#migrant tracking systems

[projectreclaim]

Mass deportation update: 🚨Missouri has officially proposed bounty system to report illegal aliens in their state.

This bill would give residents a $1,000 payout for reporting migrants who entered our country illegally, which is also one of seven bills introduced in the state’s legislature to focus on their immigration issues.

Senate Bill 72 would also develop a “Missouri Illegal Alien Certified Bounty Hunter Program,” which would certify people to be bounty hunters to track down these tips.

Updates coming soon.

[probablyasocialecologist]

These claims of an extinction-level threat come from the very same groups creating the technology, and their warning cries about future dangers is drowning out stories on the harms already occurring. There is an abundance of research documenting how AI systems are being used to steal art, control workers, expand private surveillance, and seek greater profits by replacing workforces with algorithms and underpaid workers in the Global South.

The sleight-of-hand trick shifting the debate to existential threats is a marketing strategy, as Los Angeles Times technology columnist Brian Merchant has pointed out. This is an attempt to generate interest in certain products, dictate the terms of regulation, and protect incumbents as they develop more products or further integrate AI into existing ones. After all, if AI is really so dangerous, then why did Altman threaten to pull OpenAI out of the European Union if it moved ahead with regulation? And why, in the same breath, did Altman propose a system that just so happens to protect incumbents: Only tech firms with enough resources to invest in AI safety should be allowed to develop AI.

[...]

First, the industry represents the culmination of various lines of thought that are deeply hostile to democracy. Silicon Valley owes its existence to state intervention and subsidy, at different times working to capture various institutions or wither their ability to interfere with private control of computation. Firms like Facebook, for example, have argued that they are not only too large or complex to break up but that their size must actually be protected and integrated into a geopolitical rivalry with China.

Second, that hostility to democracy, more than a singular product like AI, is amplified by profit-seeking behavior that constructs increasingly larger threats to humanity. It’s Silicon Valley and its emulators worldwide, not AI, that create and finance harmful technologies aimed at surveilling, controlling, exploiting, and killing human beings with little to no room for the public to object. The search for profits and excessive returns, with state subsidy and intervention clearing the way of competition, has and will create a litany of immoral business models and empower brutal regimes alongside “existential” threats. At home, this may look like the surveillance firm and government contractor Palantir creating a deportation machine that terrorizes migrants. Abroad, this may look like the Israeli apartheid state exporting spyware and weapons it has tested on Palestinians.

Third, this combination of a deeply antidemocratic ethos and a desire to seek profits while externalizing costs can’t simply be regulated out of Silicon Valley. These are fundamental attributes of the industry that trace back to the beginning of computation. These origins in optimizing plantations and crushing worker uprisings prefigure the obsession with surveillance and social control that shape what we are told technological innovations are for.

Taken altogether, why should we worry about some far-flung threat of a superintelligent AI when its creators—an insular network of libertarians building digital plantations, surveillance platforms, and killing machines—exist here and now? Their Smaugian hoards, their fundamentalist beliefs about markets and states and democracy, and their track record should be impossible to ignore.

[theburialofstrawberries]

On 10 February 2018, during a three-hour visit to Ramallah to meet President Mahmoud Abbas of the PLO, Modi made the longstanding and standard official Indian declaration supporting a “sovereign and independent” Palestinian state—but, for the first time in an international setting, this statement had no references to a “united” Palestinian state or to East Jerusalem as its capital. From then onwards, these absences in official statements have remained, suggesting that even a “Bantustan”-type two-state resolution worse than the land-distribution pattern proposed at Oslo would be acceptable. Indeed, after Operation Protective Edge—Israel’s July 2014 air assault on Gaza that killed over two thousand Palestinians—Modi blocked the passage of an opposition resolution in parliament condemning this attack. Where once, for form’s sake, India would go along with UNGA resolutions condemning Israel, it would now more frequently abstain. It supported the 2020 Abraham Accords, despite the obvious betrayal by the signatories—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan—to the Palestinian struggle. In July 2022, I2U2, the political and economic grouping of Israel, India, the United States and the United Arab Emirates, was formally launched. The same day, the Israeli company Gadot, and Gautam Adani, who is closely tied to Narendra Modi, won the privatisation tender for Israel’s crucial Haifa port. And, amid the latest genocidal assault on Gaza, the Modi government has helped fast-track its recruitment of Indian migrant workers to replace now outlawed Palestinian workers. India sent over twenty Hermes 900 military drones, produced jointly by Adani and Elbit Advanced Systems India, to Israel—in spite of the high likelihood of their deployment in Gaza, where Israel is using similar drones. Explosives and munitions have been respectively supplied by two companies, Premier Explosives and the state-owned Munitions India. Many other Indian companies are also involved in subsidised joint ventures with Israeli weapons manufacturers. “So how did India, which once considered Zionism a form of racism, become Israel’s number one weapons trade buyer, accounting for 42% of Israel’s arms exports since Modi came to power in 2014?” Essa asks. He provides an important part of the explanation when he talks of the ideological “kinship” of Hindutva and Zionism.

[chroniclingworlds]

Papyracetae

The “paper whales” represent an even more extreme modification of the Auranauts’ already extreme body plan. They have evolved a separate circulatory system specifically to pump hydrogen-and-helium-rich blood to their second lung, allowing them to much more effectively regulate their buoyancy and fly much higher into the atmosphere. Given their size, they are ultra-lightweight and quite delicate, with highly pneumatized bodies that are almost more air than tissue. These huge animals have long inspired mythology and are considered by many cultures to be divine beings.

Stargliders

Pictured: the common Starglider, the only species to be represented with multiple preserved specimens.

These are the smallest and the highest-flying of the Papyracetae, drifting on air currents far above the clouds. Many species of air plankton use these currents as a highway to migrate, and the Stargliders intercept them as they travel. Because of their preferred habitat, they are difficult to study, and even dead ones are hard to find as they are frequently shredded by wind and other flying animals on the descent. Due to this, it is likely that there are many undiscovered species inhabiting the skies of Strix. Currently, only the common Starglider has been studied to any decent extent, and all other described species have only been based on single dead specimens or brief sightings of live ones. Their true range is unknown, but they are assumed to live worldwide.

Sky Shepherds

Pictured: the cloudcrester, a species seen over both the Moon Sea and Great Southern Sea during their respective wet seasons.

While all other Papyracetae are solitary, sky shepherds live in small groups and work together to herd air plankton into tight balls that they can then consume. Migrating between the north and south annually, these giants keep pace with the seasonal rain and the air plankton that follow it. These shepherds are the loudest creatures on the planet, producing infrasonic trumpeting noises that can travel hundreds of miles for communication between groups. The Terebroids are particularly tuned into this frequency, and use these calls to track down their prey from miles away.

Monarchs

Pictured: the sky queen, the largest of them all, is sighted most frequently above the semi-arid plains of the midlands.

These are the largest animals on Strix by wingspan. With only three known species, they are not especially common, but they are an incredible sight when encountered. With wingspans up to 200 feet across, these massive creatures patrol the skies, scooping up air plankton into their gaping mouths. Like all Papyracetae, they are seasonal migrants, but seem to prefer the mid-latitudes more than their relatives. They are rarely sighted at the poles or over large bodies of water, and they avoid high winds and turbulence lest their paper-thin bodies be damaged. Mysterious and graceful, they are truly a wonder of evolution.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Help! My fiance won't stop not killing people! Do you know of an rpg that plays well with one DM and one PC that still has the aesthetics of DnD or classic fantasy, but where violence is more of a last resort than the primary way to resolve conflicts? One where you can actually feel like a good guy.

THEME: Non-Combat, Heroic Fantasy

Hello there, so I’m going to include games in this recommendation that may not be explicitly for two players, but can be conceivably be run with one player and one GM. This is because a number of duet games are built to provide roles for the players that don’t slot easily into the “GM” and “Player” role. I hope you find something that fits both of your goals!

GROK?!, by Lester Burton.

GROK?! is an adventure role-playing game where you assume the role of an adventurer in a gonzo world of boundless plausibility and use your ingenuity and resourcefulness to overcome strange and perilous threats.

Planet Grok was once a haven for trans-dimensional migrants and a bastion of advanced technomancy, until a cataclysm rendered it a desolate hollow planet. Now, feral monstrosities haunt its chasms, cities float among the clouds, and a derelict space station encapsulates the planet and bathes the world in perpetual phosphorescent radiation. Yet, a new era of enlightenment is dawning. Civilizations grow from the ashes, relics of immense power await those who would learn their lost secrets, and threats of caste warfare loom as leaders vie for power. All the while, a creeping black nothingness peers up through the hollow of the world.

This is a game heavily inspired by a lot of heavyweight games that exist in the ttrpg scene, such as Cortex Prime, Savage Worlds, Numenera… the list goes on. The creator describes a “universal resolution” system that is also “fail forward.” This means that you use the same resolution mechanic for every action your character takes, and instances where you fail still move the story forward. I won’t say that it prioritizes other methods before combat, but it certainly looks like you can play it that way. Aesthetically it’s a bit more science-fantasy, but the digital copy is only a dollar, and the Quickstart is free to download on the Itch.io page, so it might be worth checking out.

A One In A Million Chance At Adventure, by Jocher Symbolic Systems.

This is a game where you play the roles of, often unwilling, sometimes zealous, pawns in the cosmic octarine coloured narrative. Your character is not necessarily a "hero" per se, instead one could possibly see it as being important to the story. Characters like yourself do have a knack for not dying as often as a common mortal (or undead if that has been your unfortune). With this follows that you'll naturally have a higher chance of actually, possibly, doing some heroic deeds, just by sheer mathematical logic. Unless, of course, you are the type of adventurer who'd prefer a cup of hot tea and soft slippers and a reliable day job. That does severely reduce the odds of let's say beheading a mythical beast of ill repute or befriending the immodest wood nymphs of Howondaland.

This is a game designed for two or more players, one picking up a GM role and the rest acting as players. It’s a loving tribute to the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, and is therefore free! It is a setting that provides a tongue-in-cheeck reference to classic fantasy, and uses a 2d10 system to follow your character’s humorous attempts at becoming an adventure, and all of the one-in-a-million outcomes that make their stories interesting.

I like that this game uses narrative points to give your character a chance to do something really cool in situations where they don’t have a realistic chance of success. I also appreciate the de-centring of violence in that there are no health points or systems in place to keep track of physical harm. This doesn’t mean that conflict is impossible - it just means that it has to be figured out collaboratively between the players and the GM. What there is a great deal of focus on, is magic, with some really interesting effects that could pop up whenever you cast a spell.

This game is cheeky and knows exactly what it’s trying to emulate, and if you’re familiar in any way with Discworld, I think you should check it out.

Mausritter, by Losing Games.

Take up the sword and don the whiskers of a brave mouse adventurer in Mausritter, the rules-light fantasy adventure roleplaying game.

It’s a huge and dangerous world out there, and it does not look kindly on a small mouse. But if you are very brave and very clever and just a bit lucky, you might be able to survive. And if you survive long enough, you might even become a hero amongst mice.

Mausritter is, at its heart, an OSR game, and while many OSR games are pretty dark in tone, one thing that they excel at is providing characters with situations in which violence can’t be the answer. The costs of trying to fight something as a mouse are just too high - cats and owls and other large creatures are dangerous endeavours that only large large groups of mice have a chance at defeating. So for a two-player game, you’re going to understand narratively the necessity of using your wits. This game gives you a setting that makes it possible to have a game that mirrors more closely some themes in epic fantasy as well, including a magic system with spells that can give characters an even bigger toolbox when it comes to solving problems.

The Weaver’s Observatory, by Gem Room Games.

The Weaver’s Observatory is a two player dramatic fantasy adventure about an explorer seeking to change their destiny by asking a boon of Fate herself. Set in an ancient tower outside time, the Climber shares memories of their life as they cross a moat of living dye, ascend through the threads of discarded fates, and navigate the mechanisms that construct the fate of all living things without knowing if their request is even possible.

While this game doesn’t explicitly call the two roles within it GM and PC, it was designed for Tunnel Goons, which does use those sorts of roles. In The Weaver’s Observatory, one person is a solitary explorer, climbing a tower to request a boon from Fate. The other is Fate itself, representing the tower and the few inhabitants that reside within. The solitary Climber will encounter puzzles, hazards and guards that they will have to solve, avoid, and reason with - so I don’t see much of combat set within either the style of gameplay or the structure of the adventure.

This is a game that can be played as a one-shot, or can be set within a larger campaign. The entire game uses weaving metaphors and iconography, to set a tone for the overall narrative. If you like a tone that is intentional and purposeful, and want to tell a story that has great consequences for the person involved (and possible for a larger world), then this game is definitely worth checking out.

[mariacallous]

Poland has started building defensive lines on the border with Russia as part of the "East Shield" initiative, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Nov. 1.

Presented this May, the "East Shield" program aims to fortify Poland's borders with Belarus, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. It includes a mix of new physical barriers, modern surveillance systems, and infrastructure development.

The program is part of NATO’s eastern flank joint regional defense infrastructure plan that Poland is carrying out with Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

Warsaw allocated a total of 10 billion złoty ($2.5 billion) to strengthen the borders with Russia and Belarus to deter aggression.

"This is the largest operation to strengthen Poland’s eastern border, NATO’s eastern flank, since 1945," Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said in spring.

Kaliningrad Oblast is a small piece of land measuring 15,100 square kilometers — not much larger than the U.S. state of Connecticut — sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. It has a short, western coastline on the Baltic Sea. Its capital is also called Kaliningrad.

Though it may be small, strategically it gives Russia a second point of direct access to the Baltic Sea, the other being through its most eastern arm in the Finnish Gulf.

Russia's Baltic Sea Fleet has its headquarters and main base in Kaliningrad Oblast.

The Suwalki Gap is the closest point between Kaliningrad Oblast, and one of Russia's staunchest allies, Belarus.

It's a mere 40 kilometers wide and closely tracks the Poland-Lithuania border on the Polish side.

In the event of a war between NATO and Russia, Russian and Belarusian forces linking up across the Suwalki Gap would cut off the only land route to all three Baltic States.

In May, Tusk said that Poland had begun strengthening its entire eastern border with Belarus due to a growing "hybrid war" and illegal migration.  

Warsaw for several years accused Belarus of deliberately pushing migrants into Poland in order to pressure the EU over sanctions, a charge Minsk has denied.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has sparked concerns that the Baltic states, which are among Moscow's biggest critics and Kyiv's staunchest allies since day one of the all-out war, could become the next target for aggression.

These fears are reinforced by Russian leader Vladimir Putin's repeated threats to NATO countries.

[plethoraworldatlas]

The ACLU on Tuesday vowed to launch a legal challenge to U.S. President Joe Biden's executive order barring migrants who cross the southern border without authorization from receiving asylum.

Biden's executive action invokes Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act—previously used by the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump to deny migrants asylum—"when the southern border is overwhelmed."

Under the policy, asylum requests will be shut down when the average number of daily migrant encounters between ports of entry hits 2,500. Border entry points would reopen to asylum-seekers when that number dips below 1,500.

The president said he was acting, in part, because "Republicans in Congress chose to put partisan politics ahead of our national security, twice voting against the toughest and fairest set of reforms in decades."

On Tuesday, the ACLU said Biden's policy will "rush vulnerable people through already fast-tracked deportation proceedings, sending people in need of protection to their deaths."

"We intend to challenge this order in court," Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a statement. "It was illegal when Trump did it, and it is no less illegal now."

In July 2020 a federal judge in Washington, D.C. struck down the Trump administration's ban on most Central Americans and migrants from other countries.

ACLU chief political and advocacy officer Deirdre Schifeling said that "we need solutions to address the challenges at the border, but the administration's planned executive actions will put thousands of lives at risk."

"They will not meet the needs at the border, nor will they fix our broken immigration system," Schifeling added. "We urge the administration to uphold its campaign promise to restore asylum and mobilize the necessary resources to address the challenges at the border. It's not just the morally sound thing to do—it's good politics."

The ACLU pointed to polling showing that "voters nationwide and in battleground states largely reject enforcement-only policies that put vulnerable people in danger."

The group is advocating "balanced and humane solutions" including "improving processing at ports of entry and addressing the immigration case backlog by investing in immigration court judges and legal representation."

[centrally-unplanned]

As I have been sick over the past week+ (doing better now I think) I have put in *checks save file* over 100 hours into The Last Sovereign, the ero-kingdom-builder-RPGmaker indie game. I am as done as I can be with it pretty much right now - its being released piece-by-piece, from all plot suggestions it is right at its penultimate chapter. I highly recommend it - it's a full-on RPGmaker game and not by someone who is a tech or art wiz breaking that box's confines, so you have to be down for that aesthetic & design style. But if you are the game has one of the most detailed "politics of rulership" games I have ever played in the genre, and done very seriously through the hilarious ero-lens of you dealing with succubus migrant populations, church purity inquisitions, and orc intelligence uplifting experimental breeding pits. This plot concept lets the game be hyper-realist and irreverently funny at the same time, a welcome tone.

But it's me, so I am here to whine about some stuff!

The game has, as typical to the genre, "hidden variable" systems for resolving big political plot elements - you talk to people, make dialogue decisions, those get stored as variable counts or binaries, etc. More uniquely it also has a huge economic investment system, where you make choices balancing money-making, military, political, and social investments through cycles that give you more money and impact said political plots. This is all quite complex but it works really well in the beginning, when everything is contained.

Chapter 3 is you and your harem plotting a false flag-style insurrectionist takeover of a kingdom, Yhilin. You made some investments pretty much purely for profit in the last chapter, so you got some opening cash, you have some allies to talk to, decisions around orc recruitment, and a one-off political event. This is all pretty clear - the game even locks some of your money in a vault to make sure you spend it on military supply industries, so you can't screw up by under-provisioning. You know you are gonna invade Yhilin, and you know that you need a good army, good allies, you have a desire to minimize civilian casualties for morality reasons, and a desire to minimize damage to reduce rebuilding costs. Should you save some of your army strength at the expense of more civilian deaths? Whose to say what is better in the long run, but you know what you are choosing. This part works great, it's the best part of the game. The plot is linear, sure, you are gonna win no matter what, but based on your choices the Yhilin you conquer can be quite different.

In future chapters, particularly chapter 5, the scope is drastically wider; you are dealing with *does some head math* 10 countries in your main continent of Arlecent and ~7 nations on other continents, all of which have investments opportunities, political decisions, and hidden variables. Big plot events will occur where 4-5 different variable tracks from different countries will come into play. And the game is not built for this, for a few reasons:

Most importantly, Chapter 3's Yhilin invasion was ordered correctly; you were told you were gonna attack Yhilin first, then made decisions after. Each big political event after that is a surprise; you will have terroristic Incubus Kings attacking via magic portals three kingdoms with no warning, and your multi-track variable scores of each of those countries will impact those events.

The UI is just not built for this. Its RPGMaker, and all the variables are hidden; you can access a ledger list of investments but it doesn't tell you how important each is or anything, just money. I could track one goal in Chapter 3 around a concrete list of options and tasks; that same UI doesn't work here.

All of this would be fine if it was mainly plot, and every option was "equally good", like in some playthroughs Givini does well and Ardoheim does badly, that's cool. But it really isn't; if you know the plot ahead of time, time investments for each event, and so on, you do way better in the game, get bonus equipment and even characters. Hell it's an ero game, you get bonus sex scenes! I skip all those but I'm sure it's important for some of the players out there. So these hidden decisions are high stakes.

So yeah, all that combines to make what should be a "making tradeoffs" political management plot feel way more like a lottery system - and in practice the game is just ludomantically begging you to read a walkthrough. I tried for a long time to play the game sans guide, and as its scope expanded I gave up; I was essentially missing a lot of content because my decisions were suboptimal and I couldn't track all the decision points I ran across to make decisions between them (Also its combat is really hard and easily-missed items can make a huge difference, another guide-pushing factor).

I personally would fix this in the obvious ways; make these variables not hidden, and rewrite the plot to have less "surprises" and more telegraphed decision moments. And then make me actively choose between Ardoheim & Givini with known consequences instead of accidentally doing that (the game does have some decisions like that, its not amateur hour over here; its just out of balance).

But the more important thing to do is imo that UI, and 'conveyance'. Right now all the investment opportunities for example are discovered organically - you talk to a person in Gasm Falls (yeah, that's in the succubus kingdom, how'd you know?), she tells you about a religious order expansion opportunity, and if you wanna spend the coin you go back and talk to her. Again, fine in Chapter 3; but when there are over 50 concurrent investment opportunities across the globe in later chapters, I really can't track this all; I am making decisions somewhat arbitrarily. Instead I would have more structured events; at the end of each cycle you sit down with your harem-ministers in a room and go "here is the list of investments; if you select these 13 here is a loose summary of the bonuses each nation would get, expected revenue, etc." Since RPGs don't typically do that this game doesn't, but it's not a typical RPG right? Its UI needs to evolve with the game.

Which, btw, it is doing! So there are a bunch of political conferences throughout the game's story, and at first it was just talk to people, make dialogue tree decisions, hope you keep it all in your head and make it work. But for the last few one of the mages in your harem would cast a "display spell" making a little magic demiplane with characters who summarize all the information for you. Dealing with potential suitors for the new Queen of Ardoheim? Let's line 'em up and give you a summary of their current odds if you talk to them:

This is great, it's way better! Why aren't there more of these? I am pretty sure it's because, ya know, the creator didn't think of it until recently lol. It's an indie game, being updated live and serially. This is likely feedback in action; the events of Chapter 3 & 4 got too unwieldy, the creator realized that, so in the last few sequences in Chapter 5 improvements were added. But going back and adding these to already-completed sections? Ugh, that can't be a priority in comparison to finishing the damn game.

Which, as I often say, is why I don't judge a game harshly for these issues when it's an indie creator and their small team making their vision. The creator knows this is a problem, but fixing problems is hard! They can't do it all. It's actually very cool to see the game 'evolve' over time as they got new ideas for plot concepts, map design, and structuring political mechanics. That makes the game messier, for sure, but also more interesting; a tradeoff I normally will take.

[darkeagleruins]

[darkmaga-returns]

Democratic Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has spent a whopping $356 million in taxpayer money on migrants, a new report has revealed.

The report was penned by the Colorado-based Common Sense Institute (CSI), a nonpartisan research organization dedicated to protecting and promoting the American economy. CSI recently released an updated version of its report, which is based on data from the city government.

According to the CSI, the $356 million constitutes eight percent of the city's $4.4 billion budget for 2025. Education for the children of illegals comprises the biggest portion of the $365 million, with the rest covering healthcare, accommodation, transport and childcare.

"The total cost to Denver metro schools related to new migrant students is $228 million annually, which would equate to one to two percent of the total state K-12 education budget for the 2024-2025 academic year," the CSI report said.

As per the Times of India, approximately 45,000 migrants have entered the Denver metropolitan area since December 2022. Of this number, 16,197 migrant students have joined local schools.

"Previous CSI reporting estimated the per-student cost of instruction and support in the Denver metro to be $14,100 per year," reported the Times of India. "Assuming this cost across all recent migrant students totals $228 million."

The report also pointed out that Denver's healthcare system has reached critical capacity. CSI wrote: "With 16,760 [migrant] visits to Denver metro emergency departments from December 2022 to the present, providers would have delivered [$49 million] of uncompensated care to migrants."

According to the report, Denver's peak migrant influx in January led to projected spending of $180 million through 2024, though actual expenditure tracking by the city shows approximately $79 million.

The report continued: "Of the total, 34.5 percent has been spent on facilities including hotels; 29.4 percent on personnel; 14 percent on services; and 11 percent on food."

[commiepinkofag]

Our six priorities for digital rights

Open Rights Group is calling on the next government to focus on the following six priorities for digital rights:

1. Protect our right to send secure messages

Everyone – including children and young people – should have the right to use end-to-end encryption to ensure that our communications are safe, secure and private. The next government should protect not undermine encryption.

2. Provide migrants with digital sanctuary

Migrants, refugees and asylum seekers need the same data and privacy rights as everyone else so that they can keep their digital identity and information safe. The next government should commit to ending the digital hostile environment.

3. Ban the use of pre-crime AI by the police

Predictive policing systems that use artificial intelligence (AI) to ‘predict’ criminal behaviour undermine our right to be presumed innocent and exacerbate discrimination and inequality in our criminal justice system. The next government should ban dangerous uses of AI in policing.

4. Defend our right to freedom of expression online

Freedom of expression online is being undermined by age verification, content takedowns, social media censorship and unfair copyright claims. The next government should commit to protecting our right to freedom of expression online.

5. Strengthen our data protection rights

We need strong data protection laws to make sure that governments and companies do not use our data to track, surveil and profit from us. The next government should strengthen our data protection rights and make sure that the data protection watchdog is fit for purpose.

6. End intrusive tracking by online advertisers

Advertising companies track our internet use to build detailed profiles so they can target us with adverts. The next government should restrict intrusive tracking by data brokers and online advertisers.

[alexbkrieger13]

I like to learn, so if you don’t mind, could you explain the parties each candidate represents in that picture of the polling you shared please? I saw the other ask about the parties you would vote for, but I really don’t know much about Irish politics. Interested to learn about your parties and how you think the current election will go and what that means for you!

- US Anon with Irish heritage

So yea basically in the simplest way I can explain it in Ireland we have 2 centre right parties fianna fail and fine gael so we have dominated Irish politics since the founding of the State.

TheY basically agreed the same things for the most part and have a very similar voting base the Divide goes back to the formation of the State (FF Wanted full independence straight away FG wanted stop fighting the British and get at least some bit of Ireland independent, leaving the six counties of what we now know as Northern Ireland)

The way our voting system works means you have the chaos for which is currently happening in on of the constituency of Cork where you have the two left parties fighting for the last seatand there within a vote of each other. One of them will get eliminated on the next count. Weirdly this happens a lot

Are voting system is an impatient person's worst nightmare but I think it is actually fair

Roughs someup about our parties/what I think of them

fianna fail (ff): centre right, destroyed our economy in 2008, on track to be the biggest party in the country, historically would have been more of a working/middle class vote.

fine gael (FG): have been in power for the last 14 years, also centre right (more economically conservative), the real cool girl give us nothing energy, there base is older voters. May have spent over 100,000 on a printer. The leader cannot take criticism he is annoying af.

Sinn Fein (SF): center left. Historically was the political face of the IRA, fairly progressive but have lost a lot of class votes this election due to their stance on immigration being seen as too Pro migrant. More popular with young people than older people due to the IRA ties, also very popular further north.

Social Democrats (SD): left. Their leader literally gave birth on polling day. They take a lot of inspirations from Scandinavian ideas. Very popular with young people and more urban areas. Very similar ideas to the Labor Party. Very big on providing more housing and better health and disability services. Very similar stances with the Labour Party though they tell everyone they're very different. their on the up, last 2 elections been gaining more and more seats.

Independences (I): they are strange bunch. They run independently have a parity so you have people from the right of right and then you have people on the left. Tend to be from more rural constituencies.

My opinion on the election are pretty mixed tbh. It's pretty much probably going to be FF/FG back in power which as a young person in Ireland is not really great. A lot of their policies are in favour of corporations and older people. They do not offer anything realistic for a young person in Ireland today. There's not much investing in the future, every year we getsmall bonuses in money instead of actual investment in services. Pretty much every public service in Ireland has been underfunded for almost two decades and we have 16 billion set aside for 'a rainy day'.

Majority of Young people will never be able to afford a home, rent are insane (there are dozens of TDs (member of Parliament) who are landlords and vote down any legislation that protects renters), there's thousands of people homeless, the health service is on its knees (like for as long as I can remember there are daily updates of how many people I waiting on trolleys in emergency rooms announced every hour on the radio in the news updates), our transport links are in shit (they've been saying since the year 2000 that they're going to build an underground in Dublin. Has that happened? Nope), thousands of young people have to leave for any real quality of life, there's hundreds of children out of school because there's not enough places in special needs classes for special schools for kids with special needs.

with FF/FG for a young person in Ireland it feels like there's no political will for them to do anything to improve the country because they know they have a bank of voters that they can easily get re-elected from (older people who own their home).

[beardedmrbean]

NEW YORK CITY - The NYPD’s Detective Bureau is tracking the dangerous Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, made up of young migrants – some just 11 years old – who are believed to have arrived as NYC experienced an influx of asylum seekers.

Jason Savino, assistant chief at the NYPD Detective Bureau, said on Good Day New York that this is the first time "we've seen structure with Tren de Aragua."

"Now, we're seeing that structure. There's actually kick-ups where people are recruiting these younger members as young as 11, and they've been described as some of these robbery incidents as young as 8 years old," Savino said.

According to police, the gang’s crimes have become more brazen, with members even posting their weapons on social media.

"Right now, what we have, I like to call a perfect storm of sorts … tremendously brazen, absolutely ruthless individuals that have created a multitude of crimes with basically no repercussions," Savino said.

"[Times Square] is their threshold, that's where they feel comfortable, that's where they post to social media." Jason Savino, assistant chief at the NYPD Detective Bureau

Savino continued: "What started out as a robbery crew, upwards of 50 robberies – 20 individuals – arrested for upwards of 50 robberies," Savino said. "And out of those 20 individuals, every single one of them is on the streets today."

‘Little Devils’

Meanwhile, "Los Diablos de la 42" -- Spanish for "Little Devils of 42nd Street"-- have proven to be a big problem for Times Square and the NYPD.

"[Times Square is] their threshold, that's where they feel comfortable, that's where they post to social media," Savino said.

Police officials say they're working to nab members of the Los Diablos – a subset of the Tren de Aragua. Sources tell the New York Post about 20 young migrants are targeting locals and tourists in numerous robberies and other crimes at the "Crossroads of the World."

"There is no deterrence," the source added. "You have a 15-year-old who continues to treat our city like his personal video game."

What is Tren de Aragua?

Tren de Aragua, which translates to Aragua Train, began in 2012 among trade union members in the Aragua province of Venezuela who used the country's rail system for crime, according to the New York Post.

The gang is involved in robberies, drug dealing and human trafficking throughout South America, and authorities warn that the group is looking to expand its international empire, according to the Post.

Earlier this year, Deputy Inspector Nicholas Fiore said the NYPD recorded a "tremendous" surge in moped robberies that they believe are orchestrated by Tren de Aragua recruits.

"There are orders coming from Columbia and from Venezuela, [they move] to Miami and then to New York," Fiore said.

Bernardo Raul Castro-Mata, the Venezuelan migrant accused of shooting two NYPD officers earlier this year during a traffic stop, reportedly confessed to police that gang members were instructed to shoot police officers.

In court, Queens Assistant District Attorney Lauren Reilly said that Mata had told investigators that members of Tren de Aragua were smuggling firearms into city shelters inside food packages that do not have to go through metal detectors.

Savino told Good Day he's concerned about gang warfare.

"We do believe there's a spillover from Venezuela, where a homicide did occur," he said. "So this could be the continued beef from Venezuela, tremendously concerning, but that would ignite the fire. We're on top of it, and we'll certainly prevent it."

[cubeghost]

While Palestine Action US is targeting Elbit systems to protest the ongoing genocide in Palestine, Elbit’s tools of occupation are also being deployed in the US. As Antony Loewenstein documents in his book, The Palestine Laboratory, Israeli defense contractors test their wares on Palestinians and then export their tools of surveillance and warfare around the world. Loewenstein highlights the connection between so-called border security in the US and the oppression of Palestinians, writing, “Israeli technology was sold as the solution to unwanted populations at the US–Mexico border where the Israeli company Elbit was a major player in repelling migrants.” In her book Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, Harsha Walia describes how US Customs Enforcement officials impose the violence of bordering on Tohono O’odham lands, along the US Southern border. Walia wrote, “US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has contracted Israel’s largest private arms company, Elbit Systems, to construct ten surveillance towers, making Tohono O’odham one of the most militarized communities in the US.”  In 2017, members of the Tohono O’odham Hemajkam Rights Network (TOHRN), went to Palestine on a visit organized by the Palestinian group Stop the Wall. TOHRN member Amy Jaun told Antony Loewenstein that it was a relief to talk “with people who understand our fears … who are dealing with militarization and technology.” In 2022, after years of resistance from Tohono O’odham organizers, the construction of the contested surveillance towers was completed. As Will Parrish reported in The Intercept in 2019, each tower is outfitted with thermal sensors, high-definition cameras with night vision, and ground-sweeping radar. As Parrish noted, “The system will store an archive with the ability to rewind and track individuals’ movements across time — an ability known as ‘wide-area persistent surveillance.’” The  Tohono O’odham’s struggle against the construction of Elbit’s towers is just one example of how the company is exporting Israel’s tools of bordering and occupation. In The Palestine Laboratory, Loewenstein describes an event at the Paris Air Show in 2009, where Elbit screened drone footage for “an elite audience of global buyers.” The footage showcased the assassination of a Palestinian. A subsequent investigation by Andrew Feinstein, a global expert on the arms industry, who observed the sales video pitch in Paris, revealed that innocent Palestinians, including women and children, were killed during the drone attack that Elbit showcased at the Paris Air Show. Feinstein told Loewenstein, “This was my introduction to the Israeli arms industry and the way it markets itself. No other arms-producing country would dare show actual footage like that.” As evidenced by the construction of surveillance towers in Tohono O’odham lands, Elbit’s work extends beyond the bounds of war, but the lines between war-making, surveillance and what governments call “security” are murky, at best. When tools of war and subjugation are tested on a captive population, and marketed on the basis of how effectively those people are killed, how do we expect those tools to be deployed globally?