just want to point out, telling anyone to "go back" to whatever country, is always racist, always always ALWAYS

the oceangate situation is really funny but i do want to take a moment to look at the fact that five people of their own volition decide to go two miles under the sea in something controlled by a $30 xbox controller with no beacon or way to navigate, go missing, and immediately a massive search effort is underway with people anxiously combing the ocean for any sign of these chucklefucks, but the greek coast guard capsized a boat full of hundreds of migrants, killing 80 with over 500 people still counted as missing, and the eu won't even investigate

you can and should hate rich people, but you also need to show up for the oppressed

It goes without saying that you'll often encounter prejudices that wouldn't fly today when you take in older media, but sometimes you also encounter prejudices which simply have no contemporary analogue. I've been taking in a lot of American media from the 1970s lately, for example, and there seems to be this whole thing about the moral degeneracy of the Swedish going on – and while I know there's probably a fascinating cultural context to that, it never stops feeling vaguely like I'm somehow being pranked.

An exploration of the depth of a father's love, and his attempts to keep his son happy, healthy and safe in a world rife with racism and violence.

This is one of the best and most impactful episodes of the podcast so far.

Your reminder that the queen is not a sweet old lady who represents an oppressive institution. She’s also personally a bitch.

The Holocaust survivor introduced herself as someone forced to flee Belgium – the country where she was born – in 1943 and travel “across war-torn Europe and dangerous seas” before coming to the UK in 1947.

“Now, when I hear you using words against refugees like ‘swarms’ and an ‘invasion’, I am reminded of the language used to dehumanise and justify the murder of my family, and millions of others.

Why do you find the need to use that kind of language?”

Ms Braverman responded by saying she “won’t apologise for the language that I’ve used” to “demonstrate the scale of the problem” around immigration.

Y'know maybe I'm in the minority on this but honestly if you like

See some random ass app or tech or whatever coming of China and your first thought is it's some scheme by those Evil Chinese you might just be a racist piece of shit actually-

there is such an incredible block in racist irish peoples minds that in one breath theyll bitch and moan about their ancestors emigrating en masse during the famine and then turn around and start spewing the most vitriolically racist xenophobic shit imaginable. it is estimated that around ten million irish people have emigrated throughout history, one million during the famine, and these racist cunts will tout these figures as evidence of the great irish tragedy of exile from our home due to british oppression AND THEN TURN AROUND AND DEMONISE AND DEHUMANIZE IMMIGRANTS IN IRELAND. how does thinking like this make sense to ye? even putting aside the inherent immorality, how do ye not see how hypocritical and blatantly stupid ye sound? but thats what fascists do, pick and choose what parts of history to acknowledge.

The YouTuber patriarch of a right-wing Canadian family, Arend Feenstra, decided that he’d had just about enough of the gay people existing in his country. So he decided to take his family to Russia instead. “We didn’t feel safe for our children there in the future anymore,” said avowedly Christian dad of eight Arend Feenstra on Russian state TV. “There’s a lot of left-wing ideology, LGBTQ+, trans, just a lot of things that we don’t agree with that they teach there now, and we wanted to get away from that for our children.”

[...]

Would it have been a good idea for them to learn Russian before they went? Yes, yes it would. Did they do that? No, they did not. “We were naive on that,” said Anneesa Feenstra, matriarch and former beet farmer. “I needed to use the washroom, and on the doors said male and female, but I didn’t know which was which!"

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Tagging @politicsofcanada

As I've said, fascism is rising in Europe. I am not surprised.

Italy is one of the many examples -look at who was unfortunately recently elected. Giorgia Meloni is racist and xenophobic, opposes abortion, laws that recognize same-sex relationships/is queerphobic, condemns gender studies, is cissexist/believes in reinforcing biological essentialism. Meloni supports white nationalist conspiracies... it's absolutely horrifying.

When 3 in 4 (74%) adults in the U.S. connected the gas, electricity, phone or internet in a new home, ICE was able to automatically learn their new address. Almost all of that has been done warrantlessly and in secret.

Dated May, 10, 2022 a report published by Georgetown Law showed how invasive ICE reaches. Obtained through 200 FOIA requests, the reports says ICE has tracked civilians using utilities, drivers licenses, facial recognition, and even used vulnerable unaccompanied minors being held in detention to find more leads (specifically, searching for more of their family members without documentation) . And they do so without warrants or even informing state legislators. Even companies and corporations have shared info with with ICE without their knowledge or consent.

"Most congressional leaders did not learn about ICE face recognition scans of DMV photos until The Washington Post ran an exposé on the practice, reporting on records obtained by the Center on Privacy & Technology. This exposé ran in 2019, over a decade after ICE penned its first known face recognition contract in 2008 for access to the Rhode Island driver database.

The fact that ICE was conducting face recognition scans on driver’s license photos came as a shock to senior lawmakers – even those with the greatest insight into DHS activities. On learning of the face scans, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the longtime chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, denounced the practice as “a massive, unwarranted intrusion into the privacy rights of Americans by the federal government, done secretly and without authorization by law.” ICE’s surveillance initiatives have regularly flown under Congress’ radar. While a few political leaders have pressed ICE in oversight letters and used appropriations riders to end the most aggressive of ICE’s actions, to date there has not been one full congressional hearing or Government Accountability Office (GAO) report focused on ICE surveillance."

Further, even when states become aware and make moves to block ICE from having this kind of access they just use a different door.

 In Washington, Governor Jay Inslee enacted a statewide policy to limit state agency cooperation with ICE only to discover that state licensing officials were routinely violating that policy. When state officials cut off ICE’s access to a state-run driver database, previously unseen records show that DHS searches of a separate network of driver data – one not operated by the state – nearly doubled. In Oregon, soon after lawmakers passed a law cutting off state data disclosures to ICE, the Oregon DMV signed agreements to sell its driver’s license records to Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the two primary data brokers that sell ICE access to driver information."

This is a HUGE breach of privacy and goes as far back as 2008 when ICE used facial recognition in Rhode Island under the Bush administration.

The article also discusses the potential danger this has to cause such a deep mistrust in government that it could cause folks to deny or reject state services to avoid being put in an ICE database or otherwise have their data used without knowledge or consent.

Likewise the report also has a section that advises how this privacy could be restored and corrected by Congress. Which means signal boost this. Congress was made aware of these breaches in 2019 and as of yet have done nothing to stop ICE or hold them accountable.

Which means it's on us to hold them accountable because once again the folks in Congress have shown they lack the ambition and initiative.

when a foreign government bans social media: evil, vile, wicked, fascist, censorship

when the US bans a social media: epic lol i hated that app anyway

Okay... what are you trying to say? That your idols being xenophobic and transphobic is not important becos it has nothing to do with the Palestinian liberation movement?? What are you trying to say?? I hate reactionary "leftists" who are in it for some sense of moral and intelellectual superiority and who don't seem to realise that our struggles are interconnected and have 0 solidarity with other marginalised groups. Believe it or not I think Palestinians deserve better allies than a xenophobic, transphobic asshole.