Crooked Media - The Starlinks and stripes

- Former Trump aide Peter Navarro making a weird desperate plea outside of the courtroom that just convicted him of criminal contempt of Congress

When he is not doing enough ketamine to kill a mid-sized dog, Elon Musk is interfering in major world conflicts, seemingly on the advice of racist internet trolls, so that’s great. 
 

• A top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy accused the right-wing tech billionaire/international scourge of enabling Russian aggression, after Musk acknowledged denying satellite internet service in order to prevent a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian naval fleet in 2022. Musk’s rocket company [sighs heavily] SpaceX operates the Starlink satellite internet service, which has been essential to Ukraine’s military operation and civilians alike since the beginning of the war in areas where digital infrastructure has been destroyed. 
   

• A new biography of Musk (God help us) reveals that Musk made that fateful decision out of a supposed fear that Russia would respond to the attack with nuclear weapons, in part because Musk himself had been in conversation with senior Russian officials. Cool cool cool. Good stuff. The guy who is constantly complaining about things like the “woke mind virus” is a power broker in one of the most consequential international conflicts of the past half-century, on behalf of the bad guys. 
   

• Musk responded to the allegations by saying that he did not want to be “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.” The book also illustrates that Musk has had extremely close contact not only with Russian officials, but with high-level U.S. government officials like National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, and even chairman of the joint chiefs Gen. Mark Milley. Recent reports have brought to light the staggering number of government contracts Musk has, underscoring his vast influence in sectors where he is clearly out of his depth.

Elon’s alleged determination to “remain neutral” in the conflict (the one he inserted himself into) has resulted in him making a number of decisions that definitively benefit Russia. 
 

• Starlink operates 42,000 internet terminals used by hospitals, businesses, and aid organizations across Ukraine. One man wielding near-total control over connectivity in an international war zone has struck many as…bad. SpaceX has also used a process called “geofencing” to restrict where Starlink is available on the front lines. So Musk wants to have his “non-interventionist” cake and eat it, too. In July, the New York Times reported that Musk refused to allow the service to work near Crimea. Faced with this uneasy dependance on Starlink, Ukraine has consulted other satellite internet providers, but officials reported that no other service can even come close to Starlink’s reach. And then there’s all his other businesses.
   

• The Federal Aviation Administration said that SpaceX has to keep its Starship Super Heavy rocket grounded, after the original Starship rocket exploded mid-flight back in April. The Federal Aviation Administration called for SpaceX to take 63 corrective actions before launching another such test flight. Musk’s Tesla also doesn’t seem to be doing much about its “self-driving” cars causing crashes. It’s cool how in America you can be a rich guy who isn’t actually good at anything and still be considered a business genius. 
   

Some combination of egomania, delusion, and too much money has led Elon Musk to believe he is an essential player in geopolitics. At some point, the international community needs to put its foot down before our billionaire enfant terrible wreaks more havoc on the planet than he already has. 

So you just received your employer's new statement about its commitment to DEI — now what? In this week’s Work Appropriate episode, Sameera Kapila, author of Inclusive Design Communities, joins host Anne Helen Peterson to talk about ways your workplace can actually follow through on DEI and listeners’ questions about how to engage in effective, sustainable progress towards DEI goals at your workplace. Listen to this convo, and more only on Work Appropriate. New Episodes every Wednesday!

The special grand jury in Fulton County, GA, that investigated the Donald Trump Extended Criminal Universe and their efforts to overturn the 2020 election originally recommended indictments against 39 individuals, over twice as many as the 19 who ended up facing charges. And the takeaway is clear: This could’ve been an even greater shitshow for the GOP. Those who were ultimately spared include Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and former Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), and David Perdue (R-GA), as well as Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Graham was the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020, when he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger shortly after the November election. On that call, Graham asked him whether he had the authority to reject certain absentee ballots. In typical fashion, Graham got in front of any news network that would listen on Friday to trot out an argument of essentially, “Oh, I guess it’s ILLEGAL to do your job now.” “I guess it’s ILLEGAL for two fellas to chat on the phone.”

A federal judge has rejected former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ bid to move his criminal case from Fulton County, GA, to federal court, which likely means Trump’s effort will see the same fate. Nice!

Conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito rejected a call from Democrats (and anyone who cares about judicial ethics) to recuse himself from an upcoming SCOTUS case because he recently engaged in some political messaging with one a veteran right-wing SCOTUS lawyer who will soon argue another case before the court. 

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will run for reelection to the House in 2024. She is 83. [Rubs temples furiously until my skin bleeds]

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) appointed one of the co-founders of the far-right “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty to the Florida Commission on Ethics on Wednesday. Seems bad!

The anti-abortion movement is in search of new terminology, because “pro-life” has come to be (correctly) associated with extremism and is now politically toxic to many voters. Just over one year since the Dobbs decision, abortion is now fully banned in 15 states, eleven of which provide no exception for rape and incest. 

Donald Trump hosted a $100,000-per-plate fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani’s legal bills on Thursday night. Normal stuff!

Speaking of the big guy, Attorney General Letitia James’ (D-NY) office found that Trump’s net worth was overstated by anywhere from $1.9 billion-$3.6 billion every year between 2011 and 2021.

The United Nations issued its Global Stocktake report on Friday, and warned that the world is not on target to curb climate change and more action is needed “on all fronts” in the runup to the COP28 talks in Dubai at the end of the year. When they say “the world” they of course actually mostly mean the countries like the United States, China, and India that pollute more than most other parts of the world combined. In the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, nearly 200 countries agreed to limit warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, striving to keep the increase to 1.5 degrees C. But the U.N. wrote that existing national pledges to cut emissions are insufficient to keep temperatures below that threshold. The report offers a bold plan to combat ever-worsening climate change, including a recommendation that low and zero-carbon electricity should account for as much as 99 percent of global electricity by 2050, with coal virtually eliminated as a power source by that time. Also on Friday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told G20 leaders that they have the power to reset the climate crisis, which is true, and they should do that.

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Ireland’s Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar said he believes Irish reunification will happen in his lifetime. 

The IRS will soon launch an effort to aggressively pursue hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes from the rich and large corporations. 

A federal judge ordered the state of Louisiana to remove incarcerated youths from a temporary lockup at a former death-row building in the state’s adult maximum-security prison by September 15.