davel 8 hours ago • 100%
“Citizens” 🙄 Not every person is a citizen; I’ve got a pet peeve about this.
davel 1 day ago • 100%
davel 1 day ago • 100%
That is the famine I’m talking about.
davel 1 day ago • 100%
Corporate media copy editors: Enough with the slams & blasts already! The Outline “slams” media for overusing the word
davel 1 day ago • 92%
Neither Stalin nor Mao were genocidal. Famines had been a common occurrence in Russia and China throughout recorded history. Soon after their socialist revolutions, Russia and China experienced one more famine, and have not experienced one since. They ended famines.
davel 1 day ago • 91%
Horseshoe theory is horseshit, and Pol pot was as much a communist as Hitler was a socialist, which is to say not at all.
davel 1 day ago • 100%
Settings | Block instance 👋
davel 2 days ago • 97%
Everything isn’t capitalism, but fascism is always funded by the capitalist class. In fact it can’t get far without it. Fascism doesn’t just randomly sprout out of the ground; it’s not as organic & grassroots as most people think. Fascism is always a false revolution, because the capitalist class always remains in power. It’s what the capitalist class falls back on when liberal democracy starts to fail them. It’s when the capitalist class goes mask off. That’s what Lenin meant by “fascism is capitalism in decay.” Michael Parenti: Rational Fascism
How did January 6 happen? With a whole bunch of funding from rich motherfuckers.
- CNN: Man who organized buses for 200 people to travel to DC pleads guilty in US Capitol riot probe
- ProPublica: Texts Show Kimberly Guilfoyle Bragged About Raising Millions for Rally That Fueled Capitol Riot
- NPR: New clues emerge about the money that might have helped fund the Jan. 6 insurrection
.
The Nation: Trumpism: It’s Coming From the Suburbs
But scapegoating poor whites keeps the conversation away from fascism’s real base: the petite bourgeoisie. This is a piece of jargon used mostly by Marxists to denote small-property owners, whose nearest equivalents these days may be the “upper middle class” or “small-business owners.” […] Trump’s real base, the actual backbone of fascism, isn’t poor and working-class voters, but middle-class and affluent whites. Often self-employed, possessed of a retirement account and a home as a nest egg, this is the stratum taken in by Horatio Alger stories. They can envision playing the market well enough to become the next Trump. They haven’t won “big-league,” but they’ve won enough to be invested in the hierarchy they aspire to climb. If only America were made great again, they could become the haute bourgeoisie—the storied “1 percent.”
davel 2 days ago • 88%
The very fact that you posted this is all the citation anyone needs.
Everything coming from you is phony because you’re a big fat phony!
davel 2 days ago • 85%
Okay, pseudonymous person on the internet, I’ll definitely take your word for it over a peer reviewed Nature paper.
That’s proven and quite famous russian propaganda. Including that in their study has me doubting their motivations.
Sure, Jan. Everything people don’t like is quite famously Russian propaganda these days.
davel 2 days ago • 90%
★☆☆☆☆ I would give it zero stars if I could.
davel 3 days ago • 100%
MB/FC-blessed media ∴ It is known.
davel 3 days ago • 100%
This seems to be an unreadable jumble of unattributed copypasta.
davel 3 days ago • 100%
A day will come when they enshittify their platform, but it is not this day.
davel 3 days ago • 100%
No lies detected, but TikToky floaty head content on c/worldnews tends to generate user reports.
davel 3 days ago • 100%
We have a fair amount to show for it (like over 750 overseas military bases), it’s just that very little of it is for the working class.
davel 3 days ago • 100%
davel 3 days ago • 85%
Because bad pun memes are the bee’s knees.
davel 3 days ago • 100%
If the US security state wants it so bad why doesn’t it eminent domain it 😶 The stock is at bargain basement prices right now; a third of what it once was.
davel 3 days ago • 81%
Damn, out of 4,000 years of literature.
davel 3 days ago • 100%
That’s a lot, right? How many kgs of cocaine are allowed per banana pallet?
davel 3 days ago • 100%
concepts of a plan
That sounds like the name of a Yankee candle scent.
davel 3 days ago • 93%
Despite imperial core assertions, this is demonstrably false by reading the agreements.
davel 3 days ago • 50%
Just like last time, everyone stopped reading a while ago, including me.
davel 3 days ago • 100%
This is a semantic matter. No socialist state has ever claimed to have reached the stage of communism, including China. But some socialist states—including China—have been/are run by communist governments/parties, which claim to be working toward reaching that stage.
davel 3 days ago • 25%
A policy to continue supplying weapons to a genocide is not a slightly imperfect one, it is a genocidal one.
davel 3 days ago • 33%
Has Russia broken international law with an illegal invasion of Ukraine?
Why are you unable to answer a simple yes or no question put to you a dozen times?
It’s not that I’m unable—as I have already answered—it’s that I choose not to restate it in the format you demand, no matter how many times you nag me. You’re just making a fool of yourself with this harassment.
davel 4 days ago • 83%
Any kind of context is for nerds I guess?
He and I already gave context upthread, but here it is again.
- NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard: U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
- Robert Parry, 2015: The Ukraine Mess That Nuland Made Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s regime change without weighing the likely consequences.
- The Intercept, 2021: Meet NATO, the Dangerous “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World
- CounterPunch, 2022: NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance
- Noam Chomsky, 2023: NATO “most violent, aggressive alliance in the world”
- Jeffrey Sachs, 2023: The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace
- Thomas Fazi, 2024: NATO: 75 years of war, unprovoked aggressions and state-sponsored terrorism
davel 4 days ago • 33%
Correct. Lemmy has as many Russian trolls as it has NAFO trolls: approximately zero.
“Troll” does not mean, “anyone who disagrees with me,” and “Russian troll” does not mean anyone “anyone who disagrees with me with respect to the Ukraine proxy war.”
davel 4 days ago • 100%
Whah? Know Your Meme: Kamala Is Brat
And I still don’t get it.
Know Your Meme: Brat Summer
Brat Summer or Brat Girl Summer is a slang term and play on the idea of hot girl summer that references Charli XCX's album Brat.
Know Your Meme: Hot Girl Summer
Hot Girl Summer refers to the Summer of 2019 when American rapper Megan Thee Stallion released her album Fever.
Okay. I’ve never heard of Charli XCX before, nor hot girl summer, nor Megan Thee Stallion 🤷
davel 4 days ago • 100%
davel 4 days ago • 86%
We prefer the term housing provider.
davel 4 days ago • 100%
Last I heard LNG was cleaner than coal… because that’s what the industry wanted me to believe.
Reuters, 2020: Cleaner but not clean - Why scientists say natural gas won't avert climate disaster
In January 2020, the American Petroleum Institute (API), a powerful lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, launched its "Energy for Progress" advertising campaign.
davel 4 days ago • 100%
These aren’t American citizens… mostly.
davel 4 days ago • 100%
MMT isn’t a tool for modeling all of inflation’s factors. It’s simply a description of how sovereign fiat money works. Some people mistakenly (or knowingly, for disparagement or promotion) attribute things to MMT that it just isn’t.
davel 4 days ago • 72%
The script was by [JohntheDuncan](https://www.youtube.com/@JohntheDuncan).
>What unites them is this: a settled commitment to American global supremacy. That is something far more important to Dick Cheney, the human embodiment of the existing global power structure, than a few points on the tax rate or a little more diversity in government hiring. Kamala Harris, in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, promised that “I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal [fighting force](https://theintercept.com/2024/08/27/kamala-harris-dnc-military-lethal/) in the world.” This is enough for Dick Cheney. In this sense, she is a traditional Democrat. >Even among Democrats, the baseline assumption that America must have enough guns to exert our will on the entire world is not questioned. Kamala Harris may push for paid family leave, but she is not going to dismantle the United States intelligence agencies. Kamala Harris may raise taxes on capital gains, but she is not going to meaningfully slash military funding. Kamala Harris may protect abortion, but she is not going to stop sending weapons to Israel, or remove America’s drone bases in Africa, or Give Schools All The Money They Need and Make The Air Force Hold a [Bake Sale](https://syracuseculturalworkers.com/products/poster-bake-sale?variant=42380941394117) to Buy a Bomber. The harshest things that America does, its most uncompromising violence, its rawest assertion of pure power over weaker people, is always done overseas, far away from where we can watch it. For generations, there has been a mutual agreement from both major parties to do what must be done to protect America’s ability to militarily dominate the world—the gun that protects our concurrent ability to be richer than everyone else, the velvet fist that allows us to extract trillions of dollars in value from the Global South and use it to raise our own national standard of living. This commitment to maintaining the global order, people like Dick Cheney understand, is more important than all the other, smaller issues that voters get worked up about. >Mostly, Democrats deal with this reality by not talking about it. […] We, as Democratic voters, pretty much just ignore this stuff. We may come out against specific wars that are particularly bad ideas, but we, as a party, have almost zero will to confront the military industrial complex and its global tentacles and the way that it maintains, at gunpoint, the complex system of global economic power that allows us to live nice lives. >It’s not that Donald Trump has any ideological opposition to this commitment, which the Republicans have always embraced with relish. It’s just that he’s insane and an unpredictable egomaniac and therefore cannot be counted on to fulfill his role on this matter. […] They may prefer a Republican, but they need, above all, someone predictable. Someone who will not try to undermine the entire system. In this race, that person is Kamala Harris. And so Dick Cheney and the men like him will support Kamala Harris.
>An *Al Mayadeen* [investigation](https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/opinion/collapsing-empire--yemen-defeats-us-navy) of July 19th laid bare the US Navy’s crushing defeat by Yemen’s AnsarAllah, in Washington’s initially-vaunted Operation Prosperity Guardian. Western media has finally acknowledged the Empire’s [comprehensive trouncing](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/24/red-sea-houthis-us-navy-prosperity-guardian-iran-gaza/) by God’s Partisans, in an epic David vs Goliath triumph. Elsewhere, reporting on the much-hyped USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group’s return to base after months of relentless bombardment by the Resistance amply underlines how aircraft carriers - *the* core component of US hegemony for decades - are quite literally dead in the water.
Economically to the right of Genocide Joe. >Long-term capital gains, or assets held for more than one year, are currently taxed at a maximum rate of 20%. So not nothing, but not much, assuming the change can be pushed through at all. *Nothing will fundamentally change.* These taxes wouldn’t even affect well-paid workers; they only kick in at $1M.
This stuff was posted on two sites: - Ryan Grim & Jeremy Scahill’s new [Drop Site](https://www.dropsitenews.com/about) - Matt Taibbi’s [Racket News](https://www.racket.news/) I haven’t gone through all the content yet, but over the last ~6 years I’ve come to take [Jeffrey Sachs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Sachs) at his word, moreso than [Naomi Klein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein). He’s been consistently what he appears at face value. - Ryan Grim: [Jeffrey Sachs: A Front Row Seat to the Cold War That Never Ended](https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/jeffrey-sachs-a-front-row-seat-to) - Matt Taibbi: [What I Got Wrong About “Shock Therapy”](https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/what-i-got-wrong-about-shock-therapy) - Ryan Grim & Emily Jashinsky interview Matt Taibbi & Jeffery Sachs: [A True Shock? Economist Jeffrey Sachs Reveals Secret at Heart of U.S.-Russian Relations](https://www.racket.news/p/a-true-shock-economist-jeffrey-sachs) ([YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWYZpF2ngnc))
>It appears that Senator Elizabeth Warren was spot on in her assessment of the lack of a backbone for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell when it comes to raising capital requirements on the powerful megabanks on Wall Street. Powell doesn’t lack backbone. The private banking cartel largely runs the Fed, and he’s their elected capo. [The Fed is a racket.](https://archive.org/details/secretsofthetemplehowthefederalreserverunsthecountry)
I’m no expert on the [Foreign Agents Registration Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act), but the revisions to it seem to have removed “political propaganda” from it, such that it is focused on “lobbying,” so on first blush the executive branch seems to be on shaky legal ground. [BlueAnoners will eat this up, though](https://lemmy.ml/post/12360390/8655025).
[inb4 mbfc](https://lemmy.ml/post/18614458/12669247)
>There will always be some ineradicable incentive for unions to do things that benefit their own members even if they do some vague harm to society at large. Corporations will always try to exploit this incentive for their own benefit. It is easy to say in an abstract sense “Unions shouldn’t give in to that,” but in the real world, it is not easy at all. Should the United Mine Workers demand that coal mines shut down, because of the environment? Should the Machinists union tell Boeing to shut its factories where its members manufacture weapons that are used to blow up poor people on the other side of the world? Etc. Antitrust issues can sometimes be seen as just another big picture dilemma that does nothing to help working people put food on the table right now. > >In lieu of solving this timeless tension in today’s little blog post, let’s think about the more modest goal of how antitrust and organized labor can work together more effectively. First, we all have to realize that we’re all part of one holistic policy goal. We think that allowing corporations to proceed unchecked down the road to ultimate power is a bad idea. It is bad for workers, who will be crushed, and it is bad for governments, who will be co-opted, and it is bad for all citizens, who will suffer as corporate power sweeps away regulations and rearranges all of society to benefit shareholders at the expense of everything else, like AI gone awry. Organized labor should make it a point to use its own political capital—a very real weapon, if Kamala Harris wins the White House—to support antitrust efforts and protect its enforcers. And the antitrust world should correspondingly recognize the fact that simply limiting corporate power by fighting monopolies will never be enough; unless there are unions inside of the companies to constantly exercise power on behalf of the workers, there is no actual institution that will be carrying on the fight to prevent companies from just proceeding right back down the same harmful monopolistic path over and over again. We’re peas in a pod here. Don’t want huge companies and their idiot billionaire bosses to run the world? Break them up, and unionize them. It’s the best program we have.
https://beta.maps.apple.com/ It doesn’t seem to support Firefox or mobile browsers, at least not. [Maps on the web is compatible with these web browsers](https://support.apple.com/en-us/120585) >**On your Mac or iPad** >- Safari >- Edge >- Chrome > >**On your Windows PC** >- Edge >- Chrome
https://beta.maps.apple.com/ It doesn’t seem to support Firefox, or not yet at least. [Maps on the web is compatible with these web browsers](https://support.apple.com/en-us/120585) >**On your Mac or iPad** >- Safari >- Edge >- Chrome > >**On your Windows PC** >- Edge >- Chrome
>In the confidential assessments, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said 11 of the 22 large banks it supervises have “insufficient” or “weak” management of so-called operational risk, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. > >That contributed to about one-third of the banks rating three or worse on a five-point scale for their overall management, the people said. The scores are the latest sign that US regulators are concerned about the level of risk at the country’s largest banks in wake of a series of failures last year. > >Operational risk is one of the categories by which regulators evaluate overall risk at the banks they oversee. Each bank’s individual ratings are closely held, but regulators sometimes use aggregate data on banks’ grades to highlight areas of concern in discussions with other agencies and the industry.
>Our understanding of China — and U.S.-China relations — has become a defining feature of all global politics. The China Report is a new show produced in collaboration with Pivot to Peace where every week, hosts Amanda Yee and KJ Noh will be helping through all the propaganda with an independent view of the country we are told to hate, but know so little about. First two episodes: - [Exposed: Pentagon Ran Covert Anti-Vax Operation to Discredit China](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KApNmpAVuLo) - [WSJ Accuses China of Secret Spy Bases in Cuba: Cold War Madness Gets Crazier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pdhy2lzbZk) I’d never heard of Pivot to Peace. - https://peacepivot.org/ - https://www.youtube.com/@pivottopeace2492
>[…] > >But rarely do we have examples of propaganda so flagrant from our “free press” that it is hard for readers *not* to notice them. This week the state-corporate media made my job a little easier. Over the past few days, it has reported on two closely comparable events that it framed in entirely different ways. Ways that all too clearly serve state-corporate interests. > >The first such event was an Israeli air strike last Saturday on a school in Gaza, where Palestinian civilians, including children, had been sheltering from months of a rampaging Israeli military that has slaughtered many tens of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed most of the enclave’s homes and infrastructure. > >The massive scale of death and destruction in Gaza has forced the World Court to put Israel on trial for genocide – not that you would know from the media coverage. The genocide case against Israel has been largely disappeared down the memory hole. > >The second event, on Monday, was a Russian air strike on a hospital in Kyiv. It was part of a wave of attacks on Ukrainian targets that day that killed 36 Ukrainians. >Let us note too that, despite huge numbers of Palestinian women and children being killed *each day* by Israeli missiles, the news media largely stopped covering the carnage in Gaza months ago. The BBC’s main evening news barely reports it. > >The fact alone that the killing of 36 Ukrainian civilians attracted so much attention and concern from the western media, in a war that’s more than two years old, when there is a far larger daily death toll of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, which our governments have been directly aiding, and the slaughter is of more recent origin, is telling in and of itself. > >So how did our most trusted and progressive media outlets report these comparable events, in Gaza and Ukraine? > >The headlines tell much of the story. > >[…] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Cook
>After nine months of an Israeli mass murder campaign in Gaza, [the Israeli newspaper Haaretz](https://archive.is/iAgIy) has confirmed what my colleagues [Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada](https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/38861) (EI) and [Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone](https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters/) reported back in October: that Israel invoked the Hannibal Directive and killed its own citizens on Oct. 7th. > >According to one Israeli military source, Israeli forces were ordered to turn the boundary area around Gaza into a “killing zone” — thereby knowingly killing Israelis in that zone. Under the Hannibal doctrine, Israel’s aim was to kill its own people rather than let them be traded in a future exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons. The Israeli military has suppressed this killing of its own people on Oct. 7th all while manufacturing support for its rampage in Gaza ever since. > >The same establishment media outlets that have long ignored this aspect of Oct. 7th smeared my independent media colleagues at Grayzone and EI for reporting it. This includes two [hit pieces](https://thegrayzone.com/2024/01/24/washington-post-grayzone-holocaust-deniers-adl/) in the [Washington Post](https://thegrayzone.com/2024/06/06/washington-post-grayzone-editor-smear-piece/), and even more brazenly, three pieces [in Haaretz](https://archive.is/YMv6I) — which is now acknowledging [what it has repeatedly](https://archive.is/jW4D4) attacked [Max and Grayzone](https://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/2024-06-04/ty-article/report-fringe-anti-israel-news-site-editor-paid-by-iran-leaked-documents-show/0000018f-e389-dce5-abdf-e3adaf980000) for reporting.
- Scahill: [I’m leaving The Intercept and starting Drop Site News](https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/im-leaving-the-intercept-and-starting) - Ryan Grim: [This is an email I never thought I'd be sending](https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/this-is-an-email-i-never-thought) There seems to be a rash of exoduses from The Intercept going on. Two months ago, Ken Klippenstein quit for [The Grayzone](https://thegrayzone.com/author/ken-klippenstein/): [Why I'm Resigning From The Intercept](https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/why-im-resigning-from-the-intercept) Some may recall Glenn Greenwald’s exit in 2020. - [My Resignation From The Intercept](https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-intercept) - [Article on Joe and Hunter Biden Censored By The Intercept](https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored)
- [Friedrich Engels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels) - [Che Guevara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara) - [Robert Owen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Owen) - [Mao Zedong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong) - [Peter Kropotkin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin)
Also from [Jamie Zawinski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski) yesterday: [Mozilla's Original Sin](https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozillas-original-sin/) > Some will tell you that Mozilla's worst decision was to accept funding from Google, and that may have been the first domino, but I hold that implementing DRM is what doomed them, as it led to their culture of capitulation. It demonstrated that their decisions were the decisions of a *company shipping products*, not those of a *non-profit devoted to preserving the open web*. > >Those are different things and are very much in conflict. They picked one. They picked the wrong one.
>A Marine veteran and true American patriot, Mr. Ritter is also a noted former Chief UN weapons inspector, author and journalist. He was enroute to Russia to attend an international conference in St. Petersburg. - Malaysia Sun: [US seizes Scott Ritter's passport](https://www.malaysiasun.com/news/274394369/us-seizes-scott-ritters-passport) - Al Bawaba: [US confiscates former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter passport](https://www.albawaba.com/node/us-confiscates-former-un-weapons-1570652) - RT: [‘It was about sticking it to the Russians’ – Scott Ritter on US seizure of his passport](https://www.rt.com/news/598724-ritter-passport-spief-panels/) - Daily Beast: [Moscow Throws Putin Fanboy Scott Ritter Under the Bus](https://www.thedailybeast.com/moscow-throws-putin-fanboy-scott-ritter-under-the-bus) --- Ryan Grim @ The Intercept, 2020: [Joe Biden, Five Years Before Invasion, Said the Only Way of Disarming Iraq Is “Taking Saddam Down”](https://theintercept.com/2020/01/07/joe-biden-iraq-war-history/) >Biden told Ritter that no matter how thorough the inspections, the only way to eliminate the threat was to remove Saddam Hussein. […] “You and I believe, and many of us believe here, as long as Saddam is at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect you or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam’s program relative to weapons of mass destruction. […] > >Hussein, it turned out, did not have an active WMD program. > >During questioning, Biden mocked Ritter as “ol’ Scotty boy” and suggested that his demands — that the international community compel Iraq to cooperate with inspectors — if met, would give Ritter the unilateral authority to start a war in Iraq. Biden argued that such decisions belonged to higher-level officials. “I respectfully suggest they have a responsibility slightly above your pay grade, to decide whether or not to take the nation to war,” Biden said. “That’s a real tough decision. That’s why they get paid the big bucks. That’s why they get the limos and you don’t. I mean this sincerely, I’m not trying to be flip.”
http://archive.today/2024.05.30-203844/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/us/politics/biden-ukraine-russia-weapons.html
>The global War on Terror was based on a mistake. Quintupling down are we? Never change, *The Atlantic*. ETA: Not sure if there’s a paywall, so just in case: https://archive.ph/68sf0
>Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff in the Interior Department, accused US President Joe Biden of using Jews to justify US policy in the conflict. >“He is making Jews the face of the American war machine. And that is so deeply wrong,” she said, noting that ancestors of hers were killed by “state-sponsored violence.” >“I think the president has to know that there are people in his administration who think this is disastrous,” Call said of the war overall and US support for it. “Not just for Palestinians, for Israelis, for Jews, for Americans, for his election prospects.”
In case of paywall: http://archive.today/M5OFY
>Key federal agencies have resumed discussions with social media companies over removing disinformation on their sites as the November presidential election nears, a stark reversal after the Biden administration for months froze communications with social platforms amid a pending First Amendment case in the Supreme Court, a top senator said Monday. > >Mark Warner, D-Va., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters in a briefing at RSA Conference that agencies restarted talks with social media companies as the Supreme Court heard arguments in *Murthy v. Missouri*, a case that first began in the Fifth Circuit appellate court last July. The case was [fueled by allegations](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/04/biden-social-lawsuit-missouri-louisiana/) that federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were coercing platforms to remove content related to vaccine safety and 2020 presidential election results. >Foreign adversaries have been found deploying [fake social media personas](https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2024/04/china-backed-operatives-used-fake-social-profiles-gauge-us-political-division-microsoft-says/395516/) that have engaged with or provoked real-life users in an attempt to assess U.S. domestic issues and learn what political themes divide voters. > >The U.S. has been putting its foot down in diplomacy talks on election interference, telling major economic adversaries like China to not intervene in election processes come November. Two weeks ago in Shanghai and Beijing, cyberspace and digital policy ambassador Nathaniel Fick and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken gave a stern warning to Chinese officials about election dynamics. > >“The secretary … delivered a very clear message that we view interference in our domestic democratic process as dangerous and unacceptable,” Fick said in a separate RSA briefing with reporters Monday. “Diplomacy is most important when it is most challenging, which is why the discussions with the Chinese at this moment matter a lot,” he said. ![xi](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/bfbbd83b-0958-404b-8528-5f5de7eab4e6.png "emoji xi") ![putin-wink](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/64acb6c6-0b6b-4cd8-97be-d7c367bb59bb.png "emoji putin-wink") Sounds like no more rubles or Xi bucks. Back to sharing one toothbrush no iphone 😂
Emphasis original: >[NYT’s Cecilia] Kang’s thesis [[link](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/technology/tiktok-ban-bill-tech-law.html)] was premised on years’ worth of media and policymaker fearmongering that **TikTok** user data was susceptible to surveillance by the Chinese government (**BuzzFeed News**, [6/17/22](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access); **Forbes**, [10/20/22](https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2022/10/20/tiktok-bytedance-surveillance-american-user-data/?sh=7f901cce6c2d); **Guardian**, [11/7/22](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/07/tiktoks-china-bytedance-data-concerns)). According to Kang’s colleagues, the law’s enactment was prompted by “concerns that the Chinese government could access sensitive user data” (**New York Times**, [4/26/24](https://www.nytimes.com/article/tiktok-ban.html)). In 2023, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte sought to prohibit **TikTok** throughout his state on the grounds that “the Chinese Communist Party” was “collecting US users’ personal, private and sensitive information” (**Montana Free Press**, [5/17/23](https://montanafreepress.org/2023/05/17/montana-governor-signs-tiktok-ban/)). (Gianforte’s attempt was later [thwarted](https://www.npr.org/2023/11/30/1205735647/montana-tiktok-ban-blocked-state) by a federal judge.) > >If such fears were officials’ genuine motivation, one could hope that broader data-privacy regulation might follow. Yet, as the **Times** neglected to mention, the spying accusations are tenuous—and deeply cynical. As even US intelligence officials concede, apprehensions about China’s access to **TikTok** user data are strictly hypothetical (**Intercept**, [3/16/24](https://theintercept.com/2024/03/16/tiktok-china-security-threat/)). And, despite its bombshell headline “Analysis: There Is Now Some Public Evidence That China Viewed **TikTok** Data,” **CNN** ([6/8/23](https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/tech/tiktok-data-china/index.html)) cautioned that said evidence—a sworn statement from a former **ByteDance** employee—“remains rather thin.” > >Given their dubious nature, it’s hard to see these data-privacy claims as anything other than a pretext for the US to throttle TikTok. By forcing either divestment or a ban, the US, at least in theory, wins: It transfers a tremendously [lucrative](https://www.reuters.com/technology/tiktoks-us-revenue-hits-16-bln-washington-threatens-ban-ft-reports-2024-03-15/) and [influential](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/03/6-facts-about-americans-and-tiktok/) company into its own hands, or it prevents that company from serving as a platform—albeit one with [plenty](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/tiktok-risks-pushing-children-towards-harmful-content/) of problems—on which people can engage in and learn from discourses that are critical of US empire.
On how Lenin’s theory of imperialism was a conjunctural one to the period rather than a general/universal one, and how to conjuncturaly theorize on later periods, up to the present.
>At the invitation of H.E. Emmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic, H.E. Xi Jinping, President of the People's Republic of China, paid a state visit to France from May 5 to 7, 2024. The two heads of state had an in-depth exchange of views on the situation in the Middle East: > >1. As permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, China and France are working together to find constructive solutions, based on international law, to the challenges and threats to international security and stability. > >2. China and France condemn all violations of international humanitarian law, including all acts of terrorist violence and indiscriminate attacks against civilians. They recall the absolute imperative of protecting civilians in Gaza in accordance with international humanitarian law. The two heads of state expressed their opposition to an Israeli offensive on Rafah, which would lead to a humanitarian disaster on a larger scale, as well as to forced displacement of Palestinian civilians. > >3. The two heads of state stressed that an immediate and sustainable ceasefire is urgently needed to enable the delivery of large-scale humanitarian aid and the protection of civilians in the Gaza Strip. They called for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages and the guarantee of humanitarian access to meet their medical and other humanitarian needs, as well as respect for international law with regard to all detainees. They called for the immediate and effective implementation of relevant United Nations resolutions, in particular Security Council resolutions 2712, 2720 and 2728. This is the only credible way to guarantee peace and security for all and to ensure that neither Palestinians nor Israelis will suffer from the horrors they have experienced since the attack on October 7, 2023. > >4. The two heads of state called for the effective opening of all necessary corridors and crossing points to enable rapid, safe, sustainable and unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid throughout the Gaza Strip. The two heads of state stressed the importance of strengthening the coordination of international humanitarian efforts. > >5. The two heads of state called on all parties to refrain from unilateral measures on the ground that might aggravate tensions, and in this respect condemned Israel's policy of settlement construction, which violates international law and constitutes a major obstacle to lasting peace as well as to the possibility of establishing a viable and contiguous State of Palestine. The two heads of state reiterated that the future governance of Gaza cannot be dissociated from a comprehensive political settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict based on the two-State solution. > >6. The two heads of state called for a decisive and irreversible relaunch of a political process to concretely implement the two-State solution, with Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security, both with Jerusalem as their capital, and the establishment of a viable, independent and sovereign State of Palestine based on the 1967 borders. The two heads of state reaffirmed their commitment to this solution, which is the only way to meet the legitimate aspirations of the Israeli and Palestinian people for lasting peace and security. > >7. The two heads of state also expressed deep concern over the risk of escalation in the region, and called for the prevention of regional turbulence. China and France are working with their partners to deescalate the situation and call on all parties to exercise restraint. > >8. China and France reaffirm their commitment to promoting a political and diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action concluded in 2015 is a major outcome of multilateral diplomacy. The two countries are concerned about the risks of escalation, recall the importance of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and facilitation of diplomatic efforts, and reaffirm their commitment to safeguarding the international non-proliferation regime and promoting peace and stability in the Middle East. > >9. The two heads of state stressed the importance of safeguarding freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and called for an immediate cessation of attacks on civilian vessels to safeguard maritime security and global trade and prevent regional tensions and humanitarian and environmental risks. > >10. The two heads of state called for the observance of the Olympic Truce during the 2024 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Olympic Truce calls on all parties to stop hostilities throughout the Games. As conflicts spread and tensions rise, the Truce is an opportunity to work toward a durable resolution of conflicts in full respect of international law.
https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2024 >**International Reporting: Staff of The New York Times** > >For its wide-ranging and revelatory coverage of Hamas’ lethal attack in southern Israel on October 7, Israel’s intelligence failures and the Israeli military’s sweeping, deadly response in Gaza. Context: The Intercept: [“Between the Hammer and the Anvil”](https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schwartz-october-7/) *The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Exposé* >Israel promised it had extraordinary amounts of eyewitness testimony. “Investigators have gathered ‘tens of thousands’ of testimonies of sexual violence committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, according to the Israeli police, including at the site of a music festival that was attacked,” Schwartz, Gettleman, and Stella reported on December 4. Those testimonies never materialized. >“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Abdush’s sister, that in a short timespan “they raped her, slaughtered her, and burned her?” Speaking about the rape allegation, her brother-in-law said: “The media invented it.” >“There is nothing,” Schwartz said she was told. “There was no collection of evidence from the scene.” Vanity Fair: [*New York Times* Launches Leak Investigation Over Report on Its Israel-Gaza Coverage](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/new-york-times-israel-gaza-leak) *Management has questioned staffers, including Daily producers, after The Intercept revealed internal debate over a yet-to-air episode on Hamas weaponizing sexual violence. Such a probe is highly unusual, say staffers, one of whom dubbed it a “witch hunt.”*
>The economic base of fascism has always been the petit bourgeois, or as I like to call them, the roofing class. Small business owners. The guys who have a handful of contractors and pay 1,200 bucks a month on an F-150 Raptor that’s never been used for any kind of manual labor. >Every worker in this country has always been at the mercy of the elite, but not the elite fascists assume are pulling the strings. It’s not a shadow cabal of elite Jews, it’s just the people who own the means of production. They’re not shy about it. People like Warren Buffet routinely admit there’s a class war being waged, and that the capitalists want to make sure that they win it. >On the whole, there’s a reason the ruling class tolerates fascism and not socialism. Socialism is genuinely revolutionary, whereas fascism is just a cancerous offshoot of capitalism that can, in their mind, be used as a tool when needed. >What we’re seeing today has the same hallmarks of every other period where fascism has grown in popularity: economic insecurity, the formation of fascist paramilitaries, and a series of charismatic figures trying to tap into the rising tide of far-right populism for personal gain.