Category: Terrorism

From The TPM Morning Memo:

This is hugely pertinent to our interests. And the history callback of Dobbs/Roe is spot on!! This needs we the people’s work sooner rather than later. The story linked within is important background for working on this. Seriously: pick one or two (or more!) rights organizations and do what you can with them, now, while it’s not still too late, and stick with it until the other side is defeated. Please don’t wait until this is in court. Then:

A very sound scheme is to check in with your states on their legislative websites, see what the laws are right now, and what’s in the chute. Overturning Obergefell can’t/won’t change state laws regarding marriage, just as overturning Roe didn’t change state laws regarding repro rights. But knowing what could be coming, especially in red states, is imperative for getting ourselves protected, and protecting others. If your state is safe, well, pick another state that isn’t, and help them out. If your state has no law at all, lobby hard to get one, ASAP. And thanks! -A.

This Could Be Roe all Over Again

Some of Trump’s judicial nominees have refused in confirmation hearings to acknowledge that the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, striking down state bans on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, was correctly decided. According to an analysis by JP Collins at the legal website Balls and Strikes, Eric Tung, who Trump nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, said only, “the Supreme Court granted such a right.” William Mercer, a nominee to the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, said Obergefell is “binding precedent,” but declined to “grade the Supreme Court.”

As Collins points out, these verbal gymnastics to avoid saying the case was correctly decided mirror those of Trump’s first term Supreme Court nominees who said Roe v. Wade was precedent but would not say it was correctly decided — and then voted to overturn it.

One might say marriage equality is different from abortion. Obergefell is just 10 years old, and Roe was decades old. But the most important feature that both decisions share is the enmity of the Christian right, and its determination to overturn them, no matter how many years or decades it takes.

Even before the court decided Obergefell in 2015, the Christian right was already planning to treat it just like Roe. The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision, they argued, was not the end of the abortion issue but rather the beginning. They used money, media, political might, religion, and relentless organizing to use abortion to drive politics and shape the judiciary. Their plans for Obergefell and LGBTQ rights are no different.

Photo by Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post via Getty Images

Four clips from The Majority Report. One on Gaza war crimes committed by Israel, one on ICE, one on tRump’s attacks on schools, and one on the jobs numbers.

VRA, 1st Electrocution, Hiroshima, & More In Peace & Justice History for 8/6

August 6, 1890
At Auburn Prison in New York state, William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in the electric chair, developed by the Medico-Legal Society and Harold Brown, a colleague of Thomas Edison.
William Kemmler received two applications of 1,300 volts of alternating current. The first lasted for only 17 seconds because a leather belt was about to fall off one of the second-hand Westinghouse generators. Kemmler was still alive. The second jolt lasted until the smell of burning flesh filled the room, about four minutes.

As soon as his charred body stopped smoldering, Kemmler was pronounced dead.
——————————————————————————-
August 6th, 1945 – 8:15 AM ANNIVERSARY OF HIROSHIMA
The United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan.

Hiroshima ruins
An estimated 140,000 died from the immediate effects of this bomb and tens of thousands more died in subsequent years from burns and other injuries, and radiation-related illnesses. President Harry Truman ordered the use of the weapon in hopes of avoiding an invasion of Japan to end the war, and the presumed casualties likely to be suffered by invading American troops.
The weapon, “Little Boy,” was delivered by a B-29 Superfortress nicknamed the Enola Gay, based on the island of Tinian, and piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets.
Voices of the Hibakusha, those injured in the bombings
  <Hiroshima survivor 
Found watch stopped at the time of explosion>
Documents related to the decision to drop the atomic bomb
On August 6, 1995, up to 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing.
——————————————————————————
August 6, 1957
Eleven activists from the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) were arrested attempting to enter the atomic testing grounds at Camp Mercury, Nevada, the first of what eventually became many thousands of arrests at the Nevada test site.
—————————————————————————–
August 6, 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Johnson, making illegal century-old practices aimed at preventing African Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote.

It created federal oversight of election laws in six Southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia) and in many counties of North Carolina where black voter turnout was very low. Black voter registration rates were as low as 7% in Mississippi prior to passage of the law; today voter registration rates are comparable for both blacks and whites in these states.
The laws has been re-authorized by Congress four times.
Introduction to the Voting Rights Act
——————————————————————————
August 6, 1990

George Galloway
The U.S. imposed trade sanctions on Iraq. As a result, the lack of much-needed medicines, water purification equipment and other items led to the death of many innocent Iraqis. According to British Member of Parliament George Galloway in his testimony to a committee of the U.S. Congress on May 17, 2005, these sanctions  “ . . . killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to be born at that time . . . .”
When asked on U.S. television if she thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children (due to sanctions on Iraq) was a price worth paying, then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.” -60 Minutes (5/12/96)
Were Sanctions Worth the Price? by Christopher Hayes 
————————————————————————–
August 6, 1998
Nearly 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing which killed nearly 200,000 Japanese with a single weapon.
The headlines when it happened
—————————————————————————
August 6, 1998
Calling themselves the Minuteman III Plowshares, two peace activists, Daniel Sicken [pronounced seekin], 56, of Brattleboro, Vermont and Sachio Ko-Yin, 25, of Ridgewood, N.J entered silo N7 in Weld County [near Greeley] in Colorado operated by Warren AFB, Cheyenne, Wyoming. With hammers and their own blood, they symbolically disarmed structures on the launching pad of a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo.


Sachio Ko-Yin and Daniel Sicken
Read about the Minuteman III Plowshares action 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august6

Whistleblower: 10-year-old Palestinian boy ‘gunned down’ after receiving food aid

Former US Green Beret says Israel committed war crimes at Gaza food distribution site | BBC News

In Gaza, hunger forces impossible choices as Hamas releases propaganda video of hostage

Ruined Afternoon Swim

sigh.

A Trans Woman and Her Friends Were Violently Assaulted at an Austin Swimming Hole

The incident is being investigated by police as a possible hate crime.

By Samantha Riedel

A transgender woman and several friends were harassed and assaulted in Austin, Texas last weekend, and one bystander who stepped in to defend them was hospitalized, in an incident police are investigating as a possible hate crime.

On July 26, the trans woman — who has requested anonymity during the ongoing investigation — and several friends visited Barton Springs, a public swimming hole in Austin’s Zilker Park, as Chron reported Wednesday. During their visit, three men they didn’t know flirted heavily with members of the group, the woman told Chron, but soon began harassing and pointing at her, making remarks about not “support[ing] that lifestyle.”

The three men then reportedly began shoving members of the group and poking the women “near their breasts,” according to a Reddit user who posted about the incident on Monday, claiming to be a friend of one of the victims. At that point, a bystander — identified as Jarod — intervened, and was attacked himself.

“The three men then proceeded to get violent and aggressive, yelling at us and getting in our faces until one of them decided to start swinging and punched Jarod in the jaw, knocking him unconscious,” the anonymous trans woman told Chron. “I quickly ran over to him in an attempt to help Jarod out but was then punched in the face by the assailant in the orange shorts.” The men then shoved another of the women to the ground and left the scene soon after, according to video footage of the incident posted to social media.

The Austin Police Department (APD) released a statement on Tuesday stating that the alleged assault was under investigation and could be declared a hate crime by the city’s Hate Crime Review Committee. “APD remains unwavering in its commitment to fostering a secure and inclusive Austin community,” the department stated. (Community leaders called for APD to be investigated for excessive force in March this year, after videos circulated online that appeared to show officers throwing a trans woman onto the ground during an arrest.)

Austin-area drag performer Brigitte Bandit posted about the assault on Instagram Monday, asking locals for help identifying the attackers. In a follow-up post the next day, Bandit stated that the men had been identified and the information had been shared privately with the victims. “I will not be posting their information without consent of the people involved in the attack,” Bandit wrote, adding, “[l]et’s let them decide which routes they decide [are] best.” (snip-MORE. Also embedded tweet. Then, if you click through, you’ll see they’ve gotten the suspects ID’d.)

Doctor Gives Eyewitness Account Of Gaza Horrors| Dr. Ambereen Sleemi | TMR

ICE is thugs targetting brown people who are US citizens, detaining them, taking their ID and not returning it, assaulting them, then making up charges against them.

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/790723408167092224

And In Not What It Initially Appears To Be,

Charlotte Clymer with another interesting story about rightwingers.

Why Sydney Sweeney Needs to Be Canceled by Charlotte Clymer

Her career needs to end. Read on Substack

Actually, this has nothing to do with Sydney Sweeney.

I’ve seen some of her movies and shows. She’s a good actor. She seems nice. I have no real opinion of her beyond that.

The rightwing media ecosystem is currently obsessed with Ms. Sweeney, and per their usual outrage machine schtick, they’ve made her their latest vehicle for claiming Democrats are out-of-touch with America.

This week, Fox News and various other conservative outlets have spent considerable time claiming that Democrats are furious over a jeans advertisement featuring Ms. Sweeney—the details of their supposed outrage are too absurd to get into here, and I’d rather not insult your intelligence by pretending you should care.

But I figure tens of millions of Trump supporters are feverishly googling “Democrats” and “Sydney Sweeney” for that sweet, sweet hit of outrage to feed their addiction, and it occurred to me that a provocative headline could be a great opportunity to get them here and offer a read-out on what Democrats and progressives are currently, actually, passionately discussing.

I’m in approximately ~5,000 group chats with fellow Democrats (heavy sigh), give or take a few, and Sydney Sweeney has not come up once in any of them. Not a single one.

Here’s what we’ve really been talking about this week:

We’re pretty horrified by the ongoing horror in Gaza. Children there are starving-to-death, and the Israeli military has brutally slaughtered more than 1,000 innocent civilians attempting to get food assistance, almost all of which is being blocked by Netanyahu’s government.

All of our allies—including the United Kingdom—have been urgently pleading with Netanyahu to end the blockade and feed starving people in Gaza and please, oh please, stop shooting at them.

We’re wondering why Republican Christians in Congress would disregard Christ’s clear teachings on this matter. Pope Leo XIV condemned “the very grave humanitarian situation in Gaza, where the civilian population is crushed by hunger and remains exposed to violence and death.”

But hey, what the hell does he know?

We’re disgusted by the cover-up over the Epstein files, and it’s fairly obvious to everyone that Donald Trump is desperately attempting to conceal and distract from his involvement in a massive sex trafficking operation that targeted children.

Remember when the Republican Party pretended to care about pedophiles and sex trafficking and the so-called “Deep State” and Trump pandered to them for votes by claiming he would released the Epstein files and then he didn’t?

We’ve been talking all month about the fall-out of Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill and the fact that upwards of 17 million Americans will lose their health care coverage and millions will lose food assistance and a ton of rural hospitals are about to close down.

We have no idea how we’re going to help all these people when that legislation is fully implemented, and in discussing how to get medical treatment for the sick and food for the hungry, we don’t really care who these vulnerable folks voted for last year.

We’re considerably worried about the country’s total unpreparedness for natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis and flooding and earthquakes because Donald Trump and the Republican Party have gutted the NOAA and the National Weather Service and FEMA.

We imagine a lot of people are going to needlessly die in flood waters and devastating cyclones because of Republican incompetence and cruelty, and again: we have no idea how we’re going to help these folks when that happens.

We’ve been talking a lot about the accelerating erosion of constitutional protections and the Trump administration openly forcing colleges and corporations to pay him a bribe in order to avoid being targeted by his dictatorial madness.

We’ve been talking about Trump’s efforts to silence Stephen Colbert and his other most prominent critics in pop culture, except, of course, when he’s too chickenshit to take on the creators of South Park.

We wonder how the Constitution will survive this era. We wonder how the courts can resist threats of violence. We wonder how democracy can endure when even the most concerned Republicans, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski, have largely given up on their oaths.

Sydney Sweeney and which endorsements she’s landed and what ads she’s appearing in and what products she’s hawking to the public — none of that matters to us.

If anything, in regards to Ms. Sweeney, we’re embarrassed for the shamelessness of Republicans who are attempting to exploit her as a distraction from the death and destruction they’re causing and enabling.

Maybe if we got a hungry or sick child in a rural part of the country to record a video talking shit about Ms. Sweeney, that would be enough for Trump and Republicans to pay attention to their suffering. (snip)

Four important clips from The Majority Report. Each video clip is a different subject