'A new report has found that a majority (56%) of people want to shift investment in road building schemes to funding options for walking, wheeling, cycling and public transport.
Sustrans’ Walking and Cycling Index... also revealed greater public demand for active travel over driving, with 50% wanting to walk more and 43% wanting to cycle more. A third of people want to make greater use of public transport.'
Amira Hass wrote on possible explanations for Israeli indifference in the face of destruction and cruelty in Gaza:
[Sorry for the poor translation from Hebrew]
⸺
The Gaza strip is being erased and gone. Of her families. Of her people. Of her children, their smiles and laughter. What allows most residents of the Jewish state to support this systematic and mass erasing? to see in it an appropriate answer to the massacre carried out by the Hamushi Hamas and their companions, to the military humiliation suffered by Israel and to the indescribable suffering of the kidnapped, the injured, the survivors, their families and the families of the hundreds of dead?
The IDF is erasing the Gaza cities, streets, countryside, fields and surprising mistakes, the alleys of the refugee camps there. Her beach promenade. He is erasing her cultural institutions and the universities, her archaeological sites. Hamas's military infrastructure is also being destroyed, thousands of its militants are killed. But the organization itself and its officials will recover and prosper, in every community and place where the degradation of Gaza will continue to occur.
What allows most Jews in Israel not to be shocked by the fact that in about two months we have killed about 7,000 children (temporary data) with the enhanced bombs that the United States provided us? What allows the majority of Jews not to suffocate in the horror of a compression of 1.8 or 1.9 million people in an area of 120 km, which is also constantly exploded? and not to cry out for the reports of the hunger and thirst of 2.2 million Palestinian citizens and the diseases that spread due to the density and lack of water and hospitals? What enables the erasure and mass slaughter of children, with our active and passive participation?
Here are some answers:
• Decades of education on the knees of absolute #belief in the exclusive ability of a military power to ensure the existence and prosperity of the country, while denying rights from the Palestinian people.
• Deleting all "context" — which incitement has made it a synonym for supporting Hamas and justifying its horrors.
• The #monopoly we took, the Jews, on the concept of suffering caused by the cruelty of the other.
• The choice not to know and not to watch the unbearable images that show Palestinian children trembling and gray-faced from dust, torn from the Russian walls. And you don't know who is more lucky: them or those who died.
• Every mass slaughter or tiffin-tiffin that we commit on Palestinians in years, every looting, humiliation, abuse, goes through thousands of media, psychological and academic filters. The effect is the self conviction that their situation is better than that of Somalis or Syrians, so let them not complain.
• Remembering every massacre Palestinians have committed on us. You have forgotten every massacre we have committed.
• The decades-old practice of living in peace and well five minutes away from our backyard, where israel (that is us) destroys for Palestinians and builds for Jews, flows water to Jews and exploits Palestinians. And all the rest is written in the reports "The Focus for the Protection of the Individual", "Betzelem" and "Adalea".
• Decades-old ignorance of warnings of "moderate" Palestinians, about who robbed the lands and freedom and violence of the settlers with the help of the state — and inspired by its violence — reduce the horizons of their children and generate desperation and belief only in the power of weapons and revenge.
• The essential perception of the world: Palestinians are terrorists because they are like that. Born with the genes of hating us. A direct sequel to Hamelnitsky and Titus.
• The self-conviction that we are a democracy even though for more than 56 years we have controlled millions of people without civil rights, in their land and economy.
• The deep racial disrespect of Palestinians, that we developed in order to cognitively and psychologically justify their trampling under our feet.
• Denial of Palestinian history and the roots of Palestinian existence between the river and the sea.
• Elimination of Gaza is possible because since 1994 we have deliberately missed the opportunity — offered to us by the Palestinians — to get rid of our characteristics as an occupying and settling entity and to give them a state of 22% of the territory west of Jordan. I wrote in July 2021: "In the light of the talk about apartheid is fading and eclipsing the dynamic, active and dangerous dimension that is Jewish-ass colonialism." This is an ideology in which the Palestinians are 'giving up', it is the actions that have shaped this ideology, which are inspired and nourished by it. In short: it is possible and desirable that only the Palestinians are bounded. Their existence here is conditional, by grace and not merit, depends on our will and our kindness, it's a question of time. The 'indulgence' ideology is a poison that spreads especially when the colonial process is in full swing. Settler colonialism is in a constant movement of land acquisition, eradicating historical boundaries, redesigning, and expulsion of the original inhabitants".
I then referred to the Palestinian "luxuries" in the West Bank and warned against the intentions for Gresham. I thought that the treatment of the people of Gaza as "giving up" resulted in the separation from their boredom and their families beyond the Erez checkpoint. But here, now the "indulgence" is manifested in their deportation ("willingly", in the shadow of the bombs) and in the physical erasure of the inhabitants and plans for the renewal of Jewish settlement in the Strip. Woe to them and woe to us.
⸺ https://www.haaretz.co.il/blogs/shabahit/2023-12-16/ty-article-opinion/.premium/0000018c-738a-d798-adac-f7af51de0000@israel@terrorism
A poll in the U.S. shows a large majority of Americans who heard of artificial intelligence have very little or no trust that companies will use the technology responsibly.
I joined #WAPOR2023 in Salzburg. Delighted to offer the opening keynote. Great to see the community explore how new technologies and AI provide new questions about public opinion on these topics, how technologies can be leveraged for data collection, and how old questions about bias and data quality merit new attention.
On en causait récemment sur ce fil...
Le Canada donc, dont une immense partie de la forêt brûle depuis ce printemps, et continue de brûler, avec les conséquences que l'on sait.
Seuls 3 canadiens sur 5 attribuent le dérèglement climatique aux activités humaines. Et ce chiffre est en diminution. On y croit de moins en moins donc.
27% pensent que le "réchauffement" est réel, mais que sa cause est "naturelle".
Et 8% considèrent que le réchauffement est une théorie qui n'a pas encore été prouvée.
Le plus épatant, c'est que c'est précisément dans les régions les plus affectées par les incendies cet été (et donc les moins urbanisées) qu'on trouve le plus grand nombre de climato-sceptiques (de type "strict" : déni du phénomène, ou du type "causalité naturelle" (et surtout : "non-humaine")
Quant aux solutions, sans surprise, on préfère considérer la responsabilité des gouvernants et des entreprises, lesquels, dans un monde parfait(ement capitaliste et libéral) devraient s'allier pour résoudre le problème, de préférence aux individus, qui ne sont pas pressés de modifier leurs modes de vie.
Je suis persuadé qu'on aurait les mêmes pourcentages à peu près partout dans les pays riches, notamment en Europe.
Un pourcentage probablement très faible de gens sont prêts à bouleverser véritablement leur mode de vie, et certainement pas en tous cas ceux dont le bilan carbone est le plus élevé - c'est d'ailleurs bien pour cette raison que leur bilan carbone demeure élevé, c'est qu'ils s'en fichent royalement et n'ont aucune intention de renoncer à quoi que ce soit. La décroissance (même des plus riches, et surtout pas des plus riches) n'est pas une option. Et la sobriété n'est qu'un élément de langage (se donner bonne conscience à peu de frais)
Bref.
La propagande libérale-colonialiste-capitaliste a réussi son entreprise de destruction massive du sens des responsabilités collectives, de la morale et de la justice (pour tous les hommes). Et les processus en cours se poursuivront de manière inexorable jusqu'à leur terme (qui condamne quelques milliards d'habitants de cette planète à un destin sinistre - mais, "loin des regards de l'occident" de préférence)
As the climate crisis focuses more attention on alternatives to fossil fuels, nuclear energy is gaining more popular support in the U.S. as one of those alternatives.
This is some seriously underrated tea on #Chevron, the oil company acting like Regina George (actually though).
By Eamon Levesque | Jul 31, 2023
From the article:
#Donziger ’s three-decade legal battle with #Chevron is a pain to summarize. Key to understand is that he represented 30,000 #Ecuadorian#indigenous residents of the #Amazon in a lawsuit against oil giant Chevron.
The legal moves #Chevron has made against #Donziger are no laughing matter. On the other hand, their attempts to beat him down in the court of #PublicOpinion are… different.
“They had to create a #FakeNarrative ,” said Donziger. “At that point, they really crossed the line in terms of the things they started do… to lie, to #deceive the #public, to deceive #journalists and their own #employees.”
A recent survey shows majorities of American adults would like technology companies or the government to restrict the spread of false information online.