Hard Pass

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/54786961

In almost every instance, President Donald Trump’s administration blamed the injured and dead for the shooting within hours of the incident, raising questions about whether federal officials can fairly and objectively investigate their own. Legal experts and advocates for immigrants say this apparent lack of accountability demands that local authorities step up and exercise their power to investigate and prosecute federal agents who break state laws — from battery to murder.

“Local police and the state have gotten a free pass,” said Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago and the co-founder and director of its Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project. “Residents have every right and should be demanding that, ‘Hey, state authorities, police, local police: Protect us. Arrest people who kill us, who batter us, who point guns at us and threaten and assault us without legal cause to do so.’”

Legal experts said they were not aware of recent examples of Illinois law enforcement agencies investigating an on-duty federal agent, though last month a suburban police department obtained misdemeanor charges against an off-duty ICE agent accused of attacking an activist who was filming him while the agent was pumping gas.

Illinois State Police officials said they would investigate federal agents who were accused of breaking the law if they are asked to do so.

Meanwhile, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker called on a state accountability commission to examine the roles of key Trump officials in the escalation of aggressive tactics during a monthslong immigration enforcement campaign in Chicago and its suburbs late last year. Pritzker had previously established the commission to gather videos and testimonies about federal agents’ conduct, and to create a public record of what happened. The commission lacks subpoena power but can refer information about potential violations of state law to law enforcement agencies or prosecutors.

“Just imagine if the agents who shot Mr. Villegas González back on Sept. 12 had been publicly disciplined,” Rubén Castillo, a retired federal judge who chairs the commission, said at a hearing Friday. “Maybe, just maybe, the Minnesota shootings would not have occurred, and two people would be alive who are now dead.”

He added: “We will have conversations with those in local law enforcement to suggest prosecutions that should be occurring even as we speak.”

Even when local officials open their own investigations into federal agents, there’s no guarantee they can bring the cases to court. Federal agents can claim immunity in response to state charges, legal experts said, and can move their cases to federal court.

That immunity stems from a Supreme Court ruling more than a century ago. During the Civil Rights Movement, that immunity was used when the federal government wanted to protect its law enforcement officers tasked with enforcing then-controversial efforts like desegregation in hostile states.

Now local officials face the opposite challenge: protecting their constituents’ constitutional rights from what they believe is excessive force at the hands of federal officers.

A new tool searches your LinkedIn connections for people who are mentioned in the Epstein files, just in case you don’t, understandably, want anything to do with them on the already deranged social network.

404 Media tested the tool, called EpsteIn—as in, a mash up of Epstein and LinkedIn—and it appears to work.

“I found myself wondering whether anyone had mapped Epstein's network in the style of LinkedIn—how many people are 1st/2nd/3rd degree connections of Jeffrey Epstein?” Christopher Finke, the creator of the tool, told 404 Media in an email. “Smarter programmers than me have already built tools to visualize that, but I couldn't find anything that would show the overlap between my network and his.”

• Archive: http://archive.today/AIkL2
• Github: https://github.com/cfinke/EpsteIn

For years, we watched Silicon Valley executives perform elaborate corporate theater about “values” and “belonging” and “bringing your whole self to work.” If you were skeptical that any of that was real, well, congrats.

Aaron Zamost, a longtime tech communications exec, has a piece in the NY Times that should be required reading for anyone trying to understand the tech industry’s sudden, conspicuous rightward lurch. His argument is refreshingly blunt: this isn’t about ideology. It never was. It’s about leverage.

There are many theories about Silicon Valley’s swift, and very conspicuous, rightward turn. Tech leaders course-corrected from an overly permissive era. The Trump administration demands fealty in exchange for critical regulatory favors. Mr. Trump’s re-election reshaped the national climate and reoriented the values of tech leadership.

Each of these explanations is convenient, but none are correct. I’ve worked in tech for 20 years, across both Big Tech and venture-backed start-ups, and I can tell you the truth is much more mundane. Silicon Valley’s chief executives have always been driven by economics, not ideology. As Michael Corleone put it: It’s not personal — it’s strictly business.

The policy change makes it easier for the president to discipline or remove up to 50,000 employees, another push in the administration’s campaign to reshape the federal work force.

One of the nuts things about organizing in the Twin Cities right now is that even the most long term organizers who've been here for decades can't keep track of all the resistance that is going on. There are so many self-organized crews just doing work that in any conversation with someone from another neighborhood you might stumble over a whole collective of people resisting in ways you didn't think of. There's a crew of carpenters just going around fixing kicked-in doors. There are tow truck drivers taking cars of detained people away for free. People delivering food to families in hiding. So many local rapid response groups that the number is uncertain but somewhere between 80 and the low hundreds- especially when one considers that several immigrant communities have their own non-English rapid response networks usually uncounted in the main English-language directories. People standing watch outside daycares and schools.

This whole resistance has so many poles of initiative and leadership, so many layers of self-organization, that it's extraordinarily difficult for the state to repress or for opportunists (be they Democrats or movement-riding parties) to co-opt and control. Of course, that's built up through many years and decades of organization, and not only through explicitly political campaigns or formations built during times of crisis and rupture like 2020. It is also built through day-to-day mutual aid, culture building, workplace and tenant organizing, and simple, basic relationship building among neighbors and coworkers here.

This is an everyday, practical sort of anarchism, born not of ideology (though Minneapolis has no shortage of anarchists, and many of us have organized for years on these principles), but of the solutions found by people in the course of struggle. Waiting to be led does not make sense. Funneling power and money through a central apparatus the state can target does not make sense. Symbolic actions appealing to a state without a conscience and an opposition party without a spine make no sense. Self organization, federation, and autonomy make sense. Direct action makes sense. Mutual aid makes sense.

That thickly organized, multipolar resistance from below is what no one can substitute their grand architectural plan for, and what no state can successfully repress. The Twin Cities will not be conquered. We will not surrender. We have no indispensable leaders to hold hostage or buy off, no funding streams to choke off, no "outside agitators" to isolate and repress. We are self organized, and could well make ourselves ungovernable.

Microsite Highlighting Evidence from the Landmark Social Media Addiction Trials.

New documents show the tactics Meta, Google, Snap, and TikTok execs used to disrupt learning, prey on minors, and co-opt the PTA to control the narrative with parents

The policy change makes it easier for the president to discipline or remove up to 50,000 employees, another push in the administration’s campaign to reshape the federal work force.

... I hear they've been looking for a room temperature super conductor for ages.

(I am so sorry)

A new database of sworn affidavits filed by the ACLU shows masked agents detaining citizens based on race without warrants, ignoring IDs, and pointing weapons at them.

The new head of the Los Angeles Fire Department admitted last month the after-action report was edited to ‘soften language and reduce explicit criticism’

To be more specific, I have a friend who pointed out a couple of features that they wanted. They're present in Immich, but I'm wondering if they're replicable in Nextcloud since I already have that installed, and Immich is giving me trouble with installation. I'll troubleshoot Immich later if it can't be replicated

The features:

• Having a world map that has pins on it based on location EXIF data in photos
• Preferably a UI similar to google photos on mobile besides that

Edit: Someone in the comments pointed out that Memories (something I already installed) had come a long way. Ended up finding out there's a mobile app, and it is exactly these two things.

There are fountains of wealth being generated in this country. But that wealth isn't trickling down to working people. It’s all stuck at the top.

Our 'Tax Plan for the 99%' takes on the corporate hoarding class – to redistribute wealth⁠ and raise the floor for all of us.

Join us: lewisforleader.ca