FBI Demands to Know Identities Who Read USA Today Article, Child Kidnapping Terrorist Blows Himself up in Standoff with ISIS, More Taxes=More Poverty in Developing Nations (The Five for 06/07/21)
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Now let’s get into the news.
[one]
The media love the media, think the media is under assault, see the media as the great heroes of our age.
Of course, except when the media really is under assault, and then no outlets bother to cover what's happening.
The FBI and USA Today are in a lawsuit because the FBI wants to know the identities of people who read a news article.
Newspaper publisher Gannett is fighting an effort by the FBI to try to determine who read a specific USA Today story about a deadly shooting in February near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., that left two FBI agents dead and three wounded.
The subpoena, served on Gannett in April, seeks information about who accessed the news article online during a 35-minute window starting just after 8 p.m. on the day of the shootings. The demand — signed by a senior FBI agent in Maryland — does not appear to ask for the names of those who read the story, if the news outlet has such information. Instead, the subpoena seeks internet addresses and mobile phone information that could lead to the identities of the readers.
The information being sought “relates to a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI,” the subpoena says.
In a filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, lawyers for Gannett said the demand violates the First Amendment. They also complained that the FBI appears to have ignored the Justice Department’s policy for seeking information from the media.
“A government demand for records that would identify specific individuals who read specific expressive materials, like the Subpoena at issue here, invades the First Amendment rights of both publisher and reader, and must be quashed accordingly,” attorneys Charles Tobin and Maxwell Mishkin wrote on behalf of Gannett.
One of the more odd parts of this developing story is that USA Today is citing a case from the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal to protect the privacy of their readers.
One of the cases cited by Gannett’s lawyers is a battle that arose in 1998 after prosecutors from Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s office demanded Monica Lewinsky’s book-purchase records from D.C. bookstore Kramerbooks & Afterwords and another outlet as investigators sought to trace gifts she bought for President Bill Clinton. A judge ruled that the request implicated First Amendment rights of Lewinsky and the bookstores, prompting Starr’s office to drop one subpoena and narrow another.
This is a very big deal.
The FBI is violating the DOJ’s standards, and (a court will likely rule) the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens.
Per as usual, the really significant stories get buried beyond the front page, like this one did.
[two]
Vox isn’t one of my primary go-to sources to cite in The Five, but this is an interesting report…and interesting that an outlet that’s solidly left of center picked up the story about taxation and poverty in developing nations.
In the rich world, the poorest citizens tend to be net financial recipients from the government — they get more in transfers than they pay in taxes. But that’s not true in some developing countries. First, tax regimes in those countries aren’t very progressive, partly because the revenue authorities tend to rely on indirect taxes like the value-added tax (VAT) — which fall on all consumers — rather than direct taxes on high personal or corporate incomes. (A VAT is similar to an American sales tax but applies to all firms, not just retail businesses.)
The mechanics of a VAT are easier to implement for a weak state because the tax is collected from registered businesses — millions of individuals don’t have to file tax returns. And so organizations like the International Monetary Fund have pushed countries down this path, prioritizing the need for revenue over a concern for equity. At the same time, welfare programs that transfer more cash to the poorest citizens tend to represent a far smaller part of government spending in developing countries, relative to their richer peers.
If their tax rates are similar, by definition that means poor people in these nations on net lose a similar proportion of their income to the government as do rich people. And that means, in turn, that the impact of government can be to increase poverty rates. In four of the five sub-Saharan African countries for which the Tulane center provides data, the net effect of taxes and transfers is to increase the number of people living below the World Bank’s extreme poverty line ($1.25 of purchasing power per person per day).
In other words, even the far political left agrees that developing nations tax their poor into further poverty, which can at least partially be blamed on bad advice from NGO’s in the west (International Monetary Fund—good job, idiots).
[three]
Terrorist leader Abubakar Sheku. I intentionally picked the dumbest looking pic I could find. “Humiliated in life and death” according to the article. And in The Five. Dude kidnapped schoolchildren. He deserves the mocking.
Many Americans take the simple view of foreign policy that the world is “America vs. People Who Hate America.”
In reality, the planet is a complex web of international alliances and disputes, which includes both bonafide governments and terrorist groups.
Over the weekend, ISIS terrorists in Nigeria cornered the Abubakar Sheku, a leader of terrorist group Boko Haram.
The leader of Boko Haram — the Nigerian terror group that has killed tens of thousands of people and kidnapped hundreds of schoolchildren — has killed himself, according to reports.
Abubakar Shekau — once rejected by ISIS for being too radical — died last month as the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) was under ISIS leadership commands to capture him, Reuters said.
After a gun battle, he was cornered and offered the chance to repent and join his rivals — but instead killed himself by detonating an explosive device, the wire service said, citing an ISWAP audio recording.
“Abubakar Shekau, God has judged him by sending him to heaven,” ISWAP leader Abu Musab al-Barnawi said on the audio, the agency said.
“Shekau preferred to be humiliated in the afterlife than getting humiliated on earth, and he killed himself instantly by detonating an explosive,” al-Barnawi said in the audio, also heard by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
There was a $7 million bounty on Shekau’s head. If I had him cornered, I’d be pretty ticked that he blew himself up too.
Now nobody gets the payday.
Bummer.
[four]
Vice President Harris was greeted with protests when she touched down in Guatemala yesterday, including Guatemalans who taunted the VP with “Trump Won” signs.
The New York Post reports:
Another sign that appears to have been hoisted by activists onto a tall billboard along the roadway says, “Kamala Stop Funding Criminals #FueraDeGuatemala.”
It’s unclear how many participants were involved in the protest.
Giammattei said in a CBS News interview that aired Sunday that the Biden administration is to blame for sparking the migration crisis.
The Guatemalan president said he and Harris “are not on the same side of the coin” on migration.
“We asked the United States government to send more of a clear message to prevent more people from leaving,” Giammattei said.
When Biden took office, “The message changed too: ‘We’re going to reunite families, we’re going to reunite children,’” he said. “The very next day, the coyotes were here organizing groups of children to take them to the United States.”
VP Harris continues her tour discussing immigration issues with a visit to Mexico today.
[five]
The first new drug to combat Alzheimers in nearly two decades is hitting the market this year, but comes with a heavy dose of controversy.
NPR reports:
The Food and Drug Administration approved the drug aducanumab to treat patients with Alzheimer's disease on Monday. It is the first new drug approved by the agency for Alzheimer's disease since 2003.
The drug is the first to show significant progress against the sticky brain plaques that are the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.
The drug has proved highly effective at reducing the plaques, called beta-amyloid, that build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's.
But does the drug actually slow the progression of the disease when it reduces the plaques? It's not yet clear. Two large studies offered conflicting evidence about whether the treatment slows declines in memory and thinking. A panel of expert advisers to the FDA recommended in November that the agency not approve the drug.
As a condition of approval, the FDA is requiring Biogen, the drug's maker, to conduct another clinical study to confirm that the reduction of amyloid plaques results in clinical improvement for patients. If the subsequent study doesn't show a clinical improvement, the agency could move to withdraw the approval.
If the current trends hold, roughly 11% of the population will get Alzheimer’s eventually, which means the treatment options being developed are much smaller in scale compared to the threat of the disease to the general population.
[epilogue]
The flag of the Confederate Cherokee during the American Civil War
When the American Civil War broke out, a civil war of sorts also ignited in the Cherokee tribe, who had recently been relocated to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears, on the order of Andrew Jackson.
Most Cherokee followed tribal chief John Ross, who was committed to remaining neutral during the conflict. However, 3,000 of the 21,000 tribe members followed Stand Wattie into battle for the Confederacy, seeking vengeance for the genocide their people had endured at the hands of Jackson, which was blamed on Union states.
After the Battle of Union Gap where a beloved Cherokee leader was killed, a number of Cherokee Braves scalped the dead Union soldiers, causing sheer terror in Union ranks at the mention of the Cherokee braves.
When part of the Cherokee Braves forces were captured in battle in 1864, and after being convinced they were fighting to preserve slavery, joined the Union ranks for the remainder of the war.
The Cherokee Braves were present at Robert E. Lee’s surrender at the Appomatox Courthouse.
Stand Wattie (pictured below) was the last Confederate General to surrender, and the highest ranking Native American on U.S. soil in history.
As a result of the Cherokee rebellion, the U.S. government stripped the tribe a large amount of land in Oklahoma in 1866. Wattie returned home to find that federal forces has burned his farm as a personal punishment.
Until the next one,
-sth