Spotted in Dunvegan Gardens, Isle of Skye, Scotland

CC BY 4.0

This level of celebrity worship is so bizarre.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10038381

Archived link

Taiwan’s ambassador [to Canada] is warning that efforts to foster closer economic cooperation with China increase the threat of coercion, after Beijing imposed a 73.5 per cent tariff on Canadian pea starch.

The levy came after the Liberal government tabled legislation combatting forced labour in supply chains, which could end up targeting Chinese imports.

The UN Human Rights Office warned that China’s “poverty alleviation through labour transfer” program effectively coerces the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and other minorities into forced labor.

Harry Tseng, Taiwan’s ambassador to Canada, said ... that China has “repeatedly weaponized trade to pressure its partners.”

“From Australian wine to Taiwanese agricultural products, the lesson is clear: the greater the dependence on China, the greater the risk of coercion,” he said.

...

Tseng said Taiwan has responded by “diversifying trade and strengthening resilience,” and warned that Beijing’s new Ethnic Unity Law “risks extending transnational repression worldwide.”

“Freedom and the rule of law demand vigilance,” he added.

That law requires Mandarin to be taught to children before kindergarten and until they graduate high school, and advocates charge that it will allow for more aggressive forced assimilation of ethnic minorities.

It also includes a clause that says the Chinese government can hold legally accountable those outside its borders that undermine “ethnic unity and progress or inciting ethnic separatism.” Critics have said this permits China to crack down on dissidents living abroad.

...

Canada tabled the forced labour bill in June after the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office launched investigations into 60 countries who failed to enforce and prohibit imported goods from forced and child labour.

...

The tabling of the bill comes as Canada has started taking steps to improve ties with Beijing, including slashing tariffs on 49,000 Chinese EVs each year from 100 per cent to 6.1 back in January.

China has responded by lowering tariffs on canola seed from 85 per cent to 14.9, and suspended tariffs on Canadian canola meal, peas, lobsters and crabs.

Those tariffs will come back into force in 2027, if not renewed by China. Producers have warned this complicates planning for harvesting this season, and those in the sector told iPolitics they’re not anticipating any announcement until the fall, possibly when Prime Minister Mark Carney makes a return visit to China for the APEC summit in November.

...

Conservative agriculture critic John Barlow said uncertainty about Canada’s access to the Chinese market shows the risk of Carney’s overtures to Beijing.

“This was supposed to be a reset of this relationship with China when we let in 50,000 Chinese EVs into Canada. I think this is a stark reminder that the communist regime in China is not one that is reliable,” he said, noting that tariffs are still in effect for pork and other canola products.

“As we said right from the beginning, there’s no guarantee or long-term certainty. And when you are a farmer and you plan years in advance, you have to buy your seed and fertilizer. You’re rotating your crops. This is not something that the farmers can make a knee-jerk response to — they need certainty long-term on where their markets are going to be.”

...

The government has promised to consult on the [forced labour] bill over the summer.

...

Industry Minister Melanie Joly said recently that increased access to the Canadian market would only come if Chinese vehicle makers set up shop in Canada.

The head of the group that represents Canadian auto manufacturers cautioned that a Chinese firm coming here wouldn’t match the footprint of a GM or Honda.

Brian Kingston, the president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, said Ottawa’s criteria for accessing the Canadian market doesn’t align with the operation of Chinese manufacturers, who typically use “knock down” kits in foreign markets to get around hefty tariffs. This process involves disassembling goods manufactured in China and then shipping them abroad for final assembly, requiring minimal local support.

“They’re not using a local supply chain. They’ll use imported labor for the construction of a plant. You’re highly unlikely to see a unionized workforce, and of course, they have their own technology from China that they use in the vehicles,” Kingston explained.

...

1.4 Mission Statement The mission of the company is the well-being of all people. To accomplish this goal we will operate business ventures designed to generate income through which we can secure our own well-being and consequently become empowered to help others.

Today we are witnessing the spectacular failure of Capitalism to provide for the needs of this planet and the people on it. In previous eras of class instability, the focus was often on the bifurcation between those who wish to dominate, and those who wish for a world without domination. While the ideals of a world free of domination are admirable, its proponents face the cold reality that those who specialize in domination are able to accumulate more power than those who do not seek it.

This need to dominate is typically associated with hierarchical organizations, and for good reason as they are the mechanism that allows individuals to accumulate unconstrained executive power. However, rather than trying to dismantle hierarchical systems, our collective recognizes them as an essential tool for problem-solving and productivity. We intend to capture and incorporate hierarchical management into large, democratically owned and managed cooperatives called “Strategic Unions”. This will enable organizations with similar power compared to today’s capitalist corporations, but with social equity and Article 1.4 as their most fundamental goals.

The plan is to deploy open-source Enterprise Resource Planning software to coordinate the efforts and voting that will take place in the co-op. You then recruit like-minded workers from your area to join your server and begin organizing and holding elections. At this point, workers in your cooperative will put forward business plans and become candidates for CEO. The members vote based on the candidate and the business plan, and the person who wins is not a dictator. They are a mandated agent of the co-op, and they are removable by vote. Their job is to coordinate the business project according to their plan in order to generate revenue.

After elections, you incorporate as a Strategic Union, which means filing Articles of Incorporation as a C-corporation in your state. You will then have bargaining power in your area based on the size and specialization of your workforce. You can use the Master Staffing Agreement template to negotiate labor contracts with local businesses. Your co-op members are hired out full time, so the member-worker gets a paycheck in a similar arrangement to a staffing or temp agency. The co-op gets paid by the hour and the amount left over after paying the worker (the margin) funds the CEO’s business plan. This allows for capitalization without capitalist investors. It’s a “bootstrapping” process, meaning the first business plan is self-starting. Once the staffing contracts are no longer needed, they are dropped.

Following this plan, you don’t have to work at the same business to organize a union. You set up your server and organize with whomever you like.

We are asking you to take on Article 1.4 as your personal mission and join our efforts. Or, we could ride the crapitalism train to wherever it may be headed. Your choice my friends.

Apoidea Group

https://codeberg.org/Brachylophus/Apoidea

https://codeberg.org/Brachylophus/Apoidea/src/branch/main/PHILOSOPHY.md

https://codeberg.org/Brachylophus/Apoidea/src/branch/main/INCORPORATION.md

https://codeberg.org/Brachylophus/Apoidea/src/branch/main/STAFFING.md

https://matrix.to/#%2F%21dVwyUzAwiuIflwnpEF%3Amatrix.org%3Fvia=matrix.org

Permits reviewed by Floodlight show that nine of them combined could emit more than 130 million tons of greenhouse gases every year. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions of 35 coal-fired power plants, according to an Environmental Protection Agency calculator.

Archived copy of the article

🔗

Caption:

“Sorry, mister, but this is what we do to cattle rustlers in these parts.”

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Meanwhile Biden (and basically every zionist media outlet) on October 7th:

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49267939

The Guardian reports 235 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since October 7, 2023. A further 5 were killed by Israeli settlers. According to human rights group B'Tselem, Israel's system "effectively gives them a licence to kill." The military claims 96% of those killed were "involved in terrorism," but B'Tselem found no evidence that any of the 54 children killed in 2025 posed a threat or belonged to militant groups.

source: How children in West Bank are being killed by Israel ‘without accountability’ (The Guardian)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/29/is-it-israels-aim-to-kill-our-children-west-bank-parents-implore-end-to-idfs-child-killings-with-impunity

The absolute dregs of society i swear to god.

Psychopathic individualist ladder climbing freaks who have not one crumb of responsibility or integrity where throwing people under the bus to maintain their job of being a fuckhead is the norm.

What do i do with these people? I literally cannot be around them

Water cooler talk be like “ooh the shareprice looks good today”

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

It’s not just Bezos’ financial interests that are advanced by O’Neal’s Opinions page, but also Bezos’ and his fellow billionaires’ broader ideological project.

Under O’Neal’s watch, no tax on the wealthy seems to go uncensured. “The Post has weighed in on tax policy everywhere from Switzerland to Seattle, lambasting every attempt to reduce the grotesque inequality of our times,” Nathan Robinson wrote in a detailed review of the Post Opinions page for The Nation: "Almost no tax on the rich around the world escapes the paper’s notice—one might wonder why capital gains taxes in the Netherlands are a priority for a DC paper."

And no social program appears too small to earn O’Neal’s ire, not even diapers. In providing 400 free diapers to new parents, “California’s nanny state is taking infantilization to a new level,” decried a Post editorial.

Other recent Post editorials have “opposed minimum wage increases, tenant protections, social housing, rent control, free buses, caps on credit card interest rates, caps on the prices of staple foods, congestion pricing and even the Railway Safety Act,” wrote Robinson.

But when government largesse flows to the rich, the Post is more open minded. The Trump administration’s request for another $200 billion for the Iran War, as well as a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget for next year, both received the Post’s blessing. “Peace doesn’t come cheap,” the Post wrote.

Left unmentioned in the editorials is that Bezos’ empire—via his space company Blue Origin and Amazon’s cloud computing arm, AWS—holds billions of dollars worth of Pentagon contracts.

A new case report published in Frontiers in Neuroscience describes an extraordinary but highly preliminary observation: an 80-year-old woman with advanced Alzheimer's disease showed temporary multidomain improvement after receiving a high dose of psilocybin-containing mushrooms.

Following administration of 5g of mushrooms, she entered a prolonged deep sleep-like state. After waking, she reportedly regained the ability to speak in full sentences, recognised family members, dressed independently, and recovered urinary continence after five years.

A later 3g dose appeared to extend some of these improvements.