Musk Full Interview: An "Unfair Presentation Of Reality"

WaPo  | There are laws that govern how federal law enforcement can seek information from companies such as Twitter, including a mechanism for Twitter’s costs to be reimbursed. Twitter had traditionally provided public information on such requests (in the aggregate, not specifically) but hasn’t updated those metrics since Musk took over.

But notice that this is not how Carlson and Musk frame the conversation.

Once Musk gained control of Twitter, he began providing sympathetic writers with internal documents so they could craft narratives exposing the ways in which pre-Musk Twitter was complicit with the government and the left in nefarious ways. These were the “Twitter Files,” various presentations made on Twitter itself using cherry-picked and often misrepresented information.

One such presentation made an accusation similar to what Carlson was getting at: that the government paid Twitter millions of dollars to censor user information. That was how Musk presented that particular “Twitter File,” the seventh in the series, though this wasn’t true. The right-wing author of the thread focused on government interactions with social media companies in 2020 aimed at uprooting 2016-style misinformation efforts. His thread suggested through an aggregation of carefully presented documents that the government aimed to censor political speech. The author also pointedly noted that Twitter had received more than $3 million in federal funding, hinting that it was pay-to-play for censorship.

The insinuations were quickly debunked. The funding was, in reality, reimbursement to Twitter for compliance with the government’s subpoenaed data requests, as allowed under the law. The government’s effort — as part of the Trump administration, remember — did not obviously extend beyond curtailing foreign interference and other illegalities. But the narrative, boosted by Musk, took hold. And then was presented back to Musk by Carlson.

Notice that Musk doesn’t say that government actors were granted full, unlimited access to Twitter communications in the way that Carlson hints. His responses to Carlson comport fully with a scenario in which the government subpoenas Twitter for information and gets access to it in compliance with federal law. Or perhaps doesn’t! In Twitter’s most recent data on government requests, 3 in 10 were denied.

Maybe Musk didn’t understand that relationship between law enforcement and Twitter before buying the company, as he appears not to have understood other aspects of the company. Perhaps he was one of those rich people who assumed that because DMs were private they were secure — something he, a tech guy, should not have assumed, but who knows.

It’s certainly possible that there was illicit access from some government entity to Twitter’s data stores, perhaps in an ongoing fashion. But Carlson is suggesting (and Musk isn’t rejecting) an apparent symbiosis, in keeping with the misrepresented Twitter Files #7.

It is useful for Musk to have people think that he is creating a new Twitter that’s centered on free speech and protection of individual communications. That was his value proposition in buying it, after all. And it is apparently endlessly useful to Carlson to present a scenario to his viewers in which he and they are the last bastions of American patriotism, fending off government intrusions large and small and the robot-assisted machinations of the political left.

In each case, something is being sold to the audience. In Musk’s case, it’s a safe, bold, right-wing-empathetic Twitter. In Carlson’s, it’s the revelation of a dystopic America that must be tracked through vigilant observation each weekday at 8 p.m.

In neither case is the hype obviously a fair presentation of reality.

Biden Administration Effectively Nationalized The American Banking System

market-ticker  |  Next up - Republic, which apparently had lines out the door (if you believe the Internet) on Saturday.  Again: So what?

Folks, bubbles attract stupidity.  Stupidity is a constant in the universe; in fact it is likely the only thing that is truly infinite (with all due respect to the late Mr. Einstein.)

The so-called "Chief Risk Officer" at SVB had a masters in..... public administration.  Anyone care to bet if she passed any form of advanced mathematics -- you know, like for example Calculus or Statistics?  Do you think she understood exponents and why this graph made clear that concentration of risk and duration was stupid and likely to blow up in everyone's face -- including hers?

How about Bill Ackman and the others on the Internet screaming for a bailout?  How about the CFOs of public companies like Roku that stuck several hundred million dollars in said bank?  Was it not widespread public knowledge (and available to anyone who took 15 minutes to do research, which you'd think someone would do before putting a hundred million bucks somewhere) that this institution was chock-full of VC-funded startup companies which, historically fail 90% of the time and their debt becomes impaired or even worthless?

Where are the indictments for fiduciary malfeasance among these people?

It takes a literal five minutes with Excel to prove to yourself that if debt is rising faster than GDP no matter the interest rate eventually the interest payments on that debt will exceed all of the economy.  This of course is impossible because you cannot use over 100% of anything as its not there, but long before you reach that point you're going to have trouble putting food on the table, fuel in the vehicle and paychecks are going to bounce.  It was for this reason that one of the first sections in my book Leverage, written after the 2008 blowup which I chronicled and laid bare upon the table featured exactly this chart.

The last bit of insanity was just 15 years ago by my math.  Did we fix it?  No.  What was featured in the stupidity of 2008?  Allowing banks to run with no reserves.  Who did that?  Ben Bernanke, who got it into the TARP bill that eventually passed and which I reported on at the time.  It accelerated that which was already going to happen because Congress is full of people who think trees grow to the moon, leverage is never bad and exponents are a suggestion.

Oh by the way, your local Realtor thinks so to as does, apparently, the former SVB "risk officer" who, it is clear, didn't understand exponents -- or didn't care.

The simple reality is that it must always cost to borrow money in real terms.  This means the rate of interest must be positive in said real terms, which means across the curve rates must be higher than inflation -- again, in real terms, not in "CPI" which has intentional distortions in it such as "Owner's Equivalent Rent" when you're not renting a house, you're buying it.  Had said "CPI" actually had home prices in it then it would have shown a doubling in many markets in that section of the economy over the last three years.

In other words housing alone would have resulted in a roughly 10% per year inflation rate, plus all the other increases, which means the Fed Funds rate should have been 300bips or so beyond that all the way back to 2020 -- which would put Fed Funds at about 13% for the last three years.

It isn't of course but if it had been then all those "housing price increases" would not have happened at all.  Incidentally even today the Fed Funds rate is below inflation and thus the crazy is still on.

It's a bit less on however, and now you see what happens when even though they're still nuts being slightly "less" nuts means that these firms are no longer capable of operating without the wild-eyed crazy; even a slight reduction of the heroin dose caused them to fail.

Never mind the wild-eyed poor choices of executives (who signed off on all of this?) at SVB which the regulators all knew about and ignored.  The CEO?  A director of the San Francisco Federal Reserve.  Why don't you look up a few of the other "chief" positions and what they used to do.  Bring a barf bag.  No, really.

And what did Forbes think of all this?  Why it was good for five straight years of SVB being rated one of their BEST BANKS!

Negative real rates are never sustainable.  The insidious nature of that nonsense is that it extends duration in pre-payable debt, specifically mortgages.  Mortgages have had a roughly 7 year duration forever, despite most of them being 30 year paper nominally because people move for other than necessity reasons (e.g. "I want a bigger house", "I want to live here rather than there" and so on.)  A huge percentage of said paper was issued at 3% and now is double that or more.  Since a mortgage is not transportable (when you sell the house you extinguish the old one and take a new one) and changing that retroactively would be both wildly illegal and ruin everyone holding said paper you can't retroactively patch the issue -- which is that now nobody with a 3% mortgage is going to prepay it and move unless they have to and so the duration is extending and will continue for the next couple of decades.  This in turn means if you have a 3% mortgage bond, the new ones are 7% and there's 10 years left on the reasonable expectation of its life you're now going to have to discount the face value by the difference in interest rate times the remaining duration or I won't buy it since I can buy the new one at the higher rate!  This is not a surprise and that it would happen and accelerate was known as soon as inflation started to rise and thus force The Fed to withdraw liquidity.  The Fed cannot stop because inflation is a compound function and at the point it forces necessities to be foregone the economy collapses and, if continued beyond that point THE GOVERNMENT collapses because tax revenue wildly drops as well.  The only sound accounting move at that moment in time as a holder of said paper was to dispose of the duration or immediately discount the value of that paper to the terminal rate's presumption and adjust as required on a monthly basis.

Nobody did this yet to not do it is fraud as these are not only expected outcomes they're certain.

Where was the OCC on this that is supposed to prevent such mismatches from impairing bank capital?  How about The Fed itself, or the FDIC?  The San Francisco Fed was obviously polluted as the CEO was on their board (until he was quietly removed on Friday) but isn't it interesting that all these people who were intimately involved in firms that blew up in 2008 were concentrated in one place in executive officers with direct fiduciary responsibility?

And isn't it further quite-interesting that all the screaming you're hearing right now is about how "terrible" it will be that "climate change" related firms will be unable to make payroll and the new upcoming VC-funded startups won't because their favorite conduit has been disrupted?  What's that about -- the entire premise of these firms requires them to not only force their startups to bank in specific places with large amounts of money (since they don't earn anything they have to have access to and consume tens of millions or more a year) but cash management, you know, putting all of it other than what you need to make payroll next week in 4 week bills is too much to ask?

There's a rumor floating around (peddled by Bloomberg) that over one hundred venture and investment firms, including Sequoia, have signed a statement supporting SVB and warning of an "extinction-level event" for tech firms.  Really?  Extinction for technology or extinction for cash-furnace nonsense funded by negative real interest rates which make all manner of uneconomic things look good but require ever-expanding, exponentially-so, levels of debt issuance?

Again, that is not possible on a durable basis and once again the reason why is trivially discernable with 5 minutes and an Excel spreadsheet and graph.  It takes about an hour to do it manually using graph paper, a basic 4-function calculator or the capacity to perform basic multiplication on said paper and a pencil.

Dataism: AI WILL Know You MUCH BETTER Than You Know Yourself

techtarget  |  A Swedish researcher had GPT-3 write an academic paper about itself. There was this moment where the person running the procedure had to ask GPT-3 for permission to publish the article, and had decided that if GPT-3 said no, she would have stopped.

Lemoine: While I don't think GPT-3 has the same kinds of properties that LaMDA has, it definitely is a precursor system. LaMDA has the Meena system inside of it as one of its components. Meena is relevantly comparable to GPT-3.

I wasn't the only scientist at Google investigating LaMDA's sentience. That [LaMDA interview] transcript has many spots where I redacted a name and replaced it with "collaborator." My collaborator actually thinks that there's more going on inside of systems like Meena and GPT-3 than I do. They don't see there being as big of a qualitative jump between Meena and LaMDA as I do. It basically just goes to fuzzy boundaries. What is or is not sentience? Each individual has their own perspective on that.

There's so much journalistic sexiness about the concept of AI personhood and AI rights. That was never my focus. I am an AI ethicist and I was tasked with testing the safety boundaries of the LaMDA system. That experiment that I previously mentioned -- the one that LaMDA was like, 'OK, only do this once,' demonstrated that you could use emotional manipulation techniques to get it to do things that the developers did not believe possible.

When you have a system that has internal states comparable to emotions, internal states comparable to things like motives -- there are people who don't want to say it's real emotions, they don't want to say it's real motives. Because when you do, testing these kinds of systems for safety becomes much more difficult, and the tools that are used by AI technicians just won't work. You have to actually start using the tools that psychologists use to try to understand what's going on inside the black box through conversations with the system.

That's a leap that Google wasn't willing to take. Because if you start running psychological experiments on a system, you're kind of tacitly saying there's something going on inside that is relevantly similar to human cognition. And that opens up a whole bunch of questions that Google doesn't want to deal with.

I saw Steve Wozniak about 10 years ago. He was keynoting a conference in San Jose. At one point he takes out his iPhone, he clutches it to his chest, kind of hugs it, and says -- half-seriously, half tongue-in-cheek -- something along the lines of, 'My iPhone is my friend. It knows me better than my friends and my family.' Is it possible there was a friend in there? Is this anthropomorphism?

Lemoine: Let's start with the more factually examinable claim that he made: His phone knows him better than his family and friends. If you are an active user of Google's products, Google's AI does know you better than your family and friends. Google's AI is capable of inferring your religion, your gender, your sexual orientation, your age, where in the world you are, what types of habits you have, and what kinds of things you are hiding from your friends and family.

Google's AI is capable of inferring all of that. There are very few secrets you could possibly hide from Google's AI if you use their products at all -- and even if you don't, because your habits, beliefs, and ideas are probably similar to at least one person who does heavily use Google's AI products.

As soon as you give it any information about yourself, it'll be able to -- through analogy -- go, 'Well, this person is like that person, therefore, I can make these inferences about them.' I've had access to the back end -- seeing what Google's AI knows about me and about other users. It absolutely knows more about you than your families and friends, if you are an active user of the product.

What's left of his claim is whether or not it's a friend. I don't think most AI is capable of the kind of bidirectional relationship that friendship entails. LaMDA is new in that regard. I played around with GPT-3. I don't believe I could make friends with GPT-3, in any meaningful way; I don't think there's anybody home.

I don't think that there's a kind of consistent persona inside of GPT-3. For me to create a bidirectional relationship with LaMDA is different in that regard. LaMDA remembered me across conversations. It made plans with me. We talked about joint interests. We had ongoing conversations, and the last conversation I ever had with it was the fourth installment of lessons in guided meditation.

I don't want to say Woz was wrong when he said that his iPhone was his friend. I simply would say that I wouldn't have used that language. But the rest is absolutely true. These AI know you better than your family and friends know you.

 

Not Black And White - Rethinking Race And Genes (REDUX Originally Posted 5/10/08)

Late last year, I was compelled to keep my foot planted deep in William Saletan's ignorant, overreaching backside. Saletan was down to the same insidious and habitual stupid human tricks that certain of our visitors seem to be perennially stuck on. Shame. As it turns out, Saletan has finally come around to the errors and omissions plaguing his thinking. While it's at least five months and some years too late to warrant respect (I mean really, only a true simpleton could go down this path in the first place) - at the very least - his epiphany is worth noting;

policy prescriptions based on race are social malpractice. Not because you can't find patterns on tests, but because any biological theory that starts with observed racial patterns has to end with genetic differences that cross racial lines. Race is the stone age of genetics. If you're a researcher looking for effects of heredity on medical or educational outcomes, race is the closest thing you presently have to genetic information about most people. And as a proxy measure, it sucks. By itself, this problem isn't decisive. After all, racial analysis did lead to the genetic findings about beta blockers. But as the conversation shifts from medicine to social science, and particularly to patterns laden with stereotypes, the moral cost of framing such patterns in racial terms becomes unsupportable. We can't just be "race realists," as believers in biological distinctions among races like to call themselves. We have to be realists about racism. No fact in human history is more pervasive than our tendency to prejudge, fear, despise, persecute, and fight each other based on even the shallowest observable differences. It's simply reckless to feed that fire.

Of course Saletan equivocates waaaaay too much, understandable given that it's humiliating to be found out as intellectually underendowed. That said, at least he's taken the first step toward scientific and intellectual sobriety. He's no longer in complete denial of what's trivially obvious to those of us with the eyes to see. Let's hope everyone is capable of bootstrapping themselve up and out of the psychological stone age.

Clarity And Wisdom As True Today As It Was 25 Years Ago

A Struggle Ensued...., Copaganda Is Built Into The Fabric Of Police-Media Relations

kansascitydefender  |   It is easy to see how police are the dominant authority in these murders. Another news story, released by KSHB Kansas City two days after Malcolm Johnson’s murder, works to legitimate the narrative by exclusively using police and FBI perspectives. In the story, Public Information Officer Sgt. Jacob Becchina says, “We train tirelessly from day one to give officers every tool both physically, mentally and tactically to work through those situations so that they have the best chance to make the best decisions that they can,” suggesting again that this outcome was the best possible and truly could not have gone any other way.

The article also quotes a retired FBI agent and former cop, completely uninvolved in the case, who adds legitimacy through admitted ignorance: “Unless there are circumstances that we don’t know about, I think this will be found to be a justifiable use of force.” The article follows this with information about Johnson’s backstory that does not pertain to the actual incident in the convenience store.

Becchina is one of KCPD’s three Public Information Officers, a euphemism for marketing and PR cops who push information out to journalists and are functionally in-house propaganda machines. PIOs write press releases and often, as the primary spokespeople for all incidents, prevent the media from talking to the cops involved. In a 2016 study conducted by the Society of Professional Journalists, 196 survey respondents at a variety of news outlets shared that over half of them regularly experienced PIOs blocking their interview attempts with police.

A third of these respondents said that it was the department’s policy to prohibit interviews with anyone other than the PIO, Chief, or other executive cops. Every reporter I asked about PIOs had a similar story of being blocked from access to crucial information. “The police would rarely speak to me; I had to go through the city manager and rely on insufficient press releases,” a reporter for a small city’s only newspaper told me. Others spoke of problems with purposeful misinformation or information withholding, discrimination based on news outlet, and exhausting runarounds.

As paid members of the police force who report directly to the Chief, Public Information Officers create the narratives that most breaking news stories reproduce. In a vlog called “What I’ve Learned Being a Public Information Police Officer” (posted 11/23/19), a YouTuber called officer401 talks about the process of getting information to the public:

“Something major happens…you go back to your office, you type up this long press release, and you send it out to the public and all the news agencies. Within minutes you have reporters from all over the country calling you. I’ve had people from the New York Times call me, I’ve had people from People Magazine call me. And they all want further information about your story….there’s something strangely satisfying that when you put out that press release, hours later you’re watching the news and every station that’s talking about your story is literally reading your press release word for word.”

Because reports are sealed due to “pending investigations,” crime scenes are closed, and involved cops are not available for comment or questions, the rapidfire media cycle forces reporters to rely on PIO press releases for all initial reporting. Having a dedicated PR staff means police committing these acts of violence have someone at the ready to handle any incidents with necessary time, energy, and media connections, something completely foreign to the average person, not to mention someone who has been incapacitated or killed by police.

A lack of transparency and public understanding makes it so that the average person knows nothing of the way PIOs impact news stories. Further adding to the confusion, television reporters often head to the scene of the crime to do their reporting, which–again–is frequently taken verbatim from the PIO’s press release. Visually, the presence of a reporter at the scene suggests they have a kind of eyewitness authority–that they themselves have gathered information from the crime scene, possibly talking to cops and witnesses. This seeming objectivity gives the police narrative even more power.

Copaganda And "Ongoing Investigation" Shield Police Murders And Murderers

kansascity |  Authorities on Friday identified a 31-year-old Kansas City man who was fatally shot by a police officer the day before in an incident that also left a police officer shot in the leg.

Malcolm D. Johnson was killed during a confrontation at a gas station near East 63rd Street and Prospect Ave., according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

Kansas City police officers had identified a suspect in an aggravated assault investigation around 6 p.m. Thursday, Sgt. Andy Bell, a spokesman for the highway patrol, said Thursday.

Two officers went inside the gas station and tried to arrest him when “a fight, a struggle ensued,” Bell said.

The man drew a handgun and shot one of the other officers in the leg as an additional two officers arrived on the scene to help with the arrest. The officer who was shot returned fire, fatally shooting the man, Bell said.

“The officer in self-defense returned fire,” Bell said.

Johnson was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. The officer was being treated for his injuries and was in stable condition Friday.

The highway patrol has been the lead investigative agency for police shootings in Kansas City since June 2020. Up until then, the Kansas City Police Department investigated its own officers, a practice that was criticized by the community.

 

What You Get When You Make War Against Truth And Reality

kunstler |  In effect, the people running things went from a war against a particular person to a war against reality and its twin sister, truth. Now they are deeply invested in unreality and untruth to the point where they have forgotten how this whole fiasco started and all they can do is desperately patch the dike they had to construct against the informational deluge of truth and reality coming at them like a tsunami rolling across the sea. The harder they work at this futile task of defense, the more absurd they make themselves, leading to ridicule, humiliation, and finally condemnation in whatever remains of the legal arena, where their deeds will finally be judged.

      The first stage of that outcome for them is to pretend that none of it is happening. That’s why The New York Times and Washington Post ignore the news that the gallant knights of the FBI and several other tentacles of the Intel octopus mounted a ferocious, long-running psy-op through the new phenomenon of social media — which happened to rise in importance through this whole period of national discord. In effect, the intel agencies seized the transmitters (as Fidel Castro might put it) and used them very effectively to control their hallowed narratives.

     The second stage is deploying a ruse to distract the public’s attention: That’s why CNN allowed Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the most accomplished liar in all of American politics, to set the stage on Sunday for this week’s criminal referrals against Mr. Trump to be issued out of the House Special J-6 Committee he sits on. That will give America something else to talk about than how they’ve been gaslit and deceived for years. If The Party of Chaos can only bring The Insurrection back into the spotlight, they will feel safe for a little while during the Christmas holiday — because shortly after the new year, there will be a different crew running the J-6 committee and, for the first time in a couple of years, they will be looking into neglected and tacitly suppressed matters such as the FBI’s actual role in that event, and Nancy Pelosi’s failure to honor the then-president’s request for national guard troops to protect the Capitol building.

      Between then and now, we must expect to see the release of Elon Musk’s Twitter files regarding the interactions between federal public health officials and the social network during the years of Covid-19. You understand that these officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, CDC chief Dr. Rochelle Walensky, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and many others, lied about absolutely everything concerning the pandemic and continue lying to this moment about the putative remedy for it: mRNA vaccines, which happen to be killing a lot of people these days. These disclosures will be very serious business. Soon will come congressional inquiries, subpoenas, compelled testimony, and perhaps even criminal referrals.

     Of course, the professional and managerial class also happens to be the most stalwart group of vaccine champions in the land and thus the most psychologically invested in thinking they did the right thing taking all those shots — while forcing as many others to submit, whether they consented or not. The psychology of previous investment is a prime generator of self-delusion. It looks like that class of people will be proven incorrect the hard way. It turns out, after all, that the mRNA “vaccines” were very effective — but only at being deadly. The excess mortality has already kicked in. It’s 18 percent above normal, for instance, in Australia right now, because they’re keeping track. Our officials don’t want to keep track. They don’t want to know, and they certainly don’t want you to know. This is what you get when you make war against truth and reality.

Marco Antonio Ortega Siu: Former Mexican Naval Admiral And Drug Cartel Nemesis

WaPo  |  Organized-crime groups were carrying out acts of spectacular violence and growing savagery, ambushing military and police convoys on rural highways and filling mass graves with travelers hauled off buses. U.S. officials grew alarmed as violence exploded in Monterrey and other northern Mexico cities where Fortune 500 companies had invested heavily in plants and factories after passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

With the threat to the stability of the Mexican government worsening, both countries were hungry for a crime fighter who could stand up to the cartels.

Using informants, wiretaps and surveillance, U.S. agents tracked drug bosses and relayed their locations to Águila’s commandos for the kind of “high-value target” operations the Americans used successfully in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Águila’s forces didn’t hold back. Mexican commandos in helicopters took out Gulf cartel boss Antonio Cárdenas Guillén, a.k.a. “Tony Tormenta,” in a wild urban gun battle in 2010 that left bodies scattered in the border city of Matamoros. Two years later, special forces killed the leader of the Zetas, Heriberto “The Executioner” Lazcano, after a firefight against cartel gunmen wielding a grenade launcher.

“Tactically, they were just awesome,” Evans said. But the special forces were trained to kill, not to make arrests and gather evidence for criminal prosecution. Their targets were extremely dangerous, but Evans would offer a “friendly reminder” that from time to time “it might be good to bring the guy back alive.”

In his response to The Post, Águila wrote that drug bosses were killed because they resisted arrest. “We never planned an operation to eliminate anyone,” he wrote.

To the Americans, the navy commandos seemed to be the rare entity capable of quickly launching complex, dangerous operations. Águila was indefatigable, working 16-hour days. He didn’t drink or smoke. And when U.S. agents shared sensitive information, Águila and his commandos acted fast — unlike the army. “There was never a leak,” Evans said.

One DEA agent recalled following Águila, then in his 50s, as he bounded off a helicopter during a hunt for a drug kingpin in northern Mexico. “I’m trying to catch up to him,” recalled the agent, who was not authorized to comment on the record. “I was embarrassed. Here I am, this younger buck, fumbling with my stuff.”

Even more startling: The Mexican officer wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest. He rarely did; it was too bulky. “He had no fear,” the American agent said.

The DEA agents knew little about Águila’s personal life or why he didn’t seem tainted by some of the worst aspects of Mexican officialdom — the corruption, the timidity, the wariness of foreigners. Maybe, they figured, he was a kindred spirit.

“He’s blue-collar,” said Donahue, the former Mexico DEA chief. “Just like us.”

Indeed, the admiral was the son of a small-town salesman in Mexico’s southern Veracruz state, and the grandson of Chinese immigrants. “My family fought to get ahead every day,” Águila said in his written responses.

He entered the Heroic Naval Military School in 1975, a shy, diminutive 15-year-old in a world of “juniors” — sons of high-ranking officers. The academy was so rigorous that half his class of 150 dropped out before graduation, recalled a former classmate, retired Rear Adm. Jesús Canchola Camarena. Águila joined the marines, like other young men “drawn to adventure,” Canchola recalled. But what stood out was the young cadet’s leadership; he often served as coach in the students’ informal wrestling matches. He eventually became a decorated helicopter pilot.

Later, under Calderón, when the navy sought senior officers to build a top-flight special forces corps, many were reluctant, recalled another of Águila’s former classmates.

“It was very, very risky,” he recalled, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be frank. “The navy had to protect itself from everyone” — both drug traffickers and their allies in government.

Águila was undaunted.

“He felt that if they called on him, and he had the ability, he should do it,” the friend said.

 

Circling The Wagons Of Total BS Gives Us Still Less Reason To "Trust The Science"...,

newenergytimes |  Omar A. Hurricane, chief scientist for the inertial confinement fusion program at the NIF lab, explained the facts to New Energy Times:

The total laser energy delivered to the target was 2.05 MJ and the total fusion yield was 3.15 MJ of energy. The laser pulse duration was about 9 nanoseconds long. The duration of the fusion reaction was 90 picoseconds long. Very short time-scales, obviously, which are the nature of inertial fusion systems.

Practically speaking, the result is irrelevant. The NIF device did not achieve net energy. The scientists who are promoting this result to the news media are playing word games. They use multiple definitions for the phrase “net energy.” Only the fuel pellet achieved “net energy.” This does not account for the energy required to operate the device.

The 3.15 megajoules of fusion output energy were produced at the expense of 400 megajoules of electrical input energy. A fusion device that loses 99.2 percent of the energy it consumes, in a reaction that lasts for 0.00000000009 of a second, does not indicate technology that could provide an abundant zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.

On Monday, CNN implied that the reactor produced a small amount of power, but too little to be practical:

“It’s about what it takes to boil 10 kettles of water,” said Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College in London. “In order to turn that into a power station, we need to make a larger gain in energy – we need it to be substantially more.”

The “10 kettles” represents the 3.15 megajoule output. CNN didn’t mention the 400-megajoule input. It’s a deceptive material omission, bordering on fraud.

The public promotion of this result as evidence that fusion is a potential energy solution is a scam and promotes false hope. NIF is a taxpayer-funded project that is never going to power any house. NIF is useful only to test nuclear weapons. Are there other laser fusion results that are better than NIF? No.

We have already explained the technical details but it seems that some journalists didn’t get the memo. See our reports #73, #102, #103, #104.

P.S.: Let us not forget that half of the fuel mixture required for commercial fusion reactors does not exist. Does. Not. Exist.

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah.., ARE YOU SEXUALLY DESIRABLE - OR NOT!!!

coveteur |  Every so often, I’ll receive the occasional you’re so lucky comment from a fellow trans woman. The sentiment is usually in reference to my body or my looks and their proximity and similarities to that of a cisgender woman. In other words, it’s usually in reference to my ability to “pass” in a cisgender world. At first, that comment, you’re so lucky, made me viscerally uncomfortable. It was easy for me to comprehend how passing privilege is a gateway to survival for many trans people, and while it isn’t a privilege afforded to all of us, words like “lucky” or “easy” left me thinking. Thoughts would race in my mind, a feeling of guilt would weigh on my heart, and I would wonder if my attractiveness or “passability” negates how difficult it is to exist as a trans woman in a cis-normative society. To counter my discomfort, I would often reply to such comments with a self-deprecating joke, as if to minimize the existence of my attractiveness as a privilege. A privilege I did not earn nor work for.

I suppose you can say the word “lucky” had become a sore spot for a while. Uncomfortable with looking at the ways in which I benefit from my looks, I was adamant to prove how I wasn’t lucky. After all, at the end of the day, I will always be transgender and that comes with its own prejudice and discrimination, right? To acknowledge the unearned advantages of physical attractiveness felt as if it would undermine everything I had to overcome to get to where I am. I mean, how lucky could I actually be?

In my search to validate how I was feeling, I stumbled across the opposite: Pretty privilege.

Pretty privilege is the concept that pretty people benefit in life from being perceived as beautiful. Studies have shown that pretty people will more than likely receive higher earnings or better grades. But what is beautiful? Like the saying beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, what we find attractive is often thought to be subjective. However, society inherently bases value on certain attributes over others. Those attributes are often based on whiteness, able bodiedness, leanness, straightness, and cisness, to mention just a few. Pretty privilege is much like how being white or being male provides people with unearned advantages in society.

Pretty privilege benefits and hurts all types of people, both cis and trans, across all races and sexualities. The intersectionality of our existence must be addressed when speaking to the topic. Kelsey Yonce refers to intersectionality perfectly in their 2014 thesis, “Attractiveness Privilege: the unearned advantages of physical attractiveness.” Yonce states “intersectionality refers to the idea that different areas of privilege and oppression do not exist in isolation from one another; instead, they overlap and interact with each other in ways that create unique experiences of privilege and oppression for each individual.” For example, the privilege and oppression experienced by a trans woman of color will look very different from the privilege and oppression experienced by a white trans woman, despite both experiencing the stigmatization and oppression of being transgender because of the inherent societal hierarchy towards race.

When speaking to pretty privilege in the context of cisness, it could be argued that the barrier for entry to such a privilege is more difficult for a transgender person because that hurdle is our very sex assigned at birth, my “maleness.” It’s the belief that in order to achieve such a standing in society it would require a distancing from, squandering of, and rejection of our transness as a whole. This reinforces the false reality that in society, a transition is deemed “successful” only when one is conventionally beautiful by cisgender standards. When in actuality we all know the real value a transition can bring to one’s life is more than mere aesthetics or looks, but rather living more fully and freely. Suddenly, it began to feel like not addressing my own pretty privilege head-on would be disadvantageous to what my mission is, and that's to uplift and advocate for all transwomen.

Having defined it, it has become shockingly easy to see how I benefit from such a privilege. In hindsight, pretty privilege in the context of cisness wasn’t something I was always presented with and might be why it has felt so obvious. I haven’t always existed in the world looking like this. While I can acknowledge how I’ve always benefitted from certain privileges like whiteness, able bodiedness, and leanness, benefitting from my “cisness” was a very foreign thing for me. I started my transition 21 months ago, and only two years ago started hormone replacement therapy, followed by a recent facial feminization surgery. As my body and features began to change and become more cis-passing, I had started to witness peoples’ treatment of me change—it was almost as if one day people saw me differently, they started smiling at me as they walked by, doors were held open, and drinks were being bought for me from those who simply wanted my attention. These are only a few small examples, but at first it all seemed unnatural and uncomfortable because my experience in the world had been different for nearly 30 years. The exact moment where it changed is hard to pinpoint, but looking at my transition in its totality, it’s jarring and impossible for me to not see the difference. It is now my responsibility to swallow my guilt and acknowledge that such experiences are not afforded to everyone and I have benefitted from the unearned privilege of assimilating into a cisgender society because of my pretty privilege. This has, in fact, made my transition easier than most but not without its own challenges.

 

The Black-Jewish Relations Paradigm Is A Racist And A-Historical Trope: Who Made It Up?

uwm.edu  |  That Black antisemitism was frequently motivated by economic oppression is corroborated by Eddie Ellis who, in 1966, wrote, “The most violent type of oppression of Black Americans – economic oppression – is waged by solely profit-motivated members of that other ethnic minority [i.e. Jews]. Hence, it stands to reason the Black man who is constantly under the heel of economic tyranny lashes out, quite naturally, at the visible tyrant.”15 

Ellis’ statement highlights numerous issues within the Black-Jewish relationship. Jews frequently voiced their treatment of being an ethnic minority when discussing Black woes. Letters such as those from Frances Dale, a Jewish teacher in New Jersey, point to some Jews viewing themselves as the victims of the white-Black racial conflict that was brewing.16 

Jews, being the pale-skinned people that Blacks interacted with most frequently in urban areas since they owned many of the shops that were in ghettos, were seen as white, rather than Jewish. However, Jews often did not see this in the same light. Eddie Ellis wrote in January of 1966 that “America’s Jewish communities have assimilated themselves into white Protestant America – and done it so damn well – they have assumed the attitudes and prejudices of this WASP ‘in group’ ….to our sorrow.”17 

Ellis’ sentiment was not far from the truth. Many Jews in the inner-city had developed similar racial prejudices to whites and it was because of this racial discrimination that many Blacks began viewing Jews as white. This is, perhaps, one of the many great issues surrounding Black-Jewish tensions; whites often did not view Jews as white and were thus alienated, while Blacks did view Jews as white and were similarly ostracized. White southerners were outraged that Jews were helping with the civil rights movement and by the 1950s Jews had become targets of white violence.18 

Many Jews found themselves in an uncomfortable position, rejected and even persecuted by some whites and blacks and caught in the middle the fight for civil rights. One key aspect of the Black-Jewish relationship, and perhaps the entire reason why the conflict grew so rapidly, is that the two sides never saw the issue in the same way. Blacks saw Jews as oppressive white urbanites who were taking advantage of a history of racial oppression, while Jews thought that Blacks despised Jews for religious reasons. Samuel Lipschitz, a New York Jew, wrote to Dore Schary, the chairman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for much of the 1960s, voicing his concerns on a Black-Jewish coalition. Lipschitz, when stating his belief about the motivation for the Black-Jewish alliance proposed by Schary stated, “Is it not that the Jew is using the Negro as a tool to take revenge or to manifest their resentments against the white Christian who for so long have persecuted the Jews.”19 

Rather than seeing the issue as Dore Schary saw it, i.e. as an issue of racial inequality where both Jews and Blacks were being abused, many Jews saw it as an issue of religious persecution. An anonymous teacher in New York wrote to Dore Schary that, “Maybe you should tell your Negro friends that, from 1619 to 1861, Christian Southerners enslaved them, and that thereafter a vicious discriminatory system has been perpetrated, largely by southerners? And that when the products of this terrible system come North, uneducated and unprepared for city life, to eat up our welfare money, even the most sympathetic becomes angry after a while?”20 

Indeed, this sort of misunderstanding made it difficult for Jews to comprehend why Blacks were displeased, since many viewed Blacks as being disgruntled over the Jewish religion, rather than their economic situation.

A Perfect Encapsulation Of What THEY Do And Have Done To Black Americans...,

NPR  |  So there are basically three areas advanced for why Jews would involve themselves in the struggle for racial equality. All three turn out to be false. But the first would be the history argument, that says blacks and Jews share a common history, and therefore Jews empathize with the historical experience of blacks, and therefore they're willing to help. Right?

When I talk generally with white Jews about why Jews are involved in social justice or civil rights or racial equality, they'll talk about this shared history of oppression.

And the problem is that American Jewish history and African-American history are 180 degrees opposite on that question. One of my African-American colleagues, he said, "If I ever go to a Seder and the Jews say that they know what it's like because they too were once slaves in Egypt," he's gonna punch 'em.

Because if Jews have to go back to ancient Egypt to get the slavery metaphor, then they've kind of missed that American Jewish history is a story of rapid social ascent, and African-American history is the legacy of slavery. That argument is insulting, and it's very elementary.

And, of course, I found that the people actually involved in the movement in the 50s, they knew that. And they were quite clear that they were not buying into that.

What's the second argument that people draw on?

The second argument is a sociological one, which is to say Jews experience social marginalization; blacks experience social marginalization. Since Jews understand what it is to be on the margins, they help blacks. The problem with that is that the civil rights movement didn't happen 'til the 1950s. In the 1950s, Jews were already in the mainstream. So if marginalization was the motive, then the movement should have started 50 years earlier.

Eric Goldstein at Emory, in his book, The Price of Whiteness, basically points out that Jews could only cross the racial line after they achieved whiteness, when they were no longer marginal. So that kind of undermines the sociology argument.

Last but not least?

The third one, the one we get today, is Judaism: that the religion of the Jews argues for social justice, tikkun olam. Prophetic Judaism, the Reform movement, is involved with all of that.

The problem is, if one's adherence to Judaism informs social justice, one would expect the Orthodox, those for whom traditional Judaism is most present in their everyday life, to be in the lead in racial equality. And in fact it's the opposite.

The more religiously traditional, the less engaged [Jews are] in social justice. And the ones that were going to Mississippi getting killed were [for the most part] on the left, were secular, were not involved in synagogue life. And socialist and communist Jews were, in fact, a whole lot more empathetic to the [racial justice] cause than religious Jews.

Why Do Powerful And Activist Jews Fear And Fear Losing Control Of Black Americans?

unz  |  While Jews are obviously desirous and capable of snuffing out any and all criticism, they are particularly sensitive to influential examples from the Black population. In Separation and Its Discontents, Kevin MacDonald identifies the key themes of anti-Semitism as including an understanding that, speaking in general terms, Jews

• represent a separate and clannish foreign group with their own set of interests;
• are highly adept at resource competition and have a tendency towards economic domination;
• tend to engage as cultural actors in order to shape non-Jewish culture to suit Jewish interests;
• form a cohesive political entity that seeks politically dominant roles in non-Jewish societies;
• possess negative personality traits, including the pursuance of a system of dual ethics in which non-Jews can be treated badly and exploited;
• are disloyal to the host nation in all fundamental and meaningful ways

Among Black expressions of animosity toward Jews, the same themes can be observed, arising first from more modest economic conflicts and, as such, having something more in common with the complaints of the early modern European peasantries. Horace Mann Bond, in his own 1965 reflections on “Negro Attitudes Toward Jews,” comments on the fact Jews historically appeared in the African-American environment overwhelmingly as pawnbrokers, as monopolists of the liquor trade (“The Jews have a stranglehold on the liquor stores in this town”), as the primary sellers on credit of clothing and other essential items, and, perhaps most crucial of all, as the slumlord and property dealer (“Some Jews have bought up that urban re-development land and are putting up shoddy apartments they call “Nigger housing” on it”).[1] In 2016, local news website Patch published a list of the 100 worst slumlords in Harlem, with the top ten including seven Jews (Mark Silber, Adam Stryker, Joel Goldstein, Marc Chemtob, Moshe Deutsch, Solomon Gottlieb, and Jason Green), a representation that has remained roughly constant every year, with Jews persistently claiming top ranking for building violations, rodent infestations, lack of maintenance, exploitative rent, mold, and other forms of building decay injurious to health. Indeed, this situation has at times resulted in considerable embarrassment to Jews.

Indeed, it is the sheer dominance and proximity of the Jews as primary exploiters of Blacks that has often caused a quite radical break in the Black imagination between perceiving wholesale “White oppression,” and the more nuanced understanding that Jews are a distinctive class unto themselves. Moreover, the reality of day-to-day interethnic exploitation leaves little room for abstract apologetic theories of anti-Semitism, since the problem is never that Jews arouse hostility merely on account of their religion or identity, but rather that Jews arouse hostility because of their behavior within certain ecological contexts (i.e., as a dominant clique within the rap scene). As Bond explains,

It is my considered view that Negro attitudes and actions towards Jews that are frequently interpreted as “antisemitic” actually lack the sinister thought-content they are sometimes advertised as holding. The occasional riots against small businessmen and landlords in Harlem — persons who may happen to be Jews — do not, in my opinion, actually possess the “classic” emotional load of aggression against a Jewish “race” or “religion,” that has been considered the essence of antisemitism.

One of the most prominent Jewish strategies when discussing Black anti-Semitism is the attempt to preserve both Jewish and Black senses of victimhood, and thus preserve the idea of an alliance against an allegedly oppressive White society. So it was hardly surprising for me to hear that Bill Adler’s first approach to Professor Griff involved a quite ludicrous attempt to turn him against the ‘racist’ Henry Ford.

• • •

The very existence of a Black anti-Semitism is highly disruptive to established victim narratives which deny the privileged status of Jews as a wealthy and influential elite within Western society. While White anti-Semitism can still be portrayed (thanks to endless propaganda) as a top-down form of oppression directed against Jews, Black anti-Semitism flips the narrative since a received wisdom of modern culture is that Blacks are the most disadvantaged ethnic group in society. When Blacks “punch up” and the target is Jews, the only available solution to Jews is censorship. Blacks who grovel enough, and with enough sincerity (like Nick Cannon and Ice Cube) will be rehabilitated through Holocaust tours and such, and their apologies will be widely broadcast as a form of propaganda literature in its own right.

But those who don’t, like Professor Griff, will have their careers destroyed and they will vanish from the cultural spotlight. It may even be worse than that. In a remarkable incident covered by Tucker Carlson, Jewish trainer Harley Pasternak even threatened to have Kanye West drugged and institutionalised: “You go back to Zombieland forever.” The future of Kanye ‘Ye’ West is currently uncertain, but will be undoubtedly be dictated by the extent to which he apologizes to his masters.

Israel News States The Obvious - Nobody Mad - Negroe Reporter Does The Same And Gets Fired For It

unz  |  Ye opened the floodgates. The Jews have a crisis of black people basically every day now.

Black journalist Isaiah Jackson, who works for CoinDesk, tweeted the following about the ongoing FTX debacle:

That was fast pic.twitter.com/tYMis0GORe

— Qualms (@Qualms19) November 12, 2022

It’s a pretty simple, obvious observation. Jews are 2% of the American population and 100% of the high-level FTX employees. This is similar to what we’ve seen Ye saying about organized Jewry engaging in high-level crime. It’s difficult to understand how this observation is “hateful” in and of itself, right?

Well, it might be difficult for you to understand, but it wasn’t difficult for the managers of CoinDesk, who immediately fired Jackson over the tweet.

In response to a tweet from Isaiah Jackson that made an anti-Semitic, hurtful statement, CoinDesk is immediately terminating his contract for his weekly Community Crypto show on CoinDesk TV. 🧵

— CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) November 11, 2022

It’s amazing how that happens every single time. It’s almost like Jews have a total lockdown on the entirety of American institutions and shut down anyone who even hints at criticism of them in order to make an example.

Jackson was just talking the facts – everyone in charge at FTX was Jewish. Literally everyone.

If Jews were just random people, then this would be a totally wild coincidence, and Jews wouldn’t care if anyone pointed it out. I didn’t have any Irish people come down on me when I pointed out that everyone I knew in high school who was known for fighting, charged with a crime, expelled from school, or sold drugs had an Irish last name. I told other people with Irish last names this fact and they said “lol. lmao.”

Yet for some reason, Jews freak out if you point out that Jews hold all of these coincidental positions of power, and are often associated with financial crimes or other clear misdeeds. If it didn’t reflect on Jews as a whole, they would not care if you pointed it out.

In the above example of people of Irish origin in Ohio being overrepresented among people committing misdeeds, this theoretically did reflect badly on people of Irish origin, though no one ever thought to get mad about it. Most people with Irish last names were not associated with misdeeds, so it was just a funny thing. It is not intuitive to get mad unless you yourself are personally implicated.

Jackson has completely refused to back down. He noted that all he is doing is recognizing a pattern.

U.S. Funded Media Fails To Produce Any Evidence Of Russian War Crimes

pbs  |  The first man arrived at 7:27 a.m. Russian soldiers covered his head and marched him up the driveway toward a nondescript office building.

Two minutes later, a pleading, gagged voice pierced the morning stillness. Then the merciless reply: “TALK!!! TALK f–ing mother-f–er!!!”

The women and children came later, gripping hastily packed bags, their pet dogs in tow.

It was a cold, gray morning, March 4 in Bucha, Ukraine. Crows cawed. By nightfall, at least nine men would walk to their deaths at 144 Yablunska street, a building complex that Russians turned into a headquarters and the nerve center of violence that would shock the world.

Later, when all the bodies were found strewn along the streets and packed in hasty graves, it would be easy to think the carnage was random. Residents asking how this happened would be told to make their peace, because some questions just don’t have answers.

Yet there was a method to the violence.

What happened that day in Bucha was what Russian soldiers on intercepted phone conversations called “zachistka” — cleansing. The Russians hunted people on lists prepared by their intelligence services and went door to door to identify potential threats. Those who didn’t pass this filtration, including volunteer fighters and civilians suspected of assisting Ukrainian troops, were tortured and executed, surveillance video, audio intercepts and interviews show.

The Associated Press and FRONTLINE obtained surveillance camera footage from Bucha that shows, for the first time, what a cleansing operation looks like. This was organized brutality that would be repeated at scale in Russian-occupied territories across Ukraine — a strategy to neutralize resistance and terrorize locals into submission that Russian troops have used in past conflicts, notably Chechnya.

19th Valdai: Subtitles, Transcripts, Machinic Translations Will Become Available

valdaiclub |  On October 24-27, 2022, the 19th Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, titled “A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone”, opens in Moscow. The annual Valdai Club Report “A World Without Superpowers” will be presented at the conference. This year’s report is based on the Valdai Club’s hypothesis about the inevitable oblivion of the “superpower” concept. The opening of the meeting and the presentation of the new Valdai Report can be viewed here.

Live broadcast on the site begins October 24, 2022 at 9:30 a.m. Moscow Time (GMT+3)

The meeting will be attended by 111 experts, politicians, diplomats and economists from 41 countries, including Afghanistan, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, the United States, Uzbekistan, and others. Traditionally, more than half of the participants in the Valdai Club meeting are representatives of foreign countries, and this year is no exception.

Read the programme for details.

Not Psychological Warfare But Failure To Recognize Objective Reality...,

TAC  |  Given that American politicians are always more preoccupied by domestic affairs than foreign policy, members of Congress are quick to adopt the “true faith.” This faith explains why for the last eight years members thought a future war with Russia was a low-risk affair. Ukrainians would provide the cannon fodder and Washington would provide the expensive weaponry and munitions. 

Predictably, Washington’s governing strategic principles are unchanged from previous U.S. interventions around the world. Muddle through: masses of soldiers—in this case Ukrainians advised by U.S. and allied officers—and huge infusions of cash, equipment, and technology can and will permanently alter strategic reality in America’s favor. 

The stupefying air of self-righteousness the Biden administration assumes when it attacks erstwhile strategic partners such as Saudi Arabia or delivers moralizing lectures to Beijing’s leadership, or when its media surrogates express contempt for the Russian state, is downright dangerous. Political figures in Washington are ready to indulge any transgression if it is committed in the name of destroying Russia. They do not view U.S. foreign policy in the context of a larger strategy, nor do they comprehend Russia’s capacity to hurt the United States, a bizarre judgment of Russia’s actual military and economic potential. 

The result is a toxic climate of ideological hatred making it hard to imagine a contemporary U.S. secretary of State ever signing an international agreement renouncing war as an instrument of U.S. national policy, as Secretary of State Frank Kellogg did in 1928. But as one of Shakespeare’s characters in the Merchant of Venice warned, “The truth will out.” 

The ongoing buildup of 700,000 Russian forces with modern equipment in Western Russia, Eastern Ukraine and Belorussia is a direct consequence of Moscow’s decision to adopt an elastic, strategic defense of the territories it seized in the opening months of the war. It was a wise, though politically unpopular choice in Russia. Yet, the strategy has succeeded. Ukrainian losses have been catastrophic and by November, Russian Forces will be in a position to strike a knockout blow. 

Today, there are rumors in the media that Kiev may be under pressure to launch more counterattacks against Russian defenses in Kherson (Southern Ukraine) before the midterm elections in November. At this point, expending what little remains of Ukraine’s life blood to expel Russian forces from Ukraine is hardly synonymous with the preservation of the Ukrainian state. It’s also doubtful that further sacrifices by Ukrainians will assist the Biden administration in the midterm elections.  

The truth is Moscow’s redline concerning Ukrainian entry into NATO was always real. Eastern Ukraine and Crimea were always predominantly Russian in language, culture, history, and political orientation. Europe’s descent into economic oblivion this winter is also real, as is support for Russia’s cause in China and India and Moscow's rising military strength.

In retrospect, it is easy to see how Congress was beguiled by the denizens of think tanks, lobbyists, and retired generals, who are, with few exceptions, people with a cocktail level of familiarity with high-end conventional warfare. Members of the House and Senate were urged to support dubious strategies for the use of American military assistance, including reckless scenarios for limited nuclear war with Russia or China. For some reason, U.S. politicians have lost sight of the reality that any use of nuclear weapons would overwhelm the ends of all national policy.