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Created
Fri, 21/07/2023 - 00:30
Trauma, bleeding, trickery and abandonment Unintended consequences ain’t necessarily unforseen consequences. Just yesterday, a friend mentioned fallout from a GOP effort in North Carolina to change how school board members are elected. The change would in theory make it easier to elect Republicans either by making the elections partisan or (in my county) by redrawing school district lines. Try explaining the latter to kids who suddenly find themselves assigned to different schools. Partisan-inspired chaos ensues. Fallout from the Dobbs decision was not unforseen either. GOP-led states are rushing to ban abortion. Women’s lives are put at risk. In Texas, for example (The New Republic): Women who suffered medical complications after being denied abortions in Texas are now having to relive the trauma of their injuries and dead babies as they plead their case against the state. Welcome to the Republican Party’s America. On Wednesday, women who are part of a 15-person (both patients and doctors) lawsuit against the state of Texas, returned back to court to challenge the state’s extreme abortion ban.
Created
Thu, 20/07/2023 - 23:28

Seeking news coverage about the Adriana, the boat crowded with some 700 people migrating to Europe to seek a better life that sank in mid-June off the coast of Greece, I googled “migrant ship” and got 483,000 search results in one second. Most of the people aboard the Adriana had drowned in the Mediterranean, among them about 100 children. I did a similar search for the Titan submersible which disappeared the same week in the North Atlantic. That kludged-together pseudo-submarine was taking four wealthy men and the 19-year-old son of one of them to view the ruins of the famed passenger ship, the Titanic. They all died when the Titan imploded shortly after it dove. That Google search came up... Read more

Source: Migration and the Shadow of War appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Thu, 20/07/2023 - 23:08
by Daniel Wortel-London

A chapter in the U.S. Code entitled “Statements to accompany significant regulatory actions” contains a critical directive. It declares that any notice of proposed rulemaking by a federal agency that may result in expenditures of $100,000,000 or more must be accompanied by an estimate of that rule’s effect on economic growth.

Take out your editor’s pen. Imagine amending this code by replacing “economic growth” with “economic stability.” How might this simple change transform the purpose and operation of federal laws?

Created
Thu, 20/07/2023 - 23:00
Efforts to target minority voters as early as June 2020 “Jack Smith is going to accuse Donald Trump of voting fraud,” Marcy Wheeler wrote Wednesday. The Department of Justice investigation into Donald Trump’s election-related crimes churns slowly. But it does churn. Trump has been named as a target of the investigation into election interference in 2020. Not by Russians as in 2016, but by Americans. Lots of them (Washington Post): Trump disclosed on Tuesday he had been named as a target in special counsel Jack Smith’s probe of election interference. Hours later, the attorney general of Michigan announced she had issued forgery charges against 16 Trump supporters who had posed as the state’s presidential electors. A county prosecutor in Georgia is preparing to present a sweeping case to a grand jury, with indictments possible within weeks. And the attorney general of Arizona in recent months has ramped up a probe into attempts to undermine the 2020 results in that state.
Created
Thu, 20/07/2023 - 22:36

The restoration of power to people, the Arab spring, peaceful regime change, the Arab spring 2.0 or whatever might be the new nomenclature used or the latest twitter hashtags introduced, this transcendental need for a genuine experience of liberation continues to find its meaningful impulse in the life and writings of Frantz Fanon. The psychiatrist […]

Created
Thu, 20/07/2023 - 22:00

Well, registered voters of Bradford County. It’s been quite a ride. As my one and only term as transportation commissioner comes to an end, I can’t help but look back and wonder: Where did it all go wrong?

Losing this election by the biggest voting margin in our state’s history will not tarnish everything I’ve accomplished. A new five-year transportation improvement plan, a revision of the subdivision staging policy, and yes, one unfortunate late-night visit to a twenty-four-hour CVS Pharmacy.

To my 219 loyal supporters, give or take a few mail-in voters yet to be counted, I thank you. And to all the rest of you, let me say again that, yes, I did stuff my penis into that blood pressure cuff. But let me reiterate: it was not a sex thing.

Nor was I drunk or on any narcotics. I simply wanted to see what it would feel like.

It was 2:00 a.m. I made absolutely sure there were no other customers in the store. All I wanted to do was insert “myself” into the medical device, receive a quick squeeze, and a “How’s the family?” then I’d purchase a pint of Chunky Monkey and be on my way. Where’s the harm in that?

Created
Thu, 20/07/2023 - 21:19
Open Rights Group has responded to last night’s debate on the Online Safety Bill in the House of Lords. Dr Monica Horten, policy manager for freedom of expression at Open Rights Group, said: “It is disappointing that peers have failed to protect the privacy and security of the 40 million people in the UK who […]
Created
Thu, 20/07/2023 - 19:06
How Religions Go Wrong.

Back in February I started a series on how the great solutions like Christianity, Buddhism, Capitalism, Marxism and many more have tried to fix the problems created by our ability to invent creations, like agriculture, industrialization and, indeed, the internet, which wind up doing us vast harm.

Start by reading:

Fire From The Gods: the Original Sins of Agriculture and Industrialism And Hope For The Future

Then read the first post, about Buddha’s quixotic quest to end suffering.

“Fuck Suffering”, The Buddhist Solution (Part One)

Created
Thu, 20/07/2023 - 18:00
Tomas Key During the recovery from the Covid pandemic, the demand for workers rose to unprecedented levels in the UK. The number of jobs that firms were looking to fill increased to 1.3 million in the middle of 2022, 60% higher than the level in the last three months of 2019. The amount of job … Continue reading How have recent changes to the demand for workers affected the unemployment rate?