A top FBI official toed the White House line about antifa as a major domestic terror threat at a House hearing on Thursday — but he struggled to answer questions about the leaderless movement.

Pressed repeatedly by a top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee about antifa’s size and location, the operations director of the FBI’s national security division didn’t have answers.

At one point, the FBI’s Michael Glasheen fumbled with his hands as he tried to find an answer for the question from Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.

“Well, the investigations are active,” Glasheen said.

Art by Derek Evernden

From https://xcancel.com/i/status/1999173119010046339 (https://x.com/i/status/1999173119010046339)

I recently had a conversation with someone who continued to claim that Russia wasn't democratic even after i proved that V.Putin was at the top of even surveys made by westerners, what would be the point for him of cheating at elections if he's the favorite ? He was elected democratically(, and in truth every election is oligarchic/pseudo-aristocratic since representative democracy is an oxymoron, contrary to the athenian democracy through sortition, or eventually in switzerland or the local venezuelan participative democracy, but w/e).
He didn't follow with an argument on russian medias, but if he did i'd have pointed that Russia's elections would then be as "democratic" as western countries, not less. The problem is that they've been supporting, e.g., Venezuela when it was recently attacked, and here's their indian media. That is the only problem we(sterners) have with them :

The e.u. manifestedly feared to include the russian federation as a member(, biggest missed opportunity ever[1], even if i thank them for refusing hegemony, perhaps because they thought they'd lose it inside the e.u.), but will insist to keep Ukraine, and even the Donbass region and Crimea ?
If Russia doesn't conquer the whole of Ukraine, then it'll have to ensure that what remains won't be able to take its revenge on the (ex?-)ukrainians who rejected a e.u.&n.a.t.o. that opposes Russia/them. It's the west that made Ukraine the poorest european country, not the u.s.s.r., don't reward their treachery.
[1] : Byzance's heir could have reunited with Rome. They also rejected Türkiye, Islam could have reunited with Christianity. Obviously in our mind currently it's about being united in uniformity, so i don't mind.
(During the Hundred Years’ War, the treaty of Troyes would have united England and France in a single country, would that not have made France more powerful ? Again, we'd have to find ways to preserve diversity despite unity though. Also, i'm from France and we kept 0 cultural link with french-speaking african countries for some reasons, but we'll contradictorily want them to keep our language and know our history.)

Anyway, it's urgent to find a way to live united together, we can't eternally compete for hegemony, the u.n. was merely a start. I.m.o. we should have a world government and a world army(, in order to ensure each other's safety), but only with, like, 3-5 world rules and no more(, and only modified by an almost-impossible unanimity), to ensure it won't become a tyranny.
I.d.k. if you have a thought on that or another solution for a better future(, since only having communist countries, and even getting rid of nationalism, wouldn't necessarily ensure peace) ?

(Perhaps would i have received more comments/critics on an other instance)

- me after having lunch

The comment area she wrote: Side Quest!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7003284

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/12809

At a time when the American public, and especially Democratic voters, express overwhelming distrust of artificial intelligence and Big Tech, the top House Democrat is being accused of failing to meet the moment.

On Tuesday, in preparation for an executive order to be signed this week by President Donald Trump, which would seek to block states from implementing new AI regulations, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) unveiled his own effort to cozy up to the industry, whose major players have set aside more than $200 million to push out anti-AI politicians during the 2026 midterms, according to the New York Times.

Jeffries announced the creation of a “House Democratic Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy,” which will “develop policy expertise in partnership with the innovation community, relevant stakeholders, and committees of jurisdiction.”

What immediately caught the eye of critics was the list of fellow Democrats Jeffries picked to serve on the commission. It will be co-chaired by Reps. Ted Lieu (Calif.), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), and Valerie Foushee (NC), with Reps. Zoe Lofgren (Calif.) and Frank Pallone (NJ) serving as ex officio co-chairs.

As Sludge reported Tuesday: "The panel’s leaders rank among the House Democrats with the deepest ties to Big Tech and AI, from holding millions of dollars in tech stock to the contributions they’ve raised for their campaigns and the Republican-backed deregulation bills they've signed onto."

In July, Gottheimer introduced a bill along with Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) "that would require financial regulators to create 'AI Innovation Labs' where firms could experiment with AI-driven financial products under looser regulations and without the normal threats of enforcement actions."

Gottheimer is also a major stakeholder in Microsoft, which has invested tens of millions of dollars into AI and nearly $7.5 million on lobbying in 2025 so far. Beyond the almost $100,000 in contributions Gottheimer has received from Microsoft, he is also a former executive who received anywhere from $1 million to $5 million last year from his stock holdings in the company, according to financial disclosure forms. He also frequently trades in other AI power players like Amazon, Meta, and Dell.

Lofgren, meanwhile, has accepted more money from the Internet industry over the course of her career than all but one other current House Democrat—including $265,000 from Google, $115,000 from Apple, and $110,000 from Meta, according to data from OpenSecrets.

In September 2024, Lofgren co-sponsored a bill introduced by Rep. Jay Abernolte (R-Calif.) which "would create a federal 'center for AI advancement and reliability' that it would instruct to work closely with private companies and other stakeholders on developing 'voluntary best practices and technical standards for evaluating the reliability, robustness, resilience, security, and safety of artificial intelligence systems.'"

Foushee, a member of the corporate-backed New Democrat Coalition, rode to Congress in 2022 with more than $1 million from the Protect Our Future political action committee, which was backed by former FTX CEO and convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

In response to Trump's industry-friendly "AI Action Plan" in July, Foushee and the New Democrats unveiled their own "Innovation Agenda," which called for federal tax credits to companies that "reskill" workers and perform private research and development as well as federal investments in apprenticeships and "labor market data modernization."

Jeffries has neglected to take a position on Trump's proposal to preempt state regulations. Last Monday, he told reporters, "That conversation hasn't been brought to the leadership level yet."

In his statement announcing the Democratic commission on Tuesday, Jeffries said, "It is important that American companies continue to thrive" in the arena of AI, while "at the same time, Congress must consider what policies are needed to prevent bad actors from exploiting this transformative technology and inflicting harm upon the American people." However, he did not specifically mention Trump's pending block on state regulations.

— (@)

A poll released Friday by the progressive group Demand Progress showed that Americans across the political spectrum are unsettled by AI's influence in Washington: 68% of respondents overall said they were more worried that "the US government will not regulate artificial intelligence enough," as opposed to just 21% who feared too much regulation. While Democrats and independents were somewhat more concerned about underregulation at 71%, Republicans largely shared those fears, with 62% saying they feared the government would not regulate AI enough.

The consensus was even stronger regarding Big Tech's power over AI policy, with 78% of respondents overall saying it had too much influence. This included 81% of Democrats and independents and 74% of Republicans.

With this in mind, many critics were puzzled by Jeffries' decision to stack his AI commission with some of the industry's top allies.

— (@)

As Aaron Regunberg wrote in the New Republic last month, harnessing anger against the rapid, largely unregulated expansion of expensive, energy-sucking AI data centers was an essential part of Democrats' victories across the board in November's off-year elections:

In New Jersey, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill’s closing argument was a pledge to freeze electricity rates, which have soared because of data-center demand.

In Virginia, Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger won after pledging to make data centers “pay their own way,” and many Democrats went even further.

At least one candidate, John McAuliff, flipped a seat in the House of Delegates by focusing almost entirely on tying his Republican opponent to the “unchecked growth” of data centers, with an ad that asked, “Do you want more of these in your backyard?”

And in Georgia, Democrats won their first nonfederal statewide races in decades, earning 60% of the vote against two Republican members of the Public Service Commission by criticizing Big Tech “sweetheart deals” and campaigning for policies “to ensure that the communities that they’re extracting from” don’t end up with their “water supplies … tapped out or their energy … maxed out.”

"This is the most populist moment of voter rage I've ever seen, and the leading Democrats are absolutely hostile to the idea of doing anything to address Silicon Valley's massive power," said Matt Stoller, an anti-monopoly expert.

"Anticorruption is one of the strongest arguments with the broadest appeal in American politics right now, but the Democratic leadership simply refuses to stop tanking it," added Matt Duss, a former advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

"I have never seen a gulf this wide between Democratic leadership and the party writ large," said author Zachary D. Carter. "The top is corrupt, the base is raging against corruption."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

NATO chief Mark Rutte on Thursday urged alliance members to realise that they are Russia's next targets, urging them to step up defence efforts to prevent a possible war with Moscow "on the scale our grandparents endured". Rutte also argued that a peace plan in Ukraine would be a test of whether Russia "really wants peace".

here the whole speech

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/40189934

By Maha Hussaini and Mohammed al-Hajjar in Gaza City, occupied Palestine
Published date: 11 December 2025 12:50 GMT

A Palestinian infant died from the cold on Thursday as heavy rain across the Gaza Strip continued for a second day, flooding tented encampments and roads.

Eight-month-old Rahaf Abu Jazar died in Khan Younis after rainwater leaked into her family’s tent during overnight storms.

Her family was among hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians awoken in the night as torrential downpours inundated the makeshift shelters they rely on for protection.

Gaza’s war-damaged sewage system also overflowed under the heavy rain.

“We are drowning in rainwater mixed with sewage,” said Amal Eleiwa from Gaza City.

I'll give the author a modicum of credit, I didn't know wood banks were a thing, so at least I learned something. But gotta lambast them everywhere else.

Rural America knows the truth long before the rest of the country feels it.

Rural America wouldn't know the truth if it bit them in the ass. This is what they voted for, a silver spoon city slicker who calls functioning institutions "the deep state" before totally destroying them, to their delight.

The article is full of this coddling "woe is they" language.

Rural families don’t get to pretend. ... They also know what it means when everything gets privatized except the consequences.

What a load of baloney. Rural voters have been playing pretend my entire life, to the tune of 64% support for Trump in 2024. They've been pretending that piss-down economics works since the 80's. Maybe you mean they can't afford to pretend, but they've been happily running a deficit on that front and won't stop even if they freeze in the winter.

So I say let them freeze. They can beg for scrap wood and call it charity, because that's exactly what they wanted.

The American weapons maker Anduril says its founding purpose is to arm democratic governments to safeguard the Western way of life. The company’s official mission document, titled “Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy,” contains 14 separate references to democracy, two more than the name of the company. Building weapons isn’t simply a matter of national security, the company argues, but a moral imperative to protect the democratic tradition. “The challenge ahead is gigantic,” the manifesto says, “but so are the rewards of success: continued peace and prosperity in the democratic world.”

Mentions of democracy are noticeably absent, however, from Anduril’s recent announcement of a new joint venture with a state-run bomb maker from an authoritarian monarchy that is facilitating a genocide.

Anduril is partnering with EDGE Group, a weapons conglomerate controlled by the United Arab Emirates, a nation run entirely by the royal families of its seven emirates that permits virtually none of the activities typically associated with democratic societies. In the UAE, free expression and association are outlawed, and dissident speech is routinely and brutally punished without due process. A 2024 assessment of political rights and civil liberties by Freedom House, a U.S. State Department-backed think tank, gave the UAE a score of 18 out of 100.

"Three-year deal lets users create AI videos of Mickey Mouse, Darth Vader, and more."

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/12/disney-invests-1-billion-in-openai-licenses-200-characters-for-ai-video-app-sora/

I'm sure that's going to take about 30 minutes before they begin to regret the videos coming out of it...

More than 110 Palestinian prisoners have died from torture and mistreatment since Itamar Ben-Gvir became Israel’s security minister. Now he wants the power to hang them.