Blair Fix

Gazans Are Finished With Hamas My Popular Forces control significant parts of eastern Rafah and we are ready to build a new future.

One major difference between the Holocaust perpetrated by Israel & the Nazi Holocaust is that Group 13's Abraham Gancwajch didn't get an oped in a fucking mainstream American newspaper entitled "Jews Are Finished With the Jewish Combat Organization: My Popular Forces control the Warsaw ghetto"

This is the same amount as the entire National Science Foundation's R&D spending for the entire field of *engineering* for the whole country. All of it.

Trump Officials Discussed $500M Alberta Independence Loan, Separatist Claims Private details from a Washington D.C., meeting about Alberta becoming the 51st state was revealed at a separatism event attended by DeSmog.

H/T to @DeSmog and you should read their whole story here!

www.desmog.com/2025/07/22/t...

"it seemed to us like this was almost like a game of target practice. We're going to shoot the head today. Tomorrow it'll be the chest. The next day it'll be the testicles"

British surgeon Nick Maynard on IDF soldiers shooting Palestinian kids.

Quebec man warning Canadian boaters after he was detained by U.S. Coast guard, put in jail cell A Quebec man says he is outraged after the U.S. Coast Guard accused him of fishing in American waters and then arrested him before putting him in a jail cell for nearly two hours.

“I said, ‘No, I’m very sorry, I’m in Canada.’ And I said I’m polite enough to talk to you guys but you cannot arrest me. ‘You can’t come across the border and pick me up’ but they did,” he recalled

www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/art...

This is unconscionable. Our entire profession should be up in arms.

Masked law enforcement and now anonymous lawyers. Our courts are open as is our legal system. If you can’t put your name to your representation as a lawyer then you should not be allowed to appear in court. @americanbar.org

It’s Abu Ghraib all over again.

But inside our borders.

Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die July 21, 2025 AFP has been working with 1 writer, 3 photographers and 6 videographers, all freelance, in the Gaza Strip since its staff journalists left in 2024. Along with a few others, they are now the only ones left to report what is happening in the Gaza Strip. The international press has been banned from entering the territory for nearly two years. We refuse to watch them die. One of them, Bashar, has been working with AFP since 2010, first as a fixer, then freelance photographer, and since 2024, as lead photographer. On July 19th he managed to post a message on Facebook: “I no longer have the strength to work for the media. My body is thin and I can’t work anymore.” Bashar, 30, works & lives in the same conditions as all Gazans, moving from one refugee camp to another under Israeli bombings. For > a year he’s lived in utter destitution, working at extreme risk to his life. Hygiene is a major issue for him, with recurring bouts of severe intestinal illness. Since Feb, Bashar’s been living in the ruins of his home in Gaza City with his mother, 4 brothers & sisters and the family of one of his brothers. Their house is devoid of any furnishings, except a few cushions. On Sunday morning, he reported that one of his brothers had “fallen, due to hunger.” Even though these journalists receive a monthly salary from AFP, it’s no longer enough to buy food, or they have to pay completely exorbitant prices. The banking system has collapsed, and those who exchange money via online bank accounts charge a commission of up to 40%. AFP no longer has the ability to provide them with a vehicle and there is not enough fuel to allow these journalists to travel for their reporting. Driving a car means becoming a target for Israeli airstrikes. AFP reporters therefore travel on foot or by donkey cart. (alt txt continued in next post)

A horrifying statement published today by the Editorial Committee of the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency.

"Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die"

Translation from French to English by @cnorristrent.bsky.social:

So I... erm... agreed to do the Jubilee 'Surrounded' debate. Me versus 20 far-right conservatives.

And it was like nothing I've done before. Sheesh. I had no idea they'd be so extreme and racist.

Full episode/debate drops on YouTube on Sunday morning.

Just received this blog comment which made me laugh. Sometimes AI bullshit is so unintentionally funny:

"Can we have a dialectic on the reactive potential of combining Kantian project with Neitschian Will to power, MacKander and Clausewitz"

Is Colbert’s Ouster Really Just a ‘Financial Decision’? CBS no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt.

If CBS thought Trump wouldn’t approve the Skydance-Paramount merger unless they got rid of Colbert, that would be a financial decision.

YouTube video by Blair Fix AI hype, uses, and threats

When it comes to AI, everyone has an opinion ... so I thought I'd add mine to the mix. Here's a conversation with myself and Erald Kolasi about the uses, threats and hype of AI.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeAZ...

If in 2015 I'd written a scenario about 2025 that included as one of its illustrative outputs this headline, I'd have been laughed out of the room.

As @stewartbrand.bsky.social says, *scenarios* about the future must be plausible in the present, but the *actual* future we're gonna get need not be.

American Teachers in Red States Are Walking Away for Good The predictable consequences of the right wing’s war on public schools are being felt as educators leave their communities—and their profession.

"We don’t make enough money to put up with this."

Last year, US K-12 schools opened short 55,000 teachers. Between book bans and political attacks on schools and educators, it's looking like this year's shortages will be even more dire, especially in red states.

newrepublic.com/article/1967...

Police Scotland arrested this man under terrorism legislation for wearing this t-shirt. The charge is supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation in a public place, while leafleting for a demonstration against genocide. What if we all wore such t-shirts? Everywhere?

ICE memo outlines plan to deport migrants to countries where they are not citizens The dramatic shift in policy could result in thousands of immigrants being deported to places where they lack family ties or even a common language.

Mass extraordinary rendition.

And we know with certainty from the War on Terror that those certifications against persecution and torture are pro forma and are better understood as a document colluding to such treatment.

We do have a secret police in the United States now. Unidentified agents, without accountability, serving an autocrat and targeting law-abiding people who present no threat.

Partisan Politics and the Road to Plutocracy – Economics from the Top Down In this essay, I take a deep dive into the history of American plutocracy and its conspicuously Republican roots.

As Trumps Big Ugly Bill goes into effect, pumping wealth from the poor to the rich, I'm tempted to say I told you so.

Or as Sheldon Cooper would say, "I informed you thusly."

economicsfromthetopdown.com/2025/01/31/p...

I.R.S. Says Churches Can Endorse Candidates From the Pulpit

Holy shit, a real masks-off moment. Trump's IRS says churches can continue to claim tax benefits as a nonprofit even while explicitly endorsing candidates.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/u...

I.R.S. Says Churches Can Endorse Candidates From the Pulpit In a court filing, the tax agency said a decades-old ban on campaigning by tax-exempt groups should not apply to houses of worship speaking to their own members.

The double standard here is stunning. Universities are losing grants, student aid, and endowments for being "too woke." But churches (which also receive federal funds, eg, for school vouchers, food banks, and marriage promotion programs) are now allowed to openly endorse political candidates.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Palestinian writer Mosab Abu Toha says he’s been suspended from Substack, a platform where white supremacists publish without issue. I can’t recall this happening to any prominent writers in the past.

I’m sure the benevolent, all-knowing, efficient market will properly punish Tesla for this.

ChatGPT’s Mental Health Costs Are Adding Up From brain rot to induced psychosis, the psychological cost of generative AI is growing and flying under the radar.

I cannot stress enough: people should NOT use ChatGPT as a therapist. Its habit of fanning "the flames of psychosis" is way too serious an impact to ignore.

From my colleague @parmy.bsky.social (free link!)

Criminalizing pregnancy: A record number of women were prosecuted the year after Dobbs They were targeted for substance use, miscarriages, and stillbirths, largely driven by fetal personhood laws.

Today marks the third anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

What's happened since?

A record number of women have been prosecuted. Pregnancy loss is now considered extremely suspicious, even when it has nothing to do with abortion.

Stephen Miller’s Financial Stake in ICE Contractor Palantir Raises Conflict Concerns POGO report shows top Trump adviser owned six-figure stock in company profiting off deportations.

NEWS: Stephen Miller owns a six-figure stock in Palantir, a company profiting off deportations, per @POGOwatchdog report migrantinsider.com/p/stephen-mi...

I am begging people not to look to the NYT for coverage of what's happening. The BBC, Le Monde, Ajazeera and others will have more truthful coverage.

How the Rich Get Richer – Economics from the Top Down It turns out that studying the Forbes 400 is a great way to understand how the (American) rich have gotten richer. This is the first in series of posts in which I analyze the Forbes 400 archive.

“Surely Malcom Forbes had no interest in measuring inequality. Yet his fetish for documenting great fortunes left us with a pristine record of how US elites enriched themselves over the last four decades.”

How the Rich Get Richer - @blairfix.bsky.social
economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/09/24/h...