The Digger

March 1, 2019 A choice must now be made. It is  officially unconstitutional  to discriminate against 18-year-old women by  not  forcing them to sign up to be forced against their will to kill and die for Venezuela’s oil or some other noble cause. Yes, the fine U.S. judiciary has declared for-men-only Selective Service registration to be  verboten . That’s not to say there isn’t debate on the matter. One side holds that women should be treasured as the delicate witless pieces of property they are because the Bible says so, and therefore they must be kept out of war entirely. The other side says that good modern liberal progressive feminists should demand the right of every woman to be forced, on pain of prison or even death, to help murder a million Iraqis for the cause of creating ISIS or some similar high purpose. Enlightened women demand not only equal pay, but equal moral injury, PTSD, brain injury, suicide risk, lost limbs, violent tendencies, and the...

From Global Research, a useful history lesson. Thanks for the recommendation, James. The link is https://www.globalresearch.ca/alexander-von-humboldt-venezuela-and-the-bolivarian-revolution/5669713 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By  Franklin Frederick Global Research, February 26, 2019 Region:  Latin America & Caribbean ,  USA Theme:  History   66       11     11         116 “One cannot praise enough the intelligent legislation of Spanish America’s new republics, which, since their inception, have been seriously concerned with slavery’s total cessation. In that respect, this vast part of the earth has an immense advantage over the South of United States.” “In North America white men have created for themselves a white republic with the most shameful laws of slavery.” — Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) In 2019 we celebrate the 250th birthday of the scientist and geogr...

Anyone interested in weighing in on the morality of machines? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Posted on   February 28, 2019   by  Yves Smith By Matthew Linares, Technical and Publishing Manager with openDemocracy. He is a variable tinkerer writing and organising around debates in technology and more:  Thought and projects . He tweets  @deepthings . Encrypt mail to him with  his  public key . Originally published at  openDemocracy Toyota unveil a self-driving car in 2013. IEEE’s new standards could transform how companies use AI. Image:  David Berkowitz  (CC BY 2.0) (CC BY 2.0) From the algorithms used by social media platforms to the machine-learning that powers home automation, artificial intelligence has quietly embedded itself into our lives. But as the technology involved grows more advanced and its reach widens, the question of how to regulate has become increasingly urgent. The pitfalls of AI are well-documente...

"History seldom cooperates by providing us with clear indications of participants’ thinking during instances of “spontaneously conscious” [2]  crowds. One such exceptional case is the Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention (RPCC), a multicultural public gathering of between 10,000 and 15,000 people who answered the call by the Black Panther Party (BPP) and assembled in Philadelphia on the weekend of September 5, 1970. Arriving in the midst of police terror directed against the BPP, thousands of activists from around the country were determined to defend the Panthers. They also intended to redo what had been done in 1787 by this nation’s founding fathers in the city of brotherly love–to draft a new constitution providing authentic liberty and justice for all. Although seldom even mentioned in mainstream accounts, this self-understood revolutionary event came at the high point of the sixties movement in the US [3]  and was arguably the most momentous event in the move...

Thank you, James, for emailing this article to me this morning. There's much food for thought here. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “Suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effects has been way underestimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something. Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we’d probably have a fascist takeover-with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I’d even agree to it, because there’s just no other alternatives right now.” – Noam Chomsky ( Understanding Power, 2002 ) “We’re under attack from climate change—and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII”. – Bill McKibben ( The New Republic , 2016) “…the survival of National Socialism within democracy (was potentially more dangerous than )the survival of fascist tendencies against democracy”. – Theodor Adorno (  quote by...