Category: Uncategorized

Bringing it back: “Silence = Consent”

Cut and paste and pass it on… #Resist #Persist #SandInTheGears

WHAT TO DO AT AN ICE CHECKPOINT, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE WHITE and/or FEEL THE NEED TO JAM UP THE WORKS.
Here’s the deal:
🔘 Border Patrol can verify citizenship within 100 miles of a border or “external boundary.” This includes coastlines, so NYC, Philadelphia, and all of NJ are within the 100-mile zone.
🔘 Border patrol can only ask brief questions about citizenship, and they cannot hold you for an extended time without cause.
🔘 You always have the right to remain silent. You do not need to answer their questions.
🔘 WITH THAT SAID, IF YOU ARE A BORN CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES AND ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE WHITE, YOU NEED TO SPEAK THE FUCK UP.
🔘 The most important acts of resistance are the small ones. Make it difficult and uncomfortable for ICE agents to do their jobs. They are counting on citizens to turn a blind eye and allow them to deport undocumented citizens without challenge. Disabuse of that notion.
🔘 If you are on a train, bus, or anything else and ICE or CBP boards, you need to stand up and loudly let everyone know that they have the right to remain silent or only answer questions in the presence of an attorney, no matter their citizenship or immigration status. There have been numerous reports that confronting the agents in this way has caused them to leave without verifying citizenship. THIS CAN SAVE LIVES. 🙌
🔘 If you see anyone being held up by immigration, loudly ask if they are being detained and if they are free to go.
🔘 Immigration officers cannot detain anyone without reasonable suspicion, an agent must have specific facts about you that make it reasonable to believe you are committing or committed, a violation of immigration law or federal law. If an agent detains you, you can ask for their basis for reasonable suspicion, and they should tell you.
🔘 Always say no to a search and let everyone know that they can and should refuse consent to a search.
🔘 They cannot search or arrest anyone without facts about that make it probable that they are committing, or committed, a violation of immigration law or federal law.
🔘 Silence alone meets neither of these standards. Nor does race or ethnicity alone suffice for either probable cause or reasonable suspicion
🔘 White citizens, you have a level of privilege which protects us from retaliation from ICE for being “rude” and making a scene, which makes it our DUTY to speak up and make sure people without the same privilege know their rights. GET LOUD. YELL. YELL IN SPANISH IF YOU KNOW IT. LET PEOPLE KNOW THEY DON’T HAVE TO SAY SHIT. MAKE ICE UNCOMFORTABLE. THROW SAND IN THE GEARS OF WHITE SUPREMACY.
⭐️ Bonus info ⭐️
🔘It is perfectly legal to record immigration agents as long as you are not on government property or at a port of entry. If your train/bus gets boarded, pull your phone out and start videotaping immediately.
🔘 If you are detained or see someone getting detained, get the agent’s name, number, and any other identifying information. Get it on video if possible.
And get any detainees’ names and (even rough) birthdate information – this will make it easier for them to be found in the system.
🔘 Contact the ACLU or your local immigrant/migrant support orgs if you see someone’s rights being violated.
(this has been copy and pasted — please do the same)

“…isn’t dangerous enough to remain in detention”

“Haaretz reports that Hathaleen’s killer, Yinon Levi, was released to house arrest while he’s investigated for manslaughter, with a judge deciding that he isn’t dangerous enough to remain in detention.

This decision comes less than a day after Levi shot and killed Hathaleen in broad daylight, with the attack caught on camera. Witnesses said that Levi later said of the shooting, “I’m glad I did it,” per Al Jazeera.

https://truthout.org/articles/no-other-land-contributors-killer-released-as-israeli-soldiers-raid-mourners/

I can only ask, “What the fcuk?” In broad daylight, in from of cameras.

#NotInMyName #TheWholeWorldIsWatching

Shadows and Lights…

Evening.

A darkened sky, the light beginning to emerge from the those corporate windows across the way, allowing their interiors to be more clearly revealed. And as I look at this checkerboard of light and darkness, a vacillation catches my eye. I move to get a better view of the two windows and see what looks to be a disco ball with garlands of bright lights running from wall to wall, and, somehow, a beam of light — like a searchlight — sweeps across the tableau. I see this several nights in a row and now I am truly curious.

Days later, I gaze over at the same scene, now reflecting the sky, buildings, and grounds — that are hidden from me, for they are behind me — to the north of here. I try to look closer, feeling like Jimmy Stewart in “Rear Window” but looking for my binoculars (I have none, at present).

Details emerge and resolve, as does the meaning of the mystery. I see a rising lansdscape, and atop it, lights flashing exactly where the “disco ball” had appeared. Indeed, the lights are flashing, even in the wild-fire smoke-muted sunlight of the Montréal skies. And now, I understand.

I spent some time yesterday, observing this reflection, periodically, as the day transited from a yellow-gray morning, through the equally yellow-gray afternoon, and finally into the welcoming cool of night. What I was seeing was the warning lights arrayed across the top of the promontory that hulks behind me, rising up and North of me. This, and nothing more.

Today, the reflection is muted by the aerial pollution of smoke from the Prairie fires — I had forgotten just how pernicious that smoke is on what our skies look like, after experiencing it in Wyoming and Alaska — and I cannot see the Mount or much other detail. But it is there, waiting for the fall of darkness.

“See ya later, alligator…”

#AtYourTrialPedophile !

This one won the Internet for me today. Haven’t found the attribution for it yet, but here it is anyway.

We’re deep into July and I’m having flashbacks of the Summer of 1973… Nixon had the sense to resign. These days, we can only hope for that (and that he takes the rest of his crew with him).

Wondering if there is a mechanism to call for new elections in the US system…

Image of Donald Trump greeting an alligator in front of his estate in Florida, with the text "Seeya later Alligator — At your Trial, Pedophile"

Starving the News

Once again, so that news can be shared more freely —

“Since AFP [Agence France-Presse] was founded in 1944,” the agency’s Society of Journalists said on X, “we have lost journalists in conflicts, some have been injured, others taken prisoner. But none of us can ever remember seeing colleagues die of hunger.”

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/nx-s1-5476532/agence-france-presse-gaza-afp

Basically, the Israeli genocidal behavior is now directly affecting not just Palestinians. Maybe the world will start paying attention? Or, in the words of the inimitable Phil Ochs:

“But Monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game

And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends“

“Popcorn for the masses, please…”

I did not really expect things to unravel as quickly as they seem to be doing… if karma is the slow unwinding of consequences, then I guess it is time. The proverbial steam engine may be “steam engining.”

It is an understatement — no matter what you say about the situation, to comment on The Current Regime’s atrocities and outrages. But today, today has been quite a day for the Alt Press.

To wit:

The Epstein Cover-Up at the FBI

… Allison Gill is laying out the matter in a clear, unhysterical manner that is to be admired and emulated.

As Mr. B. Franklin commented, “three people can keep a secret, if two are dead.” So it would also appear to be the case at the FBI.

#TheWholeWorldIsWatching

“I’ll get back to you…”

I can never remember what the META algos are blocking to and from Canada these days, so I’m sharing this to further on to my friends over there in Evil Suxerburgville…

Always on. Must reply. Ooops.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/01/im-not-ignoring-your-message-im-overwhelmed-by-the-tyranny-of-being-reachable

Found somewhere off of social media (with no clear attribution!) —

Circles or Rectangles

Pre-emptive posting againt the probablity that a certain META platform will not allow this “news”-derived story from the Guardian UK.

“What” we see may be heavily culturally-driven. What do you see when you look at the image?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/05/optical-illusions-see-world-perception

… here’s a link that will help you see both:

https://imgur.com/a/Mp2MphF

… now you will probably see both every time you look.

Trouble at the Mill…

So once again, I fall victim to the greed of META — posted a link to a story about the Canadian archives and the tremendous difficulties they are facing presently, only to have be blocked. There was some weirdness associated with the blocking — it appeared long enough for a friend to comment, I saw her comments and was about to respond when it. Just. Disappeared. Along with some 7 hours of other posts — suggesting that my account might have been blocked. With META, who knows?

But the Internet, like water, refuses to be tamed by the likes of Suckerberg. SO without further ado, here’s a link to the article from one of my recent reading discoveries, The Walrus:

~~~

“Canada’s Archives Are in Trouble—and So Is Its History”

~~

So, I really hope that my friends who were able to see it, however briefly, will chime in on the matter from this link.

I’m counting on you, Lisa and Luciana!

Here’s two screenshots:

… and shortly after…


No Vaccines for this one..

“Language is a virus” sang Laurie Anderson some years ago, riffing on William S. Burroughs’s “The Ticket That Exploded” and one wonders. How does it infect us and how do we spread it?

Does it lie dormant in our very DNA and only awaits the right circumstances to trigger, just waiting to explode into out consciousness? What would be its trigger(s)?

And then there’s the act of reading a book. Reading is staring at the hieroglyphics imprinted upon sheets of dead tree byproducts and hallucinating wildly — for hours on end! I thought this graphic below summed things up quite nicely:

[Click to see the article where I found this]

Now consider how we recruit/radicalize/train others to be able to self-hallucinate… and not just the “text”-based but things like music scores and EVERYTHING we see with our eyes…

Most of this has been triggered off of the reports of the hallucinating chatbots — given that they are based on LLMs or image databases, how does this happen?

And a happy end of June Thursday to you all!

[More on reading and hallucination: Two sources for the same paper]

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810017300314
“Uncharted features and dynamics of reading: Voices, characters, and crossing of experiences”

2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5361686/
“Uncharted features and dynamics of reading: Voices, characters, and crossing of experiences”