Colby
@mobilecheco.bsky.social
human rights expert. civic space, movements, authoritarianism, conflict, extremism, Africa, US. “put your good where it does the most”
The age of totalitarianism is upon us, and the more money Congress gives these guys, the worse it's going to get. Gift link. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
How ICE Is Weaponizing Social Media Against Its Critics
The agency says its surveillance program searches for threats to agents, but critics see free-speech infringements.
wsj.com
The great unfolding of authoritarianism is a series of plausibly deniable moves in which people choose power over principle, over & over & over. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
How ICE Is Weaponizing Social Media Against Its Critics
The agency says its surveillance program searches for threats to agents, but critics see free-speech infringements.
wsj.com
The Russian government-controlled Africa Corps carried out airstrikes in central Mali on June 15, 2026, that killed eight civilians, including three children, in an apparently unlawful attack. New from HRW:
Mali: Russia’s ‘Africa Corps’ Airstrikes Kill Civilians
The Russian government-controlled Africa Corps carried out airstrikes in central Mali on June 15, 2026, that killed eight civilians, including three children, in an apparently unlawful attack, Human R...
hrw.org
in the wake of Amy Acton's anti-trans turn in Ohio, I will re-up this @bostonreview.bsky.social essay where I make the case that abandoning trans rights is BAD POLITICS for Dems, as it will turn away their own pro-LGBTQ base w/o winning over a single new voter... www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...
Trans rights aren’t tanking the Democrats.
Julia Serano responds in a forum on “How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism.”
bostonreview.net
The ‘traitors then invaders” meme is everywhere on X, along with the shitty Nazi Armie Hammer movie. The UK arrests people for much less overt incitement to violence. Will they have the guts to enforce their own laws?
"Since March, South Africa has been roiled by often violent demonstrations against illegal immigration. More than 160,000 people from countries including Mozambique, Nigeria and Zimbabwe have left South Africa..." www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
Beaten, robbed and driven out: violent demonstrations target immigrants in South Africa
Thousands have fled amid months of anti-immigration protests as campaigners demand undocumented people leave the country
theguardian.com
"They were interested, each of them, in doing something beyond analysis & handwringing. That included creating a cultural front against the great replacement of public space, play, & common life with quantification, dashboards, glowing screens, and endless feeds." www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
Getting Off with the Luddites | Sarah Thankam Mathews
They see Big Tech as having eroded commonality: the common good, the social fabric, the institutions of collective interest. Luddism, as they conceive of it, is a communal, spiritual, and political pr...
nplusonemag.com
Ian Bremmer remains the most embarrasing graduate of Tulane poli-sci. "Effects don't have causes" man if you want Musk's money that nadly just say it.
Two Russian men have been found guilty by an Angolan court of terrorism and spying. Prosecutors said they were planning a coup and helped to organise protests against fuel price hikes last year. Angola's security forces were accused of using live fire during the demonstrations, which 22 people died
Two Russian men jailed in Angola for terrorism and spying
The men were convicted over alleged plan to stage coup and organise deadly demonstrations over fuel prices last year
theguardian.com
Time for the “ask the president to identify the country he’s about to attack” challenge
This as George W Bush is basically rehabilitated as a moderate or bipartisan or whatever. Neocons (and Obama) have benefited from such a whitewashing of their anti-immigrant policies in the wake of Trump
The Costs of War Project@costsofwar.bsky.social · 3w agoRead the report “Terrorizing Migrants: Five Ways Post-9/11 Legal Precedents Paved the Way for Anti-Immigration Actions in the United States.” costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/paper/terror...
This is a terrific illustration -- for elected officials but also for media figures -- of the incredible power of simply refusing to take a bullshit dodge for an answer. Keep asking the question, over and over again, and make the weasels squirm.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3w agoOSSOFF: Who won the 2020 election? CLAYTON: Uhm, you know, I'm not going to do this with you O: This is a job interview. You have an obligation to be honest with the committee. Who won the 2020 election? C: I'm not gonna get into that with you O: You're not being honest or forthright C: ...
At this point, it's basically a monthly thing where the NY Times has some boomer Dem write a piece saying the party should abandon trans people.
Nor indeed that the Grand Jury wanted to indict Sen Graham for multiple crimes relating to the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. bsky.app/profile/matt...
Matt Negrin still host of Hardball on MSNBC@mattnegrin.bsky.social · 3w agoThe NYT obituary of Lindsey Graham makes no mention of his effort to overturn the 2020 election by calling Georgia’s secretary of state to intimidate him into manufacturing votes for Trump. The Times, like all news media, is GOP propaganda erasing Republicans’ history as election deniers
Mainstream Respectable opinion is that people joking about a bad person's death represents a culture of cruelty, but really it represents a culture of impunity. It's a coping mechanism for watching someone do evil their whole life and never seeing consequences
ICE has shot and killed a man in Houston. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. Another murder. The tenth by ICE officials this year.
The story here isn't that the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship. It's that a minority of the court believes that the 14th Amendment, as it's been understood since its inception, is wrong. They want to turn back the clock — not just to before the Civil Rights era, but before Reconstruction.
Another thing that today's SCOTUS abominations made clear again is that we need to have very uncomfortable, serious conversations about the structure of legal academia & the Federalist Society pipeline allowing authoritarians to capture & dismantle the rule of law & democracy through the courts.
Joe Stieb@joestieb.bsky.social · last mo.Well i mean if 4 people support something it can’t be wrong and inhumane
The TL;DR, as always, is this: SCOTUS will allow Donald Trump to wreck separation of powers and the rule of law, but they draw the line at wrecking capitalism.
Mark Joseph Stern@mjsdc.bsky.social · last mo.Slaughter is an earthquake: SCOTUS has overturned a 90-year-old precedent that facilitated much of modern governance by granting many agencies meaningful independence from the president. Now SCOTUS crushes that independence ... for seemingly every agency except the Federal Reserve.
Untangling the head spinning networks of extraction, corruption, and coercion in DRC mining www.dropsitenews.com/p/epstein-ba...
How Jeffrey Epstein’s Israeli Network Shaped Congo’s Deadly Mineral Trade
Leaked documents reveal how military contractors linked to Israeli intelligence secretly trained a special operations strike force in mineral-rich eastern Congo.
dropsitenews.com
The "civil discourse" pushers remind me of fossil fuel industry's success in pushing "carbon footprint" - shifting the focus toward individual behaviors and protecting elite impunity
Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · last mo.Alice Speri (@alicesperi.bsky.social) of @theguardian.com once again covering the actual story of what’s happening in HigherEd.
"Uncivil, a consortium of scholars and researchers of which Moreton is a member, found that 20 out of the 23 foundations most active in the pluralism and depolarization space also fund conservative policy networks or pro-Israel organizations."
Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · last mo.Alice Speri (@alicesperi.bsky.social) of @theguardian.com once again covering the actual story of what’s happening in HigherEd.
People whose ideology is an explicit lack of ideology fear they're on the verge of losing the ideological war.
Politico@politico.com · last mo.Moderate Democrats fear they’re on the verge of losing the party’s ideological civil war to progressives.
i’m reading the new @quinnslobodian.com on Musk and the book makes a very persuasive case that Musk’s upbringing in apartheid south africa are at the core of his ideology
Nils Gilman@nilsgilman.bsky.social · 2mo agoI also don't think it's a total coincidence that the apex promoter of the Mars colonization grew up in apartheid South Africa: Mars colonization fantasies always include the idea of escape from the terrestrial political reality of having to share space with one's lessers.
It must be so cool to live in a functional republic.
Jair Bolsonaro’s son sentenced to four years in jail for seeking US interference in father’s Brazil coup trial
Brazil supreme court finds that Eduardo Bolsonaro – who resides in the US - tried to get sanctions put on judges trying ex-president over coup plot
theguardian.com
Elon Musk's incitement of pogroms in Belfast reveals he'll use his immense wealth and influence to foment untold fascist violence in the future. Only a global movement can break his power. New piece from @polphilpod.bsky.social and me. Threading highlights below. 1/ newrepublic.com/article/2119...
Elon Musk’s Race War Just Took Darker Turn—Time for a Global Response
The violent fascist riots in Belfast reveal the future that the trillionaire really wants. We need an international movement to constrain him.
newrepublic.com
