…not sure if congrats are appropriate

Geert Wilders, whose far-right Freedom party (PVV) shocked the Netherlands by finishing first in elections late last year, has conceded that he will not be the next prime minister because his potential coalition partners do not back him.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/13/geert-wilders-gives-up-hope-of-being-dutch-pm-due-to-lack-of-support

…it’s borderline quaint that someone from that slice of the spectrum would call it quits…or…it’s one of them strengths of the proportional representation thing…depends who you ask…but one less problem child posturing as a head of state seems like the sort of thing we call a bonus these days…round & around we go…where it stops…nobody knows?

The bill matters outside the EU because Brussels is an influential tech regulator, as shown by GDPR’s impact on the management of people’s data. The AI act could do the same.

“Many other countries will be watching what happens in the EU following the adoption of the AI Act. The EU approach will likely only be copied if it is shown to work,” Couneson added.
[…]
The act itself has a more detailed take, describing the AI technology it regulates as a “machine-based system designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy”, which obviously covers tools like ChatGPT.

This system may show “adaptiveness after deployment” – ie it learns on the job – and infers from the inputs it receives “how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments”. This definition covers chatbots, but also AI tools that, for instance, sift through job applications.

As detailed below, the legislation bans systems that pose an “unacceptable risk”, but it exempts AI tools designed for military, defence or national security use, issues that alarm many tech safety advocates. It also does not apply to systems designed for use in scientific research and innovation.

“We fear that the exemptions for national security in the AI Act provide member states with a carte blanche to bypass crucial AI regulations and create a high risk of abuse,” said Kilian Vieth-Ditlmann, deputy head of policy at German non-profit organisation Algorithmwatch, which campaigns for responsible AI use.
[…]
In private, responses have been more critical. One senior figure at a US company warned that the EU had set a limit for the computing power used to train AI models that is much lower than similar proposals in the US. Models trained with more power than 10 to the power of 25 “flops”, a measure of computing power, will be hit with burdensome requirements to prove they don’t create system risks. This could prompt European companies to simply up stakes and move west to avoid EU restrictions.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/14/what-will-eu-proposed-regulation-ai-mean-consumers

…the devil…as they say…is in the details

A lightly redacted copy of the transcript, which is more than 250 pages and was reviewed by The New York Times, was sent to Congress hours before the special counsel, Robert K. Hur, testified on Tuesday in front of the House Judiciary Committee. Democrats on the panel later released the document.

…not sure the transcript’s likely to hit the bestseller lists…but…it’s something to see them catch another car

Mr. Biden’s lawyers, who were present for five hours of questioning over two days, have challenged the damaging portrait by Mr. Hur, a former Trump administration official. But the transcript had not been publicly available to evaluate Mr. Hur’s assessment that Mr. Biden’s memory has “significant limitations.”
[…]
Mr. Biden went into great detail about many matters, the transcript shows. He made jokes over the two days, teasing the prosecutors. And at certain points, he corrected his interrogators when they were the ones who misspoke.

When Mr. Hur showed him a photograph and suggested that two documents resembled each other, Mr. Biden objected to the comparison. When Mr. Krickbaum misquoted Mr. Biden as having told his ghostwriter that he had found material “marked” classified, Mr. Biden interrupted to question his inaccurate addition of that word.

Mr. Biden also critically evaluated Mr. Hur’s strategy. At the end of the first day of questioning, he told his lawyers, “They’re obviously trying to establish something.”

On the second day, when Mr. Krickbaum insinuated that Mr. Biden had improperly held onto personal diaries from his vice presidency in which he had recorded accounts of sensitive meetings, Mr. Biden forcefully stressed, “Every president before me has done the same exact thing.” He added, “I just want to make sure we’re on the same page.”

When Mr. Hur suggested that classified files found in Mr. Biden’s garage may have once been stored in a desk in his house that contained similar-looking folders, Mr. Biden questioned that premise. He argued that it was more likely that both sets were originally shipped to the garage, and someone — not him — had just found the one set and so put it in his desk.

And when Mr. Biden provided a lengthy description of the layout of his house in Delaware — portions of which were redacted in the transcript for security reasons — Mr. Hur observed that Mr. Biden appeared to have “a photographic understanding and, and recall of the house.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/us/politics/hur-biden-memory-transcript.html

…you’d think they’d get sick of the taste of fenders…but there’s no accounting for taste

Vote against Trump, former supporters urge in $50m video campaign [Guardian]

…either way…when it comes to facing the music…it seldom hurts to know the score

“Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers,” the Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote in his 1777 essay Of the First Principles of Government. Centuries later, his observation still holds. Despite having numbers on our side, the vast majority of people continue to be dominated by a small subset of the population. Why?

Today, an oligarchic minority rules because they have extreme wealth. The 2022 World Inequality Report found that the richest 10% today take over 52% of all income, leaving the poorest half just 8.5%. The same year, the bottom half of US citizens, or more than 160 million people, held a mere 2% of the country’s total wealth. An upper class owns most of the land and capital, which allows them, in turn, to exert control over politics and pass on enormous fortunes to their offspring, effectively establishing a modern-day aristocracy.

In opposition to the power of money stands the power of the many – at least in theory. In practice, things are more complicated. As Hume noted long ago, power does not flow from sheer numbers alone. What matters is not merely absolute numbers but organised numbers. Without solidarity and organisation, numerical advantage doesn’t mean much. It doesn’t matter if there are thousands of workers and only a handful of bosses if those workers lack a union, or if there are millions of citizens and one dictator if people are too atomised and afraid to try to topple the regime.

Yet history has shown time and again that even a proportionally small number of people, if they are well organised, can have an outsized effect. People getting organised is what brought down slavery and Jim Crow, outlawed child labour in the US and elsewhere, and overthrew the legal subjugation of women. If it wasn’t for people acting in concert, universal suffrage would not exist, and neither would the eight-hour workday or the weekend. There would be no entitlement to basic wages, unemployment insurance, or social services, including public education. It would still be a crime to be gay or trans. Women would still be under the thumb of their husbands and at the mercy of sexist employers, and abortion would never have been legalised, however tenuously. Disabled people would lack basic civil rights. The environment would be totally unprotected and even more polluted. Without collective action, colonised people would never have ousted their oppressors, Indigenous people would not have survived attacks from genocidal settlers, and apartheid would not have been overthrown.
[…]
Scholars have since documented the way the late 20th century was, for the activist left, characterised by a shift to a shallow, professional and often philanthropically funded model of “advocacy”, one that elevates self-appointed leaders and elite experts to speak on behalf of constituencies to whom they are not directly accountable. Rather than organising people to fight for themselves, these groups promote professionals who attempt to exert influence inside the halls of power. Instead of protests, they publish white papers; in place of strikes, they circulate statements; instead of cultivating solidarity, they seek access to decision-makers.

These kinds of elite strategies can occasionally produce positive results, but the approach is often counterproductive, and certainly not democratic. This top-down approach puts its faith in the persuasive abilities of a tiny few, and denies the fact that politics is a power struggle – and that engaging and organising more people gives your position more leverage.

The sociologist Theda Skocpol uses the phrase “diminished democracy” to describe this shift from membership to management-led initiatives. A similar trend of diminishing democracy is apparent in the growing number of people who think of themselves as allies or activists, but who are not connected to political organisations. Millions of concerned citizens support social justice causes – they want an end to racism, a shift toward ecological sustainability, better treatment for workers, and so on – and they raise awareness by sharing on social media, committing random acts of kindness, voting for progressive candidates and showing up at rallies. And yet, they are not actually organised.

…it…cuts both ways, I suppose you could say

The diminished organisational capacity in American civic life is reflected in the weakness of social movements that appear, on the surface, to be robust. The 21st century has witnessed the biggest protests, and the most popular petitions, in history, yet they have produced comparatively small effects. On 15 February 2003, across the world, an estimated 10 million people came out in opposition to the impending war in Iraq. Since then, in the US, protests have only become bigger. In 2017, the Women’s March, held the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, attracted an estimated 5 million people, taking part in at least 400 actions worldwide, from large cities to small towns. In the autumn of 2019, teenagers called for a global climate strike, which inspired more than 6 million people to protest at 4,500 locations in 150 countries. In 2020, the protests against racism and police brutality continued the trend, rapidly becoming the largest movement in the country’s history. After the murder of George Floyd, an estimated 15 to 26 million people demonstrated nationwide over a one-month period.

Of course, there is much to cheer about here, especially when people move from the sidelines to the streets. During the anti-police brutality protests of 2020, half of those who protested reported that it was their first time ever doing so.
[…]
Uprisings can sometimes create a mirage of popular power, but without the organisation, strategy and vision necessary to influence what follows, the presence of large numbers is insufficient to produce transformative results, leaving more disciplined and mercenary formations to fill the void.

It’s worth lingering on this dilemma, because it is tempting to think that the problem is that our movements aren’t big enough. This is where the question of organisation comes in. It’s not enough to pursue numbers alone. If material transformation is your goal, it may well be better to have a dozen staunch supporters than 1,000 fair-weather friends; 100 dedicated organisers will probably accomplish more than 100,000 email contacts or retweets.

Consider what it took to compose and deliver a petition two centuries ago. In 1839, the London Working Men’s Association presented a People’s Charter to the British parliament, demanding electoral reforms including universal male suffrage and annual elections. They gathered more than 1,280,000 names, representing workers of every imaginable occupation and background, on a massive scroll that was three miles long. Simply transporting it across town was a feat that demonstrated the dedication and ingenuity of the ringleaders, and the depth of popular support. When the petition was rejected by parliament, public outcry inspired organisers to try again. They presented a second charter in May 1842, signed by more than 3 million people, which was also ignored, and then a third petition delivered in 1848. Today, the UK parliament’s official website recounts this history, noting that while the Chartist movement formally disbanded before it succeeded, it helped catalyse change, including the electoral reform bills of 1867 and 1884, and that by 1918 “five of the Chartists’ six demands had been achieved”. Today, a million virtual petition signatures are an indication of good digital marketing skills, not the devotion of the organisers or the signatories to a cause.
[…]
To make a real and lasting mark, transformative solidarity must involve expanding the number of supporters while also strengthening the relationships between participants. Consider the civil rights movement. Today, everyone knows about the Montgomery bus boycott led by Rosa Parks, but few realise it lasted 381 days, and we rarely acknowledge the years of organising that laid the groundwork, nor do we recall earlier efforts that helped hone the boycott in Montgomery, including the Baton Rouge bus boycott of 1953. Similarly, we have vague inklings that the suffragettes struggled to secure the right to vote, but we often fail to grasp the tireless decades of meetings, planning and petitioning, or we forget the fact that their tactics included property destruction: bombing, arson and breaking windows. These organisers didn’t confine themselves to civil debate, or seek unity with racist and patriarchal authorities who viewed Black people and women as subhuman. They engaged in an unremitting, high-stakes confrontation.
[…]
Again and again, people build solidarity and leave the world a better place, as the examples of movements for labour, civil and disability rights all show. And yet we still struggle to tell these inherently collective stories. Too often the tale of “Us” gets whittled down into a tale of an “I” – a story about a visionary liberator or self-sacrificing saint who changed the world. We turn a handful of protesters and rebels into icons, but hear comparatively little about the organising communities that shaped and supported them, or the ones that they tried to build to carry their efforts forward.

Our simplifying, celebrity-obsessed culture distorts the legacies of talented organisers and historical figures while also amplifying a handful of contemporary telegenic activists – the latter too often possessing a knack for social media and self-promotion, but lacking a commitment to an organised base they are accountable to. This emphasis on lone heroes is a kind of flipside to the fixation on increasing numbers for their own sake, or on notching bigger protests rather than better ones. An unhelpful binary emerges as a result: social movements are imagined to consist of charismatic individuals on the one side and nameless masses on the other.

But real organising is something else entirely. Every successful effort to challenge the status quo has required a multitude of people playing a wide range of roles. Allowing for this diversity is one way to grow both numbers and meaningful organisation. When we come together in an organised fashion – forging new self-conceptions, embracing radical visions and acting strategically – we can wield the power of numbers to disrupt business as usual, wrest concessions and pave the way for future victories.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/14/solidarity-and-strategy-the-forgotten-lessons-of-truly-effective-protest

…it’s…like laundry…or the washing up…only nobody’s made a machine that can do it for us…&…going through the motions in an online-only context is…really rather fashionable, I find…which isn’t what “moral relativism” used to mean…still…standards have certainly slipped since those days

“Clearly, it’s uncomfortable, I’m uncomfortable talking about this now, because he was clearly wrong,” the energy minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday morning. “But we need to show understanding – and the important thing was, he did apologise.”

…quick bit of context in case this one’s been under your radar…a dude called frank hester…has some extremely lucrative government contracts…&…in what is doubtless an entirely innocent coincidence…has also contributed at least an eight figure sum to the tory coffers…but…inconveniently…seems to be on the record saying some things that he shouldn’t have…which is obviously worse than thinking & doing things that people shouldn’t…& really quite a lot of cash to have to pay back right when you’re trying to spring a surprise election on people who have been impatiently waiting for one…so…they’ve tried to play the usual game of distraction, deflection & general dissembling…only

By that evening, however, in scenes that reminded some Conservative MPs of the way Boris Johnson operated, the government line had changed. No 10, which had declined all day to say the remarks by their biggest donor were racist, put out a statement calling them “racist and wrong”.

…anyway…real quick…he appears to have said a) that he’d be quite pleased to see an MP named dianne abbott shot…& that b) when he hears her speak it…& this sort of needs to be verbatim…makes him “want to hate all black women”…which is about as close to being a paraphrasing of the definition of racist as I can imagine, frankly…so the extent of the dancing around & about that as they try to hang on to him as a donor & his donations to date in particular is…illuminating…if you happen to pay attention

One former minister added: “They appear not to be very good at politics. They keep sending ministers out with lines that are obviously unsustainable and it is driving the ministers nuts.”

…good to know the british birthright of understatement is alive & well

When the Guardian first revealed on Monday afternoon that Hester had said looking at the MP Diane Abbott made you “want to hate all black women”, the Conservative response stuck closely to Hester’s own.

“Mr Hester has made clear that while he was rude, his criticism had nothing to do with her gender nor the colour of her skin,” a spokesperson said. “He has since apologised.”
[…]
The following morning, Stuart was sent out to defend the Tories’ decision to stick by their donor, and to resist calls to hand back the £10m he has donated.

At briefings with reporters in the morning and the afternoon, Downing Street stuck strictly to that line. Hester’s comments had been “unacceptable”, according to a spokesperson, but not racist.

Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, was the next senior minister sent out to deliver the message. The remarks had been “inappropriate”, Stride said, but they were not “gender-based or race-based”. Stride added: “He has apologised and I think we need to move on from that.”

…ahem…ARE-YOU-FUCKING-KIDDING-ME…the two things he explicitly bases the generalized hatred he extrapolates from his feelings about an individual are her gender & the visible component of her “race”…what the fuck else is there to call that other than equally explicitly “gender-based” & “race-based”?

Two and a half hours later, the Downing Street line had changed too. No 10 now did believe the comments were racist, a spokesperson clarified – but the party was still not going to give back the money.
[…]
“He didn’t deny the comments, although he has rightly apologised,” Sunak’s spokesperson said. “And in light of this, we were clear, and the prime minister is clear in the house today, that the comments were racist and wrong.”

…when we said they weren’t based on race that was us saying they were racist…we get mixed up sometimes on account of habitually arguing black is white until we’re blue in the face, you see…you can hardly blame us for that now, can you?

Even as his officials gave their customary post-PMQs briefing to journalists, the Scottish Conservatives issued a statement saying: “The Scottish Conservative party has never accepted a donation from Frank Hester and the UK Conservative party should carefully review the donations it has received from Hester in response to his remarks.”

Other senior Tories – including the West Midlands mayor, Andy Street, the former party chair Chris Patten and the former minister Alistair Burt – are also calling for the party to hand back Hester’s donations, or to give them to charity.

The question some current ministers are now asking themselves is whether they will spend the next few days publicly insisting the money should remain with the party, only to see Sunak eventually reverse that position.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/13/tory-line-frank-hester-changing-rishi-sunak

…so…before I call it quits for today…I figured I’d maybe offer something by way of an example…that thing way up wherever I stuck it that talks about organizing (but spells it like the brits do) doesn’t use the term “virtue signalling” that I recall…but it’s often a valid accusation of a variety of people online…from the earnestly naïve to the dullest of man-splain-y bores…so…in their way the tories…indeed the whole of parliament thanks largely to the choices of the speaker of the house…offered a masterclass in demonstration of the art of pettifogging their way through that particular two-step as they tried to score enough points to call the whole thing a draw

The Commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, has sparked a fresh row by refusing to allow Diane Abbott ask a question during a heated session of prime minister’s questions, which was dominated by discussion of a Conservative donor’s comments about her.

…she was right there in the fucking chamber…which she was elected to as a labour MP…but in which she currently sits as an independent since her party withdrew the whip over some remarks she made in support of palestine that were deemed too vulnerable to charges of antisemitism that the right makes a habit of browbeating the left over in exactly the ways rishi tried to deflect the implications of his refusual to break ties with the obvious racist with bags of money…for which she apologized…so…by rishi’s rules she really ought to be a labour MP of good standing again…but…well…it’d probably be impolite to mention that part

Hoyle is already under fire over his decision last month to allow the Labour party to amend an SNP motion on Gaza – a decision which triggered anger on the SNP and Tory benches and prompted an unprecedented apology from the speaker himself.

Abbott tweeted afterwards: “I don’t know whose interests the speaker thinks he is serving. But it is not the interests of the Commons or democracy.”
[…]
Stella Creasy, another Labour MP, tweeted during the session: “Right now Diane Abbott is standing to ask a question in prime minister’s questions. As her safety is debated by others. Something very wrong if her voice isn’t heard today.”

Afterwards, a spokesperson for Momentum, the leftwing campaign group, said: “It was a shocking failure from the speaker not to pick Diane Abbott for a question at PMQs, despite her repeated attempts.”
[…]
As prime minister’s questions finished, Flynn and Starmer approached Abbott to talk to her as she sat on the backbenches.

According to an account of the conversation retweeted by Abbott herself, Starmer asked if there was anything he could do to help her, to which she replied: “Restore the whip.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/13/row-as-speaker-fails-to-let-diane-abbott-speak-in-pmqs-debate-over-tory-donors-comments

…I dunno about you lot…but…I could stand to feel like I was better organized when it came to not putting up with this shit

…& I really was joking the first time I said the thing about the church…but…it’s right there in the name…organized religion…I dunno…that whole idea keeps eyeing me up…& it’s sort of unsettling the way it keeps getting more attractive…that sort of thing can put an agnostic off their stride, you know?