I’ll add this to the OP but
I think this is the original artist
Justlosingmymind
joined 1 week ago
I think this is the original artist.
70
Israeli soldier tells CBS News he was ordered to use Palestinians as human shields in Gaza
(www.cbsnews.com)
Sanctioned by DT and VP, partially funded by America.
[…]Tommy said his commander ordered his unit to use Gazan civilians to search buildings for explosives instead of dogs.
"They were Palestinian," he said. "We sent them in first to see if the building was clear and check for booby traps…They were trembling and shaking."
"We talked to our commander, and we asked him to stop doing it," Tommy said, but they were ordered to continue. He told CBS News it was policy.
The IDF would not confirm if it was investigating any other reported instances of its forces using the "mosquito protocol," but we discovered that Israeli forces are using the same Gaza playbook in the occupied West Bank, where a massive offensive has seen forces blow up homes and displace more than 40,000 people for over two months.
In the West Bank, CBS News met 14-year-old Omri Salem, a studious kid who dreams of being an engineer. His family has been in the area for generations. He told CBS News that, along with his nine-year old cousin, he was ordered by the IDF to search a four-story apartment building.
He didn't want to do it.
"I was so scared," he said. "Then they started beating us." Omri remains deeply emotionally scarred by the soldiers, whom he says forced him at gun point to be their human shield.
In Gaza, Tommy was the one holding the gun, but he said he was also traumatized.
I'm morally wounded," said the soldier.
"It's f****d up, you know, to use citizens as your human shield like a dog."
^___^
Because I got distracted and immediately put my phone down after my comment.
Hehe oops. That’s my bad.
cross-posted from: https://possum.news/post/729
cross-posted from: https://possum.news/post/334
1)Do not obey in advance.
2)Defend institutions against capture and collapse.
3)Contest one-party rule. (It defaults to oppression.)
4)Challenge signs and symbols of hate or loyalty.
5)Remember and champion professional ethics.
6)Resist paramilitaries pushing violence into politics.
7)Be ready to say "no" to unlawful orders.
8)Stand out; set an example and others will follow.
9)Be mindful of parroting others words; read widely. TIMOTHY SNYDER: TWENTY LESSONS FROM THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
10)Believe in truth, not lies or wishful thinking.
11)Investigate; verify information, follow sources you trust to do the same, and share what you learn.
12)Make eye contact and small talk; be observant, break down barriers, and learn whom to trust.
13)Go outside and take action with others in person.
14)Protect your privacy; don't indulge in distractions. "In politics, being deceived is no excuse." Leszek Kotakowski
15)Donate to and participate in good causes.
16)Seek out and learn from peers in other countries. STAY INFORMED
17)Call out manipulative or divisive language. federalnewsnetwork.com
18)Keep calm when the crisis arrives; do not give up. propublica.org
19)Be patriotic by advancing ideals, not grievances. ground.news
20)Be as courageous as you can. snyder.substack.com
This is not an ad. I'm sharing these because the crisis is here, truth still has power, and I refuse to give up. Will you?
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Wendell Phillips
cross-posted from: https://possum.news/post/2967
cross-posted from: https://possum.news/post/2966
cross-posted from: https://possum.news/post/2963
The time for us to stand united is now!!! Our government is in shambles and our rights, jobs, and lives are at stake. We need to come together in overwhelming numbers to say that enough is enough!
April 5th, 2025 there is a mass protest scheduled in Washington DC at the National Mall. EVERYONE should know about it. That's why today I leased a billboard next to the highway. I shared my story with some of you and it became clear that others feel the same way.
So let's do it. Let's get some billboards!!!
Our goal is to raise $10,000 to lease as many billboards as we can within roughly 150 miles of Washington DC to promote the peaceful day of action on April 5th. Together we will get the word out. Together we will stand side-by-side in Washington. And together WE WILL BE HEARD!!!
cross-posted from: https://possum.news/post/2963
The time for us to stand united is now!!! Our government is in shambles and our rights, jobs, and lives are at stake. We need to come together in overwhelming numbers to say that enough is enough!
April 5th, 2025 there is a mass protest scheduled in Washington DC at the National Mall. EVERYONE should know about it. That's why today I leased a billboard next to the highway. I shared my story with some of you and it became clear that others feel the same way.
So let's do it. Let's get some billboards!!!
Our goal is to raise $10,000 to lease as many billboards as we can within roughly 150 miles of Washington DC to promote the peaceful day of action on April 5th. Together we will get the word out. Together we will stand side-by-side in Washington. And together WE WILL BE HEARD!!!
98
cross-posted from: https://possum.news/post/2820
Philip Holsinger REPORTING FROM SAN LUIS TALPA, EL SALVADOR Holsinger is an American photojournalist based out of Nashville, Tenn.
On the night of Saturday, March 15, three planes touched down in El Salvador, carrying 261 men deported from the United States. A few dozen were Salvadoran, but most of the men were Venezuelans the Trump Administration had designated as gang members and deported, with little or no due process. I was there to document their arrival.
For more than a year, I have been embedded throughout El Salvador’s society, working on a book chronicling the country’s transformation. From the huts of remote island fishermen to the desk of the President, from elite homicide detective units to elementary school classrooms, I have interviewed government officials and everyday people, collecting stories that would shock Stephen King. I’ve stood in classrooms full of happy students which not long ago were empty, because children here once learned early that schools were places to be raped or recruited. I’ve interviewed killers in prison and sat with them face-to-face.
As I stood on the tarmac, an agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's ICE Special Response Team told me that some of the Venezuelans had weakly attempted to take over their plane upon landing. It wasn’t unusual for detainees to try to make a last stand, the agent said, guarding the doorway to the plane at the top of the gangway stairs. “They began to try to organize to overthrow the plane by screaming for everyone to stand up and fight. But not everyone was on board,” the agent said, cautioning me to be careful because some of the Venezuelans would fight once they were offloaded.
Even if not fighting, almost all the detainees came to the door of the plane with angry, defiant faces. It was their faces that grabbed me, because within a few hours those faces would completely transform.
The Venezuelans emerging from their plane were not in prison clothes, but in designer jeans and branded tracksuits. Their faces were the faces of guys who in no way expected what they first saw—an ocean of soldiers and police, an entire army assembled to apprehend them.
One of the alleged organizers of the attempted overthrow fought the U.S. agents on the plane, cursing the Americans, the Salvadorans, President Nayib Bukele himself. El Salvador’s Minister of Defense, René Merino, who had been standing on the tarmac at the bottom of the gangway, rushed aboard, dragged the guy to the gangway himself, and flung him into the waiting hands of black-masked guards.
The transfer from the plane to the buses that would carry them to prison was rapid, yet it might as well have been the crossing of an ancient continent. I felt the detainees’ fear as they marched through a gauntlet of black-clad guards, guns raised like the spears of some terrible tribe. I walked the line of buses waiting to depart, photographing faces. A guard noticed one of the detainees turned toward the window and wrenched his head back down into his chest.
Around 2 a.m., the convoy of 22 buses, flanked by armored vehicles and police, moved out of the airport. Soldiers and police lined the 25-mile route to the prison, with thick patrols at every bridge and intersection. For the few Salvadorans, it was a familiar landscape. But for a Venezuelan plucked from America, it must have appeared dystopian—police and soldiers for miles and miles in woodland darkness.
The Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious maximum-security prison known as CECOT, sits in an old farm field at the foot of an ancient volcano, brightly lit against the night sky. I’ve spent considerable time there and know the place intimately. As we entered the intake yard, the head of prisons was giving orders to an assembly of hundreds of guards. He told them the Venezuelans had tried to overthrow their plane, so the guards must be extremely vigilant. He told them plainly: Show them they are not in control.
The intake began with slaps. One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor. He said, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.” I believed him. But maybe it’s only because he didn’t look like what I had expected—he wasn’t a tattooed monster.
The men were pulled from the buses so fast the guards couldn’t keep pace. Chained at their ankles and wrists, they stumbled and fell, some guards falling to the ground with them. With each fall came a kick, a slap, a shove. The guards grabbed necks and pushed bodies into the sides of the buses as they forced the detainees forward. There was no blood, but the violence had rhythm, like a theater of fear.
Inside the intake room, a sea of trustees descended on the men with electric shavers, stripping heads of hair with haste. The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell. He was slapped. The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again.
After being shaved, the detainees were stripped naked. More of them began to whimper; the hard faces I saw on the plane had evaporated. It was like looking at men who passed through a time machine. In two hours, they aged 10 years. Their nice clothes were not gathered or catalogued but simply thrust into black garbage bags to be thrown out with their hair.
They entered their cold cells, 80 men per cell, with steel planks for bunks, no mats, no sheets, no pillow. No television. No books. No talking. No phone calls and no visitors. For these Venezuelans, it was not just a prison they had arrived at. It was exile to another world, a place so cold and far from home they may as well have been sent into space, nameless and forgotten. Holding my camera, it was as if I watched them become ghosts.
Across the country, from local school boards to the halls of Congress, extreme, anti-democratic movements seek to wield political power and roll back our rights. At this critical moment where those who were responsible for January 6th have returned to power, we must use the law to defend our democracy and build for a better future.The courts are now the frontline in the battleground for democracy, not merely the last resort protectors of it.
In towns and cities across America, Democracy Forward provides legal representation and expert counsel to people and communities who make up the very fabric of American democracy — free of charge. We also leverage our collective power and the law to hold anti-democratic actors to account at the national level.
Our strategic pillars incorporate immediate defensive needs and a longer-term, proactive view in this fight for our democracy, our present, and our future. We leverage creativity, legal excellence, and our team’s unique mix of expertise and diverse experience in service of an unyielding determination to make our future better than our past.
(Edited to fix formatting and add link)
cross-posted from: https://possum.news/post/826
This public resource tracks legal challenges to Trump administration actions. If you think we are missing anything, you can email us at [email protected]. Special thanks to Just Security Student Staff Editors Anna Braverman, Isaac Buck, Rick Da, Charlotte Kahan, and Jeremy Venook, and to Matthew Fouracre and Nour Soubani.
The Tracker was first published on Jan. 29, 2025 and is continually updated. Last updated March 21, 2025.
Thanks for the heads up.
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The websites have people coordinating carpools and bus shuttles so there are options if you really want to attend. If not, find other ways to get involved.