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Platner really is a level of organic stupid that we should be proud of. He's the pinnacle of American culture.
CIA sends ‘buyout’ offers to entire workforce
The Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday became the first major national security agency to offer so-called buyouts to its entire workforce, a CIA spokesperson and two other sources familiar with the offer said, part of President Donald Trump’s broad effort to shrink the federal government and shape it to his agenda.
Trump and his allies have claimed at different points that intelligence officers at the CIA have been part of a “deep state” determined to undermine him, and some critics have described the deferred resignation program as a purge – something Trump officials have denied. Some national security officials in Trump’s orbit believe that the CIA in recent years has become too heavily weighted towards analysis at the expense of clandestinely collecting intelligence and carrying out covert operations – functions of the agency’s much smaller Directorate of Operations. Ratcliffe during his confirmation hearing vowed to reinvest in both. “To the brave CIA officers listening all around the world, if all of this sounds like what you signed up for, then buckle up and get ready to make a difference,” he said in his opening statement. “If it doesn’t, then it’s time to find a new line of work.”
Every day a frightening new development of fascism, but also every day, more of the empire apparatus getting hollowed out. I wonder where the critical point is for this to collapse and reform into a new state.
Not my Capitalism. No Bust, only Boom.
The way the comments there are all cheering for Luigi this far after the event, on the official SNL channel, is pretty crazy (good).
Propaganda of the Deed has a bad efficacy historically, and it’s no replacement for organized action, but I kinda wonder if the dynamics of it are different now compared to the last cycle of it.
Now, with mass media constantly barraging people with the man and the event, reminding them of it, and the juxtaposition of the ruling class commentary and their own experiences, it seems like it’s sorta working more?
Though I’m sure if similar actions become more widespread, responses would be more mixed.
The fucking animals in 
cheering this on are making me fucking furious. Even if you accept he base idea that Hezbollah is a terrorist org, and that Israel is justified in attacking them (Which I don't), it's fucking absurd to think that all of these explosions only harmed "terrorists". So many people were harmed here, and likely many more will die. Thousands were harmed by this, people just guilty of holding on to a communication device. This is such a disgusting action.
This lady led a secret coup to depose the bourgeois government of the United States, installing a council republic with minimal bloodshed. Now, the next phase comes, to secure revolutionary power, and quell the counter revolution.
Girls rock.
This is such a giant leap in criminalizing homelessness. Like, this has been in the works for a while, and in a lot of ways municipalities have been making homelessness de-facto illegal, but now they can just ticket or arrest people for a basic part of living, a fundamental need of continuing existence.
So, UC strike update. The university admin has been working overtime to shut down the strike via legal means, in addition to all their normal intimidation stuff. They filed not one, but two, complaints to PERB, the union regulatory body, and both were struck down. PERB even filed a complaint against the UC after the second one, due to their gross breach of union protections and norms.
So, what did they do? Decide to just strike break like a normal company? No.
They shopped around California to get a judge to rule the strike illegal, outside of the entire legal chain of how this is supposed to go, after the actual regulatory body has declared it legal, twice. And they just succeeded! A restraining order got signed, of some weird legal justification or another. Of course the crank judge signed off on this, and now our collaborator union executive board just signed off an email to pause striking. The order is to pause it until June 27th, which is coincidentally 3 days before the strike is constrained to end at, June 30th, so it's effectively a full destruction of the strike.
Fucking amazing. There's a strong wildcat strike supporting contingent already, and I can only imagine it's going to get bigger in the face of this obviously farcical judicial order. Now we're going to pressure people to try to stop being pieces of shit at the top end. Because honestly, if they let this slide, what is even the point of a union existing anymore? Like seriously!
There was a midnight raid on the UCSC Palestine encampment. A lot of arrests. From what I’ve heard though, there’s still people in the encampment holding on. Unsure of the details at moment.
Three more UC campuses are going on strike next week. The Palestinian activists are inspiring. Some of the encampments elsewhere have settled for promises of meetings in the future, which has been noticed and refuted by people on the ground. There’s already been meetings between reps and admin staff where those kinds of offers have been refused. While the Union has had made a colossal fuck up that I can’t mention here for opsec reasons, there’s so much good stuff happening. I’m proud to do my part, however small.
Got an email from my union president a few minutes ago. UAW 4811, the union of academic workers in the UC system, "voted to hold a strike authorization vote as early as next week to give the Executive Board authority to call a strike."
This is obviously in regards to the attack at the UCLA encampments. My opinion of the highest level of my union leadership is kinda bad, there's still a decent bit of corruption that hasn't been stamped out, but I think this might have been egregious enough for the other organs of the union below to push for this. This could be pretty huge if it goes through, there's 48000 people in the union altogether. This would be a massive amount of economic pressure, so I can only hope.
The strike authorization vote will be across the entire union membership, which is good. The membership is consistently better about things than the highest leadership levels.
The amount of people concern trolling about incitement to violence in the replies. Holy fuck. Look at that US senator’s post about killing protesters. I’m honestly furious.
Republican senators were alarmed and relieved when they learned that their colleague Sen. Joni Ernst had choked during a party lunch on Thursday and was rescued by Sen. Rand Paul, who gave her the Heimlich maneuver.
Ernst appeared to be making jokes about the experience on social media, tweeting, “Can’t help but choke on the woke policies Dems are forcing down our throats. Thanks @randpaul!”
“I didn’t actually see it,” said Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican of Texas. “We’ve had that happen one other time to one of our members. It’s kind of scary.”
Thank God. We almost had a tragedy. Imagine losing two American heroes in one day.
Thank you for your service, Mr. Paul. 
In a move that critics are calling “one of the most tasteless events I’ve ever heard of,” Berkeley landlords are celebrating the end of eviction protections in the East Bay city with a cocktail party. The Berkeley Property Owners Association, a trade group for rental property owners in Berkeley, apparently believes regaining the right to throw people out of their homes is cause for celebration — or at least a networking event. The “Fall Social Mixer: Celebrating the End of the Eviction Moratorium” is set for the evening of Sept. 12; the event was first spotted by Berkeleyside.
About an hour passed before protesters entered the bar, at which point multiple fights broke out, Berkeleyside reported. According to one witness, a male BPOA member who attended the event slapped a female protester in the face and pushed her. Videos of the event show other violent altercations, including a protester knocking a party attendee’s eyeglasses off and a party attendee swinging their fist toward a protester.
Statement by the Landlord association:
“We condemn the actions of hostile dissidents who disrupted a private gathering at a local restaurant to intimidate, harass, and physically assault our members who are law-abiding small business owners,” read part of a statement, which was shared with SFGATE.
"Hostile dissidents" is some interesting phrasing for local residents chanting outside of a bar.
Cuba is a beacon of progress and humanity in the Americas. Fidel Castro was a hero. Also a pro at dodging the CIA's kill squads.
Even if that shock happens, China will still be in a better situation. Like, they actually manufacture stuff there, and the government builds infrastructure aggressively. That’s two massive benefits to economic security and health.
I do think they gain big loyalty points by doing shit like this, which is a benefit for them for obvious reasons, but they lose even the smallest vestiges remaining of institutional experience. At a certain point, you're just not going to be able to manage the networks as well when everyone in the department is some random groyper. It just won't work the same without the patience to rebuild and manage that apparatus, and everything we're seeing here is a lack of long term planning, so I doubt they can handle that.