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Burma’s Conscription Law: Destroying Education and Accelerating Brain Drain

The Burma (Myanmar) military junta activated its conscription law on February 10, 2024, requiring men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 to serve in the military. Professionals, including doctors, engineers, and technical specialists, can be conscripted up to age 45 for men and 35 for women.

Those conscripted are required to serve a minimum of three years. This includes educated adults with engineering, medical, and technical skills, further draining Burma’s already collapsing education and professional sectors.

Conscription means serving a junta that seized power in 2021 by overthrowing the elected government and arresting pro-democracy leaders. It also means being forced into a civil war in which as much as 80 percent of the population opposes military rule.

For ethnic minorities, who make up roughly 40 percent of the population, conscription is especially devastating. It means being ordered to participate in widespread atrocities, including murder, rape, and the burning of villages, directed against their own families and communities.

The International Labour Organization estimates hundreds of thousands have fled Burma to escape conscription since February 2024. Fear of being drafted drove so many young men to flee to Thailand in 2024 that they set a record for the highest annual number of undocumented Burma migrants to arrive in Thailand. The International Organization for Migration estimates over 4 million Burma migrants live in Thailand, about half of whom are undocumented. In addition to the personal hardship, they face as undocumented aliens in Thailand, separated from their families, the conscription law is decimating Burma’s education system.

At the beginning of the revolution, thousands of students walked away from junta-run universities and schools as part of the civil disobedience movement. Many shifted to alternative education options, including community-run higher education institutions in ethnic minority areas and online programs. The conscription law, however, made it unsafe for them to remain in Burma while completing these programs.

As a result, the Thailand Education Fair held in April 2024 saw overwhelming attendance, and the November 2024 fair was extended to two days as attendance doubled. Students whose families can afford it, or who secure scholarships, are fleeing to study at Thai universities. As Burma’s economy collapses, however, this option has become increasingly out of reach. Annual tuition of roughly $3,000 represents about two years’ salary for Burmese families fortunate enough to still have employment.

The law has exacerbated a brain drain that was already causing young people to leave Burma, impacting education and the labor market.

The United States Agency for International Development funding freeze suspended the Development and Inclusive Scholarship Program, affecting more than 400 Burma students pursuing degrees in the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Thailand. Inside Burma, parents are pulling children out of school and sending them to neighboring countries to look for work, driven by fear of conscription. Both inside Burma and across the region, child labor violations involving children aged 12 to 16 have increased as youth fleeing the country or joining resistance forces have created labor shortages.

The crisis extends beyond students. Teachers and professors have either fled to the jungle to join the resistance or escaped the country altogether in search of work. As a result, educated adults and former professionals now find themselves in Thailand and other countries working as day laborers alongside young people who fled before finishing university, or in many cases, even high school.

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State Department expected to end aid to Somalia: report

The U.S. State Department has announced a decision to cut off government-to-government assistance to Somalia following a dispute over the fate of American-donated food supplies, according to diplomatic communications cited in a news report.

Earlier this month, Somali authorities at the Mogadishu port demolished a key World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse—a facility built with international support to store emergency food aid. U.S. officials say the action, ordered by Somalia’s president and carried out without notifying donor nations, likely destroyed roughly 76 metric tons of U.S. food aid meant for vulnerable people. Additional shipments totaling over 1,600 metric tons were also affected and had to be relocated.

In response, Washington paused all current U.S. assistance programs that directly benefited the Somali federal government. 

The State Department has tied the reopening of aid commitments to Somalia’s acceptance of responsibility and compensation for the missing food supplies. 

The State Department said Jan. 7 that it had suspended all U.S. assistance programs that support Somalia’s federal government, warning that funding would not resume unless Somali officials accept responsibility for what Washington called unacceptable conduct. An administration official, who spoke on background with The Daily Wire, said the pause is expected to become permanent, with all remaining aid formally terminated by May.

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U.S. lawmakers propose legislation to allow citizens to sue ICE. A CT senator is leading the way

As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations are spreading across the nation, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal is proposing legislation to allow people to sue ICE agents for violating their civil and constitutional rights.

The proposal comes amid the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old mother in Minneapolis and widespread protests against ICE operations under President Donald Trump’s administration. Under Blumenthal’s proposal, the legislation would allow cases to be heard in civil court.

Under current law, federal law enforcement officers have qualified immunity from civil cases, shielding them from lawsuits. But federal law enforcement are not shielded from prosecution for committing crimes, he said.

The Accountability for Federal Law Enforcement Act, co-introduced by Blumenthal and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) in December, would authorize states to bring civil actions against federal agencies whose violations of the law pose an imminent and substantial risk to public safety or constitutional rights. Blumenthal said he introduced the legislation before the controversial killing of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis.

“Individual victims of excessive force should have recourse also. They do against local and state law enforcement, but not against federal officers,” Blumenthal said at a press conference on Friday. “I’m introducing legislation that will give everyday Americans recourse. A remedy in court when their rights our violated. In amends the 1983 statute to provide rights in court for people when they are abused by violation of the law by federal officers. Just like they can sue local and state officers when they are abused.”

The Connecticut Democrat called the legislation “overdue” and said that there is precedent in a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case. In Webster Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the court held that some lawsuits against federal officers can be warranted. Since the case 50 years ago, recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have narrowed that ruling, leaving many victims of federal misconduct without meaningful recourse.

“It has been narrowed and cut back by successive Supreme Court decisions. We need to make it real and provide recourse and remedies so that rights can be vindicated. When people are shot or dragged out of cars and injured or denied a lawyer when they are retained often result in trauma and injury. These violations must be addressed,” Blumenthal said.

The Accountability for Federal Law Enforcement Act is co-sponsored by U.S. Sens. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts), Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon).

Blumenthal said that some Republicans may also support the legislation.

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Companies see boost from Trump admin after adding Don Jr. to their board

Two companies which added Donald Trump Jr. to their board or advisory board subsequently received benefits from his father’s administration, and a third company that added him to their board may stand to benefit from a new Trump healthcare program. These three companies–Unusual Machines, Credova and BlinkRx–each added Trump’s eldest son to their boards after the 2024 presidential election, part of a flurry of new positions for the president’s eldest sons.

Don Jr. and Eric Trump have joined a total of ten companies’ boards since the 2024 election. The sudden burst of business opportunities is conspicuous, given that, prior to their father’s victory, there was no evidence that they had been such highly sought-after business leaders, outside the constellation of Trump family companies. Those positions, and the appearance they give the companies of an edge with the Trump administration, represent potential conflicts of interest that risk corrupting important functions of the executive branch, in favor of further enriching the Trump family. 

Just weeks after the 2024 election, drone maker Unusual Machines announced that Don Jr. joined its newly-created advisory board, immediately causing shares to soar. As compensation for his role on the advisory board, Don Jr. was given 200,000 shares of Unusual Machines stock. 

Don Jr.’s advisory agreement appears to have expired automatically after one year, but not before the company established itself as a supplier for the U.S. Army. In October 2025, Unusual Machines announced an order from the Army for 3,500 drone motors and other components, reportedly the company’s largest government order to date. The announcement also stated that the Army has plans to order 20,000 more components from Unusual Machines in 2026. 

In describing Don Jr.’s role with Unusual Machines, CEO Allan Evans said, “[j]ust lending some of that association has created more credibility to rise above the noise. It’d almost be like Oprah joining the WeightWatchers board, right? What does Oprah need to do? Not a lot.”

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Canadian PM Carney Warns Trump To Keep off Greenland, Hints at Military Confrontation With US To Defend Denmark

Canada flexing their ‘military muscles’ sounds like a dangerous proposition – for them.

And so, we’ve come to the point where Liberal Canada is showing its true colors, and its Prime Minister went to China to find a ‘reliable’ partner away from the US – good luck with that! <insert palm face emoji>

But what has been hidden away from the headlines was a much graver statement by Mark Carney: the suggestion that Canadians ‘are ready’ to defend Greenland against the US.

“We are NATO partners with Denmark, and our full-fledged alliance remains in force. Our obligations under Article 5 and Article 2 of the North Atlantic Treaty are unchanged, and we firmly and unconditionally support them.”

Carney inserted himself in the Greenland controversy by ‘warning’ that Greenland’s future will not be decided by U.S. President Donald J. Trump.

Politico reported:

“’The future of Greenland is a decision for Greenland and for the Kingdom of Denmark’, Carney told journalists at a press conference in Beijing following talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Carney urged NATO allies including the U.S. to ‘respect their commitments’ as he stressed Canada’s support for Danish sovereignty over the strategically vital Arctic island, which Trump has threatened to seize.”

When Carney says that the full NATO partnership with Denmark stands, and that he is ready to fulfil his obligations under Article 5, he is saying that Canada will stand militarily against the US.

That is hard to believe, of course, but it’s a very effective way of burying the bilateral relations with Washington, now that Carney is all about China.

“Carney said Greenland and Arctic sovereignty also featured in his discussions with Xi, adding that he ‘found much alignment of views in that regard’.”

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Trump Keeps “Joking” About Canceling Midterms Amid Threat of Insurrection Act Invocation

President Donald Trump has yet again mused aloud about canceling midterm elections. The White House immediately dismissed the remarks as a “joke.”

The comment came as tensions sharply rise between federal immigration agents and protesters in multiple cities, most visibly in Minneapolis. Large demonstrations have erupted after aggressive ICE enforcement actions and multiple shootings involving federal agents sparked nationwide outrage. Protesters have clashed with officers. Tear gas, forceful arrests, and heated confrontations now appear regularly in widely shared videos.

Trump, meanwhile, is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, the rarely used emergency law that would allow him to deploy military forces and federalize the National Guard to quell what the administration describes not only as obstruction, but as “insurrection” and “domestic terrorism.”

At the same time, the president’s approval rating remains low, with recent polls showing vanishing support on the issues of immigration and foreign policy and rapidly slipping numbers among younger voters, signaling trouble for the Republicans.

Against this backdrop, Trump’s casual talk about canceling elections lands less like harmless humor and more like a public conditioning.

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PETA’s Latest Hoax Exposed: Liberal Animal Rights Group Falsely Claims Trump Funding Russian Cat Torture, But White Coat Waste and Republican Lawmakers Ended It Years Ago

PETA is up to its same old tricks, once again making questionable claims and repackaging other groups’ work as its own.

On Friday, the liberal animal rights group published a new webpage stating, “Your Tax Dollars Fund Russian Experiments on Cats—Tell NIH No More!” and posted on social media that, “a foreign experimenter funded by the U.S. government, is mutilating…cats in Russia.”

The problem is that PETA’s claim seems to be false.

The NIH hasn’t funded these cat experiments in Russia for three years since the conservative watchdog group White Coat Waste first exposed and cut the funding.

WCW’s Senior Vice President Justin Goodman quickly jumped in on PETA’s social media posts to set the record straight.

Back in early 2022, WCW obtained records showing how the NIH was funding cat experiments at the Russian-government-tied Pavlov Institute of Physiology.

The group then led a grassroots campaign and lobbying effort that attracted support from both Republican and Democrat members of Congress.

WCW’s efforts, with people like GOP Conference Chair Rep. Lisa McClain and Senator Joni Ernst, ultimately led to the funding for those cat experiments and all other animal testing in Russia to be cut in 2023.

Since then, all Russian animal labs have been ineligible to receive any NIH funding, directly or indirectly.

PETA’s misleading new webpage claiming that “your tax dollars fund Russian experiments on cats” appears to be based on two 2025 research papers that actually say they used old data collected years earlier, before the NIH funding was cut.

The recent publications PETA is relying on also reference grant funding for cat experiments in Russia that WCW already led a successful campaign to cut back in 2023. The most recent version of the relevant NIH grant documents, obtained by WCW under the Freedom of Information Act, does not mention funding cat experiments in Russia or anywhere else, nor do federal funding databases.

PETA’s new campaign appears to be based on sloppy research at best, and a blatant lie at worst.

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Jay Jones Sworn in as Virginia Attorney General, Despite Leaked Texts Fantasizing About Children of Conservatives Being Murdered

Jay Jones was sworn in as Virginia’s new attorney general on Saturday at the state Capitol in Richmond after winning the race despite leaked texts in which he fantasized about the children of conservatives being murdered.

Jones was sworn in at the inauguration of Democrat Governor Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA agent.

President Donald Trump had called for Jones to drop out of the race after the texts were made public, but Democrats rallied behind him.

In one shocking exchange, Jones fantasized about putting “two bullets to the head” of then-Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert in a hypothetical scenario comparing him to dictators like Hitler and Pol Pot.

Jones didn’t stop there; he went even further, expressing a twisted wish that one of Gilbert’s children would die in a school shooting to change Gilbert’s stance on gun control.

“I wish one of his kids would get shot up at school and die. Then maybe he’d change his mind,” Jones wrote, adding grotesque details about imagining the child “lying lifeless in their mother’s arms.”

Vice President JD Vance also called for Jones to step aside.

“The Democrat candidate for AG in Virginia has been fantasizing about murdering his political opponents in private messages,” Vance wrote in a post on X during the election season. “I’m sure the people hyperventilating about sombrero memes will join me in calling for this very deranged person to drop out of the race.”

At the inauguration ceremony, the judge asked, “You ready?”

“Yeah, baby,” Jones responded, before being sworn in.

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Bird flu outbreak near Wisconsin lab raises gain-of-function concerns

A bird flu outbreak in a Wisconsin dairy cattle herd has raised questions about whether gain-of-function research at a nearby university laboratory may have played a role.

Last month, the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) identified what it described as the first known case of highly pathogenic bird flu  in a dairy cattle herd in Dodge County, Wisconsin. The agency characterized the outbreak as a “spillover” event from wildlife to cattle.

The virus responsible for the outbreak was identified by two scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine — Keith Poulsen, DVM, Ph.D., and Yoshihiro Kawaoka, DVM, Ph.D. Both scientists have published research on gain-of-function experiments involving bird flu viruses.

Kawaoka directs the university’s Influenza Research Institute, a lab known for conducting gain-of-function research on H5N1. The lab is located approximately 40 miles from the Dodge County outbreak site.

The university confirmed that both scientists are conducting H5N1 research but denied that the work constitutes gain-of-function experimentation. University officials said the research is intended to better understand bird flu strains circulating among wildlife and livestock.

The scientists identified the virus as the H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b genotype D1.1 — a strain that contains mutations linked to increased transmissibility.

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense, said the outbreak is notable because national databases show no recent mammalian hosts of the D1.1 strain near Wisconsin.

Two isolated spillover events involving the same strain were identified earlier in Arizona and Nevada, though federal officials said the Wisconsin case is unrelated.

While federal agencies said bird flu currently poses a low risk to the general public, the World Health Organization reported that a 3-year-old girl in Mexico died in 2025 after contracting the D1.1 strain.

Recent scientific studies have suggested the D1.1 variant may be better adapted to infect mammals, including humans, than earlier strains.

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Flashback: There Was a Time Tim Walz Was Willing to Call in the National Guard. Guess When That Was.

Minneapolis has descended into chaos, thanks to the failed leadership of Tim Walz and Jacob Frey. Rioters have ransacked ICE vehicles, tried to take down a fence around an ICE facility, and the assaults on agents continue. Walz hasn’t deployed the National Guard in the city, despite calling on President Trump to “turn down the temperature” while he screams that federal law enforcement is “occupying” the city.

But there was a time when Walz wasn’t so reluctant to call in the National Guard. Back in 2021, he deployed them to protect the Minnesota State Capitol before and after Biden’s inauguration.

“I can assure you that the plans are in place,” Walz said. 

“What you can expect to see is an appropriate presence of folks there to ensure that there are peaceful gatherings, to make sure that the intent to do damage to any of the buildings will not happen, and that folks can go about doing their daily things without interference from folks who disrupt,” Walz said.

Gee, like Leftists who stop guys with Suburbans and demanding they prove they’re not ICE? Or when a Leftist confronted a CNN reporter to demand she tell him what outlet she was with?

“This is a new world now, where we’ve seen people have taken rhetoric offline and taken it into the real world. Legislators here: these are moms and dads, business owners, teachers, nurses, and doctors who come to the Capitol to do the people’s work for a couple of months out of the year. These people are posting their names and their addresses online and threatening to go to their houses,” Walz said.

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