nothing here but disaster-prone gossip

issue 255 - 12th May, 2024

CJW: Hey everyone. Welcome to another edition of nothing here. The sky has really been breaking out all the stops he past day or so. Let’s take it as a good omen. Things will change for the better, especially if we agitate for, and work towards, it. In the wise words of The Crow, “It can’t rain all the time.”

If you want to support us, you’ve got a couple of options:

• $5 monthly subscription.

• $50 annual subscription.

Both options give you access to the full bonus archive, as well as new bonuses as they are posted. Another way you can help spread the word is to forward this email to someone you think might enjoy it, share it on social media, and all the rest.

Now, let’s begin.

The Team

• Daniel Harvey (DCH) - Designer, writer, provocateur. Pro-guillotine tech critic. @dancharvey

• Marlee Jane Ward (MJW) - is also Mia Walsch. Writer & visual artist. Middle-aged greying goth.

• Corey Jae White (CJW) - author, voidwitch, girl with no face.

• Lidia Zuin (LZ) - Journalist, MA in semiotics, and PhD in Arts. 

Climate Change & The Environment

CJW: The Lunacy Of Rebuilding In Disaster-Prone Areas - Brian Stone Jr at Noema

The great urban challenge of our time is not simply climate change — it is how to tackle the multi-generational problems of social justice, affordable housing, meaningful employment and other dimensions of community well-being within the context of a rapidly changing climate. Rebuilding our cities, rendered imperative by a delayed response to climate change, will require a radically altered approach to managing flooding, to lessening heat exposure and to coping with drought — and it will require, for all of these purposes, a physical restructuring of our urban landscapes.

Moving forward, every building and land parcel will need to absorb a large fraction of the rainwater it receives, expand green cover for climate regulation and be integrated into a far more decentralized system of power generation and use. This adaptive rebuilding project cannot be separated from other longstanding urban challenges of equal import; it is a central mechanism through which expansive affordable housing, long-delayed environmental justice and a broader community revitalization can be realized. In this sense, the path forward is not to be found in climate adaptation but rather in an adaptive urbanism.

A really interesting piece on climate adaptation and retreat as an integral part of adaptation, using examples from the US (negative), Denmark, and Canada.

A condensed summary:

We cannot engineer our way out of climate change; retreat is inevitable — and not just in coastal cities.

//

• “To combat the growing risk of catastrophic wildfires and to bring more water back onto the landscape, a tribe in California is helping to reshape fire management policy in the West.” Fire for Water - Ashley Braun at bioGraphic (DCH: More like this please)

• World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target - Damian Carrington at The Guardian - CJW: It’s not a scientific survey, but rather a survey of the scientists who are working with climate change data every day. It’s depressing stuff. But you already knew that.

Just the headlines:

• Scientists make significant breakthrough utilizing unlimited power source found deep in Earth: 'Has the potential to replace fossil fuels' - Kristen Lawrence at The Cooldown

• Does Carbon Removal Need to Be Dumb To Work? - Emily Pontecorvo at Heatmap

Geopolitics & Empire

CJW: Israel Is Carrying Out a Horrific Ground Invasion of Rafah - Seraj Assi at Jacobin

The invasion will mean horrific atrocities for Palestinians in Rafah. Rafah is a small dusty town located on the southern Gaza border with Egypt. A tiny sliver of land half the size of Disney World, Rafah has been swelled by refugees to six times its prewar population. It now provides shelter to nearly 1.5 million Palestinian refugees, who have been forcibly displaced and bombed out of Gaza by Israeli forces. These include over six hundred thousand girls and boys sheltering in tents, many of whom have been orphaned by the war. International observers describe the children as malnourished, sick, and traumatized.

[...]

The invasion comes days after a top Israeli minister, echoing Netanyahu’s rhetoric invoking the Amaleks, called for the “total annihilation” of Gaza, and shortly after the chair of the ruling Likud Party’s international arm said Israel should “kill everyone” in Rafah, children included.

There are no words. That (most of) the "international community" has not even spoken out against Israel's genocide is reprehensible. The only action they've dared take is to attack, undermine, or otherwise ignore the citizens of their so-called democratic nations who have the heart and the strength to call for an end to the bloodshed.

Related: Palestinian Kids in Rafah Can’t “Evacuate” Safely: UNICEF - Jeremy Scahill at The Intercept

//

CJW: The Attack on American Democracy — In the Name of Israel - Murtaza Hussein at The Intercept 

In one stateside case, the squashing of a campus protest even involved what could be called “baltagiya”: the signature Egyptian tactic where unofficial state-aligned militias armed with clubs attack demonstrators before the police swoop in.

This wasn’t, however, Cairo in 2011. It was Los Angeles. At the University of California, Los Angeles, a pro-Israel mob videotaped itself descending on a protest camp and brutally beating protesters, including journalists.

The violence at the UCLA raged on for three hours before police intervened to restore order. Roughly two dozen people were reportedly hospitalized for injuries. It is not clear whether the gangs that attacked the encampment were students of the school.

We haven't shared much on the student protests - I tend to avoid US domestic politics because you all get a huge enough dose of it elsewhere, and in this case because it seemed obvious that the media narrative was being run to take attention away from Gaza. But the above seems especially important. The state is basically deputising thugs to carry out violence on their behalf, with no repercussions for the attackers while the peaceful protectors get an "official" beatdown and arrested once the police do turn up.

DCH: Related - Pro-Palestinian Campus Protests Go Global - Alexandra Sharp at Foreign Policy

Pro-Palestinian student protests like those seen in the United States in recent weeks have begun popping up at universities around the globe, including in Australia, Canada, France, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. Pro-Israel counterdemonstrations have also arisen in several places in response. Unlike in the United States, where more than 2,300 demonstrators have been arrested or detained across at least 49 campuses since April 18, international protests have largely faced minimal police interference.”

Like Corey I’ve kind of avoided posting about the student protests but because I’ve felt the media was centering that narrative instead of what’s happening to Palestenians in Gaza. But it’s important to shine a light on what now seems to be a global solidarity youth movement. Especially since they’re facing their own violent crackdowns for doing the right thing. 

And the student protests are getting results. 7 universities in the US and Trinity College in Dublin have agreed to student demands for divestment from Israeli companies.  

//

MJW: Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers: Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center by CNN's International Investigations and Visuals teams

CNN spoke to three Israeli whistleblowers who worked at the Sde Teiman desert camp, which holds Palestinians detained during Israel’s invasion of Gaza. All spoke out at risk of legal repercussions and reprisals from groups supportive of Israel’s hardline policies in Gaza. They paint a picture of a facility where doctors sometimes amputated prisoners’ limbs due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing; of medical procedures sometimes performed by underqualified medics earning it a reputation for being “a paradise for interns”; and where the air is filled with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot.

I keep trying to think of some kind of commentary for this, but what can I say?

//

• “It’s estimated that more than 50% of Gaza’s buildings have been destroyed or damaged and approximately 1.7 million people have been displaced since the offensive began. Bellingcat worked with partners Scripps News to investigate the alleged domicide in Gaza and the ongoing conflicts over land in the West Bank, you can watch the full documentary here”. “We’ve Become Addicted to Explosions” The IDF Unit Responsible for Demolishing Homes Across Gaza - Bellingcat

• "This past Wednesday, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the Antisemitism Awareness Act, by a vote of 320 to 91. The bill urges the Department of Education to codify a definition of antisemitism that includes anti-Zionist criticism of Israel." Congress’s Antisemitism Bill Is an Insult to Jewish History - Oren Schweitzer at Jacobin

• "The U.S. has a vested interest in hiding the words of terrorists from view because those words often present a vision of reality that stands in stark contrast to the official narrative. What would the American people do if they really knew what their country was responsible for?" - The Meaning of ‘Terrorism,’ According to the United States - Kody Cava at Current Affairs - CJW: There's plenty to this essay, but I'm dropping this pull quote because it seems relevant to what I was talking about last issue RE: Zankyou No Terror.

• "This is basically the anarchist blackpill: the realization that what we call politics has only ever been the chaotic effects of multiple sources of power acting across multiple axes and the stories we tell about them afterwards." Anarcho-Trumpism: A Thesis - Elizabeth Sandifer at Eruditorum Press (DCH: Might makes might, Nothing is true everything is permitted for me but not for you.)

• How the World Can Prepare for Trump 2.0 - Chloe Hadavas at Foreign Policy (DCH: also featuring There’s Nothing Between an Unstable President and the Nuclear Button - Adam Mount at Foreign Policy)

Just the headlines:

• US politicians threaten to invade Int'l Criminal Court if Israel faces war crimes charges - Ben Norton at Geopolitical Economy Report - CJW: The "rules-based order" everyone!

• In Myanmar, Military Rule Is Faltering - Morten Hammeken at Jacobin

• India’s Adivasi Communities Are Facing Brutal Repression - Kurusam Shankar at Jacobin

Science & Space

CJW: Wounded orangutan seen using plant as medicine - Georgina Rannard at BBC

The scientists concluded that Rakus knew he was applying medicine because orangutans very rarely eat this particular plant and because of the length of the treatment.

"He repeatedly applied the paste, and he later also applied more solid plant matter. The entire process lasted really a considerable amount of time - that's why we think that he intentionally applied it," explains Dr Laumer.

We still underestimate not just the animals we recognise to be intelligent, like primates, but the intelligence of animals more generally. No, I won’t step down from this soap box. One day, collectively, we will (or fucking should) look back at the way we’ve treated animals with shame at how ignorant we were and how vile our behaviour was. Let’s just hope that consciousness shift happens in time for the biosphere.

//

• “The process, called primary endosymbiosis, has only happened twice in the history of the Earth, with the first time giving rise to all complex life as we know it through mitochondria. The second time that it happened saw the emergence of plants.” Two lifeforms merge into one organism for first time in a billion years - Anthony Cuthbertson at The Independent

Tech & Design

DCH: Managing Up - Edward Zitron

These vile management consultants — like Sundar Pichai and Sheryl Sandberg — and their acolytes who exhibit the same destructive traits (in particular Raghavan) are the faithful foot soldiers in the war to ruin technology products, dampen innovation, and destroy otherwise-flourishing companies in the name of short-term market gains that benefit only the investor class. They didn’t build these products, and they certainly don’t use them - all they care about is market share, revenue and organizational power.

This is why management consultants are so high up on my personal guillotine list. 

//

DCH: When AI Decides Who Lives and Dies - Simon Frankel Pratt at Foreign Policy

But since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, the IDF has shifted gears. It has discarded the old process of careful target selection of mid-to-high-ranking militant commanders. Instead, it has built on ongoing advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) tools, including for locating targets. The new system automatically sifts through huge amounts of raw data to identify probable targets and hand their names to human analysts to do with what they will—and in most cases, it seems, those human analysts recommend an airstrike.

More coverage of the monstrous Lavender and Where’s Daddy programs which I wrote about in our last bonus letter and which were originally exposed by Yuval Abraham at 972 Magazine. These programs are the bitter fruit of 76 years of military surveillance and colonial occupation.

//

• "According to a 63-page Israeli government procurement document, however, two of Israel’s leading state-owned weapons manufacturers are required to use Amazon and Google for cloud computing needs. Though details of Google and Amazon’s contractual work with the Israeli arms industry aren’t laid out in the tender document, which outlines how Israeli agencies will obtain software services through Nimbus, the firms are responsible for manufacturing drones, missiles, and other weapons Israel has used to bombard Gaza." Israeli Weapons Firms Required to Buy Cloud Services from Google and Amazon - Sam Biddle at The Intercept (DCH: these are the same sort of contractual requirements that meant Amazon was helping to run Trump’s border camps for ICE.)

Just the headlines: 

• Robot dogs armed with AI-targeting rifles undergo US Marines Special Ops evaluation - Benj Edwards at Ars Technica

• Will AI deepfakes and robocalls upset the 2024 election? - Jeffrey Fleishman at Los Angeles Times

Society & The Culture

CJW: Gather your gossips - Mandy Brown

How many times have I heard someone (nearly always femme) say they know they shouldn’t engage in “gossip” at work? How many times have I heard a senior leader refer to a team member dismissively as a “gossip,” or criticize them for engaging in the same? We are, often unknowingly, reinscribing a story that demonizes women’s talk every time we repeat that use of the word. But it’s within our power to resurrect its original meaning, to use it as it was intended. To gossip, then, isn’t to malign or spread false rumors; it’s to share information and wisdom, to cultivate fellowship, to acknowledge that we are all equals, that we are all in this—this life, this work, this planet—together. That is, to gossip is an act of solidarity, even, at times, of love.

Seems especially important at a time when so-called 'whisper networks' are one of the few systems in place to protect people from abusers in a community. Of course, gossip is an imperfect tool, but anything that builds true solidarity will (I believe) eventually leave abusers and manipulators on the outs and losing power.

Brown's piece ends on this thought too, which I enjoyed:

[...] if capitalism needs women to be quiet, then women talking is one key to ending capitalism. Gather your gossips around you, friends, we’ve got work to do.

//

• “The far-right’s current obsession with “child sex trafficking” — the animating force behind such conspiracy theories as QAnon and Pizzagate, as well as coded political insults like “groomer” — has roots in this moral panic hyped by powerful Republicans and Democrats alike. The panic reached its crescendo with the 2018 federal indictments related to a sex ad hub called Backpage.com.” QAnon Was Born Out of the Sex Ad Moral Panic That Took Down Backpage.com - Trevor Aaronson at The Intercept

• "Each time a [mobile home] park becomes a cooperative, a tiny bit more of the country’s affordable housing is taken out of the private market. And so, in a quiet way, each new cooperative proposes a radical concept: What if we stopped seeing housing as an investment? What if we simply saw housing as housing?" - Trailer Park Residents Are Forming Cooperatives - Amos Barshad at Jacobin

Health, Cooking, and Related

CJW: Police Who Tear-Gas Abortion-Rights Protesters Could Induce Abortion - Matthew R. Francis at Scientific American

It is essentially legal for police to endanger pregnancies by assaulting protesters with likely abortifacients.

[...]

In other words, the chemical component CS itself may not be causing miscarriage, but tear gas is so demonstrably harmful to physical and mental health that it hardly matters from a human rights perspective. A weapon that stresses a person’s body or mind so much that they spontaneously abort is not better in any way than a chemical that does the same thing via a more direct biochemical process.

Rank hypocrisy from the US state is hardly a surprise, but at this point in some states your only "legal abortion providers" might be the riot police that have been called in to brutalise peaceful protestors.

And never forget:

[...] police and other government forces are free to tear-gas unarmed civilians in the name of law enforcement, while soldiers could be prosecuted for war crimes if they did the same to armed combatants.

//

DCH: The Canadian State Is Euthanizing Its Poor and Disabled - David Moscrop at Jacobin

For want of a mattress, a man is dead. That’s the story, in sum, of a quadriplegic man who chose to end his life in January through medically assisted death. Normand Meunier’s story, as reported by the CBC, began with a visit to a Quebec hospital due to a respiratory virus. Meunier subsequently developed a painful bedsore after being left without access to a mattress to accommodate his needs. Thereafter, he applied to Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program.

This is the result of defunding the very basics of healthcare. Politicians do this to line the pockets of vested business interests. The same fundamentals of this story is also playing out here in the UK too. If you’re an affluent able-bodied person then they want you to pay for private healthcare. And well if you’re not then just fuck off and die already. 

CJW: I think this is an incredibly important issue, and one that people don't seem to know/care about, so I wanted to add another quote:

Indeed, last year, Jeremy Appel argued that MAiD was “beginning to look like a dystopian end run around the cost of providing social welfare.” Initially supportive, he changed his mind on MAiD as he considered that the decisions people make are not strictly speaking individual but are instead collectively shaped and sometimes “the product of social circumstances, which are outside of their control.” When we don’t care for one another, what do we end up with?

“I’ve come to realize,” wrote Appel, “that euthanasia in Canada represents the cynical endgame of social provisioning with the brutal logic of late-stage capitalism — we’ll starve you of the funding you need to live a dignified life [. . .] and if you don’t like it, why don’t you just kill yourself?”

Just the headlines:

• Google Delists DIY Hormone Therapy Sites - Emanuel Maiberg at 404 Media - CJW: Unsurprising that Google is helping in the UK government’s continued campaign against trans people getting any sort of gender-affirming healthcare, even DIY.

• New vaccine could protect against possible future coronaviruses - UKRI

• AstraZeneca withdraws Covid-19 vaccine worldwide, citing surplus of newer vaccines - Melissa Davey at The Guardian (DCH: Another appalling example of corporate short-term greed. Even more bullshit than usual given 97% of the funding was from taxpayers and charities.)

Labour & Economics

DCH: Global Inequality Has Skyrocketed Since the Pandemic - Max Lawson at Jacobin

Global dividend payments to rich shareholders grew on average fourteen times faster than worker pay in thirty-one countries, which together account for 81 percent of global GDP, between 2020 and 2023. Global corporate dividends are on course to beat an all-time high of $1.66 trillion reached last year. Payouts to rich shareholders jumped by 45 percent in real terms between 2020 and 2023, while workers’ wages rose by just 3 percent. The richest 1 percent, simply by owning stock, pocketed on average $9,000 in dividends in 2023 — it would take the average worker eight months to earn this much in wages.

Shareholder dividends and payouts are the biggest driver for the short-term thinking fuelling the rot economy. Imagine if companies had a fiduciary duty of care to the people that use their products and the planet that makes it all possible. 

//

DCH: An Oil Price-Fixing Conspiracy Caused 27% of All Inflation Increases in 2021 - Matt Stoller

“The theory was that American producers, after a bitter price war from 2014-2016, got tired of competing on price with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or the OPEC oil cartel, and at some point from 2017-2021, decided to join the cartel and cut supply to the market. This action had the affect of raising oil prices, costing oil consumers something on the order of $200 billion a year.” 

Why is it that all the actual conspiracies almost always involve petrol death cultists? 

//

• The $2 Trillion Secret Trial Against Google Returns Tomorrow - Matt Stoller 

Just the headlines:

• AI is causing massive hiring discrimination based on disability - Sarah Ross and Becca Delbos at The Hill

Movies + TV

MJW: Monkey Man

Dev Patel's directorial debut could have been John Wick with the serial number filed off, but it's not. It's grittier, darker but more colourful too, woven with mythology, and delightfully imperfect. The fight choreography isn't as robotic as in a lot of modern action, it's slower and more punchy, less perfect and more realistic. Dev is a great action hero, and he's told a fun story in Monkey Man.

CJW: My favourite thing about the film is that rather than having a wise old master like Yoda to help him through his dark night of the soul, Dev has a whole commune of trans femme terrorists to help and support him.

Music

LZ - Chymist - Opus I: Nox

Atmospheric black metal from Finland with alchemical topics as inspiration. Really like them musically and also aesthetically – they went for the full maximalism with monk capes, corpse paint and spike armbands.

Art

CJW: Children and Animals Merge with the Natural World in Willy Verginer's Whimsical 'Lost Garden' - Colossal

Really beautiful sculptures - I prefer them on their own over the installations, but they’re gorgeous either way.

The Self-Promotion

LZ - Diving into the Vígljós hivemind

In a past issue of this newsletter, I mentioned I was going to try to write a piece on the band Vígljós which I learned about and which happened to have its members dressed as medieval beekeepers, just like in another, also black metal, band They Came From Visions. I got the opportunity to interview them and learn a bit more about their references, and what to expect from their first album, Apidae, which is coming up on the 11th. For those who like more old-school BM like Darkthrone, this could be a good recommendation. 

The Memes