November 12, 1969 Seymour Hersh, an independent investigative journalist, in a cable filed through Dispatch News Service and picked up by more than 30 newspapers, revealed the extent of the U.S. Army’s charges against 1st Lieutenant William L. Calley at My Lai, a Vietnamese village.Hersh wrote: “The Army says he [Calley] deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians during a search-and-destroy mission in March 1968, in an alleged Viet Cong stronghold known as ‘Pinkville.'” The same Seymour Hersh first wrote about abuses of Iraqis held in Abu Ghraib prison by Americans in 2004. Seymour Hersh
November 12, 1982 The Polish government freed the leader of the outlawed Solidarity union movement, Lech Walesa, after 11 months of internment. His release came only two days after riot police used tear gas, water cannon and phosphorous rockets to disperse large pro-Solidarity demonstrations in Warsaw and other cities. Read more
November 12, 1989 Tens of thousands of Americans joined “Mobilize for Women’s Lives” in more than 150 cities and towns nationwide. They sought protection of women’s rights to reproductive choice, including abortion. Their focus was on state legislatures in their own states where laws were being introduced to put limits of a woman’s right to choose when she should bear children. More than 2500 defenders of legalized abortion gathered at the First Parish Unitarian Church in Kennebunkport, Maine, just a few miles from President George H. W. Bush’s summer home, to hold a candlelight vigil. Watch Helen Reddy lead “I am Woman” at the D.C. rally National Abortion Rights Action League / Pro Choice America
Despite the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924, Native American activists have had to repeatedly take their fight for voting rights to Congress.
In June 1986, Judge Edward Rafeedie handed down a ruling. Indigenous voting rights were being suppressed in Montana’s Big Horn County, where “official acts of discrimination…have interfered with the rights of Indian citizens…to register and vote.” This was a victory for voting equality, but it wasn’t met with open arms. County Commissioner Ed Miller, for example, was dismayed, citing a longing for the “good old days.”
“The Voting Rights Act is a bad thing,” Miller claimed, according to the San Francisco Examiner. “[T]hings were fine around here. Now they (Indians) want to vote. What next?”
It shouldn’t have been as difficult for Native Americans to vote as it was. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, in theory, settled the question of whether Indigenous people were citizens. They were. And they were entitled to vote. However, as historian Orlan J. Svingen explains, this law didn’t prevent discrimination.
A government study in 1936, for example, found that seven states were actively preventing Native Americans from voting. Much like the laws that prevented Black Americans from voting, these states enacted laws specifically targeting Native American voters, including mandating that all voter registrars be taxpayers (many Native Americans were exempt from certain local taxes, and this law depressed voter registrations on reservations) and literacy tests as a requirement for voting. One Cherokee voter was told by a judge that despite his master’s degree from the University of North Carolina, “You couldn’t read or write to my satisfaction if you stayed here all day.”
Though there was anger and a number of court battles in earlier years, it may have been the start of World War II that acted as a catalyst for activism, McCoy notes. Though Native American soldiers were being sent overseas to fight for freedom, that same freedom eluded them at home. Navajo soldier Ralph Anderson sent a letter to tribal leaders in 1943 with this exact contradiction on his mind.
“We all know Congress granted the Indians citizenship in 1924,” he wrote, “but we still have no privileges to vote. We do not understand what kind of citizenship you would call that.”
In the following years, Native activists took their fight to Congress several times, meeting denials of their rights most times. But they were undeterred and began leading direct actions. In 1946, for example, Navajo citizens attempted to register to vote in Arizona and were denied, as were two people from the Yavapai tribe. The latter denial led to a court case, Harrison v. Laveen, that overturned a previous ruling that classified Native Americans living on reservations as being essentially wards of the state and ineligible for voting. A case in 1948 successfully took the fight to the federal government, arguing that the denial of voting rights was unconstitutional. And as Svingen writes, in the 1970s, “exemptions from certain taxes no longer limits [Native Americans’] right to vote, and election districts must be apportioned under the ‘one person one vote’ principle,” rules that officials in Big Horn County were simply ignoring.
Be careful with what you ask for. You just might get it. Read on Substack
Stephen Colbert made a joke about people telling comedians after the Trump victory (gag), “At least you’ll have so much material to work with.” Cartoonists were sick of that comment back in 2016. One of my colleagues and friend, Ward Sutton, drew a cartoon about it. It’s something we hear all the time and I don’t think people truly understand it’s the last thing we want to hear. In fact, it was repeated to me last night at a party for writers.
We don’t want to hear it. It’s empty solace and goddammit, we hear it too often. I’m going to hear it again before the day’s over. I would rather my nation survive and not turn into a fascist state controlled by racist goose-stepping troglodytes than have great material from it. And by the way, the material’s not that great. Another fact is that Trump cartoons are bad for business. Editors are scared shitless of them.
What I’m getting to with this in regards to today’s cartoon is that after posting on social media about the comment, a few people told me they will need to laugh to avoid crying and that’s what my cartoons will give them. Yeah, except I think each of my cartoons since last Tuesday has been sad. Proofreader Laura told me that at least twice, and I didn’t argue with her (she’s really smart and perceptive). Others have told me the same thing. Someone told me they couldn’t even click like on one of my cartoons because it was so sad, and I’m not even drawing dead puppies.
My last few cartoons have been kinda sad, like this one, or this one, or this one. And now many will find today’s cartoon sad. The Latino vote certainly depresses me.
Why would any Latino other than George Zimmerman vote for a racist who’s been shit-talking you for the past decade? Hmm? I will never understand the appeal of Donald Trump.
While Harris won the Latino vote with 53 percent, about 45 percent of Latinos voted for Donald Trump. Why? Tommy Vallejos wrote a column for The Tennessean in Nashville to explain it to all of us liberal dummies.
Vallejo’s first argument is that voting for Trump doesn’t make him or other Latinos racist. I’m not going to call Latinos racists for voting for Trump. I’m going to state the fact that voting for Trump means Latinos voted for a racist. They voted for racism. Donald Trump is a racist and nobody can make a strong case that he isn’t.
Voting for Donald Trump, at the very least, means racism is not a dealbreaker for you, no matter what race you are. And while you may wonder why a Latino would want to shit on other Latinos, I would like to have about 60 percent of America’s white population deported. Let’s send them all to Liberia.
Vallejo’s major reason for being a Trumper is the economy, so he claims. But if Vallejo is an intelligent person, he knows that’s a lie.
He writes that most Latinos who voted for Trump were concerned about jobs and the economy, forgetting that the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent when Trump left office. Trump inherited President Barack Obama’s economy and fucked it up. He left office with fewer American jobs than there were when he entered. He’s the first president to love more jobs than he created since Herbert Hoover.
There is no evidence that Donald Trump can rebuild an economy. There’s only evidence he can destroy it.
Trumpers will claim that’s not Trump’s fault. It was Covid’s fault. If you’re going to make that argument then you can’t blame President Joe Biden for inflation. In case you weren’t paying attention, inflation hit the entire planet. High gas prices hit every nation. Vallejo, who forgets Trump’s final numbers, blames Biden for inflation. He’s making an extremely dishonest argument in voting for Trump.
And if you voted for Trump because of the economy, here are a few other facts can chew on with your lying mouth: Under Trump, the trade deficit went up over 36 percent. Trump’s promising even more tariffs so enjoy your 20 percent tax increase on imported goods, fuckers. People lacking health insurance rose by three million, and that’s even with Trump failing to repeal Obamacare. What are they going to do now? How many Americans will lose healthcare coverage in Trump’s second term? Vallejo argues that under Biden, the government spent “freely and indiscriminately,” yet under Donald Trump, federal debt went from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion. Under Trump, home prices increased nearly 30 percent while rising 20 percent under Biden. Wages rose higher under Biden than they did under Trump. The top 25 U.S. companies invested more than $900 billion in the economy, which is 40 percent higher than during the Trump regime.
Everyone who voted for Trump because the economy was their top concern should have voted for Harris.
Vallejos also argues that we need Trump to curb illegal immigration, but guess what, Buddy. In Trump’s last year, apprehensions at the southern border had a nearly 15 percent increase than President Obama’s last year in office. Even if you honestly wanted to reduce illegal immigration, do you really support deporting millions of people and tearing apart families by using the military? Seriously, Mr. Vallejo, how much do you hate Latinos?
Vellejos also cries that under Biden and with inflation rising, stagnant wages “failed to keep pace” and blames Biden for not reducing the tax and regulatory burden on “job creators.” But Trump’s huge tax cuts for asshole billionaires were still in place, so why didn’t corporate America come running to the rescue? Oh, yeah…trickle-down economics doesn’t work. Instead of cutting their own profits, Corporations jacked up prices and as inflation has been going down, their prices have not. In fact, Corporate profits continued to rise throughout the Biden administration. Exxon’s second-quarter profits this year were over $9 billion. Did they lower the price of gas at the fuel pumps? HAHAHAHAHA. You’re funny.
Despite Donald Trump tweeting in 2020, “If you want your 401k’s and stocks…to disintegrate and disappear, vote for the Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats and Corrupt Joe Biden,” the stock market did better under Biden than Trump. Fact fact fuckity fact fact.
The S&P 500 has posted a compound annual growth rate of 14.1 percent from Biden’s November 2020 election to the beginning of this month. The market returns under Biden are the second best in modern history, only trailing behind Bill Clinton’s, gasp, another Democratic president.
Vallejo accused Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of “fumbling” the economy which makes me think he doesn’t watch football and doesn’t know what a fumble is. Is it when the cheerleaders kick the ball?
Vallejo also wrote that Latinos voted for Trump because they are “supportive of the rule of law and desire an orderly process.” Now you gotta get the fuck out of here. Vallejo, like most MAGAts, is a liar who suffers from memory loss. Hello? January 6, fake electors, electoral fraud, 11,780 votes, stolen documents, assaulting women, corruption, violating the emoluments clause, etc. If you truly desire the “rule of law,” Mr. Vallejo, call the Trump team now and demand that he doesn’t fire Jack Smith.
Shockingly, Vallejo didn’t include that he voted for Trump so boat batteries would be lighter, the boats wouldn’t sink from their weight, and sharks wouldn’t eat you while you’re flapping around in the water.
At the end of his bullshit designed as a column for a newspaper’s opinion page, Vallejo writes, “Most importantly, we love the USA and cherish freedom and opportunity.” So you voted for the treasonous fuck who’s a subordinate of Vladimir Putin? You voted for the asshole who gave Putin classified information. You voted for our nation’s greatest national security threat who has been secretly talking to Putin since we fired him in 2020. You voted for the guy who says he wants to be a dictator, quoted Hitler, and said he wants to delete the Constitution.
Every reason Vallejo gives for voting for Trump is bullshit. That means I don’t know why in the hell Trump won 45 percent of the Latino vote. I just hope that when it burns them, they fucking get it.
And Mr. Vallejo, I changed my mind. You are a racist. It’s like anytime when someone says, “I’m not a racist, but…”
And hey, at least I have so much material to work with now.
Creative note: I drew most of this yesterday and all I had to do this morning was color it. I was all like, “Yay, I’m done by 1 p.m. and now I can go watch football…right after I write this blog. It’s now 3 p.m. Are my Saints winning?
Music note: I listened to Buddy Holly. I will never get over the hiccup thing he does at the start of Rave On.
if we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay Read on Substack (Language NSFW, as always with Jeff Tiedrich’s writing)
the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled media utterly failed us during the 2024 campaign season.
New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn came right out and said it: defending democracy is a ‘partisan act,’ and we won’t do it — and, fuck us all, the press kept their word, and didn’t do it. they enthusiastically put their fingers on the scale for Donny Convict.
arguably, the media’s worst transgression was the sanewashing — the cleaning-up of Donny’s incomprehensible blitherings, to hide his obvious cognitive disintegration and make him sound coherent.
a minutes-long disjointed word-salad about how tariffs on Chinese goods were going to lower the cost of childcare became “a major economic speech.”
Donny’s inability to keep his increasingly-demented mind on the topic at hand — his crazypants pinballing from they’re eating the dawgs to Hannibal Lecter wants to have you for dinner to would you rather be eaten by a shark or electrocuted — was explained away by Donny as his brilliant “weave.”
[Wishcasting is] the act of interpreting information or a situation in a way that casts it as favorable or desired, despite the fact that there is no evidence for such a conclusion; a wishful forecast.
sure enough, the media has now gone into overdrive, churning out piece after piece in which they promise us that if we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay.
not twelve hours after the election had been called for Donny, the Times wasted no time in assuring us that the election of a vindictive fascist is an amazing opportunity for vindictive fascism not to happen.
what kind of magical, everybody-gets-a-pony thinking is this? just fucking stop it.
did Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat both experience some kind of recent head trauma that has caused them to forget the years 2017 through 2020? Donny’s first presidency was a dumpster fire of corruption, mismanagement and mass death — but somehow now, given a second chance to fuck shit up worse, Donny’s going to bring us an “American renewal”?
anything’s possible, right? overnight, Donny Convict could magically become a wise and fair statesman — also, technicolor pigs could fly out of my ass.
oh my god, the media never stops imagining that Donny is going to somehow become presidential. during his first term — over and over — every time Donny stopped short of taking out his dick and pissing on the floor, the press would fall all the fuck over itself in a mad dash to proclaim him presidential.
spoiler alert: Donny never became presidential. not from the the first time he threw a ketchup-hurling tantrum in the White House, to the moment he absconded back to his Florida golf motel, taking with him boxes of stolen classified documents.
the premise here is that if we’re respectful to Donny — if we fucking kowtow to him, and stop opposing him — he’ll be nice to us in return. he’ll become — dare I say it? — presidential.
Stop indulging the fantasy that outrage, social stigma, language policing, a special counsel, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or impeachment will disappear him. And stop talking as if normal political opposition is capitulation.
Everyone should normalize Trump. If he does something good, praise him. Trump is remarkably susceptible to flattery.
okay, I will grant that Newsweek may be half right. Lisa Murkowski seems to genuinely loathe Donny, and we can probably count on her to vote against the worst of his fuckery — but Susan Collins? the credulous naïf who assured us over and over again that Donny had learned his lesson, and would never transgress again?
now, let’s bask under some rays of hope from people who aren’t just blindly wishcasting, but are actually offering reasoned arguments.
in the middle of a fairly clear-eyed assessment of the Trumpian horrors to come, the Guardian gives us this:
Elaine Kamarck, a former official in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “For him to expand presidential power, Congress has to give up power and they’re not in the mood to do that. They’ve never done that. There are plenty of institutionalists in Congress.”
Kamarck also expressed faith in the federal courts, noting that judges appointed by Trump only constitute 11% of the total placed on the bench by former presidents. A Trump dictatorship is “not going to happen,” she added. “Now, there might be things that the president wants to do that people don’t like that the Republican Congress goes along with him on but that’s politics. That’s not a dictatorship.”
Paradoxically, however, Trump’s reckless venality is a reason for hope. Trump has the soul of a fascist but the mind of a disordered child. He will likely be surrounded by terrible but incompetent people. All of them can be beaten: in court, in Congress, in statehouses around the nation, and in the public arena. America is a federal republic, and the states—at least those in the union that will still care about democracy—have ways to protect their citizens from a rogue president. Nothing is inevitable, and democracy will not fall overnight.
Americans cannot vote themselves into a dictatorship any more than you as an individual can sell yourself into slavery. The restraints of the Constitution protect the American people from the unscrupulous designs of whatever lawless people might take the reins of their government, and that does not change simply because Trump believes that those restraints need not be respected by him. The Constitution does not allow a president to be a “dictator on day one,” or on any other day. The presidency will give Trump and his cronies the power to do many awful things. But that power does not make them moral or correct.
I sure hope to fuck they’re right.
This is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:
practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means disengaging with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.
to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.
we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.
My top-line thought for the week ahead: Don’t give up!
If you want to plan a protest, plan it. If you want to knit in public at a lecture, do it. Don’t let anyone else make the rules for you. You get to set your own vision for what it means to be persistently pro-democracy as we prepare to face what’s ahead.
For me, it means resisting the language of division that brought us here and working to maintain the big tent that helped us win the fight for four more years of democracy in 2020. People are down right now; none of us are at our best. So, give people a lot of space and understanding. But don’t be afraid to act on your own or enlist like-minded friends to come along with your plans. Don’t let anyone tell you that your way of expressing your love for country and Constitution isn’t the right way. There is a lot of that going around, as many people with good intentions are struggling.
If you’re looking for inspiration and have the concentration for a longer piece, read the words of Czech leader Václav Havel, who wrote The Power of the Powerlessin 1978, ten years after the Soviet Union crushed Prague Spring. Havel explored the idea that individuals who might normally be seen as powerless can make common cause in dissidence against a repressive political structure. The Czechs did not have the centuries-long history of democracy like we do, nor did they have a Constitution in place that guaranteed rights like our does. Still, Havel pointed the way for them to resist a totalitarian system. Although the story of our coming struggle is likely to be very different from theirs, you may still take heart reading Havel, knowing that his people struggled free from a dictatorial regime and created a republic.
The outcome of this election has been incredibly hard to come to terms with. In my heart, I feared Donald Trump would win—I live in a state where many people support him and their numbers were strong—but I hoped and even dared to believe it wouldn’t happen. And of course, I was wrong.
We are in for tough times, and they will not be times to give up in. Lawyers are already preparing to do important work. They have the experience of 2016 to guide them. Project 2025 and Trump’s Agenda 47 vision are dark. But they are not self-executing; they will have to do the work to put them in place, and we need to be there every step of the way, pushing back. Never underestimate the value of the public voice.
But do take time to refresh your understanding of the policies this administration has rallied around in advance. I have not forgotten that in early July, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts commented that the coming revolution could be “bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
This interview with States United CEO Joanna Lydgate is an overview of Project 2025
This piece talks about the impact of mass deportations
This piece linked Trump to Project 2025 after he disclaimed knowledge of it
This is an index of the columns I wrote about Project 2025 prior to last July
We have a long history and tradition of democracy in this country. We have local governments and organizations where we can run for office and use our power to make things better, even if Trump is trying to make them worse at the national level. We are still a constitutional democracy, and if we want to keep the Republic, we are going to have to fight to hold onto as many of our norms as we can.
But not all this week.
This week we are going to have to endure the winding down of the criminal cases against Donald Trump. That’s a gut punch for those of us who believed that accountability was possible and that Donald Trump wasn’t above the law.
Tuesday in Manhattan, Judge Juan Merchan is expected to rule on whether the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision impacts Trump’s conviction in the New York case. If the convictions survive, and they should, or at least some of them, expect a rocket of an appellate case going off, as Trump tries to avoid being sentenced later this month. He may succeed given the politics of the moment, but legally, there is no reason he can’t be sentenced, although, and I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, I expect that even if he receives a custodial sentence, he will not serve it because of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. It’s an entirely unsatisfactory conclusion to one of the worst-ever violations of American democratic principles.
I don’t expect normal times ahead. I believe Trump when he tells us who he is. I believe MAGA when they tell us who they are. This wasn’t just a campaign where the winner takes office and we all move on happily together, shoring up our disappointment. We have to be prepared for that reality, and not get sucked into a “business as usual” version of what Trump’s time in office will look like.
We haven’t begun to fight yet, but as we get over the shock of the election, we can begin to get ready. As President Biden says, you can’t love your country only when you win. I’d add to that, you can’t be willing to fight for democracy only when it’s easy.
The Society for Human Rights, the first gay rights organization in the U.S., was founded in Chicago by Henry Gerber, a German immigrant. He had been inspired by Germany’s Scientific Humanitarian Committee, formed to oppose the oppression of men and women considered “sexual intermediates.”
Henry Gerber–founder of the Society for Human Rights
This short clip is great. The point she makes is the same one I made about the Democratic Party sliding right to get dissatisfied republican voters. Her point, we should have paid more attention to the people who left the Democratic Party than those who were never tRumpers or left the republican party due to tRump. Again it is the party of the working person not the party of republican lite. Hugs
While I find it easier to follow Sam’s reasoning on some issues, while he is out on funeral leave after his mother died, I am glad it is Emma explaining this. Listen to what tRump was saying about women. He wanted to see Harris in a ring getting beaten by Mike Tyson. He said he would protect women if they liked it or not. So she says two themes, I say three. She says fear stoking by bashing immigrants and misogyny. I say it was them plus racism. The first thing he said about her was she changed to being black for advantage, then started calling a black woman retarded. But if you remember the things he said about women in the 2016 election about Clinton and the grab them by the pussy tape. Sad that so many of our fellow people have these feelings in 2024. Hugs.
in this video both Matts are upset with the culture of democrats in office refusing to do what is needed instead patting each other on the back as infallible. Trump attacked both democrats and republicans who did not follow the ideas he pushed. Ideas that he felt people wanted, and it became true the more he said it. Even when they failed to actually help the lower incomes and did increase greatly the incomes of the upper incomes / very wealthy. They mention that again in 2023 the mean average income was lower than in 2019. Lower incomes are still losing and have been since the 1980s. While harder to listen too it is all about the conditions on the ground vs words used by democrat candidates. Brandon talks about the influencers on podcasts / social media. Matt Bender continues that conservation. Hugs
This video is about Joe Biden and him staying in until the last minute. How there was no primary and no time for Harris to introduce herself to the public. How Biden did not promote her publicly until he dropped out. How Biden kept her sidelines because her age made him look older by comparison. How the democrats need to do more to run to their extremer base like the republicans do. Hugs
In video Emma points out that the covid recovery plan of massive help for the lower incomes made the Biden administration very popular, but when that changed in 2022 for a more austerity program pushed by bipartisan republicans and Manchin / Sinema … or should I say by the republicans and Biden’s need for the feeling of bipartisanship. Once people realized again they wouldn’t be getting the help promised them by the democrats they again felt the democrats left them behind. The lower incomes feel betrayed by the democratic party and they feel used. Paid attention to only every four years and promised table scraps so the democratic candidate can keep the corporate dollars flowing. Hugs
November 9-10, 1938 Nazis looted and burned synagogues and Jewish-owned stores and homes, and beat and murdered Jewish men, women, and children across Germany and Austria. Known as Kristallnacht, it was a night of organized violence against Jews marking the beginning of the Holocaust with the killing of 91 and the deportation of 30,000 to concentration camps. The German word translates to “the Night of Broken Glass,” so called because of the vast number of broken windows in Jewish shops, 5 million marks worth ($1,250,000). Read more
November 9, 1965 At the first draft-card burning [see November 6, 1965], a heckler shouted that they should burn themselves, not their draft cards. Three days later Roger LaPorte, a student of religion and a Catholic Worker volunteer, poured gasoline on himself and struck a match to it in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York. Police managed to douse the flames. Roger LaPorte On his way to the hospital he said, “I’m a Catholic Worker. I’m against war, all wars. I did this as a religious action.” He died 33 hours later. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement and a speaker on the 15th, wrote that she believed that LaPorte knew it was wrong to take his own life. But she explained his desire to end the Vietnam War; in the previous few days, six massive air strikes had made it the deadliest week since the war began. Read more
November 9, 1984 U.S. peace activists sailed a shrimp boat into the Port of Corinto to confront U.S. warships threatening Nicaragua. The U.S. had mined the harbor in violation of international law, and had invaded Nicaragua through this port in 1896 and 1910.
November 9, 1989 For the first time since World War II, free travel between East and West Germany was allowed. The Berlin Wall, built to stop the exodus from the Communist-controlled East in 1961, was opened in response to nonviolent popular action.
November 9, 2002 Somewhere between 450,000 and a million Europeans in Florence, Italy, peacefully protested the threatened U.S. invasion of Iraq. Florence, Italy 11.9.2002 The inaugural meeting of the European Social Forum had just concluded there.It was a regional part of the framework established at the World Social Forum which had met in Porto Alegre, Brazil, first in 2001. Read more about this protest The Forum is a citizens’ movement exploring alternatives to globalization and the inhumane consequences of the changing world order. They focus on sustainable development, social and economic justice. Those who were part of the Forum come from a broad range of civil society, including: pacifists; environmentalists; those in nonprofit, volunteer and non-governmental organizations; representatives of religious and lay groups; those in the anti-globalization and anti-capitalist movements; and, for the first time in Florence (Firenze), significant involvement of the labor movement, notably the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), and trade unions or national confederations from nine European countries, including Russia.
“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
obeying in advance is how fascism wins.
just last month, we saw Dick-Rocket Czar Jeff Bezos — owner of the Washington Post — preemptively kowtow to Donny Convict.
‘please sir, don’t hit me. look, look, I’ve told my editor at the Post not to endorse Kamala. they had one all written, and I told them to shitcan it. see, sir? can we be friends now?’
today, lets check in on some leaders who are already saying no to the coming reign of King Fuckface the First.
Donny Convict hates the shit out of California — and, by extension, he hates its Governor, Gavin Newsom. look at this handsome fucker, with his square jaw and his thick head of hair. he makes Donny seem like a misshapen garden gnome by comparison — and Donny knows it.
inside Donny’s childish, ignorant brain, California is entirely populated by chardonnay-sipping hippie elites who hate his guts — and so when disaster strikes, he’s inclined to deny them federal aid.
Donny somehow believes that all of California’s water comes from a massive faucet in Canada. this faucet is so ungodly ginormous that it takes an entire day to turn it. I wish I were making this up — but no, our incoming 47th president actually imagines that the reason California experiences droughts is because Gavin Newsom keeps that big-ass faucet under lock and key and won’t let anyone open it.
oh god oh god oh god he’s so fucking stupid. it hurt my brain just to type that last paragraph.
can we just pause to reflect for a moment on just how insane it is for a country to have a chief executive who believes in such a fever-swamp hallucination? this is a man who will once again be in charge of a nuclear arsenal — and he’s wandering about, babbling incoherently about giant spigots. holy shit.
Donny’s already threatening to inflict preemptive retribution on California as part of his Day One Dictatoring — and Governor Newsom has a message for Donny:
California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fierce critic of former President Donald Trump, on Thursday called for lawmakers to convene a special session ahead of another Trump presidency to safeguard the state’s progressive policies. Meanwhile, attorneys general in blue states across the country announced they were also gearing up for a legal fight.
Newsom’s office told The Associated Press that the governor and lawmakers are ready to “Trump-proof” California’s state laws.
no word from Newsom on if he’s ever going to open that big fucking faucet.
In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker said on Thursday he would ask his state’s legislators, possibly as soon as next week, to address potential threats from a second Trump term. “You come for my people,” Mr. Pritzker said at a news conference, “you come through me.”
here’s New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul:
The announcements echoed a vow on Wednesday by Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York to “honor” the election results and to try to work with Mr. Trump, but also to fight any efforts to curtail reproductive freedoms, expand gun rights or curb environmental regulations.
At a news conference, Ms. Hochul addressed Mr. Trump directly: “If you try to harm New Yorkers or roll back their rights, I will fight you every step of the way.”
“If possible, we will work with his administration, but we will not compromise our values or our integrity, our principles,” she said. “We did not expect this result, but we are prepared to respond to this result, and my office has been preparing for several months, because we’ve been here before, we’ve faced this challenge before, and we use the rule of law to fight back.”
Donny’s plan to round up million of immigrants and disappear them into detention camps hinges on using each state’s local law enforcement to do the rounding-up. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healy say that Donny can stick that plan where the sun don’t shine.
However, plans for using local law enforcement and the National Guard could face roadblocks in states led by Democrats.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey told MSNBC that she would “absolutely not” allow state police to assist in mass deportations if the Trump administration requested it.
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Protesters and political prisoners are being drugged, tortured and beaten in state-run institutions, say rights groups
Human rights organisations say they are gravely concerned that a young Iranian woman arrested for stripping down to her underwear could be subjected to torture after she was transferred to a psychiatric hospital by the authorities.
Amnesty International said it had found evidence that the Iranian regime used electric shocks, torture, beatings and chemical substances on protesters and political prisoners taken to state-run psychiatric institutions after being called mentally unstable. It said the situation facing the young woman was “alarming”.
Video of the young woman, who has not been formally identified, walking around a university campus in Tehran in her underwear was widely circulated on social media last week before she was seen being arrested by police officers. She is believed to have been protesting at being physically assaulted by campus security guards at the Islamic Azad University in Tehran for failing to comply with the strict dress code imposed on all Iranian women.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) called the student’s transfer to an undisclosed psychiatric facility a “kidnapping”, saying the use of forced transfer of anti-regime protesters to mental health facilities was being increasingly used to silence dissent.
The woman is believed to have been protesting at being physically assaulted by campus security guards. Photograph: X/Amnesty
“Iranian authorities systematically use involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation as a tool to suppress dissent, branding protesters as mentally unstable to undermine their credibility,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of CHRI.
“Transferring individuals who participate in peaceful protests to psychiatric hospitals represents not only an act of arbitrary detention but also constitutes a form of kidnapping. This practice is a blatantly unlawful move to discredit activists by labelling them mentally unstable.”
There have been a number of other high-profile cases of protesters arrested during the Woman, Life, Freedom demonstrations who were also committed to psychiatric hospitals after their arrest.
Saman Yasin, a well-known Kurdish rapper, was taken by the authorities to Tehran’s Aminabad psychiatric hospital after his arrest at a protest in 2022, where he was allegedly tortured and coerced into a confession. He spent two years in prison before being released on medical furlough last month.
A source close to Yasin told the Guardian: “Saman was tied to the bed in the psychiatric centre in a cruciform position for a long time. They administered high-dose sedatives and despite his unconscious state, the restraints on his hands and feet were not removed.”
In October 2023, Roya Zakeri, a young Iranian woman who was filmed chanting anti-regime slogans, was called mentally unwell by state media and taken to the women’s ward of Razi psychiatric hospital. The Guardian has been told by people close to her family that she was injected with sleeping agents, physically assaulted and had her arms and feet chained.
Rights activist Azam Jangravi protesting in Tehran in 2018. Photograph: supplied
Azam Jangravi, a human rights activist, said she was pressed by Iranian authorities to sign a statement saying she had mental health issues after photographs of her waving her hijab over her head on a Tehran street were widely circulated in 2018.
“When they interrogated me, they accused me of being a spy,” she said. “They wanted me to write a confession stating that I regretted my protest and that I did it because I was mentally unwell. I didn’t sign it … They keep taunting us during interrogations by citing the examples of former political prisoners who were sent to these psychiatric hospitals, [telling us] ‘If you don’t regret your act of protest, you’ll face the same fate.’ I fear the university student is under horrific conditions right now and we must demand her release,” she said.
The Guardian spoke to young women in Iran who said they been inspired by the video of the university student, who was rapidly hailed as a new icon of Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom movement after the video was posted online.
“Nobody I know who protested and has called for freedom from the Islamic Republic does not support her act of protest,” said Farah*, a university student in Tehran. “This is what we are fighting for, to have the freedom to choose. We are in awe of her bravery. If it were up to the regime, all of us who protested would be branded as mentally unwell.”
Images of the young woman have also been posted by pro-regime social media accounts, which have circulated messages about her mental health and personal life.
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