30: DOGE

How Native Americans guarded their societies against tyranny When the founders of the United States designed the Constitution, they were learning from history that democracy was likely to fail – to find someone who would fool the people into giving him complete power and then end the democracy. ......... Twelfth-century Cahokia, on the banks of the Mississippi River, had a central city about the size of London at the time. ....... The American Colonists and founders thought Native American societies were simple and primitive – but they were not. ........ Native American communities were elaborate consensus democracies, many of which had survived for generations because of careful attention to checking and balancing power. .......... As they formed these new and more dispersed societies, the people who had overthrown or fled the great cities and their too powerful leaders sought to avoid mesmerizing leaders who made tempting promises in difficult times. So they designed complex political structures to discourage centralization, hierarchy and inequality and encourage shared decision-making........... the oral history of the Osage Nation records that it once had one great chief who was a military leader, but its council of elder spiritual leaders, known as the “Little Old Men,” decided to balance that chief’s authority with that of another hereditary chief, who would be responsible for keeping peace. .......... Another way some societies balanced power was through family-based clans. Clans communicated and cooperated across multiple towns. They could work together to balance the power of town-based chiefs and councils. ........... Many of these societies required convening all of the people – men, women and children – for major political, military, diplomatic and land-use decisions. Hundreds or even thousands might show up, depending on how momentous the decision was. .......... In some societies, it was customary for the losing side to quietly leave the meeting if they couldn’t bring themselves to agree with the others. ........... Leaders generally governed by facilitating decision-making in council meetings and public gatherings. They gave gifts to encourage cooperation. They heard disputes between neighbors over land and resources and helped to resolve them. Power and prestige came to lie not in amassing wealth but in assuring that the wealth was shared wisely. Leaders earned support in part by being good providers. .......... The Native American democracy that the U.S. founders were most likely to know about was the Iroquois Confederacy. They call themselves the Haudenosaunee, the “people of the longhouse,” because the nations of the confederacy have to get along like multiple families in a longhouse. ........... In their carefully balanced system, women ran the clans, which were responsible for local decisions about land use and town planning. Men were the representatives of their clans and nations in the Haudenosaunee council, which made decisions for the confederacy as a whole. Each council member, called a royaner, was chosen by a clan mother. .............. The Haudenosaunee Great Law holds a royaner to a high standard: “The thickness of their skin shall be seven spans – which is to say that they shall be proof against anger, offensive actions and criticism. Their hearts shall be full of peace and good will.” In council, “all their words and actions shall be marked by calm deliberation.” ............. The law said the ideal royaner should always “look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground – the unborn of the future Nation.” ............. Of course, people do not always live up to their values, but the laws and traditions of Native nations encouraged peaceful discussion and broad-mindedness. Many Europeans were struck by the difference. The French explorer La Salle in 1678 noted with admiration of the Haudenosaunee that “in important meetings, they discuss without raising their voices and without getting angry.” ......... Leaders looked ahead and sought to protect the well-being of every person, even those not yet born. The people, in exchange, had a responsibility to not enmesh their royaners in less serious matters, which the Haudenosaunee Great Law called “trivial affairs.”

28: India

28: Adani

27: India

24: Bollywood

24: DOGE

23: Maharashtra

Kriti Sanon, Diljit Dosanjh

23: India

22: Hakeem Jeffries

Elon Musk Gets a Crash Course in How Trumpworld Works The world’s richest person, not known for his humility, is still learning the cutthroat courtier politics of Donald Trump’s inner circle — and his ultimate influence remains an open question. .......... For the first 53 years of his life, Elon Musk barely spent any time with Donald J. Trump. Then, beginning on the night of Nov. 5, he spent basically no time without him. .......... For the world’s richest person — not known for his humility or patience — it is a social engineering challenge far trickier and less familiar than heavy manufacturing or rocket science. ......... What he brings instead are his 200 million followers on X and the roughly $200 million he spent to help elect Mr. Trump. Both of those have greatly impressed the president-elect. Mr. Trump, gobsmacked by Mr. Musk’s willingness to lay off 80 percent of the staff at X, has said the tech billionaire will help lead a Department of Government Efficiency alongside Vivek Ramaswamy. ......... In private meetings at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Musk shows little familiarity with policy or the potential staff members being discussed, but he returns repeatedly to a central point: What is required, he says, is “radical reform” of government and “reformers” who are capable of executing radical changes, according to two people briefed on the meetings, who insisted on anonymity to describe the internal conversations. .......... Across Silicon Valley, interest in serving in the Department of Government Efficiency is high. Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of Coinbase, described that work on social media this week as “a once in a lifetime opportunity to increase economic freedom in the U.S. and cut the size of government back to health.” ............ And Mr. Musk was a vociferous defender of former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who on Thursday withdrew as Mr. Trump’s pick for attorney general.

What ‘Mass Deportation’ Actually Means The constraints on a mass deportation operation are logistical more than legal. Deporting one million people a year would cost an annual average of $88 billion, and a one-time effort to deport the full unauthorized population of 11 million would cost many times that — and it’s difficult to imagine how long it would take. ..... ......... In fiscal year 2024, Congress gave ICE the money for 41,500 detention beds. This is insufficient for anything that would constitute mass deportation. Extra holding facilities can be spun up as needed, but not immediately — and at higher cost (because of, say, noncompetitive contractor bids) than building a detention facility the usual way. ........... The only people who can be both easily rounded up and deported without a court hearing are those who have already been ordered removed from the United States but are allowed to stay if they come in for regular check-ins. ........ People who have a form of legal status that has lapsed, or legal protections that the Trump administration might try to strip, such as Temporary Protected Status, may be easy to find but won’t be quick to remove. ............... the logistical realities: beds in detention, seats on planes. .......... There are two previous occasions in which the U.S. federal government can be said to have engaged in mass deportation — around the 1930s and the 1950s. Both entailed horrific conditions for those caught and deported, and the tearing apart of families with claims to both the United States and other countries. But in both cases, the federal government ultimately took credit for “deporting” some people it never actually laid hands on — those who had been pressured or terrorized into leaving. .......... making people afraid enough to deport themselves is a convenient and low-cost way to do it. ......... The government will do things that hurt people. It will do things that look scary

China’s Hacking Reached Deep Into U.S. Telecoms The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said hackers listened to phone calls and read texts by exploiting aging equipment and seams in the networks that connect systems..

21: Nicholas De Santo