@usul@piaille.fr2026-01-16 08:43:19
On a atteint 10% des 100k signature pour que nos politiques bougent de X, continuons de signer : https://petitions.assemblee-nationale.fr/initiatives/2610
@cdarwin@c.im2026-01-13 15:52:03
Eyewitnesses say Iranian government forces have begun opening fire,
apparently with automatic weapons and at times seemingly indiscriminately,
on unarmed protesters.
Hospital workers say protesters had been coming in with pellet injuries but now arrive with gunshot wounds and skull fractures.
One doctor called it a “mass-casualty situation.”
Despite the communications blockade, a recurring image has made its way out of Iran:
rows and rows of body bags.
@StephenRees@mas.to2026-01-15 18:01:53
Coastal First Nations Call on Carney to Defend B.C. Tanker Ban in Pipeline Talks
Coastal First Nations President KΓšwšziɫ Marilyn Slett said she called on Prime Minister Mark Carney in a meeting Tuesday to maintain and protect the oil tanker moratorium in his government’s pipeline talks with Alberta, saying afterwards that “it would take just one spill to destroy our way of life.”
#bcpoli
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-10-30 10:05:59
The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol
@memeorandum@universeodon.com2025-11-12 17:01:26
White House responds to newly released Epstein emails (NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/live-blog/trump-government-shutdown-house-vote-aca-schlossberg-live-updates-rcna242798/rcrd93045?canonicalCard=true
http://www.memeorandum.com/251112/p63#a251112p63
@drgeraint@glasgow.social2026-01-14 09:39:02
I suspect that this could be the start of a (slow) turning point for government enthusiasm for AI. Embarrassment of a Chief Constable before a Commons Select Committee is going to lead to new questions about integrity of data in police reports in his force, and probably beyond.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c394…
@Techmeme@techhub.social2026-01-13 16:36:06
Sources: China has told some tech companies that it will approve Nvidia H200 chip purchases only under special circumstances, such as for university research (Qianer Liu/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/china-restric…
@newsie@darktundra.xyz2026-01-12 20:33:30
Armenia probes alleged sale of 8 million government records on hacker forum https://therecord.media/armenia-probes-alleged-sale-government-records
@cdarwin@c.im2026-01-11 03:46:52
Progressive lawmakers are demanding that the Democrats use the upcoming government funding deadline to hopefully reduce the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to wreak further havoc.
“I just don’t understand how we provide votes for a bill that funds the extent of the depravity,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told CNNThursday.
“I know we can’t fix everything in the appropriations bill but we should be looking at ways we can put some commonsense limitations on their ability to…
@cdarwin@c.im2026-01-10 21:53:41
Iran’s internet shutdown,
now in place for 36 hours
as the authorities seek to quell escalating anti-government protests,
represents a “new high-water mark” in terms of its sophistication and severity, say experts
– and could last a long time.
As the blackout kicked in, 90% of internet traffic to Iran evaporated.
International calls to the country appeared blocked and domestic mobile phones had no service,
said Amir Rashidi, an Iranian digital right…