How does the World view America these days?

  On 2/16/2025 at 9:13 AM, prdctvsm said:

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tumblrposting

enforced servitude

Now ICE wanna go after people for calling them out on social media?

I'll just be blunt here. If they wanna kick down my door, they'll be playing with fire.

  On 2/17/2025 at 6:48 AM, ambermonk said:

Now ICE wanna go after people for calling them out on social media?

I'll just be blunt here. If they wanna kick down my door, they'll be playing with fire.

 

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ICE already has extensive social media surveillance capabilities provided by federal contractor Giant Oak, which under both Trump’s first term and the Biden administration sought “derogatory” posts about the United States to inform immigration-related decision-making. The goal of this contract, ostensibly, is focused more narrowly on threats to ICE leadership, agents, facilities, and operations.

the video is an added layer of boisterous on top of the already overly-suggestive headline from the article. https://theintercept.com/2025/02/11/ice-immigration-social-media-surveillance/

don't get me wrong, Trump could sure green light some dragging out of dissenters for criticizing him/his policies, that's on the path they're charting, but i don't think this in particular w/ regards to ICE is as 'right there' as mr presenter man tries to make it out to be. 

(i could be wrong, honestly couldn't make it more than about 90 seconds into that video, the guy's a fucking load of steaming wannabe. but he's right about the fuck ICE part. fuck ICE.)

Is a new Great Depression on its way?
 

Posted to FB, because Trump reads that!

this is more pathetic than the twitter files

  On 2/19/2025 at 6:38 PM, Nebraska said:

this is more illegal than the twitter files

ftfy

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McDonald’s will expand a scholarship for Hispanic and Latino students to white applicants after the burger giant was served a DEI lawsuit from the American Alliance for Equal Rights, a group opposed to affirmative action.

McDonald’s changed the scholarship requirements to “any student who can demonstrate an impact on or commitment to the Latino community. Applicants no longer need to have at least one Latino parent.” Prior to the lawsuit, HACER applicants needed to have meet certain GPA and age requirements, as well as having “at least one parent of Hispanic/Latino heritage.”

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technically it's not expanded just "to white applicants" but the restrictions for who qualifies as hispanic are now more inclusive and open to anyone regardless of ethnicity, but i love how the NY Post framed it

This is disgusting from start to finish:

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/world/americas/us-migrants-panama-jungle-camp.html (article pasted below)

Migrants, Deported to Panama Under Trump Plan, Detained in Remote Jungle Camp

 

The group of unauthorized migrants, which includes children, were bused to the camp late Tuesday night. “It looks like a zoo, there are fenced cages,” said one of the detainees.

Feb. 19, 2025Updated 5:27 p.m. ET

Nearly 100 migrants, recently deported by the United States to Panama where they had been locked in a hotel, were loaded onto buses Tuesday night and moved to a detention camp on the outskirts of the jungle, several of the migrants said.

It is unclear how long the group, which was deported under the Trump administration’s sweeping effort to expel unauthorized migrants, will be detained at the jungle camp.

Conditions at the site are primitive, the detainees said. Diseases, including dengue are endemic to the region, and the government has denied access to journalists and aid organizations.

“It looks like a zoo, there are fenced cages,” said one deportee, Artemis Ghasemzadeh, a 27-year-old migrant from Iran, after arriving at the camp following a four-hour drive from Panama City. “They gave us a stale piece of bread. We are sitting on the floor.”

The group includes eight children, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak on the record. Lawyers have said it is illegal to detain people in Panama for more than 24 hours without a court order.

The Panamanian government has not made an official announcement about the transfer to the jungle camp.

In a broadcast interview on Wednesday with the news program Panamá En Directo, the country’s security minister, Frank Ábrego, did not discuss the move. But he said that migrants were being held by Panama “for their own protection” and because officials “need to verify who they are.”

The transfer is the latest move in a weeklong saga for a group of about 300 migrants who arrived in the United States hoping to to seek asylum. The group was sent to Panama, which has agreed to aid President Trump in his plan to deport millions of undocumented migrants.

The agreement is part of a larger strategy by the Trump administration to export some of its most difficult migration challenges to other nations. The United States, for varying reasons, cannot easily deport people to countries like Afghanistan, Iran and China, but by applying intense pressure it has managed to convince Panama to take some of them.

Last week, Panama’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos Ruiz-Hernández, said Panama was complying with a direct request from to the Trump administration to accept the migrants. “This is obviously a favor being done,’’ Mr. Ruiz-Hernández said during a news conference last Thursday. “It’s a request, a request that was made with quite a bit of urgency.”

Analysts say Panama is also under intense pressure from Mr. Trump, who has threatened to seize the Panama Canal over what he believes is Chinese influence in the waterway, a claim that Panama’s president has repeatedly refuted.

After being sent to Panama, the deported migrants are no longer subject to United States law.

Costa Rica is also taking some deportees, including migrants originally from Central Asia and India, and has said it plans to repatriate them. A flight from the United States was expected to arrive in Costa Rica on Thursday.

Upon arrival in Panama City last week, the 300 or so migrants were taken to a downtown hotel, called the Decapolis, and barred from leaving, several of them told The New York Times in calls and text messages.

A lawyer seeking to represent many of them, Jenny Soto Fernández, was blocked at least four times from visiting them in the hotel, she said. At the hotel, the United Nations International Organization for Migration has been speaking with migrants about their options, according to the government, and offering flights to their home countries to those who want them.

Some, including a group of Iranian Christians and a man from China, told The New York Times that they risk reprisals if returned to their native countries, and have refused to sign documents that would pave the way for their repatriation.

Under Iranian law, converting from Islam is considered apostasy and is a crime punishable by death.

On Tuesday morning, an article published by The Times attracted enormous attention to the migrants’ situation, and members of the Panamanian news media began surrounding the hotel.

That night, guards at the hotel told people to pack their bags, said Ms. Ghasemzadeh, one of the Christian converts from Iran. Several buses arrived and guards led them aboard, as witnessed by a reporter working for The New York Times.

The migrants were initially told they would be taken to another hotel, Ms. Ghasemzadeh said, and some feared they were really being deported back to Iran.

Instead, the buses passed the airport and then snaked their way to a highway, traveling out of Panama City, east and then farther east, to the province of Darién.

Two migrants used their cellphones to share their real-time location with The Times, allowing reporters to track their movements.

The camp where the 100 or so migrants will stay is called San Vicente, and sits at the end of a jungle, also called the Darién, which links Panama to Colombia. The camp was built years ago as a stopover point for migrants coming north from Colombia through the Darién jungle and into Panama, a harrowing part of the journey north to the United States.

Image

Now, the Panamanian government is using it for deportees.

One Iranian woman, the mother of an 8-year-old, cried during the bus ride. Her child had been sick with a sore throat for days, she said, and the uncertainty and constant displacement was taking a toll on her.

Upon arrival, Ms. Ghasemzadeh said she could see large containers that appeared to be the migrants’ new homes. Officials instructed them to fill out forms with their names, and asked for fingerprints, she said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Ábrego told reporters at a news conference that 170 of the 300 or so migrants had volunteered to be sent back to their countries of origin, journeys that would be arranged by the International Organization for Migration.He described the decision to hold the migrants as part of an accord with the United States.

“What we agreed with the United States government is that they remain and are in our temporary custody for their protection,” he said.

Responding to migrants’ accounts that many people’s cellphones and documents, including passports, had been confiscated, Mr. Ábrego said that those items had been taken while the migrants were in U.S. custody.

On Wednesday he said that 12 people from Uzbekistan and India had been repatriated with the help of the International Organization for Migration.

Officials also said on Wednesday that one of the migrants in their custody, a woman from China, had escaped from the hotel, where dozens of migrants remain.

In a message posted to X, the country’s migration service asked for help in finding her, saying the authorities feared she would fall into the hands of human traffickers.

“As a State security entity,” authorities wrote on X, “our commitment is to combat illegal migration,” while complying with “national and international principles and regulations on human rights.”

The Panamanian government has previously said the migrants had no criminal records.

Many migrants who remain in the hotel — including some from India and Eastern Europe — have signed documents authorizing their deportation and are expected to be sent to their countries of origin in the coming days.

On Wednesday morning, from the Darién region, Ms. Ghasemzadeh described a sweltering encampment, overrun with cats and dogs.

Then, she sent a text message saying that she feared authorities would soon take her phone. “Please try to help us,” she said.

Alex E. Hernández contributed reporting from Panama City.

Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization, and also covers Iran and the shadow war between Iran and Israel. She is based in New York. More about Farnaz Fassihi

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 20, 2025, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Migrants Deported to Panama by U.S. Are Taken to Jungle Camp

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  On 2/19/2025 at 11:22 PM, Nebraska said:

technically it's not expanded just "to white applicants" but the restrictions for who qualifies as hispanic are now more inclusive and open to anyone regardless of ethnicity, but i love how the NY Post framed it

 

Maximum outrage or convincing win for Trump - it's how the right-wing propaganda machine operates (as compared to the more balanced headline from AP). The short-attention span will be the death of democracy.

Any Americans in here - this live event might be of use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK3ReST359U

This is a good speech from Illinois Governor Pritzker (well it's the conclusion of his budget speech).

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"Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won,(...)"

 

 

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https://truthsocial.com/users/realDonaldTrump/statuses/114031332924234939

flol

Look at Macron’s face, “imaginary Federal employees being paid by US taxpayers.” He’s Insane in the membrane.

just at the store getting some water... w/my sweatpants 9 in its holster.. or whatever.. like a responsible gun dude. 

Trump is selling DOGE membership cards for $47

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-selling-official-doge-membership-cards-donations-elon-musk-2025-2