#they will continue to act with impunity

[mangled-by-disuse]

talking to friends about The Horrors, specifically the Trumpian Horrors, and, like

the more I consider it, the more I think that the best thing we outside the US can do - for ourselves, for the world, and for America as well - is to just holler to the fucking rooftops that AMERICA IS NOT THE WORLD.

By which I mean:

we do not let politicians, media, and our own social circles convince us that American issues are the only issues worth discussing;

we challenge politicians, media, and our own social circles on the politics of appeasement;

we challenge ourselves on the assumption that laws passed in the US affect us directly, and we do not place ourselves in American shoes;

we focus on our own shit. Not because it's more important, but because we need to remember that it still exists. Our eyes cannot be on the USA while the legislative and political rights in our own countries are eroded from under us.

we look to the rest of the world. We get used to viewing people who don't look like us, talk like us, or even like us as an equal and crucial part of the political landscape.

WE ARE LOUD ABOUT THIS. In politics, in activism, in social contexts, in our own assessment of our own politics, we remember and hold up that America is NOT the centre of the world, and that American hegemony is NOT inevitable.

This is not because I'm trying to undermine American struggles. This is because the Trump administration is strengthened and bolstered by every other country that chooses to suck the cock of American supremacy in the desperate attempt to maintain the last remnants of the old imperial order.

It is up to everyone in the world to challenge that, and to say: yeah, this fucking sucks, and we want America to be better, but we don't need America.

There are other markets. There are other allies and potential allies. There are other global powers (Personally I think we should try to dismantle global powers entirely, but, you know, one battle at a time) and there are other political shifts.

So much of the current rightward swing in the UK, at least, is directly modelled on MAGA to the point that it's the same movement, to the point where the branches of that movement feed power and influence to one another. You know what has consistently been one of the more successful tactics? Fucking reminding people that they are not, in fact, offering solutions to the problems Britain faces, because these are American solutions and we are not America.

idk it feels stupid to say this. it feels stupid to have to point out that Not Everywhere Is America, and it feels even stupider to think that this is something that needs pointing out to the systems of power. But the more I think about it, the surer I am that one of the tentpoles of American power, and therefore of Trump's power (in the US as well as beyond it!) is just... the willingness of so much of the world to say: yeah, sure, everything is America.

WE ARE NOT AMERICA.

AMERICA DOES NOT HAVE TO CONTROL US.

idk. maybe it won't change shit. but maybe yelling that at international power structures loudly enough - making noise about issues that are not American, focusing our efforts outside America, challenging American supremacy on the global stage - is, in fact, the most useful thing we can do.

[zorthania]

A piece about survivors guilt.

This comic isn't perfect. I started it back in October 2023, and every time I picked up my pen, I wept.

I bring this to you today, on 9/11, in hopes that you reflect on this day a little differently than how most Americans would. Let it move you to continue to boycott, protest and challenge your family, friends and colleagues. You have a bigger impact than you would believe.

Thank you for reading this with an open heart.

From the river to the sea...

I'd like to bring to attention the fact that the figures depicted above are a gross undercount of the actual number of deaths. I scoured the internet high and low to source my findings and not a single one could break down the devastation that befell an individual ethnicity. Instead, they lumped a bunch of ethnicities together, provided a general timeline, and called it a day, reinforcing the sheer scale of dehumanization propagated in the west. The only consistency between all the articles I looked up was the 4.5 to 4.7 million figure I've included above, and even then, they were all published by western media news outlets... the very same that have been so unreliable and complicit in the genocide of Palestinians today. So I have to take everything they say with a grain of salt.

We are not just numbers.

All of us have ambitions and desires and lives worth living.

With that said, this is your friendly reminder to:

Donate an e-sim

Donate to PCRF to provide Palestinian children aid

Donate to Pious Projects to provide woman with feminine hygiene kits

Donate to CareForGaza to provide food to displaced families in Gaza either through their Gofundme or their paypal

Donate to any of the vetted gofundme campaigns on GazaFunds to help Palestinians trying to flee Gaza.

And if you or someone you know sees or experiences a hate crime and can afford it, SUE. This is a more effective use of your money than most realise. The reason zionists act with impunity is because of the normalization of white supremacy and oppression of ethnic minorities. Challenging that in any capacity tells them that there are consequences to their actions and makes them think twice before engaging in hate crimes and helps raise all of us up against the systems currently in place that let them get away with it.

If you can't donate or spend any money, you can:

Do your daily clicks.

Boycott targeted companies on the BDS list (if you're like me and you don't want a single dollar to go towards anything supporting Israel right now, you can use Bdnaash to double check what products are okay to buy, but the BDS list is sufficient as it is a strategic attack and proven very effective thus far)

Flood your representatives emails and voicemails with how you won't be voting for them unless their politics align with an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Attend a protest, be LOUD.

Challenge your circle of friends, family and colleagues with conversations about Palestine. (THIS IS THE MOST UNDERRATED AND MOST EFFECTIVE THING YOU CAN DO)

and if you're really up to, be disruptive in any capacity that you can think of towards major corporations benefiting from this onslaught. (i.e. halting military manufacturers from production + shipments, sticking boycott stickers on products at your market etc)

And finally, if your country wasn't mentioned in the above excerpt, it was no deliberate omission on my part and I encourage you to come forward and tell your story about the suffering of your people so that this may be a learning opportunity for everyone.

You are seen.

You are not alone.

Thank you again if you've read this far.

From the river to the sea...

[girlfictions]

something i’ve been thinking about lately is like. growing up muslim right after 9/11 is something i’d never really reflected on much because it was all i’d ever known — at 5, my friend’s mum didn’t let her invite me to her birthday party because i was the only brown girl in our class, at 12, my classmates would joke about my family being part of isis, at 16, my dad was interrogated by american airport security for hours — and it always stung and it always hurt but it was just the way things were because the western world hated muslims. but i don’t think i’ve ever fully comprehended the extent to which we were hated until now.

palestine is being turned into a mass graveyard. every single day there are new photos of the atrocities being carried out against them and videos of them pleading for help and still those who can actually intervene turn a blind eye. israel is claiming to only be targeting hamas “terrorists” while bombing a refugee camp. israeli police raided and assaulted a non-zionist jewish neighbourhood. israeli soldiers are posting tiktoks of them torturing captured palestinians. this is not a complicated issue and it never has been. ethnic cleansing is being committed right in front of us. and yet the western world leaders refuse to call for a ceasefire.

and while zionist organisations accuse pro-palestine demonstrations of anti-semitism, while zionist celebrities insist that they’re afraid to leave their mansions in los angeles, a six year old muslim boy was stabbed to death and his mother wounded in the same attack in chicago. a muslim doctor was murdered while sitting outside her apartment complex in texas. hundreds of peaceful protesters have been arrested (many of whom have been jewish). despite what zionists want you to believe, this is not a jewish/muslim conflict. i have so much love and gratitude to my brave jewish brothers and sisters all over the world who are condemning israel for their actions.

ultimately, israel have been granted impunity by the west. they have slaughtered thousands upon thousands of innocent palestinians. they have bombed hospitals and schools indiscriminately. they have used white phosphorus, violating the geneva convention. they have completely eradicated nearly 900 bloodlines. how many more need to be wiped out? how many more children need to be buried underneath the rubble? how many more doctors need to be confronted with the bodies of their own family members? how many more journalists need to detail the horrific acts of violence they are witnessing? what more can be done to the palestinian people that has not been done already?

i truly believe that palestine will be free one day. i believe the palestinian people will receive the justice they finally deserve. but what breaks my heart is how much they have suffered and will continue to suffer before they are deemed worthy of help. and it would be to all of our detriment if we ignored how much of a factor palestine being a predominantly muslim state has played into the way the world has reacted to their genocide.

[communist-ojou-sama]

The United States of America is collapsing before our very eyes. At what point does it lose the capability to bomb Palestine and engage in other acts of imperialism and genocide with impunity?

I think it's already lost the ability to do so with impunity, it's just that the consequences have not yet taken a clear form, but they will. But lets be clear: the US has been leading from weakness to weakness: Its attempt to build a puppet state in Bolivia failed, its attempt to build a functioning puppet state in Afghanistan over 2 decades failed, its attempts to subdue the Ansarallah movement and establish a joint Saudi puppet state in Yemen failed, its attempts to destroy the Resistance in Lebanon failed, its attempt to build a functioning puppet state in Syria is failing right now. There is no actual place where US imperialism is succeeding, all it's doing is engaging in a lot of thrashing and killing in the meantime, and I think that'll continue until that violence becomes fully reflected inward.

[romchat]

I FINALLY bought a digital copy of Sinners and wanted to highlight a few other cinematography choices I really loved besides that tracking shot of Lisa Chow. The first is the camera language with which the White (and passing) characters are introduced and how it creates a unique sense of racial dread.

In her NYTimes article "The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning, poet Claudia Rankine pointedly describes the daily strain of anti-Black racism:

"Anti-black racism is in the culture. It’s in our laws, in our advertisements, in our friendships, in our segregated cities, in our schools, in our Congress, in our scientific experiments, in our language, on the Internet, in our bodies no matter our race, in our communities and, perhaps most devastatingly, in our justice system. The unarmed, slain black bodies in public spaces turn grief into our everyday feeling that something is wrong everywhere and all the time, even if locally things appear normal."

This quiet but unrelenting feeling that something is wrong and could go wrong hovers over Sinners, the movie playing with our (visual) expectations of the many ways racist violence can suddenly strike at the whim of its White characters.

From the establishing shots of Sammie's sharecropper home to the plantation fields to the prison chain gang, we know that this a world where White characters can act without impunity. The violent legacy of slavery continues well beyond its official end, which we can see from the endless white rows of cotton in the foreground and background connecting each scene to the next, the overseers' silhouettes haunting the edge of the frame.

So when a White character physically enters a scene, we immediately feel dread, hyperaware that they could choose to be dangerous and mete out violence at any time just because they can. The introduction of Hogwood and Mary are good examples of this.

As Smoke and Stack wait for Hogwood to arrive to sell them his property, the camera stays trained on a narrow road that snakes behind the bend. There's low visibility because of the use of a wide shot and its duration is a beat too long. The Twins aren't sure how the interaction will go with this White man, and we the audience are forced to sit in that uncomfortable (but routine) tension with them.

And their wariness is justified because look at how Hogwood gets out of the car, his gun front and center. He's a threat on arrival and flaunts that power (e.g., that intentionally placed "boys").

Side Note: I might be stretching but that utility pole is almost cross-like, no? Possible reference to a KKK burning cross?

And despite Mary's deep connection to Stack and the rest of the Black community, she too chooses to be a danger and we can see this based on how she's visually introduced.

Her figure stands in the background, blurred because of the depth of field. There's something ghost-like about her appearance, which I'd interpret as symbolic of how as a White passing woman her past sexual relationship with Stack can still haunt him given the South's anti-miscegenation laws.

The tension of the scene ramps up as Mary approaches, the intimacy of the close-up shots anxiety-inducing. Although she is justified in how upset she is at him, this move is completely reckless given the optics. As @mosaic-briar observes in their analysis of Mary:

"White women have some of the most historically violent relationships to Black men that goes from before Emmitt Till to the data surrounding discipline in schools...Mary's incapability to recognize how much danger she was putting Stack in by yelling about their sex in the middle of the street telegraphed for us everything we'd need to know about how far she had processed her own identity."

This is a meeting between former lovers who care about one another but Mary's White femininity is still lethal even if she doesn't mean it to be. What a smart way to communicate the capricious but destructive power of Whiteness.

[foxgirltail]

If staff says they can't undo the wrongful terminations of people because it was done by the CEO, that means that the CEO can continue to act with impunity and that their words are hollow and meaningless.

Even if you somehow believe that Rita did something wrong on predstrogen, her worst crime on her later blogs was documenting the way the CEO was targeting her. And dozens of trans women's blogs have been terminated in the past week or so for similar

If these blogs, who only performed actions that you as staff say is fine and defensible, remain terminated; how can we trust anything else that you've said

[incessantscreech2000]

Image transcriptions below:

Legendary South African Jewish Freedom Fighters

And Their Condemnation of Israel

Many people don't know that several of Nelson Mandela's closest and earliest comrades and co-conspirators were South African Jews.

These Jewish comrades and their work was pivotal to the defeat of South African apartheid, giving them a unique perspective on the state of Israel.

—

Joe Slovo (1926-1995) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist. In 1942, at age 16, Slovo volunteered to travel to Europe to fight the Nazis. Upon return, he studied alongside Nelson Mandela. He eventually was a founding member of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the paramilitary arm of the African National Congress.

Slovo was exiled to Mozambique by the apartheid government. Whilst there, his wife, legendary Jewish anti-apartheid activist Ruth First, was assassinated by a parcel bomb sent by the apartheid regime.

Working from abroad for the fall of apartheid, he eventually returned and became a Minister in Mandela's government. Throughout his life he remained a staunch critic of Israel.

—

"Ironically enough, the horrors of the Holocaust became the rationalization for the preparation by Zionists of acts of genocide against the indigenous people of Palestine. Those of us who, in the years that were to follow, raised our voices against the violent apartheid of the Israeli state were vilified by the Zionist press."

- Joe Slovo

—-

Denis Goldberg (1933-2020) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist. He spent 22 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, for his political activity alongside Mandela.

He was finally freed when his daughter, who lived in Israel, lobbied the Israeli government, which was closely allied to the apartheid regime, to release him. Due to his staunch opposition to Zionism, he refused to join her in Israel.

—

"The violence of the [South African] apartheid regime was nothing in comparison with the utter brutality of Israel's occupation of Palestine."

- Denis Goldberg

—

Beata Lipman (1928-2016) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist. She drafted the original Freedom Charter in her own handwriting in 1952, which became the basis for the constitution of free South Africa after the fall of apartheid.

Lipman was a proud Jewish critic of Israel, penning many letters condeming Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.

—

"We who have fought against Apartheid and vowed not to allow it to happen again can not allow Israel to continue perpetrating apartheid, colonialism and occupation against the indigenous people of Palestine. We dare not allow Israel to continue violating international law with impunity. Apartheid was a gross violation of human rights. It was so in South Africa and it is so with regard to Israel's persecution of the Palestinians!"

- Beata Lipman in joint letter

—

Ronnie Kasrils is a Jewish South African who was also a founding member and Chief of Intelligence for uMkhonto we Sizwe.

In 1992, Kasrils led an unarmed protest when the apartheid government opened fire, killing 28 of his comrades and injuring over 200 others. He went on to serve in various Ministerial roles after the defeat of apartheid.

In 2001, Kasrils was co-author of the

*Declaration of Conscience by South Africans of Jewish Descent, which calls Israel a colonial apartheid-state. He has drawn criticism for stating that Israel has behaved like the Nazis.

—

"We recognise the operation today by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza as a legitimate expression of their right to resist. We support all efforts of oppressed people to liberate themselves from their oppressors in the same way we did in our liberation struggle.

We are saddened by all violence but Israeli Jews will not realise peace until they accept a future where they will live with Palestinians as citizens in a single, democratic Palestinian state, with Palestinians being compensated for seven decades of colonisation, occupation and apartheid."

- Ronnie Kasrils, 7th October 2023

[didalexiabreakupwitholgaisback]

What's frustrating in all this is that Jenni's life is ruined and all that for a 10,000 slap on the wrist.

yes, i think what people don't understand is that there are those who view this as a victory for rubiales. €10.800 is pocket change to a man like rubiales and there's no prison time associated. and given that he was acquitted for coercion, it was simply an expensive "stolen kiss" and nothing more.

meanwhile, yes, jenni's life is effectively ruined. she is done with the national team, and realistically cannot come back to play in spain. she'll continue to receive harassment. (i mean just go on social media and see the messages mocking the trial 🙃) it's incredibly unfair to her and her family.

and finally, if you think a conviction for sexual assault will mean anything in this country, then you are incredibly naive. rather, when this act was fully televised with multiple camera angles in front of the entire world, and the final result was a €10.800 slap on the wrist, do people not realise how this emboldens others? and for the coercion allegations, it means that the judge did not believe the players' testimony. do you see how that puts the players in an uncomfortable position as not credible?

personally, i think we all need to be vigilant. rubiales will take some time away and then will come back to the world of football. and the snakes vilda, luque, and rivera? they are free to continue with impunity.

i feel more for our players and above all, jenni hermoso, more than anything else. it's about to get a lot more worse for them! 🙏

[halalchampagnesocialist]

I think when Zionists accuse pro-Palestinians of holding Israel to an "unfair standard" or "unfairly targeting Israel", or "singling out Israel" or criticising anything Israel does "because they're Jews" or any other reason, I do think this is a consequence of the plausible deniability that they engage in by claiming that Israel engages in a gold standard level of warfare.

Aside from the usual rubbish of "the IDF is the most moral army in the world"... Over the last six months, I've heard nothing from Israel apologists except how "Israel has done everything to minimise civilian harm compared to Hamas which maximises civilian harm" (Not true) or how Israel has achieved the "lowest combatant to civilian ratio in the history of war" (also not true). Other times it simply defects blame onto Hamas by either claiming they use human shields or claiming there were combatants in civilian area. In the recent case of the killing of aid workers, they claimed it was an "accident" despite evidence showing otherwise, and the only reason they did so was because those aid workers were Westerners and to possibly not also alienate Israel's allies. Any other time it doesn't even pretend to cover up but simply justifies its actions, no matter how horrible, because of xyz. If all else fails, they'll just doubt the death toll count by claiming it's not trustworthy because it comes from the "Hamas-run" MoH or they'll say "it's war and civilians die in war." (Funny how there's been no Israeli civilian death since Oct 7).

You simply cannot claim to be unfairly targeted by critics and accuse them of antisemitism, then continue lying and engaging in denial. In the last six months, Israel has inflicted a level of damage onto Gaza and Palestinians that is reported to take decades to be able to recover from. Hundreds are still dying per day whether it's from Israeli bombs or Israeli-engineered famine. Israel cannot keep acting with impunity and killing as many Palestinians as it deems fit whether it be in Gaza or the West Bank.

[aettuddae]

high garden academy — chapter 83.

⟢ synopsis: a new school year begins at the high garden academy boarding school, bringing with it new students, and among them, the new center of attention for the drama-thirsty student body: the hong sisters. eunchae and her mysterious and unsympathetic older sister, daein, who oddly seem uninterested in the secrets, legends, and gossip of their new school. winter, the institution's top student, and karina, the popular girl and promising pianist, never imagined they would end up so closely involved with hong daein.

masterlist | prev | next

[written chapter]

daein was leaning against a wall near where all her friends were forming a round and dancing to the music, she had a cigarette between her fingers that went back and forth to her lips from time to time, her now characteristic bored expression decorating her face as her eyes wandered through the crowd.

"you're really bold lately." karina's voice could easily be heard over the music. "quoting my tweets, bashing me." she reminisced. "since when did top student have such impunity?"

at the top of the club, on the second floor, karina and minjeong had met in a tumultuous manner. sure neither was the other's favorite person, but minjeong was having a day in which she couldn't stand anyone and when the oh-so-popular girl appeared in front of her, who was accompanied by taeyong, she couldn't contain the intrusive urge to nudge her shoulder with her body as she walked past her, which of course the blackhaired, who had a volatile character, didn't like.

minjeong was nice all the time, but when she didn't want to be it she could get really annoying.

"drop the mean girl act, will you?" the redhead's words were harder to hear because of how softly they came out. "you were just too close, it was unintentional." she lied, the reality is that it was indeed an angry act, but she wasn't waiting for her opponent to confront her.

the girl had never had an argument with a classmate before and her first one would not be over daein.

"i didn't think you were the type to act like that over a person." she folded her arms, turning her body completely towards her and facing her, looking down at her from the height.

"sorry, is just that your girlfriend," she made quotation marks with her fingers as she said that word. "she promises i'm the only person in her eyes and then she goes with you." she didn't know what had led her to say such a thing, but she was tired of keeping quiet, maybe provoking karina could give her answers.

"so it is all about her." she observed.

"why else would you and i have anything to do with each other?" she replied.

unlike volleyball, this time it had been karina's turn to lose. she didn't know how to contradict her, she of all people knew that minjeong wasn't lying when she said that daein looked at her, and she wasn't going to continue a fight over any person. she let out a long sigh,

why wouldn't daein choose her? she was sure sometimes she did, but why couldn't she be the only one?

her eyes wandered away from the shorter one's face and surveyed the place to see if anyone was paying attention to them, but beyond their friends, no one seemed to have noticed the crossing between the two girls. however, when her gaze fell to the floor below she was met with an image that made her approach the railing with haste.

daein was no longer in the same place she had been all night, but was now in the arms of her best friend, jennie, who had forced her to dance with her to get her to change that moody attitude she used to have. karina knew that the interaction probably had no hidden agenda, but she couldn't calm the pang she felt in her chest as she watched daein let the other girl move to the music, rubbing against her body, or as her hands roamed her neck, her arms and her waist. but what made her insides burn the most was the stupid grin that lay on hong's lips.

jimin had kissed her, had cared for her, but that had never made her smile.

"do something." a plea reached her ears from behind, causing her to look over her shoulder to find minjeong standing right behind her, almost glued to her back, watching as well.

"isn't she your best friend?" she inquired even though she knew the answer.

"jennie wouldn't be with daein." she assured and looked karina in the face who was giving her a sidelong glance, one that indicated she wasn't sure if she believed her. "yes, she's my best friend and she would never do that to me." she reiterated, but the girl didn't change her attitude. "which doesn't take away from the fact that i'm jealous." she admitted.

"you're lucky i am too." she confessed. "i wouldn't help you any other way."

"i wouldn't help the girl my girlfriend likes either." she commented casually, her eyes riveted on daein and jennie.

"you know damn well she's not my girlfriend so stop acting like i'm a ridiculous cuckold." she sentenced.

unknowingly, karina had given in to kim's intentions, she had given the information the girl wanted to get. minjeong was extremely smart and the blackhaired seemed to have overlooked it. now she knew that daein hadn't lied to her, that the whole bizarre plan that was so hard to believe was really happening.

karina nodded to her indicating to follow her. "where are you going with top student?" asked her friend giselle as they walked past her.

"if i tell you, you'll get mad." she warned simply.

"minjeong?" called taeyong from behind her, with a worried tone.

"i don't know what's going on either." she informed the boy and continued walking behind karina.

they both walked down the stairs leading to the first floor and with the pianist in the lead they passed through the crowd running past the people blocking their way. appearing out of the sea of people right where daein was standing with her friends, particularly jennie. yu approached the two who were still dancing and wrapped her arms around daein's waist from behind her back, who was startled by the sudden touch and turned around in surprise to look at what was going on.

"hello." murmured the younger girl tenderly as she came face to face with the girl.

"karina don't start-" her reaction was already coming with nuisance, but she fell silent when she saw the redhead only inches behind jimin.

"come dance." the girl tugged her by the waist with just enough force to make her body cut off all contact with jennie's.

"i don't want to dance with you." she pulled away slightly, but was still in the girl's grip.

"not with me." she quickly denied. "with us." she pointed at minjeong, whose face went pale with embarrassment as she realized what yu's plan was.

"are you friends now?" she crossed her arms over her chest molding them to the little space she had.

"we were never enemies." she clarified. "come here." she turned to the girl who was watching everything from the side and grabbed her arm to pull her over to where they were.

"sorry, i know this is weird." the redhead spoke to hong and then leaned down until she was within earshot of jennie. "how low is it to ally myself with karina because she was jealous of you?" she asked with a tone of embarrassment.

"ew." that was her best friend's only response. "just ew." she repeated then turned away and went back to the others.

daein was left alone with both girls who looked at each other in bewilderment as to what the next move was supposed to be, while daein's eyes stayed up, avoiding any contact with them. the first step was taken by the ideator of the situation, starting to move softly to the rhythm of the song playing in the background, throwing a signal to the other to do the same, and the latter, in the absence of certainty, obeyed.

daein felt uncomfortable, which it was obvious would happen to her having to share time with the two girls she least expected to see together, who kept her awake at night going over her bonds with them to try to understand them, to whom she had caused so many emotions, good or bad. faced with such discomfort, she preferred not to make the moment even stranger and after lighting a new cigarette, she started to sway slowly to accompany them. she didn't expect that karina would take this as a reason to get even closer to her and put her hands again on her waist, now dancing together.

minjeong was fighting her shyness and introverted personality, things that were clearly of no concern to someone like yu jimin, and she took daein's trembling eyes that looked at her uncertainly as she danced with the blackhaired as initiative to join them, hugging the older girl's arm and continuing her subtle movements to the music.

it was a competition now, even though they were on the same team. they wanted to know who was closer, who had her more on their side.

karina's hands slowly took course down the older girl's body, roaming her waist, her back, her chest. the contrary didn't take it well and copied her actions, moving her touch up the older's torso. for her part daein had too much weed in her system to think clearly, she was lost in both girls, in her girls. she leaned her head forward allowing the fingers of the two to climb up to the nape of her neck and tangle in her hair. her eyes were closed, her breathing heavy, she held the two in her arms. in the state she was in, she would have let them do whatever they wanted.

karina raised her head until her mouth was at the level of her ear, capturing her earlobe between her teeth and letting it go after giving it a gentle bite, then moving down to her neck and caressing the skin there with her nose.

minjeong brought her palm up to her cheek and drew her to herself with it, using the closeness to leave a trickle of pecks on her face and jaw, while with her thumb she caressed her skin.

maybe if daein were sober she would question why neither of them were restraining themselves, or why they were on good terms with each other, but her brain was completely foggy, so it took her a second to identify when a fourth body appeared behind the girls in her arms. it wasn't until they abruptly both separated from her that she woke up from her trance, looking up to find a guy dancing with them now. she looked at him in disbelief, and tried to narrow her eyes to focus on him better and make sense of his face, but she didn't, she didn't know who he was. the guy had his hands on minjeong and karina's backs, apart from an extremely cheerful smile on his face.

soon he would have daein's fist in his face as well.

daein had gotten into fights a few times in her life, more times she had been attacked over her bad attitude than she had attacked others, but she had experience hitting people. taeyong, for example. the girl lunged at the boy, raising her arm back in the air and gathering power to throw her fist forward to slam it into the guy's face with force.

his body went backwards from the impact and he covered his face where he was hit as if that would ease the pain. he straightened up and looked at the girl angrily, the happy expression he had seconds before seemed to have never existed. with sure and quick steps he returned to daein and hit her back, impacting his knuckles against her cheekbone.

a struggle ensued between the two, with punches and scratches coming and going from the girl. daein was dizzy from the drugs in her system, but that wouldn't make her lose, if anything it helped her not to feel so much pain from the aggressions. in a moment of lucidity she realized she could use her foot to put it between her opponent's and thus knock him down by pushing one of his legs. once he was on his back on the ground, daein sat on top of him, using the advantage to be the one in control, repeatedly punching his face in anger.

"don't touch them again!" she exclaimed before throwing her hand towards him again.

realizing that there was no longer any danger and that the biggest threat was daein, karina approached them both quickly, taking care not to take any damage as she leaned down and wrapped herself around daein's torso and then pulled back, thus forcing her to stand up and away from the boy, restraining her from lunging at him again by placing her hands on her chest. once calmer, daein realized that the entire club had their attention on them.

"i can't believe you got into a fight for us." commented karina in surprise.

the three of them were in the dean's office, sitting in the dark on a little bench against the wall, having just received the reprimand of their lives. of course, daein had taken the brunt of it and had only been spared expulsion for sneaking off to a party and getting into a fight because her father would be talking to the director tomorrow,

which meant he would give him a large sum of money to keep his daughter there.

the same could not be said about the other guy who thought it was a good idea to hit a girl.

meanwhile, karina and minjeong had received the same punishment as the rest of their classmates for going out without permission, which was the cancellation of their breaks for a month, which to jimin seemed like the end of the world, but to the other girl it meant nothing.

"are you okay?" minjeong looked at daein uneasily and put her hand on hers to try to comfort her.

daein nodded wordlessly.

"that was very hot of you." the pianist added as if it would make the situation less terrible.

"karina." her classmate called out to her, looking at her in disbelief. "let's not celebrate that she got into a fight." she shook her head.

"oh please don't tell me it wasn't." she reproached her. "that whole 'don't touch them again' thing was something." she recalled daein's words.

"i can't believe you're serious." she groaned at the things she said.

"can you two stop?" daein uttered word for the first time in hours. "watching you two interact gives me migraine."

"and to think this moody being is our love interest, huh?" she patted kim's arm to go along with her joke.

"is she always like this?" the redhead asked daein. "or does she ever take anything seriously?" the older girl shook her head negatively.

"we should go to sleep." the older one proposed.

"you have to heal those wounds first." ordered kim.

"you look like a tomato." jimin pointed out, earning another judging look from the other two. "an attractive tomato." she added.

"i'm going with minjeong." announced the oldest, causing the named one to be pleasantly surprised as yu opened her mouth to whine.

"is it because i called you a tomato?" she inquired with an exaggeratedly sad tone.

they both got up to start on their way to their rooms, their backs to jimin who still didn't move. daein stopped in her tracks and turned to her, looking at her hesitantly for a few seconds until she decided to walk over, lean above her and leave a kiss on her forehead. "rest."

"you too." she gave her cheek a short caress.

"pick a side." demanded the redhead from behind watching the whole scene.

"hold still." she demanded as she swiped a cotton ball with saline solution on it.

"it hurts." she whined, pulling her face a little away from the girl's hands before she pressed on any wounds again.

"it hurts now." she observed. "when you were at blows with a guy in front of everyone it didn't hurt." she nagged at her.

"hey, i did it protecting you." she defended herself. "i didn't like the way he touched you." she put her hands on the girl's waist.

"protecting us." she corrected. "you did it for karina too." she removed her grip from her body and continued to heal the marks on her face.

"he messed with both of you." she explained. "i wouldn't allow it with anyone."

minjeong said nothing and proceeded to wet another cotton ball to bring it to daein's face, where she swiped it across the scrape under her right eye, making daein hiss from the pain at the contact. the oldest raised her arm and pushed the girl's hand with it, removing it from her face, leaving nothing between them. she again held her opponent's hips firmly so that this time she would not remove it and drew her even closer than she already was.

"you know i like you, don't you?" daein reminded in a whisper, loud enough for only her to hear, as if there was someone else in the room.

"your actions and your words never match." she leaned her weight on the contrary's shoulders, they were so close that just by moving her head forward their noses would brush.

"then let me act on my words."

daein brought her touch up to minjeong's face, cupping her cheeks and pulling her to her lips, thus trapping her in a slow, tentative, careful kiss. it was more of a caress, a cuddle between their mouths. minjeong strengthened her grip on the older one by exerting pressure, trying to suppress the curious sensations stirring in her stomach.

hong's thumbs were tenderly roaming over the younger girl's skin, as if she was afraid of touching hard and breaking her. daein's inner difference, the violence of a few hours ago and the affection that now blossomed in her. their lips moved to the rhythm of absolute silence, to the sound of an imaginary melody, perfectly coordinated as if they had been lifelong dance partners.

but minjeong pushed daein by the shoulders and broke the kiss, pulling away abruptly as she caught her breath.

"what happened?" worried daein in a thread of a voice so subtle the redhead thought she never heard.

"you." she nudged her gently so as not to hurt her. "you're high." she reminded. "and i like you." admitted. "a lot." she clarified. "but not like this." she shook her head in denial. "not when you do it because of the substances in your system and not because you really feel it."

"but i do feel it." she assured standing up with a frustrated attitude. "you know i really do."

"but a kiss from you in this state is worthless." she began to gather her things. "in this state you would kiss any girl to fill your emotional deficiencies." she headed for the door.

"minjeong." she ran after her to hold her arm and make her turn to face her. "that's not true." she asserted, her demeanor drooping.

"if we hadn't stopped you today you would have tried to kiss jennie." she accused. "and i know that, i'm sure of it." she wouldn't cry in front of her, but she wanted to. "because when you're like this you don't care if you feel anything or not, you just want attention, someone to love you for a few seconds." she put her hand on daein's chest. "i can love you, but properly." proposed, her eyes filled with something that looked like illusion. "not like this, not like another one of your girls who fill the emptiness you feel." she let out a long sigh and receiving no response from daein, she left the room.

(!)

— taglist [OPEN] : @yoontoonwhs @hwm1hyun @jisooftme @gornoi @linnnsworld @xen248 @rinapomu @myouiiiiiiii @blaymine @chaewoni3 @aliceiwk @gfriendsapple @sewiouslyz @multiliker @cwpiqwon @pandafuriosa60 @gtfoiydlyj

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Apple to EU: “Go fuck yourself”

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/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma

There's a strain of anti-anti-monopolist that insists that they're not pro-monopoly – they're just realists who understand that global gigacorporations are too big to fail, too big to jail, and that governments can't hope to rein them in. Trying to regulate a tech giant, they say, is like trying to regulate the weather.

This ploy is cousins with Jay Rosen's idea of "savvying," defined as: "dismissing valid questions with the insider's, 'and this surprises you?'"

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/344825874362810369?lang=en

In both cases, an apologist for corruption masquerades as a pragmatist who understands the ways of the world, unlike you, a pathetic dreamer who foolishly hopes for a better world. In both cases, the apologist provides cover for corruption, painting it as an inevitability, not a choice. "Don't hate the player. Hate the game."

The reason this foolish nonsense flies is that we are living in an age of rampant corruption and utter impunity. Companies really do get away with both literal and figurative murder. Governments really do ignore horrible crimes by the rich and powerful, and fumble what rare, few enforcement efforts they assay.

Take the GDPR, Europe's landmark privacy law. The GDPR establishes strict limitations of data-collection and processing, and provides for brutal penalties for companies that violate its rules. The immediate impact of the GDPR was a mass-extinction event for Europe's data-brokerages and surveillance advertising companies, all of which were in obvious violation of the GDPR's rules.

But there was a curious pattern to GDPR enforcement: while smaller, EU-based companies were swiftly shuttered by its provisions, the US-based giants that conduct the most brazen, wide-ranging, illegal surveillance escaped unscathed for years and years, continuing to spy on Europeans.

One (erroneous) way to look at this is as a "compliance moat" story. In that story, GDPR requires a bunch of expensive systems that only gigantic companies like Facebook and Google can afford. These compliance costs are a "capital moat" – a way to exclude smaller companies from functioning in the market. Thus, the GDPR acted as an anticompetitive wrecking ball, clearing the field for the largest companies, who get to operate without having to contend with smaller companies nipping at their heels:

https://www.techdirt.com/2019/06/27/another-report-shows-gdpr-benefited-google-facebook-hurt-everyone-else/

This is wrong.

Oh, compliance moats are definitely real – think of the calls for AI companies to license their training data. AI companies can easily do this – they'll just buy training data from giant media companies – the very same companies that hope to use models to replace creative workers with algorithms. Create a new copyright over training data won't eliminate AI – it'll just confine AI to the largest, best capitalized companies, who will gladly provide tools to corporations hoping to fire their workforces:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

But just because some regulations can be compliance moats, that doesn't mean that all regulations are compliance moats. And just because some regulations are vigorously applied to small companies while leaving larger firms unscathed, it doesn't follow that the regulation in question is a compliance moat.

A harder look at what happened with the GDPR reveals a completely different dynamic at work. The reason the GDPR vaporized small surveillance companies and left the big companies untouched had nothing to do with compliance costs. The Big Tech companies don't comply with the GDPR – they just get away with violating the GDPR.

How do they get away with it? They fly Irish flags of convenience. Decades ago, Ireland started dabbling with offering tax-havens to the wealthy and mobile – they invented the duty-free store:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty-free_shop#1947%E2%80%931990:_duty_free_establishment

Capturing pennies from the wealthy by helping them avoid fortunes they owed in taxes elsewhere was terribly seductive. In the years that followed, Ireland began aggressively courting the wealthy on an industrial scale, offering corporations the chance to duck their obligations to their host countries by flying an Irish flag of convenience.

There are other countries who've tried this gambit – the "treasure islands" of the Caribbean, the English channel, and elsewhere – but Ireland is part of the EU. In the global competition to help the rich to get richer, Ireland had a killer advantage: access to the EU, the common market, and 500m affluent potential customers. The Caymans can hide your money for you, and there's a few super-luxe stores and art-galleries in George Town where you can spend it, but it's no Champs Elysees or Ku-Damm.

But when you're competing with other countries for the pennies of trillion-dollar tax-dodgers, any wins can be turned into a loss in an instant. After all, any corporation that is footloose enough to establish a Potemkin Headquarters in Dublin and fly the trídhathach can easily up sticks and open another Big Store HQ in some other haven that offers it a sweeter deal.

This has created a global race to the bottom among tax-havens to also serve as regulatory havens – and there's a made-in-the-EU version that sees Ireland, Malta, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands competing to see who can offer the most impunity for the worst crimes to the most awful corporations in the world.

And that's why Google and Facebook haven't been extinguished by the GDPR while their rivals were. It's not compliance moats – it's impunity. Once a corporation attains a certain scale, it has the excess capital to spend on phony relocations that let it hop from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, chasing the loosest slots on the strip. Ireland is a made town, where the cops are all on the take, and two thirds of the data commissioner's rulings are eventually overturned by the federal court:

https://www.iccl.ie/digital-data/iccl-2023-gdpr-report/

This is a problem among many federations, not just the EU. The US has its onshore-offshore tax- and regulation-havens (Delaware, South Dakota, Texas, etc), and so does Canada (Alberta), and some Swiss cantons are, frankly, batshit:

https://lenews.ch/2017/11/25/swiss-fact-some-swiss-women-had-to-wait-until-1991-to-vote/

None of this is to condemn federations outright. Federations are (potentially) good! But federalism has a vulnerability: the autonomy of the federated states means that they can be played against each other by national or transnational entities, like corporations. This doesn't mean that it's impossible to regulate powerful entities within a federation – but it means that federal regulation needs to account for the risk of jurisdiction-shopping.

Enter the Digital Markets Act, a new Big Tech specific law that, among other things, bans monopoly app stores and payment processing, through which companies like Apple and Google have levied a 30% tax on the entire app market, while arrogating to themselves the right to decide which software their customers may run on their own devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax

Apple has responded to this regulation with a gesture of contempt so naked and broad that it beggars belief. As Proton describes, Apple's DMA plan is the very definition of malicious compliance:

https://proton.me/blog/apple-dma-compliance-plan-trap

Recall that the DMA is intended to curtail monopoly software distribution through app stores and mobile platforms' insistence on using their payment processors, whose fees are sky-high. The law is intended to extinguish developer agreements that ban software creators from informing customers that they can get a better deal by initiating payments elsewhere, or by getting a service through the web instead of via an app.

In response, Apple, has instituted a junk fee it calls the "Core Technology Fee": EUR0.50/install for every installation over 1m. As Proton writes, as apps grow more popular, using third-party payment systems will grow less attractive. Apple has offered discounts on its eye-watering payment processing fees to a mere 20% for the first payment and 13% for renewals. Compare this with the normal – and far, far too high – payment processing fees the rest of the industry charges, which run 2-5%. On top of all this, Apple has lied about these new discounted rates, hiding a 3% "processing" fee in its headline figures.

As Proton explains, paying 17% fees and EUR0.50 for each subscriber's renewal makes most software businesses into money-losers. The only way to keep them afloat is to use Apple's old, default payment system. That choice is made more attractive by Apple's inclusion of a "scare screen" that warns you that demons will rend your soul for all eternity if you try to use an alternative payment scheme.

Apple defends this scare screen by saying that it will protect users from the intrinsic unreliability of third-party processors, but as Proton points out, there are plenty of giant corporations who get to use their own payment processors with their iOS apps, because Apple decided they were too big to fuck with. Somehow, Apple can let its customers spend money Uber, McDonald's, Airbnb, Doordash and Amazon without terrorizing them about existential security risks – but not mom-and-pop software vendors or publishers who don't want to hand 30% of their income over to a three-trillion-dollar company.

Apple has also reserved the right to cancel any alternative app store and nuke it from Apple customers' devices without warning, reason or liability. Those app stores also have to post a one-million euro line of credit in order to be considered for iOS. Given these terms, it's obvious that no one is going to offer a third-party app store for iOS and if they did, no one would list their apps in it.

The fuckery goes on and on. If an app developer opts into third-party payments, they can't use Apple's payment processing too – so any users who are scared off by the scare screen have no way to pay the app's creators. And once an app creator opts into third party payments, they can never go back – the decision is permanent.

Apple also reserves the right to change all of these policies later, for the worse ("I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further" -D. Vader). They have warned developers that they might change the API for reporting external sales and revoke developers' right to use alternative app stores at its discretion, with no penalties if that screws the developer.

Apple's contempt extends beyond app marketplaces. The DMA also obliges Apple to open its platform to third party browsers and browser engines. Every browser on iOS is actually just Safari wrapped in a cosmetic skin, because Apple bans third-party browser-engines:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

But, as Mozilla puts it, Apple's plan for this is "as painful as possible":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/26/24052067/mozilla-apple-ios-browser-rules-firefox

For one thing, Apple will only allow European customers to run alternative browser engines. That means that Firefox will have to "build and maintain two separate browser implementations — a burden Apple themselves will not have to bear."

(One wonders how Apple will treat Americans living in the EU, whose Apple accounts still have US billing addresses – these people will still be entitled to the browser choice that Apple is grudgingly extending to Europeans.)

All of this sends a strong signal that Apple is planning to run the same playbook with the DMA that Google and Facebook used on the GDPR: ignore the law, use lawyerly bullshit to chaff regulators, and hope that European federalism has sufficiently deep cracks that it can hide in them when the enforcers come to call.

But Apple is about to get a nasty shock. For one thing, the DMA allows wronged parties to start their search for justice in the European federal court system – bypassing the Irish regulators and courts. For another, there is a global movement to check corporate power, and because the tech companies do the same kinds of fuckery in every territory, regulators are able to collaborate across borders to take them down.

Take Apple's app store monopoly. The best reference on this is the report published by the UK Competition and Markets Authority's Digital Markets Unit:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63f61bc0d3bf7f62e8c34a02/Mobile_Ecosystems_Final_Report_amended_2.pdf

The devastating case that the DMU report was key to crafting the DMA – but it also inspired a US law aimed at forcing app markets open:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2710

And a Japanese enforcement action:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies

And action in South Korea:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/skorea-considers-505-mln-fine-against-google-apple-over-app-market-practices-2023-10-06/

These enforcers gather for annual meetings – I spoke at one in London, convened by the Competition and Markets Authority – where they compare notes, form coalitions, and plan strategy:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cma-data-technology-and-analytics-conference-2022-registration-308678625077

This is where the savvying breaks down. Yes, Apple is big enough to run circles around Japan, or South Korea, or the UK. But when those countries join forces with the EU, the USA and other countries that are fed up to the eyeballs with Apple's bullshit, the company is in serious danger.

It's true that Apple has convinced a bunch of its customers that buying a phone from a multi-trillion-dollar corporation makes you a member of an oppressed religious minority:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Some of those self-avowed members of the "Cult of Mac" are willing to take the company's pronouncements at face value and will dutifully repeat Apple's claims to be "protecting" its customers. But even that credulity has its breaking point – Apple can only poison the well so many times before people stop drinking from it. Remember when the company announced a miraculous reversal to its war on right to repair, later revealed to be a bald-faced lie?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

Or when Apple claimed to be protecting phone users' privacy, which was also a lie?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The savvy will see Apple lying (again) and say, "this surprises you?" No, it doesn't surprise me, but it pisses me off – and I'm not the only one, and Apple's insulting lies are getting less effective by the day.

Image: Alex Popovkin, Bahia, Brazil from Brazil (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Annelid_worm,_Atlantic_forest,_northern_littoral_of_Bahia,_Brazil_%2816107326533%29.jpg

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

--

Hubertl (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2015-03-04_Elstar_%28apple%29_starting_putrefying_IMG_9761_bis_9772.jpg

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

[rdthoughtdaughter]

Sexual violence systematically used as a weapon of war in the DR Congo

The article is from April 23d, 2025, the source: UN.

The ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continues to have devastating consequences, particularly for women and children, who face an increased risk of conflict-related sexual violence.

Worsening conditions in the east

Escalating attacks by non-State armed groups in eastern DRC have led to a significant surge in sexual violence, predominantly targeting women and children.

Rwanda-backed M23 rebels seized control of key eastern cities such as Goma and Bukavu from government forces earlier this year, plunging the already volatile, mineral-rich region deeper into chaos following years of instability and conflict between multiple armed factions.

UN peacekeepers are deployed under a mandate from the Security Council to protect civilians and support the delivery of humanitarian aid.

“In the face of this unprecedented security and humanitarian crisis, the situation for women and children continues to deteriorate,” UN officials stressed.

Children are increasingly subjected to grave human rights violations, including recruitment and abduction by armed groups, alongside the threat of sexual violence.

Local militias have also coerced young girls into early marriages. Since February, at least nine girls have reportedly been forced into marriage, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

No end to displacement

The DRC is currently facing one of the world's most severe displacement crises, with 7.8 million people internally displaced. Nearly 9,000 of them are currently sheltering in 50 collective centres in North Kivu, OCHA reports.

Ongoing violence, looting, and restricted humanitarian access have worsened living conditions. Attacks on healthcare facilities and severe shortages of medical supplies are placing additional strain on survivors, particularly those requiring life-saving HIV treatment, which is increasingly unavailable.

Prolonged conflict has also driven 1.1 million Congolese to flee to neighbouring countries, with children comprising over half of the refugee population.

Impunity and lack of support

Despite the scale of the crisis, acts of sexual violence remain largely underreported due to fear of stigma, threats of retaliation, and inadequate access to humanitarian services. Survivors frequently face obstacles in accessing medical treatment, mental health support, and legal protection.

UN officials have called for urgent accountability measures and the implementation of gender-sensitive, child-centred responses.

Restoring critical humanitarian aid and protection services is essential to help survivors reclaim their health, dignity, and a sense of safety.

Source: United Nations

Link: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/04/1162536

[kazimirovich]

all i can say forever

i'm jewish. as a child i moved from a rural town where my family saw acts of rage and hate, emigrated from a country with a horrifying history with jews. you know the one, though there are many. i'm 31 now and i have seen and experienced antisemitism my whole life, in the many places i've lived, to varying degrees. not that i should need to qualify this before everything i have to say - but i know what that looks and feels like. in my life there have been times at which i have been in danger. i choose to stay out of danger in all the ways i was taught. (part of that is not moving into someone else's house uninvited (more in a sec))

(well-meaning?) people want me to have a relationship with israel. they are very invested in assuming i have some connection to this shifting space, this project. they associate my german jewishness with a place i have never been and never felt. home, for me, is the uncle i haven't seen in too long, the ailing brother of my mother, the same red nose. it's fresh sheets hung over dry summer grass, it's bavarian farmland, it's thick liptauer on pumpernickel bread warmed over the wood stove. it's my grandmother's dining room and rough fenceposts, borders we disrespected as kids. home is also here and there and where my family is, where my friends are, where i've built myself.

in a geopolitical sense, it is clear that the antisemitic position is to sequester jews into a partitioned state conceived of by non-jews after the sunset of our most recent attempted decimation. antisemitic, to tell jews "move here, be at home in this space of constant war. impose war on others. fight for a tenuous link to an ancestry you've never seen or studied." in a religious sense, sort of a key feature of judaism since the second exile is that - we're in exile. this is an orthodox argument, but i have to admit that rabbinical discourse is pretty convincing. the secular establishment of the israeli state in an attempt to accelerate any so-called redemption has left us at a point where i really don't know what hope we have for that to occur. if you believe in god, how can you believe they are looking down at us, impressed

because beyond theoretical or spiritual reasons, the bloodlust, the vengefulness, the racism, the violation of law (i know that laws are agreed upon, are broken all the time by those who grant themselves impunity), the evil of this continuance, the evil which grinds babies and text and memory, gnashes it all in its droning machinery, its cold horror and inhumane (unhuman) practice, seemingly perfected... it is obvious to anyone with a single thought that it is an ethnic cleansing. the forcible "movement" (murder) of people of one group from land people of another group want. is ethnic cleansing. we are watching it in real time, and the world stands by and in many cases, it endorses, it beats and imprisons those who are brave enough to stand up to it, it rewards cowardly men in war rooms who having read fukuyama and arendt and maybe even voegelin conveniently forget themselves, because they can afford to, and wave their hands and make calls and decimate entire families cities sovereignties. and liberalism - that fickle ideology whose sole search is for the justification of atrocity - sends its thoughts and prayers, and emphasizes how just horrible both sides are, and conveniently forgets the histories that have led each "side" to this. convenient.

and i can't do anything about it. i can perfectly articulate every well-thought-out argument, i can cry the most frustrated tears from the well of my chest and i can scream that this isn't right, because it isn't, but nobody fucking cares. those who matter have decided for those who don't.

if you align yourself with israel, or feel any sympathy toward the supposed plight of active settlers (not a neutral spot to be in, by the way - another rational argument), i hope you know how thoroughly you've been manipulated. how successful the project of those with the power to decide we don't matter has been. you and i don't matter. so-called free thinkers meme. you fucking idiot. you genocidal maniac.

not putting this under a cut. fuck you. read it all and remember my jewish name and keep it far out of your mouth the next time you tell someone why the people you've told me are my neighbors deserve a flattening.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Olga Lautman at Unmasking Russia:

In just over two weeks, Trump has crippled U.S. national security, delivering massive wins to Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. One radical move after another, he has dismantled America’s defenses against foreign interference, corruption, and election meddling—deliberately exposing the U.S. to attack—while simultaneously waging war on our law enforcement and national security agencies. By unraveling critical national security protections, Trump has signaled to adversaries that the U.S. will no longer actively counter their influence. These moves not only endanger America’s electoral integrity but also open the door for authoritarian regimes to expand their control and further infiltrate key institutions with impunity.

Dismantling America’s Defenses: A Direct Gift to Russia

One of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s first acts was to disband the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, a unit dedicated to countering adversarial interference in U.S. politics. Created after Russia’s attack on the 2016 election, the task force investigated foreign hacking, cyberattacks, election infrastructure breaches, and influence operations—including on social media. Now? Russia, China, and Iran have free rein to attack U.S. elections with barely any FBI oversight. Bondi also gutted enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)—ensuring that foreign political operatives can work in America without disclosure or consequence. This means that lobbyists, political influencers, and even disinformation agents working on behalf of foreign governments can now operate freely within the U.S. without fear of repercussions. The removal of these enforcement mechanisms effectively greenlights covert foreign influence on U.S. lawmakers, policies, and political campaigns.

[...]

If You Think It Stops There—Nope.

Bondi also shifted enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), a key tool for targeting bribery and illicit financial networks. By deprioritizing white-collar crime and corruption cases, her office has effectively signaled to foreign entities that violations will no longer be aggressively prosecuted. This move will embolden corrupt officials, business figures, and oligarchs to engage in unchecked financial manipulation, further entrenching foreign influence in critical sectors of the U.S. economy. [...]

USAID Shutdown: Our Adversarie Dream

And all of this while Trump has also shuttered USAID, one of the U.S.’s strongest tools for countering authoritarian influence abroad. USAID has been essential in stabilizing fragile states, promoting democracy, providing life-saving humanitarian aid, and blocking Russian and Chinese expansionism. By shutting it down, Trump has given autocratic regimes free rein to dominate vulnerable nations. Without USAID, U.S. allies will be defenseless against foreign influence. Russia and China will expand unchecked, filling the void with economic coercion and military partnerships. Countries in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe will lose resources to resist foreign domination, making them easy targets for authoritarian control, corruption, and manipulation. [...]

Trump’s National Security Purge

All this is happening as Trump continues an further assault on America’s intelligence infrastructure and is pushing buyout offers to the FBI, CIA, NSA, and other national security agencies, aiming to purge career officials and replace them with loyalists. These potentially illegal forced exits will cripple intelligence operations at a time of heightened global threats.

Great column by Olga Lautman on how Donald Trump’s two-plus weeks of his 2nd term has been a gift to America’s enemies.

[ouroborosmoons]

"When I was in Gaza I felt like it was a prelude to the end of humanity"

Video description: Dr. Tanya Haj Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor with Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), shared a harrowing account of her experiences working in Gaza, where she bore witness to the devastating humanitarian crisis. She described the systematic targeting of civilians, healthcare workers, and infrastructure, emphasizing the unimaginable toll on Palestinian lives. Through poignant stories of patients and colleagues, she highlighted the loss of entire families, the suffering of children, and the resilience of healthcare workers who continue to serve despite constant threats and personal losses. Dr. Haj Hassan detailed how hospitals have become targets of military strikes and described the horrors of forced displacement, deprivation, and the relentless psychological and physical toll on Gaza's population.

She called for urgent global action, stating that silence in the face of such atrocities perpetuates impunity and signals the erosion of humanitarian law. Dr. Haj Hassan urged the international community to move beyond pity and praise, offering meaningful solidarity and tangible support for Palestinians. Citing the courage of healthcare workers in Gaza as an inspiring model, she asked the audience to reflect on their responsibility to act and to consider what they are willing to risk to prevent further atrocities.

[whencyclopedia]

Ptolemaic Police

Ptolemaic police, or phylakitai, were responsible for law enforcement throughout Ptolemaic Egypt. The existence of a professional police force made Egypt different from ancient societies like the Roman Empire, which had no police. In addition to preventing, solving, and punishing crimes, Ptolemaic police guarded state property and helped transport valuable goods like grain.

Police wielded almost total power within their local jurisdictions and were not subject to oversight in their day-to-day operations. This lack of oversight contributed to severe corruption that affected all levels of ancient Egyptian society. Petitions from civilians reveal complaints about police committing thefts and assaults with impunity. Police also shirked their duties and colluded with criminals. The royal government attempted to eliminate corruption through legislation but was mostly ineffective at preventing it.

Origins

Following Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt in 332 BCE, it was ruled by the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty. This dynasty kept much of Egypt's administrative system intact, so Ptolemaic law enforcement bore many similarities to the earlier functions of police in ancient Egypt. In ancient Egypt, the pharaoh was the ultimate authority on justice. It was the pharaoh's duty to uphold ma'at, the concept of cosmic order and balance. This system continued in the Ptolemaic period. Theoretically, anyone could petition the Ptolemaic king and queen for judgment. For practical reasons, most criminal proceedings were presided over by judges. During the Ptolemaic period, Egypt was divided into provinces called nomes. Royally appointed judges presided over the nomes and acted in the pharaoh's authority.

At the local level, there was a twin system of courts specializing in either Greek or Egyptian law. The Egyptian courts (laokritai) were presided over by Egyptian priests, while the Greek courts (chrematistai) were run by Greek officials. This division of legal authority was necessary since the vast majority of Egypt's people were native Egyptians, but the ruling dynasty was Greek, and hundreds of thousands of Greeks immigrated to Egypt. Generally, Egyptians pursued justice through the Egyptian courts, while Greeks went to the Greek courts. The Ptolemaic dynasty had no desire to create a unified national judicial system. Instead, it focused on strengthening the enforcement of pre-existing laws, especially those related to the collection of taxes and control of economic activity. The will of the courts was enforced by military and police forces.

Continue reading...