You are correct though, I did indeed not watch it. Hence I misunderstood the comment I was answering to as being negative towards Signal. Thanks for the added context.
PoTayToes
joined 1 year ago
Tell me though, which company will not hand over what data they have when asked by their country's judiciary?
The question here is how much data they keep. Strict legal minimum or more.
Sure, but even in other categories AIPAC is far from a top-player from what I understand.
Here are the numbers for the 2022 cycle, since 2024 isn't done yet I found 2022 more relevant.
American Israel Public Affairs Cmte Contributions $13,423,002 Ranks 46 of 34,495
Lobbying Ranks 247 of 8,586 in 2022 $2,723,081 in 2022 $2,757,247 in 2021
Here is the section for the "Pro-Israel" Interest Group, which includes other groups than AIPAC. It still totals 44m$ for 2022.
Here is the page for Lobbying -> Single Issue category, for 2022. Here also, "Pro-Israel" is far from a top player. The "Human Rights" category, which many say is pretty much opposite of what Israel's governement is doing these days, outspends them 16 to 1.
So everything I've seen so far really doesn't push me to believe that they have such a massive influence that OP or whoever that Cenk Uygur guy is can honestly say "AIPAC controls everything". Unless someone can show me there are numbers that are not taken into account in OpenSecrets (and then, if that's the case, give me a comparison in how other groups use those alternative channels), then this is basically antisemitism ("Jews control the world") from OP and Cenk, currently upvoted at +200.
As much as we can know, it's legit. Hell, it's the one mentioned in the sidebar of this place.
They explain in detail their rating, with sources. That's the most important one. Then, they have transparency on their funding and they are highly reviewed by fellow fact-checkers.
There's not much more one can do without doing a systematic review of their ratings.
You can see which country spends money in US politics on OpenSecrets, actually.
Link for 2023 spending: https://www.opensecrets.org/fara?cycle=2023
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Country | 2023 Spending
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Liberia $235,465,089
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Saudi Arabia $93,058,680
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China $85,378,704
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Japan $69,410,221
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Hong Kong $55,957,695
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Bahamas $52,861,943
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Marshall Islands $45,711,184
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United Arab Emirates $40,491,794
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South Korea $30,982,223
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Canada $21,529,601
I for one am quite hyped about this new expac. They have really sold me on the Homestead.
You can still try the base game for free if you want to give it another go.
And when it goes on sale, the "Complete" Collection (First three expacs + the Living Story 2, 3, 4 and 5) is a steal at 50$/€. That's 10 years of content you can catch up to. Even full price I'd say worth it, if you're looking for a casual-friendly MMO with enough content to keep you entertained for a long time.
Another rec for GW2. I'd recommend you try the F2P game so you get a general sense of the mechanics and see if you like it, then wait for a sale to buy the "Elder Dragon Saga—Complete Collection" for half-price. I mean, there's enough content for it to be worth 100 bucks, but for 50 it's a bargain.
Not 100% but 99.9%... IIRC Guild Wars 2 servers had like 1 actual outage in 11 years. They have pretty amazing structure.
How do people still live without uBlock Origin is beyond me.
Sorry for the delayed answer.
I fail to see how using OpenSecrets is a problem. Be it private donors or foreign groups/governements, all the money is (officially) there, is that not so?
Because in the comment you are answering to, the comparisons are done also against groups funded by private donors. Which should also not be registered under the act. And again, those other groups massively outspend the pro-Israel ones.
I have honestly no idea? But from my understanding, any other random lobbying group could also do the same, if they had an interest into it. Hell, maybe they do already but there has been no reporting on it because it's less interesting if it's the NRA or Lockheed-Martin?