The bourgeoisie has class solidarity.

Service members should be thinking very hard about their role and rights at this moment.

The millions of people who came into the streets in 2020–which include many veterans, active-duty, Reservists, and Guard soldiers–were very fortunate that Trump had some wall of opposition against his demand to have the military open fire on the demonstrations. It seems hard to imagine such an incident, but should now feel very close and very real.

The millions who came out this past year to oppose Israel’s genocide (which, again, included many vets and service members) are attacked as domestic terrorists by the Trump Administration. Any mass protests, for that matter, which oppose the politics of this administration are looked at as a domestic threat. Whether or not you agree with a protests’ demands, they are protected under the US Constitution. Trump has a different view. Even during his campaign, [he promised to “crush” protests](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/27/trump-i

The truth is, neither deserves credit [for the ceasefire]. Certainly, Biden deserves none. The “plan” he put forth last May was on the table for six months before he dishonestly presented it as an Israeli plan, only to later claim it for himself. In fact, it was neither; it was the only way to negotiate a ceasefire that both sides could be made to accept, and was negotiated for that reason.

Biden preferred month after month of genocide. That his team was part of the discussions wherein Israel finally agreed to what is likely to amount to a brief pause in the genocide akin to what we saw in November 2023 should earn Biden nothing.

Was it Trump then? In comparison to Biden, Trump did do something here. As I’ve described it, “Trump could and did use his leverage over Netanyahu to push him toward the agreement.” But some are

Kit Klarenberg’s take: It's Official: US Abandoning Ukraine

It's Cory. This time the guy holding court is Cory.

BTW, the Kickstarter for Pixelfed and Loops, the actually-open, ActivityPub based clones of Instagram and TikTok, just hit $35,000 in its first 13 hours. The creator of Mastodon just ceded control to a new non-profit. That's how you do it. By spending money to build free things for the public interest out in the open, not by tithing your money, labor and attention directly to VC-funded for-profit corporations.

For those who don’t know jwz, among other things, you have him to thank for Firefox/Mozilla’s existence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski

The thing some US empire managers dislike about him is the only thing I like about him: that he makes the US empire a less effective evil because of how much less hidden he keeps the inner workings of the machine. The hood stays popped open the entire time, showing the whole world how the imperial sausage gets made.

• The Atlantic: That’s Not How Constitutional Amendments Work
• NYT: Can He Do That? Here’s What Biden’s Move on the Equal Rights Amendment Means.
• Vanity Fair: Biden Proclaims That The Equal Rights Amendment Is The Law Of The Land—But What Does That Mean?
• NPR: Biden says the Equal Rights Amendment is law. What happens next is unclear
• WaPo: Biden reaffirms belief that the Equal Rights Amendment is the law

• Web: https://www.xiaohongshu.com/
• Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xingin.xhs&hl=en-US
• iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/%E5%B0%8F%E7%BA%A2%E4%B9%A6/id741292507
• Mao’s Little Red Book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao_Tse-tung

Paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/79BtW

Rolling Stone yesterday: More Women Accuse Author Neil Gaiman of Sexual Assault

I’ve given Amanda Palmer the slant eye ever since her The Art of Asking TED talk. It seemed to me that she either doesn’t understand or pretends not to understand power dynamics in relationships.

A few observations on Mark Zuckerberg’s astonishing volte face today, declaring that he will end the crushing climate of censorship on his Meta platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, in time for Donald Trump's arrival in the White House.

It should not have taken a video admission from Zuckerberg for us to appreciate the degree to which we have been living for many years under a regime of political censorship on social media, with Meta leading the pack.

In his grovelling video message to Trump – I mean, to Meta users – Zuckerberg effectively settles the question of whether his globe-spanning corporation has been aggressively corralling its 3 billion users away from political content. He admits it has.

What he has not admitted, and won’t, is that Meta has not even been trying to enforce that censorship evenhandedly or neutrally. We know, for example, that Meta’s algorithms were carefully engineered for many long months duri

In recent months, a remarkable development in the Empire’s decline has gone almost entirely unnoticed. The National Endowment for Democracy’s grant database has been removed from the web. Until recently, a searchable interface allowed visitors to view detailed records of Washington-funded NGOs, civil society, and media projects in particular countries - covering most of the world - the sums involved, and entities responsible for delivering them. This resource has now inexplicably vanished, and with it, enormous amounts of incontrovertible, self-incriminating evidence of destructive US skullduggery abroad.

Take for example NED grant records for Georgia, the site of recent repeated colour revolution efforts, at the forefront of which were [Endowment-bankrolled](https://www.mintpressnews.com/coup-cia-foreign-agent-law-color-revolution-geo

In the wake of Kamala Harris's defeat, the Left's association with identity politics has been a major focus of public debate. But what identity politics is or who primarily benefits from it remains contested.

In this episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber discusses the Democrats’ long-standing attachment to identity politics, why this form of politics can't fight oppression, and the real history behind struggles for justice.

https://archive.ph/mI2pJ

It’s a Julfest Wunderwaffe Wunder.

Plutocrats like Thiel are constantly thinking about the fact that ordinary people vastly outnumber them and can kill them at any time. They think about it way more often than ordinary people do. It’s a point that they are acutely aware of at all times. It consumes their attention. They are always working on manipulating public consciousness to ensure that we don’t think as much as they do about how many more of us there are of them, and how we don’t have to put up with their domination of our society if we don’t want to.

As Michael Parenti once put it:

“I tell students when they say, ‘Oh they don’t care what we think. They ignore us’, and all that, and I say, ‘Oh no, no. That’s the only thing they care about you. The only thing they care about you is what you’re thinking. They don’t care if you eat correctly, they don’t care how your living conditions are, they don’t care that they’ve built up an inhuman and irrational traffic