onfocus

The US state department has announced that it will designate four European self-described anti-fascist groups as Foreign Terrorist Organisations, as the Trump administration broadens its campaign against what it portrays as an international wave of leftist violence.

They should come up with a clever name for anti-anti-fascist groups. Also "portrays" is an interesting replacement for "fabricated".

“ICE is currently deploying armed, masked agents to take people from daycares, street corners, parking lots, and even their own homes, often based on paper thin suspicion and frequently with unjustifiable use of force. It is the mothers, fathers, children, friends, neighbors and coworkers being targeted by ICE who are most vulnerable in this situation.”

Google labeling the secret police force with the power and resources of the federal government a "vulnerable group” is particularly galling.

“All uses of force have been more than exemplary,” Bovino stated in a recent deposition. He is, as Judge Ellis has stated, lying. Bovino personally threw a tear gas canister in Little Village. He claimed in a sworn deposition that he was struck in the head by a rock before throwing the canister, and when videos showed no rock, admitted that he lied about the event. When shown video of himself tackling peaceful protestor Scott Blackburn, Bovino refused to acknowledge that he tackled the man. Instead, he claimed, “That’s not a reportable use of force. The use of force was against me.”

“I find the government’s evidence to be simply not credible,” said Judge Ellis in her November 6th ruling. “The use of force shocks the conscience.”

The US secret police invasion of Chicago has been a tragedy that we should all be ashamed of. We should be trying to stop it any way we can.

If the far-right succeeds in its project, when your wife gets sick you won’t be able to afford a doctor. Your kids or grandkids won’t be able to get an education. Should you become successful in business they will force you to pay bribes. These people believe in extraction, not growth. Their goal is to subjugate, to dominate, to force everyone beneath them into a life of precarious insecurity.

If you can make it past the title, this is an excellent picture of where the tech industry and tech culture were in the past compared with where it is now.

“The sandwich kind of exploded all over my uniform,” Lairmore said. “It smelled of onions and mustard.”

This horror show did not move this stone cold jury.

The Trump administration immediately appealed that order and earlier court decisions that required it to make at least partial payments to the SNAP program.

Just your regular reminder that this Republican administration works tirelessly to make people suffer.

The metaphor of Trump crushing a portion of the White House as he aims bulldozers at democracy itself is almost too obvious to note. But it’s not just a symbolic parallel: both are rooted in the same indifference to what these American institutions mean to Americans and to America. Both are rooted in Trump wanting to treat those things as his own and now feeling empowered to do precisely that.

Seeing the White House demolition has been surprisingly painful.

“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote, “they promptly let the individual go.”

But that is far from the reality many citizens have experienced.

Kavanaugh ignored the entire history of law enforcement as it exists in reality.

The dress-up “dismantles their narrative a little bit,” Jack Dickinson, also known as the “Portland Chicken,” told Willamette Week. “It becomes much harder to take them seriously when they have to post a video saying Kristi Noem is up on the balcony staring over the Antifa Army and it’s, like, eight journalists and five protesters and one of them is in a chicken suit.”

Tactical frivolity.

We don’t need to cherry-pick the remarks of a college group chat, which is essentially what this is, given that most attendees received a college degree within the last two decades.

The hateful, racist, antisemitic “young” Republicans are not having persistent youthful indiscretions. This is the Republican party. And this is a not-very-funny satirical article that packs a punch.

Reid, in a statement through her attorneys, said the verdict shows “that this administration and their peons are not able to invoke fear in all citizens.”

“I feel sorry for the prosecutors really, who must be burdened by Trump’s irrational and unfounded hatred for his fellow man,” she said. “Knowing that I can stand in front of 12 of my fellow citizens and be found not guilty for standing up for basic human rights makes me feel like, despite the scary times we live in, we have hope for the future.”

DC jury is not having the BS.

The way out of our present age of political violence is not scolding "we have to live here with one another," at those who are not threatening anyone's life, at those whose very existence supremacists refuse to accept. Rather the way out is standing between supremacists and their targets and telling them "no, you have to live with them, just like we live with you, and if you can't do that, then you have a problem with us, too."

This is the way.