BC LEGAL
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

US law enforcement has literal centuries of shameful history of infiltrating and spying on politically disfavored activist groups, from trade unionists to suffragists to abolitionists to civil rights advocates to antiwar advocates.

1/

 Long before #cointelpro, federal agencies were intercepting communications and embedding as provocateurs in radical political movements, often with the help of mercenary "contractors" like the @pinkerton_agent. The digital age only ramped up this public-private surveillance.

2/
The #NoDAPL protests were infiltrated and surveilled by beltway bandits who billed the US taxpayer handsomely for the service.

https://t.co/Syh7HCEFb0

3/
2020's #BLM uprising was subjected to the full array of military and national intelligence surveillance: drones, IMSI catchers, mass interception, infiltrators, wiretaps, "reverse warrants" to recover location data from Big Tech monopolists and more.

https://t.co/klUhDgzkXU

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And yet, federal and local agencies were seemingly totally unprepared for a mob of thousands of armed terrorists who stormed the capitol, disrupted the transition of presidential power, and threatened the lives of US legislators as well as the integrity of state documents.

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The thing is, the plans were in plain sight. For weeks, I've been seeing screengrabs from far-right forums that leaked onto public social media in which violent psychopaths laid out detailed plans to commit murder and overthrow the government.

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I wasn't even looking for this stuff. I was on vacation and only cursorily checking the internet. But it was obvious. How obvious? Well, the President was the keynote speaker at the riot and he openly called for violent insurrection. That might have tipped the cops off.

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Since 1999's Battle of Seattle, cops have acted like pants-wetting cowards at the first whiff of protest.

2017's plan for dozens of paralyzed, wheelchair-using Medicare For All activists to peacefully occupy the capitol begat violent police panic.

https://t.co/fkAo8X6J2l

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But when armed terrorists followed through on their widely proclaimed plan to invade the capitol building yesterday, law enforcement foundered. They weren't just unprepared to stop terrorists for breaking in, they were also unprepared to deal with them after the break-in.

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To get a visceral sense of the shitshow, listen to @ryangrim's interview with @mepfuller, recorded while Fuller was hiding in a secret bunker with other Congressional reporters, Members of Congress and their staffers.

https://t.co/ai5ThS9j77

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There's a lot of fingerpointing today between the agencies, with a starring role for the US @CapitolPolice, who get $460m/yr (10% of Congress's total budget) and have demanded a stonking increase for 2021.

https://t.co/INNmiMQHcT

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They definitely have some serious questions to answer (including why their officers posed for selfies and seem to have opened the gates to permit terrorists to storm the building).

https://t.co/XHJjWbHnRO

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But as @nealstephenson pointed out in his 1994 comic technothriller masterpiece INTERFACE, DC is a "cop zoo" with literally hundreds of different law enforcement agencies operating in its city limits.

https://t.co/SMMMnI7L4x

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Did none of these agencies see the terrorist plan that had been scrawled in 100' tall flaming letters across the internet? How could they be caught this flatfooted?

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From: @propublica: "a thin line of U.S. Capitol Police, with only a few riot shields between them...struggled with a flimsy set of barricades as a mob in helmets and bulletproof vests pushed its way toward the Capitol entrance."

https://t.co/b8WaKu3okA

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In her excellent @nakedcapitalism roundup of yesterday's failures, @yvessmith examines the theory that police were on the terrorists' side. After all, police unions rallied for and endorsed Trump. Would they support a coup to keep him in power?

https://t.co/kmUyQY1Bjd

16/
Biden is no defund-the-police radical. He pledged to INCREASE cop funding by 10%.

But Trump doesn't just promise money for cops: his offer is total impunity. Remember when he told police they should deliberately brutalize people during arrests?

https://t.co/2udGqejB8c

17/
US policing has its origin in "slave patrols" that abetted enslavers by kidnapping Black people and forcing them into slavery. Slave patrols' legacy lives on in modern policing, with US police forces riddled with white nationalist terror supporters:

https://t.co/cJkyaN1ZrO

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Trump himself is a white nationalist. A significant proportion of US police might be tempted to abet a coup to perpetuate the rule of a despot who promises them a free hand to torture and brutalize, and who backs white supremacy.

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More from Cory Doctorow #BLM

Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
The Democrats are at least two parties. The progressive wing of the party (which is by no means unified) and the finance wing of the party, which is also the party leadership.

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During the leadership race, the progressive wing was represented by @SenSanders and @SenWarren; the former wants to minimize the role of markets in our lives, the latter wants to redeem markets by regulating them. It's a distinction with a difference, but I donated to both.

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Both wings of the party have prominent representatives in Congress; Sandersism are most visibly associated with @AOC (whom I donated to) and Warrenism is embodied by @RepKatiePorter (likewise), who was also one of Warren's law school proteges.

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Porter is a force of nature. She is infamous - and celebrated - for her brutal, no-holds-barred questioning of both corporate and administration witnesses, using a white-board to pin them down and eviscerating any attempts at bullshittery.

4/

This isn't just about getting facts into the record (though, she is SO GOOD at getting facts into the record!), it's also about effecting change, like when she single-handedly cornered the CDC's chief into guaranteeing universal, free covid
POLITICS
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
While many Amazon warehouse workers in Europe have unionized, its brutalized, underpaid, routinely maimed US workforce remains tragically unorganized, thanks to the US's weak labor laws that make forming a union far harder than at any time since the Gilded Age.

1/


But all that may be about to change: 6000 warehouse workers in #BHM1, the massive Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, AL, will vote next month on a push to unionize under the

Amazon, like other tech giants, is absolutely reliant on building and maintaining a competitive advantage by exploiting technology to drive wages ever downward while ducking responsibility for harming workers.

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Big Tech is pants-wettingly afraid of unionization, and that goes double for any solidarity between high-paid tech workers and misclassified/outsourced warehouse workers and other "unskilled" laborers.

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Amazon has gone so far as to hire the Pinkertons, renowned as some of history's most violent anti-worker terrorists, to bust unionization drives in its
BUSINESS
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Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
@doctorow
It's been eight years since @aaronsw took his own life. Aaron had been charged with 13 felonies under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (#CFAA) for violating the terms of service on the @JSTOR database of scholarly articles.

1/


Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn't dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime.

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In other words: any business could conjure a felony out of thin air by making you click through an unreadable garbage-novella of legalese proscribing the use of a service they granted you access to. Violate any of those terms and you face a prison sentence.

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This isn't law as we know it, it's Felony Contempt of Business Model, and the most alarming thing was that this interpretation of the CFAA wasn't completely ridiculous, given how badly drafted that law is.

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Ronald Reagan signed CFAA into law. Fed prosecutors had been seeking broad authority to punish "hacking" and had drawn up an absurdly broad definition of cybercrime that would give them latitude to go after anyone they didn't like.

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ALL
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Thinking through Mitch McConnell's plea for comity; Further, on Mitch McConnell and comity; Understanding the aftermath of r/wallstreetbets; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/1rRmrJa4FK

#Pluralistic

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Thinking through Mitch McConnell's plea for comity: A thoughtful analysis.

https://t.co/2T74ykb3Ws

2/


Further, on Mitch McConnell and comity: I thought about it some more.

https://t.co/mTQ225Lr3X

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Understanding the aftermath of r/wallstreetbets: Even if there's no angels, there's still a path to glory.

https://t.co/x7BaqUQ0hj

4/


#10yrsago Morrow’s Diviner’s Tale is a tight, literary ghost story https://t.co/XFW0AGFwhI

#10yrsago ATM skimmer that doesn’t require any modifications to the ATM
TRADING
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Inequality requires narrative stabilizers. When you have too little and someone else has more than they can possibly use, simple logic dictates that you should take what they have.

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The forbearance exercised by the many when it comes to the wealth of the few isn't down to guards or laws - rather, the laws and the guards are effective because of the STORY, the story of why this is fair, even inevitable.

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Think of the story of monarchy and its relationship to the Church: the Church affirms that the monarch (and the aristocracy) was chosen by God ("dieu et mon droit") and the monarchy reciprocates by giving the Church moral and economic power within the kingdom.

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Capitalism replaced the story of divine will with a story of a self-correcting complex system: humans are born and raised with a variety of aptitudes and tastes, and at any moment, historical exigencies dictate that some individuals are better suited than others to do well.

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When it's railroad time, there are people who were born to oversee the laying of track and the coordination of rail networks: markets find those people, allocate capital to them, and allow them to mobilize that capital to produce shared prosperity for all of us.

5/
CULTURE

More from Legal

Antifascist Trash Panda \u2199\ufe0f\u2199\ufe0f\u2199\ufe0f\U0001f99d
Antifascist Trash Pand...
@trashpandaAFA
1/ On Jan 2 we introduced Proud Boy Billy Knutson to the world. Billy said he was going to DC to "literally go Antifa hunting."

Well, Proud Boy Billy Knutson stormed the U.S. capitol with his fellow terrorists and participated in a failed coup:
https://t.co/Ctb7vThYhs


2/ Terrorist Proud Boy Billy Knutson placing himself at the scene of the failed coup in DC to overthrow democracy:


3/ From terrorist Proud Boy Billy Knutson's Parler in his own words:

PS: We see Texas Charter Plane 5 Jenna Ryan made the big time at the failed U.S. coup in DC


4/ FAIR USE claim: shows context in tweets

Terrorist Proud Boy Billy Knutson's Parler video where you can hear him screaming, "Stand Back and Stand By Motherf*ckers!" while standing on the US capitol steps. Speaker says they'll be back on Inauguration Day.


5/ Terrorist Proud Boy Billy Knutson already lost his Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, & Twitter before heading to DC

However @Spotify & @YouTube continue to platform Billy Knutson, aka Playboy The Beast, a terrorist that participated in the U.S. failed
LEGAL
home \U0001f3e1 \U0001f30a
home 🏡 🌊...
@alllocalpolitic
🧵
Asst Chief Filice (@rfSalinasPD),

I'd like to report crimes in your jurisdiction:

1. Louie Alejo (@SupervisorAlejo) took bribes from Mike Hackett of Casa Sorrento fame. (cocaine dealer and @maryrduan's soft spot) - it's on recording.

2. Dave Drew was involved in a fraud

2/

scheme involving Frankie Lane, Anthony Lane (Cotroneo boys from Montreal), Jimmy Gilbert (deceased Monterey wharf biz owner) and McGilloway (accountant with an office in Unicool's W. Market office complex) and the Fox Theater in Oldtown Salinas.

The fraud was documented in

3/

a civil suit laid out by Monterey attorney Hugo Gerstl (smart man) in 2016 - two years before @JerryBrownGov pardoned Drew.

3. The Bankers Casino boys are involved with narco-trackers and money launderers. They also have ties to organized crime figures.

Please let me know

4/

how you wish to proceed?

Also, @Kelly_McMillin has a troubling connection to all of these issues.

I'm also concerned about reports a @SalinasPD officer has received financial assistance to buy a house on the border with Mexico 🇲🇽 with the help of Rolando Cabrera who is a

5/

member of the Cabrera crime family.

Would you please enlighten the public on this relationship between the Cabrera's and one of Salinas' "finest"?

Thank you for your immediate attention.

Exhibits to follow:
LEGAL
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Rhona Hotchkiss
Rhona Hotchkiss
@HotchkissRhona
1/9 A thread of testimony submitted by experts in psychiatry, paediatrics & cognitive neuroscience from around the world to the High Court in the Tavistock Puberty Blockers case.

2/9 One expert said it had been left to those coming to the end of their careers to speak out because the atmosphere of hostility & intimidation facing critical voices made it impossible for younger people to do so

3/9 A global expert on autism reported that girls with autism or anorexia were much more likely to say they wanted to become boys; all young people with difficult childhoods were more likely to say they wanted to transition

4/9 The same expert said autistic teenagers seize on the promise of online sites suggesting their life-long problems will be resolved by transition. Up to 26% of the trans population have Autistic Spectrum Disorder

5/9 A Swedish Psychiatrist reported research saying if left alone, dysphoria usually resolves & girls want to live as women, also that he had treated autism in girls for 45 years and rarely saw gender dysphoria before 2013
LEGAL
Marybeth Glenn
Marybeth Glenn
@MBGlenn
Thread time (SORRY!) I've been thinking about Chris Stanton, one of the individuals who was arrested for being involved in the Capital insurrection, who died by suicide. How does a - seemingly - regular guy throw his entire life away to help commit an act of terror? 1/?

We need to address the rot that goes well beyond Trump. As someone who voted Republican back when these games started, I know their playbook by heart. I know they use fear to mobilize. I’m angry that so many Republicans will walk away from this with their career unscathed. 2/?

They're coming for your guns!
Socialism!
Trans story time!
They hate America!
They want to allow the murder of newborns!
Immigrants are going to take your jobs & rape your women!
Refugees = terrorists!
The media hates you!
You can't say Christmas!

And on and on and on.... 3/?

Nancy Mace mentioned the dangers of rhetoric the other day w/o acknowledging her part in this. Separating herself from an out of control fire after she’d been stoking it. And she’s far from alone. Rubio, Cruz, Haley, [insert hundreds of names] have all had a hand in this. 4/?


Men like Chris Stanton listened to the fear mongering, then he had Trump reaffirming it all, and an entire party lining up behind whatever beliefs brought them increased funding reaffirming it all. They told supporters to fight, they sold them on “war,” 5/?
LEGAL
\U0001f3e1 home
🏡 home
@alllocalpolitic
... it's not that hard to figure out who the corrupt fucks are in my community.

Mike Hackett is a convicted cocaine trafficker and major marijuana kingpin in Monterey County.

Monterey County supervisors claimed no felons would be working in "legal" #cannabis.


2/

Mike Hackett's @RiverviewFarms_ is being sued (again) for various torts.

In a nutshell people who do biz with Hackett later and often soon end up accusing Hackett of being a scumbag.

The lawyer representing Hackett is lying Larry Biegel a local criminal defense attorney.


3/

Jennifer Rosenthal is representing Riverview Farms.

Who is Jennifer Rosenthal?

She is a @RepJimmyPanetta campaign cash bundler.

Rosenthal is also a marijuana lawyer (of course) and represents a guy named Sal Palma Jr.

Junior's grandfather was also named Sal Palma.


4/

Sal Palma is a well known name in the @CityofMonterey. Palma co-owned the hotel where the Monterey Marriott now sits. Named the restaurant on top Ferrante's. Sal Palma also developed millionaire housing at Markham Ranch in Corral de Tierra where billionaire Bruce Taylor lives

5/

Sal Palma was a new immigrant to our community and a non-citizen. In the 1940's in his early 20's Sal Palma because a United States Citizen.

In his later 20's he was accused of sexual assault and arrested by @MontereyPolice.

Sal Palma was convicted. But, he was a new
LEGAL

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👨‍💻 Last resume I sent to a startup one year ago, sharing with you to get ideas:

- Forget what you don't have, make your strength bold
- Pick one work experience and explain what you did in detail w/ bullet points
- Write it towards the role you apply
- Give social proof

/thread


"But I got no work experience..."

Make a open source lib, make a small side project for yourself, do freelance work, ask friends to work with them, no friends? Find friends on Github, and Twitter.

Bonus points:

- Show you care about the company: I used the company's brand font and gradient for in the resume for my name and "Thank You" note.
- Don't list 15 things and libraries you worked with, pick the most related ones to the role you're applying.
-🙅‍♂️"copy cover letter"

"I got no firends, no work"

One practical way is to reach out to conferences and offer to make their website for free. But make sure to do it good. You'll get:

- a project for portfolio
- new friends
- work experience
- learnt new stuff
- new thing for Twitter bio

If you don't even have the skills yet, why not try your chance for @LambdaSchool? No? @freeCodeCamp. Still not? Pick something from here and learn https://t.co/7NPS1zbLTi
You'll feel very overwhelmed, no escape, just acknowledge it and keep pushing.
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Vibhu Vashisth
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MAHARAANI TARARANI: THE QUEEN OF MARATHAS

Rani Tarabai was the brave daughter-in-law of Chhatrapati Shivaji and one of the greatest medieval Monarchs India ever had.
She was born in 1675 to one of the bravest commander-in-chiefs of Shivaji's Army named Hambir Rao Mohite.


Tarabai was just 8yrs old when she was married to Shivaji's younger son, Rajaram. Mughals and Marathas were constantly at war with each other. Shivaji was crowned the ruler of the Independent Maratha Swarajya in 1674 which was established by him.


However,the great leader died in 1680&the Maratha Samrajya went into a complete&total chaos.Marathas saw some very tough times ahead. In 1689,when Raigad Fort fell to the Mughal Army of over 15000,Shivaji's first wife Saibai and his elder son Sambhaji were captured&put to death.


Sambhaji's wife and son Shahu were taken prisoners to the Mughal court. During the same battle, Shivaji's second son Rajaram(Tarabai's husband) , who was the heir to the throne now, managed to escape using a disguise. He made his way to the Gingee Fort in Tamil Nadu.


Mughal General Zulfikar Khan, however, followed them to Gingee laying siege to the Gingee Fort. From 1690-1698,This was the longest siege by a Mughal Army of any Fort which stands testimony to the military and diplomatic credentials of Rani Tarabai.
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It’s underremarked upon that stablecoins accomplish basically all of the original design goals for Bitcoin qua a transactional mechanism (instant free value transfer anywhere), but that nobody cares about this because nobody ever cared about that part of the pitch.

“Why do people care about stablecoins then?”

A mix of “they encourage dollar-denominated liquidity in the cryptocurrency ecosystem and discourage withdrawal of the same” and “they’re good for money laundering.”

“But they make value transfer between exchanges much faster!”

This was a solved problem in traditional finance, too, mostly through the extension of credit. (It doesn’t matter how long settlement takes if there is sufficient trust to enable credit.)

The Bitcoin ecosystem is *positively allergic* to credit, so you have to call it a coin for them to accept it. And after you call it a coin they ignore everything the world has learned about credit, like risk management.

“Stablecoins aren’t credit!”

They’re pretty much exactly credit? A tether is a zero-coupon Bitfinex bond with a non-functioning call option. I
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Filippo Valsorda
Filippo Valsorda
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“We don’t negotiate salaries” is a negotiation tactic.

Always. No, your company is not an exception.

A tactic I don’t appreciate at all because of how unfairly it penalizes low-leverage, junior employees, and those loyal enough not to question it, but that’s negotiation for you after all. Weaponized information asymmetry.

Listen to Aditya


And by the way, you should never be worried that an offer would be withdrawn if you politely negotiate.

I have seen this happen *extremely* rarely, mostly to women, and anyway is a giant red flag. It suggests you probably didn’t want to work there.

You wish there was no negotiating so it would all be more fair? I feel you, but it’s not happening.

Instead, negotiate hard, use your privilege, and then go and share numbers with your underrepresented and underpaid colleagues. […]
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Some quick thoughts on Sam Gyimah's resignation after conversations with various Conservative MPs: 1) the chances of a second referendum are a lot higher than I thought:

2) At this point, if you are a young and ambitious Tory MP it is now so overwhelmingly in your interest to vote against the withdrawal agreement. V v hard to see how Julian Smith can cap rebellion at under 100:

3) Really just to reiterate 1) Gyimah is the kind of "No, never gonna rebel" vaguely pro-EU Tory you'd need to get on side to outweigh Labour Leavers and Real Concerners.
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