Peter Sterne

Trump Just Ripped Out the QueensWay's Heart—And Maybe Saved the QueensLink? A transformative project that would bring a new subway line and a park to Queens just got a lifeline—and may have a champion in the next mayor of New York City.

A transformative project that would bring a new subway line and a park to Queens just got a lifeline—and may have a champion in the next mayor of New York City.

The ADL's hypothetical scenario involving flyers critical of Israel's demolition program encapsulates many other issues that those who reviewed the material or completed a training raised. The scenario begins with a student leaving their dorm room to find a flyer taped to the door "warning that your residence hall will soon be demolished" "The rest of the flyer contains 'facts' about how many Palestinian homes have been demolished by the Israeli military to collectively punish and 'ethnically cleanse' Palestinians," the toolkit continues. The ADL is referring to the highly charged debate over Israel's mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank. The training material then offers the Israeli narrative around the demolitions, claiming they target "terrorists" and "deter others from terrorist action". *. Other homes were demolished because they were "built without proper permits", the ADL states. "While you may agree or disagree with these Israeli government actions, the charge that Israel has demolished these homes to 'ethnically cleanse' Palestinians is inaccurate and inflammatory," the ADL material states.

According to the Guardian, the ADL is now creating education materials for schools in which the civil rights organization justifies Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in occupied Palestinian territory.

The rise of AI tools that write about you when you die Families and funeral directors are using AI obituary generators to more efficiently memorialize the dead. What happens when they get it wrong?

New: A few weeks ago, when my father-in-law died, the funeral home asked if we wanted to use AI to write his obituary. So I dug into it and found that it's the biggest new trend in "death care." Tens of thousands of AI obits have been made already. Often the families don't even know wapo.st/4okuxIg

Oof. That bad, huh?

Presumably, Youssef would have played a leader of Jarhanpur but the character was cut.

In NY state, the minimum salary for a state lawmaker is $110,000/year.

I feel like people who go out waving swastikas ought to know what to expect

Oh yeah, of course. No one moves across the country solely due to affordability. You need to have some pull factor, like family or a job opportunity. The people working in the city who get priced out still need to live within commuting distance of their jobs. But they’re still leaving NYC.

You don’t think the Black working class is actually getting priced out of the city?

It’s Time for Health Workers to Defy the Law—Again When the government obstructs care, caregivers must go underground.

Two new articles I hope will be read together:
1) On how medical ideology trains US doctors into compliance with fascist violence
authors.elsevier.com/a/1lUTb-CmV5...
2) How doctors can refuse fascism and instead join the tradition of the Hippocratic underground
www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Trump’s Domestic Use of Military Set to Get Worse, Leaked Memo Shows A Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by TNR signals top-level discussions about a potential escalation of the Pentagon’s domestic anti-immigration role, and lays out new details.

NEWS --> An internal Homeland Security memo suggests Trump's use of military for domestic enforcement is about to get worse. It details top-level talks between Defense Department and DHS on what this should look like. Experts say it's alarming.

We obtained the memo:
newrepublic.com/article/1987...

The New York Times Puts An Asterisk On A Starving Child The Times takes the bait on Israeli propaganda

"For a long time, the media has been able to present the situation in Gaza as a tale of competing narratives. But as the distance grows between the story being sold by Netanyahu’s government and the obvious truth, the Times and everyone else will be forced to choose which one they want to accept."

The New York Times Puts An Asterisk On A Starving Child The Times takes the bait on Israeli propaganda

"What we see from the pro-Israel press is similar to what we see in right-wing American media: less of a coherent narrative and more a series of talking points with only a loose correlation to fact." stringinamaze.net/p/the-new-yo...

The 9th district court affirmed what we already knew: you can’t just snatch people up for being brown and working hard. Not in the fields, not in a Home Depot parking lot, and NOT on our watch.

This is a victory for the many, and not by the few. 1/

And you don’t need to primary every single moderate Democrat. A few high-profile primary upsets and the rest of them will quickly get the picture.

The most productive way to channel it would be a wave of left-wing primary challenges next year, I think. If you can knock off some moderates and then ride the blue wave to take the House, you’ll push the party left at the same time the Dems gain a measure of power in DC.

Everything about this story is horrific:

1. The student never mentions Jews
2. The university is going to expel a student for criticizing a country over genocide
3. A Republican congressman is taking credit and implying the student is a Muslim terrorist
4. The U.S. Justice Department is involved

Fox News is making campaign ads for me now.

Inside the Crisis at the Anti-Defamation League The group used to believe the rights of Jews were inextricable from the rights of everyone else. Its war against anti-Zionism has changed everything.

In an internal memo to ADL staff, Jonathan Greenblatt calls my story about the group a "shallow hit piece."

The article has more than 40 sources. You can judge for yourself whether or not it's shallow or a hit piece.

I'll link to Greenblatt's memo in the thread.

nymag.com/intelligence...

Thanks for quoting and linking to my interview with Shamsul!

This will be much easier once Bluesky adds polls

The state Legislature is unpaid?

Official US economic statistics are no longer reliable and community efforts will be needed to replace them. Reply “YES” to this post if you have a job and “NO” if you don’t. Later on someone can count them.

YES

Court allows Trump to end union bargaining for federal workers A federal appeals court on Friday lifted a judge's order blocking U.S. President Donald Trump's administration from stripping hundreds of thousands of federal workers of the ability to engage in union bargaining with U.S. agencies.

Court allows Trump to end union bargaining for federal workers reut.rs/4l4OkbJ

Sorry for not posting for a long time, unfortunately I had forgotten my Bluesky password and fortunately I was able to recover it, thank you.

You mean to be a Russian analog

Wasn't he speaking Serbian?

I also thought that Boravia/Jarhanpur was intended to be a Russia/Ukraine analog that also unintentionally echoed some images from the invasion of Gaza.

So I’ve been really surprised to see how many people saw it as a direct analog for Israel/Palestine.

fresh @leftanchor.bsky.social episode, we've got @diplomatofnight.com on to discuss the abrupt recognition of Gaza atrocities: www.leftanchor.com/e/a-turning-...