FYI, Charter Communications—better known as Spectrum—maintains an ICE contract supplying cable and internet to the Homeland Security Investigations field office in Beaumont, Texas. The agreement is valued at $12,837, with an option to expand to $21,839 and run through 2028.
The Pentagon’s acquisition system is being overhauled into a “Warfighting Acquisition System,” turbocharging weapons production, slashing bureaucracy, and empowering officials to deliver arms at “wartime speed.” Portfolio Acquisition Executives now wield sweeping authority, startups are courted like prom queens, and the defense industrial base is being rebranded as Silicon Valley with missiles.
So much for the “peace president”—Trump’s arsenal of freedom looks more like an IPO for war, where venture capital meets missile launchers and bureaucrats cosplay as battlefield commanders.
The background to the article reprinted here is the “long boom” of western capitalism during the 1950s and 1960s. It first appeared in International Socialism journal in Spring 1967. On the surface it appeared that the capitalist system had stabilised itself, had broken out of the boom-slump cycle and was now able to offer the workers of Western Europe and North America a steady increase in living standards.
This was a frustrating world for Marxists, who found themselves subject to two temptations. One was to surrender to the claims poured out by the system’s apologists that capitalism had solved its problems and that the path of gradual reform offered a sure road to socialism. The other was to deny the obvious signs of stability and prosperity and assert that capitalism was on the verge of imminent, catastrophic collapse. If these temptations were to be avoided, and Marx’s analysis of capitalism’s contradictions was to hold, then the long boom must be explained.
Less than a decade after, as he puts it, “getting run out of Silicon Valley by backstabbing snakes,” things are coming full circle for the Anduril founder who maintains a revenge folder.
Data-mining company Palantir is poised to turbocharge its sales to the U.S. military under President Donald Trump, amid signs that his administration plans to loosen the hold of traditional defense contractors and tap Palantir executives for key government positions.
Expanding the fundamental rights to include food, clothing, shelter, education, internet, and vote, the Constitution Reform Commission proposes replacing nationalism, socialism, and secularism with equality, human dignity, social justice and pluralism as fundamental principles of state policy.
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Modifying, the much discussed article 70, the commission recommends that parliamentarians be allowed to vote against party line except finance bills.
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The constitution commission recommends deletion of the constitutional provision that stipulates inclusion of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s speech of March 7, 1971, his declaration of independence and the proclamation of independence, which are included in the 5th, 6th and 7th schedules respectively.
FYI, it was written by International IDEA, which is funded by USAID, Open Society Foundations, and several Western governments.
Representatives of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have been working at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where they have gotten access to key payment and contracting systems, according to people familiar with the matter.
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CMS in particular is a highly politically and economically sensitive agency. It is the nerve center of much of the nation’s complex healthcare economy, with outlays of about $1.5 trillion in fiscal 2024, or about 22% of the federal total. With around 6,710 employees, it oversees Medicare, the health coverage program for older and disabled Americans and Medicaid, for lower-income enrollees, among other areas. Many veteran CMS staffers have worked there for decades.
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Dr. Mehmet Oz, the high-profile physician and former television host, has been nominated to lead CMS, but hasn’t yet been confirmed by the Senate. Several CMS officials who are expected to work under Oz have already taken over at the agency.
“I’m a propagandist, I’ll twist the truth, I’ll put forward only my version of it if I think that’s going to propagandize people to believe what I need them to believe.” – Palmer Luckey
The Typhon launchers, which carry Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of reaching targets in China and Russia from the Philippines, also house SM-6 missiles, which can strike air or sea targets more than 200 km away.
The US military has relocated its Typhon missile launchers—capable of firing multipurpose missiles over thousands of kilometers—from Laoag Airfield in the Philippines to another location on Luzon island, a senior Philippine government source revealed, as reported by Reuters.
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