Obama Reversed The Smith Mundt Act Prohibiting Goverment From Waging Infowar On U.S. Citizens

stanford  |  In his keynote, Obama reflected on how technology has transformed the way people create and consume media. Digital and social media companies have upended traditional media – from local newspapers to broadcast television, as well as the role these outlets played in society at large.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the American public tuned in to one of three major networks, and while media from those earlier eras had their own set of problems – such as excluding women and people of color – they did provide people with a shared culture, Obama said.

Moreover, these media institutions, with established journalistic best practices for accuracy and accountability, also provided people with similar information: “When it came to the news, at least, citizens across the political spectrum tended to operate using a shared set of facts – what they saw or what they heard from Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley.”

Fast forward to today, where everyone has access to individualized news feeds that are fed by algorithms that reward the loudest and angriest voices (and which technology companies profit from). “You have the sheer proliferation of content, and the splintering of information and audiences,” Obama observed. “That’s made democracy more complicated.”

Facts are competing with opinions, conspiracy theories, and fiction. “For more and more of us, search and social media platforms aren’t just our window into the internet. They serve as our primary source of news and information,” Obama said. “No one tells us that the window is blurred, subject to unseen distortions, and subtle manipulations.”

The splintering of news sources has also made all of us more prone to what psychologists call “confirmation bias,” Obama said. “Inside our personal information bubbles, our assumptions, our blind spots, our prejudices aren’t challenged, they are reinforced and naturally, we’re more likely to react negatively to those consuming different facts and opinions – all of which deepens existing racial and religious and cultural divides.”

But the problem is not just that our brains can’t keep up with the growing amount of information online, Obama argued. “They’re also the result of very specific choices made by the companies that have come to dominate the internet generally, and social media platforms in particular.”

The former president also made clear that he did not think technology was to blame for many of our social ills. Racism, sexism, and misogyny, all predate the internet, but technology has helped amplify them.

“Solving the disinformation problem won’t cure all that ails our democracies or tears at the fabric of our world, but it can help tamp down divisions and let us rebuild the trust and solidarity needed to make our democracy stronger,” Obama said.

He gave examples of how social media has fueled violence and extremism around the world. For example, leaders from countries such as Russia to China, Hungary, the Philippines, and Brazil have harnessed social media platforms to manipulate their populations. “Autocrats like Putin have used these platforms as a strategic weapon against democratic countries that they consider a threat,” Obama said.

He also called out emerging technologies such as AI for their potential to sow further discord online. “I’ve already seen demonstrations of deep fake technology that show what looks like me on a screen, saying stuff I did not say. It’s a strange experience people,” Obama said. “Without some standards, implications of this technology – for our elections, for our legal system, for our democracy, for rules of evidence, for our entire social order – are frightening and profound.”

As "Russian Disinformation" Huntergate Mattered - Now Proven True - It's Uninteresting And Irrelevant

jonathanturley |  It appears that some media have a new narrative after admitting that the Hunter Biden laptop is legitimate after all. According to Atlantic Magazine writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum, the story never did matter because it was just not interesting and “totally irrelevant” to her. Strangely, however, it once did. Applebaum pushed the false narrative as she was slamming others for publishing “Russian disinformation” and using the Hunter Biden story as an example. It only became uninteresting when it turned out to be true. The one convincing assertion, however, is that it was simply not viewed as “relevant.” What was clearly relevant for Twitter and most media outlets was the election of Joe Biden. Otherwise, as captured by Gaston de La Touche, it is a matter of sheer boredom.

Applebaum was at my alma mater, The University of Chicago, for the Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference on Wednesday.  The conference appeared largely an echo-chamber, a disappointing lineup for UChicago which is known to value a diversity of opinion. Applebaum slammed Fox and its viewers: “Those who live outside the Fox News bubble and intend to remain there do not, of course, need to learn any of this stuff.” (For the record, I work as a legal analyst at Fox).

That is when University of Chicago Student Daniel Schmidt delivered a haymaker after citing her dig:

“A poll, later after that, found that if voters knew about the content of the laptop, 16% of Joe Biden voters would have acted differently. ‘Do you think the media acted inappropriately when they instantly dismissed Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation, and what can we learn from that in ensuring that what we label as disinformation is truly disinformation, and not reality?”

Applebaum responded by saying that she really did not care if the laptop was legitimate because she did not find it interesting.

“My problem with Hunter Biden’s laptop is I think it’s totally irrelevant,” she said. “I mean, it’s not whether it’s disinformation… I didn’t think Hunter Biden’s business relationships have anything to do with who should be President of the United States.”

So, if the Biden family was engaged in selling access to foreign interests, it really has nothing to do with the President of the United States. It is not interesting that there are references to Joe Biden’s knowledge or involvement and possible benefitting from the millions passing through his son. It does not matter that Hunter is shown telling his daughter Naomi: “I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years. It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.”

It is all just so uninteresting.

 

 

Does Your Government's Clumsy And Conspicuous Lying Make You Feel Like An Abused Child?

caitlinjohnstone |  NBC News has a new report out citing multiple anonymous US officials, humorously titled "In a break with the past, U.S. is using intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the intel isn't rock solid". 

The officials say the Biden administration has been rapidly pushing out "intelligence" about Russia's plans in Ukraine that is "low-confidence" or "based more on analysis than hard evidence", or even just plain false, in order to fight an information war against Putin.

Psyops in the U.S. targeting the public used to be illegal, even though the way they got around it was to plant stories in the foreign press. But over the last five years beginning with Russiagate & now Ukraine, it is clear that U.S. public is fair game: https://t.co/gcEWoCZbkB

— Ajamu Baraka (@ajamubaraka) April 6, 2022

The report says that toward this end the US government has deliberately circulated false or poorly evidenced claims about impending chemical weapons attacks, about Russian plans to orchestrate a false flag attack in the Donbass to justify an invasion, about Putin's advisors misinforming him, and about Russia seeking arms supplies from China.

Excerpt, emphasis mine:

It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine.

President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.

It’s one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off balance.

So they lied. They may hold that they lied for a noble reason, but they lied. They knowingly circulated information they had no reason to believe was true, and that lie was amplified by all the most influential media outlets in the western world. 

Another example of the Biden administration releasing a false narrative as part of its "information war":

Likewise, a charge that Russia had turned to China for potential military help lacked hard evidence, a European official and two U.S. officials said. 

The U.S. officials said there are no indications China is considering providing weapons to Russia. The Biden administration put that out as a warning to China not to do so, they said. 

On the empire's claim last week that Putin is being misled by his advisors because they are afraid of telling him the truth, NBC reports that this assessment "wasn’t conclusive — based more on analysis than hard evidence."

I'd actually made fun of this ridiculous CIA press release when it was uncritically published disguised as a breaking news report by The New York Times

 

What Exactly Is The Real Aim Of These Sanctions?

off-guardian |  “sanctions were designed to collapse the value of the Ruble, they have failed”.

…to which I can only respond, well “were they?”

…and perhaps more importantly, “have they?”

Because it doesn’t really look like it, does it?

If anything, the sanctions seem to be at best rather impotent, and at worst amazingly counterproductive.

It’s not like the US/EU/NATO don’t know how to cripple economies. They have had years of practice starving the people of Cuba, Iraq, Venezuela and too many others to list.

Now, you could argue that Russia is a larger, more developed economy than those countries, and that’s true, but the US and its allies have previously managed to hurt the Russian economy quite drastically.

As recently as 2014, following the “annexation” of Crimea, Western sanctions were tame compared to the recent unprecedented measures, but crucially the US massively increased its own oil production, then later that year (following a visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry) Saudi Arabia did the same.

Despite objections from other members of OPEC – Venezuela and Iran chiefly – the Saudis flooded the market with oil.

The result of these moves was the biggest fall in oil prices for decades – collapsing from $109 a barrel, in June 2014, to $44 by January 2015.

This kicked Russia into a full recession and saw Russia’s GDP shrink for the first time under Putin’s leadership.

Again, just two years ago, allegedly as part of competing with Russia for a share of the oil market, Saudi Arabia once more flooded the market with cheap oil.

So, the West does know how to hurt Russia if it really wants to – by increasing oil production, flooding the market and tanking the price.

But has the US increased its oil production this time round? Have they leant on their Gulf allies to do the same?

Not at all.

In fact, in a point of beautiful narrative synchronicity, the US claims it’s “unable” to increase its oil production due to “staff shortages” caused by that gift that keeps on giving – Covid.

Similarly, Saudi Arabia is not tanking the oil market, but deliberately increasing prices.

Yes, right now, with the Western allies locked in an alleged economic war with Russia the price of oil is soaring, and may continue to do so.

This is good news for the Russian economy, to the point it may even make up for the damage done by the brutal sanctions.

The high price of oil and need “not to rely on Putin’s gas” or “de-Russify” our energy supply will doubtless result in millions being poured into “green” technology.

Victoria Nuland....,

RT  |  Russia is eager for a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Ukraine, but it won’t accept any Western mediation during its talks with Kiev, the Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

“We’re ready to give diplomacy a chance. That’s why we agreed to the talks, which are resuming in Istanbul,” Lavrov said during a video conference on Monday with the Serbian media. The discussions are scheduled to continue on Tuesday.

The Turkish government, which has good ties with both Russia and Ukraine, has put a great deal of effort into getting the two sides around the negotiating table, Lavrov explained. However, there's no need to include the EU or the US – which support Kiev in the conflict – in the peace process, according to the minister.

“There are many examples of times when the achievements of diplomacy were shattered by Western colleagues. They can’t be trusted anymore,” Lavrov opined.

“I wouldn’t want to see any shuttle diplomacy from our Western partners, because they’ve already done their ‘shuttling’ – in February 2014 in Ukraine and in February 2015 in Minsk,” he added.

In February 2014, the EU became the guarantor of the agreements between Ukraine’s then-president Viktor Yanukovych and the Maidan protesters in Kiev, Lavrov reminded viewers. “It was a pinnacle of diplomacy. But, the next morning, the opposition spat on that diplomacy, and the EU had to swallow it.”

Yanukovich ended up being deposed after violent clashes and fleeing the country, and the new Ukrainian authorities soon sent their military to the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, where most of the population had refused to recognize the coup in the capital.

In September of the same year, the Minsk I agreement between the breakaway republics and Kiev was reached in the Belarusian capital, having been negotiated by Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France in the so-called Normandy Format. The deal called on the two sides to stop fighting, organize prisoner exchanges, allow deliveries of humanitarian aid, and withdraw heavy weaponry.

“The diplomacy then reached new heights in February 2015, when the agreements that were signed in Minsk ended the war in eastern Ukraine and opened the way to restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity by granting a special status to the Donbass,” the minister continued.

 

Crackhead Zelensky Doing All His Fake-Heroic Stunting From The Safety Of Poland...,

johnhelmer |  The summit meeting of East European leaders, hosted in Kiev by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky on March 15 was fabricated by the Polish government, with Polish secret service agents playing the part of journalists, and fake photographs of the meeting, press briefing, and train journey prepared by Zelensky’s press office.

The operation was designed by the Poles to promote their role in support of the Ukraine, the Ukrainian refugees, and in defence of Europe against Russia, and seek new European, American,  and NATO alliance funds and military equipment.

A according to the Ukrainian publicity, the operation was designed to promote the appearance that Zelensky’s regime is in control of Kiev, and to accelerate their application for admission to the European Union (EU).

The Anglo-American media have reported the meeting, as announced by Petr Fiala, the Czech  prime minister, with “the aim…to express the European Union’s unequivocal support for Ukraine and its freedom and independence,”

The result of the summit meeting, according to the Financial Times in London, was “a show of European solidarity even as Russian shelling continued on residential neighbourhoods in the Ukrainian capital. The trip by the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia is the most high-profile visit to Kyiv since Russia invaded the country on February 24.”

“It is here, in war-torn Kyiv, that history is being made,” the Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced. “It is here that freedom fights against the world of tyranny. It is here that the future of us all hangs in the balance.”

Morawiecki and the western press were lying – there was no meeting in Kiev. Instead, the meeting was staged at the Polish rail junction town of Przemysl, 95 kilometres west of Lvov (Lviv), and 20 kms inside the Polish frontier with the Ukraine.

In a report published by the Associated Press (AP) bureau in Warsaw, “the long journey over land from Poland to Kyiv by Morawiecki, Poland’s deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Prime Ministers Petr Fiala of the Czech Republic and Janez Jansa of Slovenia sent the message that most of Ukraine still remains in Ukrainian hands.”

The evidence gathered from sources in Warsaw and from analysis of the videos and photographs published on the meeting proves there was no “long journey”; no meeting in Kiev or in Lvov, the Galician region capital, which is the operating headquarters of the Ukrainian government. From the evidence provided by the Poles and also by the Zelensky’s publicity staff, it is now clear that only a small part of western Ukraine remains in Ukrainian hands.  Zelensky himself is now in Polish hands.

Why DoD Puts Its Bioweapons Labs In African And Failed Eastern European States...,

undark  |  In 2004, an activist named Edward Hammond fired up his fax machine and sent out letters to 390 institutional biosafety committees across the country. His request was simple: Show me your minutes.

Few people at the time had heard of these committees, known as IBCs, and even today, the typical American is likely unaware that they even exist. But they’re a ubiquitous — and, experts say, crucial — tool for overseeing potentially risky research in the United States. Since 1976, if a scientist wants to tweak the DNA of a lab organism, and their institution receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, they generally need to get express safety approval from the collection of scientists, biosafety experts, and interested community members who sit on the relevant IBC. Given the long reach of the $46-billion NIH budget, virtually every research university in the U.S. is required to have such a board, as are plenty of biotechnology companies and hospitals. The committees “are the cornerstone of institutional oversight of recombinant DNA research,” according to the NIH, and at many institutions, their purview includes high-security labs and research on deadly pathogens. 

The agency also requires these committees to maintain detailed meeting minutes, and to supply them upon request to members of the public. But when Hammond started requesting those minutes, he found something else. Not only were many universities declining to share their minutes, but some didn’t seem to have active IBCs at all. “The committees weren’t functioning,” Hammond told Undark. “It was just an absolute joke.”

The issue has gained fresh urgency amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Many scientists, along with U.S. intelligence agencies, say it’s possible that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, emerged accidentally from a laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV — a coronavirus research hub in China that received grant funding from the NIH through a New York-based environmental health nonprofit. Overseas entities receiving NIH funding are required to form institutional biosafety committees, and while grant proposals to the NIH obtained by The Intercept mention an IBC at the Wuhan institution, it remains unclear what role such a committee played there, or whether one was ever really convened.

An NIH spokesperson, Amanda Fine, did not answer questions about whether the Wuhan institute has had a committee registered with the agency in the past. In an email, she referred to a roster of currently active IBCs, which does not list WIV. Other efforts by Undark to obtain details about meetings of the Wuhan lab’s IBC were unsuccessful. But so, too, were initial efforts to obtain meeting minutes from several IBCs conducting what is supposed to be both routine and publicly transparent business on U.S. soil. Undark recently contacted a sample of eight New York City-area institutions with requests for copies of IBC meeting minutes and permission to attend upcoming meetings. Most did not respond to initial queries. It took nearly two months for any of the eight institutions to furnish minutes, and some did not provide minutes at all, suggesting that in many cases, the IBC system may be as opaque and inconsistently structured as when Hammond, who eventually testified before Congress on the issue in 2007, first began investigating.

Indeed, recent interviews with biosafety experts, scientists, and public officials suggest that IBC oversight still varies from institution to institution, creating a biosafety system that’s uneven, resistant to public scrutiny, and subject to minimal enforcement from the NIH. Hammond and other critics say these problems are baked into the system itself: As the country’s flagship funder of biomedical research, the NIH, these critics say, shouldn’t also be charged with overseeing its safety.

 

Zelenskyy: The Servant Of The People

chesno |   The financial statements from the Servant of the People indicate that the party collected 226 million hryvnias (~$8 million USD) in donations while Zelenskyy and his associates’ election accounts collected 200 million hryvnias (~$7 million USD).

These numbers themselves seem relatively unremarkable, but the sources and types of donations are much more interesting.

Chesno reported that from September 2018 to September 2019 only 94 people donated to Servant of the People. Of the 94 people, most of these were entrepreneurs or sole proprietors. Most of the donations came from Kyiv, followed by donations from Odessa and Dnipro.

Chesno also found that 44 legal entities donated to the Servant of the People and Zelenskyy, with 34 of these entities donating 3 million hryvnias ($105,000 USD), which is just under the 3.3 million hryvnia ($120,000) limit placed on donations. The majority of these donations came from either Kyiv or Odessa.

More than 99% of all donations were more than 100,000 hryvnias ($3,500 USD); only two donations of less than 10,000 hryvnias ($350) were received in this time period.

To contextualize these figures, the minimum wage in Ukraine is 6,000 hryvnias per month ($220 USD) and the median salary in Ukraine is around 21,000 hryvnias ($775 USD).

This means that the majority of donations received by Zelenskyy and Servant of the People were more than what most Ukrainians make over five or six months of full-time work.

Chesno also found that some of the 94 personal donations came from questionable sources. Chesno interviewed Tetyana Staneva, who lives in a village in Odessa and has no business registered in her name. She donated 1.5 million hryvnias ($52,000 USD) to the Servant of the People party, telling Chesno, “It’s not just my money, I just sent it. This is a group of like-minded people, we did it together.” It should be noted that this is against Ukrainian law, which says that individual citizen must make financial contributions to political groups personally, and not as a collective.

Investigators identified one of the 44 entities that donated as Yaroslava Reklama, LLC, registered to a 22-year old cook named Yaroslav Kuzka who works at one of Kyiv’s restaurants. Yaroslava Reklama LLC, transferred the maximum donation of 3.3 million hryvnias ($120,000 USD) to Servant of the People. Upon investigating the address to which Yaroslava Reklama LLC was registered, journalists found that tenants in the area had never heard of the company.

Another company, Prom Import LLC, was registered to a woman named Juliana Kuku. She complained on her social media accounts that business was “not going well”, but at roughly the same time, made a 500,000 hryvnia ($16,000 USD) donation to Servant of the People.

Chesno also found that of the 44 entities that donated to Servant of the People, four of them changed their addresses within two days of one another in December 2018, leading investigators to conclude that many of the donors were likely linked.

It is perhaps remarkable to consider that although only 94 persons and 44 legal entities donated to Servant of the People, that it grew to controlling 254 of 450 seats in the Verkhovna Rada despite not existing less than six months before.

Who Is America's Greatest Rival? Russia? China? Or Europe?

colinsims |  First of all, who is America’s greatest rival? Is it Russia? China?

What about Europe?

Think about it. The U.S. has already demonstrated its willingness to expend extraordinary levels of blood and treasure to topple any Middle Eastern dictator who so much as thinks the word “euro” while he lies awake at night. So, what about the Europeans themselves? After all, they’re the ones who issued the dreaded euro in the first place. The Chinese yuan—for a myriad of reasons—isn’t going to replace the dollar any time soon. Neither is the Russian ruble. But the euro stands a chance. It’s the world’s second largest reserve currency and could easily become number one. If it succeeds, the economic blow to the United States would be catastrophic. The effects would be far more devastating than anything Russia or China could do, short of launching a full-scale nuclear attack. So I ask you again, who is America’s greatest rival?

It’s Europe.

So, from that perspective, let’s take a look at what America’s objectives truly are with Ukraine, regardless of dubious public pronouncements.

A December, 2021 article from the BBC quoted an anonymous high-ranking European intelligence official who said, “Let's not be blind. If Russia initiates a scenario of any kind it will also initiate action against Nato members.” The official added, “To think war could be contained to one nation would be foolish.”

It is also likely that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would greatly exacerbate growing tensions within the European Union. For example, E.U. diplomats have already stated that a Russian incursion will be met with severe economic repercussions. However, as one security analyst at the European Policy Centre put it, “Putting tough sanctions on Russia can also have consequences for the E.U. because the economies (Russia’s and Europe’s) are linked … There could be costs to pay that some member states do not want to pay.”

That statement crystalizes one of the E.U.’s biggest problems: economic policies—especially monetary ones from the European Central Bank—are seldom one-size-fits-all. So, what’s good for northern states like Germany or Denmark is not always good for southern states like Greece or Italy. This “North-South” divide has fostered a growing fissure within the E.U. for years, and if Russia invades Ukraine, it will grow even wider.

In short, that’s good news for the U.S. dollar. The more division within Europe the better, because it calls into question the euro’s future existence—no one is going to invest in that, it’s too risky. That leaves the dollar as the only option. So, no matter how screwed up America is, either at home or abroad, it’s still a better bet than anyone else. That is U.S. foreign policy in a nutshell.

But what about Russia? Does the U.S. gain anything from Russia getting bogged down in a Ukrainian quagmire?

Absolutely!

In the book, “Implosion: The End of Russia and What it Means for America,” author Ilan Berman argues that the biggest worry regarding Russia is not its strength, but its weakness. This is primarily due to the country’s rapidly shrinking population and abysmal mortality rate. (The average Russian male dies at 59.) The problem with this, from a Western perspective, is that if the Russian government collapses, who is going to safeguard the roughly 7,000 nuclear weapons currently at its disposal?

The First DNC Attack On Joe Rogan Came In 2020

CNN  |  Bernie Sanders is facing a backlash from some Democrats after his campaign trumpeted an endorsement from comedian Joe Rogan, a popular podcast and YouTube talk show host with a history of making racist, homophobic and transphobic comments.

The Sanders campaign touted the endorsement in a tweet on Thursday afternoon, featuring a clip of Rogan's supportive remarks. 

 

"I think I'll probably vote for Bernie. Him as a human being, when I was hanging out with him, I believe in him, I like him, I like him a lot," Rogan said on an earlier episode of his show.

 

"What Bernie stands for is a guy -- look, you could dig up dirt on every single human being that's ever existed if you catch them in their worst moment and you magnify those moments and you cut out everything else and you only display those worst moments. That said, you can't find very many with Bernie. He's been insanely consistent his entire life. He's basically been saying the same thing, been for the same thing his whole life. And that in and of itself is a very powerful structure to operate from."

Rogan, a libertarian-leaning broadcaster with a public persona in the mold of Howard Stern, is a divisive figure who has said the N-word on his show and in 2013 questioned -- using offensive language -- whether a transgender MMA fighter should be able to compete against other women. 

 

"If you want to be a woman in the bedroom and, you know, you want to play house and all of that other sh-t and you feel like you have, your body is really a woman's body trapped inside a man's frame and so you got a operation, that's all good in the hood," Rogan said. "But you can't fight chicks.". 

 

The decision to highlight Rogan's support has divided opinion among Democrats and activists, particularly online, where it has sparked a heated debate over whether Sanders should have aligned himself with Rogan in any form or context. 

 

Sanders' strategic targeting of young, unaffiliated and working class voters often takes him to places, and onto platforms -- like Twitch -- that most Democratic candidates rarely venture. But that practice, when it brings a figure like Rogan into the political spotlight, also carries the risk of alienating parts of a liberal base that, especially in the Trump era, has become increasingly cautious about the company it keeps -- and what that signals to marginalized communities. 

 

On Saturday, the progressive group MoveOn called on Sanders "to apologize and stop elevating this endorsement."

 

"It's one thing for Joe Rogan to endorse a candidate," MoveOn said in a tweet from its official account. "It's another for @BernieSanders' campaign to produce a video bolstering the endorsement of someone known for promoting transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism and misogyny."

Let’s be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 25, 2020

 

Less than an hour later, former Vice President Joe Biden appeared to enter the fray.

 

"Let's be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time," Biden tweeted. "There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights."

Elite Capture: If You Believe Marc Benioff Is A Good Guy - Why Is San Francisco So Squalid?

NPR  |  Benioff's outspokenness is part of his brand. He frequently and forcefully weighs in on controversial issues, including gun policy, human rights, climate change, and politics more broadly.

He is an evangelist for changing the way companies do business, a defender of what's called "stakeholder capitalism," or the belief that corporations should look beyond just the interests of its employees or shareholders and customers.

"We need a new capitalism that is more fair, more equitable, more sustainable," he told CNBC. "Capitalism that values not just all shareholders, but all stakeholders."

Benioff defines "stakeholder" more broadly than most of his contemporaries.

In a recent interview with NPR, Benioff said the planet is a Salesforce stakeholder, and so is the homeless community in San Francisco, where his company has its headquarters, and where his family has lived for four generations.

It's a kind of advocacy few other CEOs have engaged in, according to Benioff.

"When I first started, I don't think there were a lot of CEOs who were willing to speak out and really take positions outside of, maybe, their product," he told NPR.

But that's starting to change — slowly.

In 2015, when Indiana passed a law that would have made it easier for business owners to deny services to same-sex couples because of religious beliefs, Benioff was joined by other CEOs, including Apple's Tim Cook and organizations like NCAA in denouncing the law.

That forced then-Governor Mike Pence to amend the law.

Last year, in a moment that seemed to represent a turning point for corporate America, executives widely condemned the killing of George Floyd, and many pledged to address racial inequality both within their companies and in society at large.

However, many company executives continue to stay away from hot-button issues.

 

 

Brytney Cobia Judging The Unvaccinated But Offering No Ivermectin....,

AL |  Dr. Brytney Cobia said Monday that all but one of her COVID patients in Alabama did not receive the vaccine. The vaccinated patient, she said, just needed a little oxygen and is expected to fully recover. Some of the others are dying.

“I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” wrote Cobia, a hospitalist at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, in an emotional Facebook post Sunday. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”

Three COVID-19 vaccines have been widely available in Alabama for months now, yet the state is last in the nation in vaccination rate, with only 33.7 percent of the population fully vaccinated. COVID-19 case numbers and hospitalizations are surging yet again due to the more contagious Delta variant of the virus and Alabama’s low vaccination rate.

For the first year and a half of the pandemic, Cobia and hundreds of other Alabama physicians caring for critically ill COVID-19 patients worked themselves to the bone trying to save as many as possible.

“Back in 2020 and early 2021, when the vaccine wasn’t available, it was just tragedy after tragedy after tragedy,” Cobia told AL.com this week. “You know, so many people that did all the right things, and yet still came in, and were critically ill and died.”

In the United States, COVID is now a pandemic of the unvaccinated, according to the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Alabama, state officials report 94% of COVID hospital patients and 96% of Alabamians who have died of COVID since April were not fully vaccinated.

“A few days later when I call time of death,” continued Cobia on Facebook, “I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same.”

“They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu’. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.”

More than 11,400 Alabamians have died of COVID so far, but midway through 2021, caring for COVID patients is a different story than it was in the beginning. Cobia said it’s different mentally and emotionally to care for someone who could have prevented their disease but chose not to.

I Love Me Some Chlorine Bleach - But Clorox Needs To Be Shot With Hot Pee For This!

undark  |  As a second wave of Covid-19 infections tore through the United States in the summer of 2020, a partnership was forged between the Cleveland Clinic, one of the nation’s premiere medical centers, and the Clorox Company, the California-based ­­­­­­­maker of surface disinfectants. Sales of Clorox products had been soaring since the beginning of the pandemic, when public health agencies were still warning that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, could lurk on surfaces, sickening people who touched them. The company’s stock was also soaring, and at times it struggled to keep up with demand.

Under the partnership, the company and the clinic would co-produce public health guidelines to help the public navigate the Covid-19 pandemic. The arrangement continued into March of this year, when the CDC Foundation — an independent nonprofit chartered by Congress to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — joined the group. Their ongoing campaign, the Clorox Safer Today Alliance, includes ads for the brand that bear the Cleveland Clinic and CDC Foundation logos. The Alliance advises companies — including United Airlines and AMC Theatres — and individuals on navigating Covid-19 reopening, with an emphasis on disinfecting surfaces. 

This seemingly benevolent union in the name of public health has a problem, critics say: a lack of compelling evidence that surface disinfection plays any significant role in halting the spread of Covid-19. Despite early speculation among experts that surface contact was a key mode of SARS-CoV-2 transmission and subsequent rush among consumers to purchase cleaning products at the outset of the pandemic, the science supporting frequent surface disinfection as a response to Covid-19 has largely faltered, many experts say.

Indeed, after nearly 18 months of investigation, most scientists believe that airborne transmission is the chief concern, and that overuse of surface disinfectants may well do more harm than good. “Your efforts at cleaning are better spent towards cleaning the air than cleaning the surfaces,” said Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech and a prominent expert on Covid-19 transmission.

Given this, the continued relationship between two major public health organizations and the Clorox Company — which appears well positioned to profit from a particular interpretation of the science — has some critics raising pointed questions about the appropriateness of the arrangement and the misleading messages it might send to consumers. It also comes amid ongoing scrutiny by experts and advocates of the effects of corporate donations on scientific research and public health. Clorox donated $1 million to the Cleveland Clinic this spring, and a press release for the Safer Today Alliance notes that the company also donated $1 million to the CDC Foundation in early 2020.

 

Assange Momentarily Democratized Information - For That - His Life Has Been Destroyed

craigmurray  |   Thordarson has now told Icelandic magazine Stundin that his allegations against Assange contained in the indictment are untrue, and that Assange had not solicited the hacking of bank or police details. This is hardly a shock, though Thordarson’s motives for coming clean now are obscure; he is plainly a deeply troubled and often malicious individual.
Thordarson was always the most unreliable of witnesses, and I find it impossible to believe that the FBI cooperation with him was ever any more than deliberate fabrication of evidence by the FBI.

Edward Snowden has tweeted that Thordarson recanting will end the case against Julian Assange. Most certainly it should end it, but I fear it will not.

Many things should have ended the case against Assange. The First Amendment, the ban on political extradition in the US/UK Extradition Treaty, the CIA spying on the preparations of Assange’s defence counsel, all of these should have stopped the case dead in its tracks.

It is now five months since extradition was refused, no US government appeal against that decision has yet been accepted by the High Court, and yet Julian remains confined to the UK’s highest security prison. The revelation that Thordarson’s allegations are fabricated – which everyone knew already, Baraitser just pretended she didn’t – is just one more illegality that the Establishment will shimmy over in its continued persecution of Assange.

Assange democratised information and gave real power to the people for a while, worldwide. He revealed US war crimes. For that his life is destroyed. Neither law nor truth have anything to do with it.

For Adam Serwer Radically Distorting The Truth Appears To Be The Point

theamericanconservative |  Adam Serwer’s “The Cruelty Is the Point” is the most toxic piece of journalism of the Trump era. After the shocking election of 2016, the liberal establishment showed glimmers of willingness to ask hard questions about how it had happened. If millions of Obama voters were now switching their allegiance to a reality show billionaire, perhaps the Democratic party had done something to ill-serve these people? Then along came Serwer in the Atlantic to tell them that, no, Trump voters did not have any legitimate grievances. They were evil racists, simple as that.

The phrase took on a life of its own. Politicians from presidential candidate Julian Castro to “Squad” member Rep. Ayanna Pressley started using it. “Do these five words define the Trump years?” asked Brian Stelter on CNN. It became ubiquitous on cable news and Twitter.

Now Serwer has published a book under the same title. You might think the 2020 election, which saw Trump gain among black and Hispanic voters, would have caused him to reconsider his thesis that the source of Trump’s appeal is racist hate. Not a bit. Each essay in this collection comes with a short introductory essay describing how Serwer came to write the piece and how he thinks it has held up in retrospect. He makes very clear that, with the benefit of hindsight, he has no regrets.

Looking at the title essay fresh, two and a half years after it was first published, one is struck by how offensive it is, and with how little justification. It opens with a lynch mob. “Grinning white men stand next to the mutilated, half-naked bodies of two men lashed to a post in the street,” writes Serwer, describing an old photograph. He leaps from this haunting image to a Trump rally, where he detects the same “rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them.”

His evidence for this incendiary claim is a rather hasty list of talking points, very few of which live up to his tendentious billing. He accuses Trump of “seeking to ethnically cleanse 193,000 American children,” which refers to his not renewing temporary protected status for certain Salvadoran refugees. “Mocking Puerto Rican accents shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria” refers to this clip, which you can watch for yourself to see how innocuous it is.

Peak Distrust Of The Ruling Professional Managerial Class

newsweek  |  The trials and tribulations of COVID-19 in America have dealt an irreparable blow to the credibility of America's ruling class and the ruling class's implicit appeal to its authority as a coterie of highly trained and capable experts. No single person exemplifies this more than Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has attained celebrity status during the pandemic as the nation's leading immunologist and forward-facing spokesman for our public policy response. As Steve Deace and Todd Erzen detail in their new book, Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History, Fauci has repeatedly contradicted himself throughout the pandemic, waffling on what the "science" demands at any given moment while still always seeming to err on the side of draconian overreaction.

 Recent Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests by BuzzFeed and The Washington Post only underscore the point. Perhaps most damningly, the FOIA requests revealed a February 2020 email to former Obama-era Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell explaining that store-bought face masks are "really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection." He also added that the "typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material."

Of course, barely over a month after Fauci's unearthed email to Burwell, Americans were required to wear masks pretty much every time they left their house—and mask-skeptical posts were censored or deleted by the ruling class's preferred private-sector enforcement arm, Big Tech. And none of this is to even broach the separate issue of the extensive COVID-19-era societal lockdowns, which were never justified on the scientific metrics despite being ubiquitously promoted by those excoriating lockdown-skeptical conservatives to just shut up and "trust the science."

In addition to the Fauci FOIA cache, there is also the Democratic Party and the media's inexplicable 180-degree turn on the plausibility of the Wuhan lab leak theory—that is, the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic has as its origins not a zoonotic transmission at a local "wet market" but an escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was conducting dangerous coronavirus research (partially subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer) and happens to be located within the immediate vicinity of the then-novel virus' first confirmed cases. The lab leak theory was always plausible, if not probable, but those who promoted it as a possibility from the onset—such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and then-President Donald Trump—were routinely lambasted as Sinophobic conspiracy theorists.

 

Public Health Celebrity Lil'Fauci Says "Guns A Public Health Emergency"

aier |  For decades, Anthony Fauci was an unrecognizable government bureaucrat to anyone who lived outside of the D.C. Beltway. He would pop up out of obscurity and into the conversation every few years in the event of a niche issue involving infectious diseases. That all changed with the COVID-19 pandemic, which elevated the once-irrelevant mandarin to stardom. Today, he is a media mainstay. The celebrity doctor, who has become best known for his routine peddling of quackery related to the coronavirus, has developed a cult following thanks to his consistent political activism and regular appearances across a plethora of media platforms.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — where Fauci has held the top post for 38 years — now accommodates their celebrity doctor by maintaining a dedicated list of his media appearances. Scroll through the “Fauci In The News” tab on the NIAID website and you will find page after page of Dr. Fauci’s seemingly endless schedule of media hits. By my count, he has accumulated well over 300 media appearances over the past year alone. On Sunday, Fauci got a high dose of his television fix, racking up 4 separate TV appearances on ABC, CNN, CBS, and NBC.

The partial list, which was last updated on April 19, shows that Fauci has collected 309 media appearances over the past year alone. By comparison, in 2019, Fauci made about 1 media appearance per week. Additionally, the “Fauci In The News” list does not account for many of Fauci’s appearances on random celebrity YouTube channels, podcast hits, radio interviews, livestreamed conferences and the like, which easily send his average media hits over the past year to well over one appearance per day. 

When Anthony Fauci isn’t in front of a camera, he’s said to be on the front lines battling the pandemic as the nation’s “foremost infectious diseases expert,” a label that is somehow justified by his track record of being a government bureaucrat for half a century. However, other than working his way up the ranks of a government bureaucracy, and using crafty political maneuvers to build his personal status in Washington, D.C. and around the world, it’s unclear what exactly Fauci has accomplished to deserve this label.

With all of that time in front of a camera, it might make some wonder if the celebrity bureaucrat has time to actually follow the latest data and statistics on the pandemic. Given his routine blunders, his lack of transparency, and his advocacy for continued shutdowns (there are now over 50 published scientific studies that show lockdowns don’t work), it’s safe to say that the NIAID director is either ignorant and clueless and/or purposely advocating for measures that do not work to “stop the spread.” 

NYTimes Defends Lil'Fauci - America's Highest Paid Public Health Celebrity

Conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf on FOX News Primetime: "[Anthony Fauci] doesn't work for us... He got a million dollars from the state of Israel..." (h/t @kampeas) pic.twitter.com/Z6KECpc2tf

— John-Paul Pagano (@johnpaulpagano) April 20, 2021

NYTimes |   “Fauci” was a dirty word uttered from the stage of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida in February. “Fauci” is a dirty word prevalent in conservative publications. In Breitbart News several days ago, Fauci was dismissively referred to as America’s top “public health celebrity.” “Fauci Fallacies at All-Time High” was a recent headline in The Washington Free Beacon. In the span of one week this month, National Review published articles titled “Anthony Fauci Has Worn Out His Welcome,” “Anthony Fauci’s Misadventures in Fortune-Telling” and “Another Dismal Sunday-Show Circuit for Dr. Fauci.”

Just a few days ago in The Washington Post, Dan Diamond mentioned Fauci antipathy in the opening paragraph of a report about people who refuse to get vaccinations against the coronavirus. The message from one focus group of such people, he noted, was that “if you’re trying to win over skeptics, show us anyone besides Dr. Fauci.”

Philip Bump, one of Diamond’s colleagues at The Post, correctly observed that “Fauci has become what Trump always wanted him to be: the scapegoat for unpopular government recommendations.”

But it’s even bigger and weirder than that. “He doesn’t work for us,” the writer Naomi Wolf said on Fox News on Monday, referring to Fauci and reacting to a $1 million prize given to him by a philanthropy in Israel as a recognition of his, yes, public service. She cast the money as evidence that he was “so conflicted” and not sufficiently guided by concern for the “public health of the American people.”

 

 

Kwestins About The Panic-demic Got Asked - But Went Entirely Unanswered

thewrap  |  On Tuesday, Tucker talked about what he argued has been a severe miscommunication problem from medical science leaders regarding the vaccines, in particular messaging that suggests people’s lives cannot meaningfully change even after they’ve received the vaccine — which actually we’ll concede is a good point. Tucker also brought up the pause in distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine following a tiny fraction of people who developed a blood clot disorder after taking it.

This led him to say, “It is possible, in fact, that this vaccine is more dangerous than they’re indicating it is.”

And then later in the rant, he appeared to suggest that the vaccines may not work at all, and that it’s possible that a conspiracy of some sort might be covering that up. If you don’t believe us, here is what he said, verbatim:

“Experts say it is not entirely clear when it will be considered okay for people who are fully vaccinated to stop wearing masks. At some point, no one is asking this but everyone should be, what is this about? If vaccines work, why are vaccinated people still banned from living normal lives? Honestly, what’s the answer to that, it doesn’t make any sense at all. If the vaccine is effective there’s no reason for people who’ve received a vaccine to wear masks or avoid physical contact. So maybe it doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that. Well you’d hate to think that especially if you’ve gotten two shots but what’s the other potential explanation? We can’t think of one.”

Yes, Tucker actually said this. Perhaps it was just a rhetorical device, but if so, he didn’t say that was the case.

 

 

Representative Jim Jordan asked Dr. Fauci when the COVID mitigation would be considered successful? When exactly would Americans be permitted to recapture the rights the government has taken away? What exactly are the metrics that define success?…. 

 

 

Jordan continued to press him for a specific number. But, as Fauci started to give a response, the next committee member began to speak, thanking Clyburn. “I’d like my question answered!” Jordan shouted, in response to which Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) yelled: "You need to respect the chair and shut your mouth!”

 

Inwardly Wokeness Is A Weapon, Outwardly Wokeness Is A Disguise

greenwald  |  The British spy agency GCHQ is so aggressive, extreme and unconstrained by law or ethics that the NSA — not exactly world renowned for its restraint — often farms out spying activities too scandalous or illegal for the NSA to their eager British counterparts. There is, as the Snowden reporting demonstrated, virtually nothing too deceitful or invasive for the GCHQ. They spy on entire populations, deliberately disseminate fake news, exploit psychological research to control behavior and manipulate public perception, and destroy the reputations, including through the use of sex traps, of anyone deemed adversarial to the British government.

But they want you to know that they absolutely adore gay people. In fact, they love the cause of LGBT equality so very much that, beginning on May 17, 2015 — International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia — they started draping their creepy, UFO-style headquarters in the colors of the rainbow flag. The prior year, in 2014, they had merely raised the rainbow flag in front of their headquarters, but in 2015, they announced, “we wanted to make a bold statement to show the nation we serve how strongly we believe in this.”

Who could possibly be opposed to an institution that offers such noble gestures and works behind such a pretty facade? How bad could the GCHQ really be if they are so deeply committed to the rights of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and trans people? Sure, maybe they go a little overboard with the spying sometimes, and maybe some of their surveillance and disinformation programs are a bit questionable, and they do not necessarily have the highest regard for law, privacy and truth. But we know that, deep down, these are fundamentally good people working within a fundamentally benign institution. Just look at their flamboyant support for this virtuous cause of social justice.

Large corporations have obviously witnessed the success of this tactic — to prettify the face of militarism and imperialism with the costumes of social justice — and are now weaponizing it for themselves. As a result, they are becoming increasingly aggressive in their involvement in partisan and highly politicized debates, always on the side of the same causes of social justice which entities of imperialism and militarism have so effectively co-opted.

Corporations have always sought to control the legislative process and executive branch, usually with much success. They purchase politicians and their power aides by hiring them as lobbyists and consultants when they leave government, and those bought-and-paid-for influence-peddlers then proceed to exploit their connections in Washington or state capitals to ensure that laws are written and regulations enforced (or not enforced) to benefit the corporations’ profit interests. These large corporations achieve the same goal by filling the campaign coffers of politicians from both parties. This is standard, age-old K Street sleaze that allows large corporations to control American democracy at the expense of those who cannot afford to buy this influence.

But they are now going far beyond clandestine corporatist control of the government for their own interests. They are now becoming increasingly powerful participants in highly polarizing and democratic debates. In the wake of the George Floyd killing last summer, it became virtually obligatory for every large corporation to proclaim support for the #BlackLivesMatter agenda even though many, if not most, had never previously evinced the slightest interest in questions of racial justice or policing.