Yep fuck Sinclair broadcasting too, but as you can see, the only news covering this is from local Indiana news reporting.

Yeah fuck the intercept, not really the point.

My point is that while big news networks are fucking around it’s the locals news and individuals who are getting fucked over the most by this bullshit who are actually trying to make sure this shit doesn’t get buried

True, there was not a whole lot of mainstream media coverage of assange but there were journalists from places like the intercept and I believe rolling stone or vice also covering it.

In this case, and many cases all over the country lately, I’m finding that tiny local news outlets are doing a better job keeping us informed than mainstream media or even larger less mainstream news outlets.

Also realized that if this was a case of spying it would seem very unlikely he would have a lawyer at his residence while it was being raided but who tf knows. Not us.

What are you talking about. State secrets are well protected by Elon Musk

Yeah, if only we had a free press that could keep the public informed about matters so we could know what the fuck is actually going on anymore.

It’s especially weird the university just didn’t release a statement about it or anything.

It definitely could go either way

If we actually still had a free press, you would expect this to be getting some coverage and for there to be some kind of statement from the University’s lawyers saying they were cooperating with the FBI if this guy was legitimately wanted for shady dealings.

It’s fucking sad that we all read this and have to think, is this the FBI handling a legitimate threat or is this why DHS keeps complaining about Civil Rights Offices standing in their way.

Yeesh nvm. I need night nights

Pretty positive there is no actual plan to improve cybersecurity, it’s a facade to quietly hand over power and control to the national guard to keep people in line.

The same day the emergency order was signed by the governor, he announced he was restructuring GOHSEP (governors office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness) under the National guard as part of his state DOGE plan to cut waste and save money.

The emergency order grants the director of GOHSEP authority to act however they seem fit to handle cybersecurity. But on the same day the director of GOHSEP was given a new title, and is no longer director.

The “acting director” is now Louisiana National Guard Brig. Gen. Jason P. Mahfouz

Here is a summary of everything: https://lemm.ee/post/59671562

But tldr for even that: One day last week the governor just declared he was suddenly moving the entire office that handles state emergencies (Governor’s office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness-GOHSEP) under the control of the state’s national guard.

On the same day he also suddenly announced he was Renewing a previous state of emergency that was created by the previous governor to address a cyber attack.

For some unknown reason that nobody has addressed, he added a new section to the renewed executive order that essentially says the director of GOHSEP has authority to do whatever he deems necessary to handle cybersecurity.

Except when he moved GOHSEP to be controlled by the National Guard, he also removed the director of the office and gave him a new title. So there is no actual director.

A member of the National Guard is acting director, so it would appear that the governor basically handed very broad control of cybersecurity to the national guard in a very underhandeded way hoping nobody would notice

So I updated some stuff and yeah this seems very strange. The original order was in 2019 after an attack on some government servers. I had somehow forgotten that in 2023, the government admitted that there had been an ongoing cybersecurity attack on Louisiana OMV data and that essentially every adult in the state had their data breached (it’s been a bit of a hectic year).

https://pimento-mori.ghost.io/comparing-edwards-original-state-of-emergency-cybersecurity-incident-with-landrys-renewal-2/

The governor is a former lawyer, so someone might even suggest it was left intentionally vague?

I do have face unlock option but it’s showing in settings it’s never been set up. No app permissions I wasn’t aware of except android system intelligence. I tried to switch it to always ask permission but it just disappeared

Yeah I went ahead and just deleted it, but I’m very confused why it’s showing any app associated with that email. It was literally just a throwaway email I used once so I wouldn’t have to use my main account.

When I tried to log in to Google play using that email it said I needed to accept the terms and conditions bc I’d never logged in before.

What’s weird is that’s a throwaway email address I made to sign up for something but never used otherwise. Like I had never actually logged into the playstore with that address

No, I used my lock code

Thank you for your reply!

Again, I am sorry if my understanding is way off base. So the house of Lords are all elected, and and peers are selected by elected members?

How much sway do individual peers currently have?

I’m not sure if a good U.S. comparison (if one exists) to peers needing to be vetted would be similar to U.S. lobbyists or if peers have more direct roles in law making, similar positions that individuals in the U.S. are nominated for (such as Kratsios’ OSTP nomination), which then has to be approved by the Senate.

In the case of U.S. nominees for executive positions, they are supposed to be vetted by bipartisan committees of elected senators that will not pass them on to be nominated by the entire Senate if they are not fit to serve those positions. It’s supposed to act like a safeguard, because once fitness is approved by those committees, it would basically take an act of God (for some reason) to keep the main Senate vote from approving the nomination. While I think it’s a good thing those committees exist, they also fail horribly to do what they’re actually supposed to do.

This U.S. election in particular has shown us what a joke that entire process is, and not only resulted in approval of Kratsios’ nomination by a Senate committee which s supposed to make decisions for U.S. science (only 4 of 13 Democrats bothered to object to his fitness), it has also resulted in several other individuals being approved who are clearly unfit for their roles. Such as RFK Jr., who is famous for his anti-vax and anti-science rhetoric, being approved by another committee for our secretary of health and human services. In that case, the committee decision came down to the vote of one Republican senator who is also a physician, and has publicly stated he is very pro vaccination and hoped to never have to witness another parent lose a child to a preventable disease. Yet for some reason, he voted to approve his fitness to serve.

I have no idea why, but we now have measles outbreaks in parts of the country which have resulted the death of at least one child. Here is an article about that same Senators displeasure with new vaccination policy in his own state. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/16/louisiana-vaccines-rfk-jr

Either way, in those two cases, I can see how the positions are a great thing to have, but only when the people who are elected to the positions actually do their jobs. Instead what we have is basically theatre that, as you correctly put it, just further undermines credibility of the entire government.

Hi all, Hope this is ok for me to post here, apologies if not. I’m in the U.S. and recently joined Lemmy looking for a place to have uncensored discussions about U.S. and global issues.

I am curious to hear how U.K.ers feel about this proposed law. It seems like an attempt to create some additional checks and balances and avoid unchecked power by the Prime Minister.

Watching executive power currently being used as a weapon to destroy any chance of public opinion pumping the breaks on insane policy makes this seem like a good idea, but I also know legal process and politics are very different in the U.K., so I would love to hear U.K. thoughts and opinions about this. If there is a better place for me to post this, I will delete it and move it there.

The reason this article caught my attention, is the mention of the former special adviser to David Davis, and his opposition to the bill.

I’ll be honest, before last month, I didn’t know who David Davis was, but have taken an interest in his connection to U.S. politics and the Trump administration.

Davis is the father-in-law of Michael Kratsios, Trump’s Science Advisor nominee and Director of Office of Science and Technology Policy. Kratsios is also a former employee of Peter Theil, and is focused on AI policy.

Given the UK-US refusal to join other countries signing an AI declaration, (which included agreeing to join other countries in defending against a cyber attack by another nation like oh idk…Russia), I find the connection between Davis and Kratsios very suspicious. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8edn0n58gwo

I also know that Musk is planning on opening an xAI branch in the UK, and I have been screaming into the void for months trying to warn people in the U.S. about his xAI data centers. I’m not sure how much news coverage this has received in the U.K., but there’s been hardly any focused coverage of all of the shady things surrounding xAI in the U.S.

I hope voters in the U.K. are aware of all of these things, if only for the sake of staying informed. Let me know if you would like to discuss any of this stuff, or know of a community that would be better to start a discussion about this.

Thanks!

It’s every major platform. Even Substack is just so ridiculous at this point. Idk if it’s even necessarily Russians, but just the ability of wealthy people to buy algorithm control and push an agenda.

I tried to use Substack for a min but just kept getting frustrated with the inability to sort feed content of any accounts unless you follow them already. Like something would happen and I would want to discuss it with a large group of people and learn information while it’s still relevant, but there’s no way to do that.

For some reason I kept seeing the same messaging over and over pushed on my feed trying to convince me that Pete Buttigeg is somehow the same as AOC or Bernie Sanders (which logic should tell you wtf no he’s not) then yesterday I see the same account announcing he’s gearing up to run for 2028 and suddenly it all made sense. Typical establishment bullshit but modernized for the Broligarchy takeover.

Paying for social media algorithm control like advertising so that what people get to experience is nothing social, just media pushing a wealthy agenda but tweaked to their individual feed.

I think Russian propaganda has always been there it’s just been tweaked over the years to match the audience. Reddit has exiled anyone that doesn’t support Musk, so by default the audience is mainly far-right. And it has definitely gotten out of hand to such an extreme that most of reddit is just dead internet. Bot posts filled with one liner bot comments that rarely actually engage in a discussion about anything.

I just assume any content that pushes extreme divisiveness on issues and refuses to acknowledge any sort of logic or gray area is probably due to Russian bot swarms on most major platforms.

Before I left reddit for the final time, if there was a message that was clearly being suppressed, any attempts to talk about it would be met with the most irrational wall of resistance.

Like I tried to post on a sub for federal workers back in late Jan telling people they should be refusing illegal orders being given to them. It started to get some traction, and then suddenly it was just like a swarm of very irrationally angry comments and downvotes. Like a thread could be almost completely dead, with no activity in the last several hours and I would make a comment like that and get one or two upvotes and then suddenly within a minute it would be sitting at -15 downvotes.

Idk if a community already exists for this but I feel like we need a way to teach people how to spot bot activity the same way we teach people how to spot disinformation.