Tag: Politicians

Investigation Shows Israeli Malware Firms Pitching Spyware To Embargoed Countries, Serial Human Rights Abusers

Ms. Cat

from the never-even-bothering-to-ask,-are-we-the-baddies? dept

Thu, Oct 12th 2023 04:13pm – Tim Cushing


As we’re all painfully aware by now, former Israeli intelligence analysts are capable of producing private sector malware companies faster than the CIA can produce successful coups.

Investigation Shows Israeli Malware Firms Pitching Spyware To Embargoed Countries, Serial Human Rights Abusers

Related:

Investigation: How Israeli Spyware Was Sold to Egypt and Pitched to Qatar and Saudi Arabia

Biden won’t protect Palestinian Americans from Israeli attacks

Ms. Cat

For the second time this year, large numbers of armed Israeli settlers have rampaged through Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank terrorizing Palestinians in their homes.

Biden won’t protect Palestinian Americans from Israeli attacks

Links behind paywalls:

Israeli settlers torch Palestinian homes and cars to avenge deadly shooting. A Palestinian is killed

You, American taxpayer, are helping to fund Israeli settlements

U.S. Ambassador: We Will Not Stand Idly by and Watch Settler Violence

Israel’s Far-right Finance Minister: ‘I’m a Fascist Homophobe But… I Won’t Stone Gays’

Israel Eases West Bank Settlement Rules, Clearing Way for New Homes

The FTX Collapse Is Also a Huge Campaign Finance Scandal

Ms. Cat

Sam Bankman-Fried was set to testify before Congress on Tuesday, but before he could appear, he was arrested in the Bahamas. Not surprisingly, most of the charges he’s facing involve allegations of fraud related to the collapse of FTX, his crypto-trading platform. But a federal indictment unveiled Tuesday also accuses SBF—a prolific political donor who cultivated relationships with politicians and policymakers—of campaign finance violations.

The FTX Collapse Is Also a Huge Campaign Finance Scandal

Congress’ Best Idea to Save Local Journalism Would Actually Hurt It + Some Temporary Good News

Ms. Cat

Congress’ Best Idea to Save Local Journalism Would Actually Hurt It

Meta reported $114.93 million in ad revenue in 2021, whereas Google reported $209 billion. But determining how much of that publishers should get is difficult—and the JCPA doesn’t even try. One version of the JCPA proposed platforms and publishers negotiate an agreed-to payment, and if they couldn’t come to a consensus, they’d enter forced-arbitration with no formula for what is fair. But whether the money would end up being vast or a modest bump to the bottom line, not every publication stands to benefit if the JCPA becomes law. While the JCPA’s alliances allow for partnerships, exclusionary elements of the JCPA would encourage big brands to unite selectively at the expense of smaller ones and shut out niche independent journalistic outlets altogether.

Related:

JCPA Update: The Dangerous Link Tax That Still Won’t Save Local Journalism

The original text of the JCPA already authorized print media companies to form one or several cartels and collectively bargain with the largest online platforms—defined in terms that single out Facebook and Google. Although the bill hinted at these news cartels being able to demand payment for merely linking to their content, or hosting snippets like the results you get from Google News, the mechanism by which they would be paid was left vague. However, the fact that the bill allowed news companies to withhold content strongly suggested a claim to some sort of property right, or ancillary copyright, that the targeted platforms would owe for hosting links and snippets.

Some Temporary Good News: None Of The Really Bad Internet Bills Seem To Have Made It Into The NDAA

This would also hurt independent media and bloggers (you would have to pay a ‘link tax’ to corporate media for linking to their articles—see below image)! So far, it hasn’t passed (it was attached to the NDAA) but there’s still the omnibus spending bill and the next session of Congress!

Source.

State TikTok Bans Are A Dumb Performance And Don’t Fix The Actual Underlying Problem

Ms. Cat

For decades, U.S. politicians leaders utterly refused to support most meaningful privacy protections for consumers. They opposed any nationwide privacy law, however straightforward. They opposed privacy rules for broadband ISPs. They also fought tooth and nail to ensure the nation’s top privacy enforcement agency, the FTC, lacked the authority, staff, funds, or resources to actually do its job.

State TikTok Bans Are A Dumb Performance And Don’t Fix The Actual Underlying Problem

Matthew Hoh: War is a cancel culture

Ms. Cat

YouTube: Scheer Intelligence: War is a Cancel Culture

Related:

The U.S. Is Drowning in Pretend Patriotism

Washington’s “Farewell Address” to the new nation was a warning about the threat of American imperial ambitions and a declaration of his high expectations for a republic of free men: “In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. …”

…

But recognize that you have shamed the legacy of our first president. George Washington, who distinguished the promise of the new world from the corruptions of the old by shunning imperial conquest, said: “Our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing.”