Amidst all the talk about defunding the police, notice something important: No one talks about defunding the military. That’s because the military establishment is too powerful and has come to be accepted as a permanent feature in American life. Except for libertarians, everyone treats the military as their god.
Why Not Defund the Military?
Not sure if he’s correct about military capabilities but I can get behind defunding the military!
Elon Musk’s favorite anti-trafficking advocate has set off a war in right-wing circles after Twitter banned some of her critics—and her own friends are poking holes in her story.
Eliza Bleu’s Own Friends Aren’t Buying Her Trafficking Story (archived)
MOSCOW (Sputnik), Tommy Yang – Despite the apparent political chaos following two military coups in Burkina Faso in 2022, young activists in the Western African country explained to Sputnik why they largely supported political changes they viewed as opposing France’s colonial influence.
Video via Activist News Network
If it can conceivably be considered a “third party record,” the government is going to seek warrantless access to it. The Third Party Doctrine — ushered into existence by the Supreme Court in 1979 — says there’s no expectation of privacy in information shared with third parties. That case dealt with phone records. People may prefer the government stay out of their personal conversations, but the Smith v. Maryland ruling said that if people shared this info with phone companies (an involuntary “sharing” since this information was needed to connect calls and bill phone users), the government could obtain this information without a warrant.
More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions
In November 2022 The Breakthrough Institute (BTI), drawing from Academia, NGOs, and the UN, released a report, which others digested, on the supposed inextricable link between the solar industry’s supply chains and Uyghur slave prison labor in China. China denies such claims. The report praises initial moves by the US and the EU to counter these allegedly ongoing human rights violations and extols countries and the solar industry to move the various parts of its manufacturing process out of China. As the fight for nuclear and responsible renewable energy development intensifies in the US, this narrative is gaining traction as another tool to counter the 100% renewable extremists. However, the US also has a prison slave labor problem, one that it does not even deny. We are also in a time of ratcheting tensions between the US and China, in which these narratives would be useful in stoking anti-China sentiments. However, bringing up these facts in a simplistic argument leads to the inevitable accusation of whataboutism and little else. As such, it is worth making a more longform argument which clearly lays out the current conditions of slave labor in both countries. Once it is shown that China has progressed further along in the abolition of slavery than the US, it will be clear how this narrative is just another in a long list of anti-Chinese propaganda.
Uyghur Forced Labor Camps are the New WMDs in Iraq
Video via C Ozmun
Related: *Xinji
The ADL has been trying to liaise with the FBI by offering ADL investigators as informants, offering to exchange files to “avoid duplication of investigation” and “train” FBI and law enforcement personnel since the 1940s.
What have been the negative consequences for human rights activists?
IRmep presents findings from years of Freedom of Information Act filings at a number of relevant Washington, DC locations.
ADL files FBI “Civil Rights Threat” conflating white nationalists with pro-Palestinian charities
FOIA documents: Israel Lobby Archive
ADL’s penetration of the FBI & negative consequences for human rights activism
from the the-eu-approach-is-dangerous dept
Fri, Jan 6th 2023 10:41am – Mike MasnickLast summer, I mocked the EU a bit for setting up a new office in Silicon Valley, and sending an official here to “liaise with Silicon Valley companies affected by EU tech regulation,” noting how it felt weird to have EU internet police setting up shop in Silicon Valley. Given that, I was a bit surprised that the new office invited me to “moderate” a panel discussion last month about the Digital Services Act (DSA), a bill I have regularly criticized and which I think is going to be dangerous for free speech on the internet.
If You Don’t Want EU Style Censorship To Take Over The Internet, Support Section 230
Related:
Despite pleading with oil and gas companies to boost their output in recent months, to tackle global shortages and rising prices, President Biden is once again hitting the industry hard by proposing a greater emissions reduction in operations. And he’s not the only one, as the U.K. and EU look to reduce gas flaring and venting practices to curb their methane emissions in line with climate pledges.
More Biden Oil And Gas Restrictions Are On The Horizon
Related:
Dispelling the Myth of Tax-Induced Capital Flight
A study by the American Sociological Association in 2016 found that while massive top rate tax hikes might cause some millionaires to move from their high-tax state to a low-tax state, the amount of them doing so for this reason was negligible. Millionaires moved for tax purposes around 2.2% of the time. Indeed, in any event the rate of inter-state migration generally was lower for millionaires, at 2.4%, than it was for the general population, at 2.9%.
Tesla’s lawyers argued in a brief filed last month that, even though the company’s CEO promised fully self-driving cars for the last nine years and failed to deliver, no fraud was perpetrated against owners.
Tesla’s Promise of a Fully Self-Driving Car Merely an ‘Aspirational Goal,’ Lawyers Say
H/T: Steve Lehto
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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