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intersectionalpraxis · 1 month

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icedsodapop · 3 months

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This is so foul

Red carpets may be a chance to talk up current projects while wearing high-wattage fashion, but they’re also an opportunity for stars to express their support for vital issues — that’s why viewers of Sunday’s 2024 Golden Globe Awards are seeing some attendees wearing yellow ribbons at tonight’s ceremony.

J. Smith-Cameron of Succession and John Ortiz of American Fiction are among the stars who have arrived sporting a yellow ribbon to show support for the roughly 130 hostages who are still being held in captivity by Hamas since the terrorist organization attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The symbolic effort was organized by Bring Them Home, an Israeli hostage advocacy organization that has been working behind the scenes to supply the ribbons, and is being coordinated by Ashlee Margolis, founder of Beverly Hills-based branding agency The A List. While the Israeli hostages are the main focus of the effort, the hostages reportedly represent 30 nationalities.

The choice of yellow is rooted in the origins of the symbol. Yellow ribbons became a popular emblem of support during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, when 52 Americans were held in captivity in Tehran for 444 days. Worn on lapels and seen on front porches and trees across the U.S., the yellow ribbon became the most widely used symbol of bringing the hostages safely home.

It's to support US imperialism, pure and simple.

- mod sodapop

#golden globes 2024 #free palestine #us propaganda #palestine #us imperialism #golden globes

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workersolidarity · 7 months

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Politico defending LITERAL WWII Nazis.

Politico seriously suggests there is "nuance" around Yaroslav Hunka's joining of the Nazi 14th Waffen SS Grenadier Division (1st Galicia) to fight the Soviet Union and, like Canadian commentators over the last few days, suggests no war crimes were committed by this Division.

That's COMPLETE AND UTTER LUNACY.

The Nazi Germany 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS was NOTORIOUS for SLAUGHTERING their way through Ukraine, enthusiastically participating in the genocide of Poles, Roma, Jews, and Socialists/Communists

These people are manipulating history and your ignorance of it to make Nazis go from black and white obvious evil, to shades of grey in which you're not "expert" enough to have an opinion on, thereby weakening efforts to expose fascist ideology being integrated into Western society.

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lastcatghost · 5 months

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The most absurd propaganda shit I see is when some magazine or newspaper runs an article of money management advice from someone who's wealthy.

The ultra rich, especially those born into excess wealth always seem to be the people with the worst money management skills out there.

I want grocery shopping tips to save from a single parent with many dependents and yet don't qualify for stamps, let them tell me their tips for stretching the buck, not some mf who's never actually had to work and worry trying to tell those they exploit to just cut out all luxuries, and somehow being more miserable will magically save enough to buy a house

#class warfare #working poor #human rights and civil liberties #capitalism #poverty #classism #fuck capitalism #late stage capitalism #communism #violence of poverty #economic violence #billionaire propaganda #us propaganda #anti capitalism #capitalist propaganda

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theculturedmarxist · 1 year

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Being labeled a Russian propagandist all day every day for criticizing US foreign policy is really weird, but one advantage it comes with is a useful perspective on what people have really been talking about all these years when they warn of the dangers of “Russian propaganda”.

I know I’m not a Russian propagandist. I’m not paid by Russia, I have no connections to Russia, and until I started this political commentary gig in 2016 I thought very little about Russia. My opinions about the western empire sometimes turn up on Russian media because I let anyone use my work who wants to, but that was always something they did on their own without my submitting it to them and without any payment or solicitation of any kind. I’m literally just some random westerner sharing political opinions on the internet; those opinions just happen to disagree with the US empire and its stories about itself and its behavior.

Yet for years I’ve watched people pointing at me as an example of what “Russian propaganda” looks like. This has helped inform my understanding of all the panic about “Russian influence” that’s been circulating these last six years, and given me some insight into how seriously it should be taken.

That’s one reason why I wasn’t surprised by Matt Taibbi’s reporting on the Twitter Files revelations about Hamilton 68, an information op run by DC swamp monsters and backed by imperialist think tanks which generated hundreds if not thousands of completely bogus mainstream news reports about online Russian influence over the years.

Hamilton 68 purported to track Russian attempts to influence western thought on social media, but Twitter eventually figured out that the “Russians” the operation has been tracking were actually mostly real, mostly American accounts who just happened to say things that didn’t perfectly align with the official Beltway consensus. These accounts were often right-leaning, but also included people like Consortium News editor Joe Lauria, who’s about as far from a rightist as you can get.

They played a massive role in fanning the flames of public hysteria about online Russian influence, but while they did this by pretending to track the behavior of Russian influence ops, in reality they were tracking dissent.

One of the craziest things happening in the world today is the way westerners are being brainwashed by western propaganda into panicking about Russian propaganda, something that has no meaningful existence in the west. Before RT was shut down it was drawing a whopping 0.04 percent of the UK’s total TV audience. The much-touted Russian election interference campaign on Facebook was mostly unrelated to the election and affected “approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content” according o Facebook. Research by New York University into Russian trolling behavior on Twitter in the lead-up to the 2016 election has found “no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.” A study by the University of Adelaide found that despite all the warnings of Russian bots and trolls following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the overwhelming majority of inauthentic behavior on Twitter during that time was anti-Russian in nature.

Russia exerts essentially zero influence over what westerners think, yet we’re all meant to freak out about “Russian propaganda” while western oligarchs and government agencies continually hammer our minds with propaganda designed to manufacture our consent for the status quo which benefits them.

All this and we’re still seeing calls for more narrative management from the western empire, like the recent American Purpose article “The Long War of Ideas” being promoted by people like Bill Kristol which calls for a resurrection of CIA culture war tactics like those used during the last cold war. Every day there’s some new liberal politician sermonizing about the need to do more to fight Russian influence and protect American minds from “disinformation”, even as we are shown over and over again that what they really want is to shut down dissident voices.

That’s what we’re seeing in the continual efforts to increase online censorship, in the bogus new “fact-checking” industry, in calls to increase the output of formal US government propaganda operations like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, in the way all dissent about Russia has been forcefully purged from the western media in recent years, in the way empire-amplified trolling operations have been shouting down and drowning out critics of US foreign policy online, in the way censorship via algorithm has emerged as one of the major methods of restricting dissident speech.

They claim there needs to be a massive escalation in propaganda, censorship and online psyops in order to fight “Russian influence”, while the only influence operations we’re being subjected to in any meaningful way are only ever of the western variety. They just want to do more of that.

Our rulers aren’t actually worried about “Russian influence”, they’re worried about dissent. They’re worried the public won’t consent to the “great power competition” they plan to subject us to for the foreseeable future unless they can exert massive influence over our minds, because they know that otherwise we will recognize that our interests are directly harmed by the economic warfare, exploding military spending and nuclear brinkmanship which necessarily accompanies that campaign to reign in Russia and stop the rise of China.

They’re propagandizing us about the threat of foreign propaganda in order to justify propagandizing us more. We’re being manipulated into consenting to agendas that no healthy person would ever consent to without copious amounts of manipulation.

#russian propaganda #us propaganda #propaganda #caitlin johnstone #manufacturing consent #misinformation #disinformation #media disinformation

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healingheartdogs · 6 months

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Biden lied at a public event on the news to spread Israeli propaganda and now the White House is doing damage control for him. I am so serious when I say not to trust anything right now.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/white-house-clarifies-biden-s-claims-on-confirmed-pictures-of-hamas-beheading-children-/3016397

https://voz.us/biden-confirms-that-hamas-murdered-babies-i-never-thought-that-i-would-see-pictures-of-terrorists-beheading-children/?lang=en

https://nypost.com/2023/10/11/biden-ive-seen-pictures-of-terrorists-beheading-children-in-israel/

This is a claim initially made by a biased Israeli news network with ties directly to the Israeli prime minister and Israeli intelligence agencies, a claim that even the IOF has refused to confirm on any level because they have no actual evidence it ever happened. Please be aware that even the articles about this calling the president out for his lie are full of Israeli propaganda that paints Palestinians as terrorists based on even more still unfounded claims such as those of mass rape without evidence. Do not trust what you see reported. This is literal proof that even the highest seats of power and authority are not above making things up in this situation. The western media is throwing itself full force into Israeli propaganda right now to justify the genocide of Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza -- about half of which are children with the majority of those being under 15 years old -- while the Israeli government and and IOF indiscriminately bombs them and calls it "self defense".

#palestine #israel #hamas #joe biden #israel palestine conflict #that tag is for reach please dont call it that because its a genocide not a “conflict”#free palestine #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #us politics #us propaganda #propaganda #made this its own post with sources because it NEEDS to be seen #YOU CAN NOT TRUST THE MEDIA ABOUT PALESTINE AND ISRAEL

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lonelyrosegold · 2 years

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The US really be out here like gaslight, gatekeep, girl boss its own fucking citizens

#pride month #black lives matter #lesbian #lgbt #blacklivesmatter #America #joe biden #bernie sanders #politics #us politics #us propaganda #police #pride #pride 2022 #2022 #war #united states #4th of july

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lilithism1848 · 7 months

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Atrocities US committed against PRISONERS

The US currently operates a system of slave labor camps, including at least 54 prison farms involved in agricultural slave labor. Outside of agricultural slavery, Federal Prison Industries operates a multi-billion dollar industry with ~ 52 prison factories , where prisoners produce furniture, clothing, circuit boards, products for the military, computer aided design services, call center support for private companies.

Ramping up since the 1980s, the term prison–industrial complex is used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. Such groups include corporations that contract prison labor, construction companies, surveillance technology vendors, companies that operate prison food services and medical facilities, private probation companies, lawyers, and lobby groups that represent them. Activist groups such as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) have argued that the prison-industrial complex is perpetuating a flawed belief that imprisonment is an effective solution to social problems such as homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy.

The War On Drugs, a policy of arrest and imprisonment targeting minorities, first initiated by Nixon, has over the years created a monstrous system of mass incarceration, resulting in the imprisonment of 1.5 million people each year, with the US having the most prisoners per capita of any nation. One in five black Americans will spend time behind bars due to drug laws. The war has created a permanent underclass of impoverished people who have few educational or job opportunities as a result of being punished for drug offenses, in a vicious cycle of oppression.

In the present day, ICE (U.S._Immigration_and_Customs_Enforcement), the police tasked with immigration enforcement, operates over 200 prison camps, housing over 31,000 undocumented people deemed “aliens”, 20,000 of which have no criminal convictions, in the US system of immigration detention. The camps include forced labor (often with contracts from private companies), poor conditions, lack of rights (since the undocumented aren’t considered citizens), and forced deportations, often splitting up families. Detainees are often held for a year without trial, with antiquated court procedures pushing back court dates for months, encouraging many to accept immediate deportation in the hopes of being able to return faster than the court can reach a decision, but forfeiting legal status, in a cruel system of coercion.

Over 90% of criminal trials in the US are settled not by a judge or jury, but with plea bargaining, a system where the defendant agrees to plead guilty in return for a concession from the prosecutor. It has been statistically shown to benefit prosecutors, who “throw the book” at defendants by presenting a slew of charges, manipulating their fear, who in turn accept a lesser charge, regardless of their innocence, in order to avoid a worst outcome. The number of potentially innocent prisoners coerced into accepting a guilty plea is impossible to calculate. Plea bargaining can present a dilemma to defense attorneys, in that they must choose between vigorously seeking a good deal for their present client, or maintaining a good relationship with the prosecutor for the sake of helping future clients.

European countries. John Langbein has equated plea bargaining to medieval torture: “There is, of course, a difference between having your limbs crushed if you refuse to confess, or suffering some extra years of imprisonment if you refuse to confess, but the difference is of degree, not kind. Plea bargaining, like torture, is coercive. Like the medieval Europeans, the Americans are now operating a procedural system that engages in condemnation without adjudication.”

A grand jury is a special legal proceeding in which a prosecutor may hold a trial before the real one, where ~20 jurors listen to evidence and decide whether criminal charges should be brought. Grand juries are rarely made up of a jury of the defendant’s peers, and defendants do not have the right to an attorney, making them essentially show-trials for the prosecution, who often find ways of using grand jury testimony to intimidate the accused, such as leaking stories about grand jury testimony to the media to defame the accused. In the murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice, all of whom were unarmed and killed by police in 2014, grand juries decided in all 3 cases not to pursue criminal trials against the officers. The US and Liberia are the only countries where grand juries are still legal.

The US system of bail (the practice of releasing suspects before their hearing for money paid to the court) has been criticized as monetizing justice, favoring rich, white collar suspects, over poorer people unable to pay for their release.

On Jan 26th, In Mississippi state penitentiary, an inmate was found hanging in his cell, in a string of deaths in the prison. This is the 12th death within a single month.

A photo surfaced of a November 2019 training class for prison guards in west virginia, showing 34 trainees doing a nazi salute. Only 3 people have been fired. A large number of prison workers, and populations in prison towns, are white supremacists.

A black-site interrogation warehouse in Chicago called Homan Square is notorious for the sexual abuse, torture, and disappearances of its prisoners. The main interrogator, Richard Zuley, applied torture techniques he learned at Guantanamo Bay at Homan Square.

On Oct 25, 2014, a mentally ill inmate, Michael Anthony Kerr, at the Alexander Correctional Institution in Taylorsville, NC, died of thirst after being denied water during a 35-day solitary confinement. Prison officials have said since Kerr’s death six months ago that they would investigate the events that led to his death, but no report has been issued and officials have not said when one would be.

On May 23rd, 2014, a mentally ill inmate at a Dade County correctional facility near Miami FL was tortured to death by prison guards. Darren Rainey was serving a two-year sentence for cocaine possession when he was forced into a locked shower by prison guards as punishment for defecating in his cell, says one inmate. Once Rainey was inside the shower, guards blasted him with scalding hot water as he begged for his life. Investigators determined that there was not enough evidence to charge the guards.

The Crime Bill of 1994, signed into law by Bill Clinton, increased the size of the US prison industry and dealt with the problem of crime by emphasizing punishment, not prevention. It extended the death penalty to a whole range of criminal offenses, and provided $30 billion for the building of new prisons, to crack down on “super predators”, a term used by Hillary Clinton to refer to remorseless juvenile criminals.

In the 1978 case, Houchins v. KQED, Inc. the Supreme Court ruled that the news media do not have guaranteed rights of access to jails and prisons. It ruled also that prison authorities could forbid inmates to speak to one another, assemble, or spread literature about the formation of a prisoners’ union.

In September 1971, prison guards killed George Jackson, a black Marxist and member of the Black Panthers in San Quentin prison (who had served 10 years of an indeterminate prison sentence for a $70 robbery), after he attempted to free himself and other inmates. Outrage over this, terrible prison conditions, and mistreatment by white prison guards, caused the Attica Prison Riot, in which 33 inmates and 10 prison guards were killed, and sparked dozens of prison riots across the country. In Attica, 100 percent of the guards were white, prisoners spent fourteen to sixteen hours a day in their cells, their mail was read, their reading material restricted, their visits from families were conducted through a mesh screen, their medical care disgraceful, 75% were there as a result of plea bargaining, and their parole system inequitable.

Many companies in the 1800s were guilty of using prison laborers, such as the Tennesee Coal Iron and Railroad Company. In 1891, the prison workers struck and overpowered the guards, and other neighboring unions came to their aid.

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magicrainbowkitties · 2 months

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I was in highschool JROTC and continually ran into the slogan "freedom isn't free," and I thought "no yeah absolutely, just because you've declared you have freedom doesn't mean you're actually free in society, that's a nebulous concept that has a lot of different meanings to different people and institutions."

And now I feel stupid bc I now realize it's a recruitment slogan meaning "You are free as an American because military folks paid for it in blood, but it still costs more to keep you free. Freedom has a price tag on it."

And now, as an anarchist it's like...

#us military #us propaganda #anarchy #anarchist #freedom is free actually #it's the lack of freedom that costs us

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nando161mando · 2 months

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intersectionalpraxis · 2 months

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Hilary Clinton is a perpetual disappointment. I have had sympathy for her in the past given the rampant sexism and misogyny she has had to face -directly from her colleagues to mass media, and especially considering she's had to navigate decades of a career where mostly men berated her and many women for getting into politics because women are 'too emotional.'

Given the history of the Clinton's even their evils and complicity in US imperialism, Sana calls this out perfectly -Hilary, like her fellow politicians who weaponize feminism across the political spectrum in order to push their agenda is both vile and counter to the heart of feminist movements -which is challenging and dismantling powerful institutions/structures/governments that oppress people -in order to create real systemic changes.

Hilary, you cannot sit there and tell people you care about women and girls when Palestinian women and girls are being disproportionately and PURPOSELY targeted by the IOF. Hilary, you cannot look away from the sexual violence and abuse Palestinian women have and continue to face (the recent UN report is ONE example). Hilary, you're a hypocrite whose own 'sympathy' only extends to those apart of the empire you work for. Hilary, while you're standing on the side of the oppressor, you're simultaneously becoming one yourself (or to be quite frank -you already are one).

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icedsodapop · 8 months

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It's so funny how pple on all social media platforms are claiming that Oppenheimer isn't propaganda becos it criticizes the bomb, and Im just going, my dears you need to remember how propaganda works. Saying Oppenheimer couldnt possibly be propaganda becos it is critical of the bomb is like saying Brooklyn 99 can't be copaganda becos they had episodes that were critical of the cops. 😑😑😑

Im sick and tired of having to explain until I'm blue in the face that propaganda, particularly Hollywood propaganda, doesnt always have to take the form of obvious messages like "X is good!!" Or, "Y is bad!!" Anyways, here's a great tiktok that explains why Oppenheimer is propaganda:

Credit: @malihaness

#oppenheimer #barbenheimer #films #imperialism #us imperialism #propaganda #us propaganda #hollywood propaganda

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workersolidarity · 9 months

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Anti-Communism is something bred into Americans from the time we are children. We are taught how anything related to Stalin is automatically bad and anything involving the Soviet Union is inherently secretive and authoritarian.

This bias is so deeply ingrained, that, having finally after years of Marxist and Geopolitical study, I've finally reached a point where those little anti-Communist tropes and sound bites inserted into our political conversations catch my attention automatically.

Now this took a really long time to reach. Anti-Communism is so deeply ingrained in our society, so embedded in our information space, and this completely by design, that we don't notice it in our everyday lives. We're not meant to. We're meant to internalize these stereotypes until it affects every aspect of our political thinking.

And I'll give you an example of how even the most obscure media consumption can result in our exposure to anti-Communist propaganda.

So I'm watching one of these obscure science channels on YouTube, being interested in the science behind nuclear criticality. So in the first video, which is about a famous incident in which a Russian scientist was exposed to a particle beam in an accelerator that resulted in serious injury but he survived. And at the end of the video, they start talking about how he really suffered under that awful Soviet Bureaucracy when he was denied his free government healthcare in 1997. 🙄

I seriously face palmed on that one.

But then I'm watching an entirely different science video on an entirely different nuclear accident. This one the only fatal Nuclear reactor accident in American history.

So I get to the end of this video, they've done a great job at really helping you understand the science behind what triggered the accident, and I'm really satisfied with the video, and then, right at the end they throw this little tidbit of information out as though it too were a statement of fact:

[Speaking factually about the fatal design flaw responsible for the US accident in 1961 that was also present in the design of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986]

"When we don't learn from history (deeply accusing stare at the Soviets) it tends to repeat itself"

Ugh!!!!!!!

🤯

Okay, so basically he has to throw in the insinuation that somehow the Communists are even more deeply responsible for Chernobyl than the Americans were for SL-1, the destroyed US nuclear reactor from 1961.

Now on its face, most people aren't going to think twice about such a statement. It is meant to evoke a response inside you of "ugh those Communists were just terrible to see our mistakes and repeat them anyway!" without ever giving any kind of critical nudge at the thought whatsoever. After all, we Americans all know how evil and awful Communists, and especially Russian Communists were.

And that's supposed to be the end of that. Two science videos, both ending with throw away lines of anti-Communist propaganda, both meant to leave me feeling superior as an American and especially an American Capitalist!

But the reality exposes the absurdity of American anti-Communist propaganda!

How would the Soviets have known about the US design flaw years earlier?

Am I just mistaken and it was common practice from the 1960's to the 1980's to share our nuclear trade secrets with our greatest adversary??? To share nuclear designs with the great evil empire the USSR at the height of the Cold War?

Please. How the fuck could the Soviets have known the details of the SL-1 design flaws?

But that's not even really the point, because in the end, it does not matter how ridiculous or absurd or counter factual US propaganda becomes because the public is just so deeply propagandized, so well trained, and so peppered with this kind of subliminal propaganda all day every day.

And it truly took years for me, not just to be able to recognize propaganda anyone can do that, but to really begin to understand the depth and nature of which we are being saturated in this constant stream of pro-Imperialist, pro-Capitalist, often conflicting narratives that are intended to make us accept without ever critically analyzing what "approved" sources tell us.

I cannot stress enough the importance and personal responsibility of every worker to educate yourself on the nature of advertising and propaganda and their relationship to Capitalism and Imperialism.

It is so important that we understand how Wall Street, the Big Banks, Big Investors and Big Corporate bosses, how they use the tools of the media and internet to control and maintain the information available to us and how they use that control to maintain the myths of Capitalism, Neoliberalism and an Imperialist Foreign Policy, as well as maintain the myths of "authoritarianism " and "human rights violations" maintained around US Adversaries like the Soviet Union and now Russia, Iran, Cuba, DPRK, Vietnam, China and on and on and on.

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lastcatghost · 6 months

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On one of the least surprising turn of events since oregon decriminalized substance use, the lack of accessible and realistic resources to actually help people gain a footing in recovery, instead in the public eye, ignorant of the reality, the general assumption is so many people using in the open, the blame shifts entirely on the people suffering, if they're still using they just don't want help. The changing of the law also aided the misplaced judgment as people general grew more and more resentful at the lack of police interactions and incarceration of homeless users.

Now as anyone understanding this tactic could see coming, cities across Oregon and many pig chiefs are starting to publicly call for re Criminalization of substances, and they'll likely not only succeed with this, but I'd bet anything when the law changes back to locking users up again, it will be even harsher than every other state. They'll claim decriminalization was a failed experiment and proves heavier sentences and allowances for the police to pursue any suspected user or dealer.

God forbid they give people things like housing and actual treatment so they can have a way to even attempt recovery, when instead they can publicly be used as live public propaganda pawns, thus increasing the publics approval for incarnation in the slavery system that is US prisons, it's providing housing that they can profit off of, so clearly that's what's better for business after all. Can't have a surplus of slave labor if people get real help.

#portland #decriminalize drugs #human rights and civil liberties #capitalism #poverty #classism #homelessness #fuck capitalism #late stage capitalism #communism #class warfare #us prisons #us propaganda #prison system #abolish the police #abolish prisons

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theculturedmarxist · 1 year

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The Biden administration's Department of Justice has just charged four members of the African People's Socialist Party (APSP) for conspiring to act as agents of Russia by using speech and political action in ways the DOJ says "weaponized" the First Amendment rights of Americans.

The Washington Post reports:

Federal authorities charged four Americans on Tuesday with roles in a malign campaign pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda in Florida and Missouri — expanding a previous case that charged a Russian operative with running illegal influence agents within the United States.

The FBI signaled its interest in the alleged activities in a series of raids last summer, at which point authorities charged a Moscow man, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, with working for years on behalf of Russian government officials to fund and direct fringe political groups in the United States. Among other things, Ionov allegedly advised the political campaigns of two unidentified candidates for public office in Florida.

Ionov’s influence efforts were allegedly directed and supervised by officers of the FSB, a Russian government intelligence service.

Now, authorities have added charges against four Americans who allegedly did Ionov’s bidding through groups including the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement in Florida, Black Hammer in Georgia, and an unidentified political group in California — part of an effort to influence American politics.

AFP reports that the conspiracy charges carry a sentence of up to ten years, with three of the four APSP members additionally charged with acting as unregistered agents of Russia which carries another five years.

“Russia’s foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights – freedoms Russia denies its own citizens – to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen in the DOJ's press release regarding the indictments, adding, “The department will not hesitate to expose and prosecute those who sow discord and corrupt U.S. elections in service of hostile foreign interests, regardless of whether the culprits are U.S. citizens or foreign individuals abroad.”

Looks like the United States has decided to dispense with those freedoms as well.

The superseding indictment containing these charges consists of a lot of verbal gymnastics to obfuscate the fact that the DOJ is prosecuting US citizens for speech and political activities in the United States which happen not to align with the wishes of the US government. The grand jury alleges that the aforementioned Ionov "directed" these Americans to "publish pro-Russian propaganda" and "information designed to cause dissention in the United States," which is about as vague and amorphous an allegation as you could possibly come up with.

For the record Omali Yeshitela, the founder and chairman of the African People's Socialist Party and one of the four Americans named in the indictment, has adamantly denied ever having worked for Russia. Earlier this month before charges were brought against him, the Tampa Bay Times quoted him as saying, "I ain’t ever worked for a Russian. Never ever ever ever. They know I have never worked for Russia. Their problem is, I’ve never worked for them.”

But it's important to note that this should not matter. Under the First Amendment the government is forbidden to abridge anyone's freedom to speak however they want and associate with whomever they please, which necessarily includes being as vocally pro-Russia as they like and promoting whatever political agendas they see fit, whether that happens to advance the interests of the Russian government or not. The indictment alleges that the four Americans engaged in "agitprop" by "writing articles that contained Russian propaganda and disinformation," but even if we pretend that's both (A) a quantifiable claim and (B) a proven fact, propaganda and disinformation are both speech that the government is constitutionally forbidden from repressing.

It's not reasonable for the government to just dismiss the First Amendment on the grounds that it is being "weaponized". You can't have your government dictating what speech is valid and what counts as "agitprop" and "disinformation", because they'll always define those terms in ways which benefit the government, thus giving more power to the powerful and taking power away from the people. You can't have your government dictating what political groups are legitimate and which ones are tools of a foreign government, because you can always count on the powerful set such designations in ways which benefit themselves.

There's also the brazen hypocrisy of it all. The US government is constantly engaging in foreign influence operations with outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up to help foment coups and color revolutions and advance US information interests overtly in ways the CIA used to do covertly.

As commentator Brian Berletic noted on Twitter, "The US through the National Endowment for Democracy has created armies of organizations carrying out malign influence operations around the world including here in Thailand. When the Thai government attempts to stop this activity, the US embassy shouts 'free speech.' Thailand's government and others around the world could easily cite this move by the US Justice Department to target and uproot US-funded organizations doing exactly this and worse."

So for the US government to now claim it's legitimate to start throwing US citizens in prison for a decade because they published "propaganda" for another country is absurd, and more than a little scary. The most powerful government in the world needs more political dissent at home, not less, and here they are trying to turn it into a crime.

When they claim the members of the APSP published "propaganda" and promoted "dissention", what they really mean is that they engaged in speech and political activism that the US government does not like. The spinmeisters will try to spin it, the legal mumbo-jumbo will try to obfuscate it, but that's what's happening. Don't let them conceal this from you. They're not worried about Russian propaganda, they're worried you'll stop listening to US propaganda.

#us propaganda #caitlin johnstone #African people's socialist party #us censorship #first amendment #russia #new cold war

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troythings · 4 months

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throw wonder woman (2017) in the trash.

it is not “empowering” or “inspiring.” it is pro-war, us versus them, american imperialist dogshit with some selective feminism tacked on. wonder woman (2017) is the reason that war criminal idf propagandist gal gadot has such a big following. why people in the us even listen to her in the first place.

its easy to imagine now, because of course she signed up for a film where her character can kill enemy soldiers, humiliate their women and get celebrated for it.

#wonder woman #wonder woman 2017 #anti wonder woman 2017 #anti gal gadot #fuck israel #fuck imperialism #american propaganda #us propaganda #palestine #free palestine #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #expose israel

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