Politics & Stuff

[Vesper 28,818]

EU business lobbying on sustainability exposed

Ongoing debates about Europe’s Green Deal reveal new evidence of business lobbying’s hidden influence on environmental policies.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/eu-business-lobbying-on-sustainability-exposed

 

As debates continue over the future of Europe’s Green Deal and other environmental policies, new evidence sheds light on the often hidden role of business lobbying in shaping these regulations. The gap between companies that publicly promote their sustainability credentials while lobbying behind the scenes against environmental regulation has long been identified. However, solid evidence to support this assertion has been difficult to find—until now. A new report reveals how business lobbying contributed to excluding financial services companies from Europe’s responsible supply chain law, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).

The United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights has strongly condemned the exclusion of investors from the EU law. The Italian stock exchange Borsa Italiana and the French association of insurers, the Association des Assureurs Mutualistes (AAM), are highlighted in the report for their strong opposition to the proposals. This is despite Borsa Italiana being a member of the UN Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative and AAM positioning itself as part of the ‘social and solidarity economy’ under French law.

The ‘Social LobbyMap’ methodology was used to analyze company lobbying based on published information, freedom-of-information requests, and media reports in the two years leading up to the agreement that removed finance from the scope of the EU Directive. Detailed analysis of positions adopted by nine companies and ten trade associations in France, Italy, and Spain also reveals how companies often rely on their associations to deliver negative messages.

Eight out of ten trade associations analyzed opposed including the finance sector in the regulation, with only France’s responsible investor association, l’Association AFR, speaking in favor. Although European-wide business associations are typically the most influential in lobbying, the report highlights disparities within France, where half of business responses favored the regulation, but six out of seven associations lobbied against it. None of the Italian companies studied supported the proposals, which sheds light on Italy’s dramatic but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to block the Directive in the European Council, alongside Germany.

However, the research challenges the assumption that companies are always anti-regulation. Prominent Spanish firms, including insurer Seguros RGA, actively supported the regulation, not only through public statements but also through detailed lobbying. The ‘Social LobbyMap’ project encourages companies to align their sustainability and purpose statements with their public policy activities and those of their trade associations. Investors are seen as crucial to achieving this goal, holding a mirror up to businesses that are usually the ones scrutinizing the companies they invest in.

The ‘Social LobbyMap’ methodology builds on the work of the ‘Influence Map’ project, which originated in the United States and prompted several US corporations to leave trade associations with regressive climate change positions. Whether this new research on social and human rights lobbying will have a similar impact in Europe remains to be seen.

With a new European Commission consultation on guidance for the CSDDD, upcoming lobbying around the Directive’s transposition in member states, and a scheduled review within two years on whether finance might be brought back into its scope, companies will face immediate scrutiny for their positions on this legislation. A key tenet of responsible business is ensuring alignment between a company’s values and its actions—including its lobbying activities. The ‘Social LobbyMap’ aims to hold businesses accountable, ensuring their government relations and trade association memberships align with their stated commitments to sustainability.

 

The new report “Financial Sector Lobbying of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive: a Social LobbyMap Analysis” is available on the Eiris Foundation website at: https://eirisfoundation.org/social-lobbymap/

[Vesper 28,818]

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-11-20-ai-information-corrosion/

Lucky you: For the length of time it takes you to read this column, you don’t have to think about Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, Mike Huckabee, Pete Hegseth, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis being “excited by the news that the President-Elect will appoint @RobertKennedyJr to @HHSGov,” the headline writers at The New York Times, or all those miscreants in the Democratic Party whose refusal to follow your preferred strategy for the Harris-Walz campaign delivered the nation into the bosom of fascism. Nothing strictly political at all.

Enjoy!

Or maybe not.

Today’s object of ire is web searches using large language models, which marketers have cleverly designated “AI.” More precisely, my beef is with people who desperately want to believe in artificial intelligence’s merit as an information broker. It started when I read a social media post from a former editor of mine whom I deeply respect. He cited his favorite “AI-powered search engine,” then did one of those parlor tricks where you ask it to write a poem with a series of silly constraints. The results were, allegedly, splendid.

As I argued on the same social media platform, it astonishes me that critical thinkers would promote the use of AI search engines. I offered two reasons. The first is that a basic feature of an AI “search,” in contrast to a conventional search, is that it renders invisible the source of the information; a meal that comes shrink-wrapped, so to speak, only without the ingredients on the label. A commenter pointed out to me that this isn’t right, at least when it comes to Perplexity.ai and Microsoft Copilot, which affix footnotes to their summaries.

But that’s also unsatisfying. They can’t footnote all their sources. That’s the point of a large language model: It draws from millions of sources. (It’s precisely this largeness that is responsible for a demerit of large language models I won’t belabor: the colossal amounts of energy these “data vampires” consume.)

My second complaint concerned what is colorfully referred to in the biz as “hallucinations”: when stuff they churn out is wrong. Enormous mischief ensues, with consequences that I find terrifying: not just for a writer like me, whose professional identity is bound up in words, but for anyone with a stake in there being more accurate information about the world rather than less. Which is to say, all of us.

WE RECENTLY PASSED AN AI WATERSHED. Now, when you enter a Google search in the form of a question, it answers by placing AI-generated summaries, called “AI Overviews,” at the top of the results. Like this: “When did Google start putting AI at the top of its search answers?” Answer: “Google began prominently displaying AI-generated summaries, called ‘AI Overviews,’ at the top of search results, in May 2023 as part of their ‘Search Generative Experience’ (SGE) feature, initially rolling it out in the United States and then expanding to other countries; this essentially puts AI-powered answers directly at the top of the search page for certain queries.”

And that’s a nifty Exhibit A of the problem right there. Dig one level deeper—or a few inches lower. The first offering in the “People also ask” feature is “when did Google AI overview start?” Answer: “Google launched AI Overviews in the U.S. on May 14, 2024.”

Which is not, in case you missed it, “May 2023.” Two pieces of directly contradictory information answering the same question. Which do you believe: your lying eyes, or your lying eyes?

A further complication greets those who make their way down to the list of conventional search results. The first is a post from the Google blog dated May 14, 2024, called “Generative AI in Search: Let Google do the searching for you.” (Even algorithms have to advertise, I suppose.)

My beef is with people who desperately want to believe in artificial intelligence’s merit as an information broker.

The second is a puffy story from The Verge dated over a year earlier, from May 10, 2023, called “The AI takeover of Google Search starts now.”

Only if you make your way to the third result, a Washington Post article from May 30, 2024, does this farrago of confusion recede. It’s entitled “Google scales back AI search answers after it told users to eat glue.” A complex story—a public launch, an embarrassing recall, then a quiet relaunch with no fanfare—has been utterly obscured. Quite clarifying, for those of us who stubbornly think search engines are supposed to make it easier, not harder, to understand reality.

You might remember that embarrassing moment for Google from six months ago. Everyone started to test things for themselves, and were served up-is-down information, like that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision reaffirmed the right to choose an abortion. Others came across hallucinations by accident. One of my social media followers told the story of a pilot friend of hers who asked ChatGPT for ideas for hotels, food, and attractions for their refueling stops on a coast-to-coast trip. They learned of a legendary diner just a short walk from one of the airports, celebrated for decades for its scrumptious chicken-fried steak. There were citations from rave reviews. They landed with mouth watering, walked to the indicated spot, and found a field of soybeans. It was the kind of mirage a parched desert wayfarer might hallucinate in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

One supposes Google insists all of that has by now been fixed. But I still couldn’t figure out the basic question of when Google started up the AI Overviews again. Last week appears to be the answer; or at least that was when I first noticed it. Further research seems to be required, but not via Google; they are no longer any help at all.

THOSE WERE THE RESULTS WHEN I TRIED IT last Friday; if I tried it Saturday, Sunday, or today, results were likely to be different. That is a problem; if the same question is answered differently, which answer is one to take as authoritative? This novel kind of memory hole made it hard for us to create links that illustrated my points. And if the wording of the question is changed slightly, the results can be a great deal different. Together, these issues open up onto another problem, perhaps the biggest of all. Answers rendered, to use the industry term of art, in “natural” language—in complete sentences resembling what a human would write—appear, well, natural. As the answer; as the Truth. With a capital T, which rhymes with D, which means definitive.

A list of results in an old-fashioned search, on the other hand, reads as inherently provisional: as ingredients of an answer that one’s active intelligence has to shape. That shouldn’t matter to a sophisticated consumer of information, who can be expected to understand that anything a computer spits out is not necessarily the Truth. What’s depressing, however, as I learned when I criticized AI in that social media post I referred to above, is how unsophisticated some smart people showed themselves to be when it came to AI. This is especially so when the questions are not factual but interpretive.

In the post, I offered an excruciating (to me) example: the first time I tried putting ChatGPT through its paces, not by asking it for a sonnet or a Keatsian ode, but “What does Rick Perlstein believe?” One of the things the confident listicle that came forth offered was actually the opposite of what Rick Perlstein believes: namely, the rank cliché that the biggest political problem America faces is “polarization.” No. Rick Perlstein actually believes the biggest political problem America faces is fascism, and that fighting it requires more polarization. And I should know. I’m Rick Perlstein!

A lot of people responded, with evident irritation, that they hadn’t had problems with searches they’d carried out. Someone else destroyed that argument. They pointed out the time they asked an AI search engine to summarize one of their essays. The summary was about 85 percent correct. They pointed out that this, effectively, was almost as bad as it being zero percent correct. There’s an old saw in the advertising trade: Half of all ads will be ineffective, but you can never know in advance which half. That’s the same thing here: If you want to take an AI search result to the bank, as it were, “getting 15 percent wrong makes it 100 percent useless.”

People get things 15 percent wrong all the time too, of course, even in peer-reviewed papers, one of my AI-defending followers pointed out. But we know that much of what people say is wrong; learning to judiciously distrust experts is one of the things that makes a well-educated person well educated. But a computer spitting out shrink-wrapped packages of fact: That is something that it is way too easy to fool ourselves into implicitly trusting—a stubborn sort of hallucination in itself.

I love my most active followers on this particular social media platform, an intelligent, thoughtful, and humane bunch who have taught me a great deal. This time, many disappointed me. Some really, really want to trust AI. Even when it led them astray right in front of their eyes.

The guy whose original post set me off suggested I was whining like a buggy whip manufacturer beefing on Henry Ford. People started showing the technology off, almost with pride of ownership, typing “What does Rick Perlstein believe?” into the search boxes and gloating over the results. And, yes, some were impressive. (“His work critiques the media’s tendency to avoid addressing the deep structural conflicts in American society featuring narratives of consensus over conflict.” Thank you!)

But the longest and most elaborate result—352 words over seven numbered paragraphs—was so full of bad information that … well, it might take a book to fully explain how mistaken it was. Which raises another important point. It was mistaken in ways that were subtle and hard to summarize.

Someone pointed out that the question was the problem, that AI is a tool, and that smart consumers know how to maximize its value. “Name some arguments Rick Perlstein has made” might be better, for example. But that still, to my mind, falls into a basket of questions upon which AI should follow the advice from Ludwig Wittgenstein. He advised philosophers that when it comes to certain kinds of ineffable questions, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Questions about anyone’s opinions fit that description. “Does Google have a vice president for epistemology?” one of my smart friends asked. Great question!

The last thing the world’s information infrastructure needs is “experiments,” with all of us serving as guinea pigs.

Let’s start at the very beginning, and that little word “believe.” Ask ChatGPT “What does Rick Perlstein believe,” and it can only answer from Rick Perlstein’s published output. But if you write with a political goal, as I do, you might choose to hold back some sincerely held belief, the better to stick to your most persuasive points. The philosopher Leo Strauss built a career on the argument that great philosophers of the Western tradition hid their true beliefs in esoteric language inaccessible to ordinary readers, intended only for an elite class of readers. What’s more, almost everything you can read from me was edited, and sometimes my editors are so much more erudite and intelligent than I; sometimes (grrrrrr) not. [Editor’s note: This editor is among the former.]

And does ChatGPT know writers don’t write headlines?

The problem extends down to language’s subatomic levels. (That’s a metaphor, Mr. Robot. Please make sure everyone knows Rick Perlstein doesn’t believe language is actually made out of atoms.) Literary theorists refer to “textuality”: the way written words (spoken words, too) are not some pristine uncorrupted signal of inner beliefs but are subject to all sorts of corrupting noise built into the technology of writing itself. Heidegger called language “the house of being”; but sometimes we can’t access what’s inside it at all. And what is an “author” anyway? It was Freud, or maybe it was Shakespeare, who first systematically demonstrated how fundamentally a self can misunderstand even itself …

Okay, my University of Chicago soul is showing. Let’s get down to the actual words on the screen.

From ChatGPT, we learn that Rick Perlstein writes “books like Before the Storm (about Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign).” That’s an authoritative-sounding factual mistake right off the bat: Only 258 out of 660 pages are about Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. And that this Perlstein fellow believes certain things about “Populist conservatism: He emphasizes how that the conservative movement’s success lies in its ability to channel grassroots populist anger.” Bzzzzzzz! ChatGPT must have missed my 2017 critique, presented at a conference on “Global Populisms: A Threat to Democracy?” about the dangerous distortions that come from the overuse of the word “populist” in describing right-wing authoritarianism. (He thinks variants of the word “demagogue” are far more useful than “populist,” but hasn’t published anything about that, so ChatGPT doesn’t know he believes that.)

Other points in the answer, again, are impressive! Sophisticated! Which, again, makes things worse, because this raises the answer above the threshold of appearing authoritative, to those who know a little about the subject—but who can’t know which one-third of the words in the result are not, in fact, accurate (at least in my self-interested opinion), and which two-thirds are.

Then all comes this, supposedly “based upon his public writings and commentary.” Including this final point: “Perlstein’s [work does] not advocate a political agenda …”

Well, now. Turns out there exists some parallel ChatGPT planet where these pieces I so lovingly grind out for you each and every week, and before that for so many other left-wing publications, all with the fervent aim of advocating a political agenda, do not exist. A blunt, basic reality that does not exist.

It’s all too easy to imagine the opposite case: a writer who dotes upon the non-agenda-driven nature of their writing, finding a search engine that says they’re in fact an ideologue, and wanting to sue for libel for the way this ginned-up “fact” degrades their integrity. But who would they sue? The lack of a responsible agent behind a falsehood is another part of what makes the whole thing so maddening.

BY THE WAY, DID YOU READ MY COLUMN about the possibility of a future world war? No? Google it: “Everything You Wanted to Know About World War III but Were Afraid to Ask.”

Two weeks ago, if you typed those words into the search engine, all you’d get is a link, which you would then have to read yourself, and decide on your own steam whether it had any value or not. Type them in this week—though that changed the next day, and you could only get this result by typing in the fragment “Everything You Wanted to Know About World War III”—and you’ll learn that it “refers to a hypothetical future global conflict that would involve major powers, potentially leading to large-scale destruction and casualties, with key concerns including potential triggers like escalating geopolitical tensions, nuclear weapons usage, and the devastating impacts such a war could have on the world, including widespread economic disruption and societal collapse; it’s often discussed in the context of historical analysis of past world wars, current international conflicts, and potential future threats like cyberwarfare and emerging military technologies.”

That oh-so-authoritative-sounding summary seems to refer to nothing else besides my article, which is linked at the right, but where the title is followed, mysteriously, with the words “Russian Defense Ministry Pre…” The way it’s laid out on the screen makes it seem at first glance—which for most people will be the only glance—that those words seem to have some particular significance to the article. They’re from the photo credit: “Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP.” Garbage in, garbage out. An intelligence that was not artificial would know that these words are throwaways with no significance.

The “AI Overview” then moves to a list of “Key Points About World War III.” Which is pretty disturbing, given that the key points all appear to come from my article and nowhere else, even though one of the main points of the article is that I don’t know very much about war. The person I interviewed for the article does, and I may have summarized his argument well, or maybe not. But neither of our names is attached to these “Key Points” for people to evaluate whether the source is trustworthy or not. Be that as it may: My interpretation of his points is now hanging out there on the internet as an authoritative representation on the most important subject imaginable.

And this AI-generated block of text presenting itself as everything you need to know on the subject also happens to exclude the most important thing the article proposes we need to know.

I had asked Matthew Gault if we needed to worry about AI making World War III more likely. He replied, “I am extremely skeptical that AI is or will become part of command-and-control systems—in America.” But “the guy I talk to about this, who is very smart and has the connections, said Russia is talking about using large language models to take over portions of the decision-making process, because they are worried that they will have someone in the chain that will say ‘no.’ So they want to automate that.”

Ask the guy who had to eat granola bars for lunch instead of chicken-fried steak if that is a good idea.

The last word in Google’s AI Overview of “Everything You Wanted to Know About World War III” is a consumer warning: “Generative AI is experimental,” then a link at which you can “Learn more.” Well, thanks for the warning and the suggestion. I’d love to learn more. I love learning. But I already know enough to know that at this perilous juncture, the last thing the world’s information infrastructure needs is “experiments,” with all of us serving as guinea pigs.

End this experiment now, Google. Keep it up, and someone might lose an eye.

Edited Wednesday at 22:59 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,818]

grifter gonna grift

[Vesper 28,818]

On 18/11/2024 at 12:38, NikkiCFC said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjr4zwj2lgdo

Nordic neighbours release new advice on surviving war

@Vesper expect a pamphlet soon. 

[cosmicway 1,323]

2 hours ago, Vesper said:

The High-Stakes Gamble of Doing Nothing: Why Business Must Act Now

In a world teetering on the edge of chaos, disengagement is a dangerous delusion. Here’s why smart leaders know that stepping up is necessary.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-high-stakes-gamble-of-doing-nothing-why-business-must-act-now

Investors and business leaders know all about the relationship between risk and reward. While a “steady as she goes” approach may seem to reduce risk, in the short run at least, it could be that relative inaction exposes you to much greater risk over the longer term. Doing nothing in fact becomes the riskier thing to do.

The world at the end of 2024 does not appear to be offering the business community a particularly appetising set of options. There is war raging in Ukraine and the Middle East. Energy prices remain high. And a familiar figure is about to return to the White House to pick up where he left off four years ago. Life is about to get even more complicated.

The temptation for business leaders to disengage, to keep their heads down and focus on spreadsheets rather than news bulletins, may be high. But this would be a bad choice. Events will inevitably impinge on business plans. However unappealing it may seem, this is a time for business to step up and engage, not opt out.

Sceptics may object that business’s track record on engagement is patchy or at least unconvincing. And the sceptics would have a point. Not so long ago – in 2019 in fact, during those last few happy pre-Covid days – the US Business Roundtable announced rather dramatically that the era of narrowly pursuing “shareholder value” was over. “Each of our stakeholders is essential”, declared a new statement on the purpose of a corporation, signed by 181 top chief executives. Employees mattered: “We foster diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect.” At the World Economic Forum in Davos the following January Klaus Schwab declared that a new era of stakeholder capitalism was being born.

This was not merely premature; it was wrong. One investor wrote to the board of JP Morgan, whose CEO, Jamie Dimon, had been a leading force in the production of the Business Roundtable statement. Had JP Morgan’s commercial goals, and the fiduciary duties of the board’s directors, changed? Not at all, came the reply. Essentially it was business as usual. Research conducted by scholars at Harvard Law School revealed that very few of the 181 corporations had indeed altered their fundamental approach to business after signing this statement. In fact, it had rarely been discussed at board level at all.

At least these CEOs were trying to move the conversation on from that destructive account of business inspired by the work of the economist Milton Friedman: that it is purely a matter of making profits without breaking the law (or without getting caught breaking the law, at least).

But in terms of political economy the Business Roundtable were slow learners. The British commentator Will Hutton had written about the stakeholder economy in his book “The State We’re In” in the mid 1990s. Indeed, as far back as 1932, Adolf A Berle and Gardiner C Means had written “The Modern Corporation and Private Property”, which looked at the separation of ownership and control and called for greater shareholder democracy, transparency and accountability.

Until recently, it had seemed that responsible business leaders might be able to make a positive contribution to society under the headings of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI – as referenced in the Business Roundtable statement), and that investors could support progressive (and sustainable) business activity with their ESG (environment, social, governance) funds.

But these ostensibly non-political interventions have been politicised. Donald Trump’s return to power has been accompanied by a wave of hostility to so-called “woke capitalism”. So certain Republican-run states in the US have attacked pension funds for investing under the ESG heading. The cause of DEI has been smeared, as if greater fairness and equality of opportunity at work are a bad thing. Businesses that still want to make a positive difference in this area are having to rebrand or even camouflage their activities to avoid the hostility of their newly-emboldened critics.

So what can a responsible business leader do? Luckily there is some good and practical advice available in a new book: Higher Ground – how business can do the right thing in a turbulent world, by Alison Taylor, who teaches at the Stern School of Business in New York City.

Taylor is pragmatic and wise. “Being an ethical business is about undertaking a process of discovery about your real-world impact and then basing your values and supporting principles on what you find,” she writes. “What has your company been doing that generates negative and positive impacts? How do you affect the external environment? How does it impact you? How might you alter these results?”

And in a footnote Taylor offers this telling insight: “During the course of this book I will cite examples of positive and negative practice, sometimes from the same company. I cannot provide a neat, holistic example of a company that gets everything right; I believe the expectation that this is possible is part of the problem.”

The world is struggling, and is facing a tough moment. Engaged businesses, thoughtfully led, can improve this situation: providing good jobs, and selling useful goods and services. We should not expect profit-making businesses to act in a saintly manner. But they should be able to do as little harm as possible. And sometimes they can actually make things better.

The differences are small.
No one can speak of huge ideological shifts that have taken place.
It's more of a rep thing, the Trump phenomenon. They did not want a moderate or quasi-moderate candidate (like Bush - Romney - Healey) but him.
Then there were the six million or so absentees in the Harris camp, Now that the count of votes is almost complete this looks like being the number - enough to have given her the victory. But again were those people dems or 2020 dems now Trump leaning who decided not to turn up ?

In the post Bin Laden world there is this phenomenon everywhere.
I remember Hillary in the year 2000.  Bill was lame duck president and she traveled somewhere for a good will visit (Europe, South America - I don't remember).
Returning to New York airport she said "happy Ramazan everybody" as it was Ramazan in November 2000.
You fancy anyone among the libs saying "happy ramazan" now ? Starmer - Macron - Harris - Angela Merkel ?

The Dems were unlucky with the October 7 events, even though this was really by design to help Trump and Putin was behind it (n.b. he threw another one from a window last week).
While many muslim voters would have voted Dem if things were n't so hot down there, now they did n't.
Also the woke agenda and there was one played a more than significant role.

Do you know that in Greece former prime minister Antonis Samaras just resigned from the government party and now there is the possibility of early elections if some more mps follow ?
Samaras was the one who put the Golden Dawn leadership to prison back in 2013. Golden Dawn continued to exist for five more years but they had to stop their violent actions thanks to the resolute stance of Antonis Samaras.
Now what does he want ?
He wants to form a new party with the right wingers !
There seem to be about 20% of those and he wants to lead them - with the obvious exception of the ultras who remain faithful to the Dawn one should think.
His opposition to the woke agenda of Mitsotakis is one of the reasons he wants to do that,
The one he fancies as deputy is ms Latinopoulos, this debutant:



Greece is supposed to be the 51st state by the way.

Edited Thursday at 01:25 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,818]

U.S. Plans to Propose Breakup of Google to Fix Search Monopoly

In a landmark antitrust case, the government will ask a judge to force the company to sell its popular Chrome browser, people with knowledge of the matter said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/technology/google-search-remedies-doj.html

The Justice Department and a group of states plan to ask a federal court late Wednesday to force Google to sell Chrome, its popular web browser, two people with knowledge of the decision said, a move that could fundamentally alter the $2 trillion company’s business and reshape competition on the internet.

The request would follow a landmark ruling in August by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that found Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search. Judge Mehta asked the Justice Department and the states that brought the antitrust case to submit solutions by the end of Wednesday to correct the search monopoly.

Beyond the sale of Chrome, the government is set to ask Judge Mehta to bar Google from entering into paid agreements with Apple and others to be the automatic search engine on smartphones and in browsers, the people said. Google should also be required to share data with rivals, they said.

The proposals would likely be the most significant remedies to be requested in a tech antitrust case since the Justice Department asked to break up Microsoft in 2000. If Judge Mehta adopts the proposals, they will set the tone for a string of other antitrust cases that challenge the dominance of tech behemoths including Apple, Amazon and Meta.

Being forced to sell Chrome would be among the worst possible outcomes for Google. Chrome, which is free to use, is the most popular web browser in the world and part of an elaborate Google ecosystem that keeps people using the company’s products. Google’s search engine is bundled into Chrome.

Google is set to file its own suggestions for fixing the search monopoly by Dec. 20. Both sides can modify their requests before Judge Mehta is expected to hear arguments on the remedies this spring. He is expected to rule by the end of the summer.

“The D.O.J. continues to push a radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues in this case,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice president for regulatory affairs at Google, said in a statement this week after details of the government’s discussions were reported publicly. “The government putting its thumb on the scale in these ways would harm consumers, developers and American technological leadership at precisely the moment it is most needed.”

A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment. Bloomberg earlier reported some details of the department’s planned request.

Regulators have in recent years cracked down on the power of the biggest tech companies. The Justice Department has also sued Google over its dominance in advertising technology, and Apple for making it difficult for consumers to leave its tightly knit universe of devices and software. The Federal Trade Commission has separately sued Amazon and Meta, accusing them of anticompetitive behavior and stifling rivals.

It is unclear if these efforts will continue under President-elect Donald J. Trump. Some of the antitrust lawsuits began during Mr. Trump’s first administration.

The government’s victory in the Google search case followed a 10-week trial last year. Justice Department lawyers said Google had locked out rivals by signing deals with Apple, Mozilla, Samsung and others to be the default search engine that appears when users open a smartphone or a new tab in a web browser. In total, Google paid $26.3 billion as part of those deals in 2021, according to evidence presented at the trial.

The government argued that those deals entrenched Google’s power, guaranteeing that its search traffic was robust. The company then used the data it gathered to make its search engine better, which kept customers coming back.

Google argued that its deals had not broken the law. It said users chose Google because it was better than search engines like Microsoft’s Bing or DuckDuckGo at finding information.

The states and the Justice Department were still deciding what to ask for right up to the Wednesday deadline to file their request, according to three people familiar with the talks.

On Monday, a federal judge will hear closing arguments in the second major antitrust trial against Google — the one involving advertising technology — in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Edited Thursday at 01:28 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,818]

fuck Biden, zio bootlick

Report: Biden Admin Lobbying Against Sanders Push to Block Israel Arms Deal

The administration claimed that blocking arms transfers would embolden Hamas — ignoring Israel’s genocidal slaughter.

https://truthout.org/articles/report-biden-admin-lobbying-against-sanders-push-to-block-israel-arms-deal/

The Biden administration has levied a strong effort to lobby against a set of resolutions introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) to block several proposed arms sales to Israel ahead of a scheduled vote Wednesday, new reporting finds.

In a memo circulated to the Senate by the White House, obtained by HuffPost, the administration urges senators to vote against the resolutions. The memo claims that voting to block certain weapons to Israel would only empower Hamas and other entities opposed by the U.S. — invoking several such arguments meant to distract from the fact that Israel is making extensive use of U.S.-provided weapons in its genocidal assault of Gaza.

“Disapproving arms purchases for Israel at this moment would … put wind in the sails of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas at the worst possible moment,” the memo says, per HuffPost.

“Now is the time to focus pressure on Hamas to release the hostages and stop the war,” the document goes on. “Cutting off arms from Israel would put this goal even further out of reach and prolong the war, not shorten it.”

This line of reasoning is false. Israel is heavily dependent on U.S. weaponry to continue its genocide in Gaza, and Israeli officials have shown no indication that they would stop the assault if the remaining Israeli hostages are released. The memo also said that halting weapons transfers would jeopardize ceasefire talks between Israel and Hezbollah — despite the fact that Israeli leaders have categorically rejected the idea that they would stop their assault of Lebanon.

The White House’s memo is yet another show of the White House’s insistence that it back Israel’s genocide no matter what — to the extent that it is lobbying “aggressively,” as HuffPost reports, to block a set of resolutions that are likely to fail anyway, given the strong support for Israel within Congress. Indeed, despite the administration’s insistence that officials are “tirelessly” working for a ceasefire, the U.S. also vetoed a resolution in the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire on Wednesday.

The Senate is slated to vote on three of Sanders’s joint resolutions of disapproval on Wednesday, regarding blocking sales of tank rounds, mortar rounds, and JDAMs to Israel. Together, the three sales represent just over $1 billion worth of the weapons in the Biden administration’s proposed $20 billion deal.

Despite widespread evidence that Israel is using these weapons to kill civilians in Gaza and violate international humanitarian law — and strong support from the public to half weapons transfers — just seven senators have so far come out in favor of the resolutions. Experts have repeatedly said that stopping weapons sales to Israel is one of the only ways to stop Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) is also reportedly asking senators to vote against the legislation — a move that lines up with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plea for colleagues to reject the bid.

Though the resolutions are unlikely to advance to the House, roughly a dozen House Democrats so far have expressed their support for the legislation, saying they would vote for them if given the opportunity. This includes prominent advocates for Palestinian rights like Representatives Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) and Cori Bush (Missouri).

“[President Joe Biden] has refused to enforce US law and stop sending weapons to the Israeli government as they commit genocide in Gaza and use starvation as a weapon of war. Today, every Senator will have to decide if they will vote to uphold our own laws and block arms sales to Israel,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) on social media on Wednesday.

“We urge Senators to support these joint resolutions of disapproval to block specific offensive arms sales to Israel, upholding U.S. law that prohibits arms transfers to countries that engage in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights or restrict the delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance,” said a group of nine Democrats in a joint statement led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington).

Edited Thursday at 02:01 by Vesper

[cosmicway 1,323]

The left may still exist but is being dicredited edeverywhere and people laugh.
The only left that earns my respect is the KKE.
The KKE and its sister parties have as their ultimate purpose to create a dystopian world.
But within the sphere of left wing logic the Stalinists are the only ones who merit respect and in any case possess a coherent ideology.
This leaves the social democrats and the moderate conservatives who are however both losing ground towards the dangerous Trump like entities.
The pointers indicate we are going to have stronger Trumpism in politics. Weaker left also but only somewhat.
At the same time moderates seem incapable to think logically and stop this, other by giving in to some of the right wing demands which does n't do them any good.
In reality are those right wingers less corrupt ?
No they 're not. I know them. If they see a 50p coin on the floor they will jump like Banks-Bonetti-Olver Khan to catch it.

Edited Thursday at 04:25 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,818]

(translated)

Reklamombudsmannen (RO), is the Swedish Advertising Ombudsman

"Cunt on us" - RO-posted advertising becomes world news

Elexir Pharma's advertising campaign for Hapy, a food supplement for women's genitals, has been rejected by the Advertising Ombudsman. The reason is that the poster, which was seen on public transport in Stockholm and Gothenburg, contains a vulgar play on words. The news has now also spread abroad.
- Humor is disarming, says the marketing manager behind the campaign.

https://www.resume.se/marknadsforing/kampanj/cunt-on-us-ro-falld-reklam-blir-varldsnyhet/

During the autumn, Elexir Pharma marketed its new dietary supplement "HAPY (Happy Vagina)". The in-house produced campaign contained copy such as "Chaos down there? Don't worry!” and "There's a new vagina in town!".

However, it is the underlying tagline "You can cunt on us" that has been reported to the Advertising Ombudsman. "Cunt" is the English word for pussy and the play on words is about the similarity with the word "count" - thus the English translation of the expression "you can count on us".

A complainant writes that "cunt" is "one of the worst, crudest and most insulting words in the English language" and thinks it is "scandalous that such a word is normalized".

The advertising ombudsman's opinion board agrees with the complainants and writes that "the use of the gross profanity 'cunt' in the way it is done in the advertisement can be assumed to offend consumers in general".

The marketing manager: "Humor is disarming"

Hanna Myrling is marketing director at Elexir Pharma. She answers Resumé's questions in an email. According to her, the aim was to "promote a positive dialogue about women's health".

"We used a language game with a twinkle in our eye to challenge and break taboos around women's genitalia, health and various ailments. We believe it is important to normalize conversations about these topics and see our advertising as part of a wider movement to empower women by openly and unashamedly discussing their bodies. Humor is disarming," she writes.

What do you think of the criticism?
"We wanted to create impact and dialogue around women's health and topics that are still taboo but shouldn't be. We tested a daring approach with a twinkle in our eye and will take the insight of the criticism forward with us".

The story has now had an impact that probably no one could have foreseen. The British newspaper The Guardian has reported on the dropped advertisement. " Swedish firm censored for use of C-word in ads for vaginal health supplements " is the title of their article.

How do you see all the commotion?
"RO exists for a good reason and we get to correct ourselves in the ranks and learn something. At the same time, we are a little surprised by the interest - let's hope it leads to something good!", writes Hanna Myring.

Is all publicity good publicity?
"Twofold: we are neither the first nor the last company to test communication concepts that you have to back down from. At the same time: the more conversations about women's health, the better!”

SL regrets ✓ Ordvitfest online

SL's press officer Claes Keisu writes to Dagens Nyheter that it was "unfortunate that the advertisement was let through".

"Although in this case it should be understood that the advertising message is a play on words, we understand that it could arouse reactions and be perceived as offensive," he writes in an email to the newspaper.

He says that Clear Channel, which manages the sale of advertising in the subway, is making an initial assessment. In cases of doubt, they consult with the traffic administration.

"That this advertisement was allowed through is unfortunate and that it is criticized by the Advertising Ombudsman is a lesson both for us at the traffic administration and our advertising contractors," continues Claes Keisu's email to DN.

With The Guardian picking up the incident, the news also spread to the internet forum Reddit. In a now-deleted thread, several users spin on the pun. Some examples are "I cunt believe what I'm reading", "targeted content marketing" and "such a cuntroversy".

[Fulham Broadway 16,851]

Russia just fired an Inter Continental Ballistic missile....

[Fernando 6,463]

2 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Russia just fired an Inter Continental Ballistic missile....

Where to? 

nvm i just saw it, but Russia ain't saying nothing. So that means the world will not believe it. 

Edited Thursday at 11:42 by Fernando

[Fulham Broadway 16,851]

4 minutes ago, Fernando said:

Where to? 

Ukraine -think they're just showing threy're serious with an Inter Continental missile - no need to fire one with a 2000 mile range

[cosmicway 1,323]

They want to scare Zelensky.
The rocket was conventional of course.
Putin in the meantime throws dissenters out of windows day after day.
Putin offers a choice tea-plutonium-window. Apparently the window is the less painful.

[Vesper 28,818]

ICC issues arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged Gaza war cri

Just now, Fulham Broadway said:

Arrest warrants have been issued for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former defence secretary Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

 

The warrants are forwar crimes.

Another warrant was issued for the arrest of Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al Masri.

lol, I was just posting this when you beat me to it

GMTA

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/21/icc-issues-arrest-warrant-for-benjamin-netanyahu-israel

[Vesper 28,818]

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-11-21-harris-disappointed-gen-z/

Students register to vote at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, October 11, 2024.

“I love Gen Z,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a campaign advertisement. “You know your power. Your power through your voice, through your vote.” But Harris’s attempts to turn out young voters weren’t nearly as successful as she would have hoped. President-elect Donald Trump made large gains with young people disillusioned by their future prospects and by the Democratic candidate who believed that she’d won them over.

 

Harris’s failure is a direct result of a weak Democratic brand that once again abandoned Generation Z and undermined young voters’ trust in government institutions. Erin Heys, policy director for the Berkeley Institute for Young Americans at the University of California, Berkeley, says young voters are “fatalistic,” and feel that their lives and futures are outside of their control.

Young people see a failed two-party system that ignores their concerns—and progressive youth see Democratic politicians who promised to create a more equitable America and yet are no longer acting in their best interests. The demise of Roe v. Wade, escalating police brutality, and ditching DEI policies have led Gen Z to distrust the government, even if Democrats were not directly responsible for these shifts. Two critical issues, the Israel-Gaza war and the economy, fed into young Americans’ disillusionment with politics and either turned them toward Trump or led them to boycott this election.

The Israel-Gaza war showed that Democrats were unwilling to listen to young voters, particularly college students. Sophie Mansuri, a junior at George Washington University, says she hesitantly voted for Harris despite her “wishy-washy” stance on the war in Gaza, citing campaign ads that displayed different messages both on Israel’s right to self-defense and a call to end the war in Gaza. What ultimately informed her decision, however, was that Harris was “the lesser of two evils.”

“I’m frustrated, but not surprised,” says Charles Cherry, a junior at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, the only all-male historically Black college in the United States. Atlanta played a critical role in flipping Georgia, which voted narrowly for Biden in 2020. In the swing state, however, Harris rallied less support than Biden, despite sharing a common ethnic background with Black voters and a commitment to HBCUs.

Under the guise of empowering men, Republicans catered to young men’s worst patriarchal impulses and used social media as the backbone of their propaganda.

Cherry notes that only a small group of students at Morehouse College were enthusiastic about voting for Harris, while many more people were skeptical. Harris’s identity as a Black woman triggered some misogyny among an increasingly conservative base of young men, and her past as San Francisco’s district attorney and as California’s attorney general also drew concerns about her views on mass incarceration.

Young white men were Trump’s most supportive demographic. Almost half of the surveyed young Latino men voted for Trump, compared to a third of young Latina women. Surprisingly, Trump made gains among young white women despite expectations that women would overwhelmingly support Harris because of her stance on reproductive rights.

Most young voters had concluded that the economy is “somewhat” or “very poor” in a University of Chicago/Gen Forward youth survey. Young men, particularly young conservative white men, expressed that the economy was a top priority—concerns about inflation influenced their votes. Young Latino voters also voiced fears about financial stability and jobs.

Trump took a multifaceted economic approach: tackling housing costs through stricter immigration laws, addressing the rising cost of living, and cutting taxes on income, like ending taxes on tips. Harris made the same pledge on tips, but some of her other proposals, such as down-payment support for first-time homebuyers, didn’t attract the interest of young adults who don’t have the financial means or desire to own a home.

Under the guise of empowering men, Republicans catered to the young men’s worst patriarchal impulses and used social media as the backbone of their propaganda. Both off- and online, conservatives scapegoated women and Democrats by using critical issues like bodily autonomy, framing that concern as “anti-man” instead of anti-control. The GOP also weaponized men’s festering resentment toward what they viewed as feminist politics.

Trump built his presence throughout this “manosphere” by using male voices like Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist and former kickboxer; Logan Paul, a YouTube star and wrestler; and Joe Rogan, a mixed martial arts commentator and podcaster, to indoctrinate young men in economic and immigration policies. The Trump campaign amassed support from less politically active men due to right-wing social influencers meeting them in their online spaces. They convinced young men that Democrats believe masculinity to be the enemy; but conservatives, they argued, were willing to accept young men as they are. Trump’s relationship with Elon Musk also attracted aspiring entrepreneurs and misogynists alike; and he used Musk’s status among tech bros to connect more people to his policies.

Conservatives also leaned into racial biases, convincing non-Black college applicants that Black students took up spaces at elite colleges that they were somehow unqualified for. The GOP also used Asian American students’ dissatisfaction over college admissions processes in the assault on affirmative action, which has benefited white women as much if not more than students of color. On identity issues, they argued that Harris wasn’t Black enough to relate to the Black experience and, in the same breath, branded non-Black voters of color as true Americans—a demographic that Harris wouldn’t support. At least, not like Trump.

President Biden’s broken promises on climate issues that young people monitor, like drilling for oil on public lands in Alaska, also helped tank Harris’s green agenda.

In 2020, youth voters turned out in record numbers. But in 2024, turnout was significantly lower and surprisingly similar to voter turnout in 2016. Why didn’t young people turn up? In short, the increase in overt racism and sexism perpetuated through social media platforms, plus Harris’s association with the war in Gaza, meant that many young Democratic voters of college age just decided to pass on the 2024 presidential election.

Splitting Democrats has always been essential to building the Republican brand. By highlighting the divisions in the party, Republicans have successfully portrayed the Democratic Party as a jumble of conflicting ideas all fighting for their slice of the rhetorical pie. In contrast, Republicans used that internal chaos to appear calm and focused on issues like the economy that mattered most to voters.

Democrats must ensure Gen Z has a future that they can be enthused about. They can start by combating “doomer” and fatalistic mindsets permeating politics. For Gen Z, not only are Democrats spineless, but they are willing to use issues to garner support, with no intention of fixing the problem. The perception exists that the party only appeals to young Americans when they need their votes and they don’t put in the hard work to build stable coalitions outside of presidential election cycles. Republicans capitalized on those growing fractures.

Democrats could win back Gen Z by acknowledging their anxiety about the state of the world and pledging substantial economic and social changes that would benefit people entering adulthood. The Democrats assumed that since they had secured the youth vote, they did not need to carve out specific policies for young people. That disconnect allowed Republicans to spoon-feed uninformed voters with misinformation about Trumponomics to quell their fears about the future. Young Americans wanted policies that would make real changes in their increasingly difficult lives and point the way to better circumstances—and the Democrats did not deliver. As Mansuri says, “If you don’t listen to your constituents, we don’t owe you any loyalty.”

[Fernando 6,463]

2 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Ukraine -think they're just showing threy're serious with an Inter Continental missile - no need to fire one with a 2000 mile range

I think this was also due because Biden allowed Ukraine to use a specific weapon to them, It is interesting that Biden was against this but now allow it right before his term finish....

[KEVINAA 97]

 

 

 

Edited Thursday at 14:43 by KEVINAA

[Fulham Broadway 16,851]

13 minutes ago, Fernando said:

I think this was also due because Biden allowed Ukraine to use a specific weapon to them, It is interesting that Biden was against this but now allow it right before his term finish....

Bizarre and reckless of Biden to do this -there was/is no way of knowing how Russia would respond. And the UK govt is just as bad - no vote by MPs as to whether its sensible to ifre British made Storm Shadow missiles into Russia.

Though not surprising as Kier Starmer is the first and only MP out of 650 to be inaugurated into an American Neo Con group Tripartite Commission