Deuce Dread @DeuceDread24

This bird almost vanished once. Market hunters nearly wiped it out by the early 1900s. Then federal protections brought it back. The wood duck — one of the most breathtaking birds in North America — recovered because the wetlands that shelter it were protected by law. Cattail marshes. Forested swamps. Small seasonal pools tucked into the woods where they nest, feed, and raise their young. Now those same wetlands are losing federal protection — quietly, through a rule change most Americans have never heard of. It's called WOTUS. Waters of the United States. The administration has proposed redefining which waters qualify for protection under the Clean Water Act. Up to 80% of American wetlands — 73.5 million acres — would no longer qualify. No federal permit required to drain them. Fill them. Build on them. The wood duck doesn’t get a vote. Neither do the 700+ other species that depend on these waters. Millions of Americans depend on them too — for clean drinking water, flood protection, and healthy local ecosystems. If the Clean Water Act no longer protects most of America's wetlands — what exactly is it protecting? 🦆 #WOTUS #DemsUnited

Growing up in America, we are taught from birth to hate socialism. We are told it is the greatest threat to our “freedom,” and most of us believe this lie our entire lives. But some of us wake up and realize under capitalism none of us are free. We are owned by banks, billionaires, and both parties who do their bidding. Propaganda against socialism is a tool our rulers use to keep us obedient and prevent us from questioning how unjust capitalism is. Why should the majority of people spend most of our lives working to enrich a handful of billionaires and corporations? Where is the freedom when billionaires hoard ungodly fortunes through the mass exploitation of our labor and mass extraction of resources that belong to our communities? Where is the freedom when our tax dollars fund endless wars and the killing of children abroad all to further enrich US oligarchs? Where is the freedom when 70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to afford basic needs like housing, healthcare, and groceries? There is no freedom here. We are all prisoners of a corrupt capitalist system that keeps us trapped in the rat race by demonizing the one economic model, socialism, that would put the economy in the hands of the people. Imagine a world where decisions are made to meet the basic needs of the people rather than the endless greed of billionaires. That is socialism, and there is nothing scary about it. What is scary is allowing a handful of billionaires to control our entire economy and make life-or-death decisions for all of humanity. What is even scarier is billionaires and both parties that do their bidding understand their greed has destroyed our society, which is why they are investing so heavily in AI to surveil, replace, and solidify their control over us. If humanity is to have any future, now is the moment to push back and ensure AI is used to benefit all of society, which is only possible by moving from capitalism to socialism.

Nigeria’s ginger export collapsed from a staggering N26 billion($47.5 million) to absolute zero in a span of just three years, wiping out the livelihoods of thousands of families. The official excuse is being branded as a mere "fungal" disease, which is ridiculously funny, insulting, and misleading. A mere disease can kill a handful of crops, but it can never systematically wipe out an entire agricultural belt spanning hundreds of thousands of acres. When a disaster of this magnitude destroys crops across multiple communities in Kaduna and neighboring states, we can be rest assured that this is a man-made, policy-driven disaster without a single shred of doubt. Indeed, the N26 billion export figure quoted was not from 2024. Nigeria’s export of ginger in 2024 had already plummeted to a pathetic N6.2 billion, roughly 4.7 million dollars, which forces us to ask what actually happened between 2023 and 2024 to pave the way for this historic, sudden decline. Everything began in 2017, when the World Bank sent their economic hitmen to Nigeria to convince the federal government that our agricultural output was poor. They claimed the issue was not because the predatory terms of the World Trade Organisation banned the government from subsidizing local farmers, providing modern tractors, building secure storage facilities, or protecting domestic markets from heavily subsidized Western imports. Instead, they deceitfully concluded that Nigerian farmers were doing poorly simply because they lacked access to modern, high-yielding, corporate-patented seeds. As usual, the incompetent Nigerian government under the Buhari administration rolled over, spread their laps, and eagerly accepted a 200 million dollar loan from the World Bank to kickstart the APPEALS project. Nigeria historically grew two traditional, highly resilient, non-genetically modified varieties of ginger known as UG1, locally called "Tafin Giwa," and UG2, locally called "Yatsun Biri." Under this APPEALS program championed by the World Bank, ginger farmers in Northern Nigeria were instructed to abandon their local, highly resilient seeds. Instead, they were forced to source new, delicate foundation seeds from the National Root Crops Research Institute in Umudike, Abia State. The NRCRI does not operate in a vacuum: it functions within a complex global network of funding, corporate interests, and academic research heavily bankrolled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the agro-chemical giant Monsanto. Under this collaborative framework, the Gates-funded institute provided the laboratory methodology and the modified parent seeds, while the World Bank’s APPEALS project supplied the logistics, the demonstration farms, and the training to force farmers into growing these highly dependent seeds. . Traditionally, farming ginger is not rocket science. All a farmer had to do was make a small hole in the soil, drop the seed rhizome inside, cover it up, and let nature do the rest. But because the farmers were forced to abandon their traditional seedlings and adopt the genetically fragile, volatile, lab-grown tissue cultures from the Gates-funded institute, they no longer had that luxury. The institute's labs simply lacked the capacity to mass-produce these delicate seeds at the industrial scale required for nationwide agriculture. This is where the World Bank's economic traps clicked shut. Under the APPEALS program, farmers were trained to cut the healthy foundation rhizomes into tiny, microscopic pieces weighing a mere 4 to 5 grams. These tiny buds were then dipped in a specialized, highly expensive chemical fungicide wash, placed into artificial nursery trays, and kept under protective, climate-controlled shade nets. The farmers had to baby these nurseries, watering them with meticulous care just to get the single buds to sprout into disease-free green seedlings over a thirty-to-forty-day period. Once these fragile green shoots reached a height of 10 to 15 centimeters and developed a weak, independent root system, the farmers had to carefully transplant them directly into pre-prepared ridges in the open fields. At first, it looked like a miracle. The farmers saw a temporary 67% surge in their ginger yields, which was paraded by World Bank PR teams as a massive success. But the APPEALS program was only scheduled to last for six years. In 2023, the World Bank packed up their bags, collected their interest, and quietly left the country. Naturally, the farmers attempted to continue farming on their own to maintain their profit margins, but they ran into a fatal wall. It is not enough to train farmers to use delicate, laboratory-engineered seeds: you must also fund the highly specific chemical inputs those seeds require to survive in the wild. As soon as the farmers tried to buy the specialized fungicides and chemical washes needed to protect these hyper-sensitive crops, they realized the prices had skyrocketed by over 300%, making them completely unaffordable for the average rural farmer. Desperate, the farmers tried to source cheaper, local alternatives, but these fragile seeds are so biologically delicate that the slightest deviation in chemical treatment or soil temperature renders them sterile and highly vulnerable to pathogens. This is how Nigeria's ginger output collapsed from 47 million dollars in 2023, to a pathetic 4.7 million dollars in 2024, and finally to absolute zero by 2025. There are many performative reforms currently ongoing to supposedly rescue the Nigerian ginger market. But the cold truth is that the World Bank and Bill Gates successfully destroyed a thriving, self-sufficient local industry that fed millions of homes, and this is not the first time this economic sabotage has occurred in Nigeria. Look at what they did to our cocoa industry in the late 1980s. Under the brutal dictates of the World Bank's Structural Adjustment Program, the federal government was forced to dissolve the Nigerian Cocoa Board, which had historically guaranteed price stability, provided free high-quality seedlings, and subsidized essential pesticides for local farmers. Once the market was liberalized, our local farmers were left completely defenseless against the volatile swings of the global commodities market and the predatory pricing of Western buying cartels like Cargill and Barry Callebaut, systematically crashing Nigeria's dominance in global cocoa and reducing our once-proud farmers to low-wage laborers for multinational corporations.

Nigeria Stories @NigeriaStories

2 months ago

BREAKING: Nigeria’s 🇳🇬 Ginger export went from N26Billion to zero in the last 3 years Source: Businessday Nigeria

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Stop believing the lie that we have to build more data centers to compete with China. The US already has 5,381 data centers, which is 12 times as many as China’s 449. US billionaires want more data centers to replace our jobs and the US government wants them to surveil us at home and wage more endless wars abroad. The American people need to wake up and understand that while China is investing in bettering life for its people with housing, education, healthcare, and infrastructure, our own government is investing in making life worse for people both at home and abroad.

Utah’s new data center will release 23 atom bombs of energy into the environment every day all to surveil the public, make billionaires richer, and power the artificial intelligence that will replace us. Stopping these data centers is an existential fight for humanity’s survival.

This is what local accountability looks like: In Festus, Missouri, a town of about 14,000 people, the city council quietly approved a $6 billion Ai data center to be built on 360 acres just north of Highway 67. Residents say they were never properly heard. Meetings were held in private. Documents were released too late. A week after the approval, the town held a regular election. Voter turnout jumped 129 percent. Every single council member who had voted yes lost in a landslide. A 70-year-old first-time candidate beat an 8-year incumbent by 40 percentage points. Now a recall petition is circulating to remove the mayor as well. The lawsuit against the city is already filed. Has your local government ever been held accountable like this? 🔥

California Democrats have a 3/4 SUPERMAJORITY, and they just killed their own universal healthcare bill. AGAIN. You can’t blame Trump. You can’t blame people who didn’t vote blue. What now?

NEW: Democrats hold a supermajority in California yet they just blocked a single-payer healthcare bill because like the national party the state parties are corrupt & controlled by corporate interests. Voting blue does not bring democracy. It solidifies the capitalist oligarchy.

This is just pure unadulterated propaganda by The Economist, as is so often the case with their coverage of China (reminder that, if you read The Economist, the Chinese economy should have collapsed more or less every year for the past 20 years). I actually come from a country - France - where our minorities did actually get squashed, so I have a pretty decent understanding of what that concretely means. For instance in France our regional languages (Basque, Alsacien, Corsican, Breton, Occitan, etc.) have ZERO official status, cannot be used in government, and - under French law - were prohibited in classrooms under threat of punishment (kids at school were made to wear a necklace of shame around their neck if they spoke their regional language: fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergonha#…). The first line of Article 2 of the French constitution (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_2…) - as amended in 1992 - specifies that French is the exclusive language in France and constitutionally excludes every other language from any official role whatsoever. There was, in France, an official policy of linguicide. The net result, according to official French statistics (ined.fr/fr/publication…), is that regional languages like Corsican or Breton went from being spoken in 70%-80% of local families at the end of WW1 down to sub-10% numbers by the end of the 20th century. Even Alsacien, the most resilient regional language, still saw its transmission rate collapse from 70% to 18% in just 2 generations. That, folks, is "squashing." Same thing, incidentally, in the UK - The Economist's own country: a reminder that in Wales schools used the "Welsh Not" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not), a token of shame that a child would need to wear around their neck if they were heard speaking Welsh. Compare and contrast this with this new Chinese law. First of all, fact is that if you look at minorities with their own language in China, the immense majority of them still speak it and use it in their daily life. For instance, a 2017 survey conducted by 国家语委 (the National Language Commission, the authoritative Chinese body on language policy), only 30% of people in Tibet had functional Mandarin proficiency (tibetology.ac.cn/2023-02/10/con…). In other words, Tibetan, not Mandarin, remains the dominant working language of daily life for the overwhelming majority of the population in Tibet. Same story with Mongolian: according to China's Sixth National Census (2010), 85.25% of ethnic Mongols still used Mongolian in daily life (nmlr.muc.edu.cn/info/1119/2132…). Which means, as a starting point, that China already did a far better job than virtually any Western country at protecting their minority languages. Important context when we're speaking about Western media lecturing China on the topic... Heck, a good case could be made that they did TOO GOOD a job given that - among some ethnic minorities - most people speak ONLY their regional language, and can't even speak Mandarin, which is actually one of the main points of the new law. So let's look at this new law (full text here: neac.gov.cn/seac/xwzx/2026…). Does it officially recognize and protect minority languages? Yes, the law literally says "The state respects and protects the learning and use of minority languages and scripts, promotes the regulation, standardization, and digitalization of minority languages." Does it ban minority languages in schools? No. The new law does tilt education further toward Mandarin - requiring nationally unified textbooks and designating Mandarin as the basic language of instruction - but it does not abolish minority-medium schools (民族语授课学校 in Chinese, literally "minority-language-instruction schools") which can continue to operate with state funding in their respective regions. Does it ban minority languages from government? No. Article 15 explicitly states that "where relevant laws require documents to be issued in minority languages, both the national common language version and the minority language version shall be provided" (依照有关法律规定需要使用少数民族语言文字发布文书的，应当同时提供国家通用语言文字版本和少数民族语言文字版本). Does it ban minority languages from public signage? No. The law requires Mandarin to be displayed "prominently" alongside minority scripts in public settings - not instead of them. Does it undermine autonomous regions? No. Article 8 of the new law explicitly reaffirms "upholding and improving the system of ethnic regional autonomy" (坚持和完善民族区域自治制度). Which means that the 1984 Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law remains in force, with their local regions' legal authority to adopt regulations suited to local ethnic conditions. So all in all, what you CAN say is that the new law does indeed promote Mandarin and pushes to ensure every Chinese citizen can speak a common national language - which is, frankly, a pretty normal thing for any country to expect. What you CANNOT say - unless you are writing propaganda rather than journalism - is that this law "squashes" 55 ethnicities. Actual squashing is hanging a wooden clog around a child's neck for speaking his mother tongue. Actual squashing would be making minority languages or culture anticonstitutional. A law that funds minority-language preservation, preserves minority-medium schools, reaffirms regional autonomy, requires bilingual government documents and operates under a Constitution whose Article 4 guarantees all ethnic groups "the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages and to preserve or reform their own traditions and customs" is not "squashing" anything. It's a level of minority-language and cultural protection that the French Republic - or the UK - has never offered its own citizens in its entire existence.

The Economist @TheEconomist

3 months ago

There are 56 ethnicities in China—and 55 are getting squashed. A new law passed by the Chinese legislature is a grim milestone in the Communist Party’s harder-line approach to ethnic politics econ.st/4vK4oX4

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Even if nothing happens today, this should not be seen as a conclusion; significant work remains ahead. This moment presents an opportunity for us to come together once more in support of the UN and respect for international law. If I criticize your side, you assume I'm on theirs. If I criticize their side, they assume I'm on yours. You are both wrong. My position is guided by principles and upholding the law rather than alignment. I am against "a whole civilization dying tonight." The fact that a president could simply threat to use weapons capable of wiping out an entire civilization—placing more than ninety-three million of lives at risk—is disqualifying in itself. He should not be close to power. It also underscores the importance of ensuring that decisions of this magnitude of using such weapons are governed by robust, collective procedures, rather than resting with a single individual. Just because Trump announces he agreed to a two-week ceasefire before threatening genocide and war crimes does not mean that he is suddenly fit to serve and a man of peace. International organizations must consider the attempt to commit genocide. Diplomacy ultimately remains the only path forward. Yet it is striking that, after so much death and destruction, all parties are returning to the negotiating table with many of the same core issues that were already under discussion before the escalation. The Strait of Hormuz was already open when Trump started the war, and Iran had already agreed not to build a nuclear bomb during the Oman negotiations. This event has reinforced the importance of international law and the authority of the United Nations, demonstrating that no leader or nation is above the law. Moving forward, the choice is clear: we can build a world governed by rules and principles, or one left to the uncertainties of unchecked power. If diplomacy evolves, even the hardest conflicts can find a path to peace. We can't solve all the world's problems but we can at least stop adding to them. There is no military solution in any conflict. Peace for the world.

The US-Israel have illegally, criminally, and deliberately bombed a nuclear facility in Iran for the fourth time in a month, creating this way the risk of a nuclear catastrophe with mass civilian casualties. Radioactive fallout will end life in GCC countries, not just Iran. When Russia bombed near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, the world condemned it. But when the US-Israel bombed Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Iran, the world insisted on the US-Israel right to "pre emptive strike"! Both must be condemned, and both violate international law and human rights. The possibility of a nuclear disaster must be taken very seriously. It's dangerous.

Honestly, this shit feels so blasé now. What you mean tax the billionaires? We are wayyyyyy beyond TAXING them. Where’s the mfking retribution for them stealing our data establishing surveillance of every eye twitch and sneeze, conducting genocides and trafficking children for their use.

Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders

6 months ago

Yes: We need a wealth tax on billionaires.

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Let me get this straight… OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit. Open source. For everyone. “To benefit humanity.” Then he raised billions of dollars. Then he closed the source code. Then he converted to for-profit. Then he scraped the entire internet without asking anyone. Then he used YOUR writing YOUR art YOUR code to train his models. Now he’s on stage saying you’ll pay HIM to access intelligence. Just like a water meter. He stole all of your data. He built the product with your work. And now he’s going to bill you to use it… Corporate greed has reached an all time high, and they’re not even hiding it anymore…

Chief Nerd @TheChiefNerd

4 months ago

🚨 SAM ALTMAN: “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.”

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BREAKING: The first fallen soldiers in Trump and Netanyahu’s war on Iran have returned home. Do not let them rewrite history. They did not die for our freedom. They died for Israel and the Epstein class. We will never end these wars unless we start telling the truth about them.

The U.S. and Israel have bombed 20 schools and 10 hospitals. They’ve murdered over 1,300 civilians including 300 children. They’ve bombed freshwater plants & oil facilities to cut off the water & energy supply of the people. They’re not liberating Iran. They’re destroying it.

The only way to stop the Iran war is to stop the corporations that profit off the war & keep the war machine running: Lockheed Martin Raytheon Northrop Grumman Boeing General Dynamics Trump just met with the CEOs of these death merchants in the White House. Shut them all down!

How are they getting to “vote” on whether their crimes are made public or not?

Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein

4 months ago

House votes 357-65 to block release of congressional sexual misconduct and harassment reports nbcnews.com/politics/congr…

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Your enemies are not in Iran. They are in the Epstein files.

Is this you, wearing the same thing, giving a standing ovation to Trump when he said he would do this?

Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren

4 months ago

Trump’s war against Iran is illegal and a betrayal of the American people. Congress cannot allow Trump to drag yet another generation into a forever war.

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This war against Iran would have also happened under Kamala Harris. The only difference is liberals would be at brunch instead of foolishly bragging online that they voted for the blue imperialist party.