Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822 – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage.
Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by enslavers as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight, intending to hit another slave, but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. After her injury, Tubman began experiencing strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God. These experiences, combined with her Methodist upbringing, led her to become devoutly religious.
In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, only to return to Maryland to rescue her family soon after. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other enslaved people to freedom. Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) travelled by night and in extreme secrecy, and later said she "never lost a passenger". After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she helped guide escapees farther north into British North America (Canada), and helped newly freed people find work. Tubman met John Brown in 1858, and helped him plan and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.
When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. For her guidance of the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people, she is widely credited as the first woman to lead an armed military operation in the United States. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her and was admitted to a home for elderly African Americans, which she had helped establish years earlier. Tubman is commonly viewed as an icon of courage and freedom.
Republicans terrified of crossing Trump due to physical threats, Democrat says
Eric Swalwell says threats to them and their families are stopping GOP officials from criticizing president
Republicans on Capitol Hill are shying away from criticizing Donald Trump’s policies over fears for their physical safety and that of their families, a Democratic member of Congress has said.
Eric Swalwell, a Democratic representative from California, said his Republican colleagues were “terrified” of crossing Trump not only because of the negative impact on their political careers, but also from anxiety that it might provoke physical threats that could cause personal upheaval and require them to hire round-the-clock security as protection.
Swalwell’s comments came in a webinar chaired by the journalist Sidney Blumenthal in response to a question on whether Republicans might be driven to rebel against or even impeach Trump.
“I have a lot of friends who are Republicans,” he said. “They are terrified of being the tallest poppy in the field, and it’s not as simple as being afraid of being primaried and losing their job. They know that that can happen.
“It’s more personal. It’s their personal safety that they’re afraid of, and they have spouses and family members saying, ‘Do not do this, it’s not worth it, it will change our lives forever. We will have to hire around-the-clock security.’ Life can be very uncomfortable for your children.
“That is real, because when [Elon] Musk [Trump’s most powerful ally] tweets at somebody, or Trump tweets at somebody, or calls somebody out, their lives are turned upside down.
“When he tweets at you, people make threats, and you have to take people at their word. And so that is a real thing that my colleagues struggle with.”
Swalwell warned that fear of Trump was likely to further weaken support for Ukraine among GOP House members following his recent attacks on the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and his public praise for the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin.
“I thought that the numbers that we’ve showed to be unified around Ukraine would hold, and it’s not holding,” he said.
Swalwell’s comments come at a time when some Republican members of Congress are encountering pressure from constituents to push back against the attacks on federal government workers by Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit, which critics say is usurping the powers of Congress.
Swalwell, a member of the House judiciary committee, said he had spent more than $1m on security in the past two and a half years, after arousing Trump’s enmity by serving as a manager in his second impeachment trial and by filing a lawsuit against him and his eldest son, Donald Jr, seeking damages for their role in inciting the 6 January attack on the US Capitol by a violent mob.
His portrayal of Trump-inspired intimidation was supported by Bradley Moss, a lawyer for the FBI Agents Association, which has filed a lawsuit to prevent the Trump administration from publicly naming agents and bureau employees who worked on the 6 January criminal investigation.
Moss recalled Trump publicly attacking his boss, Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who represented the whistleblower who disclosed details of a call Trump made to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in 2019 that eventually led to his first impeachment.
“Donald Trump literally held up a photo of my boss, called him out by name, said he was scum, was a liar, etc,” Moss said during the webinar. “Next day, I woke up to, like, 150 voicemails. Texts were flooded throughout my inbox. We were getting death threats like crazy, and there was actually at least one gentleman who went to prison for making threats against my boss.”
He added: “We publicly called him out during that impeachment, when he was threatening the whistleblower in public statements, saying you are putting this person’s life in jeopardy. He made clear he doesn’t care. He’ll say it’s not my fault if something happens to that person.
“He knows full well the intimidation factor he can bring through his bully pulpit.”
Most Republicans who voted to impeach Trump during his first presidency are no longer in Congress. Liz Cheney – who played a leading role in the House committee investigating the 6 January insurrection – lost her Wyoming seat after being defeated in a GOP primary by a Trump supporter.
Cheney told CNN that some of her Republican colleagues had voted against impeaching Trump because “they were afraid for their own security – afraid, in some instances, for their lives”.
Her comments were backed up by Mitt Romney, the former Republican senator and presidential candidate, who told his biographer, McKay Coppins, of a senior Senate colleague who intended to vote for Trump’s conviction at his Senate trial only to change course when a colleague told him: “Think of your personal safety. Think of your children.”
Musk, the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur, has threatened to use his vast wealth to fund primary challenges against any House or Senate Republicans who vote against Trump’s agenda or oppose his cabinet nominees.
The tactic appeared to be effective in the case of Joni Ernst, a Republican senator for Iowa, who reversed her initial opposition to Pete Hegseth’s nomination as defence secretary on the basis of sexual assault allegations that had been made against him after Musk funded adverts extolling a rightwing radio host who had vowed to challenge her in a primary.
Thom Tillis, a Republican senator for North Carolina, told people that he received FBI warnings of “credible death threats” when he was publicly considering voting against Hegseth, Vanity Fair reported. Tillis, who had spoken at length to witnesses who raised concerns about Hegseth’s behavior, ultimately voted in favor of his confirmation.
Vanity Fair cited an unnamed source as quoting Tillis advising people who wished to understand Trump to read Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, a 2006 book by Paul Babiak and Robert Hare. A spokesperson for Tillis denied that he had recommended the book in that context.
Trump's talking about punishing his critics and opponents.
It's not plain old everyday political blather, and it's not an empty threat.
He fucking means it - and we'd better fucking take it seriously.
Jailed reporters, silenced networks: What Trump says he'd do to the media if elected
5-Minute Listen:
Former President Donald Trump often basks in the glow of press attention. Just as often, he trashes the press and threatens journalists.
On the campaign trail and in interviews, Trump has suggested that if he regains the White House, he will exact vengeance on news outlets that anger him.
More specifically, Trump has pledged to toss reporters in jail and strip major television networks of their broadcast licenses as retribution for coverage he didn't like.
"It speaks directly to the First Amendment — and the First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy," Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, tells NPR.
Trump has made more than 100 threats to prosecute or punish perceived enemies To be clear, the government does not license national networks like those targeted by Trump, but the FCC does license local TV and radio stations to use the public airwaves.
"While the FCC has authority to provide licenses for television and radio, it is pretty fundamental that we do not take them away because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes any kind of content or coverage," Rosenworcel says.
Trump's declarations arrive at a time of increasing concern about his more autocratic impulses. And press advocates say he is intentionally fueling a climate hostile to independent reporting.
One in three journalists says they've faced violence — or the threat of it
"President Trump was a champion for free speech. Everyone was safer under President Trump, including journalists," a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee wrote to NPR in response to questions about these concerns.
Even so, a new survey of hundreds of journalists who received safety training from the International Women's Media Foundation finds 36% say they have faced or been threatened with physical violence on the job — and they have felt especially threatened at Trump campaign rallies.
"Journalists reported feeling at high risk while covering Trump rallies and 'Stop the Steal' protests, especially when some Trump supporters and protestors openly carry weapons," the report states.
While campaigning for Republican congressional candidates in 2022, Trump repeatedly pledged to jail reporters who don't identify confidential sources on stories he considered to have national security implications.
He joked that the prospect of prison rape would loosen reporters' lips about their sources.
"When this person realizes that he is going to be the bride of another prisoner shortly, he will say, 'I'd very much like to tell you exactly who that was,'" Trump told an appreciative crowd at a Texas rally. And Trump said he wouldn't limit it to the reporters: "The publisher too — or the top editors." He made the same claim two weeks later at an Ohio rally.
Threats to investigate TV networks — and take them off the air
Last year, Trump called for NBC News to be investigated for treason over its coverage of criminal charges he faces. After his lone debate with Vice President Harris this summer, it was ABC's turn to face Trump's wrath. Trump expressed anger over moderators' decision to fact-check him. He popped up on Fox & Friends the next day with a warning.
"I think ABC took a big hit last night," Trump said. "I mean, to be honest, they're a news organization. They have to be licensed to do it. They oughta take away their license for the way they do that."
This month, Trump has been back at it, slamming CBS repeatedly over its handling of the vice presidential debate and of the network's interview with Harris on 60 Minutes. He pointed to two versions of an answer Harris had given — one that aired on 60 Minutes and the other on the show Face the Nation — to argue CBS was deceiving viewers to aid the Democrat.
"Think of this," Trump told attendees at a rally in Aurora, Colo., this month. "CBS gets a license. And a license is based on honesty. I think they have to take their license away. I do."
And on Sunday, Trump repeated his complaint to Fox News' Howard Kurtz. "It's the biggest scandal I have ever seen for a broadcaster," Trump said. "60 Minutes, I think it should be taken off the air, frankly."
CBS and 60 Minutes rejected the claim that the network had deceitfully manipulated Harris' interview because it had shown a shorter excerpt of her answer to the same question on 60 Minutes. "The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment," it said in a statement Sunday evening.
Again, news organizations do not need licenses to operate — unless they are local TV or radio stations. The parent companies of CBS, ABC and NBC own more than 80 local stations among them. All three declined comment for this story.
A vow to bring an independent agency under the president's control
The Federal Communications Commission was set up 90 years ago as an independent agency. While Rosenworcel was appointed chairwoman by President Biden, she is not subject to his directive or that of any president. The FCC receives funding and oversight from Congress.
Last year, however, Trump posted a video on social media promising to bring the agency under full White House control.
"I will bring the independent regulatory agencies such as the FCC and the FTC back under presidential authority as the Constitution demands," Trump said, though such an effort would assuredly face a legal challenge. "These agencies do not get to become a fourth branch of government issuing rules and edicts all by themselves — and that's what they've been doing."
Several former television network executives, asking for anonymity to avoid getting pulled into the campaign, said that they feared the consequences of Trump's stance on pursuing reporters' secret sources more than the threats to pull the broadcast licenses.
In recent decades, digital fingerprints have made it easier for investigators to track down contacts between government employees and journalists.
Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, prosecutors pursuing charges against leakers have sought such records from reporters. (Previously, presidential candidates have not raised the question on the campaign trail — except now for Trump.)
After taking office, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland shifted policy, effectively barring the Justice Department's practice of subpoenaing journalists' records, except in rare cases.
At The New York Times, leaders are girding for what could happen under a president more hostile to the media.
"[Publisher A.G. Sulzberger] devoted a team of people and a significant effort to looking at the ways in which the rule of law — protections for the press — could be worn away by either authoritarian leaders or by populist leaders who rally their supporters against independent media," Times Executive Editor Joseph Kahn recently told NPR's Steve Inskeep. "We shouldn't pretend that they're only vulnerable in a place like Hungary or Turkey. ... They are also vulnerable here."
As president, Trump aided allies such as Rupert Murdoch, the founder of Fox News. (Trump recently said on Fox & Friends that he would ask Murdoch to stop Fox News from airing the Harris campaigns' negative ads about him.)
Trump also tried to punish media outlets that were critical of him. His administration sought to block the takeover of CNN's parent company. It also tried to deny a cloud computing contract for Amazon, which was founded by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos.
"It's the frequency of these attacks on the First Amendment that strike me most," Rosenworcel, the FCC's chairwoman, says.
As a federal employee, Rosenworcel says, she almost invariably refrains from public comment on political matters during election season. But she says she could not let this pass unacknowledged.
Similarly, Rosenworcel criticized the threats of prosecution made by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration against local television stations that run ads advocating greater abortion rights in the state. The Florida Department of Health attorney who sent the letters to the Florida TV stations has resigned, saying he was ordered by DeSantis aides to send the letters .
"We can't let this be normal," Rosenworcel says of threats to press independence. "If you want to maintain a democracy, you have to speak up for it."
Senate passes Ukraine, Israel aid bill after months-long debate
The $95 billion foreign aid bill now heads to the president’s desk
The Senate overwhelmingly passed a $95 billion foreign aid bill on Tuesday, delivering billions of dollars in weapons and support to key U.S. allies Ukraine and Israel despite some opposition from both parties’ bases. The legislation, which passed by a 79-18 vote, had seemed all but dead for several months due to opposition in the GOP-led House.
President Biden said in a statement he would sign the bill into law as soon as it crosses his desk on Wednesday, and send aid to Ukraine this week. The funds help him deliver on his promise to the nation’s NATO allies to continue to aid Ukraine as it enters its third year fending off Russia’s invasion.
Passage of the legislation marks the first significant new tranche of aid passed by the U.S. Congress to the beleaguered nation in more than a year, as some Republicans aligned more with former president Trump’s “America First” foreign policy waged a fierce battle against it. They ultimately lost out when Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) decided to put the $61 billion in Ukraine aid on the floor last Saturday, citing his belief that Russia posed a serious threat.
“Today the Senate sends a unified message to the entire world,” Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the floor on Tuesday. "America will always defend democracy in its hour of need.”
Nine Republican senators flipped their votes to support the legislation on Tuesday after voting against an earlier version of the aid in February.
The legislation also sends $26 billion in funds for Israel and humanitarian aid for Gaza and other places, at a time when some congressional Democrats are calling for further aid to Israel to come with conditions.
Just three senators who caucus with Democrats opposed the aid package as progressives continue to decry the mounting civilian casualties in Gaza. University protests are growing and becoming more volatile, and the State Department released a report saying the human rights situation has significantly deteriorated in the region because of the conflict.
“Israel does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, which is exactly what it is doing,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt). said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote.
Sanders and other Democrats, including Schumer, have criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza that’s left more than 34,000 Palestinians dead and much of the region’s housing and civilian infrastructure destroyed. Famine is spreading, humanitarian aid officials and USAID administrator Samantha Power said this month.
The Senate measure also would force TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company to sell off the social media site or face a ban, as well as allocating $8 billion for Taiwan, other IndoPacific allies and countering China. A portion of the $61 billion in Ukraine funds are given via a loan to Ukraine that the U.S. president may forgive beginning in 2026.
The Ukraine funds come at a key juncture for the country in its war with Russia, as Ukrainian forces, running low on ammunition, have begun to cede frontline towns to Russia. The Pentagon has warned for months that a U.S. failure to arm Ukraine would prove catastrophic, and potentially spur Russian military advancement into other neighboring countries.
“So much of the hesitation and shortsightedness that has delayed this moment is premised on sheer fiction,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Tuesday. “Make no mistake: delay in providing Ukraine the weapons to defend itself has strained the prospects of defeating Russian aggression.”
The months of congressional inaction may also have dealt long-lasting damage to America’s reputation and alliances, officials and analysts say.
“The perception of the reliability of the United States is severely damaged,” said Kurt Volker, who served as a liaison to Ukraine under the Trump administration. “That has ripple effects.” NATO member states may be more doubtful that the U.S. would uphold its commitment to mutual defense as a member of the alliance, he said.
The Senate passed a version of the aid bill in February, following months-long negotiations to come up with a GOP-demanded bipartisan border deal linked to the aid that fell apart after Trump announced his opposition. The effort divided Senate Republicans at the time, and only 22 of them voted for it. But on Tuesday, 31 Republicans voted to advance the measure, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) a longtime hawk who flipped his vote from February.
At a celebratory news conference after a key procedural vote succeeded, McConnell said he believed the vote showed Republicans rejected an isolationist worldview that he said was promoted by ex-Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, whom he mocked for recently interviewing Russian Leader Vladimir Putin.
“I think we’ve turned a corner on the isolationist movement,” McConnell said.
In February, Trump said at a rally that he’d encourage Russia to do "whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member country that is not spending a sufficient amount of money on its own defense.
“I think it’s an insult to the American people the idea that, again, we’re going to send another 60 billion to secure the borders of another country,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who voted against the bill.
The aid package has been long awaited by the White House, which requested the current version of the funds in October, shortly after Israel came under attack by Hamas in the Oct. 7 assault that left about 1,200 Israelis dead.
Schumer and McConnell were largely united in pushing for Ukraine aid, despite fierce House GOP opposition that hung over Johnson as he weighed his decision. The speaker may yet lose his job over the Ukraine aid vote due to lingering anger on his right flank, but Trump has so far praised him and cautioned against ejecting Johnson.
“McConnell and I locked arms on this, we were shoulder to shoulder the whole way through,” Schumer said of the Senate’s efforts in an interview. The two men strategized on how to convince Johnson to let the House vote on their measure, and made a pact not to separate Israel aid from Ukraine funds, he said.
The bill prohibits any U.S. aid funds from going to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) — the organization that distributes most of the food, medicine and basic services to Palestinians in Gaza and across the Middle East — operating in Gaza and the West Bank following Israeli allegations that a dozen of its employees were involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. An independent review of the latter claim commissioned by the United Nations found no evidence to support it.
The bill prohibits any of the bill’s humanitarian funds from going to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the organization that distributes most of the food, medicine and basic services to Palestinians in Gaza and across the Middle East. That ban follows allegations that a dozen of UNRWA’s employees were involved in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and that the agency has been widely infiltrated by Hamas. An independent review of the latter claim commissioned by the United Nations found no evidence to support it.
Polling suggests Democrats are deeply divided about Israel’s approach to the war, but Democratic senators largely stuck together in approving the aid package on Tuesday. Some Democrats cited Iran’s recent strike on Israel as a development they believed would make clear to voters the need for the aid.
“The notion that we ought to help Israel defend itself I think also is a little more obvious to people than it might have been in February,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). The senator added that he believes Israel has allowed more humanitarian aid into the strip in recent weeks, following a deadly Israeli strike on World Central Kitchen aid workers.
Others cited the impracticality of trying to put conditions on the aid, saying such action is more effective coming from the president.
“The more I have looked into the mechanics of what would it actually mean to try to condition aid in response to a specific event at a specific time — it was always going to require cooperation and partnership from the executive,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.). “Because aid that we approve or vote for now will not arrive for months or years.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who traveled to the Capitol in December to ask for more support, thanked Congress for their actions ahead of the Senate vote. “We are glad that the United States remains with Ukraine, that it remains our main powerful ally,” Zelensky wrote on social media.
As the Senate considered the aid package Tuesday, Ukrainian lawmakers hoisted the American flag in Ukraine’s parliament.
“This critical legislation will make our nation and world more secure as we support our friends who are defending themselves against terrorists like Hamas and tyrants like Putin,” Biden said in a statement.
And now we can ponder what this might portend for the Putin's Boot-Licker Caucus.
People will be free. Even if we vote ourselves into bondage, there's always a kernel of dissent - a small group who won't knuckle under - who won't be fooled, and who will eventually bring the others around.
When the size of that kernel is potentially half of your population, you'd best be paying attention.
I'll say it again: Women will save us from ourselves - if we can figure out how to get the fuck outa their way.
The story of Iran’s Mahsa Amini uprising told through its most iconic images
It was a movement that began with the death of a young Iranian woman from a small Kurdish town. Over the next year, it spread on social media and captured the attention of the world.
This is the story of Iran’s uprising through its most memorable images. 1 Mahsa Amini’s death
On Sept. 13, 2022, Mahsa Amini was visiting her brother in Tehran just days before her 23rd birthday when she was stopped and taken away by the country’s infamous “morality police,” for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women.
Within hours, Amini lay in a coma in a hospital bed, with Iranian police claiming that she had suffered a heart attack. Her family said she was beaten. The image of her shared on social media shook the country.
Three days later, she died.
2 Removing the headscarf
The protests began on Sept. 16, the day Amini died, with crowds gathering outside the Tehran hospital where she spent her final days.
As she was laid to rest in her hometown of Saqqez the following day, women took off their headscarves in protest. They chanted “woman, life, freedom” — a slogan that would soon be heard across the country.
translated: Mazniha's flag ✌️👏 in Sari, 29 September; Burning scarf ceremony! #Mehsa_Amini #MehsaAmini
Some women took off their headscarves, waving them in the air or setting them on fire. Others cut their hair in public, openly defying the morality police.
Universities became hubs of protest as young people became leaders of the movement. Campuses were raided by security forces. The government cut off the internet. Some students were detained or forced to abandon their studies.
When Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, visited one university in an attempt to calm protests, he was greeted by angry students yelling “get lost.”
Students at Al-Zahra University—an all female uni in Iran—shout in protest upon President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit:
In one clip, a group of young women can be seen singing the song “Baraye,” which became an anthem giving voice to protesters’ grievances and received a Grammy award for Best Song for Social Change. 5 Remembering Amini
In late October thousands of people made their way to Amini’s grave to mark the 40th day after her death — known as a “chehellom,” an especially important moment in the Iranian Shiite funerary tradition.
A photo of a young woman standing on a car without a headscarf became an iconic image.
6 Taking the protest to sports
Acts of protest weren’t confined to Iran. A number of Iranian athletes appeared to support the uprising on the world stage. Climber Elnaz Rekabi took part in a competition in South Korea without wearing a headscarf — mandatory for all women representing the country abroad.
Concerns for Rekabi’s welfare grew after a stilted message posted on her Instagram account claimed she was unintentionally not wearing a headscarf. She later returned home to crowds of supporters.
In November, members of Iran’s men’s soccer team at the World Cup refused to sing the national anthem during their first match against England, widely interpreted as a gesture of solidarity with the protesters back home.
Sardar Azmoun, a forward on the team, has been the most vocal champion of the uprising. “I don’t care if I’m sacked,” Azmoun wrote in a since-deleted post on Instagram last September. “Shame on you for killing people so easily. Viva Iranian women.” He later issued an apology on Instagram.
When the team was eliminated from the competition, protesters at home erupted in celebration over what they viewed as a symbolic defeat for the Islamic Republic.
translated: At the funeral of Javad Heydari, one of the victims of the murder protests #مهسا_امینی , his sister cuts her hair at her brother's grave.
As the death toll rose during protests, a video shared on social media showed a woman cutting her hair over the grave of her brother, Javad Heydari, who was killed during the demonstrations. The gesture is found in ancient Persian literature as a sign of protest, anger or grief.
Women around the world, from members of the Iranian diaspora to politicians and celebrities, cut their hair in solidarity.
And BTW - "morality police"? How in the blue-eyed buck naked fuck does that make sense to somebody?
noun ➡︎ the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.
"we do have some freedom of choice"
➡︎ absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government.
"he was a champion of Irish freedom"
➡︎ the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.
"the shark thrashed its way to freedom"
Opinion
Dictators’ dark secret: They’re learning from each other
In the spring of 2012, Vladimir Putin was feeling the pressure.
For months, anti-Putin protests had surged through the streets of Moscow and other cities following fraudulent parliamentary elections the previous December. Mr. Putin, who was about to be sworn in for a third term as president, harbored a fear of “color” revolutions — the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine — as well as other popular revolts like the 2010-2012 Arab Spring, in which four dictators were overthrown. Until his inauguration in May, Russian authorities had tolerated the demonstrations. But when street protests broke out again, some marred by violence, the police moved in aggressively and hundreds were arrested.
On July 20, Mr. Putin signed legislation — rushed through parliament in just two weeks — to give the government a strong hand over nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which he suspected were behind the protests. He had long been apprehensive about independent activism, especially by groups that were financed from abroad. Under the new law, any group that received money from overseas and engaged in “political activity” was required to register as a “foreign agent” with the Justice Ministry or face heavy fines.
The law crippled these groups, the backbone of a nascent civil society that had blossomed in the 1990s in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Such organizations are the heartbeat of a healthy democracy, providing an independent and autonomous channel for people to voice their desires and aspirations. One of the first groups to be targeted was Memorial, founded during Mikhail Gorbachev’s years of reform to protect the historical record of Soviet repressions and to defend human rights in the current day. Mr. Putin was determined to squelch it and others like it.
Soon, similar laws began to crop up around the world.In the following years, at least 60 nations passed or drafted laws designed to restrict NGOs, and 96 carried out other policies curtailing them, imposing cumbersome registration requirements, intrusive monitoring, harassment and shutdowns. The wave of repressive measures offers a revealing look at the titanic struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. In the past decade, dictators have forged transnational bonds, sharing methods, copying tactics and learning from one another. They are finding new ways to quash free speech and independent journalism, eradicate NGOs, silence dissent and suffocate criticism.
In previous editorials in this series, we examined how young people who posted freely on social media were wrongly imprisoned by authoritarian regimes. We also described how Russia created and exploited disinformation about biological weapons. This editorial looks at how autocracies are reinforcing themselves by swapping methods and tactics.
The dictators want most of all to survive. They are succeeding.
A cascade of restrictions
The Russian “foreign agent” law hung an albatross around the neck of NGOs and, later, independent journalists and bloggers — anyone who received any money from abroad, even payment for a single freelance article. All were required to post a label on their published material identifying it as the work of a “foreign agent,” which in Russia has traditionally been associated with spying. When many organizations refused to oblige, the law was amended so the Justice Ministry could put them in the registry without their consent. Then in 2015, Russia added a new law designating any organization “undesirable” if the government deemed it a threat to national security — effectively a ban. One of the organizations so labeled was the Open Society Foundations established by financier George Soros, which had been, among other things, a lifeline of personal subsidies for Russian scientists in the lean years after the Soviet collapse.
Azerbaijan was the first among former Soviet republics to copy Russia’s 2012 law in 2013 and 2014. Then came Tajikistan in 2014 and Kazakhstan in 2015 with legislation directly limiting foreign funding to NGOs or sharply increasing bureaucratic burdens on them. The laws were largely borrowed from Russia. The cascade of laws has been documented in the Civic Freedom Monitor of the International Center for Not-for-profit Law.
Egypt also put NGOs in the crosshairs. In 2013, the courts convicted 43 NGO workers, including Americans, Egyptians and Europeans, many in absentia, on charges of operating without required government approval. The notorious criminal prosecution, Case 173, dragged on for years. Although the 43 were later acquitted in a retrial, the harassment continues. Under President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, Egyptian authorities have frozen the assets of human rights activists, banned them from traveling abroad and regularly called them in for questioning on suspicions of “foreign funding.” This included Hossam Bahgat, founder and director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, one of Egypt’s most well-known rights organizations. Egypt replaced a draconian 2017 law on NGOs with a new one in 2019 but retained many harsh restrictions. The new law banned activities under vaguely worded terms such as any “political” work or any activity that undermines “national security.”
Cambodia, ruled by strongman Hun Sen for decades, in 2015 imposed a law under which NGOs can be disbanded if their activities “jeopardize peace, stability, and public order or harm the national security, culture and traditions of Cambodian society.” Uganda, which has an active community of NGOs, imposed a restrictive law in 2016; the groups have faced suspensions, freezing of accounts, denial of funding and restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly. In Nicaragua, the dictatorship led by former Sandinista guerrilla Daniel Ortega adopted a “foreign agent” law in 2020 and a law restricting NGOs in 2022. It has canceled the legal registration of more than 950 civil society organizations since 2018.
China, which originally permitted NGOs to exist in a legal gray zone, took a harder line after Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. A new NGO law went into effect in 2017, increasing state control over foreign and domestic funding to civil society groups. While Russia operated with blacklists, China created a whitelist, rewarding some NGOs whose interests it approved, as it sought to punish those in sensitive areas such as media, human rights and religion. Lu Jun, co-founder of one of the early successful NGOs, the Beijing Yirenping Center, which fought discrimination, recalled the ways in which the state turned against his group. For seven years, it was allowed to grow. But then, he recalled, “Between 2014 and 2019, in four separate crackdowns, nine of my colleagues were jailed and five of our offices were repeatedly searched until they were shut down.”
A secret school — or ‘mad scientists’?
How did so many countries come to do the same thing in the same decade? The answers are difficult to find — dictatorships are shrouded in secrecy. But Stephen G.F. Hall, a professor at the University of Bath, in Britain, uncovered evidence that the dictators copy, share and learn from one another. His new book, “The Authoritarian International,” looks at how this works.
According to Mr. Hall, authoritarian regimes must constantly maintain the illusion of steadfast control. Relax for a minute, and the illusion could vanish. “Protest is like a run on the bank,” Mr. Hall told us. “The protesters only have to get it right once.” For autocracies, protest and dissent are an existential threat.
“They’ve all seen what happens to autocrats generally — the Gaddafi moment, being dragged through the streets and beaten to death with a lead pipe. … They seem to know that if one country becomes democratic in a region, the rest will almost certainly follow. … And the best way to ensure that survival is to learn, to cooperate and to share best practices because you constantly have to stay one step ahead.”
Mr. Hall says much “authoritarian learning” is indirect, diffused through like-minded networks and emulation. When he began his research, he thought he might find an actual school of dictatorship, with Mr. Putin or other despots as “either star pupils or teachers telling other autocrats how to establish best survival practices.” But Mr. Hall did not find contemporary evidence of such a school. “I think it is primarily a case of trial and error,” he said, with the dictators more like “mad scientists” who run experiments and then share the results. which are passed around in the shadows, through security services and old-boy networks.
And there are traces of collaboration. According to Mr. Hall, Russia has frequently looked to Belarus as a proving ground and source of authoritarian methods. In 2002, Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko created the Belarusian Republican Youth Union, a pro-regime, patriotic organization that could take control of the streets in Minsk in the event of an attempted color revolution. After the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Kremlin quickly created its own groups of “patriotic youths.” Years later, when Mr. Lukashenko was facing massive protests after stealing the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Putin came to his rescue. For instance, when Belarusian television workers quit their jobs in protest of the election fraud, Mr. Putin sent in Russians to keep the broadcasts going. (For Russia, the help is also driven by security concerns, given Belarus’s proximity to NATO.) Belarus also cooperates with China, which has long provided it with facial recognition technology. China’s telecommunications giant Huawei set up research centers in Belarus and brought Belarusian students to China for training.
Some authoritarian learning has its origin in history books. Magnus Fiskesjö, a professor at Cornell University, has shown how China in the past decade or so has brought back show trials, with staged, coerced confessions, borrowing both from the Mao era and reaching back to Joseph Stalin’s show trials of the 1930s. The extrajudicial show trials have been used against journalists, bloggers, academics, lawyers and entertainers, among others. The forced confessions go a step further than just silencing dissent; they are used to “shape reality” and create a more “predictably obedient society.”
The digital censors
In the world of authoritarian tactics, Russia and China are the center of gravity. They share know-how for policing the internet and generate sheaves of propaganda and disinformation, sometimes broadcasting identical sets of lies at the same time. Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022, but closer cooperation to squelch free speech on the internet was already well underway.
A glimpse of how it works was provided recently in a trove of internal documents, emails and audio recordings disclosed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in an April 5 report by Daniil Belovodyev, Andrei Soshnikov and Reid Standish. The materials depict Russia and China working closely to help each other more tightly control the internet in two high-level meetings in 2017 and 2019.
The first meeting, on July 4, 2017, was a two-hour session in Moscow between Ren Xianling, who was then-deputy minister of the Cyberspace Administration of China, and Aleksandr Zharov, then-head of Roskomnadzor, the Russian government agency that censors the internet. According to the documents and other materials, the Russians wanted expertise from China about “mechanisms for permitting and controlling” mass media, online media and “individual bloggers,” as well as China’s experience regulating messenger apps, encryption services and virtual private networks. The Russians asked to send a delegation to China to study its vast domestic surveillance system and the “Great Firewall” that blocks unwanted overseas information. The Chinese visitors were particularly interested in methods used by the Russian agency to control the media coverage of public protest. The Chinese visitors’ questions were prompted by public demonstrations just a few months before, organized by opposition leader Alexei Navalny in March 2017. Mr. Zharov reportedly responded that the Kremlin wasn’t worried because the protests were small-scale and Mr. Putin’s public support was at a “very high level.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in March. (Washington Post illustration; Alexey Maishev/Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images) The discussion came just as Russia was looking at how to install more sophisticated controls over the internet. The government attempted in 2018 to block the popular messaging platform Telegram but failed to do so. In May 2019, Mr. Putin signed new legislation requiring that Russian companies install more intrusive controls, and also envisioning the creation of an entirely isolated Russian internet. Outside researchers have found that the new controls gave the Kremlin “fine-grained information control” over internet traffic.
In July 2019, the Russian and Chinese teams met again in Moscow, according to the RFE/RL report. Mr. Zharov asked the Chinese for advice about how to deal with platforms that successfully evade Russia’s blocking. The failure with Telegram was brought up as an example. The Russians also asked the Chinese how they used artificial intelligence to identify and block “prohibited content.” RFE/RL disclosed this year that Roskomnadzor has been using sophisticated techniques to track Russians online, searching for posts that insult Mr. Putin or call for protests.
Then in October 2019, on the sidelines of the World Internet Conference in China, Russia and China signed a cooperation agreement on counteracting the spread of “forbidden information.” In December 2019, China sent requests to Russia, in three separate letters, with censorship requests to block articles and sites, such as the Epoch Times, a newspaper with ties to the Falun Gong movement that is persecuted in China, and links on GitHub, the software development website, that describe ways to bypass China’s firewall inside the country.
The dictators have clung to power
Of course, the United States and other democracies also cooperate and spend billions of dollars annually promoting the values of open societies and rule of law around the world. Like the dictators, the democracies share tactics and methods with one another. But there is one important difference: Diffusion of democracy appeals to — and relies upon — individuals and free thinking, while autocrats pursue their own survival by suffocating individual voices.
The latest Freedom in the World report shows a decline in freedom for the 17th year in a row. Many autocrats are proving resilient. In the nearly 11 years since Mr. Putin signed the “foreign agent” law, most of the world’s leading dictators have held on. Rarely have they been toppled by popular protests. They are building new means of repression along with the old. In China, tech companies have invented an electronic surveillance system that can automatically recognize a protest banner and demonstrators’ faces — and alert the police.
In Russia, Mr. Putin is unrestrained. The “foreign agent” and “undesirable” laws were revised again in 2022, making them significantly more draconian. While the earlier version singled out those who received money from abroad, now a “foreign agent” can be anyone who receives any kind of support from overseas or comes “under foreign influence in other forms.” New names are added every Friday to the registry compiled by the Justice Ministry.
As of June 16, the registry listed 621 groups and people.
“Authoritarian regimes are much more brazen than before,” said William J. Dobson, co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and author of “The Dictator’s Learning Curve,” published in 2012. “They are not sitting still.”
At the same time, autocracies are racked with challenges and setbacks. Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine might yet doom his rule. In China, Mr. Xi demands obedience, but protesters defy him, as they did last winter over “zero covid” restrictions. And one example of successful protest came recently in Georgia. The ruling Georgian Dream party advanced yet another “foreign agent” bill to require any organization receiving more than 20 percent of its funds from foreign sources to register as “agents of foreign influence.” But the bill was widely criticized, and after mass protests around the Parliament building in March, it was dropped.
All who believe in democracy must find new ways to advance it. This is especially important now, when democracy has lost luster around the globe.
Democracy’s greatest strength is openness. It should be harnessed to tell the truth loudly and widely.
There's a sewer-y part of practically everything. That doesn't mean you should seek it out, and live in it. Although, on the intertoobz at least, that's exactly what some folks are wont to do.
(pay wall)
A BASELESS CONSPIRACY theory about the assault of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi trended on Twitter Monday morning after being boosted all weekend by prominent conservatives and even new Twitter owner Elon Musk.
Hashtags including “PelosiGayLover,” “PelosiSmollett,” “PelosiGate,” and “Listen to the 911” appeared in the trending bar amid the proliferation of false claims about the attack and mockery of Pelosi. Several prominent right-wing figures pushed the false idea that both the attacker and Pelosi were in their underwear at the time of the assault, and that Pelosi knew his attacker and that they were actually lovers because Pelosi had referred to him as a “friend” while attempting to tip off 911 dispatchers as to his situation.
San Francisco police have debunked claims that both men were in their underwear and that Pelosi knew the attacker. The attacker, David DePape, 42, broke into the Pelosi home early Friday morning, allegedly shouting “Where’s Nancy?” before ultimately attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer. Pelosi underwent “successful surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands,” and according to a statement from the speaker’s office, “doctors expect a full recovery.”
Musk on Sunday tweeted (and later deleted) a story from right-wing rag The Santa Monica Observer claiming Paul Pelosi was not the victim of a break in, but that the attack was part of a domestic dispute with a male prostitute. It has been widely noted that the Observer has a history of publishing false claims, including that Hillary Clinton had died and been replaced with a body double. Musk later made fun of The New York Times for reporting that the tweet was based on a claim from a regular source of misinformation.
Former first son Donald Trump Jr. mocked the attack on Instagram and Twitter later on Sunday, posting a meme depicting a pair of underwear and a hammer with the text, “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.” Jr. captioned the post “OMG. The internet remains undefeated.”
Trump Jr. on Monday morning tweeted out a photo of a hammer in a holster, captioned “open carry in San Francisco”
Sitting politicians have also been mocking the attack. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) tweeted, then deleted, an image mocking Speaker Pelosi, captioning the tweet, “That moment you realize the nudist hippie male prostitute LSD guy was the reason your husband didn’t make it to your fundraiser.”
Researchers have found that while DePape did hold anti-establishment ideologies, his online activity indicated a longstanding pattern of extremist beliefs, including QAnon conspiracies, Holocaust denail, false voter fraud claims, and screeds against trans people and “groomers.”
On Fox News, the hosts of Fox & Friends alluded to the conspiracy on air. “Something, something doesn’t make sense,” said host Pete Hegseth, adding that it “doesn’t add up.” Larry Elder, the former California gubernatorial candidate and frequent Fox News guest, mocked the attack at an event Sunday night, saying that between the DUI conviction and the assault Pelosi was “was hammered twice in six months.”
Professional conspiracy theorists beat the disinformation drum on Twitter all weekend. Dinsesh D’Souza began publishing an alternate version of events on social media virtually immediately after the attack happened. Former Trump administration hand Sebastian Gorka published what is allegedly a partial clip of the conversation between 911 dispatchers sending someone to Pelosi’s home, captioning the video “The Paul Pelosi 911 Lie…” (The clip does not feature Paul Pelosi himself speaking to officers.) Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich claimed news outlets are “hiding facts from the public,” suggesting that a break in at the Pelosi home was implausible and baselessly alluding to a connection between the attack and Paul Pelosi’s recent DUI case.
Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has thrown the future of enforcement of anti-disinformation policies into chaos. Massive layoffs are expected at the social media company, and over the weekend Musk tweeted that he had not yet made any changes to Twitter’s content moderation policies, but reports indicated that instances of racist and hateful abuse on the platform skyrocketed in the immediate aftermath of Musk’s takeover.
On Monday morning, Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt defended Musk tweeting a conspiracy theory about Pelosi’s attack, labeling it a “free speech” issue.
I haven't decided yet whether to stay with Twitter and lurk, so I can keep an eye on it, or bail and try to find something else.
So far, I've seen a lot more weird shit, but that could be me engaging with the crazies more than I have done (mostly Blue Check Crazies) so maybe the algorithm is slanted in their direction.
I have noticed though that I've lost a couple of hundred followers, which may be the beginnings of "Twexit".
