Democracy Local, a planetary publication 地方民主

NEW: A Local Snapshot with Orzhytsia (Ukraine) Mayor Olena Sydorenko. 'Openness Is Even More Essential in War' www.democracy.community/stories/loca...

NEW: A Local Snapshot with Orzhytsia (Ukraine) Mayor Olena Sydorenko. 'Openness Is Even More Essential in War' www.democracy.community/stories/loca...

NEW at Democracy Local: Our Local Snapshot feature chats with Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani about his city's water struggles—and how participatory governance and neighborhood democracy may help solve them. www.democracy.community/stories/loca...

Apologies... I'm Scots-Irish, so need to work on my Welsh.

They are gulags. Should start calling them that, @nytimes.com

In separatist news, the Welsh nationalists with a strong showing. Cymru Rhydd!

they hate it when we call it San Fran. It's San Francisco. Or, just, The City.

If you’re wondering why ICE Agents, even behind their masks, seem like a bunch of pathetic losers, it’s because that’s exactly the kinds of people who join secret police forces: people who are such failures that a repugnant job is the best they can get. Data: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Always greatful for every reader, even harsh ones. And I’ll readily concede that if you’re the sort of person who prefers politically irrelevant academic agonism to considering technologically enabled possibilities for real change, you probably won’t like our book.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Abundance Movement’s Blind Spot | NOEMA What if Americans care more about the cost of climate disasters than carbon-free energy?

“The long-delayed realization that what was once considered our grandchildren’s problem is now our own is arriving not in the form of hurricane-force winds, but as a letter of assessment from an insurer.”

— @brianstonejr.bsky.social

#abundanceagenda #climatecrisis #greentransition

Welcome To The New Warring States | NOEMA Today’s global turbulence has echoes in Chinese history.

“The ‘Make America Great Again’ movement is less a conservative restoration than a strategic recalibration rooted in the logic of the Warring States.”

—Hui Huang

#china #history #tariffs

Rescuing Democracy From The Quiet Rule Of AI | NOEMA Our gravest AI risk isn’t runaway superintelligence but our cultural readiness to surrender collective judgment to algorithmic systems.

“The path to tyranny is often paved by individuals who ‘obey in advance,’ anticipating what authoritarian leaders want & preemptively meeting them halfway to avoid conflict. In the age of AI, this phenomenon appears poised to occur at an algorithmic scale.”

—Andrew Sorota

#AI #democracy

Wide-ranging discussion at the UN Forummof Mayors in Geneva

The municipality of Gaborone, Botswana takes transparency seriously. It posts its response times and service delivery promises on a big tablet right outside the Civic Center.

Great local panel at Open Government Partnership.

‘Constitutional Patriotism’ | NOEMA Europe hopes America will remain anchored in the West.

“That it has fallen to Germans to remind America of what the West is all about suggests we have come full circle to a point where the most ardent pupils of democracy must now tutor their mentors who seem to have forgotten the lessons they once taught so well.”

—Nathan Gardels
#democracy #patriotism

Bloomberg bubble charts the Bubble:

Priorities | Katie Porter for Governor Defending Your Health Care From Trump’s Attacks: Our next governor must be a health care governor! In Congress, I took on our health care challenges — passing a strong law to stop insurance companies ...

@katieporteroc.bsky.social 's interview reveals not her manners but her lack of ideas & vision.

The question she was asked is a softball--what do you say to Trump voters? The easy answer is to offer your vision. But she doesn't have one. Look at her website policy katieporter.com/priorities/

Pastor shot in the head by ICE agents sues over First Amendment threats David Black joins journalists and protesters in lawsuit to stop ‘pattern of extreme brutality’ from federal agents

An incident in Chicago took place that everyone in America should know about. Trump's ICE thugs shot a pastor in the head with a pepper bullet. He's suing. This man should be internationally famous. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Editing Nature To Fix Our Failures | NOEMA Gene editing may enable us to prevent a species from ever becoming extinct in the first place. But should we?

We are starting to witness tantalizing glimpses of the net good that can be achieved via genetic editing. How far will we allow it to go?

Aryn Baker explores.

#geneediting #crispr

Big news in LA

The Trump Admin’s Mostly Unnoticed Move to Crack Down on the Opposition Last month, the White House issued two executive orders that direct federal...

MAGA’s full-scale assault on civil society is about to begin, and here’s the vehicle: “the threat of the orders comes not necessarily in the form of imminent charges but in the lengthy, resource-draining investigations…” talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the-tru...

Despite opposition parties' promises to save democracy once elected, it is not uncommon for these parties to become seduced by the power of their predecessors' authoritarian machinery.

muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/a...

Claim: 10 cars rammed ICE
Truth: No cars rammed ICE

Claim: She boxed ICE in
Truth: ICE boxed her in

Claim: She shot a rifle at ICE
Truth: She did not have a rifle

Claim: ICE returned fire
Truth: Only ICE fired

Claim: She drove herself to the hospital
Truth: Paramedics found her

A lack of respect for opposition parties and checks and balances led to the unraveling of Bolivia's Movement Toward Socialism (MAS).

muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/a...

I was at an event last week when a regional election chief from India discussed banning paid advertising and declared, "the media must fall in line."

Big mistake! The UN just let Democracy Local in. Looking forward to an interesting day of discussion at the Forum of Mayors in Geneva

The Atlantic Writer, Ross Andersen (@rossandersen.bsky.social) in conversation with Futurology Producer Grant Slater (@grantslater.bsky.social) get into the dangerous gap between humanity's understanding of time and the consequences of our actions.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN31...

ICE admits that up to 50% of arrests in its Chicago raids are "collateral.” These aren't statistics. They are parents taken from their children, neighbors taken from our communities. When does a "collateral" U.S. citizen child's trauma matter? This isn't law enforcement; it's a campaign of terror.

Trump’s America is effectively abandoning California OPINION: “The question of whether California’s future belongs inside or outside the United States remains a choice, but it is no longer a difficult one,” Joe Mathews writes.

Californians, stop talking about secession or independence. We're past that. Trump dumped us. We're already gone.

My new column @sfchronicle www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open...