#defense funding

[trendynewsnow]

Linking EU Funding to Macroeconomic Reforms: Concerns and Perspectives

Linking EU Programmes to Macroeconomic Reforms: A Critical Perspective According to Siegfried Muresan, the MEP spearheading discussions on the EU’s next long-term budget (2028-34), linking EU funding programmes to broader macroeconomic reforms within member states could lead to significant negative consequences for citizens. In a recent interview with Euronews, Muresan criticized leaked proposals…

[antifainternational]

What happens when you defend a drag show from the armed transphobes who threatened to murder attendees? In Texas, first you get arrested on bullshit charges, then a "Christian fascist fraternity" sues you for violating their "right" to attack drag queens and their fans. When two people facing this situation contacted the International Anti-Facist Defence Fund, we stepped in to help them with their legal costs, because we have the backs of anyone willing to protect people from transphobic violence. You should too, here's how: Chris' crowdfunder Aeshna's crowdfunder If you also think that having a standing fund to come to the aid of anti-fascists in emergency situations like this = a good idea, you should contribute to that fund right here!

[violent138]

Gothamites are simultaneously the calmest and best employees during an emergency but also the ones least likely to have read the manual for what to do in case of emergency.

[nerdygaymormon]

[curtvilescomic]

Painkiller Jane cover by Amanda Conner for CBLDF No Justice/No Peace

[cloud9v]

how much would you pay for a bloons slice of life series

[victims-of]

[quietwingsinthesky]

jack harkness/simm master. do what you want with that

i love the idea of Jack and the Master meeting during his minister of defense era, it’s so deliciously terrible to me. great potential. anyway. here’s them.

Here’s what Jack Harkness takes away from his first impression of Saxon: he’s too clean for a politician, especially one settled in so comfortably as Minister of Defense.

It itches at the back of his brain through their few conversations as Saxon smiles at him. “*I’m* sure Torchwood’s funding wouldn’t be better spent elsewhere,” he tells Jack, co-conspiratorial, “and if it were up to me-”

“It is up to you,” Jack says, smiling back. Saxon’s eyes dart down to his lips and up again. Jack leans forward, casting his gaze across the man’s face like he’ll find the secrets he’s looking for in the pull of his lips or crinkle of his eyes. Too clean, too perfect, like a pretty picture of a potential Prime Minister. Jack tries to remember his stated policies, but his mind slides off the information, and it turns to him, grasping at nothing, and tells him that whatever he believes, Saxon believes.

“If only,” Saxon laughs, and it’s warm like a housefire. Jack squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head, and suspicion falls right out. “I heard about the fiasco at Canary Wharf.”

Heard? Jack thinks. How’d you miss it? Saxon reaches across his desk and puts his hand over Jack’s wrist.

“I bet you run a tighter ship than that, Captain,” he says, voice low. “Tell me exactly what their tax dollars are going to, so I can reassure all those worried voters who might just have to think for themselves otherwise.” The words themselves buzz without meaning across Jack’s brain as Saxon’s fingers drum against the pulse at his wrist, too quick to match, too many beats, almost familiar like-

“You are just horrible to look at,” Saxon murmurs. “Nails on a chalkboard. I don’t know how he could stand being around you for even a minute.” Jack’s mind feels slow and thick, and any sentence he manages is a fight of slowly wading through.

“Torchwood… We arm the human race against the future.” Saxon grins wider.

“Do you have a speech prepared?” he releases Jack’s wrist suddenly and falls back into his chair, his whole body language changing from Prime Minister hopeful to lazy predator smelling fresh meat. “He hates whenever I get a taste of his pets. I’ll fuck you for it.”

“What?” Jack’s trying to catch up. Wherever the conversation went when Saxon was touching him is dim in his memory already, and he’s not even able to summon up concern about it.

“Or I’ll let you fuck me. I like that better. Less work.” Jack narrows his eyes. This, he understands. Too clean, he’d known. Too pretty a wife not to be messing around. Well, he could do worse. For his team, he’d do just about anything.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Martin Pengelly at The Guardian:

Tax filings obtained by the Guardian show how the rightwing dark money impresario Leonard Leo helped fuel the Bud Light boycott in response to ads featuring the transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, an effort that generated threats against Mulvaney, violence against consumers and layoffs by Anheuser-Busch. Uncovered by the watchdog group Accountable.US, the filings for 2022 show the Concord Fund, a group linked to Leo, gave $350,000 to Consumers Defense, an arm of Consumers’ Research, not long before that group played a central role in the Bud Light boycott. Leo is a Catholic conservative activist widely known as the force behind the Federalist Society, which has helped transform the US courts system, ultimately through the installation of three hardline justices on the supreme court that has handed down epochal rulings on abortion rights, presidential immunity and more.

But Leo’s fundraising work ranges wider. Consumers’ Research was formed in 1929 to champion consumers’ rights, but went largely dormant before being revived as a rightwing watchdog. It now claims to lead “the fight against ESG”, or environmental, social and governance policies, in corporate America. It issues “woke alerts” concerning companies it deems to be “putting progressive activists and their dangerous agendas ahead of customers”. Links between Leo and Consumers’ Research are known but have not been directly confirmed. In 2021, Marble Freedom Trust, a non-profit controlled by Leo, received a record $1.6bn donation from Barre Seid, a Chicago billionaire.

That year and in 2022, Consumers’ Research enjoyed huge funding boosts when it received nearly $15m from Donors Trust. That group, linked to Leo, calls itself a “principled philanthropic partner for conservative and libertarian donors”. It has also been called the “dark-money ATM of the right”. The New York Times and Bloomberg previously linked Leo to the sudden funding influx to Consumers’ Research. Leo did not comment.

Consumers’ Research is also known to be a client of CRC Advisors, Leo’s for-profit firm. The tax filings obtained by the Guardian show another direct link.

[...] In spring 2023, Anheuser-Busch paid such a price. It began with a video featuring Mulvaney, a trans influencer. “Happy March Madness!!” she wrote. “Just found out this had to do with sports and not just saying it’s a crazy month! In celebration of this sports thing @budlight is giving you the chance to win $15,000! Share a video with #EasyCarryContest for a chance to win!! Good luck! #budlightpartner.” It seemed innocuous, but rightwing anger, primed by culture-wars battles over trans imagery in business and education, fueled calls for a boycott.

The Guardian has a report out that right-wing dark money influencer Leonard Leo helped fuel funding for the Bud Light boycott.

[random2908]

Frustrating when a VC-funded company gets credit for being the "first" and the "leader," when they had a sub-component demo the same week we had a full-system demo. Like, we are easily 5-10 years ahead of them, it's ridiculous; their approach isn't even yet proven to work. But they get science youtubers talking about them.

Because they're VC-funded, they have a marketing/press department.

And because we're an employee-owned company working off of government contracts, well, most government contracts get slapped with an ITAR label (an old Cold-War-era law saying basically sharing scientific information counts as illegally selling arms/munitions). So if you want to publicize your work, including your company's products, you have to appeal that label. (Universities have specifically negotiated a blanket exemption, so if you spend your whole life in academic science you might never even know about this.)

(My previous employer filed those appeals several times a year in order to do press releases and publish journal articles and apply for patents. I think every single information-release appeal they filed went through, because there's no reason any of this stuff should be labeled as arms--it's literally the same stuff universities are doing. My current employer is afraid to, which I think is wrong-headed; at worst they'll just say no, and anyway, our non-restricted competitors are giving fucking lab tours to youtubers.)

[davidzoltan]

Governor Tim Walz, I am proud of you for raising such a clearly loving and passionate son. He has done proud by you, but I am sorry that his disability has been used as a weapon against others, especially by those that aren't as interested in charting an equitable future for him and all his disabled colleagues, myself included, around the country.

Vice President Kamala Harris, your campaign and those in the party you now, by default, lead, have put a young man with at least one disability central to your attacks on our mutual enemies, and yet the policies in your speech last week do not reflect disability justice.

For starters, the only explicit policy you mentioned that touches on the needs of disabled people are "protecting Social Security and Medicare". We don't need it protected. We need it expanded. We need to be making explicit that equity for disabled people means lifting the tax cap on Social Security completely and instituting a progressive Social Security tax. That expansion of income must then be used to ensure a Living Wage For Social Security rather than keeping us in abject poverty. Also, ending policies that result in well over four in five applications for SSDI to need to go through a lengthy and draining appeal process.

It also means backing Improved Medicare For All. If you aren't willing to extend that far, then at the very least, it is time to introduce a public option to ensure that we are able to expand benefits through a larger insurance pool including more benefits for disabled folks, control prescription and other medical prices for more people, and bring us another step closer to universal coverage.

Next, it should go without saying that any policy that needlessly increases the likelihood of creating disabilities for people is ableist from the start. That means a more hawkish war footing is counter to disability justice. We already have the most lethal fighting force in the world many times over. If the military were a tenth of its size, it would still be the most lethal even then while also greatly expanding available funding for programs that help every American, disabled folks included.

And in the specific, you must impose an arms embargo on Israel to stop the genocide in Gaza. I'd go a step further and demand that you also impose a funding embargo as funding a genocide is hardly any better than enabling one with weaponry. We have all seen the reports and the tragic media that show the Palestinians disabled by Israeli forces using American weapons. And as a Jew as well as a disabled American, I say not in my name.

And that's just to speak to top level of items in your speech. There needs to be an entire disability justice analysis of the platform you're still writing and a disability justice plank as part of that platform.

I hope you will listen. I am forced to vote for you right now as the alternative would literally either kill me or force me to flee the country. But I currently have none of the joy that your campaign seeks to create. I volunteer my labor often (because I can't be hired by any campaign lest I put the very federal and state benefits that keep me alive in danger), and I would be willing to discuss with your team further so that hopefully we can seek a better path forward together.

But for now, the least you owe Tim's son and every disabled person that has seen themselves in the mouths of Democrats everywhere without supporting our needs is to show solidarity with us in the days to November 5th.

[mymarifae]

hehe. i always win. 💖

jesus christ though look what it did to his defense (it was at 5k with the light cone i was using before......)

[lynxfrost13]

Praps if I’m good I’ll post not only about Frau Wasserlinse!! But also the very prestigious and totally not falling apart Vinetan Defense Freighter crew and additional operations

[remembertheplunge]

10/16/2024

I'm going to be doing the Alcatraz to San Fransisco Yacht Harbor swim on October 23, 2024 as part of a fund raiser for Full Picture Justice, formerly known as Community Initiative Resources (CRI) . They are a mitigation team that does extensive record and back ground search for clients in some of my big cases. They also do community outreach to those adversely affected by the criminal justice system which is the reason for the fund raising. Anything you can give will be much appreciated. I will be blogging about the swim and keeping you posted. Thank you.