PhilipTheBucket

joined 11 months ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago

It's just a one-off fetching script I made. Hosting for it and ponder.cat together is just on a super basic $30/mo VPS, I think it is 4 CPUs and 16 GB memory.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

OP I have a vague opinion against Strange Planet just because it has such a different feel than a lot of the other long-form comics that usually feature here. I'm not bothered but it does seem a little out of place.

Would you mind switching the Lemmy / Piefed community links in the sidebar to be the more federation friendly ! based links though?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

the sheer audacity for OP to believe that they and they alone get to determine what is and isn’t European?

Yeah, imagine the audacity for someone to decide what they want to host in their own community and why, write in the sidebar that it is allowed, and then solicit feedback from the community in case other people disagree and hear them out.

Literally this stuff is how Hitler got started

[–] [email protected] 38 points 14 hours ago

Q: What about that massive photo of Trump and the backpack checks for DEI literature

A: That's fine why do you ask

[–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago

Taking away freedoms has been part of the US since the inception.

We got lucky, some of us of the right color and socioeconomic background, to be in the US during one of its freedom stages. But black people, gay people, women, people who want to be able to join a union or have a weekend have been fighting in some kind of realm rhetorical or life-and-death physical for the right to have any kind of democracy stuff for themselves, against the US government, for centuries.

It's coming true in unusually systematic and horrifying form right now. But it's not new.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago

You can just read the article.

ICE was doing their thing as they do, a group of people were doing something outside the facility, ICE called the local cops, and then someone from the group shot at the local cops when they came up to investigate.

That's the official statement right now. Who knows whether it's accurate, but if it is accurate, then no, he wasn't acting as an ICE officer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I read this with a hell of a lot of scrutiny.

For one thing, they're not wrong. Ukraine has been a puppet of conflicting massive powers for so many decades it's hardly worth counting, and this new thing is obviously a corrupt continuation (although its actual negative impact on Ukraine may be limited, since Ukraine doesn't have as many valuable minerals as the people who engineered this deal seem to think it does) but not really that surprising.

The anomalously intense scrutiny they're giving to Hunter Biden in the story, while memory-holing the much more egregious corrupt pressure Trump got impeached for putting them under, is a little weird. And the coverage of Ukraine's internal politics being messed around with by great powers that doesn't see fit to talk about any of it happening from the Russian side gets into "very weird" territory. But whatever, even after reading it I still wasn't really sure if it was a legit thing that just happened to be similar to some propaganda I've seen in the past, or it was as it appeared to be, a planted story to spread around pro-Russian and Trump-friendly talking points ("nothing to see here, this kind of thing is perfectly normal, don't worry"). So I went to the author's Substack.

infamously corrupt Security Services (SBU)

The OCCRP’s reporting also played a major role in Russiagate. ‘OCCRP’s reporting on Rudy Giuliani’s political work in Ukraine was cited four times in the whistleblower letter that led to President Donald Trump’s impeachment.’

I have written here in detail about how USAID-funded media cooperated with the SBU back in 2016 to ‘spark’ the ‘Russiagate’ saga. Naturally, many in Ukraine believe that these ‘independent journalists’ were simply given orders to set such a fire by their handlers in the Democrat Party.

Journalists at MintPress

Bellingcat was founded in 2014 after the start of the war in Ukraine. It is well known for its role in attempting to prove that pro-Russian forces were responsible for the downing of Dutch passenger plane MH-17 in July of that year.

I was apprehended by a loud young man from the nationalist svoboda party

in 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected on the platform of a peacemaker with Russia

And so on. That's all from https://eventsinukraine.substack.com/p/bellingcat-and-the-occrp-regime-change. There are also stories about how Ukraine's military is collapsing, and they're about to lose the war, any day now.

I am pretty confident at this point in calling this person a Russian stooge. I am accustomed to seeing this stuff on blogs and in the European press but I am sad to see it has now infiltrated Al Jazeera.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Honestly this is a great and perfectly realistic outcome. Of course, assuming ICE doesn't just seize all the voting machines for the next election and Trump wins by 104% (which I think is a lot to ask at this point).

If, somehow, we have free and fair elections coming up, then a splintered right from the bullshit Musk and Joe Rogan put together or whatever, and a splintered left because their constituents want them to stop making it legal to hunt Palestinians for sport, makes it perfectly sensible that the dinosaurs who run our government could declare that some form of post-19th-century voting system that would enable a little bit fairer outcome than FPTP is what's needed. And, when the dinosaurs want something to happen, it usually actually happens, without all this molasses speed when it is merely because of people dying or whatever the problem the regular people are having is.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Him who mountain crush him no
Him who sun him stop him no
Him who hammer him break him no
Him who fire him fear him no
Him who raise him head above him heart
Him diamond

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Oh... yeah, you're right. No idea then.

 

People have referred to CECOT, the Salvadoran gulag, as “The Prison that Nobody Leaves.” That’s one reason (of many) that it was so concerning that the Trump regime was renditioning people there with no due process. Indeed, most had no criminal record at all. This is why there were concerns that it would, in fact, be impossible to ever get Kilmar Abrego Garcia (who goes by Kilmar Abrego) back: because El Salvador’s dictator, Nayib Bukele, would never let anyone out to say what they had seen.

Indeed it was surprising enough, when Senator Chris Van Hollen was finally able to meet with Abrego, that he was told that once the controversy over his detainment got enough attention, he had been moved to a different prison. It was even more surprising that the US did actually bring him back to the country, even though it was to face what appeared to be completely fabricated criminal charges.

Because, bringing him back—even to fight criminal charges—would allow him to do something like tell the world (and the courts) about the hellscape that is CECOT.

Plaintiff Abrego Garcia reports that he was subjected to severe mistreatment upon arrival at CECOT, including but not limited to severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture.

The handoff from US to Salvadoran custody was seamless—and brutal:

Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was pushed toward a bus, forcibly seated, and fitted with a second set of chains and handcuffs. He was repeatedly struck by officers when he attempted to raise his head. He observed an ICE agent on the bus communicating with Salvadoran officials to confirm the identities of the Salvadoran nationals on board before the bus departed.

But the real horror began upon arrival:

Upon arrival at CECOT, the detainees were greeted by a prison official who stated, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.” Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was then forced to strip, issued prison clothing, and subjected to physical abuse including being kicked in the legs with boots and struck on his head and arms to make him change clothes faster. His head was shaved with a zero razor, and he was frog-marched to cell 15, being struck with wooden batons along the way. By the following day, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia had visible bruises and lumps all over his body.

The psychological torture was as systematic as the physical:

In Cell 15, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia and 20 other Salvadorans were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM, with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion. During this time, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was denied bathroom access and soiled himself. The detainees were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation.

Guards weaponized the prison’s gang population as a tool of terror:

While at CECOT, prison officials repeatedly told Plaintiff Abrego Garcia that they would transfer him to the cells containing gang members who, they assured him, would “tear” him apart.

These weren’t idle threats:

Indeed, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia repeatedly observed prisoners in nearby cells who he understood to be gang members violently harm each other with no intervention from guards or personnel. Screams from nearby cells would similarly ring out throughout the night without any response from prison guards on personnel.

The physical toll was severe and immediate:

During his first two weeks at CECOT, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia suffered a significant deterioration in his physical condition and lost approximately 31 pounds (dropping from approximately 215 pounds to 184 pounds).

The complaint reveals that officials weren’t just torturing Abrego—they were actively trying to hide the evidence. This included staging photos to create a false narrative and, once the controversy grew, moving him to a different facility where he could be hidden from oversight.

The desperation to silence Abrego explains why the Trump administration is freeing actual criminals in exchange for their testimony against him—a remarkable admission that they’d rather have dangerous felons on the streets than let this witness speak freely.

Abrego’s testimony represents the first unfiltered account of conditions inside CECOT—and it’s damning. But this isn’t just about one man’s suffering. It’s about a deliberate policy of sending people, most without any criminal record, to a facility that operates as a torture chamber.

The Trump administration knew exactly what CECOT was when they started using it as a foreign rendition site. They knew people wouldn’t come back to tell their stories. They counted on the silence.

That silence has now been broken. The question is whether anyone will be held accountable for turning torture into immigration policy.

 

So it turns out .cat is only for Catalonia. I didn't know this, just thought it was a neat hostname. So... they finally caught me not being Catalan, and they're taking my domain away.

It's sad. I'm not really sure what I plan to do, but in about a week, rss.ponder.cat will be no more. Sorry gamers. No promises but one possibility would be to set up a replacement instance, and just send everyone a DM with links to be able to get their subscriptions via the new instance instead.

People are going to complain at me about having to block the new bots, too. Hooray! Well, life goes on.

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