(Anti)Fascism Today

Good morning,

My name is Brandon Siguenza, and I am a US citizen from Minneapolis. Yesterday, while doing legal observation, ICE stopped their cars to harass my friend and me. They sprayed pepper spray into the vent of our vehicle. We held our hands in the air and told them we were not obstructing, that the car was in park and they were free to drive forward and away. There was no active immigration raid. They returned to their cars, and drove forward a bit, then decided to stop again. They surrounded us, smashed the windows of our car, opened the doors (they were unlocked), ripped my friend and I out of the car and arrested us on charges of obstruction.

I was put in an unmarked SUV, separated from my friend. As I was put in the back seat an ICE agent tore the whistle off my neck and said “I’ll be taking this, I might need it later.” My phone was knocked out of my hand while being arrested. As we drove away I asked the driver and the passenger if they wouldn’t mind buckling my seatbelt, as they were driving erratically. I was ignored. I asked them if I could have the handcuffs loosened, as I was losing circulation, and was told no. At one point the passenger realized his own driver’s license was in the backseat next to mine, and tried to surreptitiously grab it without me seeing it.

We were taken to the Whipple federal building, where I saw dozens of brown people being processed in an unheated garage. I was frisked, told of my charges, and saw buses and vans being prepped. I later learned that these were being filled with detainees and driven to the airport for deportation. As we were led in, I noticed that the building was very busy. I got the impression that one of the 2 agents bringing me around was being trained. At multiple points throughout my stay, government agents were unable to open doors, not sure where they were meant to be going, and overall confused and overwhelmed. They couldn’t figure out how to use the building phones, or complained about a lack of cell service preventing them from checking the internet or making calls.

The people in the cells were extremely scared. We heard people screaming “let me out!”, crying, wailing and terrified screams. There were cells with as many as 8 people. I have no way of knowing how long they have been there, if they were allowed any contact with the outside world, or if they were being brought food or water. Most people were staring at the ground with almost no energy. I was not allowed to talk to anyone imprisoned. I distinctly remember seeing a desperate woman. She was staring at the ground with her head in her hands crying, hopeless, while her friend or family member sat on a bathroom seat observed by 3 men.

My friend and I were put in an area for “USCs,” which we eventually learned meant US citizens, separated by gender. We were imprisoned for 8 hours, during which my friend was never allowed a phone call. I was allowed to call my wife and tell her where I was. During my interview with Special Agent William and Special Agent Garcia, they asked me to empty my pockets. When I pulled out gloves, Agent William said those were meant to be taken when I was processed, and complained about having to fill out the form again. He frisked me once more, where he found glass in my pocket from when our car window was shattered. He filled out the form listing my personal items again, but put the wrong date. I was read my rights, I pleaded the fifth and was led back to my cell.

Food, water, and bathroom breaks were extremely difficult to acquire. I would ask over the intercom provided in the cell for a bathroom break, be told someone was on their way, then ask again 20 minutes later, be told someone was on their way, wait another 20 minutes, etc. Eventually they either turned off the intercom or it stopped working, because no one would respond. I could get water and bathroom breaks by pounding on the glass when someone happened to walk by and beg them directly. Hours would go by without anyone checking on us. I am vegan and the only food they offered were turkey sandwiches, fruit snacks with gelatin, and granola bars with honey. I eventually ate a granola bar out of hunger.

I was in the cell alone for between 1 and 2 hours, then another man was put into my cell, whose shirt was ripped open from his arrest, and an injured toe, who was carried aggressively into an unmarked car during his arrest. After about 4-5 hours, another man was brought in who had a cut on his head from his arrest. He told me he was tackled by 4 or 5 agents during his arrest. At no point was he offered medical assistance.

Later I was told that a lawyer was here to see me, and I was able to speak with him in a visitation room. The special agent told me that the door could not be closed all the way, so it was cracked during my interaction with my lawyer. I got the impression that they were not used to having lawyers present, and were trying to follow procedure as best they could. I asked an agent if the other detainees were allowed lawyers and was not answered.

At one point, 3 men from the department of Homeland Security Investigations brought me into a cell. They insinuated that they could help me out. After inquiring several times what exactly they meant they finally told me that they could offer undocumented family members of mine legal protection if I have any (I don’t), or money, in exchange for giving them the names of protest organizers, or undocumented persons. I was shocked, and told them no.

Finally, after hours of detention, I was told to follow an agent. At no point was I told whether or not I was being charged, or where I was going, but I was led out of the building. I asked if I could use a phone to call my wife to pick me up, and was told I could not. After pleading for several minutes eventually Special Agent William let me use his phone to call my wife. As I was escorted off the property by government agents, I was told to turn right. I was escorted to the protest area, where 5 minutes later, tear gas was deployed and I was struck by a paint ball gun. I was not protesting, I was simply being released without charges after an 8 hour detention. I was on the other side of the street, as instructed by the agents that released me and the agents shouting orders over a bullhorn. A passerby who was tear gassed was panicking and having an asthma attack, so I helped her find a medic to get her an inhaler. I used a stranger’s phone to co-ordinate pickup, and was picked up by my wife.

During my detention I knew that I was being released. I knew that as a citizen of the United States I have legal protection. The hundred or so other people being detained had no such protection. At this time I don’t need your help, it is the families that are being separated, abused, terrorized, harassed and killed that need your help. If this is happening to me, an American citizen born in the United States, then what is happening to the people in here that have no one calling lawyers on their behalf? That have no constitutional rights to due process? What is happening to the people that they will never be released to see their families, go to their jobs, or walk through their city ever again?

Please take care of yourselves, your family, and your community. I am safe and healthy, if you feel compelled to help, please offer your help to the Immigrant Defense Network at https://immigrantdefensenetwork.org/. If you know someone detained by ICE, call or text CAIR-MN at 612-206-3360 for 24/7 legal intake.

Source: Brandon Siguenza (Facebook), 12 January 2025. Thanks to KFK for the heads-up.

KARE 11, “Taken by ICE & Detained | Breaking the News Plus”

What is it like in the Minneapolis ICE Detention Center? Patty O’Keefe & Brandon Siguenza join Jana to discuss their experience being detained for over 9 hours.

Source: KARE 11 (YouTube), 12 January 2026

In this week’s bulletin: Trade Union Confederation statement after January 9^th Russian attacks; statement by Ukraine Social Movement on Venezuela; captivity and oppression in the Russian-occupied territories; problems of the Russian economy; anti-war messages in Russian cities.

News from the territories occupied by Russia:

Ukrainian, abducted as a teenager from occupied Donbas in 2019, sentenced by Russian court to 22 years (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 9^th)

Ex-military and Ukrainian: No more needed for Russian ‘treason trials’ and massive sentences (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 9th)

The Face of Resistance: The Story of Crimean Tatar Political Prisoner Ismet Ibrahimov (Crimea Platform, January 9th)

‘Russian world’ in occupied Luhansk oblast: no heating and deliberately cut off from mobile telephones and Internet (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 8th)

Desperate plea from Russian prison: Ukrainian political prisoners need to be freed now, not after ‘peace deal’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 7th)

Crimean Political Prisoner Tofik Abdulgaziev in Critical Condition (Crimea Platform, January 7th)

The Woman Who Didn’t Break. Part Two (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 6th)

Monstrous 27-year sentence against Ukrainian civilian abducted from Russian-occupied Melitopol (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 6th)

Weekly update on the situation in occupied Crimea on January 6, 2026 (Crimea Platform, January 6th)

Even Putin supporter debunks Russia’s lies about a ‘Ukrainian drone attack on civilians’ in occupied Khorly (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 5th)

No answers & questions to Red Cross after Russia holds 64-year-old Melitopol journalist prisoner for third year (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 5th)

“You must not show that you are afraid”: Tales of captivity in the Kremlin-controlled “People’s Republics” (The Insider, January 5^th)

News from Ukraine:

Fire Point’s large missiles and contracts: the story of Ukraine’s most enigmatic defence company (Ukrainska Pravda, January 9^th)

More artists killed in Ukraine (The Artist, January 9^th)

Statement of the KVPU on the critical situation in Ukraine after January 9 Russian attacks (Ukraine Solidarity EU, January 9th)

‘Bro-wolfieʼ: The story of a soldier who survived in Mariupol and rebuilt his life (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 8th)

All change: why Zelensky needs to reshuffle Budanov, Fedorov, Shmyhal, Maliuk and other top officials (Ukrainska Pravda, January 5^th)

Engineers, missile strikes and high technology: can Ukraine produce more weapons in 2026? (Ukrainska Pravda, January 4^th)

Denys, a unionised railway worker on the front line (International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggle, January 1^st)

War-related news from Russia:

Alexander Krichevsky of Izhevsk: Six Years in Prison for a Comment (Russian Reader, January 8^th)

The rise and fall of the “Heroes of the Surgut Land”. How the Russian state works with memory of soldiers who died in the war with Ukraine (Mediazona, January 7^th)

The streets speak. Anti-war messages in Russian cities (Mediazona, January 6^th)

Timofey Anufriev Dies Fighting for Ukraine (Russian Reader, January 6th)

On thinning ice: After almost four years of war, Russia’s central bankers are running out of tricks to keep the economy afloat (The Insider, January 6^th)

The Story of Gordey Nikitin: 17 Years for “High Treason” (Russian Reader, December 31st)

Analysis and comment:

Cedos held a discussion on the impact of research on policy change (Cedos, January 9^th)

Behind the Contact Line: How would the 20-point peace plan impact the millions of Ukrainians living under Russian occupation? (Meduza, January 9^th)

When Information Starts Working on Its Own (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, January 8th)

From master spy to lead negotiator: what does Zelensky’s new chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, bring to the peace talks? (Meduza, January 8^th)

Women’s Careers in STEM: Barriers and Motivations (Cedos, January 7th)

The Non-Peaceful Atom (Posle Media, January 7^th)

Key challenges related to possible holding of an all-Ukrainian referendum on changes to Ukraine’s territory (Opora, January 5^th)

Social Movement: What’s wrong with US aggression against Venezuela? (Ukraine Solidarity EU, January 3rd)

International solidarity:

Ukrainian leaders in UK call for Kemi Badenoch to sack David Wolfson, Russian assets to be used to aid Ukraine (USC, January 8th)

Upcoming events:

Thursday 15^th January, at 7pm, Russia’s War On Ukraine, Us Strategy Review – Stopping The Authoritarians, organised by Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Scotland, register here.

Thursday 5th February, at 6.30pm. Try Me For Treason reading and discussion event at Clore Lecture Theatre, Birkbeck College Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL. Details here.

This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. To receive it by email each Monday, email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.

Source: News from Ukraine Bulletin no. 178, 11 January 2026

Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”

“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”

Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”

The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.

“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”

Notes:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=armytalks

War Department, “Army Talk 64: FASCISM!” March 24, 1945, at https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/mode/2up

Source: Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 9 January 2026

Comply or Die

“Comply or die” has always been my country’s operative motto, especially when “compliance” has been a priori impossible:

On May 14, 1854, six Missourian explorers crested a steep ridge, some 150 miles north of San Francisco. After days of hard travel through mountainous, broken terrain, they encountered a stunning sight. Spread below them was twenty-five thousand acres of lush, flat land. The next day, the six horsemen descended to the floor of what is now known as Round Valley, in northern Mendocino County. According to Frank Asbill, son of one of the six, “they had not gone far when the tall, waving, wild oats began to wiggle in a thousand different places all at the same time.” The group’s leader, Pierce Asbill, then called out: “We’ve come a long way from Missouri to locate this place . . . an’ be damned if wigglin’ grass ’ull keep us away! Git a-hold of yer weapons—we’uns are goin’ in!” Reaching a creek bed, the six horsemen reportedly encountered three thousand Yuki Indians. “A war hoop went up from the Missourians [who] just lay over the horse[s’] neck[s] and shot. . . . They just rode them down. . . . It was not difficult to get an Indian with every shot. . . . When the shootin’ was over, thirty-two dead and dying [Yuki] lay scattered.” By the end of the day perhaps forty Indians were dead. The massacre was a prelude to an American genocide.

Source: Benjamin Madley, “California’s Yuki Indians: Defining Genocide in Native American History, California History, Vol. 96, Number 4, p. 11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2019.96.4.11. Image source.

President Donald Trump said the U.S. will seize control of Greenland “the easy way” or “the hard way” and warned that he won’t miss out on the opportunity to Russia or China.

“We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,” he said. He brushed off naming a price to purchase the land from Denmark but also didn’t describe what any potential military action would look like.

“I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way,” Trump said.

He made the comments during a press availability Jan. 9 as he met with some of the top oil companies in the world to discuss investment in Venezuela, where the U.S. just a week earlier captured leader Nicolás Maduro and brought him to New York to face drug charges.

Trump said if the U.S. hadn’t gone into Venezuela and attempted to reinvigorate their oil industry, Russia or China would have. He also referred to Venezuela as a next-door neighbor because of its location in the Western Hemisphere.

“And by the way, we don’t want Russia or China going to Greenland, which if we don’t take Greenland, you’re going to have Russia or China as your next door neighbor,” Trump said. “That’s not going to happen.”

Trump said there are Russian and Chinese destroyers, Russian submarines and larger Chinese ships, already sitting outside of Greenland.

Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark that has about 31 billion barrels of oil in reserves, about three-quarters of what the U.S. has. But the territory banned drilling in 2021, citing environmental concerns.

White House aide Stephen Miller questioned Denmark’s right to control Greenland in a Jan. 5 interview with CNN.

Source: Erin Mansfield and Bart Jansen, “By right or by might? Trump vows to take Greenland before Russia, China,” USA Today, 9 January 2026. I inserted the illustration, which I found here. ||||| TRR

Black Friday

Source: Ozon email advertising circular, 14 November 2025

An American World War II cemetery in the Netherlands removed displays focused on Black American soldiers, sparking outrage and compelling Dutch politicians to appeal to U.S. officials this week to restore the information.

The two displays were added to the Netherlands American Cemetery’s visitor center in September 2024 after some historians and relatives of service members criticized the site for not mentioning the unique experiences of Black troops. One plaque featured the story of George H. Pruitt, a Black soldier in the 43rd Signal Construction Battalion, who died trying to save a comrade. The other highlighted how Black American service members were “fighting on two fronts” — for freedom overseas and for their civil rights at home.

The displays’ removal, American and Dutch critics of the move say, signifies an erasure of Black Americans’ contributions in the war and their work to liberate the Netherlands from the Nazis. It also represents an overstep in the Trump administration’s campaign to curb what it deems diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, the critics said.

It’s unclear exactly when the plaques were removed.

The American Battle Monuments Commission, a U.S. government agency that oversees the cemetery, did not respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post. The commission told Dutch news outlets that one panel is “off display, though not out of rotation,” and a second panel was retired. The commission did not elaborate on either decision.

Janice Wiggins, the widow of Jefferson Wiggins, a Black WWII soldier who was quoted in one of the displays, said she had “a gut-wrenching feeling” when she learned the panels had been removed.

“Not only reading about, but actually experiencing, how history and those who shaped it can be so easily and casually erased,” she said. “It was very personal.”

“The removal of the displays is disrespectful to the Black American soldiers who served and to the legacies their families cherish,” Wiggins added.

More than 8,000 U.S. troops who fought in World War II are buried at the Netherlands American Cemetery, a solemn site in the village of Margraten in the southern part of the country. Just over 170 of these service members are Black Americans, a slice of the more than 1 million Black Americans who fought during World War II in segregated forces.

The cemetery is special to the local community, according to the American Battle Monument Commission’s website. Residents have adopted the grave sites, bringing flowers to the cemetery for decades.

The 6,450-square-foot visitor center, where the displays about Black service members were, tells the stories of the thousands of Americans commemorated at the cemetery.

One of the removed plaques described the “horrors of war” that Black service members faced while serving primarily in labor and support positions. In fall 1944, the U.S. Army’s 960th Quartermaster Service Company, a mostly Black unit, arrived in Margraten “to dig graves at the newly created cemetery,” the display read, according to a photo provided to The Post.

Jefferson Wiggins, a first lieutenant, recounted seeing service members under his command crying as they dug the graves.

“They were just completely traumatized,” the display said.

Now there is no textual information provided about Black troops at the cemetery, said Kees Ribbens, a senior researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. Although it’s unclear why the displays were removed, Ribbens said it’s notable that it happened during the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity efforts.

President Donald Trump signed executive orders on his first day in office banning government diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The impact has been widespread: Arlington National Cemetery scrubbed information from its website about prominent Black, Hispanic and female service members and topics such as the Civil War. Exhibits related to slavery were removed at multiple national parks. The White House accused the Smithsonian of promoting “race-centered ideology.”

“Given the emphasis the current administration puts on DEI, it doesn’t make it that difficult to start wondering if the disappearance of Black history [at the cemetery] has to do with the current winds blowing in D.C.,” Ribbens said.

In the Netherlands, the public has been baffled that anyone would see a reason to remove the panels, Ribbens said.

Dutch politicians have demanded that the displays be reinstated, appealing to the American Battle Monuments Commission and the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands.

Alain Krijnen, the mayor of Eijsden-Margraten, where the cemetery is, sent a letter Monday to the commission: “We greatly value the story of the Black Liberators in relation to the past, present and future. In that context, we would greatly appreciate it if the story of the Black Liberators — like the 172 Black Liberators buried in Margraten — could be given permanent attention in the visitor center, and therefore reconsider the removal of the displays.”

The office of the governor of Limburg, the Dutch province containing the cemetery, said it also has “serious concerns.”

“The displayed panels depicted a history we must never forget, and from which we can learn a great deal — especially now, as global divisions are being increasingly magnified,” Bas Alberson, a spokesman for the governor’s office, said in a statement to The Post.

The mayor’s office and the Limburg governor’s office said they had not heard from American officials as of Wednesday.

Janice Wiggins, the 77-year-old widow of Jefferson Wiggins, said she learned the displays had been removed after her friends visited the cemetery in October and noticed the absence. The removal chips away at some of her life’s work, she said.

“Along with [former] US Ambassador to the Netherlands Shefali Razdan Duggal and Dutch author Mieke Kirkels, I lobbied for the inclusion of Black American soldiers in the exhibits at the Netherlands American Cemetery Visitors Center. The original exhibits included only White soldiers,” Wiggins, who lives in New Fairfield, Connecticut, wrote in an email.

Those who have family buried at the cemetery also feel the loss.

Julius Morris is a Black WWII soldier who is buried there. His nephew, Raphael Morris, who lives in St. Louis, felt resigned when he heard the news.

“Business as usual by this administration,” said Morris, 73. “Color me concerned, disappointed, but not surprised.”

Source: Anamita Kaur, “U.S. WWII cemetery in the Netherlands removes displays about Black troops,” Washington Post, 13 November 2025

“Culture Black Friday, 14–24 November. Up to 60% discounts on tickets.”

Source: Bileter.ru email advertising circular, 14 November 2025

Toxicity

School of Rock performs System of a Down’s “Toxicity” (2022)

Actors Martin and Janet Sheen, John Cusack and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek have signed an open letter urging Russian prison officials to end the solitary confinement of jailed activist Mikhail Kriger, who has been on a dry hunger strike for more than a week.

They join Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson, who earlier this week called on the local prison chief to end Kriger’s isolation.

Kriger, 65, first launched a hunger strike in late September. He started a dry hunger strike — meaning abstention from both food and water — last Friday after a planned visit with his daughter was canceled.

Kriger has accused prison authorities of deliberately trying to isolate him to prevent contact with other inmates.

The latest signatories of the letter to the head of Correctional Colony No. 5 in Russia’s Oryol region claimed Kriger’s condition “has now become critical,” according to the letter published by the exiled news website Mediazona.

“[Kriger’s] speech has slowed, his gaze is unfocused and he is extremely weak. Dry hunger strikes cause organ failure and quickly lead to shock and death,” the Sheens, Cusack and Žižek wrote.

Kriger was in 2023 sentenced to seven years in prison for “justifying terrorism” and “inciting hatred” over anti-Kremlin social media posts. The activist said during trial that he was being persecuted for his anti-war views and open pro-Ukrainian position.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights group Memorial designated Kriger a political prisoner.

The anti-Kremlin activist group Pussy Riot raised alarm over Kriger’s hunger strike earlier this week, calling on followers to write letters to him and the prison administration.

It was not immediately clear whether authorities in the Oryol region prison colony intended to respond to the international appeals.

It was also not clear when Kriger was expected to be moved out of solitary confinement and whether his medical condition was being properly monitored.

Kriger’s support group said the activist was taken to a regional hospital on Wednesday for tests, the results of which have not been shared.

Kriger’s lawyer said he was “cheerful, wrote poems and even offered to hop on one leg to show his strength,” the support group said in an update Thursday.

“Forced feeding will only begin if he loses consciousness or doctors deem his condition critical,” Kriger’s support group wrote on Telegram.

Source: “Hollywood Stars Back Jailed Russian Activist on Hunger Strike,” Moscow Times, 17 October 2025

Yegor Shramko holding a placard that reads “No to the war with Ukraine” in Petersburg’s Palace Square

Our correspondent reports that activist Yegor Shramko did an anti-war picket in Palace Square and was detained.

The Petersburg man held a blue-and-yellow placard bearing the slogan “No to the war in Ukraine” and stood this way for around an hour. Shramko told our correspondent that although passersby supported him, the police were summoned by animateurs dressed as Russian emperors and empresses who offer to take photos with them for money on the square.

“I cannot keep silent. A life in which you have to fear everything, keep quiet, and be afraid of every little noise has no value for me,” Shramko explained to Bumaga.

He told RusNews that he had been wanting to stage the protest for four months but only worked up the nerve today.

This past summer, Shramko was jailed for twenty-four hours on charges of “displaying extremist symbols.” The “extremist symbol” in this case was the portrait of Alexei Navalny which Shramko brought to the Solovetsky Stone on the murdered politician’s birthday. At the time, Shramko told Bumaga that Navalny’s own words—”I’m not afraid, and you shouldn’t be afraid either”—had encouraged him to take the plunge and risk arrest by carrying out the proteest.

Source: Bumaga (Facebook), 17 October 2025. Thanks to Hanna Perekhoda for the heads-up.

The activist held a solo picket for about an hour. St. Petersburg residents approached him—some offered words of support, while others began arguing with him. More than 50 minutes after the picket began, security forces in full uniform arrived and detained Yegor.

Source: “Security forces detained activist Yegor Shramko, who was holding a pacifist picket | St. Petersburg,” RusNews (YouTube), 18 October 2025

As you have probably heard, recently, on a Swiss train, a Russian man (with Latvian citizenship) attacked a family. The family was speaking Ukrainian among themselves. He started threatening to kill them and their baby.

It’s easy to dismiss this as just another “fait divers” (which, in a sense, it is), but I think it says something larger. To understand his actions, you have to understand where it comes from.

For centuries, the inhabitants of the Russian state lived in a situation where order depended on fear and extreme forms of violence. This was true in much of the world, but while many countries began to change over the last century (let’s put aside the reasons behind the change), in the Russian/Soviet empire the situation actually became worse. Much worse.

The rules were never something people agreed to follow together (after all, you need to feel a part of a society and thus to share common imaginary to do it, and it is impossible to do it if you live in the empire, however much some contemporary researchers might wish it). It is something they were imposed from above, by the state, or by whoever had power over you at the moment. People learned that laws only mattered when someone strong was watching. So when a person raised in that kind of world finds themselves in a place like Switzerland, where rules work because the majority respects them voluntarily, they see the absence of fear and coercion as a sign that anything goes.

The man in that train was in a setting where no one was looking as capable to physically stop him and he took that as permission to dominate others, those people that he hates for the mere fact of their existence.

This same pattern plays out on a global scale. The Russian state elites see Europe much like that man saw the train: as a place without explicit “real” (military) force. It looks fake, easy to break, like a house of cards, because it relies on trust, and thus, in their view, on NOTHING.

People and societies shaped by fear and domination can’t imagine relationships built on any agreements (that require trust). They assume that if no one is dominating explicitly, it’s an invitation to act.

The man on the train and Putin’s crew are two versions of the same story. Both come from a social setting that sees respect as submission, peace as weakness, agreements as empty shells and absence of explicit force as an invitation to unlimited violence.

Source: Hanna Perekhoda (Facebook), 18 October 2025

Donald Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday to make a deal with Russia, pouring cold water on Kyiv’s push for Tomahawk missiles as the U.S. leader pursues a diplomatic solution to the war.

Trump said as recently as last month that he believed Ukraine could take back all its territory — but a day after agreeing to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for a new summit the American had changed his tune.

After meeting with Zelensky at the White House, Trump said on social media that their talks were “very interesting, and cordial, but I told him, as I likewise strongly suggested to President Putin, that it is time to stop the killing, and make a DEAL!”

Trump also appeared to suggest both sides should accept their current front lines. “They should stop where they are. Let both claim Victory, let History decide!” he said.

Zelensky said after the meeting that Russia was “afraid” of the U.S.-made long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, but that he was “realistic” about receiving the weapons from Washington.

He told reporters that while he and Trump talked about long-range weapons they “decided that we don’t speak about it because… the United States doesn’t want escalation.”

‘Get the war over’

Zelensky came to Washington after weeks of calls for Tomahawks, hoping to capitalize on Trump’s growing frustration with Putin after a summit in Alaska failed to produce a breakthrough.

But the Ukrainian left empty-handed as Trump eyes a fresh diplomatic breakthrough on the back of last week’s Gaza peace deal.

Trump has appeared far more upbeat about the prospects of a deal since his two-and-a-half hour call with Putin on Thursday, in which they agreed to meet in Budapest.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over with without thinking about Tomahawks,” Trump told journalists including an AFP reporter as he hosted Zelensky at the White House.

Trump added that he believed Putin “wants to end the war.”

Zelensky, who came to the White House to push for the long-range U.S.-made weapons, said however that he would be ready to swap “thousands” of Ukrainian drones in exchange for Tomahawks.

Zelensky congratulated Trump on his recent Middle East peace deal in Gaza and said he hoped he would do the same for Ukraine. “I hope that President Trump can manage it,” he said.

‘Many questions’

Diplomatic talks on ending Russia’s invasion have stalled since the Alaska summit.

The Kremlin said Friday that “many questions” needed resolving before Putin and Trump could meet, including who would be on each negotiating team.

But it brushed off suggestions Putin would have difficulty flying over European airspace.

Hungary said it would ensure Putin could enter and “hold successful talks” with the United States despite an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes.

Since the start of his second term, Trump’s position on the Ukraine war has shifted dramatically back and forth.

Initially Trump and Putin reached out to each other as the U.S. leader derided Zelensky as a “dictator without elections.”

Tensions came to a head in February, when Trump accused his Ukrainian counterpart of “not having the cards” in a rancorous televised meeting at the Oval Office.

Relations between the two have since warmed as Trump has expressed growing frustration with Putin.

But Trump has kept a channel of dialogue open with Putin, saying that they “get along.”

The U.S. leader has repeatedly changed his position on sanctions and other steps against Moscow following calls with the Russian president.

Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, describing it as a “special military operation” to demilitarize the country and prevent the expansion of NATO.

Russia now occupies around a fifth of Ukrainian territory — much of it ravaged by fighting.

On Friday the Russian Defense Ministry announced it had captured three villages in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions.

Source: Danny Kemp (AFP), “Trump Tells Zelensky to ‘Make a Deal’ as Tomahawk Plea Misfires,” Moscow Times, 18 October 2025

All last week, Republican leaders tried to portray the No Kings protests scheduled for Saturday, October 18, as “Hate America” rallies. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers partnered with Atlanta-based science newsroom The Xylom to estimate that as many as 8.2 million people turned out yesterday to oppose the Trump administration. The mood at the protests was joyful and peaceful, with protesters holding signs that championed American principles of democracy, free speech, equality, and the rule of law. As the Grand Junction, Colorado, Daily Sentinel put it in a front-page headline: “‘This is America’ ‘No Kings’ protests against Trump bring a street party vibe to cities nationwide.”

Then last night, after the protests, the president’s social media account posted an AI-generated video showing Trump in a fighter jet with “KING TRUMP” painted on the side. The president sits in the airplane in front of something round that could be seen as a halo. He is wearing a gold crown; weirdly, the oxygen mask is over his mouth and chin, rather than mouth and nose.

Once in the air, the plane drops excrement on American cities, including what seems to be New York City. The excrement drenches protesters, one of whom is 23-year-old liberal political commentator and influencer Harry Sisson. Journalist Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who shares media clips that reflect politics, commented: “Trump posts AI video showing him literally dumping sh*t on America.” Historian Larry Glickman noted that media outlets make much of alleged Democratic disdain for ordinary Americans, but have had little to say about the disdain for Americans embodied by Trump’s video.

Several administration videos and images have responded to Americans saying “No Kings” by taking the position “Yes, We Want Kings,” an open embrace of the end of democracy. But they are more than simple trolling. Led by Trump, MAGA Republicans have abandoned the idea of politics, which is the process of engaging in debate and negotiation to attract support and win power. What is left when a system loses the give and take of politics is force.

The idea that leaders must attract voters with reasoned arguments to win power and must concede power when their opponents win has been the central premise of American government since 1800. In that year, after a charged election in which each side accused the other of trying to destroy the country, Federalist John Adams turned the reins of government over to the leader of the opposition, Thomas Jefferson. That peaceful transfer of power not only protected the people, it protected leaders who had lost the support of voters, giving them a way to leave office safely and either retire or regroup to make another run at power.

The peaceful transfer of power symbolized the nation’s political system and became the hallmark of the United States of America. It lasted until January 6, 2021, when sitting president Trump refused to accept the voters’ election of Democrat Joe Biden, the leader of the opposition.

Now back in power, Trump and his loyalists are continuing to undermine the idea of politics, policies, and debate, trying instead to delegitimize the Democratic opposition altogether. Yesterday, during the protests, President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D Vance, and the official White House social media account posted a video of Trump placing a royal crown on his head, draping a royal robe around his shoulders, and unsheathing and brandishing a sword (an image that raises questions about why Trump wanted one of General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s swords so badly that he had the museum director who refused to hand it over fired). In the video, Democratic leaders including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and what appears to be Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) first kneel and then bow to Trump.

Administration imagery doesn’t simply insult opposition leaders; it undermines the idea of politics by suggesting that Democrats are un-American. Last night the White House continued its racist crusade against Democratic leaders by posted an AI-generated image of Trump and Vance wearing jewel-encrusted crowns positioned above an image of House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wearing Mexican sombreros. The caption reads: “We’re built different.”

The administration’s hostility to loyal opposition is translating into direct assaults on our government. House speaker Mike Johnson is refusing to seat a member of the opposition. Voters chose representative-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) on September 23 to fill a vacant House seat, but Johnson has come up with one reason after another not to seat her. Until she is sworn in, she has no access to government resources and cannot represent her constituents. She also cannot be the 218th signature on a discharge petition that would force a vote on whether to demand the release of the Epstein files, the final signature needed.

Grijalva recorded a video reinforcing the political system, saying: “We need to get to work, get on the floor, and negotiate so we can reopen the government.”

But Republican congressional leaders are refusing even to talk with Democrats to reopen the government, let alone to negotiate with them. They are trying to force Democrats simply to do as they say, despite the fact that 78% of Americans, including 59% of Republicans, support the Democrats’ demand for an extension of the tax credit that lowers the cost of healthcare premiums on the Affordable Care Act markets. Lindsay Wise, Anna Wilde Mathews, and Katy Stech Ferek of the Wall Street Journal reported today that more than three quarters of those who are insured through the ACA markets live in states that voted for Trump.

A video of Trump in a bomber attacking American cities carries an implied threat that the disdain of throwing excrement doesn’t erase. This morning, Trump reinforced that threat when he reminded Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo: “Don’t forget I can use the Insurrection Act. Fifty percent of the presidents almost have used that. And that’s unquestioned power. I choose not to, I’d rather do this, but I’m met constantly by fake politicians, politicians that think that, that you know they it’s not like a part of the radical left movement to have safety. These cities have to be safe.”

That “safety” apparently involves detaining U.S. citizens without due process. On Thursday, Nicole Foy of ProPublica reported that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by immigration agents. She reports they “have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.”

On Friday, the Trump administration pushed its attempt to use the military in Democratic-led cities, asking the Supreme Court to let it deploy troops in Chicago immediately. Chris Geidner of Law Dork notes that four judges, two appointed by Democrats and two appointed by Republicans, have rejected the administration’s arguments for why they must send in troops. Now the Department of Justice has appealed to the Supreme Court, asking for a decision on the so-called shadow docket, which would provide a fast response, but one without any hearings or explanation.

The administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court warned that there was “pressing risk of violence” in Chicago—a premise the judges rejected—and said preventing Trump from going into the city “improperly impinges on the President’s authority.”

How much difference will the No Kings Day protests, even as big as they were, make in the face of the administration’s attempt to get rid of our democratic political system and replace it with authoritarianism? What good is an inflatable frog against federal agents?

Scholar of social movements Lisa Corrigan noted that large, fun marches full of art and music expand connections and make people more willing to take risks against growing state power. They build larger communities by creating new images that bring together recognizable images from the past in new ways, helping more people see themselves in such an opposition. The community and good feelings those gatherings develop help carry opposition through hard moments. Corrigan notes, too, that yesterday “every single rally (including in the small towns) was bigger than the surrounding police force available. That kind of image event is VERY IMPORTANT if you’re…demonstrating social coherence AGAINST a fascist government and its makeshift gestapo.”

Such rallies “bring together multigenerational groups and the playfulness can help create enthusiasm for big tent politics against the monoculture of fascism,” Corrigan writes. “The frogs (and unicorns and dinosaurs) will be defining ideographs of this period of struggle.”

Source: Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 19 October 2025

System of a Down, “Toxicity” (2001)

Sunday Reader No. 6: Hell Is Full

On Chaplygin Street in Moscow. Photo by anatrrra. Used with their permission

EXTERIOR: A neo-classical building in Moscow’s old German quarter. A plaque on the wall reads, “Western District Military Court No 2”. A group of actors and journalists mill around on the lawn.

INTERIOR: A large hall with a grand staircase. Through the frame of a metal detector stands a statue of Lady Justice in her blindfold, holding scales in one hand and a sword in the other.

A commotion. Several portly guards in flak jackets, with a dog on a leash, escort two handcuffed women through the hall. One, about 5ft tall with big eyes and curly hair, is Yevgenia Berkovich, a 39-year-old poet and theatre director. She is dressed in a white shirt and black trouser-suit. The other, slightly taller, wearing jeans, a white T-shirt and large owlish glasses, is Svetlana Petriychuk, a 44-year-old playwright.

The two women are led into a courtroom and placed in a cage of bullet-proof glass. A bailiff lets in the spectators, who sit down on the upholstered, green benches. Berkovich mischievously sticks out her tongue as photographers’ cameras flash and click. Yuri Massin, the judge, looks towards Berkovich.

Massin: Are you ready for the proceedings?
Berkovich: Well, it depends on what will happen.

What happened was a show trial that revealed the radicalisation of the Russian state in the past few years. By the time proceedings began on May 20th 2024, Berkovich and Petriychuk had already been in detention for more than a year, having been charged with “propaganda and the justification of terrorism”. In the eyes of the regime, they had committed a crime by writing and staging a play called “Finist, the Bright Falcon”. Part docu-drama, part fable, “Finist” tells the story of the thousands of Russian women who, from 2015, were seduced online by professional recruiters from Islamic State (IS), and travelled to Syria to marry jihadists. Many of these women received lengthy sentences on their return home. The play premiered in 2020 to critical acclaim and was performed across the country.

As with any show trial, this one’s outcome was preordained, and its purpose was to justify the existing system and demarcate the ideological limits of the state. In doing so, it elucidated the ultra-conservative, anti-Western belief system that has expanded across public life since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Berkovich and Petriychuk were the first artists to be jailed since Soviet times for the content of their work—or, more precisely, the thoughts of their characters. But as theatrical professionals, they managed to turn the trial into their show.

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Suffer the Children

LOCAL INSPIRATION of the day. This quilt by Joleigh Kambic is part of a larger quilt titled “Babies in Gaza Who Never Made It To Their First Birthday.” The quilt is composed of smaller quilts created by nearly 40 quilters from across the Monterey Bay, commemorating the children who were killed in the Israel-Hamas war. It is on display through Oct. 3 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Monterey Peninsula, 490 Aguajito Road in Carmel.

Source: Monterey County NOW newsletter, 29 September 2025

Special detention center for waifs and “troubled” teens. Moscow, 1988. Photos: Igor Stomakhin

Source: Igor Stomakhin (Facebook), 1 September 2025. The first of September (aka Knowledge Day) is the first day of the school year in Russia and other former Soviet countries.

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Choice Is Yours, Don’t Be Late

Source: High Potential (TV series), Season 2, Episode 2: “Checkmate”

Every week the headlines blur together: a church in Michigan left in ashes, a North Carolina waterfront bar turned into a war zone, a Catholic school in Minneapolis where children never made it home, an ICE facility in Dallas pierced by sniper fire, a political rally in Utah where a bullet silenced a conservative gun rights activist.

And … and … and …

Different cities. Different motives. Same profile. White. Male. Armed. Deadly.

The news pretends each act is an isolated tragedy: a troubled man, a random eruption, a community blindsided. But line them up side by side and the repetition is too precise to ignore. These aren’t anomalies; they’re a drumbeat. Churches, schools, bars, government buildings. Nothing is sacred. Nobody is immune. The perpetrators are acting out the same choreography and playing variations on a script that ends with bodies on the ground and their names immortalized in headlines.

Humiliation is the through-line.

Strip away the headlines, the manifestos, the mugshots, and what you see is white men who cannot live with being ordinary, ignored, or denied. White masculinity in America was built on the guarantee of centrality, the right to be heard, feared, and obeyed. When that illusion frays, humiliation takes its place. And humiliation, when combined with access to assault rifles and an internet full of cheerleaders becomes combustible.

Enter Donald Trump.

He is not the author of this script, but he is its loudest hype man. He takes that humiliation and translates it into a politics of grievance. He tells white men their despair isn’t failure, it’s theft. He tells them their rage isn’t weakness, it’s patriotism. He baptizes their sense of collapse as a holy war. Trump doesn’t hand them the gun, but he hands them the permission slip to kill. He turns their humiliation into a rallying cry, their despair into his campaign platform, and their death wish into applause lines.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk proves this. Here was no random eruption in a mall or classroom, but a sniper attack staged at a political rally. What we witnessed was violence designed as theater. The accused, Tyler Robinson, was reportedly obsessed with Kirk, surveilled his movements, and turned grievance into spectacle. This wasn’t just about killing one man, it was about sending a message by inscribing grievance onto the national stage. And while Robinson didn’t appear to seek his own death in the same way as other shooters, the logic still holds: collapse turned outward, humiliation converted into performance, violence as a last-ditch claim to visibility. Whether in a schoolyard or at a rally podium, the impulse is the same — make sure the world cannot look away.

That’s why so many of these killings end with the shooter’s own death. Researchers have long noted that mass shooters often carry suicidal intent. Some kill themselves on the spot, others provoke police into finishing the job. Even those who survive often admit they never planned an escape. They weren’t trying to get away with it. They were trying to make sure we all saw them on the way out.

This is suicide turned outward. Instead of a private exit, it is a public performance. It is despair weaponized into punishment. It is a white man who feels invisible deciding that if he must disappear, he will do it in a blaze that makes his enemies, his community, his whole country remember his name. The bullets are not just aimed at bodies, they are aimed at the world that he believes has betrayed him.

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Judging Them by How They Look

A Russian National Guard serviceman checks residency documents during a raid outside the Apraksin Dvor clothing market, in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, July 4, 2025. (AP Photo/File)

The immigrant worker from Uzbekistan entered the bank in Moscow, but when he reached the teller, she refused to serve him and she wouldn’t say why.

For him and others from impoverished countries across Central Asia who seek better lives in Russia, such hostility is woven into everyday life. Sometimes it bursts into outright violence.

“Mostly you notice it when you go to the hospital, a clinic, a government office: You stand in line and everyone shoots you dirty looks,” said the man, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he feared repercussions.

Such xenophobia clashes with economic realities at a time when Russia has a labor shortage, primarily due to its war in Ukraine. In the first quarter of 2025, over 20% of Russian businesses said they were hindered by a lack of workers, according to the Central Bank. 

But rather than welcoming laborers, Russian officials are fomenting anti-migrant sentiment and increasing restrictions on immigrants, which the government says number 6.1 million, but is probably higher. The government is tracking their movement, clamping down on their employment and impeding their children’s rights to education.

A massacre and a backlash

The continued crackdown comes as a trial began this month for four Tajik nationals who are accused of the shooting and arson attack at a Moscow concert hall in March 2024 that killed 149 people. The four were arrested within hours of the attack and appeared in court with signs of being severely beaten. An Islamic State group claimed responsibility but Russia sought to blame Ukraine for the bloodshed.

Anti-migrant rhetoric had been growing in Russia since the early 2020s. But the massacre in particular launched a wave of “terrible violence” against immigrants, said lawyer Valentina Chupik, who has worked with the immigrant community for over 20 years. In the eight days after the killings, she received 700 reports of injuries to immigrants, including “faces smashed against the doors of police stations,” she said.

Parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin captured the public mood after the massacre, saying “migration control is extremely important” to ensure foreign nationals carrying out “illegal activity” could be deported without a court order.

The violence drew concern from human rights groups.

“Central Asian migrants seeking work in Russia due to dire economic conditions in their countries of origin today face ethnic profiling, arbitrary arrests, and other harassment by police in Russia,” Human Rights Watch said in a report on the anniversary of the attack.

“The heinous massacre cannot justify massive rights abuses against Central Asian migrants in Russia,” said its author, Syinat Sultanalieva.

Raids, roundups and restrictions

While some violence has subsided, it hasn’t disappeared. In April, police raided a Kyrgyz-run bathhouse in Moscow with video showing masked men forcing half-naked bathers to crawl across the floor and deliberately stepping on them before covering the lens of a security camera.

Police also reportedly rounded up immigrants in raids on warehouses, construction sites and mosques, then coerced them into joining the military to fight in Ukraine. Some are threatened with having their residency documents withheld, while others are recently naturalized citizens who failed to register for military service. In such cases, serving in the military is presented as the only alternative to prison or deportation. For others, a fast track to Russian citizenship is offered as an incentive for enlisting.

Speaking in St. Petersburg in May, Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, said “20,000 ‘young’ citizens of Russia, who for some reason do not like living in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan (and) Kyrgyzstan” were serving in Ukraine.

Those immigrants who have avoided violence still are subject to new anti-migrant laws. Much of this is targeted specifically toward workers from Central Asia.

In 2024, 13 Russian regions banned immigrants from certain jobs, including in hospitality, catering and finance, and even as taxi drivers. A pilot program starting in September in the Moscow region requires migrants who enter Russia without a visa to be tracked via an app. Those failing to comply are added to a police watchlist, impeding access to services like banking, and subjecting them to a possible cutoff of cellphone and internet connectivity.

A nationwide law banned children of immigrants from attending school unless they could prove they could speak Russian. Less than six weeks after the law came into force, officials told local media that only 19% of children who applied for the language test were able to take it, and the most common reason for rejection was incomplete or inaccurate documents.

Another man from Uzbekistan who has worked in Russia for almost two decades and lives in St. Petersburg said he’s had to wait in line for over seven hours to get needed residency documents. The man, who also spoke to AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, hopes to stay in Russia but says the climate has worsened.

“It’s hard to get paperwork,” he said. “There just isn’t the time.”

The oppressive laws sometimes force immigrants to resort to paying bribes. Chupik, the lawyer, believes that Russia’s system results in “violations that cannot be avoided.”

“This is exactly what this mass regulation is striving for: not for all migrants to be here legally, but for everyone to be illegal,” she said. “That way, they can extract bribes from anyone at any moment and deport anyone who resists.”

Encouraging anti-migrant sentiment

Anti-migrant sentiment is unlikely to diminish anytime soon, mostly because it’s encouraged by authorities like the Investigative Committee’s Bastrykin, who said immigrants “physically occupy our territory, not just with their ideology but with specific buildings” — referring to sites such as mosques.

Ultra-nationalist lawmaker Leonid Slutsky said foreign workers “behave aggressively, causing conflicts and potentially dangerous situations.”

Migrants are an easy scapegoat for many social ills, and not just in Russia, said Caress Schenk, an associate professor of political science at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan.

“Closing borders, conducting migrant raids and tightening policies are all tools that are easy go-tos for politicians the world over,” she said. “It goes in cycles that are sensitive to geopolitical pressures, as we’re seeing now, but also things like election campaigns and domestic political rivalries.”

A surge of “anti-migrant propaganda” has dwarfed previous rhetoric of recent years, according to the Moscow-based Uzbek immigrant who was ignored by the bank teller.

“If every person paying attention to the TV, the radio, the internet is only told that migrants are ‘bad, bad, bad,’ if they only show bad places and bad people, of course, that’s what people are going to think,” he said.

Such anti-migrant rhetoric has become part of the nationalist narrative from President Vladimir Putin and others used to justify the 2022 invasion of Ukraine — that Russia is under constant threat.

“Russia has started lumping together all of ‘the external enemies’ that it’s created over the years for itself: the migrants, the Ukrainians, the West,” said Tajik journalist Sher Khashimov, who focuses on migration, identity and social issues. “It all becomes this part of this single narrative of Russia being this castle under siege, and Putin being the only person who is on the lookout for ordinary Russians.”

The Uzbek immigrant in Moscow said Russia has created conditions “supposedly to help people, to help migrants.”

“But the rules do not work,’ he added. ”Special barriers are created that migrants cannot pass through on their own.”

Source: Katie Marie Davies, “Immigrants from Central Asia find hostility and violence in Russia,” Associated Press, 22 August 2025

Source: SEIU California (Facebook), 8 September 2025

A prominent nonviolent activist from Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara has been detained by federal immigration officers. Jamal Fadel was seized by masked ICE agents at Manhattan’s notorious federal building at 26 Federal Plaza on August 25 after a routine immigration hearing — an arrest that was caught on video.

Fadel is from the occupied city of Boujdour in Western Sahara. He’s been protesting nonviolently against Morocco’s occupation since he was a high school student, and was threatened by Moroccan authorities so many times that he left to seek political asylum in the United States.

Fadel is currently being held by ICE at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania. His attorney expects ICE will move for an expedited removal hearing. If deported, Fadel faces lengthy imprisonment, torture — or worse.

Source: Democracy Now (Facebook), 9 September 2025

I spotted some of the Trump administration’s wanted men on Tuesday, the day after the U.S. Supreme Court granted immigration agents virtually unchecked permission to continue the “largest Mass Deportation Operation” in America’s history.

The wanted stood outside of a U-Haul truck rental outlet in the San Gabriel Valley. They polished other people’s BMWs and Range Rovers at a Pasadena car wash. I saw the wanted women too, walking to jobs as nannies and housekeepers.

They looked suspicious, all right, by the definition outlined Monday by Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. They were natives of Mexico and Central America, seeking “certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction.”

They were suspect to many Californians too, but only of wanting to work, wanting to earn a little cash, wanting to pay their bills and feed their families. One hundred and seventy five years to the day after land that once belonged to Mexico became the 31st American state, California felt to many people Tuesday like it had reverted to a kind of frontier justice, where racial profiling had become the law of the land.

“I am just working hard and paying taxes,” said Mario, 50, between sips of coffee on the sidewalk outside the U-Haul station. Even before the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids began three months ago, the Honduran immigrant said, life for street-corner workers was not easy.

“People are just looking for work. Some of them are even homeless,” said Mario, who declined to give his last name. “But some people are showing them hate, sometimes even hitting or kicking the homeless. We see it out on the street.”

At the Pasadena car wash where six workers were carted away in late August, those left behind continued their buffing and polishing Tuesday.

“It feels like we have come down low, really low,” said Cesar, between checking in customers. Though he was born just blocks away at Pasadena’s Huntington Hospital, he said he does not feel immune from the raids.

“If now they are just going to judge you by how you look, or maybe how you talk, I can get pulled over. Anyone can get pulled over,” said Cesar, who did not give his last name. “It’s gonna be harder for people to live a normal life. They’re gonna just have to deal with harassment. That’s not something I would want anyone to have to go through.”

Earlier raids by Trump immigration agents have spread far beyond snagging the criminals and drug traffickers the president and his allies claimed to be after. With 10 million Latinos living in the seven Southern California counties covered by the court’s order, a rights group said the high court’s action cleared the way for “an extraordinarily expansive dragnet, placing millions of law-abiding people at imminent risk of detention by federal agents.”

“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote. “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

The action offered portentous echoes of the mistreatment and greater violence unleashed on Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s. Today, it had U.S.-born citizens, such as The Times’ Gustavo Arellano, feeling they will have to carry their passports to prove their citizenship.

Outside the U-Haul, Mario said he holds a green card. So he will continue waiting on the sidewalk for his next job.

“I believe in God,” he said. “We might think different things, but we all have the same heart. There should be the same heart for everyone. Everyone.”

Source: James Rainey, “Essential California” newsletter (L.A. Times), 10 September 2025

The United States deported 39 Uzbek nationals on a charter flight to Tashkent, the U.S. Embassy confirmed in what it described as part of ongoing efforts to remove migrants without legal status. Earlier this year, more than 100 Central Asians, mostly Uzbeks, were repatriated in a similar U.S.-funded operation. The deportations attest to close cooperation between Washington and Tashkent on migration enforcement. That partnership has been accompanied by political overtures. Last week, Presidents Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Donald Trump held a phone call in which they pledged to broaden their strategic partnership ahead of an expanded dialogue session this autumn. U.S. officials have pointed to investment opportunities in Uzbekistan, particularly in critical minerals, while both sides also highlight cooperation on security and migration.

Source: Peter Leonard, “Central Asia’s week that was #70,” Havli, 10 September 2025

Eating Kimchi in Public

So the Korean Hyundai factory workers were racially profiled and yesterday SCOTUS said racial profiling is now constitutional. The workers were reported to ICE because someone saw a bunch of foreign workers. That is racial profiling.

Yesterday’s news made me think about when I was little and went on road trips with my family. My parents always insisted on preparing and eating Korean food at rest areas along the way. This was before Korean food became more well-known and I remember that if there were people nearby who could smell our food, they often made faces and comments about the smell. Eating kimchi in public was always an interesting experience back then. This was just embarrassing, but does the new Supreme Court ruling mean that in this scenario, it is now something much more ominous we should be worried about?

Now someone could call ICE on a foreign-looking family eating foreign-smelling food in a rest area. When ICE shows up we now would have to show papers to prove we are citizens based on a racially motivated tip, is that our reality? Also, remembering that my mother never became a citizen but had a green card and probably speeding tickets so she would have been deportable under the current regime? What if I can’t prove my citizenship because I don’t carry my passport or naturalization papers, I am detained until I can prove my citizenship and they have the legal authority to do all of this now?

Lawyers, please help me understand. Is this our reality now? Is eating kimchi in public while Korean enough to get ICE called on us?

And I want to add that racial profiling has always been used against Black Americans and to a lesser degree other less white adjacent communities forever in this country, whether it was deemed constitutional or not. This is not new for Black Americans and others and something I have to acknowledge.

Source: Son Mun (Facebook), 9 September 2025

Source: Clarence Patton (Facebook), 9 September 2025

Cars for Ukraine

The European University at St. Petersburg has purchased and dispatched a UAZ vehicle to the war in Ukraine “for transporting the wounded in the combat zone,” the university’s press service has reported.

It notes that the vehicle was sent to Military Unit No. 11076, which was formed from mobilized residents of St. Petersburg, the Leningrad, Murmansk, and Arkhangelsk regions, and the Komi Republic.

The university’s press service posted a commendation to university rector Vadim Volkov from the unit’s commander, who praised Volkov for his “social activism” and support of the military “as it carries out missions in the special military operation zone in Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic, the Zaporizhzhia region, and the Kherson region.”

“Military Unit No. 11076 expresses gratitude to the autonomous noncommercial higher education organization ‘European University at St. Petersburg’ in the person of Vadim Viktorovich Volkov for social activism and support rendered to the soldiers of our unit as they carry out missions in the special military operation zone in Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic, Zaporizhzhia Region, and Kherson Region. Victory will be ours! Military Unit No. 11076’s commander, Colonel V. Zyatchin, May 2025.”

The European University is a private university founded in St. Petersburg in 1994. The university was funded by grants from American and European NGOs. In 2016, the university was stripped of its accreditation for a year after an audit undertaken by the Prosecutor’s Office and Rosobrnadzor [the Russian federal education watchdog], after which such audits became routine.

In 2023, the Russian authorities audited the European University “for extremism,” and the university was also fined over books in its library published by “undesirable” organizations. Rector Volkov reported in an interview with RBC on June 24 that the prosecutor’s office had audited ninety-eight programs at the university and twelve master’s theses, after which the university had amended the programs and made changes to its academic advising process based on the recommendations of the authorities.

In March 2024, the European University fired Ivan Kurilla, an Americanist who taught in its political science and sociology departments. Kurilla opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and was among the signatories of an open letter against the war by Russian academics and science journalists.

Source: “European University at St. Petersburg sends vehicle to war, garnering thank-you from Russian military,” Meduza, 10 June 2025. Photo courtesy of European University at St. Petersburg. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up.

Where are you from? And where are you now? Doing what?

I am from Aarhus, Denmark, and have lived in Kyiv for almost 20 years. I own a software company, Livatek, which works with clients in Northern Europe.

As a foreigner working and living in Ukraine for many years, what is the best and the worst thing about Ukraine?

The worst thing about Ukraine is that nothing is possible. The best about Ukraine is that everything in the end is possible.

How has the war changed your life? Has the war changed you personally?

With the start of the war, my brother Morten and I reactivated a Danish initiative called “Biler til Ukraine” – “Cars for Ukraine”—which had already helped a Ukrainian NGO bring SUVs to the front for medical evacuation during the war in Donbas. Within a week of the full-scale invasion in 2022, we were back in Ukraine with the first three cars.

Since then, we have scaled up tremendously and delivered more than 400 vehicles to the Ukrainian military for logistics and tactical purposes, including 75 buses for personnel transports. These days, we are managing more than one car per day. All in all, as a rough estimate, the value of these cars is somewhere close to $2 million. The money comes from absolutely average, normal Danes and private companies. I am often surprised by people’s generosity. They often donate their car and even drive it with us to Ukraine!

Growing a business has become more difficult with the war. With “Cars for Ukraine,” I have found another outlet for my professional energy to defend Ukraine. It has allowed me to work with some unique people in Denmark and Ukraine. Their strength and dedication inspire me.

What has surprised you most about Ukrainians these past couple of years? Good or bad?

I was not surprised to see the tenacity of the Ukrainians as they resisted Russia’s efforts to eradicate their culture. On the negative side—and here I am probably a bit naïve—I can still be disappointed by corruption. I know it is good news that corruption and the people who commit it are discovered and prosecuted, but I would prefer things to be nipped in the bud instead of cracked down afterward.

What are your plans?

I think I am like most Ukrainians in that “the future” does not exist anymore. We have a war to fight and win—after that, there is a future—and it is bright and open.

How do you see the war ending and Ukraine returning to a normal life?

Forces at play now do not point to a happy-end scenario for Ukraine. The dynamics need to change. Specifically, more political leaders of the West must do “a Macron” — to understand that Ukraine is fighting for every country of the liberal, Western world. (French President Emmanuel Macron underwent a radical change in his view on Russia’s war from dovish to hawkish and insisting on Russia’s defeat.) Because, honestly, for Ukraine to have a normal future, Russia not only needs to be beaten back to within its borders. It needs such an educational wacking that it will give up on its aggressive ways – and never again even consider attacking Ukraine or other states.

Tell us one thing people abroad do not know about Ukraine but they really should.

For too many centuries, Russian culture has defined itself as being unique, and outside rules and measures apply only to other countries. The mere existence of an independent Ukraine is a challenge to that myth. And, when Russia is attacking its neighbor, it is fighting its own demons and inferiority complexes.

You can learn more about the work of “Cars for Ukraine” (in Danish “Biler til Ukraine”) here.

Source: “BLITZ INTERVIEW: Jesper Lindholt, a Danish tech executive bringing hundreds of cars to the Ukrainian army,” Two Grumpy Old Men on Ukraine, 20 May 2024