And adding on to that, I believe it aligns with the minimum age for renting a car in the US. As in, if you try renting a car while under 25, you usually need to pay a premium for similar, insurance reasons.
And the FAQ. Frequently Asked Questions Why is Reddit doing this? Reddit is built on tools that empower the community to be creative. We believe that Community Points can be a very useful and very powerful tool that communities own. We are excited to see what communities do with it! Isn’t crypto terrible for the environment? Not all crypto is the same. Different blockchains work in different ways, with different amounts of energy consumption. In our case, Community Points is built on a network that leverages the is built on the Ethereum blockchain, which is upgrading to a new version that uses 99.95% less energy. In addition, our project does not run on the Ethereum blockchain directly. We run on a “layer 2” scaling network, which further reduces energy consumption and lowers costs. In general, as crypto technology evolves, we expect it will become more efficient in order to scale to more users. Why didn’t I get Points? Go to your subreddit and look for the most recent post from u/CommunityPoints. If the post ends in “Proposal” then Points will be distributed one week after that post was made. You’ll know it’s distribution day when a new post is made saying “New [Points] Are Ready!” Hang on, they’ll be out soon! If the post says “New [Points] Are Ready”, open the post and download the CSV inside. You can open this in any text editor or spreadsheet software. Do a search for your username and see if it is in there. If your name is not in this list, you either did not earn positive karma in the community because of downvotes or penalties from the rules in the community. Keep in mind that your own votes don’t give you karma. You may also have been excluded if you were banned from the community or banned from Reddit at the time the distribution was proposed. If your name is in the list, you should receive Points. Open your Vault and look for a card that starts with “Claiming Your Points”. If you have not created a Vault yet, you can create one by going to “Vault” in the left drawer of the Reddit mobile app. If you do see the card in your Vault, we are still sending Points out to everyone. Please wait at least 24 hours after the “New [Points] Are Ready” post before filing a ticket in case there are delays. If you do not see the “Claiming Your Points” card, it’s possible your Points are being sent to an old Vault of yours. Have you created or recovered a Vault recently? Check the address (“0x…”) of the Vault in Vault Settings and try to match it with the address in the CSV. If the address number does not match, your Points were sent to an old Vault that was active when the distribution was originally proposed. If you can still recover that old Vault: Copy your new Vault address and make sure it is backed up to Reddit. You can do this from the Vault settings page Sign out of your current Vault Recover the old Vault by signing back in and choosing the old address and providing the password, or by entering in the Recovery Phrase for the old address Send the Points in the old Vault to the address you copied for the new Vault Sign out of the old Vault and recover the new Vault If a) the address in the CSV matches your active Vault, b) you don’t see a “Claiming Your Points” card, c) it’s been more than 24 hours since the post was made, and d) you still do not see your Points, then please file a ticket with your username and everything you have checked so far. We’ll be happy to take a look! How do I cancel my Special Membership? It depends on how you bought your membership: If you purchased your Special Membership subscription on reddit.com using a credit/debit card, you can cancel it by going to https://www.reddit.com/settings/special. If you bought your Special Membership subscription with Points, you can cancel it from the Memberships tab in the applicable subreddit page on the mobile app. If you purchased your Special Membership subscription using Google Play, you can manage or cancel it by visiting the Subscriptions section of Google Play. If you purchased your Special Membership subscription with your Apple ID, you can manage or cancel it through your device’s Account Settings or in the Manage Subscriptions section of the Apple App Store. Help! I’ve lost my Recovery Phrase and/or Vault Password, can you reset my Vault for me? Unfortunately, by design, Reddit does not have access to your Vault to recover it or the Points inside of it. If you’re absolutely sure your Vault is not stored on any of your mobile devices and you absolutely cannot remember your Recovery Phrase or Vault Password, there is nothing we can do to unlock your Vault and you will have to create a new Vault. Also note that Points are tied to the Vault that was active when the distribution is finalized. If you change your Vault between when the distribution is proposed and when Points are actually distributed, your Points will go to the updated Vault. What if I get banned? What happens to my Points or my Special Membership? Your existing Points will forever remain tied to your Vault address, but you will get locked out of Vault. You’ll also stop receiving distributions, and any Special Membership renewals will be cancelled. I don’t see Vault in the app. Vault will appear in the left drawer when you meet one of the following conditions: Have unclaimed Points Have a non-zero Points amount Subscribed to a subreddit with Community Points Make sure your account satisfies any of the above conditions. In some cases, it can take up to a minute for the Vault to appear in the menu after starting the app. If you are still having trouble, please file a ticket. I’m not seeing my Points on my account. If you have just created your Vault, your Points can take up to 24 hours to land to your account. When 24 hours have passed and you still don’t see any Points, please file a ticket. Points are bound to your Reddit account, so your alt accounts won’t have Points from your other accounts. Make sure you’re using the correct Reddit account when accessing your Vault. If you created a Vault on a second device, it becomes active and the reflected balance is from that Vault. If you wish to go back to your Vault: Go to Vault → Settings Tap on Log Out Select your old Vault address from the list Recover using Reddit Backup or a Recovery Phrase I got charged for a Special Membership but I haven’t received it. Please file a ticket. I converted my Points into Reddit Coins, but I don’t want them anymore. Can you revert the transaction? This is not possible. Conversion into Coins is final and cannot be reversed, since Points are burned in the process. Why can I no longer convert my Points into Reddit Coins? Reddit Coins (including monthly coins from Reddit Premium) are winding down September 12, 2023. Learn more. How do I delete my Vault? Because Vault is a digital wallet on the blockchain, you can’t permanently delete your Vault. While you can’t delete your visible public address for Vault or any prior Community Points transactions, you can sign out from your Vault through the Reddit app, which will delete Vault from your local device and delink it from your Reddit account. To do that, go to Vault —> Setting —> Sign out. I haven’t found my answer. How do I get support? If you have questions, please file a ticket.
I’m on a Nebula guest pass this week someone generously gave me when I talked about having a hard time finding AI things. It’s a very stark contrast scrolling through the 2 feeds next to each other! Nebula has a more Fediverse feel. I don’t believe it has any kind of real recommendation algorithm, it just has a few suggested categories, like this is Women’s Month, so they highlight female creators. Less people contributing, but every video looks watchable even if it’s not something I have interest in. The main issue I’ve had is getting used to a more Netflix looking system to find videos, and just the fact since everything looks interesting, I haven’t actually watched much since it’s stuff I want to watch when I can actually pay attention instead of it just being moreso background noise. For the $60 a year or whatever it is, it is looking quite tempting. Scrolling YouTube next to it feels much more like looking at Facebook. Clear algorithm based feed. Lots of mental junk food type recommendations. Real content looks the same as AI. I’m on premium and still have to hear the in-video ad reads. Much more variety (almost no electronic music production or synth type stuff I could find on Nebula, not much on animation, for example) but you have to wade through a lot of crud to find the good stuff.
The Kickstarter wasn’t just selling “the book”, it sold four things (we’ll get back to this) and wasn’t trying to “get back at Amazon”. I believe the Kickstarter was an appropriate option, even without considering his inability to independently bankroll the final scope of the project. The four things: A Premium Hardcover of the novels. This is the first time that the initial print version of one of his novels was released as a Premium Hardcover (albeit they did glue the binding), demand was very much not predictable and using KS helped to ensure everyone who wanted the limited print hardcover could get one (over 90k of each were needed). DRM-free ebook of the novels. This was entirely risk-free for the consumer, they already essentially existed. This was essentially a pre-order, it is really only justified on KS because of #1. Audiobook of the novel. Similar to #2, however I guess there was some minor consumer risk in that the audio needed to be recorded still, but Brandon does have reliable narrators and though he tried and failed at getting special narrators, that wasn’t part of the pitch. Swag Boxes. This is the biggest item type to justify KS usage, they needed tools like they get from KS to be able to properly manage the monthly subscription box fulfillment. This did have some consumer risk, because it isn’t what they normally do, Sanderson couldn’t bank roll it himself (even after the $40M Kickstarter, he’s only got a 6M$ net worth) and it was largely an unknown in the book publishing space. Back to the Amazon bit, it wasn’t a selling point to the KS, Amazon isn’t mentioned at all. He did decide to support competition in the Audiobook space as part of his fulfillment. In fact, all 4 of the novels are available on Amazon as print and ebooks, published through deals with his traditional publishers. The way in which he decided to sell these novels (bundled content types and subscriptions) wasn’t something his traditional publishers were agreeable to and the KS was used as a proof of concept for that. The KS raised $41M dollars, it’s the largest KS campaign ever by double. There’s a 0% chance the project would have been any where near remotely successful (and enjoyed by fans) if he’d tried to deliver it in a more traditional way. He didn’t have support of his publishers for that, he couldn’t afford it himself and the only other option would be a business loan, which we don’t know if he could have received a large enough one. Regardless of funding, the demand smashed expectations, less people would have got what they wanted in a traditional purchase method. Yeah, there are bad board game companies on KS, take your complaints up with them. Which reminds me, I need to see when my physical edition pledge of Z from 2013 is due…
Right clicking on the UI: believe it or not… premium feature.
Except when you run a blackmail operation of course you will compile all the information of all the people, so you can blackmail them with it. If it was only about abusing children, Epstein could have done that with relatively little attention. Instead he made sure to have as many people involved as possible. There is credible reasons to believe that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell have been instructed by Mossad, as they have extensive ties to Mossad and Israel, in particular through the father of Ghislaine Maxwell, Robert, who Epstein apparently helped stow away stolen money. Also Robert “fell of his Yacht” when it became known that he was a Mossad asset. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#Alleged_connections_to_intelligence_agencies Epstein was rumored to be associated with Intelligence agencies.[292] The U.S. journalists Dylan Howard, Melissa Cronin and James Robertson linked Epstein to the Israeli Mossad in their book Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales. They relied for the most part on the former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe.[293] According to him, Epstein’s activities as a spy served to gather compromising material on powerful people in order to blackmail them.[294] There is also a possible connection to the Mossad via Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father Robert Maxwell is said to have had contacts with the Mossad.[295] Epstein’s victim Virginia Giuffre also alleged Epstein to be an intelligence asset, linking on Twitter to a Reddit page, that alleged Epstein was a spy, running a blackmail operation.[296] As U.S. Attorney in Florida, the later U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta reached a settlement with Epstein’s lawyers (including Alan M. Dershowitz) in 2008, which allowed him to receive a very light prison sentence. Acosta later reportedly stated that he was told that Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and that the issue was above his “pay grade.” According to Acosta, he was pushed to give him a good deal.[297] Former CIA Director and diplomat William J. Burns met with Epstein three times. According to a CIA spokesperson, Burns hoped that Epstein would help him “transition to the private sector.”[298] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell#Mossad_allegations;_Vanunu_case The Foreign Office suspected Maxwell of being a secret agent of a foreign government, possibly a double agent or a triple agent, and “a thoroughly bad character and almost certainly financed by Russia”. He had known links to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), to the Soviet KGB, and to the Israeli intelligence service Mossad.[58] Shortly before Maxwell’s death, Ari Ben-Menashe, a former employee of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, approached a number of news organisations in Britain and the US with the allegation that Maxwell and the Daily Mirror’s foreign editor, Nicholas Davies, were both long-time agents for Mossad. Ben-Menashe also claimed that, in 1986, Maxwell informed the Israeli Embassy in London that Mordechai Vanunu revealed information about Israel’s nuclear capability to The Sunday Times, then to the Daily Mirror. Vanunu was subsequently kidnapped by Mossad and smuggled to Israel, convicted of treason and imprisoned for eighteen years.[59] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell#Death Murder was ruled out by the judge and, in effect, so was suicide.[65] His son discounted the possibility of suicide, saying, “I think it is highly unlikely that he would have taken his own life, it wasn’t in his makeup or his mentality.”[10] Maxwell was afforded a lavish funeral in Israel, attended by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Israeli President Chaim Herzog, at least six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence[67] and many dignitaries and politicians, both government and opposition, and was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.[68][69] Herzog delivered the eulogy, and the Kaddish was recited by his fellow Holocaust survivor, friend and longtime attorney Samuel Pisar.[70] Also note how the recent denials from Israel are extremely agressive https://time.com/7302177/epstein-mossad-israel-intelligence-naftali-bennett/: The Israeli politician on Monday said he had “100% certainty” that Epstein did not have any ties to the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, or the country itself. “The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false,” Bennett said in a post on X. “There’s a vicious wave of slander and lies against my country and my people, and we just won’t take it anymore.” EDIT: Also note that Israel is notorious for harboring fugitive child abusers. Israel is strategically building on child rapists to support them. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-jewish-american-pedophiles-hide-from-justice-in-israel/ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-07-25/ty-article/.premium/tip-of-the-iceberg-how-foreign-sex-offenders-find-refuge-in-israel/00000182-3532-d7e9-af96-3d73c52c0000
I believe Louis Rossmann said that giving a single dollar directly to a creator is more than a lifetime of watching their ads. Premium I think is really good comparatively but that’s only because ads pay so little. (https://youtu.be/4Q3ZXQZZlcE?t=55 is where he says this according to his cpm)
I think when you see an action you should always look for the reaction. For example the rise of short video and fragmented content also gave us a kind of golden age of long form spoken content. There’s always a swing to the pendulum. Similarly I believe the age of slop will put a large premium on anything that is done sincerely and well thought out by a human. Just because they desperately want to sell slop, doesn’t mean the people want to buy slop.
A somewhat practical guide to living on a hard money standard in a debasing fiat world. Firstly, let me say, I do not know how long this will end up being. It could be very short, or it could be an entire essay. We shall see. The “why?” Choosing a hard money Unit of Account (UoA) Stability out of instability Shifting your mindset Practical advice and how I do it The “why?”: All governments debase fiat currency. This is a fact. You work day after day, hour after hour, and you feel like you can never get ahead. You see your friends turning to socialist and communist policies such as rent control and public takeover of private property. You believe in the idea that what you work for is rightfully yours, and therefore you are labeled selfish. I disagree, and you are not alone. This is an admittedly incomplete guide as to how I do my best to live my life on #Monero, but these concepts can be applied to other things such as #Bitcoin. I’ve explained bits and pieces of this before on podcasts and in ephemeral chats that disappear over time, but I figure I should actually write them down in a slightly more permanent way, so here it is, filtered by at least some forethought, though admittedly not much. Choosing a hard money Unit of Account (UoA): This is a personal choice, but from what I can tell, the best contenders are #Monero, #Bitcoin, and #Gold. Monero prides itself and strives to be peer-to-peer, uncensorable, private digital cash. The Monero community believe fiercely that the right to privacy in your financial dealings is a fundamental human right. An outsider is unable to tell who sent a Monero transaction, who received that Monero transaction, or how much that Monero transaction was for. The only people who have the right to know that information according to the Monero community are the sender and the receiver. The Monero community is openly defiant of state power and control and believe Monero is a tool like any other that can cause great harm or great good depending on the human behind the input device. Bitcoin these days is commonly referred to as “digital gold”. It was the very first cryptocurrency, and we all owe a great debt of gratitude to Satoshi Nakamoto for what he/she/they accomplished. Bitcoin was released as a scathing response to the 2008 great financial crisis. Satoshi embedded a now famous headline into the Genesis block of the network, "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”. What an absolute legend. Gold has been hard money for thousands of years, retaining its purchasing power, and was only dealt a final killing blow in 1971 when then US President Richard Nixon declared “I have directed Secretary Connally to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other reserve assets, except in amounts and conditions determined to be in the interest of monetary stability and in the best interests of the United States.”. In case you haven’t been keeping count, this temporary government program has been in effect for 55 years, showing that there really is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program. As mentioned above, I have chosen Monero to fill this role in my life. Stability out of instability: I will be the first one to admit, living on a hard money standard when everybody else is living on a flexible fiat standard is hard work. If you are not prepared for hard work, stop reading now and go do something else. Depending on the recklessness of your government, this could be literal years of hard work. If you look at a price chart on any trading service, what you will find is that the prices of Monero, Bitcoin, and Gold can fluctuate wildly, or at least they look like they do. More on that later. The way I have found to combat this problem is by using a simple moving average of the prices instead of the day-to-day fluctuation in the market prices. You have a choice to make. How comfortable are you with instability? If you choose a shorter term moving average, you will be closer to the current market price at any given time, but your net worth will also experience more fluctuation when measured in your failing fiat currency. Choosing a longer-term moving average will keep your net worth more stable when measured in your failing fiat currency at the expense of most of the time underestimating your actual net worth, sometimes by quite a bit. Shifting your mindset: Here’s where things get tough. You have to abandon accounting your net worth in the fiat currency that you’ve used all your life. And that is hard. You have to put yourself in a headspace something like “my fiat currency is worthless, and I want nothing to do with it, if at all possible.” you have to take the simple moving average you decided on above and start mentally pricing items from your fiat currency into the hard money you’ve chosen to use. as an example, instead of “my internet bill is 50 US dollars per month” your thought will need to become “my internet bill is 144 millinero (0.144 Monero) per month”. This is where that moving average from earlier comes in. The market price of the hard money can fluctuate wildly in your failing fiat currency and you need to be able to price items you see directly in your new hard money without having to break out a calculator for everything. You don’t have to get the pricing perfect by any means, but eventually you should be able to look at a price in your local fiat currency and have a decent idea of exactly what that item would cost in your hard money unit of account. Since your fiat currency is failing against the hard money unit of account you’ve chosen, what you’ll often find is that you can get items at a “discount” from what you would have expected to pay by using the simple moving average. As an example, as of writing, I would expect to pay ~86 millinero for 2 two topping pizzas delivered to my home, but as of now, I would actually pay ~51.7 millinero instead. That is a "discount’ from what I would have anticipated to be paying as determined by the simple moving average. However, the opposite can sometimes be the case and you might end up having to pay a “premium” above what you would have expected based on the simple moving average. This happens when your hard money unit of account is being undervalued as compared to the simple moving average in your failing fiat currency and is generally short-lived since your fiat currency is failing. during this “premium” it is best to delay non-essential consumption, if at all possible, until this reverts to normal. You should of course be fiat cost averaging into your hard money currency at all times from your failing currency, but at these times it is best to put any extra you might be able to get ahold of in quickly because you will obtain more units of the hard money and therefore be more wealthy later on down the road. Practical advice and how I do it: 5A: Consume Media: Find podcasts, books, music, etc. to listen to about your chosen unit of account or similar hard monies. The Monero community, the Bitcoin community, and the Gold community have their differences, but deep down we are all striving for the same thing. We want to live in a world where our work is valued in a currency that cannot be debased by other human beings. Therefore, it’s fine to listen to content from the other camps. Because the general rules apply even if specifics may not. I’ve chosen Monero personally, but I still listen to Bitcoin podcasts and read Bitcoin books because while they may be about Bitcoin, so much of what they have to say is completely applicable to Monero. I also listen to podcasts about gold and silver for that exact same reason. 5B: Redenominate your life: Denominate your life as much as possible in the unit of account you’ve chosen and encourage others of similar viewpoints to do the same. If you can do so, find companies who take your currency for bill payments and start using them (example: Cloaked Wireless accepts both Monero and Bitcoin for cellphone bills) For me #XMRBazaar has been fantastic. They have tons of items directly priced in Monero, where I don’t have to concern myself with converting from Fiat. 5C: Determine your CAGR (compound annual growth rate): You are using the simple moving average to calculate your net worth, which is going to most of the time be below your actual net worth, and your fiat currency is failing against the hard money you’ve chosen. This means if you spent nothing from your hard money stack that your net worth in your local fiat currency would actually continue to grow. You could also treat this as a “dividend” and spend that much fiat in the full knowledge that as long as you spend less than that amount, the fiat value of your stack would stay the exact same or possibly grow. Here’s a quick example for illustration purposes: monero’s 6 month simple moving average is $352 US Dollars and the CAGR is 15%. So 15% divided by 12 months is 15/12 = 1.25%/month. If your hard money stack was worth 1,000 US dollars your “dividend” would be 1000*0.0125 = $12.50 US Dollars/month. If you spent nothing, your hard money would now be worth $1,012.50 or if you wished you could spend that $12.50 on something and your hard money stack would still be worth $1,000 US Dollars. Your stack of hard money would decrease slightly, but the fiat value of that stack would stay the exact same. 5D: Live the gift card life: You will not be able to find everything you want priced directly in your hard money of choice. Deal with it. Therefore, you will need to find merchants who are willing to accept the hard money you have chosen for gift cards denominated in your local currency in order to get some of the things you need. Here in the US, I am able to spend Monero to buy an Instacart gift card, for example, and then buy my groceries using that, so I have paid for my groceries using Monero indirectly. After all is said and done, what you will find is that your life as denominated in the hard money currency you’ve chosen will get easier over time. In 2023 I was having to pay 1.2 Monero per month for my groceries and today that has fallen to 0.511 or -57.4% in 3 years. And that’s against the US dollar, which is supposedly a stable currency. I can’t imagine what it would be like for something like the Argentinian peso or Mexican peso. If the US dollar really is the cleanest dirty shirt, then that’s still an extremely dirty shirt.
(This takes approx. five minutes to read.) The global publishing platform Substack is generating revenue from newsletters that promote virulent Nazi ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism, a Guardian investigation has found. The platform, which says it has about 50 million users worldwide, allows members of the public to self-publish articles and charge for premium content. Substack takes about 10% of the revenue the newsletters make. About 5 million people pay for access to newsletters on its platform. Among them are newsletters that openly promote racist ideology. One, called NatSocToday, which has 2,800 subscribers, charges $80 — about £60 — for an annual subscription, though most of its posts are available for free. NatSocToday is understood to be run by a far-right activist based in the U.S. and features a swastika, a symbol appropriated by the Nazi party in the 1920s to symbolise white supremacy, as its profile picture. The full name of the Nazi party was the [so-called] National Socialist German Workers’ party. One of its recent posts suggests the Jewish race was responsible for the second world war and describes Adolf Hitler as “one of the greatest men of all time”. Within two hours of subscribing to NatSocToday for the purposes of this investigation, the Substack algorithm directed the Guardian’s account to 21 other profiles featuring similar content. Some of these accounts regularly share and like each other’s posts. Many have thousands of followers. Erika Drexler, a self-styled “NS [national socialist] activist” with 241 subscribers, shared posts describing Hitler as her hero and the “most overqualified leader ever”. The account is also believed to be U.S.-based and charges $150 for an annual subscription. Ava Wolfe, who has 3,000 subscribers and calls herself an “archivist of articles and videos about history in particular WW2” appears to be based in the UK. She has a profile which features [anticommunist] imagery. An annual subscription to her Substack costs £38. Much of the content Wolfe posts engages in Holocaust denial. About 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, but she falsely claimed earlier this month that doctors had found that “no one was deliberately murdered by Germans” and that “death was from disease and starvation only”. It is unclear if Drexler and Wolfe have used their real identities to post their material, or if they write under pseudonyms. (Given that ‘Drexler’ could refer to Anton Drexler, and ‘Wolfe’ could refer to somebody’s nickname for an Axis dictator, these are very probably pseudonyms.) Another account, entitled Third Reich Literature Archive, with 2,100 subscribers, shared postcards purporting to be from a [Fascist] propaganda rally in Nuremberg in 1938, the year before [the Third Reich and the Slovak Republic invaded Poland]. It also charges $80 a year for a premium subscription. The Guardian account was shown separate posts that promoted conspiracy theories about Jewish power and influence and suggested antisemitism was a myth. The algorithm also promoted other extremist content, including newsletters relating to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory — the suggestion that there is a plot to replace white Europeans with people from other races. There has been a sharp increase in antisemitism and Islamophobia since the beginning of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023. Two men were killed when a synagogue in Heaton Park, Manchester, was attacked on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur in October last year. Fifteen people were shot dead as they celebrated Hanukah at Sydney’s Bondi Beach in December. The chief executive of the Antisemitism Policy Trust, Danny Stone, said harmful online content often inspired real-life attacks. As examples, Stone cited the racially motivated murder of 10 African Americans in Buffalo, New York, in 2022; a synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2018 in which 11 people were killed and the 2017 attack on a mosque in Finsbury Park, north London, in which one person was killed and several injured. “People can be, and are, inspired by online harm to cause harm in real world,” he said. “The terrorist who attacked Heaton Park synagogue didn’t wake up one morning and decide to kill Jews; he will have been radicalised. “Algorithmic prompts and the amplification of harmful materials is extremely serious. The Online Safety Act was supposed to address the illegal content but very little is being done about so-called legal but harmful content.” Stone also expressed concern about online disinformation about the Holocaust. “There has been a drop in attendance and take-up of Holocaust memorial events,” he said. “We know that knowledge already was frighteningly low. “When you have Holocaust denial, inversion or comparisons, you are seeing, across the board, a diminishing of the memory of the Holocaust. As we are further away, with fewer survivors, the facts can get lost. “We have to win the battle for that narrative. This online content does extreme damage because if we fail to learn the lessons of that past, we’re doomed to repeat it.” A spokesperson for the Holocaust Educational Trust said: “Material like this that spreads conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial and which praises Hitler and the Nazis is not new but clearly its reach is increasing. The idea that Substack profits from this hateful material and allows for it to be boosted via their algorithm is a disgrace. “We are acutely aware of the passage of time which moves us further away from the events of the Holocaust, and eyewitnesses to this history are becoming fewer in number. At the same time, antisemitism is increasing — this extremism needs to be exposed, challenged and stamped out.” Joani Reid, the Labour chair of the all party parliamentary group against antisemitism, said she planned to write to Substack and Ofcom to ask them to address the Guardian’s findings. She said [that] antisemitism was “spreading with impunity” and getting worse. “We need to hold these tech companies to account because there are real-life consequences to this,” she said. “Jewish people have been complaining about this for years — saying this violence online is going to end in violence offline and that is exactly what has happened. We need to start taking this stuff far more seriously.” Substack was contacted for comment but did not respond. Launched in 2017, the platform has previously faced criticism for hosting newsletters that promote extremist views. Its co-founder, Hamish McKenzie addressed its decision to host [neofascist] content in one of his own posts on the site in 2023. “I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either — we wish no one held those views,” he wrote. “But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetising publications) makes the problem go away — in fact, it makes it worse. “We believe that supporting individual rights and civil liberties while subjecting ideas to open discourse is the best way to strip bad ideas of their power. We are committed to upholding and protecting freedom of expression, even when it hurts.” (Apparently, this dullard has never seen David Irving repeatedly frustrate Shoah survivors.) McKenzie also said the site’s content guidelines “do have narrowly defined proscriptions, including a clause that prohibits incitements to violence”. I just want to add that Substack is most likely getting a good deal of dosh from hosting Herzlian newsletters, too. The uptick in alt-right content after Elon Musk acquired Twitter did little, if anything, to drive out its own Herzlian users.
Photograph Source: Caassemblyedits – CC BY-SA 4.0 California Governor Gavin Newsom has made headlines this winter by vowing to defeat a proposal for a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires in the state. Many national polls now rank him as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, but aligning with the ultra-wealthy is not auspicious for wooing the party’s voters. Last year, Reuters/Ipsos pollsters reported that a whopping 86 percent of Democrats said “changing the federal tax code so wealthy Americans and large corporations pay more in taxes should be a priority.” Newsom has drawn widespread praise for waging an aggressive war of words against President Trump. But few people outside of California know much about the governor’s actual record. Many Democratic voters will be turned off to learn that his fervent opposition to a billionaire tax is part of an overall political approach that has trended more and more corporate-friendly. A year ago, Newsom sent about 100 leaders of California-based companies a prepaid cell phone “programmed with Newsom’s digits and accompanied by notes from the governor himself,” Politico reported. One note to the CEO of a big tech corporation said, “If you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away.” While pandering to business elites, Newsom has slashed budgets to assist the poor and near-poor with healthcare, housing and food – in a state where 7 million live under the official poverty line and child poverty rates are the highest in the nation. The latest Newsom budget, released last month, continues his trajectory away from social compassion. “The governor’s 2026-27 spending plan balances the budget by dodging the harsh realities of the Republican megabill, H.R. 1, and maintains state cuts to vital public supports, like Medi-Cal, enacted as part of the current-year budget,” the California Budget & Policy Center pointed out. “Governor Newsom’s reluctance to propose meaningful revenue solutions to help blunt the harm of federal cuts undermines his posture to counter the Trump administration.” The statement said that the proposed budget “will leave many Californians without food assistance and healthcare coverage.” So far, key facts about Newsom’s policy priorities have scarcely gone beyond California’s borders. “National media have focused on Newsom as a personality and potential White House candidate and have almost completely ignored what he has and has not done as a governor,” said columnist Dan Walters, whose five decades covering California politics included 33 years at The Sacramento Bee. “It’s a perpetual failing of national political media to be more interested in image and gamesmanship rather than actual actions, the sizzle rather than the steak, and Newsom is very adept at exploiting that tendency.” Walters told me that Newsom “has generally avoided direct conflicts with his fellow millionaires, such as discouraging tax increases, and has danced between corporations and labor unions on bread-and-butter issues such as minimum wages. He’s also quietly moved away from environmental issues, most notably shifting from condemnation of the oil industry for price gouging and pollution to encouraging the industry to increase production and keep refineries operating.” Newsom angered climate activists last fall by signing his bill to open up thousands of new oil wells. Noting that “Newsom just championed a plan to dramatically expand oil drilling in California,” the Oil and Gas Action Network said that he “can’t claim climate leadership while giving Big Oil what it wants.” Third Act, founded by Bill McKibben, responded by denouncing “Newsom’s Big Oil backslide” and accused the governor of “backtracking on key climate and community health commitments.” Great efforts to curb the ubiquitous toxic impacts of PFAS “forever chemicals” hit a wall in October when Newsom vetoed legislation to ban them in such consumer items as cookware, dental floss and cleaning products. “This bill had huge support from both within the state and beyond, and yet, apparently, the governor was interested only in the one sector opposing it – the cookware industry,” said Clean Water Action policy director Andria Ventura. The organization put the veto in context, observing that “the governor seems determined to move away from his pro-environment past.” As with the environment, so with workers’ rights. In 2023, Newsom vetoed a bill to provide unemployment compensation to workers on strike. In 2024, he vetoed a bill to help protect farmworkers from violations of heat safety regulations, while temperatures in California’s agricultural fields spike above 110 degrees. The latest Gallup polling of the party’s rank-and-file indicates a wide ideological gap between Newsom and the party’s base. Fifty-nine percent of Democrats described themselves as “liberal” or “very liberal,” while 32 percent said “moderate,” and 8 percent “conservative” or “very conservative.” And the trendline is striking: Democrats’ self-identification as liberal or very liberal has doubled in the last two decades. It might be tempting to believe that Newsom’s services to corporatism and the rich are less important than the possibility that he would be an adept Democratic nominee to defeat the GOP ticket in 2028. But pursuit of such “moderate” politics was harmful to Democratic turnout in 2016 and 2024. Newsom’s current political attitude is similar to the timeworn approach that undermined the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. Newsom says he’s eager to pitch a big tent for the Democratic Party, declaring that he welcomes the likes of former U.S. senator Joe Manchin as well as New York’s socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani in the fold. “I want it to be the Manchin to Mamdani party,” Newsom said in November. “I want it to be inclusive.” He did not mention that during the Biden presidency, while in the Senate, Manchin wrecked prospects for transformational Build Back Better legislation and other measures that would have benefitted tens of millions of Americans. It’s telling that Newsom and former president Bill Clinton, a longtime backer, have voiced profuse mutual admiration. Interviewed after he came off the stage with the former president in a joint appearance at a Clinton Global Initiative event a few months ago, Newsom praised “the ability to reach across the aisle.” That formula is a throwback to what propelled Clinton into the presidency with a pledge to find common ground, only to toss the working class overboard from the Oval Office. The disastrous results – made possible by Clinton’s reaching “across the aisle” – included passage of the NAFTA trade pact, the “welfare reform” law that harshly undermined poor women with children, the mass-incarceration-boosting crime bill and the media monopoly-enabling Telecommunications Act. Launching his podcast “This Is Gavin Newsom” a year ago, the host began warmly showcasing extremist bigots by featuring Charlie Kirk as his first guest. When Kirk was assassinated in September, Newsom lavished praise on him, tweeting: “The best way to honor Charlie’s memory is to continue his work: engage with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse.” From the governor’s office, Newsom issued a statement that explained: “I knew Charlie, and I admired his passion and commitment to debate.” The praise raises the question: how far right would someone need to be before no longer meriting Newsom’s admiration for “passion”? Clearly, Kirk wasn’t far right enough to be disqualified. He only said things like asserting that “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” proclaiming “we made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s” and castigating Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and others as affirmative-action hires: “You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” Newsom’s show has continued to give a friendly platform to such extreme right-wingers as Steve Bannon and Ben Shapiro. In effect, Newsom is engaged in a podcast form of triangulation – by turns validating and disputing his guests’ attacks on progressivism. On no issue is Newsom more out of step with the Democratic electorate than U.S. support for Israel. Last summer, a Quinnipiac survey found that 77 percent of Democrats believed Israel was guilty of genocide in Gaza – but last month Newsom said the opposite, declaring “I don’t agree with that notion.” Like most Democratic officeholders who combine their denial of genocide with support for the nonstop weapons flow to Israel, Newsom lays blame narrowly on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that he is “crystal clear about my love for Israel and condemnation of Bibi.” The same Quinnipiac poll found that fully three-quarters of Democrats were opposed to sending further military aid to Israel, a position that Newsom refuses to take at the same time that he dodges questions about the right-leaning Israel lobby group AIPAC. Newsom can expect a direct challenge from another California Democrat likely to be on debate stages when the party’s presidential campaigns get underway next year. Congressman Ro Khanna said of Newsom in January: “He doesn’t want to offend the AIPAC donors. He doesn’t want to offend the donor class. And that explains his position on going to give Netanyahu a blank check right after October 7, on not being willing to ever call out the funding we were giving, and not willing to call out that clearly it was a genocide, and then not willing to challenge the billionaire class on tax policy.” For anyone who wants a truly progressive Democratic Party, Gavin Newsom is bad news. The post The Actual Gavin Newsom Is Much Worse Than You Think appeared first on CounterPunch.org. From CounterPunch.org via this RSS feed
The conversation around energy use in the United States has become … electric. Everyone from President Donald Trump to the Today show has been talking about the surging demand for, and rising costs of, electrons. Many people worry that utilities won’t be able to produce enough power. But a report released today argues that the better question is: Can we use what utilities already produce more efficiently in order to absorb the coming surge? “A lot of folks have been looking at this from the perspective of, do we need more supply-side resources and gas plants?,” said Mike Specian, utilities manager with the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, or ACEEE, who wrote the report. “We found that there is a lack of discussion of demand-side measures.” When Specian dug into the data, he discovered that implementing energy efficiency measures and shifting electricity usage to lower-demand times are two of the fastest and cheapest ways of meeting growing thirst for electricity. These moves could help meet much, if not all, of the nation’s projected load growth. Moreover, they would cost only half — or less — what building out new infrastructure would, while avoiding the emissions those operations would bring. But Specian also found that governments could be doing more to incentivize utilities to take advantage of these demand-side gains. “Energy efficiency and flexibility are still a massive untapped resource in the U.S.,” he said. “As we get to higher levels of electrification, it’s going to become increasingly important.” The report estimated that, by 2040, utility-driven efficiency programs could cut usage by about 8 percent, or around 70 gigawatts, and that making those cuts currently costs around $20.70 per megawatt. The cheapest gas-fired power plants now start at about $45 per kilowatt generated. While the cost of load shifting is harder to pin down, the report estimates moving electricity use away from peak hours — often through time-of-use pricing, smart devices, or utility controls — to times when the grid is less strained and power is cheaper could save another 60 to 200 gigawatts of power by 2035. That alone would far outweigh even the most aggressive near-term projections for data center capacity growth. Vijay Modi, director of the Quadracci Sustainable Engineering Laboratory Columbia University, agrees that energy efficiency is critical, but isn’t sure how many easy savings are left to be had. He also believes that governments at every level — rather than utilities — are best suited to incentivize that work. He sees greater potential in balancing loads to ease peak demand. “This is a big concern,” he said, explaining that when peak load goes up, it could require upgrading substations, transformers, power lines, and a host of other distribution equipment. That raises costs and rates. Utilities, he added, are well positioned to solve this because they have the data needed to effectively shift usage and are already taking steps in that direction by investing in load management software, installing battery storage and generating electricity closer to end users with things like small-scale renewable energy. “It defers some of the heavy investment,” said Modi. “In turn, the customer also benefits.” Specian says that one reason utilities tend to focus on the supply side of the equation is that they can often make more money that way. Building infrastructure is considered a capital investment, and utilities can pass that cost on to customers, plus an additional rate of return, or premium, which is typically around 10 percent. Energy efficiency programs, however, are generally considered an operating expense, which aren’t eligible for a rate of return. This setup, he said, motivates utilities to build new infrastructure rather than conserve energy, even if the latter presents a more affordable option for ratepayers. “Our incentives aren’t properly lined up,” said Specian. State legislators and regulators can address this, he said, by implementing Energy Efficiency Resource Standards or performance-based regulation. “Decoupling,” which separates a company’s revenue from the amount of electricity it sells, is another tactic that many states are adopting. Joe Daniel, who runs the carbon-free electricity team at the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, has also been watching a model known as “fuel cost sharing,” which allows utilities and ratepayers to share any savings or added costs rather than passing them on entirely to customers. “It’s a policy that seems to make logical sense,” he said. A handful of states across the political spectrum have adopted the approach and, of the people he’s spoken with or heard from, Daniel said “every consumer advocate, every state public commissioner, likes it.” The Edison Electric Institute, which represents all of the country’s investor-owned electric companies, told Grist that, regardless of regulation, utilities are making progress in these areas. “EEI’s member companies operate robust energy-efficiency programs that save enough electricity each year to power nearly 30 million U.S. homes,” the organization said in a statement. “Electric companies continue to work closely with customers who are interested in demand response, energy efficiency, and other load-flexibility programs that can reduce their energy use and costs.” Because infrastructure changes happen on long timelines, it’s critical to keep pushing on these levers now, said Ben Finkelor, executive director of the Energy and Efficiency Institute at the University of California, Davis. “The planning is 10 years out,” he said, adding that preparing today could save billions in the future. “Perhaps we can avoid building those baseload assets.” Specian hopes his report reaches legislatures, regulators and consumers alike. Whoever reads it, he says the message should be clear. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The U.S. doesn’t need to generate as much new electricity as you think on Feb 4, 2026. From Grist via This RSS Feed.
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Held between January 26 and 27 at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center and called Generation Truth, the second international conference on combating antisemitism was a picture of cracking contradictions. Organised by Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, it featured speakers from various far-right groups, many European, and saw Australia’s former Prime Minister and Pentecostal believer, Scott Morrison, address attendees. (The man is obviously touting for gigs.) The attendance list caused problems prior to last year’s inaugural conference, not least because it included speakers from parties with memberships boasting neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. If this was Chikli’s effort at humour, violating that injunction that Zionism and Nazism shall never be linked, few were laughing. Notable international figures such as the UK’s chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, and Germany’s antisemitism commissioner Felix Klein, cancelled their participation on realising the unsavoury lineup. ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt also withdrew from the conference “in light of some of the recently announced participants.” By 2026, Chikli had learned a few lessons sufficiently to see appearances by Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Jewish Federations of North America President and CEO Eric Fingerhut accede to appearing. Not that those lessons were deep ones. The minister still believed that far-right politicians, notably from Europe, had a role to play in combating antisemitism, much to the consternation of Jewish community leaders and advocates in the diaspora. “We just have a disagreement,” he put it dismissively in an interview with The Times of Israel. This particular approach involves a calculus on how Islamophobic your counterparts are relative to antisemitism. A rash of antisemitism can well be tolerated as long as the Prophet remains the arch enemy. “The real threat to European Jewry is radical Islam, not the political right,” comes Chikli’s confirmation. The intention was to “form a broad camp to fight together the lethal antisemitism that is coming from within. That’s not to say we can ignore the far left or the far right, but this is the most lethal form of antisemitism that we face.” Within what is not exactly clear, but presumably it’s the milieu that tolerates nuisance types who think Israeli policies towards Palestinian self-determination and suffering deserve condemnation, including the atrocities, dispossession and ethnic cleansing that has accompanied them. As the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs explained in a media release on January 22, this grievance was antisemitism in progressive guise, “which adopts the language of human rights while in practice working to delegitimize Israel, exclude Jews from the public sphere, and legitimize boycotts.” These are the very policies that have been found to be genocidal by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory last September, and deemed such by Amnesty International in December 2024 and the International Association of Genocide Scholars in August 2025. Such claims, filed by South Africa, are currently being reviewed by the International Court of Justice. It would be absurd to expect that indignant protests against such conduct would not follow, be it in the Palestinian diaspora and those sharing solidarity with its cause. But as such protests are seen to be antisemitic for attacking Israel, the argument comes full circle: those holding placards and crying through megaphones are the ones accused of encouraging acts of hatred to Jews in toto, not the diminishing stocks of Israel’s reputation before the mountainous pile of Gazan corpses. In hate, there are the pure and the soiled, with holy writ dispensing with the ambiguities. The opening address further showed how muddled Chikli is. “This conference seeks to banish political correctness, call the child [antisemitism] by its true name, and mobilise all forces in the ideological and physical struggle against the heirs of the modern Nazis,” he stated in his welcome address. “This is not just the struggle of the Jewish people. This is the struggle of the free world against the imperialism and tyranny of radical Islam.” Among the far-right figures in evidence was Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Åkesson. Willie Silberstein, as chair of Sweden’s Committee Against Anti-Semitism, told the BBC in 2022 when commenting on the rise of the SD that his committee had “a problem with parties that were founded by Nazis. That is not an opinion – that is a piece of fact.” The fact that Åkesson had thought it prudent to suspend the party’s entire youth wing in 2015 over its links to the far right gave Silberstein room to wonder: “If one party is so full of people that need to be excluded because they are Nazis – it says something about that party.” There was Brazilian Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, father of former President Javier Bolsonaro and self-declared contender for the Brazilian presidency. Rather than acknowledging the throbbing authoritarian lineage through his father, he promoted the importance of removing his country’s current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a man who had likened Israel’s war in Gaza to the Holocaust. Bolsonaro was judicious in referring to the importance of “Judeo-Christian values” and calling Brazil a “Christian, Jewish country”. Were he to be elected, he would move Brazil’s embassy to Jerusalem. Sam van Rooy and Geert Wilders, parliamentarians from both Belgium and the Netherlands, were also there to bulk the show. Hungary’s representative, EU Affairs Minister János Bóka, attended in premier Viktor Orbán’s stead, a figure so finely illustrative of the dangerous nonsense that afflicts Israel’s courting of European nationalism that ran, and to a large extent still runs, on the intoxicating fumes of antisemitic mania. Orbán’s verbal lashings of the Hungarian Jewish financier George Soros, whom he accused of wishing to settle millions of “illegal immigrants” on Europe’s chaste, Christian soil, are hard to discount. The Soros-founded Central European University wasn’t spared either. By way of contrast, one of Hungary’s rather sketchy historical figures, Miklós Horthy, an important if erratic figure in sending Jews to extermination camps during the Second World War, has received praise and admiration for being a capital fellow, a true statesman. Being in league with the Christers and blood-and-soil brigade is a confounding situation especially seeing how troubled they have been by Jewry. But when one considers that the likes of Chikli, Bezalel Smotrich, and Itama Ben-Gvir are themselves ethnonationalist and believers of the final war of Gog and Magog, those gathering for Armageddon in the Holy Land are going to be having a most interesting if confrontational encounter when the final reckoning is reached. Armageddon is intended to be a bigoted affair. The post Dancing with European Nationalism: Israel’s Generation Truth Antisemitism Conference appeared first on CounterPunch.org. From CounterPunch.org via this RSS feed
After two years of denial and deception, the Israel Defense Forces acknowledged Wednesday for the first time that over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, while continuing to deny the famine Israel caused by blocking humanitarian aid from entering the obliterated strip. Israeli media including the Times of Israel, the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, and others reported that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) accepts the accuracy of the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry’s (GHM) death toll, which currently stands at least 71,667, with more than 171,000 others wounded and 9,500 missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of bombed buildings. “How many years did we spend screaming, with checked and re-checked figures, lists showing names and ID numbers, being told the numbers were completely fanciful despite rigorous, transparent verification, and now the IDF quietly accepts that they were correct all along,” Beirut-based journalist Séamus Malekafzali said on X in response to the IDF admission. Experts—including the authors of multiple peer-reviewed studies in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet—assert that the actual death toll in Gaza is much higher than reported. Last June, a study published in Nature reported 84,000 deaths in Gaza. Others say the toll could be even higher, with one Economist study estimating between 77,000-109,000 Gazans killed by Israeli forces. “We should not care what the IDF accepts or not—they perpetrated the genocide,” said Jake Romm, the US representative for the Hind Rajab Foundation, which tracks suspected IDF war criminals and is named after a 5-year-old Palestinian girl massacred along with relatives and rescue workers by Israeli occupation forces on January 29, 2024. “Their communications are in service of that project.” “This is, in any event, an admission that will only be used to discredit the real, much higher death toll as the scale of the atrocity becomes known,” Romm added. Israeli academic Ori Goldberg was also skeptical of the IDF’s admission, asserting on X: “‘Accepts’ means that even the vast network of lies no longer holds. If the IDF ‘accepts’ 70,000, it has killed innumerably more.” While the IDF accepted GHM’s death toll, it argued that the famine in Gaza—which officially lasted from August-December 2025, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the standard international framework for classifying food insecurity and malnutrition—did not happen. GHM says at least 453 Palestinians, including 150 children, have died of malnutrition in Gaza since October 2023. The IDF contends that the figure is a mix of lies and misleading reporting about people who had preexisting health conditions before they starved to death. However, famine experts contend that Israel orchestrated a carefully planned campaign of mass starvation in Gaza. Throughout the war, Israeli leaders, their supporters abroad, and mainstream US media attempted to discredit GHM casualty figures by casting aspersions upon the “Hamas-run” ministry. This, despite Israeli military intelligence deeming the figures accurate and historical confirmations of their reliability. “The phrase *Hamas* Health Ministry was used as a slur for years to signal unreliability, even though it was pointed out again and again that its numbers had always held up,” noted journalist Jasper Nathaniel, adding sardonically that “I’m sure the ‘Pallywood’ crowd will be rushing to apologize today.” The International Center for Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) said on social media that “every media outlet that cast doubt over these figures with dogwhistling phrases like ‘Hamas-run MoH’ is complicit in these killings.” “In truth, the 71,000+ figure is conservative,” ICJP added. “Palestinian bodies are buried under the rubble and can’t be counted and many more have died from malnutrition due to Israel’s deliberate starvation of Palestinians. Different tools, same outcome: Israeli genocide of Palestinians.” In the United States—which has supported Israel’s annihilation of Gaza with tens of billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic cover including vetoes of numerous United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolutions during both the Biden and Trump administrations—the House of Representatives approved a bipartisan amendment in June 2024 that banned US officials from using State Department resources to cite GHM casualty figures. The amendment’s lead sponsor, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.)—whose all-time top campaign contributor is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—contended that “at the end of the day, the Gaza Ministry of Health is the Hamas Ministry of Health." Former President Joe Biden faced genocide denial accusations for casting aspersions upon GHM reports. President Donald Trump has also said he does not believe that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. A senior IDF official told the Times of Israel that the military is in the process of determining how many of the Gaza dead were members of Hamas or other militant groups. While the Israeli government has claimed a historically low civilian-to-combatant kill ratio in Gaza, classified IDF intelligence data obtained last year during an investigation by Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine and Local Call and Guardian senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison revealed that 5 in 6 Palestinians—or 83%—killed by the IDF through the first 19 months of the US-backed war were civilians. Former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi—who led the IDF through most of the war—acknowledged after retiring last year that “over 10%” of Gaza’s population, or about 220,000 Palestinians, had been killed or wounded as of September 2025. “This is not a gentle war," Halevi said at the time, “we took the gloves off from the first minute.” Following the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, the IDF dramatically loosened its rules of engagement, effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking. The IDF’s use of massive ordnance, including US-supplied 1,000- and 2,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs capable of leveling entire city blocks, and utilization of artificial intelligence to select targets has resulted in staggering numbers of civilian deaths, including numerous instances of dozens or more people being massacred in single strikes. Through it all, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli political and military leaders claimed that the IDF, “the most moral army in the world,” went to great lengths to avoid harming civilians. While Israeli leaders scoffed at war crimes allegations, South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The ICJ, a UN body, subsequently issued multiple provisional orders for Israel to prevent genocidal acts. Israel has been accused of ignoring these orders, and last September a panel of UN experts concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Later, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. The killing isn’t over. Since a tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect last October 10, Israeli forces have killed more than 500 Palestinians in over 1,200 violations of the truce. Palestinians—mostly children and infants—are also still dying of exposure to cold weather as Israel continues to restrict the entry of aid into Gaza. “They said Palestinians were exaggerating. Lying. Propagandists,” Independent UK Member of Parliament Shockat Adam said on X Thursday. “Now, even the IDF accepts 70,000+ killed in Gaza. The real figure is much higher. This is a ‘ceasefire’ in name only. The slaughter goes on.” From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain The so-called ceasefire in Gaza was a cynical ruse to secure Israeli captives while giving Israel free rein to starve, murder and assassinate at will. The world was duped into swallowing yet another Zionist deception, orchestrated by Israel-first Americans, financed with U.S. taxpayer dollars, and drenched in Palestinian blood. Since the ceasefire was announced, north of 1700 have been murdered or injured by Israeli fire. In one day this past week, Israel murdered 11 Palestinians in Gaza, including three journalists and children. By the numbers, this ceasefire has been a misnomer amounting to an average of 17 Palestinians killed or injured every day over the past 100 days. Of those, and according to UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, “More than 100 children have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire . . . one girl or boy killed every day.” Some were shot or bombed. Babies died more quietly, but no less violently, freezing to death. Infants die of hypothermia not because winter is unforgiving, but because Israel has destroyed their homes and continues to block UNRWA from bringing safe shelters, winterized tents, and adequate housing into Gaza. Infants perish from cold in Gaza not as a result of a natural disaster; they are victims of an evil Israeli policy. Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump remain sanguine, insisting the ceasefire has “held” since early October 2025. One can ask, would they make the same assertions if only ten Israeli Jewish children had been killed? The answer is self-evident. This is not bias or ignorance. It is racism: a blood-soaked moral order, Western and Jewish supremacist calculus that renders Palestinian babies disposable, while the life of Jewish children is sacrosanct. At the center of this deception is the so-called yellow line, an ill-defined military boundary marking Israeli partial withdrawal as part of phase one of the supposed ceasefire. The yellow line has become a trap, a moving frontier. Israel shifts it in the middle of the night, and mow Palestinians at sunlight, without oversite, and without warning. Palestinians believed the ceasefire meant a chance to return to inspect their damaged homes, recover belongings, or forage for wild plants to feed their children. Instead, they find their homes erased, not in battle, but methodically by an enemy insatiable with hate. Parallel to this, aid is not allowed to enter Gaza in accordance with the “ceasefire” agreement. The siege has not been lifted. It was refined. Convoys are delayed. Medical equipment is rejected over technicalities. Fuel, shelter materials, and prefabricated housing are blocked or restricted. Hospitals go without medicine not because of unavailability, but because Israel has revoked the licenses of 37 aid organizations, including Doctors Without Borders, preventing them from sending staff or bringing aid in. Babies freezing to death while UNRWA is barred from delivering safe shelters is not a humanitarian failure, it is intentional murder. As Israel’s atrocities in Gaza continue, as Israeli Jewish mobs terrorize Palestinian villages, torch homes, and assault civilians with near-total impunity, and as new Jewish-only colonies expand across the occupied West Bank, Israel is escalating regional tensions with calculated intent. A familiar display of chicanery, provokes a wider confrontation to shift headlines, play victim, and drown culpability in the noise of a larger war. To that end, Israel is openly goading a confrontation with Iran in a bid to draw the United States into another made-for-Israel war. A war to serve Israeli political interests only, while exacting catastrophic costs on the region, as well as on American lives and resources. The United States remains Israel’s main enabler for laundering war crimes through diplomatic language. Europe’s wishy-washy position is not less cynical. In late 2025, the European Union debated punitive measures, including suspension of the preferential trade Agreement over Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law. Those measures were shelved the moment the fictional ceasefire was announced. By halting accountability in exchange of a supposed ceasefire, the EU granted Israel another pass. Israel understood the message, adjusted its tactics and the violations intensified. Demolitions continued, aid strangled and children died not only by bullets, or bombs, but freezing to death. Now we hear echoes of Trump’s archetypal diplomatic hubbub, cynically sold to the world as a “Board of Peace.” A “Board” that includes among its membership an indicted war criminal, who skips Davos’ signing to evade arrest and the ICC, is not peace, it’s a farce at the highest level. A “Board” originally created for Gaza has evolved into a billion-dollar club with lifetime memberships, governed by a founding charter that cannot even bring itself to mention Gaza, Palestine, or any credible path to self-determination. At the launch of his “Board,” Trump chose not to address the Israeli murder of more than 470 Palestinians or the babies freezing to death. Instead, he dwelled on his fixation with recovering the body of an Israeli soldier and on disarming the occupied. If this inauguration speech is any indication, the “Board of Peace” will be nothing but a performative shell, not a pathway to human justice. What emerges, in reality, is something closer to a Jared Kushner real-estate venture run by a self-appointed dictator with no mandate and answerable to no one. And where Chapter VI Article 6 grants the Board “… to enter into contracts, acquire and dispose of immovable and movable property, … receive and disburse private and public funds…” Palestinians do not need another peace circus, nor shark billionaires who view Gaza through the prism of a real-estate opportunity rather than a people. There can be no “peace” that erases Palestinian agency while entrenching Israeli criminal impunity. What Palestinians demand is self-determination and the right to live in a secure, sovereign state of their own. Anything less is not peace, it’s an international management of subjugation and oppression. Gaza does not need another phase or “Board.” Gaza needs legal redress for an Israeli system of cruelty. It must be granted unimpeded ingress and egress by land, sea, and air. Gaza must not be condemned to survive as a managed humanitarian dependency, rationed by aid and policed by donors. The international community must reclaim the primacy of international law by allowing the International Criminal Court to prosecute indicted Israeli political and military leaders for war crimes and genocide— without American coercion, without Western exceptionalism, and without the moral fraud of double standards. A ceasefire that leaves infants freezing to death because Israel continues to block the entry of weather shelters is not peace. A “Board” that grants itself the authority to “acquire and dispose of … property,” while Israel violates agreements in Gaza and Jewish mobs terrorize communities in the West Bank, is a new phase in the normalization of mass dispossession and genocide. The post Gaza’s “Board of Peace”: A Circus to Normalize a New Phase of Mass Dispossession and Genocide appeared first on CounterPunch.org. From CounterPunch.org via this RSS feed
Keila Szpaller*Daily Montanan* The Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Office helped stop a fraudulent multimillion dollar billing scheme by agents preying on Native Americans on reservations, Commissioner James Brown announced this month. In cooperation with health insurers, tribal communities and law enforcement, the investigation secured more than $23.3 million of fraudulently incurred claims through the Affordable Care Act, Brown said. An additional $27 million is pending. Commissioner James Brown. (Provided by the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Office) Credit: Provided by the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Office The most reprehensible aspect of this scheme is how the people who were allegedly provided ‘care’ were vulnerable populations that were, in some cases, exploited, coerced, moved across state lines, and not even so much as given a way to get back home to Montana,” Brown said in a statement. In an interview, Brown said some Montana victims who were taken out of state for treatment that never took place have yet to be found. Brown said his office met with tribes in Montana throughout 2025 to alert them to the scheme. It also made referrals to federal law enforcement authorities in Montana and the FBI office in Los Angeles where the alleged crimes took place. In an interview, Brown described the way bad actors used a provision in the Affordable Care Act to victimize Native Americans to try to defraud an insurance company, how the scheme led to as much as $54.7 million in unjustified claims, and discussed the work that remains in the aftermath. In January 2025, PacificSource reported suspected fraudulent ACA enrollment to the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance, and the office launched an investigation a couple of weeks later, according to a timeline provided by CSI. Under the Affordable Care Act, Native Americans are able to enroll in the federal marketplace at any time, Brown said; they don’t have to wait for open enrollment. Fraudsters operating out of Arizona and, for the purposes of the Montana scheme, California, used that provision to entice Native Americans to disenroll from Medicaid and sign up for health insurance through the ACA instead, Brown said. In particular, he said, the agents would set up information booths on reservations — he believes nearly every reservation in Montana has been a target — and tell people about free drug and alcohol treatment at a beautiful facility in southern California. The schemers would then transport victims across state lines by buying them a plane ticket to California or driving them in a van; keep them for 90 days while providing “fake services”; and then bill the insurance company $9,000 a day for 90 days, Brown said. The billing was for services that didn’t take place, were unnecessary, or were provided at “greatly inflated prices,” according to the Commissioner of Securities and Insurance. Brown said the bad actors abused “Obamacare” and trafficked “vulnerable Native Americans.” He said at least 183 people were victimized. “We’re still trying to find some of these people, honestly,” Brown said. The Office of Indian Affairs could not be reached Monday about any efforts to find people. The FBI in Montana also could not be reached in time for this story. Brown said insurance abuse leads to higher premiums for everyone, but the investigation from his office and work with the Trump administration has meant $23.3 million in payments don’t have to be made to date. Brown said an additional $27 million is pending a decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He said so far, 80 policy recissions have been granted, and dozens remain under review. Brown said PacificSource first suspected a problem when it came across half a million dollars in alcohol and substance abuse being billed out of southern California and the southwest part of the country. “That is what set their alarm bells off, and they approached us for help,” Brown said. He said his office conducted an investigation that supported the ability of CMS to approve the non-payment of fraudulent claims and rescind the policies. CSI has a team of four investigators, and he said his office spent seven months on the investigation. The team uncovered falsified records, unlicensed and out-of-state actors, fabricated addresses, and unsupported earnings information used to obtain coverage, according to CSI. It also found “immediate, high-dollar billing patterns designed to extract maximum payouts.” In a statement provided by CSI, PacificSource spokesperson Erik Wood thanked Brown and his team for helping stop suspected fraudulent activity in the marketplace. “As a nonprofit health plan, PacificSource exists to keep health care accessible and affordable for our members, and preventing fraud is an important part of that work,” Wood said. “We appreciate the state’s commitment to protecting Montanans and the integrity of our health insurance system.” PacificSource is a not-for-profit health insurance provider and one of three insurers that offer plans under the Affordable Care Act. Brown said his office is helping to re-enroll victims into Medicaid so they have coverage. He encouraged Montanans to be wary of any alleged agents advising disenrollment in Medicaid and recommending treatment programs in California through the Affordable Care Act. Brown said Arizona and Alaska also have dealt with a variation of the scheme. He said any state with a significant Native American population is a target, and he has talked with his counterparts and insurance providers in Washington and Wyoming to alert them to the scheme. Brown said his office has “zero tolerance for fraud” and it is focused on consumer protection that “works for the people of Montana as opposed to scammers.” He said his office is pursuing additional investigations and will ask for an additional investigator in the future. “We don’t tolerate corruption, and we don’t apologize for enforcing the law,” Brown said in a statement. “If you exploit vulnerable people or try to game our system, we will come after you.” Credit: Daily Montanan The post Fraudulent health care scheme stopped in Montana appeared first on ICT. From ICT via This RSS Feed.
Hi, all, and happy Thursday. Deeeeeep breaths. There is a lot going on. I say this as Iran smolders, ICE increases its attacks in Minnesota, and Trump floats the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act. Will he do it? We don’t know. Either way, though, things are escalating, so we’re going to have to focus on our breath, self-care, and community ties right now. And, of course, we must continue to take action. Doing so will sustain and strengthen us as Trump, growing ever weaker and more embattled, flails and attacks like a wounded, trapped animal. I know this is really hard. Please remember, a majority of the country loathes him. They. Loathe. Him. They loathe ICE, too. The majority of us are not with this administration. This is not just me saying that. It’s poll after poll after poll. Now, public opinion doesn’t fix anything in the short term, but in the long term it does matter. A lot. Midterms are coming. Lawmakers are up for re-election. Trump is poison at the ballot box. They know it. So do we. He is weaker than he appears. He is hemorrhaging support. We will beat him. Speaking of which, political strategist (and friend) Mike Lux posted a short Substack piece this week celebrating the courageous Americans rising up across the country to protest ICE. He titled his post after the Woody Guthrie song “All You Fascists Bound to Lose.” I played the song to myself this morning and it did so much good that I decided I would include it here today (see above). Because we all need an anthem, and we need one now; I believe this is the right tool for the job. It also serves as a reminder that the best people have aligned against—and fought—fascism from time immemorial. After all, fascism is like a virus. It lies dormant in the body politic, then flares up during times of upheaval, stress, or rapid change. As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, it never goes away entirely. But we, the people, are the antibodies every time. Unlike the unproven “remedies” to which some initially turn, like politicians, or the press, or the business world, we alone have a track record of success. Why? Because we, not they, were made for this job. We, further, can—and do—evolve. As the sickness mutates, in other words, so do we. We surge where needed, constantly learning and adapting new forms to meet new threats. Once we have overcome one strain of fascism we internalize that ability, using those antibodies to help beat the next one. We are the white blood cells of the body politic, y’all. Because of us, the patient will live. Our immune system, such as it is, is entirely up to this task. The fascists, then, ARE bound to lose. Because we are strong, wholly determined, and growing in numbers by the day. Thank you for all you do. Bless you for being the cure. Now let’s you and me get to work. P.S. — Tim Walz posted an excellent statement on Instagram (and other platforms) yesterday about the situation in MN. It’s 6 minutes long but worth every minute. I urge everyone to watch it in its entirety and share it widely. It IS the messaging we need. It’s on Instagram here and YouTube [here](http://tim/ Walz posted an excellent statement on Instagram (and other platforms) yesterday. It’s 6 minutes long but worth every minute. I urge everyone to watch it in its entirety and share it widely. It IS the messaging we need. It’s on Instagram here and YouTube here.). Call Your Senators (find yours here) 📲 Hi, I’m a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is ______. First, I understand that Senator Schumer tried to pass the ACA premium tax credit extension bill last night by unanimous consent and that Republicans blocked it. This angers me. Please tell the Senator I support these subsidies and want him/her to do everything possible to get them passed. Second, I am horrified by ICE’s abuses in Minnesota and elsewhere. The Senator needs to refuse to vote for any DHS appropriations bill that fails to rein them in. And I’d like the Senator to make a public statement saying as much. We can’t wait around while ICE harms more people. The Senator must push for an appropriations bill that puts serious restrictions on it, ends its dragnet raids, and doesn’t add a penny to its already bloated budget. [If Democrat add:] And please push Chuck Schumer to get on board with this effort and make a public statement about it. His weakness in this moment is deeply disappointing. [ONLY if Hawley or Young add:] One more thing: I can’t believe the Senator backed down on the Venezuela War Powers Resolution. Shame on him. He is ignoring the will of his constituents and abdicating his Congressional duties. I will never forget it. Call Your House Rep (find yours here) 📲 Hi, I’m a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is _______. I’m calling to urge Representative [Name] to refuse to vote for any appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security that fails to rein in ICE. And I’d like them to make a public statement saying as much. Renee Good’s killing on January 7 is part of a broader pattern of unchecked violence, impunity, and abuse carried out by federal immigration enforcement agencies against our communities. We can’t wait around while ICE harms more people. Representative [NAME] must push for an appropriations bill that puts serious restrictions on ICE, ends its dragnet raids, and doesn’t add a penny to its already bloated budget. [If Democrat add:] And please ask the Congressmember to push Hakeem Jeffries to get on board with this effort and make a public statement about it. His weakness in this moment is deeply disappointing. [H/T Indivisible] Extra Credit ✅ Delaney Hall is an ICE detention facility in Newark NJ with no indoor waiting facility (the only one without an indoor waiting facility in the country), so people waiting hours to see their loved ones are being exposed to the elements and smog. Activists and community members are emailing the facility director of Delaney Hall demanding an indoor waiting area so that people can wait to see their loved ones without risking illness for themselves or their children. An enterprising reader found the Assistant Director of the Delaney Hall facility’s email address—his name is Sekou Ma’at and his email is [email protected]. The other email she found is [email protected] to reach the corporate office. Her suggested letter is: Mr. Ma’at, I am writing to urge you to immediately establish an indoor waiting area at Delaney Hall for the families and loved ones who come to visit those detained there. At present, families, including children and infants, are required to wait outdoors for hours at a time, exposed to freezing temperatures and harsh waterfront conditions, simply for the chance to see their loved ones. This is not only unacceptable; it is inhumane. Volunteers who have come to provide basic support and assistance to these families have already experienced hypothermia after just two to three hours in current weather conditions. If healthy adults are becoming ill, it is deeply troubling to imagine the impact on children, elderly family members, and infants. No family should be subjected to physical harm or serious health risk simply for attempting to maintain contact with a loved one. The absence of an indoor waiting facility reflects a disregard for basic human dignity and safety, and it places people in avoidable danger. This is a problem with a clear, practical solution, and it requires immediate action. I urge GEO Group and on-site leadership to address this without delay before someone is seriously injured or worse. Providing a safe, indoor waiting area is the bare minimum standard of care and decency, and Delaney Hall must meet it. Please send an email! Thanks! Extra Credit for Floridians! The Florida legislature and Desantis are looking to lower the legal age of purchase for an AR15 and other long guns from 21 to 18 years old. After the horrific Parkland School Shooting the age was raised to 21 and this has had a positive impact in keeping Florida safer than it otherwise would be. Lowering the age will only increase the likelihood that these weapons of war will get into the wrong hands and will without question result in more shootings, more deaths and more families and communities torn apart. If you live in Florida or can help mobilize people in Florida to opposethis dangerous bill, please go to this link for the Newtown Action Allianceand see the different actions that you can take to help. Get Smart! 📚 Red, Wine, and Blue presents: Stand Together with Heather Cox Richardson: One Year Post-Inauguration Tuesday, January 20th at 7:30 pm ET. On the one-year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, we are exhausted and anxious. That’s why we’re turning to our favorite historian Heather Cox Richardson to help us reflect on the year and how we can and must continue to stand strong together. This conversation is not just about naming what’s gone wrong; it is also about recognizing what’s beginning to shift. She will share why the tide may be turning as cracks form in the MAGA movement and more people are rejecting extremism in favor of humanity. Let’s start the new year talking about how we will continue to bring positive change and the power we have when we stand together. RSVP here. Messaging! Messaging! Messaging! 📣 Please post this on your social media: Indivisible is holding a call in day today to push Democrats to refuse to vote for more DHS funding until ICE is reined in. WE HAVE LEVERAGE HERE —Republicans need 7 Democratic votes to pass this funding—but Dems need to be pushed to use it. Please, even if you don’t usually call your reps, we need your voice right now. Lives are at stake. You’ll be provided with a script. Make three calls—to your two US Senators and your one House Rep. Thanks! https://indivisible.org/ice-out-house https://indivisible.org/ice-out-senate Give 💰! If you’re on Instagram I highly recommend following Smitten Kitten —they are a small Minneapolis shop that has become a hub for mutual aid—their posts are amazing and so informative. I just donated to two places they suggested—Wrecktangle Pizza, which is delivering food to immigrants hiding at home, and a social worker who’s distributing supplies to those in need in the twin cities area (her Venmo is : @ Edali-Terrones and her cashapp is $itsdali28). There’s also a whole MN mutual aid linktree here. And a website with loads of ways to help here. Grab your Wallet! 💳 I’ve decided to create a spreadsheet of corporations to boycott. I will include a column explaining why we’re boycotting, another one with contact info, and another one with sample messaging so that we can let them know we’re boycotting and why. It’s just begun and it’s here. My assistant Andrea is helping me with it but if anyone else feels like working on it or has suggestions for companies to add please email me at [email protected] Win Races! 🗳 [From the HODG newsletter] In 2024, Dems lost ground across nearly every demographic. The Democratic brand clearly needs to be fixed. That will require what every broken relationship requires: rebuilding trust and listening. Voters and volunteers are bone-tired of short-term, transactional outreach that starts too late, misses the mark, and ends abruptly after Election Day. Campaigns rely on outdated tech, incomplete data, and narrow targeting that overlooks potential supporters who could make the difference in tight races. Swing Left is trying to change all that with Deep Canvassing. The idea is not new, but it’s a tactic that’s under-utilized. Deep Canvassing means you are having meaningful, deep-listening conversations with a wide range of voters – not just likely Dems – so you can learn what those folks care about, what specific challenges they’re facing. You can then bring those concerns back to candidates so they can respond to them. To do this deep canvassing – which they’re calling “Ground Truth“ – Swing Left has doubled its operational budget, hired more staff and is piloting a canvassing program that uses AI to help Dems fix what we all sense when we talk to voters: a broken party infrastructure. Swing Left is now looking for volunteers to get trained in Deep Canvassing, and reach out to voters. If that sounds interesting to you, then sign up to learn more. Sign Up to Learn More about Deep Canvassing with Swing Left Chop Wood, Save the Planet 🔥 Is your money sitting at one of the 10 US megabanks that disproportionately finance fossil fuels? Moving your money to a community development or minority depository bank or credit union is one of the most effective things you can do to fight the climate crisis while building your community. Are you ready to move your money to a bank or credit union that builds your community instead of fossil fuels? Then Green America’s Better Banking Action Hour is for you. Join them on Thursday, January 22, at 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT to learn: How banks use your deposits How to find a bank or credit union that doesn’t finance fossil fuels How to switch to a new bank or credit union REGISTER HERE Resistbot Letter (new to Resistbot? Go here! And then here.) 💻 [To: all 3 reps] [H/T ] [Text SIGN PQFQEF to 50409, or to @Resistbot on Apple Messages, Messenger, Instagram, or Telegram] (Note that for the most effective RESISTBOT it’s best to personalize this text. More about how to do this here. But if you’re short on time just send it as is using the above code.) Since the first day of his second term, President Trump has shown open contempt for the Constitution. He now asks Congress to ratify that lawlessness by passing a continuing resolution that would fund the federal government at current levels—including funding for unconstitutional conduct, state-sanctioned violence, and dangerous abuses of military power.Congress must refuse.Instead, Congress must use its Article I authority to defund an authoritarian agenda that is already harming Americans and destabilizing the world. [Read the rest here.] OK, you did it again! You’re helping to save democracy! You’re amazing. Talk soon. Jess Chop Wood, Carry Water is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Share Leave a comment From Chop Wood, Carry Water via this RSS feed
Fukushima Unit 3 after the explosion on 15 March 2011. Image Wikipedia. Sooner or later, in any foolproof system, the fools are going to exceed the proofs.[1] I awoke on the Friday morning of March 11, 2011, to a peaceful, sunny, relatively warm early spring day in Vermont. While I was sleeping, an earthquake and tsunami had decimated the Pacific coast of Japan. More than a dozen Japanese nuclear plants took their cooling water from the Pacific Ocean. It was obvious to me by 8 AM that three of the six nukes at Fukushima were already melting down and the remaining reactors in Eastern Japan were also in jeopardy. I knew a catastrophe was unfolding at Tokyo Electric’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiich Reactors. As the United States was waking up that Friday morning, the US nuclear industry spin doctors were already circling the wagons and framing the developing catastrophe as being of little consequence. At 8 AM Pacific time on March 11, in Washington State, Dr. James Conca, the Laboratory Director of the Hanford (Washington) Laboratory, site of the nation’s largest nuclear dump, said: After representatives of the nuke industry touted the industry’s safety record— working at a nuclear plant is “safer than working at Toys ‘R’ Us,” Hanford lab director Jim Conca told the committee—committee members asked the industry reps whether they were confident that all the safety systems they’d just praised would hold up in Japan. Conca added: “I’m very happy that Japan has 26 percent nuclear because those will not be the problems. When you see the pictures things burning [in Japan], it won’t be nuclear, it’ll be the gas-fired power plants and things like that. Nuclear is no problem at all.”[2] That same morning, the Public Relations Director of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Nuclear Industry’s Lobbying, Campaign Financing, Public Relations and Marketing organization, chimed in as well, adding: Asked specifically about the nuclear situation in Japan, Nuclear Energy Institute public affairs director Jim Colgary reassured Rep. Deb Eddy (D-48) that the safety systems in place at the nuclear reactors “absolutely” would come through. “It’s a conservative safety system,” Colgary said. … Yes, I’m adequately sure that the safety systems in place work. ” Those remarks by NEI didn’t age well, but they were never expected to be correct. From my training forty years earlier in the Northeast Utilities Speakers Bureau, I could see the nuclear spin already at work, trying to strike first, to capture the headline. That’s why framing a discussion as early as possible is so important. I wasn’t the only person who witnessed the nuclear spin doctors trying to change the narrative while Fukushima was melting down. In his book, even the former Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Dr. Greg Jaczko, identified the immediate desire of the nuclear lobby to minimize the Fukushima meltdowns on the weekend after the meltdowns began! “… that ignores the unwritten laws of nuclear politics. Regulators are there to ensure safety, but they must always balance that need against the imperative that the industry survive … we said very little during the first weekend [March 12/13], despite tremendous pressure from nuclear industry proponents who wanted us to speak out. The message they wanted us to deliver was that everything was fine. I was not convinced it was… Vivid images that resembled a Hollywood disaster movie were circulating, and soon the press, the environmental community, and Congress would ask what the Fukushima accident meant to the United States. I knew the nuclear industry would have an answer ready: “This is a Japanese problem. American plants are safe.”[3] Many tried to dismiss Fukushima as a result of Japanese unwillingness to challenge authority… But that same obeisance to the powerful is exactly what I saw at home at the NRC. American politicians had long ago been lead to believe that these kinds of calamities were no longer possible…In hindsight, the Fukushima accident reveled what has long been the sad truth about nuclear safety: the nuclear power industry has developed too much control over the NRC and Congress. … because the industry relies too much on controlling its own regulation, the continued use of nuclear power will lead to catastrophe…. That is a truth we all must confront.[4] The efforts to quickly frame nuclear power as safe and to minimize the impact of the Fukushima meltdowns extended to Europe as well as the US and Japan. But in Europe, the UK government was pushing the nuclear industry, not the other way around! According to the UK’s Guardian Newspaper: British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known. Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva, and Westinghouse to try to ensure the accident did not derail their plans for a new generation of nuclear stations in the UK. “This has the potential to set the nuclear industry back globally,” wrote one official at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), whose name has been redacted. “We need to ensure the anti-nuclear chaps and chapesses do not gain ground on this. We need to occupy the territory and hold it. We really need to show the safety of nuclear.” The business department emailed the nuclear firms and their representative body, the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA), on 13 March, two days after the disaster knocked out nuclear plants and their backup safety systems at Fukushima. The department argued it was not as bad as the “dramatic” TV pictures made it look, even though the consequences of the accident were still unfolding and two major explosions at reactors on site were yet to happen. “Radiation released has been controlled – the reactor has been protected,” said the BIS official, whose name has been blacked out. “It is all part of the safety systems to control and manage a situation like this.” The official suggested that if companies sent in their comments, they could be incorporated into briefs to ministers and government statements. “We need to all be working from the same material to get the message through to the media and the public. “Anti-nuclear people across Europe have wasted no time blurring this all into Chernobyl and the works,” the official told Areva. “We need to quash any stories trying to compare this to Chernobyl.”[5] Some Japanese scientists became quickly aware of the danger from the radioactive clouds that were enveloping Toyko. As recently as 2025, the Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists published a previously untold story stating: Japanese radiochemist Satoshi Utsunomiya found that air samples from March 15, 2011, in Tokyo contained a very high concentration of insoluble cesium microparticles. He immediately realized the implications of the findings for public safety, but his study was kept from publication for years….The controversy surrounding his attempts to publish his findings nearly cost him his career and prevented his results from being widely known by the Japanese public ahead of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo[6] What was unfolding on the other side of the world was not a “Japanese problem.” The Fukushima Daiichi reactors that were most in jeopardy were designed in the mid-1960s by a US company (GE) and constructed by a US company (EBASCO) and there were more than 20 reactors with the similar design in the United States, with still others in Germany, Sweden, Spain and Mexico! The worldwide nuclear industry and NEI were singing Bobby McFerrin’s song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, while at the six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi and at the four similar Fukushima Dainni reactors several miles to the south, chaos and courage reigned. Notes Quote created by the author first spoken in California in 1994 ↑ (source: https://www.seattlemet.com/articles/2011/3/17/nuclear-is-no-problem-at-all ) ↑ Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator, by Gregory B. Jaczko, Simon & Shuster, 2019, pages 68, 77 and 80. ISBN 978-1-4767-5576-2 ↑ IBID pages 21 and 22. ↑ 5. The Guardian: Revealed: British government’s plan to play down Fukushima, June 30, 2011 By Rob Edwards ↑ 6. https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-01/how-fukushimas-radioactive-fallout-in-tokyo-was-concealed-from-the-public/#post-heading ↑ The post The Fukushima Coverup, Fifteen Years On appeared first on CounterPunch.org. From CounterPunch.org via this RSS feed
It makes sense though, doesn’t it? I imagine someone going in knowing it’s machine learning doesn’t have too many false assumptions, but they are being programmed in a way to mimic humans. The voice recognition part has come an incredible long way and I would not be surprised that this makes the uninitiated expect more of the language model than actually is there. In this era of atomic isolation, even I wanted to believe it’s true. Having an algorithm that remembers my name through reboots would deepen the sense that there is a pretty developed entity helping me. Luckily I skimp on the premium versions.
Someone should investigate deeply. My combo of a whitelist firewall on an OpenWRT variant and Graphene often has a bandwidth issue that is clearly software related only after watching something from YT. I can stop the apps manually and close everything related to browsing and the connection issue still exists. I can disconnect the internet from my router and the problem still persists. However, if I shutdown all 3 devices for a few minutes and bring them up fresh, the network connection is flawless. Something is running in memory, and I believe it is related to YT, but I lack the skills to break it down further. I like to run an AI server and it is simply useless if anything on the network has connected to YT since booting. I’ve also noticed when family is watching YT premium (not something I use) and I am downloading a LLM from HF, the internet bandwidth of our network more than doubles on my wired connection. In between the streaming packets from YT the speed on the download jumps massively. If family is watching YT, I can actually download a LLM faster. That just seems odd to me that those are connected.