How long have we been forced into narrow copyright regimes to benefit a few powerful companies, and now all data suddenly belongs to the new "AI" lords?
Everyone should read this!
#imperialism #ai #copyright #theft
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/13/openai_data_copyright/
"The #Ukrainians are fighting and dying"
"#Russian occupation of Ukraine must end".
An image from the US Library of Congress.
Photographer: Marion S. #Trikosko
Created 20th September 1960.
#LibraryofCongress #NewYork #SlavaUkraini #Chruschtschow #UN #UnitedNations #Khrushchev #Demonstration #History #HistoryRepeating #Sovjet #Imperialism
URL https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.83276/
Today in Labor History March 11, 1833: The U.S. invaded Nicaragua to “protect U.S. business interests.” The U.S. invaded again in 1853, 1854, 1867, 1894, 1896, 1898, 1899 and 1909. Then, in 1912, they invaded and occupied the country for 21 years.
Look, I'm not psychic. I can't tell you whether or not Donald Trump is going to *successfully* annex or invade Canada; although I will say that given the *vast* disparity between Canadian and US military capabilities, it's highly unlikely Canadian leaders would risk letting it get far enough to see "U.S. Marines marching on Quebec," so folks waiting for that before they deign to take this seriously are more or less promising to do nothing to prevent this. What I can tell you is these nazis do *not* have a sense of humor, the establishment portion of the America First fascist movement has been openly building the ideological arguments to seize Canada and trying them out in public settings for several years, and watching everyday Americans fall right back into a pattern of ignorant nationalism because they're pissed off at Canadians for booing our anthem in response to Trump's threats, doesn't give me faith in the idea that this is just another doomed-to-fail Trump fever dream. This is real, and it *is* a scandal that the Very Serious PeopleTM in America are not only failing to oppose it, but not even taking it seriously enough to discuss it.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-threat-over-canada-scandal-172715816.html
Trump’s Threat to Take Over Canada Is a Scandal
"There are numerous reasons why Trump and his government’s pervasive blathering about turning Canada into the “51st state” shouldn’t be dismissed as a “Madman Theory”-negotiating tactic, or as performative MAGA trolling. During a private phone call last month, according to a Friday New York Times report, Trump “told Mr. Trudeau that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary. He offered no further explanation.”
Lately, Trump — a man who would never try to do anything world-historically rash like ending democracy in America — has told every news camera that would listen and broadcast his message to the world that he would like to rule Canada, one of the U.S.’s most vital allies. It’s not just Trump blurting it out: This has become the position of the United States federal government; his White House press secretary and his Homeland Security secretary are now, too, calling Canada “the 51st state.”
“Canada could do a lot more. Canada has been taken over, Bret, by Mexican cartels,” top Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, bizarrely, told Fox News host Bret Baier on Wednesday, attempting to justify Trump’s tariffs. (At least Trump White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt practically admitted the tariffs are about forcing Canada’s annexation.)"
As I've mentioned elsewhere, over the course of the past ten years I've spent warning people that the American establishment right has become an full-blown, openly fascist movement full of people who literally admire the Nazis, I've received a tremendous amount of pushback from too-clever-by-half people with college degrees insisting that I can't call what has now become the America First movement "fascist" because "they're not pursing an aggressively expansionist nationalist policy." Setting aside the fact that Americans are so drunk on bipartisan nationalism that I strongly question whether or not these folks would recognize it in the wild (a fact borne out by watching our establishment largely laugh off Trump's threats to annex Canada, seize Greenland, and carve up Ukrainian resource rights with Russia) there can be little question that the Trump regime is in fact "pursuing an aggressively expansionist nationalist policy" now that he's back in power; which stands to reason - after all, by necessity the Nazis didn't start invading Europe until they'd already seized political control of Germany because that's how wars work. Furthermore, the idea that Trump is not doing so until there are "boots on the ground" in Toronto is absurd; America has long been proficient in exercising soft power and flexing our economic might to transform other countries into puppet states and colonial extraction zones for American corporations - we just don't *usually* do it to countries full of white people, so the American media complex gives it little notice.
Finally, for those still clinging to the idea that there is no *reason* for these Nazis to want to invade Canada, let me be blunt. Climate crisis is real, as the entire planet burns the Pig Empire is openly entering a phase of rampant climate imperialism, and Canada is not only predicted to be less affected than the US by climate change in the short term, but they also have vast supplies of fresh water, heavily forested land, and natural resources extremely valuable to the billionaire tech company fascists actually running the Trump administration. Of course, a US discourse that ignores climate crisis and pretends corporate power doesn't control US foreign policy, probably isn't going to mention that and would prefer to stick with "Trump cray tho."
The Zelensky-Trump meeting blew up in a shouting match in front of the media. Don’t get lost in the bluster – here’s 3 things to keep in mind to understand what’s really going on. 
Today in Labor History March 1, 1954: The U.S. detonated Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll. It caused the worst radioactive contamination ever by the U.S. However, this occurred after years of nuclear testing and contamination of the islands and waters around them. The U.S. detonated 23 nuclear devices on the islands from 1946 to 1958. They blew up the bombs on the reef, in the sea, in the air and underwater. They relocated islanders several times, each time to supposedly safe islands. But they neglected to provide sufficient food and water, causing starvation. When the islanders tried to catch fish to eat, or grow their own crops, they were so contaminated from radioactive fallout, that it poisoned all who ate it. Women started having miscarriages and giving birth to babies with abnormalities. To this day, it is still too contaminated for inhabitants and their descendants to return. A trust fund that had been set up to help support the survivors ran out of funds in the late 2010s.
@tagesschau
This stupid old man #trump #dictatortrump and his lapdog #vance has complitly misunderstood what the Ukraine War is and who had started - trumps friend: #putin Trump has literally thrown Selensky out of the White House! #putinspuppet #notmypresident #imperialism #impeachment now !
Today marks 3 years since the start of the war in Ukraine.
The corporate media says Putin wants to take over the world, and Trump says Zelenskyy somehow managed to trick the US into supporting him — but the reality is that NATO’s long-term strategy of expansion towards Russia’s borders made war inevitable.
The only REAL path towards peace is the abolition of NATO!
I have not been squeeing enough about the #BookSirens reader copy I #amReading, Lines of Flight: Capitalism and Mental Illness by Joseph T. Mendoza-Green. There are 95 review slots left and the reading period is well into April, if you're interested in a book that examines #psychiatry as a part of imperialist and capitalist systems. https://booksirens.com/book/TXGZ2H9
Mendoza-Green, a working counselor for over a decade, questions the field of psychiatry and the construct of "mental illness" as he pores over modern statistics, media theory, histories of madness and melancholy, and the systemic demands of #imperialism and #capitalism to take apart the medical model for non-normative minds.
In parts sprawling intellectual inquiry, cranky musings of a frontline worker, and extended civ-critical rant, Lines of Flight isn't exactly light reading at over 400 pages of text and over 60 pages of footnotes and references. Rather it's a pugnacious line of thought that simply refuses to stop gnawing at its central question in its far-ranging travels, and I'm finding it a fun and idiosyncratic ride.
Make America, China and Russia great again! (formerly known as #imperialism) #MACRA
Pankaj Mishra represents a voice from the Global South that holds the mirror of the Eurocentric mindset and an unbroken colonial rule over the rest of the world into our face. Even if you don't identify with the slave masters the sheer imagination he allows us to have part in makes one cringe.
What tops it all off is the latest land grab by #Trump declaring to "have" #Gaza just like an especially convenient real-estate deal. You don't even need to buy it, it's totally wrecked - by design of US-made weaponry - so let's do those Palestinians a favor and resettle them somewhere else.
Western #imperialism in full swing again not even caring to put up a more benevolent face but presenting "real talk'' to humans that can't help to listen because there's nothing left to rely on. Firstly you bomb the hell out of them, strain their life force to the limit, and if they lie totally exhausted in the dust begging for some drops of clean water you make them an offer they can't reject - or else. So make the best out of the living hell you've been thrown into by some bad luck which surely has nothing to do with Bibi and me.
This is #GoogleMaps on my own phone, right now. This is madness. Our king is literally mad.
Jódete Trumpas!
América pertenece a los indios nativos.
#FueraGringos #gringosgohome #imperialism
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-tariff-steel-aluminum-canada-1.7454845
Nothing says “Let’s Make a Deal” like breaking every agreement you’ve ever made.
#Trump #Tariffs #USPol #cdnpoli #USAggression #Imperialism
Concentration camps nearby Cuba - very, very typical of the U.S. Empire...
"The Trump administration has moved more than 30 people described as Venezuelan gang members to the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, as U.S. forces and homeland security staff prepare a tent city for potentially thousands of migrants.
About a dozen of the men were brought in from El Paso, Texas, on Friday, as Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, arrived at Guantánamo. She is the first senior member of the Trump administration to visit the migrant mission on the base in southeastern Cuba.
Ms. Noem was taken to the rooftop of the base’s aircraft hangar and observed as U.S. security forces led the deportees down the ramp of a C-130 military cargo plane to an awaiting minibus. Maj. Gen. Philip J. Ryan, the army commander overseeing the migrant mission, stood beside her in combat uniform, and a Chinook transport chopper could be seen in the distance.
“Vicious gang members will no longer have safe haven in our country,” Ms. Noem said on social media, calling the men “criminal aliens.”"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/us/politics/guantanamo-bay-migrants.html
"Alex Karp, the creepy CEO of creepy defense contractor Palantir, just can’t stop talking about killing people. During a recent call with investors, the billionaire let it slip that he doesn’t mind a little bloodshed, just so long as the money keeps pouring in.
“Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them,” Karp said, with a smile on his face. The CEO added that he was very proud of the work his firm is doing and that he felt it was good for America. “I’m very happy to have you along for the journey,” he said. “We are crushing it. We are dedicating our company to the service of the West, and the United States of America, and we’re super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about.”
Mother Jones reports that Trump’s re-election and subsequent enactment of police-state style policies have been mighty good for Palantir’s stock— which makes sense since Palantir is a police-state kind of company."
https://gizmodo.com/palantirs-billionaire-ceo-just-cant-stop-talking-about-killing-people-2000560597
"The Chinese economy is in a precarious position, and the country’s overcapacity problem is forcing it to increase exports and creating pushback across the world. China’s economic future is uncertain, and the downturn may not be reversed even with active government intervention, regardless of what the United States does.
Yet Chinese leaders remain confident that, even if the country’s economy suffers, four years of Trump is unlikely to send it into a full-blown crisis. And they anticipate that if Trump follows through on his declared policies, such as those on trade and territorial expansion, he could do severe damage to the United States’ credibility and global leadership. Beijing thus sees Trump’s second term as a potential opportunity for China to expand its influence farther and faster. In this view, competition with the United States is not in itself the driving force behind China’s grand strategy. It is instead one component of a larger process: China’s rise and displacement of the United States as the world’s leading superpower, what Xi often describes as “changes unseen in a century.” Beijing assumes that Washington’s own policies will dismantle the foundations of U.S. global hegemony, even if it creates a lot of turbulence for other countries in the process. China’s top priority, then, is simply to weather the storm."
The one who deals the blow forgets.
The one who carries the scar remembers.
– Haitian proverb
Quoted in Jonathan M. Katz, Gangsters of Capitalism (St: Martin's, 2022), front matter.
مجد الشهابي 
