#drone rules in california

[mariacallous]

One of the section leaders for my computer-science class, Hamza El Boudali, believes that President Joe Biden should be killed. “I’m not calling for a civilian to do it, but I think a military should,” the 23-year-old Stanford University student told a small group of protesters last month. “I’d be happy if Biden was dead.” He thinks that Stanford is complicit in what he calls the genocide of Palestinians, and that Biden is not only complicit but responsible for it. “I’m not calling for a vigilante to do it,” he later clarified, “but I’m saying he is guilty of mass murder and should be treated in the same way that a terrorist with darker skin would be (and we all know terrorists with dark skin are typically bombed and drone striked by American planes).” El Boudali has also said that he believes that Hamas’s October 7 attack was a justifiable act of resistance, and that he would actually prefer Hamas rule America in place of its current government (though he clarified later that he “doesn’t mean Hamas is perfect”). When you ask him what his cause is, he answers: “Peace.”

I switched to a different computer-science section.

Israel is 7,500 miles away from Stanford’s campus, where I am a sophomore. But the Hamas invasion and the Israeli counterinvasion have fractured my university, a place typically less focused on geopolitics than on venture-capital funding for the latest dorm-based tech start-up. Few students would call for Biden’s head—I think—but many of the same young people who say they want peace in Gaza don’t seem to realize that they are in fact advocating for violence. Extremism has swept through classrooms and dorms, and it is becoming normal for students to be harassed and intimidated for their faith, heritage, or appearance—they have been called perpetrators of genocide for wearing kippahs, and accused of supporting terrorism for wearing keffiyehs. The extremism and anti-Semitism at Ivy League universities on the East Coast have attracted so much media and congressional attention that two Ivy presidents have lost their jobs. But few people seem to have noticed the culture war that has taken over our California campus.

For four months, two rival groups of protesters, separated by a narrow bike path, faced off on Stanford’s palm-covered grounds. The “Sit-In to Stop Genocide” encampment was erected by students in mid-October, even before Israeli troops had crossed into Gaza, to demand that the university divest from Israel and condemn its behavior. Posters were hung equating Hamas with Ukraine and Nelson Mandela. Across from the sit-in, a rival group of pro-Israel students eventually set up the “Blue and White Tent” to provide, as one activist put it, a “safe space” to “be a proud Jew on campus.” Soon it became the center of its own cluster of tents, with photos of Hamas’s victims sitting opposite the rubble-ridden images of Gaza and a long (and incomplete) list of the names of slain Palestinians displayed by the students at the sit-in.

Some days the dueling encampments would host only a few people each, but on a sunny weekday afternoon, there could be dozens. Most of the time, the groups tolerated each other. But not always. Students on both sides were reportedly spit on and yelled at, and had their belongings destroyed. (The perpetrators in many cases seemed to be adults who weren’t affiliated with Stanford, a security guard told me.) The university put in place round-the-clock security, but when something actually happened, no one quite knew what to do.

Stanford has a policy barring overnight camping, but for months didn’t enforce it, “out of a desire to support the peaceful expression of free speech in the ways that students choose to exercise that expression”—and, the administration told alumni, because the university feared that confronting the students would only make the conflict worse. When the school finally said the tents had to go last month, enormous protests against the university administration, and against Israel, followed.

“We don’t want no two states! We want all of ’48!” students chanted, a slogan advocating that Israel be dismantled and replaced by a single Arab nation. Palestinian flags flew alongside bright “Welcome!” banners left over from new-student orientation. A young woman gave a speech that seemed to capture the sense of urgency and power that so many students here feel. “We are Stanford University!” she shouted. “We control things!”

“We’ve had protests in the past,” Richard Saller, the university’s interim president, told me in November—about the environment, and apartheid, and Vietnam. But they didn’t pit “students against each other” the way that this conflict has.

I’ve spoken with Saller, a scholar of Roman history, a few times over the past six months in my capacity as a student journalist. We first met in September, a few weeks into his tenure. His predecessor, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, had resigned as president after my reporting for The Stanford Daily exposed misconduct in his academic research. (Tessier-Lavigne had failed to retract papers with faked data over the course of 20 years. In his resignation statement, he denied allegations of fraud and misconduct; a Stanford investigation determined that he had not personally manipulated data or ordered any manipulation but that he had repeatedly “failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes” from his lab.)

In that first conversation, Saller told me that everyone was “eager to move on” from the Tessier-Lavigne scandal. He was cheerful and upbeat. He knew he wasn’t staying in the job long; he hadn’t even bothered to move into the recently vacated presidential manor. In any case, campus, at that time, was serene. Then, a week later, came October 7.

The attack was as clear a litmus test as one could imagine for the Middle East conflict. Hamas insurgents raided homes and a music festival with the goal of slaughtering as many civilians as possible. Some victims were raped and mutilated, several independent investigations found. Hundreds of hostages were taken into Gaza and many have been tortured.

This, of course, was bad. Saying this was bad does not negate or marginalize the abuses and suffering Palestinians have experienced in Gaza and elsewhere. Everyone, of every ideology, should be able to say that this was bad. But much of this campus failed that simple test.

Two days after the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Stanford released milquetoast statements marking the “moment of intense emotion” and declaring “deep concern” over “the crisis in Israel and Palestine.” The official statements did not use the words Hamas or violence.

The absence of a clear institutional response led some teachers to take matters into their own hands. During a mandatory freshman seminar on October 10, a lecturer named Ameer Loggins tossed out his lesson plan to tell students that the actions of the Palestinian “military force” had been justified, that Israelis were colonizers, and that the Holocaust had been overemphasized, according to interviews I conducted with students in the class. Loggins then asked the Jewish students to identify themselves. He instructed one of them to “stand up, face the window, and he kind of kicked away his chair,” a witness told me. Loggins described this as an effort to demonstrate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. (Loggins did not reply to a request for comment; a spokesperson for Stanford said that there were “different recollections of the details regarding what happened” in the class.)

“We’re only in our third week of college, and we’re afraid to be here,” three students in the class wrote in an email that night to administrators. “This isn’t what Stanford was supposed to be.” The class Loggins taught is called COLLEGE, short for “Civic, Liberal, and Global Education,” and it is billed as an effort to develop “the skills that empower and enable us to live together.”

Loggins was suspended from teaching duties and an investigation was opened; this angered pro-Palestine activists, who organized a petition that garnered more than 1,700 signatures contesting the suspension. A pamphlet from the petitioners argued that Loggins’s behavior had not been out of bounds.

The day after the class, Stanford put out a statement written by Saller and Jenny Martinez, the university provost, more forcefully condemning the Hamas attack. Immediately, this new statement generated backlash.

Pro-Palestine activists complained about it during an event held the same day, the first of several “teach-ins” about the conflict. Students gathered in one of Stanford’s dorms to “bear witness to the struggles of decolonization.” The grievances and pain shared by Palestinian students were real. They told of discrimination and violence, of frightened family members subjected to harsh conditions. But the most raucous reaction from the crowd was in response to a young woman who said, “You ask us, do we condemn Hamas? Fuck you!” She added that she was “so proud of my resistance.”

David Palumbo-Liu, a professor of comparative literature with a focus on postcolonial studies, also spoke at the teach-in, explaining to the crowd that “European settlers” had come to “replace” Palestine’s “native population.”

Palumbo-Liu is known as an intelligent and supportive professor, and is popular among students, who call him by his initials, DPL. I wanted to ask him about his involvement in the teach-in, so we met one day in a café a few hundred feet away from the tents. I asked if he could elaborate on what he’d said at the event about Palestine’s native population. He was happy to expand: This was “one of those discussions that could go on forever. Like, who is actually native? At what point does nativism lapse, right? Well, you haven’t been native for X number of years, so …” In the end, he said, “you have two people who both feel they have a claim to the land,” and “they have to live together. Both sides have to cede something.”

The struggle at Stanford, he told me, “is to find a way in which open discussions can be had that allow people to disagree.” It’s true that Stanford has utterly failed in its efforts to encourage productive dialogue. But I still found it hard to reconcile DPL’s words with his public statements on Israel, which he’d recently said on Facebook should be “the most hated nation in the world.” He also wrote: “When Zionists say they don’t feel ‘safe’ on campus, I’ve come to see that as they no longer feel immune to criticism of Israel.” He continued: “Well as the saying goes, get used to it.”

Zionists, and indeed Jewish students of all political beliefs, have been given good reason to fear for their safety. They’ve been followed, harassed, and called derogatory racial epithets. At least one was told he was a “dirty Jew.” At least twice, mezuzahs have been ripped from students’ doors, and swastikas have been drawn in dorms. Arab and Muslim students also face alarming threats. The computer-science section leader, El Boudali, a pro-Palestine activist, told me he felt “safe personally,” but knew others who did not: “Some people have reported feeling like they’re followed, especially women who wear the hijab.”

In a remarkably short period of time, aggression and abuse have become commonplace, an accepted part of campus activism. In January, Jewish students organized an event dedicated to ameliorating anti-Semitism. It marked one of Saller’s first public appearances in the new year. Its topic seemed uncontroversial, and I thought it would generate little backlash.

Protests began before the panel discussion even started, with activists lining the stairs leading to the auditorium. During the event they drowned out the panelists, one of whom was Israel’s special envoy for combating anti-Semitism, by demanding a cease-fire. After participants began cycling out into the dark, things got ugly.

Activists, their faces covered by keffiyehs or medical masks, confronted attendees. “Go back to Brooklyn!” a young woman shouted at Jewish students. One protester, who emerged as the leader of the group, said that she and her compatriots would “take all of your places and ensure Israel falls.” She told attendees to get “off our fucking campus” and launched into conspiracy theories about Jews being involved in “child trafficking.” As a rabbi tried to leave the event, protesters pursued him, chanting, “There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!”

At one point, some members of the group turned on a few Stanford employees, including another rabbi, an imam, and a chaplain, telling them, “We know your names and we know where you work.” The ringleader added: “And we’ll soon find out where you live.” The religious leaders formed a protective barrier in front of the Jewish students. The rabbi and the imam appeared to be crying.

Saller avoided the protest by leaving through another door. Early that morning, his private residence had been vandalized. Protesters frequently tell him he “can’t hide” and shout him down. “We charge you with genocide!” they chant, demanding that Stanford divest from Israel. (When asked whether Stanford actually invested in Israel, a spokesperson replied that, beyond small exposures from passive funds that track indexes such as the S&P 500, the university’s endowment “has no direct holdings in Israeli companies, or direct holdings in defense contractors.”)

When the university finally said the protest tents had to be removed, students responded by accusing Saller of suppressing their right to free speech. This is probably the last charge he expected to face. Saller once served as provost at the University of Chicago, which is known for holding itself to a position of strict institutional neutrality so that its students can freely explore ideas for themselves. Saller has a lifelong belief in First Amendment rights. But that conviction in impartial college governance does not align with Stanford’s behavior in recent years. Despite the fact that many students seemed largely uninterested in the headlines before this year, Stanford’s administrative leadership has often taken positions on political issues and events, such as the Paris climate conference and the murder of George Floyd. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Stanford’s Hoover Tower was lit up in blue and yellow, and the school released a statement in solidarity.

When we first met, a week before October 7, I asked Saller about this. Did Stanford have a moral duty to denounce the war in Ukraine, for example, or the ethnic cleansing of Uyghur Muslims in China? “On international political issues, no,” he said. “That’s not a responsibility for the university as a whole, as an institution.”

But when Saller tried to apply his convictions on neutrality for the first time as president, dozens of faculty members condemned the response, many pro-Israel alumni were outraged, donors had private discussions about pulling funding, and an Israeli university sent an open letter to Saller and Martinez saying, “Stanford’s administration has failed us.” The initial statement had tried to make clear that the school’s policy was not Israel-specific: It noted that the university would not take a position on the turmoil in Nagorno-Karabakh (where Armenians are undergoing ethnic cleansing) either. But the message didn’t get through.

Saller had to beat an awkward retreat or risk the exact sort of public humiliation that he, as caretaker president, had presumably been hired to avoid. He came up with a compromise that landed somewhere in the middle: an unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’s “intolerable atrocities” paired with a statement making clear that Stanford would commit to institutional neutrality going forward.

“The events in Israel and Gaza this week have affected and engaged large numbers of students on our campus in ways that many other events have not,” the statement read. “This is why we feel compelled to both address the impact of these events on our campus and to explain why our general policy of not issuing statements about news events not directly connected to campus has limited the breadth of our comments thus far, and why you should not expect frequent commentary from us in the future.”

I asked Saller why he had changed tack on Israel and not on Nagorno-Karabakh. “We don’t feel as if we should be making statements on every war crime and atrocity,” he told me. This felt like a statement in and of itself.

In making such decisions, Saller works closely with Martinez, Stanford’s provost. I happened to interview her, too, a few days before October 7, not long after she’d been appointed. When I asked about her hopes for the job, she said that a “priority is ensuring an environment in which free speech and academic freedom are preserved.”

We talked about the so-called Leonard Law—a provision unique to California that requires private universities to be governed by the same First Amendment protections as public ones. This restricts what Stanford can do in terms of penalizing speech, putting it in a stricter bind than Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, or any of the other elite private institutions that have more latitude to set the standards for their campus (whether or not they have done so).

So I was surprised when, in December, the university announced that abstract calls for genocide “clearly violate Stanford’s Fundamental Standard, the code of conduct for all students at the university.” The statement was a response to the outrage following the congressional testimony of three university presidents—outrage that eventually led to the resignation of two of them, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill. Gay and Magill, who had both previously held positions at Stanford, did not commit to punishing calls for the genocide of Jews.

Experts told me that Stanford’s policy is impossible to enforce—and Saller himself acknowledged as much in our March interview.

“Liz Magill is a good friend,” Saller told me, adding, “Having watched what happened at Harvard and Penn, it seemed prudent” to publicly state that Stanford rejected calls for genocide. But saying that those calls violate the code of conduct “is not the same thing as to say that we could actually punish it.”

Stanford’s leaders seem to be trying their best while adapting to the situation in real time. But the muddled messaging has created a policy of neutrality that does not feel neutral at all.

When we met back in November, I tried to get Saller to open up about his experience running an institution in turmoil. What’s it like to know that so many students seem to believe that he—a mild-mannered 71-year-old classicist who swing-dances with his anthropologist wife—is a warmonger? Saller was more candid than I expected—perhaps more candid than any prominent university president has been yet. We sat in the same conference room as we had in September. The weather hadn’t really changed. Yet I felt like I was sitting in front of a different person. He was hunched over and looked exhausted, and his voice broke when he talked about the loss of life in Gaza and Israel and “the fact that we’re caught up in it.” A capable administrator with decades of experience, Saller seemed almost at a loss. “It’s been a kind of roller coaster, to be honest.”

He said he hadn’t anticipated the deluge of the emails “blaming me for lack of moral courage.” Anything the university says seems bound to be wrong: “If I say that our position is that we grieve over the loss of innocent lives, that in itself will draw some hostile reactions.”

“I find that really difficult to navigate,” he said with a sigh.

By March, it seemed that his views had solidified. He said he knew he was “a target,” but he was not going to be pushed into issuing any more statements. The continuing crisis seems to have granted him new insight. “I am certain that whatever I say will not have any material effect on the war in Gaza.” It’s hard to argue with that.

People tend to blame the campus wars on two villains: dithering administrators and radical student activists. But colleges have always had dithering administrators and radical student activists. To my mind, it’s the average students who have changed.

Elite universities attract a certain kind of student: the overachieving striver who has won all the right accolades for all the right activities. Is it such a surprise that the kids who are trained in the constant pursuit of perfect scores think they have to look at the world like a series of multiple-choice questions, with clearly right or wrong answers? Or that they think they can gamify a political cause in the same way they ace a standardized test?

Everyone knows that the only reliable way to get into a school like Stanford is to be really good at looking really good. Now that they’re here, students know that one easy way to keep looking good is to side with the majority of protesters, and condemn Israel.

It’s not that there isn’t real anger and anxiety over what is happening in Gaza—there is, and justifiably so. I know that among the protesters are many people who are deeply connected to this issue. But they are not the majority. What really activates the crowds now seems less a principled devotion to Palestine or to pacifism than a desire for collective action, to fit in by embracing the fashionable cause of the moment—as if a centuries-old conflict in which both sides have stolen and killed could ever be a simple matter of right and wrong. In their haste to exhibit moral righteousness, many of the least informed protesters end up being the loudest and most uncompromising.

Today’s students grew up in the Trump era, in which violent rhetoric has become a normal part of political discourse and activism is as easy as reposting an infographic. Many young people have come to feel that being angry is enough to foment change. Furious at the world’s injustices and desperate for a simple way to express that fury, they don’t seem interested in any form of engagement more nuanced than backing a pure protagonist and denouncing an evil enemy. They don’t, always, seem that concerned with the truth.

At the protest last month to prevent the removal of the sit-in, an activist in a pink Women’s March “pussy hat” shouted that no rape was committed by Hamas on October 7. “There hasn’t been proof of these rape accusations,” a student told me in a separate conversation, criticizing the Blue and White Tent for spreading what he considered to be misinformation about sexual violence. (In March, a United Nations report found “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence,” including “rape and gang rape,” occurred in multiple locations on October 7, as well as “clear and convincing information” on the “rape and sexualized torture” of hostages.) “The level of propaganda” surrounding Hamas, he told me, “is just unbelievable.”

The real story at Stanford is not about the malicious actors who endorse sexual assault and murder as forms of resistance, but about those who passively enable them because they believe their side can do no wrong. You don’t have to understand what you’re arguing for in order to argue for it. You don’t have to be able to name the river or the sea under discussion to chant “From the river to the sea.” This kind of obliviousness explains how one of my friends, a gay activist, can justify Hamas’s actions, even though it would have the two of us—an outspoken queer person and a Jewish reporter—killed in a heartbeat. A similar mentality can exist on the other side: I have heard students insist on the absolute righteousness of Israel yet seem uninterested in learning anything about what life is like in Gaza.

I’m familiar with the pull of achievement culture—after all, I’m a product of the same system. I fell in love with Stanford as a 7-year-old, lying on the floor of an East Coast library and picturing all the cool technology those West Coast geniuses were dreaming up. I cried when I was accepted; I spent the next few months scrolling through the course catalog, giddy with anticipation. I wanted to learn everything.

I learned more than I expected. Within my first week here, someone asked me: “Why are all Jews so rich?” In 2016, when Stanford’s undergraduate senate had debated a resolution against anti-Semitism, one of its members argued that the idea of “Jews controlling the media, economy, government, and other societal institutions” represented “a very valid discussion.” (He apologized, and the resolution passed.) In my dorm last year, a student discussed being Jewish and awoke the next day to swastikas and a portrait of Hitler affixed to his door.

I grew up secularly, with no strong affiliation to Jewish culture. When I found out as a teenager that some of my ancestors had hidden their identity from their children and that dozens of my relatives had died in the Holocaust (something no living member of my family had known), I felt the barest tremor of identity. After I saw so many people I know cheering after October 7, I felt something stronger stir. I know others have experienced something similar. Even a professor texted me to say that she felt Jewish in a way she never had before.

But my frustration with the conflict on campus has little to do with my own identity. Across the many conversations and hours of formal interviews I conducted for this article, I’ve encountered a persistent anti-intellectual streak. I’ve watched many of my classmates treat death so cavalierly that they can protest as a pregame to a party. Indeed, two parties at Stanford were reported to the university this fall for allegedly making people say “Fuck Israel” or “Free Palestine” to get in the door. A spokesperson for the university said it was “unable to confirm the facts of what occurred,” but that it had “met with students involved in both parties to make clear that Stanford’s nondiscrimination policy applies to parties.” As a friend emailed me not long ago: “A place that was supposed to be a sanctuary from such unreason has become a factory for it.”

Readers may be tempted to discount the conduct displayed at Stanford. After all, the thinking goes, these are privileged kids doing what they always do: embracing faux-radicalism in college before taking jobs in fintech or consulting. These students, some might say, aren’t representative of America.

And yet they are representative of something: of the conduct many of the most accomplished students in my generation have accepted as tolerable, and what that means for the future of our country. I admire activism. We need people willing to protest what they see as wrong and take on entrenched systems of repression. But we also need to read, learn, discuss, accept the existence of nuance, embrace diversity of thought, and hold our own allies to high standards. More than ever, we need universities to teach young people how to do all of this.

For so long, Stanford’s physical standoff seemed intractable. Then, in early February, a storm swept in, and the natural world dictated its own conclusion.

Heavy rains flooded campus. For hours, the students battled to save their tents. The sit-in activists used sandbags and anything else they could find to hold back the water—at one point, David Palumbo-Liu, the professor, told me he stood in the lashing downpour to anchor one of the sit-in’s tents with his own body. When the storm hit, many of the Jewish activists had been attending a discussion on anti-Semitism. They raced back and struggled to salvage the Blue and White Tent, but it was too late—the wind had ripped it out of the ground.

The next day, the weary Jewish protesters returned to discover that their space had been taken.

A new collection of tents had been set up by El Boudali, the pro-Palestine activist, and a dozen friends. He said they were there to protest Islamophobia and to teach about Islam and jihad, and that they were a separate entity from the Sit-In to Stop Genocide, though I observed students cycling between the tents. Palestinian flags now flew from the bookstore to the quad.

Administrators told me they’d quickly informed El Boudali and his allies that the space had been reserved by the Jewish advocates, and offered to help move them to a different location. But the protesters told me they had no intention of going. (El Boudali later said that they did not take over the entire space, and would have been “happy to exist side by side, but they wanted to kick us off entirely from that lawn.”)

When it was clear that the area where they’d set up their tents would not be ceded back to the pro-Israel group willingly, Stanford changed course and decided to clear everyone out in one fell swoop. On February 8, school officials ordered all students to vacate the plaza overnight. The university was finally going to enforce its rule prohibiting people from sleeping outside on campus and requiring the removal of belongings from the plaza between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. The order cited the danger posed by the storm as a justification for changing course and, probably hoping to avoid allegations of bias, described the decision as “viewpoint-neutral.”

That didn’t work.

About a week of protests, led by the sit-in organizers, followed. Chants were chanted. More demands for a “river to the sea” solution to the Israel problem were made. A friend boasted to me about her willingness to be arrested. Stanford sent a handful of staff members, who stood near balloons left over from an event earlier in the day. They were there, one of them told me, to “make students feel supported and safe.”

In the end, Saller and Martinez agreed to talk with the leaders of the sit-in about their demands to divest the university and condemn Israel, under the proviso that the activists comply with Stanford’s anti-camping guidelines “regardless of the outcome of discussions.” Eight days after they were first instructed to leave, 120 days after setting up camp, the sit-in protesters slept in their own beds. In defiance of the university’s instructions, they left behind their tents. But sometime in the very early hours of the morning, law-enforcement officers confiscated the structures. The area was cordoned off without any violence and the plaza filled once more with electric skateboards and farmers’ markets.

The conflict continues in its own way. Saller was just shouted down by protesters chanting “No peace on stolen land” at a Family Weekend event, and protesters later displayed an effigy of him covered in blood. Students still feel tense; Saller still seems worried. He told me that the university is planning to change all manner of things—residential-assistant training, new-student orientation, even the acceptance letters that students receive—in hopes of fostering a culture of greater tolerance. But no campus edict or panel discussion can address a problem that is so much bigger than our university.

At one rally last fall, a speaker expressed disillusionment about the power of “peaceful resistance” on college campuses. “What is there left to do but to take up arms?” The crowd cheered as he said Israel must be destroyed. But what would happen to its citizens? I’d prefer to believe that most protesters chanting “Palestine is Arab” and shouting that we must “smash the Zionist settler state” don’t actually think Jews should be killed en masse. But can one truly be so ignorant as to advocate widespread violence in the name of peace?

When the world is rendered in black-and-white—portrayed as a simple fight between colonizer and colonized—the answer is yes. Solutions, by this logic, are absolute: Israel or Palestine, nothing in between. Either you support liberation of the oppressed or you support genocide. Either Stanford is all good or all bad; all in favor of free speech or all authoritarian; all anti-Semitic or all Islamophobic.

At January’s anti-anti-Semitism event, I watched an exchange between a Jewish attendee and a protester from a few feet away. “Are you pro-Palestine?” the protester asked.

“Yes,” the attendee responded, and he went on to describe his disgust with the human-rights abuses Palestinians have faced for years.

“But are you a Zionist?”

“Yes.”

“Then we are enemies.”

[blimbo-buddy]

drafting an idea for the ant colonies of bwnm - specifically the California ones- where the whole “queens are released, mate with drones, and start a new colony” thing is pretty much forbidden in the area because a bunch of conservative Queen Mothers back in the day said “Hm. Nah that’s gonna be too much competition let’s make a new rule about this”

but this is in very early stages of drafting because I want to see how it’ll fit into Gnash and Macerate’s motivations and ant political views

(Well that and also making sure that their ant species have Swarming Seasons. I know the Solenopsis genus does but I gotta check on the Formica genus)

[beardedmrbean]

Even liberal San Francisco voters are getting tough on crime and public disorder.

Residents of the City by the Bay approved ballot measures Tuesday to set minimum police staffing levels, allow officers to chase suspects under reasonable suspicion they have committed or will commit a felony or nonviolent misdemeanor — with the help of drones — and set up public safety cameras that could use facial recognition technology to apprehend perps.

Another proposition that passed requires anyone who receives employment assistance, housing, shelter, utilities or food from city coffers to submit to drug screenings — and denies them those benefits unless they enter a treatment program.

The San Francisco Police Department had prohibited officers from pursuing nonviolent offenders unless there was an imminent risk to public safety.

Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, backed the ballot measures as she eyes re-election to a second full term in November — while facing challenges from Daniel Lurie, a nonprofit executive, and current and former city officials including ex-interim mayor Mark Farrell.

“We want San Francisco to be exactly what the people who live here want to see,” Breed said at a cocktail bar surrounded by supporters as the results rolled in Tuesday night, according to Politico. “And that is a safe, affordable place to call home.”

Voters also overwhelmingly approved tighter ethics rules for city employees regarding the receipt of gifts and mandating the teaching of Algebra I in schools by eighth grade.

Ballot measures allow voters to directly change laws during elections without the help of their elected officials.

Following a spate of state and local changes to crime policies in recent, San Francisco has been dogged by retail crime sprees, burglaries, rampant open-air drug use and public defecation.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, during a high-profile TV debate this past November against former San Francisco Mayor and current California Gov. Gavin Newsom, pointed to the city’s downfall as proof of failed liberal policies.

Dozens of big-name businesses have departed the city’s formerly bustling downtown area since 2020, the year after Breed was elected. Drug overdose deaths also hit a record high last year, with 806 recorded.

The descent into lawlessness was turbocharged by the COVID-19 pandemic and widespread rioting following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in summer 2020, as San Francisco and other cities embraced calls to defund law enforcement.

Breed supported a $120 million cut from the city’s police budget in 2020 — but reversed course the following year and pleaded with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to restore funding.

“I’m proud this city believes in giving people second chances,” she said in December 2021. “Nevertheless, we also need there to be accountability when someone does break the law … Our compassion cannot be mistaken for weakness or indifference … I was raised by my grandmother to believe in ‘tough love,’ in keeping your house in order, and we need that, now more than ever.”

The pivot to the center came just in time, as disgruntled San Francisco voters went on the following year to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a progressive prosecutor and former public defender.

Before that, parents had ousted three members of the city’s school board for pushing a progressive political agenda and keeping classrooms closed during the coronavirus pandemic.

A former city supervisor, Breed was elected mayor in 2018 to finish out the term of the late Ed Lee, who died in office. She was later elected to a five-year term in November 2019.

She is still working to regain the trust of law enforcement officials, however, with the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association saying in November that her “commitment to dismantling the criminal justice system has remained a focal point.”

Breed is battling a high disapproval rating, with 71% of likely general election voters taking exception to her job performance, according to a San Francisco Chronicle poll last month.

The city’s ranked-choice voting system could also throw a wrench into Breed’s re-election bid if she does not receive at least 50% support in the initial round, as second- and third-place candidates often receive more votes than those at the top of the ticket.

[sarahjacobs]

the university of california is planning on implementing mask bans, forcing students show their student ids if asked at random, and beefing up their private security and police departments. & of course the pds of each campus will ask for MORE military grade tech because they rlly rlly rlly need to have more of those tasers, less than lethals equipped w/ rubber bullets bean bags tear gas grenades etc, ak 15s. and of course drones so they can surveil protesters better. and they’ll still call local pds, who are similarly militarized, for “mutual aid” aka aid in beating the shit out of you. & the uc is making sure to note that they’ll have readily available mental health services which a) sounds like a good way to get ppl to snitch on themselves b) natural grief & rage at colonialism are pathologized c) Are you fucking kidding me. I have to laugh. the uc will literally sic hundreds of cops on you & make you homeless if you get arrested while protesting & do nothing as zionists throw bricks and shoot fireworks at you and set rats on you & then the uc will say they care about your mental health and trauma. & in the mean time the uc will send out emails saying that they care so much about free speech, just, there’s a time and place for it, you need to be respectful and not antisemitic and totally 100% compliant of both university rules & the law and 😊 free speech is a fucking farce lol.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Theo Baker

Published: Mar 26, 2024

One of the section leaders for my computer-science class, Hamza El Boudali, believes that President Joe Biden should be killed. “I’m not calling for a civilian to do it, but I think a military should,” the 23-year-old Stanford University student told a small group of protesters last month. “I’d be happy if Biden was dead.” He thinks that Stanford is complicit in what he calls the genocide of Palestinians, and that Biden is not only complicit but responsible for it. “I’m not calling for a vigilante to do it,” he later clarified, “but I’m saying he is guilty of mass murder and should be treated in the same way that a terrorist with darker skin would be (and we all know terrorists with dark skin are typically bombed and drone striked by American planes).” El Boudali has also said that he believes that Hamas’s October 7 attack was a justifiable act of resistance, and that he would actually prefer Hamas rule America in place of its current government (though he clarified later that he “doesn’t mean Hamas is perfect”). When you ask him what his cause is, he answers: “Peace.”

I switched to a different computer-science section.

Israel is 7,500 miles away from Stanford’s campus, where I am a sophomore. But the Hamas invasion and the Israeli counterinvasion have fractured my university, a place typically less focused on geopolitics than on venture-capital funding for the latest dorm-based tech start-up. Few students would call for Biden’s head—I think—but many of the same young people who say they want peace in Gaza don’t seem to realize that they are in fact advocating for violence. Extremism has swept through classrooms and dorms, and it is becoming normal for students to be harassed and intimidated for their faith, heritage, or appearance—they have been called perpetrators of genocide for wearing kippahs, and accused of supporting terrorism for wearing keffiyehs. The extremism and anti-Semitism at Ivy League universities on the East Coast have attracted so much media and congressional attention that two Ivy presidents have lost their jobs. But few people seem to have noticed the culture war that has taken over our California campus.

For four months, two rival groups of protesters, separated by a narrow bike path, faced off on Stanford’s palm-covered grounds. The “Sit-In to Stop Genocide” encampment was erected by students in mid-October, even before Israeli troops had crossed into Gaza, to demand that the university divest from Israel and condemn its behavior. Posters were hung equating Hamas with Ukraine and Nelson Mandela. Across from the sit-in, a rival group of pro-Israel students eventually set up the “Blue and White Tent” to provide, as one activist put it, a “safe space” to “be a proud Jew on campus.” Soon it became the center of its own cluster of tents, with photos of Hamas’s victims sitting opposite the rubble-ridden images of Gaza and a long (and incomplete) list of the names of slain Palestinians displayed by the students at the sit-in.

Some days the dueling encampments would host only a few people each, but on a sunny weekday afternoon, there could be dozens. Most of the time, the groups tolerated each other. But not always. Students on both sides were reportedly spit on and yelled at, and had their belongings destroyed. (The perpetrators in many cases seemed to be adults who weren’t affiliated with Stanford, a security guard told me.) The university put in place round-the-clock security, but when something actually happened, no one quite knew what to do.

Stanford has a policy barring overnight camping, but for months didn’t enforce it, “out of a desire to support the peaceful expression of free speech in the ways that students choose to exercise that expression”—and, the administration told alumni, because the university feared that confronting the students would only make the conflict worse. When the school finally said the tents had to go last month, enormous protests against the university administration, and against Israel, followed.

“We don’t want no two states! We want all of ’48!” students chanted, a slogan advocating that Israel be dismantled and replaced by a single Arab nation. Palestinian flags flew alongside bright “Welcome!” banners left over from new-student orientation. A young woman gave a speech that seemed to capture the sense of urgency and power that so many students here feel. “We are Stanford University!” she shouted. “We control things!”

“We’ve had protests in the past,” Richard Saller, the university’s interim president, told me in November—about the environment, and apartheid, and Vietnam. But they didn’t pit “students against each other” the way that this conflict has.

I’ve spoken with Saller, a scholar of Roman history, a few times over the past six months in my capacity as a student journalist. We first met in September, a few weeks into his tenure. His predecessor, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, had resigned as president after my reporting for The Stanford Daily exposed misconduct in his academic research. (Tessier-Lavigne had failed to retract papers with faked data over the course of 20 years. In his resignation statement, he denied allegations of fraud and misconduct; a Stanford investigation determined that he had not personally manipulated data or ordered any manipulation but that he had repeatedly “failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes” from his lab.)

In that first conversation, Saller told me that everyone was “eager to move on” from the Tessier-Lavigne scandal. He was cheerful and upbeat. He knew he wasn’t staying in the job long; he hadn’t even bothered to move into the recently vacated presidential manor. In any case, campus, at that time, was serene. Then, a week later, came October 7.

The attack was as clear a litmus test as one could imagine for the Middle East conflict. Hamas insurgents raided homes and a music festival with the goal of slaughtering as many civilians as possible. Some victims were raped and mutilated, several independent investigations found. Hundreds of hostages were taken into Gaza and many have been tortured.

This, of course, was bad. Saying this was bad does not negate or marginalize the abuses and suffering Palestinians have experienced in Gaza and elsewhere. Everyone, of every ideology, should be able to say that this was bad. But much of this campus failed that simple test.

Two days after the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Stanford released milquetoast statements marking the “moment of intense emotion” and declaring “deep concern” over “the crisis in Israel and Palestine.” The official statements did not use the words Hamas or violence.

The absence of a clear institutional response led some teachers to take matters into their own hands. During a mandatory freshman seminar on October 10, a lecturer named Ameer Loggins tossed out his lesson plan to tell students that the actions of the Palestinian “military force” had been justified, that Israelis were colonizers, and that the Holocaust had been overemphasized, according to interviews I conducted with students in the class. Loggins then asked the Jewish students to identify themselves. He instructed one of them to “stand up, face the window, and he kind of kicked away his chair,” a witness told me. Loggins described this as an effort to demonstrate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. (Loggins did not reply to a request for comment; a spokesperson for Stanford said that there were “different recollections of the details regarding what happened” in the class.)

“We’re only in our third week of college, and we’re afraid to be here,” three students in the class wrote in an email that night to administrators. “This isn’t what Stanford was supposed to be.” The class Loggins taught is called COLLEGE, short for “Civic, Liberal, and Global Education,” and it is billed as an effort to develop “the skills that empower and enable us to live together.”

Loggins was suspended from teaching duties and an investigation was opened; this angered pro-Palestine activists, who organized a petition that garnered more than 1,700 signatures contesting the suspension. A pamphlet from the petitioners argued that Loggins’s behavior had not been out of bounds.

The day after the class, Stanford put out a statement written by Saller and Jenny Martinez, the university provost, more forcefully condemning the Hamas attack. Immediately, this new statement generated backlash.

Pro-Palestine activists complained about it during an event held the same day, the first of several “teach-ins” about the conflict. Students gathered in one of Stanford’s dorms to “bear witness to the struggles of decolonization.” The grievances and pain shared by Palestinian students were real. They told of discrimination and violence, of frightened family members subjected to harsh conditions. But the most raucous reaction from the crowd was in response to a young woman who said, “You ask us, do we condemn Hamas? Fuck you!” She added that she was “so proud of my resistance.”

David Palumbo-Liu, a professor of comparative literature with a focus on postcolonial studies, also spoke at the teach-in, explaining to the crowd that “European settlers” had come to “replace” Palestine’s “native population.”

Palumbo-Liu is known as an intelligent and supportive professor, and is popular among students, who call him by his initials, DPL. I wanted to ask him about his involvement in the teach-in, so we met one day in a café a few hundred feet away from the tents. I asked if he could elaborate on what he’d said at the event about Palestine’s native population. He was happy to expand: This was “one of those discussions that could go on forever. Like, who is actually native? At what point does nativism lapse, right? Well, you haven’t been native for X number of years, so …” In the end, he said, “you have two people who both feel they have a claim to the land,” and “they have to live together. Both sides have to cede something.”

The struggle at Stanford, he told me, “is to find a way in which open discussions can be had that allow people to disagree.” It’s true that Stanford has utterly failed in its efforts to encourage productive dialogue. But I still found it hard to reconcile DPL’s words with his public statements on Israel, which he’d recently said on Facebook should be “the most hated nation in the world.” He also wrote: “When Zionists say they don’t feel ‘safe’ on campus, I’ve come to see that as they no longer feel immune to criticism of Israel.” He continued: “Well as the saying goes, get used to it.”

Zionists, and indeed Jewish students of all political beliefs, have been given good reason to fear for their safety. They’ve been followed, harassed, and called derogatory racial epithets. At least one was told he was a “dirty Jew.” At least twice, mezuzahs have been ripped from students’ doors, and swastikas have been drawn in dorms. Arab and Muslim students also face alarming threats. The computer-science section leader, El Boudali, a pro-Palestine activist, told me he felt “safe personally,” but knew others who did not: “Some people have reported feeling like they’re followed, especially women who wear the hijab.”

In a remarkably short period of time, aggression and abuse have become commonplace, an accepted part of campus activism. In January, Jewish students organized an event dedicated to ameliorating anti-Semitism. It marked one of Saller’s first public appearances in the new year. Its topic seemed uncontroversial, and I thought it would generate little backlash.

Protests began before the panel discussion even started, with activists lining the stairs leading to the auditorium. During the event they drowned out the panelists, one of whom was Israel’s special envoy for combating anti-Semitism, by demanding a cease-fire. After participants began cycling out into the dark, things got ugly.

Activists, their faces covered by keffiyehs or medical masks, confronted attendees. “Go back to Brooklyn!” a young woman shouted at Jewish students. One protester, who emerged as the leader of the group, said that she and her compatriots would “take all of your places and ensure Israel falls.” She told attendees to get “off our fucking campus” and launched into conspiracy theories about Jews being involved in “child trafficking.” As a rabbi tried to leave the event, protesters pursued him, chanting, “There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!”

At one point, some members of the group turned on a few Stanford employees, including another rabbi, an imam, and a chaplain, telling them, “We know your names and we know where you work.” The ringleader added: “And we’ll soon find out where you live.” The religious leaders formed a protective barrier in front of the Jewish students. The rabbi and the imam appeared to be crying.

Saller avoided the protest by leaving through another door. Early that morning, his private residence had been vandalized. Protesters frequently tell him he “can’t hide” and shout him down. “We charge you with genocide!” they chant, demanding that Stanford divest from Israel. (When asked whether Stanford actually invested in Israel, a spokesperson replied that, beyond small exposures from passive funds that track indexes such as the S&P 500, the university’s endowment “has no direct holdings in Israeli companies, or direct holdings in defense contractors.”)

When the university finally said the protest tents had to be removed, students responded by accusing Saller of suppressing their right to free speech. This is probably the last charge he expected to face. Saller once served as provost at the University of Chicago, which is known for holding itself to a position of strict institutional neutrality so that its students can freely explore ideas for themselves. Saller has a lifelong belief in First Amendment rights. But that conviction in impartial college governance does not align with Stanford’s behavior in recent years. Despite the fact that many students seemed largely uninterested in the headlines before this year, Stanford’s administrative leadership has often taken positions on political issues and events, such as the Paris climate conference and the murder of George Floyd. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Stanford’s Hoover Tower was lit up in blue and yellow, and the school released a statement in solidarity.

When we first met, a week before October 7, I asked Saller about this. Did Stanford have a moral duty to denounce the war in Ukraine, for example, or the ethnic cleansing of Uyghur Muslims in China? “On international political issues, no,” he said. “That’s not a responsibility for the university as a whole, as an institution.”

But when Saller tried to apply his convictions on neutrality for the first time as president, dozens of faculty members condemned the response, many pro-Israel alumni were outraged, donors had private discussions about pulling funding, and an Israeli university sent an open letter to Saller and Martinez saying, “Stanford’s administration has failed us.” The initial statement had tried to make clear that the school’s policy was not Israel-specific: It noted that the university would not take a position on the turmoil in Nagorno-Karabakh (where Armenians are undergoing ethnic cleansing) either. But the message didn’t get through.

Saller had to beat an awkward retreat or risk the exact sort of public humiliation that he, as caretaker president, had presumably been hired to avoid. He came up with a compromise that landed somewhere in the middle: an unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’s “intolerable atrocities” paired with a statement making clear that Stanford would commit to institutional neutrality going forward.

“The events in Israel and Gaza this week have affected and engaged large numbers of students on our campus in ways that many other events have not,” the statement read. “This is why we feel compelled to both address the impact of these events on our campus and to explain why our general policy of not issuing statements about news events not directly connected to campus has limited the breadth of our comments thus far, and why you should not expect frequent commentary from us in the future.”

I asked Saller why he had changed tack on Israel and not on Nagorno-Karabakh. “We don’t feel as if we should be making statements on every war crime and atrocity,” he told me. This felt like a statement in and of itself.

In making such decisions, Saller works closely with Martinez, Stanford’s provost. I happened to interview her, too, a few days before October 7, not long after she’d been appointed. When I asked about her hopes for the job, she said that a “priority is ensuring an environment in which free speech and academic freedom are preserved.”

We talked about the so-called Leonard Law—a provision unique to California that requires private universities to be governed by the same First Amendment protections as public ones. This restricts what Stanford can do in terms of penalizing speech, putting it in a stricter bind than Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, or any of the other elite private institutions that have more latitude to set the standards for their campus (whether or not they have done so).

So I was surprised when, in December, the university announced that abstract calls for genocide “clearly violate Stanford’s Fundamental Standard, the code of conduct for all students at the university.” The statement was a response to the outrage following the congressional testimony of three university presidents—outrage that eventually led to the resignation of two of them, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill. Gay and Magill, who had both previously held positions at Stanford, did not commit to punishing calls for the genocide of Jews.

Experts told me that Stanford’s policy is impossible to enforce—and Saller himself acknowledged as much in our March interview.

“Liz Magill is a good friend,” Saller told me, adding, “Having watched what happened at Harvard and Penn, it seemed prudent” to publicly state that Stanford rejected calls for genocide. But saying that those calls violate the code of conduct “is not the same thing as to say that we could actually punish it.”

Stanford’s leaders seem to be trying their best while adapting to the situation in real time. But the muddled messaging has created a policy of neutrality that does not feel neutral at all.

When we met back in November, I tried to get Saller to open up about his experience running an institution in turmoil. What’s it like to know that so many students seem to believe that he—a mild-mannered 71-year-old classicist who swing-dances with his anthropologist wife—is a warmonger? Saller was more candid than I expected—perhaps more candid than any prominent university president has been yet. We sat in the same conference room as we had in September. The weather hadn’t really changed. Yet I felt like I was sitting in front of a different person. He was hunched over and looked exhausted, and his voice broke when he talked about the loss of life in Gaza and Israel and “the fact that we’re caught up in it.” A capable administrator with decades of experience, Saller seemed almost at a loss. “It’s been a kind of roller coaster, to be honest.”

He said he hadn’t anticipated the deluge of the emails “blaming me for lack of moral courage.” Anything the university says seems bound to be wrong: “If I say that our position is that we grieve over the loss of innocent lives, that in itself will draw some hostile reactions.”

“I find that really difficult to navigate,” he said with a sigh.

By March, it seemed that his views had solidified. He said he knew he was “a target,” but he was not going to be pushed into issuing any more statements. The continuing crisis seems to have granted him new insight. “I am certain that whatever I say will not have any material effect on the war in Gaza.” It’s hard to argue with that.

People tend to blame the campus wars on two villains: dithering administrators and radical student activists. But colleges have always had dithering administrators and radical student activists. To my mind, it’s the average students who have changed.

Elite universities attract a certain kind of student: the overachieving striver who has won all the right accolades for all the right activities. Is it such a surprise that the kids who are trained in the constant pursuit of perfect scores think they have to look at the world like a series of multiple-choice questions, with clearly right or wrong answers? Or that they think they can gamify a political cause in the same way they ace a standardized test?

Everyone knows that the only reliable way to get into a school like Stanford is to be really good at looking really good. Now that they’re here, students know that one easy way to keep looking good is to side with the majority of protesters, and condemn Israel.

It’s not that there isn’t real anger and anxiety over what is happening in Gaza—there is, and justifiably so. I know that among the protesters are many people who are deeply connected to this issue. But they are not the majority. What really activates the crowds now seems less a principled devotion to Palestine or to pacifism than a desire for collective action, to fit in by embracing the fashionable cause of the moment—as if a centuries-old conflict in which both sides have stolen and killed could ever be a simple matter of right and wrong. In their haste to exhibit moral righteousness, many of the least informed protesters end up being the loudest and most uncompromising.

Today’s students grew up in the Trump era, in which violent rhetoric has become a normal part of political discourse and activism is as easy as reposting an infographic. Many young people have come to feel that being angry is enough to foment change. Furious at the world’s injustices and desperate for a simple way to express that fury, they don’t seem interested in any form of engagement more nuanced than backing a pure protagonist and denouncing an evil enemy. They don’t, always, seem that concerned with the truth.

At the protest last month to prevent the removal of the sit-in, an activist in a pink Women’s March “pussy hat” shouted that no rape was committed by Hamas on October 7. “There hasn’t been proof of these rape accusations,” a student told me in a separate conversation, criticizing the Blue and White Tent for spreading what he considered to be misinformation about sexual violence. (In March, a United Nations report found “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence,” including “rape and gang rape,” occurred in multiple locations on October 7, as well as “clear and convincing information” on the “rape and sexualized torture” of hostages.) “The level of propaganda” surrounding Hamas, he told me, “is just unbelievable.”

The real story at Stanford is not about the malicious actors who endorse sexual assault and murder as forms of resistance, but about those who passively enable them because they believe their side can do no wrong. You don’t have to understand what you’re arguing for in order to argue for it. You don’t have to be able to name the river or the sea under discussion to chant “From the river to the sea.” This kind of obliviousness explains how one of my friends, a gay activist, can justify Hamas’s actions, even though it would have the two of us—an outspoken queer person and a Jewish reporter—killed in a heartbeat. A similar mentality can exist on the other side: I have heard students insist on the absolute righteousness of Israel yet seem uninterested in learning anything about what life is like in Gaza.

I’m familiar with the pull of achievement culture—after all, I’m a product of the same system. I fell in love with Stanford as a 7-year-old, lying on the floor of an East Coast library and picturing all the cool technology those West Coast geniuses were dreaming up. I cried when I was accepted; I spent the next few months scrolling through the course catalog, giddy with anticipation. I wanted to learn everything.

I learned more than I expected. Within my first week here, someone asked me: “Why are all Jews so rich?” In 2016, when Stanford’s undergraduate senate had debated a resolution against anti-Semitism, one of its members argued that the idea of “Jews controlling the media, economy, government, and other societal institutions” represented “a very valid discussion.” (He apologized, and the resolution passed.) In my dorm last year, a student discussed being Jewish and awoke the next day to swastikas and a portrait of Hitler affixed to his door.

I grew up secularly, with no strong affiliation to Jewish culture. When I found out as a teenager that some of my ancestors had hidden their identity from their children and that dozens of my relatives had died in the Holocaust (something no living member of my family had known), I felt the barest tremor of identity. After I saw so many people I know cheering after October 7, I felt something stronger stir. I know others have experienced something similar. Even a professor texted me to say that she felt Jewish in a way she never had before.

But my frustration with the conflict on campus has little to do with my own identity. Across the many conversations and hours of formal interviews I conducted for this article, I’ve encountered a persistent anti-intellectual streak. I’ve watched many of my classmates treat death so cavalierly that they can protest as a pregame to a party. Indeed, two parties at Stanford were reported to the university this fall for allegedly making people say “Fuck Israel” or “Free Palestine” to get in the door. A spokesperson for the university said it was “unable to confirm the facts of what occurred,” but that it had “met with students involved in both parties to make clear that Stanford’s nondiscrimination policy applies to parties.” As a friend emailed me not long ago: “A place that was supposed to be a sanctuary from such unreason has become a factory for it.”

Readers may be tempted to discount the conduct displayed at Stanford. After all, the thinking goes, these are privileged kids doing what they always do: embracing faux-radicalism in college before taking jobs in fintech or consulting. These students, some might say, aren’t representative of America.

And yet they are representative of something: of the conduct many of the most accomplished students in my generation have accepted as tolerable, and what that means for the future of our country. I admire activism. We need people willing to protest what they see as wrong and take on entrenched systems of repression. But we also need to read, learn, discuss, accept the existence of nuance, embrace diversity of thought, and hold our own allies to high standards. More than ever, we need universities to teach young people how to do all of this.

For so long, Stanford’s physical standoff seemed intractable. Then, in early February, a storm swept in, and the natural world dictated its own conclusion.

Heavy rains flooded campus. For hours, the students battled to save their tents. The sit-in activists used sandbags and anything else they could find to hold back the water—at one point, David Palumbo-Liu, the professor, told me he stood in the lashing downpour to anchor one of the sit-in’s tents with his own body. When the storm hit, many of the Jewish activists had been attending a discussion on anti-Semitism. They raced back and struggled to salvage the Blue and White Tent, but it was too late—the wind had ripped it out of the ground.

The next day, the weary Jewish protesters returned to discover that their space had been taken.

A new collection of tents had been set up by El Boudali, the pro-Palestine activist, and a dozen friends. He said they were there to protest Islamophobia and to teach about Islam and jihad, and that they were a separate entity from the Sit-In to Stop Genocide, though I observed students cycling between the tents. Palestinian flags now flew from the bookstore to the quad.

Administrators told me they’d quickly informed El Boudali and his allies that the space had been reserved by the Jewish advocates, and offered to help move them to a different location. But the protesters told me they had no intention of going. (El Boudali later said that they did not take over the entire space, and would have been “happy to exist side by side, but they wanted to kick us off entirely from that lawn.”)

When it was clear that the area where they’d set up their tents would not be ceded back to the pro-Israel group willingly, Stanford changed course and decided to clear everyone out in one fell swoop. On February 8, school officials ordered all students to vacate the plaza overnight. The university was finally going to enforce its rule prohibiting people from sleeping outside on campus and requiring the removal of belongings from the plaza between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. The order cited the danger posed by the storm as a justification for changing course and, probably hoping to avoid allegations of bias, described the decision as “viewpoint-neutral.”

That didn’t work.

About a week of protests, led by the sit-in organizers, followed. Chants were chanted. More demands for a “river to the sea” solution to the Israel problem were made. A friend boasted to me about her willingness to be arrested. Stanford sent a handful of staff members, who stood near balloons left over from an event earlier in the day. They were there, one of them told me, to “make students feel supported and safe.”

In the end, Saller and Martinez agreed to talk with the leaders of the sit-in about their demands to divest the university and condemn Israel, under the proviso that the activists comply with Stanford’s anti-camping guidelines “regardless of the outcome of discussions.” Eight days after they were first instructed to leave, 120 days after setting up camp, the sit-in protesters slept in their own beds. In defiance of the university’s instructions, they left behind their tents. But sometime in the very early hours of the morning, law-enforcement officers confiscated the structures. The area was cordoned off without any violence and the plaza filled once more with electric skateboards and farmers’ markets.

The conflict continues in its own way. Saller was just shouted down by protesters chanting “No peace on stolen land” at a Family Weekend event, and protesters later displayed an effigy of him covered in blood. Students still feel tense; Saller still seems worried. He told me that the university is planning to change all manner of things—residential-assistant training, new-student orientation, even the acceptance letters that students receive—in hopes of fostering a culture of greater tolerance. But no campus edict or panel discussion can address a problem that is so much bigger than our university.

At one rally last fall, a speaker expressed disillusionment about the power of “peaceful resistance” on college campuses. “What is there left to do but to take up arms?” The crowd cheered as he said Israel must be destroyed. But what would happen to its citizens? I’d prefer to believe that most protesters chanting “Palestine is Arab” and shouting that we must “smash the Zionist settler state” don’t actually think Jews should be killed en masse. But can one truly be so ignorant as to advocate widespread violence in the name of peace?

When the world is rendered in black-and-white—portrayed as a simple fight between colonizer and colonized—the answer is yes. Solutions, by this logic, are absolute: Israel or Palestine, nothing in between. Either you support liberation of the oppressed or you support genocide. Either Stanford is all good or all bad; all in favor of free speech or all authoritarian; all anti-Semitic or all Islamophobic.

At January’s anti-anti-Semitism event, I watched an exchange between a Jewish attendee and a protester from a few feet away. “Are you pro-Palestine?” the protester asked.

“Yes,” the attendee responded, and he went on to describe his disgust with the human-rights abuses Palestinians have faced for years.

“But are you a Zionist?”

“Yes.”

“Then we are enemies.”

[doctornerdington]

Ten first lines

@totallysilvergirl tagged me. (Thank you, this was fun!) I’ll go newest to oldest.

Rules: share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. If you have written less than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway.

1. Stede never loved Mary, he knows that now; not as a husband should. (WIP, mostly complete: Some nights you are the sea)

2.  “… and huge – I mean really huuuuge knockers!” Calico Jack roared, to the cheers of the inebriated crew around them. (A Dark and Hollow Thing)

3.  To all profound thinkers in the realms of Science who may chance to read this tale, greetings! (A Martian Stole My Body!)

4. Suppose there is nothing but the hive: That there are drones and workers And queens, and nothing but storing honey— (Material things as well as knowledge and wisdom)— For the next generation, this generation never living, Except as it swarms in the sun-light of youth, Strengthening its wings on what has been gathered, And tasting, on the way to the hive From the clover field, the delicate spoil. (The Hive) 

5.  I found him there not eight months after he died. (Lhasa)

6.  The late-afternoon winter sun filtered weakly through the great front window of the University of California’s medical library. (Opportunities We’ve Had Along the Way)

7.  Once a term during the school year, Mycroft Holmes came down from Oxford to visit his younger brother at Winchester College where the boy spent the greater part of his year, and had since he was five years old. (Into the Greenwood)

8.  Sherlock was tired: tired to the point of giddiness. (Retain for Future Analysis)

9.  She wakes to raucous laughter in the street, unsteady footsteps on the stair. (At once I blossom green and wither brown)

10.  Hiya, John. It’s Tom. (Drunk texts and questionable life choices)

Tag, friends! You’re it.

[fursat]

How Modern Technology Enhances Safety for Construction Workers

Safety is a top priority on construction sites, where hazards can range from heavy machinery to high scaffolds. In recent years, advances in technology have reshaped how companies ensure worker safety, from improving awareness to minimizing risks on site. In addition to tools like wearables and IoT sensors, one new approach, Safety Orientation Videos, has proven highly effective for onboarding workers to critical safety practices.

This article explores the latest technologies in construction safety, demonstrating how they work to protect workers in real-life situations.

1. Safety Orientation Videos: Educating Workers Before They Start

Before workers step onto a construction site, it's essential they understand safety protocols and the risks they may encounter. Safety orientation videos have become an essential tool, enabling companies to communicate site-specific safety guidelines, expectations, and emergency procedures. These videos are often presented in interactive formats, which help workers retain critical information.

Real-Life Example: A construction company in Texas used safety orientation videos to onboard new hires. By watching a video detailing site rules and the location of safety equipment, workers had a clear understanding of safety expectations. According to the company, this reduced first-week accidents by nearly 20%.

The videos are a cost-effective, time-efficient way to educate new workers and ensure consistent safety training, reducing the risk of accidents.

2. Smart Wearables: Tracking Worker Safety in Real-Time

Smart wearables are becoming essential for construction safety. These devices include smart helmets, gloves, and vests equipped with sensors that monitor health indicators like heart rate, temperature, and fatigue. Alerts notify supervisors when a worker shows signs of heat exhaustion, has been standing still for too long (suggesting a fall), or is near dangerous equipment.

Case Study: A major construction project in California equipped workers with smart helmets, which could detect proximity to heavy machinery and alert workers of potential hazards. This simple precaution helped avoid several accidents and improved overall site safety.

Wearables help supervisors identify risks early on and take immediate action to protect workers, keeping everyone safer on-site.

3. Drones: Keeping Workers Safe at Height and Inspecting Hazardous Areas

Drones have transformed how construction sites conduct inspections and assess project progress. By capturing aerial views, drones can perform tasks that would typically require workers to operate at high elevations, thereby reducing the risk of falls.

Example in Practice: During the construction of a high-rise building in New York City, drones were used to inspect scaffolding and roofing structures instead of sending workers up. This prevented potential falls, and the project experienced a 25% reduction in height-related accidents.

Drones allow construction companies to gather valuable data from heights or hard-to-reach areas without putting workers in harm’s way.

4. Safety Management Platforms: Centralizing Safety Data and Compliance

Digital safety management platforms, like SiteDocs and Corfix, have transformed how companies track and document safety activities. These platforms digitize paperwork, allowing supervisors to complete and share safety forms, inspections, and incident reports in real time. Having all safety-related data in one place ensures better compliance and allows managers to address safety concerns promptly.

Case Study: A construction company in Ontario used SiteDocs to manage safety forms digitally. Supervisors could complete forms directly on tablets, immediately notifying workers if safety checks were missed. The ease of documentation led to a 30% decrease in errors, creating a safer work environment for everyone.

Safety management platforms keep teams organized and compliant, ensuring that safety protocols are followed consistently across all worksites.

5. IoT Sensors: Monitoring Site Conditions for Hazards

Internet of Things (IoT) sensors track environmental conditions such as temperature, air quality, and noise levels on construction sites. These sensors help prevent health issues by alerting workers and supervisors to dangerous levels of pollutants or excessive noise, which can lead to long-term health problems if left unaddressed.

Real-World Example: In a large tunneling project, IoT sensors monitored the oxygen levels and air quality inside confined spaces. When air quality dipped below safe thresholds, workers were promptly evacuated, and ventilation systems were deployed. This proactive approach prevented respiratory issues and kept the site compliant with safety standards.

IoT sensors give real-time feedback on site conditions, enabling companies to keep the environment safe for workers without delay.

6. Augmented Reality (AR) for Training and Hazard Awareness

Augmented reality (AR) offers a safe, immersive way for workers to understand potential hazards before they face them on-site. AR simulations allow workers to walk through a virtual construction site, identifying safety risks and practicing emergency responses in a controlled setting.

Example in Practice: A construction company in Germany introduced AR headsets for new workers to simulate the hazards on a busy construction site. Workers could identify and respond to risks, such as electrical hazards and falling objects, without real-world exposure. After training, incidents dropped by 18% in the following months.

This hands-on training tool allows workers to build safety awareness, reducing their risk of making errors on-site.

7. Predictive Analytics for Proactive Risk Management

Predictive analytics is helping construction companies prevent incidents before they occur. By analyzing past safety data and identifying patterns, predictive analytics tools highlight common risk factors and help site managers plan accordingly. For example, if data reveals that accidents spike during specific tasks, managers can increase oversight and provide additional training to reduce these risks.

Case Study: A company building a bridge in Chicago used predictive analytics software to analyze trends in near-misses and accidents. They discovered that most incidents happened near heavy equipment, leading them to rework equipment placement and enforce stronger safety barriers. This led to a 20% decrease in equipment-related injuries.

Predictive analytics empowers construction managers to proactively tackle risks, making workplaces safer for everyone involved.

8. Robotics and Automation for High-Risk Tasks

Robotics and automation are changing the face of construction safety by performing tasks that would otherwise expose workers to high-risk situations. Robots can handle repetitive or dangerous tasks, such as concrete demolition or heavy lifting, reducing the physical strain on workers and minimizing the chance of injuries.

Real-Life Example: A robotics company partnered with a construction firm to provide automated machines for a demolition project in a crowded urban area. By using robots instead of manual labor, the firm was able to complete the job without putting workers in hazardous conditions.

Robots allow workers to focus on safer, more skilled tasks, improving site productivity and worker safety.

Conclusion

As technology advances, so does the ability to protect construction workers from potential hazards. Safety orientation videos, smart wearables, drones, safety management platforms, IoT sensors, augmented reality, predictive analytics, and robotics each play a critical role in minimizing risks on construction sites. These tools not only safeguard workers but also improve overall project efficiency by preventing delays caused by accidents or injuries.

With these innovative safety tools, construction companies are building safer environments, leading the way in protecting workers while enhancing productivity. As more companies adopt these technologies, construction sites around the world are becoming safer places to work.

[swldx]

BBC 0409 14 Oct 2024

12095Khz 0358 14 OCT 2024 - BBC (UNITED KINGDOM) in ENGLISH from TALATA VOLONONDRY. SINPO = 45334. English, dead carrier s/on @0358z then ID@0359z pips and newsday preview. @0401z World News anchored by Neil Nunes. § Four soldiers have been killed and more than 60 other people injured in a drone strike targeting an army base in northern Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said. The IDF added seven soldiers had been severely injured in the attack on a base "adjacent to Binyamina" - a town around 20 miles (33km) to the south of Haifa. Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for the attack, which it said targeted a training camp of the IDF's Golani Brigade in the area, which is based between Tel Aviv and Haifa. The armed group's media office said the strike was in response to Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon and Beirut on Thursday. § The UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon says Israeli tanks forced their way into one of its positions early on Sunday morning. UN secretary general António Guterres warned any attacks on peacekeepers "may constitute a war crime", adding that "Unifil personnel and its premises must never be targeted". "Attacks against peacekeepers are in breach of international law, including international humanitarian law," Mr Guterres said, according to a statement from his spokesman. The incident is the latest in a growing number of encounters between Unifil and Israeli forces. § China is holding military exercises around Taiwan, in what it calls a "stern warning" against those seeking "independence" for the self-ruled island. The drills are seen as a response to a speech by Taiwanese President William Lai last week, in which he vowed to resist "annexation" by Beijing. Taiwan's Ministry of Defense has condemned what it describes as "irrational and provocative behaviour" by China, adding it is ready to defend itself. Taiwan's transport ministry says air traffic and port operations remain "normal" despite the military drills off the coast. § A man in illegal possession of a shotgun and a loaded handgun was arrested at an intersection near Donald Trump's rally in Coachella, California, on Saturday, police said. The 49-year-old suspect, Vem Miller, was driving a black SUV when he was stopped at a security checkpoint by deputies, who located the two firearms and a "high-capacity magazine". Multiple passports with multiple names and multiple driving licences were found in the car, the sheriff said, adding that the licence plate was "home-made" and not registered. § A public inquiry is to begin later in Salisbury, to examine how a woman from Wiltshire was killed by a 2018 poisoning blamed on Russian agents. Dawn Sturgess, 44, died after coming into contact with Novichok - the same chemical weapon used to target a former Russian spy four months earlier. § Mexican authorities said on Sunday they had found the bodies of five decapitated men on a road in western Jalisco state, the latest grisly find in the violence-plagued country. The violence in Jalisco is blamed chiefly on the Jalisco Nueva Generacion Cartel (CJNG), one of Mexico's most powerful and violent criminal groups. § Kenyan Ruth Chepngetich completed Sunday's Chicago Marathon with a world record-breaking time of 2:09:56. She crossed the finish line in Grant Park nearly two full minutes faster than the previous record time, set by Tigist Assefa of Ethiopia last year in Berlin. § Robotics specialists developed a three-armed robot capable of conducting an orchestra. Named MAiRA Pro S, the robot conducted the Dresden Symphony Orchestra in two new works at the orchestra's 25th anniversary concert. @0406z "Newsday" begins. Backyard gutter antenna w/MFJ-1020C active antenna (used as a preamplifier/preselector), JRC NRD-535D, 250kW, beamAz 315°, bearing 63°. Received at Plymouth, MN, United States, 15359KM from transmitter at Talata Volonondry. Local time: 2258.

[greywhalebaja]

Safeguarding Cetaceans: Mexico's Whale Watching Regulations

Mexico, with its rich marine biodiversity and extensive coastlines, has become a premier destination for whale watching, particularly for observing gray whales in their breeding lagoons. To protect these magnificent creatures and ensure sustainable tourism, the Mexican government has implemented a comprehensive set of regulations governing whale watching activities.

The foundation of best Whale Watching in Baja Mexico regulations is the Official Mexican Standard NOM-131-SEMARNAT-2010, which was updated in 2011. This standard establishes the guidelines for whale watching activities throughout Mexican waters, covering all cetacean species but with particular emphasis on gray whales due to their popularity and vulnerable status during their breeding season.

One of the key aspects of these regulations is the limitation on the number of boats allowed in whale watching areas at any given time. This measure aims to reduce stress on the whales and minimize the risk of collisions. In the main gray whale lagoons of Baja California Sur, such as San Ignacio and Ojo de Liebre, strict quotas are in place for the number of boats permitted to operate.

The regulations also dictate specific approach distances and methods. Boats are required to maintain a minimum distance of 30 meters from adult whales and 60 meters from mother-calf pairs. If the whales approach the boat voluntarily, operators are instructed to turn off their engines or keep them in neutral to avoid injuring the animals.

Speed limits are another crucial component of the regulations. Boats must reduce their speed significantly when entering designated whale watching zones and maintain a slow pace throughout the encounter. This not only reduces the risk of collisions but also minimizes noise pollution, which can disrupt whale communication and behavior.

To ensure the quality of Mexico whale watching experiences and promote conservation education, Mexico requires all whale watching guides to be certified. This certification process includes training on whale biology, behavior, conservation issues, and proper observation techniques. Guides are also educated on the regulations and are responsible for ensuring their guests comply with the rules.

The duration of whale watching tours is also regulated to prevent prolonged disturbance to the whales. Most encounters are limited to 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the specific location and the number of other boats in the area.

Mexico's regulations extend beyond just boat-based whale watching. They also cover land-based observation and the use of drones or aircraft for whale watching purposes. These activities are subject to specific rules to minimize disturbance to the whales and their habitats.

Enforcement of these regulations is carried out by the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection (PROFEPA) in collaboration with the Mexican Navy. Violations can result in significant fines and the revocation of operating permits for tour companies.

In addition to these national regulations, local authorities in key whale watching areas often implement additional measures. For example, in some lagoons, a system of alternating days for whale watching activities has been established to give the whales periods of respite from tourist boats.

These comprehensive regulations reflect Mexico's commitment to balancing tourism interests with whale conservation. By providing clear guidelines for responsible whale watching, Mexico aims to ensure that future generations can continue to marvel at these ocean giants in their natural habitat.

The effectiveness of these regulations is continually monitored and evaluated by marine biologists and conservation organizations. Their findings inform potential updates to the regulations, ensuring that Mexico's whale watching practices remain at the forefront of responsible ecotourism.

As whale watching continues to grow in popularity, Mexico's proactive approach to regulation serves as a model for other countries seeking to develop sustainable marine tourism industries while protecting vulnerable cetacean populations. https://www.greywhale.com/whale-watching-mexico/

[mediamonarchy]

https://mediamonarchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/20240723_MorningMonarchy.mp3 Download MP3 Drone program meetings, CrowdStrike software glitches and championship auctions + this day in history w/Maria Butina, the covert Russian agent and our song of the day by Tom MacDonald on your #MorningMonarchy for July 23, 2024. Notes/Links: House Democrats to Fight Bill Requiring Proof of U.S. Citizenship to Vote https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/07/08/house-democrats-to-fight-bill-requiring-proof-of-u-s-citizenship-to-vote/ What the SCOTUS Decision on Homeless Encampments Means For California; The state has the highest homeless population in the country, estimated at more than 180,000 people. https://archive.is/GlfEi Secret Service director steps down amid resignation calls after Trump assassination attempt https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/secret-service-director-resigns-after-admitting-agency-s-failure-to-protect-trump/ar-BB1qugOP Kimberly Cheatle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberly_Cheatle Video: Three Audio Files Align and Agree: There Were Two Shooters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03AxTE7R5Cg New Mexico’s Largest Landowner Controls a Ridiculous 24,665,774 Acres https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/new-mexico-s-largest-landowner-controls-a-ridiculous-24-665-774-acres/ar-BB1k08PC Four wildfires reach ‘megafire’ status in Oregon, scorching thousands of acres https://www.koin.com/news/wildfires/oregon-megafire-durkee-cow-valley-falls-lone-rock-07222024/ Image: Jesus didn’t really say, “Take memes personally and argue with people” https://mediamonarchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/jesus_memes_personally_argue.png Image: Lisa didn’t really say, “Memes do a better job at reporting current events than the mainstream media.” https://mediamonarchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/memes_better_media.jpg More police drones will take flight in the skies above Montgomery County; The area just north of Washington has become a national leader in launching drones immediately after 911 calls. https://archive.is/qZ0V2 Homicides and Carjackings Double in 2021 in Montgomery County (Jan. 3, 2022) https://www.mymcmedia.org/homicides-and-carjackings-double-in-2021-in-montgomery-county/ Video: Montgomery County police to hold drone program meeting (Audio) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IJ2eil9JY0 Sonic Eyes – “City Brain” (w/Patrick Lyons // Vinyl // Audio) https://www.discogs.com/release/20992462-Sonic-Eyes-Hearing-With-Sonic-Eyes // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et3EiEg23jY #PumpUpThaVolume: September 14, 2023 ♬ Sonic Eyes – “Do The Zep Tepi” (Vinyl) https://mediamonarchy.com/20230914pumpupthavolume/ Supreme Court Ruling Threatens the Framework of Cybersecurity Regulation; The Supreme Court’s striking down of the Chevron Doctrine will have a major effect on the determination and enforcement of cyber regulation in the US. https://www.securityweek.com/supreme-court-ruling-threatens-the-framework-of-cybersecurity-regulation/#:~:text=Laws%20are%20written,the%20guide%20dog. NHS cyber security: Ex security chief warns of future attacks https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd9glyx414o Microsoft Says Windows Not Impacted by regreSSHion as Second OpenSSH Bug Is Found https://www.securityweek.com/microsoft-says-windows-not-impacted-by-regresshion-as-second-openssh-bug-is-found/ Microsoft outages caused by CrowdStrike software glitch paralyze airlines, other businesses. Here’s what to know. https://archive.is/g7oRe 911 Services Down in Several States Amid Major Tech Outage; White House and the Department of Homeland Security are now investigating the matter, officials say. https://archive.is/gpf7O Video: Remember when Trump said Crowdstrike had the DNC server in Ukraine to hide it from the government? (Audio) https://x.com/travis_4_trump/status/1814494211393130987 Flashback: What is CrowdStrike and why is it part of the Trump whistleblower complaint? (Sep. 26, 2019) https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/26/tech/what-is-crowdstrike/index.html ‘Painful’ wake-up call: What’s ...

[fatihulusoy]

Greetings folks! This time i have both a advance naval drone and a security breach: meet MANTA RAY Drone.. 🎶I fly in water, lil' Manta Devilfish Manta..🎶 anyways.. :)

First things first this system is a UUV (Unmanned Undersea Vehicle) in 2021 weirdly enough Darpa has started a research program for inspecting the behaviors of adult mantas and measuring them.. specifically.. and just few mounts later we heard a project that grumman and darpa has a project on a demonstration called Aerodynamic Analysis of Manta Ray Inspired Fixed and Flapping-Wing Drones for High Altitude

A submerged vehicle design to deceive radars and sonars and surveillance enemy vessels stealthly. Appearantly we dont know *cant say* its technical capabilities much but this system is kinda effective for deceiving visual and sonar scans of submarine and large vessels by its shape. Clever right? something of a project that should be hidden from any surveillance right?

i mean.. image explains itself.. Apparently, our folks at google has breach the rules of agreement of censoring the military bases.. Again..

and just guess what happened right after..

but right after this article is posted they made a 360 view of the vehicle

im not gonna say anything more this thing is become more ridiculous with every thing they add up to..

a little personal note: we are literally dancing with media, bringing multiple false topics each time we are infront of a interview and sometimes even disguise ourselves each time we are outside, using multiple layers of layers online security measures to hide a fucking 3d printer's existence and when i see something like this.. i cant help it and LOSE MY MİND!! Dude, god please at least do something regards to meaningless and useless NDA of yours!!

phew.. im ok! im fine..

so here is your sources:

[mariacallous]

San Francisco made history in 2019 when its Board of Supervisors voted to ban city agencies including the police department from using face recognition. About two dozen other US cities have since followed suit. But on Tuesday, San Francisco voters appeared to turn against the idea of restricting police technology, backing a ballot proposition that will make it easier for city police to deploy drones and other surveillance tools.

Proposition E passed with 60 percent of the vote and was backed by San Francisco mayor London Breed. It gives the San Francisco Police Department new freedom to install public security cameras and deploy drones without oversight from the city’s Police Commission or Board of Supervisors. It also loosens a requirement that SFPD get clearance from the Board of Supervisors before adopting new surveillance technology, allowing approval to be sought any time within the first year.

Matt Cagle, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, says those changes leave the existing ban on face recognition in place but loosen other important protections. “We’re concerned that Proposition E will result in people in San Francisco being subject to unproven and dangerous technology,” he says. “This is a cynical attempt by powerful interests to exploit fears about crime and shift more power to the police.”

Mayor Breed and other backers have positioned it as an answer to concern about crime in San Francisco. Crime figures have broadly declined, but fentanyl has recently driven an increase in overdose deaths, and commercial downtown neighborhoods are still struggling with pandemic-driven office and retail vacancies. The proposition was also supported by groups associated with the tech industry, including the campaign group GrowSF, which did not respond to a request for comment.

“By supporting the work of our police officers, expanding our use of technology, and getting officers out from behind their desks and onto our streets, we will continue in our mission to make San Francisco a safer city,” Mayor Breed said in a statement on the proposition passing. She noted that 2023 saw the lowest crime rates in a decade in the city—except for a pandemic blip in 2020—with rates of property crime and violent crime continuing to decline further in 2024.

Proposition E also gives police more freedom to pursue suspects in car chases and reduces paperwork obligations, including when officers resort to use of force.

Caitlin Seeley George, managing director and campaign director for Fight for the Future, a nonprofit that has long campaigned against the use of face recognition, calls the proposition “a blow to the hard-fought reforms that San Francisco has championed in recent years to rein in surveillance.”

“By expanding police use of surveillance technology, while simultaneously reducing oversight and transparency, it undermines peoples’ rights and will create scenarios where people are at greater risk of harm,” George says.

Although Cagle of the ACLU shares her concerns that San Francisco citizens will be less safe, he says the city should retain its reputation for having catalyzed a US-wide pushback against surveillance. San Francisco’s 2019 ban on face recognition was followed by about two dozen other cities, many of which also added new oversight mechanisms for police surveillance.

“What San Francisco started by passing that ban and oversight legislation is so much bigger than the city,” Cagle says. “It normalized rejecting the idea that surveillance systems will be rolled out simply because they exist.”

The San Francisco Mayor’s Office hasn’t said which type of drone, surveillance, or body-worn cameras police might use under the new rules. Anshel Sag, a principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, a tech research firm, notes that almost all newer drones on the market have forms of face recognition technology built in. Some of Insta360’s action cameras include this, he says, as well as drones made by DJI, the world’s largest commercial drone maker. “DJI’s cameras use it to track a person and stabilize the video capture,” he says.

In some cases, the customer may be able to toggle off tracking options. And, Sag adds, the video-capture technology may be more coarse and not specifically track a face. But this isn’t always clear to users of the technology, he says, “because the object-tracking algorithms operate like a black box.”

Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney for the the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that San Francisco’ previous ban on face recognition allows the police department to possess devices with the technology built in if it’s a manufacturer-installed capability. (San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors had to update the law to make iPhones, which use face recognition technology to unlock, legal.) The law stipulates that these devices not be acquired for the basis of using them in policing functions.

More concerning to the EFF specifically is how Proposition E allows for a certain level of secrecy around surveillance technologies trialed by SFPD, for as long as a year without being disclosed, Hussain says. "It’s about making sure the police stick to the contours of the law."

[dankusner]

Helicopter Sample — Dallas 

Sam Lavigne is an artist and educator whose work deals with data, surveillance, cops, natural language processing, and automation. 

He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Design at UT Austin. Dallas police investigating how hundreds of hours of aerial surveillance videos were hacked

The data breach is the latest incident drawing concerns about the city’s security of electronic police information after a former IT worker deleted millions of files.

An activist group says it received hundreds of hours of mostly Dallas police aerial surveillance footage from an anonymous hacker claiming to target law enforcement data in unsecured cloud storage. 

The data breach is the latest incident drawing concerns about the city’s security of electronic police information after a former IT worker deleted millions of evidence files earlier this year.

Distributed Denial of Secrets, which describes itself as a transparency collective nonprofit, posted more than 600 hours, or almost 2 terabytes, of police helicopter and drone footage on its website Friday. 

Emma Best, a cofounder, confirmed to The Dallas Morning News this week that the videos were from Dallas police and the Georgia State Patrol.

The story was first reported by Wired.

Best said her group doesn’t know the identity of the person who submitted the footage and was given no reason why the two departments were targeted. 

Distributed Denial of Secrets recently shared leaked records with journalists allegedly from the Oath Keepers, a far-right paramilitary group, that showed its members include police officers from across the country. 

The Oath Keepers have been linked to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, and at least a dozen group members have been charged in connection with the attack.

Senior Corporal Melinda Gutierrez, a Dallas police spokeswoman, said an investigation is underway to determine how the aerial footage was obtained.

“The department cannot confirm at this time how much video information was breached,” she said. “It is important to note that this video data was not lost nor is it missing.”

She declined to comment further until the city’s probe has ended.

Bill Zielinski, Dallas’ chief information officer who oversees the city’s information and technology services department, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Axon, the company that stores police body camera and drone footage, said it was aware of the incident but said the breach didn’t involve its company.

CNC Technologies, the California-based company the city contracts with to install digital recording systems on DPD’s two helicopters and provides cloud-based video storage, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. The City Council is scheduled to be briefed Wednesday in closed session regarding possible legal and security issues related to the incident. 

The News has not yet fully reviewed the footage.

Protecting data

A 33-second clip of video posted on Twitter by a reporter at online outlet Daily Dot shows overhead video, including in infrared, scanning over a crowded Fair Park. 

The clip is dated Feb. 2, 2019, though there isn’t a record of a large event at the South Dallas site on that day.

The purported hacked footage comes after a city IT employee deleted more than 8 million police archive photos, videos, audio and other materials at the end of March. 

The employee, who was fired in August, erased the files after he was supposed to move the data from cloud storage to a city server.

A report released by the IT department in September faulted the former employee for failing to follow instructions laid out by Commvault, the software company the city contracts with for cloud storage management. 

The report also blamed the employee for moving the files and ignoring warnings that they were being deleted. 

The report also noted the city has no clear rules on how to store data, and that poor department policies, planning and oversight were among issues that also led to the files being erased.

Scott Belshaw, a criminal justice associate professor at the University of North Texas, said the idea of Dallas police data being hacked was disturbing and a symptom of 21st-century problems.

“People take cybersecurity for granted, but the lack of it can do just as much damage as physically harming another person,” said Belshaw, who also is the director of UNT’s cyber forensics lab.

He said this incident coupled with the lost police files shows the city has to strengthen its police data protection.

“It’s going to take some time to close all those holes,” Belshaw said. “But the horrible part is that new holes are going to pop up all the time, especially in a city that large.”

Helicopter unit The police department has had a helicopter unit since 1969 and has used drones since 2005. 

They’re used to help officers cover large public events or find people who pose a risk to the public or police. 

In 2018 and again this September, the City Council approved two contracts with CNC Technologies worth a combined $4.1 million for services including outfitting the city’s police helicopters with cameras and a mapping system as well as for cloud storage of videos. A grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security covers $2 million and almost $1.6 million came from money seized in federal cases.

During a council briefing Monday on the department’s use of drones, police Sgt. Ross Stinson said the department has five FAA-certified pilots and federal guidelines don’t allow them to fly the devices out of their line of sight.

Helicopters are used when there’s a need to scan a wide area or high-risk cases, such as an armed suspect hiding from officers in a wooded area or abandoned building.

Stinson said the drones aren’t used to help build probable cause for arrests or for mass surveillance. 

They also can’t be flown directly over people or higher than 400 feet.

State law only allows video recording with unmanned aircrafts during police searches with an active warrant, felony offenses while they are occurring and under life-and-death circumstances. 

Stinson said natural disasters, investigations involving armed suspects, and search-and-rescue incidents are among the circumstances approved by Dallas police.

City policy says all videos collected via police vehicles or body-worn cameras have to be retained for at least 90 days, in line with state law. The department’s records retention schedule doesn’t specifically mention helicopter and drone footage.

[12thwonderindia]

Top 10 Best Geospatial Companies

This guide highlights the top 15 GIS (Geographic Information Systems) companies leading the way with their cutting-edge solutions in mapping and spatial analysis. It points out how crucial GIS technology has become for making informed decisions in various sectors, given that understanding location data is key in today’s world. With the geospatial market set to grow from USD 8.1 billion in 2020 to an estimated USD 14.5 billion by 2030, finding the right GIS partner is more important than ever.

This list is designed to help organizations pick the best GIS company to work with. It includes companies known for their deep knowledge, wide range of geospatial services, and solid reputation in the field. These companies stand out for using the latest in GIS technology to solve real problems, helping businesses stay on top of the game in a world where data rules.

12th Wonder Founded: 2012 Headquarters: California, United States. Expanded presence in Ivory Coast, Japan, and India. 12thWonder has a global tech team of 100 employees with a diverse and expanding workforce. Key Services: – GIS Application Development (Web, Mobile, Desktop) – Remote Sensing & GIS, Photogrammetry, Drone, and LiDAR Services – Consulting Services in Geospatial Solutions

12th Wonder specializes in geospatial solutions, blending IT services with tailored GIS applications to meet the needs of various industries including utilities, telecom, mining, and urban planning. Their offerings range from developing GIS applications across different platforms to providing data services using advanced techniques like remote sensing and LiDAR. The company also offers consulting services to navigate complex geospatial challenges. Leveraging a team with deep domain expertise and a commitment to innovation, 12th Wonder aims to extend asset lifespan, standardize revenue, and efficiently meet people’s needs across the globe. Their approach to geospatial solutions emphasizes user centric design, agile development methodologies, and a collaborative relationship with clients to ensure tailored, industry specific outcomes.

FARO Technologies Founded: 1981 Headquarters: Lake Mary, Florida, USA Employee Count: 1,000+ Key Services: – 3D measurement, imaging, and realization technology – Computer aided measurement and imaging devices – Software for 3D modeling and analysis

FARO Technologies specializes in the design, development, and marketing of 3D measurement and imaging solutions. Serving a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, construction, engineering, and public safety, FARO’s technology facilitates the measurement and analysis of complex spaces and geometries.

Topcon Positioning Systems Founded: 1932 Headquarters: Livermore, California, USA Key Services: – Precision positioning technology – Software solutions for surveying and construction – Optical equipment for ophthalmology and medical diagnostics

Topcon Positioning Systems is a leading provider of precision equipment for the surveying, construction, and agriculture industries. They offer innovative solutions that combine GPS technology, optical, laser, and data collection systems, enhancing productivity and efficiency.

Precisely Founded: 1920 (as Pitney Bowes Inc.) Headquarters: Stamford, Connecticut, USA Key Services: – Data integrity software – Location intelligence solutions – Data quality and enrichment services

Now operating under the brand name Precisely, the company provides critical data integrity solutions, including location intelligence, data quality, and enrichment, to help clients make better decisions by understanding the relationships between data and geography.

DigitalGlobe (part of Maxar Technologies) Founded: 1993 Headquarters: Westminster, Colorado, USA Employee Count: Part of Maxar Technologies Key Services: – Earth observation and geospatial data – High-resolution satellite imagery – Advanced geospatial analytics solutions

As a leader in Earth observation and geospatial data, DigitalGlobe provides comprehensive imaging and analysis capabilities that enable clients across the globe to make critical decisions.(Read More…)