04/12/18 Overnight Links

New York Times: What you don’t know about how Facebook uses your data

LA Times: Facebook will no longer fund campaign opposing proposed California consumer privacy initiative

Activist Post: The same government that spies on its citizens is lecturing the Facebook CEO for doing the same thing

 Breitbart: Master Mark: “We don’t think what we are doing is censoring speech”

MuckRock: Chicago police department coaches officers on how to avoid the same social media surveillance they themselves employ

Al Jazeera: Oil prices soar over fears of a US strike on Syria

Salon: Trump launches a new drug war, but who’s the real enemy?

Reason: It’s good news for libertarians when Paul Ryan quits Congress

FEE: Why the social engineers of the Sixties failed to create a “Great Society”

Cato: Candy-coated cartel: Time to kill the US sugar program

Also Cato: No strategic, tactical, legal, or humanitarian justification for US airstrikes in Syria

Consortium News: International lawyers: Strike against Syria would be illegal

The American Conservative: Trump surrenders to the foreign policy blob : “President Trump recently spoke an essential truth on foreign policy when he stated that American troops should come home from Syria. The Islamic State has been defeated and Washington has no business trying to overthrow Assad, dismember Syria, get between the Turks and Kurds, confront Russia and Iran, and whatever other inane quests the neocon think tanks have come up with.

However, the Blob—as the foreign policy establishment and its extensive network of analysts, pundits, and officials is known—also dominates the president’s staff. Indeed, it is not clear he has anyone working for him, at least at the State Department, Pentagon, and National Security Council, who is not a card-carrying member of the Blob. That means his foreign policy aides spend most of their time trying to talk him out of his most sensible ideas.”

Truthdig: YouTube blocks video criticizing Israeli militarism

In between cancer treatments, Justin Raimondo reflects on the purpose behind his writing and his website

Author: S. Smith