Tag: midterm elections

Netanyahu Says US Must ‘Reaffirm’ Alliance With Saudi Arabia + More [Abraham Accords]

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Netanyahu Says US Must ‘Reaffirm’ Alliance With Saudi Arabia

The incoming prime minister said that he wants to build on the Abraham Accords, which his former government signed in 2020 to establish diplomatic ties with Bahrain and the UAE. Netanyahu said it’s “up to the leadership of Saudi Arabia if they want to partake in this effort.”

Saudi officials recently reaffirmed that they seek a Palestinian state as a precondition for normalizing with Israel. But in order to form a coalition government, Netanyahu gave Religious Zionism party leader Bezalel Smotrich, an ultranationalist settler, sweeping powers over the West Bank.

Related:

Read More »

Pentagon Profiteers: Executive Compensation in the Arms Industry

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

Pentagon Profiteers: Executive Compensation in the Arms Industry

Another way to understand the size of CEO compensation at the big contractors is to look at how many jobs would be created if that $287 million were spent on something else. The answer is that spending that money on productive activities would create thousands of jobs: 2,812 jobs in clean energy or infrastructure; 4,104 jobs in health care; and 4,362 in education, calculated using data on the jobs impact of government spending generated by Heidi Peltier for the Brown Costs of War Project.

South Dakota Bans Government Employees From Using TikTok. The Countless Other Apps And Services That Hoover Up And Sell Sensitive Data Are Fine, Though

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem put on a bit of a performance this week by announcing that the state would be banning government employees from installing TikTok on their phones. The effort, according to the Governor, is supposed to counter the national security risk of TikTok sharing consumer data with the Chinese government:

South Dakota Bans Government Employees From Using TikTok. The Countless Other Apps And Services That Hoover Up And Sell Sensitive Data Are Fine, Though

Related:

Oracle Cloud Data Center Locations

Oracle’s coziness with [US] government goes back to its founding

TikTok is such a danger, to national security, that US politicians have used it for campaigning, a tool of war propaganda, and former NATO employees work for them! Besides, TikTok stores user data with Oracle! This moral panic, over TikTok, is all about competition!

Progressives Say Congress Must Raise Debt Limit Now to Protect Social Programs

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Progressives Say Congress Must Raise Debt Limit Now to Protect Social Programs

The programs have long been targets of Republicans, despite the fact that Social Security is fully funded through 2035 and is able to pay for 90% of benefits for the next 25 years, even without Congress acting to expand it.

Related:

GOP’s Thune Sees Debt-Ceiling Hike as Vehicle for Budget Cuts

White House Knocks Thune’s Bid to Tie Debt Limit to Entitlements

Biden calls on Congress to impose rail contract in a major assault on workers’ democratic rights

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

President Biden published a statement Monday night calling on Congress to intervene to block a national rail strike and impose a contract which tens of thousands of railroad workers voted down. A few hours later, outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the House of Representatives would take up such a bill this week and send it to the Senate with the “hope that this necessary, strike-averting legislation will earn a strongly bipartisan vote…”

Biden calls on Congress to impose rail contract in a major assault on workers’ democratic rights

Inside the Trilateral Commission: Power elites grapple with China’s rise

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Inside the Trilateral Commission: Power elites grapple with China’s rise (original)

Each new candidate for Commission membership is carefully scrutinized before being allowed entry. As a rule, members who take up positions in their national governments — which is uncannily common — give up their Trilateral Commission membership while in public service. Those include U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

This revolving door between the commission and senior government ranks has always been fodder for conspiracy theorists. Its first director in 1973, Zbigniew Brzezinski, later became U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. The very existence of the commission, meanwhile, seems predicated on the question of whether governing should be left to the people. It is a question the commission itself has tackled head-on since 1975: Is democracy functioning? Or does someone need to guide it?

That year, three scholars — Michel Crozier, Samuel Huntington and Joji Watanuki — wrote a report for The Trilateral Commission titled “The Crisis of Democracy.” In it, Huntington wrote that some of the problems of governance in the U.S. stem from an “excess of democracy.”

Related:

The Crisis of Democracy – Trilateral Commission – 1975