who sponsored the hate?

newyorker |  The big donors in the Republican Party are reportedly flummoxed by the toxic rhetoric of Donald Trump. The billionaire political industrialist Charles Koch has warned that Trump’s proposed registry of Muslims in the U.S. would “destroy our free society.” After pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into promoting their right-wing libertarian views over the past four decades, and budgeting some eight hundred and eighty-nine million dollars to spend in the 2016 election cycle, he and his brother David Koch, and their donor circle, are apparently disappointed that they have bought so little control over the Republican Presidential candidates. “You’d think we could have more influence,” he lamented to the Financial Times. But, in fact, the influence of the Kochs and their fellow big donors is manifest in Trump’s use of incendiary and irresponsibly divisive rhetoric. Only a few years ago, it was they who were sponsoring the hate.

Over the July 4th weekend of 2010, I attended the fourth annual Defending the American Dream Summit, in Austin, Texas, which served in part as a training session for local Tea Party activists. The summit was sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, which purported to be a nonpartisan grass-roots political-advocacy group devoted to the cause of small government, free markets, and liberty. It was in fact an organization that had been founded and heavily funded by the Kochs, whose early activism was entwined in fearmongering and racial intolerance.

The Kochs’ father, Fred Koch, the founder of Koch Industries, the hugely profitable private oil-and-chemical company that his sons inherited, was one of the original members of the John Birch Society, the ultra-conservative group that accused political opponents of treason and was at its core segregationist. After the Supreme Court ruled in favor of desegregating America’s public schools, in 1954, the Birchers launched a nationwide crusade to impeach Chief Justice Earl Warren. In 1960, Fred Koch wrote a self-published book describing welfare programs as a secret government plot to lure rural blacks into cities so that they could foment “a vicious race war.” Before George Wallace declared his Presidential candidacy in 1968, Fred Koch also supported an unsuccessful effort to recruit Ezra Taft Benson, the former Secretary of Agriculture and a leader of the Mormon Church, and Strom Thurmond, the South Carolina senator, to run on a platform calling for the restoration of segregation. The Birchers’ radicalism was so extreme, and delusional, they claimed that Republican President Dwight Eisenhower was a communist agent.

It’s not fair to visit the sins of the father on the sons, but Charles and David have their own dubious record of involvement with racist institutions. They themselves belonged to the John Birch Society, and, in the late sixties, Charles was a trustee at a place called the Freedom School, outside Colorado Springs, which had no black students because, its director explained to the Times, “it might present a housing problem because some of his students are segregationists.” The Freedom School was a font of extreme anti-government ideology, teaching a revisionist version of American history in which it was argued that the Civil War should not have been fought, the South should have been allowed to secede, and slavery was a lesser evil than military conscription. Charles Koch was so enthralled with the Freedom School that he got his three brothers and many friends to attend. He had hoped to expand it into an accredited university, but instead it ran aground financially. It was, however, the first step in the Kochs’ lifelong crusade to use their vast fortune to reshape American academia and politics along the lines of their own ideology.

a case for demilitarizing the military

tomdispatch |  General Lloyd Austin, the outgoing head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), recently testified before Congress, suggesting that Washington needed to up its troop levels in Iraq and Syria.  Meanwhile, in his own congressional testimony, still-to-be-confirmed incoming CENTCOM chief General Joseph Votel, formerly head of U.S. Special Operations Command, seconded that recommendation and said he would reevaluate the American stance across the Greater Middle East with an eye, as the Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman put it, to launching “a more aggressive fight against the Islamic State.”  In this light, both generals called for reviving a dismally failed $500 million program to train “moderate” Syrian rebels to support the U.S. fight against the Islamic State (IS).  They both swear, of course, that they'll do it differently this time, and what could possibly go wrong? 

Meanwhile, General David Rodriguez, head of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), pressed by Senator John McCain in congressional testimony, called on the U.S. to “do more” to deal with IS supporters in Libya.  And lo and behold, the New York Times reported that Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter had only recently presented an AFRICOM and Joint Special Operations Command plan to the president’s “top national security advisers.”  They were evidently “surprised” to discover that it involved potentially wide-ranging air strikes against 30 to 40 IS targets across that country.  Meanwhile, in Afghanistan -- U.S. Special Operations units and regular troops having recently been rushed once again into embattled Helmand Province in the heartland of that country’s opium poppy trade -- General Austen and others are calling for a reconsideration of future American drawdowns and possibly the dispatch ofmore troops to that country.

Do you sense a trend here?  In the war against the Islamic State, the Obama administration and the Pentagon have been engaged in the drip, drip, drip of what, in classic Vietnam terms, might be called “mission creep.”  They have been upping American troop levels a few hundred at a time in Iraq and Syria, along with air power, and loosing Special Operations forces in combat-like operations in both countries.  Now, it looks like top military commanders are calling for mission speed-up across the region.  (In Libya, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, it already seems to have begun.)

And keep in mind, watching campaign 2016, that however militaristic the solutions of the Pentagon and our generals, they are regularly put in the shade by civilians, especially the Republican candidates for president, who can barely restrain their eagerness to let mission leap loose.   As Donald Trump put it in the last Republican debate, calling for up to 30,000 U.S. boots on the ground in Syria and Iraq, “I would listen to the generals.”  That might now be the refrain all American politicians are obliged to sing.  Similarly, John Kasich called for a new “shock and awe” campaign in the Middle East to “wipe them out.”  And that’s the way it’s been in debate season -- including proposals to put boots on the ground big time from Libya and possibly even the Sinai peninsula to Afghanistan, bomb the region back to the stone age, and torture terror suspects in a fashion that would have embarrassed Stone Age peoples. 

Put another way, almost 15 years after America’s global war on terror was launched, we face a deeply embedded (and remarkably unsuccessful) American version of militarism and, as Gregory Foster writes today, a massive crisis in civil-military relations that is seldom recognized, no less discussed or debated.  TomDispatch hopes to rectify that with a monumental post from a man who knows something about the realities of both the U.S. military and changing civilian relations to it.  Gregory Foster, who teaches at National Defense University and is a decorated Vietnam veteran, suggests that it’s time we finally ask: Whatever happened to old-fashioned civilian control over the U.S. military?  Implicitly, he also asks a second question: These days, who controls the civilians?

25 companies more powerful than most countries

FP |  At first glance, the story of Accenture reads like the archetype of the American dream. One of the world’s biggest consulting companies, which commands tens of billions of dollars in annual revenues, was born in the 1950s as a small division of accounting firm Arthur Andersen. Its first major project was advising General Electric to install a computer at a Kentucky facility in order to automate payment processing. Several decades of growth followed, and by 1989, the division was successful enough to become its own organization: Andersen Consulting. 

Yet a deeper look at the business shows its ascent veering off the American track. This wasn’t because it opened foreign offices in Mexico, Japan, and other countries; international expansion is pro forma for many U.S. companies. Rather, Andersen Consulting saw benefits—fewer taxes, cheaper labor, less onerous regulations — beyond borders and restructured internally to take advantage of them. By 2001, when it went public after adopting the name Accenture, it had morphed into a network of franchises loosely coordinated out of a Swiss holding company. It incorporated in Bermuda and stayed there until 2009, when it redomiciled in Ireland, another low-tax jurisdiction.

Today, Accenture’s roughly 373,000 employees are scattered across more than 200 cities in 55 countries. Consultants parachute into locations for commissioned work but often report to offices in regional hubs, such as Prague and Dubai, with lower tax rates. To avoid pesky residency status, the human resources department ensures that employees don’t spend too much time at their project sites.

Welcome to the age of metanationals: companies that, like Accenture, are effectively stateless. When business and strategy experts Yves Doz, José Santos, and Peter Williamson coined the term in a 2001 book, metanationals were an emerging phenomenon, a divergence from the tradition of corporations taking pride in their national roots. (In the 1950s, General Motors President Charles Wilson famously said, “What was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”) Today, the severing of state lifelines has become business as usual.

ExxonMobil, Unilever, BlackRock, HSBC, DHL, Visa—these companies all choose locations for personnel, factories, executive suites, or bank accounts based on where regulations are friendly, resources abundant, and connectivity seamless. Clever metanationals often have legal domicile in one country, corporate management in another, financial assets in a third, and administrative staff spread over several more. Some of the largest American-born firms — GE, IBM, Microsoft, to name a few — collectively are holding trillions of dollars tax-free offshore by having revenues from overseas markets paid to holding companies incorporated in Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands, or Singapore. In a nice illustration of the tension this trend creates with policymakers, some observers have dubbed the money “stateless income,” while U.S. President Barack Obama has called the companies hoarding it America’s “corporate deserters.”

It isn’t surprising, of course, when companies find new ways to act in their own interest; it’s surprising when they don’t. The rise of metanationals, however, isn’t just about new ways of making money. It also unsettles the definition of “global superpower.”

I think you'd have riots...,

zerohedge |  Two days ago, courtesy of Bloomberg, we outlined how the (extremely perturbed and after Tuesday completely decimated) GOP establishment would go about stealing the Republican nomination from Donald Trump.

“Although everyone now jokes about just how unstoppable the Trump ‘juggernaut’ has become, the establishment isn’t called ‘the establishment,’ for nothing,” we said. “Trump may have proven remarkably adept at whipping certain sectors of the electorate into a veritable frenzy, but he himself will tell you that he’s no politician.” The bottom line: he may be a wily, braggadocious, billionaire but he doesn’t know all of the tricks of the political trade. That could - and likely does - mean that Republicans are already working behind the scenes to figure out how to rob him at the last minute.

There’s all sorts of ways for crafty, career politicians to rig the delegates and use procedural maneuvers at the convention to undercut Trump and you can read the full account here, but suffice to say, a Trump nomination is far from a sure thing and the more he attacks the establishment the more willing they’ll be to use any means at their disposal to stop him.

But Trump has a ...er... trump card. 

He has an army (and that’s probably a more accurate characterization than any at this point) of supporters that would literally take to the streets if they feel as though the popular will has been subverted by the very same establishment politics that compelled them to vote for Trump in the first place. As Ted Cruz put it in Maine (although he was probably talking about himself, not Trump), “If the Washington deal-makers try to steal the nomination from the people, I think it would be a disaster. It would cause a revolt.”

Trump agrees.

Asked by CNN what would happen if he can’t muster the 1,237 delegates he needs to lock up the nomination and ends up getting robbed at the convention in Cleveland, Trump said this:

"I think you'd have riots.”

the fix is in for Granny Goodness because capitalist elites demand cheap labor...,

declineoftheempire | George Carlin thought religion was the greatest bullshit story of all time, and that's probably true. But in contemporary times, I think National "Public" Radio is the greatest bullshit story.

Get this — Not only does NPR consistently represent "establishment" interests while pretending to serve public interests, but it also gets the public (through its local affiliates) to pay for it! My local affiliate tells me every single day just how great "public" radio is. How could I possibly live without it?

These earnest local boosters know of course that some time soon now they will be begging for their jobs, and at that time they will repeatedly remind me that the outstanding, in-depth NPR programming they provide to the Pittsburgh area is very, very expensive.

And you know what? People do pay for it. I think that's a great bullshit story.

Today I will deconstruct some "free trade" bullshit from National "Public" Radio. I enjoy doing this kind of thing and it passes the time. This story is ostensibly about those Carrier air conditioning layoffs which made a political splash in February. I've included the video in the deconstruction.

Over the past month, millions of YouTube viewers have watched what happens when a U.S. manufacturer announces a move to Mexico.

Click on the unsteady cellphone video, shot at a factory that makes air conditioning, heating and related equipment in Indianapolis, and you will see workers listening to a man in a suit.

Watch it now.

He's telling them that their paychecks are headed to Mexico. "I want to be clear, this is strictly a business decision," the man says. An agonized, collective cry goes up. People swear, shout and look away.

Turns out, moving manufacturing jobs to Monterrey, Mexico, is more than strictly business. It's also very personal, painful — and political.

fukushima 5th year anniversary came and went and I plumb forgot....,

enenews |  Globe and Mail, Nov 1, 2015 (emphasis added): After the Japanese nuclear reactor melted down… fears arose that radiation would pollute the Pacific and spread to Canada’s West Coast. To address those concerns… Dr. [Jay] Cullen started a radionuclide-monitoring program… “The goal and motivation … was that people were asking me, family and friends and the public at large, what the impact of the disaster was on B.C. on the North Pacific and on Canada,” he said… Shortly after he began blogging about the findings… [Cullen] was not only called a “shill for the nuclear industry” and a “sham scientist” but he was told he and other researchers who were reporting that the Fukushima radiation wasn’t a threat deserved to be executed… Even in Japan, he says, the [U.N.] determined the doses of ionizing radiation “are low enough that there will be no discernible increased incidence of radiation-related illness in them or their descendants.”… Dr. Cullen said he frequently hears from people that his science simply can’t be right because the Pacific Ocean is dying… Dr. Cullen said he understands that people are afraid of radiation, that they distrust governments and are wary of scientists… “I feel that the education system has failed these individuals in certain respects,” he said…

Globe and Mail, Nov 6, 2015: A British Columbia man who posted a video calling for the death of scientists whose research shows the Fukushima nuclear accident is not destroying the Pacific has been charged with two counts of criminal harassment. The charges were laid against Dana Durnford… In a video posted on Thursday, he said he had just been charged, and that many of his past videos had been taken down… “I was arrested… I was in court and I was charged with criminal harassment of nuclear industry PR people,” he said… he was charged under Section 264 of the Canadian Criminal Code, which makes it illegal to engage in conduct that causes someone to fear for their safety… “It’s new territory for me, and I certainly don’t want to jeopardize [the prosecution] by speaking out of turn,” [Cullen] said…

Durnford is not alone in voicing concern about the impact of the Fukushima disaster on North America. Here are a few examples from officials, professors, and other experts:

• Former US Gov’t Official: “The elephant in the room is Fukushima radiation” when it comes to Pacific Ocean animal die-offs -Source
• Experts: Fukushima radioactive contamination a “major concern for public health of coastal communities” on west coast -Source
• US Gov’t: Alaska island “appears to show impacts from Fukushima”; Scientists anticipate more marine life to be impacted as ocean plume arrives -Source
• AP: Unprecedented deaths along U.S. Pacific coast; Samples “being tested for radionuclides from Fukushima”-Source
• Professor: “Fukushima emerged as a global threat to the conservation of the Pacific Ocean, human health, and marine biodiversity” -Source
• Gov’t conducts more tests on sick animals to look for Fukushima radionuclides -Source
• Scientists predict west coast killer whales will exceed 1,000 Bq/kg of radioactive cesium; Over 10 times gov’t limit in Japan -Source
• Professors: Seafood off west coast predicted to exceed gov’t radioactivity limit -Source
• Scientist expects Fukushima radiation will cause marine bacteria in US to mutate -Source
• Boat Captain: Fishermen “talking about Fukushima… convinced it has something to do with” poor condition of marine life -Source
• Professor: Fukushima a suspected factor in ‘unusual mortality’ of seals, walruses -Source
• Scientists present links between Alaska seal deaths and Fukushima fallout -Source
• “Many researchers initially believed radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster could be at the heart of the [sea star wasting] disease” -Source
• Mystery disease kills seals in Atlantic Ocean; Gov’t tests for Fukushima radiation -Source
• “Fish along the Orange County coast may have been affected by [Fukushima] radioactivity… researchers say” -Source
• US gov’t experts looking into whether Fukushima is cause of sea lion strandings in California; NOAA: “Radiation epidemic could be potential cause” -Source

fukushima the official stories 5 years later...,

technologyreview | The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, which began on March 11, 2011, uprooted thousands of Japanese people, set the worldwide nuclear power industry back a decade, and caused a run on potassium iodide (said to help ward off thyroid cancer). What it didn’t do was kill anyone from radioactive fallout.

That was the conclusion of the six-volume Report on the Fukushima Daiichi Accident, released in August 2015 by the International Atomic Energy Agency. About 1,600 people died in the evacuation of the surrounding area, however—many of them elderly and infirm hospital patients and residents of nursing homes. That would seem to indicate that the response to the accident was more deadly than the accident itself.

A Greenpeace report released this week, “Nuclear Scars: The Lasting Legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima,” takes a harsher view, saying that “the health consequences of the Chernobyl and Fukushima catastrophes are extensive.” But most of the report dwells on Chernobyl, and it notes that the primary effects of Fukushima were “mental health disorders, such as depression, anxiety and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Put another way: fear and panic resulting from the accident (and from the loss of homes and livelihoods) were more dangerous than the radiation.

is the hon.bro.preznit afraid of the deep state?

mintpressnews |  A former CIA analyst believes the CIA and National Security Agency have become so powerful that the president is afraid to act against them when they break the law.

 

Ray McGovern retired from the CIA in 1990, following nearly 30 years of service to the agency. He was awarded the Intelligence Commendation Medal, which is given to agents who offer “especially commendable service” to the agency. 

Outraged over the CIA’s open use of torture, he returned the medal in 2006 and became an antiwar activist. He was arrested in 2011 for a silent protest against a speech by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

blaming Trump for violence highlights establishment media's shameless double standard

foxnews |  When MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow says she’s practically concluded that Trump wanted the confrontation in Chicago, where he canceled the rally, it’s clear that some in the media are making this all about the candidate and not those who would silence him.

Imagine how different the coverage might be if protestors were shouting down Hillary Clinton, as they briefly did to Bernie Sanders earlier in the season.

Everyone has the right to peacefully demonstration, something that’s deeply embedded in our country’s DNA. But nobody has the right to stop someone else from speaking. That is an assault on free speech—and one that’s been too prevalent on college campuses in recent years, where some liberals have tried to block speakers whose views they don’t like.

In the short term, this probably helps Trump in the Republican primaries, where voters will see him taking on mostly minority protestors who they don’t have much sympathy for. The danger in the long run is that the outbreaks of violence will come to be seen as a metaphor for a campaign that critics will say is tearing the country apart.

Joe Scarborough, in his Washington Post column, continues his turn against Trump, insisting that “a political campaign whose security has been so stifling as to draw angry comparisons to fascist regimes would plan a key rally for Trump in the middle of a racially diverse urban campus. The fact that this campus sits in the middle of a city that is so Democratic that it has not elected a Republican mayor since before Franklin Roosevelt was sworn in as president makes the venue’s selection even more bizarre.”

I have to disagree on that point. Why shouldn’t a presidential candidate—especially one who hopes to attract Democratic votes in the fall--be able to campaign anywhere he wants?

National Review, which detests Trump and is backing Ted Cruz, faults the protestors, but adds this:

“Trump — Saddam Hussein to the ayatollahs of political correctness on the other side — is of course far from blameless in all this. That is not to say that Trump’s irresponsible, wild-eyed, and meat-headed rhetoric, which has included explicit calls for violence against his critics, is responsible for having provoked the protests. Rather, Trump’s rhetoric has been unworthy of a presidential candidate — and unworthy of an American — in and of itself.”

game on: hopefully someone who understands all this better than I do will kindly consent to explain it...,

informationweek |  The Redmond giant is the latest tech titan to use a game to further development of AI, joining IBM's Watson and Google's DeepMind AlphaGo.

But in this particular case, Microsoft plans to open its platform to researchers and AI enthusiasts with an aim to move closer to having AI achieve the coveted "general intelligence" capabilities.

General intelligence is on par with the way a baby learns by taking in their environment via sight, sound, smell, touch, discomfort, pleasure, and other information to make decisions effortlessly. But AI researchers to date have only been able to take small slices of that total awareness to build tools that do just one thing, such as recognize words, but have not been able to combine all the slices in a way that humans do without effort, said Katja Hofmann, a researcher at Microsoft's Cambridge, UK, lab who helped develop the AIX platform with her colleagues, in a blog post.

That's partly due to the lack in understanding how people combine those senses, said Hofmann adding, "We don't understand ourselves well enough."

Enter Minecraft, which Microsoft acquired through its $2.5 billion purchase of Swedish game developer Mojang in 2014. Minecraft allows users to build their worlds however they wish. Because it affords users endless possibilities in the way they create their worlds, from scouring for treasures to erecting a building alone or with teammates, Hofmann said it made sense to use the open world of Minecraft when creating the AIX platform.

Hofmann and her team are trying to train an AI agent, similar to one used in Minecraft, to climb to the highest point in the virtual world without knowing how to do it or what needs to be accomplished.

"We're trying to program it to learn, as opposed to programming it to accomplish specific tasks," Fernando Diaz, senior researcher in Microsoft's New York research lab, said in the blog post.

Brian Blau, a research director for Gartner, agrees that games have a benefit for AI researchers.

"Games are a natural platform for test-bedding AI technology. They are rich and diverse simulations of worlds, which could be similar to what we humans experience, or not. That openness makes game worlds and virtual reality worlds well suited for AI, as they can deliver a clear visual picture and one that can be experienced personally," Blau told InformationWeek.

game on: the end of the old evolutionary system is in sight

wikipedia |  Transhumanism (abbreviated as H+ or h+) is an international and intellectual movement that aims to transform the human condition by developing and creating widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.^[1][1][2] Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as the ethics^[3] of using such technologies.^[4] The most common thesis is that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into different beings with abilities so greatly expanded from the natural condition as to merit the label of posthuman beings.^[2]

The contemporary meaning of the term transhumanism was foreshadowed by one of the first professors of futurology, FM-2030, who taught "new concepts of the human" at The New School in the 1960s, when he began to identify people who adopt technologies, lifestyles and worldviews "transitional" to posthumanity as "transhuman".^[5]

This hypothesis would lay the intellectual groundwork for the British philosopher Max More to begin articulating the principles of transhumanism as a futurist philosophy in 1990 and organizing in California an intelligentsia that has since grown into the worldwide transhumanist movement.^[5][6][7]

The year 1990 is seen as a "fundamental shift" in human existence by the transhuman community, as the first gene therapy trial,^[8] the first designer babies,^[9] as well as the mind-augmenting World Wide Web all emerged in that year. In many ways, one could argue the conditions that will eventually lead to the Singularity were set in place by these events in 1990.^{[original research?]}

Influenced by seminal works of science fiction, the transhumanist vision of a transformed future humanity has attracted many supporters and detractors from a wide range of perspectives including philosophy and religion.^[5] Transhumanism has been characterized by one critic, Francis Fukuyama, as among the world's most dangerous ideas,^[10] to which Ronald Bailey countered that it is rather the "movement that epitomizes the most daring, courageous, imaginative and idealistic aspirations of humanity".^[11]

the hon.bro.preznit publicly roasted mr. miracle into political existence...,

NYTimes |  Donald J. Trump arrived at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April 2011, reveling in the moment as he mingled with the political luminaries who gathered at the Washington Hilton. He made his way to his seat beside his host, Lally Weymouth, the journalist and socialite daughter of Katharine Graham, longtime publisher of The Washington Post.

A short while later, the humiliation started.

The annual dinner features a lighthearted speech from the president; that year, President Obama chose Mr. Trump, then flirting with his own presidential bid, as a punch line.

He lampooned Mr. Trump’s gaudy taste in décor. He ridiculed his fixation on false rumors that the president had been born in Kenya. He belittled his reality show, “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

Mr. Trump at first offered a drawn smile, then a game wave of the hand. But as the president’s mocking of him continued and people at other tables craned their necks to gauge his reaction, Mr. Trump hunched forward with a frozen grimace.

After the dinner ended, Mr. Trump quickly left, appearing bruised. He was “incredibly gracious and engaged on the way in,” recalled Marcus Brauchli, then the executive editor of The Washington Post, but departed “with maximum efficiency.”

That evening of public abasement, rather than sending Mr. Trump away, accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world. And it captured the degree to which Mr. Trump’s campaign is driven by a deep yearning sometimes obscured by his bluster and bragging: a desire to be taken seriously.

That desire has played out over the last several years within a Republican Party that placated and indulged him, and accepted his money and support, seemingly not grasping how fervently determined he was to become a major force in American politics. In the process, the party bestowed upon Mr. Trump the kind of legitimacy that he craved, which has helped him pursue a credible bid for the presidency.

“Everybody has a little regret there, and everybody read it wrong,” said David Keene, a former chairman of the American Conservative Union, an activist group Mr. Trump cultivated. Of Mr. Trump’s rise, Mr. Keene said, “It’s almost comical, except it’s liable to end up with him as the nominee.”

the blessed bigotry of Mr. Trump

unz |  If I were a self-conscious American Muslim, one who cares for Islam, I’d say to myself: which candidate, if elected, will do less harm to the Ummah, to the Muslim world? Should I support the lady who was so beastly joyous at watching the horrible brutal death of a Muslim ruler, Muammar Gadhafi? Should I support the lady who will do this week her star appearance at AIPAC conference, pledging to do Israel’s bidding for the next four years? Or, for that matter, should I support Ted Cruz who takes his orders in Tel Aviv, or should I rather support the man whom Cruz accused of being an enemy of Israel?

Surely this was a wrongful accusation; Trump has Jewish sons-in-law; but still, nobody yet accused other candidates of ever failing to do Israel’s will.

In my view, the faults usually ascribed to Mr Trump are really minor. Buffoon? Narcissus? Bigot? Who cares. The next you’ll say his personal hygiene is nor perfect. That he farts in public. Such accusations would be of value while picking a guest to stay over weekend.

We are in front of two huge trials of totally different magnitude. Dirty nails and loud farting do not come close to that. And the next US president will have to deal with that.

The Pentagon asks for a cool trillion dollars to create a brand new generation of nuclear weapons. They call it “upgrading”, but experts say these are new weapon systems, more deadly, more precise and more likely to be used. This is a new Hiroshima in making, and this time perhaps the Russian bodies will flay in the nuclear heat, while the Americans will be incinerated by the new generation of Russian missiles. President Obama, God bless him, did not authorise it yet. We – and I mean the world, not the squeamish scribes – need to stop this program dead. Donald Trump is likely to avoid this folly. For this price, he can call me a kike all day long, if it suits him.

The US administration initiated three programs: TISA, TPP, TTIP; if completed, they will enslave mankind and kill the vestiges of democracy we enjoy. Obama’s Democrats are pushing for it. This is really even more dangerous than the nuclear weapons of new generation. This monster has to be stopped. Donald Trump is likely to do it, for these programs are the epitome of whatever he fought against.

These two items are most urgent and more important than any complaint against Trump. He does not like obese women? Who cares? Let the obese women manage without Mr. Trump’s adoration, if he will stop these evil designs.

President Trump is not likely to continue with the manoeuvres in South Korea, this touchy trigger of a nuclear war. Now tens of thousands of US troops are exercising in South Korea how to kill the president of North Korea. I do not joke and I do not exaggerate. This is the described aim of the manoeuvres, and they drive the North Korea president mad. Coming after the Sony-made and the State Department influenced film describing assassination of him, this is not surprising. If Trump will forget about North Korea, he will be the president I like.

Trump said he will not tear up the Iran nuclear agreement; he will not fight till the last Syrian to remove Bashar Assad. If he will, let him say what he wants about fat women, even the most upsetting things. My aunt, a doctor, used to say there were no fat women in concentration camps, so it can’t be a disease. This is probably sufficiently bad taste.

I am not sure whether any argument will work against billions of dollars the US super-rich spend on their ads against Trump. However, give it a thought: these nasty super-rich are not known for their benevolence. If they are ready to spend so much money to stop Trump, perhaps we need to support Trump?

In any case, we shall be disappointed. Marry, and you will regret it; do not marry, you will regret it, – said the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard. So you can marry, and yes, you can vote for Trump – even if you will be disappointed. Because if you vote for Clinton (or God preserve us, Cruz) you will head into nuclear disaster and enslavement of mankind. Trump is a long shot for sanity, but it is better than a sure disaster.

game on: the end of the old economic system is in sight

globalguerillas | The surprise of this victory isn't that it occurred.  Most expected it would, eventually...  

 

Instead, the surprise is how fast it happened.  How fast AlphaGo was able to bootstrap itself to a mastery of the game.  It was fast. Unreasonably fast.

 

However, this victory goes way beyond the game of Go.  It is important because AlphaGo uses a generic technique for learning.  A technique that can be used to master a HUGE range of activities, quickly.  Activities that people get paid for today.

 

This implies the following:

• This technology is going to cut through the global economy like a hot knife through butter.  It learns fast and largely on its own.  It's widely applicable.  It doesn't only master what it has seen, it can innovate.  For example: some of the unheard of moves made by AlphaGo were considered "beautiful" by the Grandmaster it beat.  
• Limited AGI (deep learning in particular) will have the ability to do nearly any job currently being done by human beings -- from lawyers to judges, nurses to doctors, driving to construction -- potentially at a grandmaster's level of capability.  This makes it a buzzsaw.
• Very few people (and I mean very few) will be able to stay ahead of the limited AGI buzzsaw.   It learns so quickly, the fate of people stranded in former factory towns gutted by "free trade" is likely to be the fate of the highest paid technorati.  They simply don't have the capacity to learn fast enough or be creative enough to stay ahead of it.

Have fun,

why has Trump had so much success?

quora |  If millions of Americans are clearly fed up with something, it's time to analyze what that something is; thinking that Trump is the problem is childish to say the least. Trump is an actor reading a script written by millions of American authors and he is willing to turn it into a movie. If I was American and anti-Trump, I would like to read that script in full and understand what inspired it, rather than stopping at the title. Because Trump might not make it through the elections, politically speaking, but those millions of Americans will try to get someone else to produce the movie, after him, if their concerns don't get addressed.

As an external spectator I'm more troubled by Trump's detractors and adversaries' lack of analysis over the discontent of a big chunk of American voters than by the tycoon's political success. I have the unpleasant feeling that some people have forgotten what a democracy is and how it works and that rather than addressing people's problems they are more busy addressing their adversaries' unfitness. This attitude, in history, has never led to victory.

american exceptionalism presents an election made in hell...,

williamblum |  If the American presidential election winds up with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and my passport is confiscated, and I’m somehow FORCED to choose one or the other, or I’m PAID to do so, paid well … I would vote for Trump.

My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity, and the environment. And when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is an unholy disaster. From Iraq and Syria to Libya and Honduras the world is a much worse place because of her; so much so that I’d call her a war criminal who should be prosecuted. And not much better can be expected on domestic issues from this woman who was paid $675,000 by Goldman Sachs – one of the most reactionary, anti-social corporations in this sad world – for four speeches and even more than that in political donations in recent years. Add to that Hillary’s willingness to serve for six years on the board of Walmart while her husband was governor of Arkansas. Can we expect to change corporate behavior by taking their money?

The Los Angeles Times ran an editorial the day after the multiple primary elections of March 1 which began: “Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States,” and then declared: “The reality is that Trump has no experience whatsoever in government.”

When I need to have my car fixed I look for a mechanic with experience with my type of auto. When I have a medical problem I prefer a doctor who specializes in the part of my body that’s ill. But when it comes to politicians, experience means nothing. The only thing that counts is the person’s ideology. Who would you sooner vote for, a person with 30 years in Congress who doesn’t share your political and social views at all, is even hostile to them, or someone who has never held public office before but is an ideological comrade on every important issue? Clinton’s 12 years in high government positions carries no weight with me.

The Times continued about Trump: “He has shamefully little knowledge of the issues facing the country and the world.”

Again, knowledge is trumped (no pun intended) by ideology. As Secretary of State (January 2009-February 2013), with great access to knowledge, Clinton played a key role in the 2011 destruction of Libya’s modern and secular welfare state, sending it crashing in utter chaos into a failed state, leading to the widespread dispersal throughout North African and Middle East hotspots of the gigantic arsenal of weaponry that Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi had accumulated. Libya is now a haven for terrorists, from al Qaeda to ISIS, whereas Gaddafi had been a leading foe of terrorists.

What good did Secretary of State Clinton’s knowledge do? It was enough for her to know that Gaddafi’s Libya, for several reasons, would never be a properly obedient client state of Washington. Thus it was that the United States, along with NATO, bombed the people of Libya almost daily for more than six months, giving as an excuse that Gaddafi was about to invade Benghazi, the Libyan center of his opponents, and so the United States was thus saving the people of that city from a massacre. The American people and the American media of course swallowed this story, though no convincing evidence of the alleged impending massacre has ever been presented. (The nearest thing to an official US government account of the matter – a Congressional Research Service report on events in Libya for the period – makes no mention at all of the threatened massacre.) 

The Western intervention in Libya was one that the New York Times said Clinton had “championed”, convincing Obama in “what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of state.” All the knowledge she was privy to did not keep her from this disastrous mistake in Libya. And the same can be said about her support of placing regime change in Syria ahead of supporting the Syrian government in its struggle against ISIS and other terrorist groups. Even more disastrous was the 2003 US invasion of Iraq which she as a senator supported. Both policies were of course clear violations of international law and the UN Charter.

while peasants divided and distracted, the hon.bro.preznit makes final push for the TPP

libertyblitzkrieg |  The United States is in the final stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free-trade agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries. Who will benefit from the TPP? American workers? Consumers? Small businesses? Taxpayers? Or the biggest multinational corporations in the world?

One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.

ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws – and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers – without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions – and even billions – of dollars in damages.

If that seems shocking, buckle your seat belt. ISDS could lead to gigantic fines, but it wouldn’t employ independent judges. Instead, highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgment the next. Maybe that makes sense in an arbitration between two corporations, but not in cases between corporations and governments. If you’re a lawyer looking to maintain or attract high-paying corporate clients, how likely are you to rule against those corporations when it’s your turn in the judge’s seat?

the other reason the establishment hysterically hates on Trump

unz |  But there is one significant difference between Trump and the “establishment,” be they Democrats or Republicans that has not been highlighted. I would suggest that quite a lot of the depth and intensity of what we are experiencing is actually about Israel. Trump is the first high level politician aspirant within living memory to challenge the notion that the United States must stand by Israel no matter what Israel does. Even while affirming his affection for Israel, he has said that Washington must be even handed in its efforts to bring about peace between Israelis and Palestinians, implying that Tel Aviv might have to make concessions.

Trump has also added insult to injury by delinking himself from the blandishments of Jewish political mega-donors, who largely call the tune for many in the GOP and among the Democrats, by telling them he doesn’t need their money and can’t be bought. His comments have challenged conventional interest group politicking in American and have predictably produced a firestorm reaction in the usual circles. Robert Kagan announced that he would be supporting Hillary, who famously has declared that she would immediately call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon taking office as a first step in moving the relationship with Tel Aviv to “the next level.” It is to be presumed that Kagan and his fellow neocons will be experiencing a welcoming vibe from at least some of the Democrats as the neoconservatives have always been liberals at heart on nearly all issues except foreign policy, rooted by them in the “unshakable and bipartisan bond” with Israel.

It is my opinion that the “I” word should be banned from American political discourse. Ironically, many American Jews are themselves uneasy about the place occupied by Israel in ongoing political debates, recognizing that it is both unhealthy in a democracy and reflective only of the extreme views of the hardline members of their own diaspora community. It is also unpleasantly all about Jews and money since the Republicans and other mouthpieces now piling on Trump are motivated largely by their own sinecures and the Sheldon Adelson type donations that might be forthcoming to the politically savvy candidates who say the right things about the conflict in the Middle East.

Slate’s Isaac Chotiner has noted a particularly odd speech by Senator Marco Rubio in which he spoke of his single electoral triumph in Minnesota before immediately jumping to the issue of Israel, as if on cue or by rote. It is a tendency that is not unique to him. I read through the transcript of the GOP debate that preceded Rubio’s sole victory, which in part reflected a competition to see who could promise to do most for Israel. Senator Ted Cruz stated that he “would stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel…and the alliance with Israel.” Governor John Kasich declared that he’s “been a supporter of Israel – a strong supporter of Israel longer than anyone on this stage.” Senator Marco Rubio indicated that “I will be on Israel’s side every single day because they are the only pro-American, free enterprise democracy in the entire Middle East.” Ben Carson called Israel not only a strategic partner but also an element in America’s “Judeo Christian foundation” that can never be rejected.

Quite a few assertions about Israel made by politicians are, of course, nonsense. It is not in alliance with the United States and is not a democracy for starters, but the real question becomes why is Israel part of the debate at all? It is because of concerns that the deep pocketed donors like Sheldon Adelson will join his good friend Haim Saban in funding Hillary if candidates do not say what he expects to hear. Saban has referred to Trump as a “clown” and attacked him because he would be “dangerous for Israel.”

Granny Goodness has forgotten more about ultra-violence than Mr. Miracle will ever know...,

democracynow |  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is facing a new round of questions about her handling of the 2009 coup in Honduras that ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Since the coup, Honduras has become one of the most violent places in the world. Last week, indigenous environmental activist Berta Cáceres was assassinated in her home. In an interview two years ago, Cáceres singled out Clinton for her role supporting the coup. "We’re coming out of a coup that we can’t put behind us. We can’t reverse it," Cáceres said. "It just kept going. And after, there was the issue of the elections. The same Hillary Clinton, in her book, 'Hard Choices,' practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. This demonstrates the meddling of North Americans in our country. The return of the president, Mel Zelaya, became a secondary issue. There were going to be elections in Honduras. And here she [Clinton] recognized that they didn’t permit Mel Zelaya’s return to the presidency." We play this rarely seen clip of Cáceres and speak to historian Greg Grandin.

the creepy inevitable and inescapable definition of virtual reality...,

WaPo |  When cookie giant Oreo wanted to promote its latest flavors, its marketing heads decided to spice up its traditional TV ads with something not just new, but otherworldly: a virtual-reality-style fly-through of a whimsical, violet-skied fantasyland, where cream filling flows like a river and cookie pieces rocket past the viewer's head.

The 360-degree “Wonder Vault” animation allowed viewers to look around this world by turning their smartphone, moving their mouse on a screen or gazing through a virtual-reality headset. And many did: In the minute-long sugary utopia’s two weeks of existence, it has enticed nearly 3 million YouTube viewers — about as big as the 12-to-34-year-old audience for “The Big Bang Theory,” the most-watched sitcom on TV.

“Look at the Cinnamon Bun world: There are cinnamon buns, but there are also ice skaters. It evokes that sort of emotional connection,” said Elise Burditt, brand manager for Oreo North America. “It’s all about taking people inside this world we’ve created ... and back to that feeling of being a kid again.”

As VR technology has rapidly grown more vivid, affordable and widespread, its artists and fans have championed the dramatic ways it could change movies, news, video games, on-the-job training and the creative arts. But many newcomers will take their first virtual steps via a more quintessentially American medium — advertising. And companies now are investing heavily in a race to shape those worlds to their design.

the inner-trainment industry...,

timtyler |  The entertainment industry wastes billions of dollars a year on films, games, pornography and escapism.

As such it is like a cancerous growth on humanity, sapping our collective resources and strength.

These funds typically do not produce anything worthwhile. They do not feed anyone. No housing or shelter is provided. The world does not wind up better irrigated as a result. No more useful elements or minerals come into circulation. Scientific knowledge is not advanced.

It is not just the funds that are wasted. Precious natural resources are needlessly depleted as well. Human time and effort - which could usefully be spent in other areas - are also used up. Both the consumers and the producers are affected.

All that is produced as a result of all this expenditure is entertainment.

What is entertainment?

Entertainment is a type of stimulation designed to trigger a drug-like states of euphoria.

Upon receipt of certain kinds of sensory input, the human brain produces drug-like compounds associated with positive behavioural reinforcement.

Various types of entertainment cause different types of stimulation. Comedy activates the nucleus accumbens - a brain area which is known to be involved in the rewarding feelings that follow monetary gain or the use of some addictive drugs. The shock-relief cycle horror movies repeatedly put the viewer through works as another type of drug-based conditioning - based on endorphins. Action adventure games are fuelled on adrenaline. Pornography works on the brain's sexual reward centres - and so on.

The result of all this drug-related stimulation is a high level of fantasy addiction in the population.

Addicts tend to become couch potatoes, often with various other associated pathologies: eye strain, back problems, malnutrition, RSI - and so on.

Some exposure to story telling and fantasies may be beneficial - since it allows humans to gain exposure to the experiences of others quickly and in relative safety. This explains why humans are attracted to this sort of thing in the first place. However, today's fanatsies often tend to go beyond what is healthy and beneficial. They typically represent a super-stimulus, in order to encourage an rapid response and subsequent addiction.

We see the same thing with sugars. Some sugars is useful - so humans are genetically programmed to eat them. However, in the modern environment, food is plentiful, and there is a huge food marketing industry - and the result is an obesity epidemic. This wastes billions of dollars in unwanted food production and healthcare bills, and is a complete and unmitigated managerial disaster.

Similarly some exposure fantasies is beneficial. It is when there is a whole marketing industry pumping consumers to consume fantasies at the maximum possible rate - in order to satisfy its own selfish goals - that problems with over-production and over-consumption arise.