Friday, January 31, 2025
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Elon Musk's salute
"It has begun. Trump is the President and Elon Musk did his part in launching the administration by doing a Nazi salute at the inauguration.
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This iteration of fascism is all about the oligarch class. It will fuse corporate power with state power, as fascism has always done, but it will also strip our government for parts and attack the working class specifically to reinforce the power of the ruling class, rather than attempting to build the power of the nation in any way. The oligarchs want to repeal the New Deal, repeal worker protections, crush unions and more. We must understand this as we enter the second Trump administration. We will be confronted with Nazism, unparalleled greed, and countless attacks from multiple directions. And, in the chaos, we must keep hold of this bigger picture if we are to effectively fight back.
The Trump onslaught is already upon us in direct, material, tangible ways. ICE raids are about to start; by the time you read this, they may have begun. Today they will likely be executed in fourteen cities. At the same time, Trump and Melania are both scamming the MAGA faithful out of billions of dollars with crypto schemes. The first executive orders of the new administration target trans and non-binary people, increase oil production, and even move to end the birthright citizenship enshrined in the constitution."
— J. P. Hill, The Nazi Regime Begins: Trump, Musk, and fighting the fascist oligarchy. Jan 21, 2025
Regarding that scam:
"Today, the guardrails have become so flimsy that blatant corruption barely makes the news. On Friday night, Trump launched a meme coin—a digital token with no real-world value whatsoever—and abruptly increased his net worth by tens of billions of dollars.
Anyone in the world, whether foreign despots, criminals, or lobbyists hoping for a political favor, can now directly pay the president, a man who governs by loyalty tests and self-interested, transactional dealing. When I checked this morning, it was the tenth most prominent story on the New York Times website; by tomorrow, it will have mostly disappeared from view and discussion, even as it becomes a defining feature of his corrupt administration."
— Brian Klaas, How to survive the second Trump era. Jan 20, 2025
"The tone for the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th president of the United States at noon today was set on Friday, when Trump, who once trashed cryptocurrency as “based on thin air,” launched his own cryptocurrency. By Sunday morning it had made more than $50 billion on paper. Felix Salmon of Axios reported that “a financial asset that didn’t exist on Friday afternoon—now accounts for about 89% of Donald Trump’s net worth.”"
— Heather Cox Richardson, January 20, 2025
But more to the point:
"Of all the dark moments during Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the darkest may have been the moment Trump acolyte and world’s richest man Elon Musk threw up not one but two Roman salutes—the gesture most strongly associated with Nazis and the phrase “Heil Hitler,” but also used as a symbol of support in other fascist regimes. The gesture was shocking, and observers from the left to the racist right alike agreed on what they saw. Neo-Nazis cheered. (“Holy crap … did Elon Musk just Heil Hitler at the Trump Inauguration Rally in Washington DC … This is incredible,” one prominent Holocaust denier wrote, later adding, “We are so back.”) Moderates and liberals were shaken.
One group, though, was unbothered: The Anti-Defamation League, which has as its mission fighting antisemitism and bigotry more broadly.
“It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge,” the ADL posted on the Musk-owned X. “In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead.”
Musk responded “Thanks guys” with a laugh-crying emoji.
Ha ha. The joke is on us.
The entire ethos of the men and women (but mostly men) who make up the white-supremacist-adjacent fascist-friendly too-online right is one of saying what they really think with enough plausible deniability to claim it’s all just a big joke, and if you take offense, it’s because you’re a triggered woke scold. There’s always a veneer of irony, a little smirk. If the story gets too big, then it’s yet another example of a biased media engaged in, as Musk called the latest headlines, dirty tricks."
* * *
The ADL, after all, has as its national director a man who has compared wearing a kaffiyeh to wearing a swastika. The group has conflated protests against Israel’s war in Gaza with antisemitism—and while far too many of these protests have indeed veered into the antisemitic, the ADL seems to equate just about any opposition to Israeli militarism with antisemitism, a position that has badly damaged their credibility. It’s not that there is no antisemitic threat from the left; there is. It’s that a sense of proportion is also necessary, and the ADL seems to believe that an encampment of kaffiyeh-wearing college kids is more dangerous than the wealthiest man in the world who owns a major communications platform and has the ear of the most powerful man in the world. This posture is a damning indictment of an organization that has a crucial mission, is being put to the test, and is badly failing."
It’s Clear Enough What Elon Musk Did. The ADL’s Response Is Pathetic.: We desperately need a better anti-antisemitism group than this. Jill Filipovic, Slate, Jan 21, 2025
"My favorite Kurt Vonnegut quote--"you are what you pretend to be"--comes from Mother Night, a novel about an American spy who pretends to be a Nazi propagandist only to realize later in life he was just being a Nazi propagandist." Gillian Branstetter, Bluesky
On an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast released February 28, when asked about the salute, Musk took the opportunity, not to say that racism and antisemitism are bad and that he will do everything in his power to make a better world for all, but instead to say that only people who invade Poland are Nazis, and thus the label is inaccurately applied to him. The bar is literally in Hell.
"“What’s relevant about Nazis is, like, are you invading Poland? And if you’re not invading Poland, maybe you’re not,” he continued. “You have to be committing genocide and starting wars.”"
— Elon Musk Defends Nazi-Like Gesture: 'Meant In The Most Positive Spirit Possible': “You have to be committing genocide and starting wars" to be a Nazi, the tech billionaire told Joe Rogan. Pocharapon Neammanee, HuffPost, Mar 1, 2025Elon Musk Shares Post Saying Hitler 'Didn't Murder Millions Of People': The repost, later deleted by Musk, said: "Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector employees did.” Sebastian Murdock, HuffPost, Mar 15, 2025
Friday, January 24, 2025
2025 anti-immigrant attacks underway
A couple days ago, January 22, I published this in Streetlights: From the Quakers: Ways to help immigrants
I spotted this article: The Pregnant Immigrants Fighting Trump’s Bid to End Birthright Citizenship: Trump hopes to gut birthright citizenship via executive order. In lawsuits filed across the country, immigrants seek to stop him. Shawn Musgrave, The Intercept, January 22 2025
Video posted yesterday, January 23, 2025:
ICE posted this. (1) The message is missing the "who, what, when, where, why, how." (2) The message was posted to X, Elon Musk's platform. (3) The message has no alt text.
HuffPost: Though ICE doesn't comment on ongoing investigations, "Homan said later Thursday [January 23] the number of arrests so far was closer to 1,300 people, adding that collateral arrests of citizens or others legally allowed to be in the country would be higher than normal because so-called sanctuary cities were not helping ICE agents." In other words, he blamed city officials, saying that because they didn't cooperate by turning in the people he was targeting, he had to go broad and arrest everyone.
Trump’s Mass Deportations Have Officially Begun: The White House is directing its shock-and-awe strategy inward. Roque Planas, HuffPost, Jan 27, 2025
Laken Riley Act
"The Laken Riley Act is a proposed United States law that requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal immigrants charged with or convicted of theft-related crimes, assaulting a police officer, or a crime that results in death or serious bodily injury like drunk driving. The Act would also allow states to sue the Department of Homeland Security for alleged failures in immigration enforcement.
The bill was introduced following the murder of Laken Riley by an illegal migrant, who had previously been cited for shoplifting, on the campus of the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. On January 22, 2025, the House agreed to the Senate version of the bill with a 263–156 vote. The bill is awaiting presidential signature.
Trump will likely sign the bill today, January 24.
'Harsh' New Federal Law to Expand Trump's Deportation Machine Hits NYC Just as the NYPD Doubles Down on Broken Windows: The Adams administration has not said how it plans to respond to the Laken Riley Act, which gives federal authorities the right to detain immigrants accused of crimes like petty theft. Max Rivlin-Nadler, Hell Gate (NYC), February 04, 2025
Here are some things I found a while back:
"Two US military flights bound for Colombia overnight [January 25–26, 2025] were turned back, according to a flight tracker, after Petro wrote in a post on X [January 26] that he is denying the entry of American planes carrying Colombian migrants." CNN
"According to data ICE posted on X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, the agency arrested 8,276 people between Jan. 22 and Jan. 31. It also issued 6,577 "detainers lodged" for people arrested by other law-enforcement agencies whom ICE has reason to believe are eligible for deportation. That's an average of 828 arrests and 658 detainers lodged per day — 980 arrests and 762 detainers lodged per day since Jan. 25, when ICE really started beefing up enforcement with widely reported raids in Chicago and other cities.
That's a big increase from the last year of published statistics under former President Joe Biden's administration. During fiscal year 2024 (from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024), ICE reported 113,431 arrests, or an average of 310 per day. So Trump is certainly cracking down on immigration more than his predecessor did.
* * *
Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive, real-time source for ICE data; we only know the numbers for Jan. 22-31 because the agency posted them on social media, and it has not posted any data so far in February. ...
Furthermore, ICE hasn't posted any public data about how many of the people it has arrested this year have been accused of crimes, violent or otherwise."
— Nathaniel Rakich via five thirty eight, Trump is deporting more immigrants — but the data is incomplete: It's unclear how many violent criminals are among those ICE has arrested, February 11, 2025
Trump’s policies on gender identity and immigration have trans immigrants worried about their future, Taylor Romine, CNN, February 23, 2025
Trump Administration Creates Registry For Immigrants Who Are In The U.S. Illegally: Failure to register would be considered a crime, and the administration has said it aims to deport undocumented immigrants who've committed crimes in the U.S. Rebecca Santana, HuffPost, Feb 25, 2025.
Trump Announces Plan To Sell Pathway To Citizenship For The Wealthy With Trump ‘Gold Card’: Trump referred to his gold card idea as a green card with a “higher level of sophistication." Taiyler S. Mitchell and Sara Boboltz, HuffPost, Feb 25, 2025
"...you’ve probably already heard, an 11-year-old girl Jocelynn Rojo Carranza died by suicide after her peers threatened to report her parents to ICE for deportation. Other immigrants appear to have been brutalized during arrests." (Andrea Pitzer, Feb 25, 2025)
Trump's appeal of Boasberg's temporary restraining order was scheduled to be heard on March 24 before a three-judge panel of the DC circuit court. See the court docket.
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Fixing the heart!
Denny Carter wrote a couple days ago: If you "reject the message that some people should be at the top of the hierarchies of oppression, and others are meant to be at the bottom of that hierarchy, and that’s just the way it is," then your heart is "not in need of fixing in this way." Let's not be "ignoring people’s agency;" let's not be "treating them like empty, thoughtless vessels that can be infiltrated and propagandized and ultimately tricked into adopting a worldview in which some humans are more equal than others."
This discussion is from David Lynch Knew Our Hearts Needed Fixing, Denny Carter, Jan 17, 2025.
It's a perennial topic:
"I wrote in March 2023 about the eternal stream of bad faith necessary for the American right to believe in the myth of “wokeness” and to craft policies that extinguish the various forms of woke in American culture."
How about this, Carter suggests: "See the things that have made your heart so hideous and so horrible and, consequently, so very weak, and fix it before it’s too late."
"Maybe it’s always been that simple, to grab those with hate and fear in their hearts and minds and to tell them to stop it, stop being assholes, stop treating as subhuman those who do not look or speak or think like you. Your heart is blackened, poisoned, corrupted. Lynch’s instruction was direct: Recognize the corruption of your heart, become conscious of it, and fix the fucking thing. Gordon Cole did not dance around the cultural and political leanings and influences of those who might have made jokes at the expense of a transgender colleague. He did not ignore their petty hatred and discrimination against someone who may have challenged their bedrock views of sex and gender, or excuse those views because they did not know better."
We could keep it simple.
"I could have simply listened to David Lynch. Or more precisely, FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole. It was Cole, played by the inimitable Lynch over three seasons of Twin Peaks, who cut right through the bullshit with which I have covered myself over these past couple years.
In a 2015 exchange with FBI Chief of Staff Denise Bryan, a trans woman who had risen through the Bureau’s ranks since last we saw her in the early 1990s, Cole (Lynch) reminds Bryan (played by David Duchovny) that he had stepped up in her defense when others in the FBI had mocked her transition. Cole is trying to darndest to extract information from Bryan in what is proving to be the culmination of a 25-year cold case when he delivers the line..."
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Friday, January 10, 2025
Los Angeles fires: Check information about fire department budget
Yes, be political
But fact-check your information.
Gov. Gavin Newsom created this new website: California Fire Facts
Supposedly: Bluesky
Amanda Smith shares numbers on Bluesky.
Chris Hayes says "it’s still actually not 100% clear to me":
It's a narrative.
There was an error with an emergency alert.
Fun fact: 20 years ago, I wrote about "The Reform of the Public Warning System" as it went digital.
Fact-check other political claims too.
Watch for disinfo jargon. https://bsky.app/profile/hntdove.bsky.social/post/3lfd46xfmhc2k
Fact-check images.
What it will cost to repair the damage
About a quarter-trillion dollars, the LA Times reports on January 24.
Los Angeles fires: Read history
California wildfires show we are not prepared for climate change: A fragmented city response revealed how even America's richest regions can't keep up with the new normal. Daria Solovieva, Salon, January 9, 2025
Los Angeles fires: Check on everyone
Check on everyone.
Don't expect them to be working their regular jobs.
"It's hellish here. Please be kind." — Jennifer Kretchmer, Bluesky
January 2025: Watch live: Hearings on Montana bathroom ban
Watch live: Friday, Jan 10, 2025 08:00 - 12:00
Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Los Angeles fires: What social media shows me today
From a distance, I see this on socials.
Fire perimeter map: Palisades Fire devastates LA County, jumps in size as winds batter Southern California Marissa Wenzke, Matthew Rodriguez, Dean Fioresi, Chelsea Hylton. CBS News. Updated on: January 10, 2025
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