Big Tech Shenanigans, Broken Borders, and Double Standards
It was a total eclipse on our cartoon world
Let’s start with the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse. It was the longest eclipse North America has seen since Kodak invented roll-films in 1988. Unless if you weren’t hiding in a bunker, it was rejuvenating experience to most people.
With no cell-phone coverage, secluded from the busyness of life, lounging in the quiet comfort of nature - it was blissful.
For 4mins and 15 secs, I looked up into the mid-afternoon darkness as the sun, moon, and earth aligned. It was magical. Now that the show’s over, let’s get back to the darkness we can’t see, unless of course you look through the lens of The Marinade.
Big tech is trying to swallow us whole. Apple has been in rough waters lately. First the anti-trust politicians, the EU and now India - all trying to pry open Apple’s self-gratifying policies. All they want is Apple to comply to the rules of a fair market capitalist society.
If they succeed, then any app developer could potentially push code to the iOS App Store, an open market like the Android Play Store. Yay to the abundance of apps from loosely-vetted coders. Nay to having to install Norton anti-virus to clean up all the trojans that would self-download its way into my world of iOS.
Not all who sneak-in without permission get to stay. I am talking about the Chinese illegal migrants who entered the US southern border at Jacumba Springs, California. Remember? You don’t? I don’t blame you. It’s not hot news anymore. At the time, just for a few days, the main stream media couldn’t care less about Gaza or Ukraine or anything but that. After everyone said their piece, and the political puppet shows ended at the border, we moved on.
Read my special report about what happened at the San Juan border.
Some of those Chinese illegal migrants who crossed the San Juan border got deported back after waiting for months in a U.S. detention facility. Some of them who got accepted found work, then decided to return willingly.
Returning back to China1 after fleeing is no laughing matter. They all get charged a fine on entering China, their passports are taken away, are slapped a 3-year travel ban, their foreign social media accounts and contacts are deleted, and their WeChat communication is continuously monitored.
No matter what our politics, this issue is not as blue or red as the American media wants us to think. The legal and illegal doors remain open for migrants fleeing from their world into ours. People are being displaced. Many are in limbo.
The U.S. border crisis is certainly a pressing issue for our Presidential candidates to debate over the coming months. It will most certainly be also the issue that may never get resolved.
Flip flopping talking points were center stage last week.
Let’s talk about Biden’s flip-flopping first.
The double standards of the Biden administration was on display last week. Here’s what I gleaned from reading reports explaining2 why Biden does what he does for Israel.
US is the largest seller of weapons to Israel in their 3rd 10-year military alliance, committed to a 3.8bn annual spend towards supplying 68% of Israel’s foreign-sourced weapons with Germany in 2nd place with 30%. After the 2023 Hamas attack, the US Senate passed a bill to supplementary spend of $14.1bn.
It’s a give and take type of relationship. In 2019, $1.5bn worth of Israeli-made military equipment were sold to America. Israeli companies are opening subsidiaries on American soil, a defense alliances that benefits both countries in advancing their military might. When US sells weapons to Middle Eastern countries, Israel gets offsetting technology or an advanced version that can easily integrate with US technology.
The US is said to be breaking a couple of laws too.
Section 502 (B) of the US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits aid to governments engaged in gross human rights abuses, a law that has never been enforced unless the the President deems it necessary, which Biden apparently does not.
Leahy Act, forbids the state department or the Pentagon from providing funding to foreign units that have committed, according to “credible information”, human rights violations. This law has been enforced on some American allies, but never on America’s military buddy.
Biden’s own administration issued a Conventional Arms Transfer (Cat) policy, prohibits sale of weapons found guilty of “grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, including attacks intentionally directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such”, and “other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law”.
Oops, indeed.
When Trump flip-flops, it’s a “Gotcha” moment. Like a magician doing a card trick, Trump’s illusionary politics is on display for us to see. There is no double-standards when it’s always a double standard.
When it comes to abortion rights, Trump has found new meaning in the word principle according to which he is going to leave the politics of the matter aside, by allowing the US States to decide. But 15 states already ban abortion since the overturning of Roe-Wade, which was Trump’s doing that he brags about still. So, this new campaign promise seems to have rubbed the GOP the wrong way. Everyone, including the Dems, thought he would call for a national 15-week ban. But he flip-flopped, and only he knows why. Or does he?
The state of the world, the state of politics, the state of the economy - all a laughing matter these days.
Lucky for us, we have our social media world to turn to when life gets too real for us on the outside.
LOL!