Blinken's Stepfather Samuel Pisar Was Robert Maxwell's Attorney

Turley  |  This week, Blinken was implicated in a political coverup that could well have made the difference in the 2020 election. According to the sworn testimony of former acting CIA Director Michael Morrell, Blinken – then a high-ranking Biden campaign official – was “the impetus” of the false claim that the Hunter Biden laptop story was really Russian disinformation. Morrell then organized dozens of ex-national security officials to sign the letter claiming that the Hunter laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Morrell further admitted that the Biden campaign “helped to strategize about the public release of the statement.”

Finally, he admitted that one of his goals was not just to warn about Russian influence but “to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election.”

Help it did. Biden claimed in a presidential debate that the laptop story was “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan.” Biden used the letter to say “nobody believes” that the laptop is real.

In reality, the letter was part of a political plan with the direct involvement of his campaign, but Biden never revealed their involvement. Indeed, over years of controversy surrounding this debunked letter, no one in the Biden campaign or White House (including Blinken) revealed their involvement.

Of course, the letter was all the media needed. Discussion of the laptop was blocked on social media, and virtually every major media outlet dismissed the story before the election.

That was also all Biden needed to win a close election. The allegations that the Biden family had cashed in millions through influence peddling could have made the difference. It never happened, in part because of Blinken’s work.

Once in power, Blinken was given one of the top Cabinet positions. He was now one of the “made” men of the administration.

He was not alone. The 2016 election was marred by false allegations of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. Unlike the influence peddling allegations made against Biden, the media ran with those stories for years. It later turned out that the funding and distribution of the infamous Steele dossier originated with the Clinton campaign. The campaign, however, reportedly lied in denying any such funding until after the election. It was later sanctioned for hiding the funding as legal expenses.

Those involved in spreading this false story were rewarded handsomely. For example, the second collusion story planted in the media by the campaign concerned the Russian Alfa Bank. The campaign used key Clinton aide Jake Sullivan, who went public with the entirely false claim of a secret back channel between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

Sullivan was also a “made” man who was later made Biden’s national security adviser. Others who were implicated in either the Steele dossier or Alfa Bank hoaxes also later found jobs in the administration. The Brookings Institution proved a virtual turnstile for these political operatives.

Many signatories on the Russian disinformation letter continue to flourish. MSNBC analyst Jeremy Bash signed the letter and was put on the president’s Intelligence Advisory Board. As with Sullivan, it did not seem to matter that Bash had gotten one of the most important intelligence stories of the election wrong.

Former CIA head James Clapper was referenced by Biden on the letter and was also a spreader of the Russian collusion claims. Despite those scandals and a claim of perjury, CNN gave him a media contract.

They are all “made” men in the Beltway, but they could not have succeeded without a “made” media.

The DNC Email Leak And The Murder Of Seth Rich

moonofalabama  |   Last week we learned a new fact about the DNC email leak in 2016 and of the events that likely led to the killing of Seth Rich.

A quite aggressive Wikipedia page discusses the Murder of Seth Rich:

The murder of Seth Rich occurred on July 10, 2016, at 4:20 a.m. in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Rich died about an hour and a half after being shot twice in the back. The perpetrators were never apprehended; police suspected he had been the victim of an attempted robbery.

The 27-year-old Rich was an employee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and his murder spawned several right-wing conspiracy theories, including the false claim, contradicted by the law enforcement branches that investigated the murder, that Rich had been involved with the leaked DNC emails in 2016. It was also contradicted by the July 2018 indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence agents for hacking the e-mail accounts and networks of Democratic Party officials and by the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion the leaked DNC emails were part of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Fact-checking websites like PolitiFact, Snopes, and FactCheck.org stated that the theories were false and unfounded. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post wrote that the promotion of these conspiracy theories was an example of fake news.

Well, that is not what really had happened.

Yes, Seth Rich worked as IT administrator for the Democratic National Committee. He was a fan of Bernie Sanders. During the 2016 primaries DNC functionaries did their best to work against Bernie Sanders and for Hillary Clinton. To make that public Seth Rich collected an archive of all DNC emails, copied it onto an USB stick and looked for someone who would publish them.

UPDATE 20:00 UTC

The former British ambassador Craig Murray said that he was given the USB stick by an intermediary of a disgusted Democratic whistleblower and brought it from Washington DC to Wikileaks which eventually published the emails. The data involved were not only from the DNC but also from Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta:

WikiLeaks made the DNC messages public in July and the incriminating emails from Podesta were published in October. The messages predominantly showed that DNC officials were bent on sabotaging the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders in favor of Hillary Clinton. Murray insisted that the information was leaked and not hacked by Russia.

“Neither of the leaks came from the Russians. The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks…leakers were motivated by disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders.”

/End Update/

Craig Murray did not mention Seth Rich. Up to last week we did not know if Seth Rich really made contact with Wikileaks.

But we did know that the DNC was never 'hacked' by anything Russia. The date/timestamps of the leaked files were consistent with local copying and inconsistent with an internet transfer. The company Crowdstrike which was hired to protect the DNC's networks and which did an investigation into the case never observed an actual 'Russian' hack or any data exfiltration from the DNC network. As ITwire wrote in May 2020:

The controversial American security firm CrowdStrike, which was called in to investigate the alleged Russian hack of DNC servers in 2016, had no proof that any emails from the system had been exfiltrated despite public assertions that this had occurred, according to the transcript of an interview released by the US Government a few days ago.

The transcript was from an interview conducted with CrowdStrike's president of services and chief security officer Shawn Henry by the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in December 2017, but only released to the US Special Counsel Robert Mueller who conducted a two-year inquiry into alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential poll.

While the exfiltration of emails from the DNC server has been accepted as a proven fact, Henry's answers to queries from committee members make it clear that this was definitely not the case.

In one typical exchange, Henry was asked, "What about the emails that everyone is so, you know, knowledgeable of? Were there also indicators that they were prepared but not evidence that they actually were exfiltrated?" To this Henry responded, "There's not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There's circumstantial evidence - but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated."

PolitiFact, Snopes and FactCheck.org are, unsurprisingly, wrong with their assertions.

Where My Nashville Shooter Manifesto At?!?!?!

NYPost  |  Nashville shooter Audrey Hale’s manifesto is a “blueprint on total destruction” which the FBI are stalling releasing, according to local politicians, who describe its contents as “astronomically dangerous”.

Almost a month after Audrey Hale, who identified as transgender, killed six at the city’s Covenant elementary school before being shot by police authorities have yet to release a motive or any of the writings seized from her home, despite growing pressure.

Rep. Tim Burchett, (R-Tenn.) told The Post he knew the FBI was behind the delay, saying the news was “disappointing” and calling for documents to be released to grieving loved ones as well as members of Congress.

The manifesto “could maybe tell us a little bit about what’s going on inside of her head,” he added. “I think that would answer a lot of questions.”

Twenty journals, five laptops, a suicide note and various other notes written by Hale were seized from the house she shared with her parents as well as two memoirs, five Covenant School yearbooks and seven cellphones, according to a search warrant.

Metro Nashville Council Member Courtney Johnston confirmed to The Post the FBI has already ruled the manifesto would not be released any time soon.

“What I was told is, her manifesto was a blueprint on total destruction, and it was so, so detailed at the level of what she had planned,” she said, when reached by phone.

“That document in the wrong person’s hands would be astronomically dangerous,” she added.

Where My Hunter Biden Tax And Gun Charges At?!?!?!

 cnbc  |  Federal prosecutors have considered charging Hunter Biden with three tax crimes and a charge related to a gun purchase, said two sources familiar with the matter.

The possible charges are two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for one year of taxes, and the gun charge, also a potential felony.

Two senior law enforcement sources told NBC News about “growing frustration” inside the FBI because investigators finished the bulk of their work on the case about a year ago. A senior law enforcement source said the IRS finished its investigation more than a year ago.

The Washington Post previously reported that federal investigators believed they had gathered enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with tax crimes and a false statement related to a gun purchase.

The decision on which charges to file, if any, will be made by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who was appointed by President Donald Trump and retained by the Biden administration to continue the Hunter Biden investigation. There are no indications a final decision has been made, said the two sources familiar with the matter.

The IRS Criminal Investigation division, the Justice Department, the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware and attorneys for Hunter Biden declined to comment.

Politicizing The Moment For Everything It's Worth

NYTimes  |  “I think what they’re missing is just how much this impacts a lot of us who exist while Black,” said Mr. Lucas, a Democrat, who has been mayor of this city of 508,000 people since 2019.

“The immediate answer anybody wants to have is, ‘Yeah, we’re a great place,’” Mr. Lucas said. He added: “I think we’re a wonderful place. But I think we’ve got a hell of a lot of things that we should confront to be the best place we can be.”

“If you live in a privileged part of town, a less privileged part of town may as well be across an ocean,” said Jason Kander, a former Missouri secretary of state who lives in Kansas City and who is white. He said his city “remains a place that is defined by the old-school red line,” and a failure to replicate the economic growth seen in largely white parts of town in mostly Black neighborhoods.

Old dividing lines have blurred some over the decades as Black families have moved west of Troost or north of the river, and the city’s record on race is complicated. Mr. Lucas is the third Black mayor of a city that remains majority white, and its first Black mayor, Emanuel Cleaver, now represents the area in Congress. 

But in interviews across Kansas City, residents described a place where progress has been uneven. Michele L. Watley, who lives in Midtown, said racism in the city was sometimes overt, like the time someone called the police on her after wrongly suggesting that she was stealing from a store. But often, she said, the bias was more subtle.

“It’s almost like this veil of nicety and smiles that kind of overlays microaggressions and all kinds of crazy stuff,” said Ms. Watley, who is Black and the founder of Shirley’s Kitchen Cabinet, a nonprofit organization that seeks to empower Black women.

At a Kansas City community center, Deja Jones, who is white, said she had noticed that her fiancé, who is Black, regularly faced racism around town, including once when she was in the car with him and parked close to a building to drop something off.

Is It Fox4News? Is It Because He's Wayciss?

kansascity | A grandson of the man charged with shooting a Black teen in Kansas City’s Northland last week said he was “appalled” and “disgusted” at his grandfather’s actions and is thankful Ralph Yarl is recovering.

“I was horrified. I thought it was terrible,” Klint Ludwig said of his immediate reaction to hearing about the shooting of the 16-year-old. “It was inexcusable. It was wrong.

“I stand with Ralph, and really want his family to achieve justice for what happened to them. Their child or grandchild or nephew’s life was fundamentally changed forever, over a mistake and someone being scared and fearful.”

Andrew D. Lester, 84, shot Yarl twice — including once in the head — when Yarl accidentally went to the wrong house on Thursday night while trying to pick up his younger brothers. Lester, a white man who police say shot Yarl after the teen rang Lester’s doorbell, was charged Monday with first-degree assault and armed criminal action. He surrendered to authorities on Tuesday, was released on $200,000 bond and pleaded not guilty Wednesday during his first court appearance.

The shooting sparked a national conversation on race and guns.

“I feel terribly for him,” Ludwig, 28, said of Yarl. “And I’m really glad that he’s doing OK, he’s going to live. I know his life is changed forever. And I’m really sorry.”

Ludwig, who lives in the Kansas City area, told The Star on Wednesday that he also was disgusted at the way authorities handled the case.

Another grandson of Lester’s said he thinks characterizing the shooting as a hate crime is inaccurate.

Daniel Ludwig, 30, of Kansas City — who is Klint’s older brother — said he did not believe race played a role in the shooting.

“It’s just sad and I wish it didn’t happen,” Daniel Ludwig told The Star. “It seems like a bunch of mistakes in a row that resulted in a tragedy. I mean, a lot of mistakes all the way around, unfortunately.”

Daniel Ludwig said he believed his grandfather would not have fired had Yarl not “gone for the door.” It was clear, he said, that the shooting did not unfold “for no reason.”

“If you look at the affidavit, there were actions taken that caused it,” he said, later adding: “My grandpa’s side isn’t being reported.”

Yarl, however, told police he was “immediately” shot after simply ringing the doorbell.

Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney representing the Yarl family, said Yarl “never” put his hand on Lester’s door and did not try to enter the home.

“Mind you, touching the door in and of itself wouldn’t be enough to justify the use of deadly force,” he said Wednesday. “Ralph rang the doorbell and waited quietly outside until the door was open.”

Earlier this week, Clay County Prosecuting Attorney Zachary Thompson said there was a “racial component” to the shooting, though he did not elaborate. Civil rights and faith leaders have called for Lester to additionally face federal hate crime charges.

A nephew of Lester’s told The Star Wednesday evening that his uncle was a “decent man.”

“I really didn’t know what to think when I heard about this,” said Dean Smith, of Jewell Ridge, Virginia. “It just kind of shocked me. You don’t expect something like that.”

Smith said Lester was home alone because his wife had been in a rehab facility.

“They were trying to get her health back before she came home,” he said.

He said he believed Lester was scared when he heard the doorbell ring late at night.

“Eighty-four years old, living by himself.”

Smith said it would “be hard for me to believe” that Lester is racist.

“He’s worked with so many people,” he said. “He’s been a supervisor and all, over different races. He’s just a really straightforward, everyday person. He was just retired military, trying to get on with life.”

 

 

Next Day, Less Than Half A Mile From The HUGE KCPD Garrison At 27th & Prospect...,

kmbc  |  33-year-old Ahmad Simmons was shot and killed at 37th and Prospect on the morning of April 15. His murder happened two blocks away and a few hours after another homicide at 35th and Prospect.

A father and community activist is hoping to put rumors to rest one week after his son was killed at 37th and Prospect.

That area has seen a lot of violence recently, prompting Kansas City Police to step up patrols. Last week alone, Kansas City, Missouri, police reported more than 30 gunfire incidents where more than 200 rounds were fired.

Mark your calendars for next Thursday, Sept. 23! The KCPD Explorer Program is open to youth ages 14-20 interested in careers in Law Enforcement. They are having an open house at East Patrol Division in the Community Room. Text "EXPLOREKC" to 41444 to RSVP! pic.twitter.com/jU80INDa94

— kcpolice (@kcpolice) September 15, 2021

Ahmad Simmons, 33, was shot and killed at 37th and Prospect on the morning of April 15. His murder happened two blocks away and a few hours after another homicide at 35th and Prospect.

His father says it was senseless and there was no reason for his son to die.

“When you speak about him, you speak about the ultimate kid that you would want to have,” Thomas Simmons said. “People right now are generally in disbelief, you know, who would kill the Taco Man?"

The 33-year-old was known for his food truck and his heart.

“You can kill people, but you can't kill who they were,” Thomas Simmons said. “This is a legacy, I'm sure, is going to live for years and years and years.”

Darren Faulkner works with KC Common Good – a nonprofit organization working to address the root causes of violence. He said Simmons’ death was likely a retaliation after the murder at 35th and Prospect a few hours earlier.

"There had been some rumors put out in the community that this was a gang hit,” Faulkner said. “Because of this rumor that was put out in the community, another person died. An innocent person died."

Faulkner said that rumor is all that it is, and the community needs to know that.

"I feel like that was part of the narrative that needed to be told to keep this from becoming even a worse situation than it is,” Faulkner said.

Simmons is hopeful other families will not have to feel his same pain.

"He's going to be missed. I mean, greatly missed by not only the people, his family. I mean, I'm sure this whole community,” Thomas Simmons said.

Thomas Simmons also said his son had never been in a gang.

 

Did You Know That The Day After Old Man Lester Shot Young Boy Yarl....?

fox4kc  |  Eight days after five people were shot at a Kansas City, Missouri gas station, video of that shooting is circulating and community leaders are voicing their concern.

One of the victims was under five years old. A new video shows the chilling moments when that gunman starts shooting.

“Fear, anger, concern, it’s very terrifying and the fact that residents and neighborhoods are plagued with this kind of violence. It’s unacceptable and we have to do something about it,” Darren Faulkner, the program manager with KC Common Good said.

The owner of the gas station told FOX4 he has seen a 50 percent decline in business since last Friday’s shooting.

“Historically in Kansas City, gun violence goes up during the summer months June, July and August and we’ve seen such a spike—it seems like—already,” Faulkner said.

Because of that shooting and the ones that followed near the area of 35th and Prospect, the Kansas City Missouri Police Department had to increase patrols in the area.

Darren Faulkner says the problem is getting worse and there needs to be action that addresses the root causes.

“These are issues that are deeply rooted in the lack of something; the lack of knowledge, the lack of education, the lack of resources, the lack of finances, the lack of whatever. This is deeply rooted in the lack of.”

If you have any information that can help the police, you’re asked to reach out to the Kansas City Missouri Police Department.

 

 

Alissa Heinerscheid Gets That Richly Deserved Foot In Her Silly Ass...,

adage  |  Anheuser-Busch InBev has changed marketing leadership for Bud Light in the wake of controversy over the brand sending a can to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney with her face on it.

Alissa Heinerscheid, marketing VP for the brand since June 2022, has taken a leave of absence, the brewer confirmed, and will be replaced by Todd Allen, who was most recently global marketing VP for Budweiser.

Heinerscheid did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

The brewer has also streamlined its marketing function to reduce layers “so that our most senior marketers are more closely connected to every aspect of our brand’s activities,” a company spokesperson said in a statement, adding that “these steps will help us maintain focus on the things we do best: brewing great beer for all consumers, while always making a positive impact in our communities and on our country.”

The statement noted that “we communicated some next steps with our internal teams and wholesaler partners,” adding that “we made it clear that the safety and welfare of our employees and our partners is our top priority.”

Snopes/MSNBC Pretended That Annheuser Busch Didn't Fail With Dylan Mulvaney Promotion

Snopes-MSDNC  |   There was no evidence to support the claim of a causal link between the calls for a Bud Light boycott in April 2023 and the company's financial standing. Snopes reached out to Anheuser-Busch's but we did not hear from the company as of this writing. We will update this story when, or if, that changes.

There was no demonstrable connection between the above-outlined statistics and conservative calls to stop buying Bud Light, just one of Anheuser-Busch's many products. As with all stocks, multiple factors affect market changes, such as political climate, competition, etc. – not just consumer behavior.

Experts said that such market declines are common. For example, the value of AB InBev BUD shares was $58.05 on Feb. 10, 2023, went up to $62.08 on March 3, and then declined to $59.78, on March 7. "[Such] declines are historically not unusual," wrote Dan Hunt, senior investment strategist at Morgan Stanley. 

Similarly, Nicole Goodkind of CNN Business explained companies make more comebacks from declines than the other way around. "The 14 bull markets since 1932 have returned 175% on average, while the 14 bear markets starting in 1929 have resulted in an average loss of 39%, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices data," Goodkind wrote.

In reality, as of this writing, the financial impact of the protest remains unknown. There was no financial data to determine if, or to what extent, the calls to stop buying Bud Light had impacted Anheuser-Busch's market value. A MarketWatch piece explained:

For now, there's no hard data on the financial fallout of the Bud Light protest. But the brand, analysts say, had already become less relevant in the U.S. to both beer drinkers and to Budweiser's parent company, Belgium-based AB InBev BUD.

The MarketWatch piece said "the impact of any right-wing backlash could be eclipsed by a broader slowdown in the beer industry as inflation cuts into consumer purchases, craft beer becomes a barroom staple and brewers crank out a seemingly endless rotation of sours and hazy IPAs that more or less taste the same."

Meanwhile, a satirical and demonstrably false assertion surfaced online that another Anheuser-Busch beer, Budweiser, had lost $800 million in one day. Snopes fact-checked other satirical claims that surfaced about the alleged effects of the boycott on Anheuser-Busch, as well.

 

Everywhere You Look Ukronazis Like Roaches In The Biden Political Kitchen

saraacarter  |  Secretary of State Antony Blinken is being investigated by the Committee on the Judiciary and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for his prominent role in persuading 51 former intelligence officials to falsely discredit the “New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop as supposed Russian disinformation” during the 2020 Presidential election. The intelligence assessment led to a nearly blanket censorship of investigative stories exposing the alleged corruption of President Joe Biden and his family and kept the truth hidden from the American people before the election, according to a letter released Thursday night by the committees and obtained by SaraACarter.com.

During the campaign, Blinken was a senior campaign advisor to then former Vice President Joe Biden and recruited the direct assistance of then former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael Morell, who was one of the 51 signatories of the public statement. Biden used this false letter signed by former senior intelligence officials, including five former heads of the CIA, from both parties, on October 22, 2020 to disparage President Donald Trump During the final presidential debate.

Biden used the intelligence assessment that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation against President Trump during the campaign. Despite legitimate calls by Trump to have the FBI investigate Biden’s deeply concerning family business ties with China and Ukraine, as well as other allegations contained in the laptop that did belong to his son Hunter Biden, the Biden campaign used its connections within the intelligence apparatus to cover up the evidence, the truth and keep it from the American people.

Biden used the assessment signed by the intelligence officials to target Trump during the campaign’s last debate.

“They have said this has all the characteristics—four—five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani,” said Biden during the debate and reiterated in Jordan’s letter to Blinken. 

The committees letter was sent to Blinken on Thursday and it contains transcribed parts of a recent interview the lawmakers had with Morell.

 

No One Fucks With A Biden

 

jonathanturley  |  “No one f**ks with a Biden.” That statement by President Joe Biden last year to a Florida mayor seems more than just a boast this week after a whistleblower at the Internal Revenue Service surfaced. The Wall Street Journal reported that a career IRS Criminal Supervisory Agent has alleged preferential treatment given to Hunter Biden in tax investigations. The whistleblower also alleges that he or she has information that contradicts the testimony of “a senior Biden political appointee.”

The timing of the letter itself was notable. For years, the Democratically controlled committees blocked any investigation into allegations of corruption and influence peddling by the Biden family. Before the takeover by the Republicans in the House, this whistleblower would have had little reason to seek protection from a Committee with demonstrably little interest in such allegations.

In fairness to the Democrats, both parties have used their power to shield presidents or political allies. However, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has now uncovered an array of new facts that are shedding light on what could be one of the largest influence peddling efforts in history.  For a city where influence peddling is a virtual cottage industry, that is saying a lot. Even in this premier league of corruption, the Biden family is the G.O.A.T.

Just this week, Chairman Comer revealed that new financial documents show six additional Biden family members may have benefited from foreign payments. That brings the total to nine Biden family members who appear on suspicious transactions or bank records. The identity of these family members and the underlying payments remain unclear, but the past disclosures of alleged influence peddling by Hunter Biden and his uncle James warrant full investigation.

The Bidens have long counted on an enabling media to tamp down coverage of corruption allegations. The most remarkable effort was successfully burying the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election. The Bidens were able to get the media to buy into the effort. For many reporters, even the acknowledgment of this corruption would be a self-indictment of their own lack of curiosity and integrity.

Yet, there has also been a notable lack of perceptible movement in any of the investigations of the Bidens.  Take the investigation of David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware. Weiss is looking into an array of possible crimes, including tax violations, unlawful work as a foreign agent, unlawful foreign transactions and other offenses. Many of these crimes are relatively easy to investigate but the investigation has moved at a glacial pace.

There is ample evidence of Hunter working for foreign entities without registering as a foreign agent — a crime that the Justice Department used liberally against other defendants like Trump’s former campaign chair, Paul Manafort. There are also clearly false statements used by Hunter in relation to his possession of a handgun that appear undeniable.

However, years have passed without any indictment from Weiss or any state counterpart. At the same time, Attorney General Merrick Garland has steadfastly ignored the obvious basis for the appointment of a special counsel despite repeated references to the President as an intended recipient of influence peddling proceeds.

Weaponizing Free Speech: Picking On Old Negroes Nostalgic For The 60's and 70's...,

caitlinjohnstone  |  The superseding indictment containing these charges consists of a lot of verbal gymnastics to obfuscate the fact that the DOJ is prosecuting US citizens for speech and political activities in the United States which happen not to align with the wishes of the US government. The grand jury alleges that the aforementioned Ionov “directed” these Americans to “publish pro-Russian propaganda” and “information designed to cause dissention in the United States,” which is about as vague and amorphous an allegation as you could possibly come up with.

For the record Omali Yeshitela, the founder and chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party and one of the four Americans named in the indictment, has adamantly denied ever having worked for Russia. Earlier this month before charges were brought against him, the Tampa Bay Times quoted him as saying, “I ain’t ever worked for a Russian. Never ever ever ever. They know I have never worked for Russia. Their problem is, I’ve never worked for them.”

But it’s important to note that this should not matter. Under the First Amendment the government is forbidden to abridge anyone’s freedom to speak however they want and associate with whomever they please, which necessarily includes being as vocally pro-Russia as they like and promoting whatever political agendas they see fit, whether that happens to advance the interests of the Russian government or not. The indictment alleges that the four Americans engaged in “agitprop” by “writing articles that contained Russian propaganda and disinformation,” but even if we pretend that’s both (A) a quantifiable claim and (B) a proven fact, propaganda and disinformation are both speech that the government is constitutionally forbidden from repressing.

It’s not reasonable for the government to just dismiss the First Amendment on the grounds that it is being “weaponized”. You can’t have your government dictating what speech is valid and what counts as “agitprop” and “disinformation”, because they’ll always define those terms in ways which benefit the government, thus giving more power to the powerful and taking power away from the people. You can’t have your government dictating what political groups are legitimate and which ones are tools of a foreign government, because you can always count on the powerful set such designations in ways which benefit themselves.

Elderly Black LARP's Make The Empire Even More Ridiculous

justice |  A federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida, returned a superseding indictment charging four U.S. citizens and three Russian nationals with working on behalf of the Russian government and in conjunction with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to conduct a multi-year foreign malign influence campaign in the United States. Among other conduct, the superseding indictment alleges that the Russian defendants recruited, funded and directed U.S. political groups to act as unregistered illegal agents of the Russian government and sow discord and spread pro-Russian propaganda; the indicted intelligence officers, in particular, participated in covertly funding and directing candidates for local office within the United States.

This is an absolutely remarkable - and chilling - indictment. Several American black leftist groups and activists are being charged with felonies for posting memes and other political content against the war in Ukraine, protesting racial injustice: allegedly on behalf of Russia: https://t.co/SQ1K1VZG1v

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 19, 2023

Additionally, in a separate case out of the District of Columbia, a criminal complaint was unsealed charging Russian national Natalia Burlinova with conspiring with an FSB officer to act as an illegal agent of Russia in the United States.

“Russia’s foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights – freedoms Russia denies its own citizens – to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “The department will not hesitate to expose and prosecute those who sow discord and corrupt U.S. elections in service of hostile foreign interests, regardless of whether the culprits are U.S. citizens or foreign individuals abroad.”

“Efforts by the Russian government to secretly influence U.S. elections will not be tolerated,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “As today’s announcement demonstrates, the Criminal Division is committed to eradicating foreign malign influence from the U.S. political system and helping ensure the integrity of our elections.”

“Today’s announcement paints a harrowing picture of Russian government actions and the lengths to which the FSB will go to interfere with our elections, sow discord in our nation and ultimately recruit U.S citizens to their efforts,” said Acting Assistant Director Kurt Ronnow of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. “All Americans should be deeply concerned by the tactics employed by the FSB and remain vigilant to any attempt to undermine our democracy. The FBI remains committed to confronting this egregious behavior and ultimately disrupting our adversaries and those who act on their behalf.”

United States v. Ionov, et al.

According to the superseding indictment returned in the Middle District of Florida, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a resident of Moscow, was the founder and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), an organization headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and funded by the Russian government. Ionov allegedly utilized AGMR to carry out Russia’s malign influence campaign. Ionov’s influence efforts were allegedly directed and supervised by Moscow-based FSB officers, including indicted defendants Aleksey Borisovich Sukhodolov and Yegor Sergeyevich Popov.

“The prosecution of this criminal conduct is essential to protecting the American public when foreign governments seek to inject themselves into the American political process,” said U.S. Attorney Roger B. Handberg for the Middle District of Florida. “We thank our partners at the FBI for their tireless investigation of these events and their commitment to ensure justice is done.”

Among other illegal activities, the superseding indictment alleges that Ionov, Sukhodolov and Popov conspired to directly and substantially influence democratic elections in the United States by clandestinely funding and directing the political campaign of a particular candidate for local office in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2019. For instance, the superseding indictment alleges that Popov expressly referred to this effort on behalf of the FSB as “our election campaign,” and Ionov referring to the candidate as the “candidate whom we supervise.” Ionov and Popov allegedly intended that this election interference plot would extend beyond the 2019 local election cycle in St. Petersburg, and subsequently discussed that the “USA Presidential election” was the FSB’s “main topic of the year.”

Moreover, from at least November 2014 until July 2022, Ionov allegedly engaged in a years-long foreign malign influence campaign targeting the United States. As a part of the campaign, Ionov allegedly recruited members of political groups within the United States, including the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement (collectively, the APSP) in Florida, Black Hammer in Georgia and a political group in California (referred to in the superseding indictment as U.S. Political Group 3), to participate in the influence campaign and act as agents of Russia in the United States, including the following indicted defendants:

• Omali Yeshitela, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and St. Louis, Missouri, who served as the chairman and founder of the APSP;
• Penny Joanne Hess, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and St. Louis, Missouri, who served as the leader of a component of the APSP;
• Jesse Nevel, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and St. Louis, Missouri, who served as a member of a component of the APSP; and
• Augustus C. Romain Jr., aka Gazi Kodzo, a U.S. citizen residing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Atlanta, who served as a leader of the APSP and a founder of Black Hammer in Georgia.

One focus of Ionov’s alleged influence operation was to create the appearance of American popular support for Russia’s annexation of territories in Ukraine. For example, in May 2020, Ionov allegedly sent a request he stated was from “Russia, the Donetsk People’s Republic” – an apparent reference to a Russian-occupied region in eastern Ukraine – to Yeshitela and members of other U.S. political groups to make statements in support of the independence of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, a Russian-backed breakaway state in eastern Ukraine. Ionov later allegedly touted to the FSB that Yeshitela’s video-recorded statement of support was the first time that “American nonprofit organizations congratulated citizens” of the occupied region.

ChatGPT Got Its Wolfram Superpowers

stephenwolfram  |  Early in January I wrote about the possibility of connecting ChatGPT to Wolfram|Alpha. And today—just two and a half months later—I’m excited to announce that it’s happened! Thanks to some heroic software engineering by our team and by OpenAI, ChatGPT can now call on Wolfram|Alpha—and Wolfram Language as well—to give it what we might think of as “computational superpowers”. It’s still very early days for all of this, but it’s already very impressive—and one can begin to see how amazingly powerful (and perhaps even revolutionary) what we can call “ChatGPT + Wolfram” can be.

Back in January, I made the point that, as an LLM neural net, ChatGPT—for all its remarkable prowess in textually generating material “like” what it’s read from the web, etc.—can’t itself be expected to do actual nontrivial computations, or to systematically produce correct (rather than just “looks roughly right”) data, etc. But when it’s connected to the Wolfram plugin it can do these things. So here’s my (very simple) first example from January, but now done by ChatGPT with “Wolfram superpowers” installed:

It’s a correct result (which in January it wasn’t)—found by actual computation. And here’s a bonus: immediate visualization:

How did this work? Under the hood, ChatGPT is formulating a query for Wolfram|Alpha—then sending it to Wolfram|Alpha for computation, and then “deciding what to say” based on reading the results it got back. You can see this back and forth by clicking the “Used Wolfram” box (and by looking at this you can check that ChatGPT didn’t “make anything up”):

There are lots of nontrivial things going on here, on both the ChatGPT and Wolfram|Alpha sides. But the upshot is a good, correct result, knitted into a nice, flowing piece of text.

Let’s try another example, also from what I wrote in January:

A fine result, worthy of our technology. And again, we can get a bonus:

In January, I noted that ChatGPT ended up just “making up” plausible (but wrong) data when given this prompt:

But now it calls the Wolfram plugin and gets a good, authoritative answer. And, as a bonus, we can also make a visualization:

Another example from back in January that now comes out correctly is:

If you actually try these examples, don’t be surprised if they work differently (sometimes better, sometimes worse) from what I’m showing here. Since ChatGPT uses randomness in generating its responses, different things can happen even when you ask it the exact same question (even in a fresh session). It feels “very human”. But different from the solid “right-answer-and-it-doesn’t-change-if-you-ask-it-again” experience that one gets in Wolfram|Alpha and Wolfram Language.

Here’s an example where we saw ChatGPT (rather impressively) “having a conversation” with the Wolfram plugin, after at first finding out that it got the “wrong Mercury”:

One particularly significant thing here is that ChatGPT isn’t just using us to do a “dead-end” operation like show the content of a webpage. Rather, we’re acting much more like a true “brain implant” for ChatGPT—where it asks us things whenever it needs to, and we give responses that it can weave back into whatever it’s doing. It’s rather impressive to see in action. And—although there’s definitely much more polishing to be done—what’s already there goes a long way towards (among other things) giving ChatGPT the ability to deliver accurate, curated knowledge and data—as well as correct, nontrivial computations.

But there’s more too. We already saw examples where we were able to provide custom-created visualizations to ChatGPT. And with our computation capabilities we’re routinely able to make “truly original” content—computations that have simply never been done before. And there’s something else: while “pure ChatGPT” is restricted to things it “learned during its training”, by calling us it can get up-to-the-moment data.

 

ChatGPT-4 And The Future Of AI

wired  |  The stunning capabilities of ChatGPT, the chatbot from startup OpenAI, has triggered a surge of new interest and investment in artificial intelligence. But late last week, OpenAI’s CEO warned that the research strategy that birthed the bot is played out. It's unclear exactly where future advances will come from.

OpenAI has delivered a series of impressive advances in AI that works with language in recent years by taking existing machine-learning algorithms and scaling them up to previously unimagined size. GPT-4, the latest of those projects, was likely trained using trillions of words of text and many thousands of powerful computer chips. The process cost over $100 million.

But the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, says further progress will not come from making models bigger. “I think we're at the end of the era where it's going to be these, like, giant, giant models,” he told an audience at an event held at MIT late last week. “We'll make them better in other ways.”

Altman’s declaration suggests an unexpected twist in the race to develop and deploy new AI algorithms. Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November, Microsoft has used the underlying technology to add a chatbot to its Bing search engine, and Google has launched a rival chatbot called Bard. Many people have rushed to experiment with using the new breed of chatbot to help with work or personal tasks.

Meanwhile, numerous well-funded startups, including Anthropic, AI21, Cohere, and Character.AI, are throwing enormous resources into building ever larger algorithms in an effort to catch up with OpenAI’s technology. The initial version of ChatGPT was based on a slightly upgraded version of GPT-3, but users can now also access a version powered by the more capable GPT-4.

Altman’s statement suggests that GPT-4 could be the last major advance to emerge from OpenAI’s strategy of making the models bigger and feeding them more data. He did not say what kind of research strategies or techniques might take its place. In the paper describing GPT-4, OpenAI says its estimates suggest diminishing returns on scaling up model size. Altman said there are also physical limits to how many data centers the company can build and how quickly it can build them.

Nick Frosst, a cofounder at Cohere who previously worked on AI at Google, says Altman’s feeling that going bigger will not work indefinitely rings true. He, too, believes that progress on transformers, the type of machine learning model at the heart of GPT-4 and its rivals, lies beyond scaling. “There are lots of ways of making transformers way, way better and more useful, and lots of them don’t involve adding parameters to the model,” he says. Frosst says that new AI model designs, or architectures, and further tuning based on human feedback are promising directions that many researchers are already exploring.

Musk Full Interview: An "Unfair Presentation Of Reality"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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