#unlawful scheme

[black-fist-order]

BREAKING: The New York Times fearlessly fires back at Donald Trump after he threatens them with legal action for daring to report on his efforts to extort Paramount Global.

This is exactly how you stand up to this fascist bully and his corruption...

"President Trump’s post today follows a long list of legal threats aimed at discouraging or penalizing independent reporting about the administration. The law is clear and protects a strong free press and favors an informed American public," the Times told The Hill.

"The New York Times will not be deterred by the administration’s intimidation tactics," the outlet added. "We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people."

They were referring to a deranged Truth Social post that Trump fired off this morning about the massive lawsuit he's conducting against Paramount over an interview that 60 minutes aired with Kamala Harris.

Trump has alleged that the interview was deceptively edited, but most commentators agree that Trump is just trying to bully the company for interacting with his political enemy.

In his post, Trump accused the company of having "cheated and defrauded the American People at levels never seen before in the Political Arena," adding that 60 Minutes "perpetrated a Giant FRAUD against the American People, the Federal Elections Commission, and the Federal Communications System."

"Despite all of the above, and Paramount’s/CBS’/60 Minutes’ admittance to this crime and, with other similar corrupt removals of answers to questions, the Failing New York Times, which is Fake News both in writing and polling, claims that 'people' said that the case is baseless," Trump continued.

"They don’t mean that, they just have a non curable case of TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, possibly to the point where the Times’ interjection makes them liable for tortious interference, including in Elections, which we are intently studying," he went on.

"The bottom line is that what 60 Minutes and its corporate owners have committed is one of the most egregious illegalities in Broadcast History," wrote Trump.

"Nothing like this, the illegal creation of an answer for a Presidential Candidate, has ever been done before, they have to pay a price for it, and the Times should also be on the hook for their likely unlawful behavior. It is vital to hold these Liars and Fraudsters accountable!" he concluded.

The lengthy and lie-riddled outburst was prompted by a report in the Times in which they covered the scheme by Trump's lawyers to extract a settlement from Paramount over the 60 minutes segment. The outlet wrote that "legal experts have called the suit baseless and an easy victory for CBS."

This entire sordid affair is complicated by the fact that Shari Redstone — the controlling shareholder of Paramount — is trying to sell the company to Hollywood studio Skydance. In order for that sale to happen, she needs permission from Trump's Federal Communications Commission.

In other words, it appears to many experts that Trump is holding out on having his FCC grant permission in order to use it as leverage in the settlement discussions. This is corruption of the most clear cut form. He's abusing the powers of the presidency to enrich himself and in a sane country, this would be an impeachable offense...

[saywhat-politics]

By The Associated Press and AZFamily Digital News Staff

Published: Apr. 23, 2025 at 2:27 PM MST|Updated: Apr. 23, 2025 at 3:32 PM MST

PHOENIX (AZFamily/AP) — A dozen states, including Arizona, are suing the Trump administration to stop its tariff policy, claiming it is unlawful and has brought chaos to the American economy.

The lawsuit said the policy put in place by President Donald Trump has left the national trade policy subject to Trump’s “whims rather than the sound exercise of lawful authority.” Officials are challenging Trump’s claim that he could arbitrarily impose tariffs based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

The Trump administration has implemented tariffs on cars, steel, and aluminum, as well as 25% import taxes on most goods from Canada and Mexico. The White House has also imposed 10% tariffs on nearly all imports, and a huge 145% duty on goods from China, although smartphones and computers have been exempt. China has retaliated with 125% duties on U.S. goods.

“President Trump’s insane tariff scheme is not only economically reckless – it is illegal,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement. “Arizona cannot afford President Trump’s massive tax increase. No matter what the White House claims, tariffs are a tax that will be passed on to Arizona consumers.”

[macmanx]

Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of millions of pirated books. But details around the torrenting were murky until yesterday, when Meta's unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The new evidence showed that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna’s Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen," the authors' court filing said. And "Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen."

"The magnitude of Meta’s unlawful torrenting scheme is astonishing," the authors' filing alleged, insisting that "vastly smaller acts of data piracy—just .008 percent of the amount of copyrighted works Meta pirated—have resulted in Judges referring the conduct to the US Attorneys’ office for criminal investigation."

[probablyasocialecologist]

Migrant agricultural workers have held a protest outside the Home Office in London to demand an end to exploitation of overseas workers on UK farms. This was the first time migrant farm workers, who arrive in the UK as part of the Seasonal Worker Scheme, have organised a protest in the capital. The rally was also attended by various farming and workers rights organisations, including the Landworkers’ Alliance, Land In Our Names and SALT Union. In July 2023, after claims of wage theft, discrimination and health and safety concerns, 88 seasonal workers took strike action at Redbank Farm in Herefordshire. A group of these, who are organising as ‘Justice Is Not Seasonal’, are taking the farm's owner, Haygrove, to court over alleged harassment and race discrimination. The workers also allege unlawful deductions of wages and whistleblowing victimisation after raising health and safety concerns. In order to bring their campaign to light, they held a demonstration outside the Home Office today (24 January) to demand justice for migrant workers who come to work on UK farms. Their demands were an end to forced labour and exploitation in UK farms and full accountability for those responsible. They also asked for fair wages and safe working conditions, as well as access to justice and remediation.

24 January 2025

[mariacallous]

The US Department of Justice has sued Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, for abusing their alleged monopoly in the ticketing market to trample competitors.

Filed on Thursday in the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit focuses on Ticketmaster’s long-term exclusivity contracts with many of the largest music venues, making it the predominant ticketing service available to concertgoers. The firm secures these deals in part by “threatening and retaliating against venues that work with rivals,” the DOJ alleges.

In the complaint, the DOJ accuses Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which acts as a promoter for hundreds of high-profile artists, of exploiting their relationship to establish a “self-reinforcing flywheel” that blocks competitors from gaining a foothold. Live Nation parlays its exclusive promotion deals into exclusive ticketing deals with venues, the DOJ claims, which are left with no practical choice but to go with Ticketmaster, for fear of losing access to sought-after acts represented by its parent company. The DOJ is seeking to break up the joint organization.

“We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” says attorney general Merrick Garland in a statement. “The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation–Ticketmaster.”

In a lengthy statement provided to WIRED, Live Nation disputes the DOJ's allegation that it and Ticketmaster wield monopoly power. “The DOJ's lawsuit won't solve the issues fans care about relating to ticket prices, service fees, and access to in-demand shows,” the company says. “Calling Ticketmaster a monopoly may be a PR win for the DOJ in the short term, but it will lose in court because it ignores the basic economics of live entertainment, such as the fact that the bulk of service fees go to venues, and that competition has steadily eroded Ticketmaster’s market share and profit margin.”

The charges brought by the DOJ mirror allegations made previously against Ticketmaster in two ongoing private lawsuits.

In December 2022, Ticketmaster was sued by hundreds of Taylor Swift fans, who brought a case in response to a high-profile ticketing debacle that reportedly left them queuing for hours to pay for tickets that they had been assigned under an early access program, with many ultimately unable to claim their allocations. The incident led to a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee on consolidation in the ticketing industry and, reportedly, helped catalyze the investigation into Ticketmaster by the DOJ.

In their lawsuit, the Swift fans accused Ticketmaster of abusing its dominant position to impose “higher prices in the presale, sale, and resale market for concert tickets.” The company has “effectuated this anticompetitive scheme by forcing fans of musicians to use Ticketmaster exclusively to buy concert tickets,” the lawsuit alleged.

In the second case, a class action brought in 2022 on behalf of Ticketmaster customers in the US, Live Nation and Ticketmaster were accused of abusing the complementary relationship between their services to overcharge consumers and sustain their monopoly. “Live Nation controls the vast majority of the big national touring acts and, either explicitly or implicitly, coerces concert venues into selecting Ticketmaster as their ticketing service provider on pain of losing high-value acts,” claims Adam Wolfson, a partner at Quinn Emanuel, the law firm representing the plaintiffs.

This type of conduct, known as tying, was explicitly forbidden under the consent decree imposed upon Live Nation and Ticketmaster by the DOJ as a condition of their 2010 merger. “Our allegation is that they did it anyway,” says Wolfson. “Ticketmaster’s behavior is an open secret—everyone talks about it.”

In a corporate blog post published in March, Dan Wall, executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs at Live Nation, rejected allegations that Ticketmaster is driving up the price of tickets. The face value of a ticket is decided by the artist, he wrote, while the service charge—from which Ticketmaster draws its cut—is set by the venue.

In a call with reporters, a senior DOJ official described this line of defense as a “red herring” in the context of the alleged antitrust violations. “Our position is that removing the chokehold that Live Nation has at all levels of the ecosystem will be beneficial with respect to the way prices are set.”

A problem common to antitrust disputes, says Bradley Justus, an antitrust attorney at law firm Axinn, is the difficulty in distinguishing easily between practices that amount to anticompetitive behavior and those that might be considered sensible business strategy. The DOJ will argue that the exclusive deals entered into by Ticketmaster are categorically anticompetitive. “The antitrust question is: How extensive is the scope of those agreements? Are they truly so broad that another competitor couldn’t enter and scale?” says Justus.

The DOJ claims that the terms of the contracts mean that “venues cannot consider or choose rival ticketers or switch to better or more cost-effective ticketing technology.” The effect, it claims, is both to stifle competitors and minimize the pressure for Ticketmaster to improve its own product, to the detriment of concertgoers.

Although the DOJ has petitioned for Live Nation to be broken up, it has not outlined the specific structural changes it will go after, nor any injunctions it may try to impose with respect to the company’s exclusive contracts. “A breakup is absolutely on the table, but it’s important not to put the cart before the horse. In antitrust cases, any remedy has to be specifically tailored to the violation found,” a senior DOJ official told the press. “Based on the allegation that Live Nation and Ticketmaster have exerted control at every level of the ecosystem, aspects of the company need to be broken apart in order for competition to flourish in the live music industry.”

[argumate]

With a green light from both parties, egg industry consolidation continued rapidly. By the end of the 1990s, we had gone from there being a dozen or more primary breeders of layer chickens active around the world in 1980 — with most of them being based in the United States — to there being only two who control an estimated 90% of the market, both of whom are based in Europe.

Beyond acquisitions, Hendrix and EWG also proceeded to lock up much of the critical information about breeding methods, strain lineage, genetic markers, and other matters involved in breeding or multiplying layer chickens behind patent, copyright, and trade-secret protections. Simultaneously, in the 1990s, the Clinton administration eliminated what remained of funding for poultry research and the maintenance of public poultry stocks at land-grant universities. With public know-how gone and private know-how consolidated into two firms, it became extremely difficult for independent companies to enter into poultry genetics and breeding.

As one would expect, the industry stagnated. A post-consolidation study (1996) found that the layer genetics industry spent only $16-20 million a year on R&D — or 5 cents out of every $100 the industry earned globally. In 2006, even an executive at EWG had to admit that “independent sources of new germplasm” for breed development had become “very scarce,” and that “[e]very merger between breeding companies [was] result[ing] in the elimination of lines” of poultry stock important to the breeding of new and competing strains of layer hens.

...

This strategy by the dominant breeders was also a function of legal changes in antitrust. It used to be illegal for powerful businesses to use exclusivity agreements, but they are now pervasive. Exclusive deals are the basis, for example, of the antitrust case against Google in search, which signed deals with Apple, Mozilla, Verizon, and a host of other distributors to be the default search engine on their devices. Another example would be independent pharmacies, who have to sign exclusive deals with pharmaceutical distributors where they pledge to buy 90% of their supplies from one distributor. An exclusive dealing arrangement is not always unlawful, but it is when used by a dominant firm to lock up a market and foreclose rivals from selling into it.

And that’s exactly what EWG and Hendrix were doing. As a 2012 study of the dominant breeders’ strategies found, EWG and Hendrix “use[d] their corporate power to pressurize the [hatcheries] with the aim of increasing their market share[s] and superseding their competitors.” The owner of a hatchery at the time described what was happening more plainly: “We are currently still a free grower. There are not many of us left. We will probably join a group [referring to EWG or Hendrix] now, because nowadays they do not like it anymore when somebody is active on the free market and offers [multiple] products.”

In 2015, Hendrix — powered up by a large investment from a private equity fund — decided to eliminate the power of these independent hatcheries altogether by acquiring its way into the hatchery business and beginning to supply egg producers with chicks and hens directly. Seeking to control multiple layers of production and distribution like this is called “vertical integration,” and it’s something that laissez faire-minded antitrust enforcers across the administrations of Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama saw as especially efficient. To offer some context, from the 1970s until the Trump administration challenge of the AT&T-Time Warner merger in 2017, enforcers didn’t bring a single vertical merger to trial. Hendrix’s serial acquisitions of hatcheries in the 2010s was just one more vertical M&A scheme among thousands that took place during this era, barely noticeable in the deluge of monopolization.

Since then, EWG and Hendrix have bred — either directly or through contract hatcheries — an estimated 90% of the commercial egg-layer hens in the world (except China, where a state-backed firm dominates the domestic market). Beyond these two firms, the only primary breeder that remains active in the West is TETRA, which barely offers a competitive brown-egg layer strain and does not offer a decent white-egg layer hen at all. Practically, it is now impossible for a commercial producer of eggs in the United States to establish or expand a competitive flock without relying on EWG or Hendrix.

so blame Reagan, but also Clinton, Bush, and Obama for why two companies end up controlling 90% of the egg market in the US.

(excerpts from Matt Stoller's BIG newsletter)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Max Flugrath for Zeteo:

“In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” That’s what Donald Trump told a crowd in 2024. If we didn’t know what he meant then, we do now. One of his latest executive orders is a lawless power grab to seize control of elections and silence voters. The order reads like a MAGA fever dream – giving unprecedented and likely unlawful powers to the president, and bulldozing our Constitution. It requires showing documents like passports or Real IDs to use the federal voter registration form – things many don’t have or would have to pay for – despite courts ruling this is illegal. Even conservative legal experts are calling it an unlawful overreach. This would impact at least 21 million eligible Americans’ voter registrations. With Black, Latino, rural, low-income, and naturalized voters most impacted – folks who already face systemic voting barriers. New Hampshire lawmakers passed a similar citizenship-document law, and voters were turned away from a recent local election. Giving Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) power to comb through state voter rolls may be the most dangerous part. Trump wants an unelected oligarch – with roots in apartheid South Africa – to help him decide who’s American enough to vote. DOGE’s weaponized incompetence is a recipe for mass database errors and thousands – maybe millions – of Americans’ voter registrations being wrongly canceled. Here’s MAGA’s likely plan: DOGE stirs up chaos, then Trump points to the mess as proof of election law violations – and uses it to block eligible voters. States that count mail ballots after Election Day could lose federal funds under Trump’s order. That means overseas and military ballots could be tossed – even if mailed on time. The newly-corrupted Justice Department is being told to enforce this gross and “bonkers” misinterpretation of federal law. The DOJ was also told to prioritize investigations of votes that violate election law and Trump’s order proclaimed the agency has “failed to prioritize and devote sufficient resources” to stop voting by people who aren’t citizens. Data going back to 2002 from the Heritage Foundation (the right-wing group behind Project 2025) found just 85 examples. But facts don’t matter under the Project 2025 playbook.

Bypassing Congress and the Courts

This executive order is how Trump plans to get what Congress and the courts haven’t yet handed him: control over who gets to vote. With a massive voter suppression bill up for discussion in the House Rules Committee this week, but facing steep odds in the US Senate, this order takes its most dangerous provisions and makes the documentation aspects worse. It echoes North Carolina’s 2013 voter ID law – struck down for targeting Black voters “with almost surgical precision” by choosing ID types they’re less likely to have. This whole scheme reads like a follow-up to the infamous call where Trump demanded Georgia’s secretary of state “find” him 11,780 votes he didn’t earn. That call featured one of this order’s likely architects, Cleta Mitchell – who helped Trump plot to seize voting machines in 2020. [...]

Time to Organize

We can’t sit by and count on the courts to save us. We are the check. That means speaking up, organizing, and showing up in local and state elections. The Constitution is clear: Congress and the states run elections. MAGA knows it. That’s why Musk dumped massive donations behind the MAGA candidate in the fast-approaching and crucial Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Demand that Congress do its job and rein in this rambling, maniacal wannabe king. Urge your governor not to comply. Push your election officials to stand up.

Fair Fight's Max Flugrath wrote in Zeteo that the Trump/Musk co-presidency is following the Project 2025 and DOGE playbooks in dismantling what is left of our nation’s democracy.

[whencyclopedia]

Ellen and William Craft's Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom

Ellen and William Craft's Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860) tells the story of the couple's escape from slavery, with Ellen disguised as a young, White gentleman of means and William as her slave. They successfully traveled to the free state of Pennsylvania in 1848 and became the most famous fugitive slaves in the United States.

Ellen Craft (l. 1826-1891) was born in Clinton, Georgia, to a light-skinned slave and her White master, and so was light-skinned herself and could pass as a White woman. William Craft (l. 1824-1900) was born in Macon, Georgia, where Ellen arrived in the company of her new mistress after the wife of her previous owner presented her to her daughter as a wedding gift to get her out of the house and remove the evidence of her husband's affair.

The Crafts devised a clever scheme in which Ellen would pose as a White gentleman traveling north for his health (since women could not travel alone with male slaves), accompanied by a faithful slave. Because neither could read or write, Ellen wore her right arm in a sling so that the couple would raise no suspicions when asked to sign guest registries. They traveled from Georgia to Pennsylvania, arriving in Philadelphia on Christmas Day 1848.

They were taken under care by the abolitionists in the city and moved to Boston, where they lectured on their experiences until the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed by Congress and slave-catchers were sent to bring them back to Georgia. With the help of Boston abolitionists, the Crafts fled to England, where they lived for the next 19 years, had five children, lectured on their escape, and, having learned to read and write, co-authored Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, published in 1860.

They returned to the United States in 1868, three years after the end of the American Civil War and passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, and they set up a farm school outside of Savannah, Georgia, employing former slaves. White supremacist policies made it difficult to maintain the school, which closed in 1878.

In 1890, the Crafts moved to Charleston, South Carolina, to live with their daughter. Ellen Craft died of natural causes in 1891, and William in 1900. Their book became a bestseller, especially among abolitionist circles, and remains a popular work in the present day.

Text

The following excerpt is taken from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, the Electronic Edition, published on the site Documenting the American South, pp. 27-43. The excerpt has been edited for space; omissions indicated by ellipses. The full account is given in the bibliography below and in the External Links.

My wife was torn from her mother's embrace in childhood and taken to a distant part of the country. She had seen so many other children separated from their parents in this cruel manner, that the mere thought of her ever becoming the mother of a child, to linger out a miserable existence under the wretched system of American slavery, appeared to fill her very soul with horror; and as she had taken what I felt to be an important view of her condition, I did not, at first, press the marriage, but agreed to assist her in trying to devise some plan by which we might escape from our unhappy condition, and then be married.

We thought of plan after plan, but they all seemed crowded with insurmountable difficulties. We knew it was unlawful for any public conveyance to take us as passengers, without our master's consent. We were also perfectly aware of the startling fact, that had we left without this consent the professional slave-hunters would have soon had their ferocious bloodhounds baying on our track, and in a short time we should have been dragged back to slavery, not to fill the more favourable situations which we had just left, but to be separated for life, and put to the very meanest and most laborious drudgery; or else have been tortured to death as examples, in order to strike terror into the hearts of others, and thereby prevent them from even attempting to escape from their cruel taskmasters.

It is a fact worthy of remark, that nothing seems to give the slaveholders so much pleasure as the catching and torturing of fugitives. They had much rather take the keen and poisonous lash, and with it cut their poor trembling victims to atoms, than allow one of them to escape to a free country and expose the infamous system from which he fled.

The greatest excitement prevails at a slave-hunt. The slaveholders and their hired ruffians appear to take more pleasure in this inhuman pursuit than English sportsmen do in chasing a fox or a stag. Therefore, knowing what we should have been compelled to suffer, if caught and taken back, we were more than anxious to hit upon a plan that would lead us safely to a land of liberty.

But, after puzzling our brains for years, we were reluctantly driven to the sad conclusion, that it was almost impossible to escape from slavery in Georgia and travel 1,000 miles across the slave States. We therefore resolved to get the consent of our owners, be married, settle down in slavery, and endeavour to make ourselves as comfortable as possible under that system; but at the same time ever to keep our dim eyes steadily fixed upon the glimmering hope of liberty, and earnestly pray God mercifully to assist us to escape from our unjust thraldom.

We were married, and prayed and toiled on till December 1848, at which time (as I have stated) a plan suggested itself that proved quite successful, and in eight days after it was first thought of, we were free from the horrible trammels of slavery, and glorifying God who had brought us safely out of a land of bondage.

Knowing that slaveholders have the privilege of taking their slaves to any part of the country they think proper, it occurred to me that, as my wife was nearly white, I might get her to disguise herself as an invalid gentleman, and assume to be my master, while I could attend as his slave, and that in this manner we might effect our escape. After I thought of the plan, I suggested it to my wife, but at first, she shrank from the idea. She thought it was almost impossible for her to assume that disguise and travel a distance of 1,000 miles across the slave States.

However, on the other hand, she also thought of her condition. She saw that the laws under which we lived did not recognize her to be a woman, but a mere chattel, to be bought and sold, or otherwise dealt with as her owner might see fit. Therefore, the more she contemplated her helpless condition, the more anxious she was to escape from it. So, she said, "I think it is almost too much for us to undertake; however, I feel that God is on our side, and with his assistance, notwithstanding all the difficulties, we shall be able to succeed. Therefore, if you will purchase the disguise, I will try to carry out the plan."

But after I concluded to purchase the disguise, I was afraid to go to any one to ask him to sell me the articles. It is unlawful in Georgia for a white man to trade with slaves without the master's consent. But, notwithstanding this, many persons will sell a slave any article that he can get the money to buy. Not that they sympathize with the slave, but merely because his testimony is not admitted in court against a free white person.

Therefore, with little difficulty I went to different parts of the town, at odd times, and purchased things piece by piece, (except the trousers which she found necessary to make,) and took them home to the house where my wife resided. She being a ladies' maid, and a favourite slave in the family, was allowed a little room to herself; and amongst other pieces of furniture which I had made in my overtime, was a chest of drawers; so when I took the articles home, she locked them up carefully in these drawers.

No one about the premises knew that she had anything of the kind. So, when we fancied we had everything ready the time was fixed for the flight. But we knew it would not do to start off without first getting our master's consent to be away for a few days. Had we left without this, they would soon have had us back into slavery, and probably we should never have got another fair opportunity of even attempting to escape.

Some of the best slaveholders will sometimes give their favourite slaves a few days' holiday at Christmas time; so, after no little amount of perseverance on my wife's part, she obtained a pass from her mistress, allowing her to be away for a few days. The cabinetmaker with whom I worked gave me a similar paper, but said that he needed my services very much, and wished me to return as soon as the time granted was up. I thanked him kindly; but, somehow, I have not been able to make it convenient to return yet; and, as the free air of good old England agrees so well with my wife and our dear little ones, as well as with myself, it is not at all likely we shall return at present to the "peculiar institution" of chains and stripes.

On reaching my wife's cottage she handed me her pass, and I showed mine, but at that time neither of us were able to read them. It is not only unlawful for slaves to be taught to read, but in some of the States there are heavy penalties attached, such as fines and imprisonment, which will be vigorously enforced upon anyone who is humane enough to violate the so-called law…

…However, at first, we were highly delighted at the idea of having gained permission to be absent for a few days; but when the thought flashed across my wife's mind, that it was customary for travellers to register their names in the visitors' book at hotels, as well as in the clearance or Custom-house book at Charleston, South Carolina–it made our spirits droop within us.

So, while sitting in our little room upon the verge of despair, all at once my wife raised her head, and with a smile upon her face, which was a moment before bathed in tears, said, "I think I have it!" I asked what it was. She said, "I think I can make a poultice and bind up my right hand in a sling, and with propriety ask the officers to register my name for me." I thought that would do.

It then occurred to her that the smoothness of her face might betray her; so she decided to make another poultice, and put it in a white handkerchief to be worn under the chin, up the cheeks, and to tie over the head. This nearly hid the expression of the countenance, as well as the beardless chin…

My wife, knowing that she would be thrown a good deal into the company of gentlemen, fancied that she could get on better if she had something to go over the eyes; so I went to a shop and bought a pair of green spectacles. This was in the evening.

We sat up all night discussing the plan and making preparations. Just before the time arrived, in the morning, for us to leave, I cut off my wife's hair square at the back of the head, and got her to dress in the disguise and stand out on the floor. I found that she made a most respectable looking gentleman.

My wife had no ambition whatever to assume this disguise, and would not have done so had it been possible to have obtained our liberty by more simple means; but we knew it was not customary in the South for ladies to travel with male servants; and therefore, notwithstanding my wife's fair complexion, it would have been a very difficult task for her to have come off as a free white lady, with me as her slave; in fact, her not being able to write would have made this quite impossible.

We knew that no public conveyance would take us, or any other slave, as a passenger, without our master's consent. This consent could never be obtained to pass into a free State. My wife's being muffled in the poultices, &c., furnished a plausible excuse for avoiding general conversation, of which most Yankee travellers are passionately fond…

…When the time had arrived for us to start, we blew out the lights, knelt down, and prayed to our Heavenly Father mercifully to assist us, as he did his people of old, to escape from cruel bondage; and we shall ever feel that God heard and answered our prayer. Had we not been sustained by a kind, and I sometimes think special, providence, we could never have overcome the mountainous difficulties which I am now about to describe.

After this we rose and stood for a few moments in breathless silence, –we were afraid that someone might have been about the cottage listening and watching our movements. So I took my wife by the hand, stepped softly to the door, raised the latch, drew it open, and peeped out. Though there were trees all around the house, yet the foliage scarcely moved; in fact, everything appeared to be as still as death. I then whispered to my wife, "Come my dear, let us make a desperate leap for liberty!" But poor thing, she shrank back, in a state of trepidation.

I turned and asked what was the matter; she made no reply, but burst into violent sobs, and threw her head upon my breast. This appeared to touch my very heart, it caused me to enter into her feelings more fully than ever. We both saw the many mountainous difficulties that rose one after the other before our view and knew far too well what our sad fate would have been, were we caught and forced back into our slavish den. Therefore, on my wife's fully realizing the solemn fact that we had to take our lives, as it were, in our hands, and contest every inch of the thousand miles of slave territory over which we had to pass, it made her heart almost sink within her…

…We then opened the door and stepped as softly out as "moonlight upon the water." I locked the door with my own key, which I now have before me, and tiptoed across the yard into the street. I say tiptoed, because we were like persons near a tottering avalanche, afraid to move, or even breathe freely, for fear the sleeping tyrants should be aroused, and come down upon us with double vengeance, for daring to attempt to escape in the manner which we contemplated.

We shook hands, said farewell, and started in different directions for the railway station. I took the nearest possible way to the train, for fear I should be recognized by someone, and got into the negro car in which I knew I should have to ride; but my master (as I will now call my wife) took a longer way round, and only arrived there with the bulk of the passengers. He obtained a ticket for himself and one for his slave to Savannah, the first port, which was about two hundred miles off. My master then had the luggage stowed away and stepped into one of the best carriages.

But just before the train moved off, I peeped through the window, and, to my great astonishment, I saw the cabinetmaker with whom I had worked so long, on the platform. He stepped up to the ticket-seller, and asked some question, and then commenced looking rapidly through the passengers, and into the carriages. Fully believing that we were caught, I shrank into a corner, turned my face from the door, and expected in a moment to be dragged out. The cabinetmaker looked into my master's carriage, but did not know him in his new attire, and, as God would have it, before he reached mine the bell rang, and the train moved off.

I have heard since that the cabinetmaker had a presentiment that we were about to "make tracks for parts unknown;" but, not seeing me, his suspicions vanished, until he received the startling intelligence that we had arrived safely in a free State.

Read More

⇒ Ellen and William Craft's Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom

[ultra-raging-ghost]

Ok so on top of all the crimes listed by the federation here's the list he's provided us himself (possibly incomplete):

-cannibalism -robbery -Poaching -assassination -public nudity -Possible trafficking -Loitering -squatting -Supplying of illegal food -Vandalism -dumping waste -Summoning things from the underworld -war crimes (Theres like 32 of these) -Colonization/property theft -Kidnapping an alien -Document falsification -Counterfeiting -Organ trafficking -Organ theft -Cyberbullying -Poisoning -Conspiracy -Unlawful surveillance of private property -Pillaging and arson -failed extortion -destruction of private property -Several counts of Identity theft -Espionage -Crimes against heaven and earth -1st degree murder -2nd degree murder -3rd degree murder -money laundering -obstruction of justice -Shoplifting -Assault on a federation personel -Prison escaping -Attempted pyramid schemes -Enslavement -bribary of a government official -Practicing law without a lisence

And the ones the federation listed:

[misfitwashere]

April 14, 2025

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 15

READ IN APP

Today, U.S. president Donald J. Trump met in the Oval Office with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, along with a number of Cabinet members and White House staff, who answered questions for the press. The meeting appeared to be as staged as Trump’s February meeting with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, designed to send a message. At the meeting, Trump and Bukele, who is clearly doing Trump’s bidding, announced they would not bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home, defying the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bukele was livestreaming the event on his official X account and wearing a lapel microphone as he and Trump walked into the Oval Office, so Trump’s pre-meeting private comments were audible in the video Bukele posted. “We want to do homegrown criminals next…. The homegrowns.” Trump told Bukele. “You gotta build about five more places.” Bukele appeared to answer, “Yeah, we’ve got space.” “All right,” Trump replied.

Rather than being appalled, the people in the room—including Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Attorney General Pam Bondi—erupted in laughter.

At the meeting, it was clear that Trump’s team has cooked up a plan to leave Abrego Garcia without legal recourse to his freedom, a plan that looks much like Trump’s past abuses of the legal system. The White House says the U.S. has no jurisdiction over El Salvador, while Bukele says he has no authority to release a “terrorist” into the U.S. (Abrego Garcia maintains a full-time job, is married to a U.S. citizen, has three children, and has never been charged or convicted of anything.) No one can make Trump arrange for Abrego Garcia’s release, the administration says, because the Constitution gives the president control over foreign affairs.

Marcy Wheeler of Empty Wheel noted that “all the people who should be submitting sworn declarations before [U.S. District Court] Judge Paula Xinis made comments not burdened by oaths or the risk of contempt, rehearsed comments for the cameras.” They falsely claimed that a court had ruled Abrego Garcia was a terrorist, and insisted the whole case was about the president’s power to control foreign affairs.

As NPR’s Steven Inskeep put it: “If I understand this correctly, the US president has launched a trade war against the world, believes he can force the EU and China to meet his terms, is determined to annex Canada and Greenland, but is powerless before the sovereign might of El Salvador. Is that it?”

On April 6, Judge Xinis wrote that “there were no legal grounds whatsoever for [Abrego Garcia’s] arrest, detention, or removal.… Rather, his detention appears wholly lawless.” It is “a clear constitutional violation.” The Supreme Court agreed with Xinis that Abrego Garcia had been illegally removed from the U.S. and must be returned, but warned the judge to be careful of the president’s power over foreign affairs.

At the Oval Office meeting, when Trump asked what the Supreme Court ruled, deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller said it had ruled “9–0…in our favor,” claiming “the Supreme Court said that the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed 9–0 unanimously.” Legal analyst Chris Geidner of Law Dork called Miller’s statement “disgusting, lying propaganda.”

He also noted that when the administration filed its required declaration about Abrego Garcia’s case today, it included a link to the Oval Office meeting, thus submitting Miller’s lies about its decision directly to the Supreme Court. Geidner wished the administration's lawyers: “Good luck there…!”

Legal analyst Harry Litman of Talking Feds wrote: “What we all just witnessed had all the earmarks of a criminal conspiracy to deprive Abrego-Garcia of his constitutional rights, as well as an impeachable offense. The fraud scheme was a phony agreement engineered by the US to have Bukele say he lacks power to return Abrego Garcia and he won't do it.”

As Adam Serwer wrote today in The Atlantic, The “rhetorical game the administration is playing, where it pretends it lacks the power to ask for Abrego Garcia to be returned while Bukele pretends he doesn’t have the power to return him, is an expression of obvious contempt for the Supreme Court—and for the rule of law.”

Serwer notes that if the administration actually thought there was enough evidence to convict these men, it could have let the U.S. legal process play out. But Geidner of Law Dork noted that Trump’s declaration this morning that he wanted to deport “homegrown criminals” suggests that the plan all along has been to be able to get rid of U.S. citizens by creating a “Schroedinger’s box” where anyone can be sent but where once they are there the U.S. cannot get them back because they are “in the custody of a foreign sovereign.”

“If they can get Abrego Garcia out of the box,” Geidner writes, “the plan does not work.”

On August 12, 2024, in a discussion on billionaire Elon Musk’s X of what Trump insisted were caravans coming across the southern border of the U.S., Trump told Musk that other countries were doing something “brilliant” by sending streams of people out of their country. “You know the caravans are coming in and…who’s doing this are the heads of the countries. And you would be doing it and so would I, and everyone would say ‘oh what a terrible thing to say.’”

He continued: “The fact is, it’s brilliant for them because they're taking all of their bad people, really bad people and—I hate to say this—the reason the numbers are much bigger than you would think is they’re also taking their nonproductive people. Now these aren’t people that will kill you…but these are people that are nonproductive. They are just not productive, I mean, for whatever reason. They’re not workers or they don’t want to work, or whatever, and these countries are getting rid of nonproductive people in the caravans…and they’re also getting rid of their murderers and their drug dealers and the people that are really brutal people….”

Scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder explained the larger picture: “On the White House’s theory, if they abduct you, get you on a helicopter, get to international waters, shoot you in the head, and drop your corpse into the ocean, that is legal, because it is the conduct of foreign affairs.” He compared it to the Nazis’ practice of pushing Jews into statelessness because “[i]t is easier to move people away from law than it is to move law away from people. Almost all of the killing took place in artificially created stateless zones.”

Yesterday, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) requested a meeting with Bukele today “to discuss the illegal detention of my constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.” He said that he would travel to El Salvador this week if Abrego Garcia “is not home by midweek.”

Judge Xinis has set the next hearing in Abrego Garcia’s case for tomorrow, April 15, at 4:00 p.m.

Today, Dauphin County Magisterial District Judge Dale Klein denied bail for Cody Balmer, the 38-year-old man charged in connection with the arson attack on the home of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro on April 13, saying he is a danger to the community. Balmer allegedly set alight beer bottles full of gasoline in the same room in the governor's mansion where, just hours before, the family had held a Passover meal. Shapiro and his wife Lori, their four children, and another family were asleep in the house. Emergency personnel rescued the people and pets, but the historic mansion sustained significant damage.

Balmer said he has a high-school education. He is currently unemployed, does not have any income or savings, and has been living with his parents. Balmer was charged with assault in 2023, allegedly punching both his wife (from whom he is now separated) and their 13-year-old son in the face during an argument. He was due in court this week. His mother says he has mental health issues.

Balmer said he “harbor[ed] hatred” for Governor Shapiro and would have beaten him with a hammer if he had found him.

Governor Shapiro called it “an attack not just on our family, but on the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania…. This type of violence is not okay. This kind of violence is becoming far too common in our society. And I don’t give a damn if it’s coming from one particular side or the other, directed at one particular party or another, or one particular person or another. It is not okay and it has to stop. We have to be better than this. We have a responsibility to all be better.”

—

[dailyadventureprompts]

Villain: The Cult of the Wyrm Eternal

Any adventurer, alchemist, or awestruck child can tell you that there is power in the body of a dragon, and like all sources of power it's only a mater of time before someone comes along to try to capitalize on it.

Enter the Cult of the Wyrm Eternal, which emerges from long buried vaults to dissect the bodies of dragonkind like flesh eating beetles. The cult originated from a time beyond remembering following the teachings of a profane text known as the Har'Khon Libram, which survives into the modern day as a sort of how-to manual for those seeking forbidden knowledge allowing them to revive the cult's practices and discover its caches of lost power.

It's in this manner that the cult has survived millennia and numerous purges at the hands of heroes, holy orders, and oligarchs: With each iteration caching away knowledge and resources for acolytes they will never meet.

Hooks:

A prominent dragonborn hero and ally of the party disappears, leaving behind few clues and a mystery to solve. Lacking a true dragon to carve up for ingredients the cult abducted the dragonborn and plans on sacrificing them after a gauntlet of strange rituals intended to suffuse their flesh with power.  Its a race against the clock for the party to find their friend before there’s nothing left of them but a grisly scattering of magical items bound for the cult’s armoury. 

The local warlord has a new pet, a young dragon provided to him by the cult in exchange for his protection and material support. Tales of him riding out to wreak destruction from its back send shivers of terror through the populace. What a surprise then when the party encounter it in the wild, rampaging aimlessly after  slipping her bonds.  Brainwashed by cult doctrine the parry find themselves  negotiating with a creature with the drives of a caged tiger, the volatility of an abused teenager,  and the destructive potential of an artillery battery.  Talking her down will be as difficult as diffusing a bomb, but they might just come away with important information or even a new ally should they help her evade recapture.

Using knowledge purloined from the mysteries of the mother hydra herself a cell of the Wyrm Eternal has been working on a ritual to create a true dragon, experimenting with drakes, basilisks and other reptilian monsters, filling the wilderness with bounty worthy monsters that will inevitably bring the party crashing into their lair.

Background: The knowledge contained within the Har'Khon Libram is cursed, part of a scheme by the book's original author in an attempt to evade both death and those who hunt unlawful immortality. Reading the book not only imparts the authors knowledge upon the prospective cultist, but also a vestige of their cosiouness, which steers them towards the same course of action that has kept the cult alive for so long: constructing more vaults, hoarding draconic power, and propogating the Libram's knowledge so that the infection can spread through time.

Hidden in the depths of each vault are tablets of further tainted lore, which causes the seed of malign presence within the Wyrm cultist's mind to blossom, opening their mind to the space between life and death and allowing their patron's thoughts to swirl into their own. In this way the party can end up fighting the same villain through many proxies, the unseen master of the Wyrm eternal studying them as they cut down vessel after vessel before formulating a counteroffence.

Dungeon Dressing:

Wyrm Eternal vaults vary by the culture that originally constructed them, but are always in remote, sheltered areas that could endure largescale devastation. Their entrances are hidden and warded against intrusion, protected by magical cyphers that can usually only be broken with aid from the Har'Khon Libram. Vaults can also contain these doors within, locking away the greatest treasures until the acolytes have further tainted their thoughts with the Libram's curse.

Undead are ubiquitous within dungeons claimed by the Wyrm Eternal, ranging from simple servitors to looming guardians to dragonbone infused war machines just waiting to be unleashed on the cult's enemies all with green corpsefire flickering in their heads. Access to these undead armouries and the arsenal of magical items that come with them are one of the primary drivers for individuals to become cultists in the first place.

Each vault will likewise contain preserved pieces of dragongore, ranging from single skulls placed on altars to whole cellars filled with blood magically preserved in clay or glass vessels. If a cult cell reached full operation, it's likely to have atleast one mummified corpse preserved in an onsite tomb, it's vital organs ( and perhaps a few spares) preserved in canopic jars waiting nearby.

Art 1 Art 2

[darkeagleruins]

This was posted on facebook by NBC News.

You should read all the comments, nothing but people blaming Trump for this.

Liberals are not waking up in anyway, shape or form.

Hachikosela Muchimba was an employee at the U.S. Postal Service. Between Dec. 2020 and March 2023, Muchimba deposited more than $1.6 million worth of altered checks into bank accounts under his control, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney’s office, District of Columbia, on Friday.

He used the proceeds from his scheme "to fund a lavish lifestyle that included international travel, stays at luxury hotels, and purchases at gentlemen’s clubs," the attorney’s office said.

A jury Thursday found Muchimba guilty of conspiracy to commit theft of mail and bank fraud, theft of mail, bank fraud and engaging in a monetary transaction in property derived from specified unlawful activity.

The maximum penalty for bank fraud is 30 years in prison and five years for mail theft.

[recreationaldivorce]

6 february 2025

Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of millions of pirated books. But details around the torrenting were murky until yesterday, when Meta's unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The new evidence showed that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna’s Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen," the authors' court filing said. And "Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen."

"The magnitude of Meta’s unlawful torrenting scheme is astonishing," the authors' filing alleged, insisting that "vastly smaller acts of data piracy—just .008 percent of the amount of copyrighted works Meta pirated—have resulted in Judges referring the conduct to the US Attorneys’ office for criminal investigation."

and they didn't even seed:

Supposedly, Meta tried to conceal the seeding by not using Facebook servers while downloading the dataset to "avoid" the "risk" of anyone "tracing back the seeder/downloader" from Facebook servers, an internal message from Meta researcher Frank Zhang said, while describing the work as in "stealth mode." Meta also allegedly modified settings "so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur," a Meta executive in charge of project management, Michael Clark, said in a deposition.

[mr-bobinsky-loves-mooshkas]

Francesca Albanese on Trump's illegal Gaza scheme:

@Potus' plan for Gaza is nonsense, which nonetheless must be taken very seriously. President Trump has basically declared his intention to commit the int'l crime of forced displacement and resort to unlawful use of force against the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination, in violation of the UN Charter - amounting to aggression.

The 191 members of the UN who still have an interest in protecting themselves from this madness, better recover from their paralysis and stand united against this imperialist lawlessness.

PS: And in any case, this plan won't work. How do I know? 76 years of failed attempts by Israel, including 16 months of genocidal assault. Indigenous people do not leave their land.

Source: x

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Nation of Change:

The Trump administration is rapidly expanding a campaign of retaliation and intimidation against nonprofits across the United States, with threats ranging from the revocation of tax-exempt status to the embedding of government agents in independent organizations. Harvard University is now at the center of what critics say is a broader effort to dismantle civil society, as the administration threatens to strip the Ivy League institution of its 501(c)(3) status following its refusal to comply with political demands.

CNN first reported that the Internal Revenue Service, now led by an interim commissioner aligned with President Donald Trump, is weighing whether to revoke Harvard’s tax exemption. The move came shortly after Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’”

The president’s threat followed Harvard’s rejection of several administration demands, including a call to derecognize pro-Palestine student groups, audit academic programs for viewpoint diversity, and expel students involved in a 2023 protest on the Harvard Business School campus.

The legal and constitutional implications are drawing alarm from lawmakers and civil liberties experts. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said, “The First Amendment and federal tax law make clear no president can raise a university’s taxes because he doesn’t like what they teach.” He warned, “If this corrupt shakedown scheme stands, nonprofits from churches to temples to hospitals could be forced to echo Trump’s MAGA line or see their taxes hiked. Any Republican who claims to believe in the Constitution and doesn’t speak up is responsible for what happens next.”

Representative Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) called the threat “bullshit” and said, “This deeply disturbing and blatantly unlawful action is Trump’s latest foray in his war to politicize higher education and degrade any institution that refuses to bend the knee.”

Harvard is not alone. The administration’s attack on nonprofit independence is expanding through an agency known as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform, revealed that DOGE attempted to embed federal agents within its operations, citing its past receipt of federal grants. Though the group’s legal team successfully pushed back—after noting its grants had been terminated—DOGE reportedly informed Vera that its plan was part of a broader strategy to “assign DOGE teams to every institute or agency that has congressional monies appropriated to it.”

Vera president Nick Turner said, “We are sharing this information broadly with other nonprofits that receive federal funding—so they can be aware of DOGE’s plan to assign teams to investigate their operations.” Turner called it “this latest intimidation tactic targeting private, independent mission-driven organizations and undermining civil society.”

Climate organizations and environmental groups now fear they are next. Several groups are preparing for what they believe could be a targeted executive action against them on Earth Day. “There’s lots of rumors about what terrible thing [Trump] wants to do on Earth Day, to just give everybody the middle finger,” said Brett Hartl of the Center for Biological Diversity. Bloomberg Law reported that legal teams at environmental organizations are preparing for possible revocation of tax-exempt status or funding seizures. In some cases, sources said, groups fear being labeled as “domestic terrorists.”

Kieran Suckling, executive director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said his organization would take legal action if attacked. Bill McKibben, environmentalist and founder of 350.org, said, “It was perhaps inevitable that Trump and his team would target us; together we’ve been making life harder for his clients in the fossil fuel industry. And in the new America, if you don’t knuckle under you get a knuckle sandwich. Figuratively speaking. One hopes.”