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decolonize-the-left · 4 months

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If you get your news from CNN, please know they've been compromised and do in fact aid Israel in the way they provide coverage.!!!!

Their coverage is curated specifically to garner sympathy for Israel and to provide plausibile deniability for their war crimes such as genocide. Links below the vid.

Additionally, the breach to freedom of press this implies should NOT be understated.

“‘War-crime’ and ‘genocide’ are taboo words,” the worker said. “Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as ‘blasts’ attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility. Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed.” CNN maintains that the reason for the policy is to ensure its reporting on Israel and Palestine is “as precise and accurate as possible,” as one spokesperson said, claiming that the IDF’s censor has a “minimal” impact on the coverage. But CNN seems to be unique in maintaining this policy, unlike other major outlets, The Intercept wrote.

Further, the investigation found that CNN leaders have explicitly prescribed policies that favor Israel. In an email sent October 26, CNN’s News Standards and Practices sent staff an email directing them to refer to the ministry of health in Gaza as “Hamas-controlled” every time they reference the Palestinian death count — a widespread practice among major outlets, despite numerous human rights groups and war experts maintaining that the Gaza health ministry’s death tolls have historically been accurate and that public health experts have independently found no evidence that the ministry has inflated death counts.

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blueheartbookclub · 5 months

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"Leviathan Unveiled: Navigating the Depths of Hobbesian Political Philosophy"

Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" stands as a seminal work in political philosophy, providing a profound exploration of the social contract and the nature of government. Published in 1651, during a tumultuous period in English history, Hobbes crafted a philosophical masterpiece that sought to address the chaos and disorder prevalent in society.

The central theme of "Leviathan" revolves around Hobbes' depiction of the hypothetical state of nature, a condition he famously describes as a "war of every man against every man." Hobbes contends that without a structured authority, human life would be characterized by constant conflict and anarchy. To escape this state of nature, individuals enter into a social contract, surrendering some liberties to a sovereign authority in exchange for protection and order.

The metaphorical "Leviathan" represents this sovereign power, a colossal entity with the authority to maintain peace and prevent chaos. Hobbes argues for the absolute power of the Leviathan, suggesting that a powerful centralized government is necessary to ensure the stability of society. This perspective, while controversial, laid the groundwork for later political philosophies and discussions on the role of government.

Hobbes' work also delves into the relationship between church and state. He advocates for a unified authority to avoid conflicts arising from religious differences. In his view, the sovereign power should control both the ecclesiastical and civil spheres to maintain social cohesion.

One of the strengths of "Leviathan" is Hobbes' systematic approach to political theory. He applies a scientific methodology, drawing parallels between the natural world and political structures. This analytical framework was innovative for its time, influencing subsequent philosophers and political thinkers.

However, "Leviathan" has sparked significant debate and criticism. Hobbes' advocacy for absolute monarchy and his rather bleak view of human nature have been challenged by later philosophers who championed individual liberties and more optimistic perspectives on human behavior.

In conclusion, Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" remains a cornerstone of political philosophy, offering a foundational exploration of the social contract, sovereign authority, and the structure of government. While controversial and subject to critique, its impact on the development of political thought cannot be overstated, making it an essential read for those interested in understanding the roots of modern political theory.

Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" is available in Amazon in paperback 19.99$ and hardcover 25.99$ editions.

Number of pages: 484

Language: English

Rating: 8/10

Link of the book!

Review By: King's Cat

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kenyatta · 1 year

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Databases in the UK—and elsewhere—have only proliferated; increasingly manufactured and maintained by a nexus of private actors and state agencies, they are generated by and produce more and more information streams that inevitably have a material effect on the populations they’re used by and against. More than just a neutral method of storing information, databases shape and reshape the world around us; they aid and abet the state and private industry in matters of surveillance, police violence, environmental destruction, border enforcement, and more. Databases and their particularities are often seen as a merely technical concern—something to be worried about only when there’s a glitch or a security breach. But as theorist Liam Young argues in his book List Cultures: Knowledge and Poetics from Mesopotamia to BuzzFeed, statistics and information have emerged as the “lifeblood” of the modern state. These massive streams of information—portrayed as seamlessly whizzing from one dataset to another—produce the state in as much as they also reveal the state as it is.

As the authors of the 2009 report note, the aims of what they call the “enforcing state” and the “public services agenda” are increasingly fused together; information collected about individuals en masse is cast as a way to better provide for them. To a very limited degree, there is some value to this argument—in certain health care contexts, for example around vaccinations and allergies, detailed datasets offer clear benefits. But these databases demonstrate how excessive—and often unnecessary—the majority of their counterparts are.

[...]

At the time of the Database State report, the [UK] Labour government then in power was dedicated to what it called “joined-up” thinking, or pulling information from one part of the state to another in order to enact policy and deliver services more efficiently and effectively. In practice, this led to the creation of massive databases containing seemingly indiscriminate amounts of information, databases that frequently had no legal justification for their existence. Though often seen as neutral, or even user-friendly, by those who design them, these repositories are political interventions; they make possible the governmental overreach and omnipresent surveillance that are the dominant features of our times.

Public debate around databases tends to focus on the question of extraction—the extent to which modes of data collection pose a threat to civil liberties. But there’s more to it. As Dan McQuillan, an academic and lecturer in creative and social computing at Goldsmith’s College, explains, the relational database “transcribes between informational content and action in the world,” meaning that even seemingly neutral, legal data collection inevitably produces outcomes that may not have occurred otherwise. In this way, too, massive government databases are never just benign repositories.

For all of the crypto conversation about the supposed liberatory benefits of putting the world on the blockchain (a publicly distributed database), I'm surprised at how little critical conversation I've found about how databases are still an apparatus of power whether we "intend" them to be or not. Maybe I'm not reading the right stuff.

It just seems really weird considering how much the crypto and crypto-adjacent folks love Seeing Like a State.

#database #state power #societies of control

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chronicbitchsyndrome · 19 days

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so: masking: good, unequivocally. please mask and please educate others on why they should mask to make the world safer for immune compromised people to participate in.

however: masking is not my policy focus and it shouldn't be yours, either. masking is a very good mitigation against droplet-born illnesses and a slightly less effective (but still very good) mitigation against airborne illnesses, but its place in the pyramid of mitigation demands is pretty low, for several reasons:

it's an individual mitigation, not a systemic one. the best mitigations to make public life more accessible affect everyone without distributing the majority of the effort among individuals (who may not be able to comply, may not have access to education on how to comply, or may be actively malicious).

it's a post-hoc mitigation, or to put it another way, it's a band-aid over the underlying problem. even if it was possible to enforce, universal masking still wouldn't address the underlying problem that it is dangerous for sick people and immune compromised people to be in the same public locations to begin with. this is a solvable problem! we have created the societal conditions for this problem!

here are my policy focuses:

upgraded air filtration and ventilation systems for all public buildings. appropriate ventilation should be just as bog-standard as appropriately clean running water. an indoor venue without a ventilation system capable of performing 5 complete air changes per hour should be like encountering a public restroom without any sinks or hand sanitizer stations whatsoever.

enforced paid sick leave for all employees until 3-5 days without symptoms. the vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through industry sectors where employees come into work while experiencing symptoms. a taco bell worker should never be making food while experiencing strep throat symptoms, even without a strep diagnosis.

enforced virtual schooling options for sick students. the other vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through schools. the proximity of so many kids and teenagers together indoors (with little to no proper ventilation and high levels of physical activity) means that if even one person comes to school sick, hundreds will be infected in the following few days. those students will most likely infect their parents as well. allowing students to complete all readings and coursework through sites like blackboard or compass while sick will cut down massively on disease transmission.

accessible testing for everyone. not just for COVID; if there's a test for any contagious illness capable of being performed outside of lab conditions, there should be a regulated option for performing that test at home (similar to COVID rapid tests). if a test can only be performed under lab conditions, there should be a government-subsidized program to provide free of charge testing to anyone who needs it, through urgent cares and pharmacies.

the last thing to note is that these things stack; upgraded ventilation systems in all public buildings mean that students and employees get sick less often to begin with, making it less burdensome for students and employees to be absent due to sickness, and making it more likely that sick individuals will choose to stay home themselves (since it's not so costly for them).

masking is great! keep masking! please use masking as a rhetorical "this is what we can do as individuals to make public life safer while we're pushing for drastic policy changes," and don't get complacent in either direction--don't assume that masking is all you need to do or an acceptable forever-solution, and equally, don't fall prey to thinking that pushing for policy change "makes up" for not masking in public. it's not a game with scores and sides; masking is a material thing you can do to help the individual people you interact with one by one, and policy changes are what's going to make the entirety of public life safer for all immune compromised people.

#dyspunktional #cripple punk #actually disabled #cripplepunk #a lot of these are major concessions for me personally as i'm an anarchist and loathe to support further concentrations of state power #but if you're gonna be operating within the structure of the system. here you go. handing you a cheat sheet for what you should demand.

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blueheartbooks · 5 months

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"Leviathan Unveiled: Navigating the Depths of Hobbesian Political Philosophy"