We live in a fascist country now.
“But there’s no mass graves.”
Not yet. And it doesn’t matter. There isn’t just one flavor of fascism. There isn’t just extreme fascism or no fascism.
This is a facist nation because it is behaving like a fascist nation. And it’s not going to get better unless voters start being more responsible. And it might even be too late for that.
“There are no mass graves”
Ask the hundreds of people who entered ICE internment camps and never left. Alligator Alcatraz. 2/3rds of the 1,800 people “disappeared”
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/09/25/men-lost-from-alligator-alcatraz/
Every fascist regime was established in democratic elections. No fascist regime was overthrown in democratic elections.
To be the pedantic smart ass that I am, Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain weren’t voted in.
This is in extremely poor taste considering what happened to the kid in the picture. That’s what is terrifying, not a vandalism arrest.
We should oppose fascism without belittling its victims, regardless of which state they’re under.
I don’t think this is belittling the kid at all. Just pointing out that we’re now doing approximately the same thing at home.
The kid returned home with brain damage, IIRC. Has that happened to anyone accused of vandalizing the pool?
The only actual evidence was a blurry video which probably wasn’t even him. He was just a convenient political tool. I remember reading a very detailed breakdown of how the suspect in the video was the wrong height and walked differently.
I want to add (without prison sentences… for now) all the push of Europe to do the internet surveillance China style, after we have criticized it so much.
Is so sad how “autocratic government surveillance” suddenly becomes “protecting the children”…
Fuck politicians, hope they all die a terrible death. They deserve all the hate in the world and then a bit more.
Is so sad how “autocratic government surveillance” suddenly becomes “protecting the children”…
The saddest part about it is how well it works. People are still falling for this shit. We never learn anything.
to be fair, when EU adds firewall and blocks all traffic from USA, they will have like 99% less advertisements
The Chinese firewall isn’t surveillance, lol. It’s to keep American surveillance from surveilling Chinese citizens. I’m sure your familiar with Snowden and Assange?
Yet Chinese surveillance is surveilling everyone else.
What are CCTV, Ring, smart phones, smart homes, smart cars, and the Patriot Act for the daily double?
Show me your work, then.
Define “work”
Surely there’s proof of the Chinese government surveilling the rest of the world, more so than the 5 eyes countries, otherwise the original statement of the EU doing surveillance “China style” is just xenophobia.
I didn’t mean “in relation to the Chinese government” when I mentioned “Chinese surveillance”, I meant “surveillance of Chinese origin”. If you check ad and tracking blocklists, by far most popular ones are either in the US or China. For me that’s equally as bad as government sponsored. Although “government sponsored” usually implies “of big(ger) scale”, it’s not necessary.
There are more than just 5 eyes.
I am going to refrain from arguing, for I have taken note of your instance being “lemmy.ml”. As much as I hate discriminating by instance, I have to do what I have to do.
I’m not arguing, nor am I looking for anecdotal evidence, lol. I’m asking you to prove your own statement correct.
Someone got 50 YEARS for protesting ICE
A life sentence for protesting.
This is America.
Our Constitution is effectively over and a frightening percentage of Americans aren’t even aware, or don’t even care.
Personally, I’m crossing my fingers for Balkanization. Staying chained to this sinking ship is not wise.
Two people who weren’t even there, who never discussed the illegal acts, who were only in a group chat where people discussed attending a legal protest, were sentenced to 50 years.
But they were trans women in Texas. So the jury had no problem sending them to a men’s prison without any crimes being committed.
He touched floating point chips? Like an old 80387?
Also 50, 70, and 100 year sentences for people who were protesting against ICE in Texas
Wow this completely flew under my radar wtaf
the US is now soviet russia. the whole western world is sad :/
The US has more prisoners than any country to ever exist. You’ve been worse than the soviet union for basically all of your history in those regards.
Edit: Plus it’s baked into your constitution that those prisoners are perfect for slavery. You never stopped using slave labor in the entire 250 year history of America.
At least Soviet Russia wasn’t run by a handful of billionaires
it is now.
What are the chances that these people will get pardoned, etc, when(if) normality returns?
Also what’s the chances that the judge who handed down these long and unfair sentences will get any repercussions for being so obviously corrupt?
I don’t think a President can pardon a state crime, so you need a blue Texas Governor for starters.
Sanders joined ABC News’s “This Week,” where host Jonathan Karl asked if there was anything Trump has done right.
“I think cracking down on fentanyl, making sure our borders are stronger,” Sanders replied. “Look, nobody thinks illegal immigration is appropriate, and I happen to think we need comprehensive immigration reform, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for people to be coming across the border illegally.”
While the senator agreed with Trump on strengthening the country’s borders to protect citizens, he disagreed with the president’s mass deportation plan.
“He wants to deport 20 million people who are in this country who are undocumented,” Sanders said. “Well, you do that, you destroy the entire country.”
“Because I got news for you, Trump’s billionaire friends are not going to pick the crops in California that feed us. They’re not going to work in meatpacking houses,” he continued. “That’s what undocumented people are doing.”
Given that this is as far left as US politicians get, I’d say unlikely.
…What’s wrong with his position, exactly?
Because people are not ‘illegal’ for crossing an imaginary line on a map.
Where did he call anyone ‘illegal’?
Unlikely. The US executes people when there’s so much new evidence after sentencing pointing toward them not being guilty that the original prosecutors plead for them to not execute. The Dem establishment’s complaints against ICE are mostly just procedural; they just argue for things like more transparency for these detention centers, not their abolishment.
The last time that a Democratic president was in office for a federal execution was Lyndon Johnson.
Snarling wolves and smiling foxes.
A full pardon? Maybe for some of them, especially the zine guy, but the guy who actually shot the cop, unlikely. No democrat would want the optics of that.
Gotta commute that absurd sentence tho
Cop shot first. The guy who shot him did so in community defense.
In fact that cop may have given the shooter’s attorneys an argument to revisit Harlow v Fitzgerald, and hand the SCOTUS the full text of §1983. They were given, unknowingly, an illegally edited text in 1982 when Harlow v Fitzgerald established Qualified Immunity, which is illegal according to the full statute as recorded in the 1871 Congressional Record.
Even the cop shooter should be fully pardoned.
I hope they stand a good chance for an appeal based on the jury selection fuckery
Honestly 50/50
You can’t really bounce back from the bullshit that has just ensued immediately, it’s also kinda apparent to your average leftist that the democratic party is kind spineless as fuck when it comes to the right, so to have judges IN TEXAS MIND YOU bounce back from their previous decisions? Not gonna be too easy
it’s also kinda apparent to your average leftist that the democratic party is
kind spinelesscomplicit as fuck when it comes to the right, so to have judges IN TEXAS MIND YOU bounce back from their previous decisions? Not gonna be too easy
I mean to give full context, that protest did end with a cop getting shot.
But the sentences are still wildly excessive including 30 years to someone for carrying a box of magazines.
First off, the shooter claims that the cop was about to murder an unarmed protestor.
But more importantly, it was just one person who shot. Collective punishment is literally against the Geneva Convention.
Imagine getting a 50 year prison sentence because you were peacefully protesting at a place where someone else shot a cop. By the same logic, every cop that was present when Alex Pretti was executed should have 50+ year prison sentences.
I know reading comprehension is not great on this site, but I’m in no way shape or form making an argument the protestors were in the wrong. Literally just providing context.
It’s cool that you were able to get that snarky remark in, but I was not necessarily disagreeing or arguing with you.
However, reading your comment again, it still comes across as cop apologetics. It’s the “the protest did end with a cop being shot”. It’s a justification. Maybe you didn’t intend that, but that’s the implication.
Did I comprehend ok?
How many years were did shooters of Pretti and Goode receive?
Those floating paint chips are worth thousands of dollars! Or rather, that’s what the administration paid for them.
I feel like the guy who got 30 years for picking up a box of zines is a much better example here.
Even then, there is no comparison for the brutality of beating a man into brain damage and shipping his dying body home.
Maybe something close would be the ICE detainees who suffocated? But you could argue that is the result of incompetence not malice.
Explain plz?
Wonder if others can use this case as the basis for asylum hearings in other countries
In the defense of the North Korea outrage, they lobotomised the kid and sent the dying body back to US.
Pretty sure there were missing teeth.
Edit: not Otto. Might have been another prisoner. Or I’m confusing it with World War Z and how North Korea solved the zombie crisis by pulling everyone’s teeth.
Edit edit: ok, he’s the one I read about but these details aren’t in wikipedia and may be suspect.
They said Otto was deaf, blind, jerking uncontrollably and making “inhuman” sounds when they met him on a plane.
His teeth also looked like they had been rearranged with pliers, his father said.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/he-totally-deformed-otto-warmbiers-11242029
IIRC some experts said that most likely his state was causes by reaction to medicine or something. North Korea prefers to exchange American prisoners for something rather than simply kill them.
Give the Americans some time.
only difference here is that the body will already be on us soil
It’s bizarre to see somebody believe that not only will a former Olympic athlete be sentenced for touching paint but to honestly believe he could be beaten into brain damage and die from it.
Chances are the guy walks away scot free and then sues the US Government.
We’re saying we are seeing the end of that soon. We are being more oppressed over time
I think he has a lot less support and authority now than at the start of his term.
Sure it’s bizarre to see somebody believe that, but it’s because it is so easy to believe with all the shit going on, not because it’s something difficult to believe.
Given the post, these comments, and that comment score I think it isn’t unrealistic to believe it’s just a bunch of fucking Tankies trying to normalize North Korea.
Like yeah, the Trump admin is shit, and would have spiraled out of control if there were no resistance, but it ain’t fuckin North Korea. It isn’t even as bad as China.
More things that you wouldn’t have thought possible in polite society have been happening in recent years.
Since US was a colony.
No no, see, these folks don’t count the genocide of millions and the people who suffered under street executions, illegal detention, and the destruction of families, for centuries because those people deserved it for being born wrong. Now it’s happening to white people! Can you believe that? My stars! Never before! Unprecedented!
I bow to the lotus feet of the guru.
😂😭🫂
Wait until you find out what the current regime and its supporters thinks about being able to sue for violating the constitution.
Frankly, I don’t care what the buffoon thinks.
We took his name off the Kennedy building, we’re suing comanies for AI racial bias, we blocked his DOJ from collecting trans medical records, and we just told his ICE to fuck off from immigration hearing locations.
The courts aren’t completely corrupted yet and they are still in charge.
The courts aren’t completely corrupted yet and they are still in charge.
You sure about that? I’d lto have faith in the rule of law, but the trump admin is increasingly ignoring court orders, despite the public wins you mentioned.
I really feel like we’re going to see the admin trot out the apocryphal Andrew jackson quote of ‘the courts have made their decision, let them enforce it’ in the next year or so.
And yet his name is off the Kennedy building and his ballroom is not open.
And yet US citizens are still being abducted, killed, disappeared, and sent off to random countries. But sure, let’s all cheer about them removing his name from the Kennedy building lmao. What a joke.
(All in the name of immigration control! If only those us citizens had just sued the government I’m sure they’d still be alive!)
Yeah because he’s white.
How is this fake news getting such high upvote ratio
He wasn’t literally surgically lobotomized no - but he did have extremely severe neurological damage from an unknown source which put him in a vegetative state that he never regained consciousness from. If it was done by DPRK intentionally or not isn’t known, but he did suffer those injuries during his time imprisoned under their supervision, and generally it’s held that harm to a prisoner is the fault of the captor.
Yes, that’s not “North Korea lobotomising him”. Hence fake news. A lobotomy cuts off the front of the brain
It would be the first time North Korea has harmed an American in this context and it’s pretty likely to be unintentional if they wanted to trade prisoners
You seem to have experience with lobotomy.
Appreciate your kind words
What a tedious semantic argument. An inaccurate use of a term in an informal setting that nonetheless quite accurately describes the symptoms he experienced, is not fake news - it’s not even news, it’s an internet comment. It’s been corrected now.
it’s pretty likely to be unintentional
It’s generally unintentional to beat someone and have them wind up in a vegetative state.
See the other comment from someone else, they were not beaten at all and the one anonymous report that he was appears to be fabricated
The beating the previous comment or is referring to isn’t a real beating, it’s figurative to make a point. Intentional or not, it happened and NK is responsible for the outcome. Just like the US is responsible for what happens to the foreign nationals we imprisoned.
Not what the other comment says.
“Didn’t they beat the guy so badly he had brain damage and died?”
Is that not what this person is saying?
Actually shut the fuck up. Please.
That’s demonstrably false.
Which part?
Edit: apparently the lobotomized part.
Getting hit with the biggest “um, actually” energy from the tankie battalion 🙄
We’ve had plenty of examples of what happens when you let autocrats take power. It’s not like Trump didn’t tell us who he was. For that matter, it’s not like the Republican Party hasn’t been obvious about who they are since Reagan.
And yet we keep electing them.
Maybe we do so because it’s macho, and voting for anyone else is effeminate. Or we do so to punish the Democrats when they’re wishy-washy. Or we do so to own the libs (and in 2026, to return non-whites and women to non-citizen status.)
It’s a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, and I’m unsure we can’t get ourselves out without a whole lot of people suffering and dying.
People are gling to suffer and die no matter what at this point, so we’d might as well go down swinging.
I’m gonna see what happens in November, but history tells us that violent dictatorships are rarely brought down by peaceful means.
*never
Oh, there are peaceful movements that work. But then the autocrats can sometimes be eager to fire the first shots. Take January 6th, 2021 for example.
As Nelson Mandela put it, A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a point, one can only fight fire with fire.
This is a good take. America owns all of this shitshow.
One might easily prefer Kim Jong Un over Trump too.
You do you, but Kim actually got people executed by cannon so…
Source?
No, I mean like an actual source and not obvious bullshit propaganda, lol.
Didn’t they beat the guy so badly he had brain damage and died?
Much worse.
He was vegetative. Kept alive by life support.
No, but we’ve given Antifa protestors fifty years plus for conspiring to shoot ICE. Give us time.
*without any evidence. That’s an important part.
No.
You don’t know that, though. Nobody (except maybe the DPRK) knows what the cause of his brain damage was, but injuries from torture could easily have healed in the 16 (maybe) months after he suffered the injury. It does not have to be a severe beating to cause severe brain injury, unfortunately, just an unlucky strike.
Did you read the article here?
Yes? I fail to see how it’s relevant to your argument, it agrees with exactly what I just said.
Here in Australia our racist nutbag pollie is pretending a poster that was dropped behind her could have been a bomb… and now wants police protection
And people keep listening to her as if she’s a champion for the working class. Fuck off Pauline you vapid cunt, people with more than 2 brain cells can see through your facade.
You haven’t heard? She’s absolutely interested in uniting the nation into one.
Which is why she openly hates woke people, greenies, lefties, first nation ceremonies (and therefore traditional first nations), people who don’t speak english (also some of our first nations), trans people and migrants. She definitely tries to unite suspected war criminals too.
In her defence, she does spend 1 day a year trying to unite everyone… Australia day. Everyone MUST unite on that day, including first nations who were invaded that day at one time.
And, she at least waited until the day after Australia day to release her “anti-woke” video and song which started openly attacking Aussies she deems are “unacceptable”
a kid got years in North Korean prison for stealing a poster
The full story of this kid was far crazier than the post implies. (https://archive.is/kyR8h)
Firstly, he wasn’t in jail for years. He was in jail for 17 months, largely due to the chill relations between the Obama government and North Korea during that time. It is common for US expats to receive special release with a bit of glad handing and brown nosing from a US diplomat, and the fact that Bill Richardson wasn’t able to secure Otto’s release was the exception rather than the rule.
But secondly, and much more curiously, the story spun up after his release looked more and more like a fabrication the deeper journalists probed.
The previously unreported detail of when Otto was admitted to the Friendship Hospital changes the narrative of what could have happened to him. If Otto was “repeatedly beaten,” as the intel reports suggested, it would logically have been during the two to six weeks between his sentencing, when videos of him showed no signs of physical damage, and “April,” as the North Korean brain scan was dated. But Otto was apparently unconscious by the next morning. The coroner found no evidence of bludgeoning on Otto’s body. And when one takes into account that the entire sourced public case that Otto was beaten derives from that single anonymous official who spoke to The New York Times, the theory begins to crack.
It is for this paucity of evidence that, though the public discourse about Otto’s death has long been dominated by talk of beatings, there have been doubts among North Korea experts that the intelligence reports were correct. Of the dozen experts I spoke to, only a single one thought there was even a remote likelihood that he had been beaten. “I don’t believe Otto was physically tortured,” Andrei Lankov said in his office in Seoul. “The campaign to make Otto a symbol of North Korea’s cruelty was psychological preparation to justify military operations.”
Many experts pointed out that though North Korea is often portrayed as irrational, the Kim family had to be “both brutal and smart,” as Lankov said, to maintain its relative power on the world stage, especially for such a small, impoverished country. What incentive would they have to lose a valuable bargaining chip, especially when they had never been so thoughtless before? To these experts, it made much more sense that Otto was treated like all other detained Americans and that an unexpected catastrophe occurred. But despite the experts’ doubts, none of them could disprove the intelligence reports indicating that Otto had been beaten. However, a senior-level American official who reviewed the reports told me, “In general, the intel reports were wrong, as the medical examinations have shown. They were apparently not even correct about where Otto was or when he was beaten, for God’s sake. Likely, the reports were just hearsay. Someone heard third- or fourth-hand that Otto was sick, and that person decided he was beaten. The North Koreans have never tortured a white guy physically. Never.” The official said he did not know of the Trump administration having other sources of information about Otto being beaten.
So you had a US expat detained for an extended period, only to be released into US custody as an attempt by the NK government to curry favor with Trump. But in the process of being released, Otto falls into a vegetative state with no evidence of physical violence perpetrated against him. The poor state of his health is conveyed to the Trump administration and immediately poisons relations with the new administration.
And over the next several months, Trump begins to ratchet tensions with North Korea as a potential prelude to war.
How did this happen? Who did it benefit?
Also worth mentioning is that he “allegedly” stole that poster in the first place, so he probably didn’t even do any crimes, he was just picked as a political tool
he probably didn’t even do any crimes
Pretty sure even his friends admitted he pulled the poster off the wall.
So a guy got imprisoned by the most brutal government in the world. And then he fell into vegetative state. But said government has nothing to do with the vegetative state?
Do people just do that? Do people just go “eh, I’ve had enough, maybe I’ll just turn my brain off for a while”.
No, because the most brutal government in the world is the United States’.
‘They used dogs’: New Al Jazeera film exposes Israel’s use of rape in jails
Former detainees detail systematic torture and sexual violence, including rape, while in Israeli custody.
The United States used black children as alligator bait, allowed and encouraged dogs to rip humans’ flesh from their bones and eat it, until they died, made black mothers nurse their infants so whites could play “Hit the N****r Baby” with baseballs that were aimed either at the head, or stomach so they would vomit. This was before portable cameras, microphones and video recording devices were widely available. I’ll posit USA probably did it first.
The United States is pretty bad, especially for being a supposedly rich country. But no, it’s not the most brutal.
Even though I would not travel to the USA under any condition, if I have to choose between USA, north Korea, Iran, or some other random authoritarian country such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, sudan or somalia, I’m going to USA. Even though I’m a non-gay male.
Go tell that to the black people living there that have been brutalized for generations. Or maybe to people living in countries that was destabilized by it. This pales in comparison to the contries you named, combined.
Hell, go see what they did in North Korea during the war.
Edit: And how could I forget. Go tell that to the indigenous
Yeah. Go tell that to the people/slaves of the countries I mentioned.
As I said, USA is no good, but it’s not the worst.
You don’t seem to understand the meaning of “worst”.
“Bad” is absolute and can be judged with just the USA.
“Worst” is relative and you have to consider the other ones.
Maybe KSA, Qatar. Dubai, UAE, are as bad or worse, if you’re poor. Not having resided or visited, it’s pointless speculation.
FYI, the person you’re arguing with is from .ml, so good luck getting them to admit that the us is better than any other country, despite any and all available evidence to the contrary.
You people are seriously disgusting. No wonder minorities don’t feel safe in the Fediverse.
You don’t seem to understand the meaning of “worst”.
The “Worst Country” is the country that the US Media tells us is the worst, as measured by US Think Tanks and US Epsionage Agencies and US Propaganda Mills.
And when you compared the atrocities comited, it doesn’t even scale close to everything the US has done and is currently doing.
Also tell me who’s the one that profits from the slavery in Saudi-Arabia and supports it fully?
You seriously think I just considered what the US did without comparing it to the other countries you mentioned?
Regardless of whether any beatings occurred, when someone is imprisoned in your country, they are under your care, and you are responsible for them. It doesn’t matter whether it’s malnutrition, beatings, or if he just smacked his head against the wall on his own accord really hard: it is the responsibility of the custodian to ensure the good and proper health of those in their custody. That is the position of international human rights law. It doesn’t even matter if a prisoner decides to kill themselves, a death in custody is always the responsibility of the custodian and in that case it’d still be the custodian’s fault for allowing the creation of circumstances that allows prisoners to kill themselves.
It is not usual for a person to suddenly become comatose while in custody. And even if that did happen, it was North Korea’s positive responsibility to notify consular officials and the family of that, and deliver proper medical care to them.
I have a friend who work at the time for a company that offer tour in weird places, the story running between this type of travel agencies at the time was that the guy refused to listen security instructions, got way more drunk and tried to go, multiple times, in place clearly mark « don’t go there ». After a wile the hotel staff had to call the police
the story running between this type of travel agencies at the time was that the guy refused to listen security instructions, got way more drunk and tried to go, multiple times, in place clearly mark « don’t go there ».
Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me. Not unusual for someone to come into the country on a tourist visa and commit a nasty taboo.
It helps to remember that this is a country we are still functionally at war with. Imagine a Ukrainian taking a vacation in Moscow. Or a Palestinian touring Tel Aviv. That’s what these Americans are undertaking.
As a safety measure the agency of my friends now refuse American when going in North Korea
Or a Palestinian touring Tel Aviv.
21% of the population of Israel is Palestinian. There’s tens of thousands of Palestinians living in the Jaffa neighbourhood of Tel Aviv.
- Death to israel. 2. Aren’t you tired of poisoning all fkn conversations with your Israeli disgusting propaganda? Can you fuck off? nobody likes zionists.
Good ol apartheid.
21% of the population of Israel is Palestinian.
Not for long
