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Celebrating UNCTAD’s achievements of the past 60 years - Charting a New Development Course in a Changing World.
Marking its 60th Anniversary, UNCTAD Rebrands to “UN Trade and Development” and Convenes a Global Leaders Forum
UNCTAD’s 60th anniversary Rebrands as "UN Trade and Development" and convenes Global Leaders Forum with the UN Secretary-General, Heads of State, leading economists and Nobel Laureates in June 2024.
UN Trade and Development’s Secretary-General, Rebeca Grynspan, emphasized the organization’s transformative approach and commitment to supporting developing countries in an increasingly polarized world.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) announced today its landmark rebranding as "UN Trade and Development," commemorating its 60th anniversary this year. This strategic move underscores the organization's commitment to greater impact with a new, clearer visual identity aiming to better reflect its work and values aiming to amplify its global voice on behalf of developing countries.
Charting a New Course
Under the leadership of Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan, the organization has been adapting to a rapidly changing global trade landscape impacted by the COVD19 pandemic, geopolitical tensions and climate change, with initiatives that enhance the organization's capacity to rapidly analyze new challenges and support efforts in developing nations.
The rebranding marks a pivotal moment- the first ever comprehensive review of UNCTAD’s global communication footprint and a bold forward-looking strategy to communicate its work and values.
At the presentation of the organization’s new brand as part of its 60th anniversary celebrations, Secretary-General Grynspan underlined "Visible, transformational change is our objective. We are celebrating UNCTAD’s achievements of the past 60 years as a forward-looking, renewed organization, building on our legacy but ready to respond to the new complexities of the global economy. We will continue to work to ensure development is at the core of global economic decisions, and the voice of developing countries is heard."
The organization will adopt its new name and logo across all official channels, in the six UN languages, marking its first rebranding in sixty years.
60th anniversary celebration: Global Leaders Forum
The rebranding marks the start of the 60th anniversary of the organization. UN Trade and Development will convene a Global Leaders Forum from 12-14 June at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, inaugurated by UN Secretary-General, António Guterres and UN Trade and Development Secretary-General, Rebeca Grynspan, alongside Heads of State and Government, and the participation of civil society organizations, private sector representatives and some of the world’s leading economists. Under the theme "Charting a New Development Course in a Changing World", the Forum will emphasize the organization’s integrated approach to trade and development, addressing finance, technology, investment, and sustainable development, with a specific focus on the needs of developing countries, and UNCTAD’s work in Africa, the least developed countries, small island developing states (SIDs), and landlocked developing countries.
It will also be an important occasion to explore innovative approaches and pioneering solutions with the world’s top policy makers and thinkers.
For more information about UN Trade and Development and its 60th-anniversary events, click here.
Download the video here.
**About UN Trade and Development: **
UN Trade and Development (formerly known as UNCTAD) is dedicated to promoting inclusive and sustainable development through trade and investment. With a diverse membership, it empowers countries to harness trade for prosperity.
#United Nations Conference on Trade and Development#unctad#economic growth#trade#development#60th anniversary#trade for prosperity#developing countries#least developed countries#small island developing states (SIDs)#landlocked developing countries (LLDCs)#pioneering solutions#policy makers#policy thinkers.#innovative approaches#UN Trade and Development
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“What is fatality to us of today? Policy is Destiny for us.”
— Napoleon to Goethe
Source: Emil Ludwig, Goethe: The History of a Man
#Policy is destiny is my motto now#he was such a beautiful political thinker#Napoleon#Goethe#Johann Wolfgang von Goethe#napoleon bonaparte#napoleonic era#napoleonic#first french empire#french empire#quotes#napoleon quotes#quotes by Napoleon#history#Emil Ludwig#Emil#Ludwig#Germany#France#french history#policy
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Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.
Thomas Sowell, Source Unlisted.
#philosophy tumblr#philoblr#philosopher#thinker#american authors#writrblr#thomas sowell#economics#politics#governance#social policy#ideology#nationalism#dark academia#life quotes
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I woke up yesterday morning to learn that Don Trump—the famed rapist, convicted felon, and white christian presidential candidate—had mimed performing a blowjob on his microphone stand to the clear delight of his crowd. There's a famous Christian thinker named Jesus H. Christ who you may have heard about; people will often say his full name when they see things like this. [...] It cuts against the dominant social narrative to say we need to fight the white supremacist cult, and this is for the very good reason that our society is traditionally white supremacist. If you suggest that a white supremacist cult's behavior and intentions are indecent and absolutely unacceptable, there is a general realization that this means not accepting it, which would inevitably mean the social exclusion and isolation of people committed to pursuing unacceptable behavior, and who have made indecent and unacceptable behavior a core part of their identity. And it's very unhealthy to be socially excluded and isolated. And who could be against health? In the eyes of those who control the platforms of communication, and in the halls of power, and in the minds of many comfortable and privileged people, it is a far less divisive act to hold a Nazi rally, crammed with racism and hatred and bigotry and Nazi speakers delivering Nazi slogans and Nazi intentions to enact Nazi policies, than it is to refer to such a thing as "a Nazi rally." In the eyes of those who control the platforms of communication, and in the halls of power, and in the minds of many comfortable and privileged people, saying you intend to fight a white supremacist cult is considered far more divisive and radical than being a part of a white supremacist cult who intends to force a fight with everyone else. In fact "we're still going to be sharing a nation with them and there are millions of them" is usually what's said to anybody who suggests we even oppose them. It's said as a reason to not oppose them, as a reason to not even name them for what they have chosen to be. "You can't just get rid of them," it's said. The suggestion seems to be that in so doing we are excluding them from society, isolating them, dehumanizing them, by naming what it is they have chosen to become (which, again, is a white supremacist cult), and by refusing to accept their unacceptable propositions as acceptable. It's not so popular to suggest that the answer is for white supremacists to change their behavior. It's far more popular to say we need to heal the white supremacist cult. It's far more popular to issue reminders that we need to leave paths open for the white supremacist cult to find redemption
Apology Not Accepted
Another exceptional post from Andrew Moxon that I encourage you all to make some time to read.
When all of this is over, no matter how long it takes to send Shitler to prison, I will not forget and I will not forgive the christian nationalist white supremacists who have brought us here.
This includes people I thought I knew.
We must drive these cancerous, violent, hateful people back into social isolation and societal rejection, where they have always belonged.
This includes people I thought I knew.
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The question we should ask our children is not, “what do you want to do?”
It should be, “what do you want to do to earn money?”
#Thoughtmonger#Painkiller#111#Thinker#Overthinker#quote#qotd#children#guidance#parenting#life#experience#capitalism#life in monetary policy
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socialism has never been a working class movement. it's an aristocratic and intellectual movement to push out the entrepreneurial class that time and again leaves the former in the dust because it knows how to adapt.
as the aristocrat and intellectual become less relevant, they resent the entrepreneur for their loss of status, balking at the thought of having to work for their livings and so they whip up a frenzy to force slow but steady policy change or violent regime change.
extremely few socialist thinkers came from working classes, the few that did are not popular. champagne socialism is not the exception, it's the norm.
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Not all educated people are liberal, but most conservative rhetoric and failed economic/tax policies depend on highly unserious thinkers.
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Fun how the people who hue and cry the loudest about China's "Reform and Opening Up", condemning it as some sort great betrayal of socialism, so often consider themselves aligned with Lenin. Like some sort of defender of true socialism from the golden era against all those later revisionists. As though like the NEP wasn't something that Lenin himself very much supported and implemented. Our wise and tactical introduction of capitalist elements VS their revisionist selling out to the bourgeoisie, something like that
There's probably a couple of things at play here. One contributing factor likely the fetishism of defeat you see all too often among Western socialists, treating the dead and failed experiments of the past as somehow being more pure and truly communist than any still living socialist regime. Another is the excessive attachment to specific individuals you see among those who accept communist ideas without truly embracing dialectical materialist thinking; treating certain thinkers and leaders (i.e. Lenin, Trotsky, Mao) as though they were divine prophets while others (i.e. Deng) are devils sent to lead us astray. Policies are not evaluated in terms of their material effects, the prevailing conditions they were taken in or even their theoretical basis. Rather the focus is on who proposed them; similar policies are good when a good guy supports them and bad when backed by a villain. Finally there's likely an element of underlying racism to all this; these people have faith in the ability of Europeans make the right decisions and build a better society, while no such trust is extended to those "less enlightened" peoples of the world. Surely the end of Socialism in Europe meant the end of any Socialism that matters? Like any nation still calling itself Socialist must be lying or deluded; there's no way those barbarians could have anything to teach us...
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To be honest, a lot of the politics you see online--on Tumblr and Twitter--are predicated on the biggest posters with the biggest followings being people who had a lot of potential they squandered, and their spite drives them to encourage other people to engage in self-destructive behaviors. That's also why you see a lot of "gifted kid" discourse from them, while sprinkling in the occasional "lol why even go in to work, fuck your boss." They're mad other people succeeded. They're more angry that other people succeeded than they care if they succeed. They want things to suck as much as possible so other people are on their level, even if it means, for the most part, people being dragged down and certainly not lifted up. Black unemployment is the lowest it's ever been and they secretly want to throw that away so that immigrants get shot at the border, because behind 99% of these snappy, cynical accounts is someone secretly seething that immigrants who come to America tend to benefit from that and apply it towards the welfare of their families, as productive members of a community. They pretend to be "left-wing" but look at what they're actually doing. Look at the implications their preferences actually have. They need that because if you actually evaluated their stances and the implications of the behavior they promote, it's a pound of flesh at everyone else's expense. The lowest quintile of incomes is doing better under Biden than in the last 40 years (very much taking into account inflation, because it's been driven by low-income workers finally being paid more and this being reflected in the cost of goods and services). If they cared about uplifting the poor, they'd tell you things like that. And on matters of foreign policy, since that's what they're using as cover right now, they'd be upfront about the foreign policy differences between the two parties (e.g. Trump got his Muslim ban and wants a stronger one, and it is constitutional, and he will do it--including his literally announced plan to deport anyone on a visa who protests, which is also actually constitutional).
Among other things, their professed position tends to rely on the idea that the USA is uniquely despicable but the US government should also be bigger and do more things for people. Any actual political thinker who is thinking politics-first will have a coherent answer to that, because it's on-its-face contradictory. But again: it's not driven by actual political principles, they're working through personal resentments and using politics to make you think you should listen to them and validate them.
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One thing I hate about modern politics is how compulsive factional flag-planting by the right in an attempt to make everything into a wedge issue for their base leads to the near universal politicization of what are just... Straightforwardly, obviously good ideas. Politics in the US (and tbh a lot of other places) is like:
Scientists: hey so we've discovered a new type of cereal that prevents the disease that makes babies explode. if we started selling it in stores it would save the economy 2 trillion dollars in explosion damage and also it would stop babies from exploding
Liberal politician: huh, sounds neat. you guys interested in the like, uh, anti explosion cereal?
Public: yeah, sure, we like babies
Liberal politician: cool, well in that case-
Conservative thinker (dude with a YouTube podcast that at least five senators secretly watch): -WAIT! STOP! THIS IS A PROPOSAL BY THE EVIL LIBERALS! IT'S A LEFTIST PLOT TO DEPRIVE YOUR CHILDREN OF THE RIGHT TO EXPLODE!
Half the fucking public for some reason: by tarnation, he has the same prejudices as my pops so he must have a point! Can't let those fucking libs get their agenda through!
News anchor, six months later: ...and in other news, the controversial "stop babies exploding" bill, currently polling nationally at 56 points in favour, was blocked in the liberal-lead senate by the conservatives and a liberal minority leading a revolt against their own party's policy. In response, the liberal party president is said to be drafting a modified version of the bill that promises means-tested access to the cereal that stops babies exploding to a randomized subset of 1% of baby and non-baby residents in five test constituencies. The new bill is expected to fail to pass the house some time in the next five years.
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‘100% feminist’: how Eleanor Rathbone invented child benefit – and changed women’s lives for ever
She was an MP and author with a formidable reputation, fighting for the rights of women and refugees, and opposing the appeasement of Hitler. Why isn’t she better known today?
Ladies please reblog to give her the recognition she deserves
By Susanna Rustin Thu 4 Jul 2024
My used copy of the first edition of The Disinherited Family arrives in the post from a secondhand bookseller in Lancashire. A dark blue hardback inscribed with the name of its first owner, Miss M Marshall, and the year of publication, 1924, it cost just £12.99. I am not a collector of old tomes but am thrilled to have this one. It has a case to be considered among the most important feminist economics books ever written.
Its centenary has so far received little, if any, attention. Yet the arguments it sets out are the reason nearly all mothers in the UK receive child benefit from the government. Its author, Eleanor Rathbone, was one of the most influential women in politics in the first half of the 20th century. She led the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (Nusec, the main suffragist organisation, also formerly known as the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies) from 1919, when Millicent Fawcett stood down, until the roughly five million women who were not enfranchised in 1918 gained the vote 10 years later. In 1929, aged 57, she became an MP, and remained in parliament until her death in 1946. While there, she built up a formidable reputation based on her advocacy for women’s rights, welfare reform and the rights of refugees, and her opposition to the appeasement of Hitler.
It would not be true to say that Eleanor Rathbone has been forgotten. Her portrait by James Gunn hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Twenty years ago she was the subject of a fine biography and she is remembered at Somerville college, Oxford – where she studied in the 1890s and ran a society called the Associated Prigs. (While the name was a joke, Rathbone did have a priggish side – as well as being an original thinker, tremendous campaigner, and stubborn, sensitive personality.) She also features in Rachel Reeves’s book The Women Who Made Modern Economics, although Reeves – who hopes shortly to become the UK’s first female chancellor – pays more attention to her contemporary, Beatrice Webb.
A thrilling tome … The Disinherited Family by Eleanor Rathbone. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
But Rathbone, who came from a wealthy dynasty of nonconformist merchants, does not have anything like the name-recognition of the Pankhursts or Millicent Fawcett, or of pioneering politicians including Nancy Astor and Ellen Wilkinson. Nor does she enjoy the cachet of writers such as Virginia Woolf, whose polemic about women’s opportunities, A Room of One’s Own, was published five years after Rathbone’s magnum opus.
There are many reasons for Rathbone’s relative obscurity. One is that she was the first woman elected to parliament as an independent (and one of a handful of men at the time). Thus there is no political party with an interest in turning her into an icon. Having spent the past three years writing a book about the British women’s movement, I am embarrassed to admit that when I started, I didn’t know who she was.
Rathbone was not the first person to propose state benefits paid to mothers. The endowment of motherhood or family allowances, as the policy was known, was written about by the Swedish feminist Ellen Key, and tried out as a project of the Fabian Women’s Group, who published their findings in a pamphlet in 1912. But Rathbone pushed the idea to the forefront. A first attempt to get Nusec to adopt it was knocked back in 1921, and she then spent three years conducting research. The title she gave the book she produced, The Disinherited Family, reflected her view that women and children were being deprived of their rightful share of the country’s wealth.
The problem, as she saw it, was one of distribution. While the wage system in industrialised countries treated all workers on a given pay grade the same, some households needed more money than others. While unions argued for higher wages across the board, Rathbone believed the state should supplement the incomes of larger families. She opened the book with an archly phrased rhetorical question: “Whether there is any subject in the world of equal importance that has received so little consideration as the economic status of the family?” She went on to accuse economists of behaving as if they were “self-propagating bachelors” – so little did the lives of mothers appear to interest them.
Rathbone’s twin aims were to end wives’ dependence on husbands and reward their domestic labour. Family allowances paid directly to them could either be spent on housekeeping or childcare, enabling them to go out to work. Ellen Wilkinson, the radical Labour MP for Middlesbrough (and future minister for education), was among early supporters. William Beveridge read the book when he was director of the London School of Economics, declared himself a convert and introduced one of the first schemes of family-linked payments for his staff.
But others were strongly opposed. Conservative objections to such a radical expansion of the state were predictable. But they were echoed by liberal feminists including Millicent Fawcett, who called the plan “a step in the direction of practical socialism”. Trade unions preferred to push for a living wage, while some male MPs thought the policy undermined the role of men as breadwinners. Labour and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) finally swung behind family allowances in 1942. As the war drew to a close, Rathbone led a backbench rebellion against ministers who wanted to pay the benefit to fathers instead.
Rathbone celebrates the Silver Jubilee of the Women’s Vote in London, 20 February 1943. Photograph: Picture Post/Getty Images
It is for this signature policy that she is most often remembered today. At a time when hundreds of thousands of children have been pushed into poverty by the two-child limit on benefit payments, Rathbone’s advocacy on behalf of larger families could hardly be more relevant. The limit, devised by George Osborne, applies to universal and child tax credits – and not child benefit itself. But Rishi Sunak’s government announced changes to the latter in this year’s budget. From 2026, eligibility will be assessed on a household rather than individual basis. This is intended to limit payments to better-off, dual-income families. But the UK Women’s Budget Group and others have objected on grounds that child benefit should retain its original purpose of directly remunerating primary carers (the vast majority of them mothers) for the work of rearing children. It remains to be seen whether this plan will be carried through by the next government.
Rathbone once told the House of Commons she was “100% feminist”, and few MPs have been as single-minded in their commitment to women’s causes. As president of Nusec (the law-abiding wing of the suffrage campaign), she played a vital role in finishing the job of winning votes for women.
The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in women’s suffrage, partly due to the centenary of the first women’s suffrage act. Thanks to a brilliant campaign by Caroline Criado Perez, a statue of Millicent Fawcett, the nonmilitant suffragist leader, now stands in Westminster, a few minutes walk from the bronze memorial of Emmeline Pankhurst erected in 1930. Suffragette direct action has long been a source of fascination. What is less well known is that militants played little part in the movement after 1918. It was law-abiding constitutionalists – suffragists rather than suffragettes – who pushed through the 1920s to win votes for the younger and poorer women who did not yet have them. Rathbone helped lead this final phase of the campaign, along with Conservative MP Nancy Astor and others.
Rathbone was highly critical of the militants, and once claimed that they “came within an inch of wrecking the suffrage movement, perhaps for a generation”. Today, with climate groups including Just Stop Oil copying the suffragette tactic of vandalising paintings, it is worth remembering that many women’s suffrage campaigners opposed such methods.
Schismatic though it was, the suffrage movement at least had a shared goal. An even greater challenge for feminists in the 1920s was agreeing on future priorities. Equal pay, parental rights and an end to the sexual double standard were among demands that had broad support. After the arrival in the House of Commons of the first female MPs, legislative successes included the removal of the bar on women’s entry to the professions, new rights for mothers and widows’ pensions. But there were also fierce disagreements.
Tensions between class and sexual politics were longstanding, with some on the left regarding feminism as a distraction. The Labour MP Marion Phillips, for example, thought membership of single-sex groups placed women “in danger of getting their political opinions muddled”. There was also renewed conflict over protective legislation – the name given to employment laws that differentiated between men and women. While such measures included maternity leave and safety rules for pregnant women, many feminists believed their true purpose was to keep jobs for men – and prevent female workers from competing.
Underlying such arguments was the question of whether women, once enfranchised, should strive for equal treatment, or push for measures designed to address their specific needs. As the debate grew more heated, partisans on either side gave themselves the labels of “old” and “new” feminists. While the former, also called equalitarians, wanted to focus on the obstacles that prevented women from participating in public life on the same terms as men, the new feminists led by Rathbone sought to pioneer an innovative, woman-centred politics. Since this brought to the fore issues such as reproductive health and mothers’ poverty, it is known as “maternalist feminism”.
Rathbone and other Liverpool suffragettes campaigning in 1910. Photograph: Shawshots/Alamy
The faultline extended beyond Britain. But Rathbone and her foes had some of the angriest clashes. At one international convention, Lady Rhondda, a wealthy former suffragette, used a speech to deride rivals who chose to “putter away” at welfare work, instead of the issues she considered important.
The specific policy points at issue have, of course, changed over the past century. But arguments about how much emphasis feminists should place on biological differences between men and women carry on.
Eleanor Rathbone did not live long enough to see the welfare state, including child benefit paid to mothers, take root in postwar Britain. Her election to parliament coincided with the Depression, and the lengthening shadows of fascism and nazism meant that she, like her colleagues, became preoccupied with foreign affairs. In the general election of 1935, the number of female MPs fell from 15 to nine, meaning Rathbone’s was one of just a handful of women’s voices. She used hers to oppose the policy of appeasement, and support the rights of refugees, including those escaping Franco’s Spain. During the war she helped run an extra-parliamentary “woman-power committee”, which advocated for female workers.
She also became a supporter of Indian women’s rights, though her liberal imperialism led to tensions with Indian feminists. During the war she angered India’s most eminent writer, Rabindranath Tagore, and its future prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, when she attacked the Congress party’s policy of noncooperation with Britain’s war effort. Tagore criticised what he called the “sheer insolent self-complacency” of her demand that the anti-colonial struggle should be set aside while Britain fought Germany.
Rathbone turned down a damehood. After their first shared house in Westminster was bombed, she and her life partner, the Scottish social worker Elizabeth Macadam, moved around the corner to a flat on Tufton Street (Macadam destroyed their letters, meaning that Rathbone’s intimate life remains obscure, but historians believe the relationship was platonic). From there they moved to a larger, quieter house in Highgate. On 2 January 1946, Rathbone suddenly died.
Rathbone’s blue plaque at Tufton Court. Photograph: PjrPlaques/Alamy
A blue plaque on Tufton Street commemorates her as the “pioneer of family allowances” – providing an alternative claim on posterity for an address more commonly associated with the Brexit campaign, since a house a few doors down became its headquarters. She is remembered, too, in Liverpool, where her experience of dispersing welfare to desperately poor soldiers’ wives in the first world war changed the course of her life, and where one of her former homes is being restored by the university.
I don’t believe in ghosts. But walking in Westminster recently, I imagined her hastening across St James’s Park to one of her meetings at Nancy Astor’s house near the London Library. Today, suffragettes are celebrated for their innovative direct action. But Rathbone blazed a trail, too, with her dedication as a campaigner, writer, lobbyist and “100% feminist” parliamentarian.
Sexed: A History of British Feminism by Susanna Rustin is published by Polity Press (£20). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
#Eleanor Rathbone#The Disinherited Family#Books by women#Books about women#Child benefit#National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (Nusec)#Rachel Reeve#The Women Who Made Modern Economics#Women in politics#UK#Seed: A History of British Feminism#Susan Rustin
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being a young liberal or socialist student of political philosophy trying to learn outside of your comfort zone, you decide to read some conservative writings because you want to read the best version of the thing you oppose, not just swipe at the low-hanging fruit of the numbnuts pundits of the world.
and then it is all insane troll logic. critically thinking about why and how our societies exist in the way they do, and if they could be different, is going to cause Literally 1984 (<- this is what Friedrich Hayek actually believed). real socialism would involve making absolutely zero changes to the structure or policies of the economy and is just about feeling good about your place in the abstract concept of the nation (Spengler, most fascist thinkers). rulers are kind of like your dad and political constitutions are divinely inspired (classic early modern reactionaries like Filmer and de Maistre - the OGs if you will.) socialism neglects “spiritual needs” - what those are is an exercise for the reader to figure out, but it probably includes business owners not having to pay taxes (Bozell, ghostwriting for Barry Goldwater).
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Some tankie bs detection
I saw this post on my dash. The user is blocked now. But just to educate people so that they won't fall for idiotic claims online, here are a couple of facts:
1. The Islamic Republic is not anti imperialist, they're anti USA. The regime is very much in love with Russian imperialism. At this point, Iran is an unofficial russian colony. And by the support of their imperialist father figure they have their small version of imperialism in middle east. Ask Iraq and Lebanon.
2. There's no "safety" when it comes to economy in Iran. The "national sovereignty" is called "those fvckin thieves in power" here. Iran's regime is one of the most corrupt regimes by international index. Rent, nepotism, embezzlement and money laundering are serious issues in Iran. Done only and only by the governors and people in power. Social class is not only a thing, there's a raging gap between rich people and those in poverty. And the gap is getting bigger and bigger by month. If you have connections in government or you are in the government, you'll get richer and richer. Other wise, soon enough you'll be in poverty too. Many families, including mine, who used to be considered middle class, have incomes lower than the poverty threshold now.
About 15% of Iran's economic failure including inflation is on the sanctions. The rest is on the corruption within the regime.
Iran's banking system is also a corrupted organ. The so called Islamic banking is anything but Islamic. The loan interest rate is one of the highest worldwide, 23%, so that often you have to pay back more than twice the money you've received. It's called Riba in Islam and it's Haram. According to the regime themselves, the banking system in European countries, even in the USA, is more Islamic than us. The fact that some of the biggest embezzlement in Iran has been done by bank managers should give you a picture of how they're drinking our blood.
None of this is on USA imperialism. It's all the Islamic Republic.
3. The Islamic Republic doesn't support Palestinians. The regime is extremely racist and anti Arab. I dare you talk about this with an actual Arab. IR don't give two shites about Palestinians lives. The regime is antisemitic. That's what they are. Palestine is just an excuse to attack Israel. In the past 20+ years of my life, living in Iran and dealing with these posers, not once we've been educated about Palestine and Palestinians lives. Everything I know, I've learned from online resources and documentaries make by Palestinians. The regime doesn't talk about Palestinians when they pose as supporters. I'm pretty sure they don't know or care to know anything noteworthy about Palestine, considering my knowledge of the human rights violations there is always more than basiji people of my country, and I don't even know that much. All the regime talks about is how Israel should be eliminated. IR supports a terrorist organization called Hamas, not Palestinians.
4. Let's forget about everything I said so far. I wonder if tankies like the op has any ounce of humanity in them! The regime has been oppressing women, violating every type of human rights and murdering lgbtq people and other-thinkers for the last 40 years. The spectacular environmental disaster in Iran is the direct result of regime's policies and neglect. This is a case of human rights violation since it's ruining people's lives, especially ethnic minorities, like Arab farmers in south.
No religious minority is safe in Iran, be it atheist, Baha'i, Jew, christian, or Sunni Muslim. They commit crime against children, through labor and through war. IRGC have little regards for human lives in general but it descent into no regards at all for ethnic minorities.
They have MASS EXECUTED 30,000 leftists (members of Marxist Communist parties and their supporters) within the first decade of their autocratic rule. It's unbelievably funny to me when foreign leftists support a regime that has executed many of their fellow thinkers and still arrest and torture any left activist in Iran.
To say the reason the 1979 revolution happened was to get rid of western influence and to establish a democratic free independent government is true. But the Islamic Republic is not that result. Don't be fooled.
#iran#iranian#iran revolution#iran protests#human rights#politics#lgbtq+#feminism#middle east#irgcterrorists#support iranian women#human rights violation#crimes against children#crimes against women#ethnic minorities#racism#russian imperialism#tw misogyny#tw racism#tw homophobia#environmental issues#background information
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Jewish American Heritage Month
May is Jewish American Heritage Month, there's no way I can make a post to highlight ALL the ways Jewish Americans have contributed to American life, culture, politics and History but here are a few
The Touro Synagogue in Newport Rhode Island is the oldest Synagogue in the United States, built in 1763 for a congregation that dates back to 1658 when 15 Sephardic families moved to America. Touro is also famous for a letter sent to them by President George Washington in 1790 where he assured them of freedom of religion in the new United States:
... the Government of the United States ... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. ... May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.
- Letter of George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island
Emma Goldman (1869-1940) Born in what is today Lithuania Goldman immigrated to the United States at the age of 16. She would become in the 1890s one of the leading voices of the anarchist movement and remains one of Anarchisms most important thinkers. Goldman also spoke out and was arrested for supporting birth control at a time when it was illegal. She supported Free Love and even gay rights before the dawn of the 20th Century making her the only major figure of her time to speak out in favor of homosexual love.
Irving Berlin (1888-1989) Born in what is today central Russia, the Berlin family immigrated to America when Irving was 5 years old. Starting with 1911's "Alexander's Ragtime Band" Berlin would go on to write upwards of 1,500 songs over his 60 year music career. He wrote the scores for 20 Broadway shows, 15 Hollywood movies, was nominated for 8 Oscars and had 25 number one songs on the charts. His most famous songs include, Puttin' on the Ritz, Cheek to Cheek, White Christmas, Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better), and There's No Business Like Show Business. Fellow Jewish composer George Gershwin (1898-1937) declared Berlin "the greatest songwriter that has ever lived"
Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) A towering legal mind Brandeis would in the early 1900s earn the nickname "The People's Lawyer" for refusing payment in cases for "the public interest" Brandeis fought many antitrust cases in court and fought businesses in court in support of early work place safety laws. Brandeis was also the first to articulate the idea of a Right to Privacy in 1890. Brandeis idea would become the basis of rulings supporting the right to birth control, abortion, and gay rights. Nominated to the Supreme Court in 1916 Brandeis was the first Jewish Justice and was vehemently opposed by antisemites. Fellow Justice James Clark McReynolds refused to speak to Brandeis for years, never signed his name to opinions written by Brandeis, and would often openly start reading a news paper when Brandeis read his opinions from the bench. McReynolds, along with Justices Pierce Butler and Willis Van Devanter sent a letter to President Hoover begging him to not "afflict the Court with another Jew" when he appointed the second Jewish Justice, Benjamin Cardozo, in 1932. Brandeis served 23 years on the Court from 1916 till 1939 and is regularly counted as one of the greatest Justices to ever serve championing Free Speech and progressive policies often from opposition to the Conservative majority of the time.
Stan Lee (1922-2018) and Jack Kirby (1917-1994) Born Stanley Lieber and Jacob Kurtzberg respectively, Lee and Kirby were among countless Jews who adopted less Jewish sounding names in hopes of escaping discrimination. Lee and Kirby along with countless other Jewish artists and writers formed the backbone of the Golden and Sliver ages of comics. Characters such as Batman and Superman had Jewish creators. Kirby and Lee themselves are responsible for such cultural icons as Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Black Panther, Daredevil, and The X-Men. The preponderance of Jews in the early comics was a result of persistent discrimination against Jews. High class advertising agencies didn't want Jewish artists drawing their ads and literary magazines like The New Yorker weren't interested in Jewish staff writers. So young Jewish artists and writers found themselves in the "less respectable" world of pulp and penny comics where they made a huge cultural impact though many, like Kirby, would fight for years to get the money they deserved and many never did.
Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011) Kirk Douglas (1916-2020) Douglas was born "Issur Danielovitch" but changed his overly Jewish sounding name to make it in the Hollywood of the 1940s and 50s. regarded as one of the greats of classic Hollywood Douglas would be nominated for Oscar for Best Actor 3 times, for Champion (1949), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Lust for Life (1956). He is most well known for his work with Jewish filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) who's first two major films Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960) starred Douglas who was also a producer, they are still thought of as some of the best films ever made. Kirk Douglas is also the father of actor Michael Douglas(1944-) Elizabeth Taylor was an iconic star of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Best known for Cleopatra (1961), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Taming of the Shrew (1967). Taylor converted to Judaism in 1959. An iconic beauty, Taylor was married 8 times to 7 different men (she divorced and remarried and divorced again many time co-star Richard Burton) including to the heir of the Hilton fortune and a US Senator. In the 1980s she would become one of the leading celebrities speaking out and raising money to fight AIDS at a time when fellow Hollywood Star, President Reagan, refused to even say the word in public.
Sammy Davis Jr. (1925-1990) A singer, dancer, performer and actor Davis was one of the most popular acts of the 1950s and 60s. Well known for performing with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra in what was known as the Rat Pack. Davis would star along side Martin and Sinatra in Ocean's 11 (1960) as well as other Rat Pack films. In the 1980s he toured with Sinatra and Liza Minnelli. Davis was politically active and influential using his fame to push Presidents Kennedy and Nixon on civil rights. Davis' cross over popularity and being booked to co-star with white acts helped break down the color barrier and push integration. After a nearly fatal car accident in which Davis lost his left eye (he wore a glass eye for the rest of his life) in 1954 he began his path to conversion formally converting to Judaism in 1961.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Joachim Prinz (1902-1988) with King. Both Heschel and Prinz were Rabbis in Europe before WWII, Prinz in particular had served as a Rabbi in Berlin in the 1930s and was expelled from Germany by the Nazis in 1937 for embarrassing them internationally. Both men settled in the United States after leaving Europe and would become leading lights of American Jewish community. Prinz would serve as the President of the American Jewish Congress from 1958 till 1966, he would help create the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in 1956 and be its President from 1965 till 1967. Heschel wrote a number of highly influential books such as Man Is Not Alone, God in Search of Man, The Sabbath, and The Prophets which are still widely read today. Both men felt called on by their experiences with the Nazis to become involved in the 1960s Civil Rights movement. Heschel was close personal friends with Dr. King and marched with him many times, most famously the 3rd Selma to Montgomery march between Dr King and John Lewis who'd been beaten badly at an earlier march. Prinz served as one of the organizing forces behind the 1963 March on Washington and Prinz gave the speech directly before Dr. King's famous "I Have a Dream" Speech. Heschel acted as a Jewish representative at the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council where he was able to get the Church to drop centuries old antisemitic lines blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus from the liturgy.
Andrew Goodman (1943-1964), James Chaney (1943-1964), and Michael Schwerner (1939-1964) In the summer of 1964 The Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) launched a massive effort to register disenfranchised black voters in Mississippi to vote, they called the effort Freedom Summer. Goodman and Schwerner both natives of New York were among the hundreds of CORE volunteers from the North who came south to help local activists like Mississippi native Chaney with the registration drive. Many of the white northern volunteers, like Goodman and Schwerner were Jewish, Jews had also been heavily represented among the white Freedom Riders of 1961. On June 21, 1964 Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney were pulled over together by a Deputy Sheriff before being set upon by a conspiracy of local KKK members. The 3 were murdered, and their bodies hidden in an earthen dam, there is some evidence that Goodman was still alive when he was buried. Their disappearance set off a massive FBI lead search known as Mississippi Burning. Public outrage particularly fueled by the image of the 3 men's crying mother's arm in arm at Chaney's funeral would help push through the Civil Rights act of 1964.
Bob Dylan (1941-) Born Robert Zimmerman Dylan lead the American Folk revival of the early 1960s. His songs Blowin' in the Wind (1963) and The Times They Are a-Changin' (1964) became anthems of both the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements of the 1960s. His 1965 transition from Folk to Electric pushed Dylan to the forefront of late 1960s Rock and Roll. Dylan is often ranked as one of the most iconic artists of the 1960s ranked up along side the Beatles. His musical influence is massive and still felt today. In 2016 Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition"
Mel Brooks (1926-) and Gene Wilder (1933-2016) born Melvin Kaminsky and Jerome Silberman respectively. Brooks is a comedic legend, writing and directing for film and stage. Brooks is one of only 18 people to complete the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony Awards). Brooks collaborated with Wilder on a number of his most famous works, The Producers (1967), Blazing Saddles (1974), and Young Frankenstein (1974). Other works include History of the World, Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). Just this year at the age of 96 Brooks wrote and produced History of the World, Part II a TV series sequel to his 1981 film. Wilder worked closely with Brooks as well as with Richard Pryor. He had a star turn in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972). Wilder is best known for his iconic role of Willy Wonka in 1971's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
Gloria Steinem (1934-), Bella Abzug (1920-1998), Betty Friedan (1921-2006) with Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm (middle seated). Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is widely understood as the spark that started Second Wave Feminism or "Women's liberation". In 1966 Friedan helped start and would be the first President of, National Organization for Women (NOW). NOW remains a major feminist and progressive political organization. Friedan left NOW in 1970 to focus on the fight to pass an equal rights amendment to the US constitution (ERA). Together with Steinem and Abzug Friedan formed the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971. She also helped found the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, known to say simply as "NARAL". Bella Abzug known as "Battling Bella" for her fire breathing progressivism was first elected to the US House in 1970. Her slogan was "This woman's place is in the House—the House of Representatives" a slogan that has been reused by many women candidates since. Abzug was an early pioneer of ecofeminism. She also was a leading figure in the movement to impeach Nixon. Abzug would be one of the first supporters of gay rights in Congress sponsoring the first federal gay rights bill in 1974. Steinem was an influential counter-culture journalist and speaker. Her feminist magazine Ms. served as a voice piece for the Feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Her connections to the counter culture and her youth caused Steinem to often times act as a bridge between the younger 1960s generation and older activists like Friedan. Steinem remains active in politics and feminism today in her 80s.
Barbra Streisand (1942-) an EGOT winning actress and singer. Streisand first came to national attention with chart topping hits in the 1960s. Across her career Streisand has had 11 number 1 records the most for a woman on the US charts. In the late 1960s Streisand transitioned to film, winning the Oscar for Best Actress for her first role, 1968's Funny Girl. She followed up with Hello, Dolly! (1969), What's Up Doc? (1972), and The Way We Were (1973) before winning her second Oscar this time for Best Original Song for A Star Is Born (1976) the first time a woman won composing Oscar. Streisand's first try at directing was the Jewish classic Yentl (1983) the first time a woman had written, produced, directed, and starred in a major studio film. She became the first and till 2020 only woman to win the Golden Globe for Best director for Yentl. Streisand has always been politically active from the Civil Rights and anti-War movements of the 1960s, feminism in the 1970s, and LGBT rights in the 2000s as well as being active in Democratic politics going back to the 1972 election.
Harvey Milk (1930-1978) The first openly Gay man elected to public office in the United States. Originally from New York Milk moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s and settled in nascent gay neighborhood of The Castro. Milk's small business, Castro Camera soon become a hub of the community. Milk organized gay owned businesses and the local gay community to boycott homophobic businesses and support gay owned ones. He soon earned the nickname "Mayor of Castro Street" for his organizing and leadership of the gay community. He launched his first campaign for office, an election for San Francisco Board of Supervisors, in 1973. Despite being openly gay and sporting classic hippy long hair and a bread Milk swept the Castro and other liberal areas, however he fell short citywide. Milk would run again in 1975, and for State Assembly in 1976 getting closer each time till 1977 when San Francisco introduced districts and Milk won the Castro based District seat. Milk's election made him a national figure and the face for Gay Rights across the country. His brief time in office was consumed by the fight against the Briggs Initiative, a ballot initiative that would have automatically fired any gay teacher or teacher who supported gay rights in California. The Briggs Initiative failed, marking the first time gay rights had won at the ballot box. Harvey Milk and his ally Mayor George Moscone were assassinated on November 27, 1978 by disgruntled former Supervisor Dan White. The Police investigation of White, a former cop, was deeply failed and a straight jury sentenced him to just 5 years for the double murder. In the aftermath of the sentencing the gay community rioted in what is known as The White Night Riots. The gay political movement Milk built in San Francisco remains today with the LGBT community having a powerful voice in local politics.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) Born in what is today Ukraine he fled Europe in 1941. In 1951 Schneerson succeed his Father-in-law as the 7th Rebbe of the Chabad-Lubavitch Movement. While all Hassidic movements have Rebbes, Schneerson would become such a towering figure both in Jewish life and outside it to this day nearly 30 years after his death he is still "The Rebbe". During his long reign as the Rebbe Schneerson transformed the Chabad movement into a global Jewish outreach organization. In many parts of the world Chabad houses operate as the sole outpost of Jewish life. It is not uncommon in heavily Jewish areas or events to find Chabadiks asking men if they're Jewish and have wrapped tefillin today. The Rebbe and his movement would be at the center of the 1980s struggle to liberate Soviet Jewry as well as efforts to evacuate Jewish youth from Iran in 1979. The Rebbe started a global Chanukah outreach campaign, trying to assure that individual Jews have their own menorah and candles as well as pushing for public lightings of display menorahs, if your city lights one it's likely a Chabad project. During his life time many of his followers came to believe that he was the awaited Jewish Messiah. After his death the Chabad movement has not elected another Rebbe to replace him and likely never will. His grave in Queens is a major pilgrimage sight not only for Hassidic Jews but seekers of all kinds, Jewish and not. Ever since 1978 Schneerson's birth has been marked in the US by an act of Congress and Presidential decree by every President since Carter as "Education Day" focusing on his life long work for education and learning.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) The Second woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Ginsburg entered law in the 1950s at a time when very few women did, her Harvard Law Class had 500 men and just 9 women. She graduated first from Columbia. She was denied a Supreme Court Clerkship because of her gender. In 1972 Ginsburg organized and became the head of the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. By 1974 the Project had been involved with 300 gender discrimination cases. As general counsel of the project Ginsburg would argue 6 gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court between 1973 and 1976, winning 5. She was often compared to Thurgood Marshall in her role fighting for women's rights in Court. She would keep working with the ACLU till 1980 when she was appointed to the US Court of Appeals, Second Circuit by President Carter. She was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Clinton in 1993, as only the second women and the first Jewish woman to serve, she is the longest serving Jewish Justice. Ginsburg was allied with the liberal wing of the Court through out her time on the bench. After Justice O'Connor retired and Ginsburg found herself in the unexpected position as the only woman on the court from 2006 till Justice Sotomayor joined in 2009 she became more outspoken. Ginsburg would become known for her powerful dissents often read from the bench. After Justice Stevens retired in 2010 Ginsburg became the de facto head of the liberal wing of the Court and soon reached cultural icon status with the wider American public.
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These are just a few of the hugely important Jewish Americans who have impacted and shaped every part of American life and the list if not random is just who I thought of, there were many others I thought about but decided I didn't have room for. Have a good Jewish American Heritage Month this May and learn some Jewish History
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There are several historical contexts for what is going on now in Israel-Palestine that cannot be ignored. The wider historical context goes back to the mid-19th century, when evangelical Christianity in the West turned the idea of the “return of the Jews” into a religious millennial imperative and advocated the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine as part of the steps that would lead to the resurrection of the dead, the return of the Messiah, and the end of time. Theology became policy toward the end of the 19th century and in the years leading up to World War I for two reasons. First, it worked in the interest of those in Britian wishing to dismantle the Ottoman Empire and incorporate parts of it into the British Empire. Second, it resonated with those within the British aristocracy, both Jews and Christians, who became enchanted with the idea of Zionism as a panacea for the problem of anti-Semitism in Central and Eastern Europe, which had produced an unwelcome wave of Jewish immigration to Britain. When these two interests fused, they propelled the British government to issue the famous – or infamous – Balfour Declaration in 1917. Jewish thinkers and activists who redefined Judaism as nationalism hoped this definition would protect Jewish communities from existential danger in Europe by homing in on Palestine as the desired space for “rebirth of the Jewish nation”. In the process, the cultural and intellectual Zionist project transformed into a settler colonial one – which aimed at Judaising historical Palestine, disregarding the fact that it was inhabited by an Indigenous population. In turn, the Palestinian society, quite pastoral at that time and in its early stage of modernisation and construction of a national identity, produced its own anti-colonial movement. Its first significant action against the Zionist colonisation project came with al-Buraq Uprising of 1929, and it has not ceased since then.
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Twinkfrump Linkdump
I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in CHICAGO (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!
Welcome to the seventeenth Pluralistic linkdump, a collection of all the miscellany that didn't make it into the week's newsletter, cunningly wrought together in a single edition that ranges from the first ISP to AI nonsense to labor organizing victories to the obituary of a brilliant scientist you should know a lot more about! Here's the other 16 dumps:
https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/
If you're reading this (and you are!), it was delivered to you by an internet service provider. Today, the ISP industry is calcified, controlled by a handful of telcos and cable companies. But the idea of an "ISP" didn't come out of a giant telecommunications firm – it was created, in living memory, by excellent nerds who are still around.
Depending on how you reckon, The Little Garden was either the first or the second ISP in America. It was named after a Palo Alto Chinese restaurant frequented by its founders. To get a sense of that founding, read these excellent recollections by Tom Jennings, whose contributions include the seminal zine Homocore, the seminal networking protocol Fidonet, and the seminal third-party PC ROM, whence came Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and every other "PC clone" company.
The first installment describes how an informal co-op to network a few friends turned into a business almost by accident, with thousands of dollars flowing in and out of Jennings' bank account:
https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/TLG.html
And it describes how that ISP set a standard for neutrality, boldly declaring that "TLGnet exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information." They introduced an idea of radical transparency, documenting their router configurations and other technical details and making them available to the public. They hired unskilled punk and queer kids from their communities and trained them to operate the network equipment they'd invented, customized or improvised.
In part two, Jennings talks about the evolution of TLG's radical business-plan: to offer unrestricted service, encouraging their customers to resell that service to people in their communities, having no lock-in, unbundling extra services including installation charges – the whole anti-enshittification enchilada:
https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/
I love Jennings and his work. I even gave him a little cameo in Picks and Shovels, the third Martin Hench novel, which will be out next winter. He's as lyrical a writer about technology as you could ask for, and he's also a brilliant engineer and thinker.
The Little Garden's founders and early power-users have all fleshed out Jennings' account of the birth of ISPs. Writing on his blog, David "DSHR" Rosenthal rounds up other histories from the likes of EFF co-founder John Gilmore and Tim Pozar:
https://blog.dshr.org/2024/04/the-little-garden.html
Rosenthal describes some of the more exotic shenanigans TLG got up to in order to do end-runs around the Bell system's onerous policies, hacking in the purest sense of the word, for example, by daisy-chaining together modems in regions with free local calling and then making "permanent local calls," with the modems staying online 24/7.
Enshittification came to the ISP business early and hit it hard. The cartel that controls your access to the internet today is a billion light-years away from the principled technologists who invented the industry with an ethos of care, access and fairness. Today's ISPs are bitterly opposed to Net Neutrality, the straightforward proposition that if you request some data, your ISP should send it to you as quickly and reliably as it can.
Instead, ISPs want to offer "slow-lanes" where they will relegate the whole internet, except for those companies that bribe the ISP to be delivered at normal speed. ISPs have a laughably transparent way of describing this: they say that they're allowing services to pay for "fast lanes" with priority access. This is the same as the giant grocery store that charges you extra unless you surrender your privacy with a "loyalty card" – and then says that they're offering a "discount" for loyal customers, rather than charging a premium to customers who don't want to be spied on.
The American business lobby loves this arrangement, and hates Net Neutrality. Having monopolized every sector of our economy, they are extremely fond of "winner take all" dynamics, and that's what a non-neutral ISP delivers: the biggest services with the deepest pockets get the most reliable delivery, which means that smaller services don't just have to be better than the big guys, they also have to be able to outbid them for "priority carriage."
If everything you get from your ISP is slow and janky, except for the dominant services, then the dominant services can skimp on quality and pocket the difference. That's the goal of every monopolist – not just to be too big to fail, but also too big to care.
Under the Trump administration, FCC chair Ajit Pai dismantled the Net Neutrality rule, colluding with American big business to rig the process. They accepted millions of obviously fake anti-Net Neutrality comments (one million identical comments from @pornhub.com addresses, comments from dead people, comments from sitting US Senators who support Net Neutrality) and declared open season on American internet users:
https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing
Now, Biden's FCC is set to reinstate Net Neutrality – but with a "compromise" that will make mobile internet (which nearly all of use sometimes, and the poorest of us are reliant on) a swamp of anticompetitive practices:
https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/04/harmful-5g-fast-lanes-are-coming-fcc-needs-stop-them
Under the proposed rule, mobile carriers will be able to put traffic to and from apps in the slow lane, and then extort bribes from preferred apps for normal speed and delivery. They'll rely on parts of the 5G standard to pull off this trick.
The ISP cartel and the FCC insist that this is fine because web traffic won't be degraded, but of course, every service is hellbent on pushing you into using apps instead of the web. That's because the web is an open platform, which means you can install ad- and privacy-blockers. More than half of web users have installed a blocker, making it the largest boycott in human history:
https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/
But reverse-engineering and modding an app is a legal minefield. Just removing the encryption from an app can trigger criminal penalties under Section 1201 of the DMCA, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine. An app is just a web-page skinned in enough IP that it's a felony to mod it.
Apps are enshittification's vanguard, and the fact that the FCC has found a way to make them even worse is perversely impressive. They're voting on this on April 25, and they have until April 24 to fix this. They should. They really should:
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf
In a just world, cheating ripoff ISPs would the top tech policy story. The operational practices of ISPs effect every single one us. We literally can't talk about tech policy without ISPs in the middle. But Net Neutrality is an also-ran in tech policy discourse, while AI – ugh ugh ugh – is the thing none of us can shut up about.
This, despite the fact that the most consequential AI applications sum up to serving as a kind of moral crumple-zone for shitty business practices. The point of AI isn't to replace customer service and other low-paid workers who have taken to demanding higher wages and better conditions – it's to fire those workers and replace them with chatbots that can't do their jobs. An AI salesdroid can't sell your boss a bot that can replace you, but they don't need to. They only have to convince your boss that the bot can do your job, even if it can't.
SF writer Karl Schroeder is one of the rare sf practitioners who grapples seriously with the future, a "strategic foresight" guy who somehow skirts the bullshit that is the field's hallmark:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack
Writing on his blog, Schroeder describes the AI debates roiling the Association of Professional Futurists, and how it's sucking him into being an unwilling participant in the AI hype cycle:
https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/dragged-into-the-ai-hype-cycle
Schroeder's piece is a thoughtful meditation on the relationship of SF's thought-experiments and parables about AI to the promises of AI hucksters, who promise that a) "general artificial intelligence" is just around the corner and that b) it will be worth trillions of dollars.
Schroeder – like other sf writers including Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross (and me) – comes to the conclusion that AI panic isn't about AI, it's about power. The artificial life-form devouring the planet and murdering our species is the limited liability corporation, and its substrate isn't silicon, it's us, human bodies:
What’s lying underneath all our anxieties about AGI is an anxiety that has nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence. Instead, it’s a manifestation of our growing awareness that our world is being stolen from under us. Last year’s estimate put the amount of wealth currently being transferred from the people who made it to an idle billionaire class at $5.2 trillion. Artificial General Intelligence whose environment is the server farms and sweatshops of this class is frightening only because of its capacity to accelerate this greatest of all heists.
After all, the business-case for AI is so very thin that the industry can only survive on a torrent of hype and nonsense – like claims that Amazon's "Grab and Go" stores used "AI" to monitor shoppers and automatically bill them for their purchases. In reality, the stores used thousands of low-paid Indian workers to monitor cameras and manually charge your card. This happens so often that Indian technologists joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians":
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain
Isn't it funny how all the really promising AI applications are in domains that most of us aren't qualified to assess? Like the claim that Google's AI was producing millions of novel materials that will shortly revolutionize all forms of production, from construction to electronics to medical implants:
https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/
That's what Google's press-release claimed, anyway. But when two groups of experts actually pulled a representative sample of these "new materials" from the Deep Mind database, they found that none of these materials qualified as "credible, useful and novel":
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643
Writing about the researchers' findings for 404 Media, Jason Koebler cites Berkeley researchers who concluded that "no new materials have been discovered":
https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/
The researchers say that AI data-mining for new materials is promising, but falls well short of Google's claim to be so transformative that it constitutes the "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge" and "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity."
AI hype keeps the bubble inflating, and for so long as it keeps blowing up, all those investors who've sunk their money into AI can tell themselves that they're rich. This is the essence of "a bezzle": "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it":
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way
Among the best debezzlers of AI are the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy's Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, who edit the "AI Snake Oil" blog. Now, they've sold a book with the same title:
https://www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-snake-oil-is-now-available-to
Obviously, books move a lot more slowly than blogs, and so Narayanan and Kapoor say their book will focus on the timeless elements of identifying and understanding AI snake oil:
In the book, we explain the crucial differences between types of AI, why people, companies, and governments are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can’t fix social media, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. While generative AI is what drives press, predictive AI used in criminal justice, finance, healthcare, and other domains remains far more consequential in people’s lives. We discuss in depth how predictive AI can go wrong. We also warn of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.
The book's out in September and it's up for pre-order now:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/ai-snake-oil-what-artificial-intelligence-can-do-what-it-can-t-and-how-to-tell-the-difference-arvind-narayanan/21324674
One of the weirder and worst side-effects of the AI hype bubble is that it has revived the belief that it's somehow possible for giant platforms to monitor all their users' speech and remove "harmful" speech. We've tried this for years, and when humans do it, it always ends with disfavored groups being censored, while dedicated trolls, harassers and monsters evade punishment:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/como-is-infosec/
AI hype has led policy-makers to believe that we can deputize online services to spy on all their customers and block the bad ones without falling into this trap. Canada is on the verge of adopting Bill C-63, a "harmful content" regulation modeled on examples from the UK and Australia.
Writing on his blog, Canadian lawyer/activist/journalist Dimitri Lascaris describes the dire speech implications for C-63:
https://dimitrilascaris.org/2024/04/08/trudeaus-online-harms-bill-threatens-free-speech/
It's an excellent legal breakdown of the bill's provisions, but also a excellent analysis of how those provisions are likely to play out in the lives of Canadians, especially those advocating against genocide and taking other positions the that oppose the agenda of the government of the day.
Even if you like the Trudeau government and its policies, these powers will accrue to every Canadian government, including the presumptive (and inevitably, totally unhinged) near-future Conservative majority government of Pierre Poilievre.
It's been ten years since Martin Gilens and Benjamin I Page published their paper that concluded that governments make policies that are popular among elites, no matter how unpopular they are among the public:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
Now, this is obviously depressing, but when you see it in action, it's kind of wild. The Biden administration has declared war on junk fees, from "resort fees" charged by hotels to the dozens of line-items added to your plane ticket, rental car, or even your rent check. In response, Republican politicians are climbing to their rear haunches and, using their actual human mouths, defending junk fees:
https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-12-republicans-objectively-pro-junk-fee/
Congressional Republicans are hell-bent on destroying the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's $8 cap on credit-card late-fees. Trump's presumptive running-mate Tim Scott is making this a campaign plank: "Vote for me and I will protect your credit-card company's right to screw you on fees!" He boasts about the lobbyists who asked him to take this position: champions of the public interest from the Consumer Bankers Association to the US Chamber of Commerce.
Banks stand to lose $10b/year from this rule (which means Americans stand to gain $10b/year from this rule). What's more, Scott's attempt to kill the rule is doomed to fail – there's just no procedural way it will fly. As David Dayen writes, "Not only does this vote put Republicans on the spot over junk fees, it’s a doomed vote, completely initiated by their own possible VP nominee."
This is an hilarious own-goal, one that only brings attention to a largely ignored – but extremely good – aspect of the Biden administration. As Adam Green of Bold Progressives told Dayen, "What’s been missing is opponents smoking themselves out and raising the volume of this fight so the public knows who is on their side."
The CFPB is a major bright spot in the Biden administration's record. They're doing all kind of innovative things, like making it easy for you to figure out which bank will give you the best deal and then letting you transfer your account and all its associated data, records and payments with a single click:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights
And now, CFPB chair Rohit Chopra has given a speech laying out the agency's plan to outlaw data-brokers:
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/prepared-remarks-of-cfpb-director-rohit-chopra-at-the-white-house-on-data-protection-and-national-security/
Yes, this is some good news! There is, in fact, good news in the world, bright spots amidst all the misery and terror. One of those bright spots? Labor.
Unions are back, baby. Not only do the vast majority of Americans favor unions, not only are new shops being unionized at rates not seen in generations, but also the largest unions are undergoing revolutions, with control being wrestled away from corrupt union bosses and given to the rank-and-file.
Many of us have heard about the high-profile victories to take back the UAW and Teamsters, but I hadn't heard about the internal struggles at the United Food and Commercial Workers, not until I read Hamilton Nolan's gripping account for In These Times:
https://inthesetimes.com/article/revolt-aisle-5-ufcw-grocery-workers-union
Nolan profiles Faye Guenther, president of UFCW Local 3000 and her successful and effective fight to bring a militant spirit back to the union, which represents a million grocery workers. Nolan describes the fight as "every bit as dramatic as any episode of Game of Thrones," and he's not wrong. This is an inspiring tale of working people taking power away from scumbag monopoly bosses and sellout fatcat leaders – and, in so doing, creating a institution that gets better wages, better working conditions, and a better economy, by helping to block giant grocery mergers like Kroger/Albertsons.
I like to end these linkdumps on an up note, so it feels weird to be closing out with an obituary, but I'd argue that any celebration of the long life and many accomplishments of my friend and mentor Anne Innis Dagg is an "up note."
I last wrote about Anne in 2020, on the release of a documentary about her work, "The Woman Who Loved Giraffes":
https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg
As you might have guessed from the title of that doc, Anne was a biologist. She was the first woman scientist to do field-work on giraffes, and that work was so brilliant and fascinating that it kicked off the modern field of giraffology, which remains a woman-dominated specialty thanks to her tireless mentoring and support for the scientists that followed her.
Anne was also the world's most fearsome slayer of junk-science "evolutionary psychology," in which "scientists" invent unfalsifiable just-so stories that prove that some odious human characteristic is actually "natural" because it can be found somewhere in the animal kingdom (i.e., "Darling, please, it's not my fault that I'm fucking my grad students, it's the bonobos!").
Anne wrote a classic – and sadly out of print – book about this that I absolutely adore, not least for having one of the best titles I've ever encountered: "Love of Shopping" Is Not a Gene:
https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/04/love-of-shopping-is-not-a-gene-exposing-junk-science-and-ideology-in-darwinian-psychology/
Anne was my advisor at the University of Waterloo, an institution that denied her tenure for fifty years, despite a brilliant academic career that rivaled that of her storied father, Harold Innis ("the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan"). The fact that Waterloo never recognized Anne is doubly shameful when you consider that she was awarded the Order of Canada:
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/queen-of-giraffes-among-new-order-of-canada-recipients-with-global-influence
Anne lived a brilliant live, struggling through adversity, never compromising on her principles, inspiring a vast number of students and colleagues. She lived to ninety one, and died earlier this month. Her ashes will be spread "on the breeding grounds of her beloved giraffes" in South Africa this summer:
https://obituaries.therecord.com/obituary/anne-innis-dagg-1089534658
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/13/goulash/#material-misstatement
Image: Valeva1010 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hungarian_Goulash_Recipe.png
CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
#pluralistic#linkdump#linkdumps#junk fees#fcc#ai#ai hype#labor#unions#hamilton nolan#history#cfpb#privacy#online harms#ai snake oil#anne dagg#anne innis dagg#obits#rip#mobile#net neutrality#5g
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