@aronow Beautiful. ️

@grb090423 @CathyBikesBook Yeah not sure how I left @potterybyosa off the list! She's incredibly talented, been following her a while.

Haven't seen anything from J in a long time. Hope he's doing ok.

@CathyBikesBook

Welcome. A few popular accounts off the top of my head would be...

@mekkaokereke
@carnage4life
@AngryBlackLady
@ErickaSimone
@Deglassco
@futurebird
@qaris

This doesn't include the many, many folks you can follow and interact with from here, despite them being on other platforms such as Bluesky or Threads.

Hope this is of some help.

@GeofCox @Lynnd @randahl I'll agree insofar as there are conversations that are probably best left till *after* the midterms were scheduled to occur - and perhaps this is one of them.

Personally, I'm unable to follow the trajectory of current events to a place where those elections are allowed to proceed fairly, if at all. Just can't see that happening.

I also don't think it reasonable to expect communities to not defend themselves against daily assault. Sooner or later someone will retaliate.

@randahl I find it difficult to believe the regime would be terrorising its own citizens if the midterms were going to make any difference! No, it needs an excuse to rig, disrupt, delay or even cancel those elections. And we know Trump has been obsessing over invoking the Insurrection Act for the past decade.

Anyway, regardless of what you think of the Black Panthers or "open carrying" semi-automatic weapons, you can't expect communities to not defend themselves against ICE violence. They will.

@randahl So do you think if everyone remains calm, unarmed and defenseless, the regime will respect this? That it won't simply keep escalating its own violence until it has the excuse it needs to deploy the military, whatever that may take?

Is there some theoretical threshold of murdered and/or illegally detained civilians past which you would accept that however this ends, it isn't going to end peacefully?

Where is your red line?

@randahl The two unanalysed assumptions in your post are (1) that civil war is avoidable at this point given that the regime has already started one by kidnapping and murdering innocent citizens, and (2) that the regime has not already ended democracy.

Both of these assumptions are palpably false, however much trouble liberals may have accepting reality. Any one of the resisters the Black Panthers are protecting here could be next on the ICE hit list. They've begun brutalising children.

Kids.

@aaronmccollum @_elena It's a real worry that right now, thousands of people with reason to fear ICE are voluntarily adding themselves to a handy list of potential targets, simply by blocking the account.

Again and again, the Bluesky people demonstrate they have no interest in the safety of users.

@thordis Late Gen X. One year later born and I'd have been a millennial.

Which is where climate change denial and disinfo comes in. It’s not only about greedy CEOs protecting their profits. For the people with the most to lose, it’s about keeping the whole capitalist system afloat by any means necessary. They don't want mainstream acknowledgment that we need to stop using fossil fuels. Because if that happens, this gigantic house of cards built on the remains of dead dinosaurs comes tumbling down, and all their mechanisms of power are broken. Kaput.

6/6

This whole rotten system is dependent on investors *believing* that we will, somehow, definitely keep extracting those resources. It's the Mother of all Bubbles: if everyone decided tomorrow to stop drilling and burning them for good, any financial assets based on them would become worthless. Gone. Poof. And with them, trillions of dollars tied up in fossil fuel-based investments. The richest people in the world would see their wealth evaporate overnight. Capitalism itself would implode.

5/6

Because it's not about the resources we've already extracted, it's about what's still in the ground. Not only are we burning fossil fuels, we're also banking on them. Like mortgage repayments yet to be made, the reserves of oil, gas and coal that remain unexploited have become financial assets, and are treated as though they've already been extracted and sold. They are traded, speculated upon, borrowed against, and woven into the fabric of global finance.

4/6

Why would the richest people who've ever lived be backing far-right movements everywhere, lobbying governments and politicians, and funding shady NGOs and public figures to promote rampant xenophobia, strengthening of borders, outlawing of protest and dissent, and rollbacks of civil liberties? Why is it that for them, it’s business-as-usual even if it means fascist police states and totalitarian rule? Even if it means destroying all life as we know it?

3/6

Not only that, but emissions from the industries on which this system of oppression and violence depends, are heating our world at a rate too rapid for many ecosystems to adapt. Biodiversity is already collapsing fast. Food supply chains are at risk. So why, instead of continuing to spend countless trillions on genocidal military incursions over finite resources, won't our power elites invest more in renewable energies instead? It's not as if climate impacts won't cost us, regardless.

2/6

This will be a short thread of home truths about capitalism. Contrary to popular belief, Western economic dominance wasn't built on "free markets". It was built on pipeline and tanker routes, energy consortiums and contracts, enforced by brutal colonialist wars and the might of armies. It was built on the backs of the enslaved and the subjugated, and depends to this day on an endless supply of cheap hydrocarbons. And eventually, these fuels are going to run out.

1/6