Precarity - Neofeudal Slave Nouveau

nakedcapitalism |  precarity is the result of the shift in the last couple of generations of business revenues away from workers and towards profits, or capital, if you prefer. And that most people are far too complacent about that because they have deeply internalized prevailing market/neoliberal ideology.

Robert Heilbroner identified this tendency in his 1988 book, Behind the Veil of Economics. A major focus was contrasting the source of discipline under feudalism versus under capitalism. Heilbroner argues it was the bailiff and the lash, that lords would incarcerate and beat serfs who didn’t pull their weight. But the lord had obligations to his serfs too, so this relationship was not as one-sided as it might seem. By contrast, Heilbroner argues that the power structure under capitalism is far less obvious:

This negative form of power contrasts sharply with with that of the privileged elites in precapitalist social formations. In these imperial kingdoms or feudal holdings, disciplinary power is exercised by the direct use or display of coercive power. The social power of capital is of a different kind….The capitalist may deny others access to his resources, but he may not force them to work with him. Clearly, such power requires circumstances that make the withholding of access of critical consequence. These circumstances can only arise if the general populace is unable to secure a living unless it can gain access to privately owned resources or wealth…

The organization of production is generally regarded as a wholly “economic” activity, ignoring the political function served by the wage-labor relationships in lieu of bailiffs and senechals. In a like fashion, the discharge of political authority is regarded as essentially separable from the operation of the economic realm, ignoring the provision of the legal, military, and material contributions without which the private sphere could not function properly or even exist. In this way, the presence of the two realms, each responsible for part of the activities necessary for the maintenance of the social formation, not only gives capitalism a structure entirely different from that of any precapitalist society, but also establishes the basis for a problem that uniquely preoccupies capitalism, namely, the appropriate role of the state vis-a-vis the sphere of production and distribution.

The bygone decade is marked by a radical change in relations between employers and employees. According to recent research by the Bank of England, the labour share of income in the last thirty to forty years significantly fell in the USA and in other advanced economies as well. The decline of influence of labour as well as new technologies adopted by big corporations have led to new forms of employment: mostly flexible, low-payed, unstable jobs that are underregulated by labour legislation.

The state of things in capital-labour relations with constant redistribution of wealth and power to capital owners is without exaggeration class warfare (an expression, with a good reason, constantly used by Bernie Sanders). Ideology is ready as a powerful weapon in this class war. Media, internet, books and experts strive to persuade workers that this state of insecurity is necessary, normal or even desirable. And the defenders of flexible and unstable jobs claim that this is objective logic of economy which has nothing to do with political decision-making.

 

Citizen My Ass - You are an Indebted Tenant of the Sovereign

theamericanconservative |  The REAL ID Act has been intensely controversial since its 2005 enactment in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and fiercely opposed by both conservatives and liberals. Twenty-five  states passed resolutions objecting to the law or signaling that they would not comply. The Electronic Frontier Foundation declared in 2007,  “A federal law that aims to conscript the states into creating a national ID system… is precisely the kind of scheme that the framers expected that federalism would guard against.” 

But the Department of Homeland Security has compelled submission by announcing that the Transportation Security Agency will prohibit Americans from flying unless they have either a REAL ID Act-approved driver’s license or a passport.  The Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the “‘constitutional right to travel from one State to another’ is firmly embedded in our jurisprudence.” But REAL ID Act policies have routinely scorned both the Bill of Rights and Supreme Court rulings. 

Most Americans do not possess passports, so federally-approved state driver’s licenses are becoming de facto internal passports. Almost a hundred million Americans do not have REAL ID-compliant identification, according to the U.S. Travel Association. In Minnesota, 11 percent of drivers still have licenses that will be rejected at TSA checkpoints starting on October 1. States and individuals are chaotically scrambling to meet the law’s shifting demands. Twitter is echoing with howls of people who spend hours at motor vehicle administration offices only to have their paperwork rejected because of picayune quibbles. 

But the REAL ID law poses perils far beyond the airport entrance. Maryland began issuing REAL ID driver’s licenses in 2009. In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security notified the state that its REAL ID licenses were invalid unless Maryland snared more documents for each driver. More than half a million drivers remain at risk for losing their licenses.  

TheWashington Post reported in August that 8,000 Maryland licenses have been suspended. Three months earlier, MVA announced that 66,300 people were at risk of having their driver’s license or identification cards revoked for failure to comply with MVA demands.  As Maryland ramps up enforcement, the number of suspended licenses is probably far higher now but MVA spokespersons failed to respond to repeated press inquiries seeking the latest number. Maryland police are seizing the license of any driver who they stop whose only offense was failure to hustle to show Maryland bureaucrats their birth certificate, passport, utility bills, Social Security card, or other proof of their identity. 

Since the 2005 enactment of the REAL ID Act, the federal government has helped bankroll the license plate scanner networks  that permit tracking any driver on the roads in many parts of the nation. If Maryland decides to target people who received cancellation notices, there are almost 500 license plate scanners deployed in police cars and elsewhere in the state that compile almost half a billion scans of driver’s per year. If the order is given to use the scanners, a thousand people a day could be stripped of their licenses and potentially arrested. MVA spokespersons failed to respond to inquiries about whether license plate scanners may be used for enforcing REAL ID compliance demands.

U.S. Foreign Policy: Weaponizing Fascism for "Democracy"

yasha.substack |  When I launched Immigrants as a Weapon back in September, I argued that America had done more to promote the far-right around the world than any other country on earth. I wasn’t exaggerating. America really is the biggest and most active player in the field — the biggest by far. 

Even a cursory look at modern American history shows that promoting nationalism and backing far-right emigre groups has been a major plank of American foreign policy going back to the very end of World War II. This mixture of covert and overt programs and initiatives was first deployed to fight the Soviet Union and left-wing political movements but has over the years touched down all over the globe — wherever America has some sort of geopolitical interest, including modern capitalist states like Russia and China. One of these nationalism weaponization initiatives — which targeted the USSR for destabilization in the 70s and 80s — was how a Soviet kid like me ended up in San Francisco as a political refugee.

This history is important. Without it, it’s impossible to understand the mechanics of our reactionary foreign policy today — whether in China or with our “strategic partner” Ukraine, a country that’s at the center of today’s impeachment show.

There are all sorts of possible entry points into this story. I guess I could go all the way back to America’s support for the White Russians against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War. But for now I’d like to start at the very end of World War II — when this approach was just beginning to crystalize as a distinct strategy inside America’s foreign policy apparatus.

Uh.., Vote Counting Isn't Exactly Rocket Science

williammarble |  A surprising fact about the 2016 election is that Trump received fewer votes from whites with the highest levels of racial resentment than Romney did in 2012. This fact is surprising given studies that emphasize “activation” of racial conservatism in 2016—the increased relationship between vote choice and racial attitudes among voters. But this relationship provides almost no information about how many votes candidates receive from individuals with particular attitudes. To understand how many votes a voting bloc contributes to a candidate’s total, we must also consider a bloc’s size and its turnout rate. Taking these into account, we find that Trump’s most significant gains came from whites with moderate attitudes about race and immigration. Trump’s vote totals improved the most among swing voters: low-socioeconomic status whites who are political moderates. Our analysis demonstrates that focusing only on vote choice is insufficient to explain sources of candidate support in the electorate.

A surprising fact about the 2016 election is that Donald Trump received fewer votes from whites with high levels of racial resentment than Mitt Romney did in 2012. We estimate that, nationwide, Romney received 18.3 million votes from whites in the highest quintile of racial resentment (defined using the 2012 distribution of racial resentment), 8.2 percent of the2012 voting eligible population, while Trump received 12.4 million votes from individuals in the highest quintile, 5.4 percent of the 2016 voting eligible population.1This translated into fewer net votes for Trump: his advantage over Clinton among individuals with the highest levels of racial resentment was smaller than Romney’s advantage over Obama by 3.4 million votes.

Trump saw this decrease in support even though whites who turned out to vote and had high levels of racial resentment voted for Trump at higher rates than they chose Romney. But there was also a shift in attitudes: fewer whites had high levels of racial resentment in 2016than in 2012 (Engelhardt, 2019; Hopkins and Washington, 2019; DeSante and Smith, 2019)and there was an overall decline in turnout. As a result, there were fewer racial-conservative whites to cast their vote for Trump in the voting booth. So, even though these voters selected Trump at a higher rate once they turned out to vote, the higher rate of support for Trump was not enough to overcome the change in the distribution of attitudes and the change in turnout rates across elections.

This fact might seem particularly surprising in light of a social science literature that has focused on vote choice, conclusively showing that attitudes about race and ethnicity were the most “activated” in 2016 relative to 2012 (Sides, Tesler and Vavreck, 2019; Mutz, 2018;Reny, Collingwood and Valenzuela, 2019).2

Hegemonic Han N+1 and N-1 Equals PHUK EVERYONE and Must Not be Tolerated...,

nature |  A laboratory in Wuhan is on the cusp of being cleared to work with the world’s most dangerous pathogens. The move is part of a plan to build between five and seven biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs across the Chinese mainland by 2025, and has generated much excitement, as well as some concerns.

Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping, and the addition of a biological dimension to geopolitical tensions between China and other nations. But Chinese microbiologists are celebrating their entrance to the elite cadre empowered to wrestle with the world’s greatest biological threats.

“It will offer more opportunities for Chinese researchers, and our contribution on the BSL‑4-level pathogens will benefit the world,” says George Gao, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology in Beijing. There are already two BSL-4 labs in Taiwan, but the National Bio-safety Laboratory, Wuhan, would be the first on the Chinese mainland.

The lab was certified as meeting the standards and criteria of BSL-4 by the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment (CNAS) in January. The CNAS examined the lab’s infrastructure, equipment and management, says a CNAS representative, paving the way for the Ministry of Health to give its approval. A representative from the ministry says it will move slowly and cautiously; if the assessment goes smoothly, it could approve the laboratory by the end of June.

BSL-4 is the highest level of biocontainment: its criteria include filtering air and treating water and waste before they leave the laboratory, and stipulating that researchers change clothes and shower before and after using lab facilities. Such labs are often controversial. The first BSL-4 lab in Japan was built in 1981, but operated with lower-risk pathogens until 2015, when safety concerns were finally overcome.

The expansion of BSL-4-lab networks in the United States and Europe over the past 15 years — with more than a dozen now in operation or under construction in each region — also met with resistance, including questions about the need for so many facilities.

The Wuhan lab cost 300 million yuan (US$44 million), and to allay safety concerns it was built far above the flood plain and with the capacity to withstand a magnitude-7 earthquake, although the area has no history of strong earthquakes. It will focus on the control of emerging diseases, store purified viruses and act as a World Health Organization ‘reference laboratory’ linked to similar labs around the world. “It will be a key node in the global biosafety-lab network,” says lab director Yuan Zhiming.

What Dirty MF's DO DO With Today's Surveillance Technology

commentarymagazine |  Obama’s FBI and former intelligence-community leaders kept open an investigation into Trump after that investigation yielded exculpatory evidence. Following Trump’s election, Comey, Brennan, and a host of Obama national-security officials weaponized the allegations against Trump by becoming pundits themselves on cable news channels and suggesting by their very presence that they had inside information about the Trump-Russia conspiracy—information they did not have. With few exceptions, members of Congress and the press who should have scrutinized their false assertions acted as an echo chamber to amplify them.

Is it any wonder that no Republican voted to impeach Trump in the House on the Ukraine matter? This cannot just be explained away as political and moral cowardice. It’s a response to the failure of the party leading the impeachment to acknowledge the falsehood of its initial conspiracy theory about Russia.

But it also must be said that this debacle is not evidence of a deep-state coup, as so many on the right have alleged. There are two important reasons for this. First, there is no singular “deep state.” 

Horowitz also showed in his report that there were FBI agents at the New York field office who were rooting for Trump. Certainly the key deep-state figure here would be James Comey—and if he were, why would he have mortally damaged the campaign of Trump’s rival 10 days before the election by briefly reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server? In any case, the “deep-state” theory suggests there is a governmental hive mind, an unelected bureaucracy that runs things while officials like Comey sit on top, clueless and imagining themselves powerful.

You can see how the “deep-state” theory might let the actual saboteurs off the hook. Comey, McCabe, Brennan, and others had a mix of motivations for making the decisions that they did. To say they were acting on behalf of an unelected bureaucracy is to absolve them.

The deep-state theory also leads those who espouse it to overreact. If the institutional rot is this profound, then why not eliminate the FBI and CIA altogether? But that’s a bit like calling for the abolition of a police department after a brutality scandal. The country needs spies and lawmen to protect us against real foreign threats. The problem with the Trump-Russia investigation is that at the moment the investigators were receiving exculpatory evidence, the false collusion theory became the hottest story in the world. And that happened because the most important evidence the FBI leadership believed was true was also briefed to media.

This should never happen again. And, in normal times, it would not have happened. Journalists would have maintained their initial skepticism about the dossier. FBI lawyers would have been more vigilant about including exculpatory information in the Page surveillance warrant. Congressional leaders would have been more restrained in publicly questioning the loyalty of Americans who worked for a rival political campaign. Former intelligence officials would not have deployed innuendo to imply that the legitimately elected president of the United States was a traitor.

But Trump was perceived to be such a threat to the republic that resistance was required. That resistance became a permission structure to break longstanding rules and norms. Just consider Clinesmith, the FBI attorney who altered an email from the CIA to make it appear that Carter Page was not assisting the agency when he really was. In a footnote, Horowitz quotes an instant message from Clinesmith to a colleague the day after Trump won the election in 2016. “I am so stressed about what I could have done differently,” he wrote. Two weeks later he tapped out a message that ended with “Viva le [sic] resistance.”

It’s rare that law-enforcement scandals involve officials who acknowledge bad motives to themselves. They are almost always the result of cops and lawyers who justify their infractions and misconduct as a necessary means to a more noble end. From Comey to Clinesmith, the investigators responsible for the Russia investigation really believed that Trump was a unique threat to the republic and that they were justified in taking the steps that they did. The problem is that their theory about Trump and Russia was wrong, and the shortcuts they took to prove the theory true blinded them from seeing their folly sooner.

That folly has deformed our politics. Now, in 2020, voters are faced with a choice between two parties led by conspiracy theorists and gaslighters. Instead of saving America from Trump, the Resistance may have reelected him.

Imagine if These Dirty MF's Had Had Today's Surveillance Technology at Their Disposal

commondreams |  After the FBI took to Twitter Monday with a message that allegedly aimed to honor "the life and work" of Martin Luther King Jr., a chorus of critics promptly urged the bureau to "sit this one out," pointing to its history of spying on King and trying to convince the civil rights leader to kill himself.

Each year on the national holiday dedicated to King, progressives criticize and work to counter the whitewashed public narrative of a man who, particularly in the years leading up to his April 1968 assassination, passionately condemned the "evils" of capitalism, militarism, and racism.

The FBI, during both the Obama and Trump administrations, has provoked a wave of criticism for posting shoutouts to King on social media, given the bureau's past treatment of him. Monday was no different.

Some critics expressed anger and disbelief. Rewire.News senior legal analyst Imani Gandy wrote in response to the FBI, "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

Journalist David Corn posed "a sincere question," asking: "Has the FBI ever apologized to King's family for wiretapping King, blackmailing him, and trying to get him to commit suicide?"

Crawford also noted that "the FBI's surveillance of black Americans isn't just history. [In 2018], we learned the FBI has been spying on black activists, labeling them 'Black Identity Extremists.' The feds also use powers obtained through national security laws like the Patriot Act to target people in the racially biased drug war."

"More disturbing: The FBI that spied on King and today classifies Black civil rights activists as 'extremists,'" Crockford continued, "is now partnering with Big Tech to amass unprecedented surveillance powers that history has taught us will be used to target communities of color, religious minorities, dissidents, and immigrants."

FBI director Christopher Wray testified before Congress in July 2019 that the bureau has stopped using the term "black identity extremism." However, some groups and individuals on Monday shared critiques of the FBI's current practices alongside denunciations of the bureau's past behavior.

The London-based advocacy group CAGE, which works to empower communities impacted by the War on Terror, tweeted Monday that the FBI still tries "to suppress dissent" and uses "dirty tactics that would make Edgar Hoover proud. But [is] happy now to co-opt MLK to try to cover up the above."

Only the Hard and Strong May Call Themselves Spartans, Only the Hard, Only the Strong...,

Summit |  Drag queen Kitty Demure posted a viral video in which he expressed his amazement at why ‘woke’ parents are allowing their kids to be around drag queens, asking, “Would you want a stripper or a porn star to influence your child?” 

Demure questioned why drag queens had attracted so much “respect” from the left given that they’ve done little more than “put on make-up, jump on the floor and writhe around and do sexual things on stage.”

“I have absolutely no idea why you would want that to influence your child, would you want a stripper or a porn star to influence your child?” he asked.

Demure went on to point out that drag queens perform in clubs for adults and that backstage “there’s a lot of sex, nudity and drugs, so I don’t think this is an avenue you would want your child to explore.”

“To get them involved in drag is extremely irresponsible on your part,” Demure told parents, adding that many went along with it to appear “cool” or “woke” to their leftist friends.

“You can raise your child to be just a normal regular everyday child without including them in gay, sexual things,” said Demure.

Calling Things By Their Real Names

charleshughsmith | In last week's explanation of why the Federal Reserve is evil, I invoked the principle of calling things by their real names, a concept that drew an insightful commentary from longtime correspondent Chad D.:

Thank you, Charles, for calling out the Fed for their evil ways. We have to properly name things before we can properly address them. I would add that the Fed's endless creation of "money" to hand out to connected bankers (not all bankers) is just one facet of the evil. The evil also manifests itself as extraordinary political-economical power in a system that allows legalized bribery disguised as free speech.

One does not need money to speak/write to convey one's thoughts, but what money does allow is the drowning out of speech of those without money by those with a lot of money. In essence, the ultra-rich (i.e. the top .01%) get a huge megaphone to blare their thoughts, many of which are deliberately used to disorient and confuse the common man through the major media and so-called higher institutions of learning. Hence, we get common folk actively fighting for policies and laws that are against their own personal interests, such as promoting "free trade" agreements that are really managed trade agreements, whereby domestic workers are forced to complete with workers in other countries who make a pittance and are not protected by labor or environmental laws.

These agreements are part of a legal, yet unjust, framework that gives unfair, competitive advantages to large, multinational businesses at the expense of their smaller domestic and international competitors, which includes the abridgment of basic rights to settle disputes in a real court of law, not some kangaroo arbitration process with biased "judges".

And we must not forget the bailouts, lack of prosecution for economic crimes, such as fraud and monopolistic and deceptive trade practices, and tax loopholes, all of which are bought in one way or another from the compromised "representatives" and "public servants" within the system.

Trump Impeached for Interfering with A System of "Woke, Self-Serving, Lying and Looting"

mattstoller.substack |  If the goal of economics were to ascertain truthful views about the world, if economics were as its proponents offer, a ‘science,’ then one would remark on the lack of self-policing within the profession. Of course, given that there is limited self-policing at best and the top practitioners in the field are routinely wrong about fundamental questions, we can conclude that uncovering truth may be an incidental outcome of the practice of economics, but it is certainly not the goal of the discipline.

Methodological Biases in Economics

There are three main problems with economics as a ‘science’ that can guide public policy choices. The first is that it is a post-mortem discipline. Economists often assert we need data before drawing conclusions. Economist Thomas Phillipon noted this in his book on the institutional basis of markets that an economist was like that of Sherlock Holmes, asserting ‘data data data, I cannot make bricks without clay.” And yet, there was no data in 2000 when the U.S. changes its policies vis-a-vis China, because the consequences were in the future. There’s nothing wrong with being a study of the past that has a specific quantitative framework, as long as there is a genuine acknowledgment that there’s no science here and projections have no scientific validity whatsoever. 

The second is that using economics to make judgments about the world can be extraordinarily costly and exclusionary. This may or may not be a big deal when considering macro-economic forecasting, but when economics becomes a key part of institutional legal arguments it shades who can use the law to protect their rights. For example, showing that someone robbed me by breaking into my house requires evidence and common sense. But bringing an antitrust lawsuit showing someone robbed me by excluding me from a market often requires millions in economics consulting services. If you don’t have that money, the law becomes meaningless.

The third is that an obsession with quantifying leads to political control by those who have access to data. A well-known example is famous economist Alan Krueger, who was paid by Uber and then wrote widely circulated scholarship based on internal Uber data about the corporation’s wage setting terms. But it’s broader than just one company, most of the big tech platforms work with economists, giving these powerful corporate entities a measure of political control over lines of research. Beyond tech, it’s actually quite hard to get information on a whole host of practices in the economy. For example, the Trump administration had to battle hospitals just to get them to disclose their official price list for different procedures (which isn’t even real considering the extent of secret discounts and rebates throughout the industry).

Meanwhile, McClatchy Started Some McCarthy-ite Isht With My Favorite Local Radio Station...,

kansascity |  A Kansas City area radio station can broadcast Russian state-owned media programming, the type that U.S. intelligence called a “propaganda machine,” for six hours a day through a lease agreement struck by a local radio operator.

RM Broadcasting LLC, a Florida-based company that has agreements to broadcast the Russian state media program Radio Sputnik, reached a deal on Jan. 1 to lease air time through Alpine Broadcasting Corp. in Liberty. Alpine Broadcasting Corp. broadcasts on three frequencies in the Kansas City area: KCXL 1140 AM, 102.9 FM and 104.7 FM. 

The lease agreement lets RM Broadcasting air its programming from 6 to 9 a.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. seven days a week. KCXL’s website, which says that it’s the radio station that will “tell you the things that the liberal media wont (sic) tell you,” lists Radio Sputnik in its morning programming.

A 2017 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that evaluated Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election described Sputnik as “another government-funded outlet producing pro-Kremlin radio and online content in a variety of languages for international audiences.”

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article239359868.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

Sputnik, along with Russian television outlet RT — formerly Russia Today — “contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences,” the DNI intelligence assessment said. 

Those descriptions were part of a larger set of findings by the Director of National Intelligence that said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign during the 2016 elections that sought to undermine public faith in the U.S. election process, denigrate Hillary Clinton and promote Donald Trump.

RM Broadcasting is run in Florida by a man named Arnold Ferolito. He disputed the government’s assessment of Radio Sputnik.

“Ninety percent of the programming is generated right here in the United States,” Ferolito told The Star in an interview.

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article239359868.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article239359868.html#storylink=cpy

Spartans Showed Up in Athens Yesterday and Demonstrated Self-Discipline AHOO! HOO! HOO!

BaltimoreSun | Thousands of mostly white men — many decked out in camouflage and armed with assault-style rifles — packed Richmond’s streets Monday, circling the gun-free Capitol Square, where thousands more waved signs and listened to speeches, all wanting to make one point: They weren’t going anywhere, and their gun rights shouldn’t either.

“I think there’s an assault on the Second Amendment,” said 60-year-old Richmond resident Danny Tumer, who was standing in line to get into the grounds at 6:30 a.m.

Tensions have been building across the state since Democrats gained a majority in the legislature and vowed to enact tighter gun control laws following the May mass shooting in Virginia Beach. As lawmakers filed bills to limit handgun purchases and require universal background checks, gun owners packed local government chambers, demanding localities not enforce any legislation they considered an infringement on their Second Amendment rights.

Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, had placed Richmond under a state of emergency prior to the event, saying the annual Virginia Citizens Defense League lobby day and rally Monday — which was also Martin Luther King Jr. Day — had drawn the attention of militia and out-of-state groups who have come to “intimidate” and “cause harm."

He banned weapons from statehouse grounds, and anyone who wanted to be on Capitol Square had to pass through metal detectors and have their bags searched, causing lengthy lines. Many protesters wore orange stickers with the words “Guns SAVE Lives.”

Throughout the morning, the overwhelmingly pro-gun crowd, many from out of state, remained peaceful. There were only small groups of counter-protesters. Officials estimated 6,000 people were inside Capitol square, with another 16,000 outside the gates.

Only one person, a 21-year-old woman, was arrested, according to officials who ran the Twitter page VACapitol2020. She was charged with wearing a mask in public after police asked her multiple times to adjust the bandanna around her face.

Many of the participants left on charter buses by 2 p.m.

Localism in the 2020's

libertyblitzkrieg |  Contrary to popular opinion, I think a loss of faith in Washington D.C. and its institutions is entirely rational and healthy. Maintaining faith in something due to tradition or the fumes of hope won’t lead to anything productive, rather, it’s preferable to honestly assess the reality of whatever situation you’re in and reorient your worldview and priorities accordingly.

Whether the issue relates to above the law criminal bankers, a Federal Reserve which systematically funnels free money to the already wealthy and powerful, the societal dominance of free speech and privacy-despising tech giant monopolies, or the national security state’s undeclared forever wars for empire, there’s no good reason to maintain any faith in the federal government and the oligarchs/special interests who control it.

Philosophically speaking, I’ve come to conclude the only way to truly have self-government where community life reflects the desires and needs of the people who live there is by concentrating decision making at the local level. I’ve become increasingly interested in the general idea of localism not just because I agree with it in theory, but because it seems more and more people will begin to gravitate toward this perspective and life strategy out of necessity and frustration.

Rather than groveling to Washington D.C., grassroots movements should focus more on the local level where community can be built and things can get done to reflect the desires of the people living there. The entire notion of a one-size fits all approach to virtually all aspects of life dictated via laws passed by corrupt egomaniacs in the swamp is certifiably deranged.

Bidens Corrupt AF!!!

NYPost |  Political figures have long used their families to route power and benefits for their own self-enrichment. In my new book, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,” one particular politician — Joe Biden — emerges as the king of the sweetheart deal, with no less than five family members benefiting from his largesse, favorable access and powerful position for commercial gain. In Biden’s case, these deals include foreign partners and, in some cases, even U.S. taxpayer dollars.

The Biden family’s apparent self-enrichment involves no less than five family members: Joe’s son Hunter, son-in-law Howard, brothers James and Frank, and sister Valerie.

When this subject came up in 2019, Biden declared, “I never talked with my son or my brother or anyone else — even distant family — about their business interests. Period.”

As we will see, this is far from the case…

 oe Biden’s younger brother, James, has been an integral part of the family political machine from the earliest days when he served as finance chair of Joe’s 1972 Senate campaign, and the two have remained quite close. After Joe joined the U.S. Senate, he would bring his brother James along on congressional delegation trips to places like Ireland, Rome and Africa.

When Joe became vice president, James was a welcomed guest at the White House, securing invitations to such important functions as a state dinner in 2011 and the visit of Pope Francis in 2015. Sometimes, James’ White House visits dovetailed with his overseas business dealings, and his commercial opportunities flourished during his brother’s tenure as vice president.

The Virginia Gun Rights Conflict

alt-market |  In my article 'Trump Impeachment And The Civil War Scenario', I warned that conservatives and leftists are being pushed to the brink of a shooting war using various methods of social manipulation and 4^th Gen warfare, and that this conflict, if dictated by gatekeepers of the false Left/Right paradigm, would only benefit establishment elites in the long run. Internal division among the public is designed to keep us at each other's throats while losing focus on the real enemies.

Hard line democrats and the social justice cult are merely a symptom of the disease, they are not the source of the disease. However, I also acknowledge that the rift between conservatives and the political left has become so extreme that reconciliation is almost impossible. War might be unavoidable, and the globalists love it. If they can pretend like they had nothing to do with creating tensions, and if conservatives are so blinded by anger against Democrats that they refuse to admit that some of their own political leaders (including Trump) have been co-opted, the elites win.

The danger in any civil war is that BOTH sides end up being manipulated and controlled, and that the situation is maneuvered towards an outcome that only serves the interests of a select few.

Virginia may be a test bed, a trial run for a nationwide conflagration, and if it does hit a point where state officials compel a violent response from the citizenry, then it is important that liberty advocates remain vigilant and steer clear of incompetent or controlled leaders. It is also important that they remember there is a much larger agenda at play here; the Democrats may be useful idiots fueling that agenda, but most of them are oblivious to their role. Our fight is not with the Democrats, our fight is with the globalists that influence them; the same globalists that are trying to influence us.

First and foremost we have to address the propaganda, because all wars begin first in the public consciousness.  The current situation in Virginia remains a battle of political rhetoric and “fluid” interpretations of the law. Here are the arguments I've seen from the political left so far on the issue of 2^nd Amendment Sanctuaries:

AOC Still Cute, But This Plump, Pasty, Gun-Grabbing Ginger Here...., Really?

dcist |  A planned gun rally in Richmond, Va. on Monday has prompted Governor Ralph Northam to declare a state of emergency in the commonwealth’s capital, citing “credible intelligence” that many of the demonstrators “may be armed, and have as their purpose not peaceful assembly but violence, rioting, and insurrection.” Northam instituted a temporary ban on firearms on State Capitol grounds in anticipation of the demonstration.

But he’s not the only Virginia politician fearful that the protests slated for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in Richmond could result in a dangerous clash like the fatal Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017.

Facing a series of death threats, Manassas Delegate Lee Carter says he will spend Monday at a safe house instead of the state house, as first reported by Gen.

The threats against Carter—a Democratic Socialist first elected in 2017—also show how an echo chamber of conspiracy theories that begin as social media posts get laundered into mainstream outlets like the Wall Street Journal, and can ultimately lead to real-world peril.

Monday’s rally is a tradition for the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a pro-gun group that lobbies each year in Richmond on Martin Luther King Jr. Day while bearing arms. But this year, a large number of armed militia groups have pledged to join the rally. Northam tweeted that “intelligence suggests militia groups and hate groups, some from out of state, plan to come to the Capitol to disrupt our democratic process with acts of violence.”

At least some of the people who say they’re coming have described it as a “boogaloo,” a word used by the far-right to describe a violent civil war, according to the Daily Beast. This morning, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested three suspected members of a neo-Nazi hate group who were considering going to Virginia’s capital for the rally and had more than 1,500 rounds of rifle ammunition, per prosecutors, the New York Times reported.

As these protesters get ready to descend on Richmond, Carter is planning to be at an undisclosed location amid concerns over his safety.

“People were threatening to murder me and murder my family over something I’m not even doing,” Carter tells DCist from Richmond on Wednesday evening. “These threats are more hateful and more numerous than anything I’ve seen before. I mean, I’m the only socialist elected to a legislature in the south, so I do occasionally get waves of death threats—about every two three months it’ll happen—but this one is far larger and far more serious than anything I’ve seen before by orders of magnitude.” Carter has reported the threats to the Virginia Capitol Police.

Could a Hypothetical Cult Operate Without an ACTUAL Public Accountant?

pogo |  KPMG had been performing disastrously on inspections conducted by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), and it was under pressure to improve. In the annual inspections, the oversight board scrutinizes a sample of the audits that major accounting firms perform on companies listed on U.S. stock markets. Advance word of which audits the PCAOB planned to inspect would give KPMG an edge.

On Sweet’s first day at the firm, over lunch at a posh Mediterranean restaurant, KPMG brass pumped him for information on the PCAOB’s inspection plans. His second day on the job, in a tête-à-tête in an executive conference room, as Sweet recalled, his boss’s boss referred to the uneasiness Sweet had shown divulging such information and told him he needed to remember where his paycheck came from. His fourth day on the job, while Sweet and his new boss, Thomas Whittle, walked back to the office from lunch at a Chinese restaurant, Sweet told Whittle that he knew which audits the oversight board planned to inspect that year—and that he had taken PCAOB documents with him.

That evening, “Thomas Whittle came by my office where I was sitting and he leaned against the door and asked me to give him the list,” Sweet testified.

Brian Sweet was part of a pipeline that funneled confidential information from KPMG’s prime regulator to KPMG.

The conspiracy took Washington’s notorious revolving door to a criminal extreme. According to the Justice Department, KPMG partners hired PCAOB employees, pumped them for inside information on the oversight board’s plans, and then exploited it to cheat on inspections. Meanwhile, PCAOB employees angled for jobs at KPMG and divulged regulatory secrets to the audit firm.

The case has led to a series of convictions and guilty pleas—and a $50 million administrative fine against KPMG. It also laid bare inner workings of the revolving door in detail seldom seen.

Beyond the conduct labeled as criminal, in little-noticed testimony the case revealed a series of side contacts between senior KPMG partners and top officials of the PCAOB—one, or in some cases two, members of its five-member governing board. The low-profile meetings at locations such as the Capital Hilton, which is steps from the PCAOB’s Washington headquarters, gave KPMG leaders a preview of questioning they would later face at periodic meetings with the full board.

But all of that is just part of a larger picture: The supposedly independent regulator is inextricably tied to the industry it oversees, a Project On Government Oversight (POGO) investigation found.

Q-Anon and "The Cult" Strike Me As Distractions...,

americanthinker |  If you’re unfamiliar with Q or only know it through the media’s attacks, I’d like to provide a brief introduction to this extraordinary phenomenon. I’ve followed Q since the first drop, and I’ve grown increasingly impressed by the accuracy, breadth and depth of Q’s messages. Q followers were prepared long in advance for the easing of hostilities with North Korea, the deflation of the mullahs of Iran, and the discovery of Ukraine as a hotbed of corruption for American politicians. They knew a great deal about Jeffrey Epstein’s activities before the public did and anticipate even more shocking revelations to come. As Q likes to say, “Future proves past.” As Q’s predictions come true, they lend retroactive credibility to the entire enterprise.

Q’s followers believe that Q is a military intelligence operation, the first of its kind, whose goal is to provide the public with secret information. Many Q followers think the Q team was founded by Admiral Michael Rogers, the former Director of the National Security Agency and former Commander of US Cyber Command.  Some suspect that Dan Scavino, White House Director of Social Media, is part of the team, because the high quality of Q’s writing has the luster of a communications expert.

Q is a new weapon in the game of information warfare, bypassing a hostile media and corrupt government to communicate directly with the public. Think of Q as a companion to Trump’s twitter. Whereas Trump communicates bluntly and directly, Q is cryptic, sly and subtle, offering only clues that beg for context and connection.

Here’s the way it works: Q posts messages (also known as “drops” or “crumbs”) on an anonymous online forum, which are discussed, analyzed, and critiqued by the board’s inhabitants. (The forum has changed a few times after massive online attacks.) Hundreds of social media accounts then spread Q’s latest posting to worldwide followers who share their research, analysis, and interpretations of Q’s latest information.

Human Supremacy Alert : Urgently Repeating Myself for Slow Cats...,

PNAS |  Most technologies are made from steel, concrete, chemicals, and plastics, which degrade over time and can produce harmful ecological and health side effects. It would thus be useful to build technologies using self-renewing and biocompatible materials, of which the ideal candidates are living systems themselves. Thus, we here present a method that designs completely biological machines from the ground up: computers automatically design new machines in simulation, and the best designs are then built by combining together different biological tissues. This suggests others may use this approach to design a variety of living machines to safely deliver drugs inside the human body, help with environmental remediation, or further broaden our understanding of the diverse forms and functions life may adopt.  

ABSTRACT

Living systems are more robust, diverse, complex, and supportive of human life than any technology yet created. However, our ability to create novel lifeforms is currently limited to varying existing organisms or bioengineering organoids in vitro. Here we show a scalable pipeline for creating functional novel lifeforms: AI methods automatically design diverse candidate lifeforms in silico to perform some desired function, and transferable designs are then created using a cell-based construction toolkit to realize living systems with the predicted behaviors. Although some steps in this pipeline still require manual intervention, complete automation in future would pave the way to designing and deploying unique, bespoke living systems for a wide range of functions.

Most modern technologies are constructed from synthetic rather than living materials because the former have proved easier to design, manufacture, and maintain; living systems exhibit robustness of structure and function and thus tend to resist adopting the new behaviors imposed on them. However, if living systems could be continuously and rapidly designed ab initio and deployed to serve novel functions, their innate ability to resist entropy might enable them to far surpass the useful lifetimes of our strongest yet static technologies. As examples of this resistance, embryonic development and regeneration reveal remarkable plasticity, enabling cells or whole organ systems to self-organize adaptive functionality despite drastic deformation (1, 2). Exploiting the computational capacity of cells to function in novel configurations suggests the possibility of creating synthetic morphology that achieves complex novel anatomies via the benefits of both emergence and guided self-assembly (3).

Currently, there are several methods underway to design and build bespoke living systems. Single-cell organisms have been modified by refactored genomes, but such methods are not yet scalable to rational control of multicellular shape or behavior (4). Synthetic organoids can be made by exposing cells to specific culture conditions but very limited control is available over their structure (and thus function) because the outcome is largely emergent and not under the experimenter’s control (5). Conversely, bioengineering efforts with 3D scaffolds provide improved control (6⇓–8), but the inability to predict behavioral impacts of arbitrary biological construction has restricted assembly to biological machines that resemble existing organisms, rather than discovering novel forms through automatic design.

Meanwhile, advances in computational search and 3D printing have yielded scalable methods for designing and training machines in silico (9, 10) and then manufacturing physical instances of them (11⇓–13). Most of these approaches employ an evolutionary search method (14) that, unlike learning methods, enables the design of the machine’s physical structure along with its behavior. These evolutionary design methods continually generate diverse solutions to a given problem, which proves useful as some designs can be instantiated physically better than others. Moreover, they are agnostic to the kind of artifact being designed and the function it should provide: the same evolutionary algorithm can be reconfigured to design drugs (15), autonomous machines (11, 13), metamaterials (16), or architecture (17).

Here, we demonstrate a scalable approach for designing living systems in silico using an evolutionary algorithm, and we show how the evolved designs can be rapidly manufactured using a cell-based construction toolkit. The approach is organized as a linear pipeline that takes as input a description of the biological building blocks to be used and the desired behavior the manufactured system should exhibit (Fig. 1). The pipeline continuously outputs performant living systems that embody that behavior in different ways. The resulting living systems are novel aggregates of cells that yield novel functions: above the cellular level, they bear little resemblance to existing organs or organisms.

EVERY Machine is Vulnerable to Unadvertised Behaviors (I Don't Play Guitar, I Play Electricity)

lareviewofbooks |  The past two decades have brought two interrelated and disturbing developments in the technopolitics of US militarism. The first is the fallacious claim for precision and accuracy in the United States’s counterterrorism program, particularly for targeted assassinations. The second is growing investment in the further automation of these same operations, as exemplified by US Department of Defense Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, more commonly known as Project Maven.

Artificial intelligence is now widely assumed to be something, some thing, of great power and inevitability. Much of my work is devoted to trying to demystify the signifier of AI, which is actually a cover term for a range of technologies and techniques of data processing and analysis, based on the adjustment of relevant parameters according to either internally or externally generated feedback

Some take AI developers’ admission that so-called “deep-learning” algorithms are beyond human understanding to mean that there are now forms of intelligence superior to the human. But an alternative explanation is that these algorithms are in fact elaborations of pattern analysis that are not based on significance (or learning) in the human sense, but rather on computationally detectable correlations that, however meaningless, eventually produce results that are again legible to humans. From training data to the assessment of results, it is humans who inform the input and evaluate the output of the algorithmic system’s operations.

When we hear calls for greater military investments in AI, we should remember that the United States is the overwhelmingly dominant global military power. The US “defense” budget, now over $700 billion, exceeds that of the next eight most heavily armed countries in the world combined (including both China and Russia). The US maintains nearly 800 military bases around the world, in seventy countries. And yet a discourse of US vulnerability continues, not only in the form of the so-called war on terror, but also more recently in the form of a new arms race among the US, China and Russia, focused on artificial intelligence.

The problem for which algorithmic warfare is the imagined solution was described in the early 19th century by Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, and subsequently became known as the “fog of war.” That phrase gained wider popular recognition as the title of director Errol Morris’s 2003 documentary about the life and times of former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. In the film, McNamara reflects on the chaos of US operations in Vietnam. The chaos made one thing clear: reliance on uniforms that signal the difference between “us” and “them” marked the limits of the logics of modern warfighting, as well as of efforts to limit war’s injuries.

Was the Real Cause of Physics Winter 1990 Immigration Reform?

iai |  In the foundations of physics, we have not seen progress since the mid 1970s when the standard model of particle physics was completed. Ever since then, the theories we use to describe observations have remained unchanged. Sure, some aspects of these theories have only been experimentally confirmed later. The last to-be-confirmed particle was the Higgs-boson, predicted in the 1960s, measured in 2012. But all shortcomings of these theories – the lacking quantization of gravity, dark matter, the quantum measurement problem, and more – have been known for more than 80 years. And they are as unsolved today as they were then.

The major cause of this stagnation is that physics has changed, but physicists have not changed their methods. As physics has progressed, the foundations have become increasingly harder to probe by experiment. Technological advances have not kept size and expenses manageable. This is why, in physics today, we have collaborations of thousands of people operating machines that cost billions of dollars.

With fewer experiments, serendipitous discoveries become increasingly unlikely. And lacking those discoveries, the technological progress that would be needed to keep experiments economically viable never materializes. It’s a vicious cycle: Costly experiments result in lack of progress. Lack of progress increases the costs of further experiment. This cycle must eventually lead into a dead end when experiments become simply too expensive to remain affordable. A $40 billion particle collider is such a dead end.

The only way to avoid being sucked into this vicious cycle is to choose carefully which hypothesis to put to the test. But physicists still operate by the “just look” idea like this was the 19th century. They do not think about which hypotheses are promising because their education has not taught them to do so. Such self-reflection would require knowledge of the philosophy and sociology of science, and those are subjects physicists merely make dismissive jokes about. They believe they are too intelligent to have to think about what they are doing.

The consequence has been that experiments in the foundations of physics past the 1970s have only confirmed the already existing theories. None found evidence of anything beyond what we already know.

But theoretical physicists did not learn the lesson and still ignore the philosophy and sociology of science. I encounter this dismissive behavior personally pretty much every time I try to explain to a cosmologist or particle physicists that we need smarter ways to share information and make decisions in large, like-minded communities. If they react at all, they are insulted if I point out that social reinforcement – aka group-think – befalls us all, unless we actively take measures to prevent it.

Do We REALLY Have a Long Way to Go and a Short Time to Get There?

bbc |  At the start of the 2010s, one of the world leaders in AI, DeepMind, often referred to something called AGI, or "artificial general intelligence" being developed at some point in the future. 

Machines that possess AGI - widely thought of as the holy grail in AI - would be just as smart as humans across the board, it promised. 

DeepMind's lofty AGI ambitions caught the attention of Google, who paid around £400m for the London-based AI lab in 2014 when it had the following mission statement splashed across its website: "Solve intelligence, and then use that to solve everything else."

Several others started to talk about AGI becoming a reality, including Elon Musk's $1bn AI lab, OpenAI, and academics like MIT professor Max Tegmark. 

In 2014, Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, went one step further with his book Superintelligence. It predicts a world where machines are firmly in control.

But those conversations were taken less and less seriously as the decade went on. At the end of 2019, the smartest computers could still only excel at a "narrow" selection of tasks. 

Gary Marcus, an AI researcher at New York University, said: "By the end of the decade there was a growing realisation that current techniques can only carry us so far."

He thinks the industry needs some "real innovation" to go further.

"There is a general feeling of plateau," said Verena Rieser, a professor in conversational AI at Edinburgh's Herriot Watt University. 

One AI researcher who wishes to remain anonymous said we're entering a period where we are especially sceptical about AGI. 

"The public perception of AI is increasingly dark: the public believes AI is a sinister technology," they said. 

For its part, DeepMind has a more optimistic view of AI's potential, suggesting that as yet "we're only just scratching the surface of what might be possible".

"As the community solves and discovers more, further challenging problems open up," explained Koray Kavukcuoglu, its vice president of research.

"This is why AI is a long-term scientific research journey.

"We believe AI will be one of the most powerful enabling technologies ever created - a single invention that could unlock solutions to thousands of problems. The next decade will see renewed efforts to generalise the capabilities of AI systems to help achieve that potential - both building on methods that have already been successful and researching how to build general-purpose AI that can tackle a wide range of tasks."

Human Supremacy - A New Political Axis of Man's Possible Development?

jacobin |  Populism involves the exclusion of elements from society not considered a part of the “people,” usually cultural “others” and the ambiguously defined “elites” or “anti-nationals.” A nationalist populist discourse, as in the Indian case, differentiates between who belongs to the nation and who does not. Hindutva’s “people” is imagined as a religious and ethno-cultural Hindu community which excludes Muslims and liberal elites.

In addition to delimiting the authentic “people,” this form of populism typically relies on a leader who claims to be the sole representative of the people and the embodiment and authority of the popular will. Modi is a paradigmatic example of such a leader.

At an event hosted by the Indian diaspora in Houston, the “Howdy Modi?” rally, Modi’s answer to the rhetorical question was revealing: “Modi is nothing by himself. I am only a common man working on the orders of 1.3 billion people. So, when you ask, ‘Howdy Modi?’ I can only answer, ‘everything in Bharat is good.’” Despite the pretensions of humility, Modi understands the populist logic well: to ask the question how is Modi is precisely to ask how is the nation.

Additionally, this form of populism is a political style which involves a whole repertoire of staged, mediatized performances by the leader that are transmitted to wider audiences through media. Part of the performative rhetoric of such populist leaders centers around some kind of a pervasive crisis or threat. With Modi and the BJP, there is ever present specter of “Urban-Naxals,” “terrorists,” “anti-nationals,” “Tukde-Tukde Gang,” and “Khan Market Gang,” all of whom are portrayed as trying to undermine the integrity of the nation, and in effect polluting the purity of the people.

These Are Novel Living Machines

telegraph | The world’s first living robots have been built using stem cells from frog embryos, in a strange machine-animal hybrid that scientists say is an ‘entirely new life-form.’

Dubbed ‘xenobots’ because they are constructed of biological material taken from the Xenopus laevis frog, the little bots are the first to be constructed from living cells.

Researchers are hopeful they could be programmed to move through arteries scraping away plaque, or swim through oceans removing toxic microplastic.

And because they are alive, they can replicate and repair themselves if damaged or torn.

“These are novel living machines,” said Dr Joshua Bongard, a computer scientist and robotics expert at the University of Vermont, who co-led the new research.

“They're neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It's a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism.”

Living organisms have often been manipulated by humans in the past, right down to their DNA code, but this is the first time that biological machines have been built completely from scratch.

Scientists first used the Deep Green supercomputer cluster at the University of Vermont to create an algorithm that assembled a few hundred virtual skin and heart cells into a myriad forms and body shapes, for specific tasks.

Based on the blueprints, a team of biologists from Tufts University, Massachusetts, then assembled the cells into living bots, just one millimetre wide.