• RT: ‘It was about sticking it to the Russians’ – Scott Ritter on US seizure of his passport
• Malaysia Sun: US seizes Scott Ritter's passport
• Al Bawaba: US confiscates former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter passport
• Daily Beast: Moscow Throws Putin Fanboy Scott Ritter Under the Bus

I’m not sure how salient the Dark Crystal franchise is to the public consciousness, though Netflix did a series five years ago.

Skeksis are like capitalists in that, while they may fight amongst themselves & backstab each other, their primary & common cause is Gelfling subjugation, through deceit if possible or naked violence if necessary.

Actual title: Michael Hudson - Life and Thought

The interview with Professor Michael Hudson was conducted on 7 May 2018 in Beijing, by Professor Lau Kin Chi and Professor Sit Tsui Jade. Professor Hudson talked about his formative years, and his turn to economics from music as he found his mentor Terence McCarthy's speech about economics beautiful and asethetic. He recalled his experiences in research and teaching, and the background leading to his writing the many books on imperialism, balance of payment, history of debt, and fictitious capital.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hudson_(economist)

On how Lenin’s theory of imperialism was a conjunctural one to the period rather than a general/universal one, and how to conjuncturaly theorize on later periods, up to the present.

tl;dr: Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is on the Board. Someone please update this meme:

Anyone know anything about “human rights advocate” Esra’a Al Shafei? This is all I found of note so far: S.T.O.P. and the Fight Against Surveillance

The amazing activists sneaking footage out of Uyghur detention facilities in China and those fighting for reproductive justice in the U.S. use the exact same encryption as criminals.

Where’s the footage, Esra'a? We’re still waiting on it…

From JWZ’s hot-take: I see no way this could possibly go wrong

Oh, and apparently one of the other board members, Ghavi, is a lawyer at a firm that is all-in on cryptocurrency and "AI" companies.

Anyway, on to the Board:

Esra’a Al Shafei is a human rights advocate and founder of Majal.org, a network of digital platforms that amplify under-reported and marginalized voices in Southwest Asia and North Africa. She is also the co-founder of the Numun Fund, the first dedicated fund for feminist tech in the Global Majority. Esra’a currently serves on the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit which hosts Wikipedia. She is also on the Board of the Tor Project, developers of one of the world’s strongest tools for privacy and freedom online.

Karien Bezuidenhout is an advocate for openness and supporter of social entrepreneurs. As the former director of the Shuttleworth Foundation, her core interest lies in social and policy innovation through practical interventions and sustainable social enterprises. Through her experience as a board member to social change organisations and social enterprises across the world, she strives to make connections that accelerate learning.

Amir Ghavi leads Fried Frank’s core technology practices as the co-head of the Technology Transactions Practice, where he advises clients on cutting edge technology and intellectual property matters. Amir is also a regular speaker, panelist and commentator to the media on digital assets and quantum computing.

Felix Hlatky has been the Chief Financial Officer of Mastodon since 2020. Felix helped Eugen by incorporating the project in a non-profit LLC in Germany and raising additional funds from Prototype Fund, NLnet and GLS Bank. Felix is the CEO of SOLARYS, a company developing software for volunteer firefighters in the DACH region.

Biz Stone is an entrepreneur best known as a co-founder of Twitter, one of the world’s leading social media platforms. Biz’s career spans various facets of technology and social networking, including contributions to the development of blogging, podcasting, and social media. Beyond Twitter, Biz has engaged in various philanthropic efforts and tech ventures, emphasizing the importance of corporate responsibility and the potential of technology to address societal challenges.

The boys try to make sense of Katherine Maher, the new president of NPR, ex-CEO of Wikimedia, ex-Atlantic Council, ex-State Department, and current member of the Council of Foreign Relations. But as usual their liberal ideology doesn’t quite get them there. They see that Maher has a relationship with the ruling class, the state, and imperialism, but they’re unable to see that, because this is a monopoly capitalist state, the capitalist class, the state, and imperialism are really one system (How they fail to note that NPR is state-affiliated media is beyond me).

They talk about the new FISA expansion bill (which was signed into law today) as well, which to their credit they see as related.

America This Week, April 19, 2024: "To Build a Surveillance State." (transcript)
A paid subscription is ostensibly required, so: https://files.catbox.moe/e7xim5.mp3

ETA: The Grayzone on Maher previously:

• 2020: Meet Wikipedia’s Ayn Rand-loving founder and Wikimedia Foundation’s regime-change operative CEO
• 2023: US regime change activist named Web Summit CEO after founder forced out for condemning Israeli ‘war crimes’

I’m probably going to the_dunk_tank for this, but…

Requirements: Violentmonkey browser extension. Tampermonkey and Greasemonkey might work as well, but I haven’t & won’t test them. Note also that I haven’t & won’t test Chrome or Edge, either.

// ==UserScript==
// @name        lemmy-delete-tagline
// @match       https://hexbear.net/
// @require https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@violentmonkey/dom@2
// ==/UserScript==
VM.observe(document.body, () => {
  const node = document.querySelector('#tagline');
  if (node) {
    node.remove();
    return true;
  }
});

Edit to add: Maybe it needs some work: when I click on the homepage icon from another page, it fails to remove the tagline. I’m an old who doesn’t understand how progressive web applications work. Maybe I need to remove the return true and also tune how often the observer observes. Or maybe there’s some trigger I should hook it up to. Simply removing return true does seem to work, but I have no idea if it’s at the cost of any appreciable performance.

Edit to add more: !companero@hexbear.net suggested that I just use a uBlock Origin filter. I tried it and it works. It’s as simple as:

hexbear.net###tagline

An excellent Critical Theory Workshop lecture and Q&A on fascisms and liberalisms—contemporary but also historical—through a dialiectical materialist lens.

Beldon for scale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up-dfbIeBIc

Make Titanic Great Again

Effort posts are messages in bottles.

My response to this weapons-grade gish gallop:

Tiananmen square massacre

• The Tian’anmen Square ‘Massacre’: The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.
• 1989 Tian'anmen Square riots
• A Note on the Tiananmen Protests
• Images from Tiananmen 1989 the West never shows (NSFW / CW: violence and death)
• ‘Tank Man’: the full footage. Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1989

their genocide of the Uighur people

This bullshit never ends, does it?

• https://lemmy.ml/comment/8588979
• A Reddit AMA Claiming To Be A Uyghur Quickly Exposes A CIA Asset Slandering China

their oppression of Hong Kong

Hong Kong was the product of the UK’s century of Chinese oppression, and their 99 year lease on oppressing Hong Kong ended in 1997.

steal Taiwan’s sovereignty

Taiwan is only considered sovereign by eleven countries, most of which are micronations like the Holy See, the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan

was a bigger crime

• List of Atrocities committed by US authorities
• Are We The Baddies?