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That story about Google killing hundreds of thousands of trees in Finland for its data center project is such a perfect microcosm of what capitalism is doing to our world.
Recent mass media headlines are saying the tech giant "illegally" cut down "250,000" trees, but both claims paint an inaccurate picture of what actually happened. Google killed 400,000 trees (250,000 near a town called Muhos and another 150,000 near the village of Otanmäki), and unless the company's executives actually wind up going to prison for this, their actions cannot properly be described as "illegal".
I don't know who first coined the saying "If the penalty is a fine, then it's legal for rich people," but it certainly applies here. The Finnish Licensing and Supervision Authority has reportedly ordered Google to suspend all “measures that significantly change the environment," saying it will "consider enforcement proceedings and fines" if the megacorporation does not comply. Google's parent company Alphabet has a net worth of around four trillion dollars. Whatever paltry penalties Finland might impose for these ecocidal actions, it won't have any meaningful effect on Google.
Giant corporations do this shit all the time. They calculate that the fines incurred by their abusive actions will be dwarfed by the massive profits they generate, issue fake apologies as needed, and leave it to their armies of lawyers to minimize the damage. That's why the Sackler family is still worth billions despite all the fines Purdue Pharma was slapped with while creating the US opiate epidemic.
A 2017 Harvard study titled “The Opioid Epidemic: Fixing a Broken Pharmaceutical Market" contains the following paragraph:
"Although civil claims and criminal charges were brought against Purdue and its executives, the resulting penalties paled in comparison to extended-release oxycodone profits. In May 2007, the company and its president, chief counsel, and former chief medical officer pled guilty to falsely marketing extended-release oxycodone as 'less addictive, less subject to abuse and diversion, and less likely to cause tolerance and withdrawal than other pain medications.' As part of the plea bargain, Purdue agreed to pay the federal government $600 million and 27 states $20 million. The three executives agreed to $34.5 million in fines but avoided jailtime. By contrast, Purdue has earned an estimated $31 billion in total revenues from extended-release oxycodone since its launch. Rather than deterring fraudulent marketing, the penalties simply became a cost of doing business."
A cost of doing business.
That's how things work under capitalism. The law primarily exists not to protect people or the environment, but to protect the interests of capital. If you destroyed a Google data center you'd probably be charged as a terrorist and spend decades in prison, but Google can destroy the natural world around you and get off with a finger wag and a symbolic fine. If you stole millions of dollars from your employer you'd go to prison for grand larceny, but if your employer steals millions from its employees you need to win a class action lawsuit to get back what they stole from you.
Proponents of capitalism often pretend they support minimal government intervention in civilian affairs, but their entire model is at all times propped up by state power using force to protect the haves from the have-nots at every level of our society. Corporations are free to destroy the environment, destroy your health, rob you, exploit you, and manipulate your government to their advantage, and if you ever take action to stand up to this world-devouring onslaught, the state will lock you in a cage.
In school we are taught that that the law exists to protect ordinary people from bad people, but that's not true at all. Under capitalism, the law exists to protect the very worst among us from everyone else. That's why we are seeing our planet being turned into dust and ashes for no reason other than shareholder profit.
It's an insane system, and it needs to end. These freaks are feeding our entire biosphere into the woodchipper.
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"John Healey pledges to use budget to harness power of AI to bolster Britain’s security"
Labour aim to bolster the profits of billionaires by promoting AI, Data Centres, opening up new oil and gas fields, whilst hammering the sick and disabled, the young, pensioners etc.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2026…
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Runaway AI poses a threat to us all. How humanity stays in control should be a priority for everyone.
Projection location: Slough, UK
(Narrated by Gavin Esler)
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Instead of endlessly platforming Reform, discuss this #r4today #bbcr4today
🆘 This is Sir James Eadie QC, the Government’s own barrister, in the Court of Appeal in 2019.
Listen carefully to what he says.
Theresa May was, he told the court, “entirely well aware” of the “notorious” facts surrounding the referendum: the Electoral Commission findings, police investigations, ICO work and parliamentary scrutiny.
And then this:
“It’s perfectly obvious that the PM has decided to carry on.”
🔥 That is the heart of it.
The referendum was advisory. Serious unlawful conduct had already been established around the campaign. The PM knew the findings and proceeded anyway.
At the same time, Parliament had authorised the Article 50 notification, but had never expressly enacted the separate Article 50(1) decision to withdraw. That was the issue raised in my own Webster judicial review.
The courts refused permission in both Webster and Wilson. Now, years later, we are being told that Russia also interfered in the 2016 referendum.
That is why this can no longer be brushed aside as old Brexit litigation.
We need a statutory public inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005.
We need the documents, the intelligence assessments, the Cabinet record, the legal advice, the witnesses under oath, and the full Article 50 decision-making trail.
Because the question is now very simple:
What did the Government know, when did it know it, and on what basis was Britain actually taken out of the European Union?
@JMPSimor @mrjamesob @mikegalsworthy @andyburnham
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"Britons kept in dark about scale of climate crisis, say viewers of ‘first-of-its-kind’ emergency briefing"
I have been trying to get this across for decades. The public, not just the British public, are being subjected to massive gaslighting, to get them to ignore the climate crisis.
When rational and unbiased people are given the unvarnished truth about the climate and ecological crisis, most change their attitude and their views.
Sir David Attenborough describes how attending a lecture/presentation, changed his scepticism. Boris Johnson was the same, he was sceptical, but a presentation he was shown changed his views completely.
I fully support a screening of the @nebriefing film on prime time TV. Actually several screenings, because prime time TV viewing figures aren't what they used to be. But I very much doubt it will happen, given the massive orchestrated gaslighting, the public has been subjected to over the climate crisis by our government and the media. If governments were responsible and truthful, there would not be any need for it.
The one thing governments, vested interests, and the establishment in general fear, is it the public becoming fully informed about what the climate and ecological crisis means for us.
"Nine out of 10 people felt motivated to act after watching film outlining threats to food security, economy and public health"
Why would this be, if our governments hadn't been actively gaslighting the public about what the climate and ecological crisis, actually means for us?
theguardian.com/environment/…
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This is Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flock Surveillance Cameras.
Please DO NOT REPOST HIS IMAGE, because while his company wants to photograph you wherever you go,... and digitally store everything you do,... they themselves do not want to be photographed,... because they value their privacy.
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What I think most people have got wrong about the climate and ecological emergency, and our civilisation is this. Is that they mistakenly think, our countries, our governments, are some sort of solid coherent entities, that will stay together in the face of adversity to protect the people, sort of like if they were attacked in a war.
They are not taking into account, how recent, modern governments and countries, and systems are. You might find the precursors to the modern world order further back, but the modern world order only really came into being in the post-war (WW2) period.
In fact China, as a pre-eminent industrial power, has only come about in the last 25 years. People talk about China having the greatest cumulative carbon emissions. But in the 1990s, the UK had greater cumulative carbon emissions than China.
Governments like to claim they are there to protect their people. But in reality, they are running a sort of protection racket, enabling business as usual, economic growth, and the growth of the financial markets. They are doing absolutely nothing to protect their people from the forthcoming ravages of the climate and ecological emergency. They seem to have no plan to deal with it all, and they are just obsessed about maintaining economic growth, even if it kills us all. In fact, even worse than having no realistic plan to deal with the climate and ecological emergency, is that they don't seem to have any realistic inkling of what it means for us. Just close their eyes and hope for the best.
Exactly how are very recent entities (governments), solely fixated on maintaining business as usual economic growth, going to stick together in the chaos of climate change and ecological breakdown, creating food supply crises, making parts of the world uninhabitable, large areas of the world uninhabitable, with a climate refugee crisis?
I see all this pie in the sky nonsense discussion, about how governments will have to move a lot of the major cities of the world, inland, to deal with sea level rise. What about a large proportion of the world's prime agricultural land being lost.
The governments who are supposedly going to move all these great cities inland, are the same ones who in the last 35 years, have failed to get any agreement on phasing out the burning of fossil fuels, because it would interfere with their gigantic Ponzi Scheme, turning billionaires into trillionaires. There is no evidence whatsoever, that governments solely interested in profit and making money, could do and arrange anything to protect their people. They have zero interest in protecting the people, and are just selling us out to billionaire oligarchs, hoping to profit from AI.
How are such governments, going to suddenly transform into protectors of the people, in the face of global food shortages, and a massive refugee crisis, which is likely to happen relatively quickly. I haven't even gotten onto realistic prospects of things like AMOC collapse.
In fiction, movies etc, governments wheel into action to address planetary threats. But the climate and ecological emergency, didn't just happen. That is what the first 1972 UN Environment Conference, and the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (the biggest global summit there has ever been). They were about plans to stop the climate and ecological emergency. They did produce such plans. But governments quietly dropped them in favour of maximum economic growth.
And people, who supposedly understand what climate change means, bizarrely think our civilization, solely focused on growing wealth for billionaires and corporations, is going to limp on for another 75 years. How???????
I can't see how on the current trajectory, we're going to make it to the middle of the century, let alone the end of the century. This is not inevitable if governments start doing what they claim to do, protecting the people. But there is no sign of this, just press the pedal to metal, with business as usual economic growth.
I'm a bit puzzled that these climate scientists give our civilization to the end of the century. I can't see it lasting until the middle of the century, in the context of the climate and ecological crisis. This is not inevitable, it can be avoided, but it is this total denial of the climate and ecological crisis, what it means for our societies, and this bizarre false belief that we can carry on with business as usual, that is making early collapse inevitable.
There is no scientific basis for this AI threat stuff, it is pie in the sky imagination. Sure AI is a real threat, in terms of the building of all these energy guzzling, water guzzling data centres. Plus it is predicated on replacing most of the human workforce, where most people will be seen as surplus to requirements. But it is totally bizarre that they ignore the real threat from the climate and ecological emergency, backed up by massive scientific evidence, and dwell on the fevered imaginings of some computer nerds.
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Please RT this until the world's most obscene war-crimes are no longer allowed to be committed in the name of the evil racist ideology called Zionism.
Thank you.
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Filistin’e destek paylaşımlarım sebebiyle hesabım spamlanıyor. Görünürlük kısıtlanıyor. Bu mesajı gören kardeşlerim, yoruma bir 🌹 koyabilirse sevinirim.
Lütfen takip ve yorum yaparak destek verebilirsiniz ❤️
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Should Israel be banned from all international sporting competitions - like Russia already is?
Please RT after voting - thank you.
97%Yes
3%No
5,643 votes • Final results Not dark yet retweeted
Datacentre are being foisted on people living in low/medium income areas, not in wealthy areas.
Resulting in excessive use of water, energy; pollution and environmental damage. Very few long-term jobs are generated.
Watch the Minister's reply.
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Military AI & autonomous weapons risk taking decisions away from trained personnel enabling algorithms and Big Tech to determine civilian life or death.
Machines should never be allowed to decide to kill. The PM should back the UN process to control killer robots.
🚨🇬🇧 NEW: Andy Burnham has announced the UK & US are developing a “new AI defence partnership”
[@SkyNews]
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Don’t allow this news be suppressed- please share
Israel has been found guilty today in Geneva of war crimes including extermination, forcible transfer, starvation, torture and false imprisonment, sexual violence including rape... and many many more.
If it was any other country than Israel all of Europe would boycott them.
Instead there will be silence.
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Israeli Colonel is “not sorry” for ordering airstrikes that targeted 3 British aid workers. This story should be a top headline on MSM outlets
Israeli colonel Nochi Mendel ordered a lethal airstrike on three British aid workers in Gaza and said he was "not sorry".
IDF and British military commanders could now be asked to give evidence to an inquest about the massacre👇
declassifieduk.org/israel-ki…
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Charlotte Church sang From the River to the Sea at a fundraising event for Palestinians and now all the usual people are screaming antisemitism and trying to cancel her.
RT if you stand with Charlotte Church and Palestine.
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Anyone else remember when a bunch of billionaires murdered & ate babies, raped & tortured children and then blackmailed each other to enact policies that benefited them, all while their media organisations told us to hate minorities and immigrants instead of the paedophile ring…