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"Putin met both Xi and Modi during the summit as he seeks to strengthen ties with India and China in the face of Western pressure. The two major economies have become a crucial economic lifeline for Russia during the full-scale war and are leading buyers of its oil."
"The Great Resegregation: The Trump administrationâs attacks on DEI are aimed at reversing the civil-rights movement."
"What Republicans and Trump are doing today is not new. It has precedent in the last 100 years of conservatism, which, for a time, was not just in the Republican Party, but also the Jim Crow Southern Democrats. The Southern Democrats are a faction that has been fully absorbed by the RepublicansâŠ"
"The parent company of American alcohol producers such as Jack Daniel's whisky and Woodford Reserve bourbon says sales to Canada dropped 62 per cent during the latest fiscal quarter compared to a year ago, as American alcohol remains off the shelves in many provinces." đ
"A whopping 80% of Canadian travelers whose travel decisions are being influenced by U.S. policy and politics say U.S. tariffs and economic policy are the major negative influence. Seventy-one percent say political statements by U.S. leaders are a key negative factor, up from 64% in April,"
"With this Constitution-mocking action, the administration is bringing us closer to a shutdown on September 30, and it doesn't seem to care. "This is not just a constitutional crisis, it's a matter of global justice."
"The email, sent after Trump signed an executive order in March directing federal agencies and the Smithsonian to eliminate divisive and "anti-American" content from museums and national parks, informed staff that exhibit teams at the museum would work to "upgrade the gallery and the exhibition.""
"Trump has also threatened military action against Mexico targeting drug cartels; imposed tariffs on nations based in part on false or exaggerated claims about their role in fentanyl trafficking; and falsely blamed fentanyl trafficking on undocumented migrants."
"Hoping for the best and preparing for the worst is a way of life in Finland. The entire country lives by a concept called "comprehensive security," which requires every citizen, business, military member and government official to recognize the role they have to play in defending their country."
Instagram influencer Adventorin goes viral after demonstrating how simple it is to climb over the U.S. Border Wall.
For those that may want to read the entire article in a Bluesky thread with more visuals:
The Catholic Christofascist undoing of 250 years of democracy and not a peep from NYT, Wapo, Mother Jones or any legacy MSM. @jayrosen.bsky.social @sulliview.bsky.social @markjacob.bsky.social linktr.ee/dissentinbloom dissentinbloom.substack.com/p/one-blood-...
Time to dust off the conspiracy theories around The Dark Enlightenment with JD Vance, Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. In those circles, Vance is the Trojan horse for the techno-authoritarian elite and christofascism.
"Dozens of Russian attack drones have also been reported across multiple regions, including the country's far-west." "In response to the attack, Poland scrambled fighter jets to protect the country's own air space."
Electricity Is Becoming Unbelievably Expensive as the US Power Grid Decays Into Ruin
But from everything theyâve said, this is not the path they want to take. Instead, while Vance misinterprets history, Ukraine continues to bleed.
Things do not need to be as they are. Trump and Vance could assist Ukraine securing the just peace its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is calling for. They could allay European fears about Russia by making it clear to Putin that aggression will not be rewarded.
But also, the collapse of its client regime in Syria and Israelâs humiliation of Iran, another longstanding ally.
Russia, by contrast â long a rival for the superpower mantle â has endured multiple recent foreign policy setbacks. Not least of these is the failure to dismantle Ukraine, which was supposed to take a matter of days. X
In 2025 the US still claims to be the worldâs only true superpower; its support and weaponry has helped keep Russia from the gates of Kyiv without firing a shot or placing a single US soldier on the ground. www.aei.org/articles/unr...
Vance is wrong for another reason. Ukraineâs defeat would represent perhaps the greatest US foreign policy disaster since the Vietnam war.
They, as she noted, have always refused. Contrary to Vladimir Putin or Vanceâs plans, the Ukrainians have their own ideas about their national destiny.
This all sounds rather more like Ukrainian âcapitulationâ rather than a ânegotiationâ. A friend from the Ukrainian diaspora said to me recently: Ukraine will be âforced to erase itself to make Russia happy, and that has been happening for hundreds of yearsâ.
President Donald Trump came away from the recent summit in Alaska talking about Ukraine giving up its territory, despite the fact that territory is not something that can simply be negotiated away over the heads of the Ukrainian people.
1. Negotiation or capitulation? âNegotiationâ is what Vance says regarding Russia and Ukraine. But the administration he serves has already suggested that any negotiation will involve Ukraine giving up land. archive.ph/30yDP
The Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 ended with the Treaty of Frankfurt in 1871, which saw France lose territory in Alsace and Lorraine. Ultimately, these wars ended with negotiated capitulation. opil.ouplaw.com/display/10.1...
The Crimean war ended with another Treaty of Paris in 1856 and involved Russia agreeing to the neutrality of the Black Sea and the loss of the territories it had captured from the Ottoman empire. opil.ouplaw.com/display/10.1...
Perhaps Vance was thinking of some of the rather smaller 19th-century wars which ended with, at least nominal, negotiated settlements.
Meanwhile after the French capitulation, a treaty was signed in Paris in November 1815, imposing a large fine, a foreign occupation and the loss of territory. So presumably Vance wasnât referring to these conflicts.
Napoleon abdicated on April 6 and was exiled to Elba. He escaped in 1815, returned to arms and was defeated at Waterloo. He was exiled again, even further away, to Saint Helena.
The Napoleonic wars came to an end with coalition forces engaged in a full-scale invasion of France and entering Paris on March 30 1814.
So, which major wars does Vance mean? Contrary to his pronouncements, clearly not the first or second world wars. If we look at the major wars a century prior, do we see what he is talking about?
The Germans were not invited to those negotiations and the terms of the treaty were imposed upon them. This led to the partition of Germany, the loss of its empire, its military reduced to a rump, and a reparations bill of 20 billion gold marks (ÂŁ6.6 billion).
As for the first world war, that ended with an armistice on November 11 1918 following the collapse of the German armed forces. The peace treaty, the Treaty of Versailles, was later signed in 1919.
To cap it all, the Americans were also threatening to invade Kyushu and then Honshu. But before that came to pass, the US deployed superweapons. Japan surrendered just days after the atomic bombings and the Soviet intervention.
The war against Japan ended with Hirohitoâs empire on the verge of famine, its infrastructure destroyed by American fire. The Soviets had invaded Manchuria, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, and were threatening to invade Hokkaido.
But he was wrong. In fact, few major wars in recent history have ended in negotiation. Letâs take Vanceâs two examples. The second world war in Europe ended with the Soviet capture of Berlin and Germanyâs dictator dosing himself with cyanide and putting a bullet in his own brain.
Vanceâs response was clearly his way of saying that the war in Ukraine would have to end in a negotiation, with the suggestion that some sort of territorial concessions on Ukraineâs part would naturally flow from that process.
âIf Russia is allowed to keep any of the territory that it illegally seized, what message does that send to China? Does it give China a green light to invade Taiwan? Does it give Russia a green light to invade other European countries, which is what your European allies are concerned about?â
Vance was responding to a question from the NBC news anchor, Kristen Weller, who asked:
âThis is how wars ultimately get settled. If you go back to world war two, if you go back to world war one, if you go back to every major conflict in human history, they all end with some kind of negotiation.â
In a recent Meet the Press interview, the vice-president of the US, J.D. Vance, argued in relation to Russiaâs illegal invasion of Ukraine:
J.D. Vance is wrong about history â hereâs why this matters for Ukraine: The US vice-president recently said that all major wars end in negotiations. Itâs a clue to how the US might approach ending the war in Ukraine. Article BASE thread 𧔠(7 min) đđżđ
"Hardly anyone has said what would work, and has been proven to reduce gun violence in every other advanced nation. To license new gun buyers and require both criminal and mental health background checks, and a permit each time they want to purchase either a semiautomatic weapon or handgun."
"The NYPD's facial recognition software lumped him in with a group of "possible matches"" "Despite being 12 miles away from the crime when it happened, not to mention eight inches taller and about 70 pounds heavier, Williams was still arrested and held in jail for more than two days."
"As this is happening, the actual condition of the grid is decaying rapidly. Nearly a third of transmission infrastructure is already near or beyond its useful life span. 46% of US distribution infrastructure, including utility poles and power line transformers, was found to be in a similar state."
"How Hurricane Katrina Paved the Way for American Fascism"
"How Hurricane Katrina Paved the Way for American Fascism"
"Trumpâs dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. Itâs like being woken in the night by a burglar wearing a striped shirt and carrying a bag marked âSwagâ: we would assume it was a joke or a stunt or otherwise unreal, rather than a genuine danger."
"The GOP also seems to like when a president abuses his power as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump all have done. Itâs been a party tradition for the last 50 years."
"School shootings have been rising over the past decade, in particular since the Covid pandemic, even as some states tighten gun laws." "Last year saw the most school shootings in history (83); with each year since 2021 setting new record highs. Thatâs roughly one school shooting every four days."
I can certainly say that for myself, Megalopolis was the worst big budget movie I have ever seen. It was atrociously bad.
"How Hurricane Katrina Paved the Way for American Fascism"
Rahim says Katrina was a turning point because it showed the opposite: that a disaster was an opportunity for exploitation by the right, rather than a moment for the people to come together and organize. archive.ph/NZMxG
But we would also have a model for how disaster recovery could be done equitably, without worsening the injustices that were present before the disaster. archive.ph/5h6XJ
If the post-Katrina recovery had been different, if it had all embodied the solidaristic ethic that Common Ground possessed, New Orleans today would be a more just and equal city.
Rahim believes that the rest of America should pay attention to the injustices of the Gulf region, because âI work under the premise that so goes the Gulf, so goes America. And so goes America, so goes life as we know it on this planet. Itâs just that simple.â
Moore has ânever gotten any type of recognition for what he did,â but âhe sent staff here and purchased a boat for us⊠There wouldnât have been a Common Ground to the degree that it exists, if it wouldnât have been for Michael Moore.â
Rahim says that many who made sacrifices to help were never given credit, and the media was never interested in the positive work being done by his group. He especially wished to single out leftist filmmaker Michael Moore for credit.
âIndividuals that volunteeredâ were âin what was called some of the most âdangerousâ communities in the city, and there was never a person being robbed, raped, or killed⊠These are the things the media refused to look at⊠They were saying that everybody that was stuck in the city were criminals.â
Rahim says that the work of Common Ground shattered stereotypes about how âdangerousâ and full of âlootersâ New Orleans was in the aftermath of Katrina.
âIt broke the myth that all whites were racist,â he says, because âfor a lot of people in our community, it was the first time they ever had direct contact with any white person.â
âWe had almost 20,000 volunteers come,â he says, âand almost 90 percent were white⊠it set a whole new precedent that had never happened, nowhere in the South.â
But the story of post-Katrina New Orleans is not solely a story of exploitation of Black communities by white developers. Malik Rahim actually points to Common Ground as an inspiring example of cross-racial solidarity.
The city demolished housing projects that hadnât even suffered storm damage, eliminating thousands of affordable units at the height of a housing crisis:
Fouts also cites the fact that the cityâs public housing projects were shuttered and never reopened.
This undemocratic recovery was not limited to schooling, but was characteristic of post-Katrina New Orleans as a whole. There was even, at one point, a plan to eliminate whole neighborhoods and never rebuild them.
New Orleans went from having one of the highest percentages of Black public-school teachers in the nation to a teaching force that is much whiter and younger.
Lay says that while the charters focused relentlessly on test scores as measures of success, in the process, local democracy was essentially destroyed, with private entities rather than a traditional elected school board controlling every aspect of schooling.
When âKatrina flooded New Orleans, it didn't just destroy much of the city, it also destroyed the school systemâ and âsome school reformers thought maybe thatâs what needed to happen.â The state legislature transferred authority over the schools away from the school district.
The city was subjected to the most radical school privatization experiment in America, going from having 123 public schools to having only 4, with the rest being privately-operated charter schools. As Tulane University professor Celeste Lay told Current Affairs;
New Orleans became an example of what Naomi Klein calls âthe shock doctrine,â with politicians and wealthy business interests using a moment of crisis to force through sweeping policy changes that could never pass in a moment when the population was in a position to resist.
Much of what turned Katrina âfrom a disaster to a tragedyâ (as Rahim said) was the way that lawmakers, city officials, and local business groups chose to use the opportunity to reinforce the cityâs worst inequalities:
That was just the beginning. As the city rebuilt, it did not rebuild with equal speed for all. As Sarah Fouts, professor at the University of Maryland and author of Rebuilding New Orleans, explains;
Rahim explains in that period, âif you were African American, youâd better not get caught walking through Algiers Point to get to the evacuation station.â ProPublica has documented 11 shootings of Black residents by white vigilantes that occurred in the stormâs aftermath, which were never punished.
In the aftermath, while some like Rahim were organizing relief efforts, white communities focused on keeping out Black storm refugees. ProPublica explains: www.propublica.org/article/post...
Some tragedies were immediate. Others were long-term. Approximately 1,400 people died in the storm itself, the third-highest death toll from a hurricane in American history.
And, of course, the collapse wasnât equal across neighborhoods, with some predominantly Black areas like the Lower Ninth Ward losing nearly two-thirds of their population.
And San Francisco after its 1906 earthquake did not experience such lasting decimation.
Even Chicago after the Great Fire;
There were 460,000 people in New Orleans in 2004, and less than half that the year after the storm. By 2008, half of the cityâs pre-storm working poor, elderly, and disabled residents had not returned. Decades on, there are still only 360,000 people here.
No other major American city has ever suffered anything like Katrina. The population never fully recovered.
âKatrinaâ has entered the American lexicon as a byword for government failure, tragic injustice, or just a terrible natural disaster. It is worth remembering, 20 years on, just what this calamity meant to the people who went through it.
Both evacuation and return were stratified by race and class, and while the middle class and affluent actually experienced something of a renaissance in New Orleans in the years after Katrina, much of the social fabric of the city was permanently wiped out, never to return.
The story of Katrina, then, is a story of resilience by groups like Common Ground, but also one of defeat. The city was rebuilt, slowly, but it was a highly unequal and unjust recovery, with the worst burdens inflicted on the poorest residents.
Common Ground attracted legions of volunteers from outside the city and became a symbol of solidarity and self-determination. Nevertheless, Rahim sees the tragedy of Katrina as a critical âturning point to the rightâ because:
Rahim took the organizing skills he had honed during his Panther days and founded Common Ground Relief, a radical, community-based mutual aid organization offering free health clinics, food and water distribution, home rebuilding, and legal support.
After Hurricane Katrina hit the city in 2005, countless Black residents were left stranded in a flooded city without federal or state assistance.
Rahim was one of the original founders of the New Orleans Black Panther Party in the early 1970s, helping to organize its âfree breakfast program for children, political education classes, facilitation of free medical care, and neighborhood clean up and empowerment programs.â
"If we had stood up for justice after Katrina, there may not have been a Jena. If there wouldnât have been a Jena, then maybe there wouldnât have been a Ferguson. All of it was the ripple effects of what did not happen after Katrina.â
It was a turning point to the right,â Malik Rahim says of Hurricane Katrina. âIt was when the right saw they had the ability to create justiceâŠ"
How Hurricane Katrina Paved the Way for American Fascism: For New Orleanians like Black Panther community organizer Malik Rahim and author Sarah Fouts, the hurricane that struck 20 years ago marked a pivotal moment in Americaâs shift toward the political right. Article BASE thread 𧔠(9 min) đđżđ
"We are now witnessing a most peculiar twist of history. Two decades ago, western leaders thought China was becoming more âAmericanâ, in the sense of adopting free market, capitalist principles. Now it is the US that looks more Chinese." archive.ph/mn1MQ
âUnlike what had been agreed between President Trump and President Putin last week, when we were together in Washington, it is obviously not going to come to a meeting between President Zelenskyy and President Putin,â archive.ph/x7Rue
Projection 101. The oppressor blaming the oppressed.
"The precision of the strike indicates Russia deliberately targeted this Ukrzaliznytsia facility. Notably, the site is a depot where passenger trains are based and prepared for service. In other words, civilian infrastructure was directly destroyed."
âDemocrats, the one thing they should learn from President Trump is to laugh at themselves a little bit. They donât have to be so serious. They donât have to get offended at everything. Sometimes itâs actually a good thing to have a sense of humor about our political process.â archive.ph/vnynW
