. “I know.”

“Tell them you lied.” You shake him. “You don’t have to tell them it was you, just tell them you fucking lied.”

“I’m not.” He tells you. “This is your own fault, (Y/n).”

“How is this my fault?” You demand. “I promised you!”

“You broke up with me.” He’s calm, which is making you agitated. “After I made sure you got out of the sewers safely, you didn’t think to apologize. It was the right move to make.”

“Why would I?” You hiss. “Your actions murdered people.”

He makes a face. “Let go of me.”

“Everything I have is in District Four. My home, my pictures, my belongings. My entire life is there, and you’re the only thing standing in the way of me going. Just tell them you lied, and I’ll leave you alone.”

Finnick pulls your hands off of his shirt. “You have District Two, didn’t Paylor tell you? They said that they’d take you and Gale in.”

Gale, a bitter name in your mouth.

“I don’t belong there, and you know it.” You say.

“It doesn’t have to be there. You can go anywhere you want, (Y/n).”

“Anywhere I want.” You echo, as if it’s a cruel joke, blood boiling. “Just not home.”

“Maybe they’ll let you back sometime in the future.” Finnick begins to back up toward the hovercraft. “I can’t promise you that your house will be there. I heard from Annie that they set it on fire the same night I told them the truth. You’ll be lucky if there’s still ashes.”

“You’re going to regret this, Finnick.” You don’t move from where you stand. “This is going to haunt you for the rest of your life. Each time you look at the other side of the street, it’ll kill you knowing that you did this to me.”

“We’ll see about that.”

--

this was part of my 3k celebration! thank you anon!!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Anne Applebaum :: @anneapplebaum

This was the moment that mattered. Trump's political movement relies on total impunity for liars, and mostly gets it. The lies bind them together, cement their feeling of power.

* * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 1, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 02, 2024

More than 45,000 U.S. dock workers went on strike today for the first time since 1977, nearly 50 years ago. The International Longshoremen's Association union, which represents 45,000 port workers, is negotiating with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) employer group over a new contract. The strike will shut down 36 ports from Maine to Texas, affecting about half the country’s shipping. Analysts from J.P. Morgan estimate that the strike could cost the U.S. economy about $5 billion a day. The strikers have said they will continue to unload military cargo.

Dockworkers want a 77% increase in pay over six years and better benefits, while USMX has said it has offered to increase wages by nearly 50%, triple employer contributions to retirement plans, and improve health care options. In the Washington Post, economics columnist Heather Long pointed out that the big issue at stake is the automation that threatens union jobs.

Although the strike threatens to slow the economy depending on how long it lasts, President Joe Biden has refused requests to force the strikers back to work, reiterating his support for collective bargaining. He noted that ocean carriers have made record profits since the pandemic—sometimes in excess of 800% over prepandemic levels—and that executive compensation and shareholder profits have reflected those profits. “It’s only fair that workers, who put themselves at risk during the pandemic to keep ports open, see a meaningful increase in their wages as well,” Biden said in a statement.  

In the presidential contest, the Trump-Vance campaign is trying to preserve its false narrative. In Wisconsin today, Trump accused Vice President Harris of murder—although he appeared to get confused about the victim—and claimed that she has a phone app on which the heads of cartels can get information about where to drop undocumented immigrants. He also said that Kim Jong Un of North Korea is trying to kill him.

When asked if he should have been tougher on Iran after it launched ballistic missiles in 2020 on U.S. forces in Iraq, leaving more than 100 U.S. soldiers injured, Trump rejected the idea that soldiers with traumatic brain injuries were actually hurt. He said “they had a headache” and said he thought the attack “was a very nice thing because they didn’t want us to retaliate.”

Trump also backed out of a scheduled interview with 60 Minutes that correspondent Scott Pelley was slated to conduct on Thursday. 60 Minutes noted that for more than 50 years, the show has invited both campaigns to appear on the broadcast before the election and this year, both campaigns agreed to an interview. Trump’s spokesperson complained that 60 Minutes “insisted on doing live fact checking, which is unprecedented.” Vice President Kamala Harris will participate in her interview as planned. 

The campaign’s resistance to independent fact checking of their false narrative came up in tonight’s vice presidential debate on CBS between Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s running mate, and Ohio senator J.D. Vance, running mate for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. CBS Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell and Face the Nation moderator and chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan moderated the debate.

Walz’s goal in the debate was to do no harm to Vice President Harris’s campaign, and he achieved that. Vance’s goal was harder: to give people a reason to vote for Donald Trump. It is doubtful he moved any needles there. 

The moments that did stand out in the debate put a spotlight on Vance’s tenuous relationship with the truth. When Vance lied again about the migrants in Springfield, Ohio, who are in the United States legally, Brennan added: "Just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio, does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status."

Vance responded: "The rules were that you guys weren't going to fact-check.”

There were two other big moments of the evening, both based in lies. First, Vance claimed that Trump, who tried repeatedly to repeal or weaken the Affordable Care Act, “saved” it. Then, Walz asked Vance directly if Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. Vance refused to answer, saying he is “focused on the future,” and warned that “the threat of censorship” is the real problem in the U.S. 

Walz said: “That’s a damning non-answer.” 

Former chair of the Republican Party Michael Steele said after the debate: “I don't care where you are on policy…. If you cannot in 2024 answer that question, you are unfit for office.”

It was significant that Vance tried to avoid saying either that Trump won in 2020—a litmus test for MAGA Republicans—or that he lost, a reflection of reality. While this debate probably didn’t move a lot of voters for the 2024 election, what it did do was make Vance look like a far more viable candidate than his running mate. Waffling on the Big Lie seemed designed to preserve his candidacy for future elections.

It seems likely that the message behind Vance’s smooth performance wasn’t lost on Trump. As the debate was going on, Trump posted: “The GREAT Pete Rose just died. He was one of the most magnificent baseball players ever to play the game. He paid the price! Major League Baseball should have allowed him into the Hall of Fame many years ago. Do it now, before his funeral!” 

Former Cincinnati Reds baseball player Rose died yesterday at 83. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[squareallworthy]

The Trump Mandate

Donald Trump has claimed that the election gave him an "unprecedented and powerful mandate." It didn't, of course. Nevada and Arizona have still not been called, but assuming he picks up both of them (as seems likely), that will give him 312 electoral votes. That would put him ahead of Biden's 2020 result and his own 2016 result, but well behind Obama and Clinton. Among the 20 elections since 1948, Trump's 312 votes would rank 12th.

And assuming he holds his popular vote majority of 50.6% to 47.9% (as does not seem likely, since there are still a lot of California votes to count), that gives him a 2.7% popular vote margin. That doesn't beat Biden in 2020, and again it's well below Obama and Clinton. Among the 20 elections since 1948, Trump's 2.7% popular vote margin would rank 14th.

So not only is that not unprecedented or powerful, it's actually sub-par for elections since World War II. Every president always claims a mandate, and sure, Trump has one in the sense that any successful candidate gets the mandate "be president, administer the executive branch," but not much more than that.

If there is a mandate for anything, it's "keep inflation low," because apparently Americans hate inflation so much that they will vote for just about anybody rather than an incumbent during a time of inflation, even if wages have been going up along with prices. So, whether that makes sense or not, the American people are clear on this: don't cause any inflation.

The thing is, though, one of his big campaign promises is to impose tariffs on all imports, which will drive up prices, and another one is to deport millions of workers, which will also drive up prices. This is exactly contrary to the "no inflation" mandate. I don't see any way he can keep his promises and also avoid inflation. In fact the mandate that voters appear to have given Trump is "don't be Biden, but don't be Trump either." And I think he's going to have a hard time pulling that off.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

COP29: Brazil may lead global actions to mitigate climate change

To Márcio Astrini, the conference is difficult, but the country has been reaching goals and and may lead the agenda

The 29th edition of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP), which began on Monday (11) in Baku, Azerbaijan, is likely to be one of the hardest ever. This is because it is taking place while there are ongoing wars, a breakdown of trust and the election of Donald Trump in the United States. However, it is also an opportunity for Brazil to position itself as a global leader in actions to mitigate climate change. 

This is the assessment of the executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, Márcio Astrini. “Brazil has to fill this vacuum now – this gap left by those who are leaving – and take the lead. Not only Brazil, but other countries too. The COP is knocking on our door, and so is the call for new global leadership. Brazil needs to take that place,” he said. 

According to him, the country has made significant progress in meeting its mitigation targets since the recent presidential victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party), with the possibility of meeting them by 2025, something few countries will achieve. However, the time has come to present more robust proposals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“These good figures are not enough for Brazil to lead the negotiating agenda, which is where we want to see Brazil in 2025, at the conference here [COP30 will be held in the city of Belém]. One thing is to do your homework, and another thing is to set an example and push the global agenda,” he argues. “The global agenda isn’t a domestic task. That's the principle of everything. If you don't do it even at home, then there's no point in wanting to be the world's negotiating leader. Now, Brazil needs to take the next step, which is to put itself forward as a leader by having an aggressive proposal for reducing greenhouse gases.”

Continue reading.

[kirbylover34]

VOTE!!!

I know how everyone is feeling currently about the genocide of Palestine right now. People are angry and furious that we Americans are complicit in the ongoing violence that revokes the lives of innocent people. How our politicians are sending weapons and defending Zionism, and silencing those that speak out. As it stands both political parties, our democratic and republican candidates are fully onboard with the slaughter of women and infants. I feel that pain, seeing videos of children crying for their deceased families and the vileness I never thought humans were capable of doing. As it stands democratic candidate Kamala Harris has fully shown support for the Israelis. So why as an average normal American citizen who detests the ongoing genocide am I telling you to vote for Kamala? If you have been paying attention to our current politics. You would know who Donald Trump is. But many of you have seem to have forgotten the various warning signs that should alarm everybody. Trump has recently ramped up fascist rhetoric, calling immigrants and minorities like vermin, threatening to arrest political opponents, spreading deceitful lies such as how Haitians are eating cats and dogs, many of you have also seem to forgot that he incited an insurrection on our capital after sleepy joe was fairly elected. He did nothing when people were dying from COVID and even sent our tests to Vladimir Putin. He has been convicted of 34 felonies. Many of you should also know about his Project 2025 playbook,if you don’t. It details plans to replace the federal civil workers with MAGA Loyalists, and using Unitary Executive Theory to give the Executive branch more power over other branches of government. He also wants to send illegal immigrants to concentration camps, give a tax cut to 1%, defund the department of education and EPA, cut back on social security and Medicare. Also many seem to be ignoring the fact that he was given immunity by 6 out of 3 Supreme Court justices. Which the sane court also overturned Roe V. Wade. He also plans to take abortion away nationwide making it illegal. Also most of his current administration want the same things he wants. He plans on turning our country into a military state as a local police force. Hell that’s not even counting the fact that the republicans request he be put in MILITARY VEHICLES FOR TRANSPORTATION. He wants to outlaw rights for Gay and LgbtQ. Thats not even counting the fact that he is clearly suffering from dementia and could be in control of NUCLEAR CODES! Yet many people say Kamala is the same shit from the toilet bowl as trump. I can’t sit here in good faith and watch people ask for a revolution that may never even happen. We are literally hanging by a thread over a black abyss we may never escape from. We are looking at the next Nazi Party, but instead they call themselves MAGA. I’m telling you to vote for Kamala not because I support her. I’m voting for her for the lives of every American. People of color, women, children, LGBTQ, elderly, average normal people who just want to live their lives. Literal lives are at stake here. People should be coming together to make sure Trump never gets back in. And yet I still see people insist to not vote for Kamala. I’m sending this as a warning and message to everyone to vote Blue, no matter what stupid shit the democrats do or how much you dislike them. Do it for your neighbors, do it for the good people who stand in solidarity with Palestinians! VOTE!!! 🔵🇵🇸

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How Google’s trial secrecy lets it control the coverage

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

"Corporate crime" is practically an oxymoron in America. While it's true that the single most consequential and profligate theft in America is wage theft, its mechanisms are so obscure and, well, dull that it's easy to sell us on the false impression that the real problem is shoplifting:

https://newrepublic.com/post/175343/wage-theft-versus-shoplifting-crime

Corporate crime is often hidden behind Dana Clare's Shield Of Boringness, cloaked in euphemisms like "risk and compliance" or that old favorite, "white collar crime":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/07/solar-panel-for-a-sex-machine/#a-single-proposition

And corporate crime has a kind of performative complexity. The crimes come to us wreathed in specialized jargon and technical terminology that make them hard to discern. Which is wild, because corporate crimes occur on a scale that other crimes – even those committed by organized crime – can't hope to match:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card

But anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. After decades of official tolerance (and even encouragement), corporate criminals are finally in the crosshairs of federal enforcers. Take National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo's ruling in Cemex: when a company takes an illegal action to affect the outcome of a union election, the consequence is now automatic recognition of the union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

That's a huge deal. Before, a boss could fire union organizers and intimidate workers, scuttle the union election, and then, months or years later, pay a fine and some back-wages…and the union would be smashed.

The scale of corporate crime is directly proportional to the scale of corporations themselves. Big companies aren't (necessarily) led by worse people, but even small sins committed by the very largest companies can affect millions of lives.

That's why antitrust is so key to fighting corporate crime. To make corporate crimes less harmful, we must keep companies from attaining harmful scale. Big companies aren't just too big to fail and too big to jail – they're also too big for peaceful coexistence with a society of laws.

The revival of antitrust enforcement is such a breath of fresh air, but it's also fighting headwinds. For one thing, there's 40 years of bad precedent from the nightmare years of pro-monopoly Reaganomics to overturn:

https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator

It's not just precedents in the outcomes of trials, either. Trial procedure has also been remade to favor corporations, with judges helping companies stack the deck in their own favor. The biggest factor here is secrecy: blocking recording devices from courts, refusing to livestream the proceedings, allowing accused corporate criminals to clear the courtroom when their executives take the stand, and redacting or suppressing the exhibits:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-09-27-redacted-case-against-amazon/

When a corporation can hide evidence and testimony from the public and the press, it gains broad latitude to dispute critics, including government enforcers, based on evidence that no one is allowed to see, or, in many cases, even describe. Take Project Nessie, the program that the FTC claims Amazon used to compel third-party sellers to hike prices across many categories of goods:

https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/amazon-used-secret-project-nessie-algorithm-to-raise-prices-6c593706

Amazon told the press that the FTC has "grossly mischaracterize[d]" Project Nessie. The DoJ disagrees, but it can't say why, because the Project Nessie files it based its accusations on have been redacted, at Amazon's insistence. Rather than rebutting Amazon's claim, FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar could only say "We once again call on Amazon to move swiftly to remove the redactions and allow the American public to see the full scope of what we allege are their illegal monopolistic practices."

It's quite a devastating gambit: when critics and prosecutors make specific allegations about corporate crimes, the corporation gets to tell journalists, "No, that's wrong, but you're not allowed to see the reason we say it's wrong."

It's a way to work the refs, to get journalists – or their editors – to wreathe bold claims in endless hedging language, or to avoid reporting on the most shocking allegations altogether. This, in turn, keeps corporate trials out of the public eye, which reassures judges that they can defer to further corporate demands for opacity without facing an outcry.

That's a tactic that serves Google well. When the company was dragged into court by the DoJ Antitrust Division, it demanded – and received – a veil of secrecy that is especially ironic given the company's promise "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful":

https://usvgoogle.org/trial-update-9-22

While this veil has parted somewhat, it is still intact enough to allow the company to work the refs and kill disfavorable reporting from the trial. Last week, Megan Gray – ex-FTC, ex-DuckDuckGo – published an editorial in Wired reporting on her impression of an explosive moment in the Google trial:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

According to Gray, Google had run a program to mess with the "semantic matching" on queries, silently appending terms to users' searches that caused them to return more ads – and worse results. This generated more revenue for Google, at the expense of advertisers who got billed to serve ads that didn't even match user queries.

Google forcefully disputed this claim:

https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1709726778170786297

They contacted Gray's editors at Wired, but declined to release all the exhibits and testimony that Gray used to form her conclusions about Google's conduct; instead, they provided a subset of the relevant materials, which cast doubt on Gray's accusations.

Wired removed Gray's piece, with an unsigned notice that "WIRED editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial standards. It has been removed":

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

But Gray stands by her piece. She admits that she might have gotten some of the fine details wrong, but that these were not material to the overall point of her story, that Google manipulated search queries to serve more ads at the expense of the quality of the results:

https://twitter.com/megangrA/status/1711035354134794529

She says that the piece could and should have been amended to reflect these fine-grained corrections, but that in the absence of a full record of the testimony and exhibits, it was impossible for her to prove to her editors that her piece was substantively correct.

I reviewed the limited evidence that Google permitted to be released and I find her defense compelling. Perhaps you don't. But the only way we can factually resolve this dispute is for Google to release the materials that they claim will exonerate them. And they won't, though this is fully within their power.

I've seen this playbook before. During the early months of the pandemic, a billionaire who owned a notorious cyberwarfare company used UK libel threats to erase this fact from the internet – including my own reporting – on the grounds that the underlying research made small, non-material errors in characterizing a hellishly complex financial Rube Goldberg machine that was, in my opinion, deliberately designed to confuse investigators.

Like the corporate crimes revealed in the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, the gambit is complicated, but it's not sophisticated:

Make everything as complicated as possible;

Make everything as secret as possible;

Dismiss any accusations by claiming errors in the account of the deliberately complex arrangements, which can't be rectified because the relevant materials are a secret.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/09/working-the-refs/#but-id-have-to-kill-you

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: Jason Rosenberg (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/underpants/12069086054/

CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

--

Japanexperterna.se (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/japanexperterna/15251188384/

CC BY-SA 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[txttletale]

how do ml's reconcile with lenin going for a bigbrainhaver hierarchy which just so happened to place him at the tippy top? most of the things he's quoted for writing make a kind of sense in that longwinded academic philosopher way, but, like, russia went from having a revolution against monarchy to having a monarchy, essentially, and what folks do tends to align with their desires, yeah? wouldn't that make everything he said, idk, suspicious?

we reconcile with this because none of this is even remotely true. lenin did not 'happen to be placed at the tippy top' but was in fact elected by the soviets, who worked in a very simple electoral system by which workers and peasants would elect representatives to their local soviet, who as well as administering local services would also elect members to higher bodies. the quote unquote bigbrainhaver hierarchy system in question was as follows:

The sovereign body is in every case the Congress of Soviets. Each county sends its delegates. These are elected indirectly by the town and county Soviets which vote in proportion to population, following the ratio observed throughout, by which the voters in the town have five times the voting strength of the inhabitants of the villages, an advantage which may, as we saw, be in reality three to one. The Congress meets, as a rule, once a year, for about ten days. It is not, in the real sense of the word, the legislative body. It debates policy broadly, and passes resolutions which lay down the general principles to be followed in legislation. The atmosphere of its sittings is that of a great public demonstration. The Union Congress, for example, which has some fifteen hundred members, meets in the Moscow Opera House. The stage is occupied by the leaders and the heads of the administration, and speeches are apt to be big oratorical efforts. The real legislative body is the so-called Central Executive Committee (known as the C. I. K. and pronounced "tseek") . It meets more frequently than the Congress to which it is responsible-in the case of the Union, at least three times in the year-passes the Budget, receives the reports of the Commissars (ministers), and discusses international policy. It, in its turn, elects two standing bodies: (1) The Presidium of twenty-one members, which has the right to legislate in the intervals between the sittings of the superior assemblies, and also transacts some administrative work. (2) The Council of Peoples' Commissars. These correspond roughly to the Ministers or Secretaries of State in democratic countries and are the chiefs of the administration. Meeting as a Council, they have larger powers than any Cabinet, for they may pass emergency legislation and issue decrees which have all the force of legislation. Save in cases of urgency, however, their decrees and drafts of legislation must be ratified by the Executive Committee (C.I.K.). In another respect they differ from the European conception of a Minister. Each Commissar is in reality the chairman of a small board of colleagues, who are his advisers. These advisory boards, or collegia, meet very frequently (it may even be daily) to discuss current business, and any member of a board has the right to appeal to the whole Council of Commissars against a decision of the Commissar.

—H.N. Brailsford, How The Soviets Work (1927)

you might notice that the congresses of soviets were not directly elected -- this is because they were elected by local soviets, who were directly elected, in a process that many people have given first hand accounts of:

I have, while working in the Soviet Union, participated in an election. I, too, had a right to vote, as I was a working member of the community, and nationality and citizenship are no bar to electoral rights. The procedure was extremely simple. A general meeting of all the workers in our organisation was called by the trade union committee, candidates were discussed, and a vote was taken by show of hands. Anybody present had the right to propose a candidate, and the one who was elected was not personally a member of the Party. In considering the claims of the candidates their past activities were discussed, they themselves had to answer questions as to their qualifications, anybody could express an opinion, for or against them, and the basis of all the discussion was: What justification had the candidates to represent their comrades on the local Soviet. As far as the elections in the villages were concerned, these took place at open village meetings, all peasants of voting age, other than those who employed labour, having the right to vote and to stand for election. As in the towns, any organisation or individual could put forward candidates, anyone could ask the candidate questions, and anybody could support or oppose the candidature. It is usual for the Communist Party to put forward a candidate, trade unions and other organisations can also do so, and there is nothing to prevent the Party’s candidate from not being elected, if he has not sufficient prestige among the voters. In the towns the “ electoral district ” has hitherto consisted of a factory, or a group of small factories sufficient to form a constituency. But there was one section of the town population which has always had to vote geographically, since they did not work together in one organisation. This was the housewives. As a result, the housewives met separately in each district, had their own constituencies, and elected their own representatives to the Soviet. Here, too, vital interest has always been shown in the personality of every candidate. Why should this woman be elected ? What right had she to represent her fellow housewives on the local Soviet ? In the district next to my own at the last election the housewife who was elected was well known as an organiser of a communal dining-room in the district. This was the kind of person that the housewives wanted to represent them on the Soviet. Another candidate, a Communist, proposed by the local organisation of the Party, was turned down in her favour.

[...]

The election of delegates to the local Soviet is not the only function of voters in the Soviet Union. It is not a question here of various parties presenting candidates to the electorate, each with his own policy to offer. The Soviet electorate has to select a personality from its midst to represent it, and instruct this person in the policy which is to be followed when elected. At a Soviet election meeting, therefore, as much or more time may be spent on discussion of the instructions to the delegate as is spent on discussing the personality of the candidates. At the last election to the Soviets, in which I personally participated, we must have spent three or four times as much time on the working out of instructions as we did on the selection of our candidate. About three weeks before the election was to take place the trade union secretary in every department of our organisation was told by the committee that it was time to start to prepare our instructions to the delegate. Every worker was asked to make suggestions concerning policy which he felt should be brought to the notice of the new personnel of the Moscow Soviet. As a result, about forty proposals concerning the general government of Moscow were handed in from a group of about twenty people. We then held a meeting in our department at which we discussed the proposals, and adopted some and rejected others. We then handed our list of pro¬ posals to a commission, appointed by the trade union committee, and representing all the workers in our organisation. This Commission co-ordinated the pro¬ posals received, placed them in order according to the various departments of the Soviet, and this co-ordinated list was read at the election meeting itself, again discussed, and adopted in its final form.

—Pat Sloan, Soviet Democracy (1937)

Between the elections of 1931 and 1934, no less than 18 per cent of the city deputies and 37 per cent of village deputies were recalled, of whom only a relatively small number — 4 per cent of the total — were charged with serious abuse of power. The chief reasons for recall were inactivity — 37 per cent — and inefficiency — 21 per cent. If these figures indicate certain lacks in the quality of elected officials, they show considerable activity of the people in improving government. The electorate of the Peasants' Gazette, for example, consisted of some 1,500 employees, entitled to elect one deputy to the Moscow city soviet and two to the ward soviet. For more than a month before the election every department of the newspaper held meetings discussing both candidates and instructions. Forty-three suggested candidates and some 1,400 proposals for the work of the incoming government resulted from these meetings, which also elected committees to boil down and classify the instructions. These committees issued a special four-page newspaper for the 1,500 voters; it contained brief biographies of the forty-three candidates, an analysis of their capacities by the Communist Party organization of the Peasants' Gazette, and the "nakaz," or list of "people's instructions," classified by subject and the branch of government which they concerned. At the final election meeting of the Peasants* Gazette there was literally more than 100 per cent attendance, since some of the staff who for reasons of absence or illness had not been listed as prospective voters returned from sanatoria or from distant assignments to vote. The instructions issued by the electorate in this manner — 1,400 from the Peasants' Gazette and tens of thousands from Moscow citizens — became the first business of the incoming government.

—Anna Louise Strong, The New Soviet Constitution (1937)

does this mean that the soviet project was some utopian perfect system? no. there were flaws in the system like any other. it disenfranchised the rural peasantry (although not, i would like to add, to any extent greater or even equivalent to the extent to which the US electoral system disenfranchises the urban working class) -- the various tiers of indirect selection created a divide between the average worker and the highest tier of the executive -- and various elements of this fledgling system would calcify and bureaucratise over time in ways that obstructed worker's democracy. but saying that it was 'a monarchy' is founded in absolutely nothing except the most hysterical anticommunist propaganda and tedious orwellian liberal truisms.

even brailsford, in an account overall critical of the soviet system, had to admit:

Speaking broadly, the various organs of the system, from the Council of Commissars of the Union down to the sub-committees of a town Soviet, are handling the same problems. Whether one sits in the Kremlin at a meeting of the most august body of the whole Union, the "C.I.K.," or round a table in Vladimir with the working men who constitute its County Executive Committee, one hears exactly the same problems discussed. How, be-fore June arrives, shall we manage to reduce prices by ten percent? What growth can we show in the number of our spindles, or factories, and in the number of workers employed? When and how shall we make our final assault on the last relics of illiteracy? Or when shall we have room in our schools, even in the remotest village, for every child? Was it by good luck or good guidance that the number of typhus cases has dropped in a year by half? And, finally, how can we hasten the raising of clover seed, so that the peasants who, at last, thanks to our propaganda, are clamoring for it, may not be disappointed?

—H.N. Brailsford, How The Soviets Work (1927)

genuinely, i think you should take a moment and think about where you learned about the soviet union. have you read any serious historical work on the topic, even from non-communist or anti-communist sources? because even imperialist propagandists have to make a pretence at engaging with actual facts on the ground, something which you haven't done at all -- and yet you speak with astounding confidence. i recommend you read some serious books instead of animal farm and reflect on why you believe the things you believe and how you know the things you think you know.

[redmyeyes]

That's their closing message.

Are you going to vote for a woman whose laugh they don't like? Or are you going to vote for a guy

who fomented a violent coup attempt after a months long campaign to overturn the 2020 election

undercut the nation's response to a deadly pandemic that spiraled out of control because he tried to cover it up,

lied about its severity,

promoted sham treatments for it,

said we could cure it by injecting disinfectant and shining powerful lights inside the body

and became the first president since Herbert Hoover to oversee a net job loss.

Couldn't figure out how to close an umbrella,

cosplayed as a sanitation worker, even though he almost fell while getting into the truck

and pretended to work at McDonald's, even though he couldn't remember what the fryer was called.

Laughed about firing striking workers with the richest man alive,

bragged about refusing to pay overtime

and said I don't want a poor person running the economy.

Oversaw an increase in corporate profits while manufacturing jobs declined,

presided over an unprecedented spike in crime

while home prices rose by 30%,

the national debt rose by $8 trillion

and the number of Americans without health insurance rose by 3 million.

Tried to rip healthcare away from over 20 million Americans,

but reassured everyone by saying he had concepts of a plan,

told a story about the size of a dead golfer's penis,

regaled Boy Scouts with stories of sexy yacht parties,

humped the American flag not once but multiple times,

told women he would protect them whether they liked it or not,

and would put a man who was investigated for cutting the head off a whale with a chainsaw in charge of vaccines and women's health,

insulted service members,

feuded with Gold Star families

and violated federal law by staging a campaign event at a hallowed military cemetery.

Doctored a weather map with a Sharpie to lie about the path of a hurricane,

threw paper towels at hurricane victims,

hosted a speaker at a rally who called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage,

claimed windmills cause cancer and kill whales,

said you have to flush toilets 15 times.

Called Hannibal Lecter a lovely man,

his National Security Adviser called him a dope,

his Secretary of State called him a moron,

his Chief of Staff called him an idiot and a fascist who said nice things about Hitler and Hitler's generals.

He suggested shooting protesters in the legs to his Secretary of Defense.

He reportedly suggested executing rivals and staffers for leaking information.

The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called him a fascist to the core.

He took millions from foreign officials,

including a possible $10 million bribe from Egypt.

His lawyers gave a press conference at a landscaping company.

He lost the popular vote twice,

got impeached twice,

got indicted four times

and was found guilty of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to pay hush money to a porn star.

He asked a crowd whether they'd rather be electrocuted or eaten by a shark,

he possibly farted and definitely fell asleep in court.

Bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade,

called himself the father of IVF while admitting he didn't know what IVF was,

called the CEO of Apple Tim Apple,

misspelled his wife's name

and his own name,

said Nikki Haley was the Speaker of the House on January 6th.

Claimed the price of bacon goes up because the wind doesn't blow.

Got on Air Force One with toilet paper stuck to his shoe,

became the first president in history to stare directly at an eclipse,

melted down in a presidential debate

where he claimed migrants were eating dogs,

spread lies about the federal government's response to a hurricane that caused FEMA workers to relocate due to threats.

Dances like he's punching a ghost,

held a hate-filled rally at Madison Square Garden,

stole classified documents,

obstructed attempts to get them back,

called climate change a hoax,

proposed tariffs that economists say would increase prices and crater the economy,

halted an equal pay rule for women,

curtailed access to birth control,

picked a running mate who mocked childless cat ladies

and creeped out everyone when he tried to order donuts

and was accused of having sex with a couch,

which he did not do even though he might have.

But he didn't,

but maybe he did.

But he definitely did not. [shrugs]

Said Kamala Harris happened to turn Black,

claimed his crowd on January 6th was bigger than Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech,

was banned from doing business in the state of New York for three years,

just recently posed for the single worst photo of any human being that has ever been taken on the face of the fucking planet.

So, you know, it's a toss up.

[whatiwillsay]

Hi Cam I hope you’ve been doing well <3 I’m checking back in on the pod after a few months away and with all the election talk I have a question. Now I’m not American so I am obviously a bit removed from having to actually make choices re the candidates so I get it’s a whole different situation for USAmericans. But I’m curious how you square the circle of not just voting for but vocally being for the Harris ticket when they are the party currently in power perpetrating genocide and doing very little to fight for reproductive or trans rights. I hope this doesn’t come across as an attack bc it’s a genuine question and I do get being in the belly of the beast makes it a different equation. If you’ve already talked about this I’ll be v happy to read your perspective, I’ve missed a lot of the pod and tumble talk these past months

in america we have two choices- kamala or trump. there is no other choice. it is mathematically impossible for a third party candidate to win the election.

the next president may get 2 supreme court appointments. the supreme court in America is overpowered. they are the ones who took away nationally guaranteed abortion rights for example. their decisions on cases become federal law and precedent. trump has already had 3 appointments during his 1st term (this is how we lost abortion rights and they also made other harmful decisions) if he gets 2 more then 5/9 (a deciding majority) of the supreme court will be trump appointments. it will be a defacto trump supreme court and that will last for the next 30-40 years because these are lifetime appointments. this will permanently alter the course of history.

democrats have been trying to protect reproductive rights and trans rights, they can only do so much without super majority in the senate and without controlling the house at all. they may not be PERFECT on these issues but there are only two choices and they are the far superior choice.

democrats and harris are far better for Palestinians (although certainly there is room for improvement, biden performed to the left of where he campaigned, I think kamala will as well, her senate record was the most far left and progressive of any senator except for sanders) than the republicans and trump. trump has said "let isreal finish the job" harris says "cease fire now and let's have safety and dignity for Palestinians" remember there are only two options and we have to pick one. are you really surprised I'm picking the person who says cease fire now? even if their entire position isn't perfect on Palestine, it would be HEINOUSLY immoral to not be vocally against the guy who says "let Isreal finish the job" and vocally for the person who stands in his way to power. again there is only so much dems can do without a senate super majority and house. for example biden put a pause on sending certain weapons to isreal. the republican members of congress passed a bill that disagreed with this. democrats ARE NOT perfect on Palestine but THEY ARE BETTER and again as someone who is very much concerned with the suffering of Palestinians it would be insanely immoral of me to not support the better option of the only two we have.

i am not a single issue voter either and on basically every policy I'm concerned with dems are better. dems want to get money out of politics (hindering corruption). dems want to protect gay marriage dems want to protect workers rights. there's more I'm going to take them in other points!

the genocide in gaza is not the only one happening in the world. there is an argument to be made that there is also a type of genocide being executed against black Americans. dems are for police reform that helps fight against that. i think you could also argue there is an attempt to erase lgbtq people from existence in America (particularly trans people!) as I already pointed out dems are for protecting the rights and dignity of trans people. it would be insanely immoral of me as a cis ally to the trans community and a white ally to the black community to not to loudly oppose the republicans who are the ones attacking these groups. dems are not PERFECT on these issues but they are FAR BETTER.

speaking of mass death do you know how many people will die in climate related disasters if we don't try to get global warming under control? republicans are ACTIVELY fighting against any attempt to protect the environment. dems are trying to fight global warming. they are not PERFECT on climate but they are BETTER. there are only two options. it would be insanely immoral for me to not support the better option.

i do not want to live in an uneducated country I believe access to a good education is a basic human right. trump wants to disband the department of education. this would be DISASTEROUS for some areas of the country.

trump wants to repeal the affordable care act. i, personally, will lose access to healthcare if this happens. so would nearly 30 million other americans. this would lead to the death of many innocent people, sentenced to death just for not having the right type of job or being poor. it would be insanely immoral not to oppose this. dems are not PERFECT on healthcare (I believe the only ethical solution is a single payer healthcare system) but they are BETTER.

thanks to luck and privilege I was able to buy my first home in 2015. this home has been a great source of security and wealth building for me. i want other average Americans to be able to have this same security and wealth. harris's plans increase the ability for more first time home buyers to purchase a home.

democrats in general are much better for the economy. this matters less to me than some of the other issues we've talked about but a high tide raises all ships. a good economy is protective to vulnerable people at least to some degree.

i could go on and on. at every turn on basically every policy from social safety nets to marijuana to unions to women to school lunches for me on every issue democrats and harris are BETTER. they are not perfect on every issue but there are only two options... obviously I'm going to vocally support the better option.

and yes... i do somewhat feel like I am in the "belly of the beast". some of these issues do affect me personally. issues on gay rights, healthcare, women's rights, and the environment... i am scared. i am allowed to be concerned for my own rights. women are dying because they aren't able to get abortions. my own state of Tennessee is ACTIVELY attacking gay rights. every year the world gets hotter and I fear for my life and that there might be an extreme weather event near me. my fear demands that I be vocal in fighting against this terrifying stuff.

but it's also a moral thing. i believe there is value in human life. trump's bungling of covid let to the deaths of millions. marcellus Williams would likely still be alive if we had had 3 Clinton appointments to the supreme court and not trump appointments. ashley thurman would be alive today if trump hadn't gotten to appoint three justices to the supreme court as well. trump's deregulation policies have lead to people being poisoned by our food.

and damn we haven't even gotten into January 6th. people DIED because trump sent a mob to attack the capitol because he couldn't accept he lost a free and fair election.

GOD WE HAVEN'T EVEN TALKED ABOUT TRUMP'S ADMIRATION FOR HITLER. trump's former chief of staff john kelly who is a retired general went ON THE RECORD to say trump praised hitler in office.

i'm guessing you didn't know all of this when you sent me your question and I'm guessing you now understand that yes... it is my duty as a human being to stand against the guy who praised hitler.

lol i could say more but... i hope you get it now. it would be unethical for me to do anything but support harris who is the only person who can guarantee trump doesn't reach office and while she is not PERFECT on all these issues she is FAR BETTER and that matters.