liberalchick

[liberalchick @LiberalChick]

When someone asks me to describe my job

[Maebel Gebremedhin💜 @LEBEAM]

An echo chamber full of trauma porn

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Money before stopping genocide: The British government received intelligence that the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia were supporting a genocidal militia in Sudan’s civil war in 2024 but did not go public with the news for fear of upsetting the UAE. https://t.co/Rk7ukTjdKB

[uclagrad.bsky.social has moved to BlueSky @UCLA_Grad]

“'I am a little disappointed that we may be punting big questions again to a future charter reform process,' @cd4losangeles @nithyavraman said Friday.
'There is a great deal of mistrust in L.A. city government right now.'”
@latimes

[Paul Mitchell @paulmitche11]

If you can accept that there was a late surge of young and Dem voters in LA that tipped towards @nithyavraman but believe it was through nefarious means…

What if I told you there were similar surges in neighboring cities of West Hollywood, Santa Monica and Long Beach??

[Yonas Nigussie @Yonigussie]

Consent Manufactured, Renewed Tigray Genocide Looms

In recent months, ENDF rhetoric & Getachew Reda’s recasting of the genocide as a “deadly internal conflict” echo the run‑up to the Nov 2020 war: craft the narrative, blame #Tigray, then frame renewed aggression as unavoidable.

[Film The Police LA @FilmThePoliceLA]

Good for Nithya.

The police contract was negotiated by Karen Bass to purchase the police union’s endorsement. In the process it helped break our budget.

The police union got everything they wanted and yet the number of cops went down. So money isn’t even an issue.

[Getachew Temare @getachew_temare]

The most dangerous thing about #Ethiopia’s post-Pretoria crisis is not only the return of war rhetoric. It is the attempt to rewrite responsibility while speaking in the language of peace. The Al Jazeera opinion piece by Getachew Reda and Redwan Hussein rightly says Ethiopia must not be dragged back into war. That warning is necessary. But necessary warnings can still be politically evasive when they name only convenient culprits and leave the state’s responsibility in the shadows.
No serious future for Tigray can be built by romanticizing the TPLF. Its authoritarian culture, militarized politics, forced mobilization, internal decay, and suffocation of Tigray’s civic and political space must be confronted without hesitation. Tigray must move beyond the TPLF’s monopoly over sacrifice, legitimacy, and political imagination.
But Pretoria was not signed by ghosts. It was signed by two parties: the federal government of Ethiopia and the TPLF. Redwan Hussein signed for Addis Abeba. Getachew Reda signed for the Tigrayan side. Any analysis that treats Pretoria’s failure as if it is mainly the work of TPLF hardliners, Eritrea, Fano, and other destabilizing forces, while barely interrogating the conduct of the federal government, is not serious peace analysis. It is selective accountability dressed as statesmanship. Getachew Reda knows this. He knows that Abiy Ahmed’s government has not implemented the Pretoria Agreement with genuine political will. He knows that Addis Abeba has not meaningfully engaged Tigray’s political leadership. He knows that the federal government has not seriously opened political space for independent Tigrayan actors outside the TPLF orbit, including opposition parties, civic voices, youth, women, religious figures, intellectuals, and community leaders who could help Tigray escape its suffocating political enclosure.
Instead, the federal government has treated Tigray as a defeated territory to be managed, not as a devastated society entitled to justice, reconstruction, constitutional clarity, return of displaced communities, and political dignity. That is the moral void in the article.

[Paul Mitchell @paulmitche11]

Now that we have seen the races for Governor, LA Mayor and all the competitive. Congressional races in CA called, within one week, what are the trolls gonna focus on next?

Note: this is faster than AZ in 2024 and 2020, and GA, NV and AK in 2020.

[Getachew Temare @getachew_temare]

One of the most misleading tendencies in analyses of #Ethiopia’s current political crisis is the habit of portraying Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party as a neutral, post-ethnic, federal political force confronting “ethno-nationalist rebel groups. That framing is deeply flawed.

Abiy Ahmed has not transcended ethno-nationalism. He has dangerously innovated a new and more brutal form of it. His political project does not always speak in the old vocabulary of ethnic liberation movements. That is precisely why it is more deceptive. It takes a particular ethno-political interest, embeds it inside the federal state, clothes it in the language of national unity, and then uses state power to criminalize competing ethno-national claims.
To understand Abiy Ahmed’s real political image, analysts must pay closer attention not only to what he says in English or Amharic to national and international audiences, but also to what he says in Afaan Oromo/Oromiffa to Oromo audiences. His political meaning is not found only in formal speeches about unity, reform, and prosperity. It is also found in vernacular political signaling, local audience calibration, and the selective language through which power reassures one constituency while disciplining another.
That dual messaging matters.

The Prosperity Party is not a civic democratic party detached from Ethiopia’s ethnic power structure. It emerged from Ethiopia’s ethnic-party architecture and continues to operate through regional calculations, security loyalties, patronage networks, and selective inclusion. Its ruling center has been deeply anchored in Oromo political networks, even while it represses Oromo opposition forces and claims to represent all Ethiopians.
This is not an argument against Oromo society. Nor is it a claim that the Prosperity Party represents all Oromo people. It clearly does not. Many Oromo opposition leaders, activists, intellectuals, and communities have also been imprisoned, silenced, displaced, or pushed into armed confrontation under Abiy Ahmed’s rule.
But it is analytically dishonest to describe only the TPLF, OLA, Fano, ONLF, and other armed actors as ethno-nationalist while presenting the Prosperity Party as merely “federal” or “national.” That reproduces the regime’s own vocabulary of legitimacy instead of interrogating how power actually functions.
The Critical Threats analysis on Ethiopia’s June 1 elections is right to warn that a sweeping Prosperity Party victory will not necessarily ease tensions and may even deepen conflict. It is also right to note the disruptions, exclusions, insecurity, and unresolved armed conflicts surrounding the vote. But the deeper issue is this: Ethiopia’s crisis is not a confrontation between a neutral federal government and ethno-nationalist rebels. It is a struggle among competing ethno-political projects, one of which currently controls the state, the military, the election machinery, the security apparatus, and the official language of constitutional order

[Paul Mitchell @paulmitche11]

An updated table.

Mayoral and Gov race results, side by side, in LA Council Districts.

Interesting ones:
CD 4 Raman ended up winning her own seat
CD 5 is still Pratt / Steyer 🤪
CD 12 is only Pratt / Hilton

[Eugen Tomiuc @Etomiuc]

#tigray #Ethiopia Tigray hit by deadly drone strike: dissident authority - The Standard https://t.co/xui0fBWhQa

[Che Guvera @Thosankara]

Ethiopia: hundreds of Christians were slaughtered in recent days by Abiy Ahemed militants in the Oromo region.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Christian community was intentionally targeted.

This evil must be stopped and those responsible brought to justice.

Pray for the afflicted.

[Martin Plaut @martinplaut]

War and recovery in Tigray.
A clear and heartbreaking picture of Tigray and the suffering its people endured during the 2020-2022 war. Sadly, the current situation means there has been only limited improvement since then
https://t.co/VK7hoTlHKA

[Film The Police LA @FilmThePoliceLA]

Nithya Raman is now *one point* behind Pratt.

• Bass: 34.81%
• Pratt: 27.32%
• Raman: 26.21%

Today’s batch:

• Raman: +23,514
• Bass: +19,312
• Pratt: +10,366

[a gay with a phd @justinAB_SF]

I find it so funny that Spencer does the best in the neighborhoods least impacted by homelessness. Fucking NIMBYs

[o @acquaintf8]

2 nights ago, as complacent Bass celebrates and Pratt gloats about his successful grift, Nithya tearfully addresses her supporters. Her deriders frame it as a funeral: she’s crying because she lost. When in reality, she’s crying because she’s the one candidate that actually cares

[Taniel @Taniel]

Los Angeles County says roughly 688K ballots left. We don’t know exactly how many are within city of Los Angeles. But we can estimate based on count so far.

Based on that, Raman needs to win what’s left over Pratt by roughly 12-13% to catch up.

She won today’s batch by 13.2%.

[Emma Taylor @emmarolyat]

LA media is not examining just how bad things had to get for a Councilmember & ally of the Mayor’s to stand up and say, “Our city deserves better.” People want to paint Nithya’s choice as a reflection of her loyalty when it’s truly a reflection of how bad things have gotten.

[liberalchick @LiberalChick]

I WAS NEVER WORRIED CLOCK IT

[Zachary Donnini @ZacharyDonnini]

Raman is hitting her benchmark to overtake Pratt.

At this point, it is fair to say she is favored, though outstanding turnout remains uncertain and the race is still tracking toward a very close finish.

[Zachary Donnini @ZacharyDonnini]

Raman is hitting her benchmark to overtake Pratt.

At this point, it is fair to say she is favored, though outstanding turnout remains uncertain and the race is still tracking toward a very close finish.

[Martin Plaut @martinplaut]

Ethiopia: Regime-backed mass killings of Amhara communities in the Arsi Zone of Oromia Region reportedly continue. More than 50 Amharas have been killed, hundreds displaced, and an Ethiopian Orthodox church burned.