300 million tourists just visited China's stunning Xinjiang region. There's a side they didn't see

For years, Xinjiang had bristled under Beijing's rule, sometimes erupting into violence, which kept many domestic Chinese tourists away. Then it became infamous for some of the worst allegations of Chinese authoritarianism, from the detention of more than a million Uyghur Muslims in so-called "re-education camps", to claims of crimes against humanity, by the United Nations.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8x1rnnd5gjo

Extremely concerning... Looking into it! 🧐

Interview: Venezuela’s militias and the civil-military union

October 30, 2025 - www.red-spark.org

So, in the face of this threat, our militias are prepared and we have very high morale. Just as the militias are prepared for civil duties, we are prepared in the strategic concept of permanent war. We understand the necessity of resistance, of the people in arms and of providing material and logistical support to the entire resistance effort of the armed struggle. We are constantly training in the tactical methods of revolutionary resistance and training in different disciplines of combat so that we can mesh with other combatants in other areas. The militias are prepared, organised and trained to be able to execute any type of manoeuvre in order to resist any attempt to desecrate Venezuelan sovereignty.

We will defend our homeland. If we must resist for 50 years, or 100 years, we will do it and we will resist with everything we have at hand. We will not surrender our homeland to any imperialist power.

https://red-spark.org/2025/10/30/interview-venezuelas-militias-and-the-civil-military-union/

img description crowd of people behind an APC, there's a woman in a pink garfield shirt holding a rifle

The complaints — filed by the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization, the ACLU, and the National Immigration Project — claim the abuse took place between 2023 and 2025, across two presidential administrations.

[...]

“It got to the point where he would harass me everywhere that I went,” Monica Renteria-Gonzalez, who identifies as male, told Newsweek in an interview from the South Louisiana Detention Center in Basile.

“If I was in the recreation yard, he would come and he would follow me. If I was eating at the dining hall, he would come and just sit there next to me, making me feel uncomfortable. He would follow me into the dorm,” Renteria-Gonzalez added

He and two other trans detainees, Kenia Campos-Flores and Mario Garcia-Valenzuela, say they were targeted by the warden with an ad hoc, forced-work program and subjected to manual labor for little or no compensation.

Detainee complaints about the abusive conditions were allegedly met with the same repsonse: “‘If you wanna be a man, I’ll treat you like a man’, or ‘Aren’t you strong enough? Aren’t you a man?’”

The forced labor included pushing heavy cinder blocks or metal cabinets across a dorm before detainees were ordered to push them back to where they came from.

[...]

Multiple complaints about the alleged mistreatment were dismissed as “unsubstantiated.”

[...]

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, the Homeland Security official tasked with refuting multiple claims of abuse by ICE and its proxies in President Trump’s war on immigrants, responded to the allegations in typically bellicose language employing questionable statistics.

The allegations were “another hoax about ICE facilities,” she said, dismissing the detainees claims as the types of “smears” that are “directly contributing to our officers facing a 1000% increase in assaults against them.” She didn’t provide a source for her statistic nor said whether the alleged assaults were against officers in ICE facilities or in cities where ICE officers have forcibly injured and detained people without due process.

DHS is really out here openly defending ICE under a previous administration, its a big beautiful fascist machine folks, one of the best, vote blue

i cant include a picture because she is overly verbose, and the replies are even worse with their weird word choices, wow so literature, such words

Emma Watson went on a podcast and made a comment about how she wishes people who disagree with her could still love her, or something, ya know mummy issues and all that jazz

there's an article about it here from TheAge.com https://archive.md/T6C0Q

I'm seeing quite a bit of comment about this, so I want to make a couple of points.

I'm not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days.

Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn't want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.

However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right - nay, obligation - to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.

When you've known people since they were ten years old it's hard to shake a certain protectiveness. Until quite recently, I hadn't managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I've repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn't want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said.

The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma's 'all witches' speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence 'I'm so sorry for what you're going through' (she has my phone number). This was back when the death,removed and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family's safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.

Like other people who've never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she's ignorant of how ignorant she is. She'll never need a homeless shelter. She's never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I'd be astounded if she's been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her 'public bathroom' is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door. Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-runremoved crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a maleremoved who's identified into the women's prison?

I wasn't a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women's rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.

The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me - a change of tack I suspect she's adopted because she's noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was - I might never have been this honest.

Adults can't expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love, as though the friend was in fact their mother. Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public - but I have the same right, and I've finally decided to exercise it.

https://xcancel.com/jk_rowling/status/1972600904185483427

I'm trying to jump off youtube, and i'm finding means.tv a bit overwhelming and hard to navigate, if anyone has suggestions I'd love recommendations

Thanks in advance, maybe ill collate some of the cool things ive found in the last couple of days (but not right now)

‘I want to be buried in a land of a sovereign’ – the 95-year-old Korean POW wants to die in the North

[...]

"I just want my body to rest in a truly independent land," he said. "A land free from imperialism."

[...]

in 2000, he turned down the chance to be sent back to the North along with dozens of other prisoners who also wanted to return.

He had been optimistic then that ties between the two sides would improve, that their people would be able to travel back and forth freely.

But he chose to stay because he feared leaving would be a win for the Americans.

"At the time, they were pushing for US military governance [in the South]," he said.

"If I returned to the North, it would've felt like I was just handing over my own bedroom to the Americans - vacating it for them. My conscience as a human being just couldn't allow that."

[...]

[after being tortured in prison] "Whenever I regained consciousness, the first thing I checked was my hands - to see if there was any red ink on them," Mr Ahn recalled in his July interview.

That usually signalled that someone had forced a fingerprint onto a written oath of ideological conversion.

"If there wasn't, I'd think, 'No matter what they did, I won'. And I felt satisfied."

[...]

Mr Ahn, however, dismissed the suggestion of any humanitarian concerns in the North, blaming the media for being biased and only reporting on the dark side of the country. He argues that North Korea is prospering and defends Kim's decision to send troops to aid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

[...]

"I lived under Japanese colonial rule all those years. But I don't want to be buried under [American] colonial rule, even in death."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1jnk1dr5pgo

anything I cut out was just the BBC writer saying stuff like 'we're not sure what he meant by 'giving his bedroom over to the americans'', when his message is clear, death to imperialism!

the article does contain a video of him giving a speech

the misogyny is implicit

img description: tweet from musk that reads Overheard at a party "if your gf's a 10, she's an asset" 15k likes, 49 minutes ago

Link to twit https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1956516195093647693#m

🫡

someone tag the australian broardcasting corporation.

I feel cautious joking about this, but I have no where to share this, and I'm trying to force optimism onto myself.

A document seen by the BBC's US partner CBS describes the potential resettlement as a "priority" for President Donald Trump's government, however the timing has not been publicly confirmed by the White House.

In a statement published on Friday, South Africa's foreign ministry described the purported move as "politically motivated" and designed to undermine South Africa's "constitutional democracy".

In February, Trump described Afrikaners as victims of "racial discrimination" in an executive order, opening up the prospect for them to resettle in the US.

🫠 if the usa wasnt a settler colony I could almost get excited about this, at least send them to the netherlands or something.

there's mention in the article that the RSA govt is objecting because it suspects some of these people are running from criminal charges, classic

🏳️‍⚧️

BIGOTRY WON'T FIX YOUR RENT

Banner seen on unceded Kaurna land, Trans Day of Action, 2025

source, instagram

its a tv miniseries

saw it mentioned in a youtube video by FD signifier, I just finished the first episode, and I enjoyed it a lot, something about needing positive propaganda not just constant commenting on reactionary garbage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_a_Virgo

synopsis below, directed by Boots riley, released 2023

Cootie is a 13-foot-tall (4.0 m), 19-year-old Black teenager raised by his Aunt Lafrancine and Uncle Martisse in Oakland, California. He is shielded from the outside world until being accidentally discovered by a group of teenage political activists