Christmas creep was happening 100 years ago, thanks capitalism.

Parent-child relationships

Trauma bonds in parent-child or caregiver-child dynamics can be borne from abuse, neglect, or incestuous relationships. Abuse and/or neglect

Children of dismissive caregivers or cruel caregivers can develop insecure attachments, which can be very dysfunctional. Inconsistencies in reward and punishment (i.e., intermittent reinforcement of good and bad treatment) can highlight the affection the child receives from the parent, forcing a split between the abuse and the kindness such that the child seeks to form an overall positive view of the caregiver and thus focuses only on the affection and kindness they receive. Overall, a trauma bond develops such that the child's sense of self is derived from their emotional dependence on the authority figure, who, in this case, is the parent and/or caregiver.

I'm honestly not sure what to think about this, given previous attempts to target and downsize this office by Trump and Noem.

A provision, ultimately left out of the Intelligence Authorization Act, would have removed commonplace collection and analysis authorities granted to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, rendering much of the office’s functions inert.

The House Intelligence Committee privately considered adding a measure to the annual intelligence community authorization bill that would have significantly curtailed the size and scope of the Department of Homeland Security’s core spy agency, according to three people familiar with the matter and a summary of the drafted measure viewed by Nextgov/FCW.

The measure also would have renamed it as the Office of Intelligence and Information Sharing and reduced its workforce from around 1,000 employees to no more than 250.

It’s not entirely clear why lawmakers backed down on the provision, though the proposal raised concerns among law enforcement groups, who relayed their misgivings to members on the House Homeland Security Committee, one of the people said. One top-of-mind concern was that I&A’s workflow would stagnate because the agency wouldn’t be able to produce original insights for its stakeholders, the person added.

All three sources requested anonymity because they were not permitted to discuss closed-door deliberations about the measure.

The statute — ultimately yanked from the final House draft of the Intelligence Authorization Act — would have prohibited the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis from both collecting and analyzing intelligence, according to two of the people and the draft summary. The measure also would have renamed it as the Office of Intelligence and Information Sharing and reduced its workforce from around 1,000 employees to no more than 250.

The proposed changes are notable because the measure would have effectively recast the DHS office as a clearinghouse for findings produced elsewhere in the intelligence community, stripping it of common authorities granted to other spy agencies who routinely collect and analyze information on threats concerning U.S. interests.

The development, which has not been previously reported, highlights that Congress was weighing major overhauls for the lesser-known DHS spy bureau amid recent administration efforts to shed the office’s staffing count, and it adds a chapter to a storied history of debates over how to best reform the agency.

"The goal [of I&A] was straightforward: provide governors, mayors, police chiefs, transportation officials and emergency managers with intelligence-driven guidance — rooted in the full range of classified and unclassified reporting — to help them make long-term decisions. How much should a city invest in physical security? Does a state need new legal authorities? What training or equipment should local law enforcement prioritize?” Cash said. “No other federal entity is structured to deliver this kind of strategic, locally tailored intelligence support.”

I&A’s collection practices have always been a separate and more sensitive issue, he contended.

“It has never been clear that its domestic collection authorities could be exercised meaningfully without pushing into areas that raise profound civil-liberties and constitutional concerns. That is why, across multiple administrations — starting with President George W. Bush — there was sustained attention to guardrails, oversight mechanisms and a clear understanding that DHS intelligence activities must not evolve into a national-level domestic surveillance service.”

Dirigibles or airships are powered, steerable aircraft using lighter-than-air gas to get their lift. Rigid (or semi-rigid) airships have some kind of internal structure to make their shape. Blimps don't.

So today I learned that in my country people have a lot of hobby dogging courses. You basically bring your imaginary dog to a real dog trainer and train your imaginary dog with other owners of imaginary dogs.

I had to find a link that explains what it is. But I just wittnessed a group in my local area

On and off for over a decade, the Central Intelligence Agency conducted an audacious highly classified program to covertly manipulate Afghanistan’s lucrative poppy crop, blanketing Afghan farmers’ fields with specially modified seeds that germinated plants containing almost none of the chemicals that are refined into heroin, The Washington Post has learned.

The program’s disclosure comes as the war on narcotics is again dominating the security agenda.

President Donald Trump has declared war on drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere, ordering more than a dozen lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, designating cartels as terrorist groups, and moving a vast naval and air force to the region. He has also authorized the CIA to take aggressive covert action against drug traffickers and their supporters.

In Afghanistan in the early 2000s, the burgeoning opium trade was thwarting U.S. goals, as American troops engaged in a deadly struggle to defeat the Taliban, eliminate terrorist groups and stabilize the weak Western-backed government. Afghan heroin fueled corruption in President Hamid Karzai’s government and in the provinces. It helped pay for the Taliban’s weapons and equipment. And it accounted for the majority of global heroin supplies, with most of the drugs bound for Europe or the former Soviet Union.

Western allies and U.S. government agencies argued bitterly over which strategies would dent the crop without undermining rural Afghan support for Karzai. Diplomats and drug enforcement officials debated everything from aerial herbicide spraying to purchasing the entire Afghan crop and sending it overseas to be processed into medicine.

Unbeknownst to almost all of them, the CIA was operating its own secret heroin-eradication program, run by the spy agency’s Crime and Narcotics Center, which was flush with funds during the Afghan war. The airdrops of modified poppy seeds began in the autumn of 2004, three people familiar with the program said. The operation was paused at least once and ended about 2015, those familiar with it said.

Once the seeds were dropped, the goal was for the plants sprouting from them to cross-fertilize with native plants and become the dominant strain over time, degrading the overall crop’s potency.

The American plants not only contained virtually no morphine, but they were bred to sprout early and produce especially vivacious red flowers, making them attractive to Afghan farmers who, the CIA hoped, would harvest and replant their seeds.

Technically I've known about this for a while, since the first story broke back in September thanks to Chinese citizens who were brave enough to speak to the AP about the human rights abuses they had endured under the surveillance state.

However, I missed this particular follow up story that came out a few weeks ago, and breaks down investigative findings about the role the U.S. directly played in creating and selling China the surveillance tools:

U.S. lawmakers have tried four times since September last year to close what they called a glaring loophole: China is getting around export bans on the sale of powerful American AI chips by renting them through U.S. cloud services instead.

But the proposals prompted a flurry of activity from more than 100 lobbyists from tech companies and their trade associations trying to weigh in, according to disclosure reports.

The result: All four times, the proposal failed, including just last month.

But the tough talk about China obscures a deeper story: Even while warning about national security and human rights abuse, the U.S. government across five Republican and Democratic administrations has repeatedly allowed and even actively helped American firms to sell technology to Chinese police, government agencies and surveillance companies, an Associated Press investigation has found.

This reluctance to act reflects the tremendous wealth and power of the tech industry, which is more visible than ever under the Trump administration. And in recent months, the president himself has struck grand deals with Silicon Valley firms that even more closely tie the U.S. economy to tech exports to China, giving taxpayers a direct stake in the profits for the first time.

Now a U.S. citizen, Zhou testified before Congress in 2024, calling on Washington to investigate the involvement of American tech companies in Chinese surveillance. An AP investigation in September found that American companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known.

“It’s driven by profit, and that’s why these strategic discussions have been silenced or delayed,” Zhou said. “I’m extremely disappointed. … this is a strategic failure by the United States.”

Like many things in the U.S. right now, I feel like this investigation should have received more attention, especially given all the recent talk about U.S. patriotism, and accepting our own surveillance state in order to "win" the AI race against China.

My mind WAS NOT prepared for this at this hour. I literally referenced this movie a few hours ago, now this. Wtf.

I was listening to an episode of Behind the Bastards about the slave labor used by Volkswagen in the 1970s and 1980s and this fact came up. Here's the relevant Wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Brazil

Excerpt:

Out of the 12 million Africans who were forcibly brought to the New World, approximately 5.5 million were brought to Brazil between 1540 and the 1860s.

Eugene Yuanzhi Wu (Chinese: 吳元之; pinyin: Wú Yuánzhī) is an American lawyer and politician who is a Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives, serving since 2013. Since January 2025, he has served as chair of the Democratic caucus. He was formerly a prosecutor for Harris County.

Wu was born in Guangzhou in Guangdong Province, China. Shortly after, his family immigrated to the United States and lived in Odessa, Texas, before moving to Sharpstown, a neighborhood in Southwest Houston. He attended Ed White Elementary, Fondren Middle School, and St. Thomas Episcopal School.

Wu received a B.S. from Texas A&M University, a Master of Public Affairs from the LBJ School for Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, and earned a J.D. degree from the South Texas College of Law in Houston.

Wu has been a volunteer and trainer for Neighborhood Centers Inc. In that capacity, he conducts monthly workshops where he has helped several thousand Harris County residents become United States citizens.

Unfortunately, I am not a politician like him. My parents wouldn't be proud of me. I also don't have a college degree... not yet at least...

But yea maybe I'll be a politician one day... who knows. Maybe the first Lemmy user to become a politician with a Wikipedia page? xD

/kidding, I'll never get elected :/

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/38846669

Film also claims that Adam Milstein funds Canary Mission