"US correspondent Lauren Tomasi was reporting on a situation she said was rapidly deteriorating when she was shot in the leg by a rubber bullet".
Indeed. But Nine, via the Age, is also reporting that US rubber bullets are now autonomously intelligent
It bears repeating….
@elienyc.bsky.social is right.
Using the threat of violence as a reason not to rule against illegality effectively legitimises both the illegality and the threat. Potential perpetrators who might've perceived violence as a last resort now know it to be on the table as one of their recognised options.
Emergent media genres by Trump inauguration
2017: "We're 2 working class folk in a Ohio diner. We feel forgotten, so that's why we voted for him"
2025: "I voted for him to hurt those people. But he's hurting my people too. Stop abusing us, Mr President"
2029: ????
The ethos of this regime is "as much harm as possible to as many as possible for the benefit of as few as possible".
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJbR... More than a hint of this
It's always been about connections and prestige to these people
I see your "everything is chess and we must be mindful of our moves" and raise "it's actually a battering ram of awful things all equally designed to crush the democracy in one go"
“Those most enthralled with Donald Trump were not at the very bottom — the illiterate, the hungry,” she writes. Rather, Trump’s biggest fans could be found among “the elite of the left-behind,” meaning people “who were doing well within a region that was not.” www.vox.com/politics/369...
Lesser-discussed of late is how the Democrats extended so many overtures to the Republicans in 09/10 that they were effectively advisers to the government. It afforded them so much dignity and standing that it provided cover for all the "death panels" and "birth certificate" horseshit.
Elon Musk & @elonmusk Follow The REAL reason so many Democrats are upset about entitlements (social security, medical, etc) fraud investigations is that they are using your taxpayer money as handouts to attract and retain ILLEGAL immigrants. Their future voters. That's what it's all about. Truth. 10:48 AM • 2/17/25 • 7.7M Views
Now that musk is saying he’s doing the DOGE stuff “because the globalists have plotted a Great Replacement in which they use government handouts to buy votes from illegal immigrants and urban blacks” maybe we don’t have to act like this is about deficits or cost cutting anymore
SCOOP: The top US election security watchdog has frozen all of its efforts to aid states in securing elections. The move represents the first major example of the country’s cyber defense agency accommodating Trump’s false claims of election fraud and online censorship.
The Nazis already want autistic people dead, and their idols are the ones trying to explain their bullshit as autism.
It's the non-nazis, the people who claim they disagree with the Nazis, whose perception is swayed.
And whose apathy is necessary for atrocity.
this is the sort of thing you post when you’re ramping up to defying lawful court orders
So much of the media's behaviour over the past 12 months suggests the contradiction between their imperative for politics-as-entertainment (or clicks) and their trained vernacular in politics as process and policy.
Today in "no, the two parties aren't the same. Voting for the lesser of two evils does mean vastly less evil visited on the world".
CNN with an absolutely gigantic story:
"Elon Musk’s top lieutenants at the Treasury Department asked its acting secretary, a career civil servant, to immediately shut off all USAID payments using the department’s own ultra-sensitive payment processing system."
edition.cnn.com/2025/02/06/p...
Way*
I suppose one day to reduce the non white birth rate is to screw with the FAA so comprehensively that nobody wants to fly in US airspace at all.
Classic "I see the chess moves nobody else is making and see the game they're playing". It's possible for Trump to both sincerely direct State and Defence to begin resettlement/cleansing procedures, while also providing cover for the coup. They're not mutually exclusive.
Australian newspaper headline:- Trump just dressed up ethnic cleansing as a real estate opportunity, and blew up 'America First'
The headline here in Australia
4. Already, he is attacking trans and gay people, Black and Brown people, Muslims, women, political opponents, journalists .... For the far right, the list of potential victims never ends. Either we stand with all those they target, or we will be picked off one by one.
3. Trump has openly and disgustingly mocked people's disabilities. He's said to have a horror of people with missing or damaged limbs. We don't know how far he is willing or able to go, but we know what the far right has done in the past. We must stand in solidarity with all his potential victims.
I obviously wasn't around for JFK, the Reagan assassination attempt, the fall of the Wall, was only 5 when the towers fell, 7 when W did his daddy proud and so on. But today feels like one of those all time historic days. And that's terrifying. It hasn't been two weeks.
It's possible to both castigate the Democrats for gallivanting around with the Cheneys and being too deferential to Netanyahu and so on and so forth but also recognise that the 77 million who voted for this are absolutely awful people for their decision. It's not either/or.
Billionaires, fascists, misogynists, transphobes. Nothing mutually exclusive under their awful sun.
We need to be more specific. "South African billionaire" will never not sound like it refers to awful people. "Billionaire" too at this point.