Free Republic

Is Texas not a castle doctrine state?

I think if you call the cops to do something about the corpse hanging out of your window they be able to do something.

The samurai were officially abolished as a caste in Japanese society during the Meiji Restoration in 1867.

The first ever fax machine, the ‘printing telegraph,’ was invented in 1843.

Abraham Lincoln was famously assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in 1865.

Which means there was a 22-year window in which a samurai could have sent a fax to Abraham Lincoln.

Russian milbloggers reported it:

Russian military bloggers with close army links did report an incident over the Azov Sea.

“It will be another dark day for the Russian Aerospace Forces and Air Defense,” wrote Rybar, a blogger with nearly 1.2 million subscribers who supports and provides running commentary on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“There are not many A-50s. And the specialists operating them are generally rare. If an aircraft of this type is hit, the crew will not be able to escape.”

Telegram channel WarGonzo acknowledged that the A-50 had been destroyed.

So they took to flying them farther south, overland. But not far enough...

We'll probably hear in a few weeks that new planes have been operating in theater.

Geez, can’t you just tell me why the Soviets went along with it?

Question for the moon landing conspiracy: what rationale did the Soviets have for not pointing out it was fake?

Correct. It will not generate a return. It's just a medium of exchange that the government cannot print, and so over time it will continue to reflect the destructive acts of the monetary authorities over the mediums of exchange that they can print.

Link? Not saying you're making things up like some people, but I'd like to see the same info you did before writing that.

It doesn’t make sense for a number of reasons regardless of whether they were white or darker skinned.

Because most juvenile shootings are underpinned with ironclad logic and reason?

Not exactly:

The canal’s highest point is 89 feet above sea level.
That’s why it has locks.

‘Legacy banking financial controls’ are how the Canadian government seized the assets of protestors.
Among Bitcoin’s advantages is not having this ‘legacy’.
Deficits are projected to be a minimum of 1 trillion dollars a year for the next decade.
The inability of the government to print Bitcoin and hand them out are why U.S. dollars will continue to decline in value relative to Bitcoin.

An enormously larger amount of energy is spent keeping the lights on at the legacy banking institutions, and compared to banking peers the mining community is actually more likely to use high efficiency renewables like geothermal to power their enterprises.
It is important to remember it isn’t a ‘waste’ to maintain a currency that the government cannot abrogate by force, or print at their whim and thereby devalue.
US dollars will continue to decline in value relative to Bitcoin because the U.S. monetary authorities will never stop inflating the currency to buy votes with dollars they refuse to tax.

2/3rds of the people in this state don’t want marijuana to be criminalized.

Anyone who believes in individual freedom shouldn’t object to the possession of a plant, as it constitutes no trespass on the rights of any individual, ergo it is not a crime.

Matt Tiabbi:

Monday, the independent website Consortium News filed suit against the United States of America and Newsguard Technologies. The complaint targeting both the government and a private media ratings service is an important one, putting the censorship-by-proxy system on trial.

On September 7, 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense gave an award of $749,387 to Newsguard Technologies, a private service that scores media outlets on “reliability” and “trust.” According to the suit, roughly 40,000 subscribers buy Newsguard subscriptions, getting in return a system of “Nutrition Labels” supposedly emphasizing “safe” content. Importantly, Newsguard’s customers include universities and libraries, whose users are presented with labels warning you that CBS is great and Tucker Carlson is dangerous.

Consortium News was labeled a purveyor of “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “false content,” and, worst of all, “anti-U.S.” This is despite the fact that, according to the suit, Newsguard only flagged six articles out of the tens of thousands Consortium News has published since the late award-winning reporter Robert Parry founded it in 1995. As Consortium News points out, Newsguard downgrades its entire 20,000+ library of available online articles with these flags based on the handful of edge cases, all of which involve criticism of U.S. foreign policy.

A particular irony is that Parry, a decorated AP and Newsweek reporter, founded Consortium News specifically to address topics suppressed by mainstream editors. Now Parry’s old site is being downgraded for dissenting reports on subjects like the 2014 Ukrainian coup and neo-Nazism in Ukraine, coincidentally topics that are “the subject of NewsGuard’s ‘Misinformation Fingerprints’ project that is under contract with the Cyber Command,” as the suit reads.

Newsguard denies it’s influenced by the government. In fact, its denials are part of the reason for the suit. When Michael Shellenberger and I testified before Congress in March, we mentioned Newsguard as a “government-funded” ratings service. I was quickly contacted by email by co-CEO Gordon Crovitz, who hastened to correct me: Newsguard isn’t government-funded, but merely an organization that receives government funds. He wrote:

As is public, our work for the Pentagon’s Cyber Command is focused on the identification and analysis of information operations targeting the US and its allies conducted by hostile governments, including Russia and China.

Our analysts alert officials in the US and in other democracies, including Ukraine, about new false narratives targeting America and its allies, and we provide an understanding of how this disinformation spreads online. We are proud of our work countering Russian and Chinese disinformation on behalf of Western democracies.

Crovitz added that “contrary to claims made in the hearings, we oppose any government involvement in rating news sources,” saying Newsguard “is entirely independent and free of any outside influence, including from the U.S. or any other government.”

The letter, CC’ed to co-CEO and editor Stephen Brill, was subject-lined “Inaccuracies relating to NewsGuard.” I immediately wrote back:

Crovitz didn’t answer at the time, but Newsguard did simultaneously release the letter to the UK-based Press-Gazette. When I reached out for comment again after the filing of this litigation this week, asking once again how “government-funded” could be inaccurate, Crovitz finally answered, writing:

“We are ‘government funded’ in the same way that Verizon is ‘government funded: We have licensed data to the government for a fee, just as Verizon has provided telco services for a fee.”

He added:

The government pays us both for our commercial offerings. Our Pentagon contract is a single-digit percent of our revenues.

So, they are government-funded, just not wholly government-funded. These are the people rating others on accuracy, remember.

The conceit about funding isn’t complicated, but it works. Because Newsguard has other customers, it can claim to be an “independent” news service that just happens to downgrade news reports that contradict and/or criticize the policy of its major client, the Department of Defense. It’s censorship, but through a silencer. As the Consortium News suit reads:

NewsGuard and the United States in violation of the First Amendment are carrying out a governmental program under the “Misinformation Fingerprints” contract to publicly label, target and stigmatize news organizations as disfavored, unreliable, as journalistically not responsible… where said organizations differ or dissent from U.S. policy.

The suit also details what I think is the more insidious part of the system. In the guise of an independent news service, Newsguard contacts outlets and interrogates them about disputed content, not-so-subtly pressing for retractions. Again, from the suit:

In the course of the government contract, NewsGuard and the United States have acted to retaliate against those news entities and media organizations that refuse to retract or correct their articles; such retaliation consists of the “false content” warnings, the red flag and associated content described in this Amended Complaint…

Racket received one of these irritating queries this year. Call it what you want, but it comes down to Pentagon Cyber Command giving a big check to “analysts” who happen to slap red revenue-sapping warning tags on outlets that report on controversial topics like war or government censorship.

As I wrote to Newsguard when they contacted me, “media outlets should gain and lose trust based on how they are evaluated by audiences, not paid services.” This system allows institutions like the Department of Defense that have no legal remit to meddle in the domestic news landscape to pressure private media outlets.

That’s over and above the DoD’s already hugest-on-earth-by-far public relations budget. Think of the scale of petty determination one must have to spend over $500 million a year on messaging and be so dissatisfied with the results that you feel the need to spend more on private services that downgrade independent news critics. It’s particularly grating that your tax dollars are spent hiring private services that label news outlets using terms like “anti-US.” State-sponsored impugning of patriotism is a bold stroke, even by the low moral standards of the anti-disinformation era.

“When media groups are condemned by the government as ‘anti-U.S.’,” said Bruce Afran, attorney for Consortium News, “the result is self-censorship and a destruction of the public debate intended by the First Amendment.”

I was remiss in not getting this story up before, but will have more as the case goes on.

Consortium News is seeking “a permanent injunction… barring the government and NewsGuard from continuing such practices” and “more than $13 million in damages for defamation and civil rights violations.”

It never ceases to amaze me that people twist historical observation into ‘taking sides’, as though one couldn’t explain Hitler’s motivations unless they themselves adopted the Nazi creed.
It’s asinine, and here we have it.
The neocons wars for the last 33 years have gained the U.S. what exactly? Aside from trillions in debt, hundreds of thousands killed, or physically and mentally wounded, domestic spying with a ‘Homeland Security Dept’ to coordinate the domestic spying among the agencies of the Federal government. What’s been the ‘win’ to make all that worthwhile? To shovel billions more at the next war and wait for the terrorists attacks at home denouncing our overseas adventures?
Trump won denouncing their stupid wars, and if he’s to win again, it will be to wind down their stupid wars.

Neocons in absolute panic as younger generation learns their wars have done nothing to benefit our country, just the opposite…

Why the eagerness for censorship on X?

Source? A million rounds per day is a fantasy number.

WASHINGTON, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Russia may be able to increase production of artillery in the next couple years to about 2 million shells annually, about double some previous Western expectations but still far short of Moscow's Ukraine war needs, a Western official said on Friday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, estimated Russia fired between 10 million and 11 million rounds last year in Ukraine.

GM hasn’t halted EV production.

They’ve extended the timeline for converting one of their factories to full time EV production.

New electric versions of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra that were supposed to be produced at Orion Assembly will be assembled at GM's Factory Zero in Detroit, the company said. Limited production of the Silverado EV is underway, while Sierra is scheduled to begin next year.