#black rock coalition

[r3dsaturntv]

A rare and latest interview with guitarist Jimi Hazel of 24-7 Spyz. This one is by far, his best interview.

[tyrianblizzard]

It's time for something real

[snekdood]

i understand its sensitive. i understand you got other problems in your life. but when its so easy to just *not* do something, when it hardly takes away from your life besides not pleasing your every sensibility? what the fuck is the restraint for

[kickmag]

The Black Music Action Coalition & Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Partner To Make Music Industry More Inclusive

The Black Music Action Coalition and the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame have formed a partnership to make the music industry more inclusive with the 2024 BMAC Music Maker Guaranteed Income and Mentorship Program.  Applications for the program are available from November 2, 2023, through November 20, 2023, for Black women and women artists and industry professionals between the ages of 18-30 years old who have financial need and live in the United States. BMAC and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will provide one year of mentorship and financial support beginning in February 2024 to celebrate Black History Month.  BMAC, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Billboard, iHeartMedia, and the Music Artist Coalition (MAC) will produce an industry-wide summit during 2024 Grammy Week to discuss diversity, inclusion, and the contributions female and Black Artists have made to music.  

“...The immeasurable contributions made by Black Artists and executives have led to the growth and expansion of our music industry and impacted bottom lines globally,” says Willie “Prophet” Stiggers, co-founder/Chairman of BMAC. “However, those contributions have often been overlooked, appropriated, and misrepresented. BMAC applauds the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for partnering with us to launch a program that will directly address the long-standing inequities in the music industry. We are leveling the playing field and investing in the next generation of Black and female creatives and future executives, ensuring they have the access, resources, and the network to continue to make those contributions and impact.”

“Rock & Roll was born from the collision of Rhythm & Blues, Gospel and Country,” said John Sykes, Chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation. “From its creation in 1986 through today, Black and female artists and executives have played a vital role in creating the diverse sounds, styles, and spirit honored by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We are proud to partner with the Black Music Action coalition on this important initiative.”

“The powerful contributions made to music by Black artists and female artists are so significant as to be unquantifiable,” says Caron Veazey, co-founder of BMAC. “At BMAC, part of our mission is to support and cultivate talent – and through the BMAC x Rock and Roll Hall of Fame program, we are able to provide mentorship and a guaranteed income to artists, which will provide them with the bandwidth to create. Our aim is to help the next generation of musicians, songwriters, producers, managers, agents, and other industry professionals to go after their dreams and turn them into reality. Working together with RRHOF is an exciting example of implementing tangible action to support a shared goal.”

Applicants can apply to the BMAC Music Maker Guaranteed Income and Mentorship Program at the BMAC site.  In September, BMAC opened membership to music industry professionals and advocates who want to join as a unified force of action to bring racial parity in the music industry. 

[papasmoke]

My name is Ruwa Romman, and I’m honored to be the first Palestinian elected to public office in the great state of Georgia and the first Palestinian to ever speak at the Democratic National Convention. My story begins in a small village near Jerusalem, called Suba, where my dad’s family is from. My mom’s roots trace back to Al Khalil, or Hebron. My parents, born in Jordan, brought us to Georgia when I was eight, where I now live with my wonderful husband and our sweet pets.

Growing up, my grandfather and I shared a special bond. He was my partner in mischief—whether it was sneaking me sweets from the bodega or slipping a $20 into my pocket with that familiar wink and smile. He was my rock, but he passed away a few years ago, never seeing Suba or any part of Palestine again. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him.

This past year has been especially hard. As we’ve been moral witnesses to the massacres in Gaza, I’ve thought of him, wondering if this was the pain he knew too well. When we watched Palestinians displaced from one end of the Gaza Strip to the other I wanted to ask him how he found the strength to walk all those miles decades ago and leave everything behind. 

But in this pain, I’ve also witnessed something profound—a beautiful, multifaith, multiracial, and multigenerational coalition rising from despair within our Democratic Party. For 320 days, we’ve stood together, demanding to enforce our laws on friend and foe alike to reach a ceasefire, end the killing of Palestinians, free all the Israeli and Palestinian hostages, and to begin the difficult work of building a path to collective peace and safety. That’s why we are here—members of this Democratic Party committed to equal rights and dignity for all. What we do here echoes around the world.

They’ll say this is how it’s always been, that nothing can change. But remember Fannie Lou Hamer—shunned for her courage, yet she paved the way for an integrated Democratic Party. Her legacy lives on, and it’s her example we follow.

But we can’t do it alone. This historic moment is full of promise, but only if we stand together. Our party’s greatest strength has always been our ability to unite. Some see that as a weakness, but it’s time we flex that strength. 

Let’s commit to each other, to electing Vice President Harris and defeating Donald Trump who uses my identity as a Palestinian as a slur. Let’s fight for the policies long overdue—from restoring access to abortions to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a ceasefire in Gaza. To those who doubt us, to the cynics and the naysayers, I say, yes we can—yes we can be a Democratic Party that prioritizes funding our schools and hospitals, not for endless wars. That fights for an America that belongs to all of us—Black, brown, and white, Jews and Palestinians, all of us, like my grandfather taught me, together.

I want to be clear,” Romman said. “We’ve been in negotiations for days. This did not just come up…We’ve been talking about this for at least a week. In addition, the campaign told us that not getting a ‘no’ [initially upon first hearing the request] was a really good sign. For them to give us a ‘no’ the same day that Geoff Duncan [a Republican from Georgia] was on the stage—especially when it was my name—was just absolutely a slap in the face.”

[takami-takami]

The Uncommitted Movement and Uncommitted Delegates have been petitioning to have just one Palestinian-American speak at the DNC for months; among a sea of speakers, including a random border patrol agent, Trump voters, and the CEO of Uber.

They were told three words and no other explanation: "It's a no."

The delegates and Palestine protesters have been working tirelessly to get the DNC to rescind this decision on the last day of the convention and apply pressure. There is only one ethnic background that is not allowed to speak at the DNC, and that is Palestinians.

Georgia State Representative Ruwa Romman is at the top of the list of Palestinian democrats that were offered— of which the Uncommitted Movement and delegates generously offered the DNC to take their pick.

In case they don't let her speak, this is her speech.

"My name is Ruwa Romman, and I’m honored to be the first Palestinian elected to public office in the great state of Georgia and the first Palestinian to ever speak at the Democratic National Convention. My story begins in a small village near Jerusalem, called Suba, where my dad’s family is from. My mom’s roots trace back to Al Khalil, or Hebron. My parents, born in Jordan, brought us to Georgia when I was eight, where I now live with my wonderful husband and our sweet pets.

Growing up, my grandfather and I shared a special bond. He was my partner in mischief—whether it was sneaking me sweets from the bodega or slipping a $20 into my pocket with that familiar wink and smile. He was my rock, but he passed away a few years ago, never seeing Suba or any part of Palestine again. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him.

This past year has been especially hard. As we’ve been moral witnesses to the massacres in Gaza, I’ve thought of him, wondering if this was the pain he knew too well. When we watched Palestinians displaced from one end of the Gaza Strip to the other I wanted to ask him how he found the strength to walk all those miles decades ago and leave everything behind. 

But in this pain, I’ve also witnessed something profound—a beautiful, multifaith, multiracial, and multigenerational coalition rising from despair within our Democratic Party. For 320 days, we’ve stood together, demanding to enforce our laws on friend and foe alike to reach a ceasefire, end the killing of Palestinians, free all the Israeli and Palestinian hostages, and to begin the difficult work of building a path to collective peace and safety. That’s why we are here—members of this Democratic Party committed to equal rights and dignity for all. What we do here echoes around the world.

They’ll say this is how it’s always been, that nothing can change. But remember Fannie Lou Hamer—shunned for her courage, yet she paved the way for an integrated Democratic Party. Her legacy lives on, and it’s her example we follow.

But we can’t do it alone. This historic moment is full of promise, but only if we stand together. Our party’s greatest strength has always been our ability to unite. Some see that as a weakness, but it’s time we flex that strength. 

Let’s commit to each other, to electing Vice President Harris and defeating Donald Trump who uses my identity as a Palestinian as a slur. Let’s fight for the policies long overdue—from restoring access to abortions to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a ceasefire in Gaza. To those who doubt us, to the cynics and the naysayers, I say, yes we can—yes we can be a Democratic Party that prioritizes funding our schools and hospitals, not for endless wars. That fights for an America that belongs to all of us—Black, brown, and white, Jews and Palestinians, all of us, like my grandfather taught me, together."

[carionto]

We can no longer wait

Earth is dying.

About 700 years ago we finally managed to achieve true fusion. The cost was our inability to stop it, manifesting in the largest explosion since the primordial formation of our planet.

A 200km hole suddenly appearing in the middle of the ocean, atomizing a good chunk of it, sending trillions of tons of matter up in the air - most of which fell back down; correction - was still falling down until we finished the cleanup process just a few years before slipping back into the Universe, made us adapt the term Deathworld for our own home.

The tectonic plates are a mess. There was a three year long, uninterrupted earthquake across nearly every single fault line. Once we were able to, we discovered a few new ones. The Alpine mountains are violently growing by several meters every decade, sometimes crumbling back down in a rock avalanche. The other ranges are also quite... unwise to live near to.

And the Tsunami. A singular wave swept across nearly everything but the tallest mountains and plateaus. Pictures from our space stations and other off-world vessels at the time show an unrecognizable world - landmasses that had not seen light in eons; ocean where a desert should be; black and gray and red emerging from all known volcanoes. Hell.

Billions died in the first day. What was left of Humanity managed to climb back to where we stand now only because nearly all of our knowledge was backed up in space, though the debris storm did put most low orbit satellites and vessels out of commission. It took a few decades before we managed to manually build an industrial printer, but one is all we needed.

Ironically, the main purpose of developing such a massive reactor that can cause the destruction of a planet was to use it to help terraform planets for our needs. We did not expect to have a use for it so soon. Well, not really to make Earth habitable again, just reduce and slow down the effects of it dying in this case.

There is no saving Earth. We are artificially keeping it mostly sane. The underlying movements, however, will reach a breaking point within the next few hundred years, maybe less, it's simply too chaotic below to tell. We have to leave.

Whether the Galactic Coalition or whoever else may be out there agrees to us moving out and spreading through the stars is really not up to them to decide. We will and they will accept us. All they can decide on is what form that acceptance takes.

[audible-smiles]

So, I think I may have accidentally found the worst book ever written by a human being.

I don't know if you guys have ever heard of Savitri Devi; she was a Hitler stan who moved from Greece to India, got really excited about "Aryan" racial mythology, changed her name, and tried to fuse Nazism with Hinduism. A lot of her ideology is patently absurd (e.g. Hitler is an avatar of Vishnu), but none of it is funny because she spent her entire life actively trying to build a coalition of the most violently racist people you can imagine. Hindutva paramilitary groups, American neo-Nazis, early ecofascists; you name them, she probably went to their meetings and wrote propaganda for them.

So, knowing this, it makes one feel particularly deranged to learn that she also wrote fiction about- and from the POV of- her many cats.

The book in question is called Long-Whiskers and the Two-Legged Goddess, or The True Story of a "most objectionable Nazi" and half-a-dozen Cats.

Published in 1965, this text features a protagonist named "Heliodora", who Devi admits in the introduction is just her lightly fictionalized self-insert. In the beginning Heliodora heroically rescues a stray kitten and its mother, but then the narrative grinds to a halt to explain the weird racial theories that brought her to India, before it picks right back up with the cat fancying. Here is an excerpt that may convey a little of how jarring these transitions can be:

"An unexpected thought crossed Heliodora’s mind, like a flash of lightning: “Had I gone to Europe in 1939, or even in 1940, 1 should not have had this lovely creature, nor, in fact, any of these cats to which I have given a home. They probably all would have been dead, by now — would have died of misery, in some gutter, without love, poor beautiful felines!” And a strange question followed that thought: “Was it for them that I was fated to remain here?” She knew the thought was a nonsensical one and the question too. For of what account was the life and happiness of any creatures, nay, of any human beings, including her own, compared with the Service of the Aryan Reich and of the Cause of truth?

It is all. Fucking. Like This. There are grim descriptions of feline suffering contrasted with long, ecstatic descriptions of her cats learning to trust the only nice human in the world (her). There are passages on the virtue of vegetarianism and the evils of (especially Kosher) slaughterhouses. She thinks it's a great idea to do medical experiments on criminals rather than animals! She thinks kids who throw rocks at cats should have their hands cut off! She starts chapters with direct quotes from Mein Kampf! When her favorite cat runs away she writes the (fully imaginary) story of his adventures on the streets, including him having cat sex. Here is the cat sex:

"The coquettish she-cat jumped up and ran away, only to stop again some twenty yards further and again to roll in the grass, calling for love, — and again to ran away as soon as the lover was about to take her. At last, however, — after many an unsuccessful leap and further and further galloping in the moonshine, Long- whiskers overcame her faked resistance and possessed her. He forgot himself, and she — his black silky panther — forgot herself. Their individualities ceased for a while to exist, and in him, the eternal He-Cat, Creator and Lord of everything, and in her, the co-eternal, sphinx-like, dark Feline Mother, Lady of all Life, once more mingled their opposite polarities and took consciousness of their double Godhead, as they had been doing for millions and millions of years. And once more the divine spark — the Creative Lightning — flashed through their furry bodies, and the daily miracle took place: there was life in the female’s womb."

Sooooo......anyway...........the lost cat finds its way back to her, but has caught feline distemper and dies in her arms, but then he is REINCARNATED IN ENGLAND, as a kitten in a decent (white) home where his family loves him. Heliodora is coincidentally going back to Europe at this time (she lists her religion as "national socialist" on the travel paperwork), which means we get pages and pages of her obsessing over every 'misstep' in the war, and Germany's tragic loss, but more importantly, she meets a random cat and he is (unknown to her), the reincarnation of her beloved Long-whiskers, the Cat Who Fucked. She sees that he's well-fed and happy and is like "I finally understand why Hitler was so nice to the British; they treat cats well so I guess they're Aryan too". I am not making any of this up:

“They have poured streams of fire over Germany; betrayed their own race; identified themselves with its worst enemies ...”

“Prrr, prrr, prrr,” purred back the cat; “that is because they had been (as they are still being) misled, deceived. But one day they shall wake up from their delusion, tum against their bad shepherds, and help the people of their own blood to build up a new Europe — the very Europe of your dreams, in which we creatures will all be happy — for they are good people at heart; good people like Aryans generally are, taken as a whole. Prrr, prrr, prrr . . . The proof of it is that they have taken such good care of me! Prrrrrrrrr . . .”

This version of her cat grows old and dies. Meanwhile, Heliodora is arrested and imprisoned for distributing Nazi propaganda. When she gets out, she meets the reincarnation of a different cat she had left behind in India. (All of her cats want to find her again after death because they love her so very much.) In between her banal, mundane descriptions of caring for this new cat, she describes her various arrests, interrogations, and brief periods of imprisonment. And then she moves, gives that cat away and gets another fucking cat. It is at this point where I completely lose track of which cat is meant to be the reincarnation of which other cat; this woman goes through cats like potato chips. She says she doesn't even love them as individuals, but as one piece of "the intangible Essence of Catdom", so I guess it doesn't fucking matter whether I know their names or not.

This woman's primary thesis is "human suffering doesn't matter, only animal suffering matters" and she beats it into the ground. Her secondary thesis is that national socialism is the one true religion and will save the world. Not only is this a deeply self-obsessed, morally incoherent, grotesque piece of writing, it is also boring as hell. It's half stories about how people who are mean to animals all deserve to get murdered, and half a travelogue where the protagonist goes on screeds about race-mixing every time she visits a new city. While you're reading it you feel as if time has stopped, and you will be stuck reading this terrible book for the rest of your life. All she knows how to do is repeat her two ideas over and over again. Honestly, it reads like heavy-handed satire of a very specific type of white woman. Heliodora wears golden swastika earrings.

I'm exhausted. Never read this book.

[nexility-sims]

𝐍𝐎. 𝟑   ❛ 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐛𝐲𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐦𝐚 ❜   |   NAKAWE PALACE GROUNDS, DEC. 1990

❧  𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬  /  𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.

❛ Though she had earlier found comfort in the warm embrace of loved ones, Leonor disappeared to the far reaches of Nakawe Palace’s grounds when their eyes looked away. She didn’t leave with a destination in mind, but she ended up in a familiar spot. A stream cut through the high, orange rockland. At its edge, Leonor sank down on the damp ground and pulled her knees to her chin. The water moved slowly, almost too gentle to hear, and she listened instead for the patter of rain. It fell lightly and trickled down her cheeks. Time had already stopped, but now it ceased to exist. Though still, she floated and swayed in a place far from where she sat. Her mind, once a cacophonous and groaning cavern, quieted. Peace proved elusive, but she had needed this—time to simply be.

𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐞𝐝 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓

❧ big huge thank you to @300yearschallenge & @sirianasims for reading a draft of this and giving me feedback ! it's much better now :^) i'm taking no feedback, however, on the piss-poor dirt photoshopping sdfsf

Minutes or days later, a voice calling her name interrupted the moment. Leonor should have been relieved or touched, but she could only muster an, “Over here,” in a tone so flat and forlorn that it pushed Arturo forward in a worried hurry.

Before anyone knew him as her boyfriend, he had been the unremarkable middle son of Uspana’s fourth most prominent conservative politician. His father led the coalition today, and some wondered if he may someday be wedded to the Crown. Yet, Leonor thought of Arturo in fonder, more intimate terms. They met before they could walk. He was the second person to kiss her and the first she asked to do so again. She had confessed she lacked time for silly things like dating, so he began accompanying his father to Nakawe Palace where they could chat in the hallways and share lunch in the gardens. Sat by the same fountain, they would devise jokes at the expense of passing aides and debate policy matters, when they weren’t gossipping about shared friends and listening to cassettes. The gardens at Nakawe Palace were also where they made love for the first time. That was how she thought of it then—in romantic terms, all enamored whispers and adoring sighs of pleasure, just like her mother had told her it could be.

Leonor infrequently dreamed of being married. When she did, on rare and happy occasions, it was to him.

He asked how she was, and his voice caught midway as he realized his mistake. They did a dance she had yet to do with anyone; those who had seen her so far were either too grief-stricken, mired in the same morass of abrupt loss, or knew it was not their place to ask.

Without a thought to the wet soil and its clinging pigments, he sat down beside her.

Leonor closed her eyes. Shoulder to shoulder as they were, she felt herself torn between irreconcilable impulses—on one hand, that they were not close enough and, on the other, that she never wanted to be close to anyone ever again. What she saw against the black wall of her mind was a scene playing on loop in vivid color. Beyond her grasp, the blue fabric of her mother’s dress whisked by. The memory stood out, perhaps because she always wore red. Leonor felt the sting in her eyes as she held onto that thought and followed it to its logical conclusion: her own days in red were over, too. Her loss would always be this blue, sharply contrasting the orange rock and the royal red alike.

“Leonor—”

Whatever he hoped to say died on his lips as he saw her shoulders begin to shake. From the corner of his eye, he watched as she struggled for composure. He understood as well as she did that the sobs had to be contained. It was a mandate they all, as Uspanians, were obligated to respect. A tear may fall, but the worst of it had to be saved. He stared ahead, now feeling that sting in his own eyes. He had cried for Safya more than once. At this moment, however, he imagined the funeral, where he would finally see the pain Leonor was saving and cry for her instead.

Their clothes grew more damp as the rainfall increased. It was gentle, still, but they sat so long by the water’s edge that, even beneath the umbrella, his denim jeans and her linen pajamas began to cling. Leonor’s thick hair was wet. She could not distinguish her tears from the rainwater. At her side, Arturo fretted in his own mind about whether she was missed—if her bodyguards, unseen but watching, would hustle them back to the confines of the palace soon.

It was a small relief when Leonor extricated herself and stood up. It was abrupt, too, though he rose with her and attempted to shield her further from the rain drops. She wouldn’t admit that she wished he let the rain hit her. Instead, she walked quickly beyond reach of his umbrella.

“I’ll see you at the palace,” she called back to him as the distance between them grew wider and wider.

TRANSCRIPT:

[A] Leonor?

[L] Over here.

[A] How are you? [L] I’m … here. [A] Should I join you? [L] If you want to.

[A] Leonor— [L] I know. Thank you for being here.

[L] I’ll see you at the palace.

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

Pigs off Campus!

(College Revolt is Back in Style.)

Stephen Jay Morris

4/23/2024

©Scientific Morality

                Here is a nifty little analogy:  suppose your dad gave money to your uncle to buy a gun so that he could shoot his ex-wife? Would your dad be guilty of murder?  Kind of.  He would be an accessory to murder. Suppose your country gave weapons to another country to commit genocide? Would it be guilty of genocide? Sort of, as they would be an accessory to a war crime. So, is it justifiable for Americans to protest Israel’s genocide against Palestinians? Hell, yeah! Not only is it justified, but it is also warranted.

            Now I am going to play a game of comparative history. The Chuds have been whining and bitching about how college professors are brainwashing their precious White children with leftist propaganda. Back in 1968, most universities were run by Right wing, WASP men in suits and ties. College professors were either moderates or conservative. Only the Arts departments were managed by liberals and Beatniks. Baby Boomers were never brainwashed by college professors. They were autodidactic and hungry for the truth. Some joined the “Ban the Bomb” movement and later, the Civil Rights movement.

            The urgency of the war at hand got ahold of Boomers. Many Vietnamese women and children along with American soldiers were dying by the hundreds, as was reported on the nightly news. A minority of Boomers felt helpless and wanted to stop the killing. So, they resorted to protests and strikes on university campuses. These acts were coordinated by two major student groups: the Black Student Union and Students for a Democratic Society, other wise known as SDS. I joined SDS in 1969. The only communication avenues we had at the time were printed fliers, underground newspapers, and FM rock stations. Oh, and let’s not forget the telephone. The FBI loved tapping them. If we’d had the technology Zoomers have today, we would have stopped the Vietnam War in 1967.

            In 1968, the anti-war movement went international, from Europe to Africa to South America. Most of the world was opposed to the Vietnam War.

So, is this latest movement against Likud Party’s genocide on the Palestinian people a new Anti-War movement? As sure as the Earth is round! Now all this of this carping about Anti-Semitism is no different than when the New Left was accused of being Anti-American. Neither is true! There is a Jewish sect called, “Keturei Karta,” who believe that there can be no Israel until the Messiah comes. Many Jews do not accept Jesus as the Jewish messiah. Now, let me ask you. Is this orthodox sect antisemitic or just comprised of your average self-hating Jews? Shit no dumbass!

            In 1968, we waved Vietcong flags and were accused of being communists. It was all done in the name of solidarity. Now the Palestinian flag is waved. Nothing has changed. We did have contingencies of Tankies, and other types of communist groups, who marched with us and chanted slogans that didn’t reflect the true sentiment of the movement’s coalition. Here are a couple I remember: “America must die! Let the red flag fly!”  and “Get a clue! Fuck the red, white, and blue!” There were other silly ones I’ve long since forgotten.

            Now you have Islamic nationalist groups doing the same thing. The Chants of “Death to America” come from small, Muslim, theocratic groups who are not affiliated with the Anti-authoritarian Left. Due to rumors and erroneous propaganda, the Left, as a rule, do not support Islam. Why? Well, because many of them does not support organized religion! Second, Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, are sexist religions.

            It was the Battle of Seatle, in 1999, that gave me hope. Then came the occupation movement of 2011, and now, this anti-war movement of 2024. If they can pull this off, the movement’s young people can stop this so-called war in the Middle East. As for the young people in Israel, will they rise up and stop Likud Party? That remains to be seen.

[mariacallous]

This story is part of a joint investigation between Lighthouse Reports and WIRED. To read other stories from the series, click here.

Mitch Daniels is a numbers guy, a cost-cutter. In the early 2000s, he tried and failed to rein in congressional spending under then-US president George W. Bush. So when he took office as Indiana governor in 2005, Daniels was ready to argue once again for fiscal discipline. He wanted to straighten out Indiana’s state government, which he deemed rife with dysfunction. And he started with its welfare system. “That department had been rocked by a series of criminal indictments, with cheats and caseworkers colluding to steal money meant for poor people,” he later said.

Daniels’ solution took the form of a $1.3 billion, 10-year contract with IBM. He had lofty ambitions for the project, which started in 2006, claiming it would improve the benefits service for Indiana residents while cracking down on fraud, ultimately saving taxpayers billions of dollars.

But the contract was a disaster. It was canceled after three years, and IBM and Indiana spent a decade locked in a legal battle about who was to blame. Daniels described IBM’s sweeping redesign and automation of the system—responsible for deciding who was eligible for everything from food stamps to medical cover—as deficient. He was adamant, though, that outsourcing a technical project to a company with expertise was the right call. “It was over-designed,” he said. “Great on paper but too complicated to work in practice.” IBM declined a request for comment. 

In July 2012, Judge David Dryer of the Marion County Superior Court ruled that Indiana had failed to prove IBM had breached its contract. But he also delivered a damning verdict on the system itself, describing it as an untested experiment that replaced caseworkers with computers and phone calls. “Neither party deserves to win this case,” he said. “This story represents a ‘perfect storm’ of misguided government policy and overzealous corporate ambition.” 

That might have been an early death knell for the burgeoning business of welfare state automation. Instead, the industry exploded. Today, such fraud systems form a significant part of the nebulous “govtech” industry, which revolves around companies selling governments new technologies with the promise that new IT will make public administration easier-to-use and more efficient. In 2021, that market was estimated to be worth €116 billion ($120 billion) in Europe and $440 billion globally. And it’s not only companies that expect to profit from this wave of tech. Governments also believe modernizing IT systems can deliver big savings. Back in 2014, the consultancy firm McKinsey estimated that if government digitization reached its “full potential,” it could free up $1 trillion every year. 

Contractors around the world are selling governments on the promise that fraud-hunting algorithms can help them recoup public funds. But researchers who track the spread of these systems argue that these companies are often overpaid and under-supervised. The key issue, researchers say, is accountability. When complex machine learning models or simpler algorithms are developed by the private sector, the computer code that gets to define who is and isn’t accused of fraud is often classed as intellectual property. As a result, the way such systems make decisions is opaque and shielded from interrogation. And even when these algorithmic black holes are embroiled in high-stakes legal battles over alleged bias, the people demanding answers struggle to get them. 

In the UK, a community group called the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People is trying to determine whether a pattern of disabled people being investigated for fraud is linked to government automation projects. In France, the digital rights group La Quadrature du Net has been trying for four months to find out whether a fraud system is discriminating against people born in other countries. And in Serbia, lawyers want to understand why the introduction of a new system has resulted in hundreds of Roma families losing their benefits. “The models are always secret,” says Victoria Adelmant, director of New York University’s digital welfare state project. “If you don’t have transparency, it’s very difficult to even challenge and assess these systems.” 

The rollout of automated bureaucracy has happened quickly and quietly, but it has left a trail of scandals in its wake. In Michigan, a computer system used between 2013 and 2015 falsely accused 34,000 people of welfare fraud. A similar thing happened in Australia between 2015 and 2019, but on a larger scale: The government accused 400,000 people of welfare fraud or error after its social security department started using a so-called robodebt algorithm to automatically issue fines.

Another scandal emerged in the Netherlands in 2019 when tens of thousands of families—many of them from the country’s Ghanaian community—were falsely accused of defrauding the child benefits system. These systems didn’t just contribute to agencies accusing innocent people of welfare fraud; benefits recipients were ordered to repay the money they had supposedly stolen. As a result, many of the accused were left with spiraling debt, destroyed credit ratings, and even bankruptcy. 

Not all government fraud systems linked to scandals were developed with consultancies or technology companies. But civil servants are increasingly turning to the private sector to plug knowledge and personnel gaps. Companies involved in fraud detection systems range from giant consultancies—Accenture, Cap Gemini, PWC—to small tech firms like Totta Data Lab in the Netherlands and Saga in Serbia.

Experts in automation and AI are expensive to hire and less likely to be wooed by public sector salaries. When the UK surveyed its civil servants last year, confidence in the government’s ability to use technology was low, with around half of respondents blaming an inability to hire top talent. More than a third said they had few or no skills in artificial intelligence, machine learning, or automation. But it’s not just industry experience that makes the private sector so alluring to government officials. For welfare departments squeezed by budget cuts, “efficiency” has become a familiar buzzword. “Quite often, a public sector entity will say it is more efficient for us to go and bring in a group of consultants,” says Dan Sheils, head of European public service at Accenture.

The public sector lacks the expertise to create these systems and also to oversee them, says Matthias Spielkamp, cofounder of German nonprofit Algorithm Watch, which has been tracking automated decision-making in social welfare programs across Europe since 2017. In an ideal world, civil servants would be able to develop these systems themselves and have an in-depth understanding of how they work, he says. “That would be a huge difference to working with private companies, because they will sell you black-box systems—black boxes to everyone, including the public sector.” 

In February 2020, a crisis broke out in the Dutch region of Walcheren as officials realized they were in the dark about how their own fraud detection system worked. At the time, a Dutch court had halted the use of another algorithm used to detect welfare fraud, known as SyRI, after finding it violated people’s right to privacy. Officials in Walcheren were not using SyRI, but in emails obtained by Lighthouse Reports and WIRED through freedom-of-information requests, government employees had raised concerns that their algorithm bore striking similarities to the one just condemned by the court.

Walcheren’s system was developed by Totta Data Lab. After signing a contract in March 2017, the Dutch startup developed an algorithm to sort through pseudonymous information, according to details obtained through a freedom-of-information request. The system analyzed details of local people claiming welfare benefits and then sent human investigators a list of those it classified as most likely to be fraudsters. 

The redacted emails show local officials agonizing over whether their algorithm would be dragged into the SyRI scandal. “I don’t think it is possible to explain why our algorithm should be allowed while everyone is reading about SyRI,” one official wrote the week after the court ruling. Another wrote back with similar concerns. “We also do not get insight from Totta Data Lab into what exactly the algorithm does, and we do not have the expertise to check this.” Neither Totta nor officials in Walcheren replied to requests for comment. 

When the Netherlands’ Organization for Applied Scientific Research, an independent research institute, later carried out an audit of a Totta algorithm used in South Holland, the auditors struggled to understand it. “The results of the algorithm do not appear to be reproducible,” their 2021 report reads, referring to attempts to re-create the algorithm’s risk scores. “The risks indicated by the AI algorithm are largely randomly determined,” the researchers found. 

With little transparency, it often takes years—and thousands of victims—to expose technical shortcomings. But a case in Serbia provides a notable exception. In March 2022, a new law came into force which gave the government the green light to use data processing to assess individuals’ financial status and automate parts of its social protection programs. The new socijalna karta, or social card system, would help the government detect fraud while making sure welfare payments were reaching society’s most marginalized, claimed Zoran Đorđević, Serbia’s minister of social affairs in 2020. 

But within months of the system’s introduction, lawyers in the capital Belgrade had started documenting how it was discriminating against the country’s Roma community, an already disenfranchised ethnic minority group. 

Mr. ​​Ahmetović, a welfare recipient who declined to share his first name out of concern that his statement could affect his ability to claim benefits in the future, says he hadn’t heard of the social card system until November 2022, when his wife and four children were turned away from a soup kitchen on the outskirts of the Serbian capital. It wasn’t unusual for the Roma family to be there, as their welfare payments entitled them to a daily meal provided by the government. But on that day, a social worker told them their welfare status had changed and that they would no longer be getting a daily meal.

The family was in shock, and Ahmetović rushed to the nearest welfare office to find out what had happened. He says he was told the new social card system had flagged him after detecting income amounting to 110,000 Serbian dinars ($1,000) in his bank account, which meant he was no longer eligible for a large chunk of the welfare he had been receiving. Ahmetović was confused. He didn’t know anything about this payment. He didn’t even have his own bank account—his wife received the family’s welfare payments into hers. 

With no warning, their welfare payments were slashed by 30 percent, from around 70,000 dinars ($630) per month to 40,000 dinars ($360). The family had been claiming a range of benefits since 2012, including financial social assistance, as their son’s epilepsy and unilateral paralysis means neither parent is able to work. The drop in support meant the Ahmetovićs had to cut back on groceries and couldn’t afford to pay all their bills. Their debt ballooned to over 1 million dinars ($9,000). 

The algorithm’s impact on Serbia’s Roma community has been dramatic. ​​Ahmetović says his sister has also had her welfare payments cut since the system was introduced, as have several of his neighbors. “Almost all people living in Roma settlements in some municipalities lost their benefits,” says Danilo Ćurčić, program coordinator of A11, a Serbian nonprofit that provides legal aid. A11 is trying to help the Ahmetovićs and more than 100 other Roma families reclaim their benefits.

But first, Ćurčić needs to know how the system works. So far, the government has denied his requests to share the source code on intellectual property grounds, claiming it would violate the contract they signed with the company who actually built the system, he says. According to Ćurčić and a government contract, a Serbian company called Saga, which specializes in automation, was involved in building the social card system. Neither Saga nor Serbia’s Ministry of Social Affairs responded to WIRED’s requests for comment.

As the govtech sector has grown, so has the number of companies selling systems to detect fraud. And not all of them are local startups like Saga. Accenture—Ireland’s biggest public company, which employs more than half a million people worldwide—has worked on fraud systems across Europe. In 2017, Accenture helped the Dutch city of Rotterdam develop a system that calculates risk scores for every welfare recipient. A company document describing the original project, obtained by Lighthouse Reports and WIRED, references an Accenture-built machine learning system that combed through data on thousands of people to judge how likely each of them was to commit welfare fraud. “The city could then sort welfare recipients in order of risk of illegitimacy, so that highest risk individuals can be investigated first,” the document says. 

Officials in Rotterdam have said Accenture’s system was used until 2018, when a team at Rotterdam’s Research and Business Intelligence Department took over the algorithm’s development. When Lighthouse Reports and WIRED analyzed a 2021 version of Rotterdam’s fraud algorithm, it became clear that the system discriminates on the basis of race and gender. And around 70 percent of the variables in the 2021 system—information categories such as gender, spoken language, and mental health history that the algorithm used to calculate how likely a person was to commit welfare fraud—appeared to be the same as those in Accenture’s version.

When asked about the similarities, Accenture spokesperson Chinedu Udezue said the company’s “start-up model” was transferred to the city in 2018 when the contract ended. Rotterdam stopped using the algorithm in 2021, after auditors found that the data it used risked creating biased results.

Consultancies generally implement predictive analytics models and then leave after six or eight months, says Sheils, Accenture’s European head of public service. He says his team helps governments avoid what he describes as the industry’s curse: “false positives,” Sheils’ term for life-ruining occurrences of an algorithm incorrectly flagging an innocent person for investigation. “That may seem like a very clinical way of looking at it, but technically speaking, that's all they are.” Sheils claims that Accenture mitigates this by encouraging clients to use AI or machine learning to improve, rather than replace, decision-making humans. “That means ensuring that citizens don’t experience significantly adverse consequences purely on the basis of an AI decision.” 

However, social workers who are asked to investigate people flagged by these systems before making a final decision aren’t necessarily exercising independent judgment, says Eva Blum-Dumontet, a tech policy consultant who researched algorithms in the UK welfare system for campaign group Privacy International. “This human is still going to be influenced by the decision of the AI,” she says. “Having a human in the loop doesn’t mean that the human has the time, the training, or the capacity to question the decision.” 

Despite the scandals and repeated allegations of bias, the industry building these systems shows no sign of slowing. And neither does government appetite for buying or building such systems. Last summer, Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance adopted a decree authorizing the launch of an algorithm that searches for discrepancies in tax filings, earnings, property records, and bank accounts to identify people at risk of not paying their taxes. 

But as more governments adopt these systems, the number of people erroneously flagged for fraud is growing. And once someone is caught up in the tangle of data, it can take years to break free. In the Netherlands’ child benefits scandal, people lost their cars and homes, and couples described how the stress drove them to divorce. “The financial misery is huge,” says Orlando Kadir, a lawyer representing more than 1,000 affected families. After a public inquiry, the Dutch government agreed in 2020 to pay the families around €30,000 ($32,000) in compensation. But debt balloons over time. And that amount is not enough, says Kadir, who claims some families are now €250,000 in debt. 

In Belgrade, ​​Ahmetović is still fighting to get his family’s full benefits reinstated. “I don’t understand what happened or why,” he says. “It’s hard to compete against the computer and prove this was a mistake.” But he says he’s also wondering whether he’ll ever be compensated for the financial damage the social card system has caused him. He’s yet another person caught up in an opaque system whose inner workings are guarded by the companies and governments who make and operate them. Ćurčić, though, is clear on what needs to change. “We don’t care who made the algorithm,” he says. “The algorithm just has to be made public.”

Additional reporting by Gabriel Geiger and Justin-Casimir Braun.

[tentakilly]

The UNGOC(Global Occult Coalition) consists of 108 and possibly more anomalous and occult groups including but not limited to:

The Bavarian Illuminati, The International Center for the Study of Unified Thaumatology, The Holy Order of Knights Templar, Servants of the Silicon Nornir, The United Church of Satan, The World Parahealth Organization, The Universalist Order of the Æsir, Walt Disney company, Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White And Monty Python and the Holy Grail's black knight And Benito Mussolini and the Blue Meanie And Cowboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie Robocop, The Terminator, Captain Kirk, and Darth Vader Lo-pan, Superman, every single Power Ranger Bill S. Preston and Theodore Logan Spock, The Rock, Doc Ock, and Hulk Hogan.

[tsalala]

The one and only Olobor of the Black Rock Coalition, photographed in his home of the Masai Mara by Sultan Al Aseeri. Rest in peace to this formidable lion.

[whitesinhistory]

On June 23, 1903, a white mob of more than 4,000 people in Wilmington, Delaware, burned a Black man named George White to death before he could stand trial. Mr. White was arrested and accused of killing a young white woman. He adamantly denied any involvement in the crime but was denied the opportunity to defend himself in court. During the era of racial terror, many Black people were lynched after being accused of murder. The mere suggestion of Black-on-white violence could provoke mob violence and lynching. Here, despite Mr. White’s insistence that he was innocent, Wilmington residents were determined to lynch him without delay.  Within one week of Mr. White’s arrest, two lynch mobs attempted to abduct him from the workhouse where he was being held. White Wilmington residents talked openly about these lynching plans. In a sermon on June 21, local white pastor Robert Elwood urged white residents to exact swift public vengeance by lynching Mr. White. A lynch mob began forming the next day, and its members spent the next two days meticulously planning the public spectacle lynching that took place on June 23. Despite this public planning, in which mob members even shared their plans in advance with police officers, authorities charged with protecting Mr. White did not relocate him to a different jail or take any other measures to prevent the lynching. In the early morning hours of June 23, the lynch mob had grown to thousands and included people who had traveled from out of town to participate. The mob stormed the workhouse where Mr. White was being held and threatened to destroy every cell to get him unless authorities turned him over. Officers ultimately chose to protect the property of the jail rather than the life of a man they had a legal duty to protect; after leading the mob to his cell, the officers turned Mr. White over and “stood by to await the inevitable.”  The mob removed Mr. White from the jail and led him, chained, through a crowd of thousands to the pyre built outside the jail, where he was bound with rope and forced into the open flames. As Mr. White burned to death, the crowd of white men, women, and children there to participate in the lynching threw rocks at him and cheered.  After Mr. White was dead, members of the mob continued to shoot at his charred body, and lynching participants took pieces of his remains as “souvenirs”; a local white physician reportedly took Mr. White’s skull and right foot to display in the window of a local saloon. Though thousands of known residents were complicit in the lynching of George White, no one was ever held responsible. Mr. White is one of over 4,400 victims of racial terror lynching killed in the U.S., and more than 300 victims killed outside the states of the former Confederacy, between 1877 and 1950.  In 2019, the Delaware Social Justice Remembrance Coalition gathered with hundreds of community members to unveil a historical marker memorializing Mr. White. 

[monroeknoxwrites]

I did it – I wrote the very first words of dsbs:

They arrived during breakfast. On an isolated rock floating in space, miles and miles away from any other living thing, guests weren't ever expected, it’d be incorrect calling them an uninvited guest. But they were unwanted. Thelnym was huddled at the kitchen table, thick blanket about their shoulders. The atmosphere dome had entered its winter cycle a few days ago, turning their patch of land into a white spot on grey barren rock. In front of them was a plate of poached eggs nestled in a bed of yogurt, the whole thing drizzled in bright red oil. Next to that was a tiny hill of what Özgür said were supposed to be flower shaped buns – Thelnym thought they resembled tentacle monsters. They ripped off one of the petal-tentacles and nibbled on it thoughtfully. Özgür's dubious dough artistry notwithstanding, it tasted great. She was right about those long curly black beans. The paste made from them was pleasantly tart. Özgür herself juggled picking at her food and nervously checking her comm. Once or twice she'd steal a glance out the living room window. Thelnym observed her fidgety reflection on the surface of their inky indigo tea, white flecks floating underneath on her increasingly furrowed brow. It was almost a relief when the shuttle bearing a Coalition administrator's insignia touched down on the platform beyond the dome.

[feliniakattus]

Character Card: Opte

Name: Opte

Role: Companion to Tirone Oak of the Coalition

Family: Mara (Mother), Sere (father), Moke (brother), Myla (sister)

Description: A short, speckled lycavet with brown eyes. He has brown paws with white legs, all but one of which are mostly white with golden and brown speckles. His head is mostly brown and gold, with a mask-like face marking and big ears. He has a small ruff of black fur, with white tufts on his shoulders and by his ears. His tail is white-tipped, and he wears a bracelet of leaves. He has a leather colour with four bands of varying shades of green on it, and a sharp rock hanging from it. He also carries a bundle of herbs.

Age: 3 cycles, or 15 human years

Orientation/Gender: Homosexual, cis male (he/him)

Personality: Devoted, Gullible, Dependable