#available about the UK government

[reasonsforhope]

"Abby Allen has no problem with her neighbours peering over her luxuriant hedges to see what she is up to on her farm.

For years she has been carrying out ad hoc experiments with wildlife and farming techniques; in her lush Devon fields native cattle graze alongside 400-year-old hedgerows, with birds and butterflies enjoying the species-rich pasture.

Under the environmental land management scheme (ELMS), introduced by the government in 2021, those experiments were finally being funded. “We have a neighbour who has always been more of an intensive farmer,” she says, but he is now considering leaving fields unploughed to help the soil. “It genuinely is having such a huge impact in changing people’s mindsets who traditionally would never have thought about farming in this way.”

The new nature payments scheme followed the UK’s exit from the EU, when the government decided to scrap the common agricultural payments scheme, which gave a flat subsidy dependent on the number of acres a farmer managed. In its place came ELMS, which pays farmers for things such as planting hedges, sowing wildflowers for birds to feed on and leaving corners of their land wild for nature.

But these schemes are now at threat of defunding, as the Labour government has refused to commit to the £2.4bn a year spending pot put in place by the previous Conservative government. With spending tight and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, cutting back on infrastructure and hinting at tax rises, a cut to the ELMS scheme may be on her list.

However, government data released last week found the schemes were working to tentatively bring nature back to England’s farmland. Butterflies, bees and bats are among the wildlife being boosted by ELMS, with birds among the chief beneficiaries, particularly ones that largely feed on invertebrates. An average of 25% more breeding birds were found in areas utilising the eco-friendly schemes.

...there are also farmers who welcome the schemes. Allen says the ELMS has helped her farm provide data and funds to expand and improve the good things they were doing for nature. “Some of the money available around things like soil testing and monitoring – instead of us going ‘we think these are the right things to do and providing these benefits,’ we can now measure it. The exciting thing now is there is money available to measure and monitor and kind of prove that you’re doing the right things. And so then you can find appropriate funding to do more of that.”

Allen, who is in the Nature Friendly Farming Network, manages a network of farms in England, most of which are using the ELMS. This includes chicken farms where the poultry spend their life outside rather than in sheds and other regenerative livestock businesses...

Mark Spencer was an environment minister until 2024 when he lost his seat, but now spends more time in the fields admiring the fruits of his and his family’s labour. He says that a few years of nature-friendly agriculture has restored lapwings and owls.

“On the farm, I haven’t seen lapwings in any number for what feels like a whole generation. You know, as a kid, when I was in my early teens, you’d see lapwings. We used to call them peewits. We’d see them all the time, and they sort of disappeared.

“But then, me and my neighbours changed the way we did cropping, left space in the fields for them to nest, and suddenly they returned. You need to have a piece of land where you’re not having mechanical machinery go over it on a regular basis, because otherwise you destroy the nest. We’ve also got baby owls in our owl box now for the first time in 15 years. They look mega, to be honest, these little owls, little balls of fluff. It is rewarding.”"

-via The Guardian, August 23, 2024

[mostlysignssomeportents]

UK publishers suing Google for $17.4b over rigged ad markets

THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Look, no one wants to kick Big Tech to the curb more than I do, but, also: it's good that Google indexes the news so people can find it, and it's good that Facebook provides forums where people can talk about the news.

It's not news if you can't find it. It's not news if you can't talk about it. We don't call information you can't find or discuss "news" – we call it "secrets."

And yet, the most popular – and widely deployed – anti-Big Tech tactic promulgated by the news industry and supported by many of my fellow trustbusters is premised on making Big Tech pay to index the news and/or provide a forum to discuss news articles. These "news bargaining codes" (or, less charitably, "link taxes") have been mooted or introduced in the EU, France, Spain, Australia, and Canada. There are proposals to introduce these in the US (through the JCPA) and in California (the CJPA).

These US bills are probably dead on arrival, for reasons that can be easily understood by the Canadian experience with them. After Canada introduced Bill C-18 – its own news bargaining code – Meta did exactly what it had done in many other places where this had been tried: blocked all news from Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and other Meta properties.

This has been a disaster for the news industry and a disaster for Canadians' ability to discuss the news. Oh, it makes Meta look like assholes, too, but Meta is the poster child for "too big to care" and is palpably indifferent to the PR costs of this boycott.

Frustrated lawmakers are now trying to figure out what to do next. The most common proposal is to order Meta to carry the news. Canadians should be worried about this, because the next government will almost certainly be helmed by the far-right conspiratorialist culture warrior Pierre Poilievre, who will doubtless use this power to order Facebook to platform "news sites" to give prominence to Canada's rotten bushel of crypto-fascist (and openly fascist) "news" sites.

Americans should worry about this too. A Donald Trump 2028 presidency combined with a must-carry rule for news would see Trump's cabinet appointees deciding what is (and is not) news, and ordering large social media platforms to cram the Daily Caller (or, you know, the Daily Stormer) into our eyeballs.

But there's another, more fundamental reason that must-carry is incompatible with the American system: the First Amendment. The government simply can't issue a blanket legal order to platforms requiring them to carry certain speech. They can strongly encourage it. A court can order limited compelled speech (say, a retraction following a finding of libel). Under emergency conditions, the government might be able to compel the transmission of urgent messages. But there's just no way the First Amendment can be squared with a blanket, ongoing order issued by the government to communications platforms requiring them to reproduce, and make available, everything published by some collection of their favorite news outlets.

This might also be illegal in Canada, but it's harder to be definitive. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enshrined in 1982, and Canada's Supreme Court is still figuring out what it means. Section Two of the Charter enshrines a free expression right, but it's worded in less absolute terms than the First Amendment, and that's deliberate. During the debate over the wording of the Charter, Canadian scholars and policymakers specifically invoked problems with First Amendment absolutism and tried to chart a middle course between strong protections for free expression and problems with the First Amendment's brook-no-exceptions language.

So maybe Canada's Supreme Court would find a must-carry order to Meta to be a violation of the Charter, but it's hard to say for sure. The Charter is both young and ambiguous, so it's harder to be definitive about what it would say about this hypothetical. But when it comes to the US and the First Amendment, that's categorically untrue. The US Constitution is centuries older than the Canadian Charter, and the First Amendment is extremely definitive, and there are reams of precedent interpreting it. The JPCA and CJPA are totally incompatible with the US Constitution. Passing them isn't as silly as passing a law declaring that Pi equals three or that water isn't wet, but it's in the neighborhood.

But all that isn't to say that the news industry shouldn't be attacking Big Tech. Far from it. Big Tech compulsively steals from the news!

But what Big Tech steals from the news isn't content.

It's money.

Big Tech steals money from the news. Take social media: when a news outlet invests in building a subscriber base on a social media platform, they're giving that platform a stick to beat them with. The more subscribers you have on social media, the more you'll be willing to pay to reach those subscribers, and the more incentive there is for the platform to suppress the reach of your articles unless you pay to "boost" your content.

This is plainly fraudulent. When I sign up to follow a news outlet on a social media site, I'm telling the platform to show me the things the news outlet publishes. When the platform uses that subscription as the basis for a blackmail plot, holding my desire to read the news to ransom, they are breaking their implied promise to me to show me the things I asked to see:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

This is stealing money from the news. It's the definition of an "unfair method of competition." Article 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act gives the FTC the power to step in and ban this practice, and they should:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

Big Tech also steals money from the news via the App Tax: the 30% rake that the mobile OS duopoly (Apple/Google) requires for every in-app purchase (Apple/Google also have policies that punish app vendors who take you to the web to make payments without paying the App Tax). 30% out of every subscriber dollar sent via an app is highway robbery! By contrast, the hyperconcentrated, price-gouging payment processing cartel charges 2-5% – about a tenth of the Big Tech tax. This is Big Tech stealing money from the news:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Finally, Big Tech steals money by monopolizing the ad market. The Google-Meta ad duopoly takes 51% out of every ad-dollar spent. The historic share going to advertising "intermediaries" is 10-15%. In other words, Google/Meta cornered the market on ads and then tripled the bite they were taking out of publishers' advertising revenue. They even have an illegal, collusive arrangement to rig this market, codenamed "Jedi Blue":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

There's two ways to unrig the ad market, and we should do both of them.

First, we should trustbust both Google and Meta and force them to sell off parts of their advertising businesses. Currently, both Google and Meta operate a "full stack" of ad services. They have an arm that represents advertisers buying space for ads. Another arm represents publishers selling space to advertisers. A third arm operates the marketplace where these sales take place. All three arms collect fees. On top of that: Google/Meta are both publishers and advertisers, competing with their own customers!

This is as if you were in court for a divorce and you discovered that the same lawyer representing your soon-to-be ex was also representing you…while serving as the judge…and trying to match with you both on Tinder. It shouldn't surprise you if at the end of that divorce, the court ruled that the family home should go to the lawyer.

So yeah, we should break up ad-tech:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Also: we should ban surveillance advertising. Surveillance advertising gives ad-tech companies a permanent advantage over publishers. Ad-tech will always know more about readers' behavior than publishers do, because Big Tech engages in continuous, highly invasive surveillance of every internet user in the world. Surveillance ads perform a little better than "content-based ads" (ads sold based on the content of a web-page, not the behavior of the person looking at the page), but publishers will always know more about their content than ad-tech does. That means that even if content-based ads command a slightly lower price than surveillance ads, a much larger share of that payment will go to publishers:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

Banning surveillance advertising isn't just good business, it's good politics. The potential coalition for banning surveillance ads is everyone who is harmed by commercial surveillance. That's a coalition that's orders of magnitude larger than the pool of people who merely care about fairness in the ad/news industries. It's everyone who's worried about their grandparents being brainwashed on Facebook, or their teens becoming anorexic because of Instagram. It includes people angry about deepfake porn, and people angry about Black Lives Matter protesters' identities being handed to the cops by Google (see also: Jan 6 insurrectionists).

It also includes everyone who discovers that they're paying higher prices because a vendor is using surveillance data to determine how much they'll pay – like when McDonald's raises the price of your "meal deal" on your payday, based on the assumption that you will spend more when your bank account is at its highest monthly level:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Attacking Big Tech for stealing money is much smarter than pretending that the problem is Big Tech stealing content. We want Big Tech to make the news easy to find and discuss. We just want them to stop pocketing 30 cents out of every subscriber dollar and 51 cents out of ever ad dollar, and ransoming subscribers' social media subscriptions to extort publishers.

And there's amazing news on this front: a consortium of UK web-publishers called Ad Tech Collective Action has just triumphed in a high-stakes proceeding, and can now go ahead with a suit against Google, seeking damages of GBP13.6b ($17.4b) for the rigged ad-tech market:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/17-bln-uk-adtech-lawsuit-against-google-can-go-ahead-tribunal-rules-2024-06-05/

The ruling, from the Competition Appeal Tribunal, paves the way for a frontal assault on the thing Big Tech actually steals from publishers: money, not content.

This is exactly what publishing should be doing. Targeting the method by which tech steals from the news is a benefit to all kinds of news organizations, including the independent, journalist-owned publishers that are doing the best news work today. These independents do not have the same interests as corporate news, which is dominated by hedge funds and private equity raiders, who have spent decades buying up and hollowing out news outlets, and blaming the resulting decline in readership and profits on Craiglist.

You can read more about Big Finance's raid on the news in Margot Susca's Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy:

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087561

You can also watch/listen to Adam Conover's excellent interview with Susca:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21YfWy0-bA

Frankly, the looters and billionaires who bought and gutted our great papers are no more interested in the health of the news industry or democracy than Big Tech is. We should care about the news and the workers who produce the news, not the profits of the hedge-funds that own the news. An assault on Big Tech's monetary theft levels the playing field, making it easier for news workers and indies to compete directly with financialized news outlets and billionaire playthings, by letting indies keep more of every ad-dollar and more of every subscriber-dollar – and to reach their subscribers without paying ransom to social media.

Ending monetary theft – rather than licensing news search and discussion – is something that workers are far more interested in than their bosses. Any time you see workers and their bosses on the same side as a fight against Big Tech, you should look more closely. Bosses are not on their workers' side. If bosses get more money out of Big Tech, they will not share those gains with workers unless someone forces them to.

That's where antitrust comes in. Antitrust is designed to strike at power, and enforcers have broad authority to blunt the power of corporate juggernauts. Remember Article 5 of the FTC Act, the one that lets the FTC block "unfair methods of competition?" FTC Chair Lina Khan has proposed using it to regulate training AI, specifically to craft rules that address the labor and privacy issues with AI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mh8Z5pcJpg

This is an approach that can put creative workers where they belong, in a coalition with other workers, rather than with their bosses. The copyright approach to curbing AI training is beloved of the same media companies that are eagerly screwing their workers. If we manage to make copyright – a transferrable right that a worker can be forced to turn over their employer – into the system that regulates AI training, it won't stop training. It'll just trigger every entertainment company changing their boilerplate contract so that creative workers have to sign over their AI rights or be shown the door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

Then those same entertainment and news companies will train AI models and try to fire most of their workers and slash the pay of the remainder using those models' output. Using copyright to regulate AI training makes changes to who gets to benefit from workers' misery, shifting some of our stolen wages from AI companies to entertainment companies. But it won't stop them from ruining our lives.

By contrast, focusing on actual labor rights – say, through an FTCA 5 rulemaking – has the potential to protect those rights from all parties, and puts us on the same side as call-center workers, train drivers, radiologists and anyone else whose wages are being targeted by AI companies and their customers.

Policy fights are a recurring monkey's paw nightmare in which we try to do something to fight corruption and bullying, only to be outmaneuvered by corrupt bullies. Making good policy is no guarantee of a good outcome, but it sure helps – and good policy starts with targeting the thing you want to fix. If we're worried that news is being financially starved by Big Tech, then we should go after the money, not the links.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/06/stealing-money-not-content/#content-free

[averixus]

A story about disability discrimination

In November, me and @cassolotl made a train journey, as we often do. We were both using wheelchairs, so we booked passenger assistance in advance (as is recommended). We were told the wheelchair spaces on our trains had been reserved for us.

One of our changes was at Reading. We went to the platform ready to board the 12:15 that we were booked on. The train and station staff had an exchange, and then came to tell us that we couldn't get on the train, because there were people already in the wheelchair spaces.

We explained that legally, we had a right to use those spaces, and anyone else in them should be removed to let us on. Staff insisted it was impossible because the people in the spaces had been reserved on an earlier service that they couldn't take. They didn't let us on the train.

An hour later, we went to the platform ready to board the next service at 13:15. The staff started to put the ramp down for us, then various staff members talked to each other, and then the ramp was taken away. They came to tell us that we couldn't get on the train, because the spaces were full.

We explained that we had already been refused access to our booked train, and the spaces should be cleared for us. Staff insisted it was impossible because the people in the spaces had been reserved on that particular service, and we hadn't. They didn't let us on the train.

Both times, we went to the platform ready to get on the train and then watched the staff negotiate whether and how to break the law publicly in front of us. We watched other passengers freely being allowed onto the train while staff physically prevented us from boarding.

The staff made two opposing excuses for refusing us access to the two trains. First because other passengers had been reserved on an earlier service and we were booked on this one, and then because we had been reserved on an earlier service and other passengers were booked on this one.

They made clearly arbitrary justifications for refusing us access. Travel is exhausting for both of us, delays and disruption even moreso because we are both autistic. The open discrimination and public humiliation was the icing on the cake.

Eventually we were allowed to board the 14:15 (that's a two hour delay which non-disabled people didn't have to suffer). The standard class wheelchair spaces were full and the train manager made sure we knew that we were being allowed in the first class spaces "as an exception".

To be clear for anyone who's not intimately familiar with the UK's Equality Act 2010: the way we were treated was illegal disability discrimination. We were subjected to a disadvantage (delay and humiliation), as a result of our wheelchair use, due to disability.

And also for anyone who doesn't know: there is no central or government body which enforces the Equality Act. The ONLY legal recourse available is for individual victims of discrimination to take their discriminators to court and demand financial compensation.

We contacted CrossCountry (who ran both trains and Reading station), to say we intended to take them to court. After a few months of negotiation, they agreed to compensate us £2,000 each to drop the case, while insisting they did not admit liability. They didn't ask for an NDA though. :)

I wasn't really sure whether to post about this publicly. But I've thought about it a bit, and I've decided there are two things I'd like people to learn by reading this.

1. For non-disabled people:

This kind of stuff happens ALL the time. It is constant and relentless and neverending. It happens to every single disabled person, in subtle and obvious ways. For the handful of times you've ever noticed discrimination, it has happened to that person countless more.

Most of the time it happens behind a friendly customer service smile, and we have to thank them for the scraps of access they're offering us, because if we pointed out every time someone broke the law we would never have any friends and never be able to do anything else.

2. For disabled people (in the UK):

It really IS illegal. I know it feels like nothing can be done, because it is so frequent and widespread it seems inescapable. But the law does exist, and it does apply to you.

Unfortunately, the only way to enforce that law is to take (or threaten) legal action yourself. That's hard work, but it's less scary and risky than it might seem. I recommend this resource as a place to start if you're thinking about it.

[sophie-frm-mars]

The Cass Review, and what we can do about it

The UK government is making decisive moves toward banning trans healthcare outright. The NHS says it is adjusting its policies to be in line with the "cass report", a pseudoscientific report written by a transphobe that goes as far as to claim that little boys playing with trucks and little girls playing with dolls is biological, and which disregards dozens of scientifically sound previous studies into HRT and trans healthcare in order to reach its conclusions that trans healthcare for under 25s should be radically changed to discourage transition at every turn and make it as hard as possible for young people to transition.

These moves will kill countless young trans people. I would not have made it to 25 if healthcare wasn't available and I know so many other trans people wouldn't have either.

The mainstream reporting in the UK is keeping itself ideologically cohesive by claiming that trans people exist, nobody hates them, and they're very rare, and the big problem is the explosion of new cases of not-really-trans people who are clogging up the system (this is a lie, the system has been intentionally slowed by malicious neglect, it isn't even a resource issue, the clinics have far more capacity than the number of patients who are let through)

Once again, this is genocidal and is actually a commonplace methodology of genocide. The nazis asked GRT people to help them understand which Traveller families were "real" travellers and which were the fake ones, since they insisted it was only the fake ones who were the problem and who had to be exterminated (because a lot of nazi GRT policy was based on American indigenous reservation policy).

Labour, the main opposiiton party in the UK, has announced it will "follow the Cass Report", and implement these restrictions on trans healthcare once in government.

For the survival of young trans people, robust community structures must be developed immediately.

Efforts to change the electoral situation will proceed at a snail's pace and will be entirely at the whims of what is politically expedient. It will turn around, but it will take a long time. At the voting level, everyone in the UK who cares about trans people needs to make it clear that they won't vote for Labour unless they reverse position on this, and to be clear about this: Labour will not listen. They are PR Brained Psychopaths and they don't want to get into this "controversial" issue in a way that might cost them further popularity and the easy election win.

Wes Streeting, inhuman lab experiment and Labour Shadow Health Secretary has said that activists need to "stop protesting to ask us to be better opposition and start protesting to ask us to be better government", in other words their electoral promises are cynical reactionary bargains and deals to get them into power and the only point at which they will change anything is once they are in government, if at all. I know this sounds very "push Biden left" but I'm not saying give up now - to repeat, everyone who cares about trans people in the UK should tell Labour to get fucked right away, and then keep doing it as loudly as possible, but it's just not going to change until after the general election at least.

Another way to help could be through legal routes, like the work that The Good Law Project has been doing for trans people for several years now, but I don't know enough about the law to know if it can be used to challenge this at all.

We have to accept there is no electoral solution right now to this genocidal campaign against trans people in the UK, and while those efforts are ongoing trans people and cis allies need to fucking organise. Trans exclusive / separatist organising is riddled with issues, I don't want to cast hopelessness around but there are really very few of us and while it's absolutely necessary to privilege trans voices in trans organising and give us the deciding power and the autonomy, we need to utilise the support and time and labour of every cis person who is willing to help in whatever way they can.

Robust community structures means community structures that are helping young trans people get healthcare as an absolute basic starting point, but it means a lot more than that besides. We need community structures that are consciously organised by people who are taking responsibility for the community roles they are in and being completely explicit with each other about the nature and function of their organising. We need HRT community resources so young trans people can survive this medical segregation, we need drug user harm reduction spaces so that what people turn to in despair doesn't kill them, we need sober spaces so that people can get away from unhealthy coping responses, we need conflict resolution structures so that our problems are dealt with privately and nobody is left completely isolated, but more than any of those things, and in order to have all of those things, we desperately need trans assemblies

Assemblies are how we will get a community of robust radical organisers, because only by repeatedly practicing the ongoing process of democracy can people learn how to do it in a way that will facilitate their own organising. We have to empower the whole community to answer our own questions, come up with solutions, organise people into structures to enact those solutions and then do them. All this means is that an open door event convenes frequently (at least fortnightly) to discuss what is happening in the community. Trans people get the mic for allotted time, and discuss the issues, and then whatever voting structure the assembly uses facilitates further discussion, for example through working groups - the assembly breaks into smaller groups to discuss the topic and then representatives report the outcomes of those discussions back and consensus is reached from what the representatives report.

We have to get people engaging in this process because in order to effectively combat this situation trans people must agree on the solutions and then tell cis allies how to help and so far we haven't been doing that. We really really haven't been. But we could be with a little work. And as I'm saying, doing this will also empower everyone in the community to organise toward specific solutions for specific issues like HRT provision, sober spaces, housing, food, etc.

fuck

I'll have more to add to this post later I have to get to therapy I just got really mad when I saw the news this morning

[vague-humanoid]

A pro-Israel “surveillance network” that has offered bounties for information on pro-Palestinian protesters is establishing a foothold in Australia and claims to have secured meetings with key federal politicians, leaked messages show.

Shirion Collective, which has largely focused on the US and UK, boasts of its ability to scrape digital fingerprints to “aggressively track and expose antisemites”. It is one of a number of groups that have gained prominence on social media during the Israel-Gaza war, publicly naming individuals it accuses of being antisemitic.

Shirion Collective claims it has an AI tool called Maccabee which can identify and track targets.

In one post on X, Shirion outlines a scenario in which the tool creates and releases deepfake videos – falsified content that looks and sounds genuine – to embarrass individuals who take down posters picturing Israeli hostages.

On its X account, Shirion Collective has claimed to offer bounties of US$500 for information on people in videos. In a December post it claimed it would pay up to US$15,000 for “crucial insights” about politicians, US$7,500 for medical doctors and US$250 for students.

Leaked screenshots of Shirion’s Telegram channel, shared with Guardian Australia by the White Rose Society, an anti-fascist researchgroup, show Shirion has become active in Australia, with participants identifying potential targets and boasting of attempts to meet the home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, and the shadow home affairs minister, James Paterson.

Anonymised Shirion members discussed presenting O’Neil and Paterson with a list of names to ensure they were “brought to justice according to the rule of law”.

“Need help. We managed to get into home affairs calendar, need to come prepared with people with hate speech and names that the government didn’t held [sic] accountable,” one anonymous user said.

“Meeting with Clair [sic] or her stuff [sic] … we also have a meeting with the shadow minister.”

Both O’Neil and Paterson’s offices said they had not met anyone who identified themselves as part of Shirion Collective.

The leaked texts show people on the Shirion channel discussed adding the names of individuals to a “watch list” and mass reporting posts on social media.

Some Australians whose social media accounts were linkedin the channel had shared antisemitic, racist and conspiracy theory content on social media. Others were pro-Palestinian activists who do not appear to have posted or shared antisemitic content.

When contacted via its social media accounts, a Shirion member describing themself as the “social media guy” said the “Ai is a quiet project with an internal team”.

The Shirion member said “bounties were for info and was in the USA not Australia”. The member said Shirion’s Telegram channel was open.

“The telegram [sic] is open and we do a soft verification that people are real. But freedom of speech is welcome there,” the Shirion member said.

The member said they would refer Guardian Australia’s questions to a “commander” but no further response was received.

Shirion Collective is one of several groups that say they track and fight antisemitism, largely through identifying individuals online.

Canary Mission, which has been operating since at least 2015, maintains lists of students, professors and other individuals on its website who it claims “promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews”. Another prominent account on X, StopAntisemitism, shares the names and employers or academic institutions of individuals, and often directs its more than 298,000 followers where to make complaints.

The leaked posts from the Shirion Collective Telegram channel point to some publicly available material its contributors regard as antisemitic, but also discuss creating “infiltrator” accounts to view and share material from private Instagram accounts.

In the leaked posts seen by Guardian Australia, contributors do not reveal personally identifiable information about any individual that is not publicly available.

The Shirion Collective account on X/Twitter has identified people it alleges have posted antisemitic material, or statements in support of Hamas, and tagged in their employer or academic institution in the case of students.

Naming someone online is not necessarily illegal, but Michael Bradley, a managing partner at Marque Lawyers, warned there were potential implications depending on the nature of the claims, such as harassment and intimidation or even racial vilification.

“Using social media as a mechanism for coalescing groups that want to engage in doxing activity, it’s obviously extremely powerful,” he said.

Last month, a Sydney resident named Theo had a picture of his house and his street address posted to a Facebook group.

Theo, who asked that his surname not be used, had raised a Palestinian flag and placed a blackboard with messages critical of Israel in front of his Botany home.

Less than two weeks later, a ​​jerry can with rags stuffed into it, a disposable lighter and large bolts were placed on the bonnet of his car with a message that read: “Enough! Take down flag! One chance!!!!”

The incident prompted the deployment of the bomb squad and local police.

The investigation has not been transferred to the counter-terror investigators and remains with local police.

also

@huzni @el-shab-hussein @dirhwangdaseul

[vavuska]

J. K. Rowling vs David Tennant: where is the truth and where the lies?

Probably everyone have read something about an unpopular opinion posted by J. K. Rowling on Twitter (cough, I mean X), where she decided to go after David Tennant. She claimed that during an interview Tennant was talking about whinging f**kers who need to just shut up. These whinging f**kers who he is referring to are women who’s rights are being oppressed, according to J. K. Rowling.

Unfortunately, Tennant didn't say anything against oppressed and abused women. Actually, Rowling is *again* pursuing her personal crusade claiming female-only = no trans-women. Tennant, after accepting an award, took the microphone and gave a speech about the state of LGBTQ+ rights in the UK, and the sad need for awards like the one he received (he was honored at the British LGBT Awards with Celebrity Ally award).

During the speech, Tennant also targeted UK Minister for Women and Equalities, Kemi Badenoch, who had previously said she would exclude trans-women from single-sex areas. Tennant said:

“I suppose if I’m honest I’m a little depressed by the fact that acknowledging that everyone has the right to be who they want to be and live their life how they want to live it as long as they’re not hurting anyone else should merit any kind of special or award or special mention because it’s common sense, isn’t it?” Tennant said in his speech. “It’s human decency. We shouldn’t live in a world where that is worth remarking on. However until we wake up and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist anymore — I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up — whilst we do live in this world I am honoured to receive this.”

Tennant’s speech started a war of words with Badenoch, who later took to social media to say she would not shut up as the actor suggested. She went on to call Tennant “a rich, lefty, white male celebrity so blinded by ideology he can’t see the optics of attacking the only Black woman in government by calling publicly for my existence to end.”

Which, again, is a... Ehm... Lie, since Tennant didn't attack Minister Badenoch for her ethnicity or threatened her life. Tennant speech was critical of her position regarding trans rights and not her personal life. Tennant was calling out government bigots for their political opinions regarding social issues and not attacking anyone on personal basis and NEVER - NEVER said anything about institutional racism (which Minister Badenoch herself claimed it's not a problem in UK) and violence against women (both cis and trans) not being major problems.

In a separate red carpet interview on the awards ceremony, Tennant was asked to say something to the trans youth. He responded to don't feel judged or unloved, because transphobic politicians are just a little minority: “It's a tiny bunch of little whinging f**kers who are on the wrong side of history, and they’ll all go away soon.”

The whole interview is available under here and it's sweet and heartwarming:

As always, J. K. Rowling and conservative politicians are strumentalizing LGBTQ+ awareness contents to make the community and it's allies look like evil terrorists (“gender Taliban”) and therefore pursuing their anti-trans goals while also belittling abuse perpetrated on women in religious states and systemic racism. Since violence against women is overwhelmingly committed by cisgender men, why are the Tories blaming LGBTQ+ community and it's allies?

J. K. Rowling and Minister Badenoch demonstrated through their words, how danger narratives can be invoked not only to obscure (hetero) cis men’s violence and abuse against cis and trans women, but also justify violence against the whole LGBTQ + community in the holy name of (cis-hetero) women's safety. [Here my previous post about this]

[beardedmrbean]

A paedophile who admitted sharing thousands of disturbing images of children, including newborn babies, co-authored a “coming out guide” championed by Scottish schools.

Andrew Easton, 39, was snared by cybercrime officers over internet chat logs with someone he believed to be a vulnerable 13-year-old he called “baby boy”. Easton, who was convicted at Aberdeen Sheriff Court last week, co-wrote the guide for charity LGBT Youth Scotland, which receives millions of pounds from the Scottish Government and local authorities.

LGBT Youth Scotland boast they have “trained” thousands of teachers over LGBT inclusivity. Schools, local authorities, the Care Inspectorate and government-run health and social care authorities made the guide available to children from the age of 13.

LGBT Youth Scotland attempted to distance themselves from Easton, who demanded to be called “daddy” and used secure messaging to send messages to his schoolboy victim, and photographs of his private parts.

Dr Mhairi Crawford, chief executive of LGBT Youth Scotland, said: “We were deeply troubled to learn of Mr Easton’s criminal actions. We condemn anyone that exploits or harms young people. He was a member of one of our youth groups until 2009, and during that time he, alongside other members of the group, contributed to a ‘coming out guide’, published in 2010.”

In one chat, Easton was reminded his “victim” was just 13 years old, but he continued exchanging photographs, urging “send more, baby boy!”.

Cybercrime officers discovered 32 video files, many of which were of the most serious category A and featuring children aged between four and eight years old, had been distributed to other paedophiles by Easton.

Despite the sexual images Easton was sharing with others being of the highest category, Sheriff Morag McLaughlin failed to jail him.

Easton, of Kennethmont, Huntly, is subject to a community payback order with supervision for three years and was ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work. He will remain on the sex offenders register for three years.

Scottish Conservative MSP Meghan Gallacher said: “This is a deeply disturbing situation. It is long overdue that we audit just how much public money this organisation receives and seek assurances over what safeguarding assessments are in place.”.

The coming out guide which Easton contributed to states: “Transgender people are people whose gender identity – who they are internally or their ‘innate’ gender – is different to their physical body or the gender they were assigned at birth.”

The ideology has been dismissed by one of the UK’s most respected paediatricians, Dr Hilary Cass, whose recent report led to England and Scotland reversing decisions to prescribe gender-changing drugs to children.

Alba MSP Ash Regan said: “Serious questions must be asked about why Scottish children’s educational guidance is being shaped by unqualified lobby groups that not only overreach their published remit but operate without any apparent oversight.”

The Scottish Government said education authorities are responsible for ensuring visitors undergo disclosure checks and LGBT Youth Scotland’s safeguarding policy is an operational matter for the organisation. It said: “The Coming Out Guide, published in 2010, is not a Scottish Government publication. The Scottish Government cannot comment on individual criminal cases.”

[phoenixyfriend]

That one post about great domestic policy and HORRIFIC foreign policy just does not stop being true

Domestic Policy Win: The American Museum of Natural History in NYC is closing down two entire exhibits of Native American belongings in order to comply with a federal order that requires museums to obtain the consent of indigenous nations in order to display artifacts of native origin. The linked ProPublica article specifies that the exhibits in question are the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains Halls. To quote:

The new federal regulations, which went into effect this month, prohibit the display of items subject to NAGPRA without tribal consent and ban all research done without tribal consent. In addition, the regulations closed a loophole that had allowed museums such as the American Museum of Natural History to keep ancestral remains and burial items by claiming that they are “culturally unidentifiable” — meaning in their view they could not be connected to present-day Indigenous communities based on available evidence — and therefore could not readily be returned to tribes.

Foreign Policy Fail: The United States, the UK, and several other nations, in response to claims that several members of UNRWA were involved in the Oct. 7th attacks, have cut funding to the relief agency in question. The Al Jazeera article profiles the Palestinian response, and also specifies that this funding was pulled after the UNRWA launched an investigation in response to Israel's allegations that 12 members of the relief agency were involved.

Australia, Canada, Italy and the United States said they would halt funding to the agency, while European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the 27-member bloc would “assess further steps and draw lessons based on the result of the full and comprehensive investigation”. Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom then also joined the list of countries pausing financial aid to the UN agency, whose facilities where displaced Palestinians sought shelter have been repeatedly attacked in Israeli air raids. Ireland and Norway, however, expressed continued support for UNRWA, saying the agency does crucial work to help Palestinians displaced and in desperate need of assistance in Gaza. - Al Jazeera

"One million displaced people are currently taking refuge in and around UNRWA buildings. They are the ones who will suffer as a result of this decision," said Mr Gunness, adding: "The curtailing of UNRWA services will also destabilise the region at a time when Western governments are trying to contain a regional conflagration." [...] The US, Germany and the EU are among some of UNRWA's biggest donors. - BBC

Unfortunately, the WSJ article is paywalled, so I can't access the full thing for a quote.

Anyway. Call your reps. I'm not even talking to just the Americans this time, call your fucking reps. If they aren't donating to UNRWA, then make them do something. Is the organization possibly a security risk, and the concerns legitimate? Maybe! But you cannot cut the funding that is keeping 2.3mill people alive on an already shoestring budget and not immediately put a backup security net in place.

Until then, pick a charity with a good rating, donate and signal boost it, and politely harass your politicians.

Politely as in "don't shout at or cuss out the staffers that man the phone lines," because they are not your reps, but also because your number is going to get blocked and then you won't be able to pressure them in the future. Do be firm, though.

I'm personally picking the PCRF this time, since one of the three remaining hospitals in south Gaza has been evacuated and shut down, and the evacuees reportedly include women who just got C-sections, which means the evacuees also include newborns, and medical care is in high demand. They're also currently focused on providing clean drinking water to the people of Palestine. That said, so is food, and shelter, and winter clothing. Pick a need, find a charity, and toss them some money.

[robotpussy]

the amount of fascists and downright evil people that have been able to infiltrate anti zionist spaces is abhorrent, why are people turning around and saying bin laden, hitler and neo nazis were making points..... if you truly care about Palestine fucking read the works by palestinians who talk about colonial struggle and have been warning the world for decades about genocide? strategy for the liberation of Palestine is available for people to read right now for FREE.... if you really want to unlearn the lies of the UK and American governments pick up books on anti imperialism... Tariq Ali is right there

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our website

By Jean Shaoul

University College London (UCL) and Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK hosted a screening of The Unequal Pandemic, followed by a panel discussion, to launch the film about inequality during COVID.

The film is now available here: goodguysproductions.co.uk/the-unequal-pandemic/

Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK was formed in April 2020, because its two founders who had both lost close family members to COVID-19 believed that their loss could have been avoided if the government had made different decisions. They are determined to ensure that lessons are learned from their suffering and that others don’t have to go through the same horrible fate that they had. They want to ensure that the lessons learned from the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, which their campaign had been crucial in setting up, are turned into legislation that saves lives in the future.

They were responsible for the creation of the National Covid Memorial Wall, a 500-metre-long mural with over 200,000 hand sized red hearts painted on it to mark each of the deaths suffered at that time in the UK from COVID-19, on the south bank of the Thames facing Parliament.

The Unequal Pandemic film, by Labour MP Debbie Abrahams and Good Guys Productions, highlights the vastly unequal impact of the pandemic on Britain’s poorest communities, often minority ethnic groups. The short film lays bare the long-term institutional, social and government failures that led to one of the highest excess COVID death rates in the developed world. Its testimonies from bereaved families and stark evidence contradict the then Conservative government’s cynical claim that “We are all in it together.” This was a reference to the now infamous statement of the Tory Chancellor George Osborne in 2012 falsely claiming that everyone, and not only the working class, was bearing the brunt of the savage austerity unleashed by his government.

COVID-19 both reflected and exacerbated all the social inequalities prevalent in Britain today.

Sir Michael Marmot, Professor of Epidemiology at UCL and director of the Institute of Health Equity, a leading authority on health inequalities and author of several landmark government reviews on poverty, introduced the film. He told the audience that the UK is a “poor country with a few rich people in it.”

The pandemic killed nearly 250,000 people in the UK, according to the official statistics, with the population suffering the sixth worst death rate in the world due to the homicidal policy of Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, summed up in his infamous outburst at the height of the pandemic, “No more fucking lockdowns, Let the bodies pile high in their thousands!” The number of people infected with the virus—and continue to be infected—is so great that over a million people are estimated to be suffering from the debilitating impact of Long COVID.

The government’s policies were driven not by the fight against a preventable disease to protect public health, but by the impulse to prevent the disruption of global supply chains and financial markets. The ruling class welcomed the death of the elderly and those in need of care as a means of reducing social spending.

The pandemic had a disproportionate impact on black, ethnic minority and migrant communities (BAME). They were more likely to contract the virus, have a higher death rate, less access to sick pay, with migrants having no access to sick pay, under conditions where sick pay rates in the UK are among the lowest in the developed world, less access to adequate support schemes, unequal vaccination coverage and more likely to have inadequate living space. These conditions had a devastating impact on their health and in turn helped to spread the virus throughout the country.

The film opened with Marmot saying, “People said it will be the great leveller. But that’s not the history of mass disease. It will expose the underlying inequalities and amplify them. Professor Clare Bambra, Professor of Public Health at Newcastle University, said her heart sank when she first heard about the new virus because of the knowledge of what happened in previous global pandemics and what it meant for different communities.

Marmot said that BAME communities suffered huge excess mortality rates, much of which could be attributed to where people lived and other socio-economic factors. But there was something else going on as well. Dr. Habib Naqvi, chief executive of the NHS Race and Health Observatory, explained that the reason typically given for why BAME workers suffered such high rates was they were more likely working on the front line in the pandemic, in health and social care, transport and retail. They were also more likely to have to use public transport to get to work, further exposing them to risk. But no one explained why that was the case in the first place, he said, indicating that racism was the unacknowledged factor.

However, the overwhelming weight of evidence presented demonstrates that it is the socio-economic factors detailed by the documentary that overwhelmingly determine the disparate impact of the pandemic, including on black and Asian workers.

Mortality rates were far higher in the north of England, the former industrial—and now poorer—area of the country, than in the south, and far higher in the more deprived areas, highlighting the north-south divide. According to figures produced by Food Aid Network and the Trussell Trust, “By 2019, prior to the pandemic, the UK had more food banks than McDonalds outlets.” Marmot said that health had been deteriorating prior to the pandemic. His earlier report in 2020, Marmot Review-10 years on, revealed that life expectancy had been stalling and health inequalities were widening. Socioeconomic inequalities played a major part in these adverse health conditions in the decade before 2020.

Marmot explained that the UK fared so badly because the government had disinvested in public services in the most regressive way, with the poorest areas bearing the brunt of the cuts. Local government slashed expenditure on adult social care. Healthcare spending failed to rise in line with demographic and historical patterns. There were cuts in public health funding as well as in welfare to families with children, in education spending per school student and the closure of children’s centres. Not only had public services been cut to the bone but the tax and benefit system had been recalibrated to the disadvantage of the lower income groups, with child poverty almost doubling to 4.2 million in 2022 since 2012.

Marmot noted that income inequality led to health inequality. Health had stopped improving, and there was a high prevalence of the health conditions that increase case fatality ratios of COVID-19. The unequal conditions into which COVID-19 arrived contributed to the high and unequal death toll from COVID-19.

Thus, that disinvestment set the UK to manage the pandemic very poorly.

Even after the first case of COVID-19 was announced in February 2020 and the virus was spreading rapidly, superspreader events such as a football match in Liverpool and the horse races at Cheltenham were allowed to go ahead, with the inevitable results. The government was complacent and ignored the lessons of previous pandemics, the healthcare specialists explained. They had totally inadequate protective clothing, masks that did not fit and personal protective equipment (PPE), if it was provided at all and in many cases it was not, was useless, leaving them exposed to COVID and terrified. One healthcare worker was told when she complained to buy her own from Amazon, at a cost of £300! Many hospital workers died as a result.

When the government did try to procure PPE, it turned to its friends to do so without even the pretence of going through the correct procedures for public procurement. As a result, much of it ended up in bonfires. As Marmot said, “Pub landlords might not be the best people to buy our PPE from. So the government’s absolute faith in the private sector led to an incredible waste—£38 billion for the government’s test and trace system. The government stopped funding public health, so we had no capacity. So then it says, ‘Let’s get some capacity, let’s put tens of billions into some new private sector organisation to do.’

“No, how about funding Public Health to do it? That’s what it is set up to do. To work with local government. To work with the voluntary organisations. Do I think that running Test and Trace through local public health services would have been better than the private sector? I don’t think it could have been worse.”

The film’s screenshots show Britain’s deprivation graphically. It gives voice to some of the people who lost family members. Francesca Michaels speaks about her mother, Billie Michaels, who grew up in a deprived, working class area of Liverpool in the north west of England. Billie brought up five children while on benefits and lost her life to the virus while parties were going on in Downing Street: “It was a conveyor belt of death. She was cremated in a body bag.”

Karren Frasier-Knight speaks about losing her twin sister, Paula Greenhough. “I lost half of me – half of me is gone,” she says through tears. Lobby Akinnola, one of the panellists in the discussion after the film, had a similar experience. He says: “When I got the call from my mum that dad was no longer with us, my world ended in that instant. I fell on the floor. Everything fell apart.”

In conclusion, Marmot said that many of the failings before and during the pandemic were clear to see. Poverty is something that “impedes freedom… Don’t get rid of environmental and social protections: get rid of poverty. That way, we will be better prepared to face the next pandemic.”

Following the film, there was a discussion chaired by Delanjathan Devakumar, Professor of Global Child Health and Director of the UCL Centre for the Health of Women, Children and Adolescents. The panellists included: Sir Michael Marmot, Naomi Fulop, Professor of Health Care Organisation and Management and Director of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, Oluwalogbon Akinnola, a campaigner from Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, Debbie Abrahams, Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth and Andrew Gwynne, Labour MP for Gorton and Denton and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care.

While the discussion centred on health care inequalities, none of the panellists addressed the central questions: how is social inequality to be eradicated or where is the much-needed funding for healthcare to come from? Much less did they challenge Abrahams and Gwynne over the Labour government’s plans for a budget with at least £40 billion in spending cuts and tax rises that will vastly accelerate the 14 years of brutal cuts already carried out by Conservative-led governments and the continued evisceration of the National Health Service. That this will fall hardest upon the most vulnerable was made clear by the Labour government’s first act—to abolish the winter fuel supplement for the elderly.

Ending social inequality can only be achieved by expropriating the billionaires’ wealth and imposing massive taxes on the super-rich, the financial institutions and the corporations to fund urgently needed social programmes for workers and young people. No solution can be found to any of the problems confronting working people except through the ending of the capitalist system and its replacement with socialism.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Pizzaburger Presidency

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

The corporate wing of the Democrats has objectively terrible political instincts, because the corporate wing of the Dems wants things that are very unpopular with the electorate (this is a trait they share with the Republican establishment).

Remember Hillary Clinton's unimaginably terrible campaign slogan, "America is already great?" In other words, "Vote for me if you believe that nothing needs to change":

https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/758501814945869824

Biden picked up the "This is fine" messaging where Clinton left off, promising that "nothing would fundamentally change" if he became president:

https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-nothing-would-fundamentally-change-if-hes-elected/

Biden didn't so much win that election as Trump lost it, by doing extremely unpopular things, including badly bungling the American covid response and killing about a million people.

Biden's 2020 election victory was a squeaker, and it was absolutely dependent on compromising with the party's left wing, embodied by the Warren and Sanders campaigns. The Unity Task Force promised – and delivered – key appointments and policies that represented serious and powerful change for the better:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/10/thanks-obama/#triangulation

Despite these excellent appointments and policies, the Biden administration has remained unpopular and is heading into the 2024 election with worryingly poor numbers. There is a lot of debate about why this might be. It's undeniable that every leader who has presided over a period of inflation, irrespective of political tendency, is facing extreme defenstration, from Rishi Sunak, the far-right prime minister of the UK, to the relentlessly centrist Justin Trudeau in Canada:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-05-29-three-barriers-biden-reelection/

It's also true that Biden has presided over a genocide, which he has been proudly and significantly complicit in. That Trump would have done the same or worse is beside the point. A political leader who does things that the voters deplore can't expect to become more popular, though perhaps they can pull off less unpopular:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-left-is-not-joe-bidens-problem

Biden may be attracting unfair blame for inflation, and totally fair blame for genocide, but in addition to those problems, there's this: Biden hasn't gotten credit for the actual good things he's done:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoflHnGrCpM

Writing in his newsletter, Matt Stoller offers an explanation for this lack of credit: the Biden White House almost never talks about any of these triumphs, even the bold, generational ones that will significantly alter the political landscape no matter who wins the next election:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-does-the-biden-white-house-hate

Biden's antitrust enforcers have gone after price-fixing in oil, food and rent – the three largest sources of voter cost-of-living concern. They've done more on these three kinds of crime than all of their predecessors over the past forty years, combined. And yet, Stoller finds example after example of White House press secretaries being lobbed softballs by the press and refusing to even try to swing at them. When asked about any of this stuff, the White House demurs, refusing to comment.

The reasons they give for this is that they don't want to mess up an active case while it's before the courts. But that's not how this works. Yes, misstatements about active cases can do serious damage, but not talking about cases extinguishes the political will needed to carry them out. That's why a competent press secretary excellent briefings and training, because they must talk about these cases.

Think for a moment about the fact that the US government is – at this very moment – trying to break up Google, the largest tech company in the history of the world, and there has been virtually no press about it. This is a gigantic story. It's literally the biggest business story ever. It's practically a secret.

Why doesn't the Biden admin want to talk about this very small number of very good things it's doing? To understand that, you have to understand the hollowness of "centrist" politics as practiced in the Democratic Party.

The Democrats, like all political parties, are a coalition. Now, there are lots of ways to keep a coalition together. Parties who detest one another can stay in coalition provided that each partner is getting something they want out of it – even if one partner is bitterly unhappy about everything else happening in the coalition. That's the present-day Democratic approach: arrest students, bomb Gaza, but promise to do something about abortion and a few other issues while gesturing with real and justified alarm at Trump's open fascism, and hope that the party's left turns out at the polls this fall.

Leaders who play this game can't announce that they are deliberately making a vital coalition partner miserable and furious. Instead, they insist that they are "compromising" and point to the fact that "everyone is equally unhappy" with the way things are going.

This school of politics – "Everyone is angry at me, therefore I am doing something right" – has a name, courtesy of Anat Shenker-Osorio: "Pizzaburger politics." Say half your family wants burgers for dinner and the other half wants pizza: make a pizzaburger and disappoint all of them, and declare yourself to be a politics genius:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/17/pizzaburgers/

But Biden's Pizzaburger Presidency doesn't disappoint everyone equally. Sure, Biden appointed some brilliant antitrust enforcers to begin the long project of smashing the corporate juggernauts built through forty years of Reaganomics (including the Reganomics of Bill Clinton and Obama). But his lifetime federal judicial appointments are drawn heavily from the corporate wing of the party's darlings, and those judges will spend the rest of their lives ruling against the kinds of enforcers Biden put in charge of the FTC and DoJ antitrust division:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-for-microsoft-mergers

So that's one reason that Biden's comms team won't talk about his most successful and popular policies. But there's another reason: schismogenesis.

"Schismogenesis" is a anthropological concept describing how groups define themselves in opposition to their opponents (if they're for it, we're against it). Think of the liberals who became cheerleaders for the "intelligence community" (you know the CIA spies who organized murderous coups against a dozen Latin American democracies, and the FBI agents who tried to get MLK to kill himself) as soon as Trump and his allies began to rail against them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

Part of Trump's takeover of conservativism is a revival of "the paranoid style" of the American right – the conspiratorial, unhinged apocalyptic rhetoric that the movement's leaders are no longer capable of keeping a lid on:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

This stuff – the lizard-people/Bilderberg/blood libel/antisemitic/Great Replacement/race realist/gender critical whackadoodlery – was always in conservative rhetoric, but it was reserved for internal communications, a way to talk to low-information voters in private forums. It wasn't supposed to make it into your campaign ads:

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/05/27/texas-republicans-adopts-conservative-wish-list-for-the-2024-platform/73858798007/

Today's conservative vibe is all about saying the quiet part aloud. Historian Rick Perlstein calls this the "authoritarian ratchet": conservativism promises a return to a "prelapsarian" state, before the country lost its way:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-05-29-my-political-depression-problem/

This is presented as imperative: unless we restore that mythical order, the country is doomed. We might just be the last generation of free Americans!

But that state never existed, and can never be recovered, but it doesn't matter. When conservatives lose a fight they declare to be existential (say, trans bathroom bans), they just pretend they never cared about it and move on to the next panic.

It's actually worse for them when they win. When the GOP repeals Roe, or takes the Presidency, the Senate and Congress, and still fails to restore that lost glory, then they have to find someone or something to blame. They turn on themselves, purging their ranks, promise ever-more-unhinged policies that will finally restore the state that never existed.

This is where schismogenesis comes in. If the GOP is making big, bold promises, then a shismogenesis-poisoned liberal will insist that the Dems must be "the party of normal." If the GOP's radical wing is taking the upper hand, then the Dems must be the party whose radical wing is marginalized (see also: UK Labour).

This is the trap of schismogenesis. It's possible for the things your opponents do to be wrong, but tactically sound (like promising the big changes that voters want). The difference you should seek to establish between yourself and your enemies isn't in promising to maintaining the status quo – it's in promising to make better, big muscular changes, and keeping those promises.

It's possible to acknowledge that an odious institution to do something good – like the CIA and FBI trying to wrongfoot Trump's most unhinged policies – without becoming a stan for that institution, and without abandoning your stance that the institution should either be root-and-branch reformed or abolished altogether.

The mere fact that your enemy uses a sound tactic to do something bad doesn't make that tactic invalid. As Naomi Klein writes in her magnificent Doppelganger, the right's genius is in co-opting progressive rhetoric and making it mean the opposite: think of their ownership of "fake news" or the equivalence of transphobia with feminism, of opposition to genocide with antisemitism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

Promising bold policies and then talking about them in plain language at every opportunity is something demagogues do, but having bold policies and talking about them doesn't make you a demagogue.

The reason demagogues talk that way is that it works. It captures the interest of potential followers, and keeps existing followers excited about the project.

Choosing not to do these things is political suicide. Good politics aren't boring. They're exciting. The fact that Republicans use eschatological rhetoric to motivate crazed insurrectionists who think they're the last hope for a good future doesn't change the fact that we are at a critical juncture for a survivable future.

If the GOP wins this coming election – or when Pierre Poilievre's petro-tories win the next Canadian election – they will do everything they can to set the planet on fire and render it permanently uninhabitable by humans and other animals. We are running out of time.

We can't afford to cede this ground to the right. Remember the clickbait wars? Low-quality websites and Facebook accounts got really good at ginning up misleading, compelling headlines that attracted a lot of monetizable clicks.

For a certain kind of online scolding centrist, the lesson from this era was that headlines should a) be boring and b) not leave out any salient fact. This is very bad headline-writing advice. While it claims to be in service to thoughtfulness and nuance, it misses out on the most important nuance of all: there's a difference between a misleading headline and a headline that calls out the most salient element of the story and then fleshes that out with more detail in the body of the article. If a headline completely summarizes the article, it's not a headline, it's an abstract.

Biden's comms team isn't bragging about the administration's accomplishments, because the senior partners in this coalition oppose those accomplishments. They don't want to win an election based on the promise to prosecute and anti-corporate revolution, because they are counter-revolutionaries.

The Democratic coalition has some irredeemably terrible elements. It also has elements that I would march into the sun for. The party itself is a very weak institution that's bad at resolving the tension between both groups:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

Pizzaburgers don't make anyone happy and they're not supposed to. They're a convenient cover for the winners of intraparty struggles to keep the losers from staying home on election day. I don't know how Biden can win this coming election, but I know how he can lose it: keep on reminding us that all the good things about his administration were undertaken reluctantly and could be jettisoned in a second Biden administration.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/29/sub-bushel-comms-strategy/#nothing-would-fundamentally-change

[ausetkmt]

Where It’s Most Dangerous to Be Black in America

Black Americans made up 13.6% of the US population in 2022 and 54.1% of the victims of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, aka homicide. That works out, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, to a homicide rate of 29.8 per 100,000 Black Americans and four per 100,000 of everybody else.(1)

A homicide rate of four per 100,000 is still quite high by wealthy-nation standards. The most up-to-date statistics available from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show a homicide of rate one per 100,000 in Canada as of 2019, 0.8 in Australia (2021), 0.4 in France (2017) and Germany (2020), 0.3 in the UK (2020) and 0.2 in Japan (2020).

But 29.8 per 100,000 is appalling, similar to or higher than the homicide rates of notoriously dangerous Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. It also represents a sharp increase from the early and mid-2010s, when the Black homicide rate in the US hit new (post-1968) lows and so did the gap between it and the rate for everybody else. When the homicide rate goes up, Black Americans suffer disproportionately. When it falls, as it did last year and appears to be doing again this year, it is mostly Black lives that are saved.

As hinted in the chart, racial definitions have changed a bit lately; the US Census Bureau and other government statistics agencies have become more open to classifying Americans as multiracial. The statistics cited in the first paragraph of this column are for those counted as Black or African American only. An additional 1.4% of the US population was Black and one or more other race in 2022, according to the Census Bureau, but the CDC Wonder (for “Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research”) databases from which most of the statistics in this column are drawn don’t provide population estimates or calculate mortality rates for this group. My estimate is that its homicide rate in 2022 was about six per 100,000.

A more detailed breakdown by race, ethnicity and gender reveals that Asian Americans had by far the lowest homicide rate in 2022, 1.6, which didn’t rise during the pandemic, that Hispanic Americans had similar homicide rates to the nation as a whole and that men were more than four times likelier than women to die by homicide in 2022. The biggest standout remained the homicide rate for Black Americans. 

Black people are also more likely to be victims of other violent crime, although the differential is smaller than with homicides. In the 2021 National Crime Victimization Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (the 2022 edition will be out soon), the rate of violent crime victimization was 18.5 per 1,000 Black Americans, 16.1 for Whites, 15.9 for Hispanics and 9.9 for Asians, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders. Understandably, Black Americans are more concerned about crime than others, with 81% telling Pew Research Center pollsters before the 2022 midterm elections that violent crime was a “very important” issue, compared with 65% of Hispanics and 56% of Whites.

These disparities mainly involve communities caught in cycles of violence, not external predators. Of the killers of Black Americans in 2020 whose race was known, 89.4% were Black, according to the FBI. That doesn’t make those deaths any less of a tragedy or public health emergency. Homicide is seventh on the CDC’s list of the 15 leading causes of death among Black Americans, while for other Americans it’s nowhere near the top 15. For Black men ages 15 to 39, the highest-risk group, it’s usually No. 1, although in 2022 the rise in accidental drug overdoses appears to have pushed accidents just past it. For other young men, it’s a distant third behind accidents and suicides.

To be clear, I do not have a solution for this awful problem, or even much of an explanation. But the CDC statistics make clear that sky-high Black homicide rates are not inevitable. They were much lower just a few years ago, for one thing, and they’re far lower in some parts of the US than in others. Here are the overall 2022 homicide rates for the country’s 30 most populous metropolitan areas.

Metropolitan areas are agglomerations of counties by which economic and demographic data are frequently reported, but seldom crime statistics because the patchwork of different law enforcement agencies in each metro area makes it so hard. Even the CDC, which gets its mortality data from state health departments, doesn’t make it easy, which is why I stopped at 30 metro areas.(2)

Sorting the data this way does obscure one key fact about homicide rates: They tend to be much higher in the main city of a metro area than in the surrounding suburbs.

But looking at homicides by metro area allows for more informative comparisons across regions than city crime statistics do, given that cities vary in how much territory they cover and how well they reflect an area’s demographic makeup. Because the CDC suppresses mortality data for privacy reasons whenever there are fewer than 10 deaths to report, large metro areas are good vehicles for looking at racial disparities. Here are the 30 largest metro areas, ranked by the gap between the homicide rates for Black residents and for everybody else.

The biggest gap by far is in metropolitan St. Louis, which also has the highest overall homicide rate. The smallest gaps are in metropolitan San Diego, New York and Boston, which have the lowest homicide rates. Homicide rates are higher for everybody in metro St. Louis than in metro New York, but for Black residents they’re six times higher while for everyone else they’re just less than twice as high.

There do seem to be some regional patterns to this mayhem. The metro areas with the biggest racial gaps are (with the glaring exception of Portland, Oregon) mostly in the Rust Belt, those with the smallest are mostly (with the glaring exceptions of Boston and New York) in the Sun Belt. Look at a map of Black homicide rates by state, and the highest are clustered along the Mississippi River and its major tributaries. Southern states outside of that zone and Western states occupy roughly the same middle ground, while the Northeast and a few middle-of-the-country states with small Black populations are the safest for their Black inhabitants.(3)

Metropolitan areas in the Rust Belt and parts of the South stand out for the isolation of their Black residents, according to a 2021 study of Census data from Brown University’s Diversity and Disparities Project, with the average Black person living in a neighborhood that is 60% or more Black in the Detroit; Jackson, Mississippi; Memphis; Chicago; Cleveland and Milwaukee metro areas in 2020 (in metro St. Louis the percentage was 57.6%). Then again, metro New York and Boston score near the top on another of the project’s measures of residential segregation, which tracks the percentage of a minority group’s members who live in neighborhoods where they are over-concentrated compared with White residents, so segregation clearly doesn’t explain everything.

Looking at changes over time in homicide rates may explain more. Here’s the long view for Black residents of the three biggest metro areas. Again, racial definitions have changed recently. This time I’ve used the new, narrower definition of Black or African American for 2018 onward, and given estimates in a footnote of how much it biases the rates upward compared with the old definition.

All three metro areas had very high Black homicide rates in the 1970s and 1980s, and all three experienced big declines in the 1990s and 2000s. But metro Chicago’s stayed relatively high in the early 2010s then began a rebound in mid-decade that as of 2021 had brought the homicide rate for its Black residents to a record high, even factoring in the boost to the rate from the definitional change.

What happened in Chicago? One answer may lie in the growing body of research documenting what some have called the “Ferguson effect,” in which incidents of police violence that go viral and beget widespread protests are followed by local increases in violent crime, most likely because police pull back on enforcement. Ferguson is the St. Louis suburb where a 2014 killing by police that local prosecutors and the US Justice Department later deemed to have been in self-defense led to widespread protests that were followed by big increases in St. Louis-area homicide rates. Baltimore had a similar viral death in police custody and homicide-rate increase in 2015. In Chicago, it was the October 2014 shooting death of a teenager, and more specifically the release a year later of a video that contradicted police accounts of the incident, leading eventually to the conviction of a police officer for second-degree murder.

It’s not that police killings themselves are a leading cause of death among Black Americans. The Mapping Police Violence database lists 285 killings of Black victims by police in 2022, and the CDC reports 209 Black victims of “legal intervention,” compared with 13,435 Black homicide victims. And while Black Americans are killed by police at a higher rate relative to population than White Americans, this disparity — 2.9 to 1 since 2013, according to Mapping Police Violence — is much less than the 7.5-to-1 ratio for homicides overall in 2022. It’s the loss of trust between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve that seems to be disproportionately deadly for Black residents of those communities.

The May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer was the most viral such incident yet, leading to protests nationwide and even abroad, as well as an abortive local attempt to disband and replace the police department. The Minneapolis area subsequently experienced large increases in homicides and especially homicides of Black residents. But nine other large metro areas experienced even bigger increases in the Black homicide rate from 2019 to 2022.

A lot of other things happened between 2019 and 2022 besides the Floyd protests, of course, and I certainly wouldn’t ascribe all or most of the pandemic homicide-rate increase to the Ferguson effect. It is interesting, though, that the St. Louis area experienced one of the smallest percentage increases in the Black homicide rate during this period, and it decreased in metro Baltimore.

Also interesting is that the metro areas experiencing the biggest percentage increases in Black residents’ homicide rates were all in the West (if your definition of West is expansive enough to include San Antonio). If this were confined to affluent areas such as Portland, Seattle, San Diego and San Francisco, I could probably spin a plausible-sounding story about it being linked to especially stringent pandemic policies and high work-from-home rates, but that doesn’t fit Phoenix, San Antonio or Las Vegas, so I think I should just admit that I’m stumped.

The standout in a bad way has been the Portland area, which had some of the longest-running and most contentious protests over policing, along with many other sources of dysfunction. The area’s homicide rate for Black residents has more than tripled since 2019 and is now second highest among the 30 biggest metro areas after St. Louis. Again, I don’t have any real solutions to offer here, but whatever the Portland area has been doing since 2019 isn’t working.

(1) The CDC data for 2022 are provisional, with a few revisions still being made in the causes assigned to deaths (was it a homicide or an accident, for example), but I’ve been watching for weeks now, and the changes have been minimal. The CDC is still using 2021 population numbers to calculate 2022 mortality rates, and when it updates those, the homicide rates will change again, but again only slightly. The metropolitan-area numbers also don’t reflect a recent update by the White House Office of Management and Budget to its list of metro areas and the counties that belong to them, which when incorporated will bring yet more small mortality-rate changes. To get these statistics from the CDC mortality databases, I clicked on “Injury Intent and Mechanism” and then on “Homicide”; in some past columns I instead chose “ICD-10 Codes” and then “Assault,” which delivered slightly different numbers.

(2) It’s easy to download mortality statistics by metro area for the years 1999 to 2016, but the databases covering earlier and later years do not offer this option, and one instead has to select all the counties in a metro area to get area-wide statistics, which takes a while.

(3) The map covers the years 2018-2022 to maximize the number of states for which CDC Wonder will cough up data, although as you can see it wouldn’t divulge any numbers for Idaho, Maine, Vermont and Wyoming (meaning there were fewer than 10 homicides of Black residents in each state over that period) and given the small numbers involved, I wouldn’t put a whole lot of stock in the rates for the Dakotas, Hawaii, Maine and Montana.

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/14/where-it-s-most-dangerous-to-be-black-in-america/cdea7922-52f0-11ee-accf-88c266213aac_story.html)

[ancientstone]

Okay Brits I need you to start paying attention.

We are likely in a General Election year.

We are going to be voting which political party we want to govern us the next five years. As of yet we don't have a date (the latest it could be held is January 2025, though it's probably going to be in 2024), but you need to start listening to what's going on so you can be ready and make an informed choice.

In the last General Election, the turnout was 67.3% across the UK. People often say they didn't vote because they didn't understand the politics or "they're all the same anyway."

When a General Election is called, Polling Day will be 25 days later. If you're working, busy, or just have life stuff happening, you may not have time to do the research you want. This is why it's important to start doing things now.

1. Are you Registered to Vote?

You can register to vote here.

You can check if you're registered by going here.

You must 18 or over on Polling Day to vote in a General Election.

You must also be one of the following:

A British, Irish, or qualifying Commonwealth citizen. (You can check here if you're a qualifying Commonwealth citizen)

Be resident at an address in the UK (or a British citizen living abroad who has been registered to vote in the UK in the last 15 years)

Not be legally excluded from voting

According to the website, while registering, "You’ll be asked for your National Insurance number (but you can still register if you do not have one). After you’ve registered, your name and address will appear on the electoral register."

There is also an option to register to vote anonymously "if you're concerned about your name and address appearing on the electoral register for safety reasons." The link to that page is here.

You can register to vote by post by going here and printing out the forms.

If you would like a step-by-step guide to registering to vote, here is a page that has a pdf doing just that. It is also available in Welsh.

2. Get a Photo ID

We now need to show a photo ID when turning up to the polls.

Here is a list of valid forms of photo ID.

Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to get a valid ID, otherwise you will be turned away from the polling station.

If you vote by proxy, you need to "take your own ID when you go to vote on someone else’s behalf. You do not need to take theirs."

According to the website, "The name on your ID must match your name on the electoral register. If it does not, you’ll need to:

register to vote again with your new details

take a document with you to vote that proves you’ve changed your name (for example, a marriage certificate)

Small differences do not matter. For example, if your ID says ‘Jim Smith’ instead of ‘James Smith’.

If you do not have a type of photo ID that allows you to vote, you can apply for a Voter Authority Certificate."

3. You need to apply to vote by post

You can apply here.

You need to be registered before applying.

To apply you need:

"The address where you are registered to vote

Your National Insurance number or other identity documents, e.g. a passport

the specific date of the election or referendum you want to make a postal vote, if you only want a one-off postal vote

You’ll also need to upload a photo of your handwritten signature in black ink on plain white paper.

If you cannot provide a signature or one that always looks the same, you may be able to apply for a postal vote signature waiver within the service.

You might be asked for extra documents to identify you."

The linked page has an option for downloading an application form to send in by post.

4. Start Researching!

Think back to the last few years.

What did you like, and who did them? What about the opposite?

Is there something local happening in your area, and who is pushing for/against it?

Look up the parties' social media - what do they promote, promise, and call out?

Here are some resources:

An overview of the political parties

BBC News page for current politics

How many MPs are in which parties

Information on General Elections/when ours will likely be held

The other key political events in 2024

General info around voting, elections, boundary changes, etc.

TL;DR

2024 Will likely be the year the UK votes for the next political party in charge.

You need to register to vote.

You need a photo ID to take with you.

You need to apply to vote by post.

The best time to start looking into the parties and what they do is now, so you can be informed later on.

The rest of the world is welcome to share this!

[dowagerintraining]

A word (or several) about the Haka that was performed in Parliament.

I hemm'd and haww'd about whether to say anything about this. But just a few weeks ago I stood up at the CTU gathering and gave a speech about how important it is to push back against the government's proposed changes to Te Tiriti O Waitangi, and about how they are betting that people from my background, who look like me and sound like me, won't care. And the truth is I do care. Very much.

For the Brits who are waking up, there's going to be a slew of headlines about how the New Zealand Parliament was today 'disrupted' and 'suspended' because a young female Māori MP performed a Haka, backed by other members of her political party (Te Pāti Māori) in response to a bill being read. This Bill proposes to change the Principals of Te Tiriti O Wantangi, the closest thing New Zealand has to a founding document. It has been proposed by ACT, a small and very right wing party who are a coalition parter to our National Party (NZ Tories). The closest political analogy the UK has to ACT is probably The Reform Party.

Our NZ Parliamentary system is based on the English one (And yes, I said English. I meant what I said). It's very recognisable to me, as a Crown structure and system, as I grew up watching coverage of the House of Commons on UK TV.

New Zealand, in accordance with Te Tiriti O Waitangi, is supposed to be a bicultural society. And Bicultural means Māori and Non Māori, not Māori and 'White' or 'British' - so there is supposed to be room for everyone in this agreement. But Māori are supposed to be centralised in this agreement.

I do not see, in the Parliamentary system, room being made for Māori cultural practices or traditions. The types you would see on a Marae, between Māori people. There is not sufficient room for Haka, for Waiata, for Korero in Te Reo Māori. How do I know this? Because if there was, half of the space of these proceedings would be made available for this. So my feeling about Parliament has been, since arriving here, that it is not truly bicultural. It is not a fusion of systems. It is an imposition by The Crown. Our way or the high way.

So today, when Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, of Te Pāti Māori, lead that stirring rendition of the Ka Mate Haka in Parliament (and yes, she led it, she did not perform it alone) - I didn't see disrespect. I didn't see disruption. I certainly didn't see hate. Though I wouldn't blame her for feeling that way towards the people who have drafted and proposed this bill.

I saw anger. I saw frustration. I saw defiance to the existence of this bill. I saw people fighting, bitterly, to have their say, in their way, in a system which doesn't acknowledge them, doesn't make room for them, and doesn't respect them. Or rather, only accepts them when they use the strictures and structures imposed by The Crown.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi was supposed to enshrine Māori interests and traditions, and the promise of that has never been truly fulfilled.

If Te Tiriti had ensured true bicultural equality, haka performances in Parliament might not be seen right now through a colonial lense and viewed as an inconvenience by so many people. The fact that this haka was performed as this parliament were voting on a proposed piece of legislation which further strips away their rights and recognition...? It was absolutely appropriate. And I back them all the way.

The Parliamentarians had a colonialised view of how today was 'supposed' to go. This wonderful, young, passionate Māori wahine didn't subscribe to that. She did things her way, backed by people who knew why this was important. If Te Tiriti had ever been enacted properly, this wouldn't have been shocking. It would have been expected. It would have been valued. And this ... toilet-paper-in-waiting disgrace of a bill would never have made it on to the floor.

We're all so proud of the All Blacks doing the Haka at the rugby, aren't we! Great tradition for the rest of the world to share, two minutes at the start of the game, great way to amp up the players and crowd. But reducing Haka, in purpose and tradition, to that sole example? That's a disservice. Ka Mate was the first Haka I was ever exposed to, and yes, it was watching the All Blacks perform it at the Rugby World Cup. It is powerful, and not enough people know the meaning of it. It's more than an entertaining two minutes before the game kicks off. It packs a punch, politically. Go take a look. It was the perfect sentiment for this moment.

Kei runga koe, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke. Karawhiua!

https://www.toarangatira.iwi.nz/kamate

[arcsimper5]

UPDATED! Hi all, I feel terrible doing this, and will put it under the cut, but I have exhausted all options available to me and am asking for help here.

I woke up this morning to a lovely notification from the UK government that they had taken a payment out of my account.

This is related to something a year ago where my partner completely forgot to log on and put in his hours properly on the benefits website, which resulted in an overpayment.

My partner now can't work due to health reasons, and I am the breadwinner for the household which is me, him and our 8 year old son.

Things have been tight, but we've been managing. Until now.

We got no warning for this, we knew a repayment plan was coming but we've had no letters, no contact whatsoever.

I've looked online, and the probability of getting a refund is slim to none, as it's HMRC and the DWP.

I've applied for loans since about 3am in a panic, been declined for every one, and can't ask my parents as I've only just paid off a car from my dad and my mother is looking for any excuse to take my son from me.

In short, I have £2.03 to last me for fuel, food and everything else we might need (I'm still due to order my medication but that will have to wait) until may 30th.

Safe to say this is not how I was picturing my month going!

I feel awful asking for help with everything going on in the world at the moment, but I just want to keep my son fed and my car running so I can get to work.

I am extremely untalented so cannot offer art or anything like that as a thank you, but I can send you English snacks and treats when things get better for me, or write Star Wars drabbles/short fics as thanks.

If you can spare anything at all, I would be eternally grateful, and will do my utmost to pay it back when I am able.

If you got this far thank you for reading.

My PayPal is danibedding89@gmail.com.

Thanks again.

[officiallordvetinari]

r/theyrealreadyhere: The number one community for uncovering the truth about aliens that they don’t want you to know about.

The Blue Box Files new episode out now!

Posted by u/theblueboxfiles

⬆️ 2 ⬇️        🗨️ 0 comments

“Cube Invasion” - Seeking Possible Alien Artifacts

Posted by u/SuperFrog

Does anyone remember back in 2012 when millions of these things showed up everywhere? I have a theory that they're alien technology and I want to run some tests, but I need specimens. Willing to pay.

⬆️ 29 ⬇️         🗨️ 6 comments

u/thepurpleorchestra

I used to use one of these as a paperweight. Wonder if I still have it

⬆️ 3 ⬇️

u/OddlyRuthless

My mom has a box full of these in her attic that she never uses. Pm me.

⬆️ 7 ⬇️

Lost Eastenders “Den’s Ghost” Episode Full Recording

posted by u/magenta_dynamics

⬆️ 66 ⬇️         🗨️ 19 comments

Arthur Winters assassination - First Contact coverup???

posted by u/box_of_brains

⬆️ 102 ⬇️         🗨️ 30 comments

u/thepurpleorchestra

Who?

⬆️ 45 ⬇️

    u/box_of_brains

    ...Arthur Winters? The 43rd president of the United States? Killed under mysterious circumstances on a state visit to the UK in 2008?

     ⬆️ 49 ⬇️

        u/thepurpleorchestra

        I don’t know what you’re talking about. George W. Bush was the president in 2008, and he’s still alive.

       ⬆️ 36 ⬇️

            u/OddlyRuthless

            You mean Bruce Springsteen?

            ⬆️ 2 ⬇️

                u/thepurpleorchestra

                What?

                ⬆️ 10 ⬇️

                u/box_of_brains

                What?

        ��       ⬆️ 8 ⬇️ 

r/littlegreenmen: The number one community for exposing the lies about aliens that they want you to believe in.

Big Ben “spaceship crash”

posted by u/TroubledGiraffe

Leaked photos show that the so-called “alien” body recovered from the site was actually a pig carcass (link)

⬆️ 28 ⬇️   🗨️ 11 comments

2008 Space Titanic Incident

posted by u/grandiosegirlfriend6

Could the ship have been a holographic projection? The same technology was available for civilian use 2 years later to advertise a 3D video game with a holographic meteor (article about the ad campaign). The government probably already had access to it for years.

⬆️ 34 ⬇️   🗨️ 16 comments

u/TroubledGiraffe

I bet the spaceship sightings the previous two Christmases were holograms as well. The one they “shot down” in 2006 was probably Harriet Jones trying to stage her own Falklands poll bump, and after that they decided an invasion scare every year would keep the people docile.

⬆️ 17 ⬇️

    u/grist_for_the_mill

    What about all the people who got hypnotized in 2006?

    ⬆️ 4 ⬇️

        u/TroubledGiraffe

        Microchips, innit

        ⬆️ 3 ⬇️

The UN uses “alien activity” as a cover for their “Intelligence Taskforce” to operate with impunity

posted by u/old-fashionedappendix

⬆️ 120 ⬇️   🗨️  49 comments

The absurdity of the Zygon theory

posted by u/slow_tempo

If you’ve spent any time in alien believer circles, you’ve probably seen the claims that there are millions of shapeshifting aliens called “Zygons” (🙄) living in hiding on Earth. Some people claim to know a Zygon, or even be one - but of course they can’t prove it, because they “need to stay anonymous”. The only actual evidence believers can hold up is a few grainy cell phone videos that can be easily faked. Why are people so willing to believe outlandish claims like this?

⬆️ 53 ⬇️   🗨️  18 comments

u/parcel_of_sharks

This came up on my front page. Is it supposed to be a joke or something? My neighbor Barry’s a Zygon. Good bloke.

⬆️ -12 ⬇️