Attorney-Client Privilege. Sorry, I should have just said it.

For anyone who might have avoided this part of the world, ACP makes communications between you and your counsel inadmissible in court. In big companies, it's somewhat common to bring lawyers into discussions under the auspices of seeking legal advice, but primarily to ensure that if any artifact from that discussion were to be uncovered by an adversary, it couldn't be used in a lawsuit.

That's an impressive investigation.

It would be tough to find a better example of why lobbying in the US is fundamentally broken. An entity like Meta has ample funding to break up an operation into distinct cells that do not directly interact in public forums, while tracking the whole process in documents protected by ACP. I think it's particularly telling that Meta lobbyists are quietly nodding along legislation pushed by "grass roots" activists and that Meta's new OS just happens to implement the technology exactly as described in the law.

It's that sort of coordinated effort that the RICO act was drafted specifically to address, but it's perfectly legal.

You might read this article initially thinking it is just the US snubbing Ukraine yet again, but the real answer is laid out in black and white if you read further:

An Iranian Shahed is said to cost $20,000 to $50,000, depending on the model. The Ukrainian interceptors are even cheaper. Concerns about intercepting such a cheap, simple target with a multimillion-dollar munition spiked during U.S. fights against Houthi rebels in Yemen, and have remained high since.

You can practically hear the US MIC breathing heavily in the gallery during these talks. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan transferred trillions from US taxpayers to military contractors over 20 years, but a belligerent the size of Iran with modern warfare techniques could realize that dream again in 5.

Describing Chuck Schumer as "political opposition to the fascists" is a bizarre joke, neighbor.

That's kind of wild given the global tailwinds that literally every other energy exporter is experiencing. Wonder why they're having such a horrible time?

It's true that this isn't ex post facto, but in a sane interpretation of the law it would be discrimination against a protected class; a woman who was assigned female at birth grts preferential treatment under the law with respect to a woman who was not.