Julia Conley, Staff Writer - Raw Story | Common Dreams
Stephan:
Here is what professional scholars think about the economic ideas put forward by traitor Trump and Vice President Harris. I don’t think it is any surprise that they all favor Harris.
Vice President Kamala Harris. Credit: AFP
Several progressive economists were among more than 400 policy experts who signed onto an endorsement of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, arguing that the Democratic presidential candidate’s proposals for an “opportunity economy” would improve the financial well-being of families across the country.
Stony Brook University professor Stephanie Kelton, a leading proponent of modern monetary theory; Center for Economic and Policy Research senior economist Dean Baker; University of California Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, whose work has focused on economic inequality; and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich were among the experts who signed the statement of support.
The economists noted that while working with President Joe Biden—who set out to be the “most pro-labor president” in U.S. history and has enacted numerous pro-worker policies—Harris “has taken action to strengthen sectors critical to the U.S. economy by increasing investment in small businesses, clean energy, and domestic manufacturing.”
The vice president has pointed out during her campaign that she cast the tie-breaking vote […]
Once again MAGAt Republican politicians are playing doctors. American medical care in MAGAt controlled Red states is being sabotaged causing harm to millions by the sexual dysfunction that defines the MAGAt world. These people are deeply bizarre, and their sexual obsessions are so strong that it clouds their ability to think rationally. They want to control women and children in every way they can. Medical care. Schools. Even dictionaries.
Last August,the American Academy of Pediatrics renewed its guidance supporting the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and other medical care for transgender children and teens. At a time when trans issues have moved to the center of the culture wars, the AAP—the main medical association representing US pediatricians, with 67,000 members—said its action was aimed at supporting trans minors amid new waves of anti-trans laws.
Now, Republican officials from 21 states have accused the medical group of violating state consumer protection laws by supporting gender-affirming care for trans youth. More ominously, they’re demanding that the AAP turn over extensive records about how it developed its policy.
In a letter signed by Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador and sent to the medical group this week, the GOP officials claim that the AAP is misleading parents and the public about the reversibility of puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The letter calls gender-affirming care “medical experimentation” and demands the AAP produce years’ worth of communications and documents related to its guidance for treating trans […]
This article is so true and desperately important.
Credit: Adobe
The upcoming election may be the most important one of your lifetime. It is no less than a referendum on our climate and our future. It is that serious and urgent.
According to a study by the nonprofit Climate Central, large fires that burn 1,000 acres or more have tripled in the Western United States between 1970 and 2015. Last year was the warmest on record, a trend that is expected to continue. The country has been warming more rapidly than the global average since the late 1970s, and the West and Alaska have been at the forefront of that trend.
Concerns about the economy, housing, transportation infrastructure, farming and public health are climate issues, too — and increasingly so. Any vote this election, whether local or national, will be a vote on the climate.
I’m not trying to fan your doomsday fears. Quite the opposite: I want to try to drive us all into action. We must move from climate despair to climate repair, even though that can […]
Pranshu Verma and Will Oremus, Reporters - Mictorsoft Start | The Washiington Post
Stephan:
MAGAt world, or at least a significant percentage of it, think of Hitler as a hero, who has been wrongly styled as a villain, and they are trying, using AI, to recontextualize the Nazis as people American should follow. To be honest it makes me want to puke. As I have said many times now, the problem in America is Americans. Poorly educated, barely literate, racist, pseudo-Christians have become a major force in U.S. politics today. I hate having to keep doing stories like this, but sadly, these are the reality trends shaping American culture.
The far right is using AI to sell Hitler to a new generation. Credit: Washington Post illustration; Hulton-Deutsch Collection. / CORBIS / Getty
Extremists are using artificial intelligence to reanimate Adolf Hitler online for a new generation, recasting the Nazi German leader who orchestrated the Holocaust as a “misunderstood” figure whose antisemitic and anti-immigrant messages are freshly resonant in politics today.
In audio and video clips that have reached millions of viewers over the past month on TikTok, X, Instagram and YouTube, the führer’s AI-cloned voice quavers and crescendos as he delivers English-language versions of some of his most notorious addresses, including his 1939 Reichstag speech predicting the end of Jewish people in Europe. Some seeking to spread the practice of making Hitler videos have hosted online trainings.
The posts, which make use of cheap and popular AI voice-cloning tools, have drawn praise in comments on X and TikTok, such as “I miss you uncle A,” “He was a hero,” and “Maybe he is NOT the villain.” On […]
I have been telling you for years now that authentic journalism from national corporate media to local media, not only in the U.S. but worldwide is in sharp decline (See SR archive). Advertising in newspapers is drying up, and local papers, the main source of local news, are disappearing by the hundreds. In national media, important things don’t get much attention, and politics is treated like a horserace, as if Trump and Harris were equivalently ethical. Also journalism is becoming a dangerous job, as this article describes. And then there is the weaponization of misinformation used in pseudo-journalism that is shaping the thinking of millions, particularly young people.
Advertising revenue — the lifeline of news publications — has dried up in recent years Credit: Ishara S. Kodikara) / AFP
From disinformation campaigns to soaring scepticism, plummeting trust and economic slumps, the global media landscape has been hit with blow after blow.
World News Day, taking place on Saturday with the support of hundreds of organisations including AFP, aims to raise awareness about the challenges endangering the hard-pressed industry.
– ‘Broken business model’ –
In 2022, UNESCO warned that “the business model of the news media is broken”.
Advertising revenue — the lifeline of news publications — has dried up in recent years, with Internet giants such as Google and Facebook owner Meta soaking up half of that spending, the report said.
Meta, Amazon and Google’s parent company Alphabet alone account for 44 percent of global ad spend, while only 25 percent goes to traditional media organisations, according to a study by the World Advertising Research Center.
Platforms like Facebook “are now explicitly deprioritising news and political content”, the Reuters Institute’s 2024 Digital News Report pointed out.
Lilia Yapparova, Reporter - Reader Supported News | The New York Times
Stephan:
Putin is a global villain, and I have suspected he was doing what is described in this article, but could find no evidence of it. Now an excellent New York Times reporter has broken the story. Putin is having people all over the world assassinated. The take away for me, is that it confirms the United States is not dealing with Putin properly. We should be making a much stronger effort to help Ukraine because nothing is going to take him out of power but the Russian people. Forcing Putin to lose his war will bring him down.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Credit: Alexander Kazakov / AFP
In November 2022, my editors asked me to be careful about what I ate and stop ordering takeout. Initially, I didn’t think much of it. But I soon realized the importance of their advice when, just one month later, my colleague Elena Kostyuchenko discovered she had been poisoned in Germany, in a probable assassination attempt by the Russian state.
Such stories have become routine. Last year, an investigative journalist, Alesya Marokhovskaya, was harassed in the Czech Republic; in February, the bullet-riddled body of a Russian defector, Maxim Kuzminov, was found in Spain. In both cases, the Kremlin was assumed to be involved. Russian opposition figures know well that even in exile they remain targets of Russia’s intelligence services.
But it’s not just them who are in danger. There are also the hundreds of thousands of Russians who left home because they did not want to have anything to do with Vladimir […]
