It reminds me of the time a senator repeatedly accused the Tiktok CEO if being Chinese while he repeatedly told him he’s Singaporean. American politicians are a bunch of racist clowns.
What’s his website? That’s a millennial take, from before we merged the entire internet to live in two second soundbites on Twitter, Insta and Tiktok.
Younger generations are using other platforms to gather information. What’s not being talked about here is that young people don’t seem to give a damn if the information they research is accurate or not, it’s whether or not it’s peddled by their preferred streamer. Those “other platforms” are apparently Tiktok and Netflix, not exactly places known for speaking truth to power. I’ve spent twenty years trying to believe that the children will be the saviors of the future, but I think maybe the conservatives actually succeeded in murdering education in it’s crib. I am now nearly fully on team “You know, maybe these kids actually are a bunch of dumb fucks who won’t save us after all.”
Tiktok comment sections have discovered “dd to the idf” does not get filtered by the automod and it’s showing up everywhere even on non political posts.
I’m so disappointed with the global status this shithole maintains. They are spending so much money on bots and propaganda that if you look at Twitter, Tiktok or Instagram it’s full of organic spam and any comments calling out this disgusting place get removed or piled on.
On TikTok I’ve seen an ad showing literal penis in vagina. But people have to say “unalive.”
bloomberg.com What Happens When Someone You Love Changes Their Face? Alice Robb 10–12 minutes “When the stranger’s face arrived to occupy my mother’s body, it shocked the language out of me,” recalls Linli, the 26-year-old narrator of Sarah Wang’s debut novel, New Skin (May 12, Little, Brown). The stranger was her mother, Fanny, transformed by a face-lift and a nose job. Linli was 8 years old, and she was so disturbed that she regressed: Her grades slipped, and she stopped speaking. “I recoiled when she came near me.” A spate of new fiction and TV is making room for an underexplored perspective: that of the families and partners of plastic surgery patients. Parents, lovers, children and friends bristle at seeing their loved ones eliminate familiar quirks — and, with them, evidence of a shared history. In New Skin, Fanny’s original face is so bound up with Linli’s earliest, defining memories that she comes to feel that the surgeries have robbed her of her “real mother.” In Amy Wang’s 2025 movie Slanted, Joan, a Chinese-American high school misfit, spends endless hours on social media, admiring her blond-haired, blue-eyed classmates and filtering her own face through an app called Ethnos. When she’s offered experimental surgery that will make her look White, she doesn’t hesitate (or ask any follow-up questions, like, “Why does this surgery take place in the backyard of a strip mall?”) Joan is thrilled with the results, but her parents are aghast and threaten to call the police when a White teenager unlocks their door. They eventually accept that the body-swapped version of Joan is still their daughter but lament what they see as her rejection not only of herself, but of them. In one scene, Joan’s father sobs that he used to see his mother’s eyes in his daughter’s face. In Matthew Hodgson and Ryan Murphy’s 2026 series The Beauty, a scientist discovers “a one-shot, one-size-fits-all cure for everything” — a virus that transforms the middle-aged and genetically unlucky into physically perfect specimens. A crusty billionaire named Byron Forst wakes up in the body of Ashton Kutcher; a chubby incel turns into Jeremy Pope. The “Beautified” are unrecognizable to their friends and family, but that trade-off, in the craven world of The Beauty, is no big deal. Meanwhile, when FBI agent Jordan Bennett (originally played by Rebecca Hall, who is 43) greets her best friend and lover, Cooper, after accidentally contracting the virus and turning into Jessica Alexander (26), Cooper’s chin wobbles, and he insists that she’d always been beautiful to him. The emotional risks of cosmetic interventions are real. A growing body of research suggests that wrinkle relaxants may interfere with the ability to communicate feelings and, more important, with empathy itself. In one study, people who’d had Botox felt less fear than untreated subjects when shown footage of a man eating a sausage containing live worms, and they were less amused by America’s Funniest Home Videos. Another found that people who’d received Botox injections in the forehead were less able to perceive anger on another person’s face. In New Skin, Fanny’s eyelids are so mangled from repeated surgeries that she loses the ability to cry — a real, though usually temporary, side effect of blepharoplasty. A 2018 study of almost 2,000 bariatric surgery patients in Sweden found that those who were married at the time of their operation faced an elevated risk of divorce. After Byron Forst’s transformation, he and his wife, Franny (Isabella Rossellini) are not only emotionally distant — they dine at opposite ends of a table long enough for a banquet hall — but also physically mismatched. “What kind of joke is that?” Franny asks when Kutcher comes home claiming to be her husband. “The only joke here is that someone as good-looking as me could still be married to you,” Byron replies. The interpersonal alienation is ironic given that a common motive for cosmetic surgery is the desire to belong. Patients are striving to conform to the ideals of a group that may never accept them, whether a race, as in Slanted, or a professional class, like the supermodels in The Beauty. In New Skin, Fanny is a Chinese immigrant who longs to fit in with her colleagues at a California nail salon. Her first eyelid surgery soon leads to another procedure, and another, until her face resembles — in the harsh gaze of her daughter — a “scrambled egg.” Yet what finally gives Fanny a measure of peace is finding community among other recovering plastic surgery addicts. Disfigured by years of bargain-basement procedures, Fanny joins the cast of a reality TV show, America’s Beauty Extreme, in which victims of botched surgery compete for corrective work. After displaying a disarming self-awareness during the show’s group therapy challenges, Fanny wins the $200,000 prize. But instead of spending it on more surgery, she gives the money to Linli for graduate school tuition and returns home with a new outlook. “I don’t stay up at night thinking about the next procedure I need to get anymore,” she tells Linli. “I made real friends.” The acceptance that comes from artificially optimized looks, meanwhile, is depicted in films like The Substance as fleeting and untrustworthy. “We love you!” “You will always belong here!” TV network executives call out at dancer Sue (Margaret Qualley), as she struts toward the stage to host a New Year’s Eve special. (Sue is the pert, 20-something clone of aging actress Elisabeth, played by Demi Moore.) But when Sue’s body begins to disintegrate minutes later, their cries change to “Shoot the monster!” The crowd — so recently adoring — charges the stage, attacking her. “It’s still me,” the creature wails as she collapses. Over the past few years, as this genre of face horror has emerged, cosmetic surgery and weight loss injections have become increasingly safe and affordable. According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, almost 38 million aesthetic procedures were performed globally in 2024, a 40% increase from 2020. In November 2025, research from health policy researcher KFF found that roughly 12% of American adults had used GLP-1s. Much of the stigma has also faded: Body modification is now widely framed as an expression of autonomy and empowerment. Celebrities who once insisted their looks were natural now proudly share the names of their surgeons. When Kylie Jenner divulged the details of her breast implants in a TikTok comment (“445 cc, moderate profile, half under the muscle!!! silicone!!!”), fans called her “iconic” and praised her “transparency.” A few months later, gymnastics champion Simone Biles revealed her own breast augmentation on TikTok, drawing comments like, “You are awe-inspiring” and “Good for you for doing what makes you feel good!” Even as body modification has become more normalized, some are quietly hoping for a backlash. GLP-1s have been prescribed since the mid-2000s, and patients are overwhelmingly happy with them. But many people remain skeptical that thinness can be achieved without strenuous effort or hidden consequences. “It’s gonna backfire, something bad is gonna happen,” comedian Chelsea Handler — who reportedly works out with a personal trainer five or six days per week — said of the drugs. Reality TV star Bethenny Frankel, founder of a low-calorie cocktail brand, issued an ominous but medically unfounded warning on Instagram that the side effects from GLP-1s will not become clear “for months and years to come.” And though plastic surgery disasters are highly publicized (New Skin’s fictional America’s Beauty Extreme resembles the reality show Botched, which invites viewers to gawk at, for instance, a model with 30-pound breast implants and a woman who had tire sealant injected into her face), research suggests that most cosmetic surgery patients are ultimately pleased with their results. A 2023 study found that 85% to 95% of women who underwent breast augmentation were happy with the outcome. And a 2024 review of 380 rhinoplasty patients found that 89.5% were more satisfied with their appearance six months post-op than they’d been beforehand. Fiction offers a safe place to explore our anxieties about these new possibilities and to indulge the Protestant instinct that self-improvement ought to involve suffering. Results that initially seem miraculous inevitably expire in a moment of humiliation. In Slanted, Joan is accepting her title as prom queen when her skin begins peeling off in waxy clumps. In The Substance, Sue’s face starts to dissolve under the spotlight. And in The Beauty, frumpy people become hot for two years — then they spontaneously combust. In fiction, we can indulge the suspicion that these shortcuts are wrong, that this is gain without pain. These are fantasies of revenge, punishing the transformed for not suffering enough. While watching The Substance — an experience I hated so much, I had to spread it over several days — I kept thinking about another famous body-swapping film. Freaky Friday, which came out in 2003, is warmhearted and charming where The Substance is sterile and mean-spirited. It doesn’t dwell on the physicality of Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis trading places; the film is more interested in what a frustrated teenager and her harried mother can learn from each other’s perspectives. Alas, it was a simpler time. In the 2025 sequel, Freakier Friday, teenage Lily wakes up as her step-grandmother Jamie Lee Curtis, looks in the mirror and screams, “She just has crevices all over her face! Look at the crevices!” Alice Robb is a writer in London. Her latest book is Don’t Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet.
Nah, rednote is no less horny than tiktok was, and half the horny content/comments are from chinese IPs.
(This takes 13¾ minutes to read.) It is a 14-page file that was never meant to see the light of day. An internal document, file number 23-178. Its title: “Information Gathering Report — Yaron Avni.” Written three years ago, it tracked the activities of Avni, then a counselor at the Democratic School in Hod Hasharon. Those were the days of the protest movement against the judicial overhaul, and Avni, like many others, wrote passionately against the government’s initiatives. But behind the scenes, alongside legislation designed to dismantle the checks and balances of […] democracy, the government was also engaged in a hunt for dissidents. The report on Avni, which reached Haaretz, offers a rare glimpse into a secretive mechanism whose purpose is to silence educators who criticize the government. The body, known as the “Incitement Committee,” operates out of a commercial center in Jerusalem’s Ramat Eshkol neighborhood. The offices belong to the Education Ministry’s Enforcement Administration, but education is not what happens there. What happens there is espionage. The report details the sources used to gather information, from Facebook to “Education Ministry systems.” The material itself is almost insulting in its triviality. Among the alleged evidence of incitement: Avni shared a post by MK Yair Golan (The Democrats) and added the comment, “The racist fascists want to destroy the State of Israel because of messianic dreams. We will leave them with their dreams.” He also shared a post by protest activist Yaya Fink calling for a strike, adding: “Bring on the chaos. We will not let a bunch of criminals and fascists run this country.” The report might have been dismissed as an oddity were it not part of a broader campaign of persecution that has led to dismissals, disciplinary hearings and other sanctions against civil servants who dared criticize the government. A Haaretz investigation reveals that the Incitement Committee is headed by a former Shin Bet operative, and that its activities extend far beyond preventing incitement. According to several Education Ministry sources, the committee suppresses political criticism that has nothing whatsoever to do with incitement. Driving this campaign, they say, are people close to Education Minister Yoav Kisch. One of the officials most enthusiastic about activating the committee is Asif Kazula, Kisch’s chief of staff. Employees entering his office are required to leave their phones outside. He prefers conversations over WhatsApp. He fears recordings. When the Education Ministry hurriedly established an emergency logistics center, the tender went to the Yavne Drivers Organization — a modest company specializing in moving services, owned by Kazula’s father and brother. Sources who spoke with Haaretz described Kazula as Kisch’s loyal emissary in matters of persecution. “Everything Kazula does, he does with the minister’s authorization and authority,” they said. “He speaks directly with senior officials without going through the ministry’s director general. His role is to advance Kisch’s political standing.” A senior ministry official recalled “rampages in the minister’s office every time educators acted against the judicial overhaul, not only when they organized demonstrations, but even over simple statements. Kisch is conducting an obsessive pursuit of teachers who speak out against the government, and the tone from the top filters down through district managers and inspectors.” Kisch apparently sees political advantage in harassing left-wingers. But how extensive is the campaign his people are conducting? Very extensive. Since the attempted overhaul began in early 2023, and even more so after the October 7 massacre, the Incitement Committee has gathered intelligence on 160 educators. In half the cases, committee members concluded that incitement to violence or racism had occurred. Most of those targeted were Arabs, though a quarter were Jews. Genuine incitement from the right, however, appears not to have concerned the Education Ministry. As far as Haaretz could determine, calls to destroy, eradicate, devastate, burn, crush and erase Palestinians never appeared on the committee’s radar. Yaron Avni, 59, spent years working as an engineer in aerospace and high-tech before deciding to change direction. He earned degrees in psychology and educational counseling and eventually became a counselor at the Democratic School in Hod Hasharon. His Facebook page was, and remains, a major outlet for his political views. He shares posts from others and usually adds a sentence or two of commentary. “Before I’m a teacher, I’m a citizen,” Avni tells Haaretz. “I feel the need to express my anger about what’s happening here. I think it’s legitimate. It’s still legal to criticize the government.” That, apparently, is no longer certain. In March 2023, a complaint was filed with the Education Ministry alleging that Avni had been “engaged for a considerable period in incitement against the government through his Facebook page.” In normal times, such a flimsy complaint would likely have been dismissed. But these were not normal times. An investigation into Avni’s case lasted two and a half months, ending with the complaint being fully accepted and upheld. It remains unclear who filed the complaint. According to Avni, no parent or staff member ever approached him about his posts. “If someone had come to me and said they were offended, I probably would have addressed it,” he said. “I thought I was writing to my friends. If someone didn’t like what I wrote, they could block me or simply stop reading.” The government report opens with a background image from his Facebook page featuring a quote from the Book of Isaiah: “Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe…” (Isaiah 1:23). Apparently, the report’s author, “Information Gathering and Assessment Investigator” Guy Sela, felt less taken with the verse. From there, he meticulously documented Avni’s page through 24 screenshots and links. Among the examples cited: “We will take to the streets. We are the majority, and we will determine the way of life in this country, not the ultra-Orthodox and not the fascists.” “A government whose ministers are liars and fraudsters, fascists and parasites, is a tangible threat to the security and values of the State of Israel. Go out and protest! Even today.” “A government that should not be cooperated with and must be brought down as soon as possible.” “Ignorance, illiteracy, racism and hatred have joined forces with cowardly conformists, sycophants and idlers. Where shall we carry our shame for the crumbling State of Israel?” And: “A government of liars, thieves, criminals and mostly just shitty people. We will fight you and win.” Those were the heated days of the anti-overhaul protests, when the streets were filled with demonstrations. At one point, Avni responded to Netanyahu’s remarks by calling them “the pile of lies of a liar, son of a liar, enemy of the people.” On another occasion, he escalated further, writing that “criminals and lunatics have taken over the Knesset and expect us to fall in line; they will get a civil war in return, and we will win because we are the majority for now.” These were likely the harshest statements he made. For the Education Ministry, they were enough. “The teaching staff member publishes many posts on the internet,” investigator Sela wrote. “Several of the posts the employee writes and shares contain content characterized by racism and incitement.” The report was passed to Livni Kahn, the ministry’s “Director of Discipline and Integrity.” Kahn concluded that “a review of the report indicates that the employee uploads inciting posts against the Haredi community, the government and its ministers and the prime minister. The employee must be summoned for clarification, during which the boundaries of expression will be clarified to him.” In November 2023, Avni was summoned for a clarification meeting with the school principal. During the talk, the principal said Avni’s statements could impair his ability to function as a school counselor. Avni argued that there was nothing racist in his remarks and insisted on the importance of freedom of expression. By the end of the meeting, the two agreed that Avni would make his Facebook profile private and maintain a more “appropriate style” moving forward. The Education Ministry was dissatisfied with that outcome. Officials demanded that a note be added to Avni’s personal file, with a copy sent to disciplinary staff. The principal refused. “I’m not particularly proud of the style of some of the things I posted,” Avni said. “The language was blunt, but the goal was to shock people into understanding the gravity of the situation. I wrote out of anger and frustration. Since when is calling for a strike incitement? The attempt to claim the language is inappropriate is pathetic. The reality is what’s inappropriate. Looking back, I regret not pursuing a principled struggle. They achieved exactly what they wanted. Cases like mine are meant to scare teachers out of expressing their opinions. That’s the real goal.” A former senior Education Ministry official said the ministry’s conduct “resembles that of dark regimes.” “No one stops for a moment to think about the fact that ministry employees are being paid to collect material on educators. It’s appalling. An entire generation of principals and teachers has internalized the fear of saying what they think. Then people wonder why children fail international standardized tests. They are not being taught critical thinking.” The High Court of Justice appeared to recognize the dangers inherent in this kind of information gathering when it reviewed the petition against the police anti-incitement unit established under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. In late March, the court issued a temporary order prohibiting the unit from conducting “proactive monitoring of specific individuals to detect incitement and freedom of expression offenses.” Judge Yechiel Kasher wrote that such monitoring is forbidden without approval from the prosecutor’s office and absent any “reason indicating suspicion of committing an offense.” Meanwhile, Kisch and his people persist. The Education Ministry insists on operating the Incitement Committee in secrecy and conducting its proceedings without transparency. In an attempt to trace the scope of the persecution, Haaretz identified multiple cases in which educators were monitored and harassed over their statements. Again and again, the ministry demonstrates a failure to grasp the most basic principles of freedom of expression, often relying on an unconstitutional 2009 director general’s memo that prohibits “insulting criticism” of the government. (Just to clarify: calling the 2009 memo ‘unconstitutional’ is incorrect, seeing as how the régime has no constitution.) In 2024, Ofer Shor, a history teacher at a junior high school in the northern town of Nesher, posted a video recounting his decision to refuse reserve service in the territories during the Second Intifada. He added that he would also refuse if called to serve in Gaza. Shor was summoned to a clarification meeting with Sigal Cohen, director of the Education Ministry’s Haifa District, and suspended from his job. He later returned to teaching following an order from the Haifa Labor Court. The court also intervened in the case of Dr. Meir Baruchin, a history teacher dismissed over Facebook posts, ordering the Petah Tikva municipality to reverse the firing. During the legal proceedings concerning Shor’s refusal, ministry representatives admitted they had reviewed his various social media posts. According to Shor, the monitoring continued even after he returned to teaching. “When I posted something else about refusal, they summoned me for another clarification talk,” he said. The impact of that surveillance, he added, “absolutely makes me hesitate more. I think twice, even three times, about what I write, how I write it, and whether it’s worth the risk.” Education Ministry officials also combed through the Facebook profile of Yael Levkovitz, an elementary school teacher in Tel Aviv. During a hearing conducted by district director Revital Shapira, Levkovitz was accused of posting “statements against the government” on Facebook. “I read all the posts,” Shapira said during the hearing, “but I didn’t spy on Yael.” When asked who did, the district director fell silent. Arab teachers are usually the primary targets of the Education Ministry’s censorship efforts. Legal proceedings have been launched against educators accused of denying Hamas’ crimes. In one case, a teacher’s statement, “It’s terrible, it’s impossible to imagine what happened there,” was interpreted as denial and became a centerpiece of disciplinary proceedings. In another, posts a teacher had published before October 7 were retroactively framed as evidence of “disloyalty” after the massacre. A high school teacher in northern Israel was summoned for a clarification meeting and accused of supporting terrorism because she had liked a Facebook page years earlier that featured pro-Palestinian content. Her attempts to explain that liking a page did not mean endorsing every post on it were unsuccessful. Often Arab teachers are forced to to disprove accusations against them. One teacher from the Jerusalem area was accused of liking a TikTok video posted by Hamas militants. She denied doing so, and no evidence of the alleged like was found. Investigators then searched for alternative evidence. They confronted her with an Instagram image she had shared days after October 7 showing a crying girl beside the caption “Stop the war” in Hebrew and Arabic. That “offense” resulted in an extended leave of absence. Sabrin Masarwa, an Arab teacher at a junior high school in Ganei Tikva, came under attack after students discovered [that] she had participated in a Nakba Day march in Shfaram. The Education Ministry quickly launched an investigation to determine whether Masarwa had made “inciting statements” during the demonstration and ruled that she would not return to teaching until a clarification meeting took place. That conversation never happened, and nothing improper was found on her social media accounts. In recent weeks, Haaretz contacted Arab teachers who had faced disciplinary action from the ministry, but most declined to speak publicly. Some explained that “now is the time to keep their heads down.” According to attorney Abeer Baker, who represented some of the teachers, the persecution followed familiar patterns: combing through old social media posts, distorting comments made in private conversations, and imposing loyalty tests. “Teachers were already cautious about national issues,” Baker said, “but after October 7, caution turned into complete silence.” One way to pierce the Education Ministry’s veil of secrecy is through freedom of information requests. Haaretz submitted such requests together with attorney Elad Man, legal adviser to the nonprofit organization Hatzlacha, which works to expand public access to information. The data obtained shows that every year, between 20 and 25 teachers are found responsible for incitement. In its early stages, much of the committee’s activity was driven by complaints, particularly after October 7. “Every day, more and more reports came in from students, parents and colleagues,” said a source within the education system. “In other cases, the source was the right-wing Channel 14. There was a table that was updated daily.” This was the period when Arab teachers were heavily targeted. “Yes, most of the complaints were about Arab teachers, but left-wing teachers were also investigated. The committee members don’t necessarily have a specific agenda, but they understand what is expected of them. That’s how the system works these days.” And once expectations are understood, the system largely runs itself. Even after Channel 14’s campaigns subsided and the number of public complaints dropped, the committee’s pace remained unchanged. Since the judicial overhaul began in 2023, the committee has recommended disciplinary measures against 52 teachers. Seven were ultimately dismissed. Most others faced suspensions, hearings or clarification meetings. Nineteen teachers are still awaiting final decisions in their cases. These figures were concealed not only from the public, but even from participants in discussions about incitement held by the Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee, who were reportedly surprised by the data. So who exactly sits on the committee that decides the fate of teachers accused of the “sin” of criticizing the government? The Education Ministry refuses to disclose that as well. The Haaretz investigation found that the secret committee is headed by Lior Tuvia, director of the Education Ministry’s Security Division and a former Shin Bet operative. Tuvia spent much of his career in the élite VIP Personal Security Unit, eventually reaching a rank equivalent to an army colonel. Alongside Tuvia, two names repeatedly appear in the documents obtained by Haaretz: Batel Ohev Zion, director of enforcement, and Guy Sela, the investigator who authored the report on Yaron Avni. The committee itself consists of five members: the chairperson, a representative of the Enforcement Division, the head of the Discipline Division, the head of the Teaching Personnel Division and the ministry’s legal adviser. Three of the five members come from security or disciplinary backgrounds. Not a single pedagogue sits on the committee. Apart from the legal adviser, there appears to be no one in the room tasked with defending freedom of expression as a constitutional principle. Haaretz learned that someone proposed involving the Justice Ministry in the committee’s proceedings, but Minister Yoav Kisch rejected the idea. The committee’s existence itself was concealed in the [bourgeois] state’s response to petitions challenging a new law that allows Education Ministry leaders, namely the minister and the director general he appointed, to independently define what constitutes identification with terrorism. This law is not an invitation for interpretation, but effectively grants ministry officials the power to dismiss teachers through a fast-track process and withhold funding from “defiant” schools. Two petitions were filed against the law: one by a group of educators, and another by the Follow-Up Committee together with Adalah legal center. According to the petitions, the law’s true purpose is not combating terrorism, but intimidation and silencing. Meanwhile, Supreme Court President Isaac Amit and Justices Gila Canfy-Steinitz and Ofer Grosskopf ordered the government to explain by next month why the petitions should not be accepted. The [bourgeois] state’s response claimed that the committee has existed since 2016, during the tenure of then-Education Minister Naftali Bennett, although there is no dispute that most of its activity has occurred over the past three years. Former senior Education Ministry officials expressed surprise at the claim that the committee was not new. Some suggested it was a clumsy attempt to signal to the High Court that the monitoring constituted an established and accepted practice stretching back nearly a decade. The [bourgeois] state’s response also revealed that an official procedure was established only in September 2025. Until then, the committee operated according to an internal guidelines document that the ministry refuses to release. Under the new procedure, the committee is authorized to investigate complaints involving “identification of a teaching staff member with terrorism” and to review “all statements made by teaching staff members, whether within their work or outside it, including social media posts.” The procedure further states that the committee will conduct “preliminary checks with security and enforcement agencies.” Haaretz contacted the Shin Bet to determine whether the agency cooperates with the Education Ministry on these matters and whether this marks a return, even partially, to the years when a Shin Bet representative served as deputy director of the Arab Education Division within the ministry. That position was abolished in 2005 following a High Court petition filed by Adalah. It appears that the Shin Bet has adopted the government’s disdain for transparency and public criticism, as it did not even bother to respond. “The establishment of the committee created a mechanism whose members monitor and investigate content expressed by teaching staff members in various forums, even when there is no connection between the publications and their educational work,” attorneys Miri Gross, Moran Savorai and Tal Hasin of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel wrote to Minister Kisch. “No less serious is the fact that the committee’s main activity, despite its severe infringement on human rights, is carried out in secrecy.” Attorney Or Sadan from the Movement for Freedom of Information added that “the Incitement Committee operates under an improper veil of secrecy and without clear authorization. The information disclosed raises serious doubts regarding its legality.” In response, the Education Ministry said the committee’s work had been regulated “following professional staff work and in dialogue with the Justice Ministry. All procedures and decisions are carried out solely by authorized bodies and in accordance with the law. The committee examines cases involving concerns of incitement, identification with terrorism, or violations of the law. It does not deal with political criticism.” The ministry appeared to forget that at the end of 2025, when Haaretz inquired about who investigates complaints regarding teachers’ political statements, officials responded differently. At the time, the ministry stated that “the issue is handled by the Advisory Committee for Handling Incitement Cases,” emphasizing that the committee’s work “includes all complaints regarding statements by teaching staff members.”
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47304127 Repost from Reddit
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47304127 Repost from Reddit
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47304127 Repost from Reddit
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47304127 Repost from Reddit
Repost from Reddit
The Labour government failed to keep any written records of meetings between clients of Peter Mandelson’s lobbying firm and top civil servants, an investigation by openDemocracy has revealed. The undeclared meetings included a roundtable with oil giants Shell and Equinor and private equity companies JP Morgan and Blackstone. Global Counsel went into administration in February with debts of £4.6m, after multiple clients pulled their accounts following revelations about Mandelson’s close friendship with paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein – whom he probed for advice when starting the company. But prior to that, the business was flourishing – with the company onboarding over 20 new clients in the months after Labour’s 2024 election victory. Those clients included Palantir, Shell and TikTok. Global Counsel boasted of its access to the party of government. “Our clients’ engagement pays dividends in the long run,” the company wrote in promotional materials, claiming it was “uniquely placed” to help corporate clients “establish relationships that outlive the election and deliver policy dividends on the other side”. Profits skyrocketed from £7.9m in 2022 to £13.9m in 2024, with Mandelson appointed ambassador to the US in December 2024. The government has previously faced criticism for failing to declare a meeting between Keir Starmer, Mandelson and Palantir in 2025. The Civil Service Code legally requires civil servants to “keep accurate official records”. From Novara Media via This RSS Feed.
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/47764254 Duration - 44:41 [A video podcast about Cuba from the podcast team Cuba Analysis Podcasts] In the next episode of Cuba’s Analysis podcast, Nina Blodau speaks with US army veteran Zue Jernstedt, who served in Afghanistan before leaving the army and becoming an anti-imperialist activist. Zue has worked as a human rights observer in the West Bank, participated in the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza, and organised with anti-ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) groups in the United States. In March 2026, she met the Cuba Analysis team in Havana during the Nuestra América Global Convoy of international activists who came together to oppose US threats of military aggression against Cuba and to demand an end to the US blockade, recently compounded by a genocidal oil siege. The conversation connects anti-imperialist struggles in Cuba and Palestine to the US domestic front. Zue discusses how the US military exploits poverty as a recruitment tool, the role of the naval base in illegally occupied Guantanamo Bay as a site for torture, US support for the genocidal Israeli state, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. She reflects on her own political awakening in Afghanistan, where she realised that far from bringing democracy and women’s rights, the US were pursuing its own imperialist interests. This same logic now targets Cuba, she says, not with bombs but with a blockade that starves the population. More recently, Trump has also threatened Cuba with military attack. Zue contrasts propaganda about Cuba with the reality she experienced on the ground: free universal healthcare, a strong sense of community, and a society which, despite crushing sanctions, still cares for each other. Her story is ultimately a call to action. She urges international audiences not to remain passive in the face of imperialism: to engage, to challenge, and to disrupt complacency. As she puts it, “We shall overcome – our day will come. It is absolutely inevitable that we rise up.” Follow us for updates and new episodes: Website: https://www.cubanalysis.org/ Social: @cubanalysis Instagram / Facebook / Telegram / YouTube / TikTok Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/cubanalysisspotify Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/…/cuba-analysis/id1846065440
Meanwhile, my Wi-Fi router requires a PhD in reverse engineering just to figure out why it won’t connect to the internet. I do think people in general could benefit from maybe $100 in tools and a healthy dose of Youtube when it comes to this point. My PC of 10 years wouldn’t boot one morning because my SSD died. There wasn’t anything too important on it that I hadn’t backed up, but it was still a bummer. I took it apart, and started poking around. Found a short across a capacitor, so I started cycling capacitors. Sure enough, one was bad. Replaced it. Boots just fine. (Moved everything to a new SSD just in case). All I needed for this job was a multimeter and a soldering iron (though hot air gun made it slightly easier). I think the “black box” nature of electronics is mostly illusory due to how we treat our devices. A friend bought a walking treadmill that wouldn’t turn on out of the box. She contacted the company, they told her to trash it and just shipped her a new one. She gave it to me, I took it apart. One of the headers that connects the power switch to the mainboard was just unplugged. It took literally 10 minutes to “fix” including disassembly and assembly, and all I needed was a screwdriver. Yet there’s zero expectation of user maintenance. If it doesn’t work, trash it. Scroll through maker TikTok This guy might be looking in the wrong places.
I think a lot of people don’t realise that yt-dlp works for many sites, not just YouTube I used it recently for watching a video from tiktok without having to use their god awful web UI and it was amazing
Tiktok gets banned everyone goes to a Chinese social media called “Little Red Book”