technocrit

Schmidt-Hori began replying to some of the angry emails, asking the senders why they were mad at her and inviting them to speak face-to-face via Zoom. She wrote to an influencer who opposes diversity, equity and inclusion principles and had written about her, asking him if he intended to inspire the death threats she was getting.

At least 57 Palestinians have starved to death in Gaza as Israel’s punishing blockade of food, water, and other critical aid to the besieged enclave stretches into its third month amid relentless bombardment.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said on Saturday that most of the victims were children, as well as the sick and elderly, condemning the “continued use of food by the Israeli occupation as a weapon of war” and urging the international community to exert pressure on Israel to reopen the borders and allow in aid.

"We believe that the addition of the Official Trump tokens are an excellent way to diversify our crypto treasury, and also an effective way to advocate for fair, balanced, and free trade between Mexico and the US," Javier Selgas, the company's CEO, said in a press release on April 30.

While such a strategy could help a company such as Freight, influencing presidential decisions by buying a memecoin could bring up the question of conflict of interest. Just recently, Trump said he will hold a private dinner with top token holders, drawing outcry from Democratic lawmakers, who cited the president’s involvement with the token as potential grounds for impeachment.

On April 25, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) pointed to the crypto project offering its top holders an invitation to a dinner event with President Trump, calling it a clear case of selling access to the presidency.

A stablecoin launched by Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial crypto venture is being used by an Abu Dhabi investment firm for its $2 billion investment in crypto exchange Binance, one of World Liberty's co-founders said on Thursday.

It's the latest in a series of Trump family crypto-related ventures, including a "meme coin" launched in January, that have drawn criticism from government ethics experts and political opponents over potential conflicts of interest.

A Republican candidate for US Congress interrupted a Muslim community day at the Texas Capitol building, shouting deeply offensive Islamophobic hate speech from a podium. Valentina Gomez infiltrated the event by wearing a hijab, which she removed before yelling racist tropes.

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".