Yeah. Issues of wealth inequality in the US aside, I think it is indicative of how well the lemmy.ml hivemind grapples with factual reality (which is, it doesn't).
"She didn’t get there through album sales, she got there through hoarding real estate and becoming a landlord, and investing heavily in the corporations that have ruined our lives." was specifically what the lemmy.ml people said that I disagreed with.
The actual reality is that she made a little over 2 billion dollars in her career, almost all of it on selling tickets to live shows, and then... (lost half a billion? taxes? unclear) and now her net worth is $1.6 billion of which 10% ($150 million) is real estate. That makes sense to me. If you want to say our whole system where someone can spend $150 million on real estate is fucked (and it sounds like you do), I will completely agree with you. If you want to pretend she's at heart a parasite and bad person because she directly physically traveled around and performed shows in front of enough people that they each bought their individual ticket and she got a cut and it all added up to billions of dollars, I will disagree.
I feel like it's also an example of the kind of "I like to attack people as a way of indicating my displeasure with the wider system, because it's easy and emotionally satisfying, and all issues are black and white now" Lemmy brain thinking.
Nts nts nts
Yeah, and that part is fine. More what I was talking about was insisting that she's secretly a real estate magnate and music is just her side hustle. A more textbook example of "every bad thing is true of people I don't like" would be hard to arrive at.
Fuckin' thank you man.
There are way too many people in this comments section who are thoroughly committed to snatching defeat from the jaws of this good development or finding a way to fit it into their totally counterfactual way of looking at US law enforcement.
I've interacted with US cops from a lot of different POVs, from having friends who were victimized by the old school of corrupt US policing, to having friends-of-friends who were both cops and criminals, to a little interaction with the system myself. This reductive bullshit helps no one. Here's how I see it: Pretty much any group of people that you give power to without checking up on them is going to abuse it. That was US policing for many many years, until in the pretty recent past we actually started making serious efforts to punish bad behavior by the cops, and look at that, they got a lot more reasonable. Pretty much every instance where some cop did something heinously fucked up, in the last few years, has followed up by them not just getting fired but brought up on charges. It hasn't stopped, because they are human and there will always be "bad people" in the world, but it's not this wild street gang loose on the streets like it used to be.
(Well, mostly. Institutional corruption can keep some particular agencies corrupt for a long long time. NYPD and LASD are probably the worst that I'm aware of in that regard, and I'm sure there are some small town departments that are fucking horror shows. And they usually see protestors as "the enemy" which sure isn't fuckin great, I can talk more about that too. But what I am trying to say is that they're not the cartoon villains that almost everyone on the left seems to habitually get all unanimous about them being.)
I have no idea how far it'll go. Historically, Chicago was a pretty corrupt department and I have no idea whether they have gotten better (and I can absolutely guarantee that there are some individual Chicago cops who would rather be ICE right now and play-act as them any time they have a chance.) But if they're beefing with ICE, then good for them. It's that simple, and I have no idea why people are trying to say any different.
It's not positive for Netanyahu. He wants an excuse to keep killing Palestinians until the job is done. That's why he let October 7th happen in the first place, it's why he's been rejecting generous hostage agreements so far. Of course this is a problem for him. Now he has to come up with some new lie and fake reason, and it's inconvenient.
"He reacted with shock and outrage, as if we were old and trusted friends who had suddenly betrayed him."
"This is what Governor Pritzker calls cooperation"
Here's what Governor Pritzker actually said:
I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.
Over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning, for quite a while now, to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country's founders warned against, and it's the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances.
What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.
Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidence, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.
Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, "Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?" Instead, I say, "Mr. President, do not come to Chicago."
You are neither wanted here nor needed here.
Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous: we are watching and we are taking names.
This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now, and eventually the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf.
You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.
Yeah, sure sounds like he stabbed you in the back, swearing he's cooperating and all that.
!chiptune@lemmy.world
Also, check out this guy sperging out about the music for the Castlevania series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rryDOfG9JF0
Wouldst thou like the taste of butter? A pretty dress?
The Global Sumud Flotilla is just a day away from reaching the ‘orange zone’, 150 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza, where there is a high risk of interception by Israel.
Organisers say 42 boats and 532 participants began the final leg of their journey on Saturday evening after several days of delay. But the lead ship, Family, which suffered catastrophic engine failure off the coast of Greece on Thursday, had to be left behind.
Novara Media contributor Kieran Andrieu, who was on board, is now reporting from a different boat, which he said is making good progress through international waters.
He expects to reach the area where Israeli forces have previously illegally intercepted boats – including the Madleen and the Handala, earlier this year – in international waters by Tuesday night.
If the flotilla is not intercepted, it could reach Gaza by Thursday.
On Monday morning, a flotilla boat was evacuated by the Turkish Red Crescent after it started leaking, taking the total number sailing together down to 41, with four more hoping to catch up, including two that are on their way from Turkey.
Navy ships sent by Italy and Spain have been travelling with the flotilla since it left Greek waters. But when the leaking boat was evacuated, journalists sailing with the flotilla noticed a new frigate on the horizon. It was later reported that Turkey had sent its navy to facilitate a Red Crescent operation to distribute additional humanitarian aid to the flotilla boats, and then responded to a mayday call from the ship that was in trouble.
This comes after flight data revealed that Turkish military aircrafts have been monitoring the flotilla, and amid speculation that a joint naval exercise run by Egypt and Turkey in the Mediterranean sea last week was timed to send a message to Israel.
Italy and Spain have both stressed that they will not confront Israel if the flotilla is intercepted, but are there to protect their citizens on board. Turkish authorities said later on Monday that their boats had only provided temporary assistance and would not accompany the flotilla any further.
Yet the presence of several foreign navies already appears to have acted as a deterrent to attacks. After drone strikes last Tuesday night, the flotilla entered Greek waters for safety and stayed there until Saturday, with some organisers claiming they believed a more serious attack was imminent. Participants prepared to face regular drone strikes for the rest of the journey. But on Sunday, the flotilla spent a full night in international waters for the first time since the attacks, and it passed without incident.
Most of the 30 or so participants on board Family were reallocated to other boats on Friday and Saturday and are still sailing, but at least three left the mission entirely because no suitable alternative was offered, or they were unhappy with how the situation had been handled.
Organisers, meanwhile, moved on to Alma, the largest boat, which has Greta Thunberg and steering committee member Yasemin Acar on board.
Andrieu said his new boat, Adara, is a Spanish-flagged sailing yacht with 22 other people on board, including elected politicians from Argentina and Spain.
Palestinian-French MEP Rima Hassan, who was also on Family, is now on a small boat called Captain Nikos, which is believed to have joined the flotilla at the weekend.
Some people moved off Alma to create space for others, including Irish comedian Tadhg Hickey, who is now on the Meteque, a boat which sailed from Tunisia.
The cause of the engine failure on Family, which had not previously had any serious mechanical issues and was operated by an experienced captain and crew, has not been identified. There are credible concerns that it may have been sabotaged, but initial investigations were inconclusive.
A Turkish engineer sent to determine the cause of the failure told Drop Site News that when he inspected the engine, he found that “all the oil was gone”, but he did not say what might have caused this.
Meanwhile, back in Tunisia, more concrete evidence of foul play has emerged. Authorities announced that a foreign national has been charged in relation to the drone strikes on boats Family and Alma earlier this month. Counter-terrorism police are investigating possible links to Mossad.
The Global Sumud Flotilla is no longer the only mission sailing through the Mediterranean to break Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza; another flotilla left Italy at the weekend.
Comprised of eight boats carrying almost 70 people from more than 20 countries, the Thousand Madleens to Gaza X Freedom Flotilla mission is just a few days behind the first.
On board are elected politicians, including MPs and MEPs, from France, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, the United States and Denmark; Irish author Naoise Dolan, who initially tried to join the Global Sumud Flotilla mission but had to pull out after her boat was cancelled in Tunisia; and French-Malian racial justice activist Assa Traore.
“Every boat we launch is a direct challenge to the blockade and a declaration of solidarity,” organisers said in a statement. “We sail not as charity, but as part of the global struggle to end apartheid and affirm the right of the Palestinian people to live free.”
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), which coordinated the Madleen and Handala missions earlier this year, has been sending boats to Gaza for 15 years, while Thousand Madleens to Gaza (TMTG) is a grassroots initiative inspired by the FFC.
Many of the boats, which can all be tracked online, are named after Palestinians, including Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, who was targeted and killed by Israel in August, and paediatrician Alaa Al Najjar, whose husband and nine children were killed in an Israeli airstrike while she was at work.
Perhaps in light of the logistical issues that have beset the Global Sumud Flotilla, the FFC stressed that it is drawing on “years of experience and grassroots organising”. It emphasised that it was foregrounding “maritime safety, legal defence, and communications” to have a “global impact” and to do what “governments, corporations and institutions” refuse to do – “to stop genocide, resist apartheid and demand accountability under international law.”
One boat has not sailed yet, but may catch up with the others: the Conscience, a large passenger ship that was attacked by drones off the coast of Malta in May, shortly before embarking for Gaza. It was too severely damaged to continue at the time, but it has now been repaired. Organisers plan for it to sail with 100 medics and journalists on board.
In a statement, the two organisations said: “For nearly two years, the illegal Israeli occupation has blocked international journalists from entering Gaza, creating one of the most dangerous press blackouts in modern history. During this time, hundreds of Palestinian journalists have been deliberately targeted and assassinated, while many more have been imprisoned or silenced. This boat is our challenge to that silence.”
Another boat has also been sailing separately to the Global Sumud Flotilla since last week. The Omar Al Mokhtar departed from Libya with former prime minister Omar al-Hassi on board, and British journalist Yvonne Ridley. The Global Sumud Flotilla would not let it join their fleet because organisers said it had not gone through the strict vetting and training protocols necessary for all participants.
The boat was then converted into a ‘hospital ship’, with Turkish news agency Anadolu reporting that it has been equipped with an intensive care unit. It is currently believed to be sailing just behind the Global Sumud Flotilla, and it is not on their tracker.
Including soldiers? Maybe? Please say you're planning on deliberately screwing over one of the absolutely key groupings that you need on your side for this whole thing to work. That would be wonderful.
Don't forget: They're not loyal to you. Remember all that stony silence from the assembled generals even when the most popular president in history walked on stage? I don't think they deserve back pay, man. They need to get their minds right first. Teach them a lesson.