I suspect Liberia is just going to do something similar to what it was originally designed for - to be the dumping ground for former U.S slaves.

Being one of the poorest places in the world, I doubt it has a particularly robust immigration system.

So he’s originally from El Salvador.

1. He was going to be deported, so he designated El Salvador as the destination.
2. A judge blocked his deportation to El Salvador.
3. He was “by mistake” deported to El Salvador.
4. The courts told the administration to bring him back.
5. The administration said they couldn’t find him. Repeat 4 and 5 up the court ladder.
6. The Supreme Court told them to bring him back.
7. He was “found” and brought back to the US to face charges.
8. He designated Costa Rica as a country he’d be willing to be deported to, because he couldn’t be deported to El Salvador.
9. The Head of ICE says they have “decided to disregard” that, and they’ve negotiated to deport him to a completely different continent, because it would be “prejudicial to the United States” to deport him to Costa Rica. There is no indication he has any relation to Liberia.

ICE claims that preventing deporting him to Liberia is a “direct contradiction to established judicial norms” - as though it’s normal to deport people to entirely different places to where they’re from.

They’re punishing him because the Supreme Court embarrassed the administration, and now they’re reminding everyone that they were schooled by their own stooges. If they deported him to Costa Rica, the media might not have even picked this back up.

They also have a $73 billion nuclear and gas collaboration to build next-generation small modular reactors and natural gas power plants.

This article seems to want to push the idea that Japan is distancing itself meaningfully. Japan is making deals with both Iran and US - Japanese media just announced Iran is allowing Japan access through the Strait. Make no mistake, the Takaichi government is a conservative government, with all that entails. And Japan is forever finding ways to bend around legal constraints without breaking rules outright.

Swap the names and this could have been an article from where I am. I’d give examples but it’s a small enough place that I try not to mention it online these days.

The military action against workers doesn’t surprise me, but the eugenics sex change law thing was a truly bizarre law to begin with - and 2013 is… quite late. I’m guessing the name “Sweden democrats” is deceptive given that vote.

I’m happy to live here, but we’re not some utopia.

I hear you, I’m in the same situation. And thanks for the links, I’ve learned a lot more about Sweden than I have in many years!

I hope we both are fortunate enough to make and experience progress again in our lifetimes.

Thanks for being real about it. As a non-Swedish-speaker living outside Scandinavia, I could only suspect that the frequent lionizing of Scandinavia (and dismissal of counterpoints with the magic word “homogenous”) was another flavor of white supremacy. I’m sorry that you’re dealing with exactly the same bullshit as many other places though.

Sounds like I have reading to do later. This might partly explain why the Human Rights Watch records for Yugoslavia are sealed for the next 15+ years.

This is what bothers me when I see the phrase “Trump’s war on Iran”. It both diminishes the responsibility of all of the other people making it happen and erases the atrocities occurring in other places directly affected by the conflict.

I’m glad Lebanon is finally getting some coverage but dismayed that it took so much violence to get around to that. I also wonder how many more places and people are getting no coverage at all. While it’s a largely separate conflict, the near total silence about the war in Sudan is a good example.

Persona’s exposed code compares your selfie to watchlist photos using facial recognition, screens you against 14 categories of adverse media from mentions of terrorism to espionage, and tags reports with codenames from active intelligence programs consisting of public-private partnerships to combat online child exploitative material, cannabis trafficking, fentanyl trafficking, romance fraud, money laundering, and illegal wildlife trade

In the 1930’s, IBM subsidiary companies were responsible for the census data and concentration camp cataloguing systems in Nazi Germany (and it’s invaded territories). The numbers tattooed on prisoners were five-digit IBM Hollerith numbers, corresponding to their dedicated punch card. With an estimated 40k+ camps of different types, the machine leases would have been very lucrative for IBM. They won’t say how lucrative, and they made sure they had complex financial setups through “neutral” countries.

IBM systems also underpinned the concentration “internment” camps in the US holding people of Japanese background. But of course, they’re much louder about their 1930’s history in winning the US Social Security contract - older SSNs were also Hollerith numbers.

It would be amusing that punch cards were a more secure system if history didn’t look like it was rapidly repeating.

There was a controversial article in Slate from a decade ago about “double hit” drivers killing people because of the perception that paying the compensation for someone’s death was cheaper than paying for someone’s lifelong disability care, might that be it?

But even if true, that still seems a little different than what “paying to get out of murder” implies.

They executed Bai Tianhui a few months ago for taking $156 million in bribes in his role as a financial services manager. If he couldn’t buy his way out of a bribery conviction, I’m not sure how much buying your way out of a murder would cost.

They also jailed the former justice minister 3 years ago for life for concealing his brother’s crimes and taking bribes, so I’m guessing that even if it used to be a popular option, it might be a bit harder now.

What an excellent shot, the photographer must have been very pleased with themselves!

Reposting the comment I made in the other thread here too:

The bottom half is a cropped section of the top, which unfortunately detracts from the very real tragedy of the far too many people pictured.

Because they’re using them in their products, or the non-public infrastructure that keeps the product running, or their teams are using them internally.

Check the licenses of the projects you listed. If they allow free commercial use, you can assume those products are key to the software somewhere.

Don’t underestimate how much of big tech is made of OSS - companies will always take free stuff. They pay them because if the projects die or are compromised, so are their paid products.

The bottom half is a cropped section of the top, which unfortunately detracts from the very real tragedy of the far too many people pictured.

That’s not how you spell “abduction”

The headline for this article from Jan 30 is probably sufficient explanation for that: US approves major new arms sales to Israel worth $6.67 billion and to Saudi Arabia worth $9 billion

Note that the guardian article also says the decision to attack Iran was made end of November 2025. They stockpiled exactly for this situation. Admittedly that’s supposedly mostly ground equipment, not bombs, but that also raises further questions about the intent.

Because she’s named in very few of the lawsuits as defendant, and all the victim testimony indicates that she primarily groomed them and occasionally participated in the rape? Because she is included in very few of the financial and political conversations in the files? If she played a bigger role, don’t you think she would have featured a little more prominently in both of those categories?

You don’t need insider knowledge, a solid decade of court transcripts, victim statements, and emails are right there to read.

Behind every man

Or perhaps you just prefer thought-terminating cliches.

Maxwell obviously is entirely complicit in trafficking, abuse and rape. But the eugenics, political manipulation, and money laundering were pretty clearly Epstein’s bag.

All of finances, the extent and details of rapes, probably murders, and I assume even more horrors. Maxwell groomed kids for Epstein and occasionally took part in the rape, but for the most part wasn’t in the room, by choice. Maxwell seemed to be far more interested in just living a life of luxury.

Unfortunately Epstein was the main person who really knew each and every skeleton in all of the closets across the entire global corrupt system. The others who would probably be better informed than Maxwell, like his lawyer and accountant, are very free.

Aw, he just needed the right person. Thanks for being that person. And thanks for being a person who shares all their nice pics and stories with the rest of us.

The little head bump gets me right in the heart.

Probably referencing the 23andme kit mail out Epstein did. Yeah. It’s all pretty dire.