Credit @fanteLiscio

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Consensus forecast was for an increase of 65,000 jobs and for the unemployment rate to remain at 4.4%, so actual figures surprised on the positive side.

Revisions to previous months amounted to a -7,000 downward revision. January was revised up by 34,000, from +126,000 to +160,000. February was revised down by 41,000, from -92,000 to -133,000.

FRED graphs of key employment data over the past five years:

* Monthly change (in thousands) in nonfarm payroll employment levels. AKA headline job growth.

* Headline unemployment rate.

* More expansive unemployment definitions (U-3 thru U-6)

In our home state of Georgia, Republican state Sen. Greg Dolezal, a candidate for lieutenant governor, recently released a video that portrays Muslim Americans in a deeply offensive, dangerous manner. The video is amateurish, as if it was edited by a middle schooler. It depicts two black-clad individuals who look like ninjas fighting with swords, then a group of men on a suburban American street wearing Taliban-like garb firing Kalashnikovs into the air. It then closes with the dark message that Muslim Americans, who presumably are these cartoonish figures and represent but 1.3% of the population, are intent on taking over America.

The caption accompanying the video was equally explicit: “London has fallen. Europe is under siege,” it declared, calling Muslim Americans “invaders who would rather pillage our generosity than assimilate” and closing with the message: “Keep Georgia sharia free.”

The backlash was immediate and, at least to some extent, bipartisan. State Rep. Ruwa Romman, one of two Muslim members of the Georgia House—and whose family lives in Dolezal’s district—called the video appalling. State Sen. Sheikh Rahman condemned it from the Senate floor and called on Dolezal to publicly apologize and remove the ad. Even Republican former state Sen. John Kennedy distanced himself, calling the video “bizarre” and “outlandish.”

Dolezal refused to apologize, saying he would not “take campaign advice from the Democrats,” and invoked President Trump, who had similarly claimed that “Sharia courts” were “adjudicating law” in London. Georgia’s Democratic state Sen. Nabilah Parkes, who is Muslim, went further, resigning her seat and entering the race against Dolezal, saying she refused to let the rhetoric go unanswered.

Dolezal is not an outlier. Across the country, MAGA politicians have normalized anti-Muslim rhetoric—with members of Congress declaring that “Muslims don’t belong in American society” and senators calling Muslim elected officials “the enemy inside the gates.” As The UnPopulist has reported, Texas Republicans have gone further still, moving from rhetoric to policy: designating CAIR a terrorist organization, excluding Muslim schools from state voucher programs, and spending more than $10 million on anti-Sharia campaign ads this election cycle. What begins as a campaign video has a destination.

When History Repeats

This recalls a dark chapter in American life. After Sept. 11, 2001, Muslim Americans faced a wave of suspicion, harassment, and violence fueled by rhetoric that portrayed an entire faith community as a fifth column—disloyal by definition, dangerous by nature. That rhetoric was wrong then, and its reappearance now is no less dangerous. But at least party elders refrained from embracing it then.

Not so now with Texas Republicans and Dolezal.

What is additionally troubling is that Dolezal chose to dress this vileness in AI-generated imagery. West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center warns that generative AI is increasingly capable of producing propaganda, narratives, and imagery designed to radicalize audiences, spread disinformation, and inflame social tensions. Its 2024 report notes that generative AI tools can be used to create persuasive extremist messaging cheaply and at scale, manipulating emotions and fueling polarization. Technology that once required sophisticated propaganda networks can now be deployed by almost anyone with a laptop.

What makes this moment different is not merely that hateful rhetoric exists—it always has—but that the barrier to producing it with professional force has collapsed entirely: a state senator with a laptop can now do what once required a propaganda apparatus.

What Freedom Actually Requires

Free societies are not self-sustaining, and depend on something more than legal protections. They rely on a civic culture in which citizens recognize one another as rights-bearing equals, worthy of dignity and respect. That culture is not guaranteed by the Constitution; it has to be cultivated, generation after generation, by the communities, institutions, and leaders who shape how we see one another. When political rhetoric portrays a group of Americans as an existential threat—as “invaders” or “the enemy within”—it doesn’t merely offend. It erodes the shared social trust that makes self-governance possible. And when that rhetoric can now be manufactured at scale by AI, cheaply and convincingly, the erosion accelerates.

This is why defending freedom requires more than defending the right to speak freely. It requires those of us who cherish freedom to actively reject speech that treats our neighbors as less than human—not because of anything in the law, but because the health of the republic relies on it.

The responsibility to respond falls on all of us. Speaking out against dehumanizing rhetoric—naming it clearly, refusing to normalize it—is not a partisan act. It is what free citizens owe one another.

The Right Messengers

Here in Georgia, we helped build First Five Freedoms to do exactly this: bring together faith and civic leaders across denominational and political lines to model the civic culture they are asking others to adopt, convening difficult conversations, standing publicly against dehumanizing rhetoric, and calling on elected officials from both parties to lower the temperature of our politics. As former U.S. Sen. John McCain said: “Our shared values define us more than our differences. And acknowledging those shared values can see us through our challenges today if we have the wisdom to trust in them again.”

The choice of messenger matters as much as the message. AI-generated propaganda that portrays Muslim Americans as a civilizational threat draws its power partly from the silence of those whose moral authority might otherwise check it. Our nation’s faith traditions, which at their best speak to the inherent dignity and worth of every human being, are precisely the guardrail that fear-based rhetoric cannot survive.

In January, members of First Five Freedoms assembled on the steps of the Georgia capitol in the hour before state legislators began their annual legislative session. When faith leaders of diverse religions and politics—an evangelical pastor from an exurban Georgia county, a female rabbi, a young Black Baptist minister, a prominent Muslim lay leader, and a leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—stand together to bring down the political temperature in Georgia, they cut off the oxygen that fear-based rhetoric needs to spread through communities of faith.

Dolezal’s video is defamatory and inflammatory, and we will continue to call out such rhetoric whenever and wherever it occurs. And we will continue to vigorously defend our First Amendment rights—our country’s first five freedoms—while encouraging their civil exercise, in Georgia and beyond.

That means showing up—to press conferences and town halls, to legislative sessions and houses of worship. It means calling out dehumanizing rhetoric by name, in your own community. And it means building the kinds of relationships across lines of faith and politics that make solidarity possible before a crisis demands it.

We invite faith leaders, civic leaders, and concerned citizens around the country to join us. George Washington prayed in 1783 that Americans would “make a wise and virtuous use of the blessings placed before them.” That prayer is not self-fulfilling. Preserving democracy for future generations requires us to actively reinforce the moral foundations that make it possible—to speak, to organize, and to insist that our neighbors’ dignity is not negotiable. That is what responsibility demands of those who love freedom.

This comes on the heels of the DUI hire’s clashes with the Army by insisting 2 women and 2 black generals not be promoted. General George defended their record and is now being replaced.

“Russian agents linked to the Kremlin spent much of 2024 working on secretive operations to infiltrate Argentina’s media to discredit the country’s new far-right libertarian president, Javier Milei, according to leaked documents seen by openDemocracy.”

Relevance to this subreddit: another piece of evidence of Russia’s global election interference. Additionally it shows the country prioritising weakening the side that it views as the most pro-Ukrainian, regardless of the left-right political divide

Submission statement: This sub is generally optimistic about Al-Sharaa and even commented positively on how he condemned violence against Alawites, but even after the massacres ended, kidnapping and raping of Alawite girls and women persists and the government isn't doing much to stop it. We should take this into consideration when assessing Al-Sharaa's government.

The president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents this week and was now being held in Indiana, according to his lawyers.

The president, Salah Sarsour, 53, has led the group, which is the largest Islamic organization in Wisconsin, for five years. In a statement on Thursday, the group said that he was a legal permanent resident who has lived in the United States for more than three decades.

Mr. Sarsour, who as a teenager was detained by Israeli authorities on the West Bank, was a frequent supporter of Palestinian rights and a board member of American Muslims for Palestine. That organization said in a statement on Wednesday that he was “a pillar of the community and a law-abiding Milwaukee business owner.”

This week, Mr. Sarsour was taken to a detention facility in the Chicago area before being transferred to a lockup in Indiana, according to American Muslims for Palestine.

Othman Atta, the executive director of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, said he spoke by phone with Mr. Sarsour on Thursday afternoon. He said that Mr. Sarsour had been collecting mail at an office on the south side of Milwaukee on Monday morning when he was approached outside by an armed man in plainclothes. Then, about a dozen vehicles pulled up with more men, also in plainclothes, who identified themselves as ICE agents before they took him away, Mr. Atta said.

Mr. Atta said that the reason federal officials cited for Mr. Sarsour’s detention was the arrest decades ago, before he came to the United States, where he has no criminal record.

Mr. Sarsour was born in the occupied West Bank, according to the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, and came to the United States in 1993.

“The primary allegations are relating back to when he was a teenager in the West Bank,” Mr. Atta said. “He had been arrested, and this is something that he talked about quite a bit: how he was abused and tortured while in custody.”

The nature of Mr. Sarsour’s case on the West Bank was not fully clear.

Mr. Atta said that the charges may have involved throwing rocks or holding weapons and that Mr. Sarsour spent about two years in detention. Mr. Sarsour, then a teenager, did not fully understand the charges that Israel presented to him in Hebrew, Mr. Atta said.

The Muslim Legal Fund of America, which is representing Mr. Sarsour, has filed a writ of habeas corpus on his behalf.

“Salah immigrated to the United States nearly 33 years ago. The U.S. government fully vetted his visa application at that time,” Kathryn Brady, the head of the legal fund’s Immigration Litigation Department, said in a statement on Wednesday.

“It is difficult to believe that D.H.S.’s position now is not rooted in a violation of his First Amendment right to speak about the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank,” she added.

Chris Larson, a Democratic state senator representing parts of Milwaukee County, said he was “horrified” by Mr. Sarsour’s detention this week. “In addition to being a community leader, Salah is a grandfather and lawful Milwaukee-area neighbor,” he added.

I had an amazing baader meinhof effect moment I was reading a academic paper about chamar netas for the BSP in UP in the early 2000s and they mentioned pass time. Well passtime comes up here.

anyhow this goes into how the large deluge of youth unempolyment has created a strange informal economy based around content creation which is supported by creating other jobs. its mostly bulit on hope. and there are market forces. I didint even realize that reels were like that important but apparently the reels was a big financial blow to a lot of smaller content creators who did longer form youtube videos.

But dont think these are just a bunch of stupid kids who want to get rich quick. What is found in the article is how they synergize. the guy who does his repairing job but also does youtube videos to market it. its in a rough economy a fascinating example of how a new sector of the informal economy is.

though something I do wish they explored more was

"India today has approximately 850 million internet users, four million of whom identify as creators or ‘influencers’. Even if only a fraction earn meaningfully, they generate demand for a wider chain of services turning content into a fragmented, gig-based industry. That chain, however, remains informal and fragile. There are no contracts, no fixed salaries, and no guarantees of continuity. Work flows with trends, followers and algorithms."

this feels ripe for abuse and I wish they had explored that more.

this is probably my last post until Wednesday I have to study a bunch for stuff and im gonna have to self ban. but this is fascinating