Someone kindly reached out to ask if I would consider speaking about Gaza Verified (https://gaza-verified.org/) at the Social Web Devroom being organised by the Social Web Foundation at FOSDEM.

My answer is no.

And I feel it’s important for those of us who care about such things to understand why:

• Social Web Foundation (https://socialwebfoundation.org) partners with, and thereby whitewashes and legitimises Meta

• FOSDEM (https://fosdem.org/2026) allows itself to be sponsored by, and thereby whitewashes and legitimises, Google and IBM (Red Hat)

Meta and Google are both surveillance capitalists with strong ties to the Trump regime that is arming and financing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. IBM, apart from having helped Nazi Germany carry out the Holocaust, is also singled out by name, alongside Google (Alphabet, Inc.), as complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people (‪https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/1/un-report-lists-companies-complicit-in-israels-genocide-who-are-they).

It shouldn’t be hard for organisations that purport to be alternatives to toxic Big Tech to not be sponsored and affiliated with them. But apparently it is.

Personally, I have no trouble saying no to having my name and legitimacy being used to whitewash these corporations and I have been doing so since the beginning.

• ‪ https://ar.al/2019/01/11/i-was-wrong-about-google-and-facebook-theres-nothing-wrong-with-them-so-say-we-all/

• ‪ https://ar.al/notes/rightscon-or-a-right-con/

I will not stand – literally or metaphorically – in front of their banners and talk about an initiative that tries to help the very people victimised by these corporations in their sociopathic quest for profit at any cost.

I hope more people start doing the same if we are to have any chance of making these corporations with their toxic business models and their complicity in genocide socially unacceptable. If we cannot even meet that already-very-low bar – as long as those of us with legitimacy allow ourselves to be used to normalise them – nothing will change.

#FOSDEM #SocialWebFoundation #BigTech #sponsorship #whitewashing #legitimisation #institutionalCorruption #israel #genocide #Gaza #Palestine #GazaVerified

Australia's new national environmental standards

"Former ACCC chair condemns proposed exemption allowing minister to approve projects that don’t comply with law. Samuel, who led a 2020 review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, also argued a loophole that effectively exempts native forest logging from the laws “shouldn’t be there”.

“Logging operations should be subject to the same rules as mining, agriculture, urban development and so on." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/14/graeme-samuel-calls-for-labor-to-ditch-national-interest-workaround-for-environment-laws

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act)
The problem of ministerial discretion and “national interest” exemptions. >>
https://mastodon.au/@Bellingen/115528660854362227

Authoritarianism—but make it look like the rule of law. >>
https://mastodon.au/@Bellingen/115528971744822369

#EPBCAct #biodiversity #NationalInterest #law #exemption #MinisterialDiscretion #FastTrackApprovals #VestedInterest #ParliamentaryScrutiny #EnvironmentalLaw #conservation #regulation #governance #democracy #NSWLogging #landclearing #DualState #lawlessness #authoritarianism #LawGuardrails #normalcy #EmergencyPowers #NationalInterest #legitimisation #exemption #constitution #state #governance #LoggingImpacts

Authoritarianism—but make it look like the rule of law.
Lawlessness dressed up as law.

" The ‘dual state’ framework explains how a dictator can exercise power while life appears mostly ordinary.

The court is adjusting the law to make place for arbitrary power.

In a dual state, the high “court’s role is in creating affordances within the law that operate as off switches for the law…

This is precisely why the dual state is so dangerous: It allows the would-be autocrat to consolidate power under the cloak of democracy and norms. "
>>
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/dual-state-supreme-court/

The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship >>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dual_State
#DualState #lawlessness #authoritarianism #LawGuardrails #normalcy #EmergencyPowers #NationalInterest #legitimisation #exemption #constitution #state #governance #VibeShift #democracy

Two arguments in the docu:

- #Google should include actually helpful "Ads" if someone enters suicide-related #keywords.
- If #surveillance had prevented a (concrete case of) #suicide attempt, it was justified.

The first is totally right of course! (I'll discuss this more in the next toot though.)

However, point two is THE typical legitimisation of surveillance. This is just one disguise among many (e.g. CSAM scanning, "terrorism", "fake news", "extremism", etc.).

Here are two immediate counter arguments:

- People mining is not needed; some kind of key-word scanning is effective and efficient.
- The data about MH *will* be abused. This is the nature of #surveillanceCapitalism Rather than for these disguises, data has more often be abused (by capitalists, secret "services", rouge states, etc.)

#legitimisation #surveillance #capitalism [2/3]