Progressive Politics

As criticism mounted over Israel's assault and siege on Gaza—which has left more than 144,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and has flattened most of the coastal enclave while stoking deadly famine and the spread of preventable diseases including polio—Resnick helped expedite the flow of U.S. arms to the key Middle Eastern ally.

She also worked with the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan wants to arrest for alleged war crimes including "extermination," to allow private citizens to donate equipment to the Israel Defense Forces.

Annelle Sheline, a former State Department official who resigned earlier this year over Biden's support for Israel amid a war for which the key ally is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, told HuffPost that Resnick's appointment "reflects a doubling down on the administration's determination to continue to provide unconditional material support for Israel's genocidal campaign against civilians in Gaza."

alt-text: [ a thumbnail of blue text on a digital art wooden background next to the hand holding a rose democracy symbol. The text has multiple variations either saying “you won’t notice democracy ending, nobody notices democracy ending, or democracy ends quietly”]

alt-text for thumbnail: text saying “blocking fascists is self-care” next to an antifascist flag on a 2d digital art wooden background

Prem Thakker shares his sober realizations after two days at the DNC.

My second day at the Democratic National Convention led to a realization. For all the talk about mass protests and heightened security, about disruption and the pro-Palestinian movement overtaking events, things have not materialized in a way that's taken any kind of spotlight away from the DNC.

If anything, the DNC – its delegates, the headline speeches, the whole vibe – seems so insulated that one could assume there isn't a genocidal war, with more than 40,000 Palestinians killed, that the Biden-Harris administration is currently fueling.

Based on how attendees have behaved, one could assume Gaza is no big deal really, a now-rote nuisance some have to merely account for in their daily motions.

alt-text for thumbnail in case it embeds: it is an image of a queer flag with an infinity symbol, on a drawn wooden background with the words “autistic people mistaken for AI” on it

Alt text for the thumbnail in case it embeds: [blue words saying "what is ableism?" next to an autistic flag of many colors with an infinity symbol on it. This is all on a 2d digital art wooden background]

yo, one thing about actually abolishing oppression towards us trans people: it requires not putting any specific puberty above another. All puberties are permanent, not just trans ones. We have the ability to sit every person down before puberty and talk them through what it entails, and then let them choose what exactly they want to go through. Making it an explicit choice places trans and cis people into the same situation.

Even with zero medical barriers to transition once someone realizes they are trans, the social barrier of what you are "expected" to be is an issue, for multiple reasons. People who want to make big changes are often questioned and forced to prove that what they want is what they “actually want”, because it deviates from what is expected. People who deviate in smaller ways are punished in their own ways, with those deviations being treated as mistakes or failures, because another major role can't be easily assumed. They are pushed to drop everything that is not perfectly aligned with the role to not be constantly torn apart. We have the technology to provide agency, not allowing its use is oppression. The only way to abolish the hierarchy around puberty is to abolish expectations around puberty.

If you think a child doesn’t have the ability to decide what puberty they want to go through, forcing them into a random one isn’t better. If they can’t say no, then they definitely can’t say yes. People will always know themselves better than others do.

The point of protests is a threat to the state, and to wear down its reserves of resources and normality by taking up space and not allowing it to do things. If there is no threat of more actions, like even continued protesting, why would the state choose fundamental systematic change over losing a small bit of resources?

We are in the middle of a pandemic and so many protests are happening without a significant portion of people wearing masks. This makes these protests self defeating. Continued action won't happen in the moment when everyone gets sick, and fucking over anybody willing to protest with long covid means we get even less protesting in the future. There might be a small threat of more action, but that is far overshadowed.

The state is actively benefiting from protests right now because so many of yall are ableist and eugenicist. Even working alongside these people is counter-productive. If we don't exclude reactionaries from our action they will take us down with them.

Full episode: https://youtu.be/TwED_Znc9XQ

The diagram centrists don't want you to see

Centrism frames the debate about capitalism as one of consent vs. coercion and argue that capitalism is fine because workers consent in the legal sense to the labor contract. Democratic theory recognizes a distinction among voluntary contracts i.e. consent to alienate vs. consent to delegate. A centrist can't appeal to this distinction because capitalism and political democracy are on opposite sides

@progressivepolitics

Back in 2020, Biden campaigned on a promise to place a moratorium on deportations; he went as far as to apologize for the Obama-Biden’s administration record number of deportations. That means that, campaigning in 2024, it’s tricky for Biden or Harris to state a simple fact: that their administration has kicked out millions more migrants than Trump ever managed to.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240731112810/https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/28/trump-biden-immigration-deportation-00167914

The legendary feats the victorious wartime generation performed in saving the state and nation and their future, honourably defending peace and security of mankind and laying a solid foundation for building a rich country with a strong army, true to the ideology and guidance of the leader, are shining forever along with their noble name, and the matchless ideological and spiritual strength the brave warriors displayed in the war serves as an invincible might guaranteeing the steady and victorious advance of the cause of Juche.