For me, as an Eastern European, the USSR meant occupation, repression, loss of freedom, and hunger, not emancipation. When the Western Left ignores these experiences, it reproduces the very exclusion it claims to criticize.
Nada Homsi.. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult for civil defense crews to conduct rescue missions as massive air raids continue to pound Nabatieh (south Lebanon). Yesterday 4 paramedics were killed in a targeted triple-tap attack by Israel.
Due to the extensive fire belt likely few survived.”
Today, the future in Lebanon looks quite dim. We once again have to rely on Israel's benevolence and American assurances (each as reliable as Lebanese electricity).
Internally, polarisation is higher than I can ever recall, with each side creating scarecrows of their opponents.
we are absolutely not mad
WORD
you'd be tempted to call him Poland's Lindsey Graham except in terms of power and influence he's closer to a mix of Karl Rove, Mitch McConnell, and John Roberts all rolled into one 😅
text Translated from Polish ‼️ Jarosław Kaczyński stated that Hungary's new prime minister Peter Magyar "baked a puppy" in a microwave and beat his wife. Upon hearing from a journalist that this was untrue information, he replied that he believes it. Source: Polsat News from: https://x.com/goniecpl/status/2044006365861945538?s=46&t=hsPiZMMm8YRlkF0Dt4B0iw
how the closeted gay leader of the Polish right "congratulated" Peter Magyar's win in Hungary today ... so many brains, so much toast ...
oczywiście, thanks for writing on this, it's something I've been thinking about a lot recently as far as social media sharing; this helps me think through it
amazing words from @g-kwiatkowski.bsky.social:
"Denunciation can be necessary ... But it is also easy. It is easy to denounce and then feel cleansed. It is harder to examine the smaller pleasures that gather around denunciation: pride, vindication, relief, the sense of standing above the fallen."
Former Syracuse basketball player to be deported after more than a month in ICE custody
26 years old from South Sudan. He has been in the US since age 13, when he was recruited to the country for basketball.
Now being discarded as if he was human refuse.
Shame on Syracuse for not intervening.
www.syracuse.com/news/2026/04...
Welcoming to @flaminghydra.com a new contributor I've long admired: poet, activist and musician Grzegorz Kwiatkowski @g-kwiatkowski.bsky.social
His debut piece starts out in Gdańsk, ends up in your own heart
flaminghydra.com/issue-542/
wut????? omg
Every once in a while, I like to watch this video clip of Joe Biden comforting a grieving Parkland family to remind myself what compassionate leadership looks like.
This is the stuff I truly miss.
@apnews.com:
Minnesota investigates the arrest by ICE of a Hmong American man as a possible kidnapping
In January, ICE officers bashed open the door of ChongLy Thao's home at gunpoint without a warrant, then led him outside in just his underwear and a blanket in freezing conditions.
"Many initiatives that we treat as American, such as Project 2025, are based largely on Hungarian models."
"Much of what passes for Trumpian policy positions (…) arise in whole or in part from Hungarian sources.
This is pure, unadulterated preference falsification under authoritarian rule — @timurkuran.bsky.social getting it right yet again… www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/o...
I'm telling you every day is like a Left Behind or Thief in the Night jawn in America right now. Except no rapture to take us away from the 🤡
ok um wow
the private sphere deciding which countries do and do not exist is ... not the beginning of a happy movie
seriously! so crazy to see
If world history has taught us one thing, it's that shredding documents always takes longer than you expect.
ahhh, good to know. But yeh, the whole thing is truly bizarre to me. All of it. And def not in this kid's interest, no matter how well meaning it might be.
Orban's "farm" which looks more like Versailles hit an outlet mall in Nebraska
proposing we turn Orban's "farm" into a gay bathhouse and tell Dreher he can live there for free, as a treat
for queer teens it is usually far better to lie to abusive parents and not come out as queer than to shiver under a bridge downtown
should be obvious, but publicly calling out abusive parents is only something you do if you are confident you can then protect the children when they go back home
when I used to work with queer youth in Tulsa, one thing we continually reminded them is that their FIRST priority, always, had to be having a roof over their heads, food, and freedom from abuse; this often means lying to these kinds of parents bc the alternative, homelessness and/or abuse, is worse
as someone who had the same kind of parents, this would have been my absolute worst nightmare? after this lovely speech, this kid had to *go home* with abusive parents who had just been publicly humiliated - anyone who thinks that kid is not in a hell of a lot of danger now is insanely naive
if I remember correctly, Apple maps initially resisted switching to "Gulf of America" whereas in this instance they seem to have secretly, overnight, just wiped hundreds of Lebanese villages off the map, presumably as a favor to Israel? this isn't normal - we need to know more
begs the question: does Israel have some kind of secret leverage over Apple we don't know about, and should?
"I literally had to go see this for myself. Sure enough. Apple Maps has removed almost every town in Lebanon from the map while keeping every podunk town in Israel and Syria clearly marked."
— Mel
