But adding some specific set of demands will accomplish even less: it will alienate supporters who don’t agree with all the demands

That’s “means testing”. A classic move from the wealthy (via neoliberals) to turn a movement against itself and delay action. And why I personally don’t like trying to unite nationwide protests only a central authority or allowing a small unelected group to control a movement. The wealthy are going to try and corrupt it, and their money makes that easy for them.

it will be due to contingent circumstances that neither side was able to predict.

It’s very easy to predict…

The only reason any protest ever has worked, or ever will work is the threat of violence…

We can spend all day dressing it up. But it’s telling our government we won’t stand for what it’s doing. The different flavors of protests, riots, and even coups are all the same threat of violence by citizens against their own government, it’s just how explicit that threat is and how polite the tone we say it in is.

I’m not saying that’s wrong. I’m not saying it’s something to celebrate either.

But people need to fucking understand it is what is, because it might be like that soon.

No problem.

If I had filled in all the gaps so the lowest denominator got it, it would have been 10x as long, and it’s already too long for you to read by your own admission.

There’s just no way I can communicate something like this to you in a way that you’d be able to understand. But my comments are often long, and I’ll never see any of your responses again to give you clarification on anything else now.

So you might want to just block me so you don’t keep getting confused in other threads.

It was both a warning to Israeli-linked gangs and collaborators, as it was a statement about who still governs the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave.

Literally the only reason Hamas exists is because Netenyahu solicits donations for them from Muslim majority countries like Qatar, and then literally smuggles the cash from Israel into Palestine.

If Netenyahu really wanted to get rid of Hamas, he’d just stop paying them.

Yeah, but if the bus driver has been calling all the passengers terrorists for a decade, has been saying he’s gonna kill us all, and keeps falling asleep while driving…

Wearing a funny costume and walking around the bus holding witty signs the driver will literally never see, might not be the best way to even get the bus to stop.

Like, you get that right?

It’s not Tinkerbell logic, we can’t all just clap our hands together and say “I don’t believe in kings” and they all fall down.

And I swear to 6lb 8oz baby Jesus if someone tries to tell me it’s “raising awareness and that’s most important”, I’m going to lose it, because obviously at some point awareness isn’t going to somehow stop the bus.

And I seriously doubt anyone is more aware today then they were a month ago.

Like, you all know MAGA is too scared to go into a city themselves, and the only news they listen to will never report what actually happened today.

For fucks sake, tell me there’s something I’m missing. Because otherwise it’s incredibly stressful that people think this will in anyway help. Because then you all aren’t actually going to help.

Right but when the only people reporting on it are people who thinks no military should exist…

Why you taking their assumptions as facts?

I took a glance at the article anyways.

Sounds like they have email receipts of a Teams meeting, and a follow up thanking them for meeting.

To them, that’s “support”…

Because there extremists who literally view tolerating the existence of any form of military as explicitly supporting it.

It’s like an anarchist calling you a capitalist pig dog because you pay for lunch instead of shoplifting from a gas station.

Especially when they’re the ones saying it

I don’t think it’s for training really.

It’s way more likely they want to get people together and talking about AI in the hopes they hear literally any plausible method of monetizing it. And stealing that idea.

With the added bonus when you check out, if you subscribe to it’s AI you get 50% off the drinks, if you don’t you get a month of the AI service with you’re drinks.

The way AI effects your brain is kind of like drugs. It’s feels fun and novel at first, and a lot of people get tired and let it go. Certain people are wired different and get hooked.

Maybe it’s because I just re-watched Snowfall, but it feel like when Franklin cooked up his first key and just gave it away. They’re trying to hook people who would never intially buy it, because some of them won’t be able to stop.

I was curious what kind of website would parrot far-right talking points…

Articles like “Soldiers Aren’t Victims, And They Deserve Contempt” by Davide Mastracci critique the military, arguing that joining the army is inexcusable, regardless of personal or economic reasons. Mastracci asserts that soldiers, like police officers, enforce systemic oppression and uphold Western domination, making them complicit in violence. He dismisses arguments based on racial representation or financial necessity as weak defenses for participating in imperialist institutions.

The article also critiques other publications for perceived hypocrisy in addressing militarism. Mastracci argues that outlets like Ricochet Media (Right) and Xtra Magazine (Left) often criticize police but are softer on the military, sometimes presenting it more favorably. This reflects Maple’s strong anti-militarist stance and broader progressive ideology questioning state power and systemic injustice.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-maple-bias/

Just big Jane Fonda vibes.

In a just world we shouldn’t need any militaries, or cops, or locks on doors…

But that’s not the world we live in. And anyone arguing to do away with what protects us from the worst of humanity while the worst of humanity is running the literal biggest military in the word is either a lying piece of shit working with the fascist, or a complete and total idiot with no knowledge or experience of the real world.

I’ll say it till I’m blue in the face:

Work towards the world you want to live in, plan for the world that already exists.

21st century: without active electronic/optics countermeasures, it’s all over, anonymity of secret identity impossible to keep

What?!

1. Mask on.

2. No cell phone.

3. Uncomfortable shoes to throw off gait recognition.

4. Changing into it after you leave home, changing out of it before you go back. No car, no Uber, no public transport.

It’s literally that easy.

Unless you’re killing oligarchs, they wouldn’t catch you for anything else if taking those precautions.

You don’t need to block every camera, just be unrecognizable when on camera, and have a place to lose the camera and change identities.

But …

Multi-billionaire JB Pritzker said that people had to go thru him first…

Now the police he ultimately controls are going after peaceful protestors?

Maybe this is what he meant, if you want to hurt Illinois citizens through abuse by law enforcement. You have to “go thru him” meaning you can’t do it without his approval?

At this point it’s the only interpretation that wasnt an obvious lie when he said it.

He wasn’t even Jewish. Santos insisted he meant he was “Jew-ish” because his mother’s family had a Jewish background, even though he was raised Catholic.

Straight outta a Mel Brooks movie…

Yeah. There’s a Webley and an Ak laying around too.

But the FC9 (3d printed 9mm AR “pistol”) was hidden away in a loft even tho it wasn’t in a firable state. So there’s very little chance they left operable machine guns just laying around

They’re not airsoft, and I doubt they’re replicas. Most likely decommissioned collectibles

Usually they get the firing pins removed and then the action welded shut thru the frame, or a cut made in the same location. Sometimes the barrel gets plugged too.

But at one point they were actual guns.

While definitely a serious issue…

The picture of one of their bedrooms is fucking hilarious. You can’t get any more on point for assumptions than the juxtaposition of Nazi flags on one wall, and the kind of wallpaper you put up in a nursery on the other wall.

…

I’m saying we need to listen to the people actually fighting the fascists…

And not to the multibillionaires who are all talk an no action, just because other billionaires have the media corporations they own trying to convince everyone a billionaire who only talks but never acts is the best we can hope for…

Like, you saw what four year of “moderation” between trump terms resulted in. Right?

You think the best response to this trump turn is another moderate who cares more about billionaires than Americans?

Pritzker isn’t your friend, he’s not on our side.

If he was he’d be doing more than blowing wind.

I was in Compton a couple years ago, and it was great. Didn’t go into Watts or any of the PJs though.

I used to make it a point in my younger days to walk around “rough” areas, Compton felt like a suburb compared to something like Chicago or NYC.

Most of those “high crime areas” are because of drug dealing and gangs trying to control turf and the violence that comes with that When that stuff is going on, fucking with a random just isn’t worth the police attention it might bring.

In my experience the most dangerous areas are almost always 10-15 minutes away from a “rough” area. It’s far enough away from the action that random crime won’t negatively effect the drug trade. But close enough drug users are looking for stuff to steal to feed their addiction.

When I was skateboarding in highschool, we used to go into the city and intentionally pick skate spots within eyeshot of a manned corner. It meant cops weren’t likely to come thru the area, and no locals would start anything like a mugging/jacking because that might bring cops into the area and get the dealers pissed at them for interrupting business.

On the other hand, if we ever saw cops we were out of any area immediately. Even if we weren’t doing anything wrong, there’s just no telling when a cop would decide to fuck with someone, even planting drugs or making up random bullshit

“Local” police…

In virtually every metropolitan PD, a lot of the cops don’t just live in subdivisions, they live way outside of town.

It’s easy to abuse a crowd when it’s not neighbors and people that know you.

Is it a fantasy on my part that there’s some mythical law firm or society that looks for these violations?

Yep.

That’s what the justice system is supposed to do.

The types of organizations you’re talking about in America, instead work on saving innocent people from our justice system. Or at least ensuring punishments are fair.

As far as I know (I don’t know everything) there’s virtually zero organizations with the goal of getting guilty people charged by the state/fed.

Not saying your idea about documenting is a waste. Just that it’s the equivalent of people using plastic straws while billionaires and AI data centers do irreparable damage.

If cities/states actually wanted to press charges, they’d identify with cell snoopers, or just send 20 cops with a warrant to a field office, or look at pay records. Get their identies, then drivers licence photos, start comparing to social media profiles, identify similar picture of kit.

There’s a hundred better/easier ways to identify them. And this is the type of thing AI can actually be used to speed things up. Any average sized city has the resources to identify every ICE agent in their city. They’re just too chicken shit to escalate to that, out of fear ICE will retaliate personally.

So they pretend that tiny piece of fabric over half a face is just unbeatable.

Because city prosecutors won’t bring charges unless it’s a guaranteed win.

So even tho it happens on camera, and they could start at the top of the chain and work down applying pressure to find out identities to press charges…

They’re too scared of bringing charges in a case they might lose to even attempt to hold anyone accountable.

Our justice system has been fucked for decades, but Biden refused to fix it (because he literally “wrote” the bills that got us here) and trump wants a broken system to abuse it.

We can’t just keep letting Republicans break shit, then electing “moderates” who refuse to acknowledge there’s even an issue that needs fixed. We need people willing to fight, even if they don’t win 99.999% of battles. We need people who aren’t afraid to lose. Because they understand what happens if we abstain.

Quick edit:

Don’t forget how accurate the system was at identifying college students at protests despite them covering their faces too.

Anyone telling you a small piece of fabric over someone’s face means they’re impossible to be identified by law enforcement is lying because they think you’re dumb enough to fall for obvious bullshit.

Obviously…

Every innocent brown person they deatin, increases the percentage that are violent criminals and out of the streets.

They don’t want to solve crime, they want to convince people crime is bad so that they support the total removal of everyone brown.

Yellow isnt hot enough.

Sometimes that’s because of grease and shit that’s burning less efficiently, and you just need to let it run and it’ll fix itself.

It doesn’t look like that though, so maybe carbon is built up?

So you can try to clean it, use a toothpick.or something to make sure there’s nothing clogged.

There’s a chance the fuel is just old, but I’d imagine you checked that first and probably even a new container, but worth mentioning in case you haven’t.

Don’t worry guys!

Multi-billionaire JB Pritzker said ICE had to go thru him first, and obviously a fucking multi billionaire wouldn’t just lie about something like this…

/s

We can’t afford to let neoliberals hold positions of authority, they’ll never have what it takes to fight fascism, because even if they’re not a multi-billionaire themselves, that’s who neoliberals look out for over anyone else.

They’re still stuck on bullshit Reaganomics, despite anyone with two braincells being able to figure out it’s bad for 99.99% of the American population