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Reform takes control of Suffolk County Council and far-right party wins former ‘Little Moscow’ Leiston.
“Reform UK is now the party in charge at Suffolk County Council after winning 41 of 70 seats. The Conservatives had run the authority for 20 years.
The Greens also made gains and will find themselves back as the main opposition.” BBC.
These councillors will be in power for two years as the county moves toward a new unitary model scheduled for 2028.
Chris Hudson, a former Tory, is reputed to be not just on the far right, but is also a pretty dozy chap, and her certainly sounded like somebody with learning difficulties on BBC Radio Suffolk.
This is his record, “Following a series of Freedom of Information requests made by the Conservatives it has been revealed that Suffolk Reform leader Christopher Hudson has only attended 10% of his parish council meetings since 2021.
Mr Hudson’s Division comprises the parishes of Belstead, Burstall, Chattisham, Copdock and Washbrook, Hintlesham, Pinewood, and Sproughton.” Ipswich Star. March 2026.
This is their campaiging: “5th of May 2026
Reform UK has been accused of “trying to drive a wedge between communities” by other parties over what they say are misleading claims in election leaflets about the amount spent on translation services. BBC.
The leaflets claim the Conservative-run Suffolk County Council spends £283,000 on translation services for “those who refuse to integrate” as an example of its finances, which it called a “mess”.
The letters, delivered to homes in several villages in the Upper Gipping division, were signed by Charles Tilbury, the party’s candidate for the area.
Reform was approached but refused to comment.
The leaflets, seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, landed on the doormats of homes in villages including Haughley, Stowupland and Mendlesham.
They arrived ahead of elections for every seat on the county council, and for a third of Ipswich Borough Council’s seats, on Thursday.
Identical letters were posted through doors as far apart as Norfolk and Peterborough, with minor changes reflecting the different amounts being spent by respective authorities.”
https://bsky.app/profile/reformexposed.bsky.social/post/3mlifof5lxi2p
The following is desperately sad: At Thursday’s county council election, there was yet more change. Reform UK’s Rachael Tecklenberg won the Aldeburgh and Leiston seat, turning it a lighter shade of blue.”
“Leiston, a Suffolk town, historically hosted a surprising Communist presence from the 1930s, often nicknamed a “little Moscow,” with Paxton Chadwick (a Summerhill school teacher) and Bill Howard serving as communist town councillors.” Bill Howard (a railway signalman at Saxmundham) was a communist councillor in the 1980s. “
#Democracy #History #LocalElections #news #politics #refirm #Suffolk -
Reform takes control of Suffolk County Council and far-right party wins former ‘Little Moscow’ Leiston.
“Reform UK is now the party in charge at Suffolk County Council after winning 41 of 70 seats. The Conservatives had run the authority for 20 years.
The Greens also made gains and will find themselves back as the main opposition.” BBC.
These councillors will be in power for two years as the county moves toward a new unitary model scheduled for 2028.
Chris Hudson, a former Tory, is reputed to be not just on the far right, but is also a pretty dozy chap, and her certainly sounded like somebody with learning difficulties on BBC Radio Suffolk.
This is his record, “Following a series of Freedom of Information requests made by the Conservatives it has been revealed that Suffolk Reform leader Christopher Hudson has only attended 10% of his parish council meetings since 2021.
Mr Hudson’s Division comprises the parishes of Belstead, Burstall, Chattisham, Copdock and Washbrook, Hintlesham, Pinewood, and Sproughton.” Ipswich Star. March 2026.
This is their campaiging: “5th of May 2026
Reform UK has been accused of “trying to drive a wedge between communities” by other parties over what they say are misleading claims in election leaflets about the amount spent on translation services. BBC.
The leaflets claim the Conservative-run Suffolk County Council spends £283,000 on translation services for “those who refuse to integrate” as an example of its finances, which it called a “mess”.
The letters, delivered to homes in several villages in the Upper Gipping division, were signed by Charles Tilbury, the party’s candidate for the area.
Reform was approached but refused to comment.
The leaflets, seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, landed on the doormats of homes in villages including Haughley, Stowupland and Mendlesham.
They arrived ahead of elections for every seat on the county council, and for a third of Ipswich Borough Council’s seats, on Thursday.
Identical letters were posted through doors as far apart as Norfolk and Peterborough, with minor changes reflecting the different amounts being spent by respective authorities.”
https://bsky.app/profile/reformexposed.bsky.social/post/3mlifof5lxi2p
The following is desperately sad: At Thursday’s county council election, there was yet more change. Reform UK’s Rachael Tecklenberg won the Aldeburgh and Leiston seat, turning it a lighter shade of blue.”
“Leiston, a Suffolk town, historically hosted a surprising Communist presence from the 1930s, often nicknamed a “little Moscow,” with Paxton Chadwick (a Summerhill school teacher) and Bill Howard serving as communist town councillors.” Bill Howard (a railway signalman at Saxmundham) was a communist councillor in the 1980s. “
#Democracy #History #LocalElections #news #politics #refirm #Suffolk -
PEMBROKESHIRE: Game of Thrones star urges voters to back Plaid or Greens to block DARC radar — as planning application opens for public objections
A Game of Thrones star who lives on the Pembrokeshire coast has urged voters to back Plaid Cymru or the Green Party on Thursday – saying the Senedd election could be the best chance to block a controversial US military radar project from being built on the Pembrokeshire coastline.
Jerome Flynn – best known for his roles in Soldier Soldier, Robson and Jerome and as Bronn in Game of Thrones – posted a video to social media on Tuesday calling the election “probably the most crucial vote we’ve made in 25 years.”
Flynn lives within a few miles of Cawdor Barracks in Pembrokeshire, where the US military’s Deep Space Advanced Radar Concept – known as DARC – has been proposed.
The Ministry of Defence submitted a planning application to Pembrokeshire County Council earlier in April for 27 radar dishes on the site.
The application is currently in its publicity phase and open for public objections until 20 May.
In his video, Flynn described DARC as “the most unspeakably abominable planning application led by the US military, backed by Donald Trump to place 27 radar dishes right on the edge of our beloved coastal national park.”
He said the election was crucial because whoever forms the next Welsh Government will have the power to “call in” the planning application – a mechanism that applies to planning applications of national significance, giving the Welsh Government the power to override Pembrokeshire County Council and take responsibility for the decision itself.
Flynn said only two parties had made firm commitments to oppose DARC. “It’s not a done deal because Plaid Cymru and the Greens have both made party-led decisions to say no to Westminster,” he said. “We’re not having such a thing on our beloved coast.”
First Minister Eluned Morgan earlier called for a pause to the DARC project while Donald Trump remains in the White House, but stopped short of calling for the project to be abandoned entirely.
The PARC Against DARC campaign – which was set up in 2024 to oppose the radar – said it had delivered 22,000 leaflets across Pembrokeshire in recent weeks. Campaigners argue that Morgan’s position does not go far enough, and that only Plaid Cymru and the Greens have made a full party-level commitment to stop the project.
The campaign is also directing residents to submit objections to the planning application before the 20 May deadline, using a one-click tool at parcagainstdarc.com.
The planning application was lodged earlier in April and has already drawn significant public attention, with campaigners arguing the project would make Pembrokeshire a priority military target and give the US military the ability to track space assets from Welsh soil.
Flynn – who is known for speaking out on environmental and ecological issues and has previously backed the campaign to devolve the Crown Estate in Wales – described St Davids as “the spiritual home of Wales” in his video.
He concluded with a direct appeal to voters. “Vote with your heart because we can make a difference here – we could put in a government that cares about our land, our people and our environment,” he said.
The Senedd election takes place on Thursday 7 May. The count and results are expected on Friday 8 May.
Anyone wishing to submit an objection to the DARC planning application can do so at parcagainstdarc.com/planning before 20 May.
Our DARC coverage
Planning application lodged for 27 giant radar dishes at Brawdy
Our report on the MOD submitting a planning application to Pembrokeshire County Council.Welsh First Minister calls for halt to Pembrokeshire space radar project
#celebrity #DARC #GreenParty #JeromeFlynn #PlaidCymru #SeneddElection2026
Eluned Morgan’s intervention calling for a pause to DARC while Trump leads the US. -
Today, the Hebrew #Wikipedia functions as settler-colonial propaganda, naturalizing ethnic cleansing through environmental and legal frameworks.
Hebrew edition (translation):
[…] “Regavim is a right-wing Israeli movement and organization established in 2006 with the goal of establishing ‘a Jewish and Zionist agenda for the State of Israel in land and environmental aspects,’ for the purpose of ‘protecting the lands of the Jewish people and the natural and landscape treasures of the Land of Israel.’”
Problems:
1. Uses neutral-to-positive framing: “movement,” “protecting,” “treasures”
2. Emphasizes environmental protection discourse
3. No mention of (illegal) settler connections in opening (implied when mentioning founders like Smotrich or the term “green line”)
4. Uses biblical terminology “Land of Israel” (ארץ ישראל) instead of occupied territories (a term used nowhere in the Hebrew Wikipedia as far as I know)
The Hebrew version omits/minimizes the following:
1. Forced displacement of Palestinians - never uses terms like “ethnic cleansing” or “forcible transfer”
2. Violence against Palestinians - no mention of how Regavim’s legal actions facilitate settler violence
3. International condemnation - no mention of US Congressional calls for sanctions
4. Academic characterization as “settler-colonial” - absent, duh 🧐
5. The Khan al-Ahmar case - minimal coverage despite being emblematic
6. School demolitions - not mentioned (e.g., Bat Zuwaydin Secondary School near Hebron where “members of Regavim posted leaflets on the walls…calling for the school’s destruction”)But it gets worse. Neither version adequately conveys that Israel’s permit system in Area C makes it virtually impossible for Palestinians to build legally (Palestinian permit approval rates are approximately 1-2%). According to UN Secretary-General reports, this permit denial system combined with demolitions creates “a coercive environment that contributes to displacement that may amount to forcible transfer, which is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention”.
The Wikipedia is clearly not a neutral encyclopedia. While the Hebrew version shows how Israeli civil society narratives naturalize occupation, the English version shows how even international “critical” discourse still employs colonial frameworks.
Example: the phrasing “lacking Israeli permits” in the English edition treats Israeli military permit system as legitimate “law”.
A #decolonized language might be something like this:
“Regavim monitors and reports Palestinian construction to Israeli military authorities for demolition, exploiting a permit system designed to make Palestinian building virtually impossible”
And yes, Regavim’s expansion into #Gaza (naming of #Rafah checkpoint) must be understood within this genocidal context.
See:
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2611354/middle-east
#wikipedia #regavim #decolonized #gaza #rafah #palestine #zionism #SettlerViolence #israel #gazagenocide #dromoelimination #ethniccleansing
-
Today, the Hebrew #Wikipedia functions as settler-colonial propaganda, naturalizing ethnic cleansing through environmental and legal frameworks.
Hebrew edition (translation):
[…] “Regavim is a right-wing Israeli movement and organization established in 2006 with the goal of establishing ‘a Jewish and Zionist agenda for the State of Israel in land and environmental aspects,’ for the purpose of ‘protecting the lands of the Jewish people and the natural and landscape treasures of the Land of Israel.’”
Problems:
1. Uses neutral-to-positive framing: “movement,” “protecting,” “treasures”
2. Emphasizes environmental protection discourse
3. No mention of (illegal) settler connections in opening (implied when mentioning founders like Smotrich or the term “green line”)
4. Uses biblical terminology “Land of Israel” (ארץ ישראל) instead of occupied territories (a term used nowhere in the Hebrew Wikipedia as far as I know)
The Hebrew version omits/minimizes the following:
1. Forced displacement of Palestinians - never uses terms like “ethnic cleansing” or “forcible transfer”
2. Violence against Palestinians - no mention of how Regavim’s legal actions facilitate settler violence
3. International condemnation - no mention of US Congressional calls for sanctions
4. Academic characterization as “settler-colonial” - absent, duh 🧐
5. The Khan al-Ahmar case - minimal coverage despite being emblematic
6. School demolitions - not mentioned (e.g., Bat Zuwaydin Secondary School near Hebron where “members of Regavim posted leaflets on the walls…calling for the school’s destruction”)But it gets worse. Neither version adequately conveys that Israel’s permit system in Area C makes it virtually impossible for Palestinians to build legally (Palestinian permit approval rates are approximately 1-2%). According to UN Secretary-General reports, this permit denial system combined with demolitions creates “a coercive environment that contributes to displacement that may amount to forcible transfer, which is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention”.
The Wikipedia is clearly not a neutral encyclopedia. While the Hebrew version shows how Israeli civil society narratives naturalize occupation, the English version shows how even international “critical” discourse still employs colonial frameworks.
Example: the phrasing “lacking Israeli permits” in the English edition treats Israeli military permit system as legitimate “law”.
A #decolonized language might be something like this:
“Regavim monitors and reports Palestinian construction to Israeli military authorities for demolition, exploiting a permit system designed to make Palestinian building virtually impossible”
And yes, Regavim’s expansion into #Gaza (naming of #Rafah checkpoint) must be understood within this genocidal context.
See:
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2611354/middle-east
#wikipedia #regavim #decolonized #gaza #rafah #palestine #zionism #SettlerViolence #israel #gazagenocide #dromoelimination #ethniccleansing
-
Today, the Hebrew #Wikipedia functions as settler-colonial propaganda, naturalizing ethnic cleansing through environmental and legal frameworks.
Hebrew edition (translation):
[…] “Regavim is a right-wing Israeli movement and organization established in 2006 with the goal of establishing ‘a Jewish and Zionist agenda for the State of Israel in land and environmental aspects,’ for the purpose of ‘protecting the lands of the Jewish people and the natural and landscape treasures of the Land of Israel.’”
Problems:
1. Uses neutral-to-positive framing: “movement,” “protecting,” “treasures”
2. Emphasizes environmental protection discourse
3. No mention of (illegal) settler connections in opening (implied when mentioning founders like Smotrich or the term “green line”)
4. Uses biblical terminology “Land of Israel” (ארץ ישראל) instead of occupied territories (a term used nowhere in the Hebrew Wikipedia as far as I know)
The Hebrew version omits/minimizes the following:
1. Forced displacement of Palestinians - never uses terms like “ethnic cleansing” or “forcible transfer”
2. Violence against Palestinians - no mention of how Regavim’s legal actions facilitate settler violence
3. International condemnation - no mention of US Congressional calls for sanctions
4. Academic characterization as “settler-colonial” - absent, duh 🧐
5. The Khan al-Ahmar case - minimal coverage despite being emblematic
6. School demolitions - not mentioned (e.g., Bat Zuwaydin Secondary School near Hebron where “members of Regavim posted leaflets on the walls…calling for the school’s destruction”)But it gets worse. Neither version adequately conveys that Israel’s permit system in Area C makes it virtually impossible for Palestinians to build legally (Palestinian permit approval rates are approximately 1-2%). According to UN Secretary-General reports, this permit denial system combined with demolitions creates “a coercive environment that contributes to displacement that may amount to forcible transfer, which is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention”.
The Wikipedia is clearly not a neutral encyclopedia. While the Hebrew version shows how Israeli civil society narratives naturalize occupation, the English version shows how even international “critical” discourse still employs colonial frameworks.
Example: the phrasing “lacking Israeli permits” in the English edition treats Israeli military permit system as legitimate “law”.
A #decolonized language might be something like this:
“Regavim monitors and reports Palestinian construction to Israeli military authorities for demolition, exploiting a permit system designed to make Palestinian building virtually impossible”
And yes, Regavim’s expansion into #Gaza (naming of #Rafah checkpoint) must be understood within this genocidal context.
See:
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2611354/middle-east
#wikipedia #regavim #decolonized #gaza #rafah #palestine #zionism #SettlerViolence #israel #gazagenocide #dromoelimination #ethniccleansing
-
Today, the Hebrew #Wikipedia functions as settler-colonial propaganda, naturalizing ethnic cleansing through environmental and legal frameworks.
Hebrew edition (translation):
[…] “Regavim is a right-wing Israeli movement and organization established in 2006 with the goal of establishing ‘a Jewish and Zionist agenda for the State of Israel in land and environmental aspects,’ for the purpose of ‘protecting the lands of the Jewish people and the natural and landscape treasures of the Land of Israel.’”
Problems:
1. Uses neutral-to-positive framing: “movement,” “protecting,” “treasures”
2. Emphasizes environmental protection discourse
3. No mention of (illegal) settler connections in opening (implied when mentioning founders like Smotrich or the term “green line”)
4. Uses biblical terminology “Land of Israel” (ארץ ישראל) instead of occupied territories (a term used nowhere in the Hebrew Wikipedia as far as I know)
The Hebrew version omits/minimizes the following:
1. Forced displacement of Palestinians - never uses terms like “ethnic cleansing” or “forcible transfer”
2. Violence against Palestinians - no mention of how Regavim’s legal actions facilitate settler violence
3. International condemnation - no mention of US Congressional calls for sanctions
4. Academic characterization as “settler-colonial” - absent, duh 🧐
5. The Khan al-Ahmar case - minimal coverage despite being emblematic
6. School demolitions - not mentioned (e.g., Bat Zuwaydin Secondary School near Hebron where “members of Regavim posted leaflets on the walls…calling for the school’s destruction”)But it gets worse. Neither version adequately conveys that Israel’s permit system in Area C makes it virtually impossible for Palestinians to build legally (Palestinian permit approval rates are approximately 1-2%). According to UN Secretary-General reports, this permit denial system combined with demolitions creates “a coercive environment that contributes to displacement that may amount to forcible transfer, which is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention”.
The Wikipedia is clearly not a neutral encyclopedia. While the Hebrew version shows how Israeli civil society narratives naturalize occupation, the English version shows how even international “critical” discourse still employs colonial frameworks.
Example: the phrasing “lacking Israeli permits” in the English edition treats Israeli military permit system as legitimate “law”.
A #decolonized language might be something like this:
“Regavim monitors and reports Palestinian construction to Israeli military authorities for demolition, exploiting a permit system designed to make Palestinian building virtually impossible”
And yes, Regavim’s expansion into #Gaza (naming of #Rafah checkpoint) must be understood within this genocidal context.
See:
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2611354/middle-east
#wikipedia #regavim #decolonized #gaza #rafah #palestine #zionism #SettlerViolence #israel #gazagenocide #dromoelimination #ethniccleansing
-
Today, the Hebrew #Wikipedia functions as settler-colonial propaganda, naturalizing ethnic cleansing through environmental and legal frameworks.
Hebrew edition (translation):
[…] “Regavim is a right-wing Israeli movement and organization established in 2006 with the goal of establishing ‘a Jewish and Zionist agenda for the State of Israel in land and environmental aspects,’ for the purpose of ‘protecting the lands of the Jewish people and the natural and landscape treasures of the Land of Israel.’”
Problems:
1. Uses neutral-to-positive framing: “movement,” “protecting,” “treasures”
2. Emphasizes environmental protection discourse
3. No mention of (illegal) settler connections in opening (implied when mentioning founders like Smotrich or the term “green line”)
4. Uses biblical terminology “Land of Israel” (ארץ ישראל) instead of occupied territories (a term used nowhere in the Hebrew Wikipedia as far as I know)
The Hebrew version omits/minimizes the following:
1. Forced displacement of Palestinians - never uses terms like “ethnic cleansing” or “forcible transfer”
2. Violence against Palestinians - no mention of how Regavim’s legal actions facilitate settler violence
3. International condemnation - no mention of US Congressional calls for sanctions
4. Academic characterization as “settler-colonial” - absent, duh 🧐
5. The Khan al-Ahmar case - minimal coverage despite being emblematic
6. School demolitions - not mentioned (e.g., Bat Zuwaydin Secondary School near Hebron where “members of Regavim posted leaflets on the walls…calling for the school’s destruction”)But it gets worse. Neither version adequately conveys that Israel’s permit system in Area C makes it virtually impossible for Palestinians to build legally (Palestinian permit approval rates are approximately 1-2%). According to UN Secretary-General reports, this permit denial system combined with demolitions creates “a coercive environment that contributes to displacement that may amount to forcible transfer, which is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention”.
The Wikipedia is clearly not a neutral encyclopedia. While the Hebrew version shows how Israeli civil society narratives naturalize occupation, the English version shows how even international “critical” discourse still employs colonial frameworks.
Example: the phrasing “lacking Israeli permits” in the English edition treats Israeli military permit system as legitimate “law”.
A #decolonized language might be something like this:
“Regavim monitors and reports Palestinian construction to Israeli military authorities for demolition, exploiting a permit system designed to make Palestinian building virtually impossible”
And yes, Regavim’s expansion into #Gaza (naming of #Rafah checkpoint) must be understood within this genocidal context.
See:
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2611354/middle-east
#wikipedia #regavim #decolonized #gaza #rafah #palestine #zionism #SettlerViolence #israel #gazagenocide #dromoelimination #ethniccleansing
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ORIENTATION FOR NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING 11/27/25
WHAT IS NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING?
An annual tradition since 1970, National Day of Mourning is a solemn, spiritual and highly political day. Many of us fast from sundown the day before through the afternoon of that day (and have a social after NDOM so that participants in NDOM can break their fasts). We are mourning our ancestors and the genocide of our peoples and the theft of our lands. NDOM is a day when we mourn, but we also feel our strength in action and solidarity.
WHEN AND WHERE IS DAY OF MOURNING?
Thursday, November 27, 2025 (U.S. "thanksgiving" day) at Cole's Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, 12 noon SHARP. Cole's Hill is the hill above Plymouth Rock in the Plymouth historic waterfront area. The rallies and marches will last until approximately 3 pm.
WILL THERE BE A MARCH?
Yes, there will be a march through the historic district of Plymouth. Plymouth agreed, as part of the settlement of 10/19/98, that UAINE may march on National Day of Mourning without the need for a permit as long as we give the town advance notice.
PROGRAM
Although we very much welcome our non-Native supporters to join us, it is a day when only Indigenous people speak about our history and the struggles that are taking place throughout the Americas. Speakers are by invitation only. This year's NDOM will be livestreamed from Plymouth.
Note that NDOM is not a powwow or commercial event, so we ask that people do not sell merchandise or distribute leaflets at the outdoor program. We will have UAINE t-shirts available for sale following the march.
We also ask that you do not eat (unless you must do so for medical reasons) at the outdoor speak-out and march out of respect for the participants who are fasting.
Dress for the weather!SOCIAL
There will be box lunches available for distribution after the march (turkey and vegan), but we will not have a full sit-down social.
FMI - www.uaine.org
#NativeAmericanActivism #DayOfMourning #Solidarity #WeWillContinue #PlymouthRock
#Wampanoag #FrankJames #FrankWamsuttaJames
#SettlerColonialism #IndigenousHistory
#AmericanHistory #Mayflower
#ThanksgivingMyth #InTheSpiritOfMetacom #LGBTQ #TwoSpirits #MMIWG #LandBack #Resistance #ProtectMotherEarth #FreePalestine #CorporateColonialism #Capitalism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #WaterIsLife #LandIsLife #LeaveItInTheGround #ColonialismIsACrime #IndigenousResistance #DefendTheSacred #ManifestDestiny -
ORIENTATION FOR NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING 11/27/25
WHAT IS NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING?
An annual tradition since 1970, National Day of Mourning is a solemn, spiritual and highly political day. Many of us fast from sundown the day before through the afternoon of that day (and have a social after NDOM so that participants in NDOM can break their fasts). We are mourning our ancestors and the genocide of our peoples and the theft of our lands. NDOM is a day when we mourn, but we also feel our strength in action and solidarity.
WHEN AND WHERE IS DAY OF MOURNING?
Thursday, November 27, 2025 (U.S. "thanksgiving" day) at Cole's Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, 12 noon SHARP. Cole's Hill is the hill above Plymouth Rock in the Plymouth historic waterfront area. The rallies and marches will last until approximately 3 pm.
WILL THERE BE A MARCH?
Yes, there will be a march through the historic district of Plymouth. Plymouth agreed, as part of the settlement of 10/19/98, that UAINE may march on National Day of Mourning without the need for a permit as long as we give the town advance notice.
PROGRAM
Although we very much welcome our non-Native supporters to join us, it is a day when only Indigenous people speak about our history and the struggles that are taking place throughout the Americas. Speakers are by invitation only. This year's NDOM will be livestreamed from Plymouth.
Note that NDOM is not a powwow or commercial event, so we ask that people do not sell merchandise or distribute leaflets at the outdoor program. We will have UAINE t-shirts available for sale following the march.
We also ask that you do not eat (unless you must do so for medical reasons) at the outdoor speak-out and march out of respect for the participants who are fasting.
Dress for the weather!SOCIAL
There will be box lunches available for distribution after the march (turkey and vegan), but we will not have a full sit-down social.
FMI - www.uaine.org
#NativeAmericanActivism #DayOfMourning #Solidarity #WeWillContinue #PlymouthRock
#Wampanoag #FrankJames #FrankWamsuttaJames
#SettlerColonialism #IndigenousHistory
#AmericanHistory #Mayflower
#ThanksgivingMyth #InTheSpiritOfMetacom #LGBTQ #TwoSpirits #MMIWG #LandBack #Resistance #ProtectMotherEarth #FreePalestine #CorporateColonialism #Capitalism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #WaterIsLife #LandIsLife #LeaveItInTheGround #ColonialismIsACrime #IndigenousResistance #DefendTheSacred #ManifestDestiny -
ORIENTATION FOR NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING 11/27/25
WHAT IS NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING?
An annual tradition since 1970, National Day of Mourning is a solemn, spiritual and highly political day. Many of us fast from sundown the day before through the afternoon of that day (and have a social after NDOM so that participants in NDOM can break their fasts). We are mourning our ancestors and the genocide of our peoples and the theft of our lands. NDOM is a day when we mourn, but we also feel our strength in action and solidarity.
WHEN AND WHERE IS DAY OF MOURNING?
Thursday, November 27, 2025 (U.S. "thanksgiving" day) at Cole's Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, 12 noon SHARP. Cole's Hill is the hill above Plymouth Rock in the Plymouth historic waterfront area. The rallies and marches will last until approximately 3 pm.
WILL THERE BE A MARCH?
Yes, there will be a march through the historic district of Plymouth. Plymouth agreed, as part of the settlement of 10/19/98, that UAINE may march on National Day of Mourning without the need for a permit as long as we give the town advance notice.
PROGRAM
Although we very much welcome our non-Native supporters to join us, it is a day when only Indigenous people speak about our history and the struggles that are taking place throughout the Americas. Speakers are by invitation only. This year's NDOM will be livestreamed from Plymouth.
Note that NDOM is not a powwow or commercial event, so we ask that people do not sell merchandise or distribute leaflets at the outdoor program. We will have UAINE t-shirts available for sale following the march.
We also ask that you do not eat (unless you must do so for medical reasons) at the outdoor speak-out and march out of respect for the participants who are fasting.
Dress for the weather!SOCIAL
There will be box lunches available for distribution after the march (turkey and vegan), but we will not have a full sit-down social.
FMI - www.uaine.org
#NativeAmericanActivism #DayOfMourning #Solidarity #WeWillContinue #PlymouthRock
#Wampanoag #FrankJames #FrankWamsuttaJames
#SettlerColonialism #IndigenousHistory
#AmericanHistory #Mayflower
#ThanksgivingMyth #InTheSpiritOfMetacom #LGBTQ #TwoSpirits #MMIWG #LandBack #Resistance #ProtectMotherEarth #FreePalestine #CorporateColonialism #Capitalism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #WaterIsLife #LandIsLife #LeaveItInTheGround #ColonialismIsACrime #IndigenousResistance #DefendTheSacred #ManifestDestiny -
ORIENTATION FOR NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING 11/27/25
WHAT IS NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING?
An annual tradition since 1970, National Day of Mourning is a solemn, spiritual and highly political day. Many of us fast from sundown the day before through the afternoon of that day (and have a social after NDOM so that participants in NDOM can break their fasts). We are mourning our ancestors and the genocide of our peoples and the theft of our lands. NDOM is a day when we mourn, but we also feel our strength in action and solidarity.
WHEN AND WHERE IS DAY OF MOURNING?
Thursday, November 27, 2025 (U.S. "thanksgiving" day) at Cole's Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, 12 noon SHARP. Cole's Hill is the hill above Plymouth Rock in the Plymouth historic waterfront area. The rallies and marches will last until approximately 3 pm.
WILL THERE BE A MARCH?
Yes, there will be a march through the historic district of Plymouth. Plymouth agreed, as part of the settlement of 10/19/98, that UAINE may march on National Day of Mourning without the need for a permit as long as we give the town advance notice.
PROGRAM
Although we very much welcome our non-Native supporters to join us, it is a day when only Indigenous people speak about our history and the struggles that are taking place throughout the Americas. Speakers are by invitation only. This year's NDOM will be livestreamed from Plymouth.
Note that NDOM is not a powwow or commercial event, so we ask that people do not sell merchandise or distribute leaflets at the outdoor program. We will have UAINE t-shirts available for sale following the march.
We also ask that you do not eat (unless you must do so for medical reasons) at the outdoor speak-out and march out of respect for the participants who are fasting.
Dress for the weather!SOCIAL
There will be box lunches available for distribution after the march (turkey and vegan), but we will not have a full sit-down social.
FMI - www.uaine.org
#NativeAmericanActivism #DayOfMourning #Solidarity #WeWillContinue #PlymouthRock
#Wampanoag #FrankJames #FrankWamsuttaJames
#SettlerColonialism #IndigenousHistory
#AmericanHistory #Mayflower
#ThanksgivingMyth #InTheSpiritOfMetacom #LGBTQ #TwoSpirits #MMIWG #LandBack #Resistance #ProtectMotherEarth #FreePalestine #CorporateColonialism #Capitalism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #WaterIsLife #LandIsLife #LeaveItInTheGround #ColonialismIsACrime #IndigenousResistance #DefendTheSacred #ManifestDestiny -
ORIENTATION FOR NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING 11/27/25
WHAT IS NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING?
An annual tradition since 1970, National Day of Mourning is a solemn, spiritual and highly political day. Many of us fast from sundown the day before through the afternoon of that day (and have a social after NDOM so that participants in NDOM can break their fasts). We are mourning our ancestors and the genocide of our peoples and the theft of our lands. NDOM is a day when we mourn, but we also feel our strength in action and solidarity.
WHEN AND WHERE IS DAY OF MOURNING?
Thursday, November 27, 2025 (U.S. "thanksgiving" day) at Cole's Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, 12 noon SHARP. Cole's Hill is the hill above Plymouth Rock in the Plymouth historic waterfront area. The rallies and marches will last until approximately 3 pm.
WILL THERE BE A MARCH?
Yes, there will be a march through the historic district of Plymouth. Plymouth agreed, as part of the settlement of 10/19/98, that UAINE may march on National Day of Mourning without the need for a permit as long as we give the town advance notice.
PROGRAM
Although we very much welcome our non-Native supporters to join us, it is a day when only Indigenous people speak about our history and the struggles that are taking place throughout the Americas. Speakers are by invitation only. This year's NDOM will be livestreamed from Plymouth.
Note that NDOM is not a powwow or commercial event, so we ask that people do not sell merchandise or distribute leaflets at the outdoor program. We will have UAINE t-shirts available for sale following the march.
We also ask that you do not eat (unless you must do so for medical reasons) at the outdoor speak-out and march out of respect for the participants who are fasting.
Dress for the weather!SOCIAL
There will be box lunches available for distribution after the march (turkey and vegan), but we will not have a full sit-down social.
FMI - www.uaine.org
#NativeAmericanActivism #DayOfMourning #Solidarity #WeWillContinue #PlymouthRock
#Wampanoag #FrankJames #FrankWamsuttaJames
#SettlerColonialism #IndigenousHistory
#AmericanHistory #Mayflower
#ThanksgivingMyth #InTheSpiritOfMetacom #LGBTQ #TwoSpirits #MMIWG #LandBack #Resistance #ProtectMotherEarth #FreePalestine #CorporateColonialism #Capitalism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #WaterIsLife #LandIsLife #LeaveItInTheGround #ColonialismIsACrime #IndigenousResistance #DefendTheSacred #ManifestDestiny -
By #UnitedAmericanIndiansOfNewEngland (#UAINE) Updated November 22, 2025 - #Resist!
"Since 1970, Indigenous people & their allies have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native people do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims & other European settlers. Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands and the erasure of Native cultures. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Indigenous ancestors and Native resilience. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest against the racism and oppression that Indigenous people continue to experience worldwide.
National Day of Mourning
Thursday, November 27, 2025
12:00 Noon
Cole’s Hill (above #PlymouthRock), #PlymouthMAJoin us as we continue to create a true awareness of Native peoples and history. Help shatter the untrue image of the Pilgrims, and the unjust system based on #WhiteSupremacy, #SettlerColonialism, #sexism, #homophobia and the profit-driven destruction of the Earth that they and other European settlers introduced to these shores.
#Solidarity with #IndigenousStruggles throughout the world!
From #TurtleIsland to #Palestine, #Colonialism is a Crime!
While many supporters will attend in person, we will also Livestream the event from Plymouth.
United American Indians of New England (decolonizing since 1970)
[email protected] * #UAINENo sit-down social, but box lunches will be available.
Masks required.What is National Day of Mourning?
An annual tradition since 1970, National Day of Mourning is a solemn, spiritual and highly political day. Many of us fast from sundown the day before through the afternoon of that day (and have a social after #NDOM so that participants in NDOM can break their fasts). We are mourning our ancestors and the #genocide of our peoples and the theft of our lands. NDOM is a day when we mourn, but we also feel our strength in action and solidarity.
When and where is Day of Mourning?
Thursday, November 27, 2025 (U.S. “thanksgiving” day) at Cole’s Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, 12 noon SHARP. Cole’s Hill is the hill above Plymouth Rock in the Plymouth historic waterfront area. The rallies and marches will last until approximately 3 pm.
Will there be a march?
Yes, there will be a march through the historic district of Plymouth. Plymouth agreed, as part of the settlement of 10/19/98, that UAINE may march on National Day of Mourning without the need for a permit as long as we give the town advance notice.
Program
Although we very much welcome our non-Native supporters to join us, it is a day when only Indigenous people speak about our history and the struggles that are taking place throughout the Americas. Speakers are by invitation only. This year’s NDOM will be livestreamed from Plymouth.
Note that NDOM is not a powwow or commercial event, so we ask that people do not sell merchandise or distribute leaflets at the outdoor program. We will have UAINE t-shirts available for sale following the march.
We also ask that you do not eat (unless you must do so for medical reasons) at the outdoor speak-out and march out of respect for the participants who are fasting.
Dress for the weather!Social
There will be box lunches available for distribution after the march (turkey and vegan), but we will not have a full sit-down social.
Livestream
If you cannot get to Plymouth, you can watch ourlivestream!"
FMI - https://popularresistance.org/national-day-of-mourning-2/
Link to livestream:
https://www.youtube.com/live/6u-jF6pHDBg#NativeAmericanActivism #DayOfMourning #Solidarity #WeWillContinue #PlymouthRock
#Wampanoag #FrankJames #FrankWamsuttaJames
#SettlerColonialism #IndigenousHistory
#AmericanHistory #Mayflower
#ThanksgivingMyth #InTheSpiritOfMetacom #LGBTQ #TwoSpirits #MMIWG #LandBack #Resistance #ProtectMotherEarth #FreePalestine #CorporateColonialism #Capitalism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #WaterIsLife #LandIsLife #LeaveItInTheGround #ColonialismIsACrime #IndigenousResistance #DefendTheSacred #ManifestDestiny -
By #UnitedAmericanIndiansOfNewEngland (#UAINE) Updated November 22, 2025 - #Resist!
"Since 1970, Indigenous people & their allies have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native people do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims & other European settlers. Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands and the erasure of Native cultures. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Indigenous ancestors and Native resilience. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest against the racism and oppression that Indigenous people continue to experience worldwide.
National Day of Mourning
Thursday, November 27, 2025
12:00 Noon
Cole’s Hill (above #PlymouthRock), #PlymouthMAJoin us as we continue to create a true awareness of Native peoples and history. Help shatter the untrue image of the Pilgrims, and the unjust system based on #WhiteSupremacy, #SettlerColonialism, #sexism, #homophobia and the profit-driven destruction of the Earth that they and other European settlers introduced to these shores.
#Solidarity with #IndigenousStruggles throughout the world!
From #TurtleIsland to #Palestine, #Colonialism is a Crime!
While many supporters will attend in person, we will also Livestream the event from Plymouth.
United American Indians of New England (decolonizing since 1970)
[email protected] * #UAINENo sit-down social, but box lunches will be available.
Masks required.What is National Day of Mourning?
An annual tradition since 1970, National Day of Mourning is a solemn, spiritual and highly political day. Many of us fast from sundown the day before through the afternoon of that day (and have a social after #NDOM so that participants in NDOM can break their fasts). We are mourning our ancestors and the #genocide of our peoples and the theft of our lands. NDOM is a day when we mourn, but we also feel our strength in action and solidarity.
When and where is Day of Mourning?
Thursday, November 27, 2025 (U.S. “thanksgiving” day) at Cole’s Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, 12 noon SHARP. Cole’s Hill is the hill above Plymouth Rock in the Plymouth historic waterfront area. The rallies and marches will last until approximately 3 pm.
Will there be a march?
Yes, there will be a march through the historic district of Plymouth. Plymouth agreed, as part of the settlement of 10/19/98, that UAINE may march on National Day of Mourning without the need for a permit as long as we give the town advance notice.
Program
Although we very much welcome our non-Native supporters to join us, it is a day when only Indigenous people speak about our history and the struggles that are taking place throughout the Americas. Speakers are by invitation only. This year’s NDOM will be livestreamed from Plymouth.
Note that NDOM is not a powwow or commercial event, so we ask that people do not sell merchandise or distribute leaflets at the outdoor program. We will have UAINE t-shirts available for sale following the march.
We also ask that you do not eat (unless you must do so for medical reasons) at the outdoor speak-out and march out of respect for the participants who are fasting.
Dress for the weather!Social
There will be box lunches available for distribution after the march (turkey and vegan), but we will not have a full sit-down social.
Livestream
If you cannot get to Plymouth, you can watch ourlivestream!"
FMI - https://popularresistance.org/national-day-of-mourning-2/
Link to livestream:
https://www.youtube.com/live/6u-jF6pHDBg#NativeAmericanActivism #DayOfMourning #Solidarity #WeWillContinue #PlymouthRock
#Wampanoag #FrankJames #FrankWamsuttaJames
#SettlerColonialism #IndigenousHistory
#AmericanHistory #Mayflower
#ThanksgivingMyth #InTheSpiritOfMetacom #LGBTQ #TwoSpirits #MMIWG #LandBack #Resistance #ProtectMotherEarth #FreePalestine #CorporateColonialism #Capitalism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #WaterIsLife #LandIsLife #LeaveItInTheGround #ColonialismIsACrime #IndigenousResistance #DefendTheSacred #ManifestDestiny -
By #UnitedAmericanIndiansOfNewEngland (#UAINE) Updated November 22, 2025 - #Resist!
"Since 1970, Indigenous people & their allies have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native people do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims & other European settlers. Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands and the erasure of Native cultures. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Indigenous ancestors and Native resilience. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest against the racism and oppression that Indigenous people continue to experience worldwide.
National Day of Mourning
Thursday, November 27, 2025
12:00 Noon
Cole’s Hill (above #PlymouthRock), #PlymouthMAJoin us as we continue to create a true awareness of Native peoples and history. Help shatter the untrue image of the Pilgrims, and the unjust system based on #WhiteSupremacy, #SettlerColonialism, #sexism, #homophobia and the profit-driven destruction of the Earth that they and other European settlers introduced to these shores.
#Solidarity with #IndigenousStruggles throughout the world!
From #TurtleIsland to #Palestine, #Colonialism is a Crime!
While many supporters will attend in person, we will also Livestream the event from Plymouth.
United American Indians of New England (decolonizing since 1970)
[email protected] * #UAINENo sit-down social, but box lunches will be available.
Masks required.What is National Day of Mourning?
An annual tradition since 1970, National Day of Mourning is a solemn, spiritual and highly political day. Many of us fast from sundown the day before through the afternoon of that day (and have a social after #NDOM so that participants in NDOM can break their fasts). We are mourning our ancestors and the #genocide of our peoples and the theft of our lands. NDOM is a day when we mourn, but we also feel our strength in action and solidarity.
When and where is Day of Mourning?
Thursday, November 27, 2025 (U.S. “thanksgiving” day) at Cole’s Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, 12 noon SHARP. Cole’s Hill is the hill above Plymouth Rock in the Plymouth historic waterfront area. The rallies and marches will last until approximately 3 pm.
Will there be a march?
Yes, there will be a march through the historic district of Plymouth. Plymouth agreed, as part of the settlement of 10/19/98, that UAINE may march on National Day of Mourning without the need for a permit as long as we give the town advance notice.
Program
Although we very much welcome our non-Native supporters to join us, it is a day when only Indigenous people speak about our history and the struggles that are taking place throughout the Americas. Speakers are by invitation only. This year’s NDOM will be livestreamed from Plymouth.
Note that NDOM is not a powwow or commercial event, so we ask that people do not sell merchandise or distribute leaflets at the outdoor program. We will have UAINE t-shirts available for sale following the march.
We also ask that you do not eat (unless you must do so for medical reasons) at the outdoor speak-out and march out of respect for the participants who are fasting.
Dress for the weather!Social
There will be box lunches available for distribution after the march (turkey and vegan), but we will not have a full sit-down social.
Livestream
If you cannot get to Plymouth, you can watch ourlivestream!"
FMI - https://popularresistance.org/national-day-of-mourning-2/
Link to livestream:
https://www.youtube.com/live/6u-jF6pHDBg#NativeAmericanActivism #DayOfMourning #Solidarity #WeWillContinue #PlymouthRock
#Wampanoag #FrankJames #FrankWamsuttaJames
#SettlerColonialism #IndigenousHistory
#AmericanHistory #Mayflower
#ThanksgivingMyth #InTheSpiritOfMetacom #LGBTQ #TwoSpirits #MMIWG #LandBack #Resistance #ProtectMotherEarth #FreePalestine #CorporateColonialism #Capitalism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #WaterIsLife #LandIsLife #LeaveItInTheGround #ColonialismIsACrime #IndigenousResistance #DefendTheSacred #ManifestDestiny -
By #UnitedAmericanIndiansOfNewEngland (#UAINE) Updated November 22, 2025 - #Resist!
"Since 1970, Indigenous people & their allies have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native people do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims & other European settlers. Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands and the erasure of Native cultures. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Indigenous ancestors and Native resilience. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest against the racism and oppression that Indigenous people continue to experience worldwide.
National Day of Mourning
Thursday, November 27, 2025
12:00 Noon
Cole’s Hill (above #PlymouthRock), #PlymouthMAJoin us as we continue to create a true awareness of Native peoples and history. Help shatter the untrue image of the Pilgrims, and the unjust system based on #WhiteSupremacy, #SettlerColonialism, #sexism, #homophobia and the profit-driven destruction of the Earth that they and other European settlers introduced to these shores.
#Solidarity with #IndigenousStruggles throughout the world!
From #TurtleIsland to #Palestine, #Colonialism is a Crime!
While many supporters will attend in person, we will also Livestream the event from Plymouth.
United American Indians of New England (decolonizing since 1970)
[email protected] * #UAINENo sit-down social, but box lunches will be available.
Masks required.What is National Day of Mourning?
An annual tradition since 1970, National Day of Mourning is a solemn, spiritual and highly political day. Many of us fast from sundown the day before through the afternoon of that day (and have a social after #NDOM so that participants in NDOM can break their fasts). We are mourning our ancestors and the #genocide of our peoples and the theft of our lands. NDOM is a day when we mourn, but we also feel our strength in action and solidarity.
When and where is Day of Mourning?
Thursday, November 27, 2025 (U.S. “thanksgiving” day) at Cole’s Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, 12 noon SHARP. Cole’s Hill is the hill above Plymouth Rock in the Plymouth historic waterfront area. The rallies and marches will last until approximately 3 pm.
Will there be a march?
Yes, there will be a march through the historic district of Plymouth. Plymouth agreed, as part of the settlement of 10/19/98, that UAINE may march on National Day of Mourning without the need for a permit as long as we give the town advance notice.
Program
Although we very much welcome our non-Native supporters to join us, it is a day when only Indigenous people speak about our history and the struggles that are taking place throughout the Americas. Speakers are by invitation only. This year’s NDOM will be livestreamed from Plymouth.
Note that NDOM is not a powwow or commercial event, so we ask that people do not sell merchandise or distribute leaflets at the outdoor program. We will have UAINE t-shirts available for sale following the march.
We also ask that you do not eat (unless you must do so for medical reasons) at the outdoor speak-out and march out of respect for the participants who are fasting.
Dress for the weather!Social
There will be box lunches available for distribution after the march (turkey and vegan), but we will not have a full sit-down social.
Livestream
If you cannot get to Plymouth, you can watch ourlivestream!"
FMI - https://popularresistance.org/national-day-of-mourning-2/
Link to livestream:
https://www.youtube.com/live/6u-jF6pHDBg#NativeAmericanActivism #DayOfMourning #Solidarity #WeWillContinue #PlymouthRock
#Wampanoag #FrankJames #FrankWamsuttaJames
#SettlerColonialism #IndigenousHistory
#AmericanHistory #Mayflower
#ThanksgivingMyth #InTheSpiritOfMetacom #LGBTQ #TwoSpirits #MMIWG #LandBack #Resistance #ProtectMotherEarth #FreePalestine #CorporateColonialism #Capitalism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #WaterIsLife #LandIsLife #LeaveItInTheGround #ColonialismIsACrime #IndigenousResistance #DefendTheSacred #ManifestDestiny -
By #UnitedAmericanIndiansOfNewEngland (#UAINE) Updated November 22, 2025 - #Resist!
"Since 1970, Indigenous people & their allies have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native people do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims & other European settlers. Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands and the erasure of Native cultures. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Indigenous ancestors and Native resilience. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection, as well as a protest against the racism and oppression that Indigenous people continue to experience worldwide.
National Day of Mourning
Thursday, November 27, 2025
12:00 Noon
Cole’s Hill (above #PlymouthRock), #PlymouthMAJoin us as we continue to create a true awareness of Native peoples and history. Help shatter the untrue image of the Pilgrims, and the unjust system based on #WhiteSupremacy, #SettlerColonialism, #sexism, #homophobia and the profit-driven destruction of the Earth that they and other European settlers introduced to these shores.
#Solidarity with #IndigenousStruggles throughout the world!
From #TurtleIsland to #Palestine, #Colonialism is a Crime!
While many supporters will attend in person, we will also Livestream the event from Plymouth.
United American Indians of New England (decolonizing since 1970)
[email protected] * #UAINENo sit-down social, but box lunches will be available.
Masks required.What is National Day of Mourning?
An annual tradition since 1970, National Day of Mourning is a solemn, spiritual and highly political day. Many of us fast from sundown the day before through the afternoon of that day (and have a social after #NDOM so that participants in NDOM can break their fasts). We are mourning our ancestors and the #genocide of our peoples and the theft of our lands. NDOM is a day when we mourn, but we also feel our strength in action and solidarity.
When and where is Day of Mourning?
Thursday, November 27, 2025 (U.S. “thanksgiving” day) at Cole’s Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, 12 noon SHARP. Cole’s Hill is the hill above Plymouth Rock in the Plymouth historic waterfront area. The rallies and marches will last until approximately 3 pm.
Will there be a march?
Yes, there will be a march through the historic district of Plymouth. Plymouth agreed, as part of the settlement of 10/19/98, that UAINE may march on National Day of Mourning without the need for a permit as long as we give the town advance notice.
Program
Although we very much welcome our non-Native supporters to join us, it is a day when only Indigenous people speak about our history and the struggles that are taking place throughout the Americas. Speakers are by invitation only. This year’s NDOM will be livestreamed from Plymouth.
Note that NDOM is not a powwow or commercial event, so we ask that people do not sell merchandise or distribute leaflets at the outdoor program. We will have UAINE t-shirts available for sale following the march.
We also ask that you do not eat (unless you must do so for medical reasons) at the outdoor speak-out and march out of respect for the participants who are fasting.
Dress for the weather!Social
There will be box lunches available for distribution after the march (turkey and vegan), but we will not have a full sit-down social.
Livestream
If you cannot get to Plymouth, you can watch ourlivestream!"
FMI - https://popularresistance.org/national-day-of-mourning-2/
Link to livestream:
https://www.youtube.com/live/6u-jF6pHDBg#NativeAmericanActivism #DayOfMourning #Solidarity #WeWillContinue #PlymouthRock
#Wampanoag #FrankJames #FrankWamsuttaJames
#SettlerColonialism #IndigenousHistory
#AmericanHistory #Mayflower
#ThanksgivingMyth #InTheSpiritOfMetacom #LGBTQ #TwoSpirits #MMIWG #LandBack #Resistance #ProtectMotherEarth #FreePalestine #CorporateColonialism #Capitalism #NoMiningWithoutConsent #WaterIsLife #LandIsLife #LeaveItInTheGround #ColonialismIsACrime #IndigenousResistance #DefendTheSacred #ManifestDestiny -
Freedom of Speech Around the World: A Global Analysis and the Jimmy Kimmel Case – DrWeb’s Domain Report
Freedom of Speech Around the World: A Global Analysis and the Jimmy Kimmel Case
Published on September 19, 2025, Prepared by Perplexity Pro, edited by DrWeb.
Introduction and Defining Freedom of Speech
Freedom of speech represents a fundamental human right that varies significantly in protection across different countries and legal systems. Legal definitions provide the foundation for understanding this concept across three authoritative sources:
Cornell Law School defines freedom of speech as “the right to speak, write, and share ideas and opinions without facing punishment from the government.” This definition emphasizes the protection from government interference in expression.
The Law Dictionary characterizes it as “a guarantee of the 1st and 14th amendment giving people the right to speak without any restriction from the government.” This focuses specifically on constitutional protections within the American legal framework.
Merriam-Webster provides a broader definition: “the right to express information, ideas, and opinions free of government restrictions based on content and subject only to reasonable limitations.” This definition acknowledges that some restrictions may apply under specific circumstances.
Global Freedom of Speech Rankings
Question: Where does the United States rank in Freedom of Speech?
Based on the Global State of Democracy Indices 2023, countries receive scores from 0 to 1, with higher scores indicating stronger freedom of expression protections. The analysis reveals significant variations in how democratic nations protect speech rights.
Top 25 Countries with Strongest Freedom of Speech Protections
RankCountryScoreNotable Features1Finland0.94Leading global freedom of expression2Denmark0.93Strong Nordic tradition of free speech3Ireland0.89Robust democratic protections4Chile0.88Latin American democracy leader5New Zealand0.88Strong civil liberties framework6Austria0.84Central European democracy7Switzerland0.84Neutral nation with strong rights8Germany0.83Post-war constitutional protections9Costa Rica0.83Central American democratic leader10Czech Republic0.82Post-communist democratic success11Slovakia0.82Transition democracy12Latvia0.82Baltic state recovery13Estonia0.82Digital-forward democracy14Luxembourg0.82Small state, strong rights15United Kingdom0.81Common law tradition16Belgium0.81European Union founding member17Barbados0.81Caribbean democracy18Jamaica0.80Commonwealth democracy19Uruguay0.79South American leader20Iceland0.79Nordic island democracy21Vanuatu0.79Pacific democracy22Taiwan0.78Asian democratic success23Dominican Republic0.78Caribbean development24France0.77Revolutionary democratic tradition25Canada0.77North American constitutional monarchyNotably, the United States ranks 28th with a score of 0.75, indicating room for improvement despite constitutional protections.
This ranking suggests that while the U.S. has strong theoretical protections, practical implementation may lag behind other democracies.
International Legal Framework
Freedom of speech receives recognition in international law through multiple mechanisms and judicial bodies that have developed influential standards for global application.
International Courts and Freedom of Speech Recognition
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.” The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides legally binding protections for member states, creating enforceable obligations beyond mere aspirational statements.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has developed influential standards through Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The ECHR consistently holds that criticism of government and politicians receives strong protection, and that criminal penalties for political speech violate proportionality requirements. These European standards have become widely influential in international law and have been adopted by the UN Human Rights Committee.
International legal advocacy organizations like the International Senior Lawyers Project (ISLP) successfully use these international norms in domestic courts, arguing that restrictive national laws violate treaty obligations under the ICCPR. Recent cases in Algeria, Iraq, Tunisia, and Palestine have resulted in dismissed charges when courts recognized that criminal penalties for online expression violate international law.
Major U.S. Supreme Court First Amendment Decisions
The United States has developed extensive jurisprudence protecting freedom of speech through landmark Supreme Court decisions that have shaped modern understanding of expression rights.
Foundational Cases
Schenck v. United States (1919) established the “clear and present danger” test, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stating that speech could be restricted when “the words are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has the right to prevent.” The Court upheld convictions for distributing leaflets opposing military conscription during World War I.
Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) represents the most significant modern free speech precedent. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned Clarence Brandenburg’s conviction under Ohio’s Criminal Syndicalism statute for advocating racial strife at a KKK rally. The Court established that government cannot prohibit speech unless it is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” This decision created one of the most speech-protective legal tests worldwide.
Student Speech Rights
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969) established that students “do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.” The Court protected students who wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, creating the foundational principle for student expression rights in educational settings.
Symbolic Speech Protection
Texas v. Johnson (1989) held that flag burning constitutes protected symbolic political speech. The Court concluded that “a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment is that Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
Wooley v. Maynard (1977) protected a Jehovah’s Witness who covered New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die” motto on his license plate. The Court recognized both “the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all,” establishing negative speech rights.
Recent Developments
Moody v. NetChoice, LLC (2024) addressed social media content moderation, ruling that the First Amendment protects platforms engaging in expressive activity when compiling and curating speech. The Court held that states cannot interfere with private actors’ speech to advance ideological balance.
National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo (2024) prohibited government officials from wielding power selectively to punish or suppress speech through private intermediaries, establishing important precedent regarding indirect government censorship.
Analysis of the Jimmy Kimmel ABC Suspension Case
Question: What’s your analysis of the current Jimmy Kimmel events regarding Freedom of Speech?
The recent suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” by ABC provides a contemporary case study in the complex intersection of government pressure, private broadcaster decision-making, and First Amendment protections. This incident illustrates how theoretical speech protections face practical challenges in the modern media landscape.
Background of the Controversy
On September 16, 2025, ABC indefinitely suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following controversial comments the host made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. During his Monday night monologue, Kimmel criticized the “MAGA gang” for attempting to politically exploit Kirk’s murder, suggesting they were “doing everything they can to score political points” from the tragedy. He also mocked former President Trump’s response to questions about Kirk’s death.
The suspension came after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr publicly condemned Kimmel’s remarks on a podcast, calling them “some of the sickest conduct possible” and threatening regulatory action with the warning “we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Major broadcast station owners Nexstar and Sinclair preemptively pulled the show from their ABC affiliates before the network announced the indefinite suspension.
First Amendment Analysis
This case presents a complex intersection of government pressure and private broadcaster decision-making that raises significant constitutional concerns. Under established First Amendment precedent, particularly Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), Kimmel’s political commentary clearly falls within protected speech categories as criticism of government figures and political movements.
The critical constitutional issue centers on whether government coercion violated the First Amendment’s prohibition on indirect speech suppression. As Professor Raleigh Levine of Mitchell Hamline School of Law explains, “The issue here is whether the government is using coercion or pressure to get private companies to do indirectly what it could not directly force them to do.” While private employers can typically discipline employees for speech, broadcast networks operating on public airwaves occupy a unique regulatory space.
The Supreme Court established in Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan (1963) that government cannot use threats of punishment to coerce private entities into suppressing speech, even when direct censorship would be unconstitutional. FCC Chairman Carr’s explicit threats of regulatory consequences for failing to discipline Kimmel likely crossed this constitutional boundary.
Legal Precedent and Regulatory Framework
Broadcasters historically receive reduced First Amendment protections compared to other media, a doctrine criticized by constitutional scholars as creating “junior varsity First Amendment rights.” However, even under this diminished standard, political commentary remains strongly protected speech.
The FCC’s regulatory authority extends primarily to local station licensing rather than network content control. Carr’s threats appeared to leverage this licensing power to indirectly pressure content decisions, potentially exceeding statutory authority while violating constitutional boundaries.
Predicted Legal Outcomes
Question: What’s your predicted outcome now of the Jimmy Kimmel events?
Several potential legal challenges may emerge from this controversy:
First Amendment Litigation: Kimmel or advocacy organizations like the ACLU, which has already condemned the suspension as government suppression of opposing ideas, may file suit challenging the government coercion. Such cases would likely focus on proving that Carr’s threats constituted impermissible government pressure rather than permissible advocacy.
Congressional Oversight: The incident may prompt legislative hearings examining FCC overreach and the scope of regulatory authority over broadcast content. Questions about whether current broadcast regulation frameworks remain constitutionally viable in the modern media landscape could drive policy reforms.
Industry Response: The suspension’s chilling effect on other broadcasters and entertainers may generate broader resistance. Late-night hosts and Hollywood figures have already rallied to Kimmel’s defense, potentially creating sustained pressure for reinstatement.
Commercial Consequences: ABC faces significant advertising revenue losses, with “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” reportedly generating approximately $70 million annually from over 200 brands. Economic pressure may ultimately force the network to restore the program regardless of political considerations.
The most likely outcome involves eventual reinstatement of Kimmel’s show, possibly following legal settlement or policy clarification limiting FCC content oversight authority. This case may establish important precedent regarding the limits of government pressure on private media companies, particularly in the broadcast television context where regulatory relationships create unique constitutional vulnerabilities.
Conclusion
This comprehensive analysis demonstrates that while freedom of speech enjoys broad international recognition, implementation varies significantly across nations. The United States maintains strong constitutional protections through extensive Supreme Court jurisprudence, yet ranks below many other democracies in practical freedom of expression measures. The Jimmy Kimmel case illustrates ongoing tensions between government authority and speech protections, particularly in regulated industries like broadcasting.
The global landscape reveals that Nordic countries lead in practical freedom of expression, while international courts increasingly recognize speech rights as fundamental human rights. As media landscapes evolve and political tensions intensify, the balance between legitimate regulation and speech protection remains a critical challenge for democratic societies worldwide.
Bibliography and Sources
Legal Definitions
- Freedom of Speech – Cornell Law School
- Freedom of Speech Definition – The Law Dictionary
- Freedom of Speech Definition – Merriam-Webster
Global Rankings and Analysis
- Countries with Freedom of Speech 2025 – World Population Review
- Freedom of Expression Index, 2024 – Our World in Data
- Countries and Territories – Freedom House
International Law
- Using International Law to Defend Free Speech in the Information Age – Columbia Global Freedom of Expression
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights – United Nations
- Freedom of Speech in International Law – Oxford Academic
U.S. Supreme Court Cases
- Free Speech Supreme Court Cases – Justia
- Notable First Amendment Court Cases – American Library Association
- Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969) – Justia
- Cases By Date – MTSU Free Speech Center
Jimmy Kimmel Case Analysis
- Why Jimmy Kimmel’s Show Was Yanked Off the Air – CNN
- Were Jimmy Kimmel’s Free Speech Rights Violated When ABC Canceled His Show? – Reuters
- Does the First Amendment Apply in Jimmy Kimmel’s Suspension? – CBS News
- In Pressuring ABC Over Kimmel, Trump May Have Crossed a Constitutional Line – New York Times
- Jimmy Kimmel, the FCC, and Why Broadcasters Still Have “Junior Varsity” First Amendment Rights – Cato Institute
Research compiled, analyzed, and published on September 19, 2025.
#2025 #ABC #AI #America #DonaldTrump #DrWebSDomain #Education #FCC #FederalCommunicationsCommission #Health #History #JimmyKimmel #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #PerplexityPro #Politics #Resistance #Science #Television #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates
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https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/5929807
Saheli, a 'non-steroidal non-hormonal contraceptive pill'. Saheli dosage starts 1 pill per half-week for ... (?), then 1 pill weekly. Basically induce a brief, mini-menopause that stops when you stop the pills. https://saheliinfo.com/clinical-evidence
Then! ONE-YEAR vaginal ring Annovera. Unlike monthly-ish vaginal rings, (https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/product/6449/smpc) this thicker vaginal ring holds enough for 13 cycles with one week bleeding breaks, or 12 if you skip periods. Think "buff NuvaRing". https://www.annoverahcp.com/
Speaking of intra-uterine system / device options: the UK does several! We are no longer stuck with the larger, higher dose Mirena hIUS. https://www.mirena.co.uk/ I want the smaller, lower dose (but shorter duration) Jaydess https://www.fsrh.org/Public/Public/Documents/ceu-product-review-jaydess-apr-14.aspx or Kyleena. https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/product/769/smpc
(You can fit a non-hormonal IUD copper coil as emergency contraception, within 10 days of unprotected sex. Fitting it as regular birth control anytime otherwise is also fine, when not pregnant.) https://patient.info/sexual-health/long-acting-reversible-contraceptives-larc/intrauterine-contraceptive-device
Finally, vasectomy. New part is "I found multiple cases where doctors did their own vasectomies". This may be helpful for hesitant cis men and AMAB people to know. Vasectomies are reversible ("easily", according to a medical nerd friend, but obv different people's bodies respond to things in weird, cool ways, so everything depends). https://www.baus.org.uk/_userfiles/pages/files/Patients/Leaflets/Vasectomy.pdf
I am not a doctor. Even if I were, I am not YOUR doctor. I do not have access to your medical records.
I'm just infodumping useful info to prevent unwanted pregnancies, minimise unplanned pregnancies, and mitigate risks. https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/contraception-sterilization/management/male-sterilization-vasectomy/#contraception #contraceptive #sexEd #POP #progesterone #hormones #HRT #HormoneReplacementTherapy #birth #BirthControl #familyPlanning #PlannedParenthood #sex #Sexual #SexualHealth #healthcare #ReproductiveHealthcare #ReproductiveRights #pregnancy #InternalCondoms #ExternalCondoms #Condom #ContraceptiveDiaphragm #CayaPhragm #spermicide #vaginalRing #NuvaRing #patch #injection #IUS #hormonalIUD #IUD #copperCoil #medicine #UnitedKingdom #UK #England #Scotland #Wales #NorthernIreland #GreatBritain #Britain
-
https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/5929807
Saheli, a 'non-steroidal non-hormonal contraceptive pill'. Saheli dosage starts 1 pill per half-week for ... (?), then 1 pill weekly. Basically induce a brief, mini-menopause that stops when you stop the pills. https://saheliinfo.com/clinical-evidence
Then! ONE-YEAR vaginal ring Annovera. Unlike monthly-ish vaginal rings, (https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/product/6449/smpc) this thicker vaginal ring holds enough for 13 cycles with one week bleeding breaks, or 12 if you skip periods. Think "buff NuvaRing". https://www.annoverahcp.com/
Speaking of intra-uterine system / device options: the UK does several! We are no longer stuck with the larger, higher dose Mirena hIUS. https://www.mirena.co.uk/ I want the smaller, lower dose (but shorter duration) Jaydess https://www.fsrh.org/Public/Public/Documents/ceu-product-review-jaydess-apr-14.aspx or Kyleena. https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/product/769/smpc
(You can fit a non-hormonal IUD copper coil as emergency contraception, within 10 days of unprotected sex. Fitting it as regular birth control anytime otherwise is also fine, when not pregnant.) https://patient.info/sexual-health/long-acting-reversible-contraceptives-larc/intrauterine-contraceptive-device
Finally, vasectomy. New part is "I found multiple cases where doctors did their own vasectomies". This may be helpful for hesitant cis men and AMAB people to know. Vasectomies are reversible ("easily", according to a medical nerd friend, but obv different people's bodies respond to things in weird, cool ways, so everything depends). https://www.baus.org.uk/_userfiles/pages/files/Patients/Leaflets/Vasectomy.pdf
I am not a doctor. Even if I were, I am not YOUR doctor. I do not have access to your medical records.
I'm just infodumping useful info to prevent unwanted pregnancies, minimise unplanned pregnancies, and mitigate risks. https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/contraception-sterilization/management/male-sterilization-vasectomy/#contraception #contraceptive #sexEd #POP #progesterone #hormones #HRT #HormoneReplacementTherapy #birth #BirthControl #familyPlanning #PlannedParenthood #sex #Sexual #SexualHealth #healthcare #ReproductiveHealthcare #ReproductiveRights #pregnancy #InternalCondoms #ExternalCondoms #Condom #ContraceptiveDiaphragm #CayaPhragm #spermicide #vaginalRing #NuvaRing #patch #injection #IUS #hormonalIUD #IUD #copperCoil #medicine #UnitedKingdom #UK #England #Scotland #Wales #NorthernIreland #GreatBritain #Britain
-
https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/5929807
Saheli, a 'non-steroidal non-hormonal contraceptive pill'. Saheli dosage starts 1 pill per half-week for ... (?), then 1 pill weekly. Basically induce a brief, mini-menopause that stops when you stop the pills. https://saheliinfo.com/clinical-evidence
Then! ONE-YEAR vaginal ring Annovera. Unlike monthly-ish vaginal rings, (https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/product/6449/smpc) this thicker vaginal ring holds enough for 13 cycles with one week bleeding breaks, or 12 if you skip periods. Think "buff NuvaRing". https://www.annoverahcp.com/
Speaking of intra-uterine system / device options: the UK does several! We are no longer stuck with the larger, higher dose Mirena hIUS. https://www.mirena.co.uk/ I want the smaller, lower dose (but shorter duration) Jaydess https://www.fsrh.org/Public/Public/Documents/ceu-product-review-jaydess-apr-14.aspx or Kyleena. https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/product/769/smpc
(You can fit a non-hormonal IUD copper coil as emergency contraception, within 10 days of unprotected sex. Fitting it as regular birth control anytime otherwise is also fine, when not pregnant.) https://patient.info/sexual-health/long-acting-reversible-contraceptives-larc/intrauterine-contraceptive-device
Finally, vasectomy. New part is "I found multiple cases where doctors did their own vasectomies". This may be helpful for hesitant cis men and AMAB people to know. Vasectomies are reversible ("easily", according to a medical nerd friend, but obv different people's bodies respond to things in weird, cool ways, so everything depends). https://www.baus.org.uk/_userfiles/pages/files/Patients/Leaflets/Vasectomy.pdf
I am not a doctor. Even if I were, I am not YOUR doctor. I do not have access to your medical records.
I'm just infodumping useful info to prevent unwanted pregnancies, minimise unplanned pregnancies, and mitigate risks. https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/contraception-sterilization/management/male-sterilization-vasectomy/#contraception #contraceptive #sexEd #POP #progesterone #hormones #HRT #HormoneReplacementTherapy #birth #BirthControl #familyPlanning #PlannedParenthood #sex #Sexual #SexualHealth #healthcare #ReproductiveHealthcare #ReproductiveRights #pregnancy #InternalCondoms #ExternalCondoms #Condom #ContraceptiveDiaphragm #CayaPhragm #spermicide #vaginalRing #NuvaRing #patch #injection #IUS #hormonalIUD #IUD #copperCoil #medicine #UnitedKingdom #UK #England #Scotland #Wales #NorthernIreland #GreatBritain #Britain
-
https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/5929807
Saheli, a 'non-steroidal non-hormonal contraceptive pill'. Saheli dosage starts 1 pill per half-week for ... (?), then 1 pill weekly. Basically induce a brief, mini-menopause that stops when you stop the pills. https://saheliinfo.com/clinical-evidence
Then! ONE-YEAR vaginal ring Annovera. Unlike monthly-ish vaginal rings, (https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/product/6449/smpc) this thicker vaginal ring holds enough for 13 cycles with one week bleeding breaks, or 12 if you skip periods. Think "buff NuvaRing". https://www.annoverahcp.com/
Speaking of intra-uterine system / device options: the UK does several! We are no longer stuck with the larger, higher dose Mirena hIUS. https://www.mirena.co.uk/ I want the smaller, lower dose (but shorter duration) Jaydess https://www.fsrh.org/Public/Public/Documents/ceu-product-review-jaydess-apr-14.aspx or Kyleena. https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/product/769/smpc
(You can fit a non-hormonal IUD copper coil as emergency contraception, within 10 days of unprotected sex. Fitting it as regular birth control anytime otherwise is also fine, when not pregnant.) https://patient.info/sexual-health/long-acting-reversible-contraceptives-larc/intrauterine-contraceptive-device
Finally, vasectomy. New part is "I found multiple cases where doctors did their own vasectomies". This may be helpful for hesitant cis men and AMAB people to know. Vasectomies are reversible ("easily", according to a medical nerd friend, but obv different people's bodies respond to things in weird, cool ways, so everything depends). https://www.baus.org.uk/_userfiles/pages/files/Patients/Leaflets/Vasectomy.pdf
I am not a doctor. Even if I were, I am not YOUR doctor. I do not have access to your medical records.
I'm just infodumping useful info to prevent unwanted pregnancies, minimise unplanned pregnancies, and mitigate risks. https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/contraception-sterilization/management/male-sterilization-vasectomy/#contraception #contraceptive #sexEd #POP #progesterone #hormones #HRT #HormoneReplacementTherapy #birth #BirthControl #familyPlanning #PlannedParenthood #sex #Sexual #SexualHealth #healthcare #ReproductiveHealthcare #ReproductiveRights #pregnancy #InternalCondoms #ExternalCondoms #Condom #ContraceptiveDiaphragm #CayaPhragm #spermicide #vaginalRing #NuvaRing #patch #injection #IUS #hormonalIUD #IUD #copperCoil #medicine #UnitedKingdom #UK #England #Scotland #Wales #NorthernIreland #GreatBritain #Britain
-
https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/5929807
Saheli, a 'non-steroidal non-hormonal contraceptive pill'. Saheli dosage starts 1 pill per half-week for ... (?), then 1 pill weekly. Basically induce a brief, mini-menopause that stops when you stop the pills. https://saheliinfo.com/clinical-evidence
Then! ONE-YEAR vaginal ring Annovera. Unlike monthly-ish vaginal rings, (https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/product/6449/smpc) this thicker vaginal ring holds enough for 13 cycles with one week bleeding breaks, or 12 if you skip periods. Think "buff NuvaRing". https://www.annoverahcp.com/
Speaking of intra-uterine system / device options: the UK does several! We are no longer stuck with the larger, higher dose Mirena hIUS. https://www.mirena.co.uk/ I want the smaller, lower dose (but shorter duration) Jaydess https://www.fsrh.org/Public/Public/Documents/ceu-product-review-jaydess-apr-14.aspx or Kyleena. https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/product/769/smpc
(You can fit a non-hormonal IUD copper coil as emergency contraception, within 10 days of unprotected sex. Fitting it as regular birth control anytime otherwise is also fine, when not pregnant.) https://patient.info/sexual-health/long-acting-reversible-contraceptives-larc/intrauterine-contraceptive-device
Finally, vasectomy. New part is "I found multiple cases where doctors did their own vasectomies". This may be helpful for hesitant cis men and AMAB people to know. Vasectomies are reversible ("easily", according to a medical nerd friend, but obv different people's bodies respond to things in weird, cool ways, so everything depends). https://www.baus.org.uk/_userfiles/pages/files/Patients/Leaflets/Vasectomy.pdf
I am not a doctor. Even if I were, I am not YOUR doctor. I do not have access to your medical records.
I'm just infodumping useful info to prevent unwanted pregnancies, minimise unplanned pregnancies, and mitigate risks. https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/contraception-sterilization/management/male-sterilization-vasectomy/#contraception #contraceptive #sexEd #POP #progesterone #hormones #HRT #HormoneReplacementTherapy #birth #BirthControl #familyPlanning #PlannedParenthood #sex #Sexual #SexualHealth #healthcare #ReproductiveHealthcare #ReproductiveRights #pregnancy #InternalCondoms #ExternalCondoms #Condom #ContraceptiveDiaphragm #CayaPhragm #spermicide #vaginalRing #NuvaRing #patch #injection #IUS #hormonalIUD #IUD #copperCoil #medicine #UnitedKingdom #UK #England #Scotland #Wales #NorthernIreland #GreatBritain #Britain
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Master of Superpits: the thread about Egon Riss, who fled the Holocaust and reconstructed Scottish mining in monumental concrete
On March 20th 1964 – exactly 58 years ago when this thread was first written – a man named Egon Riss died at his home in Colinton, in suburban Edinburgh. A name relatively unknown outside modernist design and industrial architecture circles, much of his life’s work has been unceremoniously demolished. So let’s try and raise his profile just a little bit, particularly in the city he came to make his home in.
Riss was born into a Jewish family in 1901, in Lipnik Beilitz in what was then Austrian Galicia (now Lipnik Bielsko-Biała in Poland). His parents were Isidor Riss and Ernestine Itzkowitz. He had an older brother, Erwin. The young Riss studied at the Weiner Technische Hochschule in Vienna – not at the Bauhaus as is sometimes written – but he was clearly influenced by the latter.
The Weiner Technische Hochschule, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Peter HaasHe became a rising star in modern architecture and, with his partner Fritz Judtmann, managed to win an important public health commission to build the Arbeiterkrankenkasse (workers’ health insurance clinic) building in Vienna. This lead to further success in design competitions for major public health buildings, e.g. a new public health asylum.
Riss & Judtmann’s 1928 public health asylum in ViennaAnd a new Tuberculosis Sanatorium for the city. Both buildings strikingly modern in both their appearance and their construction, heavy on the reinforced concrete and glass. But also with well considered function – a theme that will recurr.
Riss & Judtmann’s 1931 tuberculosis Sanatorium at the Lainz hospital in ViennaBut all was not well in Europe and the clouds of Nazism were gathering around Austria. The Riss brothers fled the rising anti-Jewish sentiment to Czechoslovakia in 1937, the year their father Isidor died, ahead of the Anschluss the following year. Their mother Ernestine did not leave. She was deported in 1942 to Auschwitz from where she never left. In March 1939 the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, and once again the Risses had to flee. Egon made it to England where he was classified as an “enemy alien”. However through an association with furniture designer Jack Pritchard, Riss was fortunately exempted from internment.
Riss’ “Enemy Alien Exemption from Internment” card, 1939Jack and his wife Molly were directors of the Isokon Company and if you’re a real modernism anorak you will recognise Egon Riss’ address on his registration card (Lawn Road Flats) as Wells Coates’ iconic Isokon Building.
Lawn Road Flats, CC-BY-SA JustincLawn Road Flats, CC-BY-SA SciencefishEgon worked with Jack Pritchard for Isokon for a short but very period productive period. This collaboration bore fruit of several iconic (yes, that word merits being reused) pieces of modern design; the Penguin Book Donkey. Perfectly sized to take new and popular Penguin paperbacks (themselves now a classic of modern design). It was simple in form, made from a few plywood parts. The side “panniers” held the Penguins, the central slot, magazines and papers.
The Egon Riss’ Penguin Book DonkeyAllen Lane of Penguin put leaflets in every book advertising it and it could have become the must have piece of Modern British furniture had not war intervened and only a few hundred were produced before bent plywood became a strategic material used in the construction of war-winning aircraft.
Plywood goes to war, the remarkable De Havilland Mosquito aircraft. CC-BY-SA Tony HisgettAn original Book Donkey will set you back around £5-10 thousand pounds if you are lucky enough to find one. More affordable is its little brother, the Gull. Again formed from a few plywood pieces, it holds books and newspapers and can be table or wall mounted.
The Egon Riss’ book Gull. Picture from Isokon Gallery website.A cocktail cabinet called the “Bottleship” (which I cannot find a picture of) and the Pocket Bottleship, based on the Gull and with holders for bottles and glasses. Again this was could be table or wall mounted (📷 Isokon Gallery)
Egon Riss’ Pocket Bottleship. Picture from Isokon Gallery website.Riss left his partnership with Jack Pritchard and Isokon to join the British Army, first the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps (a reserve for the Pioneers, the army’s builders) and later commissioned into the Royal Engineers. In 1943 he married Margaret Jones, the couple would have 2 daughters before later divorcing. At the wars end he worked briefly in London for Robert Furneaux-Jordan and at the Architectural Association and was elected as a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
But he did not linger long in London and in 1946, or there abouts, took a job with the Miners Welfare Committee as an architect in Scotland. The MWC was a government body funded by industry levy to provide social, recreation and working condition improvement for miners. It was a pioneer of modern industrial architecture in the UK through its provision of pithead baths. Their clean, elegant, modern structures stuck out like modernist beacons against the backdrop of the Victorian collieries they served.
Polkemmet in West LothianArniston in MidlothianCardowan in LankarkshireMichael in FifeIt’s obvious from these buildings why Riss might have taken the decision to join the MWC. The combination of relative carte blanche to design striking modern structures and also to balance their form and function would have appealed. And so Riss came to Edinburgh; but his time with the MWC would be very short lived (indeed he may never actually have worked for them), because on January 1st 1947, “vesting day”, the British coal industry was nationalised under the National Coal Board; the NCB.
The British coal industry faced any number of crises; outdated working practices, a chronic lack of investment in modern techniques and equipment, labour shortages, wartime ossification, and a huge number of old, small pits approaching the end of their working lives. The NCB had a huge consolidation, modernisation and reconstruction task facing it – at the same time as maintaining and increasing existing production to keep the nations’ lights on and home fires burning. Riss himself describes it in his own words;
900 to 1,000 independent collieries had to be integrated into a single organisation. Divisions and Areas required accommodation for their staff. The offices of old coal companies were found to be most inadequate… New and better methods of material control and machine maintenance demanded Modern and spacious workshops, stores, stockyards…
Egon Riss, quoted in “Mountains and Megastructures” by Kakalis, Beattie and Ozga-LawnAnd in Scotland, it was Egon Riss who was made Chief Production Architect to the National Coal Board’s Scottish Division, headquartered at Greenend House in Gilmerton, a pit village on the outskirts of Edinburgh. The Production Architect was responsible for all the above ground buildings of a colliery. Riss was a man with a mission to use modern architecture to revolutionise Scottish coal mining. I’d like to focus this thread mainly on Riss’ work, but I do unfortunately need to stray a little bit into the early history of the nationalised coal industry in Scotland to put it in context.
The coal industry in Scotland at the time was vast, but troubled. It had suffered from a chronic lack of investment; relied heavily on manual labour and old practices; there were too many small pits with declining output; profitability and productivity were relatively low. Its old coal seams were being worked out – they were nearer the surface and easier to access and work with the older technology. There was plenty coal there, but the reserves were unproven and lay much deeper than had hitherto been exploited in Scotland. They would need the application of the most modern mining technology and methods to exploit them.
The NCB had to juggle both increasing (or maintaining) the existing output from the old, existing pits in the short term; maintaining overall production in the medium term as old pits were worked out; and planning for the bright, modern future in the long term (10+ years). It is apt that the NCB’s motto was E Tenebris Lux (“out of the darkness, light)”, as the nation was almost entirely dependent on coal for domestic and industrial heat, light and power. Without coal, and more of it, postwar reconstruction and couldn’t happen.
Arms of the National Coal Board, from Heraldry WikiMuch of the work needing done was deep underground, hidden from view of all but the men undergroun; mechanisation, reorganisation, automation, investment in new machines and techniques, exploring and exploiting new seams. But it was on the surface where Riss and his department came in. Some of his earliest work was on buildings to improve surface arrangements at existing pits, to both increase productivity but also to better the working conditions for the men. I think there’s a recurring theme in Riss’ work for the NCB that he considered the miners at all times, and how they would move around and make use of the surface buildings of the pit. He really tried to make that journey as smooth, economical and comfortable as possible. An example of this is some of his earliest work; covered walkways at the Newbattle collieries to allow miners to get between the pithead baths and the pithead, under cover and with the luxury of heating.
The remains of Riss’ concrete walkway at Newbattle in the snow, which it would have protected miners coming on and off shift from. CC-by-SA Alan Murray RustSimple improvements like this made miners lives just a little bit more comfortable and saved them a bit of time; they could get directly from the baths (where they started and ended work) to the pitheads at Lady Victoria and Lingerwood under cover, without stops, to start work.
The NCB quickly shut down the least productive (usually the smallest and oldest pits) and made investments like this at the bigger and more profitable ones as they set about trying to consolidate and rationalise the Scottish industry. But these rearrangements were piecework to tide the industry over. It was the vast new schemes, which were coined as “Superpits“, that were to be a renaissance for the industry and allow Riss to stamp his style and ideas into the landscape in towers of concrete and steel.
The NCB had a radical plan to get Scottish mining to a profitable production of 30 million tons per year by 1965, and to do this it would need 15 million tons of brand new, efficient and profitable production output from new pits. This was Riss’ challenge. These new mines would have to do something that had never been done before in Scotland; Go deep – really deep! Most of the unexploited coals lay in the deep limestone group and this meant going down to 3,000 feet before hitting the coal measures. And so Riss set to work. From his office on Eglinton Crescent in a grand Victorian villa in central Edinburgh, he worked upstairs at his easel, sketching out his ideas in charcoal, which were then taken down to his team to be turned into the technical drawings.
The National Coal Board production architect’s offices on Eglinton CrescentThe first scheme was Rothes. Planned by the Fife Coal Company prewar (one of the more learned and modern of Scottish coalmasters), this is a scheme that promised so much employment and profitability, but was killed by treacherous underground geology and a blind failure to accept that fact. It’s hard to overstate the optimism that surrounded Rothes. It was to be the showpiece for the Scottish industry – a new town was prepared for its workers at Glenrothes. And Riss prepared appropriately monumental and modern surface buildings for it. His Rothes was beautifully stark and elegant. Two giant concrete, steel and glass towers held the modern “Koepe” winders, connected by a vast car hall ( concrete, steel and glass. Surface buildings were carefully arranged, like that fanhouse with its flared ventilation scoops.
Rothes. Picture from RibapixRiss’ charcoal sketches survive with Canmore. With a literal clean sheet, everything could be arranged on the surface for maximum efficiency. The flow of men, machinery and coal was carefully planned and considered. True to the principles of the Bauhaus, form balanced function.
A Riss’ sketch for RothesThe first Superpit was opened in a blaze of publicity and optimism in 1958. The Queen performed the ceremony and even went 1,600 feet underground in pristine white overalls
The queen handing over her check token before going underground. From Fife TodayBut all was not well at Rothes behind this official veneer. Infact, it was catastrophic. The geological conditions were appalling. Water pressures of 1,000 PSI were encountered, the shafts flooded and cracked quicker than they could be dug and lined. Long story short, Rothes was beset by poor planning and an over-optimistic, over-enthusiasm to get going on unproven geology. Heroic efforts were made above and below ground by the miners and management to make a go of it, but it was a pit for nothing but money. The NCB called it quits in early 1964 and Rothes was unceremoniously closed, its monumental surface buildings left to rot for the next 30 years as a bitter reminder of its failure. Rothes’ towers came down finally in March 1993. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Riss’ part in this grand scheme, but it was an ignominious start for the revitalisation of the Scottish mining industry.
The demolition of Rothes’ towers. From The CourierFortunately the administrative building, some of the surface workshops and the fan house survive at Rothes.
Surface workshopsPithead offices and walkwayFan houseThe surface remains at Rothes. © SelfRothes had a close architectural sibling in another Superpit – Killoch in Ayrshire. That was a bit of a happier story, it was the first Scottish colliery to hit a million tons output per year – in 1965. It survived the miners strike but closed in 1988, its towers demolished. For quite some while after closure of the shafts, the coal processing facility at Killoch remained open to treat opencast coal, and much survives of the former workshops and administrative buildings on the surface as far as I’m aware.
KillochClose-by Killoch was another colliery at Barony. This was not a Superpit but was a vast reconstruction and reorganisation scheme of an existing, older mine. No. 3 shaft and its surface buildings are one of Riss’ enduring monuments.
Barony No. 3The vast A-frame that held the winding gear at Barony remains as a monument to the now-gone industry. Barony survived until 1989, linked underground to Killoch. These pits were perhaps the most successful in the post-war Scottish industry.
The Barony A-frame. CC-by-SA ScottAnother Riss reconstruction scheme was at Kinneil in Bo’ness. The old colliery was systematically modernised and rebuilt in a style which, unusually for Riss, made heavy use of brick as a feature.
Kinneil. Tom Astbury via Falkirk Community TrustKinneil closed just before the Miners’ Strike, in 1983, its expensive reconstruction never really bore the expected fruits. It is remarkable for being linked by a 5.5km tunnel, under the Forth, to Valleyfield Colliery in Fife. Nearer to home, for the Lothian coalfield, Riss laid out out his designs for two brand new Superpits. The first was in Loanhead, to replace the existing, older pits at Burghlee and Ramsay. This scheme would become Bilston Glen. Riss would work upstairs, sketching his ideas out, before taking them down to his draughtsmen to turn into technical drawings. He did not tolerate individualism on the part of his subordinates or their attempts to ornament his designs; woe betide any junior who tried to rearrange the regular and evenly spaced windows in a long façade in some sort of pleasing pattern.
Riss sketch for Bilston GlenAlthough it was never as profitable as was hoped, Bilston Glen was a productive and relatively successful pit. Nothing like as monumental as Rothes or Killoch, on the surface it was quite unobtrusive, more like a modern factory than the vast, statement cathedrals to mining. Sinking commenced in 1952 and production began 11 years later in 1963. By 1970 it employed some 2,300 and produced almost 1,400,000 tons of coal per year. Although a relatively productive and profitable mine, Bilston Glen had an unhappy end. It became a flashpoint for the Miners’ Strike of 1984 in Scotland and the site of some of its bitterest scenes, first between police and strikers and later between strikers and strike breakers. Attempts were made to restart production after the strike, but it suffered badly from flooding during the period of enforced dormancy and never really got going again. It shut in 1989 and no sign of it remains today under a modern industrial estate.
Bilston Glen during the miner’s strikeNearby Bilston Glen in the Lothian Coalfield was Monktonhall; another showpiece and another monumental Riss design. Monktonhall was to be bigger and deeper than Bilston Glen. It was sunk between 1954 and 1967, with coal production peaking almost immediately at 1.8 million tons per year, most of it getting straight on a train for the few miles down to its assured customer at the SSEB’s new power station at Cockenzie.
Monktonhall No. 1 shaftMonktonhall survived the Miners Strike in better shape than Bilston Glen, but it was always a struggle to keep it profitable. Attempts to merge the two together into a single operation centred at Monktonhall came to naught.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/74165767@N05/50259761503
Monktonhall closed with Bilston Glen, but that was not the end. In 1992 it was reopened by a few hundred laid off miners who clubbed together their redundancies and made the extraordinary bold decision to restart production. However heroic their struggle, without the millions in capital needed to drive and equip new seams, it was not to be. The men toiled 3,000 feet underground for 2 years against the floodwaters, but the end came again in 1994, with final demolition in 1997.
The demolition of Monktonhall in 1997And so we return to Fife for the last of Riss’ Superpits. At Seafield outside Kirkcaldy. Appropriately for its name, it was sited in a field and was to work the coal reserves out under the sea, deep below the Forth. The sinking of Seafield was troubled and took 12 years from 1954-66. But it was not the first difficult Fife mine to be sunk under the sea and the miners persevered and in the end succeeded. However it was always a difficult mine to work, with steeply inclined roadways and faces – and in coal mines, difficult means unprofitable.
Seafield CollieryGeological difficulties, flooding and “heating” (spontaneous combustion in the coal seams) plagued Seafield and although it also survived the Miners’ Strike, it shut in 1987 when the government refused to fund the millions needed to open new production faces. Like the other Scottish Superpits, Seafield had tens of millions of tons of untapped coal reserves, it was just too expensive to get them out. It was demolished in 1989. Seafield is often better remembered for its most famous ex-employee, the late Jocky Wilson.
The demolition of Seafield. From Fife TodayThe five Superpits were Riss’ masterpieces. It is sad that none of them had especially successful or long-lived stories to tell. This was no reflection on anything but the realities of geology, economics and politics. From an architectural and surface organisational point of view they were triumphs of design. Another Riss scheme at Airth came to nothing when sinking had to be cancelled when it dawned on the NCB that they would never hit coal no matter how hard they dug for it. Things proceeded further at nearby Glenochil, with Riss laying out modern surface arrangements for a drift mine under the Ochils.
GlenochilAgain Glenochil was to have an assured future thanks to being tied to a guaranteed customer in the SSEB’s new power station at Kincardine; but it turned into another frustrating failure for the NCB’s Scottish Division. It was to have been the UK’s largest drift mine and was to have given employment to thousands of Lanarkshire men, brought in to work it as their pits shut. Sinking started with enthusiasm in 1954 but the project was abandoned in 1964, again poor planning by the NCB had the miners chasing riches that just weren’t there to be won. The land was turned over to the Scottish Prison Service who built HMP Glenochil, infamous for the 1988 “dirty riot” protests. But again, that is no reflection on Riss or his work.
Egon Riss was praised in his time from the unlikely source of The Times’ architecture correspondent; a late 1950s article complimented Riss on how he worked and how he had his team organised to work together in their common goal of creating modern, efficient collieries. His attention to the details of improving miners’ working lives was singled out. Particularly, comfortable and generous pay-halls were designed “where the miner can queue up for his pay in comfort“; no more queuing in the cold and rain to be handed your packet at the side door.
Riss’ Superpits should have provided steady employment for 10,000 men, and families and communities an order of magnitude greater, and should have been producing 10 million tons of coal a year. He sadly died at home at 1 Munro Drive of a heart attack at the age of 62 in 1964 before it could be realised that this would never happen.
1 Munro DriveRiss’ obituary praised his creations for “their strictly functional design combined with an elegance of line that could only be achieved by a creative artist who was a master of his craft“. It noted “he had an inquisitive mind that ranged over many interests, antiques, objets d’art, science and religion, backed by a wide reading in German, French and Hebrew… he was always a fascinating conversationalist who enjoyed argument as an end to logical eduction. His good company, charming manners and not least his dignified presence will be remembered and missed by his many friends“.
So let us remember and miss the late Egon Riss, 1901-1964. From Austria to the Scottish coalfields via Isokon.
Egon Riss at work. unknown credit, via Anibou.Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
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Daniela Klette Statement at Trial
Daniela’s plea from May 12, 2026
Now this first long trial against me is coming to an end. In the course of the trial, the assessment that was made from the beginning was confirmed and it became abundantly clear: the search and the proceedings are politically determined. The point here is to absolutely enforce domination and submission. The public prosecutor’s office underlined this again with its plea. It’s not about individual acts and not so much about me, but about delegitimizing a history of radical left resistance and punishing it in a deterrent way.
I would like to thank everyone who supported me in solidarity, here in the hall, from outside, in front of the prison walls, with letters, cards and thoughts. And also my lawyer Ulrich von Klinggräff, who unfortunately became very ill and can therefore no longer be here.
What I am going to say today is addressed to all of them, as well as to the part of the public that is interested.
I would like to briefly say something about my story, which is also the story of many other comrades. Many of those who have written to me are so young that they did not experience the period from the early 70s to the 90s in West Germany. Or they grew up in East Germany or other places in the world. I wrote this without any claim to completeness, but I hope that what I have said makes it clear why I am defending the search for a better world in which capitalism, racism and patriarchy have been overcome and the fight for it.
And why I am here defending the right to build and maintain a life in illegality, even if it is “only” about evading the repression of the state. This is completely independent of the fact that the latter has been over for me for more than 2 years. That’s why it’s up to me to do it all from here as much as possible.
As a teenager, I felt that living according to capitalist rules was destructive. Humans are social creatures and geared towards cooperation. But subjection to the constraints of isolation through competition produced under capitalism attacks this and creates alienation and distance between one another. Having to function without asking why, and chasing to conform to any images and norms produced by this system creates distance from yourself.
Of course, I didn’t have a concept or an exact explanation for it. But I felt crushed by the pressure and depression that all this created and my defenses against it grew. That’s why I was moved early on by questions about a different life that had to be possible.
That was the case, even though I was very lucky at home. My parents were open people. My mother has probably always been like that. My father, who joined the Hitler Youth as a boy and was on the side of the Nazis in the war as a teenager, dealt intensively with the crimes of National Socialism after 1945 and drew conclusions from them. Both wanted to instill human values in their children. So I was able to have friends from everywhere, both in terms of country, skin color and social status. In the early days of labor migration, some of them were from Spain, Italy and Portugal. Through contact with these friends, I had the opportunity to learn about very different ways of life. That was something special. Only one of my school friends was allowed out on the street with us. Like everywhere else, racist attitudes towards migrants were widespread in our neighborhood. So my parents had to withstand the criticism from teachers who watched my “dealing” with concern. I also noticed how negative and exclusionary the behavior towards migrant workers was. I saw containers in which several Turkish construction workers had to live crammed in only to have their bones broken again during their hard work. They should allow themselves to be squeezed to the maximum at work, but they should not become an equal part of this society. These injustices also upset me. School wasn’t about being together, no, it was supposed to be taught to us that it was always about “being better”, better than your best friend. And about keeping up in order to be able to achieve a career that makes it possible to take part in consumption that is claimed to be desirable. A consumption that is not geared towards real needs, but for which the needs are artificially created in order to increase the profits of corporations. It is still the same today that you are led to believe that it is not what you are that counts, but rather what you have, what you look like and what you achieve. For the growing profit of capital, that determines your value here. Back then I often asked myself what was wrong with me because I didn’t feel any pull to keep up. On the contrary, all attempts to submit to it drained every fiber of my energy. Being depressed by this only disappeared when I met friends from the spontaneous or non-dogmatic left. We looked at texts from the socialist patient collective, such as the book “Making a Weapon Out of Illness,” which really impressed me.
Through these conflicts I learned that my feeling of being lost was not based on an individual problem, but was rooted in social conditions. Understanding this opened our eyes even further to the injustice around us. The brutal imperialist exploitation and oppression in many parts of the world and the wars that came from the rich capitalist countries. Under no circumstances did I want to become an accomplice. It became my conviction that in overcoming these conditions lies the hope of a free and humane life for everyone, which needs to be conquered.
This conviction has never left me since then. Because every decade, every single year and every day brings new evidence that humanity’s problems cannot be solved within capitalism. On the contrary: they are getting worse and worse.
Along with many others, I did not want to submit to this system that alienates people from themselves. We wanted to be seen for who we are, without conforming to lies and images presented by the consumer and performance society. We didn’t want to remain trapped in this and change ourselves and the society determined by capitalism.
That was around the mid-70s. There was still a hint of the 1968 movement of rebellion against the institutions and political positions that were still or newly dominated by Nazis and the ways of thinking in society that were influenced by fascism.
There had been the emergence of an internationalist, revolutionary left, with huge demonstrations in solidarity with the Vietnamese liberation struggle against US aggression and with the fight against the fascist Shah regime in Iran, which was then strongly supported by the revolutionary Iranian left.
But there was also the first demonstrator murdered by the police during this demonstration. On June 2, 1967, the student Benno Ohnesorg was shot by a police officer during a demonstration against the Federal Republic of Germany’s complicity with the fascist Shah regime.
There had been the emergence of an internationalist, revolutionary left, with huge demonstrations in solidarity with the Vietnamese liberation struggle against US aggression and with the fight against the fascist Shah regime in Iran, which was then strongly supported by the revolutionary Iranian left.
But there was also the first demonstrator murdered by the police during this demonstration. On June 2, 1967, the student Benno Ohnesorg was shot by a police officer during a demonstration against the Federal Republic of Germany’s complicity with the fascist Shah regime.
The RAF had already attacked the US headquarters in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, from where the US Army’s air raids in Vietnam were coordinated. The Second June Movement and the revolutionary cells were also founded at that time. And later the Red Zora, organized by women, was added.
Remnants of the 1968 awakening could still be felt in the school. Despite the professional bans, there were some teachers who practiced other forms of teaching with us that were focused on learning together and not on competition. We read books such as those by B. Traven about stories of resistance from Latin America or Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll. In Religion we learned about liberation theology in Latin America and about priests who had joined the struggle for liberation there. Like Don Helder Camara in Brazil and Camilo Torres in Colombia.
All of this, but also the fact that these teachers were disciplined and transferred before our eyes, made me learn more about global conditions and the role and reality of the Federal Republic of Germany. We were also outraged that at that time it was not part of the curriculum to deal comprehensively with Nazi fascism. Let alone the consequences that had to be drawn from it. In hindsight, it’s no wonder, because there were no fundamental plans.
We acquired our knowledge of this outside of school. I remember a ring binder put together by left-wing students. I think it was called “learning from below”. From this we learned about the responsibility of capital for the rise to power of fascism and about the entire dimension of the human catastrophe, the brutal persecution of the left-wing workers’ movement and the left-wing intellectuals, the cruel policy of extermination against the Jewish population, against Roma and Sinti, about concentration camps and euthanasia, the eradication of all opposition, about the repulsed war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, which cost the lives of more than 25 million Soviet citizens, of raids and occupation in Eastern and Western Europe, but also of Europe-wide anti-fascist and communist resistance to it.
During this time, older students also invited people to film screenings and discussions about the Vietnamese liberation struggle. We formed a school collective in order to be able to enforce demands in everyday school life. Until the age of 15, I had resisted the idea that people who wanted to fight for a better world had to use violence to achieve and defend it. My dream was non-violent change. As we looked at history and the world at large, we became increasingly aware of the fact that the powerful beneficiaries who were most entangled in the capitalist system would fight any fundamental change with the most brutal violence. The example of the US-backed fascist military coup and the assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 had shown that the possibilities and existence of any elected socialist government would be crushed if it could not defend itself with arms.
“You’ll have to realize that you have to defend yourself if you don’t want to go under,” was a slogan on many leaflets and on many walls at the time.
During the years of my politicization in Karlsruhe, I repeatedly heard about the RAF through slogans or posters on the walls. Also about the fight of political prisoners against isolation torture and solidarity with them. Soon I consciously followed everything, including their hunger strikes. It had a great attraction for me that there were people who fought so decisively against this system, by which I, like many others, felt oppressed.
I was 16 when I noticed that a person who was on hunger strike against the torture of solitary confinement had been murdered in prison. It was Holger Meins who stood up against the conditions and was killed in prison through targeted malnutrition during state force feeding and through the refusal of medical help.
I was 17 when the Vietnamese liberation struggle defeated US-led imperialism. The incredible victory was also achieved with global solidarity. Despite napalm, despite the enormous military machinery that opposed the liberation movement, and despite the massacres of the Vietnamese population that the US military carried out with the help and complicity of the West, especially Germany.
It was a time of attempts at liberation and anti-colonial struggles in many countries: for example, the Black Panthers against racist oppression and for the revolution in the USA, the fight against apartheid in South Africa or the FSLN in Nicaragua against the dictatorship. I began to understand what humanity can expect from capitalism and imperialism. Yes, I saw myself as part of the global movements that fought for liberation from exploitation and oppression against capitalism and patriarchy and against war and militarism.
In 1976/77 I started visiting political prisoners. The first of them was Johannes Thimme, who was in prison for allegedly supporting the RAF and was immediately put in solitary confinement. I wanted to express my solidarity and counteract the isolation. In response, they began to terrorize me with surveillance. In 1977, civilian police officers showed up in their cars at my front door early in the morning and followed me at walking pace to school.
After 1977, when the attempt to liberate 11 prisoners from the RAF failed, and of the Stammheim prisoners only Irmgard Möller survived the night of October 18, 1977, seriously injured, I decided to move to Wiesbaden. There I met comrades with whom I wanted to continue solidarity with political prisoners. We saw this as an important and urgently needed part of the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggle.
It was a life full of resistance activities against isolation and for the reunification of prisoners, solidarity with the liberation struggles in Palestine, South Africa, Nicaragua and El Salvador, and with Turkish comrades against the NATO coup in Turkey.
Through the fight in solidarity with the political prisoners, further discussions and friendships developed with other comrades from Ireland, the Basque Country, Italy, Spain and France. And there were contacts with the left-wing Iranian resistance.
For us, the international liberation movements also stood for the global women’s liberation struggle. Leyla Khaled from the PFLP in Palestine, Assata Shakur and Angela Davis from the black liberation movement in the USA and also the comrades from the armed groups in Western Europe were examples for us. They represented millions of women worldwide.
In recent decades, the example of the Kurdish liberation movement, particularly in Rojava, has shown how much strength arises for all when women’s liberation is a defining part of the struggle.
We lived and organized our everyday lives together. There were squats and the fight against the West runway, against the deforestation and against the expansion of the capacity of Frankfurt Airport and thus the US Air Base. We went there for the partly peaceful, partly militant Sunday walks to the runway wall, political theater, many resistance meetings and events that were directed against the imperialist US and NATO policies. Together we were at demonstrations in solidarity with the liberation movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador, against the state visits of Reagan, the then US President, and Haig, the then US NATO Supreme Commander, and in solidarity with the political prisoners. We saw the RAF attacks against Haig and Kroesen as well as on the US military airport in Ramstein as a base for their wars all over the world and the attempt in Oberammergau as a strengthening of our resistance and vice versa at the time of major mobilizations against the stationing of US medium-range missiles and the US counterwars against the liberation movements.
During this time, the RAF and action directe also proposed the formation of a common resistance front in the fight against the formation of Western Europe into an imperialist bloc and in solidarity with the liberation movements.
State security struck hard with increased repression. Several anti-imperialist comrades known to the state security service were arrested. By constructing an alleged “legal RAF,” the Federal Prosecutor’s Office created the instrument that made it possible to put comrades in prison for many years through convictions without evidence of their alleged involvement in militant actions.
Since our visits to political prisoners, we – and I mean many comrades – were monitored at almost every step. They terrorized us with obvious surveillance, with checks several times a day, during which we were addressed by name and asked to identify ourselves. They often set up checkpoints on the street where we lived so that no visitors could come to us without registering. The other variant was covert observations that we weren’t supposed to notice.
These observations were like contagious diseases that spread from person to person. In any case, we always had to assume that the “Lords of Dawn” were lurking somewhere. It took a lot of effort to be able to safely escape this surveillance for at least a few hours, whether it was to be able to have a conversation without the fear of being listened to, or to spray a few slogans or stick up posters. It is obvious that resistance could never allow itself to be put in chains that would mean having every activity controlled by state security. And of course we didn’t want to expose our emotional lives to guards.
Back in the 70s and 80s, there were always comrades who noticed how the net was being drawn ever tighter around them and who, out of fear and arrest, disappeared from the scene and lived abroad – some, sometimes for years.
At the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s it was obvious that there had to be a redefinition and fundamental reflection of revolutionary politics. On the one hand, the international framework conditions had changed profoundly, and on the other hand, it was a matter of coming to terms with past experiences. At the time, I was one of many who did not consider withdrawing in the face of the change in era. We did not want to accept the collapse of the Soviet Union as a final victory for capitalism. It was clear that this weakening of the world socialist movement would have catastrophic consequences. In the Federal Republic of Germany it led to the return of the Bundeswehr as an openly belligerent army and immediately to the war against Yugoslavia, which violated international law. It led to the incorporation of the GDR by the Federal Republic of Germany, which was also implemented over the heads of those who had begun their journey in the GDR with the aim of positive change there and beyond the capitalist system and West German reality, and brought with it the neoliberal attack on social achievements that had been fought for. And a racist mobilization sparked by the CDU as a redirection of any anger and resistance that may arise. At the same time, nationalistic joy was celebrated. This was eagerly taken up by the right-wing and led to deadly arson attacks in West and East in united Germany, such as in Solingen and Mölln, and attacks on migrants, refugees and left-wing people and their structures. I just remember Rostock-Lichtenhagen and Hoyerswerda and reports from people currently on trial as Antifa who were exposed to this atmosphere in eastern Germany in their youth.
Of course, we realized this bitter weakness of the left worldwide and that is also why we had the feeling that we wanted to make every effort to find answers to the questions before us and to continue to exist as a radical left-wing force. The disputes over this took place together with illegals. In the long run it was too dangerous to leave the observation situation again and again and then return again.
I decided not to look into these conditions any further and so stayed away. That was the decision to make resistance the center of my life and the contacts and discussions with other comrades who had the same thoughts about what to do next and the redefinition of revolutionary politics had become a priority for me.
The RAF has not existed for 28 years. The fact that the RAF played an important role in my life is evident from what I have written here. For me, these comrades represented the possibility of breaking with this system and fighting for liberation in fundamental resistance.
By discussing the RAF’s first actions during the Vietnam War, we understood more about the role of the Federal Republic of Germany and the global balance of power and how the fighting can support each other internationally.
Even from the prisons, the prisoners’ fight against isolation torture and for collectivity – to be able to be and act together with those who wanted that for themselves – conveyed a trace of what the fight for liberation is all about. Namely, a society in which the focus is on “for everyone” and not on profit, money, power – not on having, but on being, together.
For me it remained that way for a long time, regardless of the criticism that I already had about some of the actions and the underlying provisions. This is also independent of the recognition of the need to deal with errors in the history of the radical and militant left, including in the RAF.
The idea arose that the armed struggle would have to be politically and bindingly integrated into a countervailing force from below.
But the overall political situation did not allow this. I found the dissolution of the RAF and its justification completely correct.
As radical or militant leftists, we have certainly made many mistakes, but certainly not the one of shrugging off the misery of our time.
Of course I would like to take part in a discussion and preferably in conversations about this era of resistance. Burkhard Garweg was completely right when he wrote that at the end of his letter to Caroline Braunmühl.
A discussion with those who have been part of this history of resistance at some point and all those who want to use their experiences for the future of the resistance.
I don’t think the courtroom is the right place for an in-depth discussion on this.
This makes a discussion more difficult for me right from the start. Visits from former prisoners from the RAF and the June 2nd Movement were rejected with the most insane reasons. Furthermore, during the visits every sentence was recorded for the state security, even before I could think a thought back and forth with visitors.
The BAW has every one of my statements, even the most general ones, about the history of the resistance confiscated as “evidence” of involvement in the RAF, which in turn they interpret as evidence of my involvement in the actions they have attributed to me.
I see this, as well as the extensive summonses with which more and more comrades from the 70s and 80s are being harassed, as a threat not only to me. Of course, the left-wing armed groups did not move in a vacuum at the time. Like me, they touched and influenced many comrades who had their own practice of resistance and challenged their political and/or practical support, solidarity and criticism. But now, after 40/50 years, fining people heavily and threatening them with imprisonment if they are not willing to tell the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office about their lives and name other names who are then to be summoned and to completely ignore the state of health of individual comrades in the summons shows the intention to punish the comrades as a deterrent today as representative of the history of the resistance.
At the beginning of the 90s, on April 10, 1992, the RAF declared that it would stop the deadly attacks on representatives from the state and business for the necessary discussion process and that it would reduce the escalation on its part.
At the same time, solidarity with the struggle of political prisoners and the need to include them in the discussions of the radical left grew. It appeared that the state was moving in a positive direction regarding demands to improve prison conditions and release sick prisoners. But as soon as it became known to state security at the highest level that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had an informant in Klaus Steinmetz with contact with illegal immigrants, it immediately resorted to escalation again. The prisoners’ demands were closed again. In March 1993, the RAF blew up the new prison building in Weiterstadt, which was nearing completion. At the same time, the state was preparing a large wave of arrests. Then they struck in Bad Kleinen. Wolfgang Grams was murdered and Birgit Hogefeld was arrested. The RAF and resistance prisoners were subjected to new trials and long prison sentences.
In 1998 the RAF disbanded of its own accord. Both the state security agency and its much-quoted experts such as Butz Peters and Alexander Strassner spoke of up to 30 people who could have identified the RAF in the last years of its existence. They have often openly said that they basically have no idea. It should stay that way. A serious social examination and debate about history is not about individual people, but about the political content of the debate.
After 1998, the only people publicly wanted were Burkhard Garweg, Volker Staub and me. There was no question for anyone, whether they were on wanted lists or not, to turn themselves in. The state had set out clear facts about what would happen to us if they got their hands on one of us. They would have liked to celebrate their triumph against the RAF and with it an important part of the fundamental resistance in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. This was still evident almost 30 years later after my arrest, both in my treatment, presentation and the media coverage of the whole thing.
We didn’t want to subject ourselves to something like that. So it was absolutely necessary not to get caught. Neither did we want to subject ourselves to condemnation rituals that had been practiced for years. There are still long prison sentences for all sorts of actions by the RAF and the resistance that have not yet been convicted, and there is a risk of being shot if arrested.
In illegality we had the opportunity to continue living as radical leftists, albeit within limits and in seclusion in freedom. Here we were able to live in self-determined, solidarity-based relationships with comrades and friends and decide on our future path.
This state is not a friend of political solutions, but a friend of capital. Everyone must submit to this.
Such a long life of illegality has arisen from this story. Not out of a sense of adventure and certainly not out of enrichment. It has been in recent decades and is today a defensive position of resistance. Even though the life I was being taken away from meant a lot to me, there was no plan to try to use violence and shooting to get out of the situation. That’s why nothing like that happened.
When I heard the prosecution’s plea, I thought to myself how many pirouettes did she have to do to lie all this away. In the trial, the alleged willingness to kill is still maintained in order to use the hammer against me. Here all intentions are carried out, some of them vindictive, but above all those of domination. This contradiction shows that it is about demonization, which is intended to further legitimize the search for criminals who are supposedly dangerous to the public and to set an example.
I counter this with the demand: Stop the search for Burkhard Garweg and Volker Straub!
With regard to the psychological consequences for some of those affected by the attacks that were discussed here in the trial, I completely agree with Burkhard Garweg’s statement in his greetings from illegality in October 2024:
“Traumatization of cashiers and money messengers is to be regretted.”
After I noticed during the trial how badly individual victims are still doing today, such as the driver Mirko Kramer from Wolfsburg or Ms. Ulmer from Bochum, a cashier, I have to say that I feel very sorry for them because of the serious psychological injuries described in the trial.
Before I read the trial files, I would have been more likely to imagine the trauma of being robbed by a cashier than an armed money delivery person. It is surprising that money messengers do not receive any training that would enable them to act calculatingly and coolly in such a situation instead of being left in total shock. Especially when the job only exists because of the real danger of robberies. And it is remarkable that in the event of an attack, they first have to stay in the car alone or in pairs for hours. Still to protect the money, even though everything is already full of police instead of them receiving initial psychological care. For the first time in connection with this process, I was confronted with the fact that cash-in-transit drivers and money messengers spoke of traumatization.
When I and my lawyers decided not to question the psychological consequences of the witnesses in the trial, there were two reasons for this. The main reason for this was that nothing should be done that could contribute to retraumatization or deterioration. This is also about very personal things, especially when it comes to pre-existing circumstances from the life history of the individual affected. We didn’t think it was right to harp on it publicly.
The second reason was that I think it is possible and generally justified if those affected would have taken the right to a longer paid vacation after such a robbery or attempted robbery. The fact that something like this happens was proven by the statement of the driver Whitley, whose boss intervened immediately after the attack in Duisburg to put a stop to it. I don’t mention this here because I would accuse anyone who was affected here of doing so. I just want to make a relationship clear: both cashiers and cash transport employees are proletarians and not enemies.
It is well known that working conditions in the cash-in-trade industry are poor and the work is not well paid. The driver Immes’ statement that the first thing the management did after the attack in Stuhr was to inquire about the condition of the car, but not about the well-being of the people, fits in with this. It is astonishing that some cash transport crews still risk so much for “their” company. Especially since there is a directive not to risk your life for the money.
Ex-soldier and driver Whitley said he might have even started a shootout if he had had his gun with him. I had already read in an article about the incident in Wolfsburg that there is an instruction to leave the runner behind with robbers if the driver can drive away. However, I didn’t take this seriously, but rather just as a statement made by the company boss in order to protect his driver, who had saved a lot of money for the company, in public. The fact that he had let his colleague down was initially questioned morally in the regional press. Only after the suspicion was expressed that the attempted robbery had been carried out by the conjured former RAF did the press turn up the heat and write about unscrupulous and brutal robbers.
When I read about the post-traumatic stress disorder of the driver Immes from Stuhr in the files, it seemed logical to me from the start. Although my lawyers have made it clear several times that he was not targeted and that it was even part of his therapy to realize that no one wanted to kill him, the fact remains that he felt that way and was severely shocked, especially since he found himself in a situation that, for someone who had problems in small, enclosed spaces, had to be horrifying just from being locked in. At first I didn’t listen to Mirko Kramer, the driver in Wolfsburg, when he read the files.
He only had direct contact with the attack situation for a few seconds. He even outsmarted the robbers and was quickly out of the danger zone. It wasn’t until shortly before his testimony at the trial that I realized that something had actually completely thrown him off track. The trigger was the attack because it put him in this situation where he had to make a decision. In order to secure the bosses’ money, he decided to follow the instructions of leaving his colleague with the robbers. He said that Mr. Kramer had acted correctly according to the instructions, but also said that these instructions were not humanly correct. That’s exactly what I think too. It’s pure capitalism. He himself said: “I had to hear that the money is more important than the person”. That sums it up.
From the statements of the driver in Cremlingen, Michael Sohn, I gathered that Kramer was not approached by his colleagues after the attack. His actions were even questioned in the press. I think he had doubts about it himself. After he saw the robbers’ car drive away, he drove back to check on his colleague. It’s easy to imagine how frightened he must have been when he couldn’t see him anywhere at first. As I said before, I felt very sorry for him when I saw and heard how bad he had been since then. I hope he will get better soon. I also felt very sorry for the driver Immes from Stuhr. Because he felt his life was threatened and suffered from this shock for a very long time.
Under capitalism, the property and money of the rich are protected from the population at massive expense. Conversely, in cases of “white collar crime” such as the Cum-Ex affair, in which a loot of 30 billion euros was made in order to make the rich even richer, the criminals are protected by the state and the judicial structure by hindering effective investigations.
There will certainly always be situations in which people, due to persecution or a lack of other means of survival, will be forced to steal money as those who do not own property. This necessity has often existed in the history of the left. It has nothing to do with ease or adventure. In any case, all ways of obtaining money that can keep the risk to people as low as possible are preferable. Ultimately, it’s about creating conditions in which people no longer have to have to somehow get money in order to survive. Be it through allowing oneself to be exploited in wage work, through illegal work, self-exploitation or through robbery and theft. Rather than worrying about ensuring survival as dispossessed people, we would have always put our energy into so many useful things, into constructive things, into political disputes, into learning useful things together in friendships. We all have many interests and abilities, which may have to do with, among other things, seeking answers to the questions of the time, such as how to stop the frenzy of destruction and wars and build a different reality.
Some time after this attack occurred in Stuhr, Volker, Burkhard and I were publicly persecuted for attempted murder.
For several years, the public prosecutor’s office and the Lower Saxony LKA obviously didn’t come across any useful leads, which is why they doggedly turned up the heat again after 2023. With interrogations of x how many old friends and acquaintances, searches of parents and other relatives, calls in file number XY and other reports and sent their squads after every clue. Unfortunately, you came across me. Since then, the prosecutor’s arrest has brought terror into the lives of friends and siblings, parents in neighborhoods, the trailer park with real marches, without any consideration for the cause of trauma. But these are legal attacks that are wanted by the class justice system and are of course not prosecuted. This means that the accusers have no moral problems. During the course of the trial, the public prosecutor’s office made it clear that it was by no means concerned with the well-being of the witnesses or those affected by attacks. Why else did she repeatedly probe during interrogations when witnesses said that they weren’t feeling so badly after the respective attacks. The fact that they got over it relatively quickly was sometimes followed up in a mushy manner when someone said, “It was clear that it wasn’t against me.” In any case, the prosecution would have liked to hear something different. How great must the disappointment have been that the space reserved especially for many co-plaintiffs was not fully occupied? For them, those affected are only a means to an end in order to be able to achieve the highest possible sentence against me and to continue the search for Burkhard and Volker. In return, she would obviously have much preferred several retraumatized, severely injured victims.
It is also fitting that in this trial the prosecution is acting as if it doesn’t matter at all how the robbers behave. They even seem to be more upset when it is said that their behavior towards those affected was polite and reassuring. I find this unfathomable, because of course it is neither for the mugged nor for the robbers, no matter how they behave. A few weeks ago, the court got involved in the tenor of the prosecution when it rejected an application from my defense. It was claimed that anyone who commits robberies takes serious retraumatization into account, because it is well known that traumatized people can be found everywhere, from money messengers, valuables transporters, cashiers to the special squad and every random people present anyway. Soldiers and police officers are also known to have experienced trauma. I was actually already aware of the latter when they had come into situations in which people, including colleagues, had died during operations, when they themselves had been involved in massacres or had witnessed them.
I would not expect such traumatized people to be in the police service or armed as money messengers, but rather in psychological treatment or in positions that are suitable for recovery. But what does that actually mean? There is also this fatal assertion here that it doesn’t matter whether people act brutally violent and aggressive during such attacks or not, because if they encounter traumatized people, it’s the same anyway? How irresponsible and wrong are such statements! But beyond that: What does it say about the state of this society when we encounter traumatized and psychologically injured people everywhere we go today, not as a rare exception, but as an increasing rule? It is true that the constantly propagated military training and militarization and the upholding of the right of the militarily stronger in the international conflicts over power and access to raw materials and land are accompanied by the strengthening of the right and the spread of fascist thinking. Violent and patriarchal ideas are strengthened.
Since the dawn of time, femicide, rape and sexual violence – including in police operations – have been omnipresent.
During the isolation during the Corona period, outbreaks of patriarchal violence in families increased.
These are obvious sources of trauma. Otherwise, so many things are happening that are filling more and more people with great uncertainty and growing fear of the future. Every day it is spread through the bourgeois media and certainly also massively on the Internet that the money that would actually be needed for social and ecological issues, for health, education and culture, is now being invested in rearmament. The cold sorting out is becoming more and more dominant in the discussions in the main stream media – entitlement to help and care should no longer exist for ever larger parts of society. Those who don’t have the money for private insurance are at risk of receiving increasingly reduced medical care – and – expensive therapy for grandpa is no longer worth it!
Refugees should be deported somewhere else or kept out – even violently. Unless they are needed somewhere in the economy.
In times of crisis, the capitalist Western states rely on external aggression and internal social brutalization to dismantle societies. In return, contempt for a growing part of the population, which is defamed as useless, is propagated.
Social demands, social circumvention, inclusion and care are attacked as threatening the economy – and that actually means threatening profit growth. The word “reform” today stands for government steps towards the abolition of the welfare state.
The state today oppresses through division, repression and fear. This works at a time when thousands are threatened with the loss of their relative prosperity and therefore have to fear that they will soon find themselves on the side of those who have been insulted as “parasites” and will be dependent on support that is already being cut back.
The question is whether this leads many people to allow themselves to be blackmailed or lured into producing any dirt for the war machine or whether in the disputes over this, those who have long drawn up proposals for a different civil and ecological production are finally noticed and whether this can be organized and implemented together.
Young people should resign themselves to a future perspective as cannon fodder.
Although peace researchers have already refuted Russia’s war intentions or ability to wage war against NATO many times, these continue to be used as a justification for the concentration on militarization and the enormously increased spending on the military and the arms industry and the continued fueling of the war in Ukraine by NATO’s immense arms deliveries.
The feeling of not having any decision-making options arises. If the only perspective is yes! to war and impoverishment, a business as usual! When faced with natural destruction and climate catastrophe, this creates despair. For two and a half years, it has been visibly demonstrated around the world in brutality how representatives of Western governments, which until recently called themselves a “society of values”, deal with people who stand in the way of imperialist and capitalist interests – namely the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian population in Gaza as well as the ethnic cleansing through sheer terror in the West Bank and now also in Lebanon and Iran with the most brutal destruction caused by the war by Israel and the USA. It is the German government that is known to support this through arms sales, business relationships and political bows and to persecute those who oppose it. With a Federal Chancellor who remarked on Israel’s aggressive warfare even before the new expansion of war that violated international law that it was “dirty work that Israel does for us.”
So it is true when the court finds that the streets are full of people traumatized by poverty, racism, patriarchy, police violence and imperialist wars. Accusing me of this exploits the misery and is intended to justify a long prison sentence.
Overcoming mass trauma requires immediate but also profound changes, internationally. Because it is obvious that the extent of the trauma in countries that have been engulfed in war for years, such as Sudan, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Ukraine or that are subject to strangulation by sanctions such as Cuba, must be unimaginably more drastic.
Everyone can really see and understand that! Basically, most people know it.
But unfortunately many are more afraid of taking steps into a different social society that would be unknown than of the comprehensive destruction of living conditions that is clearly on the horizon if they say “Keep it up!” There is an urgent need for a “system change” because, in addition to competition, exploitation and oppression, capitalism also includes fascism, racism, war, violent power behavior in the political system and between people, patriarchal violence against women and queers, against people with disabilities and the destruction of nature.
Depending on the state of the capitalist crisis, all of this fades more into the background or more into the foreground. That is why we will only leave this story of suffering behind us once we have overcome this system. Right now we are at an extremely destructive point in this crisis. The old, false world order is losing its hegemony – finally – because it is absolutely unfair to the vast majority of humanity. But that’s why she lashes out wildly. For us, it must be a direct matter of turning away from military training and militarization, away from external aggression and internal repression and humiliation, social coldness, and complicity in global capitalist and imperialist crimes.
Stop the wars and imperial violence that violate international law! Stop the oppressive sanctions that are causing devastation and millions of deaths!
Instead, it must be about concentrating on ecologically sensible production that is not aimed at profit for the few, but rather at the well-being of all and the restructuring of society in a way that allows people to live in social security and security internationally.
“The alternative is our task worldwide and is a socialism that could be rich in historical experiences (and) also by overcoming the large and small mistakes of history, the large and small attempts at revolution, the urban guerrillas, the anarchists of the communists, the social revolutionaries and the anti-patriarchal and anti-colonial struggles and movements. Achieving this ultimately decides whether life will continue to be possible on this planet and under what conditions. …The question to all of us worldwide is the alternative to capitalism and the systemic as well as our processes towards it is existential and cannot be postponed.” Burkhard Garweg in the greeting to the Rosa Luxemburg Conference in January 2026.
The trace of this lives in all the various resistance activities of those
who know that the youth, the non-rich and powerful in the population are the ones who are supposed to be used as cannon fodder in the war for power and raw materials and therefore oppose militarization, conscription and rearmament, i.e. against the war,
who refuse to give their lives or take those of others for the interests of capital and who do not accept that the resources should be used for weapons, the military, the police and the profits of corporations instead of for the population,
who do not accept militarization because they are aware that in a militarized society violence against women, queers, trans people and people with disabilities will inevitably continue to increase,
who, as students, directly defend themselves with school strikes against a future as cannon fodder,
who oppose their solidarity and internationalism to imperial politics and crimes and do not accept the state violence that the struggle for power and raw materials in capitalism requires and which is increasingly openly represented and used more considerately by those in power,
who do not bow down, although as Jews they are massively attacked by the German state and the media as allegedly anti-Semitic, because in times of international resistance against the extreme violence against Palestinians they are to be deprived of the right to reject or even even question Israeli settler colonialism and the apartheid policy against the Palestinian population of Zionism, as well as Germany’s complicity in war crimes and genocide,
who, as activists, demonstrators, journalists, artists and scientists, insist on their opposition to this, even though Germany’s raison d’état has established unwavering support for Israel’s every policy, no matter how terrorist, and anyone who opposes this is threatened with exclusion and criminalization,
who fight anti-Semitism and naturally assume that this is part of the fight against racism in general,
who, in the face of worsening inequality, poverty, exploitation, no longer affordable rents, mass homelessness and unemployment, are questioning the capitalist system and are now demanding the abolition of the profit economy system with home ownership
who counter the politics of ongoing pushed racism, nationalism and the exclusion of people who have already been left behind from social security with a politics of solidarity and the fight against social cuts; because the only way to prevent ever larger parts of the population from moving to the right and to stop the fascization of the declining old colonial states and the USA is to counter racist agitation and a politics that is generally based on division and the invitation to save oneself by pushing away those further down in society instead of fighting upwards against power with a radical left perspective that brings tangible positive changes in life for the many,
who are organizing to stop the gradual destruction and militarization of health care,
who directly oppose Nazis and organize protection and who at the same time say that this is not enough because fascism is based on capitalism,
who oppose the ecological destruction of the world that is inevitable under capitalism and are committed to organizing humanity in order to enable sustainable ecological production and thus the survival of humanity and nature,
who, in the face of systems of repression and prisons, stand with us, with the prisoners, and demand with us a perspective of freedom and ultimately the abolition of prisons,
who, after decades of fighting to protect the life of Mumia Abu Jamal, who has been a political prisoner in the USA for 48 years, do not give up and do everything in solidarity to fight for his freedom.
These are by no means all of the diverse resistance activities that have developed today and in recent years due to so many contradictions or have existed in some cases for a long time – such as the feminist and today queer feminist organizing against patriarchal violence, the many initiatives against the increasingly perfect repressive isolation system at the borders to ward off refugees who urgently need help, the flotillas to Gaza and Cuba to break through starvation and isolation, the port blockades against weapons deliveries to Gaza and against militarization and solidarity strikes by Italian and Greek workers with the Palestinian population and their fight against occupation and expulsion, the protests against the increasing number of fatal police shots against black people, non-German people or people who appear to be non-conformist.
Even if – fortunately – I cannot list everything that is being done, I wanted to at least name a part of it because it is so important to remember to stick to the goals and thoughts of liberation and not to allow yourself to be reduced to speechlessness by the open brutality of those in power. Just as all the different initiatives are about the concrete effect against the respective crimes and the defense of “oasis of human cooperation” and at the same time their expansion and further development within their own initiatives, what is important is how everyone will come together to form a common force that can stop the development of the Third World War and what it brings with it in the run-up to it. Because of this war, all positive approaches and ideas are essentially threatened internationally.
Even if this power does not exist yet, it is all these struggles that at least enable its development and that give me hope.
This is also this hope for my and our freedom and ultimately the freedom of everyone and for a world that leaves every form of oppression behind.
A world in which no prisons continue to exist, neither in the form of diverse and interconnected violent relationships, nor in the form of concrete, stone and steel in which people are simply locked away behind walls and barbed wire.
A world in which people can live with each other and in harmony with all other living creatures in nature.
We can only be truly free when everyone is free.
Source: https://de.indymedia.org/node/736638
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=32847 #danielaKlette #europe #germany #PoliticalPrisoners #raf -
Daniela Klette Statement at Trial
Daniela’s plea from May 12, 2026
Now this first long trial against me is coming to an end. In the course of the trial, the assessment that was made from the beginning was confirmed and it became abundantly clear: the search and the proceedings are politically determined. The point here is to absolutely enforce domination and submission. The public prosecutor’s office underlined this again with its plea. It’s not about individual acts and not so much about me, but about delegitimizing a history of radical left resistance and punishing it in a deterrent way.
I would like to thank everyone who supported me in solidarity, here in the hall, from outside, in front of the prison walls, with letters, cards and thoughts. And also my lawyer Ulrich von Klinggräff, who unfortunately became very ill and can therefore no longer be here.
What I am going to say today is addressed to all of them, as well as to the part of the public that is interested.
I would like to briefly say something about my story, which is also the story of many other comrades. Many of those who have written to me are so young that they did not experience the period from the early 70s to the 90s in West Germany. Or they grew up in East Germany or other places in the world. I wrote this without any claim to completeness, but I hope that what I have said makes it clear why I am defending the search for a better world in which capitalism, racism and patriarchy have been overcome and the fight for it.
And why I am here defending the right to build and maintain a life in illegality, even if it is “only” about evading the repression of the state. This is completely independent of the fact that the latter has been over for me for more than 2 years. That’s why it’s up to me to do it all from here as much as possible.
As a teenager, I felt that living according to capitalist rules was destructive. Humans are social creatures and geared towards cooperation. But subjection to the constraints of isolation through competition produced under capitalism attacks this and creates alienation and distance between one another. Having to function without asking why, and chasing to conform to any images and norms produced by this system creates distance from yourself.
Of course, I didn’t have a concept or an exact explanation for it. But I felt crushed by the pressure and depression that all this created and my defenses against it grew. That’s why I was moved early on by questions about a different life that had to be possible.
That was the case, even though I was very lucky at home. My parents were open people. My mother has probably always been like that. My father, who joined the Hitler Youth as a boy and was on the side of the Nazis in the war as a teenager, dealt intensively with the crimes of National Socialism after 1945 and drew conclusions from them. Both wanted to instill human values in their children. So I was able to have friends from everywhere, both in terms of country, skin color and social status. In the early days of labor migration, some of them were from Spain, Italy and Portugal. Through contact with these friends, I had the opportunity to learn about very different ways of life. That was something special. Only one of my school friends was allowed out on the street with us. Like everywhere else, racist attitudes towards migrants were widespread in our neighborhood. So my parents had to withstand the criticism from teachers who watched my “dealing” with concern. I also noticed how negative and exclusionary the behavior towards migrant workers was. I saw containers in which several Turkish construction workers had to live crammed in only to have their bones broken again during their hard work. They should allow themselves to be squeezed to the maximum at work, but they should not become an equal part of this society. These injustices also upset me. School wasn’t about being together, no, it was supposed to be taught to us that it was always about “being better”, better than your best friend. And about keeping up in order to be able to achieve a career that makes it possible to take part in consumption that is claimed to be desirable. A consumption that is not geared towards real needs, but for which the needs are artificially created in order to increase the profits of corporations. It is still the same today that you are led to believe that it is not what you are that counts, but rather what you have, what you look like and what you achieve. For the growing profit of capital, that determines your value here. Back then I often asked myself what was wrong with me because I didn’t feel any pull to keep up. On the contrary, all attempts to submit to it drained every fiber of my energy. Being depressed by this only disappeared when I met friends from the spontaneous or non-dogmatic left. We looked at texts from the socialist patient collective, such as the book “Making a Weapon Out of Illness,” which really impressed me.
Through these conflicts I learned that my feeling of being lost was not based on an individual problem, but was rooted in social conditions. Understanding this opened our eyes even further to the injustice around us. The brutal imperialist exploitation and oppression in many parts of the world and the wars that came from the rich capitalist countries. Under no circumstances did I want to become an accomplice. It became my conviction that in overcoming these conditions lies the hope of a free and humane life for everyone, which needs to be conquered.
This conviction has never left me since then. Because every decade, every single year and every day brings new evidence that humanity’s problems cannot be solved within capitalism. On the contrary: they are getting worse and worse.
Along with many others, I did not want to submit to this system that alienates people from themselves. We wanted to be seen for who we are, without conforming to lies and images presented by the consumer and performance society. We didn’t want to remain trapped in this and change ourselves and the society determined by capitalism.
That was around the mid-70s. There was still a hint of the 1968 movement of rebellion against the institutions and political positions that were still or newly dominated by Nazis and the ways of thinking in society that were influenced by fascism.
There had been the emergence of an internationalist, revolutionary left, with huge demonstrations in solidarity with the Vietnamese liberation struggle against US aggression and with the fight against the fascist Shah regime in Iran, which was then strongly supported by the revolutionary Iranian left.
But there was also the first demonstrator murdered by the police during this demonstration. On June 2, 1967, the student Benno Ohnesorg was shot by a police officer during a demonstration against the Federal Republic of Germany’s complicity with the fascist Shah regime.
There had been the emergence of an internationalist, revolutionary left, with huge demonstrations in solidarity with the Vietnamese liberation struggle against US aggression and with the fight against the fascist Shah regime in Iran, which was then strongly supported by the revolutionary Iranian left.
But there was also the first demonstrator murdered by the police during this demonstration. On June 2, 1967, the student Benno Ohnesorg was shot by a police officer during a demonstration against the Federal Republic of Germany’s complicity with the fascist Shah regime.
The RAF had already attacked the US headquarters in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, from where the US Army’s air raids in Vietnam were coordinated. The Second June Movement and the revolutionary cells were also founded at that time. And later the Red Zora, organized by women, was added.
Remnants of the 1968 awakening could still be felt in the school. Despite the professional bans, there were some teachers who practiced other forms of teaching with us that were focused on learning together and not on competition. We read books such as those by B. Traven about stories of resistance from Latin America or Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll. In Religion we learned about liberation theology in Latin America and about priests who had joined the struggle for liberation there. Like Don Helder Camara in Brazil and Camilo Torres in Colombia.
All of this, but also the fact that these teachers were disciplined and transferred before our eyes, made me learn more about global conditions and the role and reality of the Federal Republic of Germany. We were also outraged that at that time it was not part of the curriculum to deal comprehensively with Nazi fascism. Let alone the consequences that had to be drawn from it. In hindsight, it’s no wonder, because there were no fundamental plans.
We acquired our knowledge of this outside of school. I remember a ring binder put together by left-wing students. I think it was called “learning from below”. From this we learned about the responsibility of capital for the rise to power of fascism and about the entire dimension of the human catastrophe, the brutal persecution of the left-wing workers’ movement and the left-wing intellectuals, the cruel policy of extermination against the Jewish population, against Roma and Sinti, about concentration camps and euthanasia, the eradication of all opposition, about the repulsed war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, which cost the lives of more than 25 million Soviet citizens, of raids and occupation in Eastern and Western Europe, but also of Europe-wide anti-fascist and communist resistance to it.
During this time, older students also invited people to film screenings and discussions about the Vietnamese liberation struggle. We formed a school collective in order to be able to enforce demands in everyday school life. Until the age of 15, I had resisted the idea that people who wanted to fight for a better world had to use violence to achieve and defend it. My dream was non-violent change. As we looked at history and the world at large, we became increasingly aware of the fact that the powerful beneficiaries who were most entangled in the capitalist system would fight any fundamental change with the most brutal violence. The example of the US-backed fascist military coup and the assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 had shown that the possibilities and existence of any elected socialist government would be crushed if it could not defend itself with arms.
“You’ll have to realize that you have to defend yourself if you don’t want to go under,” was a slogan on many leaflets and on many walls at the time.
During the years of my politicization in Karlsruhe, I repeatedly heard about the RAF through slogans or posters on the walls. Also about the fight of political prisoners against isolation torture and solidarity with them. Soon I consciously followed everything, including their hunger strikes. It had a great attraction for me that there were people who fought so decisively against this system, by which I, like many others, felt oppressed.
I was 16 when I noticed that a person who was on hunger strike against the torture of solitary confinement had been murdered in prison. It was Holger Meins who stood up against the conditions and was killed in prison through targeted malnutrition during state force feeding and through the refusal of medical help.
I was 17 when the Vietnamese liberation struggle defeated US-led imperialism. The incredible victory was also achieved with global solidarity. Despite napalm, despite the enormous military machinery that opposed the liberation movement, and despite the massacres of the Vietnamese population that the US military carried out with the help and complicity of the West, especially Germany.
It was a time of attempts at liberation and anti-colonial struggles in many countries: for example, the Black Panthers against racist oppression and for the revolution in the USA, the fight against apartheid in South Africa or the FSLN in Nicaragua against the dictatorship. I began to understand what humanity can expect from capitalism and imperialism. Yes, I saw myself as part of the global movements that fought for liberation from exploitation and oppression against capitalism and patriarchy and against war and militarism.
In 1976/77 I started visiting political prisoners. The first of them was Johannes Thimme, who was in prison for allegedly supporting the RAF and was immediately put in solitary confinement. I wanted to express my solidarity and counteract the isolation. In response, they began to terrorize me with surveillance. In 1977, civilian police officers showed up in their cars at my front door early in the morning and followed me at walking pace to school.
After 1977, when the attempt to liberate 11 prisoners from the RAF failed, and of the Stammheim prisoners only Irmgard Möller survived the night of October 18, 1977, seriously injured, I decided to move to Wiesbaden. There I met comrades with whom I wanted to continue solidarity with political prisoners. We saw this as an important and urgently needed part of the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggle.
It was a life full of resistance activities against isolation and for the reunification of prisoners, solidarity with the liberation struggles in Palestine, South Africa, Nicaragua and El Salvador, and with Turkish comrades against the NATO coup in Turkey.
Through the fight in solidarity with the political prisoners, further discussions and friendships developed with other comrades from Ireland, the Basque Country, Italy, Spain and France. And there were contacts with the left-wing Iranian resistance.
For us, the international liberation movements also stood for the global women’s liberation struggle. Leyla Khaled from the PFLP in Palestine, Assata Shakur and Angela Davis from the black liberation movement in the USA and also the comrades from the armed groups in Western Europe were examples for us. They represented millions of women worldwide.
In recent decades, the example of the Kurdish liberation movement, particularly in Rojava, has shown how much strength arises for all when women’s liberation is a defining part of the struggle.
We lived and organized our everyday lives together. There were squats and the fight against the West runway, against the deforestation and against the expansion of the capacity of Frankfurt Airport and thus the US Air Base. We went there for the partly peaceful, partly militant Sunday walks to the runway wall, political theater, many resistance meetings and events that were directed against the imperialist US and NATO policies. Together we were at demonstrations in solidarity with the liberation movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador, against the state visits of Reagan, the then US President, and Haig, the then US NATO Supreme Commander, and in solidarity with the political prisoners. We saw the RAF attacks against Haig and Kroesen as well as on the US military airport in Ramstein as a base for their wars all over the world and the attempt in Oberammergau as a strengthening of our resistance and vice versa at the time of major mobilizations against the stationing of US medium-range missiles and the US counterwars against the liberation movements.
During this time, the RAF and action directe also proposed the formation of a common resistance front in the fight against the formation of Western Europe into an imperialist bloc and in solidarity with the liberation movements.
State security struck hard with increased repression. Several anti-imperialist comrades known to the state security service were arrested. By constructing an alleged “legal RAF,” the Federal Prosecutor’s Office created the instrument that made it possible to put comrades in prison for many years through convictions without evidence of their alleged involvement in militant actions.
Since our visits to political prisoners, we – and I mean many comrades – were monitored at almost every step. They terrorized us with obvious surveillance, with checks several times a day, during which we were addressed by name and asked to identify ourselves. They often set up checkpoints on the street where we lived so that no visitors could come to us without registering. The other variant was covert observations that we weren’t supposed to notice.
These observations were like contagious diseases that spread from person to person. In any case, we always had to assume that the “Lords of Dawn” were lurking somewhere. It took a lot of effort to be able to safely escape this surveillance for at least a few hours, whether it was to be able to have a conversation without the fear of being listened to, or to spray a few slogans or stick up posters. It is obvious that resistance could never allow itself to be put in chains that would mean having every activity controlled by state security. And of course we didn’t want to expose our emotional lives to guards.
Back in the 70s and 80s, there were always comrades who noticed how the net was being drawn ever tighter around them and who, out of fear and arrest, disappeared from the scene and lived abroad – some, sometimes for years.
At the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s it was obvious that there had to be a redefinition and fundamental reflection of revolutionary politics. On the one hand, the international framework conditions had changed profoundly, and on the other hand, it was a matter of coming to terms with past experiences. At the time, I was one of many who did not consider withdrawing in the face of the change in era. We did not want to accept the collapse of the Soviet Union as a final victory for capitalism. It was clear that this weakening of the world socialist movement would have catastrophic consequences. In the Federal Republic of Germany it led to the return of the Bundeswehr as an openly belligerent army and immediately to the war against Yugoslavia, which violated international law. It led to the incorporation of the GDR by the Federal Republic of Germany, which was also implemented over the heads of those who had begun their journey in the GDR with the aim of positive change there and beyond the capitalist system and West German reality, and brought with it the neoliberal attack on social achievements that had been fought for. And a racist mobilization sparked by the CDU as a redirection of any anger and resistance that may arise. At the same time, nationalistic joy was celebrated. This was eagerly taken up by the right-wing and led to deadly arson attacks in West and East in united Germany, such as in Solingen and Mölln, and attacks on migrants, refugees and left-wing people and their structures. I just remember Rostock-Lichtenhagen and Hoyerswerda and reports from people currently on trial as Antifa who were exposed to this atmosphere in eastern Germany in their youth.
Of course, we realized this bitter weakness of the left worldwide and that is also why we had the feeling that we wanted to make every effort to find answers to the questions before us and to continue to exist as a radical left-wing force. The disputes over this took place together with illegals. In the long run it was too dangerous to leave the observation situation again and again and then return again.
I decided not to look into these conditions any further and so stayed away. That was the decision to make resistance the center of my life and the contacts and discussions with other comrades who had the same thoughts about what to do next and the redefinition of revolutionary politics had become a priority for me.
The RAF has not existed for 28 years. The fact that the RAF played an important role in my life is evident from what I have written here. For me, these comrades represented the possibility of breaking with this system and fighting for liberation in fundamental resistance.
By discussing the RAF’s first actions during the Vietnam War, we understood more about the role of the Federal Republic of Germany and the global balance of power and how the fighting can support each other internationally.
Even from the prisons, the prisoners’ fight against isolation torture and for collectivity – to be able to be and act together with those who wanted that for themselves – conveyed a trace of what the fight for liberation is all about. Namely, a society in which the focus is on “for everyone” and not on profit, money, power – not on having, but on being, together.
For me it remained that way for a long time, regardless of the criticism that I already had about some of the actions and the underlying provisions. This is also independent of the recognition of the need to deal with errors in the history of the radical and militant left, including in the RAF.
The idea arose that the armed struggle would have to be politically and bindingly integrated into a countervailing force from below.
But the overall political situation did not allow this. I found the dissolution of the RAF and its justification completely correct.
As radical or militant leftists, we have certainly made many mistakes, but certainly not the one of shrugging off the misery of our time.
Of course I would like to take part in a discussion and preferably in conversations about this era of resistance. Burkhard Garweg was completely right when he wrote that at the end of his letter to Caroline Braunmühl.
A discussion with those who have been part of this history of resistance at some point and all those who want to use their experiences for the future of the resistance.
I don’t think the courtroom is the right place for an in-depth discussion on this.
This makes a discussion more difficult for me right from the start. Visits from former prisoners from the RAF and the June 2nd Movement were rejected with the most insane reasons. Furthermore, during the visits every sentence was recorded for the state security, even before I could think a thought back and forth with visitors.
The BAW has every one of my statements, even the most general ones, about the history of the resistance confiscated as “evidence” of involvement in the RAF, which in turn they interpret as evidence of my involvement in the actions they have attributed to me.
I see this, as well as the extensive summonses with which more and more comrades from the 70s and 80s are being harassed, as a threat not only to me. Of course, the left-wing armed groups did not move in a vacuum at the time. Like me, they touched and influenced many comrades who had their own practice of resistance and challenged their political and/or practical support, solidarity and criticism. But now, after 40/50 years, fining people heavily and threatening them with imprisonment if they are not willing to tell the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office about their lives and name other names who are then to be summoned and to completely ignore the state of health of individual comrades in the summons shows the intention to punish the comrades as a deterrent today as representative of the history of the resistance.
At the beginning of the 90s, on April 10, 1992, the RAF declared that it would stop the deadly attacks on representatives from the state and business for the necessary discussion process and that it would reduce the escalation on its part.
At the same time, solidarity with the struggle of political prisoners and the need to include them in the discussions of the radical left grew. It appeared that the state was moving in a positive direction regarding demands to improve prison conditions and release sick prisoners. But as soon as it became known to state security at the highest level that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had an informant in Klaus Steinmetz with contact with illegal immigrants, it immediately resorted to escalation again. The prisoners’ demands were closed again. In March 1993, the RAF blew up the new prison building in Weiterstadt, which was nearing completion. At the same time, the state was preparing a large wave of arrests. Then they struck in Bad Kleinen. Wolfgang Grams was murdered and Birgit Hogefeld was arrested. The RAF and resistance prisoners were subjected to new trials and long prison sentences.
In 1998 the RAF disbanded of its own accord. Both the state security agency and its much-quoted experts such as Butz Peters and Alexander Strassner spoke of up to 30 people who could have identified the RAF in the last years of its existence. They have often openly said that they basically have no idea. It should stay that way. A serious social examination and debate about history is not about individual people, but about the political content of the debate.
After 1998, the only people publicly wanted were Burkhard Garweg, Volker Staub and me. There was no question for anyone, whether they were on wanted lists or not, to turn themselves in. The state had set out clear facts about what would happen to us if they got their hands on one of us. They would have liked to celebrate their triumph against the RAF and with it an important part of the fundamental resistance in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. This was still evident almost 30 years later after my arrest, both in my treatment, presentation and the media coverage of the whole thing.
We didn’t want to subject ourselves to something like that. So it was absolutely necessary not to get caught. Neither did we want to subject ourselves to condemnation rituals that had been practiced for years. There are still long prison sentences for all sorts of actions by the RAF and the resistance that have not yet been convicted, and there is a risk of being shot if arrested.
In illegality we had the opportunity to continue living as radical leftists, albeit within limits and in seclusion in freedom. Here we were able to live in self-determined, solidarity-based relationships with comrades and friends and decide on our future path.
This state is not a friend of political solutions, but a friend of capital. Everyone must submit to this.
Such a long life of illegality has arisen from this story. Not out of a sense of adventure and certainly not out of enrichment. It has been in recent decades and is today a defensive position of resistance. Even though the life I was being taken away from meant a lot to me, there was no plan to try to use violence and shooting to get out of the situation. That’s why nothing like that happened.
When I heard the prosecution’s plea, I thought to myself how many pirouettes did she have to do to lie all this away. In the trial, the alleged willingness to kill is still maintained in order to use the hammer against me. Here all intentions are carried out, some of them vindictive, but above all those of domination. This contradiction shows that it is about demonization, which is intended to further legitimize the search for criminals who are supposedly dangerous to the public and to set an example.
I counter this with the demand: Stop the search for Burkhard Garweg and Volker Straub!
With regard to the psychological consequences for some of those affected by the attacks that were discussed here in the trial, I completely agree with Burkhard Garweg’s statement in his greetings from illegality in October 2024:
“Traumatization of cashiers and money messengers is to be regretted.”
After I noticed during the trial how badly individual victims are still doing today, such as the driver Mirko Kramer from Wolfsburg or Ms. Ulmer from Bochum, a cashier, I have to say that I feel very sorry for them because of the serious psychological injuries described in the trial.
Before I read the trial files, I would have been more likely to imagine the trauma of being robbed by a cashier than an armed money delivery person. It is surprising that money messengers do not receive any training that would enable them to act calculatingly and coolly in such a situation instead of being left in total shock. Especially when the job only exists because of the real danger of robberies. And it is remarkable that in the event of an attack, they first have to stay in the car alone or in pairs for hours. Still to protect the money, even though everything is already full of police instead of them receiving initial psychological care. For the first time in connection with this process, I was confronted with the fact that cash-in-transit drivers and money messengers spoke of traumatization.
When I and my lawyers decided not to question the psychological consequences of the witnesses in the trial, there were two reasons for this. The main reason for this was that nothing should be done that could contribute to retraumatization or deterioration. This is also about very personal things, especially when it comes to pre-existing circumstances from the life history of the individual affected. We didn’t think it was right to harp on it publicly.
The second reason was that I think it is possible and generally justified if those affected would have taken the right to a longer paid vacation after such a robbery or attempted robbery. The fact that something like this happens was proven by the statement of the driver Whitley, whose boss intervened immediately after the attack in Duisburg to put a stop to it. I don’t mention this here because I would accuse anyone who was affected here of doing so. I just want to make a relationship clear: both cashiers and cash transport employees are proletarians and not enemies.
It is well known that working conditions in the cash-in-trade industry are poor and the work is not well paid. The driver Immes’ statement that the first thing the management did after the attack in Stuhr was to inquire about the condition of the car, but not about the well-being of the people, fits in with this. It is astonishing that some cash transport crews still risk so much for “their” company. Especially since there is a directive not to risk your life for the money.
Ex-soldier and driver Whitley said he might have even started a shootout if he had had his gun with him. I had already read in an article about the incident in Wolfsburg that there is an instruction to leave the runner behind with robbers if the driver can drive away. However, I didn’t take this seriously, but rather just as a statement made by the company boss in order to protect his driver, who had saved a lot of money for the company, in public. The fact that he had let his colleague down was initially questioned morally in the regional press. Only after the suspicion was expressed that the attempted robbery had been carried out by the conjured former RAF did the press turn up the heat and write about unscrupulous and brutal robbers.
When I read about the post-traumatic stress disorder of the driver Immes from Stuhr in the files, it seemed logical to me from the start. Although my lawyers have made it clear several times that he was not targeted and that it was even part of his therapy to realize that no one wanted to kill him, the fact remains that he felt that way and was severely shocked, especially since he found himself in a situation that, for someone who had problems in small, enclosed spaces, had to be horrifying just from being locked in. At first I didn’t listen to Mirko Kramer, the driver in Wolfsburg, when he read the files.
He only had direct contact with the attack situation for a few seconds. He even outsmarted the robbers and was quickly out of the danger zone. It wasn’t until shortly before his testimony at the trial that I realized that something had actually completely thrown him off track. The trigger was the attack because it put him in this situation where he had to make a decision. In order to secure the bosses’ money, he decided to follow the instructions of leaving his colleague with the robbers. He said that Mr. Kramer had acted correctly according to the instructions, but also said that these instructions were not humanly correct. That’s exactly what I think too. It’s pure capitalism. He himself said: “I had to hear that the money is more important than the person”. That sums it up.
From the statements of the driver in Cremlingen, Michael Sohn, I gathered that Kramer was not approached by his colleagues after the attack. His actions were even questioned in the press. I think he had doubts about it himself. After he saw the robbers’ car drive away, he drove back to check on his colleague. It’s easy to imagine how frightened he must have been when he couldn’t see him anywhere at first. As I said before, I felt very sorry for him when I saw and heard how bad he had been since then. I hope he will get better soon. I also felt very sorry for the driver Immes from Stuhr. Because he felt his life was threatened and suffered from this shock for a very long time.
Under capitalism, the property and money of the rich are protected from the population at massive expense. Conversely, in cases of “white collar crime” such as the Cum-Ex affair, in which a loot of 30 billion euros was made in order to make the rich even richer, the criminals are protected by the state and the judicial structure by hindering effective investigations.
There will certainly always be situations in which people, due to persecution or a lack of other means of survival, will be forced to steal money as those who do not own property. This necessity has often existed in the history of the left. It has nothing to do with ease or adventure. In any case, all ways of obtaining money that can keep the risk to people as low as possible are preferable. Ultimately, it’s about creating conditions in which people no longer have to have to somehow get money in order to survive. Be it through allowing oneself to be exploited in wage work, through illegal work, self-exploitation or through robbery and theft. Rather than worrying about ensuring survival as dispossessed people, we would have always put our energy into so many useful things, into constructive things, into political disputes, into learning useful things together in friendships. We all have many interests and abilities, which may have to do with, among other things, seeking answers to the questions of the time, such as how to stop the frenzy of destruction and wars and build a different reality.
Some time after this attack occurred in Stuhr, Volker, Burkhard and I were publicly persecuted for attempted murder.
For several years, the public prosecutor’s office and the Lower Saxony LKA obviously didn’t come across any useful leads, which is why they doggedly turned up the heat again after 2023. With interrogations of x how many old friends and acquaintances, searches of parents and other relatives, calls in file number XY and other reports and sent their squads after every clue. Unfortunately, you came across me. Since then, the prosecutor’s arrest has brought terror into the lives of friends and siblings, parents in neighborhoods, the trailer park with real marches, without any consideration for the cause of trauma. But these are legal attacks that are wanted by the class justice system and are of course not prosecuted. This means that the accusers have no moral problems. During the course of the trial, the public prosecutor’s office made it clear that it was by no means concerned with the well-being of the witnesses or those affected by attacks. Why else did she repeatedly probe during interrogations when witnesses said that they weren’t feeling so badly after the respective attacks. The fact that they got over it relatively quickly was sometimes followed up in a mushy manner when someone said, “It was clear that it wasn’t against me.” In any case, the prosecution would have liked to hear something different. How great must the disappointment have been that the space reserved especially for many co-plaintiffs was not fully occupied? For them, those affected are only a means to an end in order to be able to achieve the highest possible sentence against me and to continue the search for Burkhard and Volker. In return, she would obviously have much preferred several retraumatized, severely injured victims.
It is also fitting that in this trial the prosecution is acting as if it doesn’t matter at all how the robbers behave. They even seem to be more upset when it is said that their behavior towards those affected was polite and reassuring. I find this unfathomable, because of course it is neither for the mugged nor for the robbers, no matter how they behave. A few weeks ago, the court got involved in the tenor of the prosecution when it rejected an application from my defense. It was claimed that anyone who commits robberies takes serious retraumatization into account, because it is well known that traumatized people can be found everywhere, from money messengers, valuables transporters, cashiers to the special squad and every random people present anyway. Soldiers and police officers are also known to have experienced trauma. I was actually already aware of the latter when they had come into situations in which people, including colleagues, had died during operations, when they themselves had been involved in massacres or had witnessed them.
I would not expect such traumatized people to be in the police service or armed as money messengers, but rather in psychological treatment or in positions that are suitable for recovery. But what does that actually mean? There is also this fatal assertion here that it doesn’t matter whether people act brutally violent and aggressive during such attacks or not, because if they encounter traumatized people, it’s the same anyway? How irresponsible and wrong are such statements! But beyond that: What does it say about the state of this society when we encounter traumatized and psychologically injured people everywhere we go today, not as a rare exception, but as an increasing rule? It is true that the constantly propagated military training and militarization and the upholding of the right of the militarily stronger in the international conflicts over power and access to raw materials and land are accompanied by the strengthening of the right and the spread of fascist thinking. Violent and patriarchal ideas are strengthened.
Since the dawn of time, femicide, rape and sexual violence – including in police operations – have been omnipresent.
During the isolation during the Corona period, outbreaks of patriarchal violence in families increased.
These are obvious sources of trauma. Otherwise, so many things are happening that are filling more and more people with great uncertainty and growing fear of the future. Every day it is spread through the bourgeois media and certainly also massively on the Internet that the money that would actually be needed for social and ecological issues, for health, education and culture, is now being invested in rearmament. The cold sorting out is becoming more and more dominant in the discussions in the main stream media – entitlement to help and care should no longer exist for ever larger parts of society. Those who don’t have the money for private insurance are at risk of receiving increasingly reduced medical care – and – expensive therapy for grandpa is no longer worth it!
Refugees should be deported somewhere else or kept out – even violently. Unless they are needed somewhere in the economy.
In times of crisis, the capitalist Western states rely on external aggression and internal social brutalization to dismantle societies. In return, contempt for a growing part of the population, which is defamed as useless, is propagated.
Social demands, social circumvention, inclusion and care are attacked as threatening the economy – and that actually means threatening profit growth. The word “reform” today stands for government steps towards the abolition of the welfare state.
The state today oppresses through division, repression and fear. This works at a time when thousands are threatened with the loss of their relative prosperity and therefore have to fear that they will soon find themselves on the side of those who have been insulted as “parasites” and will be dependent on support that is already being cut back.
The question is whether this leads many people to allow themselves to be blackmailed or lured into producing any dirt for the war machine or whether in the disputes over this, those who have long drawn up proposals for a different civil and ecological production are finally noticed and whether this can be organized and implemented together.
Young people should resign themselves to a future perspective as cannon fodder.
Although peace researchers have already refuted Russia’s war intentions or ability to wage war against NATO many times, these continue to be used as a justification for the concentration on militarization and the enormously increased spending on the military and the arms industry and the continued fueling of the war in Ukraine by NATO’s immense arms deliveries.
The feeling of not having any decision-making options arises. If the only perspective is yes! to war and impoverishment, a business as usual! When faced with natural destruction and climate catastrophe, this creates despair. For two and a half years, it has been visibly demonstrated around the world in brutality how representatives of Western governments, which until recently called themselves a “society of values”, deal with people who stand in the way of imperialist and capitalist interests – namely the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian population in Gaza as well as the ethnic cleansing through sheer terror in the West Bank and now also in Lebanon and Iran with the most brutal destruction caused by the war by Israel and the USA. It is the German government that is known to support this through arms sales, business relationships and political bows and to persecute those who oppose it. With a Federal Chancellor who remarked on Israel’s aggressive warfare even before the new expansion of war that violated international law that it was “dirty work that Israel does for us.”
So it is true when the court finds that the streets are full of people traumatized by poverty, racism, patriarchy, police violence and imperialist wars. Accusing me of this exploits the misery and is intended to justify a long prison sentence.
Overcoming mass trauma requires immediate but also profound changes, internationally. Because it is obvious that the extent of the trauma in countries that have been engulfed in war for years, such as Sudan, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Ukraine or that are subject to strangulation by sanctions such as Cuba, must be unimaginably more drastic.
Everyone can really see and understand that! Basically, most people know it.
But unfortunately many are more afraid of taking steps into a different social society that would be unknown than of the comprehensive destruction of living conditions that is clearly on the horizon if they say “Keep it up!” There is an urgent need for a “system change” because, in addition to competition, exploitation and oppression, capitalism also includes fascism, racism, war, violent power behavior in the political system and between people, patriarchal violence against women and queers, against people with disabilities and the destruction of nature.
Depending on the state of the capitalist crisis, all of this fades more into the background or more into the foreground. That is why we will only leave this story of suffering behind us once we have overcome this system. Right now we are at an extremely destructive point in this crisis. The old, false world order is losing its hegemony – finally – because it is absolutely unfair to the vast majority of humanity. But that’s why she lashes out wildly. For us, it must be a direct matter of turning away from military training and militarization, away from external aggression and internal repression and humiliation, social coldness, and complicity in global capitalist and imperialist crimes.
Stop the wars and imperial violence that violate international law! Stop the oppressive sanctions that are causing devastation and millions of deaths!
Instead, it must be about concentrating on ecologically sensible production that is not aimed at profit for the few, but rather at the well-being of all and the restructuring of society in a way that allows people to live in social security and security internationally.
“The alternative is our task worldwide and is a socialism that could be rich in historical experiences (and) also by overcoming the large and small mistakes of history, the large and small attempts at revolution, the urban guerrillas, the anarchists of the communists, the social revolutionaries and the anti-patriarchal and anti-colonial struggles and movements. Achieving this ultimately decides whether life will continue to be possible on this planet and under what conditions. …The question to all of us worldwide is the alternative to capitalism and the systemic as well as our processes towards it is existential and cannot be postponed.” Burkhard Garweg in the greeting to the Rosa Luxemburg Conference in January 2026.
The trace of this lives in all the various resistance activities of those
who know that the youth, the non-rich and powerful in the population are the ones who are supposed to be used as cannon fodder in the war for power and raw materials and therefore oppose militarization, conscription and rearmament, i.e. against the war,
who refuse to give their lives or take those of others for the interests of capital and who do not accept that the resources should be used for weapons, the military, the police and the profits of corporations instead of for the population,
who do not accept militarization because they are aware that in a militarized society violence against women, queers, trans people and people with disabilities will inevitably continue to increase,
who, as students, directly defend themselves with school strikes against a future as cannon fodder,
who oppose their solidarity and internationalism to imperial politics and crimes and do not accept the state violence that the struggle for power and raw materials in capitalism requires and which is increasingly openly represented and used more considerately by those in power,
who do not bow down, although as Jews they are massively attacked by the German state and the media as allegedly anti-Semitic, because in times of international resistance against the extreme violence against Palestinians they are to be deprived of the right to reject or even even question Israeli settler colonialism and the apartheid policy against the Palestinian population of Zionism, as well as Germany’s complicity in war crimes and genocide,
who, as activists, demonstrators, journalists, artists and scientists, insist on their opposition to this, even though Germany’s raison d’état has established unwavering support for Israel’s every policy, no matter how terrorist, and anyone who opposes this is threatened with exclusion and criminalization,
who fight anti-Semitism and naturally assume that this is part of the fight against racism in general,
who, in the face of worsening inequality, poverty, exploitation, no longer affordable rents, mass homelessness and unemployment, are questioning the capitalist system and are now demanding the abolition of the profit economy system with home ownership
who counter the politics of ongoing pushed racism, nationalism and the exclusion of people who have already been left behind from social security with a politics of solidarity and the fight against social cuts; because the only way to prevent ever larger parts of the population from moving to the right and to stop the fascization of the declining old colonial states and the USA is to counter racist agitation and a politics that is generally based on division and the invitation to save oneself by pushing away those further down in society instead of fighting upwards against power with a radical left perspective that brings tangible positive changes in life for the many,
who are organizing to stop the gradual destruction and militarization of health care,
who directly oppose Nazis and organize protection and who at the same time say that this is not enough because fascism is based on capitalism,
who oppose the ecological destruction of the world that is inevitable under capitalism and are committed to organizing humanity in order to enable sustainable ecological production and thus the survival of humanity and nature,
who, in the face of systems of repression and prisons, stand with us, with the prisoners, and demand with us a perspective of freedom and ultimately the abolition of prisons,
who, after decades of fighting to protect the life of Mumia Abu Jamal, who has been a political prisoner in the USA for 48 years, do not give up and do everything in solidarity to fight for his freedom.
These are by no means all of the diverse resistance activities that have developed today and in recent years due to so many contradictions or have existed in some cases for a long time – such as the feminist and today queer feminist organizing against patriarchal violence, the many initiatives against the increasingly perfect repressive isolation system at the borders to ward off refugees who urgently need help, the flotillas to Gaza and Cuba to break through starvation and isolation, the port blockades against weapons deliveries to Gaza and against militarization and solidarity strikes by Italian and Greek workers with the Palestinian population and their fight against occupation and expulsion, the protests against the increasing number of fatal police shots against black people, non-German people or people who appear to be non-conformist.
Even if – fortunately – I cannot list everything that is being done, I wanted to at least name a part of it because it is so important to remember to stick to the goals and thoughts of liberation and not to allow yourself to be reduced to speechlessness by the open brutality of those in power. Just as all the different initiatives are about the concrete effect against the respective crimes and the defense of “oasis of human cooperation” and at the same time their expansion and further development within their own initiatives, what is important is how everyone will come together to form a common force that can stop the development of the Third World War and what it brings with it in the run-up to it. Because of this war, all positive approaches and ideas are essentially threatened internationally.
Even if this power does not exist yet, it is all these struggles that at least enable its development and that give me hope.
This is also this hope for my and our freedom and ultimately the freedom of everyone and for a world that leaves every form of oppression behind.
A world in which no prisons continue to exist, neither in the form of diverse and interconnected violent relationships, nor in the form of concrete, stone and steel in which people are simply locked away behind walls and barbed wire.
A world in which people can live with each other and in harmony with all other living creatures in nature.
We can only be truly free when everyone is free.
Source: https://de.indymedia.org/node/736638
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=32847 #danielaKlette #europe #germany #PoliticalPrisoners #raf -
Theatre Review: Avenue Q
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/04/theatre-review-avenue-q/I'll admit, I was a little sceptical about returning to Avenue Q. I saw it on its original West End run back in… OH MY GOD I AM SO OLD! FUCK! Where did the time go?
It's always hard to know how much to update a show. Does it need constant reinvention to stay in the zeitgeist or can it be pickled forever as a classic?
"I wish I had taken more pictures" was something that utterly resonated with me about my university experience. Photos were a rare commodity back when film still cost a couple of quid to develop. Perhaps today's uni students will sing "I wish I had posted less on Instagram"?
The show has been sympathetically updated. Some of the references have been modernised, a transphobic joke given the boot, and the lyrics tweaked to sometimes devastating effect. The song "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist" seems to have the most changes - and all for the better.
Parts of the show are adapted for a UK audience. Barely anyone here knows who Gary Coleman was so his intro is changed (although I guess part of the metajoke is that we all watched foreign celebrities on Sesame Street when we were growing up - so what's one more obscure cultural reference?). In the American show, the Bad Idea Bears proffer Long Island Ice Teas - that was a bit tame for UK audiences, so in the original UK run they guzzled absinthe daiquiris - a change inexplicably reverted for this limited run.
As a piece of pure entertainment it is spectacular. The laughs are genuinely non-stop and the whole auditorium rose to give the performers a well-deserved ovation. It is a tender and beautiful show which shows off the power of live theatre.
The songs are still stuck in my head and the puppetry is still amazing. Absolutely hilarious, genuinely shocking in places, utterly filthy - an excellent night out.
Pre- and Post-Show
I've written before about The art of the Pre-Show and Post-Show. With West End prices higher than ever, it is incumbent on theatres to make their shows a memorable and spectacular evening out. That can be as simple as a bit of set dressing in the foyer, or as extravagant as they can get away with.
The offering is pretty reasonable here. You can buy the T-shirt, hoodie, and commemorative socks at exorbitant prices. The souvenir programme is £8 and, while lush with photos, is pretty sparse. The original West End programme from the early 2000s had a pin-up calendar of Lucy The Slut, a bunch more funny photos, and fake autographs of the puppets.
There's a photo-booth for taking selfies, but it appeared to be broken.
It might been nice to have a few puppets placed around for people to take photos with.
One of the simplest things a venue can do is put on a themed cocktail menu. I'm surprised more shows don't do that. Who is going to turn down a glass of "The Internet Is For Pornstar Martini"?
The Shaftesbury Theatre itself isn't too cramped, even in the cheap seats. Although, at the back of the stalls, the overhang cuts off the top of the set which means you will miss a bit of action in some scenes.
While we were waiting for the show to start, the auditorium was filled with soundscape of subway cars rattling and distorted announcements. Again, fairly cheap and simple, but a nice way to build the mood.
As we exited, we were handed leaflets encouraging us to come back and bring our friends. Even better was the £10 discount on our next booking!
Considering this is a limited run, the production has done a fair job of getting the audience in the mood and rewarding them for their patronage.
Well done to all involved!
#comedy #TheatreReview -
Lazy Caturday Reads: Everything is Awful, As Usual
Good Afternoon!!
Shared Reflections, by Rebecca Aldernet
I can’t find any good news this morning–what else is new? The “president” is dangerously demented, his cabinet is full of kooks, his economy is going down the tubes, and he seems determined to start a war in Venezuela. Anyway, here are the stories that caught my attention today.
Venezuela Boat Strikes
I’m sure you’ve heard the reports about Pete Hegseth’s campaign of war crimes against alleged drug boats. Yesterday, The Washington Post published an exclusive report by Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima (gift link): Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all.
The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraftfollowed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.
A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.
The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.
The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any ofthe men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.
Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.
Use the gift link to read the rest. We’re going to need prosecutions if we ever get rid of Trump and his goons.
Phillip M. Bailey at USA Today: Pete Hegseth lashes out at ‘kill them all’ report on boat strikes.
U.S Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is lashing out at a report that he ordered military officials to “kill them all” during one of the Trump administration’s strikes in the Caribbean aimed a boat allegedly carrying drug cargo.
Nataliya Bagatskaya, Echo of the black cats
“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland,” Hegseth, 45, said in a Nov. 28 post on X.
The defense secretary was responding to a Washington Post story citing two anonymous sources that claimed he ordered troops to leave no survivors after a missile struck the vessel, which was traveling off the Trinidad coast, as two individuals were clinging to the smoldering wreckage.
Since September, the Trump administration has attacked at least 21 boats traversing international waters, killing 83 people. Trump and other officials defend the boat strikes as an attempt to crackdown on illegal narcotics flooding into the U.S., but lawmakers from both parties have criticized the administration for providing no intelligence briefings or other evidence about what the vessels are carrying.
“At this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said during an Oct. 26 appearance on Fox News Sunday. “This is akin to what China does, what Iran does with drug dealers − they summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public. So it’s wrong.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who shared the story about Hegseth’s alleged order, raised similar concerns about the constitutionality of the strikes in an Nov. 28 post on X.
“If you want to know why Hegseth is panicking about reminders that there is accountably for giving or carrying out illegal orders, it’s likely because he knows he has given illegal orders to murder people,” Murphy said.
Victoria Bisset, Alex Horton, Ellen Nakashima, and Noah Robertson at The Washington Post: Senate committee vows ‘vigorous oversight’ in killing of boat strike survivors.
The head of the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee has pledged “vigorous oversight” after a Washington Post report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken order to kill all crew members during the first U.S. strike against suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean earlier this year.
A live drone feed showed two survivors from the original crew of 11 clinging to the wreckage of their boat following the initial missile attack on Sept. 2, The Post reported on Friday afternoon. The Special Operations commander overseeing the operation then ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation, killing both survivors. Those people, along with five others in the original report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Late Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island), the committee’s ranking Democrat, issued a statement saying that the committee “is aware of recent news reports — and the Department of Defense’s initial response — regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels.”
The committee, they said, “has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
If Trump is so concerned about drugs coming into the U.S. from Latin America, why did he just pardon a Honduran drug kingpin?
The New York Times: Trump Announces Pardon for Honduran Ex-President Convicted in Drug Case.
President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.
By Louis Valtat
The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” and of running his Central American country like a narco state.
The judge in his case, P. Kevin Castel, had called Mr. Hernández “a two-faced politician hungry for power” who masqueraded as an antidrug crusader while partnering with traffickers. And prosecutors had asked the judge to make sure Mr. Hernández would die behind bars, citing his abuse of power, connections to violent traffickers and “the unfathomable destruction” caused by cocaine.
The prosecution stretched across Mr. Trump’s first term and concluded during Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s time as president. In the end, Mr. Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison in Federal District Court in Manhattan, capping what prosecutors had presented as a sprawling conspiracy.
Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the same agency, also reacted with disbelief to the news of the pardon. Mr. Vigil said the move imperiled the reputation of the United States and its international investigations into drug trafficking.
“This action would be nothing short of catastrophic and would destroy the credibility of the U.S. in the international community,” Mr. Vigil said on Friday.
Mr. Trump’s vow to pardon such a high-profile convicted drug trafficker appeared to contradict the president’s campaign to unleash the might of the American military on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that his administration says, without evidence, are involved in drug trafficking. That campaign has so far killed more than 80 people since it began in September.
There’s probably a bribe involved.
War in Venezuela?
Kelly Rissman at The Independent: Trump tells airlines to consider Venezuela’s airspace closed as US military buildup continues in region.
President Donald Trump told airlines to consider Venezuela’s airspace closed, days after he vowed to take action on land “very soon.”
Following dozens of strikes against alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean that have killed more than 80 people since September, Trump suggested to military service members in a Thanksgiving Day phone call that the U.S. would soon take action “on land.”
On Saturday, he urged the clearing of the airspace near the South American country. “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” the U.S. president wrote on Truth Social Saturday morning.
Over the weekend, the Federal Aviation Administration also warned airlines to “exercise caution” when flying over Venezuela “due to the worsening security situation and heightened military activity.”
Several airlines cancelled their flights as a result of the FAA’s warning.
By Salah Hefney
Can he do that? A bit more from the Independent story:
Last week, the White House was reportedly considering having U.S. military planes drop leaflets — containing details about the $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Nicolás Maduro — over Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, the Washington Postreported.
For months, the U.S. government has been building up a military presence in the region to curb what Trump administration officials call “narco-terrorists” and has also made it clear it wants to oust Maduro.
Maduro has been in power since 2013, following the death of Hugo Chavez. The U.S. is among more than 50 countries that have refused to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s head of state, claiming he lost the 2024 presidential election. The State Department has offered rewards for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the Venezuelan president since 2020; the Trump administration raised the reward to $50 million this year.
The U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, which Trump alleges are fueled by Maduro’s government. Last month, the State Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” claiming it’s headed by Maduro and other high-ranking members of his “illegitimate” regime.
There’s more at the link.
Attacks on National Guard in DC
Jenny Gathright, Emily Davies, and Olivia George at The Washington Post: D.C. police to begin patrolling with National Guard after fatal attack.
National Guard troops patrolling in D.C. will be paired with local law enforcement personnel, at least temporarily, in the wake of the Wednesday attack that killed one National Guard member and critically injured another, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post and two D.C. police officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss planning that is still in progress.
“Officers will conduct high-visibility patrols with the National Guard and provide assistance as needed,” said the email, which was sent to D.C. police leadership Wednesday evening. The email said the situation was “fluid,” and adjustments to the staffing plan could be made in the coming days.
Fabrice Backès, Sandie
If enacted on a long-term basis, the change would significantly shift the way National Guard troops have worked with local and federal law enforcement in the District since their arrival in August. Trump administration officials have credited the troops for helping reduce crime in the city — in part, they argued, because the troops’ presence at Metro stations and on National Park Service lands frees up law enforcement to police other areas of the city. Diverting local police to accompany Guard members would do essentially the opposite by siphoning them from other tasks in D.C. neighborhoods.
The email said the new pairing would start Thursday and Friday.A D.C. police official said some officers had been temporarily detailed to accompany the troops, and a more long-term policy change was under discussion.
The official, who stressed that the discussions were still preliminary, said D.C. police, Metro Transit Police, U.S. Park Police and several other law enforcement agencies were having conversations with the National Guard task force in D.C. about pairing the troops with police officers while they are on city streets. Since their deployment to D.C., groups of National Guard troops have largely operated unaccompanied by police, the official said.
A judge has already said that putting National Guard Troops in DC was illegal, but Trump filed an “emergency appeal.” Meanwhile, two members of the West Virginia National Guard have been shot. One has died and the other is still in critical condition.
NPR: Where things stand with the National Guard shooting in D.C.
Sarah Beckstrom, 20, of Summersville, W.Va., joined the service in 2023. Beckstrom’s father, Gary, called her his “baby girl” and said she had “passed to glory” in a Facebook post on Thursday.
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey on Friday called for residents to hold a moment of silence for the two victims of the shooting, as both were deployed as part of that state’s National Guard.
Morrisey said in a statement Friday that Beckstrom had made the “ultimate sacrifice” in service to her state and the nation. He added that both Beckstrom and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, had stepped forward and volunteered for the mission in D.C.
Morrisey also said that Wolfe remains in “very critical condition.”
“These two West Virginia heroes were serving our country and protecting our nation’s capital when they were maliciously attacked,” Morrisey said. “Their courage and commitment to duty represent the very best of our state.”
Trump’s Attacks on Woman Journalists
Corbin Bolies at The Wrap: Trump Calls CBS News Correspondent ‘Stupid Person’ in 4th Attack on Female Reporters in 2 Weeks.
President Donald Trump attacked another female reporter on Thursday after she asked him about the vetting of the suspect in a Washington, D.C., shooting that killed a National Guardsman, calling her a “stupid person.”
CBS News’ chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes questioned Trump about reports that Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the alleged gunman who entered the U.S. as part of a Biden-era program for Afghan refugees who fled the nation in 2021, was vetted before he allegedly shot at the National Guardsmen on Wednesday.
By Rebecca Aldernet
Reports indicated that Lakanwal was vetted either through his time working with the CIA in Afghanistan, during the removal process from Afghanistan or during his 2024 asylum application, which the Trump administration approved earlier this year.
Cordes, therefore, asked Trump why he blamed the Biden administration if U.S. officials confirmed vetting of the refugees took place. Trump didn’t enjoy the line of questioning.
“Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?” Trump asked. “Because they came into on a plane along with 1000s of other people that shouldn’t be here, and you’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person. And we — there’s a law passed that it’s almost impossible not to get to get them out. You can’t get them out once they come in. And they came in and they were unvetted. They were unchecked. There were many of them, and they came on big planes, and it was disgraceful.”
The attack was the latest in a series of swipes at female reporters. Trump on Wednesday described a New York Times reporter as “ugly, inside and out” over a reported story on his age. He also called a Bloomberg News reporter a “piggy” and an ABC News reporter a “terrible person” for her questioning of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Catherine Bouris at The Daily Beast: Trump’s Niece Exposes Why Her Uncle Keeps Attacking Female Reporters.
Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, says one of the reasons the president seems to be increasingly lashing out at female reporters is because he is “rattled.
Mary, 60, discussed the rise in incidents on the Wednesday edition of her show, Mary Trump Live. She noted the 79-year-old president calling a reporter “piggy” while telling her to be quiet during a gaggle aboard Air Force One, and a Truth Social post in which he insulted a New York Times reporter’s looks.
“His misogynistic attacks against reporters in particular are increasing and that means a couple of things,” she explained. “It means that he’s increasingly comfortable lodging such attacks, as he’s been openly misogynistic, as he’s been openly racist and openly Islamophobic and openly anti-immigrant and openly antisemitic. There’s no hiding it anymore.”
”I think it’s also a sign that he’s a little rattled. He’s also never clearly heard of the Streisand effect,” Mary said, referring to the internet phenomenon where somebody inadvertently draws further attention to something while attempting to hide it from the public.
“When you call attention to the thing you want people to ignore, it’s probably a terrible idea.”
Trump’s Ballroom Obsession
Luke Broadwater at The New York Times (gift link): Inside Trump’s Push to Make the White House Ballroom as Big as Possible.
I posted about Trump’s conflicts with his architects on Wednesday. This is an extension of that story. After he met with architect James McCreary in August,
McCrery Architects got to work on the initial drawings for the project, sketching out a design with high ceilings and arched windows reminiscent of Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors. It would have the latest security features, including bulletproof glass. Gold furniture, known to please the president, was added to the renderings.
Black cat with cat lady, Dee Nickerson
It was flashy enough to impress a man of Mr. Trump’s tastes, while largely matching the style of the historic White House without overshadowing it.
That’s when things got tricky.
In offering up his initial design, Mr. McCrery could not have known that Mr. Trump’s vision for the project was growing. What started as a 500-seat ballroom connected to the East Wing grew to 650 seats. Next, he wanted a 999-seat ballroom, then room for 1,350. Even as Mr. Trump assured the public in July that the ballroom would not touch the existing structure, he already had approved plans to demolish the East Wing to make way for something that could hold several thousand people, according to three people familiar with the timeline.
The latest plan, which officials said was still preliminary, calls for a ballroom much larger than the West Wing and the Executive Mansion. Mr. Trump has said publicly that he would like a ballroom big enough to hold a crowd for a presidential inauguration.
The size of the project was not the only issue raising alarms. Mr. Trump also told people working on the ballroom that they did not need to follow permitting, zoning or code requirements because the structure is on White House grounds, according to three people familiar with his comments. (The firms involved have insisted on following industry standards.)
In recent weeks, Mr. McCrery has pulled back from day-to-day involvement in the project, two people familiar with the matter told The New York Times. They emphasized that Mr. McCrery was still involved as a consultant on the design and proud to be working for Mr. Trump.
Trump has destroyed our government; now he’s working on destroying the White House. Use the gift link to read the whole awful story.
Those are my recommended reads for today. What do you think?
#andrewWolfe #donaldTrump #honduras #juanOrlandoHernandez #nationalGuardInDc #nicolasMaduro #peteHegseth #sarahBeckstrom #trumpAttacksOnWomenJournalists #trumpsBallroomObsession #venezuela #venezuelaBoatStrikes
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Lazy Caturday Reads: Everything is Awful, As Usual
Good Afternoon!!
Shared Reflections, by Rebecca Aldernet
I can’t find any good news this morning–what else is new? The “president” is dangerously demented, his cabinet is full of kooks, his economy is going down the tubes, and he seems determined to start a war in Venezuela. Anyway, here are the stories that caught my attention today.
Venezuela Boat Strikes
I’m sure you’ve heard the reports about Pete Hegseth’s campaign of war crimes against alleged drug boats. Yesterday, The Washington Post published an exclusive report by Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima (gift link): Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all.
The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraftfollowed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.
A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.
The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.
The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any ofthe men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.
Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.
Use the gift link to read the rest. We’re going to need prosecutions if we ever get rid of Trump and his goons.
Phillip M. Bailey at USA Today: Pete Hegseth lashes out at ‘kill them all’ report on boat strikes.
U.S Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is lashing out at a report that he ordered military officials to “kill them all” during one of the Trump administration’s strikes in the Caribbean aimed a boat allegedly carrying drug cargo.
Nataliya Bagatskaya, Echo of the black cats
“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland,” Hegseth, 45, said in a Nov. 28 post on X.
The defense secretary was responding to a Washington Post story citing two anonymous sources that claimed he ordered troops to leave no survivors after a missile struck the vessel, which was traveling off the Trinidad coast, as two individuals were clinging to the smoldering wreckage.
Since September, the Trump administration has attacked at least 21 boats traversing international waters, killing 83 people. Trump and other officials defend the boat strikes as an attempt to crackdown on illegal narcotics flooding into the U.S., but lawmakers from both parties have criticized the administration for providing no intelligence briefings or other evidence about what the vessels are carrying.
“At this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said during an Oct. 26 appearance on Fox News Sunday. “This is akin to what China does, what Iran does with drug dealers − they summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public. So it’s wrong.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who shared the story about Hegseth’s alleged order, raised similar concerns about the constitutionality of the strikes in an Nov. 28 post on X.
“If you want to know why Hegseth is panicking about reminders that there is accountably for giving or carrying out illegal orders, it’s likely because he knows he has given illegal orders to murder people,” Murphy said.
Victoria Bisset, Alex Horton, Ellen Nakashima, and Noah Robertson at The Washington Post: Senate committee vows ‘vigorous oversight’ in killing of boat strike survivors.
The head of the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee has pledged “vigorous oversight” after a Washington Post report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken order to kill all crew members during the first U.S. strike against suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean earlier this year.
A live drone feed showed two survivors from the original crew of 11 clinging to the wreckage of their boat following the initial missile attack on Sept. 2, The Post reported on Friday afternoon. The Special Operations commander overseeing the operation then ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation, killing both survivors. Those people, along with five others in the original report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Late Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island), the committee’s ranking Democrat, issued a statement saying that the committee “is aware of recent news reports — and the Department of Defense’s initial response — regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels.”
The committee, they said, “has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
If Trump is so concerned about drugs coming into the U.S. from Latin America, why did he just pardon a Honduran drug kingpin?
The New York Times: Trump Announces Pardon for Honduran Ex-President Convicted in Drug Case.
President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.
By Louis Valtat
The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” and of running his Central American country like a narco state.
The judge in his case, P. Kevin Castel, had called Mr. Hernández “a two-faced politician hungry for power” who masqueraded as an antidrug crusader while partnering with traffickers. And prosecutors had asked the judge to make sure Mr. Hernández would die behind bars, citing his abuse of power, connections to violent traffickers and “the unfathomable destruction” caused by cocaine.
The prosecution stretched across Mr. Trump’s first term and concluded during Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s time as president. In the end, Mr. Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison in Federal District Court in Manhattan, capping what prosecutors had presented as a sprawling conspiracy.
Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the same agency, also reacted with disbelief to the news of the pardon. Mr. Vigil said the move imperiled the reputation of the United States and its international investigations into drug trafficking.
“This action would be nothing short of catastrophic and would destroy the credibility of the U.S. in the international community,” Mr. Vigil said on Friday.
Mr. Trump’s vow to pardon such a high-profile convicted drug trafficker appeared to contradict the president’s campaign to unleash the might of the American military on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that his administration says, without evidence, are involved in drug trafficking. That campaign has so far killed more than 80 people since it began in September.
There’s probably a bribe involved.
War in Venezuela?
Kelly Rissman at The Independent: Trump tells airlines to consider Venezuela’s airspace closed as US military buildup continues in region.
President Donald Trump told airlines to consider Venezuela’s airspace closed, days after he vowed to take action on land “very soon.”
Following dozens of strikes against alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean that have killed more than 80 people since September, Trump suggested to military service members in a Thanksgiving Day phone call that the U.S. would soon take action “on land.”
On Saturday, he urged the clearing of the airspace near the South American country. “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” the U.S. president wrote on Truth Social Saturday morning.
Over the weekend, the Federal Aviation Administration also warned airlines to “exercise caution” when flying over Venezuela “due to the worsening security situation and heightened military activity.”
Several airlines cancelled their flights as a result of the FAA’s warning.
By Salah Hefney
Can he do that? A bit more from the Independent story:
Last week, the White House was reportedly considering having U.S. military planes drop leaflets — containing details about the $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Nicolás Maduro — over Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, the Washington Postreported.
For months, the U.S. government has been building up a military presence in the region to curb what Trump administration officials call “narco-terrorists” and has also made it clear it wants to oust Maduro.
Maduro has been in power since 2013, following the death of Hugo Chavez. The U.S. is among more than 50 countries that have refused to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s head of state, claiming he lost the 2024 presidential election. The State Department has offered rewards for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the Venezuelan president since 2020; the Trump administration raised the reward to $50 million this year.
The U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, which Trump alleges are fueled by Maduro’s government. Last month, the State Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” claiming it’s headed by Maduro and other high-ranking members of his “illegitimate” regime.
There’s more at the link.
Attacks on National Guard in DC
Jenny Gathright, Emily Davies, and Olivia George at The Washington Post: D.C. police to begin patrolling with National Guard after fatal attack.
National Guard troops patrolling in D.C. will be paired with local law enforcement personnel, at least temporarily, in the wake of the Wednesday attack that killed one National Guard member and critically injured another, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post and two D.C. police officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss planning that is still in progress.
“Officers will conduct high-visibility patrols with the National Guard and provide assistance as needed,” said the email, which was sent to D.C. police leadership Wednesday evening. The email said the situation was “fluid,” and adjustments to the staffing plan could be made in the coming days.
Fabrice Backès, Sandie
If enacted on a long-term basis, the change would significantly shift the way National Guard troops have worked with local and federal law enforcement in the District since their arrival in August. Trump administration officials have credited the troops for helping reduce crime in the city — in part, they argued, because the troops’ presence at Metro stations and on National Park Service lands frees up law enforcement to police other areas of the city. Diverting local police to accompany Guard members would do essentially the opposite by siphoning them from other tasks in D.C. neighborhoods.
The email said the new pairing would start Thursday and Friday.A D.C. police official said some officers had been temporarily detailed to accompany the troops, and a more long-term policy change was under discussion.
The official, who stressed that the discussions were still preliminary, said D.C. police, Metro Transit Police, U.S. Park Police and several other law enforcement agencies were having conversations with the National Guard task force in D.C. about pairing the troops with police officers while they are on city streets. Since their deployment to D.C., groups of National Guard troops have largely operated unaccompanied by police, the official said.
A judge has already said that putting National Guard Troops in DC was illegal, but Trump filed an “emergency appeal.” Meanwhile, two members of the West Virginia National Guard have been shot. One has died and the other is still in critical condition.
NPR: Where things stand with the National Guard shooting in D.C.
Sarah Beckstrom, 20, of Summersville, W.Va., joined the service in 2023. Beckstrom’s father, Gary, called her his “baby girl” and said she had “passed to glory” in a Facebook post on Thursday.
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey on Friday called for residents to hold a moment of silence for the two victims of the shooting, as both were deployed as part of that state’s National Guard.
Morrisey said in a statement Friday that Beckstrom had made the “ultimate sacrifice” in service to her state and the nation. He added that both Beckstrom and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, had stepped forward and volunteered for the mission in D.C.
Morrisey also said that Wolfe remains in “very critical condition.”
“These two West Virginia heroes were serving our country and protecting our nation’s capital when they were maliciously attacked,” Morrisey said. “Their courage and commitment to duty represent the very best of our state.”
Trump’s Attacks on Woman Journalists
Corbin Bolies at The Wrap: Trump Calls CBS News Correspondent ‘Stupid Person’ in 4th Attack on Female Reporters in 2 Weeks.
President Donald Trump attacked another female reporter on Thursday after she asked him about the vetting of the suspect in a Washington, D.C., shooting that killed a National Guardsman, calling her a “stupid person.”
CBS News’ chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes questioned Trump about reports that Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the alleged gunman who entered the U.S. as part of a Biden-era program for Afghan refugees who fled the nation in 2021, was vetted before he allegedly shot at the National Guardsmen on Wednesday.
By Rebecca Aldernet
Reports indicated that Lakanwal was vetted either through his time working with the CIA in Afghanistan, during the removal process from Afghanistan or during his 2024 asylum application, which the Trump administration approved earlier this year.
Cordes, therefore, asked Trump why he blamed the Biden administration if U.S. officials confirmed vetting of the refugees took place. Trump didn’t enjoy the line of questioning.
“Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?” Trump asked. “Because they came into on a plane along with 1000s of other people that shouldn’t be here, and you’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person. And we — there’s a law passed that it’s almost impossible not to get to get them out. You can’t get them out once they come in. And they came in and they were unvetted. They were unchecked. There were many of them, and they came on big planes, and it was disgraceful.”
The attack was the latest in a series of swipes at female reporters. Trump on Wednesday described a New York Times reporter as “ugly, inside and out” over a reported story on his age. He also called a Bloomberg News reporter a “piggy” and an ABC News reporter a “terrible person” for her questioning of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Catherine Bouris at The Daily Beast: Trump’s Niece Exposes Why Her Uncle Keeps Attacking Female Reporters.
Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, says one of the reasons the president seems to be increasingly lashing out at female reporters is because he is “rattled.
Mary, 60, discussed the rise in incidents on the Wednesday edition of her show, Mary Trump Live. She noted the 79-year-old president calling a reporter “piggy” while telling her to be quiet during a gaggle aboard Air Force One, and a Truth Social post in which he insulted a New York Times reporter’s looks.
“His misogynistic attacks against reporters in particular are increasing and that means a couple of things,” she explained. “It means that he’s increasingly comfortable lodging such attacks, as he’s been openly misogynistic, as he’s been openly racist and openly Islamophobic and openly anti-immigrant and openly antisemitic. There’s no hiding it anymore.”
”I think it’s also a sign that he’s a little rattled. He’s also never clearly heard of the Streisand effect,” Mary said, referring to the internet phenomenon where somebody inadvertently draws further attention to something while attempting to hide it from the public.
“When you call attention to the thing you want people to ignore, it’s probably a terrible idea.”
Trump’s Ballroom Obsession
Luke Broadwater at The New York Times (gift link): Inside Trump’s Push to Make the White House Ballroom as Big as Possible.
I posted about Trump’s conflicts with his architects on Wednesday. This is an extension of that story. After he met with architect James McCreary in August,
McCrery Architects got to work on the initial drawings for the project, sketching out a design with high ceilings and arched windows reminiscent of Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors. It would have the latest security features, including bulletproof glass. Gold furniture, known to please the president, was added to the renderings.
Black cat with cat lady, Dee Nickerson
It was flashy enough to impress a man of Mr. Trump’s tastes, while largely matching the style of the historic White House without overshadowing it.
That’s when things got tricky.
In offering up his initial design, Mr. McCrery could not have known that Mr. Trump’s vision for the project was growing. What started as a 500-seat ballroom connected to the East Wing grew to 650 seats. Next, he wanted a 999-seat ballroom, then room for 1,350. Even as Mr. Trump assured the public in July that the ballroom would not touch the existing structure, he already had approved plans to demolish the East Wing to make way for something that could hold several thousand people, according to three people familiar with the timeline.
The latest plan, which officials said was still preliminary, calls for a ballroom much larger than the West Wing and the Executive Mansion. Mr. Trump has said publicly that he would like a ballroom big enough to hold a crowd for a presidential inauguration.
The size of the project was not the only issue raising alarms. Mr. Trump also told people working on the ballroom that they did not need to follow permitting, zoning or code requirements because the structure is on White House grounds, according to three people familiar with his comments. (The firms involved have insisted on following industry standards.)
In recent weeks, Mr. McCrery has pulled back from day-to-day involvement in the project, two people familiar with the matter told The New York Times. They emphasized that Mr. McCrery was still involved as a consultant on the design and proud to be working for Mr. Trump.
Trump has destroyed our government; now he’s working on destroying the White House. Use the gift link to read the whole awful story.
Those are my recommended reads for today. What do you think?
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