George Reid

@GregGrandin Fantastic essay.

Read my NYRB essay for how Leo became woke, and the deeper history of this schism and culture war. Link in comments.

Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. In Jesus Christ, this humanity in its grandeur becomes the Way, the Truth and the Life, opening the path for each of us to grow toward fullness. #MagnificaHumanitas vatican.va/content/leo-xi…

A society absolutely addicted to inflicting mass suffering and death year-round on its neighbours, no strategy, no politics, no efforts to live in peace, just a singular devotion to mass murder. A representation in state form of humanity at its collective worst

Pope Leo just condemned the idea that "work dignifies man". We. Are. So. Back!

@kokorobitch @marro_bert Ensuring students learn the material is not part of a teacher's job. A teacher's job is to ensure the conditions under which a student can learn and to empower them to do so.

@marro_bert @GeorgeR12357 ensuring that students learn the material is part of a teacher’s job, which, in turn, means ensuring that the work they turn in is their own. this isn’t a new concept in education, before AI you might have had to check whether a student had copied work from someone else

seeing uni lecturers say “I’m not going to turn into an AI cop” is so disheartening. it is not being a “cop” to assess whether your students have learned something - it’s being a teacher, and it’s one of your core responsibilities!!

@enoughformethx These are very moving words and they are much appreciated.

I wrote these words on the plane home from Turkey to summarize the significance of the past months, and what I have gleaned from embedding within the flotilla movement and struggling within and alongside it on the front lines. I mean these words in earnest.

@boganintel @shot_au Searing analysis, fantastic piece.

And a big one on the Royal Comission for @shot_au: 'The royal commission into the hurt feelings of genocidal psychopaths' I am going to have a rest :) 5/5 theshot.net.au/uncategorized/…

Its been a big week for your friendly neighborhood Bogan, you may have missed seven articles (and a pod) thread 👇 My latest for @shot_au: 'As Aussie activists are brutalised, “No one left behind” is just a slogan for Albanese' 1/5 theshot.net.au/uncategorized/…

all socialists should be learning from the tactics of the bolivian people and the indigenous communities there. they aren't just on strike, they're putting up roadblocks around the major cities, they're actually shutting the economy down.

I no longer feel a sense of relief when the US war machine shows signs of de-escalation, because these days it's just a sign they're getting ready to escalate somewhere else. If Washington sets up an MOU with Iran it only means they're preparing to regime change Cuba, with plans to re-target Iran using different strategies already being drawn up for a later date. It's like when you know a guy who always abuses his girlfriends. If you see one of his partners escape her abusive relationship, after a certain point you're going to stop feeling a sense of relief, because after watching the patterns play out over and over again you know he's just going to find some other unfortunate woman to put in that spot. The amount of abuse remains constant; all that changes is the victim. The violence of the US empire remains constant. It moves around, but it doesn't diminish. If you see it pulling back a bit, that only means it's preparing to come roaring back, like a wave to the shore. The tide of imperial violence is going to keep returning until the empire is dismantled.

Bolivia’s Indigenous-led unions showing, once again, how neoliberalism is defeated: - disciplined organizers - mass mobilization - strategic blockades of key economic infrastructure

Please read every word of this devastating testimony from Mohammed Qaoud, a journalist from Gaza who was detained at the notorious concentration and torture camp at Sde Teiman. As the Flotilla participants return home bearing the marks of torture and mistreatment at the hands of Zionist occupation forces, we must remember that there are thousands of Palestinians languishing in Zionist concentration camps facing incomparably worse treatment. Beyond breaking prisoners' bones, denying them sanitation, feeding them spoiled food, erasing their very names, depriving them of sleep, and violating them sexually, among the cruellest forms of abuse the prisoners face is psychological. Prison officers lie to inmates, telling them that their families in Gaza had been targeted in strikes. They read out the names of those supposedly killed and show AI-generated images as proof. Sde Teiman, Qaoud says, "was the lowest depth of hell.” He calls on people to tell the human story of the prisoners: "behind every prisoner is a whole story. There is a mother waiting, and there are children growing up away from their fathers. There is a bride being given to her husband without her father by her side. So at minimum — since we are unable to engage in armed resistance, or unable to take practical steps to free the prisoners and ease their conditions — we must tell their stories, as people, as persons. As fathers, mothers, brothers. Not as statistics and numbers."

The situation we have reached in Gaza is harsher than anything imaginable. Mosquitoes and insects devour us to the point that my clothes are stained with blood from scratching so severely. Rats, on the other hand—I live in half a house, while the other half is bombed and filled with hundreds of rats, some weighing up to 1.5 kilograms each. Our children do not sleep at night out of fear. The bombardment is still ongoing, and the genocide has never stopped for a single day; every day there is a massacre. Every passing moment, I fear a missile will fall over my head. Furthermore, the famine continues; more than 85% of the people of Gaza depend entirely on food kitchens, and Israel still allows food in very minute quantities that do not suffice even 10% of Gaza's population. We are so tired of this situation. Until when??

“Violence is never the answer,” I say sagely from the comfort of my home in a country that has over 800 military bases in 85 countries around the world.

Kind of insane watching the notion of a "commencement speech" adapt, in real-time, from being ostensibly encouraging and aspirational, to becoming this actively antagonistic dressing-down of graduates and their expectations. A ceremonial ladder-pulling ritual.

Bolivian union workers heading to the rally. Day 10 of the general strike against neoliberalism.

Wikileaks released footage of a very similar incident perpetrated by US soldiers in 2010. The footage triggered global outrage at the highest levels. Now Israel perpetrates this crime over and over again, with total impunity. Zionism is hollowing out humanity and must be ended.

absolutely losing my mind that you have hundreds of international citizens who were been abducted, abused, some raped and tortured by Israel and… crickets in our news media. We are beyond “complicity” and ‘giving Israel impunity’ - its complete acquiescence and surrender.

Farewell to Stephen Colbert! I will miss your laundering the reputations of war criminals, like when you danced with Kissinger. It's a shame Trump got you fired because he made you a liberal martyr instead of the parable of the Obama era’s humorless and empty corporate moralism.