iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Kam @heartsapien.bsky.social · 2h

This picture reminds me of Portland, Oregon's Japanese Gardens.

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Reposted by Crip Dyke

Let’s be real, Minnesota has been a rightwing talking point and obsession since Ilhan Omar got elected to Congress in 2018. All their racism came out in full force because they don’t like that we like her and that she represents all of us.

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BTW: "Plane" was almost certainly a typo. It was almost certainly that the "plan" came down on April 6th. I meant to put a note about that in the alt-text, but forgot.

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I have reached a breaking point, I guess. I do not know how Trump can so nakedly repeat the tactics of RTLMC without an anti-murder majority in the national media erupting in truly volcanic fashion. I see it. I recognize it has happened before, but I do not understand the mindset that allows this.

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I'm so sorry you were made to feel that.

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PS. I am never fucking forgiving our national media. Ever.

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We have come so far, created such a civilization, left barbarism too distantly in the past to ever witness it again. To ask our politicians, the @nytimes.com , @cnn.com , our elites, our rabbis, our Cardinals to speak out is unnecessary. Genocide will never happen again. We know better now.

THE SURVIVOR: Innecent Rwililiza

"I have read that after each genocide historians explain that this will be the last. Because no one could again allow such an infamy. That is an amazing joke. Those responsible for the Rwanda genocide are not poor ignorant farmers, no more than they are ferocious and drunken interahahmwe -- they are the educated people. They are the professors, the politicians and the journalists who expatriated themselves to Europe to study the French Revolution and the Humanities.

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There are so many reasons not to speak up, not to give President Trump's fiery comments more oxygen. But perhaps the most compelling reason not to speak is that it simply cannot happen here. It cannot happen to us. It cannot happen today.

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Besides, conflict is inevitable in a diverse society. Immigrants must assimilate, muslims must find Jesus, gays must not flaunt, trans people must desist. We cannot be peaceful without a unified people. We cannot be one people without one set of values. For our own good, we must be purified.

Outstandingly effective murder

"In the land of philosophy that was Germany, genocide was intended to purify being and thought. In the rural land of Rwanda, genocide was meant to purify the earth, to cleanse it of its cockroach farmers. The Tutsi genocide was thus both a neighbourhood genocide and an agricultural genocide. And in spite of its summary organization and archaic tools, it was outstandingly effective.

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You could call this rhetoric against Minneapolis' Somali community racist. You could call the attacks on trans kids who just want to play games with their friends bigoted & sociopathic. But wouldn't that be using your educational privilege to demonize the uneducated? These ppl don't know better.

If educated man's heart is ill conceived, if he spills over with hatred, he will be more capable of evil-doing. In 1959 the Hutus relentlessly robbed, killed, and drove away Tutsis, but they never for a single day imagined exterminating them. It is the intellectuals who emancipated them, by planting the idea of genocide in their heads and sweeping away their hesitations.”
from A Time for Machetes: the Killers Speak by Jean Hatzfeld

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If we overreact now, we will only be offending the good people taken in by rhetoric. They don't deserve that. You're talking about fathers. Husbands. Brothers.

With me, he behaved nicely

“He came home often. He never carried a weapon, not even his machete. I knew he was a leader, I knew the Hutus were out there cutting Tutsis.

With me, he behaved nicely. He made sure we had everything we needed. Actually, he was steeped in bad politics but not in bad thoughts. He was gentle with the children. I did not want to ask him about the trouble that was spreading everywhere. To me, he was the nice man I married.” (Marie Chantal, talking about her husband, a killer)

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But surely the United States belongs to good Americans, and not to the leeches from shithole countries who come to steal our jobs and drain our public programs of the wealth that should be spent making Americans better off?

Direct quote from Radio/Television Libre Milles Collines:

"Rwanda belongs to those who really defend it."

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And even if all this is distasteful, upsetting, we must have sympathy for the economic anxieties of those upon whom Trump preys. So many people have been turned into sources of profit for others, while remaining impoverished themselves. Surely they have a right to desire better?

For the simplest farmers, it was refreshing to leave the hoe in the yard. We got rich, we went to bed with full bellies, we lived a life of plenty. Pillaging is more worthwhile than harvesting, because it profits everyone equally.

During the killings anyone with strong arms brought home as much as a merchant of quality. We could no longer count the panels of sheet metal we were piling up. The taxmen ignored us. The women were satisfied with everything they brought in. They stopped complaining.

Anyone who couldn’t loot because he had to be absent, or because he felt too tired from all he had done, could send his wife. You would see wives rummaging through houses. They ventured even into the marshes to get the belongings of the unfortunate women who had just been killed.

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Perhaps it's not the failure to fight that bothers you but the embrace of the weapons used by MAGA to further political careers of good people, of Dems who will vote for a Dem Senate Majority Leader or Speaker. But why should our stomachs turn if Dems borrow weapons to use as tools, for good works?

Even women and little girls borrow the machete for small tasks, like chopping firewood. Whatever the job, the same gesture always comes smoothly to our hands. The blade, when you use it to cut branch, animal, or man, it has nothing to say.

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We don't need to fight this battle now. We're just putting off defending Minneapolis' Somali community, or trans kids, or Springfield's Haitian people. No one is saying Amy Acton and Annie Andrews won't stand up if MAGA goes too far, and no harm comes from treating this as the distraction it is.

"When they saw the convoy disappear in the dust without even a little stop for curiosity or a drink on the Main Street, they celebrated with some Primus and shot off the cartridges in their guns as a sign of relief. You could see they felt saved. They were rid of the last stumbling block, so to speak."

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Even if one was inclined to worry, Trump's opponents are on the way. There's a huge Blue Wave coming, haven't you heard? Don't catastrophize. We don't need doomers. Everything will be okay.

NO ONE WILL STOP US

INNOCENT RWILILIZA, a survivor, witnessed the passage of the armoured cars: "They caused a big panic among the interahahmwe who were already roving in the streets, heating themselves up with sudden bursts of gunfire. Some of them shouted, "The whites are here, others will come, they have terrible weapons, it's all over for us!"

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The reality, of course, is that while all this is scary, Trump's most extreme supporters are very small in number. What is the Proud Boys membership, after all? One should not overestimate the threat from a few violent men so drastically outnumbered. How many killers are there among us, really?

“Killing is very discouraging if you yourself must decide to do it, even to an animal. But if you must obey the orders of the authorities, if you have been properly prepared, if you feel yourself pushed and pulled, if you see that the killing will be total and without disastrous consequences for yourself, you feel soothed and reassured. You go off to it with no more worry."

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Surely when -- excuse me, I mean "IF," Trump starts organizing for actual attacks there will be plenty of time then for media and anti-Trump political leaders to act. We don't want to be hysterical about something that hasn't even happened yet. Relax. We'll take care of things when the need arises.

On April 10 the burgomaster (mayor) in a pressed suit and all the authorities gathered us together. They lectured us, they threatened in advance anyone who bungled the job, and the killings began without much planning.

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Yes, trans people have been fleeting red states in a manner that can be called "precedented" in only the loosest sense. But if you look, there aren't MAGA militia on the streets right now. They're at home drinking beer, just watching FOX and reading social media. This is different from before.

"The plane came down April 6. A very small number of local Hutus went straight for retaliation. But most waited four days in their houses and in the nearest cabarets, listening to the radio, watching Tutsis flee, chatting and joking without planning a thing.

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Trump is, after all, friends with a number of Black people. Didn't he work on sentencing reform and clemency with them? Nicki Minaj! Ye! Teddy Riley! Whatever we do, we certainly cannot call Trump racist with all these Black friends. It's ... complicated.

My friend the killer

[Picture of survivor Josephine Munyeli who supplied the quote below]

"I ran into a big group of interahamwe (the Hutu militia) armed with machetes and grenades. They were on the road killing people and damaging vehicles.

"This was in February - you know, the killing started long before April 1994. They started pushing me around and saying, "come and look at the Tutsi." All kinds of evil words. But an army major saw me in the hands of the killers and put me in his vehicle and took me to my office.

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Besides, how serious could Trump even be with invitations to nuke San Diego still on his lips, can the media - or anyone in power - be expected to take seriously his exhortations to "fight" Black Americans in Minneapolis merely because many are or descend from Somali immigrants?

Some people - including the Belgian ambassador and staff of several aid agencies - recognised the danger and asked for international help in shutting down the broadcasts, but it was impossible to persuade western diplomats to take it seriously. They dismissed the station [RTLMC] as a joke.

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But what can we do? We have the precedent of Kangura magazine and Radio/Television Libre Milles Collines ("The Free Thousand Hills"). Can we treat Trump with less deference than we treated RTLMC? At stake here is a fundamental US value:

David Rawson, the US ambassador, said that its euphemisms were open to interpretation. The US, he said, believed in freedom of speech.

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When Trump speaks, it is assumed that he says nothing, and that it means nothing. But the danger is not that we have a president who means nothing, but that we have a president who encourages our fears to mean everything:

A pathological hatred

"These men really did believe that they were about to be returned to the dark ages of Tutsi autocracy.

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Crip Dyke @cripdyke.bsky.social · 4h

Donald Trump had over 2M followers on Truth Social in 2025, including institutional accounts representing every major media organization in the USA and many of their reporters as individuals.

Before and during the genocide, all inside Rwanda, as well as many who lived abroad, were aware of RTLMC's direct incitement to violence against Tutsis. It nonetheless pursued its broadcasting without much interference.

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I love Dawn Staley and I love that she did this for A'ja.

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Reposted by Crip Dyke

U.S. Representative Al Green @algreen.house.gov · 4h

Reps. Tlaib and Green lead letter demanding release of DACA recipient in ICE custody Ya’akub Ira Vijandre has now been in ICE custody for a year for ‘liking’ a social media post You can read the letters by clicking here: algreen.house.gov/media/press-...

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Crip Dyke @cripdyke.bsky.social · 4h

With the exception of Justine's unfortunate misspelling of "adorkable" I endorse this message.

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Crip Dyke @cripdyke.bsky.social · 4h

Oh, thank you! Or you're welcome, I guess. I just ... care. Ferociously. And can't shut up. Put those things together and I guess you get my threads. If there's wisdom in there, so much the better. Please prod me if there's ever anything you think I could do better or talk about more.

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@drannieandrews.com I think you should know that hating people is bad, actually. I know it's hard to believe in the age of Trump, but now, more than ever, choosing not to hate people is going to be important.

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I was literally just writing a thread about ACAB everywhere. I cannot wait to get started abolishing all law enforcement agencies.

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Exactly. Chiefs still use that phrase, and I keep waiting on the media to actually remember the entire phrase and call them on it.

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But all of our law enforcement agencies -- all of them -- must be disbanded, reimagined, and then replaced with some entirely new thing if we are ever to have a force for good, if we are ever to have a place where someone who has been raped can go, & tell the truth, & get what they need & deserve.

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Our law enforcement agencies cannot be gently massaged into a force for good. I've said in the past that we don't have to tear them all down simultaneously and go without anything for a period of time. Instead we can tear down one while others cover its work. Then do the next.

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Whether it's letting politicians get away with crimes, their inability to address rape, their dismal rates of solving murders, their racism, their violence, their lying in court, their constant pattern of time card fraud, their cover ups, or even just their repeated broken promises of reform...

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There simply is no way that existing policing institutions can fill the role of public trust, safety, and service that we ask them to do.

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Either way, why would you expect a woman in Boston or Cambridge or Marblehead to feel comfortable heading off to the cop shop to report your own rape to the people who either like rapists enough to elect them union head or just don't give a fuck about whether child rapists rape children?

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