George Bailey

Remember, the Farce will be with you, always

[Briahna Joy Gray @briebriejoy]

So, should we fund this, or DEfund this?

[Marta Havryshko @HavryshkoMarta]

A Kyiv draft officer gives a military-age man a crash course in “patriotism” — because, strangely enough, he refuses to die for Zelenskyy’s corrupt regime

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

The insistence of cable news to focus so intently on Hasan Piker yet never interview him or ask him for comment is a fascinating rejection of a century of journalistic norms.

I’ve never seen a person be covered so relentlessly—including even Osama bin Laden—without any effort to interview him.

Declining to take that basic journalistic step effectively means folks like @DanaBashCNN & @jaketapper are forfeiting their claim to even be doing journalism.

They don’t even do the standard throwaway line at the end saying, “We reached out to Mr Piker for comment and he said…”

Genuinely bizarre from two people who for a long time prided themselves on being professional journalists.

[Amir @AmirAminiMD]

Friedrich Merz, right now, is perhaps the most dangerous politician in the world.

An utterly failed populist -currently the most unpopular head of state in the world- with absolutely zero sense of responsibility, shamelessly and proudly raising his unpopularity whenever he opens his mouth in a country faced with rapid economic and social decline due to its unhinged support for the catastrophic US and Israeli wars and the political rise of literal Nazis, Friedrich Merz seems to have found a way out of his misery by playing the Netanyahu handbook -only this time, against a nuclear superpower.
And with zero support from the US.

This depraved Blackrock lobbyist is a danger to world peace.

[Rachel Gilmore @atRachelGilmore]

Genuinely foul behaviour from our government.

[GBC @GBC_Press]

🚨 BREAKING:

Finnish journalist arrested after asking Finnish President Stubb about Israeli arms deals.

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

I often wonder how many of America’s unique, not-seen-in-any-other-society social problems trace their roots to everyone in the country knowing that even if they have insurance, they still may be only one or two family medical emergencies away from actual bankruptcy.

Everyone living under that kind of threat at all times sows a simmering anxiety and rage boiling underneath everything — which almost certainly has some very negative side effects.

[Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal]

I have no doubt this screed released by Laura Loomer is retaliation for my lawsuit against the DHS for its illegal seizure of my phones following my return from a reporting trip to Iran. Our lawsuit succinctly details Loomer’s role in lobbying for the unconstitutional seizure, and her claims of credit for it. Now she’s seeking cover in the Zeppelin-sized shadow of Randy Fine.

A federal judge has clearly stated that my Fourth Amendment rights were violated through the seizure of my phones. She framed the DHS action as an attack on my First Amendment rights as well, situating it within the Trump administration’s wider assault on press freedom.

Loomer and a trio of Israel First backbenchers have responded by escalating their attack on my First Amendment rights. It’s a desperate bid to silence me and The Grayzone - not for breaking any laws, but for journalism which exposes wanton corruption and war crimes.

They are particularly incensed by my reporting on the crimes of a certain foreign apartheid state whose lobbying proxies guide their careers. Indeed, their letter is packed with hysterical complaints about my journalism, demanding that I be “investigated” for producing a documentary on Iran’s Jewish community and for clinically exposing official Israeli deceptions about October 7 designed to generate public support for genocide in Gaza.

The letter also contains blatantly false, libelous statements. For instance, its authors claim I was “cultivated by an agent of influence by an FTO and current military adversary.” This is textbook defamation, and I don’t think it’s protected by congressional immunity.

Finally, it’s impossible to ignore the irony of Randy Fine falsely accusing an American journalist of unspecified crimes just days after Fine was filmed rummaging through a private citizen’s mailbox while he was campaigning for reelection.

Breaking into a mailbox is a federal crime. Journalism is not.

[Chris Glover @chrisglover]

Ford converted OSAP grants to loans for Ontario students because the program was “unsustainable”.

Turns out private career colleges diverted almost $1billion into their pockets last year—more than public colleges and universities combined.

Ford is punishing all Ontario students with crushing debt levels because of a scam run by private career colleges.

#onted
#onpoli

https://t.co/pqPfZgrFs2

[TDot Resident @TDotResident]

The Ring of Fire mining site is owned by an Australian billionaire. We all paid $12M to promote his mining project.

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

Most Americans think slavery was abolished completely when in reality it was just rebranded as the 13th Amendment allows forced slave labor inside of our prison system.

Imprisoned workers earn, on average, 13 to 52 cents per hour nationwide and in 7 states workers are not paid at all.

𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐌𝐜𝐃𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐖𝐚𝐥𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬.

Nowhere is this problem worse than in Alabama where incarcerated people produce $450 million a year in goods and services without being paid.

Over 500 US corporations have “leased” incarcerated people from Alabama prisons since 2018 to exploit their labor and profit off slave labor.

𝐀 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐥𝐚𝐰𝐬𝐮𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐦𝐚 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦.

And one state over in Louisiana they just passed a law to make homelessness illegal to force unhoused people into the unpaid slave labor prison pipeline.

This is the new blueprint for the United States. Rather than address the root problem that causes homelessness [capitalism] states are criminalizing it & turning poverty into a pipeline of slave labor for corporations to profit off of.

𝐈𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥.

[Seth Harp @sethharpesq]

No one was there taking pictures for the cover of Time Magazine when my army engineering unit was digging mass graves outside Fallujah for all the men and boys the marines killed after refusing to let any males leave the city, then treating everyone who remained as a combatant.

[Mats Nilsson @mazzenilsson]

"Soon (poor) people won't be able to have children anymore, I suppose that would be fantastic. We could design new humans in a laboratory."

Mette-Marit, the new Queen of Norway, appears in Epstein's files, expressing her delight that the poor will not be able to have children in the future and that perfected humans can be created in laboratories. And the new King is WEF.
https://t.co/KYt8RqiqUy

[Velodus✨ @velodus]

One of the things I'm most going to take away from the Trump era is how many people and institutions and corporations don't actually stand for anything and will capitulate to bad people at a moments notice when having principles is even slightly inconvenient to them.

[Amir @AmirAminiMD]

The fact that Western politicians and mainstream media outlets aren’t even questioning why on earth ISIS -of oll terror organizations- is suddenly revived only to traget Spain -of all countries- just days after Spain criticized Israel’s genocide and illegal wars, tells you what a dystopian shithole we are living in.

There is, at this point, no doubt whatsoever that ISIS was/is an Israeli-created and controlled terror organization.

Now remember the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by ISIS, the entire regions destabilized by ISIS, the historic sites destroyed by ISIS, the trillions spent on stopping ISIS -and the millions of refugees created by ISIS with all the political implications of the migration crisis in Europe and elsewhere.

All of this done by an Israeli created and controlled terror group.

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

You want to know what actual free speech looks like in the American context?

Edward Snowden told the truth about what the government was doing to its own citizens.

He is in exile.

Chelsea Manning told the truth about what the military was doing in Iraq, including footage of a helicopter crew killing journalists and laughing.

She was imprisoned.

Julian Assange published documents showing the gap between what Western governments said and what they did.

He spent years in an embassy and then a prison, and the country that lectures the world about press freedom led the effort to destroy him.

Meanwhile the people who lied about weapons of mass destruction and launched a war that killed hundreds of thousands:

They are on the speaking circuit.

They are on television as analysts.

They have libraries named after them.

This is not a paradox. This is the system working correctly.

Free speech, in the empire's operating definition, means you can say anything that doesn't threaten the machine.

The moment the speech has real consequences for real power:

You discover exactly how free it is.

[Thomas Fazi @battleforeurope]

More truth bombs from John Mearsheimer!

“The US and the West more generally are morally bankrupt... For those who are convinced that the Israelis are the good guys and the Iranians are the bad guys, I have two questions: 1) when was the last time that Iran committed a genocide? 2) When was the last time that Iran initiated a war against another country?”.

Watch the whole show here: https://t.co/oEiR6FZktR

[Paul Holden @pauleholden]

Oh man.

Imagine bringing up "the Congo" (I'm assuming disparagingly in comparison to Japan) to argue that genetic differences viz. race shape economic and political outcomes instead of things like colonialism and white racism.

The Congo!

(There are two Congos, the DRC and Republic of the Congo, but I'm assuming he's referring to the DRC.)

There's is perhaps no clearer, more obvious example of how a region has been obliterated by colonialism and post-colonial imperialism.

After King Leopold and then the Kingdom of Belgium engaged a horrific reign of terror that killed at least a million people and eviscerated pre-colonial social and political structures (and provided the rubber and raw materials that fuelled the industrial and automotive revolutions in the West), the US then assassinated the country's first post-colonial leader Patrice Lumumba because he dared to suggest the country might redistribute its wealth and be neutral in the Cold War.

The US then helped install and then propped up the military dictatorship of Mobuto Sese Seko for decades because he was an ally in the Cold War. He looted the country for 32 years, skimming billions into his bank accounts from the exploitation of natural resources by western firms.

And then post-Cold War DRC became embroiled in two regional wars that killed 4 million people, triggered by the fall-out from the Rwandan genocide that every scholar acknowledges had ITS roots in Belgian colonial policy - and which was operationalised by militias like the Interhamwe that had received training and arms from France.

That chaos created the conditions for what is now a horror-show of competing militias, human trafficking and slavery, driven by the exploitation and export of resources to feed global tech, with paths to development systematically blocked by organised criminal networks heavily tied into the west and benefitting it's oligarch-class, reproducing the systems of colonial extraction that preceded it. These systems interpolate with local ethnic systems and political opportunism that ALSO have colonial origins.

The history of the Congo is varied, and long, and subtle, and unique. But the vicious long-term impact of colonial and imperial violence is undeniable and profound, and, most importantly, STILL ONGOING.

But this guy wants to dismiss all that and point to IQ tests to explain why Japan has a high Human Development Index and the Congo doesn't. IQ tests!

How is this man an academic? How can he claim to speak about world when he is so plainly ignorant of its most basic histories?

[George Bailey @SpecialAgentA]

@freedomrideblog Well, the US ambassador's name is Bill White

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

There seems to be very little recognition from Israeli officials and soldiers that when they boast about killing people, they are talking about real people whose lives they ended. This courageous aid worker did nothing to deserve to be killed, does not deserve to be called a legitimate target after she was murdered, and those responsible should still be prosecuted.