She also said the contents [of the backpack] would have been discovered inevitably through a federal search warrant.

Coulda woulda shoulda.

If that sets a precedent (or already is one), goodbye due process and any charade of protection from searches by law enforcement.

In school I learned that just because a warrant would very likely be granted doesn’t mean the police can skip that step.

But as we know the rule of law means the rule of the legal system over the lower classes.

There was a published exchange between former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and former US President Bill Clinton from the 1990s, in which Chrétien made a strong arguments for Canada’s nominal sovereignty in terms of how it benefits the US position. For example, Canada can take the side of the US in international relations; a state or even multiple states cannot do that. The subordination of Canadian intelligence (CISA) to the US via Five and more Eyes is another example: the US can use CISA to provide legal cover for surveilling US citizens.

I can’t wait for Huawei and ZTE hardware to be made legal in the west again. Can’t hide behind “the Chinese have backdoors in that hardware” projection when the Chinese have taken advantage of the US’ backdoors.

I feel like I am missing context here. I don’t understand why clicking a phishing link leads to getting beaten by cops and charged with a made up offense.

Every accusation is projection.

I’m not familiar with Webb but IIRC Aaron Good talks about the nexus between intelligence, organized crime, and finance capital, calling it the Deep State in his book American Exception.

Precisely.

Without reading the article the headline and summary remind me of a sales meeting I was roped into at my previous employer.

The sales manager said sales to Chinese firms were very good in the moment, but that can change at any moment because the government is completely unpredictable. All I could do was laugh internally.

The cruelty is the point.

They must be a housewarming committee.

I’d still like to see all the never-released documents but those are long gone by now.

That’s close to the original distinction between Aspergers and Autism. Aspergers were highly exploitable high performing workers, Autistic people were too disabled to be useful and thus fed to the gas chambers.

The downside of neurodivergent awareness in liberal societies will inevitably be that subsets of neurodivergents will be hyperexploited while the rest will be further marginalized.

It’s also cool that countries like the US and Germany want records of autistic people. Where have we seen this before?

Yes I see that now. Thank you.

Whoops, thanks.

This is a complaint about Epstein though. I wouldn’t put it past Trump either but he’s not named or alluded to in the document.

Going after prescription opoid profiteers when.

The Russians don’t want us to do it.

The Russians are the eviliest of evil.

Therefore whatever the Russians don’t want must be good.

It doesn’t matter if it’s illegal as per our own laws.

It’s moral to ignore laws your enemy insists on following.

over budget and fall behind schedule

Completely normal. The US government rewards contractors with “cost plus” contracts and typically no or minimal late penalties. Cost means “whatever you end up spending to build the thing”, the plus is a nominal margin on top.

If that model sounds like it’s ripe for corruption and exploitation, that’s because it is.

The Green Party (ostensibly green stands for environmentalism but in reality stands for US dollars and military) has, even before its inception in the late 1970s, been against nuclear power. Until 2011 the conservative governing coalitions had kept existing reactors running (none had been built since the 80s). With the Fukushima incident in 2011 there was no way the Greens nor the German public would accept the extension of reactor operation permits. Germans are fed anti-nuclear energy views from early childhood and as a whole rabidly against it; the most popular bumper sticker is probably “Atomkraft? Nein Danke”.

I don’t know the history of the anti-nuclear-power groups which came together and created the Green party in the late 1970s. What I can say however is that similarly active US based environmental groups like the Sierra Club were optimistially pro-nuclear in the 1960s. Moving into the 1970s gas companies infiltrated and funded these groups, turning them into virulently anti-nuclear power activist organizations to the financial benefit of the gas industry. These relationships continue to this day.

Ironically not only did the “Atomausstieg” make Germany more reliant on imported fuel, the push for renewables has led to a grid that needs to be stabilized by French nuclear, Polish coal, and Scandinavian hydro.