text:
Q: Rock, Paper, Scissors Game - userChoice not defined, but it is defined...I think? When I execute playGame(); I want to show this:
You have chosen ${userChoice) and the computer has chosen ${computerChoice}. The winner is ${determineWinner}. Based on my understanding, the userchoice is defined at the top of my code, and the computerChoice is defined in the computerChoice-section. So I don't understand. Thanks for the help.
Instead I just get an error saying: ReferenceError: userChoice is not defined
    at playGame.
FIXED: This is what I did, not sure how or why it works though:
function playGame(){
  userChoice = "rock";
  computerChoice = getComputerChoice();
  console.log(`The user chose ${userChoice}. The computer chose ${computerChoice}. ${determineWinner(userChoice,computerChoice)}`)
}
playGame();

//We're taking the userInput and converting it to lowercase letters and storing it within userChoice
    function getUserChoice(userInput){
      let userChoice = userInput.toLowerCase();
        if(userChoice === "rock" || userChoice === "paper" || userChoice === "scissors"){return userChoice;}
        else{return "That hand doesn't exist.";}
    }

    //We're making a number and converting it to an eqvivalent string
    function getComputerChoice(){
      let computerChoice = Math.floor(Math.random()*3);
        if(computerChoice === 0){return "rock";}
        else if(computerChoice === 1){return "scissors";}
        else if(computerChoice === 2){return "paper";}
            else{return "Input not valid.";}
    }

    //Determining the winner based upon the input and the computer's choice
    function determineWinner(userChoice, computerChoice){
        //Having a tie
        if (userChoice === computerChoice){return "It's a tie!";}
        //If the user types in scissors
      else if(userChoice === "scissors"){
        if(computerChoice === "rock"){return "Computer wins! Rock kills scissors.";}
        else if(computerChoice ==="paper"){return "User wins! Scissors kill paper.";}
      }
        //If the user types in paper
      else if(userChoice === "paper"){
        if(computerChoice === "rock"){return "User wins! Paper kills rock.";}
        else if(computerChoice === "scissors"){return "Computer wins! Scissors kill paper.";}
      }
        //If the user types in rock
      else if(userChoice === "rock"){
        if(computerChoice === "paper"){return "Computer wins! Paper kills rock.";}
        else if(computerChoice === "scissors"){return "User wins! Rock kills scissors."};
      }
    }

    //Function that embodies the other functions and executes the game.
    function playGame(){
      console.log(`You chose ${userChoice}`);
    }
    playGame();

A: Your variable userChoice is not defined in the context of the function playGame, which is why you're seeing the reference error:
function playGame() {
  console.log(`You chose ${userChoice}`); // this is not defined
}

playGame();

A: Variables are scoped to the block in which they are defined (or the function in which they're defined in the case of var). So the userChoice in the following code is only in scope inside of getUserChoice:
function getUserChoice(userInput){
  let userChoice = userInput.toLowerCase();
    if(userChoice === "rock" || userChoice === "paper" || userChoice === "scissors"){return userChoice;}
    else{return "That hand doesn't exist.";}
}

Similarly, the userChoice variable in the argument list of determineWinner is only in scope for determineWinner.
In playGame, there is no variable named userChoice which is in scope, hence the error.


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text:
EU Parliament against the approval of new genetically engineered soybeans
Committee on the Environment demands further investigation into the effects of herbicide applications
Tomorrow, EU Member States will vote in Brussels on import approval for a new variety of genetically engineered soybeans. Today, just before the vote, the Committee on the environment of the EU Parliament demanded that the import and use of these soybeans in food and feed was rejected. They maintain that residues left after spraying with specific herbicides to which the plants were resistant needed further and more detailed investigation before approval was given. The soybeans (DAS-68416-4) developed by the US company Dow can be sprayed with a combination of 2,4-D and glufosinate. During the approval process, the European Food Safety Authority EFSA neither investigated the residues from spraying nor any potential interactions even though these herbicides are thought to be damaging to health.
"These soybeans are indicative of developments leading to detrimental effects on the environment and new risks to health. Companies, such as Bayer, Monsanto and Dow, are patenting seeds that are resistant to more and more herbicides in ever higher dosages. The 'arms race' in the fields means there is an increasing amount of residues left in the harvests of the crops," says Christoph Then for Testbiotech. "The EU Commission and the European Food Safety Authority are clearly ignoring the obvious risks arising from consumption of the harvested products."
Testbiotech fears that many EU Member States will abstain in tomorrow´s vote and thereby open up a way for the EU Commission to approve the imports. This is a scenario that could soon be repeated: on 17 July, the EU Member States will again be deliberating on imports of further genetically engineered soybeans resistant to multiple herbicides. For the first time, this will be about the import of genetically engineered soybean varieties each resistant to three different herbicides. Amongst others, they will be voting on a soybean variety produced by Bayer that can be sprayed with a combination of the herbicides glyphosate, isoxaflutole and glufosinate.
The EU Commission and the European Food Safety Authority EFSA want to give approval without further detailed investigation of either the residues from spraying or possible interactions. Whether or not the environment and consumers are protected from such risks will depend on the way that the EU Member States vote. Testbiotech is calling on the Member States to vote "No" in the upcoming votes.
The expectation is that there will be an increase in problems with the herbicide load of genetically engineered plants. In 2016, Monsanto was granted a European patent on genetically engineered plants that are resistant to an extremely high dosage of glyphosate. The patent covers wheat, maize, rye, rice, oats, barley, lawn grass, sorghum, millet, sugar cane, tomatoes, potatoes, soybeans, cotton, rapeseed, sunflowers and alfalfa. In Germany, the maximum approved limit of glyphosate is 3.6 kg/year per hectare. But according to the patent, if these new plants are grown, almost 18 kg per hectare could be sprayed. Risks for the environment and residues in the plants will increase correspondingly. At the same time, Bayer was granted several patents in 2016 for plants resistant to isoxaflutole.
Christoph Then, Testbiotech, Tel: 0151/54638040, info@testbiotech.org
Background on genetic engineering and glyphosate resistant plants
Testbiotech comments on the three applications for GE soybeans
EU Parliament resolution
EU Parliament against import of 'toxic soybeans'.pdf 83.08 KB

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Konst & underhållning
Illustratör/Fotograf
200 col illus
Maus I: A Survivor's Tale
Paul Kalanithi
Six feet above : jumping to the top
Peder Fredricson, Lisen Lindahl
Crying In H Mart
Michelle Zauner
The Light We Carry
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
Shehan Karunatilaka
av Debbie Harry
'I was saying things in songs that female singers didn't really say back then. I wasn't submissive or begging him to come back, I was kicking his ass, kicking him out, kicking my own ass too. My Blondie character was an inflatable doll but with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was playing it up, yet I was very serious.' BRAVE, BEAUTIFUL AND BORN TO BE PUNK DEBBIE HARRY is a musician, actor, activist and the iconic face of New York City cool. As the front-woman of Blondie, she and the band forged a new sound that brought together the worlds of rock, punk, disco, reggae and hip-hop to create some of the most beloved pop songs of all time. As a muse, she collaborated with some of the boldest artists of the past four decades. The scope of Debbie Harry's impact on our culture has been matched only by her reticence to reveal her rich inner life - until now. In an arresting mix of visceral, soulful storytelling and stunning visuals that includes never-before-seen photographs, bespoke illustrations and fan art installations, Face It upends the standard music memoir while delivering a truly prismatic portrait. With all the grit, grime, and glory recounted in intimate detail, Face It recreates the downtown scene of 1970s New York City, where Blondie played alongside the Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, Iggy Pop and David Bowie. Following her path from glorious commercial success to heroin addiction, the near-death of partner Chris Stein, a heart-wrenching bankruptcy, and Blondie's break-up as a band to her multifaceted acting career in more than thirty films, a stunning solo career and the triumphant return of her band, and her tireless advocacy for the environment and LGBTQ rights, Face It is a cinematic story of a woman who made her own path, and set the standard for a generation of artists who followed in her footsteps - a memoir as dynamic as its subject.
De som köpt den här boken har ofta också köpt Born A Crime av Trevor Noah (häftad).
Fler böcker av Debbie Harry
Punk Avenue
Phil Marcade, Debbie Harry, Legs McNeil
Finalist, 2017 Indie Book Awards for Autobiography/Memoir, Foreword ReviewsPunk Avenue: The New York City Underground 1972-1982 is an intimate look at author Paris-born Phil Marcades first ten years in the United States where drifted from Boston t...
Recensioner i media
'In this whirlwind tour of her life, Harry deploys an irreverent style well suited to her story. Her tales are intermixed with interludes that capture the eclectic and electric passion she has for the creative process. In a narrative that feels simultaneously heartfelt and spontaneous, Harry recounts close encounters with violence and harassment with the same immediacy as the moments that catapulted Blondie to worldwide fame. Readers will find reflection on life with a budding band and an uncensored view of what it took to succeed.' Kirkus 'Blondie fans will love its piquant atmospherics and the energy and honesty of Harry's take on her singular saga.' Entertainment Weekly 'The ultimate rock'n'roll memoir' Sunday Times 'A rollercoaster ride that music lovers will adore' Good Housekeeping 'An entertaining reveal-all read' Woman & Home 'Extra special' Red '[This] autobiography documents, brilliantly and brutally, the lawless, druggy streets of early 70s New York, living the hazy cosmic jive of the legendary downtown loft scene' Stylist 'Harry offers a vivid portrait of a seedy, bohemian scene in late-60s New York... Engaging' Guardian 'Face It: Debbie Harry's cool and forthright memoir... The Blondie singer is a reluctant memoirist and what drove her to write this is unclear - but thank God she did' New Statesman 'Intoxicating... This candid memoir is an absorbing read.' Daily Mirror, book of the week 'Face It is a rollicking, riotous read, taking in Blondie's ascent from gritty downtown New York to pop superstars to the band's nosedive of heroin addiction, bankruptcy and break-up, and phoenix-like return to the top of the charts in 1999... a real page-turner... often jaw-dropping' NME 'An astonishing memoir' The i 'Debbie has us in raptures ... Its tone is matter-of-fact, honest, self-aware and often humorous' Daily Express 'An eye-opening memoir' The Times
DEBBIE HARRY with Blondie has sold millions of albums worldwide and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Harry had the pleasure of acting in some of the most interesting independent films of the last twenty years. She is devoted to environmental issues such as clean water and saving pollinators as well as the promotion of the LGBTQ community and human rights.


The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect public health and the environment. Yet the agency has not done much protection of the environment, public health or the public interest in many, many years. The President-elect's pick for the agency is going to have to turn around an environmental crisis that mirrors the financial one. While Obama's rumored cabinet picks are largely people who cut their teeth in the Clinton administration, or showed rare bipartisanship over the past eight years, one place a centrist will not do is the Environmental Protection Agency.
There are some good environmental laws on the books; the problem is enforcement. The Bush administration has encouraged the worst industrial practices by, for example, refusing to regulate mercury from power plants or allowing mountaintop removal mining—and the incrementalists who ran EPA during the Clinton administration bear at least some responsibility. They should not be invited back.
The new EPA leadership is going to have to do two things.
The first is to throw the moneychangers out of the temple, literally: Replace Bush's corporate goons with public servants who will put science first, and rebuild the agency's enforcement capability and take on corporate interests who, not unlike the financial industry, have operated in an anything-goes world. The second, and perhaps more important role, will be to rebuild confidence in the agency and in the federal government's commitment to protect our citizens and our environment.


text:
The Moore Store
TRANSCRIPT: Episode 239: A Handmaid's Country (feat. Cynthia Conti-Cook)
Posted by: rumble Posted on May 8, 2022 May 11, 2022
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
To read more about Episode 239, visit the main episode page.
[ Audio excerpt from Season 1, Episode 3 of A Handmaid's Tale ]
Offred from The Handmaid's Tale [00:00:00] Now I'm awake to the world. I was asleep before. That's how we let it happen. When they slaughtered Congress, we didn't wake up. Then they blamed terrorists and suspended the Constitution, we didn't wake up then either. They said it would be temporary. Nothing changes instantaneously. In a gradually heating bathtub, you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.
[ End of excerpt ]
Michael Moore [00:01:08] Hello. This is Rumble with Michael Moore and I am Michael Moore. And we are listening right now to the soundtrack from the series The Handmaid's Tale. If you haven't read the book by Margaret Atwood, if you didn't see the original movie back in the '80s, or if you haven't watched the series starring Elisabeth Moss on Hulu over the last maybe four years, it's never too late to start. It's one of the most frightening stories. I don't know if they classify it as a horror movie. It should be. It's a tale supposedly set in the near future when the United States becomes a religious, fascist country. The religious right takes over, renames the United States of America, the Republic of Gilead, and women lose all of their rights. Those who are still fertile — because there has been some unexplained environmental disaster that has made the vast majority of women infertile — so the fertile ones are essentially kidnaped by the government and sent to camps where they are trained to be essentially raped and then made pregnant by the commanders, the elite of the right wing. And then when the baby is born, it's given to the commander and his wife to raise in the new Fascist Republic of the United States. It's the most mind-bending thing I've maybe ever seen on television, because it feels obviously so real and so close. I remember thinking back in the first season, "this is so great. Thank God, we're nothing like this." And then after four years of Trump, and then what happened this past week where Politico was able to get a copy of, and leak, the 98-page decision that has already been written by Justice Alito declaring Roe versus Wade over, declaring abortion illegal — completely illegal — and providing a series of arguments that are stunning in ultimately their hatred of women, their desire to control the majority gender, and their disregard for the constitutional rights to privacy. And opening the door to go beyond abortion and do the other things that they've been wanting to do now for some years, starting with ending same-sex marriage, reversing that decision from 2015, making the morning-after pill and the abortion pill illegal — illegal to transport across state lines, illegal to mail to a friend or relative. A whole series of things that they've already — state legislatures in Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas — they've already started working on these. They've already started passing bills. It's all a ramp-up to what's going to happen in the next few weeks when they officially declare that women no longer have a right to control their reproductive organs, where women are going to be forced to be pregnant, and once pregnant, stay pregnant, and then give birth some nine months later.
Michael Moore [00:05:01] Also let me explain just before we get too far down the road here in today's episode, when you hear me or the guest or anybody use the word or term "women" or "woman," we mean that more broadly. We are also talking about people who can get pregnant — and that includes trans and non-binary folk. So let's live in the 21st century, my friends, and that while we may still be using this word, in the context of this conversation, we are including anybody who can get pregnant.
Michael Moore [00:05:35] But it's stunning to even kind of say those words, isn't it? That this is the country we're going to be living in, this version of A Handmaid's Tale: forced pregnancy, once pregnant, you're forced to carry to term, and also a declaration that a fertilized egg is a human being, that you are a human being — a full human being with human rights — at conception. And Louisiana's already started to, in their bill, not only saying that, but if you do anything to a fertilized egg, you are a murderer. They're going to make it an actual homicide. And women who, if they do have an abortion, a doctor who performs an abortion, the plan is to arrest them on charges of murder. I'm not making this up. I know a lot of people who just turned the news off this week because it just can't get any worse than this, right? But I don't think that there's ever been a Supreme Court decision that has removed an actual right, a right that we as Americans have. And that's what this decision is going to do. You women, says the court, are no longer full citizens. You're now going to be second-class citizens. As I wrote this past week on my Substack column, which I'll put a link to here on the podcast page, or you can just go to MichaelMoore.com and it will come up. It's called The Forced Birth Ruling and I lay out my reaction to what the Supreme Court has done. I really, if you haven't read it, I'd love for you to read it. It's free. There's nothing behind a paywall on the Substack. If you want to subscribe and donate to our work and the things that we're planning to do in the coming year, thank you. You can do that, but you don't need to.
Michael Moore [00:07:37] Honest to God, I have not… I'm trying to think of a time during my lifetime when something so evil has taken place in the name of you and I. In the name of the United States of America. And there's been, believe me, there's been a lot of instances I could cite, a lot of events. But honestly, I think I'd have to go back to August of 1964. How old was I then? Just a kid when Lyndon Johnson in his administration lied that we'd been attacked by the North Vietnamese. And then they and Congress, all of Congress — the United States Senate with only two senators voting 'no' to begin the Vietnam War. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Wow. So for me to say that this past week, that regardless of all the other awful things that have been done in our name in these years since Vietnam, nothing I think matches the Supreme Court getting ready to remove the rights of free citizens, the rights of the majority gender of women. And if we allow this to happen, here's the lesson if you haven't seen or read The Handmaid's Tale, the lesson is it starts with one thing and if you don't stop that one thing, it is a snowball that turns into an avalanche. These will not be the last rights they take away. These bastards, these right wingers, these sick fascists, these white supremacists, these women haters — I mean it is so catastrophic in the sense that, you know, in the past, yes we would have our disagreements on either side of the political fence, or we'd have multiple disagreements because there shouldn't be just two sides of a political fence in a democracy. There should be five sides, ten sides if you want to make sure that the entire spectrum of political thought is represented in our democracy. We don't have that. We've never had that. We've never achieved the so-called American dream that we've been told about since the beginning. They're not going to stop here, my friends. You know that. If you don't know that, you are setting yourself up for a very, very bad situation that someday will involve you and your rights. You won't be able to just sit back and say, "Well, I'm not a woman. Nothing's going to happen to me here. I'm not gay. Nothing's going to happen to me here. I'm not black or brown." If you have any kind of thinking like that, I can guarantee you, and assure you, that that kind of thinking, that response will result in your eventual downfall.
Michael Moore [00:11:11] We're really in deep trouble, my friends, and you know it. And I know a lot of people don't want to think about this. I know that's why we turn the news off. But we all have to act now. I'm not messing around. I will not live in Gilead. I will not allow this small percentage — did you see the polls by the end of the week after this decision was leaked? Over 70% of Americans oppose getting rid of Roe v Wade, and only 27% — this is the ABC News poll — 27% support the right wing getting rid of abortion. That's it, just 27%. We are the majority, vast majority. And by the way, the poll also showed that, I forget the exact number, but it was something in the thirties, like 30-ish percent of Republicans oppose getting rid of Roe v Wade. Because, of course, even Republicans find themselves with a pregnancy they can't handle, a pregnancy that's unwanted, and have taken advantage of the fact that this has been a country that has freely allowed for, and made it possible, though with so many restrictions by now and so many states with maybe only one or two clinics, still made it possible that if you wanted to get an abortion, even if you were a Republican, you could get one. And you did. I won't live in Gilead. You won't either. We have to take action, and we have to take action now. And I have today an incredible guest who is a fellow at the Ford Foundation and is a civil rights attorney, an incredible woman who has, for years, been studying and developing the plan to prevent The Handmaid's Tale. Her name is Cynthia Conti-Cook, and she very specifically has focused on the surveillance state that we've created in this country, and how it will be used against women to stop them — if they think they're still going to find a way to get an abortion, they're going to find themselves in prison. And she will be my guest here in just a few minutes and we are going to talk about the real-life Handmaid's Tale that's already in existence.
Michael Moore [00:13:32] Before we bring Cynthia out, let me just take a second here to thank my wonderful underwriters of this podcast, the people who help make this happen and support my voice, support the other voices I bring on this podcast. I'm incredibly grateful. And I've got a new underwriter today, brand new, who I'm really excited to announce. And that new underwriter is Calm. You seen Calm, right? It's the #1 mental wellness app. It's no secret that you and I are living, and have been living, in really high-stress times. You all know what I'm talking about — just listening to this podcast is enough to do you in, I know. But the Calm app helps me to just reset and refocus. Calm is not just a vast array of guided meditations, Calm has daily movement sessions to relieve tension in your neck, your shoulders, your back. They have imaginative sleep stories for children and adults to help you or your little ones unwind and sink into a nice sleep. And they add new content every week — it's not just the same old, same old playing over and over. That's why it's the #1 mental wellness app, and over a hundred million people around the world use Calm for that reason. And so here's the best part, for all of you who are listeners of my podcast, Calm is offering an exclusive offer of 40% off the Calm premium subscription at calm.com/rumble. So go to calm.com /rumble, lowercase, for 40% off unlimited access to Calm's entire library. That's calm.com/rumble. I'm very grateful for Calm for supporting this podcast.
Michael Moore [00:15:16] I also want to thank our other underwriter for today's episode and that is Shopify, a longtime supporter of Rumble. Shopify is the all-in-one commerce platform that powers millions of small businesses, schools, nonprofit organizations, and podcasts like mine. And by 'mine' I mean, of course The Moore Store. So with the help of Shopify, I launched this store, this online store last year as a way to raise money for causes and issues and things that I believe in. So when you buy a Rumble hat or a mug or a sweatshirt, a portion of the proceeds goes toward bringing civics back into our public schools, and ending voter suppression. So whether you're trying to start a new business, whether you're trying to grow your existing one, or you're trying to raise money for your school or nonprofit, Shopify has the tools and the resources that make it easy for everyone to succeed anywhere around the globe. So more than a store, Shopify grows with you and the possibilities are endless. So don't wait — go to Shopify.com/rumble for a free 14-day trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Grow your business with Shopify today. Go to Shopify.com/rumble. Go to them right now Shopify.com/rumble.
Michael Moore [00:16:38] So onto our episode here today. Cynthia Conti-Cook is an award-winning civil rights attorney, writer, speaker and researcher. She is currently a Technology Fellow at the Ford Foundation, working with the foundation's Gender, Racial and Ethnic Justice team, where they study the expanding use of surveillance technologies against immigrant communities, as well as the potential use of technology to criminalize people who seek or aid abortions. Such important work right now. Before doing this, she was a civil rights litigator and a public defender for the Legal Aid Society of New York, where she pioneered a first-of-its-kind public database that tracks misconduct by the New York City police officers. Thank you for that, Cynthia. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, the American Bar Association and The Intercept, and she has earned several awards, including the 2019 Legal Rebel Award from the American Bar Association. Please, everyone, on this very important episode, in this very important week in the life of this country, please welcome Cynthia Conti-Cook. Thank you, Cynthia, so much for coming on my podcast today.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:17:59] Thank you for the invitation.
Michael Moore [00:18:01] I'd seen you on CNN and at the end of your interview, I was so moved and I learned things, but it really also shook me to my core a bit because while I, and most of the people I think listening to this, know that we have grown into a surveillance state that is often run by police who are often not trained to be on the side of justice, even though they're part of the justice system. Maybe we just start with that. But then I want to really get into how I have this sense that we're becoming a nonfiction reality show version of The Handmaid's Tale.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:18:39] Well, thank you for that jumping off point. I actually wanted to go back to when you spoke about how the people who get pregnant are 4/5 human because they're sort of taking 1/5s of their organs and controlling them, their reproductive organs, but that really, we have to start understanding how the reproductive organs are part of the whole. I think the same is true for reproductive justice, right? Reproductive justice is also indivisible from all other forms of justice, and all other forms of the types of integrated support systems we need to make conditions conducive to life on the earth that we live on. And so I just want to start by saying that the right to decide whether or when to have a child is essential for social, economic and racial equality, reproductive autonomy, and the right to determine our own futures. And that when abortion care is accessible, individuals and families and their communities really thrive. And it's the right to maintain bodily autonomy. And what I really want to talk about today is the ways that, going forward, we have to start really integrating the idea of bodily and digital autonomy together. And there's many people out there who've been sort of saying this for a long time. But going forward, we have to think of our digital devices and the data that they are leaving everywhere to be vacuumed up, we have to start thinking of those things as extensions of us and extensions of what can be commodified from us. And therefore, we have to really embrace the idea that in order to have bodily autonomy, we also have to have more control and ownership over the data that is being extracted from us, not just to create things that advertise the right, you know, yoga pants back to us, but also realize that the data is being extracted from us so that other kinds of corporations can create tools based on our data that they then sell to governments to use against us. Like all of the biometric technology, the surveillance technologies and many other things. And then when we try to find out about how those tools work, they call it 'trade secrets.' And the combination, the really toxic triple-threat of police secrecy, corporate secrecy and algorithmic secrecy together means that the landscape of the world we're living in, in terms of the digital tools and their ability to take information from us, they're very sophisticated in a way that they definitely were not before the 1970s.
Michael Moore [00:21:10] Right. I mean, already in just the days after the release of this by Politico, of the news of what the Supreme Court's planning to do, state legislatures and governors, they've already signed bills this week —
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:21:21] Yes.
Michael Moore [00:21:24] — regarding the abortion pill that if you even attempt to mail it to a friend or a family member, you risk being arrested.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:21:30] The criminalized economy.
Michael Moore [00:21:32] Wow. Just from what I saw in these bills and these things that they plan on doing in these states of collecting information, surveillance — they want to know who's even thinking about having an abortion. Will you just explain some of this? Because when I heard you on CNN, I had not thought about just how deep of a dive this is going to be on the part of our so-called law enforcement, especially in communities that are poor or of color. And the way you described it, it wasn't like you were trying to whip everybody up, "hey, make sure you go vote this November!" You were just plainly stating the facts that you have spent years researching and advocating against or for — can I just turn it over to you? And just have you explain just how serious this is and that it already is, it's not something that is going to happen in a few months or a few years.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:22:22] That's right. That's right. It is the future that is here. And the thing that I really want to emphasize is that while this feels new, because the leak this week really electrified the way that we're all paying attention to this, but it doesn't make it new. This is actually a trend that's increasingly been happening since 2011. Anti-abortion lawmakers have pushed more than 500 restrictive laws through state legislatures that make abortion difficult and sometimes impossible to access. And before that, there's a long history, the Hyde Amendment, etc., of the ability to financially access abortion was prohibitive for black women and a lot of other indigenous women and people from communities of color who were pregnant and seeking some option to terminate. And so this is not new. The national advocates for pregnant women and organizations like If/When/How have actually been documenting and broadcasting to us for a long time that pregnant people have been charged with murder for conduct related to, or accusations related to the termination of their pregnancies. This is happening. There's a woman in Indiana who was charged in 2015, I believe, and another woman in Mississippi in 2017 who was charged for murder when she arrived at the hospital with a stillborn fetus. This has happened. Their digital devices were searched in their criminal cases because police were able to get into the device and do keyword searches that helped them find the information about that text message to a friend that's like, "hey, I'm scared and I think I'm going to try to terminate this pregnancy." It was really basic types of information that we're all co-creating with our digital devices every day. And that leaves a really strong trail of evidence-of-intent that prosecutors really treat as precious when they have a case where otherwise, the only evidence is that a woman appeared in a hospital with a miscarriage. And I don't want to say that in any way we should not be able to use these digital tools. I'm not anti-technology. I love it. I think that it's really powerful. But we have to realize that it's more of a frenemy than a friend, because at the moment, we have zero control over how our data is extracted, collected, traded and sold specifically to law enforcement that then, you know, target us with it. But we can't find out about that because it was created by a corporation.
Michael Moore [00:24:51] So the police have the means and there are people within police departments that know exactly how to find stuff in a way that you or I, you know, if you let me borrow your phone or you take mine, it would take me hours, probably to…
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:25:07] Yes. No one wants to do that.
Michael Moore [00:25:09] And no one wants to do that. But the police are different.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:25:12] They have tools, you know, and this is not done under the circumstances conducive to consent building, right? This is done typically under circumstances where someone feels like they are the subject of an investigation, even if they're not officially calling it that or if it's happening in a hospital instead of a precinct. If there's a dynamic where the police are like, "hey, you don't mind if I look through your phone, right?" And that lands on someone like, "I have to do that in order to comply to get out of this," because people, when they're in that crisis mode, in that dynamic with an authority figure who has a gun on their hip, they're just not in a space of mind to try to critically analyze what they could possibly mean by, "hey, can I have your phone for a second?" Because we think our phones are locked, our phones are difficult to search through in that sort of way — you have to wear your thumb pads out scrolling so deeply to try to find some nugget. That's how we think about it, cause that's how we interact with our phones. We interact with them like what we see on them is what there is, but there is mountains, there can be months and years of data depending on your settings, about where you've been, about who you are in contact with, about what you've searched for on the internet and about what websites you visited, and if you do anything in addition to that, like have apps that you're diligently tracking your menstrual cycle and all of your symptoms around it, then that is just more data that you are gifting out into the stratosphere that's being sucked up by data brokers and traded. And you can bet that if there is a market for law enforcement to investigate people for whether they have ever formed an intent to have an abortion or to terminate their pregnancy, there is going to be companies that try to fill those markets and create tools based on our data that is sold to law enforcement to help them investigate those because we know that about every other type of crime, whether it's sex work or it's drugs, everything. Everything that relies on the dark web to sort of move around. And now we're also talking about gender affirming health care and medical marijuana and many other things, right? This is not just about you know — it is absolutely in this moment all about abortion — however, it is also going to impact many more people in many more spaces. And yes, that sounds gloomy and awful — and it is. But it is also a really good moment for solidarity.
Michael Moore [00:27:43] Well, we need to know this, Cynthia, because if we're ignorant, if we're in the dark about it, we're not going to be able to fight it and it will be too late. We need to do something about this years ago. Another example is a couple friends of mine, Arab-Americans, who after 9/11, were very afraid to go and look up anything about, you know, never used the word terrorism, never use, you know —
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:28:05] Yes,.
Michael Moore [00:28:06] — anything. And all they wanted to do was find out what's going on. That's it. They just wanted to find out what's going on, not breaking any laws, and all of a sudden, they get a knock at the door.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:28:16] Yeah.
Michael Moore [00:28:16] "We just want to ask you a few questions. You know, don't worry. Can we come in?" You know, you got to give them permission to come in because they don't have a warrant. In fact, for the cops to take your phone and to do a search in your phone, don't they have to have a warrant?
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:28:29] There's only one state where police are required to get a warrant to get into your digital device, and that's in Michigan. And the reason that they made the warrant requirement is that I think it was recognized that people cannot conceive of the amount of consent that they are granting to police when they hand their device over. And by the way, it's not just police who have these digital forensic extraction tools, it's also immigration agents, and it is public schools, and many other state agencies use them and are equipped with them. And by the way, they're quite expensive. And by the way, you have to hire someone to run them and also update them every time any device that you want to analyze is going to be updated. So it's an expensive endeavor, so you can be sure that they don't just reserve these tools for the moments when they have a serious, violent felony. They use them all the time on every case where they can use them. And there's a tech policy organization called Upturn that has issued a fantastic report called "Mass Extraction" about the depth and the breadth of the, they call it the mobile device forensic tool, and the amount of them that there are out in the country, how unregulated they are and how expansive their use is without any restrictions. So, for example, in Wisconsin recently, there was actually a case where a man's phone, his digital device, was extracted for an investigation of a crime that happened in County A, and he consented to allowing it to be used for that purpose. And they extracted the information. Nothing happens. He's not arrested. Three months go by and a different sheriff's department in a different county investigating a different crime, the court said it was allowed to use the data from the other case in that new case, even though that was not the purpose that he submitted it for. And so it's really important to understand not only how much of this hardware there is out there, but also how much digital evidence they have already taken, how they are just storing it somewhere, and they have, at least from their perspective, no restrictions on how they're allowed to share it and use it.
Michael Moore [00:30:55] This is just amazing. I'm a little stunned by the fact that Michigan is the only state that actually requires a search warrant when it comes to the phone. Why Michigan?
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:31:06] Amazing advocates. There's the Detroit Community Technology Project and other really fantastic advocates in Detroit that have been organizing and really educating everyone about what the meaning of digital autonomy is, and how we have to start insisting on more ownership of our digital information so that when it's used to impact our lives with these tools that we interact with on a daily basis because they've been set up to surveil people —
Michael Moore [00:31:34] Right.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:31:34] — we need to know how they were made. What are they supposed to be doing, how much is being spent on them? And between the opacity of the procurement process and other instruments of corporate secrecy, like 'trade secrets' and 'the expansion of intellectual property,' we have a situation where it's going to be more and more difficult for us to insist on information that we need in order to truly understand how our government is involved in patrolling us.
Michael Moore [00:32:03] So what you're saying is that the police have these devices, search and discovery devices or whatever polite name that they gave it, and they can take that and they can take your phone… Can they do something just as simple as a search for any time you might have typed in the word 'abortion'?
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:32:20] Yes, they can do keyword searches on your digital device. So I've seen these printouts before. They're 2,000-page PDFs sometimes, and you type in a keyword and it finds every time that word was used, whether it was in a text message or on your calendar or somewhere else within the data that's collected by your phone. You know, the newer versions also give you options like image searches, or arrange it by social network, arrange it in chronological order, map it onto a geographic map, map it onto a social network. There's new capabilities and there's different levels of fanciness with the types of instruments that are extracting the information. But can you do a keyword search for 'abortion'? Hell yeah.
Michael Moore [00:33:02] Wow. Somebody wrote me after I posted my Substack column and said, "No Mike, you know, you're getting a little, you know, worked up here. It's only 26 states that are going to immediately, you know, ban abortion." And I'm like, "only 26?" "But yeah, but the other 24 or whatever, they're going to fight this and they're going to make their states available." I wrote the person back and I said, "just because the news is telling you this week that, well, it's going to be still legal in 26 states, you don't have any idea what's going on here, and maybe neither do I, because things can happen really quick, quicker than you think." And again, just to reference The Handmaid's Tale again, that scene where a couple of friends, couple of women were having a coffee in a coffee shop and they go to pay for it with a credit card and all of a sudden —
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:33:48] She can't.
Michael Moore [00:33:48] She can't because women no longer can use their credit cards, or have a credit card without their husband's permission. And later, the main character is thinking back, trying to remember when did this slow drip, drip, drip start?
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:34:02] When she's looking at the wall of paper, newspaper clippings, right?
Michael Moore [00:34:06] Yes, yes.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:34:07] Yeah, I know, I always think of that moment, too, because that's the moment where she's looking back in time from the future and being like, "Holy shit, there was the intervention. There was through the looking glass, right? There was that moment that we had where we should have seen it because it was being broadcast to us."
Michael Moore [00:34:24] And we knew we were smart. So why didn't we see it?
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:34:27] Because it's been hidden from us. Because it's been very subtly exposed.
Michael Moore [00:34:33] Right. And I think we're also raised to believe, and the narrative continues to be pushed on us, "well, Mike, it's the United States of America. It's not going to be like that. It's not going to get that bad. It's the United States." And, of course, you know, again, for those of us who grew up in a different era maybe, Vietnam as I mentioned earlier, and as I've talked about this on the podcast before, the nine boys from my high school that came back in a box. I learned very early that stuff can happen, and it can happen quick, and before you know it. I just worry, and I don't know what your experience has been this last week, but I worry about anybody who — I don't know how to put this — somebody said to me, we need an emoji with a hair on fire. We need to all be in the street, running down the street with our hair on fire because do not believe this is just "well, it's just one thing. And they'll fix some of this. They're not going to stop women who have been raped or incest or, you know, I just know won't get that bad." But I think that's a dangerous way to think. And I don't mean you've got to be paranoid or, you know, whatever. I think you just need to realize, yeah, you do live in the United States of America.
Michael Moore [00:35:48] And you need to be very, very aware. And thank God we do still have some tools, called tools of Democracy, because I don't want to believe that the other side in this is going to win this. They have to be defeated.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:36:00] That's right. There are things that we can do to minimize the exposure that our data has. And we have the tools that we can learn and we can share with our communities and help protect each other. The more that we think about digital safety as a community practice and not just like, "Well, what did they want with my information? Or what do they want from my data? I haven't committed any crime." But it's not just about you. It's about the safety of your community and your network and how you might be a connecting point for the community that you're trying to keep safe. And so the more that we are able to think about these things together in an integrated way, and like I said, there's lots of bodies of work already building around this — in this idea like Professor Ruha Benjamin's work around informed refusal and really making that the default so that there's a true obligation to engage and inform and default to, "No you cannot have my data. It's mine and I can withhold it, or perhaps it can be in another way some source for you that you can use." But it's a resource that you can decide how to deploy or how not to according to your values. And I think that one of the values is not leaving people behind, and in any way that this is a moment where we can actually expansively think about solidarity and cross movement learning between the need to be able to use technology tools to access information about abortion, we also need it to access information about gender affirming care and in every other type of criminalized economy where the thing that has been criminalized is related to our ability to take care of ourselves, whether it's medical marijuana or anything else. Right? This is about our ability to maintain both bodily and digital autonomy together.
Michael Moore [00:37:51] Where do we need to take our heads out of the sand here, such as in regards to abortion? As Elisabeth Moss says in that scene, "we were not awake." And then she says, "But I'm awake now.".
Michael Moore [00:38:03] But I don't want to wait till that moment that we're finally awake. I think that needs to happen quickly. What do we do here, now?
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:38:12] Well, first we have to do oppression management, right? We have to use the tools that we have like don't hand over your phone to police or to a social worker, to a caseworker or someone who might hand it over to law enforcement. Treat it like it's an extension of you. Treat it like if you handed it over, it would incriminate you. Treat it that way whether or not that is true. Use encrypted communications. Send your mother a Happy Mother's Day message on Signal and get used to really casually using it, having your contacts there, having it open, being familiar with how it works. And same thing for anti-fingerprinting browsers so that if you ever are in crisis-mode, or if anyone in your network is ever in crisis-mode, you have the tools already set up that will never guarantee you complete protection, but they will shrink the amount of surface area that your data footprint is leaving behind you. And with that, it can really make them have to either, you know, hack for it or work for it or litigate for it or pay for it. And the most that we can do in this oppression management context, in this inside-of-a-crisis, is that we can try to spread these tools that just protect each other. But it doesn't solve the problem. And the problem is that we're criminalizing economies of care. The other, you know, problem is that we're doing that inside of a system of very sophisticated data surveillance where we are co-creating information about ourselves, but we are not able to retain any control over it.
Michael Moore [00:39:49] I mean, I've never given Apple my fingerprint. I can take the time to type in what the password is to get online. I try to tell people, don't give them your fingerprints. Really?
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:39:59] Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's gifting them that, right? Like it's tying a bow around yourself, or a part of yourself, and giving it away for free. Which, if that's your choice, that's fantastic. And all power to you. But just know the potential consequences of the choices.
Michael Moore [00:40:15] So what do we do?
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:40:17] We get together, right?
Michael Moore [00:40:18] Like now.
[00:40:20] Yeah. We teach each other and we think about ways to organize and build power that helps us do it in collaboration, do it out loud, imagine and really try to create a visionary awareness beyond what is possible. I want to point everyone's attention to If/When/How and they're Repro Legal Defense Fund that covers bail and fund defense, and their Repro Legal Helpline that provides free, confidential legal information and advice.
Michael Moore [00:40:53] I've heard of this group. Can you explain a little more of who they are, what they do? Because I think a lot of people don't know that there already are groups that have been formed, long before now, in anticipation of this moment.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:41:04] If/When/How — it's a fantastic organization that "transforms the law and policy landscape." I'm reading from their "Who We Are" page "through advocacy, support and organizing so that all people have the power to determine if, when and how to define, create and sustain families with dignity, and to actualize sexual and reproductive well-being on their own terms." And they are fabulous.
Michael Moore [00:41:28] Are they nationwide or…?
Michael Moore [00:41:30] So any of us can go on Google, or whatever, type in If/When/How, right?
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:41:34] Yeah, I would recommend an anti-fingerprinting browser maybe instead…
Michael Moore [00:41:40] Don't use Google.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:41:42] But yes, look them up. And this emphasizes the problem. We need these tools, right? Like in this segment on CNN yesterday at the closing of my co-panelist's remarks, she listed a ton of websites, right? Which just speaks to how this is how we communicate. Of course, that's how we share resources. However, by using the tools that they have given us — and, you know, always be aware of the tools they give you my father used to say — you have to know what kind of trail you're leaving behind you, and there are steps that you can use to protect you like I said, to shrink the footprint. Even though you can't erase it, you can't guarantee it's gone, you can take some steps for protection in the meantime. And also, we've got to get together and really start figuring out how we want to be able to protect ourselves now, and also protect this place so that it will be here for our kids, right?
Michael Moore [00:42:41] Yes. You mentioned a safer browser. What would what would a safer browser be other than Google?
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:42:47] I personally use DuckDuckGo, for example. Firefox is another example. I encourage people — rather than being like use this one, this one, and this one — I really encourage people to try to get familiar with just going to the terms of service and starting to educate yourselves about the differences between the tools we're using. And any time before you download an app, try to get information about what kind of data they're extracting from you when you're using it so that you're constantly just treating, like I said, your phone is your frenemy, not your friend. Know what you want to use it for, but also know what you want to keep from it because it's your frenemy, it's not your friend.
Michael Moore [00:43:30] Right, right, right. A few years ago, somebody made a documentary called, I think that was the title, Terms of Service.
Michael Moore [00:43:36] If you have a chance, I'm sure you can find it online. But it's like that thing you always check without ever reading it. After you watch this movie, you're going to go, "I have got to read this from now on. This is scary stuff here." But you also mentioned Signal. Tell people, especially people who are not familiar with Signal, what that is and why that's maybe a bit better than the normal way of communicating.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:44:00] Signal is end-to-end encrypted. And again, there's a few different apps that are promising encryption. Just try to familiarize yourself, find information about what they're actually doing — if you have to turn off your side encryption, if the person that you're communicating with also has to, if you have to tell them that before you communicate, etc. Just know how these things work, and let's all start to build tools that help each other understand this stuff. I think there's a huge energy barrier because people just feel generally intimidated and they don't make it easy, right? We know this from other experiments with trying to get informed consent for cookies on websites — how obnoxious they make it for us to try to engage with, and understanding about what they're doing with our data. And I think that that's probably intentional because there's not an incentive for them to make us more educated about what is happening and why these tools are all being given to us for free. And this is a common saying that many other people have said before me, if it's free, you are the product. And we have to understand that as technology tools expand from just being about collecting our data to using advertisements that target things back to us, there are entire cities that are investing in infrastructures to create data extraction tools, whether they're Bluetooth beacons or other types of data collection devices. It's being referred to as smart cities, right? But what we know about the ways that these expansions are happening is just the way that they've taken our data to build things to advertise to us, they're also taking our data to build things to advertise to these cities, and taking the data from the city infrastructures and using that to sell other cities things. And so we know that there's a deep market, and we know that there is very advanced technology. But just because it's advanced, I don't think means it's progress. And so I think we just need to be more engaged in how we really want technology to help us progress and not just, you know, serving this corporate drumbeat.
Michael Moore [00:46:01] They're going to need this technology. In their perfect world, they're not thinking 26 states only where it's going to be illegal to get an abortion. They have a whole scope, these different right wing groups of what they're hoping to do. They're not going to be satisfied until all 50 states are made this way, to where it will be illegal to even think about going to Canada or Mexico to terminate a pregnancy.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:46:23] That's right.
Michael Moore [00:46:24] They're going to figure out some way, if they get the seats that they need in Congress, in the Senate, so we can't mail a morning-after pill or anything out to each other.
Michael Moore [00:46:32] You can't deliver it across state lines to a friend or a family member. So if you're wondering, like, why are we focused on the the surveillance state, it's that they, the side that doesn't want to let women have control over their own lives and bodies, they are going to work very hard — and, you know, they work hard. They work harder than we do, and I've felt this way for a long time, that they are relentless. They are relentless. And they are going to look for ways and find ways so that any corner we think we're going to cut in order to have our freedom, they're not going to have to worry about putting out the wall on the Mexican border, they're going to put up legal walls that will have them arresting anybody who is trying to get away and believe in something different other than a fertilized egg is a human being. And they've already said, I've seen them on TV, they're so emboldened this week Cynthia.
Michael Moore [00:47:23] Up next in the batter's box is same sex marriage.
Michael Moore [00:47:28] They have a long laundry list.
Michael Moore [00:47:31] And I think what you're saying is we all need to get wise and get smart, learn about these things that we need to do to figure out how to protect our privacy, and how to have our freedom. And right about now, somebody saying, "well, why aren't you talking about the November election?" So I don't know if you want to get into that, but it seems like if we had better Senators, and if we had a protected House, and if our state legislatures were such that they truly represented what the American people want — again 70% of the American people do not want to get rid of Roe v Wade, only 27% do. So what about electoral politics and trying to fix things that way?
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:48:12] I actually want to bring it back to what you said about just visioning, because I think what we have the opportunity to do — and going back to that moment in Handmaid's Tale, where Elisabeth Moss is staring at the newspapers on the wall and she's going back in time out of the fantasy future that had been created, and she's realizing this is the moment and this is a moment I should have focused my mind and tried to intervene — I think that focusing on our imaginations and getting really open to the idea of thinking about how we can create really clear, strong, solid protections for our bodily and digital autonomy that don't rely on having the right constellation of justices, etc.. I think that, yes, we need to do a huge amount of work to prevent these protections from falling to the wayside, but we also, at the same time that we're thinking about these protections, for now, we also have to think about how do we really ground these protections into what we want to see going forward in a way that it doesn't oscillate so drastically based on who is in power.
Michael Moore [00:49:22] Right. Otherwise, it's just going to be swinging back and forth. We need to get to a place where if 70% of the American public wants it this way, then that's the way it's going to be. And those newspapers that she's looking at on the wall — the old newspapers, where she's looking back at the beginning before people realized it was too late to stop these sort of religious fascists from taking over the country — one of those articles that she's looking at is, I mean, boy you look at it now, this episode was, you know, four years ago, but there is, back in the fictional story of A Handmaid's Tale, there's a January 6th attack on Congress.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:50:03] I didn't realize that.
Michael Moore [00:50:04] Where they go in, and she refers in her — you know, we're listening to her thoughts basically in her head. Her words were "when they slaughtered Congress." That should have been the moment that we just all had to take our country back from these people, but we didn't. And essentially that piece that she refers to in the history of the story is — unlike January 6, 2021 where they didn't succeed — they were armed.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:50:34] Right. We have to sit in our own fantasy futures, and not only dwell in theirs —
Michael Moore [00:50:38] Correct. Yes, that is correct.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:50:40] — and really start defining with specificity what that looks like. What are the protections in that future fantasy that we create, that we co-create? And it's power with and not power over.
Michael Moore [00:50:50] What's yours? I mean, when you think of the possibility of the future in the sort of dark place it could go. We're not paranoid people, but we also know the reality of things. I'm just curious, if you don't mind me asking you, the thing that keeps you awake at night where you wonder or worry and you say to yourself, "what will I do if we get to this point?" Because they are not going to stop with this one ruling.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:51:18] Yeah. I mean, look at the Green Wave. We can be really excited and energized by it. We can really look at, you know, what has been happening in countries like Ireland and Mexico and Argentina and get inspiration from that and learn from them, learn how they did their messaging and learn how they built power. "Troubled times focus the mind." We have to let our minds be focused, and we have to let them sort of be integrated together. And I think what we've been doing for many years now in trying to have a deeper understanding of how the iterations of harm that are caused are all sort of separate, different iterations. They all look different depending on what historically oppressed community you're in. It's important to understand the intersections and all of the different ways that those harms make people suffer so that we can know how to better protect everybody and not leave anybody behind. We can really ground what we want to do in those types of values and those types of principles. And we can also take what we know about what we need to do in addition to protecting, and also focus on the common cause of all those harms because there are some common causes. We're very busy taking care of all the harm, right? We're all doing a huge amount of oppression management in our communities. We're all experiencing it, and it looks different for everyone. And it's really important to have good vocabulary and have these sometimes tedious debates about the language and about how we're thinking about these things. It is something that is usually teased, but I think it's a really important process to get this stuff right because we want to show each other that we care about each other and we care about how our language impacts them. It's a really good, healthy sign of someone who is not antisocial. It's a very healthy and natural sign, and we have to start embracing this idea that we are naturally driven, as animals and creatures of this earth, we are naturally driven to take care of each other, more so than any survival of the fittest nonsense. And that our drive to collectively care for our communities and for our animals and our plants and our elements, and make sure that this place is still here so that when all of our descendants are trying to live their lives, they can still have happy, focused and successful lives — and that the conditions are conducive to life, as Janine Benyus says. She's a biologist who has an amazing website asknature.org that helps engineers understand how to innovate in inspiration with nature. It's awesome. But I think that we have to start thinking in those terms of what the common threads are. And that's a beautiful opportunity and moment for solidarity across movement, learning and really getting together at the same time that we're able to protect our community. But our plates are really full, right? We're really having a hard time holding everything. And it's a huge thing to ask a community to vision for the future when it's day by day.
Michael Moore [00:54:19] I'm really inspired listening to your description of this and what we need to do. It doesn't seem impossible to me. It doesn't seem like all is lost.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:54:28] No.
Michael Moore [00:54:29] I keep reminding people there's more of us than there are of them. Do not despair here. We still live in a democracy. There are things we can do. And the things that you're suggesting here are so powerful. It is a natural thing to want to have each other's back and to understand that we're all in this together.
Michael Moore [00:54:45] And then we're either going to sink or we're going to swim. And I think most of us don't want to sink. I guess I'm urging a sense of urgency that this isn't something we're going to think about for 5 or 6 years. This is something that we need to think about for 5 or 6 minutes. And when Cynthia said Green Wave, she wasn't talking about the Green New Deal. Look it up. But other countries have figured out how to fight back.
Michael Moore [00:55:14] How to push back against this sort of right wing insanity against hatred.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:55:19] But it requires true interconnection, right? Recognition of, as you know, Thich Nhat Hanh would say of inter-being, of seeing the inter-being of each other in each other and bringing that to be the value around which we do everything else. And having that unification be not just a destination, but it's the journey.
Michael Moore [00:55:40] And you mentioned this Vietnamese philosopher — I believe he passed away this past year in January.
Michael Moore [00:55:47] Wow. I mean, years ago I read his books. And. Do you have a favorite? I'll put a link on my site here.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:55:53] Call Me By My True Names.
Michael Moore [00:55:54] Call Me By My True Names. Absolutely.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:55:56] And of course, his conversation with the Berrigans.
Michael Moore [00:55:59] Oh, that's right. I completely forgot that.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:56:01] The Raft is Not the Shore.
Michael Moore [00:56:03] The Raft is Not the Shore. Wow. Thank you for reminding me of that. Somewhere during the COVID fog, much information has left my brain. But for those of you listening, Cynthia's referred to a number of things here, and we'll put up a few links for you to learn these things, because we do have to educate ourselves because we can't go into the fight ignorant or in the dark.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:56:23] Or in despair.
Michael Moore [00:56:24] Certainly not in despair.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:56:26] Carry your purpose with joy. It is something that we can sing about and dance about and art about and reflect to each other what we are experiencing together and affirm that — affirm the feelings, and affirm the grief, and affirm the relief, and really celebrate all of the evidence that we already are sitting on and have that we are committed to protecting each other and protecting the future of this earth.
Michael Moore [00:56:50] Yes.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:56:51] We are already doing that together. And we can do that, and we can do it better, sure. But we have a lot of reason to celebrate and believe that we already are doing it. And look, we're celebrating mothers this weekend, and that's a beautiful thing.
Michael Moore [00:57:04] That's right.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:57:05] But at the same time that we're celebrating mothers, the shadow of that is forced motherhood. And we want to be able to continue to worship motherhood and everything that we celebrate when we do that without creating the types of generational trauma that would really be generated if forced motherhood became what most people in this country had to experience.
Michael Moore [00:57:29] Right. Absolutely right.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:57:30] And I would also guess that many people who are in the particular circumstances of being an extra set of hands in the village that are not able to have their own children but are willing to help, that those people would not want to have a child or a baby that was just going through the type of trauma, through forced separation with their mother and their mothers forced separation with them.
Michael Moore [00:57:56] Right. In this well, I'll just call it an interim phase, this transitional phase, till we get the power of this country in the hands of the majority who are against this Supreme Court decision, you're going to hear in your local communities about different groups that are forming what some are calling, and I have called, an aboveground railroad where we need to help women and girls who need help, whether it's to get to another state, whether it's something within the state, whether it's going to Canada or Mexico in the meantime, and this is not the long term plan. We can't settle for this. We have to make the law and the laws of this land such that you have a right to a legal medical procedure. But in the meantime, you probably know of some of these groups, right, Cynthia, that are getting set up now to help women — whether it's getting to clinics in other states, whether it's getting access to the abortion pill or the plan B pill?
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:58:47] Yes, they're on the front lines.
Michael Moore [00:58:49] They're on the front lines of this right now because literally within, what, 12-24 hours of the Supreme Court's official decision, it is in these 26 states an immediate, immediate ban. Immediately a felony. Immediately illegal.
Michael Moore [00:59:05] You're not going to have any time to think about it. Everybody should have a little bottle or something of the abortion pills, because you may not be able just to walk into the CVS the next morning and get that pill.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [00:59:16] That's right. Yeah. It's going to create criminalized economies, and criminalized economies bring surveillance, and criminalized economies also mean that the people who are already under the crosshairs of any type of state control, whether it's through a child protection agency and the caseworkers or social workers, or whether it's through the increased collision frequency between police and black people, where there is just a denser amount of police in that area and therefore more collisions that are aggressively happening because all of the officers have to do their productivity goals, right? And so the more productivity goals-driven officers that you have in an area, the more you're going to have people that are increasingly having these interactions. If you look at local data in New York City, you'll see that there's on the Civilian Complaint Review Board, they have a category of an abuse that is the wrongful taking of someone's cell phone, or the wrongful interfering with the use of the cell phone. And what that tells you is that police are not just stopping people and going in their pockets and looking in their bags. They're also looking for their phones and trying to increasingly get access to the information that's in the phone. And sometimes they're even picking up a young kid and they're saying, "you know what? You littered in the hallway of a public housing project." And then taking that child into custody under the pretense of having done something that was a violation of the housing rules, and then in that interaction with that young person while detained, saying, "hey, let me see your phone, let me see your phone and see who's in your social network. Who are you Facebook friends with? Show me this. Show me that." The people who are going to suffer the most from these increasingly criminalized economies are going to be the black people and the other people of color and pregnant people who are historically oppressed and already in the crosshairs of law enforcement.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [01:01:13] Or some other type of state controller. Dorothy Roberts described the state agencies, such as the child protective welfare systems, etc., as "the benevolent terror," you know, other aspects of the human welfare system that introduce a huge amount of surveillance into someone's life if you have a caseworker for getting state assistance, for example. And Virginia Eubanks' book "Automating Inequality" is a fantastic resource to learn about this. When the state has you in their safety net, there's a lot of opportunities they create for surveilling what you buy, where you go, who you're in touch with, who's your contacts, etc..
Michael Moore [01:01:52] Just because the caseworker hasn't busted down your door, or the caseworker doesn't have a gun on them, don't let your guard down.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [01:02:00] That's right. And the work of Khadija Abdur-Rahman in that space has also been really phenomenal. And she's articulated that space well, along with a lot of other people.
Michael Moore [01:02:10] So we just have a few seconds left. I'm going to give that time to you — any final things you'd like to bring up? Say, encourage people? I think you've been very wonderful in what you said about not letting despair run your life here at this moment because we all need to pick ourselves up, pick each other up and onward. So I'll leave the last word to you.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [01:02:29] Yeah, I mean, celebrate whatever source of inspiration gets you going and makes you have energy to get together and try to learn together and realize how to protect each other now, but also how to reorganize our society, our country, maybe even our world to better protect people now and into the future.
Michael Moore [01:02:51] Absolutely. It's been a real pleasure talking to you. I'm honored that you gave up your time — we're recording this on a Saturday night and —
Cynthia Conti-Cook [01:03:00] Mom is here.
Michael Moore [01:03:02] Yes. Yes. Happy Mother's Day to all mothers out there. To those whose mothers have left us, keep living the life that you know that —
Cynthia Conti-Cook [01:03:11] Yes. To the ancient grandmothers.
Michael Moore [01:03:13] Yes, to all of them who came before us. And especially the women did not have it easy. That needs to be said and yet we all know it. And thankfully they existed, and now we exist.
Michael Moore [01:03:25] Our daughters, our nieces, our granddaughters — we have no option other than to stand up and do what's right, and do it now.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [01:03:35] Yeah. And the outpouring of protests that we've seen this week really shines back to us, reflects back to us, that we have support in our community, that we are keeping each other safe, that we're committed to keeping each other safe, and that our democracy and our devices should really do the same.
Michael Moore [01:03:54] Absolutely. Thank you very much, Cynthia Conti-Cook, for being my guest here on Rumble. We'll stay in touch. You let us know anything we need to put out there to our audience. We will do that. And to all of you out there, go online, look for ways to get involved — talk to people. Everybody's talking about this this week. There's no issue I've received more mail on since this podcast started than this issue, this week. Wow. We've got our work cut out for us, but I'm a big believer in our ability to succeed. So —
Cynthia Conti-Cook [01:04:25] Yeah. It's in our mitochondrial to open up and —
Michael Moore [01:04:28] Exactly.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [01:04:29] —pay attention.
Michael Moore [01:04:31] I have real hope. I'm not alone in this, right?
Cynthia Conti-Cook [01:04:33] No, we have hope and we have — it's a good practice to catalog as many things in your day that make it that much lighter, and that much happier and focus on those at the same time that we're also holding a lot of really heavy suffering and witnessing a lot of suffering. But we can look at the suffering and we can witness it and we can figure out and help each other integrate our traumas together so that we can heal. And I think that there is an absolute reason to be really hopeful at this moment. And, you know, if we can find that moment, if we can find the moment inside of the newspaper clippings where we can be receptive to messages from our self, from their fantasy future that says, "don't go here." And we can start to really focus on where we do want to go and decide what our own fantasy future looks like and start doing the work to build into that. And I think it's absolutely a moment that we have and a decision that we're all perfectly, you know, driven to and capable of making together.
Michael Moore [01:05:37] We can do this.
Cynthia Conti-Cook [01:05:38] Yeah, right on.
Michael Moore [01:05:39] Absolutely. Well, and that wraps it up for us here today, but it does not wrap it up in terms of how we're going to stay on this. Make your voice heard now. If you hear of demonstrations locally, go to it. Go to protests. Get out in the street. Let the Supreme Court know what they're going to be facing when they go against 70% of this country. Thanks very much to Cynthia for coming on my podcast, and to all of you for listening today. Please share this with others so that we all get involved. Please read my Substack column at MichaelMoore.com about this, and we'll be back again sometime this week with more on this and other issues. This is Rumble with Michael Moore. I'm Michael Moore. My thanks to our producer and editor Angela Vargos and everybody else who's helped me out here with this show. I greatly appreciate all of that help and all of you who listen to it. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks. There's work ahead.
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< What Does junk status really mean for SA?
This page's sole purpose is to provide readers with interactive charts and graphics regarding South Africa's formal business sector. The page will be updated on a adhoc basis as more quarter's data is released by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA).
The graphics and information will largely be based on the Quarterly Financial Statistics as published by Stats SA.
In this update we take a look at a article published by Statistics South Africa regarding South Africa's formal sector employment numbers for the fourth quarter of 2018.
The December 2018 QES survey showed that an estimated 10 151 000 people were employed in the formal non-agricultural sector of the South African economy, which is up by 87 000 from 10 064 000 in the previous quarter. The number of people working part-time increased by 37 000 to 1 065 000 in the fourth quarter of 2018. Similarly, the number of people working full-time increased by 50 000 to 9 086 000 in the same quarter.
Business services industry accounted for the biggest share of the observed increase in employment, contributing 53 000 employees, followed by the trade industry with 49 000 employees, community services industry with 9 000 employees and transport industry with 5 000 employees. However, there were decreases in employment reported by construction industry with 18 000 employees, mining industry with 7 000 employees, manufacturing industry with 3 000 employees, and the electricity industry with 1 000 employees.
Employment increased by 158 000 or 1,6% year-on-year between December 2017 and December 2018, with 134 000 being full time jobs and 24 000 part time jobs. These increases were mainly in: business services (77 000 or 3,4%), trade (55 000 or 2,5%), community services (32 000 or 1,2%) , transport (7 000 or 1,5%) and manufacturing industry (5 000 or 0,4%). During the same period, annual decreases were recorded in construction (-9 000 or (1,4%), mining and quarrying (-8 000 or -1,8%) and electricity industry (-1 000 or -1,6%).
R1,5 billion and mining industry with R544 million. Year-on-year, total gross earnings increased by R46 603 million or (6,9%).
Average monthly earnings paid to employees in the formal non-agricultural sector remained unchanged quarter to quarter, and this amounted to R21 190 in November 2018; however annually it increased by 4,9%.
So the extent of South Africa's employment problem is made clear when looking at the employment numbers above. Just over 10 million people are employed in the formal sector in South Africa, we have 4.9 million personal income tax payers in South Africa, and worryingly we have 3 million youths (between the ages of 18-24) who are not in employment, education or training. We as South Africa need WAY more people to be employed to address the unemployment and ever increasing youth unemployment problem in South Africa.
We take a look below at an article published on Statistics South Africa (Stats SA's website) following the release of the latest Annual Financial Statistics (AFS) data. The original article can be found here.
Some good news in trying times. After two consecutive years of decline, South African businesses recorded a 49% increase in net profit before tax in financial 2017, according to Stats SA's latest Annual financial statistics (AFS) survey. The mining industry was the largest contributor to this rise. The success of a business generally depends on earning a profit. Higher profits provide a company with the ability to expand its business, employ additional staff, and invest in non-current assets (such as buildings and equipment). The South African formal business sector generated R690 billion in profit in financial 2017, R228 billion more than the R462 billon recorded in financial 2016. This increase follows a two-year slump (2015–2016) that saw business profit fall by R95 billion.
With the exception of the electricity, gas and water supply industry, all the industries covered in the AFS report saw their profits rise in 2017. The mining industry contributed the most to the R228 billion rise in 2017, increasing its own profits by R80 billion. Manufacturing contributed R69 billion and business services R38 billion. Higher turnover, higher profits on sales of assets and lower losses on revaluation of assets were the main reasons given for the overall rise in profit in 2017.
Mining is an important player in the South African economy. The industry contributes 7% to gross domestic product (GDP) and employs around 450 000 people. In the 2015–2016 period, turnover in the mining industry grew by only R24 billion. Falling mineral prices and lower productivity (brought on by electricity shortages and industrial action) contributed to slower growth. The problem of sluggish turnover growth during this period was compounded by higher operating costs. If total income is considered (income includes turnover and other forms of income, such as interest and dividends) the mining industry spent more than it earned in 2015 and 2016. This is in contrast to the 2001–2014 period that saw the industry spending less than the amount of income generated.
Following 2015 and 2016, the mining industry experienced a sharp rise in income in 2017. This was largely driven by a R71 billion rise in turnover. Mining of metal ores, coal and lignite, gold, and uranium ore sub-groups contributed to the increase.
This rise in turnover was the main driver behind the rise in profit. Net profit before tax in the mining industry grew by R80 billion, from a loss of R36 billion in 2016 to a profit of R44 billion in 2017. There was also a slight drop in spending (by 0,8% or R5 billion) in 2017 compared with 2016. The largest decrease in expenditure was seen in losses on revaluation and disposal of assets. A further decrease was seen in the losses on foreign transactions resulting from changes in foreign exchange rates.
With the recent announcement by Stats SA that South Africa has emerged from its second economic recession since 1994, all eyes will be on upcoming economic releases to see if there will be more nuggets of good news.
Download the latest Annual financial statistics (AFS) release here.
1 Formal business includes private businesses and public corporations. The AFS survey measures the financial performance and position of each industry. The report sources data from the financial statements of enterprises (i.e. private businesses and public corporations) in all industries, with the exclusion of agriculture and hunting; government and educational institutions; and financial intermediation, insurance and business services not elsewhere classified. The AFS 2017 survey information was collected for the financial years of enterprises that ended on any date between 1 July 2016 and 30 June 2017.
The bar chart below takes a look at the formal sector employment for the various industries for quarter 1: 2018. During the first quarter of 2018, the formal business sector added 55 990 jobs. Hardly enough to address the near record high unemployment rate experienced in South Africa. And one needs to look at the sectors that added these jobs.
So while a lot of formal sector employment jobs were created during the first quarter of 2018, the problem is the major job creator is not the private sector but rather within government (which is the community, social and personal services industry). If government is stripped out, the private sector actually shed jobs during the first quarter of 2018. The be exact, without government sector, the private sector shed 11 895 during the first quarter of 2018. And the lack of job creation in the private sector is one of the major problems facing the South African economy and the South African government. As greater employment leads to greater spending (which stimulates growth and brings in additional taxes such as VAT), and greater employment means more personal income tax paid which helps government revenue.
The problem is the business sector just doesn't have the confidence in the SA economy to invest and grow in South Africa. We showed this with our BER/RMB business confidence index which showed that for the last 11 years businesses in South Africa thought the business environment is less than ideal. Click here to see that update.
In today's update we take a look at the formal sector employment per quarter per industry) for the year of 2017.
At the end of the 1st quarter of 2017, formal sector employment was sitting at 9 765 296, while for the 4th quarter of 2017, employment was sitting at 9 778 254, which means that South Africa's formal business sector added just under 13 000 jobs during 2017. Hardly good news for the millions of unemployed South Africans.
The graphic below shows the employment per industry for June 2016 and June 2017. From the graphic it is clear which industry is the biggest employer in South Africa.
The bar chart above shows that "Community Services" is the biggest employing industry in South Africa. That specific industry is largely made up by government employees. Government employees make up 27% (or 2.58million people) of all employed people in South Africa . And it is no surprise then that compensation of employees makes up the bulk of South Africa's government's spending. See our Fiscal Policy Page for more on government spending.
The second biggest employing industry in South Africa is the Business Services industry, with almost 2.2million people. This industry includes security guards, cleaners, maintenance and repair staff etc. The trade industry (wholesale, retail and motor trade) comes in as the 3rd biggest employing industry in South Africa with just over 2million people working in this industry.
Electricity industry is the smallest employing industry based on the bar chart above, but with ESKOM running a monopoly in the sector the bulk of those 60 thousand employees work for ESKOM, making it one of the single biggest employers in South Africa. Currently the police service is the biggest employer in South Africa.
The image below shows the contribution of various industries to South Africa's formal business turnover for the second quarter of 2017 (April 2017 to June 2017). Note the graphic was obtained from Stats SA.
Based on the pie chart above trade (which includes wholesale, retail, motor trade and accommodation) makes up around 36% of total turnover generated by formal businesses in Q2:2017. The manufacturing industry is a distant 2nd place with 27% and business services (security, cleaning, maintenance etc.) and even more distant 3rd place with 12% of total turnover generated. In total formal businesses generated R2.3trillion in turnover during the 2nd quarter of 2017 in South Africa.
But simply taking turnover on its own as a measure of commercial success doesn't provide a complete account. As in all areas of life, costs are inevitable, eroding any turnover that is generated. The two largest expenditure items faced by South African businesses are purchases, taking up 61% of total spending, and employment costs (14%). Other items measured (including interest on debt, hiring of vehicles and machinery, royalties, and renting of buildings) contribute about 10%. The miscellaneous category, referred to as "other expenditure", is responsible for the remaining amount.
After all this spending, including tax and adjustments for inventories, the R2,3 trillion in turnover generated by the South African business sector was whittled down to R256 billion. This is profit earned after tax. Simply knowing how much profit was generated doesn't provide us with a full indication of business performance. Context is required, and this is achieved by using a handy accounting measure called the profit margin ratio. By comparing two or more financial values where a relationship exists, accounting measures allow the analyst to dig a little deeper into the financial data. The profit margin ratio is calculated by dividing the profit or loss after tax by total sales or turnover. Simply stated, the ratio indicates how much of each rand earned by the industry in turnover is translated into profit.
Overall, the South African business sector earned 11 cents of profit for every rand of turnover generated in the second quarter of 2017. As mentioned earlier, trade earned the bulk of total turnover. In terms of profit margin, the industry was ranked fifth in the second quarter of 2017, at 4 cents for every rand of turnover generated. Business services took the top spot as the industry with the highest profit margin ratio, followed by personal services, manufacturing and transport. Construction was in sixth place, with 2 cents of profit for every rand of turnover generated. The electricity, gas and water supply industry, as well as mining, experienced losses, however. For electricity gas and water, it was the third consecutive quarter in which the industry spent more than it earned. See more at StatsSA.
As the pie chart shows nearly 60% (or R1.4trillion) of turnover by formal businesses for Q2:2017 were generated by large businesses, with small businesses bringing in 31.3% (or R721billion) and medium sized businesses bringing in 9,3% (or R215billion). The structure of South Africa's economy and business environment is pretty odd, with a small number of large businesses which contributes a lot to turnover generated, while there is a vast number of small businesses, generating almost a 3rd of all turnover in the country. Leaving medium sized businesses in the lurch with them just generating around 10% of turnover.
The graphic below shows the employee costs as a percentage of total expenditure per business size. As the chart shows, the smaller the business size the higher the percentage of employee costs to total expenditure is. And this is one of the problem that hamstrings smaller businesses, and will be made even worse with the implementation of minimum wage levels in South Africa.


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Home / National / EU proposes action on bees & pesticides
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EU proposes action on bees & pesticides
European Commission will proceed with plans to better protect bees, pollinators
The proposal restricts the use of 3 neonicotinoids (clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam) for seed treatment, soil application (granules) and foliar treatment on bee attractive plants and cereals. (Alias 0591, Flickr/Creative Commons)
BRUSSELS — Today, EU Member States did not reach a qualified majority – either in favour or against – in the Appeal Committee1 which discussed a Commission proposal to restrict the use of 3 neonicotinoid insecticides.
Tonio Borg, Health and Consumer Commissioner, said: "Although a majority of Member States now supports our proposal, the necessary qualified majority was not reached. The decision now lies with the Commission. Since our proposal is based on a number of risks to bee health identified by the European Food Safety Authority, the Commission will go ahead with its text in the coming weeks." To conclude: "I pledge to do my utmost to ensure that our bees, which are so vital to our ecosystem and contribute over €22 billion annually to European agriculture, are protected."
15 Member States supported the restriction, 8 Member States voted against and 4 Member States abstained during the appeal committee vote.
Main elements of the proposal
The proposal restricts the use of 3 neonicotinoids (clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam) for seed treatment, soil application (granules) and foliar treatment on bee attractive plants and cereals.
In addition, the remaining authorised uses are available only to professionals.
Exceptions will be limited to the possibility to treat bee-attractive crops in greenhouses, in open-air fields only after flowering.
The restrictions will apply from 1 December 2013.
As soon as new information is available, and at the latest within 2 years, the Commission will review the conditions of approval of the 3 neonicotinoids to take into account relevant scientific and technical developments.
In absence of an agreement between Member States, it is now for the Commission to decide on the adoption of the proposed restriction.
Following the request of the European Commission, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published, on 16 January, its scientific findings on the risks associated with the use of three pesticides, belonging to the neonicotinoid family, on bee health. On the basis of this opinion, the Commission tabled a proposal for discussion with Member States.
Experts representing the EU-27 met in the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health on 15 March and failed to reach a qualified majority – either in favour or against – the proposal to restrict the use of three neonicotinoid. 13 Member States supported the restriction, 9 Member States voted against and 5 Member States abstained. The proposal was then referred to the appeal committee on 29 April.
http://ec.europa.eu/food/animal/liveanimals/bees/neonicotinoids_en.htm
EFSA's website:
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/beehealth.htm?wtrl=01
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