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Featured Editorials

Far East news items

Submitted by soryang on Thu, 06/04/2026 - 11:57am

Smear campaign.

This is a story I thought was interesting. In Japan, as in Korea, publishing defamatory information about a political candidate for office during a campaign, is an election law violation. If a candidate or office holder is found responsible in court for the act or actions, then they are disqualified from office.

Open Thread - 4 June 2026 - Billionaires Are Getting Angry! GOOD!

Submitted by Sima on Thu, 06/04/2026 - 5:00am

Billionaires Are Getting Angry! GOOD!
Matt Stoller recently wrote a good article. It's in his 'Monopoly Roundup' from about a month ago and is entitled: The Rage of the Billionaires Is Coming (Note, you don't have to be a subscriber to read the main article, just to read the roundup news after the article).

What I thought was good about the article wasn't that the billionaires' rage is coming, of course it is. I thought it was good because Stoller talked about what is making the billionaires angry, and... what is making everyone else angry at the billionaires. Stoller starts with AI and the rage against it:

The public is extremely angry, and they are centering their anger on AI. Seven out of ten Americans oppose data centers being built nearby. It’s not hard to see why.

AI and tech CEOs seem almost proudly villainous. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei routinely says that half of white collar jobs are going to disappear because of his technology. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, noted that “AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.” And Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, said during an earnings call that “This is a revolution. Some people can get their heads cut off.”

Voters are no longer brushing these comments off. They have experience with social media and enshittification, they don’t believe in the promise of the future. And even if they did, business leaders seem to luxuriate in explaining how terrible things will soon be for the little people. So they are starting to respond with frustration.

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