Source: WLOS 13 News
“President Joe Biden offered a message of resilience to open his second State of the Union address Tuesday night in front of a joint session of Congress in a packed U.S. Capitol filled with lawmakers and their families, Cabinet officials, Supreme Court justices and guests from around the country.” (02/07/23)
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“War is organized, violent conflict between nation-state regimes. To be anti-war is to oppose such conflict, period, end of story. One might be anti-war on pacifist, non-interventionist, or isolationist grounds, or for other reasons, but it’s a specific orientation. If you oppose war as such, whatever your reasons, you’re anti-war. If you support any war, for any reason or based on any justification, you’re not anti-war. Because words mean things. I’m anti-war. I’m neither a pacifist nor an isolationist. I’m non-interventionist, but non-interventionism is corollary to, not the basis for, my position. And my anti-war position is, in turn, a product of my position on nation-state regimes as such. In my view, they are simply violent criminal organizations. Their disputes are of a piece with turf wars between mafia ‘families’ or brawls between street gangs — the difference is one of degree, not kind.” (02/07/23)
Source: Free Talk Live
“AI Porn Deepfake Controversy :: The Inevitable Rise of AI, and What It Could Mean :: 2023-02-07 Ian, Aria.” (02/07/23
Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]
“Russian forces ramped up a winter assault in [seceded republics formerly part of] eastern Ukraine, bringing tens of thousands of freshly mobilised troops to the battlefield, while Kyiv expected Moscow to broaden its offensive as towns in the northeast and south came under fire. Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday that 1,030 Russian troops were killed over 24 hours, the highest daily toll of the war. The figure could not be independently verified, and Russia has also claimed to have killed large numbers of Ukrainian troops in recent weeks. … Fighting has focused for months around Ukrainian-held Bakhmut in eastern Donetsk [People’s Republic], a city with a pre-war population of around 75,000. Russia has made clear progress towards encircling it from both the north and south, but Kyiv says its garrison is holding fast.” (02/08/23)
Source: EconLog
by Pierre Lemieux
“If protection against imports from country C (say, China) by the state of country A (say, the United States) is good, then an embargo by the government of C on exports to A must be good too. Anybody in A, or at least its government, should cheer. Something similar may happen regarding Chinese exports of some equipment used to manufacture solar panel components. The Wall Street Journal reports … ‘China’s Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Science and Technology are considering adding advanced technology used in the production of ingots and wafers, some of the building blocks of solar panels, to a list of technologies that are subject to export controls.’ Such a ban would cause an increase in the world prices of these high-tech machines and of solar panels. No surprise that American producers of solar panels, who can’t compete with Chinese producers at current prices, are thrilled …” (02/07/23)
https://www.econlib.org/the-protectionist-beauty-of-trade-embargoes/
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatar state media]
“A court in South Korea has ruled in favour of a Vietnamese woman who was shot and lost family members when South Korean marines massacred civilians during the Vietnam War. The ruling on Tuesday in favour of Nguyen Thi Thanh marks the first time a court in South Korea has acknowledged state liability and the need to compensate victims of the slaughter in Phong Nhi village in Vietnam’s central Quang Nam province where some 70 civilians were killed in 1968, local media reported. Compensation amounting to some 30 million won (almost $24,000) was ordered to be paid by the South Korean government to Nguyen Thi Thanh, with interest …. the court dismissed the state’s argument that it could not be held liable owing to agreements signed at the time of the war between South Korea, the then-South Vietnamese government, and the United States.” (02/07/23)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/7/s-korea-court-rules-in-favour-of-vietnam-war-massacre-victim
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“[Florida Governor Ron DeSantis] is asking the Florida legislature to give him another $12 million to ‘relocate’ undocumented immigrants, which will enable him to do more of what he did to those Venezuelan immigrants to new groups of undocumented immigrants. … the scheme was to induce the immigrants to sign consent forms and then transport them to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and then just dump them there. The goal of the scheme was to embarrass the residents of Martha’s Vineyard, who have expressed sympathy for the plight of immigrants in general. DeSantis was convinced that once he dumped the immigrants into Martha’s Vineyard, the residents there would treat them in the same way that DeSantis was treating them — like garbage. In that way, he would expose the hypocrisy of people ‘on the left.’ Actually, however, the scheme blew up in DeSantis’s face, in several respects.” (02/07/23)
https://www.fff.org/2023/02/07/desantis-is-doubling-down-on-immigrant-abuse/
Source: CoinDesk
“A federal judge rejected a joint request to modify Sam Bankman-Fried’s bail conditions to allow him to use certain messaging tools. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, of the Southern District of New York, said the motion is ‘denied without prejudice’ until a hearing on Thursday. An attorney for the former FTX exchange CEO requested on Monday that he be allowed to use certain unencrypted messaging applications, as well as WhatsApp with the use of monitoring software.” (02/07/23)
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“The American presidency has grown more ritualistic over the years in ways great and small. In his role as commander in chief (the title is imperator in Latin, producing emperor in English) the president has taken on more martial splendor, giving military salutes as though he were a uniformed officer, in contradiction of traditional etiquette, and increasingly accompanied by military displays of one kind or another. … Washington has gone title-crazy, with people referring in the most ridiculous way to ‘Leader McConnell’ and ‘Leader Jeffries,’ while men and women decades out of office continue to insist on being referred to as ‘Governor X’ or ‘Ambassador X’ or ‘Mr. Speaker,’ or ‘Secretary X’ as though these were lifelong titles of nobility rather than temporary job titles held by certain public servants. … We have built a sad little ersatz nobility without the, you know, nobility.” (02/07/23)
Source: JimBovard.com
by James Bovard
“African-American slavery was a profound injustice, and we should not downplay that abhorrent part of our nation’s past. But the 1619 Project is riddled with errors that have been debunked across the ideological spectrum by economic historian Phil Magness (who has done the best debunking), Professor Gordon Wood, the World Socialist Web Site, and many other respectable critics. The 1619 Project’s most harebrained idea is that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery. This notion is impossible to reconcile with the fact that the conflict erupted in northern colonies with few slaves. The 1619 storyline could not have passed the laugh test unless many Americans were clueless on the British brutality that sparked the war.” (02/07/23)
https://jimbovard.com/blog/2023/02/07/slavery-by-parliament-sparked-american-revolution/