Yossarian's Roost Resuscitated

Big Nasty 🤠
keepaustinnasty
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Jan 25
San Diego police shot and killed a Black man kneeling with his hands up two days ago. This was also recorded.

It’s not just ICE. It’s not just Trump. Our entire system is built on white supremacy.

A white person standing up for Black/immigrant neighbors also becomes disposable.

We keep lists of those innocents shot by our government. To the list of murders we cannot omit strangulation deaths and other forms, particularly in detention centers.

Andy Ternay
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I am not saying this to start controversy or an argument but It feels like it always takes the death of white people for Americans to really wake up. Like how many immigrants and BIPOC have vanished off the streets of the United States in the past year and we don't know their names, why they came to our country or what happened to them.
There is no question that the videos of the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, having been captured clearly and from multiple angles, played major part in why those two killings have resulted in so much attention. But equally, there is no denying that having two white, middle class people publicly executed amplified this well beyond what would have happened if the same thing happened to a Somali immigrant.
It bothers me and it felt important to acknowledge this.

ICE Agents are Deliberately Crushing the Testicles of Boys and Men They've Detained in a Texas Torture Facility
Sworn declarations describe officers crushing detainees’ testicles, slamming heads into walls, and laughing while teens lose consciousness.

And two separate men described federal agents doing something so depraved it has a name in any honest world:

They say officers grabbed their testicles and crushed them.

Not in war.
Not in a “battle.”
Not in some chaotic emergency.

In U.S. custody. In a detention facility. Under the American flag.
Shaun King

Lakota Made LLC

United States government has been slaughtering people since its beginninng.
Not as accidents.
Not as “mistakes.”
But as policy
From the massacre of Indigenous nations, to the lynch mobs protected by law, to the bombing of Black communities, to the killing of labor organizers, to the forced sterilization and experimentation on people deemed disposablethis country was built on violence and has never stopped using it. Lets stop pretending this is new.
They tell us it’s history.
They tell us it’s safety.
They tell us it’s necessary.
But the pattern has always been control and profit.
Slowly, quietly, our human rights are stripped away in the name of protection. We’re given the illusion of choicetwo parties, one system while the same machinery continues forward. We’re taught to believe participation equals consent, that voting alone absolves the harm done in our name.,
We’ve been beaten.
We’ve been murdered.
We’ve been experimented on.
We’ve been hidden, erased, and dismissed ,so long that many of us have learned to accept it just to survive.
We pay the fees.
We pay the taxes.
We fund the wars.
We fund the policing.
We fund the violence carried out at home and abroad.
And then we’re told to be shocked when it comes back around.
I questioned this from the beginning, because deep down we know the truth: participation isn’t always a choice when the alternative is losing everything. your job, your home, your safety, your children. Compliance is demanded through paperwork, signatures, silence, and fear.
That doesn’t make us evil.
But it does make us complicit if we refuse to see it.
If this makes you uncomfortable, good.
If you think this is “too political,” then you’ve had the privilege of not having your existence debated.
If you’re surprised by any of this, you haven’t been paying attention.
Naming the truth is not extrremism.
Remembering history is not hate.
Refusing to stay silent is not violence.
Silence has never saved us.......
💜🌿✨️
No one is illegal on stolen land built by stolen hands......👈
Indigenous people did not “immigrate” here. We were already herelong before imaginary borders, long before the Bering Strait theory was used to justify removal, long before a government decided it could rename genocide as “settlement.” whitewashed stories disguised as "history"
In 1924, Indigenous people were finally declared “citizens” of the United States. Not because we asked to join. Not because we were welcomed. But because a nation built on our land decided it needed legal authority over usaf ter centuries of massacres, forced removals, broken treaties, boarding schools, sterilizations, and murder.
Citizenship did not erase what was done to us.
It did not return land.
It did not return our children.
It did not restore sovereignty.
Borders are imaginary lines enforced by violence. Laws written to protect theft are still theft. Paperwork does not absolve hundreds of years of abuseit only attempts to legitimize it.
You cannot criminalize existence.
You cannot erase ancestry with statutes.
You cannot launder genocide through legislation and call it order.
If you believe people are “illegal” for crossing borders drawn on stolen land, then you’ve confused paperwork with morality. And if that truth makes you uncomfortable, it’s because comfort was never meant to survive honesty.
We are still here.
And we are done pretending otherwise

Because of Them We Can
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Today, we honor the life and legacy of Angela Davis, an activist and scholar whose work has pushed so many of us to think more deeply about justice and freedom.
For decades, she’s challenged systems of power, spoken clearly about race, prisons, gender, and liberation, and reminded us that change is something we build together.
We're grateful for her voice, her principles, and the example she continues to set.
Happy Birthday, Angela Davis.

journalist Ken Klippenstein published a report on January 14, 2026, based on leaked internal DHS documents from an anonymous U.S. Border Patrol official who was reportedly "outraged" by ICE's conduct. The documents—a 15-page "sensitive" file marked "LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE"—detail 21 major secret ICE operations (often referred to as "dozens" in summaries) running nationwide under the current Trump administration.Key revelations from the leaks include:Extensive intelligence-gathering efforts, such as Operation Benchwarmer, which has deployed around 2,000 "intelligence assets" (potentially including informants or embedded personnel) across U.S. cities for surveillance on immigrants and American citizens.
Operation Abracadabra, which mandates interviewing 100% of detained individuals to gather intelligence, identify follow-on targets (e.g., stash houses), and link them to transnational criminal organizations, foreign terrorist organizations, or other threats—even if tenuously.
Other codenamed programs like Operation Tidal Wave (a Florida-wide effort resulting in over 1,100 arrests, only about 63% with criminal records) and others such as Dust Off, Fleur De Lis, etc., highlighting a broad, often covert enforcement and surveillance apparatus.
Use of plainclothes or embedded agents for intelligence collection, contributing to what the reporting describes as a "dizzying" and largely hidden scale of operations, with limited public oversight or congressional transparency.

The source's motivation appears tied to concerns over secrecy, lack of accountability (e.g., ICE's use-of-force policies being heavily redacted publicly), and broader DHS/ICE activities, including recent events like the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis and related surges in agent deployments.Klippenstein published this exclusively on his Substack (kenklippenstein.com), where he noted DHS has grown into the largest federal law enforcement agency (surpassing even the FBI), with ICE's budget nearly tripling in recent years. The story has been picked up and discussed across outlets like Salon, The New Republic, Alternet, Nation of Change, and Democracy Now!, often framing it as evidence of an expansive domestic surveillance and enforcement network targeting both undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens.This fits into Klippenstein's ongoing reporting on DHS/ICE leaks, including related pieces on internal divisions, agent unease after incidents like the Good shooting, and calls for more whistleblowers. No major official denials or contradictions from DHS/ICE appear in the coverage, though the agency has not publicly commented in detail on these specific leaks.

I read about the dumbing down of America. My belief is America was dumbed down long before my lifetime. We just notice it more because Roosevelt gave us a glimpse of what is possible before his influence waned and everything has since been reverting to the old ways, along with a planned coup by present day forces that well may succeed in destroying the final illusions of freedom and democracy. -eb

Nina Turner
ninaturner
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On May 13, 1985 in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania State Police dropped a bomb from a helicopter onto a Black neighborhood.

11 people were killed, 5 of whom were children.

As we see ICE terrorize communities, understand that saying “this isn’t who we are” is false.

🚨Democrats Made This Tweet Go Viral. Turned Out She Died in ICE Custody When Joe Biden Was President. The Cruelty Has Been Bi-Partisan for Generations.
If you only care about an injustice when you think Donald Trump did it, then you don't really care about the injustice at all. It's just politics to you.
Two days ago, Senate Democrats posted about an 8-year-old girl who died in U.S. custody, and the post went viral.

The assumption was that it must have happened under Donald Trump and Stephen Miller—because the cruelty we’re watching right now makes that assumption feel easy.

But the public context note mattered: Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez died in 2023, under Joe Biden—while Border Patrol held her. And then the volume dropped and the outrage disappeared.

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Let me be clear about something before I go any further.

I loathe Donald Trump. I loathe Stephen Miller. They are deeply unjust. They are openly cruel. They’ve built policies designed to terrorize immigrant communities and normalize suffering.

But if we only care about injustice when our political enemies do it, then we don’t actually care about justice. We care about team sports.

And a child’s death should never be used as a political football.

Anadith deserved better than selective outrage.

What happened to Anadith, in plain human language
According to reporting from news reports from 2023, Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez—an 8-year-old girl—died in Border Patrol custody on May 17th, 2023 after spending more than a week in detention facilities where staff dismissed or downplayed her pain and declined to take her to a hospital multiple times, according to her family and preliminary government reports.

Her parents say they begged. Over and over.

Her mother, Mabel Alvarez, told CBS News that a Border Patrol agent stood in front of her daughter and said:

“Tell me how you can’t breathe because a girl that can’t breathe would be passing out and you’re not passing out, you’re fine.”

That is a government agent speaking like that to an 8-year-old child in his custody.

Let that sit in your spirit. That sentence is a crime scene all by itself.

Alvarez said her pleas were treated like “a joke.” She said:

“They wouldn’t call an ambulance until she passed out — not before.”

And when they finally called one, the ambulance arrived in about five minutes. That’s when the mother realized how close the hospital was—how easily this could have been avoided—how needless it all was.

CBS News reports that Anadith had sickle cell anemia and a heart condition. Her parents said she was fine when she entered custody. But after days in detention, her health began to deteriorate. She developed abdominal pain, nasal congestion, a cough, and she tested positive for the flu. Her fever reportedly reached 104.9 degrees.

CBS reports she was seen by medical staff at least nine times at a Border Patrol station in Harlingen, Texas. She was given Tamiflu and fever medication, ice packs, and even a cold shower.

But she was not taken to a hospital—despite multiple requests from her mother and despite Anadith herself begging.

Her mother said Anadith told staff:

“I’m getting a little strength just to explain I can’t breathe. Not in my mouth nor my nose.”

And her father, Rossel Reyes, recalled seeing his daughter in distress and feeling something no parent should ever feel. He told CBS News he thought his daughter was saying:

“Daddy, I can’t go on. They killed me. I can’t go on.”

And then she collapsed. She suffered a seizure. She was finally transferred to a hospital minutes away and pronounced dead soon after.

Her mother said something that will break you if you let it:

“No one is going to argue that with me because I was carrying her and mothers know.”

“Clearly preventable.” That is not my phrase. That is an official finding.
CBS News reports that an independent federal court monitor called Anadith’s death “clearly preventable” and the result of “a series of failures” by government staff and contractors… under Joe Biden.

A top CBP official speaking anonymously to CBS News conceded this:

“It is my clinical opinion that were she treated differently that she would be alive today.”

And CBS reports that a nurse contractor admitted denying at least three requests to send Anadith to the hospital. Investigators found contractors failed to contact an on-call pediatrician and failed to properly document and review her medical visits and history.

This wasn’t a mystery illness. This wasn’t a lightning strike. This wasn’t “nobody could have known.”

This was a sick child with known risk factors, deteriorating in custody, while adults with power said no. Over and over.

The quiet truth: cruelty in immigration detention is bipartisan
Now, here’s where I need to speak directly to the moral sickness this revealed in our politics.

When the Senate Democrats post went viral, a lot of people reacted like: “Look what Trump is doing!”

When the context note said it happened in 2023 under Biden, many of those same people went quiet. Not everyone—but enough to show the pattern.

And that’s not just hypocrisy. It’s dangerous. Because it tells the system:

If you do cruelty under the right brand, it’s survivable.

Immigration detention in the United States has been cruel across administrations. Sometimes it’s loud and sadistic. Sometimes it’s bureaucratic and “procedural.” But the same human outcome appears again and again: people denied dignity, denied care, denied rights.

Sometimes the cruelty is men in masks with rifles.
Sometimes the cruelty is a clipboard and a shrug.

An 8-year-old girl with a 104.9 fever begging to breathe while an agent tells her she’s “fine” is not a partisan question. It’s a conscience question.

And the most damning part? CBS News reports Anadith’s family believes they were ignored because they are Afro-Honduran and Black. Her mother said:

“Everything they did to my family was discrimination.”

Whether or not the government admits discrimination, the lived reality Black migrants describe again and again is that their pain is doubted, minimized, mocked. It is not hard to see how that shows up here.

A child says she can’t breathe.
A mother begs for help.
A government agent responds with disbelief and contempt.

That’s not “policy.” That’s dehumanization.

The part that haunts me: virtually nobody talked about her in 2023
This is what I can’t shake.

Where was the viral outrage in 2023?

Where were the endless cable segments?

Where were the politicians using her name every day for weeks?

Where were the “This is America” speeches?

This sweet child died in government custody, after her parents say they begged for help and were refused, after officials later conceded she could have been saved—and the country moved on.

And here’s the ugly truth: part of why the story didn’t lodge in the national conscience is because it didn’t fit anyone’s political script at the time. It was inconvenient. It complicated the narrative. It forced people to admit that “our side” can preside over cruelty too.

So instead, it faded.

And that’s what I mean by selective outrage. Not just that people are hypocritical. But that victims become props. The attention isn’t actually about the child. It’s about the opponent.

But Anadith is not a prop.

She was a whole human being.

CBS reports her father said she dreamed of becoming a doctor. Her parents remember her jumping on the bed, eating popcorn, her desire to help others, her kisses and hugs, her “larger-than-life smile.”

And now she’s gone.

The lesson for this moment
If a person only gets public grief when their death can be blamed on the “right” villain, we are not a serious society.

If we can scream when we think it’s Trump, then go quiet when it’s Biden, we are training the government to keep doing evil—so long as it comes in a palatable package.

So here’s my line in the sand:

I will oppose Trump and Stephen Miller with everything in me.
And I will also refuse to pretend that Democratic administrations get a moral exemption on immigration cruelty.

Because justice is not a partisan instrument. Justice is a principle.

Anadith deserved that principle when she was alive.
She deserves it now.

What should have happened in 2023—and must happen now
An 8-year-old with sickle cell anemia and congenital heart disease should never be held for over a week in facilities designed for short-term processing.

A family should never be held beyond basic limits and then treated as an “operational drain” when a hospital trip is required. A child’s life is not an inconvenience.

And no agent should be allowed to speak to a suffering child the way Anadith was spoken to—without consequences.

CBS reports a district attorney in Cameron County launched a criminal probe into potential child neglect that could lead to possible prosecution. Good. Investigate. Prosecute where appropriate. And then fix the system so it can’t swallow another child.

But that only happens if we refuse selective outrage.

Because the machine relies on our short memory.

If this work matters, help keep it free
This is why I do what I do. Because stories like this get buried. Because children like Anadith get forgotten. Because both parties would rather you argue about branding than look straight at suffering.

If you want The North Star to keep telling the truth without flinching—no matter who is in power—please become a member today. Click here to become a member and Click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member. Membership keeps our reporting free for the world, and it helps us keep naming injustice even when it’s inconvenient.

The North Star with Shaun King is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Did you know Anadith’s name before this week? If not, why do you think the country forgot her so quickly?

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

Stacey Patton
People aren’t “crazy” or “conspiracy-brained” for questioning whether that Minneapolis protest video of Alex Pretti clashing with ICE agents is real. They’re responding RATIONALLY to a government that has already been caught manipulating reality!
This is the same administration that digitally altered the arrest photo of a Black civil rights attorney to make her look hysterical and out of control.
A random troll did not do this. It didn't come from a meme page. It was the state. The White House. Official channels. These assholes took a calm, composed Black woman being arrested and AI-massaged her face into tears to fit a narrative. And then they had the GALL to shrug and said, “The memes will continue.” Basically, they said we're gonna keep doing this ****.
So once the state shows it is willing to doctor images for political effect, every piece of visual “evidence” it circulates becomes suspect. Ain't no public trust.
So when footage surfaces of a protest, of federal agents, of a man later killed by the state, and people ask, “Is this real or is this manufactured?” that isn’t denialism. That’s folks exercising some media literacy in the age of slopaganda.
You don’t get to flood the public sphere with manipulated images and then act offended or like folk are crazy when the public starts squinting at every frame.
This is the world authoritarian politics creates. Reality is unstable, the camera can no longer be assumed to tell the truth, and the state trains people to doubt their own eyes and then blames them for the doubt.
This **** is Orwellian AF!

Any minute they’re gonna say they found 11,781 votes in GA.
R Garcia

Being Liberal

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😳😳 CNN just revealed that federal agents had documented details about Alex Pretti before executing him on Saturday. It is now clear he was on their radar: Agents broke his rib a week ago, entered him into a tracking system, and then killed him.
This follows the chilling pattern used against Marimar Martinez, who was flagged in a DHS memo right before agents ambushed her and shot her five times. They aren't just "keeping the peace"; they are marking targets.

Jan. 30 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency concerning Cuba, creating a new mechanism to impose tariffs on imports from any country that provides the island nation with oil.

The executive order Trump signed Thursday states that Cuba, its policies, practices and actions constitute "an unusual and extraordinary threat" to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.
_______________________________________________________________
Any country unable to stand up to our power is automatically our property -eb

In my view, our most immediate challenge is midterm elections. The administration is openly working every angle to crush our right to choose.
eb

It's entirely probable, although I'm not sure they could pull it off without cocking it up. I'm also not sure that would matter.


By the way, Donald's fixation on the past, and his use of the government to try to make his version of the past make sense is as insulting as it is embarrassing. He is aware however that living in the past is not a desirable quality, as he tried to make clear when he started feeling the Epstein heat last year:

Donald's also aware of the idea that it's not constructive to focus on trivial matters:

He said these things just days before he demanded that the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians change their names back.

Jason Hickel

The US is gearing up to literally starve Cuba into submission. It is absolutely criminal and obscene. And this to a country that everyone knows poses *zero* threat to the US.

The people of Cuba need our full solidarity in resisting this onslaught.

James🔻
GoodVibePolitik
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Good indication that U.S. special forces operators, I would assume Delta force operators similar to those we saw in Venezuela, are prepping for operations in or around Iran. Should that be the case, it means that the U.S. is prepping for ground assaults - an insane escalation.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice - - - you can't get fooled again.

Truthout

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Democrats caved and agreed to a deal with the White House, giving up a large bargaining chip to ensure their demands were taken seriously. Critics blasted Democrats’ demands as weak and ineffectual.