Pages

▼

Tuesday, December 23, 2025

6700 Indians have been rescued from Cambodia and Myanmar scam compounds so far

 

The Plastic Chemicals Hiding in Your Food

Consumer Reports [no paywall – 2024] “CR tested popular fast foods and supermarket staples for bisphenols and phthalates, which can be harmful to your health. Here’s what we found—and how to stay safer. 

By the time you open a container of yogurt, the food has taken a long journey to reach your spoon. You may have some idea of that journey: From cow to processing to packaging to store shelves. But at each step, there is a chance for a little something extra to sneak in, a stowaway of sorts that shouldn’t be there. That unexpected ingredient is something called a plasticizer:

 a chemical used to make plastic more flexible and durable. Today, plasticizers—the most common of which are called phthalates—show up inside almost all of us, right along with other chemicals found in plastic, including bisphenols such as BPA. These have been linked to a long list of health concerns, even at very low levels. Consumer Reports has investigated bisphenols and phthalates in food and food packaging a few times over the past 25 years. 


In our new tests, we checked a wider variety of foods to see how much of the chemicals Americans actually consume. The answer? Quite a lot. Our tests of nearly 100 foods found that despite growing evidence of potential health threats, bisphenols and phthalates remain widespread in our food…”

An in depth look at unpaid highway toll scams; WSJ Video (4.42); 1 billion lost over last three years to Chinese gangs; they get credit card numbers and use US helpers to buy goods, sometimes ship to China
 
Fraud Studies: Here are links to the studies I’ve written for the Better Business Bureau: puppy fraud, romance fraud; BEC fraud, sweepstakes/lottery fraud,  tech support fraud, romance fraud money mules, crooked movers, government imposters, online vehicle sale scams, rental fraud, gift cards,  free trial offer frauds,  job scams,  online shopping fraud,  fake check fraud and crypto scams
 
Fraud News Around the worldHumor
  • Kim Kardashian, who is famous for something, announced recently that she failed the California bar exam. She previously failed the so-called the “baby bar,” a multiple-choice test required for people who study law via apprenticeship instead of, you know, actually going to law school. Kardashian has supposedly been apprenticing for over six years now, and did pass the baby bar on her fourth try, but for now has gone no further. To be fair, the pass rate for the California bar exam is notoriously low, and many people have initially failed it but then gone on to become good lawyers. To be less fair, virtually all of those people had a law degree, which Kim Kardashian doesn’t, or at least a college degree, which Kim Kardashian also doesn’t. (From Lowering the Bar)
FTC and CFPBArtificial Intelligence and deep fake fraudBenefit Theft Scam CompoundsIRS and tax fraudRansomware and data breachesATM Skimming                                                       Jamaica and Lottery FraudRomance Fraud and Sextortion 
at

Britain caught in ‘space between peace and war’, says new head of MI6 Guardian

 

Britain caught in ‘space between peace and war’, says new head of MI6 Guardian 


Automatic License Plate Reader Report Raises Concerns About Expansion of Government Surveillance in Iowa

Follow up to Judge Rules Flock Surveillance Images Are Public Records That Can Be Requested By Anyone, How Cops Are Using Flock Safety’s ALPR Network to Surveil Protesters and Activists and DeFlock – Automated License Plate Readers 

 See Also: “The University of Iowa’s Technology Law Clinic and the ACLU of Iowa today released a reportthat surveyed 48 Iowa communities and their use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), a growing form of government surveillance that is raising concerns with privacy, civil rights, and good governance advocates. 

The report is a focused look at the growing use of ALPRs by selected law enforcement agencies across Iowa and demonstrates that ALPRs are a surveillance tool that poses serious risks to Iowan’s privacy and civil liberties. ALPRs are not speed cameras. They are not “red light” cameras.

 Instead, they are cameras used along roadways throughout Iowa that take thousands of snapshots of all the license plates of the vehicles that drive by. That information can then be fed into a network of nationally shared databases that has too few privacy protections and is subject to abuse.

“Unlike other traffic cameras, ALPRs aren’t activated because you violated a law. They record you and every other person who drives by, simply to build a database of vehicle information. They can take hundreds of photos in a matter of minutes. 

And unlike ordinary surveillance cameras, where data is either not shared or shared in a more limited manner, the main purpose of ALPRs is to feed this information into a database,” said Megan Graham, director of the Technology Law Clinic at the University of Iowa College of Law and the professor who supervised the project…”


How to Build A Bot in Twelve Steps

Golann, Dwight, How to Build A Bot in Twelve Steps (December 05, 2025). Suffolk University Law School Research Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5871402 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5871402 

“Bots” powered by artificial intelligence systems are enormously powerful and versatile. 

Trained bots can take on a wide variety of roles, speaking and acting as lawyers, clients, mediators and advisors, providing unique assistance to teachers and other professionals as they do. This short paper describes how to build a bot in twelve simple steps in the ChatGPT Plus system in a template provided in Chat.

 The process is conducted in lay English, without coding or any specialized knowledge of AI. The paper also includes as examples the actual instructions guiding the “Dispute” and “Contract” bots on sites.suffolk.edu/ai-negotiation/

at

Bari’d (sic) 🇷🇺: The 60 Minutes CECOT Segment - Krasnov creating samizdat landscape in the US 🇺🇸 of A

Bari Weiss, meet The Streisand Effect.


Breaking CBS NEWS: “We can’t report on the current murdering spree until we get the serial killer’s side of the story.”


The segment apparently aired on Canada’s Global TV app and was shared by this Bluesky user @jasonparis.bsky.social. You can watch the entire segment below …

***Please share widely ‼️***


MOST WATCHED: The 60 Minutes CECOT Segment


We’ve gone from bootlegging whiskey during prohibition to having to bootleg truth during fascism…


"Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? 
Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity." 
~ Vaclav Havel 
at

Power Brokers

Thanks to Donald Trump, 2025 was a good year … for white-collar criminals Casey Michel


Tax is not theft

Is tax theft? Many people think so — and that belief shapes how we vote, how we treat public services, and how democracy functions. In
Read the full article


18

Glossary entries: tax and the reasons to tax

Every time I look at this blog’s glossary, I seem to note more gaps or omissions than explanations that I need, even though there are
Read the full article…




Epstein files: which royals, politicians, musicians and actors are in the photos?

Released images illustrate relationships Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell forged with significant figures



Trump 2.0

Trump’s social media business is merging with a nuclear fusion company CNN

 

Trump commits to Moon landing by 2028, followed by a lunar outpost two years later Ars Technica. Nuclear reactors there, too!

 

Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio, wife to donate to 300,000 Trump accounts The Hill

 

Trump’s $1,776 ‘warrior dividend’ repurposed from military housing aid The Guardian

 

Coast Guard Removes “Hate Symbol” Designations Despite Assurances It Wouldn’tTruthout


Twist In CEO Murder Case: Prosecutors Withdraw Key Interrogation Recordings In Mangione TrialDallas Express


How I Almost Became a Palantir Democrat Un-Diplomatic


Power Brokers Harper’s. “What’s really behind your soaring utility bills”


THAT’S A FEATURE, NOT A BUG: Two Fraudsters Trafficked $7 Million in SNAP Funds.

at

Monday, December 22, 2025

The Return of MAGA’s Favorite Forbidden Book

 When Camus died in a car crash, he was carrying a return train ticket. "The greatest proponent of absurdism suffered an absurd death"... more »


Nakedcapitalism - We Are Nineteen Years Old


“The Truth Behind Trump’s Aggressive Venezuela Strategy”

An explanation of why US belligerence against Venezuela is not about exploiting its oil. So what is it about?



The Return of MAGA’s Favorite Forbidden Book

The Atlantic Gift Article – What an apocalyptic French novel about a migrant invasion reveals about the worldview of nationalist conservatives – “Not long ago, a book party like this would have been unthinkable: a Washington celebration of one of the most notorious French novels ever written. 

But on a frigid December night, some 50 people crammed into Butterworth’s, a Capitol Hill restaurant favored by the MAGA elite, to celebrate the rerelease of The Camp of the Saints, which had gone out of print in English decades ago.

 The dystopian novel by the French author Jean Raspail depicts the destruction of European civilization by barbaric migrant hordes that arrive, uninvited, by boat. It has been mostly reviled since its publication, in 1973. But prominent figures of the French right have hailed it as prophetic, including Marine Le Pen, who first read it at 18 and keeps a signed first edition in her office. 


The novel has also influenced two architects of Donald Trump’s immigration policies: Stephen Miller, the current deputy chief of staff, recommended it in emails to Breitbart News reporters, and Steve Bannon, the president’s former consigliere, makes frequent reference to it…I do not believe in suppressing books, this one included. The Camp of the Saints is not a good novel, but it is an important one. Dystopian fiction helps structure political myth; political myth helps structure policy. In the same way that The Handmaid’s Tale looms over abortion politics, or The Terminator lurks over artificial intelligence, The Camp of the Saints hangs over immigration politics—for a small but important stratum of right-wing thinkers and politicians. It illuminates much about the worldview of nationalist conservatives who are ascendant in America, France, and many other democracies. 

The problem is what that light shows: the profound fear that European-American civilization, which in this view is inseparable from whiteness, faces an existential threat from migration—and that extraordinary measures can be justified in response…”


To AI-proof exams, professors turn to the oldest technique of all

Washington Post gift article – A growing number of educators are finding that oral exams allow them to test their students’ learning without the benefit of AI platforms such as ChatGPT: “…


Across the country, a small but growing number of educators are experimenting with oral exams to circumvent the temptations presented by powerful artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT. Such tools can be used to cheat on take-home exams or essays and to complete all manner of assignments, part of a broader phenomenon known as “cognitive off-loading.” 

Catherine Hartmann’s honors seminar at the University of Wyoming Hartman…she tells her students that using AI is like bringing a forklift to the gym when your goal is to build muscle. “The classroom is a gymnasium, and I am your personal trainer,” she explains. “I want you to lift the weights.” So far, her students have embraced the training regimen. Lily Leman, 20, a double major in Spanish and history, took her final exam last week. Leman admits to being “pretty freaked out” at first by the idea of an oral exam. 


Now she wishes she had more of them. “With this exam, I don’t know how you would use AI, frankly,” Leman said. Ever since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, educators have been grappling with the challenge AI represents for existing methods of learning. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.)..”

at

Satyajit Das: AI – Artificial Intelligence or Absolute Insanity?

Thanks to Donald Trump, 2025 was a good year … for white-collar criminals Casey Michel




Epstein and Maxwell Grand Jury Records Are Released

The transcripts and photos were part of Department of Justice files arising from investigations into the disgraced financier and his former girlfriend


L’affaire Epstein

Justice Department prepares to drop trove of Epstein files as deadline looms Fox News

 

Epstein, Israel, and the CIA: How the Iran-Contra Planes Landed at Les Wexner’s Base Drop Site

 

Banker dad of Donald Trump Jr’s bride-to-be vouched for Jeffrey Epstein as’ a man of the highest integrity’ to help him get Pedo Island tax breaksDaily Mail

 

Harris defends Biden administration decision not to release Jeffrey Epstein files The Hill

 

"The ISIS-inspired atrocity last Sunday reinforces the rapidly changing security environment in our nation. Our security agencies must be in the best position to respond"

PM announces review of intelligence and law enforcement in wake of Bondi attack 



Satyajit Das: AI – Artificial Intelligence or Absolute Insanity?

AI is following the same trajectory as the dot-com bubble.


Today’s Doctored CPI Inflation Release Is Like a Bad Joke, but Very Serious

PUnpacking the data crime in the new inflation report: a bizarre fall in housing ghost

Sn  oi byg.civilian   Dress.  Z  costs, aka Owners Equivalent of Rent, which is 26% of CPI.


Reform’s Russian bribe case prompts election interference inquiry

The PM has ordered an investigation into foreign influence in politics after the ex-leader of Reform in Wales was jailed for taking cash to parrot Kremlin lines

Andersen’s $176M Comeback: The Ghost of Enron Just Went Public Guru Focus

Cesspool and Chaos: the Russian Connection in the Epstein Affair


Is This Luxurious ‘Hotel Complex’ a Future Residence for Belarusian Dictator Alexander Lukashenko?

Newly obtained documents reveal the people and companies who paid for the elite development near the Russian resort city of...


TSA Is Forwarding Names, Photos, and Flight Details to ICE

Mother Jones – “The secret airport deportation program denies victims any semblance of due process. 

The Transportation Security Administration is forwarding passenger lists to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in order to detain and deport travelers while denying them the chance to challenge the process, according to documents obtained by the New York Times.

 A Times report Friday revealed that information furnished by TSA provided the basis of ICE’s high-profile detention of university student Any Lucía López Belloza, who was deported following her arrest at Boston’s Logan airport en route to visit her family for Thanksgiving. 

On a near-daily basis since March, the agency has been sending files to ICE that include photographs of the person targeted for deportation, and flight information that ICE employs to detain people before they board. 

The TSA’s participation in immigration enforcement is unprecedented, as is that of ICE with domestic travel; the program, kept secret until Friday’s report, represents yet another means of inducing collective fear en masse in travelers and other residents…”

at