It's become very evident from the outside that the best time to stand up was yesterday, and you might already be too far down the slope to be able to quickly recover for this. I really do feel for all Americans who just want to have a normal life with an average quality of life or above, but at one point the environment around you change so quickly that that stops being even a possibility in the future. If your life hasn't been affected yet, it will be shortly.
The best day to stand up against the ongoing censorship and repression might have been yesterday, but the second-best day to do so is today. You really need to start caring about this before it's way to late. One "no kings protest" every 6 months is not gonna do anything, what you need is wide solidarity across industries, and a real general strike across the country. The second you do this, you'll see that the many and poor can control the few and rich.
The article linked doesn't even say what exactly they were protesting (beyond a rather vague "attacks on scientific research" which could mean a lot of things).
— Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
I can hardly think of a more peaceful form of protest, which only intended to make aware the participants about the content of the article. Those who were not interested presumably refused to take the article copy or did not read it.
Even on HN you can still see claims that USA is a "free" country where anyone can say anything about the government, without consequences. This example shows clearly that this claim is false.
Indeed, my view and perspective is built by a culmination of recent events, not based on a single event. The widespread self-censorship Americans currently engage in (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434091) is also a large part of it.
I don't have any "index of events" handy that could explain why I think the slope is so evident currently, but based on the ongoing journalistic suppression, individual self-censorship, centralization of control and power in governments and society together with lots of other smaller incidents like this one and others, makes it pretty clear to me at least.
Though I understand the mechanism of course. People have livelihoods, careers, kids, older parents to take care of. People don’t have enough slack to stand up, and demographics means there’s not enough youth.
If it’s not this particular authoritarian soft-coup attempt it will be the next or the next, maybe even one with a different political flavor like hard authoritarian populist left. Eventually one will succeed and we will lose our republic and won’t realize what that means until it’s gone.
Talk to some of the people in Russia in prison for 10 years for social media posts, or… well… you can’t talk to the business leaders who lost their balance near windows.
- The population is kept just comfortable enough to become complacent, with easy access to intoxicants, brainrot media and fast food. Now there are even robots that can do our thinking for us. A large percentage of people are brainwashed into thinking that all change is bad because it will cause them to lose the paltry, ersatz freedom they have rather than gaining real liberty.
- The labor pool is kept large enough that any of us could be replaced immediately with no significant loss to our employers. As the ISP mantra goes, “we have nothing to lose but our jobs”.
Yes, we know that they couldn’t replace _all_ of us at once, but combine points 1 and 2 and you will start to understand why there is no appreciable labor movement in the United States.
Growing up, I always heard Americans bragging about freedom of speech, and how important it is. I'll admit I swallowed that wholesale as a young impressionable person in another country, and I still believe in it, just not the American freedom of speech flavor I suppose. But it's so sad to see the state of affairs compared to just ten years ago, where discussions could be freely held, even on mainstream social media, and people weren't afraid of talking about things with clear words.
But the chilling effect is in full effect today, and I think it's having a large impact on how well (or not) the working class could actually mobilize. Because as soon as anyone mentions "general strike" on social media, they seem to disappear into a black hole and that stuff never shows up in people's feeds. Regardless of the size of the labor pool, if you can't organize people somehow, especially across a large country like the US, it's short of impossible to actually get any change in reality.
I understand the want to protest, but you do know that misrepresentation doesn't help, right?
Refusing to cease by an even organisers order will, yes, result in being escorted out forcefully by security.
What behavior exactly were they being given an opportunity to cease?
Don't get me wrong, anything is better than nothing, and many small streams may form into one big river, eventually. But short of a general strike across impactful industries, I think the current wave of protests won't actually achieve anything.
There is a reason "general strikes" are so feared by the political and wealthy class, and it's because there is no way for them to get rid of them without actually agreeing to some of the demands, otherwise the strikes actually impact their lives. Protesting by going out on the streets waving signs isn't gonna accomplish that, sadly.
The God Emperor is not to be questioned.
"Scientists were ejected from a meeting of the American Diabetes Associate for distributing printouts of an editorial that had appeared in the ADA journal. Here's the link: https://diabetesjournals.org/.../Misguided-Brushes-of-a.... The article highlights "the many threats the current U.S. administration pose[s] to the health of our nation". I recommend that you do read it: it is not technical, you don't need to have a degree in medicine or biology to read it. What do people not understand about the First Amendment?"
> The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people were right; but he thought the procession must go on now! And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.
From https://americanliterature.com/author/hans-christian-anderse...
"This organization is controlled by Trump loyalists. They are not scientists. You do not owe them respect. Speak over them. Let no manipulation go unchallenged or derided."
Strongly disagree. If they went straight up partisan at the conference, I’d be sympathetic to the notion of throwing them out. Not every space needs to be a protest venue.
They didn’t do that. They distributed an article published in the organization’s own journal. They argue why what they did cannot reasonably be considered “protest” under the organisation’s rules, given it’s literally what the conference is for. Challenging the notion that their ejection was the ADA following its own rules is the difference between them breaking the rules and the ADA breaking its own rules to censor their speech. (To cut off an aside, no the ADA isn’t bound by the First Amendment. Yes, the government is, and if they’re corruptly influencing to yank these researchers from the conference, that’s a legal issue. But more broadly, the concept of free speech is broader than the First Amendment.)
Something that may resonate with a broader spectrum is how science requires debate and polite disagreement. Good ideas can survive being pressure tested. Compelling consensus has terrible long-term outcomes.
So the ADA is looking for funding and support from <current government>, and some attendees thought it a good idea to attack <current government>, despite already agreeing to the code of conduct:
> The ADA confirmed to MedPage Today that five registered scientists had been removed from the meeting, claiming the scientists had violated the organization’s code of conduct for conferences.
If they have violated the code of conduct, they cannot now claim to be surprised and shocked that they were kicked out. I can fully understand why the ADA would not want to be brought into disrepute with <current government>.
When you look to make a statement, you should always fully understand the cost and how it could play out. These were not children and they are responsible for their actions.
Huh. A while back on here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42390479) you were complaining that Alex Jones was getting too many consequences for his statements. Was he a child? Why the change in tune?
These kind of behaviour should trigger the dismantling of the whole ADA organisation, then to be rebuilt on proper grounds.
As usual i’m not surprised these fascist behaviours (“you’d better align with us and publicly pledge allegiance to us or else”) comes from the left. They’re the real fascist.
Something is fundamentally broken in the USA. It's like Neo-Russia, or rather handled like that by those cronies.
I think codes of conduct for fine but evidently many people here feel they can violate free speech which is interesting because when they were criticized on that basis amid their widespread adoption several years ago people branded the critics knuckle dragging misogynists.
And when Apple started responding to Democratic political pressure to eg ban Parler (which happened) this was seen as not a free speech issue because it was an action between private parties. Like this one.
I happen to think free speech is imperiled by everyone with power - dems, republicans, academic administrators police departments App Store operators etc to infinity. But a lot of people seem to be selective in their outrage. That doesn’t work. It’s either a human right and matter of principle and beneficial to support or it isn’t.
If you’re upset about this I hope you’re also riled about France going after Elon Musk for the political opinions on X. And Neil Young demanding Joe Rogan be ejected from Spotify.
A conference for the members of a medical association has the stated purpose of providing a venue for the exchange of information between the members. When the authors of an article published in the journal of the said medical association distribute free copies of that article to their colleagues who attend the conference, they do exactly the thing for which the conference is organized.
Only a shameless liar can claim that such an action is a "violation of the code of conduct".
Which part did they violate?
The next day Trump will have the 173rd Airborne kidnap the entire editorial board of the American Diabetic Association and will get them good plated with fake gilt from Temu.
> > Some questioned how handing out reprints of an editorial published in the ADA’s own journal, at the ADA’s own annual conference, could be construed as a violation of that code.
This would probably have been fine if this administration was not comprised of individuals that cannot abide any sort of pushback.
The protest would not have been needed without the official there - but their presence made the organizers so nervous that they tossed the editor in chief of their own journal.
The problem is how deep the federal dollars go into these systems that enable fear of pulling it. That is the mechanism of control. Our own tax dollars being weaponized.
Though there is a good case that breaking that rule is the best action. Getting kicked out probably did more for their cause then their protest. They just need the guts to publicly stand by.
There are few cases where it is so clear cut that only the organizers have violated the code of conduct, and not those who were expelled from the conference.
>The scientists were not disruptive or disorderly in their conduct, based on the videos posted by MedPage Today, although the fact that they were handing out reprints just before an NIH representative was scheduled to speak might be construed as a form of protest. But it could just as easily be argued that such actions fall under valid scientific dissemination and discussion, the conference’s stated objective.
If like another 5% of eligible voters committed to voting every election, minor or not, and committed to calling their electeds on one issue every quarter, we’d likely see a sea change.
The threshold for laziness is very low, currently only 1 in 5 [1]. That’s both annoying and an opportunity.
[1] https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-national-survey-shows-...
I understand you’re a fan of the method and it can be impactful but that’s not a reason to state that protesting does not accomplish anything.
Protesting is very effective when you have a government that listens, which clearly isn't the case here, then besides a bunch of violent options, you're basically left with general strikes.
The article they were distributing is pretty clearly about diabetes. If the actions it describes continues, significant efforts towards treating and even curing diabetes will be lost.
It sounds to me like criticism of the government.
Americans are talking about protesting, rape, sexual violence, censorship all the time ... and I mean literally all sides - liberals, conservatives, leftists, feminists, MAGA ...
Whenever you see something like this, it's because the platform has some kind of automoderation policy that is liable to delete/shadowban content containing the word. Typing that, then, is not self-censorship; it's the exact opposite, the defiance of external censorshop.
That's just because reddit is almost entirely children and bots/shills. Yes, a platform full of children is going to be childish.
The article is not a long read [1]. It describes how current policy is dismantling and destroying the research infrastructure for diabetes, infrastructure which has started or has already borne significant fruit. It encapsulates a criticism of the administration, and it’s definitely scathing, but it’s far from a partisan rant.
For example: “This CD3-directed monoclonal antibody has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to prevent type 1 diabetes in people aged 8 years and older with stage 2 type 1 diabetes. As a result, we are a major step closer to a cure for type 1 diabetes. With the potential to prevent the disease, screening programs for type 1 diabetes are being initiated worldwide.
…
Two examples are the Human Islet Research Network (HIRN) and the Integrated Islet Distribution Program (IIDP). HIRN aims to advance our understanding of how β-cells are lost in human type 1 diabetes and to find inventive strategies to protect or replace β-cells in people with the disease.”
The funding for that research is being cut. If you have a loved one with, or at risk of getting, diabetes, this could be the difference between vastly different levels of quality of life and years of life versus death.
[1] https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/49/6/901/164764/Mi...
