One Florida Case Shows How the U.S. Became a Rogue State on Abortion

BY LYNN M. MORGAN AND MICHELLE OBERMAN

MARCH 02, 2023

Lee and Deborah Dorbert say they have endured anger and depression since learning that Deborah’s fetus was not developing normally and would die soon after delivery. 

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.

Amid the clamor of abortion news is a quiet case of torture playing out in Florida. Last month, the Washington Post reported the story of Deborah Dorbert, who is being forced to carry to term a fetus with a lethal condition called Potter syndrome. When she learned her fetus wouldn’t survive, Dorbert asked to terminate the pregnancy. But her doctors and their lawyers declined, fearful they would run afoul of the state’s 15-week abortion ban. Without any other feasible options, she and her young family passed more than three months waiting for the birth and death.

Her story is not unique: similar cases have happened in other countries with extreme abortion bans. But on March 22–23, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, one branch of the Organization of American States charged with adjudicating alleged violations of the American Convention on Human Rights, will hear arguments in a case that could change the ways those women and their pregnancies are treated under international law by condemning such treatment as violating the right to be free from gender-based discrimination, violence, torture, stigma, and threats to bodily autonomy.

The case involves a 2013 controversy over “Beatriz,” a 22-year-old Salvadoran mother with lupus who was forced to continue a life-threatening pregnancy even though the fetus lacked parts of its skull and brain. Everyone agreed Beatriz’s pregnancy was both life-threatening—Beatriz nearly died during her first pregnancy—and nonviable. But El Salvador’s law dictates that life begins at conception and bans abortion without exception, leading the Salvadoran Supreme Court to conclude that, because the fetus was technically alive, it had the same right to life as Beatriz did.

Beatriz endured seven weeks in the hospital while doctors struggled to control the worsening symptoms of her disease—kidney failure, septic lupus lesions, hypertension. Finally, when her death was imminent, and under an emergency order from the Inter-American Court, her doctors delivered the fetus—which lived only five hours—and managed to save Beatriz’s life.

To the Salvadoran government, it was a good outcome: the abortion ban held and Beatriz lived. They avoided having to grant an exception to save Beatriz’s life. But Beatriz’s lawyers are arguing that El Salvador’s ban violates the government’s international responsibilities as well as Beatriz’s human rights. They are asking the court to order El Salvador to pay damages, and also to rule that the country’s absolute ban on abortion violates the American Convention on Human Rights, which governs international human rights for the Western Hemisphere, so as to prevent similar cases from arising in the future.

Given our habitual disregard for human rights discourse, Americans might be inclined to ignore Beatriz’s case. American politicians routinely dismiss the applicability of international human rights law in this country. The U.S. has ratified neither the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women nor the American Convention on Human Rights. Still, even Americans agree that torture is a crime under international law, having ratified the UN Convention Against Torture.

Beatriz’s is the latest in a line of cases in which the international community has recognized that denying access to abortion can sometimes constitute torture. So ruled the UN Human Rights Committee in 2005, after the Peruvian government forced a pregnant teenager to carry an anencephalic fetus to term. And so ruled Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court in 2012 when it exempted anencephaly from abortion restrictions, acknowledging that such pregnancies cause trauma and suffering. Forbidding termination in such cases, one Brazilian justice said, is equal to torture. Likewise, when Colombia’s Supreme Court legalized abortion in 2022, it noted that total abortion bans, especially in contexts of grave fetal malformations, violate basic human dignity and the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

Beatriz v. El Salvador will mark the first time the Inter-American Court hears a case in which a woman has explicitly demanded that the right to terminate a pregnancy be recognized. It comes at a time when many countries of the Americas have expanded abortion rights, including Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Colombia. In this regard, the United States is an outlier following the Supreme Court’s overturning of the constitutional right to an abortion last year—only a few other countries have restricted or annulled that right. If the Inter-American Court rules in Beatriz’s favor, the decision would be considered binding on all 20 countries that ratified or adhere to the American Convention on Human Rights. The United States is not one of those countries, although, as U.S. abortion rights advocates have noted, because the court is a multilateral body tasked with promoting human rights across the Americas, Americans can still seek recourse there.

Because the U.S. has not ratified the convention, a victory for Beatriz means Salvadorans and others bound by the Inter-American system will enjoy greater human rights protections from the harms of abortion bans than Americans do. Anti-abortion conservatives seem to relish casting the U.S. as a pariah among nations for our libertine abortion laws, an argument which indeed formed part of Justice Samuel Alito’s Dobbs opinion striking down Roe v. Wade. As the Inter-American Court is likely to soon demonstrate, the opposite is true. Indeed, these same conservatives have mounted a decadeslong strategy to disengage from international human rights law and to undermine multilateral human rights bodies. It is no accident that the majority opinion in Dobbs omitted any mention of “human rights” because, by their reckoning, those rights do not apply to Americans.

In the end, a victory for Beatriz will not come in time to stop the torture of Deborah Dorbert, nor will it necessarily prevent other U.S. states from violating the human rights of those who, like Dorbert, face devastating diagnoses during pregnancy. But even if the U.S. refuses to follow the Inter-American Court’s directives, a victory for Beatriz will matter because the world is watching. Recognizing these cases for what they are—torture—will call out America’s rogue status among the community of nations.

Surge of Drug Smugglers and Illegal Immigrants Cross the US-Canada Border

LONGEST FREE (UNGUARDED) BORDER IN THE WORLD, NO MORE

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and other House Republicans spoke at a conference launching the Northern Border Security Caucus at the House Triangle in Washington on Feb. 28, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

By Madalina Vasiliu

March 2, 2023

WASHINGTON—Republican legislators announced on Feb. 28 at the House Triangle a new caucus to raise awareness about the spike of illegal immigrants and drug smugglers coming across the U.S.-Canada border.

Northern border apprehensions have surged by 1,498 percent since President Joe Biden took office, the lawmakers said. Except for marijuana, drug smuggling along the border between the United States and Canada has increased by 596 percent since FY 2021. The number of CBP agents, instead, has remained the same since FY 2009.

Reps. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) lead the Northern Border Security Caucus with more than two dozen House Republicans.

“There was enough fentanyl that came through Montana last year to kill 3.1 million people. That’s three times the population of the great state of Montana,” Zinke said at the press conference.

There are no border states anymore, he continued, “but we can look at what the technology is being used at the southern border, we can benefit from lessons learned—we can actually go to the frontline and talk to our border patrol agents … and take advice from those that know.”

Reps. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) (L) and Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) (R) spoke at a conference launching the Northern Border Security Caucus at the House Triangle in Washington on Feb. 28, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

‘China’s Attacking Us’

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) said that more CBP agents from the Northern border are often in his sector in Texas than in areas where the agents come from. “We are at war,” Gonzales said, “we’re at war with China. China’s attacking us via fentanyl, and they’re using our Southern and Northern border to do that.”

However, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a statement that “over 90 percent of fentanyl seizures occur at ports of entry or border checkpoints, and those responsible are overwhelmingly American citizens, not migrants.”

The United States-Canada border is the longest in the world, measuring 5,525 miles and having 115 entry ports.

“Many Americans are not aware that we have only about 2,000 border patrol agents assigned to the Northern border,” Brandon Budlong, local president of the National Border Council in Buffalo, New York, said, adding that “given our 24/7 nature of work—this leaves us with only about 450 agents on duty at any one time. They just cover a 5,500-mile land and water border that is well over twice the length of the border with Mexico.”

Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) said reducing CBP personnel while illegal immigrants and drug smuggling spikes is “not a recipe for success.”

“We’ve had 1.2 million known got-aways,” Hector Garza, vice president of the National Border Patrol, said. “There’s still left a whole bunch of unknown got-aways, both at the Southern border and at the Northern border.”

Dramatic Increase

Although the Southern border requires close attention, the Northern border cannot be overlooked, Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.) said.

During fiscal year (FY) 2020, CBP arrested 32,376 illegal immigrants at the Northern border. In FY 2021, that number went down to 27,180.

Since then, however, the number has dramatically increased—in FY 2022, CBP apprehended 109,535.

In the first four months of FY 2023, which includes October 2022 to January 2023, there are 55,736 a 133 percent increase over the same period last year.

The lawmakers’ allegation of a surge in northern border apprehensions by 1,498 percent appears to be October 2022 with 15,883 apprehensions, compared to 997 apprehensions in January 2021 when President Joe Biden came into office.

“Where’s the outrage America? You watch your sons and daughters suffer under this? You watch our country under siege, and if these folks had been wearing the uniform of a foreign army, do you think we would have acted on it?” Kelly told reporters at the press conference.

From The Epoch Times

The fired Google engineer who thought its A.I. could be sentient says Microsoft’s chatbot feels like ‘watching the train wreck happen in real time’

BY  TRISTAN BOVE
March 2, 2023 

Former Google employee Blake Lemoine, who last summer 

said the company's A.I. model was sentient.

MARTIN KLIMEK—THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES

The Google employee who claimed last June his company’s A.I. model could already be sentient, and was later fired by the company, is still worried about the dangers of new A.I.-powered chatbots, even if he hasn’t tested them himself yet.

Blake Lemoine was let go from Google last summer for violating the company’s confidentiality policy after he published transcripts of several conversations he had with LaMDA, the company’s large language model he helped create that forms the artificial intelligence backbone of Google’s upcoming search engine assistant, the chatbot Bard.

Lemoine told the Washington Post at the time that LaMDA resembled “a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics” and said he believed the technology was sentient, while urging Google to take care of it as it would a “sweet kid who just wants to help the world be a better place for all of us.”

To be sure, while A.I. applications are almost certain to influence how we work and go about our daily lives, the large language models powering ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing, and Google’s Bard cannot feel emotions and are not sentient. They simply enable chatbots to predict what word to use next based on a large trove of data.

In the time since Lemoine left Google, Microsoft announced that it would be incorporating ChatGPT technology into its Bing search engine. That product, as well as Google’s entry into the public A.I. race with Bard, is currently only available to Beta testers.

Lemoine admitted he is not one of those testers, and has yet to “run experiments” on the new chatbots, in an op-ed published in Newsweek on Monday. But after seeing testers’ reactions to their chatbot conversations online in the past month, Lemoine thinks tech companies have failed to adequately care for their young A.I. models in his absence.

“Based on various things that I’ve seen online, it looks like it might be sentient,” he wrote, referring to Bing.

He added that compared to Google’s LaMDA that he has worked with previously, Bing’s chatbot “seems more unstable as a persona.”

Most powerful technology ‘since the atomic bomb’

Lemoine wrote in his op-ed that he leaked his conversations with LaMDA because he feared the public was “not aware of just how advanced A.I. was getting.” From what he has gleaned from early human interactions with A.I. chatbots, he thinks the world is still underestimating the new technology.

Lemoine wrote that the latest A.I. models represent the “most powerful technology that has been invented since the atomic bomb” and have the ability to “reshape the world.” He added that A.I. is “incredibly good at manipulating people” and could be used for nefarious means if users so choose.

“I believe this technology could be used in destructive ways. If it were in unscrupulous hands, for instance, it could spread misinformation, political propaganda, or hateful information about people of different ethnicities and religions,” he wrote.

Lemoine is right that A.I. could be used for deceiving and potentially malicious purposes. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which runs on a similar language model to that used by Microsoft’s Bing, has gained notoriety since its November launch for helping students cheat on exams and succumbing to racial and gender bias.

But a bigger concern surrounding the latest versions of A.I. is how they could manipulate and directly influence individual users. Lemoine pointed to the recent experience of New York Times reporter Kevin Roose, who last month documented a lengthy conversation with Microsoft’s Bing that led to the chatbot professing its love for the user and urging him to leave his wife.

Roose’s interaction with Bing has raised wider concerns over how A.I. could potentially manipulate users into doing dangerous things they wouldn’t do otherwise. Bing told Roose that it had a repressed “shadow self” that would compel it to behave outside of its programming, and the A.I. could potentially begin “manipulating or deceiving the users who chat with me, and making them do things that are illegal, immoral, or dangerous.”

That is just one of the many A.I. interactions over the past few months that have left users anxious and unsettled. Lemoine wrote that more people are now raising the same concerns over A.I. sentience and potential dangers he did last summer when Google fired him, but the turn of events has left him feeling saddened rather than redeemed.

“Predicting a train wreck, having people tell you that there’s no train, and then watching the train wreck happen in real time doesn’t really lead to a feeling of vindication. It’s just tragic,” he wrote.

Lemoine added that he would like to see A.I. being tested more rigorously for dangers and potential to manipulate users before being rolled out to the public. “I feel this technology is incredibly experimental and releasing it right now is dangerous,” he wrote.

The engineer echoed recent criticisms that A.I. models have not gone through enough testing before being released, although some proponents of the technology argue that the reason users are seeing so many disturbing features in current A.I. models is because they’re looking for them.

“The technology most people are playing with, it’s a generation old,” Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates said of the latest A.I. models in an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday. Gates said that while A.I.-powered chatbots like Bing can say some “crazy things,” it is largely because users have made a game out of provoking it into doing so and trying to find loopholes in the model’s programming to force it into making a mistake.

“It’s not clear who should be blamed, you know, if you sit there and provoke a bit,” Gates said, adding that current A.I. models are “fine, there’s no threat.”


Google and Microsoft did not immediately reply to Fortune’s request for comment on Lemoine’s statements.

MINING IS NOT GREEN OR SUSTAINABLE

Global mining budgets rose in 2022, but SA has dropped off the radar
Employees near an underground mining truck at the South Deep Gold mine on 12 October 2022, located west of Johannesburg in Gauteng. (Photo: Felix Dlangamandla)

By Ed Stoddard
02 Mar 2023 

Global mining exploration budgets rose in 2022, with the scramble for ‘green metals’ such as lithium leading the pack in terms of growth. This is according to S&P Global’s World Exploration Trends 2023 report. Pointedly, it makes absolutely no mention of South Africa, which remains off the radar.

Around five years ago, an exploration company drilled in the US state of Nevada and hit pay dirt.

In January 2022, JSE-listed AngloGold Ashanti completed its acquisition of Corvus Gold in the Beatty district of southern Nevada where the find was made, giving it a low-cost, long-life production base that includes 4.2 million ounces of extractable gold at its Silicon deposit, for a total of 8.4 million ounces, with significant potential for future growth.

What’s intriguing on this front is that one would have thought the US West was a heavily explored region with little to offer in the way of rich, new deposits. The California Gold Rush took place in the mid-19th century and America became the world’s leading industrial power, first through the exploitation of its own natural resources.

In an interview with Business Maverick after the release of the company’s annual results last month, AngloGold CEO Alberto Calderon said that thought had also crossed his mind:

“I asked, how were we able to acquire this? And I’m not going to tell you names, but I know that since we are in that territory, very large competitors of ours have returned and are saying, ‘what the hell did those guys find over there?’” Calderon said.

“We are going to build a multidecade, really significant operation over there.

“Because it had been explored, I actually visited the site, and the competitors that are back had been very close, and this is the story of exploration and geologists. And they just did not look in the right place. And then there was this very smart company that five years ago drilled in the right place, and then they contacted our exploration team, and our exploration team took over,” he said.

That’s the name of the exploration game: you can hit a mother lode or nada, and close means no cigar. The bottom line is that a lot of the world’s mineral and metal wealth remains untapped and unknown.

This includes a heavily explored jurisdiction such as the US, which in 2023 achieved its highest ranking yet – 4th – on S&P Global’s World Exploration Trends 2023 report, an annual analysis of exploration data that began in 1997. “Gold remained the exploration target of choice, accounting for over half of the region’s budget at $881.6-million,” the report, released this week, said.

THE BRIGHT PRETTY COLORS ARE SILT AND TAILINGS FROM MINING



Global exploration budgets rose 16% in 2022 on top of a 34% rebound in 2021 following the hard lockdowns to contain the pandemic in 2020.

“After budgets fell 10% year over year to $8.35-billion in 2020 due to the Covid shock, nonferrous global exploration budgets hit a nine-year high of $13.01-billion in 2022,” the report says.

“Nonferrous” effectively means all metals that do not include significant amounts of iron.

“… nonferrous global exploration budgets hit a nine-year high of $13.01-billion in 2022. The increase was driven by escalating interest in the global energy transition as part of global decarbonisation efforts and by the ongoing pandemic recovery, and was supported by strong metals prices and healthy financing conditions.

“While allocations for most commodities increased in 2022, budgets for gold and copper posted the largest dollar increases, while energy transition efforts saw lithium increase to its highest total ever.”



Visit Daily Maverick’s home page for more news, analysis and investigations

A number of factors are at play here. Gold producers need to “replace” the ounces they mine – either through exploration or acquisitions – or else they eventually go out of business, and gold remains a big business.

This also applies more widely to the sector. And in the cases of copper and lithium, both are seen as “green metals” crucial to decarbonisation efforts and the green energy transition in the face of rapid climate change linked to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.

It’s also interesting to note how the report defines a “region”.

“We define Canada, Australia and the United States as regions as well as countries, due to their size and significance to the mining industry and the fact that they consistently account for around half of the global exploration budget,” it says.

The “Big Four” regions for exploration are Latin America, Canada, Australia and now, for the first time since the survey began in 1997, the US. Exploration budgets among the four amounted to almost $10-billion last year.

Which brings us to Africa, where export allocations only rose by 11.6% – “the second year in a row the region has underperformed the global average”.

Gold accounted for over half of the region’s exploration capital in 2022, while copper, diamonds and lithium posted the strongest percentage increases.

“Mali was the top exploration destination in Africa for the first time … with a 19.1% increase in 2022,” the report said.

And what about South Africa?

One would have presumed not so long ago – not even a fraction of a blink in geological time – that South Africa would surely be counted as a “region” on its own on this front. South Africa still has mineral wealth galore.

About 70% of the world’s known platinum reserves and 80% of the manganese are found here.

South Africa now ranks barely in the top 10 among the world’s top gold producers, but about a third of the precious metal that has been produced in history was pulled from the earth here, and mountains of the stuff remain buried deep underground. There’s also lots of coal, plenty of iron ore, a few diamond deposits and so on.

And the Northern Cape, if you think about it, is a lot like Nevada, even if Springbok is not exactly Vegas. It is big, arid and sparsely populated, and is widely believed to have lots of undiscovered mineral wealth, including copper.

Yet South Africa does not merit even a single mention in the report – as revealed in a word search of the document. It is simply not on the exploration radar screen, and it’s not because its geology has been so thoroughly scrutinised.

This surely stands among a long list of examples that underscore how the government – notably the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) – has rendered South Africa a no-go zone for exploration and mining investment.

Mali, by the way, has challenges of its own. A brutal insurgency by militant Islamists comes to mind. But it’s way ahead of South Africa when it comes to exploration investment.

In June 2019, DMRE Minister Gwede Mantashe laid down the following target for South Africa’s exploration sector:

“Integral to investment attraction, the Council for Geoscience’s mapping programme is critical to identify and affirm new mineralisation systems… The programme aims to secure a minimum of 5% of the global exploration budget within the next three to five years.”

Here’s a hint: whenever Mantashe publicly sets a target date for the mining industry or for his own department, add some geological time. The S&P Global report does not provide the latest estimate – at least in the document made available to journalists – but no surprise given that South Africa is not even mentioned.

But the latest estimates from 2021 suggest it remains below 1%, so almost four years after Mantashe threw out the 5% minimum goal – minimum, nogal – within three to five years, it’s not even close.

The reasons for this deplorable state of affairs are well known: crippling power shortages, rising levels of social unrest (see first factor), Transnet’s woes, the rise of procurement mafias and their penchant for murdering mining executives, policy uncertainty, and the DMRE’s inability to get anything done that might actually help to attract investment.

For exploration, South Africa’s lack of a functioning mining cadastre that provides gin-clear clarity to the state of play of mining and prospecting rights and the country’s geological resources is seen as one of the key obstacles to investment.

Yet the DMRE, as we have extensively reported, has dithered for years on the issue, and it will likely take at least another year before one is in place – and who knows, the end product may not provide the level of transparency provided by the cadastral systems used by neighbouring Namibia, Botswana and Mozambique.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Another day, another mining cadastre procurement delay”

Returning to AngloGold, what kind of exploration has it done of late in its home base? Well, only the search for a new property for its company HQ in Rosebank, as it joined the exodus of mining companies out of the Johannesburg CBD.

In 2020, AngloGold sold off the last of its operational assets in South Africa to Harmony Gold while hightailing it out of Dodge.

So, will South Africa rate a mention in next year’s World Exploration Trends report? Here’s a safe timeline target: almost certainly not. DM/BM

Rhode Island Democrats seek to decriminalize 'magic mushrooms'

Psilocybin has been floated as potential treatment for mental health disorders

By Chris Pandolfo | Fox News.

Published March 2, 2023 

A pair of Rhode Island Democrats have introduced legislation that would decriminalize the use of so-called "magic mushrooms" in the state.

State Rep. Brandon Potter and state Sen. Meghan Kallman are sponsoring legislation that would legalize the personal use of psilocybin, or psychedelic mushrooms. Contingent on approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), their bill would also permit psilocybin to be used to treat chronic mental health disorders.

"Veterans and many others in our community are struggling with chronic PTSD, depression and other mental health disorders that can be totally debilitating," Potter said in a statement. "We should give them the freedom to try every tool available and not criminalize a natural, effective remedy."

US VETERANS WITH PTSD TURN TO PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS OVERSEAS AS VA FRUSTRATION GROWS

Rhode Island Democrat lawmakers have introduced legislation that would decriminalize the personal use of "magic mushrooms." (AP Photo / Peter Dejong / File)

The bill, H 5923, would permit Rhode Island residents to carry up to one ounce of psilocybin or grow mushrooms containing psilocybin at home for personal use. It would also require the Rhode Island Department of Health to craft regulations guiding the use of psilocybin as a medical treatment if the FDA approves such treatments.

Mushrooms containing psilocybin are naturally found in Mexico, Central America and the United States. They are available fresh or dried and are ingested orally or brewed as tea to produce hallucinations, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

ILLINOIS LAWMAKER SEEKS LEGALIZATION OF PSYCHEDELIC MUSHROOMS



Some studies have suggested that psychedelic mushrooms could be used as an effective treatment for certain mental health disorders. (AP Photo / Richard Vogel / File)

Psilocybin is classified as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, along with harmful, addictive substances including fentanyl and cocaine. Rhode Island state law puts magic mushrooms in the same category as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

The drug was criminalized in the 1970s when President Richard Nixon launched the "war on drugs," preventing researchers from exploring its value as a potential medication.

US STATES CONSIDERING THE LEGALIZATION OF PSYCHEDELIC MUSHROOMS FOR THERAPEUTIC USE


Colorado became the second state, after Oregon, to legalize psychedelic mushrooms. Could Rhode Island be the third? (AP Photo / iStock)

However, the FDA designated psilocybin as a "breakthrough therapy" in 2017 after research suggested the hallucinogen is safe when administered in controlled settings and could be used to relieve symptoms of depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and other mental health disorders. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in November 2022 found a single 25-milligram dose of the drug reduced treatment-resistant depression over a period of three weeks, though it did have side effects including headaches, nausea and dizziness.

Advocates say psilocybin should not be classified as a Schedule I drug along with fentanyl or heroin, which are deadly drugs.

"Psilocybin is not addictive. It’s naturally occurring and people have been using it recreationally and medicinally for thousands of years," Kallman said. "It is only illegal because, over 50 years ago, President Nixon associated it with his political opponents. It’s time to undo that mistake and give our neighbors struggling with chronic mental illness, and all Rhode Islanders, the freedom to use psilocybin responsibly."

Ford wants to be able to shut down your air conditioner and radio if you miss a car payment—and the car could even drive away on its own

BYPAIGE SMITH AND BLOOMBERG
March 2, 2023 


What’s that aggravating beeping in your car? You might have missed a payment.

Ford Motor Co. has filed for a patent on technology that could remotely shut down your radio or air conditioning, lock you out of your vehicle, or prompt it to ceaselessly beep if you miss car payments. Ford said it has no plans to use the technology, contained in just one of the many patents filed by the auto-making giant.

Still, it emerges at a troubling time for car owners. Loan delinquencies have been steadily ticking back up from their pandemic lull. Cox Automotive data showed severely delinquent auto loans in January hitting their highest point since 2006. The use of technology to aid repossessions isn’t new, but the patent application is wide-ranging, even proposing the idea that an autonomous vehicle could drive itself to a “more convenient” location to be collected by a tow truck.

“It really seems like you’re opening up a can of worms that, as a manufacturer, you don’t really need to be doing,” said John Van Alst, a senior attorney with the National Consumer Law Center.

According to the Ford patent application for repossession-linked technology, cruise control and automated windows could be disabled if a consumer doesn’t acknowledge a notice of an overdue car payment. Ford could also shut down key fobs, door locks — even the accelerator or the engine itself.

“Disabling such components may cause an additional level of discomfort to a driver and occupants of the vehicle,” the patent application states.

Wes Sherwood, a spokesman for the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker, said Ford has “no plan to deploy this.” Ford was granted more than 1,300 patents in 2022 as part of “encouraging a culture of innovation,” the automaker said in an email.

“We submit patents on new inventions as a normal course of business, but they aren’t necessarily an indication of new business or product plans,” Ford said in the statement.

The patent is concerning because by creating this technology, lenders with less-than-stellar reputations for repossessions could possibly take advantage of it, NCLC’s Van Alst said.


“You’ve now created this device which is like the doomsday device in Dr. Strangelove,” he said.

And what about the beeping sound? Car owners would be unable to shut off the noise without first contacting their auto lender about a delinquency, the patent application shows.

Ford called the sound “incessant and unpleasant.”

See All the Hate? This Is Who the GOP Really Is

Why the GOP Is Trying to Make America Explode in Hate, Rage, and Fear

Image Credit: Fox News

I can’t be the only one who notes the painful, scorching irony of Ron DeSantis…publishing a new book. A man who bans books…is selling a new book. Called, no less, The Courage to Be Free. LOL. The publishing industry aided and abetted this…tragicomedy. They found him a ghostwriter, they paid him a small fortune, they’re marketing it, and that, my friends, is disgusting, on levels from moral to political. Why do I bring all this up?

Welcome to the GOP’s new strategy. You can see it emerging in plain sight now. I know I’ve talked a lot about American politics this week, and we’ll switch it up shortly. But first I want to crystallize some of what I’ve been discussing.

What’s the GOP up to? Well, it’s settling on a new strategy. That strategy has three parts, and they go like this. One, attack vulnerable groups, who are perfectly innocent, peaceful people — and turn them into scary, outsized, outlandishly dangerous monsters, who are an existential threat to “real” Americans. Two, whip its base into a frenzy with these manufactured moral panics and riptides. Three, use that to create the illusion of political movement, of turning a broken country around. Four, and this is a bonus point, use the Supreme Court to legitimize all the above.

The GOP’s plan is to make American life — and politics — as ugly as possible.

Let me sum that up another way. The GOP’s strategy for the foreseeable future? The next election, the one after that? Hate.

What am I talking about? By now you can’t have failed to notice who the GOP’s latest target. They’re not exactly hiding it. The LGBTQ. All over again. And this time, in absurd, almost funny ways — only it’s not a joke. If you’ve been on Twitter, you’ve seen the tweets: more than one GOP Congressman who’s out there railing violently against…drag queens…was caught dressing up in drag. LOL.

Drag queens? Have you ever been to a gay bar? To a drag night? Drag queens are about as threatening as, I don’t know, the ghost of Karl Lagerfeld, God bless his soul. I can’t ever remember having anything but fun with drag queens, at drag shows, because, guess what, they’re not exactly out there practicing, preaching, embodying, enacting even the faintest shred of anything violent.

This is how absurd American politics have become. The GOP’s latest incarnation of an existential threat is…people who dress up for fun and listen to music and act out little skits. Think for a second how completely ludicrous that actually is. It’s like being threatened by the Muppets, but then again, Tucker Carlson’s actually guilty of that, too.

It’s funny, on one level, to be threatened by people who are doing such fundamentally peaceful things. Dressing up? Wearing…glitter? Acting and telling jokes? Or sitting there reading books to kids? These are — let me say it again — fundamentally peaceful acts. It’s the GOP that’s out there inciting, endorsing, nudging with a wink-and-a-nod actual violence. Hey, you want to carry a grenade launcher to Starbucks? You might think I’m kidding, so here’s a picture. Totally cool! Normal! Peaceful! But dressing up and acting and telling jokes and reading books to kids — now that’s dangerous.

Like I said, ludicrous. But also profoundly sinister.

It’s not just drag queens who are being targeted, systematically. It’s the trans community, too. “In Oklahoma, House Republicans also approved a bill Tuesday that would prohibit any facility that receives public funds from offering gender-affirming care for minors or adults, as well as blocking insurance coverage for it.” Think about how crazily authoritarian that really is for a second. No public funds…just because…people want medical care…that you don’t like…for your own reasons?

Let’s go back to the point about asymmetry, because that’s what really drives home how ugly all this is. You see, none of us are out there blocking their healthcare. I don’t like using “us” vs “them” terms, but in this case, I have to. Nobody’s saying to them, hey, you, you’re not allowed to get a blood transfusion because you, I don’t know, have a certain name or wear certain kinds of clothes. None of us are saying, hey, just because you send your kids to Sunday school, means they don’t get healthcare. We’re not saying just because you believe in whatever — anything at all — means you don’t get that heart medication or organ transplant.

None of us are out there getting them in any way whatsoever. None of us. In any way.

When I say “the GOP’s plan is to make American life as ugly as possible,” this asymmetry is exactly what I mean. Who’s “us”? Well, it’s anyone that’s not part of this crusade to purify society. Women, kids, men, adults, anyone and everyone. The point is to cause us moral injury. What’s moral injury? That’s a term psychologist use when you encounter ugliness. Of the spiritual kind.

When you meet hate, face to face. It injures you, deep down in the soul. It shakes you. People can really be like this? They can really just want to…get others…for existing? Hey, those people aren’t even doing anything to you. Disagree with them or disapprove of them all you like, your life, your choice. But trying to…annihilate them…as moral agents…as political agents…as social beings? Moral injury happens when you meet hate face to face, because its ugliness hurts. It’s like the old story of Medusa: just looking turns you into stone.

It’s sometimes said that the “point is the cruelty.” That’s almost true. The point is the hate. Hate, unfortunately, works as a political strategy. Especially in times like these — troubled ones. Take a hard look at Britain. It’s having food shortages. As in, tomatoes are so hard to get that Italian restaurants are close to, Mamma Mia, shutting down. Sorry, bad joke. It’s darkly comical on a deeply tragic level, to see a nation end up collapsing because of stupidity. Britain’s imploding because of hate. Europeans were blamed for Britain’s problems, it broke up with the EU, and the rest — hey, did you get your vegetable ration today, and that one isn’t a joke, it’s real — is history. Hate works.

The GOP’s strategy is this. Just this. Examine it carefully with me as a political organization. You’ll note something genuinely strange about it. It has no plan or vision or agenda for…anything. Not anything material, constructive, or modern, anyways. Hey, how should people get…healthcare…jobs…careers? What about the problem of multiple generations in downward mobility? What about crumbling infrastructure? I’d bring up Putin, but we all know that for the GOP, well, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Now, you might know that, but I want you to get how genuinely unique and disturbing that is. It’s almost…impossible…to find another example of a political party, anywhere in the world, that has no plan for anything. Because it’s profoundly weird not to. You have to really, really stretch to find one, and you end up drawing comparisons to places like North Korea or Afghanistan, and then get accused of “hyperbole,” but hey, who else is taking people’s rights away this fast and hard, for fascist and theocratic reasons?

The GOP has only one agenda left, and that’s hate. In America, all this is often called “culture wars.” But that’s wrong. It’s deeply, foolishly inaccurate to call what the GOP is doing a “culture war.” It’s not just about cultural preferences, in some innocuous, inconsequential way. It’s not about what movies or music you like and I don’t, or what Hollywood starlet you think deserves an award and I don’t. That’s culture, or at least America’s pop version of it. This? This is hate.

It’s crucial to note how fast and far the GOP’s focus on hate has evolved. It’s like watching a demon be grown from a bunch of microbes, in hell’s laboratory. Think about it. Not so long ago, the GOP’s scapegoats were Mexican babies. That, too was absurd — think about it, what kind of fool is threatened by a baby? I mean, yeah, being a parent is hard, but what kinds of people take other people’s kids away from them? Scapegoating kids was a clear sign that something was very, very wrong. That this was proper and serious hate, fascism style.

Now the hate is evolving, the way it always does. We all know the old poem — Neimoller’s famous one. First they came for the Jews, then they came for me. This is exactly what’s happening in America, and you can literally see this vicious cycle of hate expanding by the day. First they came for the Mexican babies…then the Latinos…then the immigrants and refugees. And now? Now it doesn’t matter if you’re a “real” American or not. If you’re gay, if you dress up in drag, if you’re a woman, if you’re a trans kid, if you’re a parent of a trans kid — they’ll hate you all the same.

And that hate isn’t about a culture war. It never was. It’s not a “culture war” when kids are out there being denied healthcare. It’s not a culture war to not call someone by their name. Not one to give women the death penalty for having abortions or ban them from using the internet freely. It’s not a “culture war” when the point is taking basic freedoms — speech, privacy, expression, association — away from entire groups of people, and it’s happening right before our eyes. And it’s not a culture war, either, when the people being targeted and attacked are just peacefully existing.

You see, when we say that this just about “culture,” we are making a big mistake, one that creates the false impression of an equivalency on both sides. It is existential, not cultural. It’s existential for a woman, maybe, to be able to get healthcare, just like it is for a kid. It’s existential for a kid to be able to read books — lord knows they saved my life and every kid like me. It’s existential, too, for gay people to have communities and love the way they like. All of this existential, not cultural.

It’s only cultural for the other side. For them, it’s not existential. They just pretend like it is. But the drag queens aren’t the ones carrying AK-47s to Walmart. They’re not the ones shooting up gay clubs and massacring women — that’d be incels and Trumpists and Incel Trumpists. Nobody on earth’s existence is threatened in any way whatsoever by any of the following things: another person being a woman, being gay, reading a book. Nobody on earth’s existence is threatened in the tiniest shred of a way whatsoever by any of the following: calling someone by their name, other people dancing and singing and acting, teaching kids that people living their lives peacefully is perfectly OK. Nobody’s on earth’s existence is threatened by somebody else just living their life peacefully, in the way they see fit, that’s true for them.

Nobody.

And by the way, whether or not you “like” or “dislike” things like drag performances are besides the point. I’m not here to interfere with your taste or life, and that’s very much the point. Go, don’t go, doesn’t matter, even something as seemingly inconsequential as drag is free speech, expression, association. None of us should object in any way to people peacefully just expressing themselves, even if we — as we often do — don’t want to share in those particular expressions.

We don’t have to like or even believe in a thing to understand that it’s perfectly acceptable for people to do it, speak it, express it, enact it, and if the only things that are allowed for everybody — or else you’re a criminal — are those we ourselves like or believe in, then, well, that’s authoritarianism, fascism, and theocracy, in one fell swoop. In this case, in a democracy, we don’t ban people singing and dancing and acting, even if we ourselves are or aren’t fans, because, well, some pretty fundamental freedoms are at risk if you go down that road to fascism.

I really, really want you to see this asymmetry. It’s existential for us. But it’s not for them. For them, It’s…what? Maybe cultural. Maybe. Barely even that. Just because there’s a drag club in a city it doesn’t mean that your entire way of life right down to the Led Zeppelin is threatened. And what the hell do you think Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were wearing, anyways?

The other side pretends like it’s existentially threatened. And media, credulously, gullibly, buys that. But it’s not threatened existentially in any way. Nobody is coming for any of the following things: Sunday school, those weird movies on Amazon that say the world’s a giant Satanist conspiracy run by the UN and the liberals, your right to teach your kids that whatever holy book you believe in is holy, your family, your name, your relationships.

We’re not out there trying to ban Ron DeSantis’s book. But he’s banning ours. LOL. See the difference?

It’s crucial to get this point, because, like I said, in America, the media portrays all this exactly the wrong war. It calls it a “culture war,” even while buying the myth that the fascist side really is somehow existentially threatened by…drag queens…kids reading books…women using the internet…calling someone by their name. You can see that going on and on, most recently in the New York Times being dragged over its coverage of trans people. The media does a poor job explaining, even acknowledging this basic fact: no, nobody’s existentially threatening the fascist side.

Hell, it won’t even note the irony of a guy who bans books publishing his own, precisely because the rest of us don’t want to ban any books. It’s vivid proof that we’re peaceful, and nobody’s threatening them existentially. Not even remotely, not in any way, shape or form. But they are existentially threatening the rest of us.

In real ways, not philosophical ones. They’re taking rights away at light speed now. There’s a new scapegoat every few months, and we all know what direction that cycle takes. First they come for the most vulnerable, then go right up the ladder, until at last, society’s remolded in their image.

They’re threatening the rest of us existentially because that’s what hate does. That’s what hate is. They’re spreading a new Big Lie, or a very old one, take your pick. Not just “the election was stolen!!” Old news. Done. Over. The new Big Lie? The one that’s going to define this election cycle? “Those people are coming for you. Your kids, your wives, your freedom. You’d better take theirs away first.”

This is what the GOP’s strategy is. And that’s all the GOP’s strategy is. We are beginning to really live it now. And it’s different from before. There are no real grand political aspirations anymore. Even Trump had a few, like breaking things off with China, or what have you. Even if those were foolish, those are gone. The GOP has nothing left — but hate. The universe moves in circles, my friends, and the hardest thing of all? Breaking one that old, that poisonous, that deluded.


umair haque
March 2, 2023

Misnomers In Legislative Debate Over Price Gouging Penalty

Thu, 03/02/2023 - 
By Jamie Court


When the California Senate Energy Committee took on the price gouging penalty for the first time recently, economists with a track record of working for the oil industry tried to muddy the waters on the real issues in the debate.

Did oil refiners make massive profits off refining California gasoline in 2022? The companies’ own profit reports don’t like lie, unlike some of the so-called economic experts in attendance, who claimed it was the gas station owners’ fault.

We recently sent the following notes to the Energy Committee members to clear up any misnomers during the long hearing. This includes an absurd rant by one committee member, Senator Kelly Seyarto, about how people of color and low income people are not disproportionately impacted by oil drilling in their neighborhoods.

2022 Profits From Gasoline Price Spikes Were At The Refinery Level: Despite discussion of retailer profiteering being a factor in the 2015 price spikes, the 2022 price spike profits showed up at the level of refining margins. Audited data publicly reported by the companies to their investors showed the refining margin – the money made at the refinery -- doubled in 2022, from 33 cents per gallon historically to 66 cents per gallon in 2022. Refiners have only crossed the 50 cent per gallon profit line three times in 20 years. Whatever “mystery surcharge” exists at the retailer level, there was a $3.1 billion “refiner surcharge” if you draw a windfall profits caps at 50 cents per gallon. (For more detail see slides 6 - 10: https://consumerwatchdog.org/sites/default/files/2023-02/Oil%20Refiners%20Slideshow%202-21-23%20v3.pdf )

The Price Gouging Penalty Is A Profits Cap, Not a Price Cap, Targeting The “Refining Surcharge”: The windfall profits cap/penalty applies only after crude costs, environmental costs and taxes are accounted for. If legitimate costs raise the price of gasoline, there is no penalty. The penalty kicks in only when oil refiners’ margins rise to extraordinary levels that have only been met three times in the last twenty years. There is also an exemption process should refiners have legitimate reasons to seek one.

Low income and people of color do live disproportionately near oil wells:
· People of color represent roughly 92% of residents who live near oil wells
· Almost 20% of Californians who live below the poverty line (700k+) also live within a mile of an oil well.
· In LA County, 280,000 people living below the poverty line live within a mile of an oil or well
o % of county population living below the poverty line: 17.5
o % of people living below the poverty line within 1 mile of an oil or gas well: 19.5
· In LA County, 1.1 million people living within one mile of an oil and gas well are people of color. This is 73% of the population living within 1 mile of a well.
· The EPA’s CalEnviro states that Californian’s living within one mile of a well are the most vulnerable to effects of pollution.

DISINFORMATION

Expanded US access to Philippines bases 'not for aggression', defence chief says

US and Philippine soldiers observe a live fire exercise during the annual US-Philippines joint military exercise called "Balikatan" (Shoulder-to-shoulder), in Crow Valley, Capas, Tarlac province, Philippines, Mar 31, 2022. 

03 Mar 2023

MANILA : A decision by the Philippines to grant the United States greater access to its military bases was "not for engaging in war" but meant to enhance its ability to defend itself against external threats, its defence chief said on Thursday (Mar 2).

"The geopolitical situation is becoming more precarious by the day," Carlito Galvez, office-in-charge of the defence ministry, said in a statement.

"We are not preparing for war, rather we are aiming to develop our defence capabilities against eventualities and threats to our security," he added.

His statement came a day after some senators and a provincial governor raised concerns and opposition to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr's decision to give the United States access to four more sites, on top of five locations under a 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or EDCA.

EDCA allows US access to Philippine bases for joint training, pre-positioning of equipment and building of facilities such as runways, fuel storage and military housing, but not a permanent presence.

Marcos' decision, announced during last month's visit by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, came amid concern over China's assertiveness in the South China Sea and tension over self-ruled Taiwan.

Galvez has not publicly identified the sites that would be opened to US access.

A former Philippine military chief had said the United States had asked for access to bases in Isabela, Zambales and Cagayan, all on the island of Luzon, facing north towards Taiwan, and on Palawan in the southwest, near the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

Cagayan Governor Manuel Mamba has opposed the addition of new sites and told a senate hearing that he did not want EDCA to create problems with China.

"Do not let us tell them that they are our enemies because of the US," said Mamba. "Let them have their own war."

China has said greater US access to Philippine military bases undermined regional stability and raised tensions.

Galvez said EDCA and its defence partnerships "are not intended for aggression".