Tag: Anonymity

Social Security rushing service cuts at White House request, sources say

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Social Security Administration is rushing cuts to phone services at the White House’s request, the agency’s acting commissioner told Social Security advocates in a meeting on Monday, two sources who attended tell Axios.

Social Security rushing service cuts at White House request, sources say

Previously:

Trump’s Billionaire Commerce Secretary: Only ‘Fraudsters’ Will Complain If Social Security Checks Don’t Arrive

No, 150-Year-Olds Aren’t Collecting Social Security Benefits

Trump’s Medicaid reversal should worry Social Security recipients.

Dems Demand Pete Hegseth Halt ‘Orwellian Book Purges’ In Military Schools

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Dems Demand Pete Hegseth Halt ‘Orwellian Book Purges’ In Military Schools

After DoDEA last month directed its schools to pull lessons from its curriculum related to immigration, gender and sexuality, the schools responded with things like book bans, a portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama being removed, a Harriet Tubman poster being pulled down, rainbows being taken down in kindergarten classrooms and bans on school clubs for LGBTQ+ students and girls in STEM.

Ironically, Vice President JD Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” was also banned. 😹😹😹

Five transgender service members speak out as Trump pushes military ban + Trauma trigger ⚠️

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Five transgender service members speak out as Trump pushes military ban

There are not many people who want to serve anymore. We’re in a recruiting and retention crisis across the board. It doesn’t matter what service you’re going in, they’re having a hard time getting people in and they’re having a hard time keeping people. And to want to push somebody out that has given their entire adult life to an organization, but then also to the nation, it’s just really unfortunate and sad that for everything that I’ve done, the hard work that I’ve done, the work that I’ve done, for the government to just kind of say that you are no longer able to serve. We just don’t want you because you’re trans.

…

Rand [Corporation] — who had predicted that it could cost up $150,000 per service member per year to have transgender folks serve — went back after trans folks were allowed to serve openly, to see what the costs actually were. And it was less than $1,000 per transgender service member per year, which I don’t need to tell you, is like an average military service member’s prescription costs per year.

…

For a lot of trans people, the military is the only option for them to to survive, to get out of the situations they’re in, and again, we’re part of that one percent of the population that has sworn to defend the country. Why would you want to not allow them to do that?

…

People do tend to isolate transgender medicine as this like wildly difficult thing, but it’s actually not. It’s fairly straightforward and basic for most people. Are there folks who have complications? Sure, but we have folks who have any number of orthopedic surgeries who have complications. Or we try to manage their allergies, and the solution that we start with isn’t where we end. You can have high cholesterol or high blood pressure, and maybe we put you on medications, maybe we say you need to change your diet, and we work down [to address the question of] how do we take care of you? Because we need you on the team.

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Syria’s Rojava [Where They Run Torture Camps] Is in Grave Danger +

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Federalization of Syria a.k.a. Balkanization

Syria’s Rojava Revolution Is in Grave Danger (Reason magazine)

If the Kurdish-Arab alliance unravels, the U.S. military may decide to directly back Arab tribes as a bulwark against Iran and the Islamic State, according to Nicholas Heras, who has advised the U.S.-led military coalition in Syria and is now senior director for strategy at the nonprofit New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington. In 2019, when former President Donald Trump wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, the Trump administration considered a strategy of letting the Kurdish forces fall to Turkey and buying off Arab tribes.

…

The United States has, directly and indirectly, backed all sides of the fight. Turkey is a NATO ally. Some of the SNA [Syrian National Army] units now attacking Kobane had received weapons and training from the CIA and the U.S. military. (After the Trump administration cut off support, a U.S. official condemned these same factions as “thugs, bandits, and pirates that should be wiped off the face of the earth,” and the Biden administration imposed human rights sanctions.) Meanwhile, several hundred U.S. troops are embedded with the SDF.

…

In his Sunday victory speech about the fall of the Assad government, President Joe Biden said that he wanted to support an “independent, sovereign—an independent—independent—I want to say it again—sovereign Syria.” But U.S. policy at the moment seems to be creating the opposite: a Syria chopped up [Balkanization] by foreign powers.

Rojava is also known as the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.

Related:

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For Taiwan, Trump’s ‘protection’ money may mean new and early big ticket arms deals

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

For Taiwan, Trump’s ‘protection’ money may mean new and early big ticket arms deals

“Watch for Taiwan on the defence side to try and start engaging them on a big arms package – to do something significant, very large,” Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council which helps broker defence exchanges between Washington and Taipei, told Reuters, adding it could come in the first quarter of next year.

“But think of it as a down payment, an attention getter,” he said. “They’ll stack up several big platforms and big buys of munitions.”

The U.S. is already Taiwan’s most important arms supplier, although Taiwan has complained of an order backlog worth some $20 billion. A new order, almost $2 billion of missile systems, was announced last month.

Related:

Profile at BowerGroupAsia: Rupert Hammond-Chambers