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the massive elephant in the room here btw re: black/native ppl in the military is that, while yes, these two groups are by and large US citizens (lets not interrogate the social or historical dynamics of this btw /s, how this came to be or the contingency of their ‘citizenship.’) there are… drum roll… also compradors and collaborators in the global south!

Did you know a big political cause for trans activism in Norway is that the Oslo University Hospital gender clinic refuses to provide gender-affirming care to nonbinary people?

Gender-affirming care that is needed by those nonbinary people, because nonbinary does not mean your gender affirmation needs can be met by a haircut, it means you have a gender identity outside of the binary.

Parts 2 through 4 cover the history of Neuralink

The following evidence is given for the claim that Elon Musk is experimenting with brain implants on immigrants detained by ICE:

1) Elon Musk made an implausible claim about it being "achievable" that Neuralink will implant over 1000 chips in humans. The author believes this is unlikely to happen using voluntary recruitment, and so is evidence that Musk intends to use involuntary recruitment. I agree that this seems unlikely but think a much more likely explanation is that Musk is just throwing around overly-optimistic estimates, as he has done before.

2) The location of two Neuralink sites in the US at the Barrow Neurological Insititute in Phoenix, Arizona and the university of Miami, and the existence of ICE detention facilities nearby. For Arizona, the facilities are the Eloy and Florence facilities and for Miami the Krome facility. I don't think this concidence adds up to much more than research centers and ICE detention facilities both being located near big cities for obvious reasons.

For the Krome facility, we are told that:

From December 2024 to February 2025, there were three deaths at Krome. One per month. All involved neurological symptoms: brain hemorrhages, seizures, vomiting.

I believe the three deaths this refers to is Ramesh Amechand, Genry Ruiz Guillen, and Maksym Chernyak, since they are the three deaths in that period that I could find listed here that were in the Krome facility.

The Neuralink clinical trial was announced on January 2025, after Ramesh Amechand's death. He died of kidney problems and as far as I can tell did not show any neurological symptoms, but I am not a doctor.

Genry Ruiz Guillen had multiple seizures, but they were first noticed in November 2024, again before the Neuralink trials in Miami

The author devotes more attention to Maksym Chernyak, saying:

Sixteen days after arriving at Krome, he was dead from a massive brain hemorrhage. The CT scan showed catastrophic intracranial bleeding. Sixteen days from intake to brain death. A healthy man in his forties. No explanation that anyone’s offered publicly. The kind of thing that, under different circumstances, might warrant investigation. The kind of thing that makes you wonder what else isn’t being investigated.

In fact an explanation was given: haemorragic stroke. Beyond the fact that he died in an ICE facility in the same city as a Neuralink clinical trial, I don't think there's any evidence his death was in fact caused by an implanted neuralink device.

I believe the deaths at the Krome facility might be evidence of medical neglect at ICE facilities, which is horrifying but unsurprising given everything else we already know about ICE. I don't think it is evidence of anything else.

As for the Phoenix facilities, the author says:

According to advocacy reports, the average time spent in solitary confinement at these Arizona facilities jumped from 14 days in 2024 to 38 days in 2025. That’s a 271% increase. Thirty-eight days is a long time to be alone. Long enough that if something happened to you, if you woke up with gaps in your memory or unexplained symptoms, it would be difficult to establish when or how. Long enough that confusion could be dismissed as the natural result of isolation. Long enough to make a person wonder if their own memory is reliable. And this spike happens to coincide exactly with Neuralink’s desperate push to scale up operations. Which is probably nothing.

That's actually a 171% increase and the 14 days figure is from 2021, not 2024, but those are quibbles. My real objection is with the implicit claim in that last paragraph. The obvious explanation for an increase in solitary confinement in ICE facilities in 2025 is the election of Donald Trump, not Neuralink. I think phrases like "coincide exactly" are disingenuous when we are talking about two things happening in a period of a year (or several years)

3) NIR, LLC. A company in Honolulu that gets Department of Defense contracts relating to neurology. We are told:

Multiple DOD contracts for neurological services, neurological procedures, neurological surgery practices. All ramping up starting in 2025. All going to a company called NIR, LLC. All listing the work location as Tripler Army Medical Center, a major military hospital in Honolulu. At first, I thought maybe this was just routine military medical care. But when I tried to look up NIR, LLC, I found nothing. No company website. No physician names. Nothing. For a medical contractor performing neurological surgeries with federal money, having zero online presence is unusual. Not impossible. Just unusual in the way that makes you keep looking.

I did find information about NIR with cursaory googling, finding an association with a Dr Felix Song, a neuroradiologist whose personal website tells me he works at Tripler Army Medical Center, the same place all those federal contracts are going to.

I believe the author's first thought was correct and this is, in fact, routine military medical care and not a shell corporation behind which Neuralink is hiding their surgeries on ICE detainees in Honolulu. Because there is no such thing, and the only evidence Neuralink is doing anything at all in Honolulu is the existence of one person with a linkedin profile who lives in Honolulu and works for Neuralink (and a second person who lives in Honolulu and does not, in fact, work for Neuralink, but does work for an investment firm that invests in Neuralink)

4) DOGE fired 20 FDA employees working at the office that reviews neuralink devices. There is no source listed for this claim, so I don't know which one the author was relying on; the one I found mentions that "Both sources said they did not believe the employees were specifically targeted because of their work on Neuralink's applications". Given that DOGE fired hundreds of thousands of employees, some of them working on Neuralink is not that surprising. Also, while it would not surprise me to learn that Musk did in fact decide to fire people reviewing Neuralink precisely because they did so, this does not add up to evidence of illegal experimentation (vs, say, Musk being a petty, vindictive asshole).

We are also told that

In April 2025, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons gave a presentation at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix. He specifically stated that ICE had been working frequently with Elon Musk’s Doge. It’s not often that the coordination is this explicit. Usually, you have to infer the connections. But apparently, we’ve reached the point where they just say it out loud at expos.

The collaboration is not hidden because DOGE and Neuralink are different things and cooperation between government agencies is unremarkable.

I see It talked about as an example of wooo aren't emus scary giant birds look even Australians couldn't kill them all! But all i see is an example of europeans callousness and hatred for the natural world and desire to stomp out whatever midly bothers them as well as an example of violent colonialism and the wests goal to ravage and destroy the land the wildlife and the people of Australia, as well all that they hold dear to and their culture (Australia is hostile to natives to this day as much as the us and canada Is to the natives there. "Australia day" etc) To "tame" It make It all like europe.

What’s so hard to believe about book-loving mothers being anti-diverse books, or engineers and scientists denying climate change?

The structures that affirm their bigoted opinions existed long before Fox News. There’s a long history of bad science and bad philosophy reinforcing these views.

its always been really obvious who considers genocide just another day in US foreign policy and who considers it a red line but it's really disappointing to see how easy it has been for democrats to exploit the idea of "palestinian rights or your rights? shut up about genocide or vote for trump?"

this is a false dichotomy. you are under no obligation to perpetuate it. vote for whoever you want but don't say say the biden administration supports a ceasefire because this is disinformation

white house propaganda #1: kamala has called for a ceasefire

since january the white house has rebranded a "humanitarian pause" as a ceasefire

joe biden has called for "a ceasefire" since february

in may joe biden said rafah was a red line and the US would not support the invasion of rafah (rafah has since been invaded and destroyed, after which netanyahu was invited to congress)

in early may the white house proposed a three-step plan to an actual ceasefire, which israel rejected and then killed the hamas leader they were negotiating with

the white house has not been forthcoming about israel being the one rejecting the ceasefire, nor israel's escalation within the region

the white house has not been forthcoming about the contradiction between "calling for a ceasefire" and continued weapons shipments to the people preventing a ceasefire

as such, the repeated calls for "ceasefire," just like the articles about biden's strongly worded calls to netanyahu, are political threatre to pacify the masses that have allowed a genocide to continue for ten months unabated. insofar, kamala's call for ceasefire is exactly the same as biden's call for ceasefire.

white house propaganda #2: the biden admin has actually stopped sending offensive weapons to israel

literally untrue: the US paused ONE shipment of 2,000 pound bombs and some 500 pound bombs in may after denouncing a potential rafah invasion, then resumed the 500 pound bombs in july after the invasion occurred with multiple massacres

a 3.5 billion military aid package was sent on august 9th, 2024, to be spent on pretty much whatever israel wants

previously imposed symbolic "sanctions" on only one unit of the IDF accused of crimes against humanity was overturned

imposed "sanctions" on 7 (seven!) extremist settlers were clarified to make sure they still had access to their assets

the biden admin opposed ICC warrants on israel as early as 2021, leading to consistent delays in the ICC doing its job, and rejected the announcement for warrants in 2024, which have still not been actually sought due to the US continuing to exert pressure against the ICC

the white house also criticized the advisory finding from the international court of justice that israel is an apartheid state

the white house has vetoed multiple security council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in gaza

the white house vetoed resolutions calling for the admission of palestine as a member state

the white house also called the case for genocide at the ICJ "unfounded" although the ICJ did find sufficient evidence for genocide and had imposed provisionary measures (which israel did not fulfill)

the white house has reaffirmed full backing for israel "against iran" even after its escalatory assassinations of both lebanese and palestinian political leaders, and deployed more troops, aircraft carriers, and missile cruisers to the middle east in august

therefore, while the biden admin acknowledges that israel stands in the way of a ceasefire, they are not pressuring israel to stop and instead providing both diplomatic immunity and military support to its escalatory actions in the region

white house propaganda #3: the US can't control israel, it acts on its own, and kamala can't do anything about it

once again, reagan ended the israeli invasion of lebanon with a single phone call to menachem begin, where he intentionally said "it looks like a holocaust"

since obama, every single US president has been fostering and empowering increasingly extremist elements within israel, moreso than republicans who came before them, including bush(!!)

while trump moved the capital to jerusalem, defunded UNRWA, and approved annexation of the west bank, biden... did not move the capital back, also defunded the UNRWA, and has overseen the largest theft of west bank territory since the peace process began, as well as delisting kahanist terrorists from the terror list after they joined netanyahu's cabinet.

how much does israel actually rely on US weaponry? that's impossible to tell, but national security correspondent greg myre told NPR:

The IDF is a primarily American-equipped military. Most soldiers probably still have the M-16s. And there are certain kinds of artillery and guided rocket systems that Israel produces, but, again, most of it is American. Tanks are actually made in Israel but with an American engine, and aircraft are American. These are American-made systems. [...] So Israel has its own advanced military technology. It's been a leader in drone warfare. The Iron Dome system, we noted, was developed jointly between the U.S. and Israel. A lot of cyber systems have military applications. But when it comes to the hardware - planes, artillery, guns - it does rely heavily on the U.S.

the US might not have as much influence on israel as it used to (and certainly israel would like to think so) but in the most basic compliance with international law the US can halt weapons shipments and recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC and ICJ, ending the diplomatic immunity it affords israel in the international arena to continue its genocide of gaza.

the UK is hardly much better, but it has withdrawn its intention to block the ICC warrants for israeli leaders and it has resumed funding the UNRWA, two low bar concessions that the US has refused.

these are regular political maneuvers. your civil rights should not be held hostage so the US can protect israel. it makes no sense for democrats to frame it that way while also claiming to want a ceasefire.

if kamala wants a ceasefire, why isn't she agreeing with the pro-palestine movement? their demands are all things that are in-line with wanting a ceasefire. an arms embargo is the natural step to a ceasefire, because you cannot say you want a ceasefire and then send 3.5 billion in military aid to the people who assassinated the negotiators for a ceasefire.

if kamala wants a ceasefire, and you want to vote for kamala, then you should encourage her to take the steps towards a ceasefire. otherwise you are running cover for genocide, just as biden's admin has been doing. your civil rights are not based on continued support for palestinian genocide, and they shouldn't be. to pretend otherwise is a betrayal of all the civil rights activists in the US, who knew that US foreign policy, from the war in vietnam to the iraq war, were unjust imperial wars, and they opposed them unconditionally, regardless of who was perpetrating this war.

propublica investigation on anthony blinken lying to congress about israel preventing humanitarian aid in order to continue sending arms to israel

israel launches war on lebanon with the highest first-day death toll in recent memory

The death count is also one of the highest daily tolls in recent global wars, and could rise because people are still believed to be trapped under the rubble in Lebanon. War death tolls are estimates, and exact comparisons between conflicts are difficult. But the toll on Monday in Lebanon exceeded most daily tolls in Gaza over the past year and more than doubled the average daily death rate during the deadliest year of the Syrian civil war.

despite this, the US refuses to admit this is an escalation of israeli aggression, nor a regional war despite the DNC changing its language on lebanon:

instead the US is calling this "de-escalation through escalation" also known as "war is peace" also known as war-mongering propaganda

the US has since sent more troops to the current 40,000 troops stationed in the middle east to support israel

the US has (today, september 26th 2024) secured 8.6 billion in military aid to israel as netanyahu prepared to address the UN in nyc

i think we can dispense with the idea that the democratic party (and of course, the republican party) has any interest in de-escalating, and that joe biden and kamala have decided to let israel's problems become their problems despite the upcoming election.

what the democratic party has an interest in is gaslighting you. they will continue to pretend they are not whole-heartedly facilitating an increasingly bloody regional war that is continuing solely because israel refuses to stop genociding palestinians in gaza. this is the highest death toll in a single day in lebanon, and the highest death toll in palestine since 1948, and democrats want you to believe it is simply business as usual in the middle east. it is not.