More countries shut down the internet in 2022 than ever before, according to a new report by digital rights researchers. Authorities in 35 countries instituted internet shutdowns at least 187 times, according to the New York-based digital rights watchdog Access Now. Nearly half of these shutdowns occurred in India, and if that nation is excluded, 2022 saw the most number of shutdowns globally since the group began monitoring disruptions in 2016. [The] report ... spans complete blackouts, suspensions of specific phone networks or social media apps, and the slowing down of internet speeds. Triggers for shutdowns have included large protests, conflict situations, elections and even examinations. Whatever the situation, they make it substantially more difficult for people to communicate and receive or send news, and they incur significant economic costs, which prompted the United Nations last year to call for governments to avoid using such a blunt tactic. "This can be a big warning sign of how the human rights situation is deteriorating, and shutdowns are often associated with increased levels of insecurity and other restrictions," said Liz Throssell, a spokeswoman at the U.N. Human Rights Office. A majority of [India's] 84 disruptions were logged in Indian-administered Kashmir, part of a disputed region in the Himalayas. India has at times cited a desire to control social unrest in the territory, where there is a separatist movement. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and mass civilian protests in Iran also led to internet shutdowns

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On at least four occasions since 2019, Elon Musk has predicted that his medical device company, Neuralink, would soon start human trials of a revolutionary brain implant to treat intractable conditions such as paralysis and blindness. Yet the company, founded in 2016, didn't seek permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) until early 2022 and the agency rejected the application. Musk has detailed a bold vision for Neuralink: Both disabled and healthy people will pop into neighborhood facilities for speedy surgical insertions of devices with functions ranging from curing obesity, autism, depression or schizophrenia to web-surfing and telepathy. Musk also has said Neuralink would restore full mobility to paralyzed patients. Reuters exclusively reported late last year that the federal government was investigating the company's treatment of its research animals. The probe was launched amid growing employee concern that the company is rushing experiments, causing additional suffering and deaths of pigs, sheep and monkeys. Musk's company ... trails at least one direct rival in the race for FDA approval. Synchron, a competitor making a BCI implant, has won the agency's blessing for human trials. The company first tested its device on four patients in Australia who successfully sent text messages with their minds. Synchron recently raised $75 million, including from funds backed by tech billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.

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Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims, which controls more than 30,000 fake social media profiles, can be used to spread disinformation at scale and at speed. It is sold by "Team Jorge", a unit of disinformation operatives based in Israel. Tal Hanan, who runs the covert group using the pseudonym "Jorge", told undercover reporters that they sold access to their software to unnamed intelligence agencies, political parties and corporate clients. Team Jorge's Aims software ... is much more than a bot-controlling programme. Each avatar ... is given a multifaceted digital backstory. Aims enables the creation of accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube. Some even have Amazon accounts with credit cards, bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts. Hanan told the undercover reporters his avatars mimicked human behaviour and their posts were powered by artificial intelligence. [Our reporters] were able to identify a much wider network of 2,000 Aims-linked bots on Facebook and Twitter. We then traced their activity across the internet, identifying their involvement ... in about 20 countries including the UK, US, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, Panama, Senegal, Mexico, Morocco, India, the United Arab Emirates, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Ecuador. The analysis revealed a vast array of bot activity, with Aims' fake social media profiles getting involved in a dispute in California over nuclear power; a #MeToo controversy in Canada ... and an election in Senegal.

Note: The FBI has provided police departments with fake social media profiles to use in law enforcement investigations. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

The FBI and the Defense Department were actively involved in research and development of facial recognition software that they hoped could be used to identify people from video footage captured by street cameras and flying drones, according to thousands of pages of internal documents that provide new details about the government's ambitions to build out a powerful tool for advanced surveillance. The documents, revealed in response to an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed against the FBI, show how closely FBI and Defense officials worked with academic researchers to refine artificial-intelligence techniques that could help in the identification or tracking of Americans without their awareness or consent. Many of the records relate to the Janus program, a project funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or IARPA. The improved facial recognition system was ultimately folded into a search tool, called Horus, and made available to the Pentagon's Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office, which helps provide military technologies to civilian police forces. No federal laws regulate how facial recognition systems can be used. The tool's use in domestic mass surveillance would be a "nightmare scenario," said Nathan Wessler, a deputy director at the ACLU. "It could give the government the ability to pervasively track as many people as they want for as long as they want. There's no good outcome for that in a democratic society."

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The Central Intelligence Agency has for years been collecting in bulk, without a warrant, some kind of data that can affect Americans' privacy. At the same time, [the C.I.A.] declared that a report about the same topic, which had prompted the letter, must remain fully classified. That report, called "Deep Dive II," was part of a set of studies by a watchdog board scrutinizing intelligence community operations under Executive Order 12333. In March 2021, the Senate Intelligence Committee received a copy of the report. Two Democrats on the panel, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, urged Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, and William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, to declassify the activity. The senators suggested that its hidden existence cut against Americans' understanding that various pieces of legislation enacted in recent years "limit and, in some cases, prohibit the warrantless collection of Americans' records." In 2015, Congress banned bulk collection of telecommunications metadata under the Patriot Act and limited other types of bulk collection by the F.B.I. under laws governing domestic activities like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. Yet "the C.I.A. has secretly conducted its own bulk program" under Executive Order 12333, the senators wrote. "It has done so entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection, and without any of the judicial, congressional or even executive branch oversight."

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When the Afghan military and government collapsed in the summer of 2021, it was the worst failure of the U.S. defense establishment since the fall of Saigon. A new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, issued this week sheds critical light on what went so terribly wrong in America's longest war and how tens of thousands of ordinary Afghans were set up by their leaders and foreign partners to fight and die for a doomed cause. The American mission in Afghanistan had been to build an army that could stand on its own feet to resist the Taliban. In the end, however, the Afghan military was not only riddled with corruption, but also designed to function properly only so long as the foreign contractors and soldiers remained around to manage it. In effect, similar to its disastrous experience in South Vietnam, the United States had attempted to build an army suitable for a modern, industrialized country like itself, rather than one that would fit the realities of a poor and agrarian state. "The types of security forces that we were trying to build, which were relatively sophisticated and relied on advanced technology and electronics logistics systems, were just not within the general capacity of what Afghanistan would be able to use in sustainable ways," said Jonathan Schroden, an Afghanistan expert at the Center for Naval Analyses. "The real damning thing about what is in the report is that people had been telling the U.S. military this for years."

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Last week, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides appeared to endorse a plan for Israel to attack Iranian nuclear facilities with U.S. support. Nides's words come after recent high-level military drills between Israel and the United States intended to showcase the ability to strike Iranian targets, as well as recent acts of sabotage and assassination inside Iran believed to have been carried out by both countries. The Israeli escalations mean that the U.S. now faces the unsavory prospect of a major crisis flaring up in the Middle East at the exact moment when its bandwidth is already stretched thin because of a major war in Europe and its deteriorating relationship with China. "The decision to leave the JCPOA ... allowed Iran to restart its nuclear program and raise once again the question of what the U.S., Israel, or anyone else might do about it," said Stephen Walt ... at the Harvard Kennedy School, referring to the nuclear deal by the initials of its former name, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The nuclear deal was intended to avoid the Middle East confrontation now visible on the horizon. Signed by President Barack Obama in 2015, the deal traded strict limits on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for its reintegration into the global economy. When President Donald Trump violated the deal ... this pragmatic arrangement went out the window not only removing limits on Iran's nuclear program, but also politically empowering hard-liners inside Iran who had balked at negotiating in the first place.

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The rivalry between the U.S. and China has hit fever pitch. Despite their deep economic integration and record trade in goods of $690 billion in 2022, the two powers are at loggerheads over everything from military supremacy in the Indo-Pacific to Russia's imperialist invasion of Ukraine, to trade and investment in the Global South. The U.S., of course, remains the world's dominant imperialist power, but now China poses a threat to its hegemony. At the center of this conflict are microchips, which are as important to global capitalism today as oil. Washington put its high-tech weaponry on full display in the 1991 Gulf War. Triumphant, Washington adopted a new imperial strategy of superintending the world economy by incorporating states into a neoliberal world order of free trade globalization. The U.S. used the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization and UN to enforce this order. The U.S. retained its lead in the design of chips, but increasingly fabrication was done by [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company] in Taiwan. The Trump administration ... targeted Beijing's tech industry. Using national security as justification, the Commerce Department prohibited U.S. companies from selling chips, hardware and software to the company. The Biden administration doubled down on Trump's strategy of great power rivalry. [Author Chris] Miller argues, "Taiwan isn't simply the source of the advanced chips that both countries' militaries are betting on. It's also the most likely battleground."

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Antiterrorist moral fervor and ideological blinders propelled the U.S. into its biggest foreign policy blunder since World War Two. The U.S. government constantly embellished the storyline to demonize the communist opposition. A CIA operative provided materials for a massive bomb that ripped through a main square in Saigon in 1952. A Life magazine photographer was waiting on the scene, and his resulting snap appeared with a caption blaming the carnage on Viet Minh Communists. The Kennedy administration sought credibility by profoundly deceiving the American people and Congress regarding its Vietnam policy. In August 1963, South Vietnamese Special Forces "carried out midnight raids against Buddhist pagodas throughout the country. More than 1400 people, mostly monks were arrested and many of them were beaten," according to the Pentagon Papers. The CIA was bankrolling these Special Forces, which were supposed to be used for covert operations against the Viet Cong or North Vietnam, not for religious repression. The Johnson administration exploited the terrorist label to sway Americans to support greater U.S. Involvement in Vietnam. In a special message to Congress on May 18, 1964 seeking additional fund for Vietnam, LBJ declared, "the Viet Cong guerrillas, under orders from their Communist masters in the North, have intensified terrorist actions against the peaceful people of South Vietnam. This increased terrorism requires increased response."

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Who the Justice Department decides to prosecute as a domestic terrorist has little to do with the harm they've inflicted or the threat they pose to human life. Police and FBI agents ... arrested a dozen of [activist Joe] Dibee's associates in the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. They were charged with conspiring to burn down factories that slaughtered animals for meat, timber mills that disrupted sensitive ecosystems, government facilities that penned wild horses, and a ski resort. While the arsons, which never hurt or killed anyone, largely took place in the late 1990s, the wave of arrests known as the "Green Scare" came in the post-9/11 era, when terrorism was the FBI's prevailing obsession. The fur and biomedical industries had spent years lobbying the Justice Department and lawmakers to go after eco-activists. When the planes hit the twin towers, industry groups seized on the opportunity to push legislation, and federal law enforcement ramped up pursuit of radical activists in the name of counterterrorism. Of 70 federal prosecutions of radical environmentalists and animal rights activists identified by The Intercept, 52 did not result in charges under anti-terrorism laws. Yet the defendants were repeatedly called terrorists by the Justice Department. The Patriot Act's broad new definition of domestic terrorism, signed into law in October 2001, was another step toward institutionalizing the notion that eco-saboteurs were terrorists.

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For the past couple of years, I've been working with researchers in northern Greece who are farming metal. They are experimenting with a trio of shrubs known to scientists as "hyperaccumulators": plants which have evolved the capacity to thrive in naturally metal-rich soils that are toxic to most other kinds of life. They do this by drawing the metal out of the ground and storing it in their leaves and stems, where it can be harvested like any other crop. As well as providing a source for rare metals in this case nickel, although hyperaccumulators have been found for zinc, aluminium, cadmium and many other metals, including gold these plants actively benefit the earth by remediating the soil, making it suitable for growing other crops, and by sequestering carbon in their roots. Hyperaccumulators are far from being the only non-humans that we might learn from. Physarum polycephalum, a particularly lively slime mould, can solve the "travelling salesman" problem a test for finding the shortest route between multiple cities faster and more efficiently than any supercomputer humans have devised. Spiders store information in their webs, using them as a kind of extended cognition: a mind outside the body entirely. A new conception of intelligence is emerging from scientific research: rather than human intelligence being unique or the peak of some graduated curve, there appear to be many different kinds of intelligence with their own strengths, competencies and suitabilities.

Note: This was written by James Bridle, an artist and technologist who was able to paralyze a self-driving car using salt and road markers. For more on his work, check out his fascinating perspective on how artificial intelligence technologies could be designed based on cooperation and relationships naturally reflected in living systems, as opposed to competition and domination.

Natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes can level entire towns, and for the search and rescue teams trying to find survivors, it's a painstaking task. But an unlikely savior is being trained up to help out: rats. The project, conceived of by Belgian non-profit APOPO, is kitting out rodents with tiny, high-tech backpacks to help first responders search for survivors among rubble in disaster zones. "Rats are typically quite curious and like to explore and that is key for search and rescue," says Donna Kean, a behavioral research scientist and leader of the project. In addition to their adventurous spirit, their small size and excellent sense of smell make rats perfect for locating things in tight spaces, says Kean. The rats are currently being trained to find survivors in a simulated disaster zone. They must first locate the target person in an empty room, pull a switch on their vest that triggers a beeper, and then return to base, where they are rewarded with a treat. While the rodents are still in the early stages of training, APOPO is collaborating with the Eindhoven University of Technology to develop a backpack, which is equipped with a video camera, two-way microphone, and location transmitter to help first responders communicate with survivors. APOPO has been training dogs and rats at its base in Tanzania in the scent detection of landmines and tuberculosis for over a decade. Its programs use African Giant Pouched Rats, which have a longer lifespan in captivity of around eight years.

Note: Don't miss the images of these adorable and heroic rats at the link above. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

Some of the women are wearing papier-mache headdresses shaped like long-necked birds. As they sing, one of them gets to her feet and starts dancing. They are part of the "hargila army", a group of rural women in the Indian state of Assam who work to protect one of the world's rarest storks: the greater adjutant (Leptoptilos dubius) or hargila (meaning "bone swallower" in Assamese) as the scavenger bird is known locally. They are celebrating the recent UN Environment Programme's Champions of the Earth award, conferred on the group's biologist founder, Dr Purnima Devi Barman. Barman won the award for her achievement in mobilising more than 10,000 women to help save the stork. "They are the protectors of the birds and of their nesting trees," says Barman. The birds were not just reviled, they were seen as a bad omen and carriers of disease. Villagers attacked them with stones, cut down trees where they roosted communally and burned their nests. Today the greater adjutant is endangered, with fewer than 1,200 adult birds in its last strongholds. Most of the global population is found in Assam, making Barman and the hargila army's work critical to its survival. Today, the once-maligned bird is now a cultural symbol, appearing on everything from towels to road-safety campaigns. In the villages of Dadara, Pacharia and Singimari (all in Kamrup district), greater adjutants' nests have increased from 28 in 2010 to more than 250 according to Barman's last count, making the area the world's largest breeding colony.

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I was asked by a friend to take a look at this paper which he was surprised to see in a science journal. Its a weird and unconvincing paper, a Case report of instantaneous resolution of juvenile macular degeneration blindness after proximal intercessory prayer. Its actually a case of rummaging around in old medical files in order to report a miracle in 1972.

Heres the story: an 18 year old girl lost her vision in 1959 over the course of a few months, with no identified cause. She was diagnosed with 7/200 vision, attended a school for the blind, and lived as a blind person for 12 years. Then, even more suddenly, her vision recovered fully after her husband prayed for her.

When the couple went to bed later than normal (after midnight), her husband performed a hurried spiritual devotional practice (reading two Bible verses) and got on his knees to pray. She describes that they both began to cry as he began to pray, with a hand on her shoulder while she laid on the bed, and with great feeling and boldness he prayed: Oh, God! You can restore [] eyesight tonight, Lord. I know You can do it! And I pray You will do it tonight. At the close of the prayer, his wife opened her eyes and saw her husband kneeling in front of her, which was her first clear visual perception after almost 13 years of blindness.

An examination in 2001 revealed that she had 20/40 vision, and that her retinas looked normal.

I cant debunk this account, if thats what youre looking for. I could speculate about possible ways the story is misleading us, but we know nothing about the causes of the blindness or its cure, we dont even know that there was a physical basis for the blindness, and Im not going to diagnose an old medical condition thats what the authors of the paper are doing. All weve got are old records, and modern evidence that she can see, and no way to trace the actual history of her vision. Its an anecdote. Maybe she was actually cured by a miracle! Unfortunately, theres no way to analyze what actually happened.

Im skeptical that prayer is actually effective, though. This woman was devout, came from a very religious family and community, and youre telling me that the onset of blindness did not trigger a flurry of intense prayers from the woman, her family, and her church? Was that the first time her husband begged his god to restore her sight? Its awfully hard to believe that something th...

I decided to try a slightly different process than normal for the update on the movement to Stop Cop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest, so that post will be up tomorrow, and today you get something like a stream of consciousness.

Work on The Inner Tower is going well, for the most part. I think I will never understand why my brain just refuses to cooperate sometimes, for no discernible reason. Even so, Im following the map I laid out, and discovering an interesting landscape. There are a few geographic locations in that world that were established before I began the exploration that is writing a first draft. Beyond that, its been mostly blank, and the landscape has been filling in as I go.

When the plot of this thing started falling into my brain like Tetris blocks last year, I decided that I was going to be deliberately formulaic with my writing, and see what sort of interesting story I could create within more conventional limits. I say more conventional, because my first novel, Exits and Entrances, was very much experimental. The biggest difference youll probably notice, should you decide to read it, is that every other chapter is a short story thats peripheral to the main plot. I dont recall why I thought that was a good idea, but I think it turned out decently for a first novel. I dont think I was a particularly good writer at that point in time, but I try to remember that there are books out there that are much worse by every metric I can think of, save popularity.

I will have to return to that particular laboratory, because there are two books still to write for that trilogy, but for my current project, Ive chosen to constraints and rules from bits of writing advice Ive encountered over the years.

I guess you could say that this series just a different kind of experiment, but I think itll be a more familiar reading experience for regular young adult fantasy readers, at least for the first couple volumes. After that, things will get a little stranger, because I just cant help myself.

Part of the reason youre getting this particular blog post, is that I was getting tired of video posts, and I doubt Im alone in that. The other part is that, after a cold snap in which we actually got snow, its the first classic Beautiful Spring Day since the sun went away. That means that Im sitting at a folding table out in the middle of our little walled village, while His Holiness Saint Ray the Cat explores.

While there are cats and foxes that...

By Daisy Luther After Silicon Valley Bank had its deposits seized by the FDIC, on a Friday, as predicted, theres a sense of unease across...

A Second Bank CLOSED by FDIC: Whos Next and What Should We Do?

By B.N. Frank You would think that Havana Syndrome would stop referred to as mysterious since numerous experts have already claimed that it is likely...

DoD Funds Animal Experiments to Determine if Radio Frequency (RF) May Be Causing Havana Syndrome in Humans

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West Virginia had a bill in the works to explicitly allow the teaching of intelligent design creationism.

Teachers in public schools, including public charter schools, that include any one or more of grades kindergarten through 12, may teach intelligent design as a theory of how the universe and/or humanity came to exist.

Never fear, Americans United is on the case. It didnt pass, not yet at least.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State President and CEO Rachel Laser issued the following statement in response to the West Virginia Legislature adjourning without passing Senate Bill 619, a bill that would have authorized public school teachers to teach intelligent design creationism:

We at Americans United are thankful that West Virginia public school students wont be forced to sit through lessons on intelligent design creationism an inherently religious doctrine that has no place in public schools. Public schools are not Sunday schools; their purpose is to teach students sound science, not preach religious beliefs.

While the intelligent design bill failed this session, its alarming that the bill got as much traction as it did. The bills supporters blatantly ignored the Constitutions promise to separate church and state the protector of religious freedom and would have flouted decades of court precedent that bars the teaching of religious doctrine in public schools, including an Americans United case that successfully proved intelligent design was simply creationism rebranded.

If legislators insist on resurrecting this bill, Americans United is ready to defend the Constitution and protect public education and the religious freedom of West Virginia families. Using our public schools to impose religious doctrines like intelligent design on a captive audience of schoolchildren is part of the Christian Nationalist agenda to force all of us to live by their narrow beliefs. We need a national recommitment to the separation of church and state. Our public schools and our democracy depend on it.

The creationists are persistent little buggers, thats for sure.

My daughter might appreciate this. Shes writing up papers, getting ready for her Ph.D. thesis defense, and trying to raise a four year old, and all I have to contribute isit could be worse.

I dont think she has any mad Australian guardians living next door, unfortunately.

Also, where is Ray Comfort getting the money?

Thats a box full of crap you can get for free from LivingWaters/london. Just fill out the form at that link, giving Ray Comfort your address, and he will ship up to ten boxes of his book and Bible tracts about the coronation.

You could have a thousand copies of Rays book and six thousand cheesy tracts delivered to your doorstep, totally free. Unless youre in the UK, EU, Australia, or New Zealand, in which case you dont get the books, just 10,000 cheesy tracts. Or if youre outside those countries, you get nothing, and will have to pick up your free tracts in person in London.

From this I have determined that Canada is truly blessed.

I thought about ordering a box, just to bleed a few drops from the bloated vampiric corpse of Ray Comforts unaccountably rich organization, but decided not to. My reasons: a) its not enough to exsanguinate the parasite, b) it would just encourage him, c) its incredibly wasteful and would just have to be recycled, and d) I dont want to read his stupid book (Ive read enough Comfort to know it will be awful), I dont want his tracts, and I dont need a box of waste paper in my house. The man is giving away free garbage, and that does not appeal.

I still have to wonder, though: does ol Ray have some multi-millionaire sugar daddy? Or does he get so much in donations from a horde of deluded Christians that he can afford these ridiculous give-aways? Does he pay taxes on all of his revenues that he then spends on evangelical nonsense?

By the way, Ray Comfort is very, very excited about the coronationbut hes not going to bother to go himself. He wants his minions to do the humiliating work of distributing his crap to all the people who dont want it in London.

Freedom-loving Americans should not give leftists the power of being called liberal. The term leftist better describes their intolerance and desire to overthrow the established order.

The claim that American policing is a direct descendant of antebellum slave patrols has no basis in actual history.

'It turns out there's quite a bit of video you haven't seen. And that video tells a very different story about what happened on Jan. 6,' Carlson said last week.

With a Twist

Our daughter Megan was six years old when we discovered she was racist. We were dining at a new Mexican restaurant in our town, and suddenly Megan called the waiter a derogatory term.

My wife and I were shocked. Megan had never used this language before, but after it occurred a few more times over the following weeks, we took her to a specialist who guided her through a series of tests. Afterwards, while our daughter waited patiently in the outer room, the specialist looked at us solemnly. Shes racist all right.

We asked him what we should do.

He gave us a leaflet and told us there were a lot of support groups that could help her negotiate her life as a racist.

Racism used to be frowned upon, he said. Society took a dim view. But attitudes are changing now, and in many places its perfectly acceptable to be racist.

We asked him where these places were, and he said they were all over the country, often in rural areas and often in the South, but not just in the South. Im sure you could find a perfectly good racist town not 20 miles from here, he said.

 We said we didnt want to move, but we were worried that our school system might not be ready to accommodate a racist.

Youd be surprised, he said. A lot of racists have been running for school board, and that changes the whole complexion of the school. Sometimes literally.

We were concerned that Megans racism might inhibit her job opportunities, but when we got home and read through the leaflet, we learned that there were many careers open to racists, including right-wing think tanks, politics, and law enforcement. We still considered putting her in an antiracism program or hiring a private tutor.

But weve learned that being racist is no impediment to a successful life, and in fact a recent president of the United States was racist, as are several current members of Congress.

Our other daughter, Colwyn, was born perfectly I was going to say normal, but of course thats putting a value judgment on racism, which weve learned not to do.

Megan is 12 now and doing well in school. She started a Junior Whiteness League and wrote her history term paper on the Replacement Theory. When she got a D, she complained to the newly elected school co...

Its unclear whether Hollywood is capable of recapturing the monocultural magic of 'Top Gun' ever again, but Sundays Oscars was more proof the industry realizes theres money on the table.

Russias Kinzhal and other hypersonic missiles make NATOs entire military posture a joke, Russia can destroy it all, underground bases, aircraft carriers and anything else.

A city is only as strong as its weakest neighborhood. These words form a core tenet for Allendale Strong, a learning and doing community in Shreveport, Louisiana which mobilized in opposition to the highway that has haunted its neighborhood for years. Now, nearly a decade after it was founded by Dorothy Wiley, Allendale Strong is coordinating with peer groups across the state of Louisiana to challenge the current development pattern. Theyre referring to themselves as the 4 Corners Coalition (4CC) and ultimately, their goal is to un-stroad Louisiana.

I grew up along a stroad, remarked Nick Lanata, a Baton Rouge-based Strong Towns member and data scientist part of the 4CC. Hes referring to the term coined by Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn 2013 to describe street-road hybrids that fail spectacularly at being either. Lanata not only brings his first-hand experience living adjacent to a multi-lane thoroughfare but a data-centric approach to the statewide coalition. By interpreting numbers and correlations, he wants to enhance the argument for why stroads are not only dangerousstatistically, they have exponentially higher crash ratios than streets or highwaysbut also financially unproductive.

We cant just convert stroads into streets or roads, Lanata concedes. There needs to be a

Report back on community defense of a childrens event in Sacramento, California from Proud Boys.

On Sunday, March 12th, at 11:30 AM, a local black owned shop in Sacramento near Oak Park (a historic black and brown neighborhood) held a family friendly drag queen story hour. The event was advertised on their social media earlier this month, to much excitement of the local community. Last night at about 6:50 PM, a neo-Nazi group known for encouraging anti-LGBTQ+ attacks, White Lives Matter California posted a tweet alerting their followers to the drag event. The same kind of alert was sounded by these Nazis earlier this week against a transgender day of joy rally and march on Friday.

The shop owner was alerted of this threat and began to reach out to her local community for support. The owners and performers decided to continue with the event as a show of solidarity and defiance in the face of hate. With less than 24 hours notice of the threat, the community responded in overwhelming support. A sizable and diverse crowd gathered to protect the event and its attendees, consisting of various affinity groups, parents, dogs, and community members of all ages; including a strong POC and LGBTQIA+ presence.

Sacramento Proud Boys are closely tied to the neo-nazi "WLM" group whose members dropped banners in UCD in Aug. Sac Proud Boys Brandon Revering and Tyler Greenhalgh were among a group of ~6 Sac PBs who rallied with WLM to harass a pride event in June. Tyler was also at UCD tues. pic.twitter.com/wyiE1PMyHF

borwin10 (@Borwin10) October 29, 2022

Around 11:15 AM, a suspicious vehicle was seen circling the venue. It was quickly recognized as the car belonging to Tyler Greenhalgh, a known member of the Sacramento Proud Boys. Proud boys including Greenhalgh have been responsible for numerous violent attacks in the region, including at a drag show in nearby Woodland, last years Straight Pride rally in Modesto, and outside a Turning Point USA even...

  Bullet Points:  ** (Reuters) (captioned photo) German air taxi developer Lilium Air Mobility said on Thursday it had reached a maximum speed of 250 kilometers per hour with a technology demonstrator, calling it a key milestone on the way to certifying its electrically powered flying shuttles in 2025. ** (Mail) SVB had NO head []

The post Checking Out appeared first on Virtual Mirage.

by Megan OMatz

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

The nonpartisan League of Women Voters has been facing a nationwide backlash after decades of going about its business of surveying candidates, registering voters, hosting debates and lobbying for its causes with little fuss.

ProPublica reported in August how the volatile political climate has caught up with the league, with conservatives increasingly portraying it as a decidedly liberal entity. Since that story was published, weve seen candidates reject invitations to debate and try to undermine the leagues work in registering new voters. In September in Illinois, then-Lake County Board member Dick Barr, a Republican, publicly apologized for a Facebook post in which he called the league partisan hags.

This week, the group found itself once again in the middle of a political controversy. This time it was in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has sought to reshape a wide range of discourse, including by making it easier for public officials to sue for defamation and restricting discussions of systemic racism in workplace trainings. The league revealed that it had been denied permission by the Florida Department of Management Services to hold an outdoor rally on the steps of the Old Capitol in Tallahassee under a new DeSantis administration rule requiring groups to first get sponsorship from a sympathetic state agency.

The rule took effect March 1 and says the requested...

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed on Friday, March 10, after a wave of bad news rattled investors and depositors. While SVB was not systemically important to the U.S. economy, it was roughly the 16th-largest bank in America, by deposits, and was at the heart of the regions tech industry, bankrolling much of the sector. The Depression-era bank guarantor known as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) protects all deposits below $250,000 in regulated American banks, but many Silicon Valley Internet startups had deposited huge amounts of cash from funding rounds with the bank. Federal regulators stepped in to sort out the accounts. Bloomberg reported more than 90% of the deposits (now managed by government caretakers inside the new Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara) are above the FDIC guaranteed limit.

Unicorn Riot received word Friday of vendors warning payments should not be submitted to SVB-based accounts showing that impacts to everyday Internet business could be fast and widespread. We also learned it is believed that a 6:30 a.m. Eastern announcement on Monday will specify how the bank will be resolved. Also we heard JPMorgan has been ruled out as the main purchaser of the banks assets. On Sunday, March 12, U.S. authorities announced that depositors would be made whole on Monday.

This report covers the recent bank collapse, the Covid bailout, the 2007-08 Great Financial Crisis and some other sketchy recent economic trends.

Longtime critics of Wall Street self-dealing and inadequate transparency, the Martens at WallStreetonParade.com, noted, be sure to write down March 9, 2023 as the day that a full-blown bank run began at non-traditional banks in the U.S.

First the federally insured Silvergate Bank, a hub in the cryptocurrency world, started shutting down on Wednesday, March 8 followed by SVB on Friday morning. (Silvergate was entwined with the fraudulent businesses run by Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX and Alameda Research, more on that below.)

Events are moving fast. Late on Sunday news...

Not just my name, address, email, and telephone number were exposed, but my date of birth and Social Security number as well.

Preserving national and religious identity and practices can begin with the promotion of family dinner.

In 'Rise of the Fourth Reich,' Steve Deace and Daniel Horowitz argue for new Nuremburg-like trials to end Covid fascism once and for all.

The rhetoric used by our political leaders undeniably affects migration patterns at the southern border. Trump and Biden prove this.

By Kurt Nimmo, March 12, 2023

The first thing to know: the agency is run out of the State Department. Its pubic relations cover is to provide international development. This is code for

The post Selected Articles: Short List of USAID Subversion Operations appeared first on Global Research.

Report back from the Houston Tenants Union in Texas about a recent campaign by tenants against an abusive slum lord.

Vera has been living at 7318 Thurow St. for a little over two years. During this time she has dealt with unlawful late fee collection, infestations of rats and other pests, non-functioning toilets and various other kinds of disrepair, all due to the landlords incompetence and malicious neglect. The male landlord has walked into her home without notice while she is nude after showering.

The landlords dumped an abused dog on the property that Jason, another Thurow St. tenant, nursed back to health and cared for over the last two years. When the Thurow tenants started objecting to the poor conditions the landlords retaliated by taking the dog. No one has seen the dog since. Jason has also helped care for the elderly father of the slumlords, who lives on the property. Often this elder is without adequate food, medical care, or hygiene.

Other tenants live in a windowless shack in the backyard that was poorly converted from a garage by the landlord, in clear violation of numerous safety and building codes. HCAD lists the structure as a garage, not as living space.

Now the Thurow Tenants are banding together to fight back against their slumlords. The tenants have been coordinating a strong campaign of documentation which can be found at Thurow Slums. They have also been distributing flyers throughout the area to warn others of the slumlords callous disregard for maintaining a safe home for the tenants at the property. The tenants have been motivated and actively resisting, recently they contacted Houston Tenants Union to help with their efforts.

Tenants Deliver Demands

In January 2023 when a friend of one of the Thurow tenants met a HTU organizer at a community event and she passed on her infor...

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The post COVID-19 Vaccinated High School Children Are Having Cardiac Arrests, Heart Attacks While Playing Sports Plus 31 Shocking VAERS Reports, Some of Them Fatal appeared first on Global Research.

Report back from recent noise demonstration in solidarity with those arrested in Atlanta on domestic terrorism charges. Originally posted to Scenes from the Atlanta Forest.

Supporters, family members, and beloved community members of the 23 young people charged with domestic terrorism at the South River Festival gathered outside of the DeKalb County Jail on March 8th to protest their unjust incarceration.

#StopCopCity vigil at #Dekalb County jail earlier tonight. People have reported being chronically deprived of food and water here, a severe human rights violation. There have been rumors of corrupt deals between the sheriffs office and the negligent prison food company.#FeedThem pic.twitter.com/Ui677aukeh

Autonomous News: Atlanta (@AutonomousATL) March 9, 2023

Parents gave speeches to their children locked inside, calling them heroes and promising to fight for them until they are free. Protestors chanted the names of all those arrested, sung freedom songs, and reassured each other they would keep fighting against these unjust charges. Other inmates shouted from their cells, describing the brown water, cold food, broken toilets, and other deplorable conditions at DeKalb County Jail.

Aslan King, the father of Ayla King (age 18) who is currently detained on charges of #domesticterrorism for protesting the construction of #copcity, came down from Massachusetts to fight for her daughter. Aslan joins several dozen people outside the DeKalb County jail. pic.twitter.com/JlzX4l8d1S

Your Story Matters (@HumanizingStory) March 9, 2023

Burning rags were thrown from windows as inmates joined the protest in solidarity. Despite the grim circumstances, the crowd of supporters was...

The post Branding the Acceptable: Battling Cancel Culture at Adelaide Writers Week appeared first on Global Research.

One wrong move and Khazarian Nazi heaven will reach ten thousand degrees in the shade.with rented nukes

by Felix Livshitz originally published on Russia Today All links to Gospa News articles have been added aftermath. American far-right radicals linked to neo-Nazis from the Ukrainian Azov Battalion have been charged with conspiring to stage a terrorist attack in Baltimore, Maryland. However, US media reporting on the story does not mention connections []

First came the solar-powered vehicles, then came cars that run on electricity. People have been looking for ways to power transportation without using the usual gas and diesel.

Here is New Hollands brand new tractor that runs on liquified methane. This is beneficial for farmers because it enables them to lower their emissions and save cash on rising diesel costs.

It has also been deemed as efficient for several other reasons. The company behind this innovative method says the fuel can actually be produced easily by methane that comes from cow pies. By doing this, they will be able to follow a more circular economic model in the most circular industry that is also just as important.

The breakthrough 270hp tractor is said to match the performance of the standard diesel-powered ones. In fact, this machine is a pioneer in the industry and it was developed by a British company called Bennamann. They have been hard at work researching and developing biomethane production for more than 10 years now.

The waste byproducts that comes from a herd as small as 100 cows can be transformed into a fuel called fugitive methane. This is done in a biometh...

Actor James Martin, the 31-year-old star of 'An Irish Goodbye,' joined the films producers on stage at the Academy Awards on Sunday.

This article talks about one of the main Syrian opposition members that passed away and she had a big role in the war on Syria

Peer-reviewed study 17 years in the making adds further support that Invincible Defense Technology prevents crime, war, terrorism and conflict. Eminent scientist Dr. David Orme-Johnson describes study published in World Journal of Social Science showing that group practice of the TM and TM-Sidhi techniques by 1% of the US population decreased multiple stress indicators in US. Scientists call for a group to create world peace.