I’ve been scraping paint off a concrete wall, bits of paint flying off, huge pieces slowly peeling away, a surprisingly zen experience. I don’t know if it’s always this way, but this wall had several layers of paint, and in some places only the top layer would peel off easily, or a whole strip would come loose down to the clean wall.

In places where everything didn’t come off easily, struggling, digging in, trying to get every last speck of paint off, seemed to have limited returns. Instead, I learned, moving on and coming back a few minutes later, or even the next day, had often created a new edge to gain purchase, and more paint would be easily broken free where previously it had been locked in.

While chipping away, it occured to me that this is how organizing works too. Every win, every non-defeat, even every loss, matters. It might not be immediately obvious, but it changes the terrain. An effort can fail, but in raising the visibility of the issue, softens the ground for the next fight. We can’t predict ahead of time what will rally people, what will change a politician’s mind, or how a judge or jury will rule.

Which is why we must contest every fight. There are no obvious loses, nothing can been immediately conceded. That’s not to say that everyone can do all the things. None of us can. But as individuals we must discover our roles to play and do what we can to fill those shoes. But the solution is also not never ending, crushing pressure, with no end in sight. These are the lessons of problem solving. Try thinking about it from a different angle, set it aside and return to it later, ask for help, etc.

This is true for the other side too however. It’s insulting to refer to any person as a distraction. Trans people were not a distraction in the 2024 Election. Iranians are not a distraction from the Epstein Files. Minnesota was not a distraction from a failing economy.

But Trump bombing Iran, now, is because we defeated his secret police force in Minnesota. Because we stood up and refused to support the genocide in Gaza. Trump’s base is attacking Trans people and the teachers and books that support them because their lives are growing measurably worse despite putting their God King in power.

The difference is they are flailing about searching for any possible edge or fault line, even the slightest win, to grasp onto. Our threatened genocide in Iran is now a ceasefire under which the US and Israel must stop striking, not just Iran, but also their regional partners. Because Trump lost the negotiation and is losing the war. Trump is losing in court. Trump lost in Minnesota, and LA, and Chicago, and Maine. So yes, he’s lashing out, and has immense power to do so. And yes, we have failed by allowing decades of decay of co-equal branches into subservient sycophants. But he’s losing and failing. We are resisting, slowing, and yes, sometimes, even winning. We must continue to fight day in and day out to limit the damage. But he is losing.

”Never interrupt your opponent while he is in the middle of making a mistake."

Reading

Israel’s New Death Penalty Law Only Applies to Palestinians by Sawsan Zaher

In the West Bank, Palestinians are tried in military courts, where the conviction rate is above 99%. The new law amends the Israeli Military Order to mandate the death penalty if the accused is convicted of “causing death with intent, where the act is an act of terrorism defined in the Counterterrorism Law.” In Israel, where Palestinian citizens make up around 20% of the population, the criminal code has been amended to mandate the death penalty for persons convicted of “causing death with the intent to deny the existence of the State of Israel.” While in theory the vague wording of this motive could apply to all citizens, in practice it refers only to Palestinian citizens. 

Israel abolished the death penalty in 1954, making an exception only for Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi convicted in 1961 for his role in organizing and executing the genocide of the Jews in Europe during World War II. Now it has not only passed a law mandating capital punishment, but one that decrees that it applies only to Palestinians. Israel describes itself as a democracy, but has codified two separate criminal paths that are based on the nationality and ethnicity of the convicted person.

The law explicitly blocks any possibility of pardon or commutation of the sentence by the military commander, and orders the execution to be carried out on an expedited schedule of only 90 days. In effect, the law is a technical machine of vengeance producing a “fast track” to the gallows, while carrying a substantial risk of irreversible wrongful convictions within a system where due process is already fundamentally in doubt.

An Anguished Debate Among Iranians by Nahid Siamdoust

Those of us living in the U.S. — who have watched in real time the dismantling of democratic norms by this administration, who have witnessed Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its crimes in Lebanon, who inhabit daily an Islamophobic and Iranophobic political climate in which it is us, apparently, who are people of “hate and terror” — cannot in good conscience treat the current war as a vehicle of liberation. The president who made that remark also stated, without so much as an apology, that he “could live with” knowing that his military had killed more than 150 schoolgirls on the first day of the war. This came after Matt Schlapp, chair of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), said on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” that those girls were better off dead than being “alive in a burqa.” These are the powers in whose good intentions Iranians are being asked to trust.

Teen who went to photograph L.A. ‘No Kings’ rally shot, blinded by Homeland Security agent, attorney says by Summer Lin

“I think unfortunately you have a mindset by some in the police agencies that the people out there exercising their First Amendment right is the enemy, instead of honoring that they’re exercising their rights in the American tradition of freedom of speech and peaceful protest,” he said.

…

“I’ve been a civil rights lawyer for 40 years, but back during the protests of the 80s, they didn’t have that kind of weaponry and they just hand them out like candy to these officers,” he said. “These officers have high-powered toys in their hands but they’re not toys. They may have a green stock barrel but they’re 12-gauge shotguns that file at a range of over 200 mph so with that amount of force, we’ve got people with broken jaws and broken skulls. It’s just heartbreaking.”

Propaganda and the market society by Luke Savage

We have, it seems, evidently moved beyond propaganda as it's traditionally been understood. The classical form of propaganda still assumed it was important, indeed necessary, to establish and maintain some kind of public legitimacy for the actions of the state or regime. That's been true in liberal democracies as well as totalitarian societies (and has plenty of precedent in pre-democratic and pre-liberal societies too).

What we have seen in Trump's otherwise quite lackadaisical messaging around the war is a concerted attempt — or rather a never-ending series of them — to prod and manipulate market behaviour, particularly when it comes to oil prices. In some instances, this looks to be straightforward case of insider trading.

https://www.lukewsavage.com/p/propaganda-and-the-market-society

Sen̓áḵw Towers set to open 113 years after Squamish people forced from site by Denise Ryan

The Indigenous-led rollout is also unprecedented. Sneak peeks and advance access is firmly Indigenous-first.

“We want to ensure we tell our story in a Squamish way,” said Halls. “Our outreach is leaning into the story of who we are as a people, and our history.”

The opening of the application process for rentals comes 23 years after 4.7 hectares of the reserve in Kitsilano were returned to the Squamish nation following a landmark court decision, and nearly three years after the B.C. Supreme Court tossed out a legal challenge by the Kits Point residents’ association.

Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and undeniably Indigenous by Michelle Cyca

This article is from 2024 but an interesting view of how this process came together, and how stupid white people are.

To Indigenous people themselves, though, these developments mark a decisive moment in the evolution of our sovereignty in this country. The fact is, Canadians aren’t used to seeing Indigenous people occupy places that are socially,economically or geographically valuable, like Sen̓áḵw. After decades of marginalization, our absence seems natural, our presence somehow unnatural. Something like Sen̓áḵw is remarkable not just in terms of its scale and economic value (expected to generate billions in revenue for the Squamish Nation). It’s remarkable because it’s a restoration of our authority and presence in the heart of a Canadian city.

…

What chafes critics, even those who might consider themselves progressive, is that they expect reconciliation to instead look like a kind of reversal, rewinding the tape of history to some museum-diorama past. Coalitions of neighbours near Iy̓álmexw and Sen̓áḵw have offered their own counter-proposals for developing the sites, featuring smaller, shorter buildings and other changes. At the January hearing for Iy̓álmexw, one resident called on the First Nations to build entirely with selectively logged B.C. timber, in accord with what she claimed were their cultural values. These types of requests reveal that many Canadians believe the purpose of reconciliation is not to uphold Indigenous rights and sovereignty, but to quietly scrub centuries of colonial residue from the landscape, ultimately in service of their own aesthetic preferences and personal interests.

Almost Half of US Data Centers That Were Supposed to Open This Year Slated to Be Canceled or Delayed by Joe Wilkins

So maybe I was wrong about the zombie data centers, not because AI will succeed and we’ll be fully utilizing them, but because those involved in the physical world will simply refuse to build them.

The data centers powering your favorite AI chatbot are running low on helium, cash, and neighbors who don’t hate them, and that’s not even the worst of it.

According to reporting by Bloomberg, about half of the data centers slated to open in the US in 2026 will either face delays or outright cancellations.

The publication interviewed analysts at market intelligence company Sightline Climate, which in research first flagged by Ed Zitron last week noted that 12 gigawatts worth of power-consuming data centers are set to open in the US this year. But here’s the catch: they say only a third of those are actually under construction right now, with the rest in a liminal pre-production stage in which they could, and likely will be, canceled.

It’s not just a problem for data centers planned for 2026, either. Among data centers slated to open in 2027, only about 6.3 gigawatts worth of computing infrastructure are actually under construction, compared to 21.5 announced gigawatts.

Almost Half of US Data Centers That Were Supposed to Open This Year Slated to Be Canceled or Delayed

The vast majority of data centers scheduled for completion over the next few years have yet to even break ground.