Tag: Kansas

U.S. Press Starts To Figure Out College TikTok Bans Are A Dumb Performance

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

U.S. Press Starts To Figure Out College TikTok Bans Are A Dumb Performance

One, the bans are generally designed to agitate a xenophobic base and give the impression the GOP is “doing something about China.” But the party that couldn’t care less about rampant corruption or privacy violations isn’t doing much of anything meaningful to thwart China. In fact, letting adtech, telecom, and app companies run rampant with little oversight runs contrary to any such goal.

Two, the bans distract the public and press from our ongoing failure on consumer privacy and security issues. Banning TikTok, but doing nothing about the accountability optional free for all that is the adtech and data-hoovering space, doesn’t actually fix anything. China can just obtain the same data from a universe of other international companies facing little real oversight on data collection.

Three, the ban is really just about money. Trump gave the game away with his proposal that TikTok be chopped up and sold to Oracle and Walmart. That cronyistic deal fell through, but it’s pretty clear that this moral panic is designed to either help TikTok’s competitors (Facebook lobbyists are very active on this front), or force the sale of the most popular app in modern history to GOP-allies. At which point they’ll engage in all the surveillance and influence efforts they pretend to be mad about.

Related:

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Peter Thiel’s midterm bet: the billionaire seeking to disrupt America’s democracy

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Re-energized this election cycle, the tech entrepreneur joins other mega-donors apparently out to undercut the political system

Peter Thiel’s midterm bet: the billionaire seeking to disrupt America’s democracy

Related:

The Right’s Would-Be Kingmaker (archived, as it’s behind a paywall)

Anti-Globalist?! He invests in businesses, worldwide!? I doubt that it would be possible without globalization! 🤷🏼‍♀️

Strikes & protests in France (and demonstrations in the US)

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Strikes grow as Macron postpones threat to crush French refinery strike

Related:

French left-wing parties gather protesters to march in Paris, as refinery strikes persist

The French call for NATO exit

MSM was all over the cost of living protests but nothing about the Anti-NATO protests. Videos have emerged of police repression in Paris (at which protest, I’m unsure). Meanwhile, in the US, the Poor People’s Campaign, and allies, held multiple demonstrations to get out the vote (which were mainly covered by local news).

The CIA Asset That Funded The Oklahoma City Bombing

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The following is an excerpt from a longer piece in preparation describing the involvement of several individuals with known or alleged ties to the Central Intelligence Agency in the Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest domestic terror attack in United States history. In the sanctioned version of events, easily found on e.g. Wikipedia, US Army veterans Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, whipped into anti-government rage by the massacres at Ruby Ridge and Waco, constructed a large truck bomb with no significant help from any other individuals and detonated it outside the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19th, 1995, killing at least 168 people. This narrative is patently false; others were clearly involved in the bombing, a fact that was confirmed in no uncertain terms by both Terry Nichols and Tim McVeigh multiple times to multiple people. In this excerpt, I explore the story of Roger Moore, an especially interesting character who both Nichols and McVeigh have suggested played a much larger role in the events leading up to the Oklahoma City bombing than is publicly acknowledged.

The CIA Asset That Funded The Oklahoma City Bombing

H/T: 10/7/22 Boltzmann Booty on the CIA Asset who Funded the OKC Bombing

Related: FBI Infiltration of Right-Wing Groups (PATCON, ETC)

Biden administration scales back student debt relief for millions amid legal concerns

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Biden administration scales back student debt relief for millions amid legal concerns

But there are significant business interests that depend on the federally guaranteed loan program — a wide range of private lenders, banks, guaranty agencies, loan servicers and investors. That industry is widely seen, both inside and outside the administration, as presenting the greatest legal risk to the debt relief program.

Many of those companies face economic losses when they lose borrowers who convert their federally guaranteed loans into new loans that are made directly by the Education Department through a process known as consolidation.

Can’t afford to lose those campaign donations!

On This Day in History: Federal prisoners land on Alcatraz

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

A group of federal prisoners classified as “most dangerous” arrives at Alcatraz Island, a 22-acre rocky outcrop situated 1.5 miles offshore in San Francisco Bay, on August 11, 1934. The convicts—the first civilian prisoners to be housed in the new high-security penitentiary—joined a few dozen military prisoners left over from the island’s days as a U.S. military prison.

Federal prisoners land on Alcatraz

Long-Term Studies Of COVID-19 Vaccines Hurt By Placebo Recipients Getting Immunized

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

February 19, 2021:

Long-Term Studies Of COVID-19 Vaccines Hurt By Placebo Recipients Getting Immunized

Dr. Steven Goodman, a clinical trials specialist at Stanford University, says losing those control groups makes it more difficult to answer some important questions about COVID-19 vaccines.

“We don’t know how long protections lasts,” he says. “We don’t know efficacy against variants — for which we definitely need a good control arm — and we also don’t know if there are any differences in any of these parameters by age or race or infirmity.”

H/T: This is nuts, Moderna & Pfizer intentionally lost the clinical trial control group testing vaccine efficacy and safety