Deep State Only Wants Trump to Live According to His Station and His Duties

extranewsfeed |  As the feudal power-structures of Europe broke down beneath a wave of revolutions in the 18th century, governments took a more active role in law enforcement and the first centralized policing organization was created in France by King Louis XIV. The duties of the new police were bluntly described as a mechanism of class-control over workers and peasants:

“ensuring the peace and quiet of the public and of private individuals, purging the city of what may cause disturbances, procuring abundance, and having each and everyone live according to their station and their duties”

While France’s Gendarmes were seen as a symbol of oppression in other parts of Europe, the French policing model spread during the early 1800s as Napoleon Bonaparte conquered much of the continent. By the mid-1800s, modern policing institutions — publicly-funded, centralized police organized in a military hierarchy and under the control of the state — had been transplanted everywhere from Tsarist Russia to England and the United States.

Policing became the exclusive right of governments as other law enforcement groups were absorbed into new and “official” institutions. The new police were not just tasked with serving the public, however — they also protected the political power of their new employers. It was a revolutionary era and the new police were shaped by rulers facing a particularly mutinous population. The use of police as the vanguard of state-power was a major development and it was adapted to repress popular movements all over the world. Early police organizations in the US, for example, pretty much handed blue uniforms to former slave-patrols and anti-union mercenaries who had historically protected the interests of plantation-bosses in the South and industrial capitalists in the North.

( For more on the historical links between slavery, anti-union security, and law enforcement, read “Private Property Is the Police-State” )

Comey's Personal Assistant Josh Resigned (Serving Agents Can't Plead the 5th..,)

NYTimes  |  When the F.B.I. knocks on someone’s door or appeals to the public for assistance in solving crime, the willingness of people to help is directly correlated to their opinion of the agency. When an agent working to stop a terrorist plot attempts to recruit an informant, the agent’s success in gathering critical intelligence depends on the informant’s belief that the agent is credible and trustworthy. And, as the former director, James Comey, would frequently say in underscoring the importance of high standards, whether a jury believes an agent’s testimony depends on whether it has faith in the bureau’s honesty and independence. To be effective, the F.B.I. must be believed and must maintain the support of the public it serves.

Do F.B.I. agents make mistakes? You bet. They are human beings. Because they are not infallible, the bureau is subject to a robust system of checks and balances, including its internal affairs division, the Department of Justice inspector general, congressional committees and the courts. These watchdogs ensure that personal opinions regarding politics, causes and candidates do not affect investigations. The system also provides an outlet for any investigator who suspects malfeasance on the part of the agency’s leadership to make those concerns known.

What, then, are we to make of the recent allegations of political bias at the F.B.I., particularly those involving two employees whose cringe-worthy text messages continue to threaten the agency’s reputation? While it would be disingenuous to claim that those two are not at least guilty of exercising incredibly poor judgment, it would be equally disingenuous for anyone who really knows the modern-day bureau to insinuate that the organization is plotting from within.

Furthermore, a congressional memo released on Friday accuses the F.B.I. and the Justice Department of abusing their surveillance powers to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser. But every statement of fact included in an affidavit for foreign intelligence collection must withstand the scrutiny of at least 10 people in the Department of Justice hierarchy before it is reviewed by an independent court.

There is, however, a difference between oversight by those in charge of holding the F.B.I. accountable and criticism by politicians seeking partisan gain. Political operatives are weaponizing their disagreement with a particular investigation in a bid to undermine the credibility of the entire institution. “The system is rigged” is their slogan, and they are now politicizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process used to collect critical intelligence about our adversaries.

The assumption among confused and dismayed F.B.I. employees is that the attacks are meant to soften the blow should the investigation by Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, lead to additional charges. However, these kinds of attacks by powerful people go beyond mere criticism — they could destroy the institution. Although those critics’ revisionist supporters claim their ire is reserved for institutional leadership and not the rank and file, it is the F.B.I. agent on the street who will be most severely affected as public support for federal law enforcement is sacrificed for partisan gain.

These political attacks on the bureau must stop. If those critics of the agency persuade the public that the F.B.I. cannot be trusted, they will also have succeeded in making our nation less safe.

#ReleaseTheMemo Phase Two: Senator Grassley Now At Bat....,

theconservativetreehouse |  Democrats, media, and the aggregate DOJ/FBI intelligence community are finally seeing accountability.  With the HPSCI memo now in the rear-view mirror, and the content in the bloodstream of the U.S. electorate, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley is next.

Toward the end of December, the FBI provided the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, with FBI investigative documents (likely FD-302’s) from their contacts with Christopher Steele.  According to most reasonable timing we can discover Steele met with FBI officials sometime around October 1st, 2016.

From the U.K. lawsuit against Christopher Steele (pdf here), Steele admits to having shopped the Clinton-Steele dossier to U.S. media outlets “in person” in late September (New York Times, WaPo, New Yorker and CNN), and mid-October, 2016 (New York Times, WaPo, and Yahoo News), per instructions from Glenn Simpson (Fusion GPS)

Additionally, in late October, 2016, Christopher Steele briefed Mother Jones via Skype.

According to the released HPSCI intelligence memo, the FBI sought a FISA application based on the Steele Dossier on October 21st, 2016.  From those UK court records at least two briefings with reporters, containing five outlets, took place prior to the FBI using the Clinton-Steele dossier in their FISA application.

The “late September” briefings with the New York Times, Washington Post, Yahoo News, New Yorker and CNN took place prior to Christopher Steele meeting with FBI officials early October.   The implication therein is that the FBI had to know prior to their October 21st, 2016, court application that the information they were presenting to the FISA court was being heavily shopped to media outlets. This would be immediately disqualifying.

The HPSCI memo notes the FBI relationship with Christopher Steele was terminated after the FISA application (Oct. 21st, 2016), as a result of the Mother Jones article from October 30th, 2016.  Media contact by an FBI material witness is immediately disqualifying.

The question is: did the FBI submit the FISA application under false pretenses?  Did the FBI actually know Christopher Steele was shopping the dossier to the media prior to their FISA court submission?

The HPSCI memo gives the FBI the benefit of doubt by presuming the FBI were unaware or “lied to“.   The FD-302’s (FBI investigative interview notes), which appear to have been turned over to Senate Chairman Chuck Grassley, would contain the evidence to support the FBI being duped – OR – show the FBI knew, and proceeded in using the dossier despite disqualifying knowledge of media involvement.

The answers to those important questions appears to be the looming in the FBI classified documents behind the Grassley criminal referral.

You Figure That One Out...,

thehill |  A Tea Party group on Friday announced the launch of an attack ad against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, urging him to “do his job, or resign” following the release of a controversial GOP memo alleging surveillance abuse at the Department of Justice.

Tea Party Patriots Action uploaded the ad to YouTube hours after the House Intelligence Committee memo was released publicly, sparking speculation that President Trump may move to fire Rosenstein. 

The ad’s narrator describes Rosenstein as “a weak careerist at the Justice Department, protecting liberal Obama holdovers and the Deep State, instead of following the rule of law.”

“His incompetence and abuse of power have undermined congressional investigations, led to stonewalling and tarnished the credibility of the Department of Justice,” the narrator continues. 

“Time for him to stand up for the rule of law and stand up for the American people. It’s time for Rod Rosenstein to do his job, or resign.”

The Kraken (GOP FISA Memo)

Remember Boys and Girls: It Don't Mean Dick Until the Handcuffs CLICK!

disobedientmedia |  However, as the Wall Street Journal reports, it is important to remember that the FBI knows and has known what is in the memo for a long time, as the Bureau had, “refused to provide access to those documents until director Christopher Wray and the Justice Department faced a contempt of Congress vote.”

The Journal further relates that: “The FBI’s public statement appears to be an act of insubordination after Mr. Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein tried and failed to get the White House to block the memo’s release. Their public protest appears intended to tarnish in advance whatever information the memo contains. The public is getting to see amid this brawl how the FBI plays politics, and it isn’t a good look.”

Members of the Democratic Party have also expressed their opposition to the release of the memo.

For example, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), has also come out against the release of the memo to the public. Last week, Schiff and Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), wrote a letter to Facebook and Twitter, in which they expressed their fears that the top trending hashtag “#ReleaseTheMemo” was being pushed by Russian bots as part of a propaganda effort seeking to “attack our democracy”.

However, much to their dismay, it was revealed that the top trending hashtag was not the work of Russian bots, but originated organically by fellow Americans. This news did not deter a California duo from penning a second letter to Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday, in order to raise awareness about potential abuse of their platforms by “agents of foreign influence”.

Like Schiff and Feinstein, Schumer went on to claim that the Russians were behind the public outcry to release the memo, stating: “Even more extraordinary is that the actions of Chairman Nunes and his supporters are being actively parroted by Russian-linked cyber actors on social media with the intent to discredit U.S. democratic institutions.”

However, it is critical to note that the Democratic Party is not the only group opposing the release of the memo to the public. The group who seems to oppose the release of the memo more than anyone is the very group of people whose job it is to hold the government accountable and expose governmental wrongdoing and corruption, the Press.

For example, MSNBC has come out against the release of information to the American public, with Andrea Mitchell tweeting: “How will they justify releasing this memo? Intelligence community is on fire about what they say risks 40 years of congressional oversight of the agencies.”

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow also chimed in, tweeting Schiff’s statement that: “There is no longer a valid basis for the White House to review the altered document, since this new version is not the same document shared with the entire House and on which Committee Members voted.”

MSNBC’s John Heilemann even went so far as to inquire as to whether or not Rep. Nunes had been compromised: “Is it possible that the Republican chairman of the House Intel Committee has been compromised by the Russians? Is it possible that we actually have a Russian agent running the House Intel Committee on the Republican side?”

Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, also attacked the memo, calling it a “sleazy political purge”, and an attempt to “misinform the public”.

The Washington Free Beacon reports that CNN’s Brian Karem also attacked the release of the memo, claiming that it would serve as a “tipping point for our democracy”, and warned that the document’s release may lead the country to be ruled by “demagoguery and despotism.”

Karem went on to further state that the release of the memo is “…simply and nothing else but a power play, a demagogue pushing back against the Democratic process”, comparing it to a “mafia boss gone mad.”

CNN’s Phil Mudd also attacked the release of the memo, claiming that it was created through “collusion” between Nunes staffers and the White House.

The Atlantic’s Senior Editor David Frum also came out against government transparency and the release of the memo, tweeting: “The *full* full transparency argument would be: release all tax returns, corporate records, campaign emails, and other documents relevant to Donald Trump’s Russia/WikiLeaks connections.”

This Morning We Get To See The Insurance Policy

theepochtimes |  How did a piece of opposition research, described by former FBI Director James Comey as both “salacious and unverified,” become the driving force behind the allegations that Trump colluded with Russian authorities?

Research conducted by The Epoch Times, using public sources, shows a web of connections related to the dossier reaching the highest levels of the FBI, CIA, and the Obama administration.

Paid for by the Clinton Campaign and the DNC, and produced by Fusion GPS—whose other clients include the Russian government—the dossier appears to have been the basis for the FBI’s investigation into Donald Trump.

The FBI used the dossier, in part, to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Trump’s team, according to national security reporter Sarah Carter. Two of President Barack Obama’s top officials also surveilled the communications of Trump’s team, both before and after the elections.

The unverified allegations in the dossier were also actively spread to media organizations, both by Fusion GPS as well as other key players involved, to cast a shadow over Trump’s run for president and his presidency.

Text messages obtained by the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general show high ranking FBI officials discussing an “insurance policy” to prevent Trump from becoming president.

The connections presented raise many questions, including the following: Why was the FBI so willing to accept the allegations made by Fusion GPS? And what did Obama obtain in monitoring the communications of Trump, the opponent of the candidate he supported?

These matters are currently under investigation by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the DOJ inspector general, and possibly special counsel Robert Mueller.

We Know A Little About What Matter Does, But Nothing About What It Is....,

qz |  Interest in panpsychism has grown in part thanks to the increased academic focus on consciousness itself following on from Chalmers’ “hard problem” paper. Philosophers at NYU, home to one of the leading philosophy-of-mind departments, have made panpsychism a feature of serious study. There have been several credible academic books on the subject in recent years, and popular articles taking panpsychism seriously.

One of the most popular and credible contemporary neuroscience theories on consciousness, Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory, further lends credence to panpsychism. Tononi argues that something will have a form of “consciousness” if the information contained within the structure is sufficiently “integrated,” or unified, and so the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Because it applies to all structures—not just the human brain—Integrated Information Theory shares the panpsychist view that physical matter has innate conscious experience.

Goff, who has written an academic book on consciousness and is working on another that approaches the subject from a more popular-science perspective, notes that there were credible theories on the subject dating back to the 1920s. Thinkers including philosopher Bertrand Russell and physicist Arthur Eddington made a serious case for panpsychism, but the field lost momentum after World War II, when philosophy became largely focused on analytic philosophical questions of language and logic. Interest picked up again in the 2000s, thanks both to recognition of the “hard problem” and to increased adoption of the structural-realist approach in physics, explains Chalmers. This approach views physics as describing structure, and not the underlying nonstructural elements.

“Physical science tells us a lot less about the nature of matter than we tend to assume,” says Goff. “Eddington”—the English scientist who experimentally confirmed Einstein’s theory of general relativity in the early 20th century—“argued there’s a gap in our picture of the universe. We know what matter does but not what it is. We can put consciousness into this gap.”  Fist tap Dale.

MIT Intelligence Quest

IQ.MIT |  We are setting out to answer two big questions: How does human intelligence work, in engineering terms? And how can we use that deep grasp of human intelligence to build wiser and more useful machines, to the benefit of society?

Drawing on MIT’s deep strengths and signature values, culture, and history, MIT IQ promises to make important contributions to understanding the nature of intelligence, and to harnessing it to make a better world.

This is our quest.

Sixty years ago, at MIT and elsewhere, big minds lit the fuse on a big question: What is intelligence, and how does it work? The result was an explosion of new fields — artificial intelligence, cognitive science, neuroscience, linguistics, and more. They all took off at MIT and have produced remarkable offshoots, from computational neuroscience, to neural nets, to empathetic robots.

And today, by tapping the united strength of these and other interlocking fields and capitalizing on what they can teach each other, we seek to answer the deepest questions about intelligence — and to deliver transformative new gifts for humankind.

Some of these advances may be foundational in nature, involving new insight into human intelligence, and new methods to allow machines to learn effectively. Others may be practical tools for use in a wide array of research endeavors, such as disease diagnosis, drug discovery, materials and manufacturing design, automated systems, synthetic biology, and finance.

Along with developing and advancing the technologies of intelligence, MIT IQ researchers will also investigate the societal and ethical implications of advanced analytical and predictive tools. There are already active projects and groups at the Institute investigating autonomous systems, media and information quality, labor markets and the work of the future, innovation and the digital economy, and the role of AI in the legal system.

In all its activities, MIT IQ is intended to take advantage of — and strengthen — the Institute’s culture of collaboration. MIT IQ will connect and amplify existing excellence across labs and centers already engaged in intelligence research.

Join our quest.

Still Not Decoded...,

Smithsonian | The Voynich Manuscript has baffled cryptographers ever since the early 15th-century document was rediscovered by a Polish book dealer in 1912. The handwritten, 240-page screed, now housed in Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, is written from left to right in an unknown language. On top of that, the text itself is likely to have been scrambled by an unknown code. Despite numerous attempts to crack the code by some of the world’s best cryptographers, including Alan Turing and the Bletchley Park team, the contents of the enigmatic book have long remained a mystery. But that hasn’t stopped people from trying. The latest to give it a stab? The Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Alberta.

Bob Weber at the Canadian Press reports that natural language processing expert Greg Kondrak and grad student Bradley Hauer have attempted to identify the language the manuscript was written in using AI. According to a press release, the team originally believed that the manuscript was written in Arabic. But after feeding it to an AI trained to recognize 380 languages with 97 percent accuracy, its analysis of the letter frequency suggested the text was likely written in Hebrew. 

“That was surprising,” Kondrak says. They then hypothesized that the words were alphagrams, in which the letters are shuffled and vowels are dropped. When they unscrambled the first line of text using that method they found that 80 percent of the words created were found in the Hebrew dictionary. The research appears in the journal Transactions of the Association of Computational Linguistics.

Neither of the researchers are schooled in ancient Hebrew, so George Dvorsky at Gizmodo reports they took their deciphered first line to computer scientist Moshe Koppel, a colleague and native Hebrew speaker. He said it didn’t form a coherent sentence. After the team fixed some funky spelling errors and ran it through Google Translate, they came up with something readable, even if it doesn’t make much sense: “She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people.”

"Dreamers" Didn't Build Anything - Time To Wake Up And Go Back Home Now...,

thewrap |  Tonight, in this room full of music’s dreamers, we remember that this country was built by dreamers, for dreamers, chasing the american dream. I’m here on this stage tonight because just like the dreamers my parents brought me to this country with nothing in their pockets but hope. They showed me what it means to work twice as hard and never give up, and honestly no part of my journey is any different from theirs.

I’m a proud Cuban-Mexican immigrant, born in eastern Havana, standing in front of you on the Grammy stage in New York City, and all I know is, just like dreams, these kids can’t be forgotten and are worth fighting for.

Tonight, it is my great honor to introduce one of the greatest bands in music history, U2. This band from Ireland first rocked the Grammy boat when they won their first four awards 30 years ago for “The Joshua Tree,” an album that explored their own powerful connection with the American Dream. 46 Grammy nominations and 22 awards later, they extend their stunning Grammy legacy tonight by celebrating New York City and the promise that has drawn generations of immigrants here from around the world. 

Here they are performing in front of a beautiful lady who inspired these timeless words by Emma Lazarus. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teaming shore, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me.”

Jordan Peterson: Isn't This Just The Way Women Try To "Debate"?

theatlantic |  My first introduction to Jordan B. Peterson, a University of Toronto clinical psychologist, came by way of an interview that began trending on social media last week. Peterson was pressed by the British journalist Cathy Newman to explain several of his controversial views. 

But what struck me, far more than any position he took, was the method his interviewer employed. It was the most prominent, striking example I’ve seen yet of an unfortunate trend in modern communication.

First, a person says something. Then, another person restates what they purportedly said so as to make it seem as if their view is as offensive, hostile, or absurd.

Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and various Fox News hosts all feature and reward this rhetorical technique. And the Peterson interview has so many moments of this kind that each successive example calls attention to itself until the attentive viewer can’t help but wonder what drives the interviewer to keep inflating the nature of Peterson’s claims, instead of addressing what he actually said.

This isn’t meant as a global condemnation of this interviewer’s quality or past work. As with her subject, I haven’t seen enough of it to render any overall judgment—and it is sometimes useful to respond to an evasive subject with an unusually blunt restatement of their views to draw them out or to force them to clarify their ideas.

Perhaps she has used that tactic to good effect elsewhere. (And the online attacks to which she’s been subjected are abhorrent assaults on decency by people who are perpetrating misbehavior orders of magnitude worse than hers.)

But in the interview, Newman relies on this technique to a remarkable extent, making it a useful illustration of a much broader pernicious trend. Peterson was not evasive or unwilling to be clear about his meaning. And Newman’s exaggerated restatements of his views mostly led viewers astray, not closer to the truth.

Intersectionality Is A Farce

truthdig |  In the worlds of politics and nonprofits intersectionality has become a sneaky substitute for the traditional left notion of solidarity developed in the process of ongoing collective struggle against the class enemy. Intersectionality doesn’t deny the existence of class struggle, it just rhetorically demotes it to something co-equal with the fights against ableism and ageism and speciesism, against white supremacy, against gender oppression, and a long elastic list of others. What’s sneaky about the substitution of intersectionality for solidarity is that intersectionality allows the unexamined smuggling in of multiple notions which directly undermine the development and the operation of solidarity. Intersectionality means everybody is obligated to put their own special interest, their own oppression first – although they don’t always say that because the contradiction would be too obvious. The applicable terms of art are that everybody gets to “center” their own oppression, and cooperate as “allies” if and when their interests “intersect.” What this yields is silliness like honchos who run the pink pussy hat marches telling Cindy Sheehan earlier this month that their women’s movement can’t be bothered to oppose war and imperialism “…until all women are free,” and the advocates of this or that cause demanding constant, elaborate performative rituals of those who would qualify for “allyship.”

The nonprofit industrial complex, funded as it is by the one percent, loves, promotes and lavishly rewards intersectionality at every turn because it buries and negates class struggle. Intersectionality normalizes the notion that the left is and ought to be a bunch of impotent constituency groups squabbling about privilege and “allyship” as they compete for funding and careers, not the the force working to overthrow the established order and fight for the power to build a new world. Even Hillary Clinton uses the word now.

Afro-pessimism is a term coined by Dr. Frank Wilderson at UC Irvine, and a nappy headed stepchild of intersectionality. Afro-pessimism, to hear Wilderson tell it is the realization that black people have no natural allies anywhere, that we are born with ankle irons, whip marks on our backs, bulls eyes on our foreheads and nooses around our necks. Blackness, he says is “a condition of ontological death,” and the dead have no allies, at least among the living. Wilderson is at least honest. He freely admits that afro-pessimism leads nowhere and offers no answers to any strategic or even tactical questions. Wilderson’s shtick is that of an old man throwing word grenades and he seems not to care much where or how they explode, as long as they do. Whatever works for him, I guess.

Mueller Will Not Indict Trump For Obstruction, Collusion, Or Any Other Crime...,

theatlantic |  The latest revelations about President Trump have, once again, excited the interest of the public, leading to speculation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller may have amassed sufficient evidence to charge the president with obstruction of justice. Trump’s attempt to fire Mueller (which happened last June, but is only now being publicly reported) is, under this line of thinking, the final straw.

Color me deeply skeptical.

Mueller will not indict Trump for obstruction of justice or for any other crime.  Period. Full stop. End of story. Speculations to the contrary are just fantasy.

He won’t do it for the good and sufficient reason that the Department of Justice has a long-standing legal opinion that sitting presidents may not be indicted. First issued in 1973 during the Nixon era, the policy was reaffirmed in 2000, during the Clinton era. These rules bind all Department of Justice employees, and Mueller, in the end, is a Department of Justice employee. More to the point, if we know anything about Mueller, we think we know that he follows the rules—all of them. Even the ones that restrict him in ways he would prefer they not. And if he were to choose not to follow the rules, that, in turn, would be a reasonable justification for firing him. So … the special counsel will not indict the president.

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!!

BostonGlobe |  The memo, which was made available to all members of the House, is said to contend that officials from the two agencies were not forthcoming to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge. 

Republicans accuse the agencies of failing to disclose that the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign helped finance research that was used to obtain a warrant for surveillance of Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser. The research presented to the judge was assembled by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele.

The memo is not limited to actions taken by the Obama administration, though. The New York Times reported Sunday that the memo reveals that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, a top Trump appointee, signed off an application to extend the surveillance of Page shortly after taking office last spring. 

The renewal shows that the Justice Department under Trump saw reason to believe Page was acting as a Russian agent.

The inclusion of Rosenstein’s action in the memo could expose him to criticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill and from conservatives in the media who have seized on the surveillance to argue that the Russia inquiry may have been tainted from the start. 

Rosenstein is overseeing that investigation because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself. It was Rosenstein who appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel.

People familiar with the underlying application have portrayed the Republican memo as misleading in part because Steele’s information was insufficient to meet the standard for a FISA warrant. 

They said the application drew on other intelligence material that the Republican memo selectively omits. That other information remains highly sensitive, and releasing it would risk burning other sources and methods of intelligence-gathering about Russia.

There is no known precedent for the Republicans’ action. Though House rules allow the Intelligence Committee to vote to disclose classified information if it is deemed to be in the public interest, the rule is not thought to have ever been used. 

Typically, lawmakers wishing to make public secretive information classified by the executive branch spend months, if not years, fighting with the White House and the intelligence community over what they can release.

Jay-Z Sound Stupid AF - Give Me The Wayciss Full-Employment Cheeto Any Day...,

NYTimes |  Mr. Trump is right. Black unemployment in the United States reached its lowest level in December. But, as my colleague Linda Qiu reported two weeks ago, the record is the culmination of a longer trend, and there has been no shift in the larger racial unemployment gap:

The 6.8 percent unemployment rate for black Americans in December is indeed the lowest since 1972, according to the latest monthly data that is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the rate has been in decline for several years, decreasing steadily from 16.4 percent in August 2011 to 7.8 percent in January 2017.
The December figures also do not reflect a significantly different racial unemployment gap. The black unemployment rate has consistently been double that of the white unemployment rate, and remained at that level in December. Presidents, especially in their first year, generally do not single-handedly influence the labor markets — as Mr. Trump suggests.

Further, it’s an open question whether a president can claim credit for economic outputs like unemployment. As my colleague Neil Irwin has explained:

So does Mr. Trump deserve any credit for solid economic results? If you think the economy is driven by concrete, specific policies around taxes, spending, monetary policy and regulation, the answer is no. If you think that what really matters is the mood in the executive suite, then just maybe.

Jay-Z is scheduled to appear at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night. He is nominated for eight awards, including record, album and song of the year.

Grinding Poverty In America

NYTimes |  There are 5.3 million Americans who are absolutely poor by global standards. This is a small number compared with the one for India, for example, but it is more than in Sierra Leone (3.2 million) or Nepal (2.5 million), about the same as in Senegal (5.3 million) and only one-third less than in Angola (7.4 million). Pakistan (12.7 million) has twice as many poor people as the United States, and Ethiopia about four times as many.

This evidence supports on-the-ground observation in the United States. Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer have documented the daily horrors of life for the several million people in the United States who actually do live on $2 a day, in both urban and rural America. Matthew Desmond’s ethnography of Milwaukee explores the nightmare of finding urban shelter among the American poor.

It is hard to imagine poverty that is worse than this, anywhere in the world. Indeed, it is precisely the cost and difficulty of housing that makes for so much misery for so many Americans, and it is precisely these costs that are missed in the World Bank’s global counts.

Of course, people live longer and have healthier lives in rich countries. With only a few (and usually scandalous) exceptions, water is safe to drink, food is safe to eat, sanitation is universal, and some sort of medical care is available to everyone. Yet all these essentials of health are more likely to be lacking for poorer Americans. Even for the whole population, life expectancy in the United States is lower than we would expect given its national income, and there are places — the Mississippi Delta and much of Appalachia — where life expectancy is lower than in Bangladesh and Vietnam.

Beyond that, many Americans, especially whites with no more than a high school education, have seen worsening health: As my research with my wife, the Princeton economist Anne Case, has demonstrated, for this group life expectancy is falling; mortality rates from drugs, alcohol and suicide are rising; and the long historical decline in mortality from heart disease has come to a halt.

Assimilation and Service Required for Replacement Negroe Legitimacy

CounterPunch |  Why do we live in a society that thinks that it’s reasonable to ask someone to shoulder an adult’s responsibility at home, support themselves and perhaps other family members too, and go to school on top of that? And then why do we call them failures when that doesn’t work?

Some students receive financial aid to cover their tuition, but that doesn’t cover their other needs. It doesn’t keep them from working long hours, sometimes on the night shift, in order to make ends meet at home.

This year, some students have an added challenge.

Some are undocumented immigrants, brought here as children through no fault of their own. Obama allowed them to pay a fee in order to avoid deportation and legally work in the U.S. temporarily. Trump ended that program.

When students’ two year work permits run out, what will happen to them? Some students have had relatives, parents even, get deported.

Students who try to educate themselves in these conditions are heroes. We should make it easier, not harder, for them to devote themselves full time to study.

And we certainly shouldn’t discuss them as if they are human garbage who should be deported.

Bruh..., Telling Truth In Public Will Be The End Of You ...,

DailyCaller |  A California city councilman and high school history teacher at El Rancho High School in Pico Rivera, Calif, was caught on video disparaging the United States military and calling its members “dumbshits” who are not “high-level thinkers.”

Gregory Salcido is a current member of the Pico Rivera City Council.

Three profanity-laced videos surfaced on Facebook Friday of Salcido declaring to his students that members of the military are dumb people who joined because they were poor students and that they are the “lowest of our low” of the country.

“They’re the frickin’ lowest of our low,” Salcido can be heard saying.

Three video of Salcido’s comments were posted to Facebook by a family friend of the student who took it and they quickly went viral. The student, who wished to remain anonymous, is the son and nephew of military veterans and told the local paper, “It was so disrespectful to my dad and my uncles and all veterans and those still in the military.”

Throughout the three videos, Salcido can be heard using vulgar language to describe the military as failed students with no other options but to serve. “We’ve got a bunch of dumbshits over there. Think about the people who you know who are over there — your freaking stupid uncle Louis or whatever, they’re dumbshits. They’re not, like, high-level thinkers, they’re not academic people, they’re not intellectual people, they’re the freaking lowest of our low. Not morally, I’m not saying they make bad moral decisions, they’re not talented people,”

The Real Thought Police In Higher Ed

zeroanthropology  |  The “views” of the university are a mercantile fiction, a falsehood designed to mislead the public and to caress donors and politicians, the kinds of individuals who are apparently empty and infantile enough to believe that the winning arguments are those that are advanced in the absence of criticism. What if we taught our students that the best way to learn is to ignore whatever they do not like to hear? That is indeed what is being pushed, ironically under the signs of “tolerance” and “inclusion,” the usual neoliberal claptrap.  Thus we witness the university turned into a mere echo chamber for the comfortable, a safe space for moneyed elites to flatter themselves, creating a virtual world of unrivalled ideological purity, contrived harmony, and eternal hegemony.

Finally, messages from university administrators along the lines of “this does not represent the views of the university,” might serve an additional function, but I am just speculating. This might be a polite way of telling rabid members of the public to lay off. We heard you, yes it’s all quite disconcerting, and here is our little statement, now move along. Had universities with their bloated administrations and overt political leanings not wished to enhance their public profiles and represent themselves as quasi-media outlets, they would spare themselves such unnecessary exercises. In the end, pronouncements about “the views of the university” end up multiplying the damage to the university, both as a self-inflicted wounds within the university, and as a sign of intellectual cowardice in the face of bullies. A university administration that engages in such conduct has failed its first and most basic function: to administer university resources in order to facilitate teaching and learning.

Ostracism Is 3rd Wave Feminism's Weapon Of Choice

BostonGlobe  |  Is the doctrinaire left as dangerous to liberal democracy as the unified rule of the right? Certainly, the Trump-era Republican Party has the potential to do grave damage to democratic institutions and is already damaging liberal norms. But the academic left’s hostility to these norms should not be discounted, and its influence over progressive and Democratic dogma is only growing.

What’s more, left-wing campus politics also feed and empower the right. Stories of political correctness run amok, gleefully picked up by conservative media (and in some cases overblown), boost the perception of rampant hypersensitivity, speech policing, and anti-male and/or anti-white bias. New research by Georgia State University Ph.D. candidate Zack Goldberg confirms anecdotal reports that many Trump voters were at least partly motivated by concerns about political correctness.

Perhaps the real danger is that “social justice warriors” on the left are propping up Trumpism on the right, and vice versa. With each side spurring the other to action in a feedback loop, there will soon be little room left for anyone else.

South Africa A Clintonian Neoliberal Captured State

CounterPunch  |  After the ascendancy of Cyril Ramaphosa to the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) last month and his imminent replacement of Jacob Zuma as national president, it is vital to understand deep structural barriers that prevent South Africa’s achievement of desperately needed socio-economic justice.

The ideological shifts that took place in the ANC’s economic views from 1990 can only be described as breathtaking: from an explicitly redistributive approach, towards embracing the American ideologies of neoliberal globalism and market fundamentalism.

From 1990 Nelson Mandela and Harry Oppenheimer met regularly for lunch or dinner and the main corporations of the Minerals Energy Complex (MEC) met regularly with a leadership core of the ANC at Little Brenthurst, Oppenheimer’s estate. When other corporate leaders joined the secret negotiations on the future of the economic policy of South Africa, the meetings were shifted to the Development Bank of Southern Africa during the night.

Although I was involved in the ‘talks about talks’ from 1987 until 1989, I did not take part in the 1990-94 negotiation process. I have been told that at the time senior individuals attached to the Sanlam Group of corporations were very much against my involvement because of my preference for social-democratic capitalism.

During these meetings an elite compromise gradually emerged between white politicians and capitalists under the leadership of the MEC, a leadership core of the ANC, and American and British pressure groups.

From February 1990 until early 1992, all the ANC policy documents emphasised the need for ‘growth through redistribution’. But when a reworked economic document of the ANC entitled ‘Ready to Govern’ was published in May 1992, the phrase ‘growth through redistribution’ was conspicuously omitted. Since then the ANC has never again emphasised the need for a comprehensive redistribution policy.

The secret negotiations reached a climax in November 1993. At that stage South Africa was preparing for interim government by the Transitional Executive Council (TEC), which decided that South Africa needed a loan of $850 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The ‘statement on economic policies’ in the IMF deal committed the TEC to neoliberalism and market fundamentalism.

There can be little doubt that the secret negotiations between the MEC and a leadership core of the ANC were mainly responsible for the party’s ideological somersault. It was, however, not the influence of the MEC alone. There was also pressure and persuasion from Western governments, and from the IMF and World Bank, and global corporations. A large group of leading ANC figures received ideological training at American universities and international banks.

In the years after the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, an atmosphere of triumphalism reigned supreme in American political and economic circles: the ‘American economic model’ triumphed and every country in the world could only survive and prosper if it adapted as quickly and completely as possible to anti-statism, deregulation, privatisation, fiscal austerity, market fundamentalism and free trade.

PropOrNot A Clintonian NeoConservative Production

Washingtonsblog |  According to journalist Robert Parry “The people that will be taking senior positions and especially in foreign policy believe “This consensus is driven by a broad-based backlash against a president who has repeatedly stressed the dangers of overreach and the need for restraint, especially in the Middle East.”

Parry goes on to say that at the forefront of this is the Atlantic Council, a think tank associated with NATO. Their main goal is a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.”

So, to make sense of all this, most of the people listed would have held cabinet positions in a Hillary Clinton presidency. If the Interpreter is a project of RFE/RL then the decision to go ahead with Propornot would have to go across their desk. That includes then Sec of State, John Kerry.

The unasked question of why would a US Government Agency do this (?) needs to be addressed. All the people listed above were actively working for Clinton to get her elected and throw Donald Trump’s campaign off the rails.

After the election, they were going to take care of Clinton’s “deplorables” by dissecting alternative media. I wrote about this before the election and I warned several major new sites what they could expect. I was right on the money. After she lost, it was already in motion. The deplorable media didn’t fall into a particular political pattern other than they did not promote Hillary Clinton.

The purpose of Propornot has been to get people to demand freedom of speech be rolled back. This was/is to be done by destroying fact-based media. If you read further, the entire plan is laid out starting from 2015 when it started coming together.

These people want reality shaped on what the perceived majority (louder) group believes to be true, regardless of what the facts are. Perception based reality is only a Facebook like away from killing one person or elevating another to hero status regardless of what they have done.

Purely Unselfconscious And Utterly Fraudulent Neoconservative Intersectionality

thehill |  Conservative commentator Bill Kristol rips Fox News's Tucker Carlson in a new interview, saying his show could be "close now to racism" or "ethnonationalism." 

"I mean, it is close now to racism, white — I mean, I don't know if it's racism exactly — but ethnonationalism of some kind, let's call it. A combination of dumbing down, as you said earlier, and stirring people's emotions in a very unhealthy way," Kristol told CNBC's John Harwood in the interview published on Thursday.

Back from Israel, where you see "that inner freedom, that simple dignity" of "people who remember their heritage & are loyal to their fate."

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) June 4, 2016

Carlson recently questioned the widespread outrage over Trump's reported comments referring to Haiti, El Salvador and African nations as "shithole countries."

"So, if you say Norway is a better place to live and Haiti is kind of a hole, well anyone who’s been to those countries or has lived in them would agree. But we’re jumping up and down, ‘Oh, you can’t say that.’ Why can’t you say that?" Carlson asked.

Democrats Learned NOTHING Getting Their Asses Kicked By Trump

CounterPunch |  Even if Democrats take back the House and the Senate, women Resisters who fall the Dems’ co-option game hoping for “equal pay” and “equal rights” will be sorely disappointed. Not because Trump will get in the way — because Democrats won’t fight for anything substantial.

Consider the Democrat most Women’s Marchers probably voted for. Like the rest of her fellow Democrats, Hillary Clinton (a multimillionaire) supported raising the minimum wage to a pitiful $12 per hour. (If it had merely kept up with inflation, it would be $23 per hour now. Given increases in worker productivity, it ought to be at least $25 per hour.)

Nearly two-thirds of minimum-wage earners are women.

Clinton gets better-a-century-late-than-never cred for endorsing the long-stalled Equal Rights Amendment. But Democrats controlled the White House, House and Senate as recently as 2010 — and never mentioned it.

Even on the signature identity-politics issue of abortion rights, Democrats have long deployed a form of psychological terrorism against women. Unless you vote for us, they’ve been telling women, some Republican president might appoint a Supreme Court justice who might cast the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Women and their partners shouldn’t have to rely on a wobbly 45-year-old court decision. Why don’t Democrats ever propose a bill legalizing abortion nationwide? Considering that 58% of voters, including many Republicans, support abortion rights, and that Democrats could characterize Congressional opponents as misogynists in attack ads, it’s entirely possible that an abortion-rights law could pass Congress. They certainly could have tried under Obama. But they didn’t. Because Democrats don’t care about people. Democrats care about electing and collecting campaign donations for Democrats.

There is no reason — zero, none, nada — to believe that the Democratic Party’s half-century-old refusal to lift a finger to help the disenfranchised will change if and when they win back Congress. Which makes the squandering of the anti-Trump historical moment so tragic.

Resisting the Resistance

theintercept |  In his farewell address, President Barack Obama had some practical advice for those frustrated by his successor. “If you’re disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clipboard, get some signatures, and run for office yourself,” Obama implored.

Yet across the country, the DCCC, its allied groups, or leaders within the Democratic Party are working hard against some of these new candidates for Congress, publicly backing their more established opponents, according to interviews with more than 50 candidates, party operatives, and members of Congress. Winning the support of Washington heavyweights, including the DCCC — implicit or explicit — is critical for endorsements back home and a boost to fundraising. In general, it can give a candidate a tremendous advantage over opponents in a Democratic primary.

In district after district, the national party is throwing its weight behind candidates who are out of step with the national mood. The DCCC — known as “the D-trip” in Washington — has officially named 18 candidates as part of its “Red to Blue” program. (A D-trip spokesperson cautioned that a red-to-blue designation is not an official endorsement, but functions that way in practice. Program designees get exclusive financial and strategy resources from the party.) In many of those districts, there is at least one progressive challenger the party is working to elbow aside, some more viable than others. 

Outside of those 18, the party is coalescing in less formal ways around a chosen candidate — such as in the case of Pennsylvania’s Hartman — even if the DCCC itself is not publicly endorsing.

It’s happening despite a very real shift going on inside the party’s establishment, as it increasingly recognizes the value of small-dollar donors and grassroots networks. “In assessing the strength of candidates for Congress this cycle, we have put a greater premium on their grassroots engagement and local support, recognizing the power and energy of our allies on the ground,” said DCCC Communications Director Meredith Kelly. “A deep and early connection to people in the district is always essential to winning, but it’s more important than ever at this moment in our history.” The committee, meanwhile, has made major investments in grassroots organizing, field work and candidate training, which also represents a genuine change.

But change is hard, and it isn’t happening fast enough for candidates like King. So a constellation of outside progressive groups — some new to this cycle, some legacies of the last decade’s growth in online organizing — are stepping in, seeing explosive fundraising gains while the Democratic National Committee falls further and further behind. The time between now and July, by which most states will have held primaries, will be among the most important six months for the future of the Democratic Party, as the contests will decide what kind of party heads into the midterms in November 2018. The outcome will also shape the Democratic strategy for 2020, which in turn will shape the party’s agenda when and if it does reclaim power.

“We are proud to work with women, veterans, local job creators, and first-time candidates in their runs for Congress, whose records of service to our country and communities are being recognized – first and foremost – in the districts they aim to serve,” Kelly said.

Who Owns The Women's March...,

RollingStone |  A year removed from the Women's March, a lot has changed. Around the country, events marking the one year anniversary of the protests are focused on channeling their energy into political organizing. But the movement is more fractured than ever. Even the name – Women’s March – has become a bitter point of contention between the women who were the public face of last year's march in D.C. — Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, Bob Bland, Carmen Perez — and the organizers of sister marches around the country and the world.

A number of marches across the United States have received letters from Women's March Inc., protesting their use of the term "women’s march." As the New York Times reported earlier this week, Amber Selman-Lynn, a Mobile, Alabama-based organizer, received a letter from Women's March, Inc. requesting the name be removed from materials promoting the march. The letter said that while the group was "supportive of any efforts to build our collective power as women," they would prefer Selman-Lynn "not advertise your event as a ‘Women's March' action." At issue was Selman-Lynn's use of the slogan, "March on the Polls," created by another group with a similar agenda, March On, in her material. (She removed the name and had them re-printed.)

Many of the organizers of last year's local marches have chosen to incorporate independently – New York's march is being organized by Women's March Alliance, Corp.; Philadelphia’s by Philly Women Rally, Inc. – and some have chosen to affiliate with March On, an umbrella group that sprung up with the express purpose of connecting sister marches after last year's worldwide protest.

Part of the problem, according to Carolyn Jasik, a pediatrician new to activism who helped organize Women's Marches across California last year, is the fact that Women's March Inc. have empowered state coordinators who organized transport from states to the flagship march in D.C., rather than the local activists who organized events in their own communities.

"The local city leads have the best inroads into the community. So if boots on the ground were needed for an action, the city organizers were a lot more equipped to make that happen," Jasik says. After the march, as local groups were primed to get to work right away on issues in their communities, the national organization was still working to formalize a structure and acquire nonprofit status. "These first-time activist leaders needed urgent help with practical matters like legal advice on how to form a non-profit, website support, mailing list management, funding [and] merchandise."

Black People - #Resist/#MeToo IS NOT FOR YOU!

theintercept |  At what point did we settle upon this fulcrum, over which our options are empowerment or helpless victimhood? The answer, of course, is that some establishment, centrist feminists have leveraged positions in the media to determine the terrain of this fight for the rest of us.

They presume that at its best, a feminist movement is all about individual empowerment, as opposed to fighting patriarchal oppression. Only a narrow outlook of feminism could see these two things as coextensive or interchangeable. It’s a position that wants to see the status quo improved but not upended. In political terms, this view is at best a reformist strategy, articulating a position that power can be shared, that power structures can be joined without first being radically challenged and broken.

As journalist Halima Mansoor pointed out on Twitter, the line taken by Weiss and others, Banfield and Whoopi Goldberg among them, betrays the privilege of their position by condemning a woman — “Grace,” the pseudonym of the Ansari accuser — for failing to speak up and walk out when made to feel sexually uncomfortable and violated. “Privilege blinds people who have it to assume everyone else has the same power and therefore should react how they might,” Mansoor wrote.

This is the problem with empty calls for more “empowerment”: They show little to no interest in how power works.

#MeToo risked limitations from the outset, popularized as it was mostly by white, liberal celebrities and framed around the excavation of individualized narratives of trauma. Any movement dependent on an endless string of victim and survivor stories accusing well-known predators and perpetrators can only reach so far.

When the national farmworker women’s organization Alianza Nacional de Campesinas wrote an open letter to sexual assault survivors in Hollywood “on behalf of the approximately 700,000 women who work in the agricultural fields and packing sheds across the United States,” it was an invitation for mutual solidarity that goes further than the tony neighborhoods of Los Angeles and New York.

Invocations of “empowerment” are of little use to these women who face harassment and sexual violence in workplaces, relationships, and situations they feel structurally, emotionally, or financially unable to walk away from — something the attacks against Ansari’s accuser seem to miss.

Divisions have attended every aspect of the so-called resistance since its birth after Trump’s election. Indeed, they color the history of social movements. The lead-up to the Women’s March a year ago was riddled with tensions over privileged, liberal leadership and framing. The demonstration was originally announced under the banner “Million Women March,” until activists condemned the name as an appropriation of the 1997 mass march by black women in Philadelphia.

It was only when a diverse and radically progressive group of organizers, including Sarsour, People for Bernie’s Winnie Wong, transgender icon Janet Mock, and the Working Families Party’s Nelini Stamp developed the Women’s March “Unity Principles” that a vision for an intersectional political movement emerged. Migrants, sex workers, and other vulnerable women were highlighted for solidarity.

Trump Reveals Gerald Horne(Cathedral) and Max Boot(NeoCon) Synergy

unz |  Max Boot: Trump ‘making me feel like a foreigner’ in my own country

(CNN) Author and foreign policy analyst Max Boot feels President Donald Trump is making him feel like a “foreigner” in his own country.

“He’s making me feel like an outsider, a Russian, a Jew, an immigrant,” Boot told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

“Anything but kind of a normal mainstream American, because of the way that he is dividing us and balkanizing us and seems to be catering to this white nationalist agenda.” …

Boot said it was “especially chilling” to hear people like Steve Bannon and Steve Miller trying to change the character of the country by “saying we’re not a nation of immigrants.” 

And now from Foreign Policy, Mr. Invade-the-World/Invite-the-World himself, Max Boot, announced that Trump’s election has opened his eyes to White Privilege:

2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege

I used to be a smart-alecky conservative who scoffed at “political correctness.” The Trump era has opened my eyes.

BY MAX BOOT | DECEMBER 27, 2017, 1:55 PM

Max Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His forthcoming book is “The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam.”

In college — this was in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the University of California, Berkeley — I used to be one of those smart-alecky young conservatives who would scoff at the notion of “white male privilege” and claim that anyone propagating such concepts was guilty of “political correctness.” As a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, I felt it was ridiculous to expect me to atone for the sins of slavery and segregation, to say nothing of the household drudgery and workplace discrimination suffered by women. I wasn’t racist or sexist. (Or so I thought.) I hadn’t discriminated against anyone. (Or so I thought.) My ancestors were not slave owners or lynchers; they were more likely victims of the pogroms.

I saw America as a land of opportunity, not a bastion of racism or sexism. I didn’t even think that I was a “white” person — the catchall category that has been extended to include everyone from a Mayflower descendant to a recently arrived illegal immigrant from Ireland….

That last sentence is just bizarre: if you are claiming that “white” is a “catchall category” that has been “extended” to “include everyone” … and then as your examples of apparent polar opposites you come up with a Mayflower WASP and an Irishman … huh? What is going on in Max Boot’s head?