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 Remember when that was a thing?

 From a "I wanna win" standpoint this makes sense, but at it's core it's a very immature stance: "I can help my friends/allies, but you can't." But economically, this is what the US is doing :  The US Treasury Department on Friday took what it called “one of its most significant sanctions actions to date” to crack down on those aiding Moscow’s war against Ukraine, targeting Russia’s metals and mining sector, its financial institutions, its military supply chain and individuals and companies worldwide that are helping Moscow avoid existing sanctions. These latest actions by the Treasury Department are among a series of new measures announced by the Biden administration Friday that are meant to strengthen Kyiv and deter those providing support to Moscow as the war enters its second year without signs of abating. Friday’s sweeping actions are meant to fill in gaps in existing sanctions that have been imposed over the past year of the war and are intended to...

 So NGO Safeguard Defenders, formally known as "China Action," presented CNN with a story of how China is outsourcing their law-enforcement by using Chinese businesses abroad as makeshift police stations .   Ignoring the irony of any American being shocked at this knowing that the US has military bases all around China , places like the Loon Fung in Glasgow, Scotland were identified as one of these "secret police base."  Accept, according to The Herald , this is pretty much a nothing-burger : The restaurant denied any wrongdoing, with the manager telling press: “There are no secret police here.” At the time, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told MSPs she was extremely concerned by the report and that she had discussed it with Police Scotland.  Asked for an update today, Detective Chief Superintendent Stuart Houston said: “Officers visited a restaurant on Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow as part of ongoing enquiries. "We are continuing to assess all information, in c...

  As mentioned earlier , the disagreements on the American Left is not just between Revolutionaries and Reformists. Even in the Revolutionary camp, their are "Radicals" and the "Refined." This is becoming more clear with this interview/exchange between Sabby Sabbs and WSWS journalist Eric London:

 Or more accurately, revert : A federal pandemic policy that guaranteed Medicaid coverage to hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents is coming to an end. Typically, people who receive Medicaid, known as HUSKY in Connecticut, go through an annual process to confirm whether they still qualify for the program. But, during the pandemic, the federal government instituted a policy, known as “continuous enrollment,” that prevented states from kicking people off of Medicaid, even if they no longer qualified or failed to update their eligibility information. But, on March 31, continuous enrollment will end, kicking off a year-long process called “unwinding,” where everyone whose Medicaid coverage has been extended as part of the public health emergency will need to reevaluate their eligibility. In Connecticut, around 434,000 residents have had Medicaid coverage extended at some point over the past three years under the continuous eligibility rules. “Just the numbers alone make this r...

 When some threatened to remove their health care rights, look what happened:

 Apparently, the answer is "yes": Nissan has tapped into the popularity of lofi videos on YouTube by creating a four-hour-long ad — and people aren’t hating it. Released on February 2, the video is titled Enjoy the Powerfully Peaceful ARIYA. It’s a low-touch advertisement for the company’s latest EV, the Nissan ARIYA. At the time of writing the video had over 1.6 million views and 625 comments which were largely positive. This may seem surprising for an advertisement that’s four hours long . But this is where Nissan has been quite clever. The entire video is an animation of a woman driving the ARIYA to a soundtrack of lofi music . These kinds of videos are incredibly popular on YouTube — they’re incredibly chill and great for background calm background music for work and study. One of the most popular is the Lofi Girl channel which streams lofi hip hop beats 24 hours a day across two ‘radio’ channels. With almost 12 million subscribers, it’s most recognisable for its anime-s...

 Take notes, Don Lemon :

 When it comes to making substantial political change, you need numbers. Anyone who is frustrated with the status quo and wishes to change it should understand this, and many do. The question is: "How to get those numbers?" What is the best way to get enough people to rally against the system? At one point, it seemed that most of the American Left was divided into two factions: Reformists and (more radical) Revolutionaries. The former basically believes in working with and/or in the system in order to change it, where the latter prefers a more outsider, non-electoral politics approach. Of course, there's room for hybrids (i.e., ignore national politics and focus on the local). Currently, the best way to discern between the two is by what you see on cable news or in the halls of government: if they are on TV or radio denouncing the status quo, odds are they are reformists; anyone going the extra step of including the current two major parties in their critique are rarely h...

 The human rights and environmental lawyer who Chevron tried to put under a jail shows us why big polluting companies want him off the board : Earlier this month, a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in eastern Ohio, exploding into flames and unleashing a spume of chemical smoke on the small town of East Palestine. The train’s freight included vinyl chloride, a chemical known to cause liver cancer and other sicknesses. In response, government and railway officials decided to “burn off” the vinyl chloride – effectively dumping 1.1m lbs of the chemical into the local community, according to a new lawsuit. Officials said that they did so to avert the vinyl chloride from exploding; in contrast, an attorney for the lawsuit has said that the decision was cheap, unsafe, and more interested in restoring train service and appeasing railway shareholders than protecting local residents. East Palestine residents are reporting headaches, sore throats, and burning eyes; dead pets and chicke...