#political news articles

[ed-nygma]

Jury Nullification: Your Power To Choose

[irate-iguana]

For those who don’t know, Elon Musk has recently been directing his assholery towards Wikipedia — calling them ‘Wokepedia’ due to the amount they spend on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and calling for people to stop giving them money “until they restore balance to their editing authority” —, now is a great time to consider donating to Wikipedia!

[altamont498]

I swear to God if you wrote something like this into a political satire like Spitting Image, it’d be called too on-the-nose.

[silvermoon424]

Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going in this joke of a country is the schadenfreude Trump supporters keep supplying me with.

I like to think of myself as a kind person, and I can be empathetic to a fault sometimes. I would also be totally lying if I said I wasn't thoroughly enjoying seeing all the Trump voters who are finally starting to question whether or not their billionaire daddies Trump and Musk actually have their best interests at heart.

Like right now there's that debate going on about H1B visas; Elon Musk has openly and repeatedly stated his desire to exploit the labor of immigrants because it's so much cheaper than American labor. Trump seems to be backing him up. And everywhere I go Trumpers being like "wow, I had no idea Trump would sell American workers out!!! Very disappointed in him."

Literally how many times does this man have to hit you in the fucking face and spit in your mouth before you finally catch on that he doesn't care about you at all, lmao. I'm genuinely embarrassed for you that you keep putting up with this.

[aferalworm]

A man threatened to show up at Capital One with a machete and gasoline

Let 👏 him 👏 do 👏 it 👏

I wanna see what happens

[perfectlyasymmetrical]

The Pentagon ran an anti-vax psyop in the Philippines at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic

Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China (usatoday.com)

Please read this article. It makes me sick.

TLDR: The US is directly responsible for the over 60,000 people who have died from COVID-19 in the Philippines since the summer of 2020. The pentagon made at least 300 fake social media accounts on twitter targeted at making Filipinos believe that the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine was dangerous. The Sinovac vaccine came out before any US-made vaccine and was widely available in the region before the smear campaign started. They used lies that the vaccine contained pork gelatin (which is considered haram to Muslims—Islam is the second largest religion in the Philippines). Their aim was to harm China's reputation and to sell more American-made vaccines in the developing world for high prices.

[communistkenobi]

struggling to reconcile my dislike of the use of “choice” in relation to transgenderism. sex assignment itself is not a choice and I don’t find it meaningful or helpful to think I “chose” to be transgender. in fact there were many things I “chose” to do prior to transitioning to make this feeling go away and it did not. Choice is further wrapped up in intentionally de-politicised ideas about social action and agency, constantly positioned in opposition to “structure” or “social pressure” or what have you. “Choice” is what happens only in the absence of domination, it is the expression of the “individual” trapped within us all. What this leaves you with is a subject who appears to rise above the power of history, making decisions ‘of his own free will’ in spite of all this violence as a result of, um, well that’s not important! Let’s not look at the law or the state or history to see where these ideas of personal individual freedoms come from or how they are themselves enforced through violence. It’s just an individual acting on his desires! To “choose to be trans” in popular consciousness means to be given the privilege of being free from patriarchal social pressures. And this is a line terfs often use - trans people are reinforcing patriarchy by deluding ourselves into thinking we can “simply choose” to be another gender. I think committing to the idea of choice as a concept and all its attendant ideological baggage (overwhelmingly structured by bourgeois legal frameworks in the popular imaginary) forces you into some deeply flawed analyses of power and domination.

And I likewise hate that the other dominant framework is “born this way/born in the wrong body” because of how it naturalises the very political and violent nature of sex assignment and its embeddedness within state census data, administrative architecture, the pathologisation of sex and desire (all of which are not natural or eternal), and so on. furthermore I deeply respect the position other trans people have when they say that they chose to be transgender - outside of conversations of individual validity, I think that is a politically useful and powerful way to position yourself. Even if we were to accept that being transgender is fully a choice, people would still do it, because being trans is not disgusting or shameful. I am not a sick individual, or a tragedy, or a danger to others, I am transgender and that is an incredibly meaningful and fulfilling part of my life. To frame this as a sexual perversion or life-long condition means reinforcing the idea that transgenderism is a shameful deformity (we have much in common with our disabled & intersex comrades in this regard), that the cissexual body is the exclusive site of beauty and authenticity.

And so this is where I find the idea of autonomy much more useful - while ‘choice’ is situated as a thing that individuals do, autonomy is power that is granted to you. I can’t meaningfully demand choice as a political goal, but I can demand autonomy. I don’t want choice, I want the autonomy to act on my desires, and the way that will happen is through the state provision of free hrt, surgery, name and gender marker changes, and so on. Autonomy feels like a much more productive articulation of “choice” because it necessitates that we think about who and what grants autonomy, for what purposes, in which contexts. Who gives a shit about choices! Transgenderism is not a social position an individual can have in society, it is produced through cissexualism, through state and medical sex assignment, through coercion and pathologisation and violence - all of which can be changed.

As a direct comparison, I don’t think people should be given the “choice” to have an abortion, but the autonomy to do so - sure you can choose to get one, but unless there is the medical, financial, and social infrastructure available to you to act on that decision, then that is not a meaningful choice you can “make.” Abortion being legal (and therefore an action you are granted the ‘choice’ to take) doesn’t mean it is actually realisable as a decision, it just means that whoever already has the power & resources to act on that legality will, and those that don’t, won’t. Who decides which people have those resources and which don’t? Well let’s not worry about that, the important thing is that people have choices!

[nonbinary-vents]

This has been an absolutely horrible couple weeks for the Jewish and Israeli community, so I want to throw in at least a tiny bit of hope in here. Amina Hassouna, the Bedouin girl who was severely hurt in Iran’s missile attacks, has been recovering well and seems to be in good condition! She is described as being ‘fully conscious’ and ‘communicating and smiling’. Two bomb shelters have been placed in Al-Fura, the town that she and her family are from, as well.

[destielmemenews]

Written out that is $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is much larger than the entire world economy.

"According to the Russian news outlet RBC, the fine is the total amount demanded by 17 Russian television channels and other media outlets whose output has been blocked from YouTube — the video platform owned by the tech giant — as sanctioned supporters of President Vladimir Putin’s regime and its invasion of Ukraine. "

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[teh-tj]

Greenbelt Maryland. Or, how America almost solved housing only to abandon it.

**I AM NOT AN EXPERT! I AM JUST AN ENTHUSIST! DO NOT TREAT MY OPINIONS/SPECULATION AS EDUCATION!**

During the Depression America faced a housing crisis that rhymes with but differs from our own. It’s different in that there wasn’t a supply issue, there were loads of houses in very desirable areas, but they were still unaffordable as people’s incomes collapsed causing a deflationary spiral. While the housing supply subtly grew and succeeded demand, people simply couldn’t pay the meager rents and mortgages. Herbert Hoover failed to manage the Depression, while his inaction is greatly exaggerated, his policy of boosting the economy with works projects and protecting banks from runs failed and the depression only got more pronounced in his term. In comes Franklin Roosevelt, a progressive liberal much like his distant and popular cousin/uncle-in-law Teddy. Franklin’s plan was to create a large safety net for people to be able to be economically viable even if they’re otherwise poor. These reforms are called the New Deal and they did many controversial things like giving disabled and retired people welfare, giving farmers conditioned subsidies to manipulate the price of food, a works program to build/rebuild vital infrastructure, etc. One of these programs was the USHA (a predecessor of America’s HUD), an agency created to build and maintain public housing projects with the goal of creating neighborhoods with artificially affordable rents so people who work low-wage jobs or rely on welfare can be housed.

In this spirit, the agency started experimenting with new and hopefully efficient housing blueprints and layouts. If you ever see very large apartment towers or antiquated brick low-rise townhouses in America, they might be these. The USHA bought land in many large and medium-sized cities to build “house-in-park” style apartments, which is what they sound like. Putting apartment buildings inside green spaces so residents can be surrounded by greenery and ideally peacefully coexist. Three entire towns were built with these ideas outside three medium-sized cities that were hit hard by the depression; Greenbelt outside DC, Greenhills outside Cincinnati, and Greendale outside Milwaukee. The idea was to move people out of these crowded cities into these more sustainable and idyllic towns. There were many catches though, the USHA planned for these towns to be all-white, they used to inspect the houses for cleanliness, they required residents to be employed or on Social Security (which basically meant retired or disabled), they also had an income limit and if your income exceeded that limit you were given a two-month eviction notice, and you were expected to attend town meetings at least monthly. While the towns didn’t have religious requirements they did only build protestant churches. Which is an example of discrimination by omission. While a Catholic, Jew, Muslim, etc could in theory move into town they also couldn’t go to a Catholic church, synagogue, or Islamic center without having to extensively travel. Things planned communities leave out might indicate what kind of people planned communities want to leave out. Basically, the whole thing was an experiment in moving Americans into small direct-democracy suburbs as opposed to the then-current system of crowded cities and isolated farm/mine towns. This type of design wasn’t without precedent, there were famously company towns like Gary and Pullman which both existed outside Chicago. But those lacked the autonomy and democracy some USHA apparatchiks desired.

The green cities were a series of low-rise apartments housing over a hundred people each, they were short walks from a parking lot and roads, and walking paths directly and conveniently led residents to the town center which had amenities and a shopping district. Greenbelt in particular is famous for its art deco shopping complex, basically an early mall where business owners would open stores for the townspeople. These businesses were stuck being small, given the income requirements, but it was encouraged for locals to open a business to prove their entrepreneurial spirit. Because city affairs were elected at town meetings the city was able to pull resources to eventually build their own amenities the USHA didn’t originally plan for like a public swimming pool or better negotiated garbage collection.

These three cities were regarded as a success by the USHA until World War II happened and suddenly they showed flaws given the shift in focus. These towns housed poor people who barely if at all could afford a car, so semi-isolated towns outside the city became redundant and pointless. The USHA also had to keep raising the income requirement since the war saw a spike in well-paying jobs which made the town unsustainable otherwise. During the war and subsequent welfare programs to help veterans, these green cities became de facto retirement and single-mother communities for a few years as most able-bodied men were drafted or volunteered. Eventually, the USDA would make the towns independent, after the war they raised the income limit yet again and slowly the towns repopulated. As cars became more common and suburbanization became a wider trend these towns would be less noticeably burdensome and were eventually interpreted as just three out of hundreds of small suburban towns that grew out of major cities. They were still all-white and the town maintained cleanliness requirements; after all they lived in apartments it just takes one guy’s stink-ass clogged toilet to ruin everyone’s day.

By the 1950’s these towns were fully independent. Greendale and Greenhills voted to privatize their homes and get rid of the income limit all together so the towns can become more normal. Greenhills, Ohio still has many of these USHA-era houses and apartments, all owned by a series of corporations and private owners. Greendale, Wisconsin property owners have demolished most of these old houses and restructured their town government so most traces of its founding are lost. But Greenbelt, Maryland still maintains a lot of its structure to this day. Greenbelt has privatized some land and buildings, but most of the original USHA apartments are owned by the Greenbelt Homes, Inc cooperative which gives residents co-ownership of the building they live in and their payments mostly go to maintenance. Because Greenbelt was collectively owned the House Un-American Activities Committee would blacklist and put on trial most of Greenbelt’s residents and officials. Though they didn’t find much evidence of communist influence, the town was a target of the red scare by the DMV area, residents were discriminated, blacklisted, and pressured into selling their assets. While Greenbelt did commodify some of the town, the still existing co-ownership shows the town’s democratic initiative to maintain its heritage. The green cities desegregated in the 50’s and 60’s depending on state law, Greenbelt was the last to desegregate under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, while discrimination persisted for years by the 1980’s the town would become half non-white, today the town is 47% black and 10% Asian.

Though these towns largely integrated with a privatized and suburbanized America, they do stand as a memorial to an idea of American urbanism that died. They were designed for walkability and were planned to be more democratic and egalitarian towns, with the conditions that came with segregation and government oversight. You can’t ignore the strict standards and racism in their history, but you can say that about many towns. How do you think America would be different if more cities had green suburbs that were more interconnected and designed for community gatherings?

[ed-nygma]

It is impossible to satirize the petite bourgeoisie, everything they say could already be mistaken for parody.

[mysharona1987]

What a sad and infuriating story this is. This woman was let down on every single level.

[pandemic-info]

Fact Check: Did Trump Raise Prescription Drug Prices? - Newsweek

Trump rescinded Biden policy on lowering costs of prescription medication for people using Medicare and Medicaid.

Biden's order [now rescinded by Trump] directed the Department of Health and Human Services to explore strategies to reduce costs. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) responded to the order with programs to cap the price of certain generic drugs at $2 for Medicare beneficiaries, improve Medicaid access to high-cost cell and gene therapies and to streamline the evidence-gathering process for new drugs.

...

"While the immediate impact depends on how pharmaceutical companies respond, this move potentially opens the door for drug prices to rise," Agranoff said. "Biden's order aimed to rein in costs by promoting price transparency and competition, which are critical for making life-saving medications affordable." "Without those measures, companies could have more flexibility to set higher prices," he added. "For many Americans, particularly those on fixed incomes or without comprehensive insurance, this change may lead to increased financial strain and limit access to essential medications."

[destiel-news-network]

(Source)

[let-them-fight]

If the president were serious about fighting antisemitism, he would have to break up with his antisemitic friends and fans, including Holocaust deniers like Nicholas Fuentes, Great Replacement conspiracy theorists like Tucker Carlson, and self-described Western Chauvinists like the Proud Boys. This is something he has shown no intention of doing. Instead, he has opted for an act of political theater. But given that his executive order, and the task force newly empowered to enforce it, have the force of law behind them, we can expect them to have pernicious real-world consequences, particularly for international students and workers with precarious legal statuses. We can expect to see instances of racial, religious and political profiling become increasingly commonplace, as the administration puts pressure on universities to identify non-citizen students involved in protests against Israel. Students and staff will be incentivized to report each other to administrators, and administrators pressured to report students and staff to the authorities. We can also expect to witness the repression of pro-Palestinian speech, the censorship of related topics in the classroom, and ever more violent crackdowns on campus protest — all with the administration’s official blessing. It is seriously unlikely that any of these measures will make Jewish students or staff any safer — on or off campus — aimed as they are at suppressing speech rather than combating hatred. If anything, they promise to undermine the intercommunal solidarity on which Jewish safety ultimately depends, creating the impression that prioritizing Jewish interests means adhering to a right-wing agenda with which a majority of Jews disagree. There is no future in which that agenda leads to happy results — for any of us.