Erin Reed , Commentator - Erin In The Morning. / truthout
Stephan:
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are so poorly governed that if you look at their social outcome data, from healthcare to education it is clear they are basically third-world countries. What is even sadder is how filled with hate and White racism they are, as this article describes. They remind me of South Africa during the apartheid period of its history. This is their latest nastiness, and it is spreading to other TCP-dominated states.
Opponents of several bills targeting transgender youth attend a rally at the Alabama State House to draw attention to anti-transgender legislation on March 30, 2021, in Montgomery, Alabama. Credit: Julie Bennett / Getty
The pace of anti-transgender legislation has slowed in recent weeks, with several states, known for previously targeting transgender individuals, failing to pass any such laws. However, a different dynamic is emerging across the Gulf South, where three states are advancing bills that would cease the legal recognition of transgender individuals, potentially having significant repercussions for their trans residents. Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are introducing bills to define sex in a manner that excludes transgender individuals, potentially affecting birth certificates, driver’s licenses, bathroom access, and more.
The bills, dubbed the “Women’s Bills of Rights” by their supporters, fall far short of actually protecting women’s rights. They fail to protect access to birth control or abortion, do not ensure equitable pay, neither allocate funds for nor promote women’s athletics, and lack any provisions designed to curb violence against women. Instead, […]
Nitasha Tiku and Pranshu Verma , - Microsoft Start
Stephan:
This AI fake video trend is getting worse and worse, and unsuspecting women are discovering that their faces are being “stolen” to be used in fake videos. As you can see in this story local police departments are not equipped to deal with this, and our dysfunctional Congress has neither the will nor the capability to deal with it. My recommendation to you is to send the URL for this story to your district’s Congress member and Senators and ask them to tell you what they are planning to do about this.
Michel Janse was on her honeymoon when she found out she had been cloned.
The 27-year-old content creator was with her husband in a rented cabin in snowy Maine when messages from her followers began trickling in, warning that a YouTube commercial was using her likeness to promote erectile dysfunction supplements.
The commercial showed Janse — a Christian social media influencer who posts about travel, home decor and wedding planning — in her real bedroom, wearing her real clothes but describing a nonexistent partner with sexual health problems.
“Michael spent years having a lot of difficulty maintaining an erection and having a very small member,” her doppelgänger says in the ad.
Scammers appeared to have stolen and manipulated her most popular video — an emotional account of her earlier divorce — probably using a new wave of artificial intelligence tools that make it easier to create realistic deepfakes, a catchall term for media altered or created with AI.
With just a few seconds of footage, scammers can now combine video and audio using tools from companies […]
Sarah Mervosh and Francesca Paris, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan:
America needs to sit down with itself and have a serious conversation about what is happening with our culture. We are a deteriorating culture in every aspect from healthcare to childcare, elder care, and even just learning to read, write, and do simple math. To quote this report, “The trends suggest that something fundamental has shifted in American childhood and the culture of school, in ways that may be long lasting. What was once a deeply ingrained habit — wake up, catch the bus, report to class — is now something far more tenuous.”
In Anchorage, affluent families set off on ski trips and other lengthy vacations, with the assumption that their children can keep up with schoolwork online.
In a working-class pocket of Michigan, school administrators have tried almost everything, including pajama day, to boost student attendance.
And across the country, students with heightened anxiety are opting to stay home rather than face the classroom.
In the four years since the pandemic closed schools, U.S. education has struggled to recover on a number of fronts, from learning loss, to enrollment, to student behavior.
But perhaps no issue has been as stubborn and pervasive as a sharp increase in student absenteeism, a problem that cuts across demographics and has continued long after schools reopened.
Nationally, an estimated 26 percent of public school students were considered chronically absent last school year, up from 15 percent before the pandemic, according to the most recent data, from 40 states and Washington, D.C., compiled by the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. Chronic absence is typically defined as missing at least 10 percent of the school year, or about 18 days, […]
Because few Americans seem to have any real grasp of history, I don’t think many realize that we are mimicking step-by-step Hitler’s rise to power, with Trump in the role of Hitler. On 30 January 1933 after a series of negotiations amongst the parties Hitler was formally appointed as Germany’s new chancellor. The TCP’s Project 2025 is following the same track.
One of the coalition members of the far-right Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” presidential transition plan is proposing to overhaul the US Constitution to keep former President Donald Trump in power beyond the eight-year limit.
The American Conservative — one of the 100 advisory groups to Project 2025 — recently published a call to repeal the 22nd Amendment as a means of allowing Trump to seek a “second consecutive term” in the White House if he wins in November. That amendment has been in place since 1951, and stipulates that presidents can’t spend more than eight years in office, whether in two back-to-back terms or staggered between other administrations.
“If, by 2028, voters feel Trump has done a poor job, they can pick another candidate; but if they feel he has delivered on his promises, why should they be denied the freedom to choose him once more?” writer Peter Tonguette proposed. “As with Prohibition, it is simply a matter of finding the will to get rid of a bad idea that needlessly limits Americans’ freedom.”
This is what genocide looks like and the United States is providing the weapons to make this happen. The problem we face as a country is that in the midst of this Israeli created genocide, our American democracy hangs by a thread and we are faced with an election that is not about Democrats vs. Republicans. It is about continuing democracy or becoming a pseudo-democracy ruled by an authoritarian criminal and the uber-wealthy oligarchs who fund him. abetted by the peasants who were ignorant enough to vote him into office.
A makeshift graveyard near the European Hospital outside Khan Younis, Gaza. “This is just one graveyard I discovered just outside the hospital,” says Khan. “There’s so many dead.” Credit: Yasser Khan
Throughout the past five and a half months, Israel has waged a full-spectrum war against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. The United States and other Western nations have supplied not only the weapons for this war of annihilation against the Palestinians, but also key political and diplomatic support.
The results of the actions of this coalition of the killing have been devastating. Conservative estimates hold that more than 31,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 13,000 children. More than 8,000 people remain missing, many of them believed to have died in the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli attacks. Famine conditions are now present in large swaths of the Gaza Strip. The fact that the International Court of Justice has found grounds to investigate Israel for plausible acts of genocide in Gaza has not deterred the U.S. and its allies from continuing to facilitate Israel’s war.
