The Labour Party has a problem with animal rights campaigners. During the Blair Government, Labour famously wrestled frequently with finding the balance between the freedom of activists to voice their concerns with animal testing and the economic investment brought by the pharmaceutical industry (often favouring the latter). The current Labour Government has inherited this aversion to animal rights protesters, but has done away with all pretence of seeking to facilitate protest. Against the background of extending the Conservative Government's anti-protest legislation, Kier Starmer's Government now represents the greatest challenge to the freedom of assembly yet.

On 14 January 2026, the Commons voted to approve an amendment which would restrict protests outside "life sciences infrastructure", including specifically infrastructure used for animal testing. The amendment was introduced on 27 November 2025 by the Minister for Policing and Crime, Sarah Jones. It sought to classify "life science infrastructure" as a "key national infrastructure" under section 7 of the Public Order Act 2023.

Section 7 criminalises the "interference with use or operation", defined broadly as preventing the infrastructure from being used or operated to any extent for any of its intended purposes, of a list of now ten "key national infrastructures". The maximum sentence for contravening section 7 is twelve months' imprisonment, a fine, or both. Since section 7(7)  of the Public Order Act 2023 allows the Secretary of State to add a new kind of key national infrastructure using secondary legislation, the Government has avoided full parliamentary scrutiny of its legislative amendment.

Sarah Jones presented the amendment as necessary to aid police in responding to "disruptive protest activity that is undermining our national health resilience", highlighting the Government's goal for the UK to become a "global beacon for scientific discovery".

According to Jones, the life science industry informed the Government that it cannot currently function in some cases due to protests. Jones' defence of the amendment was concerning. Jones did not use a single example of a recent animal rights protest which had actually impacted an animal testing facility, merely pointing out that at the 135 facilities which are licensed to do animal testing, there is only "potentially"the possibility of "protests of different degrees".

In any case, her justification that such measures must be taken to ensure vaccines can be produced in the event of a pandemic fall flat since many of these facilities have absolutely nothing to do with vaccine production.

The only current animal rights protest campaign targeting animal testing seems to be "Camp Beagle", a protest camp stationed in Cambridgeshire outside MBR Acres, a company which breeds up to 2000 beagles a year for animal testing. Camp Beagle has been established since June 2021 and grew after the Daily Mirror had published photographs of poor conditions at the premises.

Just two days before the Commons voted to approve the amendment, a jury at Cambridge Crown Court acquitted four protesters for burglary after they had broken into MBR acres to rescue beagle puppies in December 2022. To classify MBR acres as a 'key infrastructure' is significant overreach; in the words of Labour MP Kerry McCarthy, "I do not think that the country will grind to a halt if MBR Acres is occasionally obstructed from supplying beagles to laboratories for testing".

On 11 November 2025, the Government introduced its road map to phase out animal testing in line with its manifesto commitment. The first act of the Government in 2026, however, has been to criminalise protests outside animal testing facilities. There is an element of déjà vu here. Before the 1997 election, Tony Blair promised a Royal Commission to examine animal testing and possible alternatives. After elected as Prime Minister, Blair, whose premiership oversaw a heightened period of animal rights protests, instead decided the way forward was to clamp down on animal rights activists.

The most significant campaign during this period was by Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). SHAC was formed as a direct action group which aimed to shut down Huntington Life Science, an animal testing facility based in Cambridgeshire. Members became well known for their method of intimidatory "home visits", where activists would target the homes of scientists and staff of HLS and particularly their suppliers, shareholders and customers, with the aim of isolating HLS economically.

The growth of the animal rights movement in the early 2000s meant that by 2004, CEOs of major Japanese pharmaceutical companies based in the UK put increasing pressure on the UK Government to deal with protests under the threat that they would exit the country, leaving a £18.5 billion black hole in the economy in their wake.

In response, the Government legislated for section 145 (offence of "interference with contractual relationships so as to harm animal research organisations (AROs)") and section 146 ("threatening someone that they will be the victim of a crime or tortious act causing loss or damage, because they are linked to an ARO") of the Serious Organised Crime Act (SOCA) 2005. Both offences have a maximum term of imprisonment of five years.

The SOCA also added Section 42A to the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 which created a free-standing offence of harassing someone in the vicinity of their home. These legislative amendments, in addition to a ramped up police response, of which particularly encouraged pharmaceutical companies to use civil injunctions against protesters, led to a dramatic decline of animal rights activity by the end of the 2000s.

During the debate on the amendment in December 2025, Matt Vickers MP mentioned that accompanying documents to the draft regulations held that police had requested more powers because sections 145 and 146 SOCA did not go far enough to deal with current animal rights protests. The police had not explained why.

The simple matter is that current animal rights protesters, such as those at "Camp Beagle" do not engage anymore with those controversial tactics covered by those offences. Instead of recognising this, and maintaining space for peaceful protest, the Government, potentially unnerved by a recent string of life science industry disinvestments in the UK totalling £1 billion (down to domestic economic malaise, Brexit and US policies, not protests), has decided to dramatically lower the threshold of acceptable dissent, and criminalise peaceful protest.

Labour has put aside its previous concerns with the anti-protest legislation ushered in by previous Conservative Governments. Sarah Jones has gone from criticising the Conservative legislation provisions as "draconian" and "disproportionate" to a position of using them in full force against peaceful protesters now she is in government.

The move to criminalise animal rights protests takes place against the background of a concerted effort to micromanage and curtail protest. Beyond animal rights protests, Labour have pushed further in legislating for more protest-related restrictions in the Crime and Policing Bill which is currently passing through the House of Lords.

Worryingly, on 15 January 2025, the Lords agreed an amendment to the Bill put forward by the Government which would allow police to consider the cumulative impact of frequent protests when imposing conditions. This represents the greatest threat yet to the freedom of assembly. In effect, police will be able to introduce conditions on protests if they deem protesters have had sufficient opportunity to voice their concerns.

The amendment, in fact, had been repackaged from secondary legislation introduced by the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman in 2023 which was ruled subsequently unlawful by the Court of Appeal.

Clearly, notwithstanding the change in government, the zeal to limit peaceful protest persists. At this current pace, this begs the question: what will remain of the freedom of assembly at the end of this Labour Government?

This article originally published on LSE Blogs is reproduced under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY 4.0). Read the original here.

With a thematic issue on a vital topic - the rise child poverty, ending on a hopeful note. You will find sharp analyses on the effect of poverty on children's lives, with a spotlight on the communities that are on the front line of deprivation, with personal stories and shared solutions. Click on the image to gain access to it, or find us on Substack.

Journalism by the people, for the people.

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To tie up loose ends before I get on with other topics…

One narrative - from Nick Tharcher of Original Falcon Press, recently1 related how Wilson was looking for a publisher for his Prometheus Rising, because Jeremy Tarcher had expressed interest in it but had dragged his feet, and Israel Regardie had told Hyatt about RAW, and they talked on the phone for about 10 minutes and made a deal: Prometheus Rising would be published on Falcon Press. This would have been early in 1983, because the first edition of Prometheus Rising came out later that year, and 1983 letters from RAW as late as August imply Jeremy Tarcher was still sitting on the manuscript. Soon after they had a deal, Tarcher told RAW he wanted to go ahead with it, but RAW told him too little, too late, he'd just made a deal with someone else, and then in the ensuing years Hyatt and Nick Tharcher put out a long string of Wilson's non-fiction books, including books that had appeared at And/Or Press, who had (apparently?) not paid royalties, had undergone a hostile takeover and/or (pun!) was mismanaged, and went bankrupt. I'm still not sure I have the straight story with And/Or, who I covered previously in this series.

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In 1995 Wilson did a long and fascinating email interview with Alex Burns for REVelation magazine. It was later updated by Burns in 1997 and showed up at the Disinformation website in 20012, and Burns wrote, "In the mid-1980s, after leaving his work published by a range of major and independent publishers, RAW became involved with New Falcon Publications, a loose cabal of similarly minded authors, spearheaded by Dr. Christopher Hyatt, who wrote the seminal Undoing Yourself With Energized Meditation (1989). New Falcon reprinted his (RAW's) earlier work along with tracts by Leary, Crowley, and other proponents of brain change. Currently New Falcon3 is one of the leading publishers of such modern grimoires, differing from other New Age publishers in jettisoning pompous academia or hazy cosmic foo foo."

"Believe it or not, I don't understand how New Falcon came about or even why it does much of what it does," RAW admitted. "All I know is that Dr. Hyatt was a Jungian therapist, decided Jung didn't cover everything and became a Jungian-Reichian therapist, and then for some reason became a publisher on top of that. He's also the Outer Head of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. I think his major concern is to publish books that he considers important, especially if they contain the kind of ideas that the Establishment publishers in New York won't touch with a ten-foot pole."4

I'm one of those readers who, when they discover a writer they find exceedingly interesting, must read everything by them. I immediately did a special order for a number of Wilson's books at a local bookstore and most of them were on Falcon Press. And I loved Wilson even more after reading these, but found they were edited poorly. It was conspicuous. Tharcher said he thinks this might be because, when they first went into business, Hyatt (AKA Alan Miller) did the typesetting and was a "somewhat dyslexic." The reason for typos and errors seems more complex to me, but they are revealing, because RAW often got proper names wrong, and Falcon didn't do that sort of editing. We can have no doubts that when RAW first talked to Hyatt about publishing Prometheus Rising he emphasized he didn't want editors fucking with his text! As I wrote earlier in this series: RAW wanted a laissez faire editor/publisher. But I also think he'd have wanted typos fixed. Nay, we know he did, and chalked it up to the earliest computerized typesetting: (Prometheus) "emerged with a phalanx of typos that have embarrassed me considerably over the years."5

Tharcher says he and Hyatt realized people weren't complaining about the poor editing of their books, so they didn't care.6 One person who did care about the editing was Wilson's wife, Arlen Riley Wilson. And New Falcon cared enough about editing to pay her.

In a July 20th, 1989 letter from Arlen to RAW's friend and benefactor Kurt Smith, she notes some problems with RAW's publishers for his Historical Illuminatus series of books, RAW's depression, Wilson family news, RAW's heavy lecture touring, and other things. Here's an interesting line from Arlen: "I've been doing some editing work for Falcon Press (boy do the need it!). Between that and Trajectories and secretarial stuff for Bob I keep busy." Later in the same letter she notes that, because of the various problems with the publishers of RAW's Historical Illuminatus fiction series, "It's not too easy for him to get up the enthusiasm to complete the next one, The World Turned Upside Down. He's awfully busy with other things anyway, so maybe it's just as well. He's got a contract from Falcon (not all their stuff is crap, only most) to do a book which has the working title Quantum Psychology. When he gets a chance to do it, which looks to me won't be until midwinter. He's too good for them, much too good. On the other hand I shouldn't bitch since they are paying me these editing jobs right now and I hope to get more bucks out of them as time goes on. Hard to find another employer to let me work from home, which they do. I loathe offices, and besides I'm needed here."78

Tarcher started in publishing in the early 1960s, getting book deals for TV stars like Buddy Hackett, Johnny Carson, and Joan Rivers. Then he went to Esalen and had a revelation of sorts: he wanted to publish books from the Human Potential Movement, but no one in the New York publishing circles he knew was interested in those ideas or subjects. In James Fadiman's non-fictionalistic "novel," The Other Side of Haight, he quotes Tarcher9 on the New York publishing industry never "getting" the West Coast thinking in the 1960s, an idea that was repeated by not only Wilson, but Ferlinghetti, Leary, Rexroth, Robert Stone and many others. When I was 17 or so, someone told me I had to read some book called The Aquarian Conspiracy, by Marilyn Ferguson, so I did. I still think of that book as the sort of bible for the new Esalen/West Coast human potential epoch. It's a good book about heavy Generalist-type thinkers. It was issued by Jeremy Tarcher, whose wife was Shari Lewis and sister Judith Krantz. The word "conspiracy" in the title proved to be provoking to reactionaries who to this day use "the Sixties" as the reason why we must do away with democracy.

RAW had written a long PhD thesis for his alternative university, "The Evolution of Neuro-Sociological Circuits: A Contribution to the Sociobiology of Consciousness." He rewrote the dissertation into a more popular form, which became Prometheus Rising. He offered it to Jeremy Tarcher, who "held it for a full year of meditation before rejecting it; his only explanation for the rejection concerned the mixture of technologese and 'counter culture' slang that has since become my most frequent style in nonfiction. (It's based on the way I actually speak.) When I tried Falcon next, they accepted it within 48 hours, and I received the advance check within the next 48 hours. 'Oh frabjous day!'" Wilson then mentions Tarcher changed his mind, and RAW says he had to restrain himself from telling Tarcher to go fuck himself: RAW had been living in poverty while Tarcher sat on the manuscript for a year. RAW adds that Falcon "has always served as an alternative to establishment publishing."10

On February 12th, 1983, RAW wrote to Kurt Smith, "Prometheus (with Oui material rewritten) is to be published this summer. German rights were just sold. No English publisher interested yet." In this same letter RAW does some considerable complaining about publishers not paying in time: "It is 'bad form' for a writer to go around his agent and nudge a publisher personally. And/Or owed me 3700 in July, paid 400 between July and October in 5 installments, hasn't paid anything since October, still owes me 3200. End of complaints. Just want you to know I don't get depressed without cause." In an undated letter to Smith, sometime in late February to early March 1983, he quotes Smith: "'What the hell is Tarcher doing?', you ask. I wish I knew. Arlen thinks he is trying to drive me to despair. Whatever the hell he is doing, I assume it makes sense to him. It makes no sense to me. However, the latest word from my agent is that Tarcher is trying to get a paperback sale on Earth, which does make sense to me, at this point. At least, some of my fans might see the paperback. Based on sales, I gather they never browse in the hardback section."

August 3rd, 1983 letter to Kurt Smith from RAW in Dublin: "Tarcher, ideally, shd be portrayed by Peter Lorre, not Vincent Price. A very nervous, insecure, timid and therefore treacherous type. He is afraid to gamble, but is in a business that is always a gamble, and that explains him thoroughly. For the sake of the poor bastards who will sign contracts with him in the future, I wish he would read Nietzsche."11

Let's be clear: RAW only published one book with Tarcher, the hardcover version of The Earth Will Shake, and distributed by Houghton Mifflin. Paperback versions of that were put out by Blue Jay and then Lynx. But I think Tarcher's distribution would have helped RAW. Maybe. This letter was written the year Falcon first produced Prometheus Rising. From the venom in the August 3rd letter it seems the Falcon deal had yet to go down.

The drama around Tarcher "sitting" on Prometheus Rising, coupled with Tarcher's perceived role in the long sad nightmare of the publishers involved with the Historical Illuminatus Chronicles (Tarcher abandoned his involvement once The Earth Will Shake bombed in hardcover) seems to have made RAW concentrate his invective toward him, and nowhere is this discussed more pertinently than by RAW's longtime friend, D. Scott Apel, in his memories of Wilson, from Beyond Chaos and Beyond. When Apel got a journalist assignment to interview Shari Lewis in 1985: "I never saw Bob Wilson hate anyone, before or since, but he clearly hated Jeremy Tarcher (and by association, anyone who would marry Jeremy Tarcher). He thought he'd been treated poorly, unfairly, dishonestly, and all the other disrespectful ways in which a publisher can abuse an author. From that time until Shari's passing in 1998, I could never mention either of their names in RAW's presence. At one point I had to bite my tongue from saying, 'Sorry, Bob, I can't come down this Saturday — Shari Lewis is in The City and wants to see me.' Divided loyalties, for sure…but to this day I have no idea if Tarcher actually screwed Bob over — he always impressed me as an intelligent, ethical individual, even if he was a publisher— or if Bob's imagination had bested his objective analysis of the situation."12

Scott Apel transcribed a brilliant stand-up philosophy talk by Wilson in October 1987. At one point he started riffing around one of his key points that run throughout his work: that we ought to have doubt about our ideas, and that belief seems unnecessary, that living with only tentative beliefs in models keep us intellectually exhilarated and open-minded and emotionally alive. He talked about the Correct Answer Machine that people seem to get installed in their nervous system at some point: when you have this "machine" you don't need to think anymore about any phenomena. You already know all the answers. And you're a fucking fool, too. He attributed the term "Correct Answer Machine" to Mike Hoy, who ran Loompanics publishing out of Port Townsend, Washington state. Hoy published RAW's sparkling broadside, Natural Law: Or Don't Put a Rubber on Your Willy (1987). I bought quite a lot of books from Loompanics13, and I always looked forward to their yearly catalog, which they would send to anyone who bought a book from them. I still have most of them. Here's RAW in 1987:

Mike Hoy is my favorite publisher. He publishes Loompanics books — books on how to cheat on your income tax how to pick locks, how to grow your own marijuana in the closet, how to rip off automatic bank machines, all sorts of controversial books. He recently brought forth what may be the ballsiest book he's ever published: How To Cheat a Professional Dope Dealer. I travel so much that among my circle of acquaintances there's one of everything, so I know a professional dope dealer in New York. And I told him about that book - or at least I thought I did. He said, "Are you kidding? I bought the first copy!" That's the great thing about Loompanics books: the people who need them get them. [Laughter] Michael Hoy wrote an article recently for a magazine called Critique, in which he gave a little parable. Supposing somebody told you I've got a "Correct Answer" machine, and you say, "Let's see how it works." So he starts feeding into the machine all the questions you asked, and the machine came back with a great deal of what was straight, hard-line Marxist propaganda and regular Marxist jargon. And after five or ten questions you say, "Hey, that's not a Correct Answer machine - that's a Marxist propaganda machine."And the inventor says, "Oh, no. This is a Correct Answer machine. It seems the Marxists have the correct answer. The machine is just giving the correct answer, because the correct answer just happens to be the Marxist answer." And you think, "Ah, this guy's just trying to kid me. He's just a propagandist for Marxism." So you leave in a disillusioned mood, and the guy in the next window says, "Psst. Hey, I've got the real Correct Answer machine." So you go in and you ask the machine ten questions and you get ten answers of straight Libertarian Party philosophy in standard Libertarian jargon. And you say, "You don't have a Correct Answer machine either — you've just got a Libertarian propaganda machine." And he says, "Oh, no. The Libertarian Party line happens to be the correct answer to everything."

The strange thing is we wouldn't believe in such machines, but most of us think we do have a Correct Answer machine in our heads.14

RAW, on his death bed, told his daughter Christina to keep his books in print. And this small press has done so. Run by Richard Rasa and Christina Pearson, they have done very heavy lifting and I think Wilson would be proud. [Full disclosure: I've gotten essays printed in some of Hilaritas's books.] The terrain in publishing since RAW's death has seemed to mirror increasing income inequality in the population, and many are opting to self-publish. I briefly discussed the New York-based "Big Five" and what a drag they are on writing culture these days: they only want best-sellers.

RAW once dreamed of having his own press, which he'd call Ho House, with a laughing Buddha as the logo, but it never happened. "Hilaritas" is traced back to medieval philosopher Scotus Erigena, who seemed to define the term as something like "cosmic humor." A cosmic "Ho." Even in "sad" things there is humor; in humorous things there is some sadness. Ezra Pound liked the term, and that's probably where RAW first encountered it.

Hilaritas's editions are on better paper stock, with far better bindings, contain much supplementary material, have wonderful artwork, were scrutinized by a large group of editors for typos and mistakes, etc. They did/do not change any word of RAW's thought. If something seems too obscure and the current editing team can't agree what he may have meant, they just leave it alone. Still, an editor friend who worked with RAW at And/Or Press, Peter Beren, thought, "The Robert Anton Wilson Trust, which had established a strong presence online, began to seem more and more like a cult with Bob as the Prophet. The eye in the triangle, sign of the Illuminati, was its symbol and the main slogan" "Keep The Lasagna Flying." This profound but surreal and absurdist cult still exists online."15

I leave us here, with much left unwritten about Wilson, his publishers, his would-have-been publishers (Llywelyn, Weiser, Soft Skull, M.I.T. Press), his wailing and gnashing over editors, his difficult writing life. Previous parts of this story are HERE and HERE.

I will comment in general on these affairs in some future blogspew.

Hilaritas Press podcast, Dec 23, 2025, c. 08:20-09:20 or so

"In the raw: necessary heresies," RAW's interview with Alex Burns. It can be accessed HERE.

It had become New Falcon after just plain Falcon after a legal dispute, or so it seems. Then, after Hyatt died, his son created a stir and Tharcher and Hyatt's widow converted the official publisher's name to Original Falcon, which is what they are today. Also: sorry about the Jeremy Tarcher and Nick Tharcher situation, but those really are those guys' names.

Re: Hyatt as Outer Head of the Golden Dawn: In a 1988 interview with David Banton, broadcast on KFJC Los Altos Hills, California, Banton asks, "Recently, Falcon Press has been reprinting a lot of your books, and there's a little joke in the list of Falcon books. With so many of them by Robert Anton Wilson, it asks, is Falcon Press owned by Robert Anton Wilson? Well, is it?" RAW replies:

"No, that's just one of the publisher's little jokes. Falcon Press is owned by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was the English branch of the Illuminati, according to some conspiracy buffs. Of course, it wasn't really, that's just what some nutty people say. And I want to deny Mae Brussell's claim, uh, no it's not Mae Brussell, it's Lyndon Larouche. Lyndon Larouche claims I'm the head of the Illuminati; there's no truth in that whatsoever. Mae Brussell is the one who said I'm an agent of the Rockefeller conspiracy. That is the truth, I can't deny that one! Actually, my whole cellar is full from floor to ceiling with bars of gold sent to me personally by David Rockefeller for all the services I provide for the Rockefeller Conspiracy."

(see also pp. 983-1079, Infinite Jest)

Prometheus Rising, Hilaritas ed, p.ii

Listen to an interview with Nick Tharcher from two years previous to the interview citedin footnote #1, above. Start at around 33:00 and go to 34:50 or so. Since the rights to almost all of RAW's non-fiction have reverted to his family and Hilaritas Press, a small army of editors - including yours truly - have cleaned up those books significantly, although RAW's erudition, combined with his misremembering of proper names and their spelling, and some book titles, have created a huge challenge, but I think we've made a very significant dent.

I bought a bunch of books from the Falcon/New Falcon catalog written by other authors, simply because RAW had written the Foreword of Introduction. And when I read those books, I often found them wanting. Just not my taste. But there are definitely some very interesting minds put out by that publisher. RAW did an Intro for Hyatt's aforementioned Undoing Yourself. He did similar for Wayne Saalman' Dream Illuminati and Illuminati of Immortality; Madeleine Singer's Psychology of Synergy; David Jay Brown's Brainchild; Hyatt/Duquette/Ford's Taboo: The Ecstasy of Evil; Rodolfo Scarfalotto's The Alchemy of Opposites; Donald Holmes's The Illuminati Conspiracy; Constantin Negoita's Cybernetic Conspiracy: Mind Over Matter. There was a volume with Hyatt's name on it, but many contributors Rebels and Devils, that RAW also wrote for. There are probably a few others I've mis-shelved on my own shelves. All these books were worth buying, for me, simply because of RAW's introductions and contributions.

Let's get this straight: Arlen was writing Kurt Smith from Los Angeles to Smith's home in San Francisco. It's 1989. RAW was on a lecture tour, but Arlen was trying to assure Smith that RAW wasn't mad at him, and that Bob had been very busy, but when this correspondence gets published one day it will become clear that RAW was probably depressed also. "You have nothing to worry about…You are still in the Aces. Elite, Primo. Gold Card category, believe me." Why didn't they email? Probably because this was just a year or two before everyone had an email address. Why didn't they call? Probably because you had to pay per minute for calling outside your area code number, on what was called a "land line". I mean, think about how radically different communication was in just 1989!

The Other Side of Haight, Fadiman, pp.239-240. Fadiman's cousin was William James Sidis, who was a freakish genius. Fadiman was turned on to psilocybin by Richard Alpert, was Stewart Brand's guide on Brand's first LSD trip, and lived near Ken Kesey in Menlo Park. He's since become associated with microdosing and set and setting, and all things Transpersonal. His uncle was Clifton Fadiman, a 1960s TV intellectual; his cousin is writer Anne Fadiman.

Prometheus Rising, pp.i-ii of the Hilaritas Press ed. According to Hilaritas, this book continues to sell well, 19 years after RAW's death, and for me, it's still the ABC/Baedeker/enchiridion for the Eight Circuit Model of consciousness.

This seems to me a transparent projection by RAW. At least he acknowledges that publishing is a gamble. The Peter Lorre bit tickles me.

Beyond Chaos and Beyond: The Best of Trajectories, vol 2, D. Scott Apel, pp.438-439

One of my favorites was How To Start You Own Country, by Erwin Strauss. It was books like this - and no one published more of them than Loompanics - that made me realize the heavy strain of what I call "Walter Mitty Syndrome" in my reading life and personal makeup since childhood. I will happily read the most insane, "dangerous" books while sitting like some milquetoast, knowing I'd never do anything like what's going on in the book. Hey! I want to know about other reality tunnels! And so I read "Uncle Fester"'s book on starting your own LSD lab, Practical LSD Manufacture, all the while realizing I have a tough time making instant oatmeal. Or The Turner Diaries. Or Hit Man, by "Rex Feral," who was really a female mystery novelist who was having difficulty with sales. Her book brought down Paladin Press. Uncle Fester, The Turner Diaries (by "Andrew Macdonald"), and "Rex Feral" were all available through Loompanics. Thus did non-fiction forever seen coterminous with fiction to me.

Beyond Chaos and Beyond: The Best of Trajectories, vol.2, D. Scott Apel, p.270 This gedankenexperiment by Hoy, as related by Wilson, reminded me of John Searle's "Chinese Room" thought experiment about AI. And, decades later, with widespread talk about scary AI taking over the world, this seems even more pertinent. Who is programming your "reality"? This idea runs, of course, through RAW's entire oeuvre. It's just that he appreciated the shaded nuance of Hoy's rhetoric about why we must, doubt…and find our own light. I can't help but feel strongly that, had more people read RAW and understood his ideas around Model Agnosticism and "Maybe" logic, that we wouldn't be in the rapidly disintegrating apocalyptic collapse that now seems to be accelerating. On other days it rains.

Hoy quit Loompanics in 2006: "Outlaw Publisher Calls It Quits"

More True Than Strange: Collected Writing 1968-2018, Peter Beren, p.205 When I emailed Richard Rasa about this, he replied "I wish it was a cult! Then we'd have better sales!" I don't think Beren had the hilaritas, but then I'm biased. Or… stuck in a cult? Which, if so, I wouldn't know, right? Help! Help?

(above graphic done by artist Bobby Campbell)

In December 2023, Steve Bannon and Boris Epshteyn allegedly activated a backdoor mechanism in a cryptocurrency they controlled, freezing investor wallets while exempting their own. A class action lawsuit filed February 12 in DC federal court alleges the pair had secretly acquired the token — called "Let's Go Brandon Coin," or $FJB — in December 2021, paying nothing. — Read the rest

The post Steve Bannon sued over MAGA crypto scheme appeared first on Boing Boing.

Conservative podcast host Tim Dillon called FBI Director Kash Patel a "big fat liar" and demanded his resignation. Candace Owens said he should step down. Joe Rogan amplified the criticism. The backlash — from the same right-wing media that once championed Patel — centers on what Salon describes as a pattern of "premature announcements and theatrical incompetence." — Read the rest

The post MAGA turns on "Keystone Kash" Patel over botched investigations appeared first on Boing Boing.

Attorney General Pam Bondi told Congress on Saturday that the Justice Department has released all documents required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The lawmakers who wrote the law disagree.

In a six-page letter, Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche listed more than 300 "politically exposed persons" whose names appear in the files — Trump, Clinton, Gates, Prince Andrew, and, for reasons the DOJ didn't explain, Princess Diana, Elvis Presley, and Janis Joplin. — Read the rest

The post Bondi says all Epstein files are released. Lawmakers say she's lying. appeared first on Boing Boing.

Walter Donohue by Sarah Ainslie

We are delighted to announce that - due to popular demand - script editor, producer and luminary of the British cinema, Walter Donohue has agreed to teach another  two-day screenwriting course at Townhouse in Spitalfields on the weekend of 18th and 19th April.

Here are some comments by students on Walter's previous course:

"I just want to say thank you for putting on such a fantastic weekend - it was so, so interesting speaking with like-minded people who share such a love for film and to be able to speak to the wonderful Walter and Mike Figgis and glean some of their vast knowledge. The food was delicious and the setting was ideal, I really appreciate the effort that you put into making it such a fantastic weekend." MN

"The course itself exceeded my expectations - I learned so many invaluable lessons about screenwriting and the film industry itself. I will take all the new skills into my career. Both Mike Figgis and Walter led an incredibly useful course and truly took their time with each student." GE

"The weekend spent in the Townhouse was nothing short of wondrous. Walter's passion for writing and storytelling is infectious. For every story that the students had, Walter had suggestions that took that story to a new level. The man's knowledge of what is needed in screenwriting and how to pitch, for me, was invaluable. The weekend was two days that I will never forget. I now have the tools and ammunition to start my own personal project. The visit by Mike Figgis was insightful. His views on Hollywood and filmmaking were blunt, informative and most importantly, honest! I could have listened to him talk all day."  JL

WALTER'S EXPERIENCE

In the eighties, Walter began working as a script editor, starting with Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas and Sally Potter's Orlando. Since then he has worked with some major filmmakers including Joel & Ethan Coen, Wim Wenders, Sally Potter, David Byrne, Mike Figgis, John Boorman, Viggo Mortensen, Alex Garland, Kevin Macdonald, and László Nemes.

For the past thirty years he has been editor of the Faber & Faber film list, publishing Pulp Fiction and Barbie, and screenplays by Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, David Lynch, Sally Potter, and Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach, Joel & Ethan Coen, and Christopher Nolan among many others.

Walter also published Scorsese on Scorsese, and edited the series of interview books with David Lynch, Robert Altman, Tim Burton, John Cassavetes, Pedro Almodovar and Christopher Nolan.

THE COURSE

Walter's course is suitable for all levels of experience from those who are complete beginners to those who have already written screenplays and seek to refresh their practise. The course is limited to sixteen students.

APPROACHES TO SCREENWRITING

Walter says -

"My course is about approaches to writing a screenplay rather than a literal step-by-step technique on how to write.

The objective of my course is to immerse participants in the world of film, acquainting them with a cinematic language which will enable them to create films that are unique and personal to themselves.

There are four approaches - each centred around a particular film which will be the focus of each of the four sessions.

The approaches are -
Structure: Paris, Texas
Viewpoint: Silence of the Lambs
Genre: Anora
Endings: Chinatown

Participants will be required to have seen all four films in advance of the course."

This is a unique opportunity to enjoy a convivial weekend with Walter in an eighteenth century townhouse in Spitalfields and learn how to approach your screenplay.

Refreshments, freshly baked cakes and lunches are included in the course fee of £350.

Please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book your place.

Please note we do not give refunds if you are unable to attend or if the course is postponed for reasons beyond our control.

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

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A note on who I am: I'm an investigative journalist who's spent a decade reporting on the collision of technology and democracy including exposing the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal for the Guardian and the New York Times. Two years ago, I called the alliance of Trump, Silicon Valley and a global axis of autocracy: a tech bro oligarchy, aka the Broligarchy. Please help me continue to expose it.

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Today, I'm republishing my entire post from one year ago. Please read it. It was my attempt to state clearly what the US press was not: that the US was in the grips of a coup. And that if coordinated action was not taken fast, it would be too late.

It's not that there wasn't excellent reporting in the US press. There was. But there was a total absence of simple, bold labelling of what was actually happening. The major US news organisations could or would not call it what it was.

The event that triggered my nervous system was Elon Musk's DOGE illegally entering the US treasury and gaining access to the entire nation's personal and financial data: a system-level hack on the entire US population.

This was a power grab that could not be undone. Data is like a genie. It cannot be put back in the bottle. That one act - that was then replicated across the federal government - was the beginning of what I believed, still believe, is a technoauthoritarian state.

I also channelled the voices of key experts: historians of authoritarianism, Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Tim Snyder. They also said it loudly and clearly: it's a coup.

It's important to mark these moments, I believe. It's one year on. And this week, it's become distressingly clear that everything these historians have been warning about then, have warned about for nigh-on a decade, has now happened.

Thank you to everyone who commented on that and shared it.I never imagined it would meet with such a heartfelt response from so many people.

This week I was invited on Democracy Now, an indie American news station that punches well above its weight to talk about the Epstein piece I wrote and published here last week. I was blown away by the response to that piece and I just went to find the YouTube link to the show and I'm blown away again by the response to the interview: it's reached 1m views in just a few days.

In the interview, I say that the extraordinarily muted response of the US media to the Epstein files is evidence that America is more broken than it realises.

It's the same problem I wrote about (below) a year ago. It's not that there aren't still incredible journalists doing excellent reporting, there are. It's that US news organisations lack guts and leadership. They're failing to frame and make sense of what is in the files and what it means, failing to spell it out in headlines, failing to give it front page real estate. And of course, above all, it's failing the victims who've been failed so many times before.

A year ago, it failed to communicate the jeopardy of those first days and weeks of Trump's administration, a fast and furious illegal blitzkrieg that laid the groundwork for a surveillance state rooted in violence that we now see ICE consolidating.

And I think it's the same problem in this moment. The US media is pre-surrendering, self-censoring. That's what the historian Timothy Snyder warned against. It was the first and most important point on his list of how to avoid the authoritarian backslide: do not obey in advance. Yet, here we are.

Half the press has been captured by Trump allies and what remains is cowed, unable to meet the moment, impotent in the face of the abundant evidence that's revealed a paedophiliac cabal comprising individuals from every major US institution from universities to banks alongside tech bro billionaires, foreign agents and the US president. A cabal that disgusts almost everyone. And yet, it's barely even troubled the front pages of America's major newspapers.

In the clip, I talk about morality. It's not a fashionable or much-used word in the media. But in a world in which lies replace truth and black becomes white, we need something to hang on to. A line that we do not cross. And that line, if it's anything, is surely the rape and abuse of children? In Europe, at least, that line is holding. The revelations in these documents have caused political noise and heat and actual consequences. A long list of scalps across Europe and in Norway, in the last few days, the former PM Thorbjørn Jagland, a prominent figure in the files, has been arrested and charged.

But America, it honestly feels like you are lost. Broken. Not any of you. Not the little people. It's your storied paedophile-adjacent institutions that are failing you. The people named in these documents are still running your banks, they're teaching at your universities, they make up half the government. Where is the outrage? Where are the thundering op-eds? I've seen better headlines in Reddit than I've seen in the New York Times. Even in class-ridden Britain, we've booted out a Lord and there is serious heat for a police investigation of the King's brother.

The frog is boiling. You're in the water so maybe you can't feel it. But Epstein needs to be your wake-up call. I spent last week genuinely baffled by the US media's muted non-response to the files. But now I realise: it's the dog that didn't bark.

The silence is compliance. And the conditions for the Donald Trump's coup to be fully executed are now in place. The mid-terms are the final test. But nothing is inevitable. There is everything to fight for. But stop and really listen. The dog that's not barking now? If it's not barking now, it won't bark then either.

If you're unable to call out a coup in progress, or the cover-up of an entire cohort of paedophiles and their accomplices in positions of power across every sector of the US government and economy, it's not going to be able to summon the scare headlines needed to prevent an illegal assault upon an election.

You need to build your own alarm system. Your own media. You need to find new leaders. The billionaires are not coming to the rescue, nor their news organisations or networks or their political candidates. It's time to build your own. The call is coming from inside the house.

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Feb 10, 2025

Let me say this more clearly: what is happening right now, in America, in real time, is a coup.

This is an information war and this is what a coup now looks like.

Musk didn't need a tank, guns, soldiers. He had a small crack cyber unit that he sent into the Treasury department last weekend. He now has unknown quantities of the entire US nation's most sensitive data and potential backdoors into the system going forward. Treasury officials denied that he had access but it then turned out that he did. If it ended there, it would be catastrophic. But that unit - whose personnel include a 19-year-old called "Big Balls" - is now raiding and scorching the federal government, department by department, scraping its digital assets, stealing its data, taking control of the code and blowing up its administrative apparatus as it goes.

This is what an unlawful attack on democracy in the digital age looks like. It didn't take armed men, just Musk's taskforce of boy-men who may be dweebs and nerds but all the better to plunder the country's digital resources. This was an organised, systematic, jailbreak on one of the United States' most precious and sensitive resources: the private data of its citizens.

In 2019, I appeared in a Netflix documentary, The Great Hack. That's a good place to start to understand what is going on now, but it wasn't the great hack. It was among the first wave of major tech exploits of global elections. It was an exemplar of what was possible: the theft and weaponization of 87 million people's personal data. But this now is the Great Hack. This week is when the operating system of the US was wrenched open and is now controlled by a private citizen under the protection of the President.

If you think I've completely lost it, please be advised that I'm far from alone in saying this. The small pools of light in the darkness of this week has been stumbling across individual commentators saying this for the last week. Just because these words are not on the front page in banner headlines of any newspaper doesn't mean this isn't not happening. It is.

In fact, there has been relentless, assiduous, detailed reporting in all outlets across America. There are journalists who aren't eating or sleeping and doing amazing work tracking what's happening. There is fact after fact after fact about Musk's illegal pillaging of the federal government. But news organisation leaders are either falling for the distraction story - the most obviously insane one this week being rebuilding Gaza as a luxury resort, a story that dominated headlines and political oxygen for days. Or…what? Being unable to actually believe that this is what an authoritarian takeover looks like? Being unsure of whether you put the headline about the illegal coup d'etat next to a spring season fashion report? Above or below the round-up of best rice cookers? The fact is the front pages look like it's business as normal when it's anything but.

This was Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Tuesday. She's a historian of fascism and authoritarianism at New York University and she said this even before some of this week's most extreme events had taken place. (A transcript of the rest of her words here.)

"It's very unusual. In my study of authoritarian states, it's only really after a coup that you see such a speed, such obsessive haste to purge bureaucracy so quickly. Or when somebody is defending themselves, like Erdogan after the coup attempt against him, massive purge immediately. So that's unusual.

I don't have another reference point for a private individual coming in, infiltrating, trying to turn government to the benefit of his businesses and locking out and federal employees. It is a coup. I'm a historian of coups, and I would also use that word. So we're in a real emergency situation for our democracy."

A day later, this was Tim Snyder, Yale, a Yale professor and another great historian of authoritarianism, here: "Of course it's a coup."

History was made this week and while reporters are doing incredible work, to understand it our guides are historians, those who've lived in authoritarian states and Silicon Valley watchers. They are saying it. What I've learned from investigating and reporting on Silicon Valley's system-level hack of our democracy for eight long years and seeing up close the breathtaking impunity and entitlement of the men who control these companies is that they break laws and they get away with it. And then lie about it afterwards. That's the model here.

Everything that I've ever warned about is happening now. This is it. It's just happening faster than anyone could have imagined.

It's not that what's happening is simply unlawful. This is what David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School told the Washington Post.

"So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they're playing a quantity game and assuming the system can't react to all this illegality at once."

And he's right. The system can't and isn't. Legal challenges are being made and even upheld but there's no guarantee or even sign that Musk is going to honour them. That's one of the most chilling points my friend, Mark Bergman, made to me over the weekend.

Last week, I included a voice note from my friend, tech investor turned tech campaigner, Roger McNamee, so you could hear direct from an expert about the latest developments in AI. This week I've asked Mark to do the honours.

He's a lawyer, Washington political insider, and since last summer, he's been participating in 'War Game' exercises with Defense Department officials, three-star generals, former Cabinet Secretaries and governors. In five exercises involving 175 people, they situation-tested possible scenarios of a Trump win. But they didn't see this. It's even worse than they feared.

"Those challenges have been in respect of shutting down agencies, firing federal employees and engaging in the most egregious hack of government. It all at the hand hands of DOGE, Musk and his band of tech engineers. DC right now is shell-shocked. It is a government town, USA, ID, the FBI, the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, CIA, no federal agency will be spared the revenge and retribution tours in full swing, and huge numbers have been put on administrative leave, reassigned or fired, and the private sector is as much at risk, particularly NGOs and civil society organizations. The more high-profile violate the law, which is why the courts have been quick to enjoin actions.

"So yes, we've experienced a coup, not the old fashioned kind, no tanks or mobs, but an undemocratic and hostile takeover of government. It is cruel, it is petty. It can be brutal. It is at once chaotic and surgical. We said the institutions held in 2020 but behind institutions or people, and the extent to which all manner of power structures have preemptively obeyed is hugely worrying. There are legions ready to carry out the Trump agenda. The question is, will the rule of law hold?"

Last Tuesday, Musk tried to lay off the entire CIA. That's the government body with the slogan 'We are the nation's first line of defense'. Every single employee has been offered an unlawful 'buyout' - what we call redundancy in the UK - or what 200 former employees - spies - have said is blatant attempt to rebuild it as a political enforcement unit. Over the weekend, the Washington Post reports that new appointees are being presented with "loyalty tests".

Musk's troops - because that's what they are, mercenaries - are acting in criminal, unlawful, unconstitutional ways. Organisations are acting quickly, taking lawsuits, and for now the courts are holding. But the key essential question is whether their rulings can be enforced with a political weaponized Department of Justice and FBI. What Mark Bergman told me (and is in the extended note below) is that they've known since the summer that there would be almost no way of pushing back against Trump. This politicisation of all branches of law enforcement creates a vacuum at the heart of the state. As he says in that note, the ramifications of this are little understood outside the people inside Washington who study this for a living.

And at least some of what DOGE is doing can never be undone. Musk, a private citizen, now has vast clouds of citizens' data, their personal information and it seems likely, classified material. When data is out there, it's out there. That genie can never be put back into the bottle.

Itt's what it's possible to do with that data, that the real nightmare begins. What machine learning algorithms and highly personalised targeting can do. It's a digital coup. An information coup. And we have to understand what that means. Our fleshy bodies still inhabit earthly spaces but we are all, also, digital beings too. We live in a hybrid reality. And for more than a decade we have been targets of hybrid warfare, waged by hostile nation states whose methodology has been aped and used against us by political parties in a series of disrupted elections marked by illegal behaviour and a lack of any enforcement. But this now takes it to the next level.

It facilitates a concentration of wealth and power - because data is power - of a kind the world has never seen before.

Facebook's actual corporate motto until 2014 taken from words Mark Zuckerberg spoke was "Move fast and break things". That phrase has passed into commonplace: we know it, we quote it, we also fail to understand what that means. It means: act illegally and get away with it.

And that is the history of Silicon Valley. Its development and cancerous growth is marked by series of larcenous acts each more grotesque than the last. And Musk's career is an exemplar of that, a career that has involved rampant criminality, gross invasions of privacy, stock market manipulation. And lies. The Securities and Exchange Commission is currently suing Musk for failing to disclose his ownership stock before he bought Twitter. The biggest mistake right now is to believe anything he says.

Every time, these companies have broken the law, they have simply gotten away with it. I know I'm repeating this, but it's central to understanding both the mindset and what's happening on the ground. And no-one exemplifies that more than Musk. The worst that has happened to him is a fine. A slap on the wrist. An insignificant line on a balance sheet. The "cost of doing business".

On Friday, Robert Reich, the former United States Secretary of Labor, who's been an essential voice this week, told the readers of his Substack to act now and call their representatives.

"Friends, we are in a national emergency. This is a coup d'etat. Elon Musk was never authorized by Congress to do anything that he's doing, he was never even confirmed by Congress, his so-called Department of Government Efficiency was never authorized by Congress. Your representatives, your senators and Congressmen have never given him authority to do what he is doing, to take over government departments, to take over entire government agencies, to take over government payments system itself to determine for himself what is an appropriate payment. To arrogate to himself the authority to have your social security number, your private information? Please. Listen, call Congress now."

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I found myself completely poleaxed on Wednesday. I read this piece on the New York Times website first thing in the morning, a thorough and alarming analysis of headlined "Trump Brazenly Defies Laws in Escalating Executive Power Grab". It quoted Peter M. Shane, who is a legal scholar in residence at New York University, "programmatic sabotage and rampant lawlessness." It was displayed prominently on the front page of the New York Times but it was also just one piece among many, a small weak signal amid the overpowering noise.

There's another word for an "Executive Power Grab", it's a coup. And newspapers need to actually write that in big black letters on their front pages and tell their tired, busy, overwhelmed, distracted, scared readers what is happening. That none of this is "business as usual."

Over on the Guardian's UK website on Wednesday, there was not a single mention on the front page of what was happening. Trump's Gaza spectacular diversion strategy drowned out its quotient of American news. We just weren't seeing what's happening in the seat of government of our closest ally. As a private citizen mounted a takeover of the cornerstone superpower of the international rules-based order, our crucial NATO ally, our biggest single trading partner, the UK government didn't even apparently notice.

The downstream potential international consequences of what is happening in America are profound and terrifying. That our government and much of the media is asleep at the wheel is a reason to be more not less terrified. Musk has made his intentions towards our democracy and national security quite clear. What he hasn't yet had is the backing of the US state. That is shortly going to change. One of the first major stand-offs will be UK and EU tech regulation. I hope I'm wrong but it seems pretty obvious that's what Musk's Starmer-aimed tweets are all about. There seems no world in which the EU and the UK aren't headed for the mother of all trade wars.

And that's before we even consider the national security ramifications. The prime minister should be convening Cobra now. The Five Eyes - the intelligence sharing network of the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada - is already likely breached. Trump is going to do individual deals with all major trading partners that's going to involve preposterous but real threats, including likely dangling the US's membership of NATO over our heads all while Russia watches, waits and knows that we've done almost nothing to prepare. Plans to increase our defence spending have been made but not yet implemented. Our intelligence agencies do understand the precipice we're on but there's no indication the government is paying any attention to them. The risks are profound. The international order as we know it is collapsing in real time.

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We all know that the the first thing that happens when a dictator seizes power is that he (it's always a he) takes control of the radio station. Musk did that months ago. It wasn't that Elon Musk buying Twitter pre-ordained what is now happening but it made it possible. And it was the moment, minutes after Trump was shot and he went full-in on his campaign that signalled the first shot fired in his digital takeover.

It's both a mass propaganda machine and also the equivalent of an information drone with a deadly payload. It's a weapon that's already been turned on journalists and news organisations this week. There's much more to come.

On Friday, Musk started following Wikileaks on Twitter. Hours later, twisted, weaponized leaks from USAID began.

This is going to get so much worse. Musk and MAGA will see this as the opening of the Stasi archive. It's not. It's rocketfuel for a witchhunt. It's hybrid warfare against the enemies of the state. It's going to be ugly and cruel and its targets are going to need help and support. Hands across the water to my friends at OCCRP, the Overseas Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an investigative journalism organisation that uncovers transnational crime, that's been in Musk's sights this weekend, one of hundreds of media organisations around the world whose funding has been slashed overnight.

By now you may feel scared and helpless. It's how I felt this week. I had the same sick feeling I had watching UK political coverage before the pandemic. The government was just going to ignore the wave of deaths rippling from China to Italy and pretend it wasn't happening? Really? That's the plan?

This is another pandemic. Or a Chernobyl. It's a bomb at the heart of the international order whose toxic fallout is going to inevitably drift our way.

My internal alarm bell, a sense of urgency and anxiety goes even further back. To early 2017, when I uncovered information about Cambridge Analytica's illegal hack of data from Facebook while the company's VP, Steve Bannon, was then on the National Security Council. That concept of highly personalised data in the control of a ruthless and political operator was what tripped my emergency wires. That is a reality now.

The point is that the shock and awe is meant to make us feel helpless. So I'm telling a bit of my own personal story here. Because part of what temporarily paralyzed me last week was that this is all happening while my own small corner of the mainstream media is collapsing in on itself too. The event that I've spent the last eight years warning about has come to pass and in a month, 100+ of my colleagues at the Guardian will be out of the door and my employment will be terminated. I will no longer have the platform of the news organisation where I've done my entire body of work to date and was able to communicate to a global audience.

But then, it's all connected. We are living through an information crisis. It's what underpins everything. In some ways, this happening now is not surprising at all. Moreover, many of the people who I see as essential voices during this crisis (including those above) are doing that effectively and independently from Substack as I will try to continue to do.

And, the key thing that the last eight years has given me is information. The lawsuit I fought for four years as a result of doing this work very almost floored me. But it didn't. And I've learned essential skills during those years. It was part of what powered me to fight for the rights of Guardian journalists during our strike this December.

The next fightback against Musk and the Broligarchy has to draw from the long, long fight for workers rights which in turn influenced the fight for civil rights that must now power us on as we face the great unknown. What comes next has to be a fight for our data rights, our human rights.

This was former Guardian journalist Gary Younge on our picket line and I've thought about these words a lot. You have to fight even if you won't necessarily win. Power is almost never given up freely.

If you value any of this and want me to be able to continue, I'd be really grateful if you signed up, free, or even better, paid subscription. And I'd also urge you to sign up also for the Citizen Dispatch, that's the newsletter from the non-profit I founded that campaigns around these issues. There is much more it can and needs to do.

With huge thanks as ever and solidarity & support to friends & strangers in the US, Carole

PS: I rang Mark Bergman to get him to do a longer version of the note. It repeats some of the one above but it's an added extra in case you want to hear more…

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Richard Nixon in 1972 (public domain photo). 

Robert Anton Wilson used to rail about the national security state and how much power was held by unelected bureaucrats. You can see some of those comments if you search this blog for "National Security Act." See for example, this blog post on John  Barth, where Wilson writes about "the sense of uncertainty and dread that has hung over this nation since democracy was abandoned in the National Security Act of 1947 and clandestine government became official. Sometimes I find it astounding that we have lived under fascism for 40 years while continuing the rituals of democracy .... "

The New York Times recently published a piece by James Rosen (gift link) on the extensive spying the Pentagon carried out on Richard Nixon and his aides.  

The piece, "Seven Pages of a Sealed Watergate File Sat Undiscovered. Until Now," describes how Nixon finally found out about the spying. Nixon did not believe he could prosecute the people responsible and reveal the spying without discrediting the military and having his own secrets revealed, but the two people primarily responsible were sent far away from Washington, D.C., and were wiretapped.

Rosen writes, "The Joint Chiefs' spying formed only one prong of the campaign against Nixon, the most spied-on president in modern times. Declassified documents and scholarship published since 1974 have established that the F.B.I., under its director, J. Edgar Hoover, spied on Mitchell, the attorney general, and that the C.I.A. detailed its personnel to various units associated with Nixon, including the Watergate burglary team and 'components intimately associated with the office of the president,' as the agency admitted in 1975."

Now, let's try that with a human body part

Tom's Hardware: In a blind test, audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between audio signals sent through copper wire, a banana, or wet mud — 'The mud should sound perfectly awful, but it doesn't,' notes the experiment creator.

Free-living amoebas are a little known group of single-celled organisms that don't need a host to live. They are found in soil and water, from puddles to lakes. What makes them remarkable is their ability to change shape and move using temporary arm-like extensions called pseudopodia - literally "false feet". This allows them to thrive in an astonishing range of environments. And they pose a growing health threat.

The most notorious free-living amoeba is Naegleria fowleri, commonly known as the "brain-eating amoeba". It lives naturally in warm freshwater, typically between 30°C and 40°C - lakes, rivers and hot springs. But it is rarely found in temperate countries such as the UK, due to the cold weather.

The infection happens when contaminated water enters through the nose, usually while swimming. From there, the amoeba travels along the nasal passages to the brain, where it destroys brain tissue. The outcome is usually devastating, with a mortality rate of 95%-99%.

Occasionally, Naegleria fowleri has been found in tap water, particularly when it's warm and hasn't been properly chlorinated. Some people have become infected while using contaminated tap water to rinse their sinuses for religious or health reasons. Fortunately, you cannot get infected by drinking contaminated water, and the infection doesn't spread from person to person.

Brain-eating amoebas can be killed by proper water treatment and chlorination. But eliminating them from water systems isn't always straightforward. When they attach to biofilms - communities of microorganisms that form inside pipes - disinfectants like chlorine struggle to reach them, and organic matter can reduce the disinfectants' effectiveness.

The amoeba can also survive warm temperatures by forming "cysts" - hard protective shells - making it harder to control in water networks, especially during summer or in poorly maintained systems.

Free-living amoebas aren't just dangerous on their own. They can also act as living shields for other harmful microbes, protecting them from environmental stress and disinfection.

While amoebas normally feed on bacteria, fungi and viruses, some bacteria - like Mycobacterium tuberculosis (which causes TB) and Legionella pneumophila (which causes legionnaires' disease) - have evolved to survive and multiply inside them. This helps these pathogens survive longer and potentially become more dangerous.

Amoebas also shelter fungi such as Cryptococcus neoformans, which can cause fungal meningitis. It can also shelter viruses, such as human norovirus and adenovirus, which cause respiratory, eye and gastrointestinal infections. By protecting these pathogens, amoebas help them survive longer in water and soil, and may even help spread antibiotic resistance.

Climate change is probably making the threat from free-living amoebas worse by creating more favourable conditions for their growth. Naegleria fowleri thrives in warm freshwater. As global temperatures rise, the habitable zone for these heat-loving amoebas has expanded into regions that were previously too cool. This potentially exposes more people to them through recreational water use.

Several recent outbreaks linked to recreational water exposure have already raised public concern in multiple countries. These climate-driven changes - warmer waters, longer warm seasons, and increased human contact with water - make controlling the risks more difficult than ever before.

Most water systems are not routinely checked for free-living amoebas. The organisms are rare, can hide in biofilms or sediments, and require specialised tests to detect, making routine monitoring expensive and technically challenging.

Instead, water safety relies on proper chlorination, maintaining disinfectant levels, and flushing systems regularly, rather than testing directly for the amoeba. While some guidance exists for high-risk areas, widespread monitoring is not standard practice.

Free-living amoebas aren't just a threat to the brain. They can cause painful eye infections, particularly in contact lens users, skin lesions in people with weakened immune systems, and rare but serious systemic infections affecting organs such as the lungs, liver and kidneys.

Free-living amoebas such as Naegleria fowleri are rare but can be deadly, so prevention is crucial. These organisms don't fit neatly into either medical or environmental categories - they span both, requiring a holistic approach that links environmental surveillance, water management, and clinical awareness to reduce risk.

Environmental change, gaps in water treatment and expanding habitats make monitoring - and clear communication of risk - more important than ever. Keeping water systems properly chlorinated, flushing hot water systems, and following safe recreational water and contact lens hygiene guidelines all help reduce the chance of infection. Meanwhile, researchers continue to improve detection methods and doctors work to recognise cases early.

People cannot get infected with free-living amoebas like Naegleria fowleri by drinking water, even if it contains the organism. Infection occurs only when contaminated water enters the nose, allowing the amoeba to reach the brain. Swallowing the water poses no risk because the amoeba cannot survive or invade through the digestive tract.

The risk from swimming in well-maintained pools or treated water is extremely low. The danger comes from warm, untreated freshwater, particularly during hot weather.

People can protect themselves from free-living amoebas by reducing exposure to warm, stagnant water. Simple steps include avoiding putting your head underwater in lakes or rivers during hot weather, using nose clips when swimming, choosing well-maintained pools, and keeping home water systems properly flushed and heated.

Contact lens users should follow strict hygiene and never rinse lenses with tap water. For nasal rinsing, only use sterile, distilled, or previously boiled water.

Awareness is key. If you develop a severe headache, fever, nausea, or stiff neck after freshwater exposure, seek medical attention immediately - early treatment is critical.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

With a thematic issue on a vital topic - the rise child poverty, ending on a hopeful note. You will find sharp analyses on the effect of poverty on children's lives, with a spotlight on the communities that are on the front line of deprivation, with personal stories and shared solutions. Click on the image to gain access to it, or find us on Substack.

Journalism by the people, for the people.

The post Why are scientists calling for urgent action on amoebas? first appeared on East Anglia Bylines.

*Their beloved chatbot got shot in the head

At the recent "Protocols for Publishers" event, a group of us were talking about news paywalls, social media promotion, and the embarrassment of having to ask for money.

What if, we said, you could tip a journalist directly on social media? Or reward your favourite creator without leaving the platform? Or just say thanks by buying someone a pint?

Here's a trivial mock-up:

Of course, this hides a ton of complexity. Does it show your local currency symbol? Does the platform take a cut or does it just pass you to the poster's preferred platform? Do users want to be able to tip as well as / instead of reposting and favouriting?

But I think the real problem is the perverse incentives it creates. We already know that relentless A|B testing of monetisation strategies leads to homogeneity and outrage farming. Every YouTuber has the same style of promotional thumbnail. Rage-baiters on Twitter know what drives the algorithm and pump out unending slurry.

Even if we ignore those who want to burn the world, content stealers like @CUTE_PUPP1E5 grab all the content they can and rip-off original creators. At the moment that's merely annoying, but monetisation means a strong incentive to steal content.

When people inevitably get scammed, would that damage the social media platform? Would promoting a payment link lead to liability? Now that money is involved, does that make hacking more attractive?

And yet… Accounts add payment links to their profiles all the time. Lots of accounts regularly ask for donor and sponsors. GitHub sponsors exist and I don't see evidence of people impersonating big projects and snaffling funds.

It is somewhat common for platforms to pay for publishers to be on their site. If you're starting up a new service then you need to give people an incentive to be there. That might be as a payer or receiver.

Personally, I'd love a frictionless way to throw a quid to a helpful blog post, or effortlessly donate to a poster who has made me laugh. Selfishly, I'd like it if people paid me for my Open Source or (micro)blogging.

I don't know whether Mastodon or BlueSky will ever have a payments button - and I have no influence on their decision-making process - but I'd sure like to see them experiement.

You can read more discussion on Mastodon.

Or, feel free to send me a tip!

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Time-honored romance genre showing a lot of mutational vitality lately