KILL THE BILL 2 GLO (BAL) RE (BELLION) D (AILY) 22 11 2
"REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!", Trump said on his social media platform, responding toJodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)...
Journalists and press freedom advocates responded to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's attack on a proposed federal shield law with renewed calls for the Senate to pass the House-approved bill.
The bipartisan Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act, which passed the House in January, would bar the federal government from forcing journalists and telecommunications companies to disclose certain information, to protect sources and reporting materials, with exceptions for threats of terrorism or imminent violence.
Given Trump's long-standing hostility toward the press—which he has called "the enemy of the people"—there were fresh demands for Senate action.
Noting that "Democratic administrations abused their powers to spy on journalists many times, too", Trevor Timm, executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation, told CNN.
"The bipartisan PRESS Act will stop government overreach and protect the First Amendment once and for all".
"Trump want no shackles when it comes to attacking, intimidating, silencing the press", said David Kaye, a University of California, Irvine law professor, "DEFEND DEMOCRACY AND PASS THE PRESS ACT NOW!"...
Many are also sounding the alarm over H.R. 9495, a bill that passed the House on Thursday and would empower the Treasury Department to strip nonprofit status from various organizations—including news outlets like Common Dreams—by accusing them of supporting terrorism without due process.
"Today is a dark day for free speech rights and freedom altogether. Make no mistake: The real intention of H.R. 9495 is to give the executive branch extra powers to suppress dissent", Free Press Action policy counsel Jenna Ruddock said in a statement after the House vote on the "nonprofit killer" bill.
"The tax fight is starting now" said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
An analysis showed that the United States' 815 billionaires have seen their combined wealth surge by roughly $280 billion since Donald Trump's victory,.
Citing Forbes data, Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) noted that the collective net worth of the nation's billionaires jumped $276 billion between November 4—the day before Election Day—and November 12.
Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest man and a Trump confidant, accounted for 20% of the total billionaire wealth surge, with his net worth growing by $57 billion in just a week.
ATF found that U.S. billionaire wealth is now at an all-time high of $6.7 trillion.
The group observed that scrapping the estate tax would save billionaire households an estimated $2.7 trillion while depriving "working Americans of the exact same amount of funding for vital public services like Medicare, childcare, education, and housing."
Sincethe highly regressive 2017 Trump-GOP tax cut that Republicans are looking to extend and expand, U.S. billionaire wealth has risen by $3.8 trillion—over 131%—according to ATF.
Thousands of migrants from Central America left southern Mexico on 20 November, aiming to reach the US before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
The group hopes to avoid potential immigration controls and continue using the CBP-ONE asylum system to enter the country.
Trump has promised mass deportations when he takes office.
The migrants seek permission for free movement across Mexico to reach the US border. Past caravans have often dispersed along the way.
In the year from the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, Israeli troops and settlers killed 171 Palestinian children, equivalent to one death almost every other day, according to UN data. More than 1,000 others have been injured.
The youngest victim was a four-year-old girl, shot dead when she and her mother were sitting in a taxi near a checkpoint in January.
Officially there is no war in the occupied West Bank, and the scale of death in Gaza has overshadowed the losses there.
Children are dying in greater numbers than at any time since the Israeli army seized control of the area in 1967.
Emma Graham-Harrison, Quique Kierszenbaum, Sufian Taha The Guardian
The United Nations’ special coordinator for the Middle East peace process warned the Security Council that conditions in Gaza are “among the worst we’ve seen during the entire war and are not set to improve.”
The warning came as Sri Lanka’s U.N. ambassador delivered an annual report by the U.N.’s special committee on Palestinian human rights.
Peter Mohan Maithri Pieris: “This year’s report examines the mass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions intentionally imposed on Palestinians in Gaza. Our findings conclude that Israel’s methods of war align with the characteristics of genocide.”
Amid reporting that the Israel Defense Forces is using an artificial intelligence weapons system touted as improving "operator lethality",Jewish Voice for Peace said Israel's use of technological warfare is "nothing new"—but pointed out that the new reports follow the country's signing of "the first global 'safety' AI treaty".
The Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence, spearheaded by the Council of Europe, was signed by Israel in September, and "claims to be a legal framework governing AI systems to mitigate risks to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law—but the Israeli military is using AI to do precisely the opposite", said JVP.
The Jewish-led advocacy group spoke out after Middle East Eye (MEE) reported that the IDF has been using a weapons system in Gaza that came out of a collaboration between Israeli Weapons Industries and the Indian company Adani Defence & Aerospace.
The AI system, Arbel, was first unveiled at a defense expo in Gandhinagar, Gujarat in October 2022. MEE reported it is capable of turning "machine guns and assault rifles into computerized killing machines", using algorithms to increase Israeli soldiers' chances of hitting targets with accuracy and "efficiency."
If AI emerges as a practically independent political, diplomatic, and military set of entities, that would force the exchange of the age-old balance of power for a new, uncharted disequilibrium.
The international concert of nation-states—a tenuous and shifting equilibrium achieved in the last few centuries—has held in part because of the inherent equality of the players. A world of severe asymmetry—for instance, if some states adopted AI at the highest level more readily than others—would be far less predictable.
In cases where some humans might face off militarily or diplomatically against a highly AI-enabled state, or against AI itself, humans could struggle to survive, much less compete. Such an intermediate order could witness an internal implosion of societies and an uncontrollable explosion of external conflicts.
Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Craig Mundie Foreign Affairs
Artificial intelligence continues to evolve with little oversight, shifting the tides of poverty and power.
We see it in price-setting rent algorithms, pervasive misinformation, mass unemployment fueled by automation, and tech advancements that deepen wealth inequality and entrench dependence on a broken system.
The biggest drawback is automation, which is projected to replace an astronomical number of occupations. By replacing most entry-level positions, automation will have a disproportionate impact on low-income earners, young people, and people with low levels of education or experience.
According to assessments from the World Economic Forum, AI is projected to displace approximately 85 million jobs worldwide by 2025. Their opening statement, “the future of work has already arrived” concisely summarizes this dystopian reality.
Online grooming crimes have reached record levels across the UK, with offences topping 7,000 for the first time, new data1 we've compiled reveals.
The figures, provided by 45 UK police forces, show 7,062 Sexual Communication with a Child offences were recorded in 2023/24 – up 89% since 2017/18 when the offence first came into force.
The data reveals the most common platforms that perpetrators used to target children online, in cases where the means of communication was disclosed.
So far this year, the new data can show that of the overall 563,590 victims documented, most of the children seen were between the ages of 7 and 10 (201,787). Girls made up the majority of the victims (430,463).
Now, analysts can easily track information about all the children seen in the image with the Multichild feature. Being able to respond at speed and protect child victims from having horrific imagesof their suffering be uploaded, shared and viewed across the internet is a driving priority for analysts at the IWF.
Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, Jess Phillips, said: “Far too many children are being subjected to unimaginable child sexual abuse. As technologies advance, so do the threats to our children, so it is vital that we use tools such as these to ensure that we can safeguard as many children from abuse as possible".
A machine called Frontier built in 2022 was the first publicly acknowledged to have reached the exascale – a billion billion FLOPS.
Now, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California has created El Capitan, which is capable of 1.742 exaFLOPS, more than any other supercomputer.
El Capitan will essentially provide the vast computational power necessary to ensure the effectiveness of the US nuclear deterrent without having to carry out physical nuclear testing.
Researchers have created an early map of some of the human body’s estimated 37.2 trillion cells.
Each type of cell has a unique role, and knowing what all the cells do can help scientists better understand health and diseases such as cancer.
The high-resolution, open-access atlas — considered a first draft — will help researchers fight diseases that damage or corrupt human cells.
“When things go wrong, they go wrong with our cells first and foremost,” said Aviv Regev, co-chair of the Human Cell Atlas consortium who was involved with the research.
This breakthrough process, known as triazenolysis, transforms alkenes—widely occurring organic compounds like those derived from petroleum—into multifunctional amines.
These amines have diverse applications in both industrial and research settings, making the process a significant advancement in modern chemistry.
"We set the foundations to be able to engineer light-matter interactions for future applications, such as better sensors, improved photovoltaic energy cells, or quantum computing".
A shocking spate of “revenge on society” attacks is calling attention to the increasing socio-economic pressures that the Chinese face and the problem of social inequality.
In just over a week, three people have gone on mass murder sprees that have left 43 people dead and more than 60 people wounded.
Uno studio straordinario ha rivelato il cocktail di sostanze psichedeliche contenute nel vaso dedicato al dio Bes conservato presso il Tampa Museum of Art, in Florida.
“Ricordando il racconto narrato nel Mito dell’Occhio Solare e alla luce dei nostri risultati”, scrivono gli autori, “possiamo dedurre che questo vaso Bes fosse utilizzato per una sorta di rituale di rievocazione di ciò che accadde in un evento significativo del mito egizio”.
Secondo la mitologia egizia l’Occhio di Ra era un’entità vivente, spesso rappresentata come una dea (come Hathor, Sekhmet, o Tefnut), che incarnava il potere e l’autorità del dio.
Il mito racconta che l’Occhio si allontanò da Ra e fuggì nel deserto o in terre lontane, simboleggiando la perdita di equilibrio nel cosmo.
Ra inviò divinità come Thoth o Shu per recuperare l’Occhio.
Questo viaggio rappresentava il ripristino dell’ordine e dell’armonia cosmica, riportando la luce e il calore del sole.
L’Occhio, al ritorno, si univa nuovamente al dio, e questa unione simboleggiava il rinnovamento della vita e del potere divino.
Questo mito rifletteva il profondo senso di ordine cosmico (Maat) che permeava la religione e la cultura egizia, dove la luce del sole e il potere di Ra erano essenziali per la vita e l’armonia universale.
Un team internazionale di ricercatori, con diversi italiani tra i quali anche Giorgio Samorini, ha analizzato il vaso dedicato a Bes, che risale a circa 2mila anni fa, utilizzando test chimici e del DNA.
Le loro scoperte, pubblicate su Scientific Reports hanno confermato che gli antichi egizi creavano un potente cocktail di sostanze psicotrope, aromatizzato con miele, semi di sesamo, pinoli, liquirizia e uva.
Il personaggio di Everett è l’opposto di quello di Twain: ha imparato a leggere e scrivere, è colto e determinato a rivendicare il suo posto nel mondo. L’anima del romanzo è proprio nel percorso di riconquista della narrazione da parte di un uomo nero in lotta per emanciparsi dalla vita che i bianchi hanno scritto per lui e farsi autore, in senso simbolico e letterale, della propria esistenza.
Con la consueta ironia che spariglia i punti di vista, Everett attornia James di cantanti bianchi in blackface autori di brani nostalgici sulla vita in schiavitù, schiavi che amano le catene, apparizioni oniriche e deliranti di Voltaire e Locke. Ne emerge il ritratto di un Sud allo sbando, un Sud spaventato che si ancora al passato per paura di naufragare nel futuro crogiolandosi nell’ostinata e beata inconsapevolezza di essere già un relitto sul fondo del Mississippi.
The anthropologist Jason De León dedicated five years to studying migrants who tried to make the deadly crossing into the United States over the Sonoran Desert, hiking hundreds of miles of the trails himself so that he could better understand the dangers faced by the people he interviewed. His intensive fieldwork made its way into his 2015 book, “The Land of Open Graves”.
His new book is an account of the nearly seven years he spent with the people hired by migrants to help them get to the border — smugglers, that is, though their preferred term is “guía”, or “guide”, as in “the one who can potentially lead you through danger”.
“Human smuggling is exploitative and violent”, De León writes. “It also cannot be stopped”. He points to the “monstrous injustices” that drive demand for the guías’ services, including relentless poverty, the drug trade, climate change and gang violence.
Come con “La società signorile di massa”, Luca Ricolfi inventa una categoria sociologica nuova – il follemente corretto – per descrivere un fenomeno prepotentemente esploso negli ultimi dieci anni.
Il politicamente corretto era nato, negli anni ’70, con lo scopo di promuovere coesione sociale e rispetto dei soggetti più deboli. La sua metamorfosi in follemente corretto, resa possibile dalla impetuosa espansione delle reti di comunicazione e dei social, ha finito per ottenere l’effetto contrario.
Il nuovo credo non solo restringe drammaticamente la nostra libertà di espressione, ma genera profonde fratture sociali che favoriscono l’ascesa di una nuova élite, autoreferenziale e lontanissima dal vivo sentire dei ceti popolari.
Quando Monk decide di scrivere, sotto pseudonimo, un romanzo che raccolga in sé tutti gli stereotipi sulla cosiddetta “esperienza nera”, creando un romanzo disonesto, gratuitamente volgare e violento e privo di alcun valore letterario, la sua speranza è infatti quella di mettere a nudo la viscida ipocrisia di un mondo editoriale che ha sacrificato la promozione dell’arte e della cultura sull’altare del capitalismo.
Quello che nemmeno Monk avrebbe mai potuto prevedere è che il romanzo sarebbe stato osannato da editor, critica, pubblico e persino produttori cinematografici.
Tratto dal romanzo "Cancellazione", il film è frutto di una mediazione tra lo spirito dissacratorio di Percival Everett e le cautele dell’industria cinematografica odierna.
La posizione stessa del lettore, complice dell’inganno perpetrato dallo scrittore e allo stesso tempo anch’egli bersaglio della sua satira, perde, con la trasposizione, ogni ambiguità.
Il primo film di Riley, fondatore del gruppo rap iper-politicizzato The Coup, è un concentrato di paranoia, razzismo, rivolte sedate da una polizia disumanizzata e violenta, corruzione e più in generale di disgusto per il Sistema a cui Cassius e gli altri personaggi resistono strenuamente.
Un pesantissimo grido di accusa e di reazione violenta ad ogni costo contro l’oppressione sociale ed economica.
Un intellettuale nero uscito dalle migliori scuole fa l'autore per un network nazionale. Respinta una sua proposta per una sit-com di tipo familiare, pensa a un nuovo modo di presentare il "minstrel show", quello spettacolo di varietà in cui attori bianchi sono truccati da neri. Scriverà uno show in cui sono i neri a scurirsi ancor di più le facce ottenendo un grande successo che, però, avrà serie ripercussioni sulla vita di tutti.
“Each time an unarmed black person is killed, then hurriedly repositioned in death as a thug, a brute, or a layabout by mainstream media outlets… we are seeing the perpetuation of old anti-black stereotypes, forged in the crucible of mass American art”.
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