Ublock Origin does not work on my main browser Librewolf (based on Firefox, runs on linux) - its currently disabled (last time I checked was last week) as are all ad-blockers on Mozilla add-ons page. On android stuff I use Vivaldi browser (based on chromium?). I add vpn, use dns redirects, and similar stuff to anonymise/block ads and trackers. Usually stops this kinda thing but occasionally something gets through like this Guardian pop-up.

Nope. That is not the issue.

In UK, media is struggling to raise enough revenue from either ads or subscriptions. Many MSM titles have introduced a paywall where users are forced to fund the service by either commiting to a subscription or turning off ad-bkockers and seeing ads. In contrast, Guardian’s ‘unique selling point’ was that it would ‘never’ do this which was why people should prefer it to other news sources. Then, without acknowledging what it was doing, Guardian quietly introduced the same paywall as everyone it had criticised. My complaint is not about funding a service but about the hypocrisy of a service saying ‘I would never do that’ and then quietly doing it.

Moreover, this change is not consistent - you do not always see this paywall when visiting the Guardian. This paywall seems to be in ‘trial’ stage where Guardian is testing to see how much push-back they get from users. We either push-back or Guardian goes same way as rest of British MSM. That would be an irreversible loss. I think what Guardian is doing is not help its own survival long-term.

I see no difference between Guardian strategy and changes in other media (YouTube or Netflix, for example), where the owners are struggling to generate as much revenue as they expect (as they used to do). Instead of asking why their content is not popular, or why users are leaving/using ways to by-pass ads or subscriptions, they just try to squeeze out as much revenue as they can from those still willing to pay subs or see ads, while their once reliable ‘goose who lays golden eggs’ slowly stops laying. I say Guardian deserves to die if it does not keep track of what readers want and it is only ensuring its own death by trying to cash in on the remaining goodwill of a dwindling readership instead of attracting readers back or reaching out to new readers.

They are going up a cul-de-sac and it has no good end for Guardian. I cannot save them from themselves so I just have to find alternatives which are better at this than the parts of the industry that are dying out.

Aljazeera is good. I once read CSM and thought it surprisingly good, not what I expected from the title, but that was around 1980s - have never seen it in recent years!

Cheers!

I think it would be easier to just get WW3 over with and see how the dust settles!

I play Skyrim. In that rpg video game you can be an assassin. After you kill Grelod the Kind, a child abuser, one of the children she tortured says:

“Kill one person, and you can solve so many problems. I wonder at the possibilities.” - Runa Fair-Shield.

When does assassination become an acceptable political strategy? I can see how bumping off many crazy men (and right now I can only name male dictators but I guess women could be just as bad) would make the world safer - well, safer if we assume it would not trigger a backlash and WW3.

Maybe we could assassinate Kim and North Korea would rejoice not set off nukes? Maybe we could assassinate MbS and the Saudis would just shrug and appoint a new Crown Prince with a less murderous tendancy towards journalists and dissidents? But could we assassinate Putin, Trump, Xi, or Modi and not release hell?

If I had a red button to press and it would remove Putin, Trump, Musk, Thiel, Hamas, Netanyahu, or other bad guys, should I press the button? What do you think?

Note: this is a thought experiment - outside Skyrim, I never killed anyone, never worked as an assassin for hire, and have no desire to change that fact. I just want to read your thoughts on this topic - I think we’ve all wondered if there is a shortcut back to normality in face of current events but are we fooling ourselves?

Cheers friend! My hope lies in the decency of most people - yes, we are told that humans will readily do evil e.g. will hurt others if ordered to do so by an authority figure in a white coat (a classic experiment I vaguely recall from somewhere). But what gets missed is that there are always some people who refuse the first time, and if those who get fooled once realise what happened they are harder to fool a second time, which means we humans are fallible but we tend to fail towards becoming older, wiser. In brief, we can learn to do better. That is our strength. That’s how we survive.

You make good points. I sincerely hope you succeed. I admire Sanders and AOC - wish we had similar figures here in UK politics, we had Corbyn but he was destroyed by the rightwing of his party and now we have Starmer who is at best Centre-Right. I think Starmer is clueless and unwittingly preparing the way for a coup in UK like the one in US. We are just a few years behind you unless we find a miracle. I am more pessimistic than you because I think this Trumpian coup cannot be stopped by legal means now that Trump views himself as above all law and thinks his executive orders amount to regal degrees from an absolute monarch. I cannot imagine Trump being impeached, tried, deposed in USA’s current situation and I expect it to get much, much worse because Trump is serious about dismantling American democracy and has no respect for human rights and wants to wage imperialist wars and open access to the new economic zone in the ice-free Arctic. Would he even allow another election or accept any result he dislikes? Will Dems not be soon made an illegal group or labelled a terrorist organisation - like the people vandalising Tesla cars? The window of opportunity to stop him is closing very, very fast.

Given that what amounts to fascism or some similar tyranny not yet defined by academia already controls USA, what can ordinary citizens do? I think they have to recognise the old way is gone - no more calling police to report a crime, or expecting rights of employees to be respected, or getting insurance to cover healthcare, or having enforcible consumer rights, no free education, no civic freedoms or human rights, no social security in sickness or old age. Society, for the poor, those unable to emigrate, will be effectively lawless, have no safety nets, few outside resources to rely on, no state provision. Trump is trying to replace dollar with crypto currency. People might not even have access to cash economy but be reduced to barter. When ‘might is right’, the only way to protect your life, your loved ones, your neighbours and community, will be by organising yourself and improvising at the local level (and building ties with other similar organisations). Thus a kind of practical de facto anarchism - not read from a textbook and led by theory but built by trial and error from scratch from the ground up. I feel insane saying this about USA. It sounds more like an HBO or video game scenario! If Trump objects to such communities, they will either be disappeared by police or military or dragged into violent conflict with police or military. Eventually, it scales up and we have civil war or organised armed resistance and/or terrorism against Trump’s regime. Who wins that armed struggle, who else gets involved, will it lead to WW3, is beyond my guess. I cannot imagine what 2050 will be like for anywhere on earth, least of all USA. And by then, I’ll probably be dead of old age and never know.

I base this sketch of post-democracy USA on seeing what happens in improvised communities e.g. refugee camps etc. Yes, UN or MSF or other NGOs and charities do some professional organisation, send in some outside help/rations/transport/water/electricity, but the main work of surviving is on the refugees themselves. They do what they can, improvise schools, childcare, community kitchens, latrines, form orderly queues, ensure fair shares, stop crime, stop black markets, or help one another tolerate what they cannot control. USA has better infrastructure than a city of tents in Sudan or wherever but the principle remains - when a state fails, the people have to build from the ground up. Either that, or some opportunists hijack their fears, hunger, desperation, ambition, and recruit them into some cause not necessarily their own e.g. organised crime, religious fanaticism, terrorism, armed struggle in a civil war or maybe a revolution - give me your son to fight my cause and I’ll give you rice, give me your daughter for my brothel and she’ll send you a cut of the earnings so you can buy medicine, sell me your kidney and I’ll smuggle you to a new country where you’ll be safe. When society falls apart, there is chaos, and then there are new rules. The future is created by those who make those new rules.

I hope it will not come to this ‘worst case’ scenario. I hope there is a way to avoid this. But if it comes to it, I think leadership will emerge in the moment, from the community. It will not helicopter in from Washington or the state capital. The political parties will not organise food or medicine or dig graves. They are not designed to do that. Boy scouts, school football teams, college students, religious congregations, and random community groups would be more organised, integrated into the community, and potentially provide more timely, practical help. I would hope Leftists would be useful too but too many of us just talk, we don’t do the work. There is some hope in that community preparedness - we can be our own leaders, make our own society, fix our problems good enough to get by. Humans have that built in. We have been doing this for millions of years and we all default to human and we can build on that and protect the human against the inhumane. I have to believe that. I have to believe most people are good and do right by one another given a chance. I believe good is better than evil and can win in any struggle, given time, hard work, and some luck. I don’t want to be wrong about that. I think your hope in saving the democratic system by heroic efforts now, and my hope of surviving a failed system through heroic efforts in future, is based on this same belief in human decency and human beings’ sheer determination to survive. We are allies, I think.

I’m old. I write essays. Youngsters write snippets for social media. Apologies for my verbosity!

To be fair, no body understands ‘economics’ and age has not stopped Putin, Xi, Trump or a whole list of evil people get and keep power so why say Bernie is too old?

Left founded the Labour Party in UK, was excluded by Centrists for most of last century, has never been able to gain political control for pushing radical change since 1945. If you try to make Dems your vehicle, it will destroy you before you reform it. Your plan is a false hope, I’m sorry to say.

I think it makes more sense to found your own political movement. That matters more than parties. Especially in an emergency when what matters is survival not manifesto promises or campaigns for elections that, realistically given Trump’s lawlessness and declared intention to reign as monarch and founder of a dynasty, might never happen.

Feed, house, heal each other - Americans already do that, just look at community responses to recent natural disasters like California fires - ‘ordinary people’ can help each other and often do so better than the government. This is a crisis for USA but also an opportunity for citizens to make an alternative society, invent new ways of working, new ways of meeting needs, inspiring creativity and innovation, creating an economy that really takes care of people instead of making some creep more wealth than he could ever use in a hundred lifetimes. Do for yourselves what the state has failed to do. Build another nation inside the dead carcass of corporate America. Be ready to take over when Trump’s coup and the fantasy of representative democracy finally dies. Emerge as a radically different society.

There’s no point trying to reanimate the old America when it brought you to this crisis and would do so again in future you ever let it. You need your own Plan 2025. I used to think like you, now I think anarchy is probably the best strategy. Do not gift your power to others, least of all charismatic leaders or political parties dominated by careerists, lobbyists, and corruption. When in crisis, do not carry on as normal. In crisis the best hope of survival is to do something radically different. Science shows, 80% of people cannot recognise a crisis and cannot innovate. You must be in the 20%. Cultivate boldness!