Stoking Civil War To Stave Off The Revolution We Need

Detail from "America This Week: On Homeland Security's New Snitching Game"

Two men in my family gave the moms carte blanche to do whatever we wanted to do this morning. So, here goes!

I was tempted to construct this blog post as a series of screenshots from articles recently remembered by the web browser on my phone. It would look something like this:

Mother's Day in the U.S. has me thinking of the mothers and grandmothers of the children in Gaza targeted by Israeli bombing last week. The kids had to die because their elders are Palestinian resistance leaders, according to Israel.

This hilarious block of Matt Taibbi's article on censorship -- allegedly on the grounds that the article was "hate speech" -- has since been lifted following an outcry by Taibbi's readers.

Mary Beth Sullivan's excellent letter to the editor is behind a paywall at the Portland Press Herald so here's a photo from the paper copy:

I write this blog to keep my head from exploding as I consider the news of the day. 

The item below has my head continuously exploding as I try to process the marriage of artificial "intelligence" to East German Stasi-style culture where every person is an informer. This coupling is sure to produce multiple Frankenstein's monsters, but this particular example of our corporate overlords stoking civil war to stave off the revolution we so badly need is chilling to say the least. 

As Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn discuss, the Department of Homeland Security created in the wake of 9/11 now turns its attention to so-called domestic terrorists. In other words, your tax dollars are being used to fund a program that will train your neighbors and their kids to inform on you lest you become a threat to domestic tranquility. Or what's left of tranquility in a land where there is a mass shooting on average every two weeks, where more people of color are incarcerated than anywhere else on the planet, and where industrial and military  pollution render human life tenuous.

Here's a link to the full article on Racket News.

After they discuss the so-called Resilience Project and the "DHS OTVTP Choose Your Own Adventure Online" for inter-American spying, Taibbi and Kirn go on to have a literary discussion about a short story. Because they suspect that very soon we will be constrained in discussing political realities and current events, and we'll have to do so mainly via metaphor.

If this reminds you of what you were taught about life in Soviet Russia, it should. If this doesn't remind you of what you're discovering about tech platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and reddit colluding with the U.S. government to surveil and censor users, it should.

A final thought. Am I the only one who thinks the name "substack" for the self-publishing platform I've been reading and just began publishing on is reminiscent of the Soviet-era term samizdat?

Why Care About The Twitter Files As We Rush Toward WW3?

Source: "Twitter to Begin Using 'Blue Check' Status as a 'Big Brother' Weapon?" Tom Blumer, November 19, 2017

As a high school teacher 15 years ago, I showed students the Laura Poitras documentary on Edward Snowden's NSA whistleblowing and subsequent hair raising escape. They enjoyed the film but were mystified at the excitement. What was the big deal about Snowden's revelations? they asked me. 

It was a big deal because he revealed that the telecom corporations were spying on everybody, I told them.

The reaction of teenagers the second decade of the 21st century? Duh, which is Homer Simpson-speak for only a complete idiot didn't know that already.

Now I feel like the Twitter files are at least as significant but much of my generation views this as another giant Duh. 

Social media platforms are censoring our speech quietly behind the scenes, so what?

In fact it is a huge revelation that numerous government employees (including the delightfully named Elvis Chan of the FBI's Las Vegas office) spent untold hours of their taxpayer-funded time insisting that Twitter silence dissent. Elvis and the others did this rather than engaging in the law enforcement we're told the FBI exists to do.

Liberals have gotten quickly caught up in the personalities around the Twitter files dump of internal data -- and it's easy to do. It would appear that billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter for the purpose of revealing the private messages of work colleagues discussing how to handle the U.S. government's increasing demands for 1) intervention in the debate about the pandemic and how best to respond and 2) intervention in the 2020 presidential election. The sequence of those two interventions is not without significance. 

Also, some of the journalists Musk selected to work with are conservative. One exception is investigative reporter Matt Taibbi (who used to publish in Rolling Stone before it was captured by the security state now infiltrating most legacy media). Since Musk is himself a wealthy conservative who thinks it's okay to overthrow governments of nations with large reserves of the elements needed to make his electric cars, no surprises there. But let's not fail to understand that Twitter has been systematically silencing not only far-right voices but politically left voices as well. (Silencing both is probably fine with liberals who have monumentally failed to stick up for speech that doesn't align with their views.)

According to the journalists, they received a large dump of internal communications from Twitter and the only constraints they agreed to on their reporting  was the requirement that they "break" their stories on Twitter before publishing elsewhere.

So far this reporting has brought us news of how Twitter worked to suppress the entirely true story of Hunter Biden's laptop and its contents implicating Senator Joe Biden in corrupt business deals in Ukraine prior to his election as president; how Twitter silenced numerous medical researchers and clinical practitioners debating as scientists do about a novel virus; and how Twitter began designating accounts as "_______ state-affiliated media" where you fill in the blank of the enemy du jour of the U.S. empire.

From the Twitter Files as published by Matt Taibbi January 3, 2023

Some have downplayed the significance of this quiet censorship for years saying, Twitter (or Facebook) is a company not the government so it cannot by definition be in violation of the 1st amendment right to freedom of speech. But what if government was actually pulling the levers of speech repression from behind the scenes? 

What if the FBI paid Twitter $3.41 million to censor speech?

Link to the thread containing this tweet. 

Others have made the argument: so what, Facebook is much worse. And indeed Twitter users for a long time cherished the mistaken belief that their favorite platform, the digital town square where ideas were supposedly shared and debated openly (as the founder of Twitter claims was the goal), was in fact free and open. Twitter was the respectable social media platform, the intelligent choice, where policy makers and journalists and the public who were paying attention gathered. 

Not everyone believes as I do that information control is the ball to keep your eyes on.

But as warmongering members of Congress slip seamlessly into new roles as CNN talking heads, I think I'm right to be alarmed at how insidious censorship in our day has become.

Just look at the war in Ukraine. Information management has all corporate media cheering for our proxy war against Russia, and those of us who dare to dissent find our accounts canceled, with the videos on our YouTube and Vimeo channels disappeared. Despite having tens of thousands of followers; or, perhaps, precisely because the canceled accounts had built up a large number of followers.

Did I mention that the corporate media have pretty much ignored the Twitter Files? 

Interest on Twitter itself is strong, however, and likely to remain so as we anticipate the next reveal. 

If you're still not sure that ideas are as powerful as facts on the ground, consider the current campaign to make you believe that a nuclear war is either survivable or winnable. President Biden has said a first-strike with nukes is on the table, a table likely to be reduced to smoldering radioactive ash as WW3 ensues.

The Emperor's New Clothes Are Awfully Revealing

Not since the days when I helped plan satirical plays for a gravel pit in West Athens, Maine have I laughed so hard. The simultaneous meltdown of Twitter's ability to verify its high profile users and the resulting outburst of creative fun have been a welcome relief from the relentless bad news of the day: bait-and-switch on a few crumbs of student loan forgiveness, simultaneous CIA regime change operations aimed at Russia, China, and Iran, and cold weather approaching while hundreds of thousands in the U.S. are without homes.

The closest thing the U.S. empire has to an emperor is the SpaceX CEO, a man who inexplicably bought a highly successful social media platform in order to .. run it into the ground? It's likely he thought it would bend to his will because, hey, he's a billionaire and that's how things work. But it turns out that's not how free or even partially free speech works. 

In a shocking revelation that legitimacy cannot be purchased (who would have guessed?) the sale of the blue check mark quickly turned into a free for all where, as one wag put it, kids spent their lunch money to impersonate Fortune 500 companies. And this tanked their stocks!

Another thrilling example of an evil, bloodsucking corporation lampooned financially with humor:

Verification on sale for $7.99 a month quickly led to a hall of mirrors as accounts scrambled to claim to be who they said they were (or weren't, as the case may be).

Needless to say, the emperor himself came in for a lot of impersonation as did his once valuable platform.

Social media is a newish phenomenon, unlike building cars or even rocket ships. But one of its most well-established tenets is: if you're getting a service for free, then YOU are the product. Because the owners of the platform can sell access to you to their advertisers. Charging you to be the product exhibits the confusion of those who think anything can be monetized to their advantage.

Did I mention that while taking an ax to the free-content-from-famous-people model that built Twitter, the new owner also decided to fire 50% of the workers? The speed with which this was done violated labor laws in several states. 

And the new normal at Twitter may entail generating income by selling users' personal data in ways that are prohibited by law. But not to worry -- the emperor's personal lawyers assured his remaining employees that they would be safe from legal repercussions if they followed his orders.  I doubt that many of Twitter's remaining workers were dumb enough to fall for that. 

It takes a special kind of wealth and worldly success to engender the hubris to make these kinds of blunders. 

Did I mention that the emperor also tweeted the day before the midterms to vote Republican? But, like many of his tweets as supreme leader of the bird, he took that one back down.

Pessimists are predicting that, without the terminated software engineers to keep the bird aloft, it will lose more feathers each day until it eventually sinks to Earth. Notwithstanding the fact that many who were fired were offered their jobs back almost immediately, you won't be surprised to hear that many considered themselves well out of the chaos and declined. (A slew of  top executives were either fired or resigned, too.)

Free speech used to mean oration and publishing in the press. Then social media came along offering a ton of freedom and reach until the tech bros got cozy with government and began restricting the flow of information quietly, behind the scenes. The emperor's need to brag went against this tacit agreement about how things are done. He was supposedly good at making money but his new attire reveals his butt hanging out there, slowly twisting in the wind.

I'm old enough to know that most things come to an end no matter how much you love them. The In Spite of Life Players retired from the gravel pit to be seen no more. I still miss them, and I will miss Twitter. 

But, it was fun while it lasted.

One last joke before we go:

Peasants WILL Support The Wars Of Their Overlords -- Or Else

There's no point trying to write something better about so-called progressives in Congress publishing and then quickly disavowing a letter to Biden suggesting negotiations to end the bloodshed in Ukraine. In "The Brutal Comedy of the Withdrawn Letter," Matt Taibbi has already aptly described the clownish collapse of anything resembling opposition to shoveling billions into arming Ukraine. Jayapal, AOC*, Liz Warren, and even Bernie are millionaires controlled by billionaires, and the fear that they had angered the billionaires who own them was palpable.

The project of weakening Russia in order to take on China without their big ally is one underwritten by every billionaire-owned media outlet in the West. "Step out of line, the man comes and takes you away."

Scott Ritter provided an immediate test case for the claim that "the bird is freed" i.e. Elon Musk's Twitter would no longer see speech stifled to please the rich and powerful. 

Musk flunked. Is there anyone who really believed he'd pass? 

In "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss," Ritter details how he was suspended from Twitter back in April for the a tweet like this one:

He went on to explain:

I based this conclusion on three primary sources, which included a videotape of a Ukrainian official warning the citizens of Bucha that a “cleansing operation” was going to be conducted in Bucha, and that the citizens should remain indoors and not to panic, an article which appeared in an official Ukrainian government website, LB.ua, entitled “Special forces regiment ‘SAFARI’ began to clear Bucha of saboteurs and accomplices of Russia,” which declared that “Special forces began clearing the liberated, by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, city of Bucha of the Kiev region from saboteurs and accomplices of Russian troops,” and video which purported to show members of the Safari Regiment shooting civilians who were not wearing the blue distinguishing armbands signifying loyalty to the Ukrainian cause.

But never mind about evidence. Controlling information about the NATO's war in Ukraine has been job #1 from the get-go, and I've written about it several times already (e.g. here and here).

Truth tellers are still out here but their reach is much curtailed. 

Various pretexts have been offered for why too much truth could endanger the peasantry.

First, they said Russia was meddling in U.S. elections. And anyone questioning or denying this should be silenced. (Meanwhile, The Intercept among others news outlets silenced news of the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop until after the 2020 election.)

Source: "During COVID-19 Pandemic It Isn't Just Fake News But Seriously Bad Misinformation That Is Spreading On Social Media", Forbes

Then, they said so-called disinformation on the pandemic was dangerous to our health. And the restrictions put in place to suppress beliefs that eventually became mainstream e.g. lab origin, ineffectiveness of vaccines in stopping transmission, remained.

Next, they said Ukraine was a democracy and an innocent victim of Russia's unprovoked aggression. Journalists with large followings who pointed out the Maidan coup happened all the way back in 2014 were shadow banned or suspended from social media. And an army of bots attacked anyone who expressed doubt about the righteousness of NATO's cause.

Finally, they said any questioning of the many false flags in this war -- massacred civilians in Bucha, shelling of the nuclear power plant Zaporizhzhia, sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany-- was grounds for being silenced.

Silencing of dissent is dangerous as we face open confrontation between nuclear powers.

I took some comfort yesterday from war-watcher Big Serge on why neither the U.S. nor Russia is likely to use nukes in Ukraine.

I wanted to include a photo of the massive French austerity protests here, but Google only wants me to know about the CIA-sponsored uprisings in Iran -- despite my using the search terms "france protests today." Search engines are an important part of the information control matrix. 

Meanwhile, more austerity for the peasants rolls on. After Ukraine sent drones to attack ships at port in Sevastopol, Russia suspended grain shipments via ship. (That the grain was supposed to go to hungry people in Africa but was actually ending up in Europe may have had something to do with it.) 

Those with the patience and a stomach for truth may want to listen to the 3 1/2 hour speech plus Q & A session with Putin at the Valdai Discussion Club last week. If you need a chuckle today, imagine either Biden or Kamala Harris pulling off something like what Putin did at Valdai.

Why am I laughing in the face of millions freezing and starving this winter as we face the real possibility that our corporate overlords crave nuclear war?

Because if I start crying I might not be able to stop.

--

* Actually, I was wrong. AOC is only half a millionaire. Thanks to reader Edward F. for the correction.

Who Profits From Narrative Management & Eliminating Dissent?

Original collage by James Fangboner (left image), modified by me (see "Hating On ____ Is What Gives Life Meaning")

When the Pentagon summons the heads of eight weapons manufacturing corporations to a classified meeting about "aid" to Ukraine, you can be sure that a whole lot more Ukranians will be dying in their civil war on steroids.

This type of aid is in reality U.S. taxpayer-funded corporate welfare for the likes of Lockheed and Raytheon, whose former board member is our current Secretary of "Defense." The aid has been flowing so thick and fast since Russia intervened in the CIA-sponsored war on its doorstep that it's hard to add it all up quickly enough. One tally this week put the total at $1.7 billion!

Also, why limit these already wealthy corporate entities to feeding from just the U.S. trough? Zero Hedge reports: "Besides replenishing stockpiles sent to Ukraine, the companies stand to gain from European countries increasing military spending in the wake of Russia’s invasion."

I believe this cash bonanza explains the barrage of propaganda that liberals have fallen for hook, line, and sinker.

You would think that those who value free speech would be alarmed by the burgeoning online censorship that many independent journalists have noted. 

Consider the case of Michael J. Brenner, "Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a Fellow of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS/Johns Hopkins, as well as former Director of the International Relations & Global Studies Program at the University of Texas" according to an interview in scheerpost:

From the vantage point of decades of experience and studies, the intellectual regularly shared his thoughts on topics of interest through a mailing list sent to thousands of readers—that is until the response to his Ukraine analysis made him question why he bothered in the first place. 

In an email with the subject line “Quittin’ Time,” Brenner recently declared that, aside from having already said his piece on Ukraine, one of the main reasons he sees for giving up on expressing his opinions on the subject is that “it is manifestly obvious that 

our society is not capable of conducting an honest, logical, reasonably informed discourse on matters of consequence. Instead, we experience fantasy, fabrication, fatuousness and fulmination.” He goes on to decry President Joe Biden’s alarming comments in Poland when he all but revealed that the U.S. is—and perhaps has always been—interested in a Russian regime change [emphasis mine]. 

Or how about Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector who sifts through the foggy "facts" of war to discern some truth, who had his Twitter account suspended twice in one week. Based on what he knows about the grisly details of bodies left to rot in the street, he doubted that Russian soldiers could have committed the crimes before their exit from Bucha and speculated that Ukranian militias were the only ones in the area at the time of the massacre.

Cue liberals insisting that Twitter is not the government and therefore can censor anything it likes without violating the 1st amendment. Do they not know that Twitter, Facebook/Meta, Google/YouTube, and other platforms work hand in glove with the federal government to manage the narrative or, when that fails, to eliminate dissenting views? 

Are they fooled by mainstream media like the Washington Post, now owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, ironically sporting the tagline "Democracy Dies in Darkness"? 

Or do they know and not care because they're more interested in the former president and other right-wingers being denied platforms for their views than they are interested in actual free speech?

From media watcher Caitlin Johnstone:

what exactly is the argument for censoring wrongthink about the Ukraine war? Even if we pretend that everything they're saying is 100% false and completely immoral, so what? What harm is being done? Does a Ukrainian drop dead every time someone says they don't believe Russia committed war crimes in Bucha or Mariupol? Does Putin get magic murder powers if enough social media users say they support his war? Do liberal faces melt off their skulls if they accidentally see an RT headline?

Political action and the players behind it -- at every level -- becomes more murky by the day. Forgive this boomer for saying, back in the day we thought a free press was foundational to reign in the excesses of the wealthy and powerful, by shining a light into their dark doings. 

But late stage capitalism demands fealty to profits above all else. Even, or maybe especially, when the leader of the "free world" is busy shooting himself and his cronies in the foot.

Little Birch Tree -- Will It Fall To Russiaphobic Axe?

A controversy is raging among instructors in a national preschool music education program: should the Russian folk song that is traditionally part of April's curriculum be taught this year? For your reference, "Little Birch Tree" is performed here by the Seattle Girls Choir in times slightly less rife with hatred for Russia.

The inability of people in the U.S. to reason about the connections -- if any -- between traditional cultural artifacts and current geopolitical realities frightens me. Ban Russian chess players who express support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, they cry! Guessing they missed The Queen's Gambit film about chess and Russian influence in that sphere? But that's beside the point. The point is, which U.S. chess champions were banned for supporting U.S. imperial wars on Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. ?

Don't teach the authors Dostoevsky or Solzhenitsyn, they demand! Even though both were anti-authoritarian thinkers whose books long since entered the canon of world literature. And are dead. Not to mention that you will not find a book with the depth and breadth of The Idiot to replace it in your syllabus.

Even license plates are suspect these days. Here's an apologia for a vanity plate I saw on the street this morning:

Meanwhile, back in Maine, the home of the late peacemaker Samantha Smith, spring gardeners are facing up to the reality that nearly all varieties of tomatoes that grow well in our state are, um, Russian. Or descended from Russians. (Full disclosure: we have a lot of birch trees as well.)

I'm laughing at all this so I don't cry because, really, it is frightening how aggressively ignorant your average corporate news consumer is showing herself to be these days. Check out some of them spouting off in reply to my tweet after President Biden's gaffe calling for regime change to remove Russia's leader. (My reference is to a U.S. oligarch defending the right to topple Bolivia's elected government after he was blocked from mining lithium there.)

They sure told me, didn't they? The only one that even bothered to mount an argument either believes the Russian invasion was "without provocation" or chooses to say so despite copious evidence to the contrary. (Maybe because he doesn't want to be banned from Twitter for failing to spout the party line?).

As one music teacher commented about the attempt to ban the birch tree song for being Russian, "This is how people end up in concentration camps."

Too Sensitive Or Potentially Sensitive: Racist Threats OK With Twitter, Facebook But Discussing Racism Is Not

Congresswoman Frederica Wilson has a voice that white supremacists despise, but her role as a public official makes it difficult to silence her. So, they insult her instead.

A favorite local blogger, Shay Stewart-Bouley, who publishes Black Girl in Maine Media, posted about being blocked on Twitter for discussing the racism she and her family live with 365 days a year.

Stewart-Bouley wrote in "Real talk is sensitive, or How the truth is silenced" that her tweets have been blocked as "potentially sensitive" (whatever the hell potentially means in this context-- thought crimes anyone?). If you read her at all you know that she is in the habit of using well-considered words and refraining from invective.

Not implying that she should do so, but that is her choice of style in public communications.

So Twitter is really bending over backwards to silence an eloquent black woman while elevating the voice of vile, inflammatory, openly racist and violent tweeters.

Can you think of any vile tweeters that may spring to mind? 

A similar block on social media happened last week when I tried to comment on Penobscot Not Your Mascot organizer Maulian Dana's post on Facebook and fb flagged it as "too sensitive." WTF?

Here's what I wrote: I have heard versions of this powerful truth so many times in connection with the racist mascot used by Skowhegan Area High School: "I had to explain to my 8 year old why they were making fun of us..."

Here's Maulian's post that sparked my comment:

I am sharing in its entirety the eloquent and impactful letter that Amelia Tuplin shared with the Wells School Department after seeing her race mocked and degraded through Indian mascot usage. Her words are powerful and I am thankful for her speaking out. This is far from over and hopefully we can continue this dialogue that has gone on for many years now and finally free our state of these acts and make it a better place for people of all races and backgrounds. Woliwoni, Amelia.

My name is Amelia Tuplin.

On behalf of my entire family, I'm writing to express my outrage over the display of racism, ignorance and mockery that took place at the Wells high School football game on Friday, October 13th, 2017. Your team, students and spectators mocked our families heritage including my son, Quarterback Lucas Francis, by painting their faces, banging on fake drums that included 5 gallon buckets, singing mock chants, performing mock dances, and continuously making hand over mouth sounds. It was the most ultimate display of racism on the largest scale I’ve ever seen. A quick search on social media will bring up hundreds of photos to prove my case.

Before I get into detail, I'd like to first share some background information about myself and my family to help you understand my anger and disgust.

I'm a Mother, a wife,a school bus driver, a sports mom, football booster, volunteer & Native Artisan. I'm also a full blooded Mi’kmaq (MicMac) women from Lisbon Maine. We’ve lived in Lisbon for 13 years. I’m proud to be a part of a community that has accepted my family's culture and a school system that respects and embraces my children for who they and their heritage.

I'm originally from the Abegweit First Nation Reservation. My husband Jeffrey Tuplin Sr. has roots on the Lennox Island First Nation Reservation. My children are also full blood Mi'kmaq. We have family roots in the Elsipogtog First Nation Reservation, Piktu’K (Pictou) Landing First Nation Reservation and the Blood Reserve.

Our family is proud to be Mi'kmaq & Blackfoot, it's part of our daily lives, it's who we are, it runs thick in blood. Our immediate families have a long line of prominent Chiefs, Tribal Council Members, Medicine Men & Women, Traditional Elders, Jingle Dress Dancers, Drum Keepers, Pipe Carriers, Sundancers, Sweat Lodge Keepers, basket makers, quillwork artists, Aboriginal Authors, Aboriginal Lawyers, Aboriginal Nurses, Retired Native Military Members, Native B.ED Educators and Principles. We are proud of our heritage and it shines through in our work and ethics. I represent my entire family when I say we are offended and outraged.

We take pride in persevering our language, our sacred teachings, traditional medicines, sacred face painting ceremony, ceremonial regalia, sacred drums & honors songs. These things have been passed down for many generations and are sacred and precious to preserving our culture.

Unfortunately on Friday night, October 13th, 2017, my family witnessed first hand a racially insensitive display of racism and mockery of our culture on a large scale at the Wells High School Football Game.

Prior to the game, I was well aware of your Warriors Mascot and logo, which I did not find offensive, at the time. When tastefully used, with an appropriate display of homage used, Tribal Mascots would make one feel proud, proud to be Native, proud to be a Warrior.
This is not the case for Wells High School. You made a mockery of my culture.
Your chants, fake drums, war paint, dance and hand over mouth sounds were embarrassing to watch and hurtful.

This behavior is culturally insensitive, distasteful, and downright racist. To say the least I was ashamed and disappointed in your school for allowing and encouraging this type of racial mockery by your staff, students, fans, players & coaches.

Do you realize that you as a school, as educators, by encouraging this, are sending your students out into the world with a false idea of how Native Americans behave. Not once in my entire life have I seen any person in my family, from my community, at a Powwow or a ceremony behave the way you betray Natives. It was was belittling and racist.

Here are just some of the things I witnessed first hand.
Spectators including students holding fake drums and five gallon buckets, pounding and drumming on them singing offensive chants.
Face paint, distastefully done.
Hand over mouth sounds.
Players doing a mock native dance and chant.
This was not an isolated incident or a small group of people, this was on a large scale that continued throughout the entire game.
After the game I witnessed a celebratory Native mock dance and mock chant by the Wells football team.

I escorted my son from the field to the School only to be taunted by people making hand over mouth sounds.

I have been informed that this type of behavior is normal by the Wells Warriors high school team and fans and is considered part of their theme and mascot.

My family suffers from the direct effects of abuse and oppression from the Indian residential school era. With that being said, I'm shocked to be on the receiving end of racial mockery at this magnitude especially from a school in modern 2017.

My goal is to bring this to light, to as many people as possible. Your mascot is offensive, simply because of the way you represent it. I'm asking your mockery to stop immediately. Educate yourself on our culture, be classy and show some respect. Paint a true picture of our culture. Fill your students minds and hearts with the truth, stop encouraging false depictions of how natives behave and celebrate, it comes off as hateful and racist. You're promoting a false image of Natives. This is what your graduates are taking with them into an already world full of hate.

I refuse to subject my children to this type of behavior again, it needs to stop. Wells you created a hostile, hate filled racist environment for my family. What should have been a full filled night of football, a celebration of our young athletes, instead turned into a night of shame and embarrassment. I spent my night reassuring others I was ok, but not ok with what was happening. I had to explain to my 8 year old why they were making fun of us and his older brother on the football field.

Ultimately this behavior needs to stop immediately, and your Mascot should go up for immediate review and removal. I recommend Wells School Dept. have proper Native American cultural awareness training. I have brought this to the attention of the Commissioner of the Dept of Education, Maine Principal Association, Lisbon Town Council, Lisbon & Wells Superintendents of Schools, Lisbon & Wells Athletic Directors, Several Tribal Chiefs, State Senator Mason & the Media. I can only hope this brings to light an investigation and you are held accountable.

I'm requesting a public apology.

Amelia Tuplin
Lisbon Maine

Talk about potentially sensitive!

One of the links shared by Stewart-Bouley, "Activists of color lose battles against Facebook's moderator army" recounts an experiment by psychologist Mary Canty Merrill. Similar to experiments sending out résumés with "white sounding" names vs. "black sounding names," Merrill asked white friends to repost verbatim the words she had written that resulted in not only blocking but having her account suspended. Can you guess what happened?

Here are Merrill's truths that must issue only from white facebook accounts, apparently, but not from the account of a person who is most knowledgable and affected by them:

“Dear White People: The terminology we use to define a problem determines how we attempt to solve it.

“You are so accustomed to defining racism as people of color being the problem that you want to fix us, patronize us, save us and heal us. You rarely perceive yourselves as the problem (which is where its root lies). Thus, your interventions are most often ill-informed, misdirected and yield no meaningful or sustainable results.”

Talk about inflammatory! One can only imagine what would have happened if Merrill had used ugly racist epithets, threatened her white readers with violence, disparaged their ancestors, or accused them of being money-grubbing "empty barrels."


Ijeoma Olulo reported last year that she was blocked by Facebook for posting screenshots of the harrassing, violent, threatening messages sent to her -- messages that Facebook refused to block at their source.

Facebook's management was sent a letter last week from two congressmen detailing concerns about publishing advertising from white supremacists that qualifies as hate speech, and asking for answers. 

Facebook has an incredible amount of power--we should know how they wield that power, including clarification on their hate speech policies. pic.twitter.com/tb0nbbHVNC

— Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) October 18, 2017

Like Frederica Wilson, Keith Ellison and John Conyers will be harder to silence than activists like Black Lives Matter organizer Didi Delgado. ProPublica reported in "Facebook's secret censorship rules protect white men from hate" that

Delgado had her account suspended when Facebook removed her post: “All white people are racist. Start from this reference point, or you’ve already failed."

Talk about a sensitive truth! White people, let's get to work and use our white privilege to shout it from the digital rooftops.