technocrit

Supply-side progressivism is forging unexpected alliances between populist Democrats, business-friendly centrists, and MAGA Republicans around militarized growth. The result is a post-neoliberal politics that accommodates authoritarian populism.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/29826178

The Senate has passed a bill making Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the U.S.'s largest interior law enforcement agency with funding for Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agenda higher than most of the world's militaries, including Israel's.

Pending its passage in the House of Representatives, Trump's bill could mean a massive increase in ICE funding as part of an immigration enforcement agenda worth $150 billion over four years.

This figure is more than the annual military budget of Italy, which at $30.8 billion, is the world's 16th highest defense spender for this year according to tracker Global Fire Power.

It is also higher than military spending for Israel, ($30 billion), the Netherlands ($27 billion) and Brazil ($26.1 billion).

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/29826178

The Senate has passed a bill making Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the U.S.'s largest interior law enforcement agency with funding for Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agenda higher than most of the world's militaries, including Israel's.

Pending its passage in the House of Representatives, Trump's bill could mean a massive increase in ICE funding as part of an immigration enforcement agenda worth $150 billion over four years.

This figure is more than the annual military budget of Italy, which at $30.8 billion, is the world's 16th highest defense spender for this year according to tracker Global Fire Power.

It is also higher than military spending for Israel, ($30 billion), the Netherlands ($27 billion) and Brazil ($26.1 billion).

We begin our July Fourth special broadcast with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. The late actor James Earl Jones read the historic address during a performance of Voices of a People’s History of the United States, which was co-edited by Howard Zinn.

Amid US and Israeli aggression, segments of the Iranian diaspora push a narrative that frames foreign intervention as liberation, manufacturing consent for the killing of their own

While data center power usage remained roughly the same from 2005 to 2017 as increases in efficiency offset the increase in online services, data centers doubled their energy consumption by 2023 from those earlier numbers. The power running into those data centers is 48% more carbon intensive than the US average already, and expected to rise as new data centers push for increased fossil fuel usage, like Meta in Louisiana or the X data center found to be using methane generators in violation of the Clean Air Act.

The U.S. government is preparing to breed billions of flies and dump them out of airplanes over Mexico and southern Texas to fight a flesh-eating maggot.

That sounds like the plot of a horror movie, but it is part of the government's plans for protecting the U.S. from a bug that could devastate its beef industry, decimate wildlife and even kill household pets. This weird science has worked well before.

Carnists would rather breed the next plague and cover the planet in flies than stop torturing and murdering animals. It's a great plot for a horror movie except in real life.

This week on CounterSpin: White supremacy, Islamophobia and antisemitism are irreducible dangers in themselves. They are also tools that powerful, wealthy people take up to protect their power and wealth, and to deflect everyone’s attention from who is, actually, day to day, threatening all of our well-being. That brazenness (everything is in peril!)—and that skullduggery (you know who’s the problem? your different-looking neighbor!)—are both in evidence in corporate media’s hellbent, throw-it-all-at-the-wall campaign against democratic socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

We’ll talk about how elite news media are Trojan-horsing their hatred for any ideas that threaten their ill-gotten gains, via very deep, very serious “concerns” about Mamdani as a person, with Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon, longtime political activists, writers and co-founders of the emphatically nonpartisan group RootsAction.

At a panel hosted by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) in London on Saturday, experts accused mainstream Western media of contributing to the denial and distortion of atrocities unfolding in Gaza.

Omar al-Ghazzi, Associate Professor of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics, called the trend “a war on history.” He warned that the use of media narratives as future historical sources could shape how upcoming generations understand the events in Gaza.

The panel also pointed to specific language patterns in coverage. Hanif noted that the term “massacre” appeared 18 times more often when referring to Hamas attacks than to Israeli attacks on Palestinians. He said this imbalance reflected a wider rhetorical bias and an uncritical acceptance of Israeli government claims—particularly those targeting local journalists in Gaza.

British-Israeli journalist Rachel Shabi said Israel has consistently framed its ban on international reporters entering Gaza as a safety measure, while accusing Palestinian journalists of links to Hamas. She criticised international media outlets for accepting these narratives without challenge. Historian Avi Shlaim described Israel’s media strategy as an aggressive propaganda campaign designed to suppress criticism by labelling opponents as antisemitic.

For decades, Israel has tested the limits of international law by bombing its enemies when it says it feels threatened.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/42973930

Under this plan, SpaceX’s satellites would play a big role in the Space Force’s kill chain.