Komunitas
aussie.zone
This is one area where Apple has it pretty right. A Mac will do somethings when ‘asleep’ like download emails and texts. It also can broadcast its location if the ‘Find Me’ function is on. If it’s plugged into power then backups will also run, and background app updates will happen. It does this in a low power mode, so it won’t get hot enough to need fans. It’s worked flawlessly for 20 years. Meanwhile all our PCs are set to ‘never sleep’ and just get shutdown when not in use. I never trust a PC laptop to wake successfully from sleep just by closing the lid.
Komunitas
lemy.lol
I’ve chosen an outrageous option and just started buying books from used book stores, scanning library books and downloading some to my jellyfin. If I can’t trust the internet I’m just getting off it. If I couldn’t trust a restaurant to not give me food poisoning I’d stop going.
Komunitas
lemmy.world
Short answer: no, there’s not a way to check easily. Long answer: don’t download form untrusted sources, if the crack is fully published on GitHub you can trust it more easily if the code is freely available and vetted by people who know what to look for.
Komunitas
beehaw.org
For personal reference and for the lazy (i think it’s complete, did it in a hurry in a break): Notion & Google Docs Alternatives: Capacities, Fibery, Tana, Nuclino Zoom Alternatives: Whereby, Jitsi Meet, Senfcall, Vowel Slack Alternatives: Mattermost, Element (Matrix), Rocket.Chat Gmail & Google Calendar Alternatives: Proton Mail, Tutanota, Mailbox.org, Infomaniak Notes & Markdown Docs: Anytype, Obsidian, SiYuan Task & Project Management: Fibery, Nuclino I note that a good portion of these are commercial products, frankly I’d trust MUCH more a FOSS product than a commercial one after so damn many over the years have betrayed us all in the search for profit, if you’re gonna migrate to something you may as well go for the FOSS ones that are less in danger of enshittification (not a guarantee but far less of a chance since a fork kills all the walls around a walled garden pretty quickly), even if the FOSS product is not as polished.
Komunitas
infosec.pub
I recently switched to Linux after a lifetime with Windows. Last night I went to install a backup program on my media server but it couldn’t see the destination drive. I downloaded a partition manager and it crashed trying to load the external drive. DDG’d the issue, but I couldn’t find a clear cause/effect that applied to me. So I downloaded a different partition manager and backup program, and they worked right out of the box. Turns out the non-working apps were written for Gnome and the working apps were written for KDE, (which is my desktop environment). It was a very frustrating half hour, but it pales in comparison to the time I’ve spent troubleshooting (storage) driver issues in Windows. The point I’m making is, Linux isn’t really that hard to learn, it’s just unfamiliar and therefore scary. Getting past your fear unlocks a whole new world of wonder and possibilities! 🐧
Komunitas
sh.itjust.works
The more interesting question is, how many downloads do they get? So without those numbers, I see this as largely FUD. It doesn’t seem like trusted repos are getting infiltrated, so this sounds like a nothing burger. It’s good that Docker removed them, but without actual evidence of harm, it just seems cosmetic. As of this writing, I saw one comment: I get all kinds flack for not using docker containers and this is why I don’t. 20% is 1 in 5 containers, that cannot be trusted. I have no desire to to build my own Docker containers. I would much rather spin up a VM. CPU, RAM and disk space are cheap these days. - Throwdown This entirely misses the point of Docker. Yeah, 1 in 5 containers have malware, but how likely are you to be mislead into using one of those containers? I only pull containers based on some official project. For example, if I want to host nextcloud, there’s an “official” image for that. For CI, I generally use images from “official” sources (e.g. this one from Rust for Rust projects). Then again, I’m a developer, but I don’t see anything here about Docker itself being a problem, and the vast majority of users will probably just follow links from some blog to accomplish some task, they won’t be downloading random images from the Docker hub…
Komunitas
sh.itjust.works
not OC: this comment written by [email protected] It’s a [16 minute] video with many points and better if you watch it. However, here’s a break down of key points, made to be as simple as possible - there’s a lot more technical stuff, but I’ll try to keep it concise and less technical. This is probably about a 10 minute read if these concepts are not familiar to you: Google owns Chrome (not Chromium), and they dominate the market ever since they won the internet browser wars. As an amoral corporation (not evil, simply lacking morals), their business runs on advertisements. They’re revealing a new feature called Manifest v3 which is a locked down version of the browser that’s built around what they feel is security and trust. Under their proposal for Manivest v3, your browser will have to be “verified” in an attempt to keep you “safe”. Are you a human or a bot? They’re making a more trusted internet with trusted software. Companies like Netflix, news web sites, etc. will eat this up and implement the proper protocols to use Manifest v3. To visit your bank’s web site which has this protocol, you’ll need to use Chrome’s browser. Using Chrome’s browser, you’ll need to authenticate yourself and become a “trusted” user. With this enabled, you can then visit your bank’s web site. If you use an alternative browser that isn’t approved, you won’t be able to use that web site. Eventually other corporations will implement these protocols, too, and you’ll be locked out from participating in the internet. Google, an ad company, gets to control advertisements better, gets to learn more about their users, and now gets to mark them as “trusted”. In other words, you get the North Korean version of the internet, “Mommy and Daddy’s Safe and Approved Internet”. Meanwhile, North Korea and Mom/Dad get to spy on you, see what you’re up to, monitor you, control you, and shape you. The benefit is they also make money off you by selling the information they learn about you. Why is this bad: It’s censorship. It’s like your mom and dad grabbing your phone, computer, enabling severe parental controls, giving it back to you, and they get to see and approve what you’re allowed to do and say at any time. Apply that same protocol to your money, too. Want to send money through the internet using PayPal? Even more censorship. Want to watch Netflix? Your parents lock it down so only certain things can be watched, at certain times, and certainly under their permission. It buries competition and makes Google even more of a monopoly. We already know Google Search is bad (advertisements, phishing web sites, auto-generated content web sites are always the first results in Google. Digital Rights Management. Just a bit north of 20 years ago, when you purchased a digital product, you could own it. Streaming didn’t exist. In an age where “buying” no longer means “owning”, this new protocol will further enforce DRM. Pay for Netflix and want to watch it? You’ll have to be a Trusted User that uses Chrome. Bought a new video game you’re excited to play on Steam? You’ll need to be a Trusted User. Don’t want to stream music through Spotify and instead use something like Bandcamp? To make a purchase at Bandcamp, you’ll need to be a Trusted User. Don’t want to buy something through Bandcamp and instead just download what you already paid for? You guessed right - you’ll need to be a trusted user to even login and reach your downloads. Don’t forget your downloads are hosted on servers that are run by Google and Amazon - you’ll have to be a trusted user in order to download from that server. Can I use Firefox and stop using any Chromium browser Most browsers are Chromium: Chrome, Brave, Ungoogled Chromium to name a few. They will all eventually implement Manifest v3, and if they don’t, they will disappear. Firefox is not Chromium, but think about how many users use Firefox now. Google Chrome has the overwhelming market share and has captured users into their platform. Because the majority of users use Chrome, corporations have to evolve to adopt Manifest v3: banking web sites, governments, job applications, benefits, healthcare, personal emergency, etc. All of these will be forced to adopt it because that’s where the users are, and Google will force corporations to participate. After all, banking web sites will face less downtime through Manifest v3, because bots won’t be able to spam them and try to get in. Netflix will have to spend less money on security, because only trusted users will be able to even reach Netflix. Your “free” email service through Gmail now stops all spam because it only accepts incoming messages from trusted users. Of course everyone will adopt it - Google is safe, secure, and trusted. And best of all it’s “free”! If you use Firefox now and continue to use it, you’ll be safe for several years. For now. What can we do? Right now, you can opt out of using Chrome by using Firefox and other decentralized tools. In the not too distant future, there’s not much that you can do. Educating users to switch from Chrome, use Linux, use stock Android (e.g., Graphene OS), will not help. Eventually, the users that use Firefox, Linux, stock de-googled Android will get locked out. An average user isn’t going to invest their time to learn these platforms. They’ll stick with what works: “I can login to Chrome and watch my Netflix and pay my bills. You’re telling me that this Linux thing doesn’t let me do that? Screw that, I’ll use Chrome OS - at least my shit works! What’s wrong with these Linux developers, they can’t get anything right! They should take a lesson from Google and fix their shit.” Write your politicians and hope that some governments will help restrict this rollout. Keep in mind though that some version of this will get passed and approved. Also don’t forget that corrupt regulators and politicians are captured and owned by corporations. This will get passed, there’s no doubt about it. What will happen 20 years from now? Humans have tenacity. You can only frustrate humans so much before they break. Take away too many of their freedoms, impose many restrictions, and eventually they will break. The trick for all of time, seen throughout history by all our overlords, kings, emperors, etc. is to find a careful balance. Take away “just enough” freedoms. Give them “just enough”. Work them until they’re tired, but don’t let them break. And of course, give them a few handouts here and there, but not enough to make their lives easy. Manifest v3 (or its derivative) will be implemented. There’s no doubt about that at all. The 99% of the population will continue to use these services because they want to be able to participate: They have to pay bills, access money, access healthcare, use government systems, do education, have entertainment, etc. The 99% will continue to use this because they won’t care. So long as they can be happy enough, they will persist. Eventually, an infinitesimally small minority will be affected by something. Something will break and cause them to snap, and they will do the only thing that an individual human can do: opt out. That small minority will leave, opt out, and refuse to participate in the system. Those clusters will grow at an extremely small rate because they’re able to recognize the whole picture and see that personal freedoms are so restricted. They’ll remember their history and learn from it. Enter decentralization - the removal of power from centralized powers. Those who recognize decentralization will build new platforms, and others will eventually follow. This is why the Fediverse and Bitcoin exist. They recognize the problem of centralization and are full of users who decided to opt out. The Fediverse adoption exploded with the 2023 Reddit API problem, and the constant Twitter issues under Elon Musk. Bitcoin happened in 2009 out of anger from the 2008 global financial crisis when “Satoshi Nakomoto” decided to build a new economy of money that had “rules, but without rulers”. What happens 20+ years from now? In 30 years when more of the population realizes their freedoms are under attack, they’ll consult the ones who left 10 years previously. In 40 years, you might have choice. There may be a “new Firefox” that pops up after the old Firefox was wiped out 10 years ago, and let’s you use the internet, your IP, and your content in a different way. The trick is to train yourself to see the big picture. You’ll never defeat your overlords - they’re behind tall walls and they control the money. However, you can opt out. You can refuse to participate. But by doing so, remember that you will be locked out. That’s not an easy choice to make. But those users that do opt out, they will be the ones that were pushed too far. This is why refugees leave their homes - they just want to be safe, they want to be alright, they want their freedom from their opressors. We will have “Google Internet” (Manifest v3) refugees one day not OC: excellent original comment here from https://programming.dev/comment/1256612 based on https://programming.dev/post/865990 more by [email protected] here and here Louis Rossman video alt sites https://onion.tube/watch?v=0i0Ho-x7s_U https://inv.zzls.xyz/watch?v=0i0Ho-x7s_U https://invidious.io.lol/watch?v=0i0Ho-x7s_U https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=0i0Ho-x7s_U https://inv.citw.lgbt/watch?v=0i0Ho-x7s_U
Komunitas
lemmy.world
It doesn’t help that they are using facebook-like tactics to try and force/coerce you to download and use their app. I recently was trying to find help getting through a difficult part of a game. Reddit seemed to be where most of the good user discussions were at. Reddit’s mobile page would give me a pop-up stating that this community was not “trusted” and that I need to view on the app or go to the Reddit front page. There was no option to ignore. Trying to close the pop-up would just send me to the front page. Luckily, I know about old.reddit. That’s going to go away eventually though.
Komunitas
lemmy.world
Ship based piracy absolutely. Digital piracy: I remember Kazaa and LimeWire where you hoped the thing you were downloading for hours/days wasn’t a virus or a joke meme making fun of you for trusting someone. Getting an entire album of mp3s that were actually the band you hoped for and not missing any songs was a minor miracle. Now there are dozens of automated tools that talk to each other. I type the name of the movie into a search bar, look through a list of posters and click the ‘request’ button. It get’s torrented in the background and then shows up on my Plex server. If I paid for a usenet group all that could happen an order of magnitude faster. Search in one place, watch in one place. It’s not quite as instant as streaming, but at this point I have such a back catalogue to work through that that isn’t really an issue.
Komunitas
lemmygrad.ml
wake up open twitter to catch up see deepseek did it again (and as a reminder, Deepseek-r1 only came out in January so it’s been less than 12 months since their last bombshell) One more graph: What this all means Traditional AI models are trained to be “rewarded” for a correct final answer. Get the expected answer, win points, be incentivized to get the answer more often. This has a major flaw: a correct answer does not guarantee correct reasoning. A model can guess, use a shortcut, or even have flawed logic but still output the right answer. This approach completely fails for tasks like theorem proving, where the process is the product. DeepSeekMath-V2 tackles this with a novel self-verifying reasoning framework: the Generator: One part of the model generates mathematical proofs and solutions. the Verifier: Another part acts as the critic, checking every step of the reasoning for logical rigor and correctness The Loop: If the verifier finds a flaw, it provides feedback, and the generator revises the proof. This creates a co-evolution cycle where both components push each other to become smarter This new approach allows the model to set record-breaking performance. As you can see from the charts above, it scores second-place on ProofBench-Advanced, just behind Gemini. But Gemini isn’t open-source, Deepseekmath-V2 is. The model weights are available on Huggingface under an Apache 2.0 license: https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-Math-V2. This means researchers, developers, and enthusiasts around the world can download, study, and build upon this model right now. They can fine-tune or change the model to fit their needs and research, which promises a lot of exciting math discoveries happening soon - I predict (on no basis mind you) that this will help solve computing problems to start with, either practical or theoretical. Beyond just the math, the self-verification mechanism is a crucial step towards building AI systems whose reasoning we can trust, which is vital for applications such as scientific research, formal verification, and safety-critical systems. It also proves that ‘verification-driven’ training is a viable and powerful alternative to the ‘answer-driven’ method used to this day.
Komunitas
ibbit.at
Photo by Tyler Fulk Ezra Klein had a classic column in the New York Times today where he advertises in his title, “America’s Housing Crisis, in One Chart.” The chart he highlights — new housing units per capita — is informative, but not quite in the way he says. The chart shows the cyclical ups and downs in the housing market and then a massive plunge in construction following the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007-2008. Construction falls to one-third the long period average by 2010. It gradually creeped up so that it was 75 percent of the long period average by the pandemic. It rose somewhat further after the start of the pandemic, fueled by low interest rates and increased demand. Klein looks at his chart and sees massive underbuilding of housing which he attributes primarily to excessive government restrictions on building, such as zoning and outdated safety requirements. I look at his chart and see the lasting devastation to the housing market that resulted from letting a bubble grow unchecked in the first decade of this century. Asset Bubbles Are Bad News While some of us were trying to warn of the risks of the bubble; the big names in economics (e.g., Alan Greenspan and Larry Summers) were singing the praises of innovative financing and the resulting increase in homeownership. When the bubble burst, not only did we get a financial crisis and the worst recession since the Great Depression; we also got long-lasting damage to the housing market that is still being felt today in the form of higher house sale prices and rents. The reason for highlighting the impact of the bubble and its bursting, rather than the problems cited by Klein, is we need to have a sense of relative importance. Restrictive zoning is definitely a problem, and we should look at regulatory constraints, especially on manufactured housing, that may needlessly limit supply and push up prices. But we had restrictive zoning and needless regulations before 2008 and still managed to build plenty of housing. That suggests that these are not the main obstacles to more construction. The Collapsed Bubble Explains the Housing Construction Shortfall In fact, if we look at Klein’s chart, it seems that most of the shortfall in housing, which he and others put at between 2-5 million units, was the result of the plunge in construction immediately after the collapse. Using 1.5 million units a year as a target for balancing the market (people are welcome to use a higher or lower one), we fell 6.4 million units short of needed construction levels in the decade from 2008-2017. Construction has continued to climb upward in subsequent years so that in 2024 we were at 1.6 million completed units, somewhat above the 1.5 million target level used above. Construction will fall this year and next, as the rise in interest rates slowed starts, which will mean fewer completions in 2026. This history doesn’t change the fact that housing costs too much and we need more construction, but it suggests that the problems may not be as deeply entrenched as Klein’s analysis implies. Rents and house sale prices were just moderately outpacing inflation until the pandemic. When COVID-19 hit, the pandemic relief packages put money in people’s pockets; at the same time, the opportunity to work remotely expanded enormously. This both meant that people were saving money on commuting costs — which they could spend on housing — and that they needed more room at home to accommodate an office. Those factors, together with low interest rates, led to a buying boom in 2021-22, and a surge in house sale prices. The Case-Shiller house price index rose by more than 50 percent in the five years from February 2020 to February 2025. Rents also surged, but not quite as dramatically. Price and Rents Are Now Falling in Real Terms But this was a one-time effect. With the number of people working remotely having stabilized, there is no longer a big surge in demand. The weakening economy also helps on this one. House sale prices have actually taken a modest downward turn since February, falling by almost 1.0 percent as of August. That translates into a 2.5 percent real decline, adjusting for inflation. It is likely this decline will continue and perhaps accelerate somewhat. (I am not anticipating the sort of collapse we saw in the 2008-2010 period, since homeowners are not heavily leveraged and in need of selling.) There is also evidence that rents are falling, certainly in real terms and possibly also in nominal terms. The rent indexes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) have a serious lag, reflecting long-term leases, but indexes that measure rents on units that come on the market are showing flat or declining prices. This is also the case with the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ New Tenant Rent Index, which uses the CPI methodology, but only on units that come on the market. This means that the problem of high housing costs may be correcting itself, but it would be good to hasten this process. Telling people that they have to wait three or four years for an apartment or house to become affordable is not a good story and certainly not good politics. Reviewing safety regulations are definitely a good place to start. I’m less convinced on zoning. As much as it would be desirable to have denser housing in many areas, the politics on zoning are difficult, as Klein acknowledges. The story also is rarely unambiguous. I am sure I will never be able to afford to live in San Francisco, but I still think that when I visit the city it is really neat to walk through neighborhoods filled with houses and small apartment buildings, constructed in the early part of the last century. This is not just a personal preference. San Francisco has a huge tourism industry, as does New York and Paris, and many other cities that have preserved a large portion of their past. It would be wrong to dismiss this preservation as simply selfish NIMBYism. So, I would encourage efforts to reform zoning with the caution not to expect too much from them. (I will say that my friend Jared Bernstein’s proposal for a rent subsidy for high-cost cities taking steps to increase construction, which is endorsed by Klein, is almost certainly a political non-starter. It would imply transferring money from relatively poor red areas to relatively wealthy blue areas.) Other Schemes I would also throw in a few other ideas that could provide some modest short-term help. A progressive property tax that would, for example, have a higher marginal tax rate on homes that sell for more than twice the median in an area, would provide incentive for rich people to take up less space. It also has the advantage that assessed valuations are already on the books, so it requires no new administrative structure. The same is true for vacant property taxes. This would provide disincentive for leaving units vacant. San Francisco and some other cities have already tried this policy. Even if this tax just leads many property owners to lie, it still raises the costs for them to have a vacant unit. Incentives for converting office space to residential are also a good policy. Some office buildings are less well-suited for conversion than others. This means we want offices to move from the places that are easy to convert to the ones that are difficult. Government can help here. And moderate rent control can be useful, especially as a short-term solution. There is also evidence that increased concentration in the construction industry following the collapse of the housing bubble has reduced building. This suggests that anti-trust policy may have a role to play in bringing down housing costs. But the main point here is that the major shortage of housing the country faces now is not the result of zoning or regulatory obstacles but rather an overreaction to a collapsed bubble. Just as investors can be irrationally exuberant in driving a bubble, they also can be irrationally pessimistic in the wake of a collapse. It also didn’t help that the weak labor market coming out of the Great Recession meant that tens of millions of people didn’t have the regular income they needed to secure a mortgage. Also, millions had their credit ruined by a foreclosure after the crash. All of this should just remind us that asset bubbles are not fun, at least not after they burst. We should remember this when we hear people singing the praises of AI. The post Ezra Klein Needs to Look More Closely at His Housing Chart appeared first on CounterPunch.org. From CounterPunch.org via this RSS feed
Komunitas
ibbit.at
It’s been twenty-three years since the day Phoenix was released, the web browser that eventually became Firefox. I downloaded it on the first day and installed it on my trusty HP Omnibook 800 laptop, and until this year I’ve used it ever since. Yet after all this time, I’m ready to abandon it for another browser. In the previous article in this series I went into my concerns over the direction being taken by Mozilla with respect to their inclusion of AI features and my worries about privacy in Firefox, and I explained why a plurality of browser engines is important for the Web. Now it’s time to follow me on my search for a replacement, and you may be surprised by one aspect of my eventual choice. Where Do I Go From Here? It’s Hackaday, in Ladybird! (Ooof, that font.) Happily for my own purposes, there are a range of Firefox alternatives which fulfill my browser needs without AI cruft and while allowing me to be a little more at peace with my data security and privacy. There’s Chromium of course even if it’s still way too close to Google for my liking, and there are a host of open-source WebKit and Blink based browsers too numerous to name here. In the Gecko world that should be an easier jump for a Firefox escapee there are also several choices, for example LibreWolf, and Waterfox. In terms of other browser engines there’s the extremely promising but still early in development Ladybird, and the more mature Servo, which though it is available as a no-frills browser, bills itself as an embedded browser engine. I have not considered some other projects that are either lightweight browser engines, or ones not under significant active development. It’s Hackaday, in Servo! Over this summer and autumn then I have tried a huge number of different browsers. Every month or so I build the latest Ladybird and Servo; while I am hugely pleased to see progress they’re both still too buggy for my purposes. Servo is lightning-fast but sometimes likes to get stuck in mobile view, while Ladybird is really showing what it’s going to be but remains for now slow-as-treacle. These are ones to watch, and support. I gave LibreWolf and Waterfox the most attention over the summer, both of which after the experience I’d describe as like Firefox but with mildly annoying bugs. The inability to video conference reliably is a show-stopper in my line of work, and since my eyesight is no longer what it once was I like my browsers to remember when I have zoomed in on a tab. Meanwhile Waterfox on Android is a great mobile browser, right up until it needs to open a link in another app, and fails. I’m used to the quirks of open-source software after 30+ years experimenting with Linux, but when it comes to productivity I can’t let my software disrupt the flow of Hackaday articles. The Unexpected Choice It’s Hackaday, in Vivaldi! It might surprise you after all this open-source enthusiasm then, to see the browser I’ve ended up comfortable with. Vivaldi may be driven by the open-source Blink engine from Chromium and Chrome, but its proprietary front end doesn’t have an open-source licence. It’s freeware, or free-as-in-beer, and I think the only such software I use. Why, I hear you ask? It’s an effort to produce a browser like Opera used to be in the old days, it’s European which is a significant consideration when it comes to data protection law, and it has (so far) maintained a commitment to privacy while not being evil in the Google motto sense. It’s quick, I like its interface once the garish coloured default theme has been turned off, and above all, it Just Works. I have my browser back, and I can get on with writing. Should they turn evil I can dump them without a second thought, and hope by then Ladybird has matured enough to suit my needs. It may not be a trend many of us particularly like, but here in 2025 there’s a sense that the browser has reduced our computers almost to the status of a terminal. It’s thus perhaps the most important piece of software on the device, and in that light I hope you can understand some of the concerns levelled in this series. If you’re reading this from Firefox HQ I’d implore you to follow my advice and go back to what made Firefox so great back in the day, but for the rest of you I’d like to canvass your views on my choice of a worthy replacement. As always, the comments are waiting. From Blog – Hackaday via this RSS feed
Komunitas
ibbit.at
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 24, 2025 In 2010, I wrote a book called War Is A Lie, with an updated edition in 2016. If I’m lucky and find time — and maybe if they ease up on the wars for a little while — I’ll get a new version out in 2026. But I can already apply the basic idea of the book to the threatened war on Venezuela. The argument in the book is, of course, not that wars aren’t real, but rather that nothing that is commonly said to justify them is true. The book begins thus: “Not a single thing that we commonly believe about wars that helps keep them around is true. Wars cannot be good or glorious. Nor can they be justified as a means of achieving peace or anything else of value. The reasons given for wars, before, during, and after them (often three very different sets of reasons for the same war) are all false. It is common to imagine that, because we’d never go to war without a good reason, having gone to war, we simply must have a good reason. This needs to be reversed. Because there can be no good reason for war, having gone to war, we are participating in a lie.” If the U.S. launches a newly escalated war against Venezuela, and someday it ends, the war may turn out to have been a futile attempt to bring democracy to the ungrateful and incapable people of Venezuela who, we will be told, simply didn’t want it. Or — this being Trump bizarro land, with honesty bursting out in odd moments — perhaps we’ll just be told that the war was a theft of oil. If Russia has ultimately joined the war (the worst is always possible), then of course Russia will have started it — if anyone is left alive to care. But that’s all for an unpredictable future. Before the end of the war, if an indefinite occupation develops because Venezuela shockingly behaves like every other invaded place on Earth ever and fights back, then until that occupation ends, the reasons to keep the war going may include the solemn need to get more U.S. troops killed in support of those already killed, or various tales about drugs and democracy, or (if a Democrat has ascended the throne in the Trump Ballroom) the Rules Based Order, or (if one hasn’t) perhaps just old-is-new-again straight-up racism. But that’s all for after a new war has been started. What about the things we are being told right now to try to get a war started (which will likely mostly be forgotten in the future)? Well, first of all, what we’re being told is not working. Polling shows the U.S. public strongly opposed to a war on Venezuela. That fact will vanish from future tellings whether the war happens or not. Consider, though, what it says about the need to bring democracy to Venezuela through a war opposed by the people whose government is launching it. To make sense of the term “democracy” in U.S. foreign policy, it simply has to be understood as “U.S. power.” There have been misleading polls finding majority support for blowing up boats supposedly full of drugs and arrived in the United States with those drugs. Those polls have been used to provide cover for murdering everyone aboard boats that were actually found over a thousand miles away from the United States. In propaganda terms, the purpose of murdering those boatloads of people has perhaps included the unsuccessful effort to gain support for a wider war, but has certainly included the successful effort to get all decent people to focus on asking and answering the wrong questions. Murder is illegal. War is illegal. Threatening war is illegal. These basic facts are obscured when the question becomes “Does Iraq have WMDs?” or — in this case — questions like these: “Is blowing up boats part of a war?” or“Does the drug cartel invented by the CIA really exist?” or“What obscure arguments have Trump’s lawyers used to make the murders part of a war and therefore legal (even though war is not legal) while at the same time making those murders neither part of a war nor even hostile so that the War Powers Resolution does not apply?” We do not need to dignify such questions with our attention. Murder is illegal whether or not part of a war. It would be illegal even if Congress were to pass a resolution against it. It is illegal even though the Senate has voted down a resolution against it, and even though House Speaker Mike Johnson is illegally refusing to hold a vote. The exceptionally blatant illegality of attacking Venezuela, even in the eyes of many supporters of militarism in general, is likely why the head of Southern Command quit last month. The growing discussion of the responsibility to disobey illegal orders is not unrelated to this threatened war. The UK has reportedly stopped sharing information with the United States that could be used to facilitate this war. Imagine how far over the line you have to be for that to have happened. A New York Times columnist tells us that the United States should overthrow the Venezuelan government because it is allied with enemies of the United States and because it is cruel to the Venezuelan public. Either of these arguments would allow almost any country to attack various other countries. The notion that Russia, China, and Iran — either separately or together — are trying to gain a “foothold” in a part of the world properly belonging to the United States from which to launch their attack on Washington may be an embarrassingly absurd projection, but even if it were plausible, it wouldn’t justify attacking Venezuela and driving most of the rest of Latin America into closer alliances with those designated enemies. The illegal U.S. sanctions that have been killing large numbers of Venezuelans are of course at the root of much of the suffering for which U.S. columnists like to blame the Venezuelan government. In years gone by, the Nobel Peace Prize went a couple of times to Iranian opponents of the Iranian government as it was in the crosshairs of the Pentagon, but those laureates would criticize the Iranian government and quickly make clear that they didn’t want their country bombed, as that would be even worse. This year, the prize went to a Venezuelan who wants her country starved and invaded. This is used to generate the lie that Venezuelans are willing to be attacked in order to free them from their government. If you are tempted to believe such madness, think about how frustrated you are with the U.S. government, and then ask yourself whether you’d like your house bombed. Of course the notion of “overthrow” is supposed to suggest something quick and easy, an operation during which most people’s houses are spared. But quick and easy usually turns into endless and catastrophic. It’s a tragedy that the Iraq Syndrome is wearing off, that people are forgetting how actual wars relate to pre-war sales pitches. Coups tend not to be followed by peace so much as by endless killing and destruction. It’s worth bearing in mind that overthrowing a government is a crime, and the opposite of law enforcement, because we have also been hearing a lot about those murdered being criminals. Trump recently suggested that it was all right for Saudi Arabia to murder a U.S. journalist because the journalist was “controversial.” Wars tend to be marketed with a stronger claim than that, namely one of criminality. More than that, wars are usually marketed as a defense against aggression by the other side. The Venezuelan government has no difficulty marketing its side of the looming war in those terms. Trump, on the other hand, has to sell this war as a defense against an “invasion” by drug dealers or simply by the wrong sort of people. But that’s not a simple sell, possibly not even to the most sadistic “tough-on-crime” racist xenophobe, because speaking Spanish or even selling drugs is not exactly the same as mass murder and destruction, as well as because Venezuelan immigrants are mostly fleeing U.S. sanctions, a war will cause a huge increase in immigration, and the Venezuelan children blown to pieces in this “defensive” war will be seen on social media — horrors that will seem to virtually everyone worse than speaking with an accent. Simply labeling an imaginary drug cartel as a “terrorist” organization — in an act that actually terrifies people in Venezuela — lacks substance and imagery. Hard as that sell is, the war pitch to contemporary liberal war fans usually goes even further than that. Usually a claim is made that each war is a last resort, that everything other than war has been exhaustively attempted first. This is always a nonsensical claim, as there are always more things to try, but Trump’s long buildup works against him here, since he hasn’t been trying anything other than threatening war, and even a child could tell you that all he would need to do to avoid the war he is threatening is to not wage it. If all the lies are not the real reason for the war, what is the real reason? Well, usually there are many, and they include such odd factors as where the oil is, Marco Rubio’s childhood, the weapons Lockheed Martin would like demonstrated, what Trump believes will boost his news coverage during the holidays, lust for power, sadism, etc. There’s usually not just one reason. There’s usually not a way to make “sense” of the reasons. The Table of Contents of War Is A Lie gives an idea of what the actual reasons are not: Wars Are Not Fought Against EvilWars Are Not Launched in DefenseWars Are Not Waged Out of GenerosityWars Are Not UnavoidableWarriors Are Not HeroesWar Makers Do Not Have Noble MotivesWars Are Not Prolonged for the Good of SoldiersWars Are Not Fought on BattlefieldsWars Are Not Won, and Are Not Ended By Enlarging ThemWar News Does Not Come From Disinterested ObserversWar Does Not Bring Security and Is Not SustainableWars Are Not LegalWars Cannot Be Both Planned and AvoidedWar Is Over If You Want It Please take a minute to sign this petition. I just discussed this topic on Santita Jackson’s show as did Adrienne Pine: The post War on Venezuela Is A Lie appeared first on World BEYOND War. From World BEYOND War via this RSS feed
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On Tuesday, in quick succession: The House passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act 427 to 1; and Hours later, the Senate passed the Act 100 to 0. The White House said that Trump would sign the bill when “it reaches his desk,” which should be Wednesday. Signing the bill will trigger a 30-day period for the DOJ to produce the Epstein files in a downloadable, searchable format. Each of those victories is contingent, but they are victories nonetheless. Progress is slow, until it isn’t. Tuesday was one of the days when years of effort came to fruition in hours. The victory is cause for a moment of reflection and celebration before we begin imagining the complications to come. Pat yourself on the back. Take a bow. Take a deep breath and relax, if only for a few hours. You deserve it. There is only one explanation for the rapid-fire developments on Tuesday relating to the Epstein files: Trump and his enablers can read polling data. Seventy-five percent (75%) of Americans support the release of all Epstein files. (An additional 13% support releasing some of the files.) It is rare for 88% of the American public to mostly agree on anything. And producing records that evidence the sex trafficking operation of a convicted felon is something that Americans can agree on. Each day Republicans delayed the release made Trump and his minions appear to be more complicit in covering up rich and powerful men who raped, trafficked, and abused girls and young women. That lesson will not be lost on the DOJ as it releases documents that redact the names of perpetrators in violation of the Act. That is a fight to come after we see the DOJ’s production. Let’s keep our powder dry. News outlets are not reporting the language of the Act’s exemption that permits the DOJ to withhold documents. The text is helpful in understanding the scope of the DOJ’s authority to withhold or redact documents. See the text of the Act’s exemption, which is set forth in the footnote below.1 After years of struggle, we are closer than ever to the release of the files. But until Trump and Bondi comply with the Act’s provisions, we must not relent! Protesters should continue to highlight the need for full disclosure. The American people are on the side of full transparency—an advantage that we should exploit to the fullest extent possible! Keep up the good work! A three-judge panel invalidates racially gerrymandered districts in Texas Tuesday also brought a stunning victory against the Texas legislature’s attempt to create racially gerrymandered districts that favor Trump. Over the summer, Trump ordered the Texas legislature to engage in mid-census gerrymandering to create five “safe” Republican seats in Congress. Texas complied in an ugly process in which Texas legislators made no effort to conceal their racial animus in creating new districts. On Tuesday, a three-judge panel ruled that Texas illegally used race to create five new districts and ordered that Texas revert to the congressional district lines that existed prior to the illegal gerrymander. In finding that the Texas legislature engaged in racial gerrymandering, the three-judge panel relied on a DOJ letter that was key to the redistricting process. In the letter, the DOJ did not express the need for partisan gerrymandering (which is legal), but instead raised concerns about the racial makeup of the targeted districts. See Chris Geinder, Law Dork (Substack), Court blocks Texas redistricting, finding it likely unconstitutional, with DOJ largely to blame. The three-judge panel voted 2 to 1 to invalidate the racially gerrymandered districts, with a Trump appointee voting in the majority. The majority noted that Governor Greg Abbott disclaimed partisan motives, but instead highlighted the role of race in creating the districts: When given an opportunity to publicly proclaim that his motivation for adding redistricting to the legislative agenda was solely to improve Republicans’ electoral prospects at President Trump’s request, the Governor denied any such motivation. Instead, the Governor expressly stated that his predominant motivation was racial: he “wanted to remove . . . coalition districts” and “provide more seats for Hispanics.” The fact that the racially reconfigured districts would happen to favor Republicans was, to paraphrase the Governor’s own words, just a fortuitous coincidence. Texas has already appealed the ruling to the US Supreme Court. Based on the Court’s current jurisprudence, it should uphold the ruling of the three-judge panel. There many moving parts here. The Supreme Court could reverse the ruling of the three-judge panel, saying that it occurs “too close” to the 2026 midterms. If the Supreme Court so rules, that rationale should also protect California’s newly created districts. There are other scenarios in which the Supreme Court could invalidate the Texas districts while leaving the California districts in place, which would mean that Trump’s “redistricting strategy” had backfired against him. That is a low probability outcome, but Trump is on a losing streak. Stay tuned! “Things happen.” Trump met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House on Tuesday. The post-meeting press conference in the Oval Office was a thing of ugliness. ABC White House correspondent Mary Bruce asked the question that was on everyone’s mind: “And your royal highness, the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9/11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust you, and the same to you, Mr. President?” Trump jumped in to answer before MBS could respond. Sounding like a mob boss commenting on someone who (allegedly) committed suicide by jumping through a sealed window on the 10th floor of an abandoned building, Trump commented on the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by saying, “Things happen.” To remove all doubt about his meaning, Trump said, “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about.” The “thing” that happened to Jamal Khashoggi was gruesome beyond telling. The details are summarized in this separate document, taken from the Wikipedia entry, Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi - Wikipedia. After saying that “things happen” to people who aren’t “liked,” Trump said that MBS “knew nothing” about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Trump’s statement contradicts the findings of his own CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, both of which concluded that Khashoggi’s killers were directed by MBS. See Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Assessing the Saudi Government’s Role in the Killing of Jamal Khashoggi. (“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.”) Trump now describes the man deemed to be responsible for Khashoggi’s killing as a “great guy.” See The New Republic, Trump Freaks Out That MBS Might Be Embarrassed by Khashoggi Question. Kudos to Mary Bruce for asking a tough question that needed to be asked. Trump’s attack on Bruce and ABC was reprehensible. Trump said: It’s not the question that I mind. It’s your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter. It’s the way you ask these questions. You start off with a man who’s highly respected, asking him an insubordinate question. Trump returned to ABC later in the press availability, saying I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong. And we have a great (FCC) commissioner, the chairman, who should look at that because I think when you come in and you’re 97% negative to Trump. And then Trump wins the election in a landslide. That means, obviously, your news is not credible. And you’re not credible as a reporter. Trump’s attack on Mary Bruce comes five days after Trump verbally attacked a female reporter during a press availability on Air Force One. The reporter, Catherine Lucey from Bloomberg News, asks Trump about the release of the Epstein files. In response, Trump thrusts his finger toward her face and says, “Quiet. Quiet Piggy.” See video embedded here: President Donald Trump Tells Female Reporter ‘Quiet, Piggy’ Trump’s attack on reporters, especially female reporters, is consistent with everything we know about his propensity for degrading and assaulting women. Coming on a day when Trump suggested that “things happen” to reporters who are “not liked,” the verbal attacks on reporters are threats that should be rebuked by every member of Congress, including Republicans. Trump’s lavish reception for Mohammed bin Salman and his eagerness to protect MBS from questions about his complicity in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi shamed America, once again. I look forward to the day when honorable men and women reestablish America as a force for good on the global stage. It cannot come soon enough! Concluding Thoughts The newsletter is a bit shorter this evening because I began to write it before attending the fundraiser for Latino Victory and Onward Together, featuring Heather Cox Richardson, Hillary Clinton, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. While I was at the event, the news cycle upended itself, so I rewrote most of the newsletter upon returning to our hotel room after the event. Ah, well! Such is the fate of news commentary in the Age of the Fifteen-Minute News Cycle. The event was fabulous for many reasons, but especially so because I was able to greet hundreds of readers! It is always uplifting and confidence-inspiring to meet readers who are committed to our common cause. Bless you all for the work you do, and for supporting the event! (A recording of the event will be available; details tomorrow.) It was a treat to see Heather Cox Richardson skillfully moderate a discussion between Hillary Clinton and Lin-Manuel Miranda. There were many memorable exchanges, but I was struck by the emphasis that HCR, HRC, and Lin-Manuel placed on viewing this moment through the lens of history. We are living through a difficult moment in our history. As a people, we have lived through moments more perilous for democracy and dangerous for Americans. That doesn’t lessen the seriousness of the challenges we face. But it should fill us with confidence that we can endure this moment of crisis, as our predecessors endured prior crises. Our task is to continue the fight long enough for the next generation to relieve us in the defense of democracy. If we can do that, we will honorably discharge our debt to those who delivered us safely to this moment with democracy intact. We can do that. We are doing that. The victories of the last two weeks should give us confidence that we can continue to do so. We won’t win every battle. We don’t need to. We need only win most of them, over time. That is the lesson that history teaches us: Abide. Endure. Do not quit. Talk to you tomorrow! Pro-democracy protest photos: Northridge, CA: On 11/16/25, Northridge Indivisible and the Northridge Patriots held a Raising Canes rally to raise awareness about cuts to Medicare, Medi-Cal, and Social Security. The Northridge Patriots are a group of senior citizens at The Village at Northridge, an assisted living facility. Participants’ ages ranged from 67 to nearly 100 years old, and then some younger people joined. Indivisible, San Jose, CA Charlotte, NC Many of us in Charlotte have been inspired by you all for months as we have grown our protest movement of weekly protests. We now protest at ~25 locations including three highway overpasses. With ICE/CBP newly arrived in Charlotte our protest crowds have grown, so that today we had 60 on the bridge. On Sunday we had 100+ where we normally have a couple dozen. Our Saturday “Signs of Fascism” walk was well received. National Cemetery, Cape Cod, MA Saturday, Nov 15. Cold. A battalion of volunteers bundled up while collecting grave flags. 77,000+ flags removed over the 5-acre hallowed grounds site. A solemn day. Daily Dose of Perspective The Pelican Nebula, undated from my files, taken from my backyard in Los Angeles, CA. Located 1,800 light-years from Earth in the Cygnus Constellation. 1 PROHIBITED GROUNDS FOR WITHHOLDING— (1) No record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary. © PERMITTED WITHHOLDINGS.— (1) The Attorney General may withhold or redact the segregable portions of records that— (A) contain personally identifiable information of victims or victims’ personal and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy; (B) depict or contain child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) as defined under 18 U.S.C. 2256 and prohibited under 18 U.S.C. 2252– 2252A; © would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution, provided that such withholding is NARROWLY TAILORED AND TEMPORARY; (D) depict or contain images of death, physical abuse, or injury of any person; or (E) contain information specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order. (2) All redactions must be accompanied by a written justification published in the Federal Register and submitted to Congress. (3) To the extent that any covered information would otherwise be redacted or withheld as classified information under this section, the Attorney General shall declassify that classified information to the maximum extent possible. [NOTE: The bolding and capitalization are mine, for emphasis.] From Today’s Edition Newsletter via this RSS feed
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As Donald Trump continues to ramp up his immigration raids and slash social programs, one theme is consistent through his press conferences and executive orders: class war. Not just the one enforced by ICE raids, mass kidnappings, and deportations, but one that he is aiming to invade and bomb Venezuela, Mexico, and now Colombia in the so-called “war on drugs.” These attacks on the working class are part of the same imperial system, and they must be opposed with equal force, organization, and clear politics. Trump’s recent remarks claiming that he is going to “take control” of Latin America under the pretext of fighting drug cartels are nothing new. These remarks echo a long and bloody history of U.S. intervention on the continent—one that stretches from Chile and Argentina to more recent efforts aimed at overthrowing Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. One does not need to fully agree with the governments of these countries to support peace or diplomacy and prevent bloodshed or death. While people in the U.S. face hunger, homelessness, and lack vital mental health services, instead of addressing these issues, our government is spending our tax dollars on war and occupation. It is not the fault of the governments of Latin America that the Trump administration is slashing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), cutting Medicaid, evicting people, and closing the Department of Education, among other cuts to social programs. These are direct actions by our own anti-worker government and system. Every time Washington claims it’s bringing “democracy” or “freedom” to Latin America, Africa, Asia, or the Middle East, it brings hunger, poverty, death, racism, and destruction. These invasions have overthrown democratically elected governments, supported dictators, and displaced millions of families, fueling the very migration crisis Trump now condemns. Latin America Under The Boot Of The U.S. Empire In recent years, Washington has funded multiple coups across our continent, aiming to replace elected presidents with Wall Street-friendly puppets and promote “color revolutions” in the region. From the 2009 coup in Honduras to the 2019 overthrow in Bolivia, the failed 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua, the 2022 Peruvian coup, and the repeated plots to invade Venezuela or assassinate democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. has continued to undermine democracy in Latin America under the guise of “freedom” and “human rights,” and now the “war on drugs.” But this pattern is nothing new. Since its creation, the United States has consistently interfered in Latin America’s internal affairs– through invasions, land grabs, and regime changes. From stealing half of Mexico’s territory to occupying Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Our continent has always fought to defend its sovereignty and independence from both European colonial powers and U.S. imperialism. As Eduardo Galeano noted in his well-known book, ‘Open Veins of Latin America,’ he stated that: From 1898 to 1994, the U.S. overthrew at least 41 governments in Latin America, according to research by Columbia University historian John Coatsworth. On March 8th, 2022, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report stating that from 1991 to 2022, the U.S. conducted at least 251 military interventions and 469 foreign interventions worldwide since 1798. The ruling class in the U.S. has always feared that the peoples of the Americas could unite, draw from our ancestral practices, culture, and heritage, and improve our lives in the pursuit of self-determination, which is why they spend trillions of dollars creating divisions. They are well aware that we have more in common with working-class people on our continent than with the billionaires who control the world. In a 1965 report by Ray S. Cline, Deputy Director for Intelligence (CIA), to the Policy Planning Council Department of State: “Most of the Latin American Communist parties formally came into being in the decade following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. The Communist Party of Argentina is the oldest party in the hemisphere, having been founded in 1918. Each of the parties has looked to Moscow from the start for its ideology and guidance. None has drawn on Latin America’s heritage of communal practices and traditions, which have stemmed from the area’s great Aztec, Maya, or Inca civilizations.” There is a reason why we are constantly told that the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Mexico, and, more recently, Colombia are “bad” actors and need to be replaced. It has nothing to do with human rights, drugs, and everything to do with controlling the nation’s natural resources and finances, labor power, and getting them to align with the U.S. imperial ambition to dominate the planet. That is the same reason we never hear anything about the governments of Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Chile, and others that are under the imperial grip of the Pentagon and Wall Street. Also, who gives the U.S. the right to dictate what type of government and system an independent country should use? As Dr. Martin Luther King put it: How can we criticize another country when we can’t get our own government to stop sending weapons to kill innocent Palestinians? How can we trust that the same government financing and orchestrating a genocide in Gaza now cares about human rights in Venezuela or Cuba? When the U.S. government itself bears the blame as the original sinner of this continent, it has never been held accountable for its actions. There is a reason the Trump administration approved a $20 billion bailout for Argentina amid its economic crisis—while maintaining an illegal embargo on Cuba and imposing sanctions on Venezuela and Nicaragua. Major corporations and banks maintain a strong hold on Argentina’s natural resources and national debt, and they aim to do the same in Cuba and Venezuela. U.S. Banks Fund Death And Destruction Banking institutions in the U.S. have a long, brutal history of profiting from the death and destruction of our continent. For the case of Venezuela, there was a moment when Venezuela was a producer of cocaine, and that production was moved to the North American market. This was during the 1970s and 90s because the U.S.-backed government of Venezuela at the time allowed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to operate freely throughout Venezuela, overseeing cocaine shipments to the U.S., unbothered by law enforcement. Former Venezuelan president Carlos Andrés Pérez (CAP) collaborated with U.S. agencies and was well-known for being connected to major narco-traffickers who also financed his presidential elections. In 1974, when Carlos became president, he made a major deal with the DEA and opened a regional office in Caracas, which marked the peak of cocaine traffic from Venezuela to the U.S… In 1993, 60 Minutes did a show exposing the DEA-CIA drug trafficking operations. The people of Latin America indeed continue to suffer at the hands of the cartels. However, cartels can only function successfully because of the U.S. banking system. In 2010, we witnessed Wachovia admitting that they laundered $378 billion in drug money. The company’s laundering director said, “It’s the banks laundering money for the cartels that finance the tragedy (in Mexico).” Bank of America, HSBC, and Wells Fargo also admitted to laundering money for the cartels, at the cost of human life. No CEO from these banks was put on trial, arrested, or denied employment —they were just slapped with a fine. In 2005, under the leadership of Hugo Chávez, he expelled the DEA from Caracas as part of his intense anti-drug campaign. A United Nations report states there is no discernible drug cultivation or production in Venezuela. The Trump administration cannot provide any evidence that the Maduro government is connected to the cartels. Still, there is evidence that the U.S.-backed self-proclaimed “president” of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, is linked to Colombian death squads and drug networks, as reviewed in 2020 by journalist Ben Norton. In a recent interview with Rafael Correa, the former president of Ecuador, Nicolás Maduro said that he reviewed recent data showing that “it is over $500 billion annually that is in the U.S. banking system, in legal banks. If they want to investigate a cartel, let them investigate the cartel up north. It’s from the United States that all drug trafficking is directed from South America and from the rest of the world.” Venezuela’s oil reserves, which the U.S. seeks full control over, are among its most valuable assets. Venezuela has approximately 303 billion barrels of oil, making it home to the world’s largest known oil reserves. In addition, they have significant deposits of natural gas, iron, bauxite, gold, and diamonds, as well as various other minerals and agricultural products such as coffee, sugar, and cacao. U.S. Deploys Aircraft Carrier On October 24, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), the largest warship on Earth, traveling to the Caribbean. This vessel is not a tool or instrument for attacking small drug trafficking boats; it is an instrument for waging a massive war on the Caribbean and South America. This move is an escalation aimed at intimidating the leaders of Venezuela and Colombia as well. The most capable and lethal strike force in the world is added to the already significant military buildup in the Caribbean, which includes 10,000 troops, at least eight warships, P-8 surveillance aircraft, and F-35 jets deployed amid the Trump administration’s alleged counter-narcotics efforts. On November 14th, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced “Operation Southern Spear.” Hegseth said they aim to target “narco-terrorists.” The small island country of Trinidad and Tobago, located just a few miles from Venezuela, reportedly is already hosting U.S. troops for a five-day “military exercise.” Unlike the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, where former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell briefed the United Nations Security Council on “evidence” of Iraq’s failure to disarm and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the Trump administration is not providing any evidence support the claims that Maduro is trafficking drugs or that any of the fishing boats that the U.S. is bombing along the Pacific and Caribbean are carrying drugs. “It’s past time for Maduro to go. Keep it up, President Trump,” said Senator Lindsay Graham on Friday, October 24th. Graham continued advocating for “decisive military action on land, sea, or air.” Claiming that for years it’s been a “haven for drug cartels and poisoning America,” said Graham. On October 21 and 22, the U.S. military continued its operations, including maritime activities along Colombia’s Pacific Coast, this time striking two boats near Colombia. The Intercept recently reported that a high-ranking Pentagon official admitted that these strikes are criminal attacks on civilians. The United Nations explicitly condemned Trump’s boat strikes, calling them “International law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers.” David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University, said it clearly, “We are simply engaged in cold-blooded murder.” Since September, at least 83 people have died in approximately 21 airstrikes in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific as the US military expands its assets in the region. While Washington claims the goal is to combat drug trafficking, the growing fleet has raised concerns that the U.S. may be planning an attack on Venezuela. University San Carlos, Guatemala – 2021 | Photo Credit: Abraham Marquez Trump’s Aggression Against Latin America The real reason Venezuela is under attack is that the U.S. government no longer controls its natural resources, and the government in power is not a puppet. Trump’s message is clear: he wants to reassert U.S. power through fear and military force. Both overseas and at home. Our response must be just as clear; we refuse to let him attack Latin America and our undocumented community. We must build solidarity across borders, expose the hypocrisy of “law and order” politics, and challenge U.S. imperialism that underpins both ICE and the Pentagon. The future of Latin America and the safety of our immigrant communities depend on our ability to connect these struggles. Opposing Trump’s war agenda means more than rejecting one man’s policies– it means fighting the entire system of empire that enables them. We live in the belly of the beast. The people of Los Angeles and the nation have the most important responsibility to prevent the U.S. war machine from re-invading our continent for a white man’s war. From Gaza to Venezuela, we must oppose Trump’s war agenda. We have nothing to gain and so much to lose if Trump can carry out his military bombing or invasion of Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico. Resistance must therefore be internationalist. This means standing with Latin American movements fighting U.S. intervention and with immigrant communities resisting deportation. This first appeared on Substack. The post We Must Resist Trump’s War Agenda At Home And Abroad appeared first on CounterPunch.org. From CounterPunch.org via this RSS feed
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Photo by Nik Western societies find themselves assailed by “loneliness epidemics” like the one declared by the previous US surgeon general, who linked the plague of social isolation in the US to a smorgasbord of physical illnesses. Sexual inactivity is one crucial feature of isolation and of depression—the lifestyle traits that have most defined the global culture of Gen Z: the Institute for Family Studies revealed that last year “24% of people aged 18-29 said they had not had sex in the past year, twice as many as in 2010”, declaring a historic “sex recession” which also drives high suicide and drug addiction rates. That sex-recession is behind the problems of plummeting fertility rates and demographic decline in Western countries—phenomena that demonstrably feed political extremism in the 21st century, as propagandists for the Great Replacement Theory draw conspiratorial links between lowering birth rates and migration, claiming that these changes are all part of a diabolically engineered plan—rather than, say, the pain and debris resulting from the indifference of business-run societies. (This essay was pre-announced and debated on the “This is Revolution” Podcast, audio link here https://bitterlake.podbean.com/e/love-on-the-left-ep-4-confronting-big-techs-monopoly-on-love-ft-arturo-desimone/ video here ) Technology—in particular the smartphone and the apps we download onto it via GooglePlay—plays a pivotal role in this wave of asceticism. The management of contemporary sexual frustration towards profit results in the techno-puritanical wasteland we currently dwell in. One year before the pandemic, a team of American Ivy League scientists published their findings in a much-underlooked research article “Smartphones Reduce Smiles Between Strangers”, (Elsevier 2019). Think of casual flirting that used to happen more often in public spaces, (on the subway, in parks and in cafés, which are today lit up by the arcade of smartphones intercutting all glances.). As suggested by the cultural theorist Nina Power, younger people drink less than ever, partly because alcohol rarely mixes well with anti-depressants, but also because of the fear of “going viral”: the dread of the phone-camera’s power to livestream one’s most embarrassing drunken behavior to a mass audience. And in Western contexts, less drinking means less promiscuity. Outlets like The Atlantic, WSJ, and Unherd have attributed the “sex recession” to host of culprits including post-MeToo culture having made “consent” into an increasingly nebulous concept; the pandemic; and even mass consumption of therapy. Yet very few have checked the role of dating apps. Usually, it is falsely assumed that dating apps yield the opposite effect, making real-world hook-ups all too facile. Newer testimonies do not bear out that supposition: the golden age of dating apps is over (as the New York Times revealed in a 2024 essay “It’s Not You: Dating Apps Are Getting Worse ) But what ended it? As we face the loneliness pandemic and the ascent of incels into political careers, the problem of what seems to be a cartel-organized mass-dysfunction of the dating apps can no longer be a trivial concern. Why was a single firm—the multibillion-dollar oligopoly called Match Group Inc, or MTCH on the New York stock exchange— allowed to aggressively buy up 25 rival dating apps in a decade, flagrantly undermining the anti-trust laws meant to protect civil liberties and consumers? Match Group now operates over 45 distinct websites and romance search-engines, including the giants Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, and the League, next to having legally usurped services that you may have never heard of: India Match, Republican People Meet, Black People Meet, Asian People Meet, Black Seniors, Little People Meet, Divorced People Meet, Marriage Minded. Match leaves no niche or minority group untouched: from Latinos to vegetarians, to Muslims, Jews, and Catholics who wish to date the likeminded. In effect, “MTCH” inhabits the bedrooms of approximately 345 million people worldwide, mostly in the postindustrial societies–China’s “Great Firewall” blocks Tinder. Many couples in the early 2010s met thanks to these apps. But nowadays, surveys show soaring disaffection, with devices “no longer working” as before. That disenchantment culminated in a class action lawsuit initiated in a California court in February last year by a law-firm representing a group of mostly male plaintiffs. Their resonant statement (bold emphasis added by me) opens: “Over the past decade, MatchGroup’s application-based dating platforms (…) have altered social reality. A millennium of traditional courtship has been replaced by technology. Striking up an in-person conversation with a stranger cannot compete with the convenience of swiping left or right on a profile, and no person could engage with a hundred potential partners in person in a matter of minutes. Convenience, however, comes at a price. Harnessing powerful technologies and hidden algorithms, Match intentionally designs the Platforms with addictive, game-like design features, which lock users into a perpetual pay-to-play loopthat prioritizes corporate profits over its marketing promises and customers’ (…) The undisclosed defective design is intended to erode users’ ability to disengage from the Platforms and turn users into addicts who will purchase ever-more expensive subscriptions to unlock unlimited and other ‘special’ features which are not designed to deliver on Match’s marketing promises, but instead to further addict and forever entrench users in the app.” The idealistic group of disenchanted Americans was thwarted last December. Indulging the wishes of monopolists, the judge shot down the lawsuit, deciding that settlement must be worked out in private arbitrations by each individual plaintiff. Attorney Ryan Clarkson said “our clients continue to evaluate all options to hold Match accountable for a business model that puts profits over people with psychological manipulation at its core”. Sounds hopeful. But it seems MTCH has won thus far in a neoliberal America which refuses to enact existing anti-trust laws.The lawsuit hinged its case on how the addictive nature of dating apps turns their usage into a form of pathological online gambling, or ludopathy, in the big casino of desire. Unfortunately, the litigating party failed to strengthen their accusations of “purposefully addictive design” because they overlooked even more disturbing facts about MTCH. Namely, the way in which the dating app economy intersects with criminal ecosystems around the world. By not looking beyond what happens in the US, complainants failed to seize abundant evidence that would have strengthened their case. Hopefully, the following stories of Match-related crime beyond the US’ shores can revive the legal battle with a new punch. Cyberpimping: MTCH Group’s Refusal to take action against worldwide known prostitution-fronts on their dating apps Dating-apps have long been commonplace tools for the influencer industry. Ambitious influencers who seek to monetize their Instagram accounts will farm and fish for followers on Tinder: countless profiles of attractive people state “I’m rarely on here, find me on IG @username”. Influencer-world has, at many turns, become a gateway for models into high-end prostitution, as revealed in fashion magazines like Evie in the anonymous-credited article “Instagram Prostitution: The Secret of Jetsetting Influencers”. Sponsorships and monetization on Instagram might be enough to survive and scrape by, but cannot suffice to prop up the lobster-cracking lives exhibited by instagrammers who live in Manhattan and London. The parasitic misuse of Tinder and its siblings by the influencer industry was well-documented ever since GQ magazine’s bombshell report, revealing how some mostly female content-creators have gamed the dating apps to harvest profitable fanbases on Meta’s platforms and on Tiktok. These exposés had close to zero effect on the matchmaking monopoly’s willingness to clean house. Why should a monopolist worry about publicity, given the absence of competitors to nab fleeing customers? Match owns the only game in town. A far less explored problem is how Tinder has also enabled a boom in the conventional, less glamorous kinds of prostitution. In an era when social media substitutes the physical town square and its vendors and soapboxes, streetwalkers also perambulate online. “Match” does nothing to curtail the army of profiles selling sex for smaller sums of money daily, so don’t expect MTCH to tackle the high-end escort activities of attractive “content creators” herding their hopeless matches into their Instagram or TikTok fanbases for profit. In Israel, shortly after the Knesset banned prostitution, the sex-trade moved to the internet: Tinder is now the major platform for Israeli men seeking prostitutes. Tinder fulfills a similar role in Gulf countries, displacing the more colorful harems and hammams of lore. Tinder’s mutation from dating-app into cyberpimp has become especially dangerous in Latin America. Last year, the US Embassy in Colombia deplored a spate of “suspicious” deaths that all happened over the span of just two months, with eight American men killed in Medellin by women they met on Tinder—these people have a practice of drugging their dates with scopolamine, a plant-derived chemical popularly known as burundanga or “devil’s breath.” This compound nullifies the willpower of the poisoned person and causes amnesia. A string of kidnappings have also impacted the Mexican tourist-destination of Jalisco, where tourists were ensnared by sequesterers through Tinder. Argentine press reported on what it sensationally calls “black widows” (viudas negras) or escorts who rob and assault elderly men lured through dating-apps. Unfortunately, the Californian class action lawsuit, basing its case on the “engineered to be addictive” quality of Match-owned apps, made no mention of the massive number of enticing profiles that serve as fronts for the sex-tourism industry, and which make matchmaking dangerous, rather than merely frustrating. Nobody seems to be taking Match Group to task over its negligence when it comes to taking visible “game-changing” measures to stop underworld niches from hijacking its platforms. The Cover-Up Sex-workers tend to be very attractive people who keep viewers on-app in a hypnotic stupor. Perhaps the company’s hesitancy to crack down on legions of deceitful and dangerous profiles, is because these apps, much like the depressed societies they predominate in, suffer from their own demographic problems: there prevails an unequal and sterile ratio of too many men outnumbering women on sites like Tinder. But any diminishing of the mass of false profiles and fronts for prostitution on the apps would make that disparity even more glaringly obvious, laying bare the abject scarcity of women on MTCH products. Would men want to sign up for pricey Platinum memberships if we knew we’re paying the bouncers to enter a club that looks like a bratwurst factory even inside the VIP booth? Inaction, for the sake of upholding the illusion that there are options-galore and ample fishing for bachelors seeking a woman online, seems the smarter marketing strategy—even if it is an unethical coverup, misleading and, in some cases, lethal for the consumer. What to do about these MTCH-related executions of desperate gringos in South America? Let’s hope survivors will not emulate the Tennessee family of Gregory Owens, a black American tourist killed while vacationing in Cartagena: the family announced they’re suing the Colombian government—as if a country could be treated like a business, or an amusement park with faulty rollercoasters. Imagine if any of the families of over 150.000 persons disappeared in the conflict between the Colombian state, paramilitaries and Narcos were to sue their own state! If an American family would go so far as to litigate a foreign country, why not sue an American business, Match, over its incompetence and lack of screening which enabled gangs and homicidal sex-workers to lure foreign victims? So, why have there been no wrongful-death suits vs. Match Group so far? A predictable set of hurdles in the legal fine print include app-user terms forcing arbitration (making it tougher to mount public civil cases), Section 230/platform-liability limits within the U.S., causation problems (crime by third parties offline), and jurisdiction/enforcement issues when crimes occur abroad. But what if a legal team representing the victim’s families travelled to the countries where these crimes happened–Colombia and Mexico, foremost–to fight Match there within the legal frameworks of those constitutional democracies? Possibly a narrow view of the world, and the reactionary tendency of Americans like the Owenses to blame South American countries for being stereotypical seamy jungles, are among the biases that blind Western civil societies from the need and the possibilities to tackle MTCH over its complicity in deaths overseas. It’s high time for international judicial activism against a monopoly that has turned so rotten it is by now incurably enmeshed with global crime ecosystems. MTCH can fall, if it is proven that such a vast monopoly over software as simple as that of dating-apps comes at the expense of security and oversight. The sprawling MTCH monopoly has grown so unwieldy that it can no longer ensure the safety of users, or deploy competent task forces against the legion of predators. Grieving families need to be organized and guided by an idealistic legal team. FOIA requests to the State Department (alongside similar petitions to government entities abroad) are crucial here, because families who pay out ransoms to kidnappers tend to settle in quiet, leaving few case logs or numbers publicly available when it comes to abductions. Victory here would mean more than mere catharsis for the aggrieved and the frustrated: it means grabbing back the reins from an abusive mega-corp that has defaced courtship and deformed our quests for love and pleasure in this de-sexualized dystopia. As soon as the government shutdowns end and funding is restored, I will be emitting a series of FOIAs demanding a reveal on the current number of US citizens who have died dating-app related deaths abroad. (To be continued. Email [email protected] for comments) The post Break Big Tech’s Monopoly on Dating: A Manifesto appeared first on CounterPunch.org. From CounterPunch.org via this RSS feed
Komunitas
programming.dev
Homebrew 5.0: Parallel Downloads, MCP Integration, and Intel’s Final Countdown 🌟 Liquid Glass Adaptation in UIKit + SwiftUI ⚡ Claude Code Skills 📘 Rust on iOS 🔍 FSWatcher and more…
Komunitas
ibbit.at
Let’s talk about LANDFALL. That was an Android spyware campaign specifically targeted at Samsung devices. The discovery story is interesting, and possibly an important clue to understanding this particular bit of commercial malware. Earlier this year Apple’s iOS was patched for a flaw in the handling of DNG (Digital NeGative) images, and WhatsApp issued an advisory with a second iOS vulnerability, that together may have been used in attacks in the wild. Researchers at Unit 42 went looking for real-world examples of this iOS threat campaign, and instead found DNG images that exploited a similar-yet-distinct vulnerability in a Samsung image handling library. These images had a zip file appended to the end of these malicious DNG files. The attack seems to be launched via WhatsApp messaging, just like the iOS attack. That .zip contains a pair of .so shared object files, that are loaded to manipulate the system’s SELinux protections and install the long term spyware payload. The earliest known sample of this spyware dates to July of 2024, and Samsung patched the DNG handling vulnerability in April 2025. Apple patched the similar DNG problem in August of 2025. The timing and similarities do suggest that these two spyware campaigns may have been related. Unit 42 has a brief accounting of the known threat actors that could have been behind LANDFALL, and concludes that there just isn’t enough solid evidence to make a determination. Not as Bad as it Looks Watchtowr is back with a couple more of their unique vulnerability write-ups. The first is a real tease, as they found a way to leak a healthy chunk of memory from Citrix NetScaler machines. The catch is that the memory leak is a part of an error message, complaining that user authentication is disabled. This configuration is already not appropriate for deployment, and the memory leak wasn’t assigned a CVE. There was a second issue in the NetScaler system, an open redirect in the login system. This is where an attacker can craft a malicious link that points to a trusted NetScaler machine, and if a user follows the link, the NetScaler will redirect the user to a location specified in the malicious link. It’s not a high severity vulnerability, but still got a CVE and a fix. Worse than it Looks And then there’s the other WatchTowr write-up, on Monsta FTP. Here, old vulnerabilities continue to work in versions released after the fix. The worst one here is an unauthenticated RCE (Remote Code Execution) that can be pulled off by asking the server nicely to connect to a remote SFTP server and download a file. In this case, the specified path for saving that file isn’t validated, and can be written anywhere to the Monsta FTP filesystem. Instant webshell. This time it did get fixed, within a couple weeks of WatchTowr sending in the vulnerability disclosure. Imunify AV Antivirus software Imunify just fixed an issue that threatened a few million servers. Imunify is an antivirus product that scans for malicious code. It sounds great. The problem is that it worked to deobfuscate PHP code, by calling an executeWrapper helper function. The short explanation is that this approach wasn’t as safe as had been hoped, and this deobfuscation step can be manipulated into running malicious code itself. Whoops. Patchstack reported on this issue, and indicated that it had been publicly known since November 4th. Patches have since been issued, and a simple message has been published that a critical security vulnerability has been fixed. There is a PoC (Proof of Concept) for this vulnerability, that would be trivial to develop into a full webshell. The only challenge is actually getting the file on a server to be scanned. Either way, if your servers run Imunify, be sure to update! IndonesianFoods There’s another NPM worm on the loose, and this one has quietly been around for a couple years. This one is a bit different, and the “malicious” packages aren’t doing anything malicious, at least not by default. [Paul McCarty] first spotted this campaign, and gave it the name “IndonesianFoods”, inspired by the unique names the fake packages were using. It appears that a handful of malicious accounts have spent time running a script that generates these fake packages with unique names, and uploads them to NPM. Downloading one of these packages doesn’t run the script on the victim machine, and in fact doesn’t seem to do anything malicious. So what’s the point? Endor Labs picked up this thread and continued to pull. The point seems to be TEA theft. That’s the Blockchain tech that’s intended to reward Open Source project and contributions. It’s yet another abuse of NPM, which has had a rough year. Rusty Sudo Canonical made a bold decision with Ubuntu 25.04, shipping the uutils Rust rewrite of coreutils and sudo-rs. That decision was controversial, and has proven to be a cause of a few issues. Most recently, the sudo-rs utility has made news due to security vulnerabilities. We know the details on a few of the issues fixed in this update of those, CVE-2025-64170. It’s a quirk when a user types a password into the prompt, but never presses return. The prompt times out, and the typed characters are echoed back to the terminal. Another issue doesn’t have a CVE assigned yet, but is available as a GitHub Security Advisory, and the patch is published. This one has the potential to be an authentication bypass. Sudo has the feature that tracks how long it has been since the user has last authenticated. The flaw was that this state was leaking between different users, allowing a login by one user to count as a login for other users, allowing that password skip. Bits and Bytes And finally, there’s a bit of good news, even if it is temporary. Google has taken action against one of the larger SMS scam providers. The group operates under the name Lighthouse, and seems to use normal cloud infrastructure to run the scams, simply flying under the radar for now. Google has combined legal action with technical, and with any luck, law enforcement can join in on the fun. From Blog – Hackaday via this RSS feed
Komunitas
kbin.social
The idea is that it would be similar to hardware attestation in Android. In fact, that’s where Google got the idea from. Basically, this is the way it works: You download a web browser or another program (possibly even one baked into the OS, e.g. working alongside/relying on the TPM stuff from the BIOS). This is the “attester”. Attesters have a private key that they sign things with. This private key is baked into the binary of the attester (so you can’t patch the binary). A web page sends some data to the attester. Every request the web page sends will vary slightly, so an attestation can only be used for one request - you cannot intercept a “good” attestation and reuse it elsewhere. The ways attesters can respond may vary so you can’t just extract the encryption key and sign your own stuff - it wouldn’t work when you get a different request. The attester takes that data and verifies that the device is running stuff that corresponds to the specs published by the attester - “this browser, this OS, not a VM, not Wine, is not running this program, no ad blocker, subject to these rate limits,” etc. If it meets the requirements, the attester uses their private key to sign. (Remember that you can’t patch out the requirements check without changing the private key and thus invalidating everything.) The signed data is sent back to the web page, alongside as much information as the attester wants to provide. This information will match the signature, and can be verified using a public key. The web page looks at the data and decides whether to trust the verdict or not. If something looks sketchy, the web page has the right to refuse to send any further data. They also say they want to err towards having fewer checks, rather than many (“low entropy”). There are concerns about this being used for fingerprinting/tracking, and high entropy would allow for that. (Note that this does explicitly contradict the point the authors made earlier, that “Including more information in the verdict will cover a wider range of use cases without locking out older devices.”) That said - we all know where this will go. If Edge is made an attester, it will not be low entropy. Low entropy makes it harder to track, which benefits Google as they have their own ways of tracking users due to a near-monopoly over the web. Google doesn’t want to give rivals a good way to compete with user tracking, which is why they’re pushing “low-entropy” under the guise of privacy. Microsoft is incentivized to go high-entropy as it gives a better fingerprint. If the attestation server is built into Windows, we have the same thing.
Komunitas
ibbit.at
When I was assigned the story of a new report on structural racism in the Metropolitan police force yesterday, I was prepared to launch into what has had to become a standard Canary reaction. A new report shows, for the umpteenth time, that the Met is structurally racist. In other news, the sky is blue and water is wet. Beyond that, these reviews – whilst important in themselves – are used as a substitute for actual change, rather than a motivator for change. The thing that surprised me was that this review – ‘30 Patterns of Harm‘ by Dr Shereen Daniels – made that acknowledgement already. Not only in its wording, but in its structure, it works to centre Black knowledge-making without apology. Met police told: ‘we are here, again’ It should not have required another Black person, shaped by decades of navigating systems that confuse volume for credibility, and objectivity for truth, to write another review on the London Metropolitan Police Service. But we are here, again, because of the refusal to believe Black people when we speak of harm, of injustice, of deep unfairness. The thing is, it is not just a pattern in policing. It is a condition of institutional knowledge-making. Our truths are not seen as valid unless translated. Our insights are not trusted unless they come wrapped in the language of official evidence. And even then, only certain kinds of evidence count. But this review was not built in that tradition. The review makes it plain that there are no set of recommendations, no roadmap, that Met bosses can use as a checklist to declare that racism is now fixed. It knows that the problem is far deeper than that. Likewise, Dr Daniels also states repeatedly that the report isn’t meant to be skimmed. The truths it contains are meant to be sat with and absorbed. The nature of journalism as a job, and the article you are now reading, means that it is by nature a summary. However, I’d also like this, ideally, to function as a prompt. I mostly leave the quotes here unexplained, as they speak for themselves. However, I do try to situate them in their context. If you feel at all moved to do so, please read the report here. It is genuinely worth the time. And if you find yourself flinching – not at the findings, but at the framing, the word choices, the challenge – ask yourself: what made it necessary to write this way in the first place? That discomfort you feel is not a flaw in writing. It is a reflection of the conditions it was built to disrupt. The report is divided into three parts. Each fulfils a different role: anchoring intent, mapping harm, and surfacing implications. The first establishes the Black positionality of the review, and maps its approach to systematic racism. Next, the second section contains the “pattern dossiers”, mapping the ways in which systematic racism is organised in the Met. Then, the third section reflects on the ways in which the Met could react to this knowledge – both positive and negative. Part A – Position This review was commissioned by the Met. It marked a rare institutional admission: that its aspiration to become an anti-racist organisation was not matched by a clear understanding of the structural nature of the problem it was trying to solve. Despite a flurry of activity – evolved ‘race’ action plans, revised statements, clearer language, the set up of a dedicated internal team – there was little confidence that these efforts were hitting the mark. The institution was busy, but not grounded and external pressure was demanding more. It required the Met to reinterrogate the very assumptions shaping its view of the problem and I was hired to help them do that. Dr Daniels’ research is obviously far from the first such investigation into the Met’s racism. However, it was the first to take place not as a reaction to a specific scandal – like the murder of Stephen Lawrence – but as a wider examination. Nevertheless, it acknowledges both work the previous reviews and the things that Black Londoners already knew. Part of the frustration, particularly in activist circles, is that the conclusion is so often something that anyone could have told you. The cops are racist, we know. 30 Patterns acknowledges that, and the harm of being told it again. When institutions respond to complex or uncomfortable problems, such as public trust issues, misconduct, discrimination, or harm, they tend to follow a well-worn playbook. • First, initiate a review. • Ask fresh questions. • Commission new data. • Gather experiences, often painful ones. • Interview the public or staff, particularly those most affected. • Show that something is being done. • Produce a report. Sometimes, those steps are taken with good intentions. But the pattern itself rarely changes. And when the issue is systemic racism, especially anti-Blackness, this approach does something else entirely. It recycles the harm. Part of the reason why the report rejects the data-driven ‘academic’ approach is that it also acknowledges that “neutrality is not impartiality”. Too often, that appeal to neutrality merely reflects dominant norms – in this case, whiteness. Whiteness gets to decide what is valid and credible. Then, inevitably, the conclusions drawn also reflect that whiteness. 30 Patterns is trying to do something else. Modifiers on the perception of Blackness Beyond that, it also acknowledges that Blackness is not itself a monolith. Dr Daniels includes ‘modifiers’, detailing the ways that Blackness and other factors intersect: Modifiers include gender, class, colourism, neurodivergence, migration status, age, disability, religion and accent or language. They work silently but constantly. Inside the Met they decide who is seen as credible or confrontational, who is protected or punished, who is invited in or pushed out. On the street they decide who is stopped, searched, escorted home, or forced to the ground. As an example of the care the report takes with these intersections, Dr Daniels acknowledges transness and non-binary identity not just in the sections on queer identity, but also in the section on misogynoir. Too often with this kind of document, transness is siloed as a queer identity. Instead, 30 Patterns also recognises it as interacting with perceptions of Black womanhood. The primers on ‘modifiers’ are each separated into the effects that, say, disability and Blackness can have both within the police force and on the street. The examples given are illustrative but not totalising. Inside • Reasonable adjustments take longer or are dismissed entirely, especially if the condition is not immediately visible. […] On the street • Black disabled people, particularly those with mental health conditions, face rapid escalation in encounters including handcuffing, restraint or detention. Part B – Pattern dossiers (W)hen institutions treat systemic racism as dysfunction, the response becomes managerial: new policies, updated training, procedural reviews. But when systemic racism is understood as structured, as something the institution has been designed to accommodate, the work becomes deeper, slower, more uncomfortable, more intentional and far more urgent. Part of what makes this report feel like something different is its engagement with why the Met is still racist. We’ve seen decades of evidence of Met bigotry. We’ve heard repeated vows to change that also fail to acknowledge the problem. Then, surprise, the Met is bigoted again: The Met’s communications function is not designed to surface truth. It is designed to manage risk. Strategic communications operate as an institutional firewall, redirecting critique into perception work and recasting systemic issues as misunderstandings. Language becomes a tool of containment: specific terms are avoided, discomfort is softened, and messaging is curated to preserve legitimacy rather than name harm. Systematically, 30 Patterns works through the ways in which the Met is set up to perpetuate its own anti-Blackness. That includes its public address, its engagement activities with Black communities, or its inclusion of Black officers. The whole machine works to legitimate and carry out racism, even whilst appearing to work on fixing the problem. In fact, it does so by appearing to fix the problem: Community engagement in the Met is often designed to manage risk, not redistribute power. Engagement activities prioritise perception over transformation. “Listening exercises” follow public harm but rarely inform decision-making. Black residents are asked to participate in processes where the outcome is already decided, their input filtered or discredited when it challenges institutional comfort. What is presented as co-design is often just pre-approved messaging with community endorsement attached. ‘Doing the work’ and un-doing the work The visual display of data becomes institutional theatre: clean, coded, and detached from the harm it masks. In practice, dashboards reflect what the Met is willing to count, not what communities need to understand. They surface activity, complaints are logged, officers are trained, and sessions are held, but rarely pose the structural questions: to what end, what has changed, and for whom? Part of the continued response of the Met to its own racism is to engage in activities. The Met is racist, but it’s doing anti-racism training. It’s doing workshops. It’s listening to the community. This is an exercise in doing an exercise, in looking busy. That looking-busy is a knee-jerk reaction to a structural problem. As such, it will never work. Whenever racism, disproportionality, or community harm surfaces, the Met defaults to behaviour-change training. Workshops, e-learning, and micro-nudges are presented as cure-alls, signalling activity while shielding the system from redesign. When the Met treats racism as a problem of misunderstanding rather than design, it can focus on training, track how many people attend, and claim progress, all without having to change the structures of power that allowed the harm in the first place. Many of the findings of the report will be familiar. ‘Stop and search makes suspicion into routine’. ‘Strip search makes doubt into domination’. ‘Adultification makes black childhood an impossibility’. ‘Algorithmic policing automates racialised suspicion’. These are things we know. They’re still true. However, others are less routine. That’s not to say that they haven’t been explored before, sometimes many times, but they’re still not often seen in this kind of report. ‘Authorised language strips systemic racism of its meaning’, for example, examines the ways in which the Met’s phrasebook functions to rob the language used against it of its power. The Met’s control of narrative is not confined to public statements. It operates through internal scripts, preferred vocabulary, and strategic euphemism, defining what can be said, and therefore what can be seen. Language becomes a governance tool. Some terms, like “systemic racism” or “systemic failings” appear in external materials but are quietly policed in internal use. Others “whiteness (as a logic not an identity)” “anti-Blackness” “institutional racism” – are absent altogether. Part C – Not conclusions, per se This next section is not to overwhelm or persuade. It is here to help you notice what’s already visible, if you are willing to see it. The patterns do not add up to a toolkit. You cannot copy/paste them and then call it your London Race Action Plan version 2.0. They surface something more uncomfortable still: good intentions, busy strategies, even sincere efforts, can live quite comfortably alongside structural harm. That coexistence is no accident; the system was designed to accommodate it. And when Black people, the ones who often feel the harm first and hardest, have raised the flag, the Met has chosen, time and again, to look the other way. The final section examines what the patterns discussed in the previous section might reveal. These aren’t conclusions in the traditional sense. Rather, they explore the logic behind the patterns: what it says and what questions we might pose in reaction. I don’t want to give you the conclusions or the questions. Again, read the report if you can. Suppose the Met treats this review as a reputational threat, a short-term crisis, or a branding challenge to be managed. In that case, it will re-enter a cycle that has defined its institutional history: absorb critique, rename the problem, reissue commitments, and re-legitimise its own authority without shifting its architecture. That pattern is not just failure. It is complicity. Structural language must not become a shield for institutional self-protection. There is a growing risk that the vocabulary of harm will be adopted but not enacted. That individuals and departments will quote from this report to signal alignment, while continuing to reproduce the very conditions it exposes. When that happens, fluency becomes a substitute for change. 30 Patterns was commissioned by the Met. That, in itself, could make it suspect – even dangerous. Dr Daniels enumerated, at great length, the ways the Met uses reports and reviews as a substitute for actual change. It would be hypocritical to assume that this report is immune to the same abuse. This review cannot be actioned in the traditional sense. It does not lend itself to implementation plans, branded initiatives, or PR strategies. What it calls for is a different approach, one that treats transformation not as a programme, but as a long-term structural reckoning. The report refuses to give a neat checklist of actions that the Met can point to. It wants to avoid the pitfall of tickbox recommendations and activities that lead to workshops, that lead to declarations of improvement. It acknowledges that the Met desperately wants to declare racism ‘over’: The task now is not to absorb the critique, but to let it reshape the Met’s internal logic. This is what actualising commitment looks like: resisting the urge to perform transformation and choosing instead to become it. Instead, Dr Daniels has provided a clear, detailed map of how the Met went wrong, and how it keeps going wrong. That could be deeply useful, or it could be ignored, or worse. What the Met does with that map is up to it: Treating this review as a structural map, not a symbolic milestone. Even though it was commissioned, its existence does not prove change has taken place. Its publication and circulation is not the intervention. How it is used will determine its value. That’s it for now This is the end of the article. It feels odd to put that on what is nominally a news story, but this wasn’t exactly an ordinary bit of news. I want to sign off with a couple of acknowledgements. First, as you probably noticed immediately from my author photo, I’m white. It shouldn’t always fall to my Black colleagues to write this kind of article, but the fact that I’m writing it also inflects the ways I interpreted the work. Again: read the report if you can. Finally, I should also acknowledge that a report commissioned by the Met, making recommendations to the Met about how to improve, makes the assumption that the Met should exist. The Canary has frequently taken the position that the police (and the carceral justice system as a whole) doesn’t need reform, but abolition. I agree with that. However, I won’t sit here and dismiss the work in 30 Patterns because it works from a more immediately actionable position. I can read about the ways that Black police officers are discriminated against and write ‘sorry, please quit’, and my editor will probably publish that too. As with a lot of other sentiments, 30 Patterns also pre-empted this in its ‘Note to Black officers’: I recognise the calculation and I’ve named the cost. You were asked to show loyalty to an institution that withheld its own. It demanded discipline and service yet offered you no shield when racism shaped the very processes you were told to trust. That contradiction is not yours to fix and it never was. Yet you too have choices to make. Featured image via the Canary By Alex/Rose Cocker From Canary via this RSS feed