activescott's Notes

Zoom in: Newsom said that the probe resembles investigations into Former FBI Director James Comey, NY Attorney General Leticia James and Sen. Adam Schiff.

Prosecutors were unable to secure an indictment in James' case and a court dismissed one of the cases against Comey.

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Reza Shah’s need to expand trade, his fear of Soviet control over Iran’s overland routes to Europe, and his apprehension at renewed Soviet and continued British presence in Iran drove him to expand trade with Nazi Germany in the 1930s. His refusal to abandon what he considered to be obligations to numerous Germans in Iran served as a pretext for an Anglo-Soviet invasion of his country in 1941. Intent on ensuring the safe passage of U.S. war matériel to the Soviet Union through Iran, the Allies forced Reza Shah to abdicate, placing his young son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi on the throne.

when Mosaddegh became prime minister in 1951, he immediately nationalized the country’s oil industry. Britain, the main benefactor of Iranian oil concessions, imposed an economic embargo on Iran and pressed the International Court of Justice to consider the matter. The court, however, decided not to intervene, thereby tacitly lending its support to Iran.

In August 1953, following a round of political skirmishing, Mosaddegh’s quarrels with the shah came to a head, and the Iranian monarch fled the country. Almost immediately, despite still-strong public support, the Mosaddegh government buckled during a coup funded by the CIA. Within a week of his departure, Mohammad Reza Shah returned to Iran and appointed a new prime minister.

after 1954 a Western multinational consortium led by British Petroleum accelerated Iranian oil development. The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) embarked on a thorough expansion of its oil-production capacities. The NIOC also formed a petrochemical subsidiary and concluded agreements, mainly on the basis of equal shares, with several international companies for oil exploitation outside the area of the consortium’s operations.

Petroleum revenues were to fuel Iran’s economy for the next quarter of a century. There was no further talk of nationalization, as the shah firmly squelched subsequent political dissent within Iran.

In 1957, with the aid of U.S. and Israeli intelligence services, the shah’s government formed a special branch to monitor domestic dissidents. The shah’s secret police—the Organization of National Security and Information (Sāzmān-e Amniyyat va Ettelaʿāt-e Keshvār, known by the acronym SAVAK)—developed into an omnipresent force within Iranian society and became a symbol of the fear by which the Pahlavi regime was to dominate Iran.

In 1961 the shah dissolved the 20th Majles and cleared the way for the land reform law of 1962. Under this program, the landed minority was forced to give up ownership of vast tracts of land for redistribution to small-scale cultivators. The former landlords were compensated for their loss in the form of shares of state-owned Iranian industries. Cultivators and workers were also given a share in industrial and agricultural profits, and cooperatives began to replace the large landowners in rural areas as sources of capital for irrigation, agrarian maintenance, and development.

The land reforms were a mere prelude to the shah’s “White Revolution,” a far more ambitious program of social, political, and economic reform. Put to a plebiscite and ratified in 1963, these reforms eventually redistributed land to some 2.5 million families, established literacy and health corps to benefit Iran’s rural areas, further reduced the autonomy of tribal groups, and advanced social and legal reforms that furthered the emancipation and enfranchisement of women. In subsequent decades, per capita income for Iranians skyrocketed, and oil revenue fueled an enormous increase in state funding for industrial development projects.

The new policies of the shah did not go unopposed, however; many Shiʿi leaders criticized the White Revolution, holding that liberalization laws concerning women were against Islamic values. More important, the shah’s reforms chipped away at the traditional bases of clerical power. The development of secular courts had already reduced clerical power over law and jurisprudence, and the reforms’ emphasis on secular education further eroded the former monopoly of the ʿulamāʾ in that field.

AI SYSTEMS TRANSPARENCY AND OBSERVABILITY FOR ALL! Full extracted system prompts, guidelines, and tools from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, xAI, Perplexity, Cursor, Windsurf, Devin, Manus, Replit, and more – virtually all major AI models + agents!

Here you can get an keydb.cfg file that can be used for bluray playback with e.g. VLC or many other applications.

For detailed information how you can use this file please take a look at the bottom of this page - or on the following pages: https://vlc-bluray.whoknowsmy.name/ Archive page of previous OnlineDB from Starbuck

For more details or questions take a look here: DOOM9 - FindVUK Thread

In case of problems with VLC Bluray Menue playback this post here might be helpful: VideoLan Forum - Solution for libbluray+java BD-J bluray menus troubleshooting on win10

Thanks!

In the summer of 2025, Congressional Republicans passed a reconciliation bill providing $170.7 billion dollars to the Department of Homeland Security for immigration enforcement related activities. According to Office of Management and Budget, of the $75 billion specifically for ICE, $63 billion remains unspent while of the $65 billion for CBP, $37 billion remains unspent.

Or, to put it another way, ICE and CBP, despite receiving no annual appropriations this year, still have $100 billion dollars in funding to spend.

So, obviously, what Congress needs to do this year is appropriate still more money to ICE and CBP (another $70 billion to ICE and CBP together through 2029). Last night, in a 52-47 vote, that’s just what the Senate did.

A UN report published in March 2025 found evidence of the “systematic” use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence by Israel since October 7, 2023. In May, Israel was added to the UN “blacklist of sexual violence in conflict zones”. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Israeli rights group B’Tselem and the PCHR have described the pervasive culture of sexual violence within Israeli forces, especially among those charged with overseeing Palestinian prisoners. Many were arrested and held without charge under Israel’s system of administrative detention.

No soldiers or guards have been convicted of sexual abuse of Palestinians. Israel detained 10 security officers after a video of the rape of a prisoner was leaked from the Sde Teiman detention camp in the Negev desert in July 2024. But gangs of right-wing protesters, including legislators, attempted to storm the facility where the guards were being held in a bid to free them.

Last July, Israel dropped all charges against the guards. The female officer who allegedly leaked the video of the attack, Major-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, was subsequently arrested. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu termed her “crime” – sharing footage of the rape by Israeli soldiers – as the “most severe public relations attack” on the country since its founding.

Asked in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in July 2024 whether it was ever legitimate to rape a prisoner, Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, shouted: “Yes.”

“If he is a Nukhba [Hamas fighter], everything is legitimate to do, everything.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog had no issue with “unequivocally” blaming all Palestinians for the Hamas-led attack on October 7, telling reporters: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true [that] this rhetoric about civilians not [being] aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true.”

former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was fighting what he called “human animals” and ordered a “complete siege” on the men, women and children there. Others, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have been consistent offenders, routinely referring to Palestinians as terrorists or framing large segments of Palestinian society in broadly criminal or extremist terms, particularly in relation to Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Deficits are large by historical standards. The deficit totals $1.9 trillion in fiscal year 2026 and grows to $3.1 trillion in 2036. Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit is 5.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2026 and increases to 6.7 percent in 2036. Deficits averaged 3.8 percent of GDP over the last 50 years (see Chapter 1).

Debt held by the public rises from 101 percent of GDP in 2026 to 120 percent in 2036, well above the previous record of 106 percent just after World War II.

Outlays are large by historical standards—and growing. They total 23.3 percent of GDP in 2026, exceeding their 50-year average of 21.2 percent. After being adjusted for shifts in the timing of certain payments, outlays remain at about that level through 2028 but then grow steadily, boosted by rising spending on mandatory programs and increasing net interest costs. Outlays in 2036 are 24.4 percent of GDP (see Chapter 3).

the cumulative deficit over the 2026–2035 period is $1.4 trillion (or 6 percent) greater (see Chapter 5). Three major policy developments contribute to those changes: The 2025 reconciliation act (see Appendix A) increased deficits by an estimated $4.7 trillion; higher tariffs reduced deficits by an estimated $3.0 trillion; and administrative actions related to immigration increased deficits by an estimated $0.5 trillion.

The law’s most significant tax changes were those that extended certain provisions of the 2017 tax act (P.L. 115-97) that had expired or were scheduled to expire after 2025. The reconciliation act lowered statutory tax rates and changed the amount of individual income subject to tax, thus reducing individual income tax liabilities for most households and for pass-through businesses (that is, businesses for which income is taxed under the individual income tax system). It also accelerated deductions for business investment and thus reduced effective marginal tax rates on that investment. (The effective marginal tax rate measures the tax burden on returns from a marginal investment—that is, one that is expected to earn just enough, after taxes, to attract investors.) The reconciliation act modified eligibility and financing for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and altered the terms of federal student loans, reducing federal spending on those programs. It also provided additional funding for defense, homeland security, and immigration-related activities.

The 2025 reconciliation act is estimated to increase total deficits over the 2025–2034 period by $4.2 trillion relative to CBO’s January 2025 baseline projections (see Table A-1).

To account for the effects of the 2025 reconciliation act, CBO increased its estimate of total deficits over the 2025–2034 period by $4.2 trillion relative to the agency’s January 2025 baseline projections (see Table A-1). That amount reflects CBO and JCT’s conventional estimate of the law’s effects on primary deficits (which exclude net outlays for interest) as well as effects of increased net outlays for interest and of budgetary feedback from macroeconomic changes. In total, the reconciliation act increases CBO’s estimate of federal debt as a percentage of GDP in 2034 by 9.0 percentage points, from 117.1 percent of GDP to 126.0 percent.

Argo CD wraps the loop in an application-centric abstraction with a dashboard; Flux exposes the loop as a set of granular Kubernetes custom resources.

a Washington Post analysis found that Musk has recently significantly increased his rate of online posts about race and his concerns about perceived threats to Whiteness or what he views as calls for a “genocide” against White people.

In September, Musk posted on X to agree with a screenshot posted by another user that said White people faced a choice between being “conquered, enslaved, raped and genocided while being called ‘racist’” or reclaiming “our nations and our dignity while being called ‘racist.’” “Yes,” Musk replied.

In one of Musk’s recent posts on X about race the billionaire appeared to suggest that White people should be considered Indigenous to the United States. “It certainly makes no sense that everyone except Europeans can have a homeland,” he wrote. “It’s absolutely ridiculous when you think about it. Where did White people come from??”

Asked how long one’s ancestors must have been somewhere for them be considered Indigenous, Musk replied: “250 years sounds like plenty to me.”

Wow.

Murderous migrants beheading innocent people in their home town is what’s making people angry, not “social media”!

Buried deep inside a 192-page intelligence authorization bill is Section 622, titled “United States-Israel Intelligence Sharing Enhancement.” It would require the president, acting through the director of national intelligence and as necessary the secretary of defense, to “expand and enhance intelligence sharing with the Government of Israel” on a list of subjects that encompasses almost every topic of intelligence interest in the Middle East.

The bill, put forward by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would prohibit any suspension, reduction, or limitation of such sharing “except on the basis of a specific and identifiable national security concern determined by the President.” Any such exception would require a report to Congress within fifteen days detailing not only the reason for the change but also the categories of information involved. The same report would require an assessment of the anticipated impact on regional security and various other matters.

This proposal is one of several recent moves by those in Washington who carry the Israeli government’s water to keep the United States tied to Israel despite plummeting support for the country among the American public. The most salient form of U.S. support to Israel has been more than $300 billion in economic and especially military assistance.

The mandating of intelligence sharing carries this strategy further by moving it into the shadowy world of relations between intelligence agencies. That world is even farther removed from public visibility and accountability than the defense integration, and even less likely to stimulate thoughts about American taxpayers’ money going to a foreign country. So far, Section 622 of the intelligence bill has received less attention than Section 224 of the defense bill.

In intelligence, Israel is more of an adversary than an ally. Being an adversary in intelligence means indulging in the hostile act of espionage. Israel has a long record of conducting that type of hostile act against the United States. The best-known case involves the spy Jonathan Pollard, who stole such an overwhelming volume of U.S. secrets that then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger stated to the court that sentenced Pollard that it was difficult “ to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant in view of the breadth, the critical importance to the U.S., and the high sensitivity of the information he sold to Israel.”

When Pollard completed his prison sentence and parole in 2020, he was given a hero's welcome, led by Netanyahu himself, on his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel.

The Israeli espionage threat to the United States has only intensified. Last week, NBC News reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency raised the threat level for such espionage, evidently a reflection mostly of U.S.-Israeli differences over the Iran war. The New York Times quotes an official saying that Israeli intelligence operations aimed at senior U.S. officials during the second Trump administration have become so aggressive as to be “unhinged.”

Any sensitive information, including intelligence secrets, shared with Israel entails a high risk of Israel passing it to other countries, including U.S. adversaries. Israel has a long record of that, too

Israel’s sharing of U.S.-origin military technology with China has been an issue.

Israel has started more wars and attacked more nations than any other country in the Middle East. In recent years it has inflicted more death and destruction on civilians through military operations than any other Middle Eastern state. It uses violence to seek regional hegemony and destroy Palestinian nationhood in ways that are inconsistent with U.S. interests.

After being the principal influence on President Donald Trump’s decision to launch the war, Netanyahu’s government has been sabotaging efforts to end it. It currently is doing so mainly with relentless attacks in Lebanon that have killed thousands and displaced over a million people. The divergence of objectives was reflected in an expletive-laden phone call last week between Trump and Netanyahu that was mainly about those attacks.

But new research suggests another culprit may be doing more of the damage: remote work.  “Remote work can explain 64% of the increase in unemployment for all young college graduates between 2017-19 and 2022-24,” researchers wrote in a blog post published Monday by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Separately, a paper by economists Peter John Lambert and Yannick Schindler of the London School of Economics posted last month reached a similar conclusion. The authors found that work-from-home exposure was a stronger predictor of the pullback in early-career hiring than exposure to artificial intelligence, at least so far.

“Junior workers rely heavily on training, mentoring, supervision, informal feedback and internal networks,” Schindler said, “which are all things where in-person contact is really important.”

people in their 20s are generally eager to work in an office at least part time. The same is true for many workers older than 50, who tend to be more senior, are less likely to have young children at home, and whose jobs often involve more meetings and supervising.   “It’s the people in the middle of those ages — the ones who have families, who don’t need day-to-day mentoring because they’re already well on their career path,” he told Straight Arrow, “who want the flexibility of working from home.”

Judge Leo Sorokin decided those fees violated the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act. Twenty states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the fees. The judge agreed with the states that the fee is a tax, which the president cannot levy on his own. “The tax can only be levied by Congress, and so he crossed the line when he entered into this area of charging $100,000 for a particular type of visa,” Hing said.

The Trump administration has already said they plan to appeal this ruling. The district court is the lowest-level court in the federal system, with the next stop likely to be the court of appeals.

In the meantime, companies are not required to pay the fee.

As for the companies that have already paid the fee, they will likely seek reimbursement from the government. However, any refunds will likely have to wait until the appeals process is completed, which will take some time.

It comes after Trump ordered U.S. strikes in response to the downing of an American military helicopter.

Iran has not claimed responsibility for shooting down the American helicopter. Tehran accused the U.S. of acting under a “false pretext” and warned that any further U.S. attacks would be met with what it called “devastating and more wide-ranging strikes.” Despite the latest exchange, Trump has maintained that efforts to reach a peace agreement remain on track.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that Iranian leaders have "taken too long to negotiate a deal". US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iran had been given a chance to make a deal but had not taken it, adding that bombs would be "dropping on key facilities" in the country. The US president added that Iran would be attacked again if no peace deal was secured.

As part of the August deal, Alt5 acquired $1.5 billion worth of crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial, the crypto company co-founded by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., among others, in 2024. The president and undisclosed members of his family were entitled to roughly $500 million in proceeds from the crypto sale, according to disclosures by World Liberty Financial.

Alt5 closed at $8.97 on Aug. 8, the last trading day before the World Liberty deal was announced. Since then, AI Financial ’s stock — originally trading under the ticker ALTS, now AIFC — fell to 66 cents a share at the June 8 close, a 93% loss, according to FactSet data.

World Liberty was founded in 2024 as a private company by Eric, Donald Jr., and Barron Trump, sons of the president; Zach and Alex Witkoff, sons of Trump Middle East negotiator Steve Witkoff; and business partners Zak Folkman and Chase Herro, according to a company document. Disclosures on World Liberty’s website in early June show that “approximately 38% of the equity interests” in World Liberty’s parent company are owned by “an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump and certain of his family members.”

Alt5 announced the World Liberty deal on Aug. 11. It had two parts. Alt5 traded shares and stock warrants in itself to World Liberty in exchange for $750 million worth of WLFI tokens, and Alt5 sold $750 million in stock to investors at $7.50 a share. The $750 million in proceeds, minus some fees, was given to World Liberty in exchange for WLFI tokens. All told, Alt5 received nearly 7.3 billion WLFI tokens, which it initially valued at about $1.5 billion. Zach Witkoff, World Liberty’s CEO, became chair of Alt5′s board.

The Trump family is entitled to 75% of the proceeds from World Liberty’s crypto token sales, according to disclosures made in a document World Liberty published in 2024 describing its token offering, and repeated in fine print at the bottom of its website. That would put the Trump family’s direct gains from the August Alt5 transaction at roughly $500 million after fees and other expenses.

Some of these issues, such as the court filing and auditor issue, should have been revealed to investors more swiftly, Canter said. “I started my ethics career at the SEC, and I think they would have started investigating this for just one or two of these failures to disclose,” Canter said.

One potential wrinkle in the investigative process, Canter said, is the Trump family’s recent “anti-weaponization” settlement with the Internal Revenue Service. Under the settlement, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued an order releasing Trump from ongoing audits. The settlement’s language is vague and is written in a way that could be interpreted to apply to regulators’ potential investigations of companies related to the Trump family, such as AI Financial, Canter said.