#Healthcare Marketing Results

[mediaheights]

By implementing a well-planned digital marketing strategy, healthcare providers can increase brand awareness, generate leads and conversions, build trust with patients, improve patient engagement and retention rates. Furthermore, data-driven results allow for targeted analysis of campaigns to determine ROI.

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[odinsblog]

Elena Kagan issued a devastating dissent to the decision of her hard-right fellow supreme court justices to overturn the Chevron doctrine that has been a cornerstone of federal regulation for 40 years, accusing the majority of turning itself into “the country’s administrative czar”.

Kagan said that in one fell swoop, the rightwing majority had snatched the ability to make complex decisions over regulatory matters away from federal agencies and awarded the power to themselves.

“As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar,” she wrote.

For 40 years, she wrote, the Chevron doctrine, set out by the same supreme court in a 1984 ruling, had supported regulatory efforts by the US government by granting federal experts the ability to make reasonable decisions where congressional law was ambiguous. She gave a few examples of the work that was facilitated as a result, such as “keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest”.

Now, the hard-right supermajority had flipped that on its head.

Instead of federal experts adjudicating on all manner of intricate scientific and technical questions – such as addressing the climate crisis, deciding on the country’s healthcare system or controlling AI – now judges would make those critical calls.

Kagan, displaying no desire to pull her punches, portrayed Friday’s ruling as a blatant power grab by the chief justice, John Roberts, and his five ultra-right peers, three of whom were appointed by Trump – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

“A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris,” she wrote.

Not for the first time, her most caustic comments relate to stare decisis – the adherence to legal precedent that is the foundation stone of the rule of law. Respect for the previous judgments of the supreme court is a reminder to judges that “wisdom often lies in what prior judges have done. It is a brake on the urge to convert every new judge’s opinion into a new legal rule or regime.”

By contrast, she went on: “It is impossible to pretend that today’s decision is a one-off, in its treatment of precedent.”

It has become an unquestionable pattern: the new hard-right supermajority has a fondness for tearing up their own court’s precedents stretching back decades. They did it when they eviscerated the right to an abortion in 2022, upending 50 years of settled law; they did it again last year when they prohibited affirmative action in university admissions, casting out 40 years of legal precedent; and now they’ve done it once more after 40 years to Chevron.

“Just my own defenses of stare decisis, my own dissents to this court’s reversals of settled law, by now fill a small volume,” Kagan said, her final words as plaintive as they were defiant.

(continue reading)

[opencommunion]

"While largely toothless as a democratic body—shorn of true legislative capacities and having never developed a genuine transnational dynamic—the European Parliament is nonetheless an important bellwether to track the continent’s political winds. As the results of the parliament’s June 6-9 elections confirm, those winds are blowing in a bleakly reactionary direction.

... There are two principal causes for this. First, the fact that for many decades now European national governments and federal European institutions have legitimized — through emergency measures, moral panics and murderous border policies that have led to thousands of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean — the far Right’s defining claim that migration threatens the material and cultural survival of white European civilization. The far Right’s obsessive talk of borders and births, and its promotion of the myth of the Great Replacement, were enabled by the EU’s political center. Governments across the continent advanced anti-migrant policies on the grounds that stricter regulations would sap the foundations of extremism. But it turns out voters often prefer the original brand, choosing bellicose nativism over technocratic repression when it comes to the ​'migration crisis.'

The second engine of Europe’s turn towards authoritarianism is the EU’s promotion of fiscal austerity policies that have particularly impacted Southern Europe and Ireland, but which have led to welfare state retrenchment across the board. Beyond eroding livelihoods and exacerbating inequality, austerity also led to the rise of multiple movements to reclaim national sovereignty, almost all of which (after the punishment and capitulation of Syriza’s left-wing government in Greece) are now monopolized by reactionaries. While all of Europe’s far-right parties have played on this supposedly populist register, none have challenged the hegemony of markets and the rating agencies that dictate cuts to social programs. ... The real social malaise that plagues so much of Europe — overburdened and privatized healthcare, labor precarity, anemic social security, accelerating climate-related emergencies — is projected onto the far Right’s favorite scapegoats: primarily migrants, but also ​'gender ideology' and its alleged assault on the family as Europe’s moral and material core."

[decolonize-the-everything]

Immediate action is needed to tackle the impact of ethnic and other biases in the use of medical devices, an independent review says. It found pulse oximeter devices could be less accurate for people with darker skin tones, making it harder to spot dangerous falls in oxygen levels. And it warned devices using artificial intelligence (AI) could under-estimate skin cancer in people with darker skin. The review said fairer devices needed to be designed urgently.

In total, it made 18 recommendations for improvement. The government says it fully accepts the report's conclusions. The review was commissioned in 2022 amid mounting concern that ethnic minorities faced greater Covid risks. It looked closely at three types of device where there is potential for "substantial" harm to patients: • optical medical devices such as pulse oximeters, which send light waves through a patient's skin to estimate the level of oxygen in the blood. The light can behave differently depending on skin tone • AI in healthcare • polygenic risk scores, which combine the results of several genetic tests to help estimate an individual's risk of disease and are used mostly for research purposes

Pulse oximeters were used frequently during the Covid pandemic, for example, alongside other observations, to help judge whether a patient needed hospital admission and treatment.[...]

Chest X-rays

One example is the potential under-diagnosis of skin cancers for people with darker skin.

This would probably be a result of machines being 'trained' predominantly on images of lighter skin tones, the team explains. Another concern arises when using AI systems for reading chest x-rays - which are mainly trained on images taken of men, who tend to have larger lung capacities. This could potentially lead to underdiagnosis of heart disease in women, the report suggests, worsening an already long-standing problem.

Call me a fucking extremist but I don't think white people should be building AI and I definitely don't think it should be put in medical devices when the medical industry is already so full of its own systemic bias and especially before there's proper regulations about AI and without more expansive protections for BIPOC in the medical industry.

If you put racist medical device on the market and encourage people to use it knowing it can misdiagnose heart problems and cancer in people with dark skin then they should be able to take you to court for everything youve ever had ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[lilyliveredlittlerichboy]

it's time now. it's time to imagine the brightest future you can, and talk about it.

a future where people only work 8 hours a week and everyone's basic needs are met. a future where we are more connected to nature and eat seasonal, local produce. a future where you look out for your neighbours and they look out for you. a future where you actually know who your neighbours are. a future where everyone is just a lot more relaxed and able to do whatever they want to do - this 8 hour working week has given people their lives back and now they're able to make community events, work in community gardens, sing and dance and spend time with their kids, play whatever sport they want, travel, read, create art and music.

People are interacting with each other in good faith again because money as an ulterior motive has all but disappeared. Cus you see a few decades ago they made profits illegal. All money has to be put back into the company and CEOs can take home a salary only, no bonuses and it can't be more than 3x what the lowest paid employee makes. You can go to jail if your company is found to make profits, advertise on a large scale or pay its high ranking members more than what's allowed.

Jail still exists but mostly people go in for financial crimes (greed still exists); drugs are decriminalised and available to use safely. people are not as desperate now so there's been a massive reduction of violent and petty crime and most of the people who still do this are teenagers who get away with a slap on the wrist. police are not armed anymore and are heavily penalised if they abuse their power or hurt a civilian, and their role is more that of mediator, signposter (to community services, social services, and free and accessible healthcare including for mental health) and security. together with the former military they make up an "emergency task force" which are called upon in times of need and crisis, for floods, fires, other such disasters.

the stock market completely collapsed after profits were made illegal and people had to find other ways to figure out what a company was worth: such as how they treat their staff or how accessible their processes are. as a result of this, as well as more widespread disability thanks to Covid and an ageing population, accessibility is fucking incredible now. most places are accessible to the vast majority of disabled people even without them having to ask for a single thing. If they have to ask, accommodations are made quickly and without fuss and this is completely normal now. disabled people are more visible than ever in public life and this has led to a generally kinder, more tolerant public life.

Everything is slower now. Social media as we know it died decades ago and Internet 4.0 is efficient, will find you accurate answers and the websites you're looking for very easily and fast. there's monopoly laws restricting how large companies operate online. online ads are all but illegal - there's "phone book" esque pages where you can promote your business or service and that's allowed but not anywhere else. Lots of people are still annoying and some of them are still cruel but overall living together as humans has gotten so much more chill. We've tackled climate change and reversed much of it, now it's a global day of mourning whenever a species is found to be extinct through human intervention. these days used to happen much more frequently but it's very rare these days. Most everyone gets the day off and is encouraged to read about the lost species or hold themed funerals. Globally everything has gotten better - there's much more global equality now after a bunch of western/formerly colonising countries almost self destructed and then instead decided to own up for colonialism, pay reparations to a lot of countries in Africa Asia and Latin America, as well as indigenous nations of North America, Oceania, even in Europe. The USA doesn't exist anymore instead its a whole host of separate nations all managed by the native people whose land it is. The UK doesn't exist anymore. England is still sad about it but Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall are called Cymru, Alba, Eire and Kernow again and they've formed a Celtic Union for better collective bargaining power in the EU (which still exists, somehow. Its better now. England may still be out of the EU I'm not sure). Migration is common and foreigners are welcomed into any country with open arms.

I may try to write something about this. I have a vision for a future and it's so lovely. Here, on earth, with the starting point being now. We have a lot to work with and only a few changes could make such a difference. Demilitarisation, UBI and maximum working hours, greedy financial practices made illegal. Conservation and education on local plants and nature and food. Community building on every level. Giving people their lives back.

This is all extremely possible. If it were up to me, very little in society would be left unchanged but it would all be people friendly changes. changes that aim to support the poorest and most marginalised, changes that aim to punish greed and exploitation. It's a work in progress of course. But I have a vision for a better world and dammit if I'm not going to share it with you.

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 More than 70 civilians were killed over the previous 24-hours resulting from the Israeli occupation's surprise offensive into central Gaza after weeks of fighting in Gaza's north and south forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into the central Gaza Strip. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

ISRAELI OCCUPATION'S GENOCIDE IN GAZA DAY 243: NY TIMES ARTICLE SAYS ZIONIST REGIME LAUNCHED A DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN IN US, OCCUPATION ARMY CREATES NEW UNIT TO KEEP PALESTINIANS IN OUTDOOR PRISON OF GAZA, OCCUPATION ARMY RAISES CONSCRIPTION CAPS, NEW ISRAELI GROUND OFFENSIVE TARGETS CENTRAL GAZA, MASS SLAUGHTER OF CIVILIANS CONTINUES

On 243rd day of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 4 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 36 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, while another 115 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

It should be noted that as a result of the constant Israeli bombardment of Gaza's healthcare system, infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, local paramedic and civil defense crews are unable to recover countless hundreds, even thousands, of victims who remain trapped under the rubble, or who's bodies remain strewn across the streets of Gaza.

This leaves the official death toll vastly undercounted as Gaza's healthcare officials are unable to accurately tally those killed and maimed in this genocide, which must be kept in mind when considering the scale of the mass murder.

"Israel organized and paid for an influence campaign last year targeting U.S. lawmakers and the American public with pro-Israel messaging, as it aimed to foster support for its actions in the war with Gaza, according to officials involved in the effort and documents related to the operation."

That's according to an investigation conducted by the New York Times revealing a covert disinformation campaign launched by the Israeli occupation to target US lawmakers and the American public.

According to the Times, the disinformation campaign was "commissioned by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, a government body that connects Jews around the world with the State of Israel."

The Times article stated that the Israeli occupation "allocated about $2 million to the operation and hired Stoic, a political marketing firm in Tel Aviv, to carry it out."

The campaign started back in October and "remains active on the [social media] platform X."

At its zenith, the campaign used "hundreds of fake accounts that posed as real Americans on X, Facebook and Instagram to post pro-Israel comments," with the majority of the accounts focused on "US lawmakers, particularly ones who are black and Democrats, such as Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader from New York, and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, with posts urging them to continue funding Israel's military."

"ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, was used to generate many of the posts. The campaign also created three fake English-language news sites featuring pro-Israel articles," the Times stated, later adding that "the secretive campaign signals the lengths Israel was willing to go to sway American opinion on the war in Gaza."

In other news for Wednesday, the Israeli occupation army has created a new unit, the "Lotar Cover," with the purpose of protecting Zionist settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli army spokesperson said the "Awtf" unit will operate within the 143rd Division, with the express purpose of providing a rapid response to any potential threats to settlements coming out of the Gaza Strip.

The occupation army says the unit will consist of “reserve fighters who graduate from elite units who live in or around the [Gaza] cover settlements and who will be on alert to operate in the region. The soldiers will undergo a special training and qualification process, at the end of which, they will be qualified to deal with the challenges of the region.”

In the meantime, the Israeli occupation has made the decision to raise the number of reservists the occupation army is authorized to call-up for service.

According to reporting in the Hebrew media, the Israeli occupation army will now be authorized to call-up for service 350'000 citizens, up from 300'000, which the Israeli army claims has "nothing to do with tensions in northern Israel."

The occupation authorities claimed the reason for the shift "relates to the operation in southern Gaza's Rafah taking more personnel than initially planned."

Previously, as a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing genocide campaign in Gaza, the Israeli occupation army called-up a total of 287'000 reservists.

However, many have already been released from duty for the time being. The draft marked the largest call-up of reservists in the occupation's nearly 80-year history.

Elsewhere in international news reports, the Slovenian Parliament has officially approved the government's decision to recognize the State of Palestine as an independent and sovereign state, on Wednesday.

Previously, on Thursday of last week, the Slovenian Prime Minister, Robert Golub, announced that his government would recognize the State of Palestine under its 1967 borders in accordance with international law and UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions.

The Slovenian Prime Minister said the decision “sends a message of peace,” stressing that “the time has come for the entire world to unite its efforts towards a two-state solution that will bring peace to the Middle East.”

By recognizing the State of Palestine, Slovenia joins the ranks of several other countries to recently announce their recognition of Palestine as a state, including Spain, Ireland and Norway, all of whom announced their recognition last month, bringing the total number of countries to recognize Palestine to 148, out of a total of 193 member-states belonging to the United Nations.

In other news, after several weeks of Israeli assaults on the north and south of Gaza, pushing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into the central areas, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) announced a new campaign of terror targeting the residents of the central Gaza Strip.

The latest ground offensive is to be conducted by the 98th Division, and is expected to focus on neighborhoods east of the Bureij Refugee Camp, as well as the east of Deir al-Balah, where one of the last large, functional hospitals standing in Gaza, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, remains in operation.

The 98th Division is the same military group that just recently withdrew from Jabalia in Gaza's north, committing horrific crimes against the Palestinian residents there, and also previously terrorized the citizens of Khan Yunis, south of Gaza.

The Zionist army says the operation was launched following intelligence that Resistance operatives and infrastructure, both above and below ground, were located in the area.

The operation has already seen occupation soldiers advancing into the east of the Bureij Camp, in addition to the east of Deir al-Balah on Tuesday, while simultaneously, a "large wave of airstrikes" were conducted targeting so-called "weapons depots, underground infrastructure, buildings used by terror groups, and other sites," according to the occupation military.

The Israeli occupation claims several Hamas operatives were killed in the operations, while an airstrike supposedly targeting a "Hamas compound," in the Bureij Camp, [a seeming impossibility when Hamas keeps its military infrastructure deep in underground tunnel networks] which was "based out of a United Nations School."

[This is typically how the occupation army admits to bombing civilian infrastructure such as schools, water facilities and displacement shelters.]

The Zionist military stated that several Hamas operatives were "gathered at UNRWA's Abu Alhilu School when the strike was carried out," further claiming that the strike was “carefully planned and carried out using precise munitions, while avoiding harm to uninvolved [civilians] as much as possible.”

Meanwhile, local Palestinian media reported that 72 Palestinian citizens were killed during Israeli operations in central Gaza over the previous 24-hours, while scores of others were wounded in the same period.

Witnesses said the Israeli occupation forces' ground operations targeted areas of the Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi Camps, in addition to neighborhoods east of Deir al-Balah, while occupation bombing and artillery shelling targeted the Nuseirat Camp.

As ground operations targeted central Gaza, intense waves of bombing and shelling also targeted various other sectors of Gaza as well, including in the north and south of the enclave.

In one example, Zionist warplanes bombed a residential home belonging to the Hussein family in the vicinity of the Abu Rasas roundabout in the Bureij Camp, in the central Gaza Strip, killing one civilian and wounding a number of others.

Similarly, occupation fighter jets bombed a residential house belonging to the Kirdi family on Block-5 of the Bureij Camp. After the strike, the body of one civilian and several wounded were transported to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

Additionally, another occupation airstrike targeted a house belonging to the Al-Dawli family near the entrance to the Bureij Camp, resulting in the deaths of two Palestinians and wounding several others.

Another 5 civilians were wounded following an Israeli airstrike in the vicinity of a UNRWA clinic in the area and the Services Club nearby.

Zionist occupation forces also dropped several violent firebelts between the Bureij and the Al-Maghazi Camps, one of which targeted a residential building in the Al-Bataniyya neighborhood of the Al-Maghazi Camp, killing four Palestinian civilians.

In particular, the strikes killed Majd Darwish, his wife and his two children, and also wounded a number of others.

In another criminal atrocity, occupation aircraft bombed a civilian residence belonging to the Qatawi family in the Al-Maghazi Camp, in central Gaza, killing two civilians and wounding several others.

At the same time, another massacre occured when Zionist warplanes bombed a residential apartment in the Aslan Building, in the vicinity of the Qattoush roundabout in the Al-Maghazi Camp, resulting in the martyredom of 8 civilians and wounding a number of others.

Yet another occupation airstrike targeted and destroyed a four-story residential building belonging to the Al-Barr family near Salah al-Din, west of the Maghazi Camp.

The horrors went on when Israeli fighter jets bombed a residential house belonging to the Al-Louh family overnight, east of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, killing at least 5 civilians and wounding several others, while yet another airstrike targeted the Al-Masdar family home in the vicinity of the Al-Masdar Mosque, wounding several people.

Two more civilians were killed, and a number of others wounded, after Zionist artillery detatchments shelled a house in the Abu Al-Ajen area, southeast of Deir al-Balah.

According to local reports, the Israeli occupation army also arrested a number of Palestinians, including women, after the occupation forces surrounded a house belonging to the Abu Luz family, east of the Abu Al-Ajen neighborhood, southeast of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, with the kidnapped persons taken to an unknown location.

Local civil defense and paramedic personnel also reported recovering the bodies of dozens of martyrs and wounded from neighborhoods east of the central Gaza Strip following a night of intense and violent bombardment of the Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi Camps, as well as the town of Al-Masdar and Deir al-Balah, with the many wounded transfered to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

Further airstrikes targeted neighborhoods east of Khan Yunis, south of Gaza, while occupation vehicles opened fire east of the town of Al-Qarara, coinciding with intense artillery shelling of the area.

Additionally, the European Gaza Hospital reported the arrival of two dead bodies of Palestinians following Israeli drone strikes east of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, north of Gaza, occupation warplanes bombed a residential home belonging to the Dalloul family in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, resulting in the wounding of at least 7 citizens, while occupation bombing also targeted the Tal al-Hawa and Sheikh Ajlin neighborhoods, coinciding with intense machine gun fire, in addition to occupation drones which opened fire near 20th Street, east of the Nuseirat Camp, in central Gaza.

In Rafah, south of Gaza, Zionist artillery forces fired several shells into residential areas east of Al-Qarara, northeast of Khan Yunis, in the south of Gaza.

Zionist air forces also bombed a gathering of civilians in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, resulting in the murder of four Palestinians.

As a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the infinitely rising death toll now exceeds 36'586 Palestinians killed, including upwards of 10'000 women and over 15'000 children, while another 83'074 others have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

June 4th, 2024.

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@WorkerSolidarityNews

[kitty-pelosi]

ok so the rhetoric of the Democratic Party since the Carter administration has been: talk big game, never follow through. there have been a myriad of chances to pass the legislation that the Democratic Party markets itself off of, and yet there is ALWAYS a faction of the party that stops it from happening when the time comes and the chance is there. this has been a material fact for almost 50 years. denying that is ridiculous.

Even Obama. He is the kind of guy who looks and acts like he has a vision, but there never was a vision and nothing came to fruition. his ‘vision’ was a bill that Republicans wrote to undermine an actual universal state healthcare policy, and then that didn’t even happen. his attempt to compromise resulted in a total capitulation of democratic policy to Republican national capitalism.

and then comes Trump. Trump bothers people so much that Democrats see an opportunity to cease even pretending to have a policy they advocate for. the only strategies they begin to discuss are tepid executive actions they know that courts will deny. symbolic gestures which are totally meaningless yet allow them to feel morally superior. this strategy then collapses during Biden’s presidency because black and indigenous people are confronting settler colonialism and genocide.

so the next move is to prop up a black Indian woman who is a disavowed spawn of an activist marxist family. it’s actually hilarious. I feel crazy. and if you mention that they haven’t had a policy for four and a half decades a bunch of liberals come out of the woodwork to call you a fascist for “abetting trump” like I’m going to laugh myself to the moon.

in light of all this context, two things can be true: 100% of the composition of the Democratic Party suffers from absolute stupidity. or, more likely, they know exactly what they are doing and genuinely could not care less if they win or not. because when 100% of your strategy is identifying yourself by not being what your opponent is, you become totally dependent on your opponent and actually defeating them would terminate your ability to maintain the course you’ve set for the past half-century.

their actions and evidence suggests very strongly that they are not engaging with voters in good faith.

so actually, I’ll continue to judge the Democratic Party by the material evidence and not by what the TV says and what I imagine them to be. like somebody with without hay for a brain.

[violetsandshrikes]

Hi! I saw your post about the current awful disability policies in Aoteroa. I had considered moving there, since I am in bad living situation, but after that post i am reconsidering. My latest ideas had come from the way it managed covid. What are your thoughts on living there? Do you have any advice on resources to get a general idea of the politics in the country? Thank u!!

Aotearoa is a really complicated one - a lot of people want to move here from their respective countries for a better quality of life/better politics, and while we are comparatively very lucky, there is still quite a few things under the surface that a lot of people don’t know.

In terms of disability: we are really restrictive in terms of who we let immigrate that has a declared disability (which is of course, fucking awful, but very important to know if you start to get things in order). Our immigration site can probably give you some rough ideas whether or not you would have issues. Additionally important to consider: our healthcare system is actively struggling very badly. As a result, wait times are long, hospital care is hard to get, and if you need a specialist, they are usually sparse throughout the country, have a very long wait time, and often are private and incredibly expensive, so if you know you need on-going care with a specific specialist, I 100% recommend researching who is in the country (which may also put limitations on where you can easily live).

Similarly, our job market is not fantastic. It’s a small country with limited roles, so if you’re trained in something particular, in can be rough finding a suitable role. We also have what appears to be a decent minimum wage to people outside the country, but when you compare it to our very high cost of living and rent (+ housing crisis), a lot of Aotearoa is incredibly expensive to live in.

With the disability changes you saw: last year, we voted in a new government, consisting of three right wing parties. As a result, we are currently watching our social systems get absolutely gutted while landlords get billions of dollars of tax breaks. Someone on Reddit compiled a list of all the changes they made in their first 100 days (applicable till Feb 24th) to give an idea of the shifting landscape.

I don’t want to be a downer if you really want to migrate here! But there is definitely a lot that people don’t realise, and so if you do decide to move forward, I really recommend doing in-depth research on our immigration requirements, available jobs + rate, rentals in those areas + average rent, and other things you may need access to such as specialised care.

(Also, lots of kiwis follow me, and they may disagree with my assessment or have other things to add, so this is an open invite for them to pitch in!)

[bestworstcase]

klasdaskdasldas. i have a. great multitude of follow-up questions after the incarnadine post and i am struggling to decide which to ask, if that's okay? uhhhhhhh. i'm definitely curious about the Alsius Meritocratic Party/changes between Mantelian government and Atlesian government!

( the incarnadine post )

brief background: the pre-war mantle had a legislative assembly for which all adult citizens were eligible and selected by lot each year; military and civil magistracies were both elected by the assembly, and the assembly’s agenda was set for it by a theocratic executive body called the chancery. (the state religion was a highly syncretic form of madagian – worship of the four maidens – which remains the dominant religion in atlas today). notionally, the chancery was an elective body but in practice the state church was the king-maker, and decades preceding the great war were marked by a steady erosion of state power from the assembly and the (already somewhat impotent) judiciary.

post-war, reforms imposed by the vytal accords stripped executive power from the chancery (which still exists as the governing body of the state church, itself much diminished in political power) and replaced it with an executive council (6 elective seats, 3 appointed by the elected councilmen). the magistracies and judiciary were also restructured and strengthened but that’s not particularly relevant for the subject of this post; the assembly largely did not change, other than penalties for absences being reduced and the establishment of a procedure for the assemblies to impeach members of the council under certain circumstances.

so!! the executive council has no direct legislative power but because it sets the agenda for the assembly, it exercises quite a lot of indirect legislative influence (in that the council can kill any proposed law by declining to call the assembly for a vote). that plus it’s being elective plus its small size makes it the most powerful branch of the atlesian government and the one political parties typically focus most on controlling.

the AMP arose in reaction to post-war social reforms, primarily related to faunus civil rights but also a raft of new labor laws, which precipitated a migration of wealthy mantelians (in particular, former slave owners, most of whom had operated dust mines reliant on enslaved labor) to the swiftly-growing suburb surrounding atlas academy. (before the great war, atlas academy had been called alsius; hence ‘alsius meritocratic party’)

early on, the main thing the AMP stood against was a set of government programs to bring newly-emancipated fauni into a level economic playing field, which were funded largely by taxes targeted narrowly on industries where slave labor had been ubiquitous. by the present day, the party platform has moderated away from overtly anti-fauni policies (as these are politically toxic) to a broader anti-regulatory, anti-union position. the AMP is reviled in mantle but popular in atlas, which—because four of the six elective council seats are allotted to districts in atlas—has resulted in the AMP holding council majorities more often than not for the last few decades.

aside from the disdain for business regulation and worker rights, the modern AMP platform is built around a philosophy that equal opportunity is desirable, but shouldn’t be achieved by ‘penalizing success’ (i.e., imposing regulations or higher taxes on corporations and wealth). staunchly pro-military, strong support for heavy investment into public education and healthcare, socially egalitarian (nominally; there’s a noticeable covert hostility toward faunus rights still), against government subsidization of industries except for dust mining (although the fringe of the party wants to slash these too; the problem is that atlas/mantle would be uninhabitable without dust, but dust mining in the tundra is incredibly costly. the SDC runs its solitan mines at a loss it offsets in other more profitable markets, further shored up by military contracts; every other atlas-based mining competitor is dependent on government subsidies to stay afloat.)

currently the AMP holds four seats on the council. there’s a popular movement in mantle to expand the number of council seats to eleven by breaking up the mantle ‘districts’ into a seat per major borough, but that has virtually no chance of getting off the ground until/unless an atlas seat flips.

(the non-elective seats are held by 1. headmaster of atlas, 2. army general, and 3. governor of mantle, with the former two currently both held by ironwood; the votes for/against calling an assembly to vote on this proposal are currently three for, five against. if one of the AMP-held atlas seats flips it’ll be four-four and the thinking is that ironwood may be persuadable. if it goes to the assembly it’s all but guaranteed to pass, because the nature of the assembly—a set proportion of the citizen population, selected annually by random lot—means it’s statistically likely in any given year that the assembly’s majority will be working- and middle-class mantelians)

[communistkenobi]

Hi, you tend to have well-thought-out political opinions (I don't always agree with you, but your reading liveblog were the kick in the ass to make me read Orientalism, and you have managed to change my mind more than once), maybe might have a better answer here than me.

Is there an ideological reason that American (b/c it typically is, god help me) left-of-center types love electoralism so much online (and offline too, tbh. College continues to deal new and fun kinds of psychic damage), but only in the context of the general national elections? I so often receive various extensive breakdowns of reasons that I MUST vote for Biden in 2024, but less about the benefits of, like, getting really invested in my city council elections or the school board.

We have so many freaking elections for goddamn everything because the US/Canada are fuck-off huge that it's super easy to argue for the importance of participating in electoralism and instead I (especially recently) see so many people picking the worst hill to die on, that I really struggle to. Well. Understand why.

I’ll speak mostly to Canada since that’s where most of my formal knowledge comes from and also because I live here lol. Also a lot of what I’m talking about is coming from books I’ve read - Still Renovating by Greg Suttor for example is a pretty in depth history of social policy (primarily housing) in Canada, it’s very dry but is useful for this conversation. This is off the dome and not meant as a PSA or anything, it’s my own perspective, if people want sources for what I’m discussing I can go dig those up, but I’m just putting this disclaimer at the top in case this post leaves my circle.

To answer your question, my instinct is that it’s because north american democracy is increasingly necrotic and disconnected from the general public (with the usual list of caveats about how much liberal capitalist democracies have ever been “for the people”). Reading up on social policy in Canada directly post-WWII is pretty bleak when comparing it to today - social housing used to be a robust part of the housing market, people were paid far better and had far more economic security, our healthcare was freshly socialised and invigorated, the promises of the Keynesian welfare state were generally being met (for a predominantly white middle class electorate, of course), and so on. Even conservatives were basically on board with these things in the 60s, at least in Canada, although that obviously did not last long. And over the decades we have become entrenched in neoliberal cutbacks, the gutting of public institutions, the sale of public space and utilities, the downloading of responsibility for social welfare onto provincial and then municipal governments who have smaller budgets and more limited institutional power, the massive expansion in public-private partnerships, the militarisation of the police - these things really kicked off in the 80s/90s in Canada and have showed little signs of stopping or even really slowing down since (something that also obviously happened in the US). People make the joke that if libraries were suggested as a policy goal today it would be called a communist plot, but it’s true - all of the shit the government offered us forty years ago is unthinkable to even suggest now. Life in general has gotten more difficult as private wealth and deregulation has taken a progressively stronger hold on domestic affairs. This happened slowly over the course of decades, and as political horizons shrunk in terms of what you could expect/demand of your government, there was a real air of this being inevitable, not a result of conscious political decisions but just some organic outcome that no one had control over (“the invisible hand of the market”). Democratic civic responsibility demands we vote as citizens of our country, but for all the reasons outlined above plus a bunch of others I’m sure I’m forgetting, the liberal conception of democratic participation shrunk to the ballot box alone.

And while we all joke about everyone having the historical memory of a goldfish, I think the pandemic made this a deeply dissonant position to hold onto - we saw the government seemingly awake from a long slumber to exercise its might. It placed eviction bans on landlords, enforced mass quarantines and social distancing measures, provided economic relief to people who lost their jobs, stationed itself inside every building and public space to enforce mask mandates, rolled-out universal vaccination programs that were mandatory if you wanted to keep your job - we saw the government flex its power in labour, in housing, in healthcare, in civic life, and at the border in a way previously unheard of, particularly for people who were not alive to experience the welfare state of the 50s and 60s and even 70s. The state revealed itself as the life-structuring force it always had been before receding again, telling everyone to go back to normal as if nothing had happened, as if millions of people had not died in a global plague, as if it had not just demonstrated to everyone in the country that the state can at the drop of a hat order your landlord to stop evicting you and your boss to give you paid time off. This of course didn’t really happen in the US, or at least not nearly to this degree, which resulted in the deaths of over a million people.

So now when politicians perform this same incapacity to do anything, when they trot out hyper-specific policies that might benefit a couple thousand people at most, when they make stupid non-promises and shrink away from even mild forms of social democracy (eg Sanders-style campaign promises), I don’t know how much people buy it. I’m not particularly optimistic about the pandemic radicalising large amounts of people, but I think even if it doesn’t, we saw what happened! And we’ve all seen a million fucking articles about how people don’t want to go to work anymore, about labour shortages, we’ve seen essentially every sector of labour go on some kind of strike in the past two or three years - there is popular organised political participation happening far away from the ballot box, and is only growing in power by the day. Socialism is now a word that exists in the national consciousness, something that was unthinkable even a decade ago. Currently right now we are seeing an international conversation about (and global popular support for) indigenous sovereignty, we are seeing a full-throated articulation of what a LandBack policy would look like, and this comes on the heels of the national Canadian conversation of residential schools and missing and murdered indigenous women. Decolonisation is now a household term. In the case of the US, we are seeing people make the very obvious point that America can conjure billions of dollars to bomb hospitals and civilians, but any social policy to help its own citizens is too expensive, pie in the sky fantasy nonsense.

And by the same token, there is organised right-wing and fascist violence happening in the streets, massive increases in hate crimes, insane political stunts and demonstrations like the Freedom Convoy and 1 Million March 4 Children (inspired by the Capitol Hill storming in the US), Qanon plots to kidnap and execute elected officials - things that right wing parties are actively encouraging, particularly the PPC and CPC. More and more we see that electoral politics is the domain of the far-right, whose culture war issues have the best chance of being realised through the sacred portal of the ballot box. Democrats can’t even offer people legalised abortion now!

I think this is why liberals are in a state of hysteria. A healthy liberal democracy does not require constant, unrelenting reminders to “vote your ass off.” Liberals are very much aware, even unconsciously, that voting does less and less of what they want every single day - you see this openly admitted to by American liberals, who are now doing Hitler % meter calculations about which fascist to vote for come the next federal election. Voting itself is what matters, even as they openly, frantically admit it will do nothing but slightly delay the inevitable.

So to like directly answer your question: I think it has less to do with federal elections as a specific political strategy and more just an expression of anxiety about the fact that voting does not do what you want it to do, or what it once did - perhaps encouraging larger questions if voting does anything at all. If national federal elections don’t do anything, if you voting for the most powerful position on the planet doesn’t really change very much regardless of who’s in power, what is the point of voting at all? So I don’t think they are articulating an actual political strategy or way of doing politics, because by their own admission it’s not going to do much of anything (while at the same time being an existential crisis). I’m in a similar boat to you, I vote in smaller elections where I feel they will do some measure of good (in part because municipalities are responsible for so much more of civic life than they were a few decades ago), I have engaged with the Ontario NDP for several years (although that has come to an end now because of their position on Palestine). Electoralism is a compromise, it is an avenue for potential good, but not always, or even most of the time.

Thankfully there are other avenues for politics - labour organising, protesting, mutual aid support networks, getting involved with community work, even something like local neighbourhood councils. Those are places of political potential, and a single person’s presence in them can make a legitimate noticeable difference (speaking from several years of heavy involvement in community orgs). I have never really felt like I was making a change while voting, but I have felt that way helping community members not get evicted, or offering them free daycare a few times a week, or running programs from lgbtq kids who don’t want to go home after school. Those things legit save peoples’ lives, a lot of them are low stakes relative to their benefit, and they help stave off the alienation and loneliness I know everyone feels. Obviously you run into the same structural problems you would everywhere else, it’s not a paradise by any stretch of the imagination, but they are so many avenues outside of voting that do actually help people around you.

And I think if liberals admit that these actions are more powerful, more effective than voting, they are admitting to themselves that their core beliefs are wrong, that the communists and anarchists are correct and have been correct long before their dumbass was born. They can no longer point to any institution that gives a fuck about them as a defense against left-wing critiques of liberal electoralism. I think that is part of what animates their hysteria, their temper tantrums, their screaming about the only thing to do is do nothing at all. It is a full-throated defense of self-defeat. They are wailing as everything they believe in dies. I’d be pretty upset too if that were me! Luckily I grew out of that when I was like 19

[shituationist]

... A RAND Corporation analysis found that available evidence supported the hypothesis that concealed-carry laws may increase total homicides, and found some, albeit limited, evidence for concealed carry laws increasing violent crime in general. Likewise, researcher Stephen B. Billings found that gun ownership has a link to crime victimization: not only are people who have been victimized more likely to buy a gun to protect themselves, but they are more likely to be victimized again and have their gun stolen from them in turn. Billings found a vicious cycle of victimization leading to gun ownership, leading to theft, leading to victimization, as guns that are bought in response to victimization are then stolen, sold on the black market, and used to create new victims. This is what makes it very odd that concealed carry is touted by conservatives as a mechanism for improving public safety. So-called “constitutional carry” is more likely to make Louisiana’s streets more dangerous, and to lead to the proliferation of firearms on the black market as gun theft becomes more commonplace.

** Another argument for gun ownership comes from the far left as frequently as it does the far right, and has to do with gun ownership being a means for the preservation of liberty; that’s where the “constitutional” part of “constitutional carry” is supposed to lead you to in your head. Putting aside left-wing questions of revolutionary strategy, this law is also weaker constitutionally than its proponents let on. The second amendment does not specify concealed carry. It authorizes “the right to bear arms”, and to “bear arms” for the writers of the Constitution explicitly entailed visibly carrying a firearm in a public setting, or open carry. So-called “constitutional carry” also does nothing to restore the constitutional right to bear arms of individuals who have been felonized by the state; the abrogation of such right being one of the major contributors to mass incarceration, which, alongside mass surveillance, is possibly the greatest threat to liberty today. If the defense of liberty is what matters to someone in their defense of the right to bear arms, “constitutional carry” makes zero difference. Revolutions, anyway, aren’t made from concealed handguns, but from political parties dedicated to revolutionary struggle, and the paramilitaries attached to these parties, which are usually armed illegally (one must be armed illegally to have an arsenal that is a threat to the government), and which operate underground (sometimes literally). The provisional IRA, for example, smuggled weapons in from abroad, evading Irish and British gun control laws. While armalite rifles were sourced from North America, much more powerful weapons were sourced from elsewhere, including surface-to-air missiles provided by Gaddafi’s Libya. The Palestinian resistance depends entirely on smuggled and plundered weaponry, as well as domestically produced rockets using whatever scrap material the resistance can get its hands on. The Zapatista rebellion has maintained rebel-administered zones in the Mexican state of Chiapas for over thirty years with smuggled and sparsely used rifles, owing much of the persistence and longevity of their rebellion to their non-violent posture and reluctance to use firearms. For example, protesters loyal to the EZLN in 2001 occupied a military base in Chiapas without firing a shot or brandishing a weapon. The action resulted in the closure of the base and the re-opening of peace talks with Mexican president Vincente Fox. This is not to say that firearms are useless in the struggle or that the revolutionary left should support firearms restrictions. The best way to reduce crime would not be to arm everyone or to take everyone’s guns away, but to address the social forces that push people into lives of crime. A basic social democratic policy slate - universal healthcare, guaranteed housing, unionization of the workforce, and a robust welfare system - would go much further towards reducing crime rates than giving would-be vigilantes the go ahead to shoot first and ask questions later. There is an obvious reason why the Nordic social democracies produce fewer homicides annually than the city of New Orleans does alone. We know why the Louisiana GOP won’t go for such policies: high crime rates scare the populace into voting for policies that send taxpayer money, instead, into the pockets of politically powerful and well-connected sheriffs and their buddies in the private sector who have been enriched by mass incarceration, the Gerald Juneaus of the world who charge exorbitant rates for phone calls to and from parish jails, and who excise enormous profits from running jailhouse commissaries where they jack up the prices on goods sold to inmates; not to mention the private businesses who exploit contracted inmate labor for pennies on the dollar. Mass incarceration is big business, and high crime rates help that business grow.

[pillowfort-social]

Pride Month 2023

Hi everyone. As you likely know, June is Pride Month.

We’re aware many people in recent years have become wary of corporations that participate in  ‘Rainbow Capitalism’ – i.e., showing nominal support for the LGTBQIA2S+ community during Pride month as basically a marketing tactic, but otherwise failing to stand by the LGTBQIA2S+ community in substantive ways– sometimes even donating to anti-LGTBQIA2S+ organizations and politicians behind the scenes, or walking back their support in the face of opposition. As such, we want our community to know that our commitment to supporting and defending the LGTBQIA2S+ community is sincere and borne of conviction, not just a marketing ploy.

We have seen a dramatic increase in anti-trans legislation in the United States– and even legislation more broadly targeting anyone expressing non-traditional gender norms. Many are rightfully terrified by what is occurring. Make no doubt about it: these attacks are part of a larger attack on the LGTBQIA2S+ & LGTBQIA2S+ BIPOC community, a reactionary response to the progress & freedom that queer & trans people have achieved in recent decades. This legislation has made it difficult for trans and queer people to access healthcare, education, and employment. 

Furthermore, harassment and discrimination seems to be at an all time high because other social media platforms are continuing to allow hate speech and fascist thought freely. Trans and queer folks are having their voices silenced, or simply overridden by algorithms that boost bigoted rhetoric. As a result, we feel it is more important than ever for us to affirm our stance as unequivocally pro-LGTBQIA2S+ and pro-BIPOC. The need for us as a social media network to continue to stand by our LGTBQIA2S+ and LGTBQIA2S+ BIPOC members is obvious; we must be the counterbalance to all that prejudice and bigotry.

Pride Month is certainly a time to celebrate the trans and queer community, but it is also a time to remember the work where it all started. The first Pride was, in fact, a riot in response to systemic brutality against queer and trans people. We encourage you to learn more about the 1969 Stonewall Riots. 

And that’s why we won’t participate in ‘Rainbow Capitalism’. What we say here is from the heart. Our support isn’t a gimmick. 

Pillowfort.social doesn’t allow hate speech. We do not condone hateful rhetoric. We absolutely do not tolerate racism, homophobia, or transphobia. And fascism does not belong here. 

We love and support our LGTBQIA2S+ & LGTBQIA2S+ BIPOC community 365 days a year. Not just one month out of the year.  Pillowfort.social will continue to be a safe space for our trans and queer communities today, tomorrow, and forever. 

A final note: Now more than ever the LGTBQIA2S+ & LGTBQIA2S+ BIPOC Community needs your help to stand up to this wave of attacks. They need allies in the active, not passive, sense– people to stand up toward the danger they are facing. Be an accomplice. That means speaking out against anti-trans, anti-queer, and racist legislation. That means listening to trans, queer, and BIPOC voices. It’s so much more than 30 days of wearing rainbows. You might, if you can be safe doing so, look into participating with your local member groups such as the Equality Federation or the Human Rights Campaign. Organizations such as The Trevor Project are also in need of funding. 

We encourage anyone who wants to promote a local, national ,or international organization working for queer & trans rights to do so in the comments of this post. All hateful comments will be removed. The best first step to oppose anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation is to let the politicians who are promoting these measures know that there are a lot more people fighting against them than they bargained for.

Are you a trans or queer community member in need of aid? Also leave a comment here or here and link ways other users can support you. 

This month find joy in the midst of the storm. Live your life truly out of spite. Don’t let those bastards get you down.

[popolitiko]

Justice Elena Kagan’s scathing Chevron dissent highlights US supreme court’s disregard for precedent

Ed Pilkington

The court is turning into ‘an administrative czar’, says liberal justice after 40-year-old doctrine is overturned

Elena Kagan issued a devastating dissent to the decision of her hard-right fellow supreme court justices to overturn the Chevron doctrine that has been a cornerstone of federal regulation for 40 years, accusing the majority of turning itself into “the country’s administrative czar”.

Kagan was joined by her two fellow liberal-leaning justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in delivering a withering criticism of the actions of the ultra-right supermajority that was created by Donald Trump. Such caustic missives have become commonplace from the three outnumbered liberals, with each carefully crafted dissent sounding more incensed and despairing than the last.

In a speech at Harvard last month, Sotomayor revealed that after some of the supreme court’s recent decisions she has gone back to her office, closed the door and cried.

“There have been those days, and there are likely to be more,” she said.

Kagan’s dissent in Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo on Friday was the literary equivalent of crying over 33 pages. But she was also searingly angry.

She said that in one fell swoop, the rightwing majority had snatched the ability to make complex decisions over regulatory matters away from federal agencies and awarded the power to themselves.

A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris

Elena Kagan, in her dissent: “As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar,” she wrote.

For 40 years, she wrote, the Chevron doctrine, set out by the same supreme court in a 1984 ruling, had supported regulatory efforts by the US government by granting federal experts the ability to make reasonable decisions where congressional law was ambiguous. She gave a few examples of the work that was facilitated as a result, such as “keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest”.

Now, the hard-right supermajority had flipped that on its head.

Instead of federal experts adjudicating on all manner of intricate scientific and technical questions – such as addressing the climate crisis, deciding on the country’s healthcare system or controlling AI – now judges would make those critical calls.

Kagan, displaying no desire to pull her punches, portrayed Friday’s ruling as a blatant power grab by the chief justice, John Roberts, and his five ultra-right peers, three of whom were appointed by Trump – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

“A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris,” she wrote.

Not for the first time, her most caustic comments relate to stare decisis – the adherence to legal precedent that is the foundation stone of the rule of law. Respect for the previous judgments of the supreme court is a reminder to judges that “wisdom often lies in what prior judges have done. It is a brake on the urge to convert every new judge’s opinion into a new legal rule or regime.”

By contrast, she went on: “It is impossible to pretend that today’s decision is a one-off, in its treatment of precedent.”

It has become an unquestionable pattern: the new hard-right supermajority has a fondness for tearing up their own court’s precedents stretching back decades. They did it when they eviscerated the right to an abortion in 2022, upending 50 years of settled law; they did it again last year when they prohibited affirmative action in university admissions, casting out 40 years of legal precedent; and now they’ve done it once more after 40 years to Chevron.

“Just my own defenses of stare decisis, my own dissents to this court’s reversals of settled law, by now fill a small volume,” Kagan said, her final words as plaintive as they were defiant.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask if you would consider supporting the Guardian’s journalism as we enter one of the most consequential news cycles of our lifetimes in 2024.

[catdotjpeg]

Sunday evening marked the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, as Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza amid severe foot shortages continue. Instead of celebrating, Palestinians in Gaza are entering the month with heavy hearts.  The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs says Ramadan in the Gaza Strip this year is “unlike the holy month in previous years or anywhere else in the world,” especially in light of the destruction of all aspects of life in the Gaza Strip, including dozens of mosques. Ramadan has arrived as “Palestinians have been suffering from the lack and scarcity of food and drinkable water for more than five consecutive months,” it continued.  Half of the besieged enclave population crammed into the southern city of Rafah, many living in plastic tents and facing severe shortages of food. 

“Everyone we’ve known has lost a family member or loved one or someone they knew from their networks, which makes it very difficult for people. People used to prepare and start the first day of Ramadan with festivities, decorations, lights, and lanterns in the streets, markets, and mosques; the vast majority of those are now destroyed, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud from Rafah. Ramadan is usually filled with family feasts; however, Israel’s ongoing siege has rendered this almost impossible for those living in Gaza. Even where food is available, there is little beyond canned goods, and the prices are too high for many. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, says Ramadan is here as “displacement continues, and fear and anxiety prevail amid threats of a military operation on Rafah,” Gaza’s southernmost point.

“This month should bring a ceasefire for those who have suffered the most. They need respite and peace of mind. It’s long overdue,” he continued on X. Sabah al-Hendi, who was shopping for food on Sunday in the southernmost city of Rafah, told AP: “You don’t see anyone with joy in their eyes. Every family is sad. Every family has a martyr.” Meanwhile, in the north of Gaza, Palestinians continue to face famine, as severe food and aid shortages continue.

On Monday afternoon, two more children in northern Gaza died of starvation, reported Al Jazeera, citing local sources, bringing the total number to 27, most of them children who have starved to death. At least one in six children in the north are malnourished, according to the World Health Organization.  “I came here to buy but I can’t find anything to buy,” Sufian al-Yazji, a displaced Palestinian in the north, told Al Jazeera.

“There’s nothing, no dates or milk, or anything. One can’t find anything for their children. All these canned goods are full of germs that infect the stomach. We need vegetables and fruits to feed our children because they’ve weakened and will die from hunger.”  Over 2,000 medical staff in northern Gaza are exhausted and struggling to keep up under immense physical pressure with nothing to eat as they work around the clock, says the Palestinian Ministry of Health.  As a result of the lack of healthcare, bombing, starvation, and dehydration, the enclave’s elderly population are dying at an alarmingly high rate.

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement on Sunday that its team in Gaza “is recording nearly daily deaths among the elderly due to Israel’s systematic and pervasive crimes of starvation and treatment deprivation in the Gaza Strip, especially in Gaza City and the Strip’s northern regions.” “The majority of these cases do not reach hospitals, which are only partially operational in northern Gaza because of the difficulty of access given the ongoing Israeli military attacks. Consequently, after dying at home, the elderly are buried either close to their residences or in makeshift graves dispersed across the Strip. There are currently more than 140 such cemeteries,” Euro-Med said. 

-- From "‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 157" by Leila Warah for Mondoweiss, 11 Mar 2024

[spurgie-cousin]

Hoo boy SpurgieCousin, these anons sitting out the election to protest the war in Gaza or voting 3rd party to teach the democrats a lesson, or whatever their reason is have me stressed! As an elder millennial, I remember Ralph Nader peeling away enough 3rd party votes to give the election to Bush over Gore in 2000. Even though that administration gave us wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, the deaths of my friends, classmates, etc in those wars, the destruction of their futures when they came home with PTSD and missing limbs, lies about weapons of mass destruction, war crimes, Guantanamo bay AND the worst economic recession since the Great Depression- which was a fantastic time to try and enter the job market after college btw- I still think a 2nd Trump term would be worse. The only reason Trump’s first term was only a partial catastrophe was because it was incredibly incompetent and we were able to coast on a lot of momentum of the Obama years. I don’t think a 2nd term would flounder as much. I really really hope (beg)your readers reconsider their choice regarding Joe Biden. It’s not a perfect system and it’s not a perfect candidate-it never is. I appreciate their idealism- I was young once too- but not voting does not absolve them from the consequences of what may happen if this country elects Trump again. You will have complicity in negative things either way you vote, so please please vote in a way that does not make things worse. Ok, thank you for letting this geriatric millennial rant!

Oh I think that's a perfect example tbh. I'm a younger millennial so I was growing up as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars played out, and it was the first thing that ever really ignited a political rage in me. Horrible news for my very republican/George Bush voting family lol.

Unless they're very politically versed, I don't know if Gen Z or even the youngest tier of millennials really get how fucking awful the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan was. Just tons of civilians and American soldiers dead because of Bush's ego, and his ego is nothing compared to Trump's.

I think the only big difference is a lot of third party voters at that time didn't totally understand what Bush was capable of, whereas we know what a Trump presidency will be like..... we know if he promises to make gay marriage illegal and strip back more women's Healthcare rights and and more money to Netanyahu to destroy Gaza, he WILL try to do it. He's already had similar successes.

I have voted third party, I hate to discourage people from doing so because I think a third party candidate that we can rally behind is our only hope out of this 2 party shit show. We don't have anyone like that this election season, far left progressives hate Jill Stein, nobody else has the name recognition at this point to have any chance against with major candidate, and we know the end result will be either the trash can on fire that is our government right now or that trash can on fire with an added layer of dog shit on top, y'know? They're both bad sure but I just highly disagree that one isn't worse for vulnerable Americans and Gazans alike.