Maine high school students protest ICE on the Sagadahoc Bridge in Bath

Topsham Maine - Mt. Ararat Students Protest ICE. Maine Senator Susan Collins alert❗ She voted to fully 💲fund evil ICE. 😕😞

Reported "Local Scoop", in Topsham Dems News: 

On Monday, February 2nd, 2026, students from the Midcoast area, organized by Midcoast Youth Activists, including Morse High School, Lincoln Academy, Brunswick High School and Mt Ararat descended upon the Sagadahoc Bridge to protest the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surge in Maine that has so frightened the entire immigrant community, most of whom are already citizens, legal residents, or have work authorization and live here legally.

Mt. Ararat Senior, Ashby Hayward, as a three-season athlete and Theater participant, is an all-around ride-giver at Mt. Ararat. He coordinated rides to the event, reaching out to other friends with cars and connecting them to students who needed rides. He figures he coordinated about 50 to 60 rides to the protest, only to see initial plans fall through when they could not meet at the school due to the bomb threat that day. But, not to be defeated, Mt Ararat showed up! There were many Topsham students scattered on the bridge who found a way there.

I asked Ashby what drew him to the event. He said “It’s more important than it ever has been that young people use their voice - especially with social media.”

I confessed to him that his generation is surely more literate and effective online than mine. He responded, thinking in part about the videos of ICE’s brutality, “My generation was raised with this technology. The videos make it personal. Friends will switch their beliefs.” He says his generation can see right through propaganda, and finds Trump Administration propaganda incompetent. Though, he says, it is getting harder and harder to distinguish fake videos with the advent of AI technology.  #ICEoutNOW ❗

What was Ashby’s message on the bridge? “It’s so easy nowadays to disconnect and say I don’t need to do anything. None of these problems hit them in the face. But, for others the problems really do hit them in the face. 

We need to care now and not wait until it's in our backyard. We need to love each other and not hate each other. Unlike the Trump Administration.”

On the bridge, I also found Lia, a Mt Ararat Junior. Lia’s message was clear in two words: “ICE OUT❗” Lia said, “This is about protecting our communities. It’s about letting immigrants in this country know that they are safe and that we are willing to stand up and fight for their communities and them. We desperately need to recognize the indigenous and immigrant populations. We have never, ever, been a country that is just white or English-speaking. Diversity is our greatest strength.”

What does Lia hope for the future of this country❓ “We need to change the system to keep the billionaires out of politics and keep a fair distribution of income.”

There were many, many more Mt Ararat students on that bridge,T along with several hundred students from other schools. 

If they are as sharp and centered as Ashby and Lia, there is hope for us all. Their energy and passion were tangible to all who were  there.

Donald Trump was flat out wrong and sinful to call for hating his opponents when his maga cult was memorializing Mr. Charlie Kirk

Echo editorial published in The Guardian:

At Sunday’s (September 20) memorial for the conservative ultra rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump paid a peculiar tribute. Having quoted the tragically assassinated Mr Kirk’s words of forgiveness, he put aside the script. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” he said. “I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them.” It was a stark and clarifying admission. Trump does not seek to criminalise hate speech so much as to criminalise speech he hates.
The US is being dragged by Donald Trump's "Trumpziism" into a state of (Fake❗) emergency. 

• Speech is framed as terrorism. 
• Satire is rebranded as enemy propaganda. 
• Employers punish workers for personal posts. 

The predictable result is a chilling climate of surveillance and reprisal, in which citizens learn to keep quiet. The assassination is not just being used to police manners; it is being used to recon

struct the public square so that dissent equals disloyalty, and disloyalty is treated as a security threat.

The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s hate for opponents: practising politics the wrong way
Editorial

The (evil) Trump admission about "hating his opponents" is more than bravado. By blurring truth and criminalising dissent, he is dismantling the US’s free-speech order from within.

At Sunday’s memorial for the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump paid a peculiar tribute. 

Having quoted Mr Kirk’s words of forgiveness, he put aside the script. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” 💢😡he said🗯️. “I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them.” It was a stark and clarifying admission. Trump does not seek to criminalise hate speech so much as to criminalise speech he hates.

The US is being dragged into a state of emergency. Speech is framed as terrorism. Satire is rebranded as enemy propaganda. Employers punish workers for personal posts. The predictable result is a chilling climate of surveillance and reprisal, in which citizens learn to keep quiet. The assassination is not just being used to police manners; it is being used to reconstruct the public square so that dissent equals disloyalty, and disloyalty is treated as a security threat.

Hannah Arendt warned of the existential peril in blurring the line between truth and lies: then truth doesn’t stand; it becomes optional. rump’s reported falsehoods about paracetamol and autism will harm mothers, stigmatise families and erode trust in medicine. But in Trumpland such costs are outweighed by the political payoff of pitting supporters against the scientific “establishment”.

His assault is twofold. First, speech is being weaponised through partisan media, online influencers and harassment networks that seek to capture attention while corroding the conditions for open dialogue. Second, state power is weaponised by cowing social media platforms, threatening network licences and politicising information. Handing TikTok to rightwing billionaires is a morbid symptom of democratic decline.

“Authority is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority,” said the US supreme court. That defines the first amendment: citizens, not the state, decide which ideas survive, with narrow limits like fraud or defamation. By presuming to define “truth”, Mr Trump subverts self-government. Hate rallies thrive in Trump’s America because, since 1969, speech is unprotected only if intended and likely to incite “imminent lawless action”.

The US is a free-speech outlier. Other democracies accept broader, more collective trade‑offs to protect vulnerable groups, maintain public order and prevent incitement and harassment. Each country is different but the bargain is similar. Speech is presumptively free, yet words are considered acts with foreseeable harms. Words can mobilise mobs, direct harassment and orchestrate violence. The point isn’t to shield anyone’s feelings, it’s to make coexistence possible.

Trump has inverted the American model. Rather than robust exchanges under neutral rules, he selectively rewards allies while degrading the conditions of honest debate. All this while the infosphere is saturated with viral lies, making it easier to justify punitive state action “to keep order”. That is how an emergency becomes a system.

The answer is not the censor’s pen nor a free-for-all. It requires resilient democratic plumbing; social media platforms made accountable for publishing harms; and properly defining dangerous conduct. The aim – particularly in the US – must be to preserve free expression as the bedrock of self-government while dismantling the machinery that warps attention toward outrage and partisan mobilisation. Trump’s speech was disgraceful❗ When power learns to hate its opponents, democracy will fail.

How Fox News used Nazi style propaganda to sell fake news

Echo opinion published in The Chronicle, a newspaper in Centralia, in the state of Washington:

Maine Writer- This opinion echo is spot on!  

I would like to retitle this heartfelt opinion to "How Fox News used Nazi style public relations to create fake news"- During the first weeks of 1933, the Nazi regime deployed the radio, press, and newsreels to stoke fears of a pending “Communist uprising,” then channeled popular anxieties into political measures that eradicated civil liberties and democracy.

Fox News Sells Lies to Willing Viewers.

At what point do you admit to yourself that America is in trouble? I would say it would be the point you realize that Fox News has been lying to you for years.

All these radical extremist ideas, where the billionaire has all the cookies and you have one, and Fox News is telling you that another guy is going to get yours, so you better hate them. Fox News is in the midst of a lawsuit because they chose to lie to you for ratings rather than tell the truth.

They really think Trump is a demonic idiot — they said so to each other. Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity wanted to get rid of him for good, but they never told you that. They lied deliberately to mislead you. Look up the text messages they sent each other. If you only watch Fox, you have no idea about this because they won’t cover it.

Fox News nearly ruined a good honest company in Dominion Voting Systems with lies. Dominion is suing for $1.6 billion. 

Fox "Fake" News is brainwashing vulnerable cult viewers.

Smartmatic, another voting equipment system, is right in line behind them for $2.7 billion. Fox News did real damage to your idea of election integrity, even though the experts all agree that 2020 was a free and fair election in 2020. If you think it was stolen, how do you explain the down-ballot races where the GOP won? That is the big lie. Common sense Americans voted Trump out. End of story.

As far as being woke, you bet I am. So was Jesus Christ. He would be appalled at today’s GOP. The moneychangers fooled around and found out. I have compassion and empathy for my fellow man. I seek out the common good. If you disdain that, I don’t want to know you either.

Fox News is a fantasy, to make you mad enough to send grifters, petty swindlers, money. They make money on your outrage and anger, and admit it, you tune in to see who you are going to hate today: 

• Immigrants?* 
• People of color? 
• Fox has made Democrat a dirty word by ignoring the facts. 

Aren’t you tired of hating everything and everyone? If you want facts, read the rest of this newspaper. The Chronicle is a truthful conservative newspaper. I don’t always agree with their opinion, but at least I know they have some integrity.

Katherine Ford in Centralia, Washington

*Nazi propaganda: The elimination of the German multi-party political system brought about the demise of hundreds of newspapers produced by outlawed political parties. It also allowed the state to seize the printing plants and equipment of the Communist and Social Democratic Parties, which were often turned over directly to the Nazi Party. In the following months, the Nazis established control or exerted influence over independent press organs.

Untruth from Truth - The New Majority Agenda: No Facts, Just Lies

An interesting poem says, "Truth was there at beginning of the beginning of the beginning"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/truth-134/

Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Political Action Committees with money to burn are wasting more of it in the new wave of lies called The New Majority Agenda.

This time, rather than beginning the PACs negative ad with ridiculous scenarios that made no sense whatsoever, the recent twisted messages begins with truth turned inside out.  For example, it's true that President Obama inherited the worst economic mess, now called the Great Recession.  But, The New Majority Agenda uses an old fashioned technique called bait and switch.  They open with a true statement, the Great Recession, and then switch to a lie.

For example, The Great Recession economic emergency came together as a result of a confluence of circumstances, but the root of the problem was a deregulation of the banking industry which led to unregulated lending.  When some big banks found themselves on the brink of foreclosure, the federal government under President George W. Bush (#43) took the extraordinary step of bailing them out of the debt they were unable to recover from bad investing and lending.  Meanwhile, as the banks recovered, they recoiled from lending and the economy shrunk as a result.

In other words, The New Majority Agenda PAC advertisement takes the truth of the issue and switches it into a lie.  In spite of all evidence to the contrary, the PAC ad says it's President Obama's fault that all of the above happened at all.  In fact, President Obama had nothing to do with the Great Recession but he's been up against an obstructionist Republican party in efforts to bring a recovery. 

PACs waste their money creating lies from truth because they can.  According to the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court,  political action committees can legally use anonymous donations to create myths, lies and miscommunications.

Calling The New Majority Agenda a Political Action Committee is a misnomer.  Rather, it's a Propaganda Armed Conspiracy.  

Propaganda is usually repeated and dispersed over a wide variety of media in order to create the chosen result in audience attitudes.

http://www.ask.com/wiki/Propaganda?

Some truth is usually at the core of propaganda, before the message morphs into a lie, repeated over time. The purpose is to saturate the media with messages that are absorbed, like osmosis, into the public domain. 

It's time for a majority of the American public to demand truth at the beginning and at the end of The New Majority Agenda PAC messages.