PP NewsBrief: 2021-06-18

We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.

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Arizona governor BANS public universities from demanding students get Covid-19 vaccines, wear masks in class

"Governor Doug Ducey has issued an executive order barring Arizona public colleges and universities from demanding Covid-19 vaccinations and documents, or forcing students to get tested or wear masks for in-person classes.

“The vaccine works, and we encourage Arizonans to take it. But it is a choice and we need to keep it that way,” Ducey said on Tuesday, announcing the order. “Public education is a public right, and taxpayers are paying for it. We need to make our public universities available for students to return to learning. They have already missed out on too much learning.”

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According to local media, the Republican governor’s order appears to be directly related to Monday’s announcement by the Arizona State University that students arriving on campus for in-person classes in August will be fully vaccinated.

The university believes “it is imperative for the health and well-being of our community for all to be vaccinated,” ASU said in the statement.

Students who do not agree to disclose their vaccination status, or cannot be vaccinated for whatever reason, will be “required to participate” in ongoing “health management protocols” – starting with a daily health check, Covid-19 testing up to twice a week, and wearing a mask “in all indoor and outdoor spaces on ASU campuses.”"

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"Advanced" Isn't Always Better

"The future of nuclear power is uncertain. Because nuclear power is a low-carbon way to generate electricity, there is considerable interest in expanding its role to help mitigate the threat of climate change. However, the technology has fundamental safety and security disadvantages compared with other low-carbon sources. Nuclear reactors and their associated facilities for fuel production and waste handling are vulnerable to catastrophic accidents and sabotage, and they can be misused to produce materials for nuclear weapons. The nuclear industry, policymakers, and regulators must address these shortcomings fully if the global use of nuclear power is to increase without posing unacceptable risks to public health, the environment, and international peace and security.

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In the United States, new nuclear plants have proven prohibitively expensive and slow to build, discouraging private investment and contributing to public skepticism. In the 2000s, amid industry hopes of a nuclear renaissance, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) received applications to build more than two dozen new reactors. All were evolutionary versions of the light-water reactor (LWR), the type that comprises almost all operating reactors in the United States and most other countries with nuclear power. Companies such as Westinghouse, which developed the AP1000, promised these LWR variants could be built more quickly and cheaply while enhancing safety. But prospective purchasers cancelled nearly all of those proposals even before ground was broken, and the utilities that started building two AP1000 reactors at the V.C. Summer plant in South Carolina abandoned the project after it experienced significant cost overruns and delays. Only one project remains—two AP1000 units at the Alvin W. Vogtle plant in Georgia—but its cost has doubled, and construction is taking more than twice as long as originally estimated.

Almost all nuclear power reactors operating and under construction today are LWRs, so called because they use ordinary water (H2O) to cool their hot, highly radioactive cores. Some observers believe that the LWR, the industry workhorse, has inherent flaws that are inhibiting nuclear power's growth. In addition to its high cost and long construction time, critics point to—among other things— the LWR's susceptibility to severe accidents (such as the meltdowns at Fukushima), their inefficient use of uranium, and the long-lived nuclear wastes they generate.

In response, the US Department of Energy's national laboratories, universities, and numerous private vendors—from large established companies to small startups—are pursuing the development of reactors that differ fundamentally from LWRs. These non-light-water reactors (NLWRs) are cooled not by water but by other substances, such as liquid sodium, helium gas, or even molten salts.1

NLWRs are sometimes referred to as "advanced reactors." However, that is a misnomer for most designs being pursued today, which largely descend from those proposed many decades ago. At least one NLWR concept, the liquid metal–cooled fast reactor, even predates the LWR....

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...As with any technology, an independent reality check is needed. From self-driving cars to cheap flight to Mars, the Silicon Valley–style disruptive technology model of rapid, revolutionary progress is not always readily adaptable to other engineering disciplines. And nuclear energy, which requires painstaking, time-consuming, and resource-intensive research and development (R&D), is proving to be one of the harder technologies to disrupt.

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Key questions to consider are the following:

--What are the benefits and risks of NLWRs and their fuel cycles compared with those of LWRs?

--Do the likely overall benefits of NLWRs outweigh the risks and justify the substantial public and private investments needed to commercialize them?

--Can NLWRs be safely and securely commercialized in time to contribute significantly to averting the climate crisis?

To help inform policy decisions on these questions, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has evaluated certain claims about the principal types of NLWRs. In particular, this report compares several classes of NLWRs to LWRs with regard to safety and security, the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, and "sustainability"—a term that in this context includes the often-claimed ability of some NLWRs to "recycle" nuclear waste and use mined uranium more efficiently. The report also considers the potential for certain NLWRs to operate in a once-through, "breed-and-burn" mode that would, in theory, make them more uranium-efficient without the need to recycle nuclear waste—a dangerous process that has significant nuclear proliferation and terrorism risks.

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UCS considered these principal classes of NLWRs:

Sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs): These reactors are known as "fast reactors" because, unlike LWRs or other reactors that use lower-energy (or "thermal") neutrons, the liquid sodium coolant does not moderate (slow down) the high-energy (or "fast") neutrons produced when nuclear fuel undergoes fission. The characteristics and design features of these reactors differ significantly from those of LWRs, stemming from the properties of fast neutrons and the chemical nature of liquid sodium.

High-temperature gas–cooled reactors (HTGRs): These reactors are cooled by a pressurized gas such as helium and operate at temperatures up to 800ºC, compared with around 300ºC for LWRs. HTGR designers developed a special fuel called TRISO (tristructural isotropic) to withstand this high operating temperature. HTGRs typically contain graphite as a moderator to slow down neutrons. There are two main variants of HTGR. A prismatic-block HTGR uses conventional nuclear fuel elements that are stationary; in a pebble-bed HTGR, moving fuel elements circulate continuously through the reactor core.

Molten salt–fueled reactors (MSRs): In contrast to conventional reactors that use fuel in a solid form, these use liquid fuel dissolved in a molten salt at a temperature of at least 650ºC. The fuel, which is pumped through the reactor, also serves as the coolant. MSRs can be either thermal reactors that use a moderator such as graphite or fast reactors without a moderator. All MSRs chemically treat the fuel to varying extents while the reactor operates to remove radio-active isotopes that affect reactor performance. Therefore, unlike other reactors, MSRs generally require on-site chemical plants to process their fuel. MSRs also need elaborate systems to capture and treat large volumes of highly radioactive gaseous byproducts.

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Today's LWRs use uranium-based nuclear fuel containing less than 5 percent of the isotope uranium-235. This fuel is produced from natural (mined) uranium, which has a uranium-235 content of less than 1 percent, in a complex industrial process called uranium enrichment. Fuel enriched to less than 20 percent U-235 is called "low-enriched uranium" (LEU). Experts consider it a far less attractive material for nuclear weapons development than "highly enriched uranium" (HEU), with a U-235 content of at least 20 percent.

The fuel for most NLWRs differs from that of LWRs. Some proposed NLWRs would use LEU enriched to between 10 and 20 percent uranium-235; this is known as "high-assay low enriched uranium" (HALEU).2 While HALEU is considered impractical for direct use in a nuclear weapon, it is more attractive for nuclear weapons development than the LEU used in LWRs. Other types of NLWRs would use plutonium separated from spent nuclear fuel through a chemical process called reprocessing. Still others would utilize the isotope uranium-233 obtained by irradiating the element thorium. Both plutonium and uranium-233 are highly attractive for use in nuclear weapons.

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...Today's LWRs remain far too vulnerable to Fukushima-like accidents, and the uranium enrichment plants that provide their LEU fuel can be misused to produce HEU for nuclear weapons. However, developing new designs that are clearly superior to LWRs overall is a formidable challenge, as improvements in one respect can create or exacerbate problems in others. For example, increasing the physical size of a reactor core while keeping its power generation rate constant could make the reactor easier to cool in an accident, but it could also increase cost.

Moreover, the problems of nuclear power cannot be fixed through better reactor design alone. Also critical is the regulatory framework governing the licensing, construction, and operation of nuclear plants and their associated fuel cycle infrastructure. Inadequate licensing standards and oversight activities can compromise the safety of improved designs. A key consideration is the extent to which regulators require extra levels of safety—known as "defense-in-depth"—to compensate for uncertainties in new reactor designs for which there is little or no operating experience.

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Safety and security risk is the vulnerability of reactors and fuel cycle facilities to severe accidents or terrorist attacks that result in significant releases of radioactivity to the environment. Routine radioactive emissions are also a consideration for some designs. The UCS assessment primarily used qualitative judgments to compare the safety of reactor types, because quantitative safety studies for NLWRs with the same degree of accuracy and rigor as for LWRs are not yet available. Far fewer data are available to validate safety studies of NLWRs than of LWRs, which have accumulated a vast amount of operating experience.

Sustainability, in this context, refers to the amount of nuclear waste generated by reactors and fuel facilities that requires secure, long-term disposal, as well as to the efficiency of using natural (mined) uranium and thorium. Sustainability criteria can be quantified but typically have large uncertainties. To account for those uncertainties, this report considers that sustainability parameters, such as the amount of heat-bearing transuranic (TRU) elements requiring long-term geologic disposal, would have to improve by a factor of 10 or more to be significant.

Nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism risk is the danger that nations or terrorist groups could illicitly obtain nuclear-weapon-usable materials from reactors or fuel cycle facilities. LWRs operating on a once-through fuel cycle present relatively low proliferation and terrorism risks. However, any nuclear fuel cycle that utilizes reprocessing and recycling of spent fuel poses significantly greater nuclear proliferation and terrorism risks than do LWRs without reprocessing, because it provides far greater opportunities for diversion or theft of plutonium and other nuclear-weapon-usable materials. International safeguards and security measures for reactors and fuel cycles with reprocessing are costly and cumbersome, and they cannot fully compensate for the increased vulnerability resulting from separating weapon-usable materials. Also using HALEU instead of less-enriched forms of LEU would increase proliferation and terrorism risks, although to a far lesser extent than using plutonium or uranium-233.

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Not all these criteria are of equal weight. UCS maintains that increasing safety and reducing the risk of proliferation and terrorism should take priority over increasing sustainability for new reactor development at the present time. Given that uranium is now cheap and abundant, there is no urgent need to develop reactors that use less. Even so, there would be benefits from reducing the need for uranium mining, which is hazardous to workers and the environment and historically has had a severe impact on disadvantaged communities. Developing more efficient reactors may become more useful if the cost of mined uranium increases significantly, whether due to resource depletion or strengthened protections for occupational health and the environment. UCS also did not consider the potential for NLWRs to be more economical than LWRs. Although economics is a critical consideration and is interrelated with the criteria listed above, such an evaluation would depend on many open and highly uncertain issues, such as final design details, future regulatory requirements, and supply chain availability.

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Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactors

Safety and Security Risk: SFRs have numerous safety problems that are not issues for LWRs. Sodium coolant can burn if exposed to air or water, and an SFR can experience rapid power increases that may be hard to control. It is even possible that an SFR core could explode like a small nuclear bomb under severe accident conditions. Of particular concern is the potential for a runaway power excursion: if the fuel overheats and the sodium coolant boils, an SFR's power will typically increase rapidly rather than decrease, resulting in a positive feedback loop that could cause core damage if not quickly controlled.

Chernobyl Unit 4 in the former Soviet Union, although not a fast reactor, had a similar design flaw—known as a "positive void coefficient." It was a major reason for the reactor's catastrophic explosion in 1986. A positive void coefficient is decidedly not a passive safety feature—and it cannot be fully eliminated by design in commercial-scale SFRs. To mitigate these and other risks, fast reactors should have additional engineered safety systems that LWRs do not need, which increases capital cost.

Sustainability: Because of the properties of fast neutrons, fast reactors do offer, in theory, the potential to be more sustainable than LWRs by either using uranium more efficiently or reducing the quantity of TRU elements present in the reactor and its fuel cycle. This is the only clear advantage of fast reactors compared with LWRs. However once-through fast reactors such as the Natrium being developed by TerraPower, a company founded and supported by Bill Gates, would be less uranium-efficient than LWRs. To significantly increase sustainability, most fast reactors would require spent fuel reprocessing and recycling, and the reactors and associated fuel cycle facilities would need to operate continuously at extremely high levels of performance for many hundreds or even thousands of years. Neither government nor industry can guarantee that future generations will continue to operate and replace these facilities indefinitely. The enormous capital investment needed today to build such a system would only result in minor sustainability benefits over a reasonable timeframe.

Nuclear Proliferation/Terrorism: Historically, fast reactors have required plutonium or HEU-based fuels, both of which could be readily used in nuclear weapons and therefore entail unacceptable risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. Some SFR concepts being developed today utilize HALEU instead of plutonium and could operate on a once-through cycle. These reactors would pose lower proliferation and security risks than would plutonium-fueled fast reactors with reprocessing, but they would have many of the same safety risks as other SFRs. And, as pointed out, most once-through SFRs would actually be less sustainable than LWRs and thus unable to realize the SFR's main benefit. For this reason, these once-through SFRs are likely to be "gateway" reactors that would eventually transition to SFRs with reprocessing and recycling. The only exceptions—if technically feasible—are once-through fast reactors operating in breed-and-burn mode. However, the only breed-and-burn reactor that has undergone significant R&D, TerraPower's "traveling-wave reactor," was recently suspended after more than a decade of work, suggesting that its technical challenges proved too great.

High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors

Safety and Security Risk: HTGRs have some attractive safety features but also a number of drawbacks. Their safety is rooted in the integrity of TRISO fuel, which has been designed to function at the high normal operating temperature of an HTGR (up to 800ºC) and can retain radioactive fission products up to about 1,600ºC if a loss-of-coolant accident occurs. However, if the fuel heats up above that temperature—as it could in the Xe-100—its release of fission products speeds up significantly. So, while TRISO has some safety benefits, the fuel is far from meltdown-proof, as some claim. Indeed, a recent TRISO fuel irradiation test in the Advanced Test Reactor in Idaho had to be terminated prematurely when the fuel began to release fission products at a rate high enough to challenge off-site radiation dose limits.

The performance of TRISO fuel also depends critically on the ability to consistently manufacture fuel to exacting specifications, which has not been demonstrated. HTGRs are also vulnerable to accidents in which air or water leaks into the reactor; this is much less of a concern for LWRs. And the moving fuel in pebble-bed HTGRs introduces novel safety issues.

Despite these unknowns, HTGRs are being designed without the conventional leak-tight containments that LWRs have—potentially cancelling out any inherent safety benefits provided by the design and fuel. Given the uncertainties, much more testing and analysis are necessary to determine conclusively if HTGRs would be significantly safer than LWRs.

Sustainability: HTGRs are less sustainable than LWRs overall. They use uranium no more efficiently due to their use of HALEU, and they generate a much larger volume of highly radioactive waste. Although pebble-bed HTGRs are somewhat more flexible and uranium-efficient than prismatic-block HTGRs, the difference is not enough to overcome the penalty from using HALEU fuel.

Nuclear Proliferation/Terrorism: HTGRs raise additional proliferation issues compared with LWRs. Current HTGR designs use HALEU, which poses a greater security risk than the LEU grade used by LWRs, and TRISO fuel fabrication is more challenging to monitor than LWR fuel fabrication. Also, it is difficult to accurately account for nuclear material at pebble-bed HTGRs because fuel is continually fed into and removed from the reactor as it operates. On the other hand, it may be more difficult for a proliferator to reprocess TRISO spent fuel than LWR spent fuel to extract fissile material because the required chemical processes are less mature.

Molten Salt-Fueled Reactors

Safety and Security Risk: MSR advocates point to the fact that this type of reactor cannot melt down—the fuel is already molten. However, this simplistic argument belies the fact that MSR fuels pose unique safety issues. Not only is the hot liquid fuel highly corrosive, but it is also difficult to model its complex behavior as it flows through a reactor system. If cooling is interrupted, the fuel can heat up and destroy an MSR in a matter of minutes. Perhaps the most serious safety flaw is that, in contrast to solid-fueled reactors, MSRs routinely release large quantities of gaseous fission products, which must be trapped and stored. Some released gases quickly decay into troublesome radionuclides such as cesium-137— the highly radioactive isotope that caused persistent and extensive environmental contamination following the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents.

Sustainability: A main argument for MSRs is that they are more flexible and can operate more sustainably than reactors using solid fuel. In theory, some MSRs would be able to use natural resources more efficiently than LWRs and generate lower amounts of long-lived nuclear waste. However, the actual sustainability improvements for a range of thermal and fast MSR designs are too small, even with optimistic performance assumptions, to justify their high safety and security risks.

Nuclear Proliferation/Terrorism: MSRs present unique challenges for nuclear security because it would be very difficult to account for nuclear material accurately as the liquid fuel flows through the reactor. In addition, some designs require on-site, continuously operating fuel reprocessing plants that could provide additional pathways for diverting or stealing nuclear-weapon-usable materials.

MSRs could also endanger global nuclear security by interfering with the worldwide network of radionuclide monitors put into place to verify compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty after it enters into force.5 MSRs release vast quantities of the same radioactive xenon isotopes that are signatures of clandestine nuclear explosions—an issue that MSR developers do not appear to have addressed. It is unclear whether it would be feasible or affordable to trap and store these isotopes at MSRs to the degree necessary to avoid degrading the effectiveness of the monitoring system to detect treaty violations.

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Some developers of NLWRs say that they will be...deploying their reactors commercially as soon as the late 2020s. However, such aggressive timelines are inconsistent with the recent experience of new reactors such as the Westinghouse AP1000, an evolutionary LWR. Although the AP1000 has some novel features, its designers leveraged many decades of LWR operating data. Even so, it took more than 30 years of research, development, and construction before the first AP1000—the Sanmen Unit 1 reactor in China—began to produce power in 2018.

How, then, could less-mature NLWR reactors be commercialized so much faster than the AP1000? At a minimum, commercial deployment in the 2020s would require bypassing two developmental stages that are critical for assuring safety and reliability: the demonstration of prototype reactors at reduced scale and at full scale. Prototype reactors are typically needed for demonstrating performance and conducting safety and fuel testing to address knowledge gaps in new reactor designs. Prototypes also may have additional safety features and instrumentation not included in the basic design, as well as limits on operation that would not apply to commercial units.

In a 2017 report, the DOE asserted that SFRs and HTGRs were mature enough for commercial demonstrations without the need for additional prototype testing. For either of these types, the DOE estimated it would cost approximately $4 billion and take 13 to 15 years to complete a first commercial demonstration unit, assuming that reactor construction and startup testing take seven years. After five years of operating the demonstration unit, additional commercial units could follow in the mid-2030s.

In contrast, for MSRs and other lower-maturity designs, the DOE report judged that both reduced-scale and full-scale prototypes (which the report referred to as "engineering" and "performance" demonstrations, respectively) would be needed before a commercial demonstration reactor could be built. These additional stages could add $2 billion to $4 billion to the cost and 20 years to the development timeline. The subsequent commercial demonstration would not begin until 2040; reactors would not be available for sale until the mid-2040s or even the 2050s.

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An additional challenge for NLWR demonstrations and subsequent commercial deployment is the availability of fuels for those reactors, which would differ significantly from the fuel that today's LWRs use. Even a single small reactor could require a few tons of HALEU per year—far more than the 900 kilograms per year projected to be available over the next several years from a DOE-funded pilot enrichment plant that Centrus Energy Corporation is building in Piketon, Ohio. It is far from clear whether that pilot will succeed and can be scaled up in time to support the two NLWR demonstrations by 2027, not to mention the numerous other HALEU-fueled reactor projects that have been proposed.

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The non-light-water nuclear reactor landscape is vast and complex, and it is beyond the scope of this report to survey the entire field in depth. Nevertheless, enough is clear even at this stage to draw some general conclusions regarding the safety and security of NLWRs and their prospects for rapid deployment.

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Little evidence supports claims that NLWRs will be significantly safer than today's LWRs. While some NLWR designs offer some safety advantages, all have novel characteristics that could render them less safe.

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The claim that any nuclear reactor system can "burn" or "consume" nuclear waste is a misleading oversimplification. Reactors can actually use only a fraction of spent nuclear fuel as new fuel, and separating that fraction increases the risks of nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

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Some NLWRs have the potential for greater sustainability than LWRs, but the improvements appear to be too small to justify their proliferation and safety risks.

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Once-through, breed-and-burn reactors have the potential to use uranium more efficiently without reprocessing, but many technical challenges remain.

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High-assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel, which is needed for many NLWR designs, poses higher nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism risks than the lower-assay LEU used by the operating LWR fleet.

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The significant time and resources needed to safely commercialize any NLWR design should not be underestimated.

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Recommendations

The DOE should suspend the advanced reactor demonstration program pending a finding by the NRC whether it will require full-scale prototype testing before licensing the two chosen designs as commercial power reactors.

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Congress should require that an independent, transparent, peer-review panel direct all DOE R&D on new nuclear concepts, including the construction of additional test or demonstration reactors.

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The DOE and other agencies should thoroughly assess the implications for proliferation and nuclear terrorism of the greatly expanded production, processing, and transport of the high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) required to support the widespread deployment of NLWRs.

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The United States should make all new reactors and associated fuel facilities eligible for IAEA safeguards and provide that agency with the necessary resources for carrying out verification activities.

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The DOE and Congress should consider focusing nuclear energy R&D on improving the safety and security of LWRs, rather than on commercializing immature NLWR designs."

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The COVID-19 Attack on the Integrity of Knowledge

"The promotion by the most famous newpapers, universities and public intellectuals of false and misleading information concerning a COVID19 “pandemic” which does not make sense when subject to even the simplest investigations is not the result of any particular politician or businessman, but rather the final deluge resulting from the gradual decay of intellectual integrity and the degradation of all information available to citizens around the world that has resulted because of multiple causes such as the exponential development of information technology that has degraded the value of the information circulated and the spread of a culture of commodification and commercialization that demands that information be interpreted as a source of wealth, and not as a means to pursue truth, to investigate the proper moral path for humanity going forward.

We are subject to so many fake news stories, that circulate through for-profit social media at a dizzying speed, that the political process for determining what is true and what is relevant has broken down in all nations and the standards for transparency and accountability that we took for granted have collapsed, even at famous institutions like Harvard and Stanford. All information is for sale. A pernicious Gresham’s Law of information has taken effect so that the super-rich hoard accurate information and the vast majority of citizens are drowned in specious information meant to deceive.

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The truth is dead and buried. And now as universities are dismantled, and intelligence agencies are hacked apart and sold at auction to Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon, the decay of information in the United States will hit a new low in the years ahead, going far beyond anything we have experienced, a new dark age on the scale of the loss of science and philosophy, governance and ethics, experienced during the fall of the Roman Empire.

The inevitable development of new technologies for reproduction and alteration of texts, images and videos has converged with the concentration of wealth around the world to create a new space in which a handful of ruthless players distribute false information, in increasingly realistic formats, to as to disrupt existing systems and create unprecedented chaos.

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The exponential increase in our capability to gather, store, share, alter and fabricate information of every form, coupled with a sharp drop in the cost of doing so, has given these criminal institutions the tools for absolute domination, and the citizens of the world, dumbed down by years of commercial media, are incapable of responding to this frontal attack.

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We must rethink our society and culture and create new, unprecedented, institutions. A change in human life and priorities is demanded to respond to the threats of this information age.The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that digital data will rise to an astounding 175 zettabytes of data by 2025, up from 4.4 zettabytes (4.4 trillion gigabytes) in 2013.The explosion in the amount of information circulating in the world, and the increase in the ease with which that information can be obtained or altered, will change every aspect of human experience.

We need a comprehensive response to the information revolution that not only proposes innovative ways to employ new technologies in a positive manner, but that also addresses the risks concretely in an international manner free of the influence of corporations searching out profit. The ease with which information of every form can now be reproduced and altered is an epistemological, ontological and institutional challenge for us.

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The information revolution has the potential to dramatically change human awareness of the world and inhibit our ability to make decisions if we are surrounded with convincing data whose reliability we cannot confirm. These challenges call out for a direct and systematic response. There are a range of piecemeal solutions to the crisis being undertaken around the world. The changes, however, are so fundamental that they call out for a systematic response.

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As the American writer and novelist James Baldwin once wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

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We should then launch a constitutional convention and draft a document that sets forth a new set of laws and responsible agencies for assessing the accuracy of information and addressing its misuse. Those who may object to such a constitution of information as a dangerous form of centralized authority likely to encourage further abuse are not fully aware of the difficulty of the problems we face. The abuse of information has already reached epic proportions, and we are just at the beginning of an exponential increase. There should be no misunderstanding: I am not suggesting a totalitarian Ministry of Truth that undermines a world of free exchange between individuals.

Rather, I am proposing a system that will bring accountability, institutional order and transparency to the institutions and companies that already engage in the control, collection, and alteration of information. Failure to establish a constitution of information will not assure preservation of an Arcadian utopia, but rather encourage the emergence of even greater fields of information collection and manipulation entirely beyond the purview of any institution.

The result will be increasing manipulation of human society by dark and invisible forces for which no set of regulations has been established — that is already largely the case. The constitution of information, in whatever form it may take, is the only way to start addressing the hidden forces in our society that tug at our institutional chains. Drafting a constitution is not merely a matter of putting pen to paper. The process requires the animation of that document in the form of living institutions with budgets and mandates.

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...The ultimate form of such a constitution cannot be predicted or determined in advance, and to present a version in advance here would be counterproductive.

We can, however, identify some of the key challenges and the issues that would be involved in drafting such a constitution of information....

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...the capacity of computers continues to increase dramatically, whereas human institutions change only very slowly. That gap between technological change and the evolution of human civilization has reached an extreme, all the more dangerous because so many people have trouble grasping the nature of the challenge and blame the abuse of information on the dishonesty of individuals or groups rather than on the technological change itself.

The cost for surveillance of electronic communications, for keeping track of the whereabouts of people and for documenting every aspect of human and non-human interaction, is dropping so rapidly that what was the exclusive domain of supercomputers at the National Security Agency a decade ago is now entirely possible for developing countries, and will soon be in the hands of individuals. In the near future, advanced computational power will mean that a modified laptop computer can track billions of people with considerable resolution, and that capability is combined with autonomous drones, we will need a new legal framework to respond in a systematic manner to the use and abuse of information at all levels of society.

If we start to plan the institutions that we will need, we can avoid the greatest threat: the invisible manipulation of information without accountability....

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We will see the emergence of virtual worlds that appear at least as real as the one that we inhabit. If some event becomes a consistent reality in those virtual worlds, it may be difficult, if not impossible, for people to comprehend that the event never actually “happened,” thereby opening the door for massive manipulation of politics and ultimately of history. Once we have complex virtual realities that present a physical landscape with almost as much depth as the real world, and the characters have elaborate histories and memories of events over decades and form populations of millions of anatomically distinct virtual people, the potential for confusion will be tremendous.

It will no longer be clear what reality has authority, and many political and legal issues will be irresolvable. But that is only half of the problem. These virtual worlds are already extending into social networks. An increasing number of people on Facebook are not actual people at all, but characters and avatars created by third parties. As computers grow more powerful, it will be possible to create thousands, then hundreds of thousands, of individuals on social networks who have complex personal histories and personalities. These virtual people will be able to engage human partners in compelling conversations that pass the Turing Test — the inability of humans to distinguish answers to the same question given to them by machines and people. And, because these virtual people can write messages and Skype 24 hours a day, and customize their messages to what the individual finds interesting, they can be more attractive than human “friends” and have the potential to seriously distort our very concept of society and reality.

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While the idea of individuals or groups setting off “dirty bombs” is certainly frightening, imagine a world in which the polity can never be sure whether anything they see/read/hear is true or not. This threat is at least as significant as surveillance operations, but has received far less attention....

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This challenge of drafting a constitution of information requires a new approach and a bottom-up design in order to sufficiently address the gamut of complex, interconnected issues found in transnational spaces like that in which digital information exists. The governance systems for information are simply not sufficient, and overhauling them to meet the standards necessary would be much more work and much less effective than designing and implementing an entirely new, functional system, which the constitution of information represents.

Moreover, the rate of technological change will require a system that can be updated and made relevant while at the same time safeguarding against it being captured by vested interests or made irrelevant. A possible model for the constitution of information can be found in the “Freedom of Information” section of the new Icelandic constitution drafted in 2011. The Constitutional Council engaged in a broad debate with citizens and organizations throughout the country about the content of the new constitution, which described in detail mechanisms required for government transparency and public accessibility that are far more aligned with the demands of today than other similar documents.

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Deciding who to invite and how will be difficult, but it should not be a stumbling block. The US Constitution has proven quite effective over the last few centuries even though it was drafted by a group that was not representative of the population of North America at the time. Although democratic process is essential to good government, there are moments in history in which we confront deeper ontological and epistemological questions that cannot be addressed by elections or referendums and require a select group of individuals like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.

At the same time, the constitutional convention cannot be merely a gathering of wise individuals, but will have to involve those directly engaged in the information economy and information policy. That process of drafting a constitution will involve the definition of key concepts, the establishment of the legal and social limits of the constitution’s authority, the formulation of a system for evaluating the use and misuse of information and policy suggestions that respond to abuses of information on a global scale.

The text of this constitution of information should be carefully drafted with a literary sense of language so that it will outlive the specifics of the moment and with a clear historic vision and unmistakable idealism that will inspire future generations, just as the US Constitution continues to inspire Americans. This constitution cannot be a flat bureaucratic rehashing of existing policies on privacy and security. We must be aware of the dangers involved in trying to determine what is and is not reliable information as we draft the constitution of information.

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Following David Brin’s argument in his book The Transparent Society, one essential assumption should be that privacy will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to protect in the current environment. We must accept, paradoxically, that much information must be made “public” in some sense in order to preserve its integrity and its privacy. That is to say that the process of rigorously protecting privacy is not sufficient, granted the overwhelming changes that will take place in the years to come. Brin draws heavily on Steve Mann’s concept of sousveillance, a process through which ordinary people could observe the actions of the rich and powerful so as to counter the power of the state or the corporation to observe the individual.

The basic assumption behind sousveillance is that there is no means of arresting the development of technologies for surveillance and that those with wealth and power will be able to deploy such technologies more effectively than ordinary citizens. Therefore, the only possible response to increased surveillance is to create a system of mutual monitoring to assure symmetry, if not privacy. Although the constitution of information does not assume that a system that allows the ordinary citizen to monitor the actions of those in power is necessary, the importance of creating information systems that monitor all information in a 360-degree manner should be seriously considered as part of a constitution of information.

...

The need to assure accuracy may ultimately be more essential than the need to protect privacy. The general acceptance of inaccurate descriptions of a state of affairs, or of individuals, is profoundly damaging and cannot be easily rectified. For this reason, I suggest as part of the three branches of government, that a “three keys” system for the management of information be adopted. That is to say that sensitive information will be accessible — otherwise we cannot assure that information will be accurate — but that information can only be accessed when three keys representing the three branches of government are presented. That process would assure that accountability can be maintained, because three institutions whose interests are not necessarily aligned must be present to access that information. Systems for the gathering, analysis and control of information on a massive scale have already reached a high level of sophistication.

What is sadly lacking is a larger vision of how information should be treated for the sake of our society. Most responses to the information revolution have been extremely myopic, dwelling on the abuse of information by corporations or intelligence agencies without considering the structural and technological background of those abuses. To merely attribute the misuse of information to a lack of human virtue is to miss the profound shifts sweeping through society today.

...

The terms “executive,” “legislative” and “judicial” are meant more as placeholders in this initial discussion, not actual concrete descriptions of the institutions to be established. The functioning of these units would be profoundly different from branches of current local and national governments, or even international organizations like the United Nations. If anything, the constitution of information will be a step forward towards a new approach to governance in general. Vision needed It would be irresponsible and rash to draft an “off the shelf” constitution of information that could be readily applied around the world to respond to the complex situation of information today.

Although I accept that initial proposals for a constitution of information may be dismissed as irrelevant and wrong-headed, I assert that as we enter an unprecedented age of information and most of the assumptions that undergirded our previous governance systems based on physical geography and discrete domestic economies will be overturned, there will be a critical demand for new systems to address this crisis. This initial foray can help to formulate the problems to be addressed and the format in which to do so in advance.

...

If all records for hundreds of years exist online, then it will be entirely possible, as suggested in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, 7 to alter all information in a single moment if there is not a constitution of information. But the solution must involve designing the institutions that will be used to govern information, thus bringing an inspiring vision to what we are doing. We must give a philosophical foundation for the regulation of information and open up new horizons for human society while appealing to our better angels.

Oddly, many assume that the world of policy must consist of turgid and mind-numbing documents in the specialized terminology of economists. But history also has moments such as the drafting of the US Constitution during which a small group of visionary individuals managed create an inspiring new vision of what is possible. That is what we need today with regard to information. To propose such an approach is not a misguided modern version of Neo-Platonism, but a chance to seize the initiative and put forth a vision in the face of ineluctable change, rather than just a response."

While I might disagree on certain aspects I applaud the author's attempt to engage with these issues.

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Philanthropist Bill Gates Invests in “Advanced” Reactor Nuclear Technology

"Bill Gates is investing in so-called advanced nuclear reactors. His company TerraPower LLC’s most recent project is in Wyoming:

TerraPower, founded by Gates about 15 years ago, and power company PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, said the exact site of the Natrium reactor demonstration plant is expected to be announced by the end of the year. Small advanced reactors, which run on different fuels than traditional reactors, are regarded by some as a critical carbon-free technology than can supplement intermittent power sources like wind and solar as states strive to cut emissions that cause climate change.

“This is our fastest and clearest course to becoming carbon negative,” Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon said. “Nuclear power is clearly a part of my all-of-the-above strategy for energy” in Wyoming, the country’s top coal-producing state.

The project features a 345 megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten salt-based energy storage that could boost the system’s power output to 500 MW during peak power demand. TerraPower said last year that the plants would cost about $1 billion.

Late last year the U.S. Department of Energy awarded TerraPower $80 million in initial funding to demonstrate Natrium technology, and the department has committed additional funding in coming years subject to congressional appropriations. (Business Today)

...

Scientific evidence confirms that the Bill Gates advanced reactors are more dangerous than conventional nuclear reactors. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists

… newly built reactors must be demonstrably safer and more secure than current generation reactors. Unfortunately, most “advanced” nuclear reactors are anything but.

The Union of Concerned Scientists undertook a comprehensive analysis of the most prominent and well-funded non-light-water reactor (NLWR) designs. …Based on the available evidence, we found that the NLWR designs we analyzed are not likely to be significantly safer than today’s nuclear plants. In fact, certain alternative reactor designs pose even more safety, proliferation, and environmental risks than the current fleet."

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World's largest Otto von Bismarck statue to be 'CONTEXTUALIZED' with help from African artists in German design contest - report

"The German city is planning a contest to redesign the world's largest von Bismarck monument, which towers over Old Elbe Park above the port of Hamburg. The contest will involve four public workshops featuring artists and scientists, especially those from Africa, Die Welt newspaper reported.

The Hamburg Senate wants to “contextualize” the granite monument to “show and evaluate the various dimensions” of von Bismarck, according to the report. The first Reich chancellor was one of many historical figures targeted for attack in recent years, especially when the Black Lives Matter protest movement spread internationally following the May 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

Von Bismarck has been posthumously pilloried by critics because of his role in German colonial policy, as well as tendencies that Die Welt called “anti-democratic” and “militaristic.”

Self-described leftist and retired Lutheran pastor Ulrich Hentschel has called for the statue's 1.83-meter head to be removed and carted away in a horse-drawn carriage, just as it was brought in when the monument was built in 1906."

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Americans could be cut off from the internet over copyright claims

"A court ruled that an ISP could avoid being liable for copyright infringement by terminating the account of a violator after as few as two accusations from a copyright holder.

The court also allowed a damages formula that will incentivize ISPs to terminate the accounts of their users rather than risk paying a ridiculous amount in damages for copyright liability.

The case was filed by Sony Music against Cox Communications, an ISP. The district court ruled in favor of Sony, which argued that Cox was liable for enabling its users to infringe on copyright laws by sharing music recordings in peer-to-peer networks.

The court found that Cox did not close the accounts of users accused of copyright infringement aggressively enough.

A previous lawsuit disqualified Cox from the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it did not terminate enough accounts of its users who had been accused of copyright infringement.

...

However, according to the EFF, the district court misinterpreted the law. Because Cox was not protected by DMCA’s safe harbor provisions, it could be held liable for the copyright infringement of users under “secondary liability” doctrines. The district court found Cox liable under both secondary liability doctrines vicarious liability and contributory infringement. But, it misinterpreted both doctrines, resulting in “disastrous consequences.”

Vicarious liability is drawn from the law of agency. In this case, Cox could be held responsible for the copyright infringement of its users if it had the “right and ability to supervise” the users. But the court ignored the fact that ISPs do not actively supervise the internet activity of users; that would be a gross violation of privacy that many users would not be comfortable with.

According to the court, Cox made a contributory infringement because it did not take the “simple measures” available to it to stop further infringement. But according to EFF, the law does not explicitly require ISPs to terminate accounts to avoid being liable.

...

“The consequence of getting the law wrong on secondary liability here, combined with the $1 billion damage award, is that ISPs will terminate accounts more frequently to avoid massive damages, and cut many more people off from the internet than is necessary to actually address copyright infringement,” EFF adds."

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Media hushes up report suggesting FBI involvement in Capitol riot, as White House turns anti-terrorism efforts on American people

"Fox News broadcast possibly the most consequential report in recent cable news history on Tuesday night. Fox host Tucker Carlson alleged that the Capitol Hill riot on January 6 – dubbed an “insurrection,” an “assault on our democracy,” and “domestic terrorism” – may have been, at least partly, an inside job.

Carlson’s claims were first made a day earlier by Revolver News, an upstart right-wing news site. Revolver pored over charging documents against members of the ‘Oath Keepers’ and ‘Proud Boys’ militias who took part in the riots, and discovered that alongside the rioters were dozens of “unindicted co-conspirators.” These co-conspirators (UCCs for short) allegedly committed crimes equal to or greater than those of the militia members, but were kept anonymous in the court documents and not charged.

Some of them allegedly booked and paid for hotel rooms for militia members, others provided transport to Washington DC. They set up communications channels on walkie-talkie-style apps, and used these apps to whip their comrades into a riotous frenzy. “I want to see thousands of normies burn that city to ash today,” one UCC said in a Proud Boys group chat, while another, identified only as “Person 1,” replied, “God let it happen… I will settle with seeing them smash some pigs to dust.”

One alleged member of the Oath Keepers, 65-year-old Thomas Caldwell of Virginia, was charged with conspiracy, obstructing an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and unlawful entry on restricted building or grounds – a rap sheet that could see him face 20 years in prison. However, a certain “Person Two” who took part in the exact same actions as Caldwell was not charged. Neither was a “Person Three” who offered Caldwell a hotel room and spoke of bringing explosives to the riot.

The fact that these individuals have not been named is suspicious, but isn’t conclusive proof of foul play. Co-conspirators often remain anonymous and escape charges if they strike plea deals and inform on their comrades. Yet the first plea deal in the Oath Keepers case was struck in April, three months after the first indictment mentioned UCCs. Altogether, 20 UCCs were mentioned in the Oath Keepers case.

...

The militia plot last year to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was orchestrated almost entirely by the FBI. The plotters’ driver and ‘explosives expert’ were both agents, while the militia’s head of security was an undercover informant. At every meeting leading up to the supposed kidnap attempt, an FBI source was present, and out of the five men who drove a van to kidnap Whitmer, three were FBI agents and informants. In a further bizarre coincidence, the FBI agent in charge of the infiltration operation was promoted after the plot was foiled, and given a position in the agency’s Washington DC field office. He now oversees the prosecution of hundreds of Capitol rioters."

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Florida governor pardons citizens facing fines for breaking Covid-19 restrictions

"Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) has pardoned citizens in his state still facing fines and other penalties from violating Covid-19 orders issued by local governments.

In a Wednesday press conference, DeSantis called his pardons “necessary” for Florida to return to “normal” and many of the orders violated were “way, way overboard.”

Mike and Jillian Carnevale, former gym owners in the state, joined the governor for his press conference. The two had multiple run-ins with officials when they refused to force their customers to wear masks while they were working out. The couple had misdemeanor charges against them dropped in May, but DeSantis argued the business owners should have never been punished at all for exercising “common sense.”

“Just understand, if you’re in good shape, you’re going to handle COVID 99.99% of the time. And so, they are telling you to close people’s gyms, have them eat takeout, and watch Netflix all day. That’s not good for health,” DeSantis said. “So, one of the best things you can do for COVID is to be in good health.”

The total number of pardons for individuals and businesses is not yet known."

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US judge upholds vaccine mandate by Texas hospital system, marking first federal ruling on whether jabs can be forced on employees

"US District Court Judge Lynn Hughes dismissed the lawsuit on Saturday, ruling that Houston Methodist had the legal right to force employees to be vaccinated – even though the jabs have only received emergency-use authorization, not full approval, from the FDA. He said the claim by the 117 employees who sued the hospital system that the inoculations were experimental and dangerous was both “false” and “irrelevant,” as Texas law protects workers from wrongful termination only if they are fired for refusing to commit an act that carries criminal penalties.

“We can now put this behind us and continue our focus on unparalleled safety, quality, service, and innovation,” Houston Methodist chief executive Marc Boom said in a statement.

Houston Methodist put 178 employees on unpaid leave last Monday because they had refused to be vaccinated against Covid-19. The workers are scheduled to be fired on June 21 if they still haven’t complied with the mandate. In a message to staff last week, Boom chided the recalcitrant staffers, saying, “Unfortunately, a small number of individuals have decided not to put their patients first.”

...

The judge also rebuked the plaintiffs for likening the allegedly forced medical experimentation imposed on them to Nazi experiments on human subjects during the Holocaust:

“Equating the injection requirements to medical experimentation in concentration camps is reprehensible. Nazi doctors conducted medical experiments on victims that caused pain, mutilation, permanent disability and, in many cases, death.”

More than 5,000 Americans have died after receiving Covid-19 vaccines, according to the Centers for Disease Control. It’s not clear whether vaccines caused any of those deaths, the agency said, but recent reports suggest a “plausible causal relationship” between the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 jab and blood clots that have caused fatalities.

Hughes even rejected the plaintiffs’ claims that the threat of losing their jobs was coercion. The employees can “freely choose to accept or refuse a Covid-19 vaccine,” he said, and if they decline, they will “simply need to work somewhere else.”

Jared Woodfill, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, told The Hill media outlet that the employees plan to appeal Saturday’s ruling. “This is just one battle in a larger war to protect the rights of employees to be free from being forced to participate in a vaccine trial as a condition of employment,” he said. “Ultimately, I believe Methodist Hospital will be held accountable for their conduct.”

...

Hughes was appointed to the federal court bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. His rulings have been the second-most reversed among jurists who’ve had at least 100 decisions reviewed by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals. Nearly three in 10 of his rulings have been overturned on appeal, according to a February 2021 report by Reuters, citing Westlaw’s litigation analytics."

The reason people attempt to shut down comparisons to the Holocaust is not because they're invalid. It's because after decades of propaganda getting you to think the Holocaust was the worst thing that ever happened and trotting it out anytime it could be useful to advance elite interests, it's now become an impressive psychological tool to encourage the rejection of whatever it is associated with.

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After multiple delays and cost overruns, US’ only under-construction nuclear power plant faces… MORE delays and cost overruns

"Two new reactors at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant are not expected to be operational on schedule, the Georgia Public Service Commission has been told. The project’s approved cost of $17.1 billion is projected to rise by roughly another $2 billion, the monitors told the commission in testimonies last week, which were released to the public on Monday.

The addition of Units 3 and 4 at the facility located in Burke County is supposed to make Vogtle the largest nuclear power plant in the US. Since construction started in 2009, the expansion has been plagued by delays and cost overruns and almost got canceled in 2017. At the moment, it’s the only major commercial nuclear project in the country.

The new reactor units are being built by Southern Nuclear (SNC), a subsidiary of the Southern Company gas and electric utility holding firm. The contractor insisted on redacting parts of the report to the commission to protect its trade secrets, but the sections made available to the public are still quite damning, describing a slew of problems that popped up between January and May.

...

Until recently, SNC said its first new reactor would be supplying electricity to customers in Georgia no later than this November and that the second reactor would be operational no later than November of 2022. Last month, the regulator was told to expect Unit 3 to become operational sometime in late December, with a second review a week later pushing the launch date to the first quarter of 2022.

The monitors expect Unit 3 to go online in the summer of 2022. Unit 4, which was energized earlier this month, may start commercial operation sometime between June and August 2023, since it “has been treated as a lower priority than” Unit 3, the commission was told.

Similar problems with ballooning costs and shifting launch schedules doomed the other major nuclear project launched in the US in this century. The two-unit expansion of the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in South Carolina was scrapped in 2017, four years after construction began. The reactors were originally expected to go online in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Their initial cost of $11.5 billion had grown to an estimated $25.7 billion by the time the project was closed."

Considering the complexity & possibility of truly catastrophic failure I'm not sure nuclear is the salvation it's proponents claim.

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H.R. 1 Reintroduced Piecemeal Through Similar Legislation in the States

"While the 117th Congress House Resolution 1 ‘For the People’ is awaiting a vote in the Senate, the Voter Integrity Project of Look Ahead America (LAA) has released a comprehensive state-by-state report of “attempts to pass dangerous elements of HR1 through state legislatures.”

...

Matt Braynard, Executive Director of LAA, wrote in an email to subscribers,

“You may have thought HR1 was dead, but let us assure you, it is not. Progressives have broken the federal legislation up into components that they are trying to sneak through state legislatures. Our research group has documented this conspiracy.”

Calling the report and the effort to reintroduce parts of H.R. 1 through the state legislatures “The Hidden Agenda,” the May 28 report analyzed 1,144 pieces of legislation to find what “seemed like H.R. 1 introduced in almost every state,” with Texas and New York having the most. The report then lists every bit by state and bill number, with links to the state government website where they can be found.

The report does not specify what portions of the H.R. 1 legislation are included in each bill specifically but does provide a readable description of a few words for each such as, “Automatic Registration,” “Felons Voting,” “Weakened Voter ID,” and “Drop Boxes.” On the report’s summary page at the LAA website, notable examples are given.

HB2864 in West Virginia would allow felons to vote, while 16-year-olds in Texas could vote if SB1899 is passed. H788 in Massachusetts mandates voting by all citizens, with a $15 fine for failure to comply (LAA’s page lists 765, which is actually a separate bill related to H.R. 1 – type initiatives.) Connecticut, which is not mentioned on LAA’s summary page, also has similar legislation that imposes a fine for not voting."

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The Wuhan “lab-leak” story: more fear porn

"If they can get you to focus on how the “monster virus” may have “escaped from a lab” (like in a sci-fi movie)…maybe you’ll forget about Sweden, Florida, Texas, etc.

If they can get you to focus on how the “monster virus” may have “escaped from a lab” (like in a sci-fi movie)…maybe you will forget how they redefined a medical “case” to include perfectly healthy people, and then reported an explosion of “cases.”

If they can get you to focus on how the “monster virus” may have “escaped from a lab” (like in a sci-fi movie)…maybe you’ll totally forget how they defined a “Covid hospitalization” as anyone in hospital, for any reason, who tested positive with a PCR test jacked up to 40 or 50.

If they can get you to focus on how the “monster virus” may have “escaped from a lab” (like in a sci-fi movie)…maybe you’ll totally forget how they defined a “Covid death” as anyone who died, of any cause, who tested positive with a PCR test within the previous 28 days.

If they can get you to focus on how the “monster virus” may have “escaped from a lab” (like in a sci-fi movie)…maybe you’ll forget how they suddenly decided that herd immunity had never existed, and could only be achieved with an experimental “vaccine.”

If they can get you to focus on how the “monster virus” may have “escaped from a lab” (like in a sci-fi movie)…maybe you’ll forget how they showed us fake photos of “people dropping dead in the streets from Covid” back when the Shock and Awe campaign began.

If they can get you to focus on how the “monster virus” may have “escaped from a lab” (like in a sci-fi movie)…maybe you’ll forget how they terrorized everyone with pictures of “death trucks.”

If they can get you to focus on how the “monster virus” may have “escaped from a lab” (like in a sci-fi movie)…maybe you’ll forget all the empty “emergency Covid hospitals.”

If they can get you to focus on how the “monster virus” may have “escaped from a lab” (like in a sci-fi movie)…maybe you’ll forget the totally non-apocalyptic age-adjusted deaths rates."

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Old Normal vs New: From 1980s Neoliberalism to the ‘Great Reset’

"The prevailing economic system demands ever-increasing levels of extraction, production and consumption and needs a certain level of annual GDP growth for large firms to make sufficient profit.

But at some point, markets become saturated, demand rates fall and overproduction and overaccumulation of capital becomes a problem. In response, we have seen credit markets expand and personal debt increase to maintain consumer demand as workers’ wages have been squeezed, financial and real estate speculation rise (new investment markets), stock buybacks and massive bailouts and subsidies (public money to maintain the viability of private capital) and an expansion of militarism (a major driving force for many sectors of the economy).

We have also witnessed systems of production abroad being displaced for global corporations to then capture and expand markets in foreign countries.

...

Thatcher’s stated mission was to unleash the entrepreneurial spirit by rolling back the ‘nanny state’. She wasted little time in crushing the power of the trade unions and privatising key state assets.

Despite her rhetoric, she did not actually reduce the role of the state. She used its machinery differently, on behalf of business. Neither did she unleash the ‘spirit of entrepreneurialism’. Economic growth rates under her were similar as in the 1970s, but a concentration of ownership occurred and levels of inequality rocketed.

Margaret Thatcher was well trained in perception management, manipulating certain strands of latent populist sentiment and prejudice. Her free market, anti-big-government platitudes were passed off to a section of the public that was all too eager to embrace them as a proxy for remedying all that was wrong with Britain....

Thatcher’s policies destroyed a fifth of Britain’s industrial base in just two years alone. The service sector, finance and banking were heralded as the new drivers of the economy, as much of Britain’s manufacturing sector was out-sourced to cheap labour economies.

Under Thatcher, employees’ share of national income was slashed from 65% to 53%. Long gone are many of the relatively well-paid manufacturing jobs that helped build and sustain the economy. In their place, the country has witnessed the imposition of a low taxation regime and low-paid and insecure ‘service sector’ jobs (no-contract work, macjobs, call centre jobs – many of which soon went abroad) as well as a real estate bubble, credit card debt and student debt, which helped to keep the economy afloat.

However, ultimately, what Thatcher did was – despite her rhetoric of helping small-scale businesses and wrapping herself in the national flag – facilitate the globalisation process by opening the British economy to international capital flows and allowing free rein for global finance and transnational corporations.

...

The great reset envisages a transformation of capitalism, resulting in permanent restrictions on fundamental liberties and mass surveillance as livelihoods and entire sectors are sacrificed to boost the monopoly and hegemony of pharmaceutical corporations, high-tech/big data giants, Amazon, Google, major global chains, the digital payments sector, biotech concerns, etc.

Under the cover of COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, the great reset is being rolled out under the guise of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ in which smaller enterprises are to be driven to bankruptcy or bought up by monopolies. Economies are being ‘restructured’ and many jobs and roles will be carried out by AI-driven technology.

The WEF says the public will ‘rent’ everything they require: stripping the right of ownership under the guise of a ‘green economy’ underpinned by the rhetoric of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’.

At the same time new (‘green product’) markets are being created and, on the back of COVID, fresh opportunities for profit extraction are opening up abroad.

...

Just a month into the COVID crisis, the IMF and World Bank were already facing a deluge of aid requests from developing countries. Scores of countries were asking for bailouts and loans. Ideal cover for rebooting the global economy via a debt crisis and the subsequent privatisation of national assets and the further ‘structural adjustment’ of economies.

Many people waste no time in referring to this as some kind of ‘Marxist’ or ‘communist’ takeover of the planet because a tiny elite will be dictating policies. This has nothing to do with Marxism. An authoritarian capitalist elite – supported by their political technocrats – aims to secure even greater control of the global economy. It will no longer be a (loosely labelled) ‘capitalism’ based on ‘free’ markets and competition (not that those concepts ever really withstood proper scrutiny).

Economies will be monopolised by global players, not least e-commerce platforms run by the likes of Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, Google and their multi-billionaire owners.

Essential (for capitalism) new markets will also be created through the ‘financialisation’ and ownership of all aspects of nature, which is to be colonised, commodified and traded under the fraudulent notion of protecting the environment.

...

They will not only control and own data about consumption but also control and own data on production, logistics, who needs what, when they need it, who should produce it, who should move it and when it should be moved. Independent enterprises will disappear or become incorporated into the platforms acting as subservient cogs. Elected representatives will be mere technocratic overseers of these platforms and the artificial intelligence tools that plan and determine all of the above.

...

It has long been the case that a significant part of the working class has been deemed ‘surplus to requirements’ – three decades ago, such people were sacrificed on the altar of neo-liberalism. They lost their jobs due to automation and offshoring. They have had to rely on meagre state welfare and run-down public services.

But what we are now seeing is the possibility of hundreds of millions around the world being robbed of their livelihoods. Forget about the benign-sounding ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and its promised techno-utopia. What we are witnessing right now seems to be a major restructuring of capitalist economies.

With AI and advanced automation of production, distribution and service provision (3D printing/manufacturing, drone technology, driverless vehicles, lab grown food, farmerless farms, robotics, etc), a mass labour force – and therefore mass education, mass welfare, mass healthcare provision and entire systems that were in place to reproduce labour for capitalist economic activity – will no longer be required. As economic activity is restructured, labour’s relationship to capital is being transformed.

In a reorganised system that no longer needs to sell the virtues of excessive individualism (consumerism), the levels of political and civil rights and freedoms we have been used to will not be tolerated."

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Ohio HB 294 Election Security and Modernization Act

"Introduced by Republicans, this bill changes Ohio election law in preparation for future elections in a state where Donald Trump won Ohio’s 18 Electoral Votes in 2020 with over 53% of the popular vote and a margin of over 8%.

...

Democrat critics call it a voter suppression bill and said the 90-minute session denied them the ability to thoroughly vet 174 pages. The Ohio Women’s Alliance referenced Jim Crow and criticized what they called “unequal and discriminatory” targeting of “vulnerable populations that use voting as means for survival.” A change to the absentee ballot request process was criticized for its potential to make the process more confusing and to disenfranchise minority voters.

...

HB 294 would:

--Change the deadline for mailing absentee ballots to 10 days before election day rather than 3.

--Restrict drop boxes to being located at the Board of Elections office with 24-hour video surveillance and reduce drop-off days from 30 to 10.

--Allow voter registration and updating of address, driver’s license number, and other personal information at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Any such change would trigger a reset in the timestamp that determines “active voter status,” a metric used when cleaning voter rolls.

--Direct the Secretary of State to adopt rules “for the purpose of improving the speed of processing new voter registrations” that would make that data electronic and send the original application to the applicable Board of Elections (BOE).

--Prohibit “Direct electronic connection” between any of various voter registration locations, such as the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, public libraries, high schools, and vocational schools, and the statewide voter registration database. Any such data would first be required to be verified by the SoS or BOE.

--Restrict use of voting machine manufacturers, assemblers, or distributing entities with which any elected official or spouse is a partner, owner, or member, excepting ownership of less than 10% of any publicly-traded company.

--Require “systematic logic and accuracy testing if every component of every voting machine, marking device, or piece of automatic tabulating equipment with every ballot style to be used in the election.” The testing requirements further stipulate that both valid and invalid votes be tested and that an errorless count be achieved before use."

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The Recognition of Transgender Identity: Respect, Lies and Bullshit

"We often hear these days that we should refer to trans women as women and trans men as men, and that we should use whichever pronoun transgender people prefer. The people who make these claims typically do not say that we should refer to transgender people in such ways because those referential statements are true. Instead, they seem to be saying that we should be respectful to transgender people and that this respect requires the recognition of transgender people as they see themselves. Questions, therefore, concerning the truth or epistemic justification of those referential statements are ignored in favor of some presentation of “respect.”

For example, Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post recently decried a judge who refused to refer to a trans woman as a woman. Marcus protested that “Even in an uncivil, unyielding era, all of us—certainly federal judges endowed with enormous power and lifetime tenure—should be able to summon the grace to grant her simple request to be described that way.”

Marcus did not argue that the judge should refer to this trans person as a woman because this person is truly a woman. The question of truth did not factor into her reasoning. Marcus simply noted, twice, that this trans person identifies as a woman, and from that fact alone, Marcus claimed that respect and grace require this judge to refer to the trans woman as a woman. Hence, respect is the object of Marcus’s concern, not truth or epistemic justification.

Despite what you might suspect, Marcus’s line of thinking is not held exclusively by those who are on the left of the political spectrum. For instance, the more conservative author Katherine Timpf seems to believe something similar. In a 2016 piece Timpf wrote for the National Review, she stated that she personally considers it a matter of “basic respect” to use whichever pronoun a trans person prefers, adding that she believes “people who choose to use pronouns that might be different from what people might expect should feel comfortable sharing that with others.” Timpf pays no attention to truth, meaning. and the accurate application of pronouns as they correspond to a person’s gender because truth does not seem to matter. Her real concern is with rituals of “basic respect,” even if it leads to her uttering false or misleading statements. Again, respect is the object of Timpf’s concern, and the question of truth or epistemic justification is sidelined.

...

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt draws this helpful distinction between lying and bullshitting in his 1986 essay, “On Bullshit”...

...

According to Frankfurt, both the liar and the bullshitter use language in ways apart from the respect for truth and wisdom, and their cultivation. But bullshitting is worse than lying because the act of lying at least suggests a concern with truth even if truth is disrespected. By contrast, bullshit suggests no concern for truth, or falsity; truth and falsity are not even paid the respect of distinguishment. It is this indifference that makes bullshit worse than a lie.

The distinction Frankfurt draws is interesting when we consider the issue of preferred pronouns. Recall that under current norms, we are allegedly obliged to be respectful toward transgender people, and that this respect requires the recognition of transgender people as they see themselves. On this obligation, the question of whether it is true that trans women are women and trans men are men is treated as an impertinent or unnecessary consideration; the truth or falsity of the identity claim is not a concern. Instead, the concern is with the attainment of some other end—flattery, cultural capital, the preservation of feelings, or something else. Whatever the end might be, the concern is not with expressing something true or false about transgender people.

Therefore, if we presume that Frankfurt is right, and he seems to be, then saying that trans women are women and trans men are men from some sense “respect” amounts to bullshit, meaning such statements are bad uses of language.

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Let me be clear. I am not saying that transgender people deserve or are entitled to the recognition of their identities, nor do I deny it. My point is just that if anyone states that trans women are women or that trans men are men, then that should be an act of genuine recognition and not a placating expression, virtue signal, or an empty slogan. He should actually believe that trans women are women and trans men are men if he is going to say so. Otherwise, he is being disrespectful toward transgender people because he presents himself inauthentically and offers false recognition.

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Objection 2: But trans people are the authorities on their identity. Who are you not to believe them?

A person, whether he is transgender or not, is likely in the best place to tell us what or who he believes himself to be. We might take them as authorities for that question. But the recognition that he is the authority for what he believes about his identity does not entail or even suggest that anyone else is obliged to recognize his professed identity or accept that his beliefs about his identity are true. After all, some professed identities might be false, unreasonable, or incoherent; and if an identity is any of those things, then we need the space to politely decline recognition.

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If there is one idea that I would insist upon and summarizes my essay, it is this: Transgender people are entitled to authenticity, not agreement, hollow words, or slogans. Therefore, they are entitled to be free from lies and bullshit, even on matters concerning their identity. That might be hard to accept, but the commitment to truth and authenticity is not easy. In fact, sometimes it is profoundly difficult. We must remind ourselves that it is always worth the trouble."

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The Etymological Animal Must Slip Out of the Cage of Habit to Grasp Truth

"Words slip out of our mouths to surprise us.  Thoughts slip into our minds to shock us.  Dreams slip into our nights to sometimes slip into our waking thoughts to startle us.  And, as the wonderful singer/songwriter Paul Simon, sings, we are always “slip sliding away,” a reminder that can be a spur to courage and freedom or an inducement to fear and shut-upness.

Slips are double-edged.

It is obvious that since September 11, 2001, and more so since the corona virus lockdowns and the World Economic Forum’s push for a Fourth Industrial Revolution that will lead to the marriage of artificial intelligence, cyborgs, digital technology, and biology, that the USA and other countries have been slipping into a new form of fascist control.

Or at least it should be obvious, especially since this push has been accompanied by massive censorship by technology companies of dissenting voices and government crackdowns on what they term “domestic terrorists.”  Dissent has become unpatriotic and worse – treasonous.

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John Berger, commenting on the ghostly life of our received ideas whose etymology is so often lost on us, aptly said:

Our totalitarianism begins with our teleology.

And the teleology in use today is digital technology controlled by wealthy elites and governments for social control. For years they have been creating certain dispositions in the general public, as Jacques Ellul has said, “by working spells upon them and exercising a kind of fascination” that makes the public receptive to the digital life.

This is accomplished slowly in increments, as permanent dispositions are established by slipping in regular reminders of how wonderful the new technology is and how its magical possibilities will make life so free and easy. Efficient. Happiness machines. A close study of the past twenty-five years would no doubt reveal the specifics of this campaign.

In The Technological Society, Ellul writes:

"…the use of certain propaganda techniques is not meant to entail immediate and definite adhesion to a given formula, but rather to bring about a long-range vacuity of the individual.  The individual, his soul massaged, emptied of his natural tendencies, and thoroughly assimilated to the group, is ready for anything.  Propaganda’s chief requirement is not so much to be rational, well-grounded, and powerful as it is to produce individuals especially open to suggestion who can easily be set into motion."

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The end result, he argues, is the establishment of an abstract universe, in which reality is completely recreated in people’s minds.  This fake reality is truer than reality as the news is faked and people are formed rather than informed.

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In our culture of the copy, new thoughts are difficult and so the problems that plague society persist and get rehashed ad infinitum.  I think most people realize at some level of feeling if not articulation that they are caught in a repetitive cycle of social stasis that is akin to addiction, one that has been imposed on them by elite forces they sense but don’t fully comprehend since they have bought into this circular trap that they love and hate simultaneously. The cell phone is its symbol and the world-wide lockdowns its reality.

...

Jim Garrison of JFK fame said that we live in a doll’s house of propaganda where the population is treated as children and fantasies have replaced reality. He was right.

So how can we break out of this deeply embedded impasse?

This is the hard part, for digital addiction has penetrated deep into our lives.

I believe we need to disrupt our routines, break free from our habits, in order to clearly see what is happening today.

We need to slip away for a while. Leave our cells. Let their doors clang shut behind. Abandon television. Close the computer. Step out without any mask, not just the paper kind but the ones used to hide from others.  Disburden our minds of its old rubbish. Become another as you go walking away. Find a park or some natural enclave where the hum and buzz quiets down and you can breathe.

Recall that in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four the only place Winston Smith can escape the prying eyes and spies of Big Brother, the only place he can grasp the truth, was not in analyzing Doublethink or Crimestop, but “in a natural clearing, a tiny grass knoll surrounded by tall saplings that shut it in completely” and bluebells bloomed and a thrush sang madly.

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I am not proposing that such a retreat is a permanent answer to the propaganda that engulfs us. But without it we are lost.

Without it, we cannot break free from received opinions and the constant mental noise the digital media have substituted for thought.  Without it, we cannot distinguish our own thoughts from those slyly suggested to us to make us “available.” Without it, we will always feel ourselves lost, “shipwrecked upon things,” in the words of the Spanish philosopher Ortega Y Gasset.

If we are to take a stand against the endless lies and a world-wide war waged against regular people by the world’s elites, we must first take “a stand within the self, ensimismamiento,” by slipping away into contemplation. Only then, once we have clarified what we really believe and don’t believe, can we take meaningful action.

There’s an old saying about falling or slipping between the cracks. It’s meant to be a bad thing and to refer to a place where no one is taking care of you. The saying doesn’t make sense. For if you end up between the cracks, you are on the same ground where habits hold you in learned helplessness. Better to slip into the cracks where, as Leonard Cohen sings, “the light gets in.”

It may feel like you are slipping away, but you may be exploring your roots."

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Covid Was a Tipping Point for Telehealth. If Some Have Their Way, Virtual Visits Are Here to Stay.

"Last fall, a coalition of leading patient groups — including the American Heart Association, the Arthritis Foundation, Susan G. Komen and the advocacy arm of the American Cancer Society — hailed the expansion of telehealth, noting the technology “can and should be used to increase patient access to care.”

But the widespread embrace of telemedicine — arguably the most significant health care shift wrought by the pandemic — is not without skeptics. Even supporters acknowledge the need for safeguards to prevent fraud, preserve quality and ensure that the digital health revolution doesn’t leave behind low-income patients and communities of color with less access to technology — or leave some with only virtual options in place of real physicians.

Some worry that telehealth, like previous medical innovations, may become another billing tool that simply drives up costs, a fear exacerbated by the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the burgeoning digital health industry.

Companies offering remote urgent care, virtual primary care and new wearable technologies to monitor patient health are exploding, with the annual global telehealth market expected to top $300 billion by 2026, up nearly fivefold from 2019, according to research company PitchBook.

...

While Medicare and other insurers fueled the explosion of telehealth over the past year by paying the same rates as for in-person visits, many are expected to push for lower prices when the federally designated public health crisis ends. At the same time, physicians and hospitals are looking to maintain income.

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...In a nationwide poll last year, 8 in 10 Americans who had used telehealth said they “liked it” or “loved it.” Nearly the same share said they were likely to continue using it after the pandemic, according to the survey by the Harris Poll.

Just a year ago, telehealth — or telemedicine, as it’s also called — was largely a curiosity. Patient and physician wariness and strict rules about how doctors could bill had squelched widespread use.

Fearing fraud and overuse, the federal government tightly restricted the kind of video and audio visits that could be billed to Medicare, limiting use mainly to rural areas and to visits in which a doctor was in an office or hospital, rather than working remotely.

...

...While fewer than 1% of primary care visits in Medicare occurred virtually in January 2020, by April nearly half did, according to data compiled by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

At UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurer, the number of covered telehealth visits increased nearly thirtyfold, rising from 1.2 million visits in 2019 to 34 million last year. Other insurers reported as much as an eightyfold increase.

...

Other systems are moving beyond televisits to expand use of remote monitoring tools in people’s homes that track vital signs of patients with chronic illnesses such as diabetes.

Perhaps nowhere has telehealth proved more transformational than in mental health services and treatment for patients addicted to drugs.

“Telehealth has been a godsend,” said Ellen Bemis, chief executive of AMHC, a network of behavioral health clinics in rural northern Maine. Bemis said the clinics are already seeing patients adhere better to their medications as they remain in better contact virtually.

“I hope we never go back,” she said.

...

Several insurance officials said telehealth could ultimately save money by routing some medical care from high-cost doctors’ offices and hospitals to lower-priced virtual visits, particularly for urgent care.

And some insurance companies — including Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in New England and Priority Health in Michigan — are marketing health plans with lower premiums that steer patients to virtual care.

“We see this being a long-term change,” said Dr. Michael Sherman, Harvard Pilgrim’s chief medical officer.

Sherman said the health plan is even exploring whether to help low-income patients get internet access to expand telehealth further. “We have proven to ourselves that this works,” he said."

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The War Over Genetic Privacy Is Just Beginning

"All of those fascinating, genealogical searches that allow you to trace your family tree by way of a DNA sample can now be used against you and those you love.

As of 2019, more than 26 million people had added their DNA to ancestry databases. It’s estimated those databases could top 100 million profiles within the year, thanks to the aggressive marketing of companies such as Ancestry and 23andMe.

It’s a tempting proposition: provide some mega-corporation with a spit sample or a cheek swab, and in return, you get to learn everything about who you are, where you came from, and who is part of your extended your family.

...

Whereas fingerprint technology created a watershed moment for police in their ability to “crack” a case, DNA technology is now being hailed by law enforcement agencies as the magic bullet in crime solving.

Indeed, police have begun using ancestry databases to solve cold cases that have remained unsolved for decades.

For instance, in 2018, former police officer Joseph DeAngelo was flagged as the notorious “Golden State Killer” through the use of genetic genealogy, which allows police to match up an unknown suspect’s crime scene DNA with that of any family members in a genealogy database. Police were able to identify DeAngelo using the DNA of a distant cousin found in a public DNA database. Once police narrowed the suspect list to DeAngelo, they tracked him—snatched up a tissue he had tossed in a trash can—and used his DNA on the tissue to connect him to a rash of rapes and murders from the 1970s and ‘80s.

Although DeAngelo was the first public arrest made using forensic genealogy, police have identified more than 150 suspects since then. Most recently, police relied on genetic genealogy to nab the killer of a 15-year-old girl who was stabbed to death nearly 50 years ago.

Who wouldn’t want to get psychopaths and serial rapists off the streets and safely behind bars, right? At least, that’s the argument being used by law enforcement to support their unrestricted access to these genealogy databases.

...

...a few states have started introducing legislation to restrict when and how police use these genealogical databases, with Maryland requiring that they can only be used for serious violent crimes such as murder and rape, only after they exhaust other investigatory methods, and only under the supervision of a judge.

Yet the debate over genetic privacy—and when one’s DNA becomes a public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures—is really only beginning.

...

All 50 states now maintain their own DNA databases, although the protocols for collection differ from state to state. Increasingly, many of the data from local databanks are being uploaded to CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), the FBI’s massive DNA database, which has become a de facto way to identify and track the American people from birth to death.

Even hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies’ DNA, often without their parents’ knowledge or consent. It’s part of the government’s mandatory genetic screening of newborns. In many states, the DNA is stored indefinitely.

What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government database that contains intimate information about who they are, their ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations to be followers, leaders or troublemakers.

Get ready, folks, because the government— helped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), President Trump (who signed the Rapid DNA Act into law), the courts (which have ruled that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this new crime-fighting gadget)—has embarked on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.

Referred to as “magic boxes,” Rapid DNA machines—portable, about the size of a desktop printer, highly unregulated, far from fool-proof, and so fast that they can produce DNA profiles in less than two hours—allow police to go on fishing expeditions for any hint of possible misconduct using DNA samples.

...

...while much of the public debate, legislative efforts and legal challenges in recent years have focused on the protocols surrounding when police can legally collect a suspect’s DNA (with or without a search warrant and whether upon arrest or conviction), the question of how to handle “shed” or “touch” DNA has largely slipped through without much debate or opposition.

As scientist Leslie A. Pray notes:

"We all shed DNA, leaving traces of our identity practically everywhere we go. Forensic scientists use DNA left behind on cigarette butts, phones, handles, keyboards, cups, and numerous other objects, not to mention the genetic content found in drops of bodily fluid, like blood and semen. In fact, the garbage you leave for curbside pickup is a potential gold mine of this sort of material. All of this shed or so-called abandoned DNA is free for the taking by local police investigators hoping to crack unsolvable cases. Or, if the future scenario depicted at the beginning of this article is any indication, shed DNA is also free for inclusion in a secret universal DNA databank."

What this means is that if you have the misfortune to leave your DNA traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you’ve already got a file somewhere in some state or federal database—albeit it may be a file without a name. As Heather Murphy warns in the New York Times: “The science-fiction future, in which police can swiftly identify robbers and murderers from discarded soda cans and cigarette butts, has arrived…  Genetic fingerprinting is set to become as routine as the old-fashioned kind.”

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Today, helped along by robotics and automation, DNA processing, analysis and reporting takes far less time and can bring forth all manner of information, right down to a person’s eye color and relatives. Incredibly, one company specializes in creating “mug shots” for police based on DNA samples from unknown “suspects” which are then compared to individuals with similar genetic profiles.

If you haven’t yet connected the dots, let me point the way.

Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American populace potential suspects, DNA technology in the hands of government will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all merely waiting to be matched up with a crime.

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Every dystopian sci-fi film we’ve ever seen is suddenly converging into this present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science, technology and a government that wants to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful.

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...if scientists can, using DNA, track salmon across hundreds of square miles of streams and rivers, how easy will it be for government agents to not only know everywhere we’ve been and how long we were at each place but collect our easily shed DNA and add it to the government’s already burgeoning database?

Not to be overlooked, DNA evidence is not infallible: it can be wrong, either through human error, tampering, or even outright fabrication, and it happens more often than we are told. The danger, warns scientist Dan Frumkin, is that crime scenes can be engineered with fabricated DNA.

Now if you happen to be the kind of person who trusts the government implicitly and refuses to believe it would ever do anything illegal or immoral, then the prospect of government officials—police, especially—using fake DNA samples to influence the outcome of a case might seem outlandish.

Yet as history shows, the probability of our government acting in a way that is not only illegal but immoral becomes less a question of “if” and more a question of “when.”

With technology, the courts, the corporations and Congress conspiring to invade our privacy on a cellular level, suddenly the landscape becomes that much more dystopian."

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Justin Trudeau: Freedom of expression isn’t “freedom to hate”

"“The defense of freedom of expression is in our Charter, and it is fundamental to this government and our country that people need to be able to express themselves. There needs to be freedom of conscience, and religion … There isn’t, however, freedom to hate,” said the Prime Minister, making the increasingly common point that undermines the entire point of free speech.

“Hatred, hate speech is not allowed in Canada. The line that every government needs to walk between, of course, protecting freedom of expression, but not permitting incitement to hatred… is one that is continual, as a battle, as a reflection, and as technologies change, as means of communications change, we need to keep up with that.

“What is important is to ensure that, yes, there is always freedom to criticize, freedom to challenge one’s government, freedom to express one’s opinions, but not freedom to push intolerance and hatred against fellow Canadians, or discriminations against people who are different.”"

Sounds like Trudeau hates the haters (and freedom).

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Bills in Wisconsin Senate Would Change Elections

"In the Assembly, Representative Janel Brandtjen is said to be finalizing legislation that aims to restrict influence from outside groups such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which is funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. She told a local reporter, “You’re talking about millions of dollars with no regulations and no reporting… and this is just the money we know about.”

Among the recent legislation introduced through the Wisconsin State Senate, only SB 208 has made it through and been signed by Governor Tony Evers. It requires the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) to publish meeting minutes. The Governor is not expected to sign the others if they make it to his desk, particularly if they make voting more difficult. Pending bills include those that still await a vote in the Senate and those that have gone to the State Assembly after passage.

The bills still pending Senate Votes are SB 205 and SB 206, which are related to absentee voting in residential care facilities and retirement homes and among the indefinitely confined. Likewise, SB 209 prohibits drop boxes for absentee ballots that are not attached to the municipal clerk’s office. It also requires publication of the location and days of availability and that the box is emptied once per day in public view.

SB 211 requires a standard absentee ballot application from the WEC to be created, rather than the current law that allows any written request. Although “certain voters at residential care facilities and qualified retirement homes” are excepted. It also requires the absentee voter to certify facts that establish voting eligibility, including name, date of birth, and street address.

SB 204 is similar to SB 211 but also requires voter ID and mandates that absentee ballots are sent only to those who request them.

SB 214 authorizes absentee ballot canvassers established by the municipality to begin canvassing absentee ballots the day before an election, rather than only the day of. It mandates that counting continue until all absentee ballots are complete. The updated totals of those ballots already canvassed and those remaining to be counted be posted on a website and at the municipal clerk’s office at least daily. It establishes tamper-evident seal and double-lock requirements for overnight storage of tabulating equipment, memory devices, and absentee ballots. It also makes willful neglect of legally required election duties by election officials a crime and allows adjacent populations less than 35,000 to enter agreements to share polling places.

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SB 213 is also pending Assembly vote and would allow courts to address election complaints directly rather than routing complainants first through the WEC.

SB 207 ostensibly restricts outside influence on election administration, restricting application or acceptance of any donation or grant for election administration equipment, materials, or personnel from a nongovernmental entity, “except as expressly authorized under the statutes relating to elections.”

SB 210 requires the municipal clerk, chief inspector, and board of canvassers to provide election observers “uniform and nondiscriminatory access to all stages of the election process, including recounts.” It requires observers to wear their name on a badge along with the name of any applicable organization and prohibits them from wearing campaign or ballot advocacy material. They also may not interfere with a voter nor hinder an election official’s performance of duties.

SB 212 prohibits election officials from intentionally assisting knowingly invalid votes to be counted or knowingly valid votes to go uncounted, and the same for voter registrations. It makes a crime of failing to promptly report election fraud committed by another election official."