For a long time the two theories of what to do with the US empire have been (a) let's reminisce about how big our dad’s cars were and how well they could drive them before the structural crises of the 21st century slowly take us all to ruin and (b) let’s go out in a blaze of fiery ruin right NOW.
Russian oil go brrrrrrrrrrrr
Film poster for the biopic about Huey Long starring John Goodman, “Kingfish,” which was Long’s moniker.
This Huey Long figure in the Florida governor election is named “Fishback.” That might be too heavy-handed for fiction. But here we are.
Big day for a normal country with a normal government.
Press corp: Ok, but who is gonna run Iran now?
Trump officials: We will have to figure out who is still alive first. TBD
BLACK HISTORY — From the 1840s to the 1860s, the John and Mary Jane Richardson Jones used their influence to fight against the Illinois Black Codes that prohibited Black people from voting, required them to carry a “certificate of freedom,” and more.
thetriibe.com/2021/06/the-...
WATCH LIVE: The Chicago Sun-Times, WBEZ and University of Chicago are quizzing the top Democratic candidates vying for retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s seat in a debate co-hosted by UChicago’s Institute of Politics and International House.
Raja’s Palantir funding is a hell of a cudgel on the ICE talking point.
Thomas Friedman's op-ed from the NYT headline: “I Never Thought the Middle East Would Come to Minneapolis”
Fascism: if you participate in capitalism and imperialism long enough, it always comes home eventually.
This is not a revelation. It is, in fact, the definition of the term.
Damn
They aren’t sending their best.
A different brand of nationalism won’t fix anything in Iran. Or anywhere else for that matter.
If you want a constitutional order that hasn’t existed for nearly a century, then you must rewrite the constitution. But that would require a real political party with a vision for transformative change.
A world of sovereign, nuclear-armed nation-states cannot persist in perpetuity. It will either annihilate us all or be dismantled. The only question is what happens first.
If you work for a living, the only principled position is opposition to all nationalist opportunism. There is not a single nationalist struggle worth your blood or the blood of your children.
A new generation of Samantha Power style imperialists is getting its wings.
His point seems to be that imperialists don’t have to rely on the old playbook to get the U.S. into its next regionally destabilizing conflict. Whoopie!
A tiny island (Grenada) and a vassal state the U.S. carved out of Colombia (Panama) are poor comparisons to Venezuela too.
Also, the comparison drawn this week isn’t to the likely nature of the war but the methods for lying the American people into it.
www.bostonglobe.com/2025/12/11/o...
One Hincapié clearance away from a draw
The AI 2027 paper is rife with an enthusiastic tech-sector outlook. But defeating the nation-state seems like a critical piece of defeating those predictions.
The term “ethnic cleansing” emerged during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and was used by a United Nations commission of experts charged with examining violations of international humanitarian law committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. In its report, the commission of experts described ethnic cleansing as “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area”. It is “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian populations of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographical areas”. According to this commission, these practices could constitute crimes against humanity as well as well-defined war crimes. They may also fall within the scope of the Genocide Convention.
From the U.N. Regional Info Centre for Western Europe:
It's unabashed ethnic cleansing in the city of Chicago. There should be no doubts: www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/14/o...
What did Matt Gaetz know about the Organic Fresh Coin ICO? Where did all that money go?
And some more coverage here: bsky.app/profile/mich...
Seeing the Matt Gaetz scandal getting some additional coverage today. I’ve done some work covering this story over the past couple years if anyone wants a refresher:
bsky.app/profile/mich...
This has gone on for over a month now and it seems the only response our local government has come up with is to pay private security to sit and watch the raids.
I wish I hadn't rewatched Vice so recently. Today calls for a viewing.
From an Evanston resident filming an arrest at Oakton/Asbury ~an hour ago:
"He was being very violent with her, I said ‘You got to stop that,’ and he said, ‘Step back or I’ll fucking shoot you.‘ I step back, and then I continue to record, at which point he turned around and pointed a gun at me.”
If the democrats don’t run on and implement a platform of mass judicial and immigration reform, then a victory in 2028 will only ensure that we are in this same position the next time the GOP takes power.
dozens of people hold signs and stand in an airport parking lot
happening now: about 50 people, including, community organizers, faith leaders and union workers, have gathered at the gary, indiana, airport to protest its complicity in trump’s mass deportations.
many people abducted by ice in chicago are driven to the gary airport before being flown elsewhere.
Two buses with blacked out windows have arrived at the Broadview ICE facility in the last 10 minutes.
