Weltschmerz à Gogo

RE: @LiamOMaraIV@mastodon.social

Today is the 50th anniversary of the military coup in Argentina, and I'd really like to encourage people to read up on Operation Condor generally and the Argentine junta in particular. The coup ushered in a seven-year dictatorship under which, in particular, left-wing dissidents were abducted, tortured, and murdered in huge numbers.

But if you need a link with the present to make that a bit more salient (particularly in the US), allow me to remind you of the very high likelihood that many of the new hires at ICE and CBP over the past year are old Proud Boys -- an organization whose members frequently wore patches with the letters "RWDS" (short for Right-Wing Death Squad) and t-shirts promoting "helicopter rides" for "communists" in reference to the practice in both Pinochet's Chile and Argentina under the junta of drugging prisoners and then flinging their prone bodies into the ocean from helicopters (see also: Proud Boys' "Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong" t-shirts).

Of course, they were always "just kidding," because obviously that's hilarious.

At any rate, while there are armed people with murderous fantasies on our streets (and currently all over our airports) who take inspiration from the Argentine dictatorship, it seems wise to learn some of the history they're drawing on.

SPLC has uncovered the legal names of various pseudonymous authors for the right-wing "satirical" news website The Babylon Bee and the closely related site Not the Bee, as well as info about former owner Seth Dillon's other business ventures, all uniformly shady.

One of those authors is an English professor at Master's University, a Christian school in Santa Clarita, CA. Another is a high school teacher in Greentown, IN. Yet another is a fitness instructor in Arlington, VA.

The common threads here are, unsurprisingly, transphobia and anti-immigrant sentiment, with a shot of "great replacement" conspiracy theorizing for good measure -- all in the name of Christian goodness. Go figure...

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2024/11/19/inside-beehive

#TheBabylonBee #NotTheBee #ConspiracyTheories #GreatReplacement #Satire #fascism #ChristianFascism #SPLC

I really can't even think of anything to say about this. Fucking hell...

https://www.kcur.org/news/2026-07-28/missouri-couple-shot-dead-in-guatemala-after-local-ice-stop-led-to-deportations

#FuckICE #fascism #deportation #racism #Guatemala #murder

When a person is afraid to get medical care because immigration enforcement has pushed its way into healthcare facilities, and then that person dies of a treatable illness, then it's fair to say that immigration enforcement at the very least gets a significant portion of the responsibility for that person's death.

The autopsy for Jesús Juárez Cruz isn't done, and what specifically killed him remains unknown for the time being. But it's pretty likely that his should be understood as another death at the hands of the US border regime. And even if not, it seems fairly clear that professional medical care could have at least spared him a lot of pain.

https://english.elpais.com/usa/2026-04-10/the-slow-death-of-jesus-the-mexican-man-who-refused-to-go-to-a-hospital-for-fear-of-ice.html

También disponible en español:
https://elpais.com/us/migracion/2026-04-10/la-muerte-lenta-de-jesus-el-mexicano-que-se-nego-a-ir-a-un-hospital-por-temor-al-ice.html

#ICE #FuckICE #CBP

Another border regime enforcer has been charged as a sexual predator. Not a lot of details available, and obviously being charged is not the same thing as being guilty. Still, if anyone is going to get the benefit of the doubt in the US, it's a cis white dude who works for fucking Customs and Border Patrol.

https://bsky.app/profile/pacantifa.is/post/3mjif52zpxc27

News report here:
https://www.kgns.tv/2026/04/12/laredo-border-patrol-agent-arrested-indecent-assault/

#ICE #FuckICE #CBP #SexualAssault #ACAB

RE: @davidaugust@mastodon.online

Trump has unwittingly stumbled into the power that undermines itself. Graeber would be so proud!

An interesting, relatively short discussion about using AI chatbots as tools for revitalizing endangered languages. The upshot is that, if it's going to be done at all, it needs to be done very, very carefully and only by or in close collaboration with the community that actually uses a given language. But there are an awful lot of details to work through, and this discussion is really tip-of-the-iceberg level. (Personally, I'm deeply skeptical of the value of "AI" tools for projects like these, and I'm not really convinced that the payoff is likely to be worth the effort. That's without even mentioning the ecological cost of "AI". Still, the discussion is interesting even if just in terms of the ethics involved and the particular complications of working with endangered languages.)

https://endangeredlanguages.com/story/ask-elp-ethical-ai

#EndangeredLanguages #AI #IndigenousLanguage

From the article:

President Trump’s budget request to Congress contains the largest counterterrorism spending increase in years — and buried inside it is a new FBI-led center dedicated to “proactively” hunting Americans the government classifies as so-called domestic terrorists.

The new center and funding boost represent the implementation of Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), the sweeping federal order I’ve been covering since it was signed last September.

Though public opposition to ICE succeeded at forcing the administration to back down in Minnesota — even firing both Kristi Noem and Gregory Bovino — the FBI is doubling down its domestic terrorism obsession.

Now, Trump’s budget request reveals, the FBI runs a dedicated “NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center”; with personnel from 10 federal agencies, it is busy “proactively” identifying domestic terrorists motivated by any of the following beliefs:

“anti-Americanism,”
“anti-capitalism,”
“anti-Christianity,”
“support for the overthrow of the U.S. Government,”
“extremism on migration,”
extremism on “race,”
extremism on “gender,”
“Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,”
Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on “religion,” and
Hostility towards those who hold traditional views on “morality.”

In other words, if your political views are practically anything other than MAGA, you’re on notice, courtesy of the FBI.

https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-budget-request-includes-funding-an-fbi-anti-domestic-terrorism-center/

#FBI #surveillance #antifa #fascism #KashPatel

New details on a very active neo-nazi in Northern California. There's a lot of detail here, but this is how it starts:

Arron Jacob Cambridge, aka “Scipio”, is a neo-nazi from Elk Grove who has been active with multiple white supremacist groups in the Sacramento and San Francisco Bay areas. Cambridge is a member of “White Lives Matter” California, and NorCal Active Club, a nazi fight club connected to Robert Rundo’s W2R/RAM network. Cambridge has also participated in joint actions with the Sacramento Proud Boys, Patriot Front, and Golden State Skinheads.

Arron Cambridge runs several inter-related businesses, generally revolving around imaging and his commercial pilot’s license. He is certified as a commercial pilot (single engine and instrument), a remote (drone) pilot, and as an advanced and instrument ground instructor. Using this pilot’s license, Cambridge performs aerial scatterings of cremated remains under the names Cambridge Flying Services and Wentzel’s Flying Services (a company he inherited from another pilot). Cambridge also runs a print and design business under the name Cambridge Studios, through which he also performs aerial photography. A news story from 2017 shows that Cambridge also worked as a contractor for Pacific Gas and Electric, doing aerial fire reconnaissance in the summers. It’s not currently known if Cambridge is still performing this contract work.

...

Cambridge has routinely used his professional skills in furtherance of his neo-nazi agenda. He routinely uses his experience as a commercial drone pilot to film the actions of his neo-nazi groups, and serves as an on-the-ground photographer as well. In at least one case, he has used his photography to try to gather materials with which to dox pro-LGBT activists. He has also used his print shop to produce white supremacist and neo-nazi flyers and other propaganda materials, which the groups distribute.

https://bay161.noblogs.org/aaroncambridge/

#fascism #NeoNazis #fcknzs #ActiveClub #RobRundo #WhiteLivesMatter #racism #ArronCambridge #CambridgeFlyingServices #WentzelsFlyingServices #CambridgeStudios #PatriotFront #ProudBoys #GoldenStateSkinheads #WLM