#social media complaints policy

[germiyahu]

I also don't like the assertion that Jews are trying to conflate "criticism of Israel with antisemitism/the Israeli state with Jewishness as a whole" because you... YOU... did that first and you do it more easily than you breathe.

You interrogate every complaint of antisemitism, just to make sure it's not actually whining about someone being mean to Israel. You investigate the person's social media history to make sure they're not a Zionist. You turn around and act so enlightened and wise when you say "Right because Netanyahu wants Jewish people to think criticism of Israel is antisemitic, and he wants Jewish people to think that they have to have ties to Israel and that Israel is the only place they'll feel safe, that plays right into his hands," like you're doing this for Jewish people's benefit. Like you're not one of the people making Jews feel unsafe.

The fact of the matter is that Israel is intrinsically Jewish. By design yes. But also for the fact that it's just logically true? Most Israelis are Jewish. Most Diaspora Jews have friends and family in Israel. It's not a function of flags or national anthems. It's a function of people. Saying "Well conflating Israel with the idea of Jewishness is antisemitic," changes nothing about that. It's words with no value. It's empty air. Because what have you done to advocate for Diaspora Jewry and make them feel like they're not subordinate to Israel? What have you done to assure them that your disdain for a country that most of them have personal familial and cultural ties to is not motivated by bigotry? What have you done to include them and center their safety when advocating against Israel's policies?

Yes, the more people are antisemitic and weird about Israel to Diaspora Jews' faces, the more of them will gravitate closer to Israel. But that's not the point. The point is that if your criticisms of Israel were normal, we wouldn't have a problem. 99% of Diaspora Jews would join you. But you tell them they're not allowed to defend Israel in any context and they're not allowed to defend themselves when your "criticism" of Israel harms them. You don't want to admit that these can overlap. You just want them to silently add a rubber stamp of approval of whatever you say or they can leave.

It's clear you don't see Jews as a marginalized group. This is not how Leftists treat marginalized groups. This is how they treat the oppressor group, the dominant group. Diaspora Jews are at best an ally to Palestinian liberation. Because you don't see them as different from Israelis, you see them as the group that benefits from the oppression of Palestinians, not as a group that has nothing to do with Palestine and is historically and contemporarily marginalized by Western society, the society you live in.

And yet for all you conflate Diaspora and Israeli Jews you clearly want to keep Israel and the Diaspora divided, isolated from each other. They can't show solidarity with one another because that's (((ZIONIST COLLUSION))) and confirmation of a media controlled conspiracy or something. You want Diaspora Jews under your thumb and you want Israeli Jews dead. You're not as subtle as you think you are.

[osmanthusoolong]

All this uproar, the court cases, the children suffering? Unsurprisingly, the result of a couple of dedicated transphobic conspiracy theorists.

“The review of Policy 713 officially began in late April 2023, according to the province but only became public knowledge on May 5.

When asked why the review started, Hogan and Higgs gave several reasons, including "misinterpretations and concerns," from the public, and "hundreds of complaints" about the issue.

At the time, child and youth advocate Kelly Lamrock asked for the complaints showing these misinterpretations and concerns. The department handed over three emails.

When challenged, Hogan said Lamrock was only given a sample, and if people wanted to see all the emails, they could file a right to information request.

Through right to information, CBC News requested all emails about 2SLGBTQ+ issues sent to Hogan between January 2020 and May 2023.

According to records, Hogan received about 40 emails about those issues in those three years. The majority, about 35 emails, came between March and May 5, 2023, stating objections to different forms of 2SLGBTQ+ education or drag storytime.”

…

“The Saint John woman on Facebook, Barb Dempsey, is one of several New Brunswickers who make posts against 2SLGBTQ-inclusive education on social media and ask people to lobby the government for change. It's not clear whether she created the petition she shared in early April.

In late April, Dempsey and another New Brunswick resident started promoting a protest against the teachers' event in Hanwell.

On that day, a small group of protesters held signs calling educators "perverts," and accusing them of harming children.

In a later interview, when asked why he started the policy review, Higgs referred to that event.”

…

“Some email authors said teaching children about the concept of gender identity would harm them because it would confuse them.

In July, in his speech to the legislature, Higgs said, "we're seeing a rapid onset of gender dysphoria. It's expanded in the last several years and it's becoming popular and trendy."

"Society can compound [children's] confusion," he said.

The New Brunswick Medical Society said that the points Higgs made are "ideologically based narratives."

The society said "rapid onset gender dysphoria," or the notion that some children are socially influenced to become trans when they're actually not, has no scientific basis.

"The notion of 'Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria' is not a recognized medical condition and should not be used in medical, social, or political narrative," the society said in a statement.

"Framing gender dysphoria as 'trendy or popular,' as opposed to an actual medical diagnosis, lead to further prejudice and misinformation."”

@allthecanadianpolitics

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Elsie Carson-Holt at LGBTQ:

Jack Daniel’s has joined a growing number of brands that have cut their commitments to diversity, after conservative influencer Robby Starbuck threatened to make the company his next target. Last week, it was Harley Davidson, and before them it was Tractor Supply Co. and John Deere. Starbuck’s method of rallying his online followers to deluge companies social media with complaints about their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and donations to social justice organizations has proven effective.

Jack Daniel’s, the whiskey company, is the latest. On August 21, Starbuck posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) “Big news: The next company we were set to expose was Jack Daniels,” but that the company had ended several initiatives and partnerships.

Starbuck said, “They must have been tipped off by us going through employee LinkedIn pages” and that the company had “just preemptively announced” changes to DEI programs. Starbuck had obtained an email from Brown Forman (Jack Daniel’s parent company) saying that “the world has evolved” since launching a DEI campaign in 2019. The company said that since January, it had been evolving the current program to a “strategic framework,” which includes ending its partnership with the Human Rights Campaign and its Corporate Equality Index (CEI), which tracks how large employers treat their LGBTQ+ employees through various policies.

Jack Daniel’s is the latest company to shamefully cave into right-wing faux outrage artist Robby Starbuck’s bad-faith campaign against DEI and LGBTQ+ initiatives in workplaces by ending their participation in Human Rights Campaign’s CEI program and diversity initiatives.

[papapandashipyards]

Spaceshiptember Day6 CORPORATE "...regarding the complaints we received in relation to asteroid strikes of the Worker quarters; we hear you and understand your concerns! However, Company policy is clear: Asteroids are a VITAL part of the natural beauty of the universe as well as a major source of income for the ship. Therefore any negative mention of Asteroids in any Communique, News release, social media, personal correspondence, or verbal utterance will result in immediate termination."

[nikethestatue]

A personal rant.

About the state of fandom in romantasy in general.

I scrolled through Reddit today and encountered this:

This is a comment—one out of over 160, about a popular series. This is not SJM specific, but I see something similar day in and day out.

Specifically regarding SJM, a good chunk of comments are all about how SJM is a money grabber, how every character sucks, how Rhys is a dictator, Feyre is a breeder, Elain should’ve died, cassian is an abuser, and on and on.

And then we all complain about SJMs silence. Her lack of interaction with the fandom. Her disinterest in the readers.

And then I think: writers, who write for weeks, months and sometimes years are doing this as a Job. This is their work. And not only do they deserve to be compensated for their work, but also….appreciated? How about that?

How would any of these keyboard warriors feel if someone came to them and berated every single thing that they did. Publicly. Wrote long reviews of every mistake, fault, and totally personal opinions about the quality of their performance at work?

Oh, well, authors should have thicker skin!!!’

Why?

Authors write books.

It’s a boring and lonely activity (trust me I know). And they often crank out huge book annually.

And then…they have to deal with this avalanche of hate, derision and complaints.

No one trains authors to develop ‘thicker skin’. They are often suburban moms who wanted to write. They aren’t trained by the CIA to develop survival tactics and not pay attention to all the crap that is being posted about them and their work.

SJM’s writing has been called every possible derogatory word, she’s been called everything from a racist to a money grabber to a plagiarizer.

Honestly? When is this going to stop?

The way readers treat writers is revolting.

What happened?

Is this because the internet offers anonymity and you can just say anything?

I get writing an honest review (hey I hated HOFAS! But I chose not to write a review because I knew it wouldn’t have been kind) or offering a genuine critique about something, but my god…a little kindness? A little grace?

Can anyone really blame SJM for completely withdrawing from the fandom? Can you imagine waking up, going on your basic social media and only seeing endless vitriol in regard to what you’ve created?

I don’t even know why I’m writing this but I guess I’m just tired of seeing books and authors that I love and who changed the trajectory of my life being bashed and insulted all over the internet.

Sometimes, not saying anything is the best policy.

[robot-roadtrip-rants]

Please read this post

On March 12, 2022, 12-year-old Kelaia Turner hung herself with a belt. By the time her mother found her, she was bleeding from her nose and starting to cool. Paramedics were only able to find a pulse after eight minutes. She spent the next few weeks in a coma and now lives with severe neurological damage, unable to breathe, eat, or move on her own. Her mother has set up a GoFundMe, which I strongly recommend that you contribute to:

Kelaia hung herself after enduring a year and a half of severe bullying from five other students at the school she attended, Dr. Phinnize J. Fisher Middle School. About a month after she hung herself, two students managed to get to her bed in the ICU. They took pictures of her and posted them on social media. A third student also spread rumors about her injuries.

Her family is now suing Greenville County School District (GCSD) for negligence in handling the bullying. Major allegations include:

Students would call Kelaia a man and a roach in a class taught by Olivia Bennett. In December 2021 one of them asked Bennett, "Where's the roach?" Bennett pointed at Kelaia.

After the roach incident, Kelaia's parents met with Principal Smith to discuss solutions. One of the proposals was to separate Kelaia from HCJ, one of her bullies. Kelaia also emailed a school counselor, Michelle Kirby, to request a schedule change that would keep her away from HCJ. Nothing changed. In fact, Kelaia and HCJ were both added to a new class for spring semester. HCJ subsequently cursed out Kelaia in the new class.

A student attacked Kelaia in March. Kelaia was suspended; her attacker was not. The school failed to inform her parents, leaving that task to Kelaia herself.

A student in one of Kelaia's classes was constantly disruptive. When Kelaia would ask the student to quiet down, the teacher, John Teer, would scold her instead of the student. In May, another student played the Youtube video "The Black People Song." Teer allowed the song to play and did not comment on its offensiveness or scold its player.

By October 2022 one of Kelaia's bullies, BA, had begun literally pushing her around. School faculty did not intervene, even after Kelaia's mother contacted them about the pushing. BA eventually hung up Kelaia's clothes, poured water all over them, and then threw them in the trash.

After Kelaia's suicide attempt, her mother lodged a formal complaint about the school's failure to enforce its anti-bullying policy. The principals told her, and I quote, "they have a zero-tolerance policy for bullying but no way to enforce it."

While the lawsuit does not emphasize any racial component, racism hangs like a shadow over the incident. Kelaia is Black; Greenville County is 76.3% White. Olivia Bennett, who pointed Kelaia out as "the roach," is White, as are most of the nine teachers named in the lawsuit. Kelaia's mother, Ty Turner, also posted a list of the names that her bullies used on Facebook, and it's pretty indicative:

Not to mention, the US has a long history of insulting Black women by calling them masculine. All those gendered insults have a secondary meaning. In the same Facebook post, Mrs. Turner notes that the bullying started in elementary school, when Kelaia began wearing her natural hair.

GSCD's school board (ten White members, two Black members) are denying the allegations, insisting that they conducted a full investigation every time Kelaia's family made one of their many, many complaints. Their legal response only admits to exchanging emails with Kelaia's parents and that Bennett pointed to Kelaia as "the roach." Bennett is still teaching at Fisher Middle School today.

I don't usually ask this, but please, please, please reblog this post. Even if you don't live in South Carolina. Even if you don't live in the US. I suspect that GSCD wants to sweep this incident under the rug as soon as possible. It'll be a lot harder for them to do that if the world is watching them and demanding justice for Kelaia. If you can, please donate. Kelaia's care will require a lot of money; her parents could use all the help they can get.

And if you're from the Greenville area, message me. We need to put the board's feet to the fire.

[eretzyisrael]

by Ashe Schowe

A tenured Columbia University law professor says she was effectively terminated after an investigation found she discriminated against Jewish and Israeli students.

Katherine Franke, who was investigated after she gave an interview claiming that Israeli students were harassing students on campus, on Friday announced she was retiring and released a statement criticizing the university.

“For the last year and a half, as students at Columbia University and across the globe have protested against the Israeli government’s genocidal assault on Palestinians after the October 2023 attacks, a response that has resulted in horrendous devastation in Gaza, I have ardently defended students’ right to peaceful protest on our campus and across the country,” Franke began her statement. “I truly believed that student engagement with the rights and dignity of Palestinians continued a celebrated tradition at Columbia University of student protest.”

She said she had been “targeted” for her “support of pro-Palestinian protesters – by the president of Columbia University, by several colleagues, by university trustees, and by outside actors.”

“This has included an unjustified finding by the University that my public comments condemning attacks against student protesters violated university non-discrimination policy,” she added.

Those public comments, however, suggested Israeli students were the ones harassing other Columbia students, particularly Palestinian students.

“So many of those Israeli students, who then come to the Columbia campus, are coming right out of their military service,” she said in January 2024. “They’ve been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus.”

In that interview, Franke also repeated the false allegation that Israeli students had sprayed anti-Israel protesters with skunk spray, with Franke claiming they were hospitalized due to a “chemical attack.” She also claimed the students responsible were part of Columbia’s dual degree program with Tel Aviv University – but they weren’t.

“The students were able to identify three of these exchange students, basically, from Israel, who had just come out of military service, who were spraying the pro-Palestinian students with this skunk water,” Franke said in her interview with the leftist organization “Democracy Now.”

The “chemical attack” was actually a non-toxic gag spray from Amazon, and Columbia paid $395,000 to a Jewish student after it suspended him for the incident.

Other professors at Columbia Law filed a complaint against Franke following this interview, arguing that Franke “harassed members of the Columbia community based on their national origin,” according to The Times of Israel. The investigation determined that Franke violated the school’s anti-discrimination policy during her interview and also violated school policy regarding retaliation by revealing to a reporter the name of a professor who reported her. On social media, Franke also targeted the professors who filed the complaint.

“As made public by parties in this matter, a complaint was filed alleging discriminatory harassment in violation of our policies,” Columbia said in a statement to the Times. “An investigation was conducted, and a finding was issued. As we have consistently stated, the University is committed to addressing all forms of discrimination consistent with our policies.”

Franke also supported the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which aims to harm Israel economically for perceived slights while targeting no other nation for similar or worse aggressions.

Protesters at Columbia and other Ivy League universities have promoted open calls for violence, the Times previously reported. As The Daily Wire reported, these student protests likely caused Columbia’s annual “Giving Day” donations to plunge nearly 30% in 2024.

[starredforlife]

how are you expecting Trump not to win though

this is a strange question. are you trying to say you expect that if harris becomes massively criticized in a pressure campaign, then she will stay locked into her stance of supporting Israel, not budging, and lose momentum and appeal, enough to lose to trump? because i don't know, genocide should make your party completely unappealing. maybe that's just me.

HOWEVER a pressure campaign/criticism of her "platforms" (which are completely vibes and not written down anywhere yet btw) are made by people who believe SHE CAN change. i think this is where y'all are tripping up--the progressive base that shares thousands of smaller complaints with the more moderate dem policies would be willing to buck up on those, and vote full-heartedly for harris if she changed on this issue!!! it's the red line. i mean, it's fucking genocide. the uncommitted movement has a very specific demand--weapons embargo. her promising to work toward that now and during her presidential term would guarantee their votes. it's really not rocket science. so people asking her for change are people who want to vote for her--she simply hasn't done enough to earn our votes yet. but she's seemed susceptible to listening to what's the most popular stance (and i think this is always how she's worked in politics) so it's up to US to make a weapons embargo to Israel the most popular stance. does that make sense? her social media team is listening rn. they want to win and they're looking for what might throw them. it's why their border policy has fully shifted right-wing, bc that's the much more popular stance right now. it's why she's talking about no taxes on tips all of the sudden. so our threats need to hold water.

all harris has to do is agree to these demands and she won't lose those votes. it's up to her to win this election--not for us to hand it over to her regardless of what her policies are. locking yourself into the system and giving up on doing anything is actually killing people, right now. you cannot be scared to raise your voice over fear that trump may win. nobody is saying "don't vote for harris". we are saying "tell harris she is not winning our votes until she changes on this issue.". and then see if she fucking listens. and if she doesn't, i can't stop you from voting for her. but she will have lost our votes and it will be her fault--not ours.

[beardedmrbean]

A House committee revealed Friday that the Pentagon, other US agencies and the European Union — in addition to the State Department — have funded a for-profit “fact-checking” firm that blacklisted The Post.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote a letter to the firm, NewsGuard, demanding more details about the public-private collaboration that led last year to the State Department being sued by conservative outlets that were labeled more “risky” than their liberal counterparts.

NewsGuard has briefed committee staff on contracts it had with the Defense Department in 2021, including the Cyber National Mission Force within US Cyber Command; the State Department and its Global Engagement Center; and the EU’s Joint Research Centre.

“The Committee writes today to seek additional documents and communications from NewsGuard related to all past and present contracts with or grants administered by federal government agencies or any other government entity, including foreign governments,” Comer informed NewsGuard CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz.

“The protection of First Amendment rights of American citizens is paramount and attempts by government actors to infringe on those rights is dangerous and misguided,” the chairman warned.

The Oversight panel in June opened its investigation into NewsGuard’s apparent participation in a government-funded “censorship campaign” to allegedly discredit and even demonetize news outlets by sharing its ratings of their reliability with advertisers.

Comer also expressed concern about NewsGuard employees sharing social media posts exhibiting left-wing bias, in violation of the company’s policies, and the firm throttling disfavored outlets’ “misinformation” — which in at least one case included a published academic study on the failure of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“These wide-ranging connections with various government agencies are taking place as the government is rapidly expanding into the censorship sphere,” the chairman wrote. “For example, one search of government grants and contracts from 2016 through 2023 revealed that there were 538 separate grants and 36 different government contracts specifically to address ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation.’”

The right-leaning websites the Daily Wire and the Federalist filed a civil complaint against the State Department in December 2023 for allegedly using taxpayer dollars to fund firms like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which smeared the outlets as “purveyors of ‘disinformation.’”

Both firms have relationships with social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, as well as advertisers like Dell Technologies, ExxonMobil and Nike, prompting concerns about how their “disinformation” ratings would affect business.

In 2022, GDI distributed a “Disinformation Risk Assessment” that rated the “riskiest” sites for factual news as the Federalist, the Daily Wire, Newsmax, the American Conservative, Reason Magazine and the New York Post, among others.

The New York Times and the Washington Post were ranked as among the “least risky.”

In a statement Friday, Crovitz said: “When the Trump administration first asked us for our data and insights about disinformation campaigns from hostile foreign governments in 2020, we contracted with them on the condition that such work be strictly limited to disinformation from hostile governments, not US publishers. We’re proud that NewsGuard’s data and analysis has helped defend Western democracies against Russian, Chinese and Iranian disinformation. NewsGuard was created as a transparent alternative to censorship by governments or big tech companies, and we do not censor any content.”

The 2020 and 2024 elections have brought so-called “anti-misinformation” and “anti-disinformation” efforts to the fore — with The Post’s bombshell scoop on Hunter Biden’s laptop being falsely labeled a Russian plant by then-candidate Joe Biden.

Some Democrats have since been suggesting that the only way to defeat pushback to their policies is by crushing the First Amendment.

President Biden’s ex-climate envoy John Kerry even called the constitutional freedom “a major block” to keeping people from believing the “wrong” kinds of things.

��You know, there’s a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you’re going to have some accountability on facts,” Kerry told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence,” he said.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, also downplayed free speech protections during a 2022 appearance on MSNBC’s “The Reid Out.”

“I think we need to push back on this. There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy,” the Minnesota governor inaccurately stated.

Comer has asked for NewsGuard to provide by Nov. 8 all records of its contracts, grants or other work with the Pentagon, the State Department and any other federal agencies or departments.

[mariacallous]

In March 2019, TikTok agreed to a US federal court order barring the social media giant from collecting personal information from its youngest users without their parents’ consent. According to a new lawsuit filed by US authorities, TikTok immediately breached that order and now faces penalties of $51,744 per violation per day.

TikTok “knowingly allowed children under 13 to create accounts in the regular TikTok experience and collected extensive personal information from those children without first providing parental notice or obtaining verifiable parental consent,” the US Department of Justice alleged on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission in a complaint lodged on Friday in federal court in California.

TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes says the company strongly disagrees with the allegations. He reiterates a statement the company issued in June, when the FTC had voted to sue, that many of the issues raised relate to “practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed.” Hughes adds that TikTok is “proud of our efforts to protect children, and we will continue to update and improve the platform.”

Lawsuits over alleged violations of children’s privacy are almost a rite of passage for social platforms these days, with companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Epic Games collectively having paid hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties.

But the case against TikTok also falls into the US government’s escalating battle with the service, whose ownership by China-based ByteDance has drawn national security concerns. Some US officials and lawmakers have said they worry about China exploiting TikTok to spread propaganda and gather data on vulnerable Americans. TikTok has refuted the concerns as baseless fear-mongering and is fighting a law that requires it to seek new ownership.

The complaint filed on Friday alleges that as of 2020, TikTok wouldn’t let users sign up on their own if they entered a birthdate that showed they were under 13 years old. But it allowed those same users to go back, edit their birthdate, and sign up without parental permission.

TikTok also wouldn’t remove accounts purporting to belong to children unless the user made an explicit admission of their age on their account, according to the lawsuit. TikTok’s hired content moderators allegedly spent just five to seven seconds on average reviewing accounts for age violations. “Defendants actively avoid deleting the accounts of users they know to be children,” the lawsuit states. Additionally, millions of accounts flagged as potentially belonging to children allegedly were never removed because of a bug in TikTok’s internal tools.

The lawsuit acknowledges that TikTok improved some policies and processes over the years but that it still held on to and used personal information of children that it shouldn’t have had in the first place.

Authorities also took issue with TikTok’s dedicated Kids Mode. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok gathered and shared information about children’s usage of the service and built profiles on them while misleading parents about the data collection. When parents tried to have data on their kids deleted, TikTok forced them to jump through unnecessary hoops, the lawsuit further alleges.

TikTok should have known better, according to the government, because of the 2019 court order, which stemmed from TikTok’s predecessor—a service known as Musical.ly—allegedly violating a number of rules aimed at protecting children’s privacy. Those rules largely come from the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a law dating to the late-1990s dotcom era that tried to create a safer environment for children on the web.

Lawmakers in the US this year have been weighing a major update in the form of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA. The proposed measure, which passed the Senate earlier this week, would require services like TikTok to better control kids’ usage. Detractors have said it would unfairly cut off some young populations, such as transgender kids, from vital support networks. KOSA’s fate remains uncertain. But as the case against TikTok allegedly shows, stricter rules may do little to stop companies from pursuing familiar tactics.

[liskantope]

I do wonder how long you'll continue quibble over the definition of "Nazi" and whether it's applicable to Trump and his ilk. When American citizens start disappearing into Salvadoran prisons (as Marco Rubio is currently negotiating for)? When Musk starts denying social security payments to "enemies of the state?" At what point will you admit that these people are worse than people who use the word "Nazi" imprecisely? Or will that always be the greater sin to you?

I find this ask in bad faith on multiple levels.

I'm going to assume it was inspired by the following aside in this recent post of mine:

oh God only hours in we're already going down this path again of trying to pounce on every possible opportunity to equate Trumpism with Naziism could someone just wake me up in four years please

I'm assuming this, because outside of that little run-on passage, I see no excuse whatsoever to round off my feelings about the discourse surrounding Trump as my thinking people who use the word "Nazi" imprecisely are worse or committing a greater sin those who practice actual Nazi-ish behavior. If I were more into demanding apologies as a way to navigate completely uncharitable accusations and if it weren't for the above-quoted passage, I would be challenging you to either apologize or point to anything I've actually said that comes anywhere near to showing that I have that attitude.

But as it happens, I did write the above-quoted thing in the middle of a post about Elon Musk and other things, and I realized soon afterwards it was a bit inappropriately calibrated (and said as much in a reblog), and it could -- especially the last phrase "someone just wake me up in four years please" -- come across as implying that my main worry about another four years of Trump is people jumping at every opportunity to call people in the other tribe Nazis. It arguably went a little over the line. (As to the extent to which people being overly-eager to make Nazi accusations really is one of my main concerns about the next four years, let me come back to that.)

As well as assuming the worst from that one passage, I can only imagine you're doing that thing where (as I suspect) someone who only knows me through this blog kind of roughly estimates the sum total of words I've spent complaining about one thing over another, weighted by the amount of emotion evident from the tone of the complaint, and uses that to make assumptions about the actual weight of my feelings. (In this case you possibly also conveniently ignored my post soon after expressing disgust with Trump's first round of executive orders, but that's mostly beside the point.) Sorry, the words you read on a screen coming from this one blog don't tell you that much about the sum total balance of my emotional capacity and my belief system and what I care about. As at least one friend of mine (I think two, independently) once put it, assuming you know the sum total of who I am as a person from the proportions of words I spend on different topics on a single social media account is dehumanizing.

Thirdly (rereading your ask you don't exactly imply this assumption, but you sure show no sign of having considered an alternative), it's not as though my frustration with people who misuse "Nazi" is against anyone who compares proposed policies that are actually Nazi-ish as policies to Naziism. For instance, I myself was perfectly vocal in 2016 about how Trump's suggestion of making every Muslim wear some insignia that indicates they're Muslim is pretty much verbatim out of Hitler's playbook and that a bunch of other ways Trump was talking were Hitler-esque (again, possibly not vocal on this blog because again not all of my thoughts and feelings are part of this blog, but I distinctly remember talking on Facebook about it) and was bringing it up just in the past year in conversations with multiple non-liberal friends (and even got some agreement from them!) I've never had any problem with rhetoric treating Trump as anti-democratic in his mindset and a dictator wannabe and I've taken part in it myself. (Admittedly sometimes I do get annoyed at how the term "Fascist" has been stripped of half its meaning in this context and could be shutting down conversation too much, but I wouldn't call this concern a priority.) If his administration does something that has a really strongly Nazi-ish stench -- somehow revoking the citizenship of Americans whose origins are in "shithole countries" and mass-deporting them, let's say -- even if under my careful analysis it turns out that such an action doesn't quite fit the philosophical standards of Naziism, I'm not going to quibble about it. It shouldn't be anyone's priority at a moment like that to distinguish between "straight-up Nazi" versus "way too close to being a Nazi".

But what I will continue to get frustrated about is people turning every possible little symbolic thing (a precise choice of words maybe or maybe not taken out of context, a gesture, a meme, rather than actual policy-level proposed actions) into Nazi-ish intentions and trying to use that as a bludgeon whenever they can against the Other Tribe (the Trump Side). And it isn't even a question of whether I'm more more bothered by that than by actual Naziism, like one versus the other, either-or... because the point that people who talk like you often don't seem willing to see is that frivolously calling things Naziism undermines resistance to actual Naziism by making complaints about Naziism get taken less seriously. (Prime example: the myth that Trump called Nazis "fine people" because of the blatantly-taken-out-of-context "fine people on both sides" quote gave ammunition to the Trump side and made media claims about Trump's beliefs lose credibility and has bolstered the idea that the media is out to get Trump/Republicans rather than report the truth.) I'm really not anxious to see the anti-Trump side come across, as in the last time around, as desperate people who are determined to jump at every possible pretense of stamping the Nazi label on anyone and any utterance associated with the other side, and anyone who is worried about whether the nation will take notice of actual Naziism should have the same concern!

Finally, to return to the question of to what extent what I'm actually dreading about these next four years is liberals being overly liberal in pointing and shouting "Nazi", this is not so much a direct response to the ask as something it naturally brings up which I think is only fair for me to clarify here: The way I've seen it going into this new-but-also-returning administration, one could fully expect a lot of over-the-top, semi-incoherent horrifying things to be proposed and then even attempted and tons of uncertainty and chaos as to what they even mean and what will and won't actually be implemented (this is the stage we're in right now!), and then (hopefully) a lot of it being settled right off the bat and (hopefully) most of the over-the-top scary things not actually happening. (Yes he has more loyal judges this time around, there are various reasons to argue that circumstances are different this time, etc.) Last time around, things were horrible in a lot of ways and he fanned the flames of every instance of social unrest and refused to concede the next election and had tons of dictator-wannabe vibes but this country actually turning into something like a Nazi state didn't actually happen. With this in recent memory, I saw Trump's second election as forecasting a mildly low probability of something actually Nazi-level coming from the government, a mildly high probability of significant Nazi-sounding stuff being said from the White House, a very high probability that there will be widespread genuine terror for a while that Nazi-like things will happening, and a virtually 100% certainty that the level of severe toxicity in our political discourse and social relations will continue to rise. (My side loving to point at everything and everyone on the other side and cry "Nazi" is one small piece of that.) And a generous proportion of my raw emotional reaction -- and where the careless "someone please wake me in four years" throwaway comment comes from -- has had to do with that 100%-certain thing that contributes to a major widespread social ill and also happens directly all around me. Having some of this emotional reaction, while not a thing I should be particularly proud of, is very different from being unable to look at actual Nazi-ish policy and recognize it as a far worse evil than some people shouting "Nazi" too freely (and feeling some of that revulsion in my gut when it happens). And I would think anyone with a reasonable bit of emotional intelligence should be able to understand that.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Four days after the new Weathered Waves bar received its license to serve its hard ciders in its space at The Gateway mall in Salt Lake City, a post on its Instagram account announced, “NO ZIONISTS ALLOWED.”

The Monday post said: “We are a business, but we are also human. We don’t make and sell cider for robots. … We are horrified by the ongoing genocide in Gaza and are even more horrified to see so many Americans ignore and rationalize ethnic cleansing. That is why we are pleased to announce we are banning all Zionists forever from our establishments.”

[Update: Salt Lake City bar’s ‘No Zionists’ policy prompts dozens of complaints to Utah liquor agency]

Weathered Waves, 158 S. Rio Grande St., is part of the Six Sailor Cider group, and specializes in locally brewed hard ciders. Six Sailor Cider is owned by Michael Valentine, an advocate and small-business owner who unsuccessfully ran for Salt Lake City mayor last year as a first-time candidate.

On Wednesday, the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services notified the state Attorney General’s office about the post, “so they may conduct an investigation on whether the business is violating discrimination laws,” said agency spokesperson Michelle Schmitt.

The agency has received “several comments from members of the public” about the postings on Weathered Waves’ Instagram account, Schmitt said, and “we take these concerns seriously.”

It also “is reviewing its statutory obligations and legal options for responding to discrimination at DABS licensed establishments. … Safety is always the department’s top priority for everyone who interacts with licensed establishments, including patrons, employees, and owners,” Schmitt said.

The department’s commission awarded Weathered Waves its bar license on Feb. 29 and it opened March 1. In an interview Wednesday, Valentine said he wrote the Monday post and doesn’t see it as antisemitic.

He emphasized that he opposes all hate speech and said he has received “thousands” of messages on voicemail and social media, including some with threats. He said he reported a threat to burn the bar down to Salt Lake City police.

He said he clarified his stance in a follow-up post. “We didn’t just ban Zionism, we banned all hate speech,” he said. “We banned neo-Nazis, we banned transphobes, we banned sexists, we banned homophobes — any and all hate speech.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Harry Litman at Talking Feds:

It reflects the brutality of the constitutional attack that Trump has unleashed during his first two weeks in office that conduct resembling the actions that led to two impeachments four years ago has barely registered among the dizzying blitzkrieg of assaults. The episode that I have in mind took place last week, but originates from a (meritless) lawsuit that he filed against CBS as a private citizen last October. The outlandish $10 billion lawsuit alleged that CBS edited an interview with Kamala Harris in a biased fashion. The interview was part of the traditional campaign sit downs with both candidates. Trump declined to participate, but he wound up complaining bitterly about an answer Harris gave concerning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump’s beef was that the network aired one version of the answer on “Face the Nation” and a different (he alleged better) version that evening on “60 Minutes.”

In a screed dressed up as a legal complaint, Trump launched scattershot charges such as “CBS and other legal legacy media organizations have gone into overdrive to get Kamala elected… [n]otwithstanding her well documented deep unpopularity even with her own Party.” He asserted that CBS engaged in malicious distortion to “tip the scales” in favor of the Democratic ticket. Trump brought the case under Texas state law against deceptive business practice. Why Texas state law? Well for starters, there’s no viable lawsuit based on federal law. More importantly, the state law theory permitted Trump to bring the case in the Amarillo division of the federal court in the Northern District of Texas, because the constitution allows parties to bring state law cases in federal courts where the parties are from different states (aka diversity jurisdiction). What’s so special about Amarillo? It meant that he was virtually guaranteed to get the federal judge who sits there. That would be Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. The name will likely ring a bell. Known for his ardent devotion to conservative social causes, Kacsmaryk is the judge who suspended the FSA’s approval of mifepristone, among many other highly controversial rulings. Trump was engaging in naked forum shopping, exploiting a gaping design defect in the system that needs to be corrected. At the time Trump brought the lawsuit, CBS described it as “completely without merit” and pledged to defend itself vigorously. It said that the Harris interview was edited solely for time constraints on “60 Minutes”—routine editorial stuff—and they denied Trump’s charge that the tape had been doctored.

[...] As soon as he took office, Trump appointed Brendan Carr, a Republican ally whom he appointed to the Commission during his first term, as FCC Chair. In a way that is highly unusual for a regulatory appointee, Carr has been an outspoken advocate for Trump and conservative causes. He has accused Adam Schiff of overseeing a "secret and partisan surveillance machine." He has continuously leveled accusations against the media for supposed bias against Trump. In an interview with Lou Dobbs, he alleged that "[s]ince the 2016 election, the far left has hopped from hoax to hoax to hoax to explain how it lost to President Trump at the ballot box." Most notably, Carr authored the FCC section of Project 2025, which proposed lower legal shields to lawsuits and other policies to bolster conservative speech. Trump in turn has called Carr a “warrior for Free Speech.” Translated, that means a willing henchman in Trump’s shakedown efforts to force media into more favorable coverage and muddle over of his endless stream of lies. Immediately after assuming the Chair, Carr revived the investigations that the FCC had dismissed against CBS, ABC, and NBC (but not Fox). Then last Thursday he launched new investigations into PBS and NPR, both of which Project 2025 calls to defund. Those moves were already high-handed and likely unlawful: The Communications Act of 1934 affirms (and the First Amendment already provides) that the FCC cannot impose content-based restrictions on broadcasters. The FCC has no right to order what the Washington Post and LA Times have of late done voluntarily: gentler (and less honest) coverage of Trump.

On Wednesday, the FCC sent CBS a “Letter of Inquiry” seeking the full unedited transcript and camera feeds from the Harris interview. Like other networks, “60 Minutes” normally doesn’t release interview transcripts to avoid public second-guessing of its editing process. Moreover, the move was nonsensical and highly intrusive: it suggested that the FCC wants to pass judgment not only on what CBS broadcasted but what it didn’t broadcast and how it edited the material it collected for the story. There is no plausible, much less tenable, theory of FCC power that would countenance any scrutiny of that internal process. It was, in fact, a kneecap move. And the kneecap in question is the application of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, for a merger with Skydance Media, the film studio run by the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. The merger is an $8 billion deal in its closing stages that will create a new company worth about $28 billion.

[...] In its essential structure, Trump’s tactics are no different from his attempted shakedowns of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as his effort to enlist the Department of Justice to help him steal the 2020 election. With Zelenskyy, Trump, in what he has never varied in describing as a “perfect conversation,” tried to hold aid hostage to the Ukrainian president’s agreement to falsely certify corruption by Joe and Hunter Biden. The first articles of impeachment alleged that Trump had abused his power and obstructed Congress for personal political benefit, as was essentially undeniable. (Importantly, Congress had already appropriated the aid that Trump was using to bribe Zelensky; his actions are echoed in his recent effort to freeze nearly all aid and grants, which critics contend violates the anti-impoundment principle of the constitution.) Lead House manager Adam Schiff presciently told the country in closing argument that if Trump were not removed, he would violate the Constitution again. Trump tried to pull the same swindle in the aftermath of his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Conspiring with a hand-picked mid-level DOJ official Jeff Clark, whom he proposed to make the Acting Attorney General, Trump tried to manipulate the Department of Justice into sending a letter to Georgia officials suggesting falsely that the Department had found fraud in the election results. As Trump said to the actual Acting Attorney General, Jeff Rosen, "just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” But in a dramatic standoff in the Oval Office, Rosen and other Department officials threatened a mass resignation that forced Trump to back down. Trump and Carr’s shakedown of CBS is structurally identical to these two first term outrages. Trump is seeking to force CBS to pay off his lawsuit that he brought as a private citizen based on a claims that have no possible connection to his official responsibilities.

[...] In fact, Trump tried a similar caper in his first administration, trying to strong arm Time Warner, parent company of CNN, based on its proposed merger with AT&T. But since it was clear at the time (as it is now, despite the FCC’s will assertions otherwise) that the FCC merger review doesn’t take account of CNN’s editorial practices, AT&T and Time Warner were able to successfully push back on Trump’s attempts to intervene. This almost certainly is not the end of Trump’s war on the media, whom he has assailed with the same furor he reserves for DEI and illegal immigrants. Trump has called for ABC to lose its license. He has said NBC should be investigated for treason. He crowed in a campaign rally about forcing journalists to reveal their sources by throwing them in jail, saying “When this person realizes that he’s going to be the bride of another person shortly, he will say ‘I’d very much like to tell you exactly who that was.’” And, along with other recent moves like pardoning the January 6 rioters and withdrawing security detail from his political enemies, Trump’s demonization of the media threatens violence. Numerous studies have found increased threats of physical violence, as well as actual violence, against journalists, and anecdotal evidence confirms harassment is rampant at Trump rallies. After the election, a former Marine was arrested for attempting to strangle a Pacific Islander TV news reporter while taunting, “Are you even a US citizen? This is Trump’s America now.” The bottom line is that the kind of behavior every bit as corrupt as what led to the two impeachments, and that poses a grave threat to freedom of the press, now passes by as a page 3 story easily overlooked in the avalanche of outrages with immediate tangible impact, such as the OMB’s recent effort to halt nearly all federal assistance, or unelected mischief maker Elon Musk’s infiltration of the US Treasury’s payment system.

Tyrant 47 doing the same stuff he got impeached for twice in his first go. It’s time to impeach 47! #Impeach47

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Inside a Chaotic U.S. Deportation Flight to Brazil

The Trump administration’s first flight deporting Brazilians involved aborted takeoffs, sweltering heat, emergency exits and shackled deportees on a wing.

Temperatures were rising inside the plane. Eighty-eight Brazilian deportees, most of them handcuffed and shackled, were getting restless on Friday under the watch of U.S. immigration agents. The passenger jet, dealing with repeated technical problems, was stuck on the tarmac in a sweltering city in the Amazon rainforest.

Then the air conditioning broke — again.

There were demands to stay seated, shoving, shouting, children crying, passengers fainting and agents blocking exits, according to interviews with six of the deportees aboard the flight. Finally, passengers pulled the levers to release two emergency exits, and shackled men poured out onto the plane’s wing, shouting for help.

Brazil’s federal police quickly arrived and, after a brief standoff, told the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to release the deportees, though they had not yet reached their scheduled destination.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ordered a Brazilian Air Force aircraft to pick up the deportees and take them the rest of the way. His government’s ministers then publicly slammed the Trump administration’s handling of the deportees as “unacceptable” and “degrading.”

It was those complaints about the Brazilian flight that President Gustavo Petro of Colombia was replying to on social media when he announced Sunday that his government had turned away two deportation flights from the United States. That set off dueling threats of tariffs between the United States and Colombia that ultimately ended in Mr. Petro backing down.

The diplomatic dust-up over the deportation flights to Brazil and Colombia marked a turbulent first weekend for President Trump’s hard-line policy to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.

Continue reading.

[doctorjameswatson]

In a continuation from yesterday. The man with the homophobic review didn’t like our response and has updated his review, changing it from 3 to 1 star, and has put in an official complaint to our head office.

He also claims that almost everyone on his social media pages agrees with him.

My colleagues think it’s laughable and in a way it is because my company’s policies are very pro-lgbt and the law also backs us.

But it just gives me anxiety 😔

[radicallicious]

A female inmate at Mexico’s Chalco Penitentiary and Social Reintegration Center has reported that she was sexually assaulted by a trans-identified male who had been placed in her cell.

The male inmate had a history of sexual violence, and threatened to harm the victim’s children if she spoke out about what happened to her.

The assault occurred in July of 2022 after the trans-identified male inmate was transferred into the victim’s quarters. Despite having a history of violent sexual crimes and misconduct, the perpetrator was allowed to move into the women’s area where there was minimal security, with some sections being separated only by fabric curtains.

While the victim had initially been threatened into silence as the trans-identified male had promised to harm her family using contacts he had on the outside, she eventually reported the assault to prison authorities.

CODHEM, the Human Rights Commission of the State of Mexico, launched an investigation and determined that “one of the [incarcerated women] was sexually assaulted by her roommate, who was a trans woman with previous complaints of misconduct and probable sexual harassment.”

CODHEM further revealed that “the aggression was not prevented by the prison authorities,” with the facility administrators having conducted an insufficient assessment of the inmate without follow-up and with no consideration for the possible risks the trans-identified male inmate posed to the women.

But disturbingly, despite affirming that the sexual assault had taken place and that the transgender inmate had been a risk to the women, CODHEM ordered prison staff to attend a “gender perspective” course.

As reported by El Gráfico, members of the Interdisciplinary University Seminar on Citizen Security at the National Autonomous University of Mexico were in charge of giving the course on human rights and “gender perspective” to eighty prison officials.

The same University was recently embroiled in scandal after trans activists staged a “coup” and took control over one of the largest women’s washrooms on the campus in protest of a lesbian mural being painted nearby. Trans activists vandalized the washroom, painting graffiti that threatened women critical of gender ideology with “rape and death.”

Despite Mexico’s political constitution outlining that prisons must be sex-segregated, the National Human Rights Commission of Mexico has declared that there is no “strict difference between men and women.”

Since news of the assault broke, Mexican media have almost uniformly referred to the assailant as a “woman,” or “trans woman,” using feminine pronouns to refer to the rapist.

Speaking to Reduxx on the disturbing case, Laura Lecuona, the head of WDI Mexico and author of Gender Identity: Lies and Dangers, slammed CODHEM for perpetuating gender self-identification policy in light of the obvious risks it posed.

“A man with a history of sexual violence is serving his sentence in a women’s prison, where he raped and threatened a cellmate, and the state human rights commission thinks that the solution is to give prison employees a little course on ‘gender,'” Lecuona says, questioning: “What will they teach them in this course? Likely that ‘trans women are women.’ The only solution is to recognize that self-declaration of sex involves several dangers for women.”

Lecuona also says gender self-identification policies must be “abandoned” completely in order to protect women.

“Feminists have been warning about this for years. There is still time [for authorities] to rectify and fulfill their obligation to guarantee women a life free of violence.”

The employment of “gender” counselors in cases where women have been involuntarily housed in close quarters with men who declare a transgender identity is an international phenomenon. In July, Reduxx revealed that a man who identifies as transgender presented a speech for a Women’s Empowerment event held at New Jersey’s only correctional facility for women, where he lectured female inmates on the importance of “inclusivity.”

La’Nae Grant reportedly told the women that he believed “cisgender women” may hesitate to accept trans-identifying men as female due to jealousy or “competition” between the groups for male sexual partners. The Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women has been plagued by violent male convicts being transferred into the prison, including a sadistic trans-identified male inmate who was handed a 50-year sentence in 2003 for the brutal rape and murder of a sex-trafficked woman from Ecuador.

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Placing males' feelings and delusions before women and compromising their security in the process... Absolutely terrible. I took my time to read about Perry Cerf (the man mentioned at the end of the article) and I was this close to vomiting. The description of his crime and what he did to the woman (who was referred as a 'hooker' by other media outlet... Nice) is gut-wrenching so be careful.

And the immediate solution to a sexual assault committed by a trans-identified male in a women's prison is taking courses on gender perspective, suggested by the National Human Rights Commission out of all people... Noted.