05/03/18 Overnight Links

Gizmodo: Oakland passes nation’s strongest surveillance technology ordinance yet

The Intercept: New bipartisan bill could give President the power to imprison US citizens in military detention forever

Activist Post: James Comey says Deep State doesn’t exist, then describes the Deep State’s existence

LA Times: Technology turns our cities into spies for ICE, whether we like it or not

Reason: New York officials weaponize regulatory power against the NRA

The Hill: TSA forced to check whether air marshals show up to work sober: report

Techdirt: Amazon joins Google in making censorship easy, threatens signal for circumventing censorship regimes

FEE: Bigotry and compulsory inclusion are both collectivist

Cato: The 14 most common arguments against immigration and why they’re wrong

National Interest: Why Washington turns a blind eye to Egypt’s thugocracy Ed: Our government has no business worrying about the internal affairs of any foreign nation, thug state or not.  But it’s important to note the selective outrage that emanates from DC in regards to overseas atrocities.  Yemen, for example, is suffering thousands of innocent dead from Saudi Arabia’s U.S.-backed war of attrition and no one in D.C. cares, because Saudi Arabia is a thug state of America’s own making.  Our entire foreign policy could be boiled down into the propping up of various thug states across the globe, whether it be the Saudis, Ukrainian neo-Nazis, among other various and sundry tin pots who are promised American dollars in exchange for the subjection of their people.

On the topic of US-back Neo-Nazis in Ukraine is this just-published gem at The Nation: America’s collusion with Neo-Nazis  “That stormtroop-like assaults on gays, Jews, elderly ethnic Russians, and other “impure” citizens are widespread throughout Kiev-ruled Ukraine, along with torchlight marches reminiscent of those that eventually inflamed Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s. And that the police and official legal authorities do virtually nothing to prevent these neo-fascist acts or to prosecute them. On the contrary, Kiev has officially encouraged them by systematically rehabilitating and even memorializing Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi German extermination pogroms and their leaders  during World War II, renaming streets in their honor, building monuments to them, rewriting history to glorify them, and more.”

A small note on fascism: Fascism takes root so quickly in populations, with entire populations who insist that they are firmly against fascism yet backpedal into the thing they profess to oppose, because fascist rhetoric appeals to a primitive instinct that resides within all of us.  Fascism is nothing more than a militant tribalism, the fascist program exploits this aspect of human psychology to build power.  Tribalist rhetoric sustains it, and inspires dimwits to murder and die for it.  The fight against totalitarianism, and fascism, is also a fight against that instinct within us.

Cato: Drones on the border: efficacy and privacy implications

Zero Hedge: Trump “all but decided to withdraw” from Iran deal as IAEA refutes Netanyahu speech

Inverse: MDMA successfully treats PTSD in new study, scientists eye FDA approval Ed: On the verge of an historic revolution in medicine, an end of the slavery to deadly, insanity-inducing pharmaceuticals by way of marijuana and psychedelics

Cosmos: How psychedelic therapies are making a comeback

Author: S. Smith