technocrit

Two months of Israel’s aid blockade on Gaza have taken a devastating toll on Palestinians including the most vulnerable children, as Israel faces accusations of using food and water as weapons of war.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28957435

A man has been arrested in the Japanese city of Osaka after allegedly driving his car into seven schoolchildren in a suspected deliberate attack, local media said.

The children, who were on their way home from school, were injured and taken to hospital but all seven remained conscious, according to the public broadcaster NHK and other outlets.

Police could not immediately confirm the reports.

The driver was a 28-year-old man who lives in Tokyo and Osaka police have held him on suspicion of attempted murder, the reports said, citing unidentified investigative sources

Oil companies had their hackles up this year after Sen. Scott Wiener introduced a controversial bill that would allow victims of wildfires and other climate disasters to sue them for causing climate change.

Facing potentially billions of dollars in losses, Big Oil had a lot to lose.

But oil companies took a back seat last week when it came time to persuade environmentally friendly lawmakers to kill the legislation.

Instead, Big Oil’s most influential allies in California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature – the unions that represent oil industry workers – led the opposition. They successfully persuaded a committee made up of pro-labor Democrats to kill the measure, which had support from nearly every California environmental organization.

Federal and local law enforcement officers smashed their way into the Michigan homes of pro-Palestine student organizers on Wednesday in what the state attorney general's office said was a vandalism probe—but critics called an attack on dissent against Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza.

"American Extremists Aiding Radicals Across Border," trumpeted the Detroit Free Press in 1919. "707 Illegal Aliens Arrested in Checkpoint Crackdown," reported the Los Angeles Times in 1987. "87 Bronx gang members responsible for nine years of murders and drug-dealing charged in largest takedown in NYC history," announced the New York Daily News in 2016. "'Top secret' Hamas documents show that terrorists intentionally targeted elementary schools and a youth center," claimed NBC News in 2023.

Each of these headlines includes a label for a certain type of Bad Guy. Whether it’s the "Extremist," the "Illegal Alien," the "Gang Member," or the "Terrorist," these terms—and their cousins—seek to exceptionalize the alleged transgressions of their targets, separate them from both the law and history and dehumanize them, all while priming media audiences for crueler laws, harsher policing, longer incarceration and sometimes even extrajudicial punishment. The terms, of course, don’t have clear, universally accepted definitions—nor are they supposed to—their use is often heavily racialized and, by their very nature, subject to the whims and ideologies of the Security State and the media doing its bidding.

What effects, then, do these Bad Guy Labels have on public perceptions? How do they serve to foreclose critical thinking about who is deemed inside the bounds of due process and humanization and who is categorically an other in urgent need of disappearing and punishment?

On this episode, we examine four thought-terminating Bad Guy labels, analyze their origins, why they rose to prominence and explain how they are selectively evoked in order to turn off people’s brains and open up space for quick and cruel state violence.

Our guest is attorney and author Alec Karakatsanis.

Video is infuriating. It's amazing these people exist. Like "The Dark Crystal".

Videos shared online show a female protester having her Palestinian flag snatched away before she is violently shoved to the side. Later videos show her on the ground as she bleeds from the head. Police did not appear to intervene.

Some witnesses posting on social media said she was attacked with a brick.

The woman reportedly took to Instagram, where she identified herself as an anti-Zionist Jew with an Israeli passport, as she displayed the injuries to her face.

“The only thing that gives me some joy is that while all the zios were celebrating and laughing at me im over here thinking yall hit a Jew w. a damn israhelli passport!!! great job," she wrote.

The second female referenced by Adams turned out to be a passerby who lives in the neighbourhood, according to a report in the Associated Press.

She was surrounded by 100 men, all part of the pro-Israel crowd, who threatened to rape her before following her down the street as they chanted, "Death to Arabs," repeatedly, she told the AP.

Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed the TAKE IT DOWN Act, giving the powerful a dangerous new route to manipulate platforms into removing lawful speech that they simply don't like. President Trump himself has said that he would use the law to censor his critics. The bill passed the Senate in February, and it now heads to the president's desk.

In 2025, the federal minimum wage is officially a “poverty wage.” The annual earnings of a single adult working full-time, year-round at $7.25 an hour now fall below the poverty threshold of $15,650 (established by the Department of Health and Human Services guidelines). The limitations of how the federal government calculates poverty understate how far the minimum wage is from economic security for workers and their families.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/37409963

Alleged attack on facility holding African detainees raises fresh questions over US military operations in region

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/28/yemen-houthi-rebels-say-scores-killed-in-us-airstrike-on-prison

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/37410020

Local health officials say Israeli strikes on the northern Gaza Strip killed at least 17 Palestinians early Monday

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/palestinians-israeli-gaza-hamas-benjamin-netanyahu-b2740614.html

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.