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Most judges and lawyers agree that the war on drugs in the past 50 years has seriously diminished the right to privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.
Now a small group of legal academics is arguing that the war in Ukraine should be used to diminish property rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
Here is the backstory.
The Fourth Amendment was written to guarantee that the government may only search and seize persons, houses, papers and effects pursuant to a search warrant issued by a judge after the presentation under oath of evidence demonstrating that the place to be searched more likely than not contains evidence of crime. And the warrant itself must specifically describe the place to be searched and the person or thing to be seized.
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On Thursday, President Biden announced another $1.3 billion in aid for Ukraine. Of that amount, $800 million will go towards a new weapons package, and $500 million will go directly to the Ukrainian government for economic assistance.
The $800 million in military aid includes howitzers, artillery rounds, vehicles to tow the howitzers, and new drones specifically developed for Ukraine, known as Ghost drones, which the Pentagon says have similar capabilities to the Switchblade drones it has been providing to Kyiv.
According to the Pentagon, the package includes:
- 72 155mm Howitzers and 144,000 artillery rounds;
- 72 Tactical Vehicles to tow 155mm Howitzers;
- Over 121 Phoenix Ghost Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems; and
- Field equipment and spare parts.
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Like Orwell's Ministry of Truth, propaganda is pouring out of the US that is shaping our perceptions of the war in Ukraine. It is produced by the CIA, it is pronounced by the State Department and it is published by the media. It is coming from everywhere.
The heroes and the villains were cast from the start. The media rewrote history and created the myth of the "unprovoked war." As if Russia's launching of an illegal war was not sufficient to cast them as the villain in our minds, the media everywhere added the adjective "unprovoked" to create the super-villain needed to produce the necessary support for the war. As if NATO had not broken its promise not to encroach on Russia's borders. As if Russia's security concerns had not been ignored. As if Russia has not been surrounded by military bases and missiles. As if Ukraine wasn't being flooded with weapons. As if Yeltsin and Putin had not protested and drawn their red lines for years.
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The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the US and its allies are preparing for a new world where they no longer try to cooperate and coexist with Russia. Instead, they are planning a long-term strategy that aims to "isolate and weaken" the country.
While the West has been hostile to Moscow for many years, Europe has enjoyed a robust trade relationship with Russia and is incredibly reliant on Russian energy imports. But the EU is looking to change that and has already announced a ban on Russian coal.
The EU is also working on plans to ban Russian oil and eventually gas with the goal of ending all Russian energy imports by 2030. The plan is meant to hurt Russia, but Europe's economy will also take a significant hit.
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Iranian officials say there is no end in sight for the ongoing nuclear talks, saying that there are multiple issues unresolved and still pending with the US. They say US messages provided through the EU are far from settling the matter.
Unfortunately as with other recent reports, it is not specified what these remaining issues are, so it is difficult to judge how likely they are to be sorted out, or what the next step is. The only known issue at present is the removal of the IRGC from the terror blacklist, which the US doesn’t want to do.
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If you’re looking for morality tales – clashes between the clearly good and the clearly bad – I suggest you look elsewhere than the geopolitical theater. There we find only conflicts between shades of darker gray.
This seems to have been the case throughout history. Empires and would-be empires vied with rival empires and would-be empires for territory, resources, taxpayers, and soldiers. No surprise: governments will be governments, and that’s not good. This is not to say the shades of gray did not differ at all, perhaps even significantly on occasion, but the objective was always, first and foremost, booty and control of people. The interests of commoners were rarely if ever the cause.
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