"Dr Bryce Edwards is a transparency campaigner, used to run a thing called the Integrity Institute, which had backing to research these issues, now it's called The Democracy Project ..."

#ColinPeacock, 2026

https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=e7df26f7-0add-4051-a4ac-36568ba69994

Really? It's news to me that The Democracy Project is a rebranding of the Integrity Institute. I thought the latter was a newer initiative. Can anyone confirm?

#MediaWatch #IntegrityInstitute #DemocracyProject #RNZ #podcasts

Does anyone have any other info about whether Lucy has been involved in public life in any other way, prior to being arrested for protesting in support of genocide?

(5/5)

Had a look for some background on Lucy Rogers, but couldn't find any. Apart from various mentions on KiwiBlog, the Free Speech Onion website, and Reality Check Radio, related to her arrest for counterprotesting a Gaza solidarity rally.

Which does sound sketchy. I respect people's right to hold and express opinions I disagree with, including by counter-protesting against protests I support. I'm definitely not a fan of cops suppressing protest of any kind.

(4/?)

The people of Iran *did* live in a secular democracy, until a CIA-backed coup overthrew the elected government in 1953 and replaced it with the dictatorship of the Shah. Rogers seems to be claiming that that having by destroying schools, and threatening to destroy more civilian infrastructure and end civilisation, the US is somehow going to bomb Iran back the democracy they destroyed. This is the work of either a very subtle satirist, or a Useful Idiot.

(3/?)

I mean, FFS. Even the legacy news media are now naming what Likud and the IDF are doing as the genocide it is. The idea that Israel is a bastion of free expression under the Netanyahoo regime, or the US, while Orange Stalin's goons are literally gunning down citizens in the streets, is deeply delusional.

(2/?)

"But I have absolutely no respect for Joe Carolan and his bunch of commie goons, who are holding a meeting in Auckland this week to protest the attacks on the IRGC.

...

Their sympathies are with the butchers of Tehran, despite the fact that Israel and the US are democracies which respect freedom of speech."

#LucyRogers, 2026

https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2026/03/i_have_reservations_about_war_with_iran_too_but_joe_carolan_and_his_ilk_are_hypocrites_of_the_highest_order.html

Bwaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahaha 🤣

Deep in the forest this one.

(1/?)

Hi @PaulaToThePeople, I'm wondering if the joinfediverse.wiki team would like to integrate any useful info from this list of themed server people can join;

https://fediverse.party/en/portal/servers/

... into your instances page here?

https://joinfediverse.wiki/Instances

We're probably going to disestablish that page in the near future. It's a bit out-of-date, and we don't have the resources to curate it along with all the other info we're trying to track and document.

#TIL about a project called #Ecolibrium. Despite being drafted on GritHub, this doesn't appear to be software, so much as a suite of movement-building tools, inspired by WiserEarth (later wiser.org);

"An open-source blueprint for the peaceful transition to a post-scarcity, ecologically sustainable, democratically governed society."

https://github.com/simonlpaige/ecolibrium

The founder is looking for feedback. Be kind.

#WiserEarth

Maybe RealMe is fully publicly-owned and operated. Maybe the tech depends only on Free Code and open protocols that can be independently audited. Maybe the data collected while using RM is used only to provide the service being accessed, and deleted afterwards.

Maybe I've got my tinfoil hat on, and this is all fine. Maybe.

But it bothers me that this has happened by 1000 cuts, with no significant public debate about whether it's what we want from our public services.

(4/4)

So while RealMe isn't *technically* compulsory - there are other ways to interact with government services - for most people it's effectively compulsory. Anyone who;

* can't afford to travel to one of the 3 city offices, or can't get through on the phone to make an appointment

* doesn't have a printer - or the time to go to the library to do printing - and the time to go to 1 of the few remaining postshops (potentially multiple rounds of both)

... *must* use RM to access govt services.

(3/?)

A friend started applying for a passport recently, and brought it to my attention that aide from using RealMe, the only way to do that is by printing out and posting a paper form, or by going into a DIA office in person;

https://www.govt.nz/browse/passports-citizenship-and-identity/get-or-renew-a-new-zealand-passport/get-or-renew-a-new-zealand-passport/#898

So our non-RM options;

* a postal system that now charges $2 to deliver a letter, and is in real danger of collapse in the next 5-10 years

* making an appointment at an office in one of 3 cities;

https://www.dia.govt.nz/Our-public-offices

(2/?)

Kia ora kiwis, how do we feel about RealMe these days? A decade ago @thomasbeagle gave a speech about RealMe, raising concerns about overzealous data collection and and data matching, and uploaded a copy here;

https://techliberty.org.nz/speech-about-realme-and-big-data/

(1/?)

#RealMe #GovtData #GovtIT #privacy

#RMS nails the "AI" con in their characteristic manner, by turns intellectually careful and unapologetically blunt;

"We've been hearing a lot about 'AI', and that term carries a terrible confusion ... As I see it, intelligence means something's ability to know or understand ... If something can't actually understand things, we shouldn't call it intelligent, not even a little intelligent. But people are using the term 'AI' for bullshit generators."

https://audio-video.gnu.org/video/gnu40/rms-gnu40.webm

#MOLE #AI

I recently posted about archive.today (also archive.is, archive.ph, archive.fo, archive.li, archive.md, and archive.vn) using its archive links to launch a ddos attack against a blogger they accused of doxing them: https://mathstodon.xyz/@11011110/116028203974257264

That attack triggered #Wikipedia (at least, the English part) to discuss banning archive.today links, and the ensuing discussion turned up evidence that (as part of the same dispute with the same blogger) archive.today had also tampered with its archived content to falsify certain names in old archived links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Archive.is_RFC_5#Evidence_of_altering_snapshots

This led to a quick close of the discussion and a consensus to remove all archive.today links from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidance
For the same reasons I have removed all archive.today links from my blog, where I had been occasionally using them as a convenient way to access paywalled content. I suggest that others remove their links as well, lest you unwittingly become part of additional ddos attacks and falsification.

5 years ago, people from IBM/ Red Hat and Moziila were fuming about Stallman being restored to the board of the Free Software Foundation;

https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/26/redhat_fsf_funding_richard_stallman/

... in response to overwhelming support from the software freedom movement;

https://rms-support-letter.github.io/

Since then Red Hat and Mozilla have taken a whole bevy of actions that undermine the software freedom of people in their ecosystems. So ... was their motivation really concern for DEA? Or the desire to defang a prominent critic?

We have a new way for you to listen on demand. If you can't tune in to the live stream, you can listen to the Radio Allelopathy specific part of the broadcast here: https://kolektiva.media/c/radio_allelopathy/videos #music #punk #crust #metal #noise #pirateradio #anarchism #fuckICE #fuckZionazis

Trisquel is made by removing all nonfree software from Ubuntu LTS releases. If they're shipping a Chromium-based browser, that confirms that it's possible to build one with no proprietary components. So now we have 2 entirely libre codebases on which to build web browsers 🥳

(2/2)

While I'm announcing GNU/Linux-related good news, the latest version of the Trisquel distro was released this month, and ...

"Both GNU IceCat and ungoogled-chromium are now available in Ecne, joining our continuously maintained Abrowser, giving users a range of fully free web browsing choices."

https://trisquel.info/en/trisquel-120-ecne-release-announcement

(1/2)

#Trisquel #Ecne #Chromium #IceCat #GNU #LinuxLibre #GoodNews

Shlaim's roots are in the Jewish community in Iraq. In the interview he talks about how his family, like many Middle Eastern Jews, moved to Israel after it was created. How Jewish communities in Iraq were terrorised by Zionist false flag bombings, to encourage them relocate. How they suffered discrimination at the hands of the European Jews who dominated the institutions of Israel, and whose Islamophobic descendants still do.

Debunking almost every talking point in Likud/ IDF propaganda.

(2/2)

"There was no history of antisemitism in the Arab world. Antisemitism is a European disease ... In the 1930s, antisemitism was exported from Europe to Iraq in particular, and it's striking that there was no antisemitic literature in Arabic. So antisemitic literature had to be translated from European languages into Arabic, and one example is Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'."

Professor #AviShlaim, 2024

https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-arab-jew-experience-exposes-the/comments

(1/2)

#antisemitism #ChrisHedges #podcasts