I think she does - the bill is about materials being sent home with kids from schools that include sodomy or grooming or the incredibly vague ‘lgbt agenda’
It’s designed so that instead of banning books individually, they can just sue for anything they don’t like.
The headline makes it sound ridiculous - and in a way it is, of course - but it’s potentially dangerous. I don’t know how much sway her organisation has, if it’s big or niche. Hopefully zero
I was sceptical of this claim so I did some research - 700,000 is almost certainly too high, but other than that it’s disturbingly true:
The 700,000 number comes from a Russian parliamentarian in 2023, and refers to orphaned and abandoned children Russia has ‘protected’ from conflict zones in Ukraine. A later Russian report walked this back a bit, and claimed that most of this number were children accompanied by family voluntarily escaping the fighting by feeling into Russia.
Obviously we should be sceptical of what Russia says about this, but this is not the same number as the number of children abducted - not even Ukraine alleges it to be this high.
The number of children abducted and forcibly deported was officially reported by Kyev to be 19,000 to 20,000 at the time of the above claim based on the data (nearly 30,000 now). The real number is almost certainly higher - many Ukranian officials believe the actual amount is higher, with one saying it may be into the ‘hundreds of thousands’. A US report in 2022 estimates that Russia has “interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported… 260,000 children, from their homes to Russia”
Even if we take only the low amount that can be fairly positively stated as abductions, that’s nearly 30,000 children. Various reports have shown some of these children being given new Russian identities and false birth certificates, and being put up for adoption in Russia. Some have testified to being indoctrinated and shown pro-Kremlin propaganda.
This broadly constitutes Cultural Genocide - whether it technically is or not is for academics to argue over, because the legal definition of genocide is complicated and so much is unkown.
Whether or not you want to call it a Genocide, it is undeniably a War Crime. The ICC has issued arrest warrents for Putin and Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova over this.
These political groups are formed by members elected by national voters. A group can be formed as long as they have at least 25 members from at least one quarter of EU countries. They’re pretty much analogous to a party, they work in broadly the same way. In the Image above they’re broadly organised from Left to Right politically:
The LEFT group is, well, pretty left. They include Communists and Socialists, and in their own way can be a bit eurosceptic, although they typically want to reform or replace the EU rather than just disbanding it.
The GREENS are also pretty left, with a focus on Climate, Animal Rights, Income Equality, Feminism, that sort of thing. They are generally pro-Europe.
The S&D group are center left. Members tend to be from say, the Labour party of various countries. They want things like fairer employment and more regulated market. They were the largest party in the EU until 1999, now the second largest.
RENEW are Center, pretty Liberal (in the Phil Ochs sense). They’re pro-business and want a strong economy, but they at least talk up things like civil rights and social welfare (I don’t know enough about them to judge how well they do in practise). They’re very pro-EU, and have billed themselves as ‘the Pro-European political group’.
The EPP are center-right, pretty conservative. Lots of ‘Christian Democratic’ representation. Neoliberal, want more defence spending, pro-Europe, pro-Ukraine. They say they’re focused on the climate, but the Greens say that that’s a lie. They’ve been the biggest group since 1999.
The ECR calls itself center-right (but is really a bit right-er), and ‘soft-eurosceptic’. This Eurosceptism is their main thing: They support the idea of the EU, so they say, but they want to prevent it from going ‘too far’, with too much oversight, integration, and immigration. Some members are your standard conservative types, some are far-right.
The ID group is far-right. They don’t like the EU, and are opposed to it interfering with the ‘sovereignity’ of States. Anti-immigration, anti-‘islamisation’, pro-nationalism.
Nonaligned (technically ‘non-inscrits’) are just that - they haven’t joined with any of the above blocs.
These projected results broadly show increased support for the right over the left, but more sharply show gains for the Eurosceptic ID and Non-Inscrits (who often are Eurosceptic, but not always and I don’t actually know the individual cases here) at the expense of the pro-EU Greens and Renew. So it doesn’t look great for fans of the European Left.
If this is truly and legitimately where it ends - doorknocking - then its an annoyance and nothing more
But the real issue is that in the US the evangelical Christian scene has a lot of overlap with various racist/homophobic/right-wing/etcetc scenes
You can ignore ‘have you heard of our saviour Jesus Christ’ visits with a shoulder shrug, but I bet a lot of people have genuine safety concerns about this information being available to this crowd
I think Occupy was really interesting, and part of the reason was the lack of a clear and actionable message
I fully agree that the best and most effective protest movements are those with clear goals and demands, and Occupy wasn’t that
What it managed to do really effectively was bring all kinds of people and ideologies together - there were the active leftists and anarchists, but also liberals and the middle class and all sorts. I’ve read articles and accounts that talk of just every kind of person spending time in that main/original camp, and it spawned a lot of similar events here in the UK
Ultimately it had the same kind of energy as the ‘If you want it, war is over’ billboards of the late 60s. And absolutely thats frustrating from an activist p.o.v
But on the other hand, it did in a lot of ways shift public perspective. I’d stop short of saying it changed the paradigm, but it definitely contributed to an anti-neoliberal, anti-free-market normalization
So yeah, idk. It didn’t really achieve anything; the issues it tried to tackle are still omni-present. But maybe it did do something in some hard to quantify, nebulous ways. Its interesting at least 🤷♀️
But yeah really not a blueprint of an effective protest in a majority of ways
I mean, unless there was a hoax that led to widespread belief that they were gonna launch a bomb
Its suspicious if its out of nowhere, but less so if its in response to an existing rumour
This just isnt true. I’m not saying this to defend Israel and their actions in Gaza - its just really important to not get swept up in falsehoods, particularly at a time when legitimate criticism of Israel is being portrayed as antisemitic.
There are allegations that Israel administered a birth control drug - which has to be readministered every three months - to Ethiopian immigrants without informed consent. The investigation into this was flawed, but there is literally no evidence to suggest that anyone was forced or coerced into taking this.
What does seem plausible and even likely based on the facts is that doctors often made little or no effort to overcome language and cultural barriers and make sure that consent was fully informed and patients were completely aware of the effects of the procedure.
This is definitely an issue in and of itself, and is a level of societal racism. But what it is not, is ideoligical forcible sterilization.
Further, when you say ‘Ethiopian Jewish women tried to invoke the Law of Return’ the implication is that Israel was really against Ethiopian immigration. In reality, the Israeli government worked with the US to actively enable this - in 1984 Israeli covert forces worked to evacuate the Beta Israel community from Sudan to Israel during the civil war there (this is known as Operation Moses).
Basically, there is so so much to legitimately criticise the Israeli government for right now. Repeating misinformation like this just straight up doesn’t help.
The short version is that he’s gutted public services in Florida and made life worse for nearly everyone there - while engaging in massive culture war bullshit to distract his base
Not to downplay that, it includes laws and discourse such as ‘Dont Say Gay’ and attacking school curriculums that are incredibly damaging. He’s the guy that flew refugees to Martha’s Vineyard to ‘make a point’
https://time.com/6266618/ron-desantis-florida-governance-essay/
The font and moster-zombie dude is Iron Maiden (Eddy). I dont know if its AI or not but its not a real album cover, just a meme
Its not that you’re old or the meanings have changed - here’s Phil Ochs in 1966:
“In every political community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally”
Classic Liberalism overlaps with modern Libertarianism in quite a lot of ways. The emphasis is on personal freedom and restrictions on the power of the State. So, progressive in 19th Century terms, and theoretically anti-oppression (although in practise mainly for the white middle/upper class who benefited from free trade and markets).
This developed into Neo-Liberalism from the 70s/80s-ish, which goes fully all in on free markets and unregulated capitalism, and on essentially running a country centered around economic growth ideologies and private industry at the expense of, say, public services etc. Neo-Liberalism is the dominant ideology in the West, to the point where ‘left-wing’ parties like the UK’s Labour or the USA’s Democrats don’t challenge it.
From a 20/21st Century leftist PoV, the big problems with Liberalism are things like unregulated markets increasing wealth inequality, and things like opposition or indifference to welfare and public services, and a lack of reform/change from the state tackling systematic -isms etc.
So the kind of ‘Archetypal Liberal’ is someone who is ostensibly against oppression and injustice, but unwilling to address these issues in a meaningful way. Pro-status-quo, sometimes NIMBYs, very often white middle class. Wants more social justice, just not at the expense of the housing market.
(Sorry for the essay, i got a lil carried away)
If they’d rather die then they’d better do it, and decrease the surplus population!
Theres a ‘me’ though
Yup! And all we get for it is healthcare, childcare, college tuition, pensions, sick leave, maternity leave…
profitablegood healthcarewhite supremacyThe American Wayif you counttransphobiafamily valuesAll of these things are at risk.