market-ticker | I have a dozen ways criminals could exploit this, and they will.
You give Spamzon a means to access your house (e.g. a keypad on your door, etc.) They now have it.
Let's enumerate a few of the ways you can get hosed:
The "employee" (really a contractor, by the way) for Amazon simply steals anything he or she wants in your house while making the delivery -- which you allowed them in for.
Your credit card gets compromised. Said individual orders something on your card to your house, waits for it to be delivered inside and exploits said delivery, either in confederation with the person doing it or by rick-rolling them, and robs your house.
The access code is stolen and used to directly access your home. It's in the cloud. I'm sure nothing in the cloud will ever be stolen, right? Uh huh, just like virtually every American's credit file wasn't? And since the code used to open the door will be authorized guess
what -- your high-fautin' security system won't raise a peep as your
nice 60" 4k OLED TV and jewelry walk right out the front door!
These took me about 30 seconds to come up with. A bit more thinking would, I'm sure, enumerate dozens more, all of which will be exploited immediately by those with criminal intent.
I cannot imagine how stupid you have to be to sign up for such a thing. The "initiative" to get into your car to make deliveries is bad enough, but allowing a retailer's contractors into your home when you have utterly no idea who they are or how said access data will be secured has to rank as one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of, and if you allow it then you have just marked yourself as having an IQ smaller than my running shoes.
thehill | The Justice Department on Wednesday night
released a former FBI informant from a confidentiality agreement,
allowing him to testify before Congress about what he witnessed
undercover about the Russian nuclear industry’s efforts to win favorable
decisions during the Obama administration.
Justice Department
spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores confirmed to The Hill a deal had been
reached clearing the informant to talk to Congress for the first time,
nearly eight years after he first went undercover for the FBI.
“As of tonight,
the Department of Justice has authorized the informant to disclose to
the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Senate Committee on the
Judiciary, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and
the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as one
member of each of their staffs, any information or documents he has
concerning alleged corruption or bribery involving transactions in the
uranium market, including but not limited to anything related to Vadim
Mikerin, Rosatom, Tenex, Uranium One, or the Clinton Foundation,” she
said.
Multiple congressional committees have been seeking to
interview the informant, whose name has not been released publicly,
because he stayed undercover for nearly five years providing agents
information on Russia’s aggressive efforts to grow its atomic energy
business in America.
His work helped the Justice Department
secure convictions against Russia’s top commercial nuclear executive in
the United States, a Russian financier in New Jersey and the head of a
U.S. uranium trucking company in what prosecutors said was a
long-running racketeering scheme involving bribery, kickbacks, extortion
and money laundering.
But the informant was unable to provide
answers to lawmakers’ recent inquiries because he had signed a
nondisclosure agreement with the bureau. He also was forced by the
Justice Department in 2016 to withdraw a lawsuit that threatened to call
attention to the case during last year’s presidential election.
The man’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing, told The Hill on Wednesday night
that the FBI sent her a formal letter saying it no longer had any
reason to ask the informant to keep his work confidential, clearing the
way for him to potentially testify before the Senate Judiciary
Committee, the House Intelligence Committee and the House Oversight and
Reform Committee.
The committees are keen to learn what the informant knows about any Russian efforts to curry favor with Bill and Hillary Clinton,
to win Obama administration approval for Moscow’s purchase of large
uranium assets in the United States or to secure billions in new uranium
sales contracts with American utilities.
thehill | Current and past leaders of the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
say they had no knowledge that the national party was helping to fund a
dossier compiled by a British spy that contained scandalous accusations
about President Trump.
The Washington Post reportedTuesday that Hillary Clinton’s
campaign and the DNC paid millions to the law firm Perkins Coie, where
Democratic lawyer Marc Elias worked with the opposition research firm
Fusion GPS to construct the memo, which was compiled by British spy
Christopher Steele.
The memo is at the center of several
investigations into Russian meddling and it may have been used by the
FBI as part of its investigation into allegations that Trump campaign
officials had improper contacts with Russian officials. Former FBI
Director James Comey has said none of the allegations in the memo have
been verified.
The bombshell Washington Post report has emboldened President Trump, who on Wednesday lashed out at the “fake dossier” and described it as the cornerstone of “the whole Russia hoax.”
yahoo | Elias
— after consulting with senior officials at the Clinton campaign and
the DNC — approved the retention. At some point that spring, Fusion GPS
retained a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele.
Steele paid for information from Russian sources who reported
allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Putin
government. His reports on these allegations — which he has since
described as “raw intelligence” — formed the basis for the dossier.
But
how much senior officials at the Clinton campaign and the DNC were
informed about the work being done by Fusion GPS and the contents of the
dossier is unclear. Donna Brazile, who became the DNC chair after
Fusion GPS was hired but served the entire time the dossier was being
assembled and while some of its contents shared with journalists, told
Yahoo News Wednesday that at one point she requested the names of every
consultant working for the committee — and she was never told by Perkins
Cole about the work being done by Fusion GPS. “I knew nothing about
it,” she said. (The Clinton campaign did not respond to inquiries about
the matter Wednesday. A lawyer for Fusion GPS declined comment. )
“The
clients were aware and approved the retention of outside research
firms,” said a lawyer representing Perkins Cole who asked not to be
identified. “They did not know which research firms had been engaged. …
There was no reason to tell them.” The lawyer added that the material
being investigated was “sensitive” and “you don’t want hundreds of
people working on the campaign to be in the loop on it.”
Examiner | The Democratic National Committee claims its "new leadership" had
nothing to do with the funding of the so-called "Trump dossier," after
it was reported Tuesday that the firm behind it was hired by DNC lawyer
Mark Elias and Hillary Clinton's campaign.
"Tom Perez and the new leadership of the DNC were not involved in the
decision-making regarding Fusion GPS, nor were they aware that Perkins
Coie was working with the organization," said DNC Communications
Director Xochitl Hinojosa in statement, referring to the DNC chairman.
The statement,
however, makes no mention of the DNC leadership during the 2016
campaign. The group had been led by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of
Florida up until July 2016 when she resigned after WikiLeaks published
leaked emails which showed she expressed bias in favor of Hillary
Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the fight for the
Democratic nomination.
She was followed by Donna Brazile, who served as acting chair until
February up until Perez, former President Barack Obama's labor
secretary, was elected.
Observer | DNC Chair Tom Perez, who was elected without adequate political or fundraising experience, promised change, reform, and “to get things done” as leader of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Instead, he has driven the organization further into the ground.
During this tenure, Perez has managed to alienate wealthy donors, who
don’t trust that the party can recoup its drastic losses, and
progressive grassroots activists, who have been ostracized by party
leadership. The RNC has outpacedthe DNC in fundraising from both small and large donors, a harrowing sign that Democrats are in trouble for 2018. McClatchy DC reported
on October 18, “The Republican National Committee raised more than $100
million in the first nine months of 2017, marking the first time it has
raised that much, that fast, in a non-presidential election year.” The
DNC is likely panicking over the Republicans’ record breaking numbers.
thehill | Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
said Monday that renewed focus on Russian uranium deals approved during
her tenure is nothing more than debunked “baloney" and a sign that
Republicans are nervous about the current intelligence probe into
Moscow's efforts to meddle with last year's election.
"I think the
real story is how nervous they are about these continuing
investigations," the former Democratic presidential nominee said during
an interview broadcast on C-SPAN.
The renewed interest in the so-called Uranium One deal came after The Hill reported last week
that the FBI had gathered solid evidence that Russian nuclear industry
officials were engaged in bribery and extortion before the Obama
administration approved the sale to Russia of a company that controls 20
percent of America's uranium supply.
The Hill further reported Sunday
that the FBI had identified a Russian spy ring's attempt in 2009 and
2010 to infiltrate Clinton's inner circle through a donor friend in
order to spy on the State Department. Agents arrested and deported the
female spy before anything could happen.
Though stories in The
Hill were based on court documents, declassified law enforcement memos
and interviews with career officials, Clinton said any accusations of
wrongdoing were partisan in nature.
WaPo | The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee
helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing
allegations about President Trump’s connections to Russia and possible
coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with
the matter said.
Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton
campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to
conduct the research.
After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author
Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to
the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Elias and his law firm,
Perkins Coie, retained the company in April 2016 on behalf of the
Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPS’s
research into Trump was funded by an unknown Republican client during
the GOP primary.
The Clinton campaign and the DNC, through the
law firm, continued to fund Fusion GPS’s research through the end of
October 2016, days before Election Day.
RT | A journalist with Swedish daily Aftonbladet who reportedly
referred to WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange as a “criminal” is
himself in hot water. He’s accused of rape and sexual assault –
including of underage girls.
The
allegations against Fredrik Virtanen, who also hosts his own talk show
on Swedish TV8, emerged as part of the #MeToo social media campaign. The
campaign, which surged in popularity after the sex scandal surrounding
Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, encourages women to speak up to
share their experiences of sexual harassment.
The first accusation against Virtanen was made by Swedish feminist
activist, journalist and actress Cissi Wallin, who claimed last week
that Virtanen raped her back in 2006, when she was 21. In 2010, Wallin
said an “older media man with power” had sexually assaulted her and wanted to push his genitals into her mouth, but did not give his name, Nyheter24 reported.
“I cannot be quiet anymore,” Wallin said in her Instagram post. The journalist added that she should “have screamed his name long ago,” but was silent as the journalist’s representative called her “bosses and so on, and dubbed me a ‘crazy mythomaniac.’”
Virtanen
himself was a critic of Assange over rape charges, which were
subsequently dropped. But before the case was abandoned, the journalist
had referred to the whistleblower as “criminal” and said he seemed to become “more and more cracked,” according to Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR).
Swedish
crime writer Camilla Läckberg voiced her support to Wallin and said she
was ashamed that she had also been silent for years over many other
testimonies against Virtanen.
Politico | Wilson, calling Trump a “jerk” and a “liar,” said in an interview in
Miami Thursday that she believed the ambush that led to four deaths two
weeks ago resembled the 2012 attack on the diplomatic mission in
Benghazi, Libya, that also left four dead, including a U.S. ambassador.
The attack led to criticism of former President Barack Obama and
then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by conservatives who said the
facility was unprepared for such an incident and also took issue with
their handling of the aftermath.
“The circumstances are similar,” Wilson said. She said in Niger, the
four soldiers providing counterterrorism training “didn’t have
appropriate weapons where they were. They were told by intelligence
there was no threat. They had trucks that were not armored trucks. They
were particularly not protected. Just like in Benghazi, they were given
the impression that everything was fine.”
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, disputed the comparison.
“In Benghazi, you had U.S. fighter jets sitting in Crete that could
have been there very quickly. Here, we did not have U.S. capabilities
that we were freezing in place,” Gaetz said. “It is not like that in
Central Africa.”
In Niger, Gaetz said, U.S. special forces were trying to keep a light
footprint so as not to draw attention as they equipped and trained
local forces to combat terrorists chased out of North Africa. As a
result, he said, the soldiers were exposed because of the dangerous
nature of the mission.
“When you’ve got Americans in a zone where there’s really little
command and control, it’s a highly volatile environment,” Gaetz said.
“It is not atypical to begin these types of operations by having our
high-intensity special operators — the Green Berets, the Navy Seals, the
air commandos — and then over time increase our capabilities. In
Central Africa, it is important that we maintain low visibility in some
cases. And having a massive extraction force in the region doesn’t
always facilitate low visibility.”
Counterpunch | The ball is in the Trump court. What were those four men doing in
Niger? Is our military presence making things better or worse there? Did
US leadership make a bad decision that had unforeseen consequences? Are
they relying on secrecy to cover up an embarrassment? And the big
question: Is the United States mobilizing its military in Africa? Are we
embarking on a huge new foreign adventure? On a large, historic canvas,
one can look at the Vietnam and Iraq Wars in this light, as the growth
of imperial militarism with expanding commitments of young men and women
in uniform. Which brings us back to General Kelly’s schizophrenic press
conference: On one hand, there’s his moving call for recognizing the
sacrifice of our soldiers and their families. Then, there’s his shameful
political attack on a congresswoman who he did not realize had real
skin in the game — skin that happened to be darker than his white,
privileged Boston skin. The general wonders why the honor and glue of
America isn’t what it used to be in the glory days of World War Two,
which was a defensive war. Those “values” no longer prevail; something
else is going on. General Kelly needs to realize, when he becomes an
attack dog for someone like Donald Trump, he’s not on a foreign
battlefield — he’s in the trenches of Washington DC, which a recent
article in the conservative National Review compared to the climate in the HBO hit Game of Thrones.
Washington politics is uglier than it has been in a long time.
Secrecy, dishonesty and corruption are epidemic. As long as our military
is rooted in such amoral soil, the respect and sacredness for our
soldiers that General Kelly seeks will remain far out of reach.
RT | Exactly six years ago, on October 20th, 2011, Muammar Gaddafi
was murdered, joining a long list of African revolutionaries martyred by
the West for daring to dream of continental independence.
Earlier
that day, Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte had been occupied by
Western-backed militias, following a month-long battle during which NATO
and its ‘rebel’ allies pounded the city’s hospitals and homes with
artillery, cut off its water and electricity, and publicly proclaimed
their desire to ‘starve [the city] into submission’.
The last defenders of the city, including Gaddafi, fled Sirte that
morning, but their convoy was tracked and strafed by NATO jets, killing
95 people. Gaddafi escaped the wreckage but was captured shortly
afterward. I will spare you the gruesome details, which the Western
media gloatingly broadcast across the world as a triumphant snuff movie, suffice to say that he was tortured and eventually shot dead.
We
now know, if testimony from NATO’s key Libyan ally Mahmoud Jibril is to
be believed, it was a foreign agent, likely French, who delivered the fatal bullet.
His death was the culmination of not only seven months of NATO
aggression, but of a campaign against Gaddafi and his movement, the West had been waging for over three decades.
Yet it was also the opening salvo in a new war - a war for the militarily recolonization of Africa.
The
year 2009, two years before Gaddafi’s murder, was a pivotal one for
US-African relations. First, because China overtook the US as the
continent’s largest trading partner; and second because Gaddafi was
elected president of the African Union.
The significance of both for the decline of US influence on the continent could not be clearer. While Gaddafi was spearheading attempts to unite Africa politically, committing serious amounts of Libyan oil wealth
to make this dream a reality, China was quietly smashing the West’s
monopoly over export markets and investment finance. Africa no longer
had to go cap-in-hand to the IMF for loans, agreeing to whatever
self-defeating terms were on offer, but could turn to China - or indeed Libya
- for investment. And if the US threatened to cut them off from their
markets, China would happily buy up whatever was on offer. Western
economic domination of Africa was under threat as never before.
The response from the West, of course, was a military one. Economic
dependence on the West - rapidly being shattered by Libya and China -
would be replaced by a new military dependence. If African countries
would no longer come begging for Western loans, export markets, and
investment finance, they would have to be put in a position where they
would come begging for Western military aid.
To this end, AFRICOM -
the US army’s new ‘African command’ - had been launched the previous
year, but humiliatingly for George W. Bush, not a single African country
would agree to host its HQ; instead, it was forced to open shop in
Stuttgart, Germany. Gaddafi had led African opposition to AFRICOM, as
exasperated US diplomatic memos later revealed by WikiLeaks made clear.
And US pleas to African leaders to embrace AFRICOM in the ‘fight against
terrorism’ fell on deaf ears.
After all, as Mutassim Gaddafi,
head of Libyan security, had explained to Hillary Clinton in 2009, North
Africa already had an effective security system in place, through the
African Union’s ‘standby forces,' on the one hand, and CEN-SAD on the
other. CEN-SAD was a regional security organization of Sahel and Saharan
states, with a well-functioning security system, with Libya as the
lynchpin. The sophisticated Libyan-led counter-terror structure meant
there was simply no need for a US military presence. The job of Western
planners, then, was to create such a need.
LewRockwell | In the 1930s the US, Great Britain, and the Netherlands set a course for World War II in the Pacific by conspiring against Japan. The three governments seized Japan’s bank accounts in their countries that Japan used to pay for imports and cut Japan off from oil, rubber, tin, iron and other vital materials. Was Pearl Harbor, Japan’s response?
Now Washington and its NATO puppets are employing the same strategy against China.
Protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen arose from the people protesting against Washington’s tyrannical puppet governments. However, the protests against Gaddafi, who is not a Western puppet, appear to have been organized by the CIA in the eastern part of Libya where the oil is and where China has substantial energy investments.
Eighty percent of Libya’s oil reserves are believed to be in the Sirte Basin in eastern Libya now controlled by rebels supported by Washington. As seventy percent of Libya’s GDP is produced by oil, a successful partitioning of Libya would leave Gaddafi’s Tripoli-based regime impoverished.
The People’s Daily Online (March 23) reported that China has 50 large-scale projects in Libya. The outbreak of hostilities has halted these projects and resulted in 30,000 Chinese workers being evacuated from Libya. Chinese companies report that they expect to lose hundreds of millions of yuan.
China is relying on Africa, principally Libya, Angola, and Nigeria, for future energy needs. In response to China’s economic engagement with Africa, Washington is engaging the continent militarily with the US African Command (AFRICOM) created by President George W. Bush in 2007. Forty-nine African countries agreed to participate with Washington in AFRICOM, but Gaddafi refused, thus creating a second reason for Washington to target Libya for takeover.
A third reason for targeting Libya is that Libya and Syria are the only two countries with Mediterranean sea coasts that are not under the control or influence of Washington. Suggestively, protests also have broken out in Syria. Whatever Syrians might think of their government, after watching Iraq’s fate and now Libya’s it is unlikely that Syrians would set themselves up for US military intervention. Both the CIA and Mossad are known to use social networking sites to foment protests and to spread disinformation. These intelligence services are the likely conspirators that the Syrian and Libyan governments blame for the protests.
Caught off guard by protests in Tunisia and Egypt, Washington realized that protests could be used to remove Gaddafi and Assad. The humanitarian excuse for intervening in Libya is not credible considering Washington’s go-ahead to the Saudi military to crush the protests in Bahrain, the home base for the US Fifth Fleet.
If Washington succeeds in overthrowing the Assad government in Syria, Russia would lose its Mediterranean naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus. Thus, Washington has much to gain if it can use the cloak of popular rebellion to eject both China and Russia from the Mediterranean. Rome’s mare nostrum (“our sea”) would become Washington’s mare nostrum.
“Gaddafi must go,” declared Obama. How long before we also hear, “Assad must go?”
The American captive press is at work demonizing both Gaddafi and Assad, an eye doctor who returned to Syria from London to head the government after his father’s death.
The hypocrisy passes unremarked when Obama calls Gaddafi and Assad dictators. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the American president has been a Caesar. Based on nothing more than a Justice Department memo, George W. Bush was declared to be above US statutory law, international law, and the power of Congress as long as he was acting in his role as commander-in-chief in the “war on terror.”
antiwar | But Patrick Meehan, chairman of the US Congressional committee that
drew up the report, said “While I recognize there is little evidence at
this moment to suggest Boko Haram is planning attacks against the [US]
homeland, lack of evidence does not mean it cannot happen.”
Washington’s interest in Africa goes back at least to 2007, when the
Pentagon’s AFRICOM was formed, long before rebels in Libya or militants
in Mali were a threats to exaggerate.
The dominant way of thinking in Washington is that the US should be
involved in every corner of the planet, and the pressure to always “do
something” is intense.
But as Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations recently commented
with regards to the intervention in Mali, “Some things that happen on
the other 94% of the earth that isn’t the US, has nothing to do with the
US, nor requires a US response.”
Paul Chefurka's grim assessment of what's in store for Africa. Please read and bookmark this paper.
There is a darkness moving on the face of the land. We catch glimpses of it in newscasts from far-off places that few of us have ever seen. We hear hints of it on the radio, read snippets about it in newspapers and magazines. The stories are always fragmentary, lacking context or connection. They speak of things like inflation in Zimbabwe, war in Chad, electricity problems in Johannesburg, famine in Malawi, pipeline fires in Nigeria, political violence in Kenya, cholera in Congo. Each snapshot of grief heaves briefly into view, then fades back into obscurity. With every fresh story we are left asking ourselves, "Is there something bigger going on here, some unseen thread connecting these dots? Or is this just more of the same from a continent that has known more than its share of misery?"
This paper is my attempt to connect those dots, to tease some order out of the chaos of the news reports. I will use some very simple numerical techniques to fill in the missing lines, and in the end a picture will emerge. I can tell you in advance that the picture is fearsome beyond imagining, and you may well be tempted to avert your gaze. I would advise you instead to screw up your courage and take a good look. It is crucial to our future as a civilized race.
I expect the collapse to turn Africa into the next arena for a quick game of "Disaster Capitalism." Large trans-national entities will make offers of "significant assistance" to particular countries in return for untrammeled access to their resource base. The vultures will be lining the banks of the Zambezi waiting for the feast, no doubt about it.
"I know there's rumors in Ghana `All Bush is coming to do is try to convince you to put a big military base here,' Bush said at a news conference with Kufuor. "That's baloney. As they say in Texas, that's bull."
Instead, he said the new command — unique to the Pentagon's structure — was aimed at more effectively reorganizing U.S. military efforts in Africa to strengthen African nations' peacekeeping, trafficking and anti-terror efforts.
"The whole purpose of Africom is to help African leaders deal with African problems," Bush said.
Bush sought to dispel the notion about militarization of Africa even before giving reporters a chance to ask him about it. Kufuour said he was satisfied with Bush's explanation, and thanked him for announcing it "so that the relationship between us and the United States will grow stronger."
For now, the administration has decided to continue operating Africom out of existing U.S. bases on the continent with a headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. War-wrecked Liberia is the only African nation that has publicly offered to host a headquarters. Bush said before the trip that "if" a headquarters for Africom is ever established on the continent, he would "seriously consider" Liberia as the host.
Counterpunch | History may have come to an embarrassing end in the centres of the
Empire but not in it’s remote regions. As the great Egyptian analyst
Samir Amin points out in a recent Monthly Review essay: it is in the
periphery of the global system where the great political and social
storms occur.
Why? Because history is still fluid there. The battle for and against
the transformation of the system still resonates there. Whereas the
stagnant centres of the system are dealing with the pathetic aftermath
of modernity – on the edges: modernity is still being born and still
being strangled.
In other words, the weakest links in the global chain of capitalism
best reveal what the hell is going on. And what’s going to happen next.
Therefore if you want to gauge the system forget about New York or
London or Paris and head to places like the Philippines.
Before Rodrigo Duterte was elected Filipino President last year no
one gave a damn about the country. It was just assumed to be an American
puppet. Another one that is full of poverty. But overnight this
perception changed. A significant political storm emerged from within
the Filipino archipelago that forced the world to adjust its vision.
Within days of Duterte’s election the Empire was forced on the back
foot, as he insisted on Filipino sovereignty. Ironically he did this by
acknowledging China’s position in the South China Sea. Refusing to take
the American bait (war on China) the new President of the Philippines
quickly defused one of the world’s most dangerous confrontations.
For this diplomacy alone, Duterte deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.
However the Empire and even some Filipino progressives, like Walden
Bello, were frustrated by this outbreak of peace in the South China Sea.
For committing “the crime of peace” on the international stage
Duterte became a figure of hate for liberal imperialists everywhere. And
on cue, liberals suddenly cared about life in the Philippines. From
being an ignored entity before the advent of Duterte – Filipino life
became front page news in New York, London and Paris. Liberal cynicism
went into overdrive and felt the need, for geopolitical reasons, to
demonise yet another Third World leader.
theorganicprepper | A 40-year-old essay predicted the end of an empire and current events
sure make it look like we’re watching it happen in real time.
I spend a fair bit of time scanning the news every day for my site, Preppers Daily News.
And some days, I just have to shake my head as I realize that people
are so desperate for…something…that they just keep going to further and
further extremes to try and find that elusive thing their lives are
missing.
The more I read, the more likeness I see to Sir John Glubb’s essay, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival.
(It’s only 24 pages and you should definitely read it – it’s
brilliant.) Sir Glubb wrote this outstanding work when he was 79 years
old, after a lifetime of being a soldier, traveling the world, and
analyzing history. It’s well worth a read as he goes into detail about
the fall of empires past.
The final stage of the end of an empire is the Age of Decadence. Some signs of this age are political dissensions (Antifa, anyone?), an influx of foreigners (Europe, anyone?), the welfare state (America, anyone?), despair (350 million people diagnosed), depravity (see below), and the rise of frivolity as people try to fill lives that have less and less meaning.
Counterpunch | Predictably, the news media spent most of the week examining words
Donald Trump may or may not have spoken to the widow of an American
Ranger killed in Niger, in northwest Africa, in early October. Not only
was this coverage tedious, it was largely pointless. We know Trump is a
clumsy boor, and we also know that lots of people are ready to pounce on
him for any sort of gaffe, real or imagined. Who cares? It’s not news.
But it was useful to those who wish to distract Americans from what
really needs attention: the U.S. government’s perpetual war.
The media’s efforts should have been devoted to exploring — really exploring — why Rangers (and drones) are in Niger at all. (This is typical of the establishment media’s explanation.)
That subject is apparently of little interest to media companies that
see themselves merely as cheerleaders for the American Empire. For
them, it’s all so simple: a U.S president (even one they despise) has
put or left military forces in a foreign country — no justification
required; therefore, those forces are serving their country; and that in
turn means that if they die, they die as heroes who were protecting our
way of life. End of story.
Thus the establishment media see no need to present a dissenting
view, say, from an analyst who would question the dogma that inserting
American warriors into faraway conflicts whenever a warlord proclaims his allegiance to ISIS
is in the “national interest.” Patriotic media companies have no wish
to expose their audiences to the idea that jihadists would be no threat
to Americans who were left to mind their own business.
Apparently the American people also must be shielded from anyone who
might point out that the jihadist activity in Niger and neighboring Mali
is directly related to the U.S. and NATO bombing of Libya, which
enabled al-Qaeda and other Muslim militants to overthrow the secular
regime of Col. Muammar Qaddafi. That Obama-Clinton operation in 2011,
besides producing Qaddafi’s grisly murder and turning Libya into a
nightmare, facilitated the transfer of weapons and fanatical guerrillas
from Libya to nearby countries in the Sahel — as well as Syria. Since
then the U.S. government has been helping the French to “stabilize” its
former colony Mali with surveillance drones and Rangers based in Niger.
Nice work, Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama and Secretary of State
Clinton. (Citizen Trump was an early advocate of U.S. intervention in Libya.) Need I remind you that the U.S./NATO regime-change operation in Libya was based on a lie? Obama later said his failure to foresee the consequences of the Libya intervention was the biggest mistake of his presidency. (For more on the unintended consequences for the Sahel, see articles here, here, and here.)
theoccidentalobserver |It
is unfortunate, to say the least, that Black hip-hop scholarship never
mentions the elephant in the room: Jewish control of the music industry.
If hip-hop is, indeed, ethno-politics set to music, if hip-hop has
taken the place of the civil rights movement in the hearts and minds of
Black youth, it is impossible to ignore the historic Black-Jewish
alliance against WASPs. For much of the twentieth century, that
alliance was a constituent element in what Black nationalist Harold
Cruse called the “fateful triangular tension among national
groups…coming to the fore” in the 60s.[28]
It is a truism of American political history that, from the Leo Frank
trial and the founding of the NAACP in the early twentieth century down
to the Black Lives Matter movement, Jewish intellectual-activists have
worked tirelessly to imbue disaffected American Negroes with their own
revolutionary spirit.[29]
Cruse
was himself a Negro member of the American Communist Party. By that
time, Jews had displaced Anglo-Saxons as the vanguard of American
Communism. Unlike WASP Communists, the Jews shaped radical politics in
accordance with “their own national group social ambitions or
individual self-elevation.” Negroes were relegated to the status of a
national minority in the party while Jews were free to pick up or drop
their Jewish identity as it suited them.[30]
This arrangement enabled Jews to become experts on “the Negro
problem.” Not surprisingly, Jewish artists, musicians, and radicals
then became highly visible players in the Civil Rights Movement of the
1950s and 60s. “As a result,” Cruse observes, “the great brainwashing
of Negro radical intellectuals was not achieved by capitalism, or the
capitalistic bourgeoisie, but by Jewish intellectuals in the American
Communist Party.”[31]
In
the contemporary hip-hop community, Jewish leadership has been hidden
behind the corporate veil. Tricia Rose vehemently denounces the
corrupting influence of corporate control on the hip-hop community but
her treatment of the subject obscures the identity of the corporate high
command.[32]
The music industry is absorbed into a vast impersonal system of “White
power,” a matrix whose denizens all routinely swallow the blue pill.
The closest we come to identifying those in charge is when Dyson
criticizes the “White corporate interests” exploiting Black talent.[33]
Jews
are never mentioned in Dyson’s work on hip-hop. Not surprisingly,
Dyson has unimpeachable philo-Semitic credentials. Blacks and Jews, he
believes, are united in common struggles against oppression in White
America. Far be it from him ever to cast Jews as an enemy of Black
folk. On his account, Blacks love Jews and Jews love Blacks.[34] Professor Rose also tip-toes around the issue of Jewish influence in the hip-hop community; The Hip Hop Wars
has no index entry for Jews. Only in passing does Rose name names.
But, when she does identify a few of the corporate heavyweights involved
in the hip-hop community, the elephant moves onto center stage.
In
a chapter on hip-hop’s responsibility for sexist and misogynist lyrics
and imagery, Rose mentions a rare public appearance by leading figures
in the corporate record industry. In their statements “corporate
executives such as Universal chairman Doug Morris, Warner chairman and
chief executive Edgar Bronfman, Sony chairman Andrew Lack, and Viacom
president and CEO Phillipe P. Dauman have defended their role as
distributors of intensely sexist content by subsuming sexism under
artists’ rights to express themselves freely.” Interestingly, in the
same paragraph, Rose urges us to “pull back the veil on the corporate
media’s manipulation of Black male and female artists and the impact
this has on fans and the direction of Black cultural expression.”[35]
Why does she not see fit to mention that the four corporate kingpins
she names are all Jews? The ethno-political fact is that Rose leaves
the corporate veil intact by ascribing blame for the corruption of the
hip-hop community to an abstraction called corporate greed. Rose heads
the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown
University.[36] How can she not be aware of the stunning success Jews have had in mixing business with ethno-politics?
After
all, a simple Google search on “Jews run hip hop” turns up a wealth of
investigative leads for a researcher eager to see how the “triangular
tension” between Jews, Negroes, and Anglo-Saxons” has accommodated
itself to the new players in American ethno-politics. Black scholars
typically ignore the criticisms of Jewish control commonly made by
rappers and fans.[37]
Traditional Catholics such as E. Michael Jones are also critical of
rap music as “one more manifestation of the behavior which goes along
with the Jewish revolutionary spirit that took over the Black mind
during the course of the 20thcentury.”[38] The Jewish revolutionary spirit has pioneered the techniques of using sex as an instrument of political control.[39] The hip-hop brand of sexuality is no exception.
Bearing
that in mind, it comes as no surprise to learn that hip-hop is deeply
involved “with the multibillion dollar pornographic industry. The strip
club has long been an integral part of both the music video and
business end, but since the start of the new century, there has been a
complete cross-over into pornography.” Orlando Patterson describes
scenes from these productions as “the most degrading and abusive
depictions of women imaginable.”[40]
Small wonder, then, that a Google search for “Jews run pornography”
yields another treasure trove of investigative leads sure to be left
unexplored (for fear of the Jews?) by both Black and White scholars.
Zimbio | This story begins in the 1980s with the sale of Motown Records, a once black-owned record company, to MCA Records and Boston Ventures Limited Partnership. The Afrikan American community felt a great loss of one of its cherished institutions. Around that same period it seemed like war had been declared against the survival of black-owned record companies. Solar Records was involved in a suit, counter-suit with Warner Brothers Records for control of its assets. Sussex Records, a once fast growing black-owned record company, was forced to cease doing business for tax reasons. Philadelphia International Records, a quality black-owned record company, was under the distribution control, lifeline to its financial survival, of CBS Records (also known as Columbia Records).
These are mammoth events virtually placing the dominance of recorded black music in the hands of major record companies. The hidden agenda may have been the closing of all doorways towards the development of full service (production, manufacturing, distribution) black-owned record companies in America. Had this occurred, as improbable as it seems today, it is possible that black record companies would have ultimately controlled a larger or equal percentage of the music business, competing with major record companies.
It was told to me by Dave Parker (oldest promotion man in the business at that time), that of the $500 million dollars made in 1987 by CBS Records, approximately 80% was from black music. black-owned record companies were obviously seen as a potential threat to the control of the music market.
The battle to control market share can best be understood by looking into the case of Stax Records. In the 1970s, it was the largest, most diverse black-owned record company in the music industry. Stax artists roster included such stars as: Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, Al Green, Rufus and Carla Thomas, The Staple Singers, Booker T. & the MGs, and more. It also had a jazz label, blues label, gospel label, and even a comedy label where such artists as: Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor and Jackie "Moms" Mabley launched their careers.
This era paralleled the turbulent 60s, with the social, cultural, political and musical climate being fueled by the black Consciousness Movement and the Viet Nam Peace Movement. The financial profits generated by black recording artists and the phenomenal success of black films and soundtracks caused black entertainment businesses to be closely monitored.
Stax Records reached several peaks with the overwhelming success of "Wattstax." The live concert of Stax artists in the Los Angeles Coliseum attracted some one hundred and twelve thousand black people, without incident. It produced a film of the same event that was seen worldwide, and was the first to get into the revolutionary technique at the time, video production.
The success continued when Isaac Hayes, one of Stax top artists, won the Oscar for best original film score for "Shaft." This was during a time when black record companies (Stax, Sussex, Motown) had the lion's share of black artists. The major record companies, not to be left behind, sat up, took notice, determined to find a way to control the lucrative black music market. Fist tap Uncle John.
HWP | Black music exists in a neo-colonial relationship with the $12 billion music industry, which consist of six record companies: Warner Elektra Atlantic (WEA), Polygram, MCA Music Entertainment, BMG Distribution, Sony Music Entertainment, and CEMA/UNI Distribution. These firms, according to New York's Daily News, "supply retailers with 90% of the music" that the public purchases (rap accounts for 8.9% of the total, over $1 billion in 1996; these firms are currently being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission for price-fixing CDs ). While there are black- owned production companies like Uptown Records, Bad Boy Entertainment, La Face Records, Def Jam, and Death Row, which make millions, these black-owned companies do not control a key component of the music making nexus, namely distribution, and they respond to the major labels' demand for a marketable product. In turn, the major labels respond to a young white audience that purchases 66% of rap music, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), as reported by the Daily News. But the music industry's dependence on alternative music has led to flat sales and the only growth has been, once again, black music in the cultural form of rap. Rap is still on the move. For example, Lil' Kim, a protege of the late Christopher Wallace, has sold 500,000 units of her raunchy Hardcore. While Scarface has sold over 160,000 of his The Untouchable - without radio airplay.
The relationship between black music and the "Big Six" is a post-modern form of colonialism. In classic colonialism (or neo-colonialism) products were produced in a "raw periphery" and sent back to the imperial "motherland" to be finished into commodities, sold in the metropolitan centers or back to the colonies, with the result being that the colony's economic growth was stunted because it was denied its ability to engage in manufacturing products for it own needs and for export. Blacks in the inner cities, if not as an aggregate, share some of the classic characteristics of a colony: lower per capita income; high birth rate; high infant mortality rate; a small or weak middle class; low rate of capital formation and domestic savings; economic dependence on external markets; labor as a major export; a tremendous demand for commodities produced by the colony but consumed by wealthier nations; most of the land and business are owned by foreigners. With rap, the inner cities have become the raw sites of "cultural production" and the music then sold to the suburbs, to white youths who claim they can "relate" to those of the urban bantustans. If there is indeed a struggle for the control of rap, it is merely a battle between black gnats, for the war for the control of black music had been won many years ago by corporate America, aided and abetted by black leadership that has never understood the cultural and economic significance of its own culture.
Kevin K. Gaines, the author of Uplifting the Race, argues that most black leaders (spokesmen and women and intellectuals) have had a condescending attitude toward the black lower classes, urban and rural; the black elite's world view has been built on a white, bourgeois Victorian model of comportment that internalized white beliefs about blacks and race. Gaines noted that although the black elite was outraged at whites' lucrative expropriations of black culture...," they "extolled Victorian and European cultural ideals and looked with disapproval, if not covert and guilty pleasure, upon such emergent black cultural forms as ragtime, blues [and] jazz..." Black leaders' ideas about "racial uplift," notwithstanding, were based on differentiating themselves from the black lower classes who were seen as "bringing down the race." Even today's so-called black public intellectuals use various codes to dissociate the "good black middle class" - themselves - from the "bad black under-class," which can be translated to hip hop. (Randall Kennedy's featured article in the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly is a spin on racial uplift; now it's about racial extrication based upon class positioning.) Such elitist attitudes have prevented middle-class blacks and black leadership from seeing the worth of their "own" folk culture that spawned the blues and other music forms from the lower classes, and it, black music, forms the base, the very foundation of the $12 billion music industry in the United States.
But there is a problem with black music: it is created by black people, particularly the rural and urban lower classes, and the black middle has always disdained those of their own race who are considered too Negroid, too black and too ignorant. Black musical forms have been "the juice" that has driven American musical expressions and whites have grown rich off of it. The problem has been that the black middle class has been too incompetent to champion and exploit (in the best sense of the word) its own folk culture and develop the geniuses that has produced black music. Instead, black music has never had an enlightened middle class leadership to give it a proper business footing. There has been no A. Philip Randolph or Thurgood Marshall in black music. The contempt for black artists is so palpable that even blacks have resorted to the same kind of rank exploitation that whites engage in.
Unfortunately, the history of black music has been a continuous one of whites' lucrative expropriation of black cultural forms. Black music has become a part of a structure of stealing that ranges from the minstrels shows of pre- Civil War America to white composers copying black jazz styles to white rockers covering original black R&B performer songs to segregating music by black performers as "race music" thus limiting their audience appeal to publishers stealing publishing credits to the nonpayment of royalties by record companies, etc. To be clear, black music forms are perhaps the single most critical foundation of American music which is a Creole hybrid of African and European influences, but the producers of such forms, blacks them- selves, brought over to the New World as black bodies to work for whites, have been viewed as either having no culture worthy of respect or having one that's worthy of rank exploitation and domination. This is the basis of the structure of stealing that other national groups - principally Anglo Saxons (slavery), Irish (minstrelsy), Jews (Hollywood, record industry) Italians (mob influence) - have participated in regard to black music forms. American individualism not withstanding, American society is made up of economic classes and ethnic blocs, of which a black individual can only achieve so much because he or she is a member of a weak group. "Hence, the individual Negro has," argued Harold Cruse in The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, "proportionately, very few rights indeed because his ethnic group (whether or not he actually identifies with it) has very little political, economic or social power (beyond moral grounds) to wield."
The theft of black music has been so blatant and pervasive that a Rhythm and Blues Foundation was set up in 1994, with $1 million contributed by the Atlantic Foundation of Atlantic Records, Time-Warner and other music industry organizations. The foundation was set up to assist R&B artists of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, who have been "victims of poor business practices, bad management and unscrupulous record companies," wrote The New York Times. The money contributed by those record firms (which have been gobbled up by larger concerns) is a fraction of the amount of money that white-controlled record firms have made off of black artists, directly or indirectly by holding on to some of these artists' back catalogues.
Because black leaders have ignored the early years of black music development, others have come into the black community and have established a foothold before them. Even during slavery whites were dissing black folks by the back-handed compliment of minstrelsy, they just couldn't ignore the creativeness of blacks but knew "how to grow rich off of black fun," as one minstrel poseur put it. Motown was that rare exception of black control but didn't come into existence until the late fifties (and even today it is basically a shell; a mere label of Polygram, a foreign company; an expensive footnote in music history when it recently sold a 50% interests in its catalogue to EMI for $132 million). The sniping about Jews "controlling" the music business clouds over the fact that blacks have often ignored the "cultural capital" potential of blues, jazz, and R&B until it was too late. The same can be said about hip hop; it was the independents labels not Motown that produced the initial acts and the major labels rushed in when they saw the staying power of the music and that young whites were buying it. During the twenties, according to Amiri Baraka in Blues People, when Harry Pace, the owner of Black Swan Records, began selling blues, he was castigated by the black middle class for not selling music that was more racially uplifting. When jazz began circulating through the speakeasies of America during the 20s and via the new communication technology of the day, the radio, "the big brain" denizens of the Harlem Renaissance couldn't figure it out. As cited by Nathan Huggins in his Harlem Renaissance:
"Harlem intellectuals promoted Negro art, but one thing is very curious, except for Langston Hughes, none of them took jazz - the new music - seriously. Of course, they all mentioned it as background, as descriptive of Harlem life. All said it was important in the definition of the New Negro. But none thought enough about it to try and figure out what was happening. They tend to view it as a folk art - like the spirituals and the dance - the unrefined source for the new art. Men like James Weldon Johnson and Alain Locke expected some race genius to appear who would transform that source into high culture...[T]he promoters of the Harlem Renaissance were so fixed on a vision of high culture that they did not look very hard or well at jazz."
The black intelligentsia of that era could no more accept the folk reality of its own folk culture than the white intelligentsia could accept the black basis of American culture, that American society is a creolized one, pre- dating multiculturalism. Jazz and blues were urban and rural expressions of working class blacks, but the black intelli- gentsia, trained in the aesthetics of the dominant society and unable to produce a cultural philosophy its own, neglected a very vital music in hopes of it becoming something else. There was a market there, for blacks were buying five to six million discs yearly in 1925 and in 1926 the record business reached $128 million dollars in sales, and did not reach that high point again until after the Second World War.
livebluesworld | Already in the antebellum period, plantation owners would use some slaves not (only) for field work or household services, but would also let them perform as musicians (Marshall Wyatt). The leading white class controlled the way that some blacks could perform their music as entertainment, not only for themselves; they were also encouraged to play for the dancing of their fellow slaves as well. Their music integrated African and European influences. Their instrumentation combined the European violin and the African banjo (banja), and the performance included polkas, marches, jigs and reels of European origin. The percussion and drums, so typical for the African music, were banned because of their potential for social upheaval. Drums and fifes could only be found, played by blacks as well as by whites, in the appropriate context of the colonial military organisations where marches were supposed to contribute to the patriotic feelings and military energy.
In later decades and during the Reconstruction Period, the minstrelsy was the way that the white population dealt with the black music. One can see minstrelsy and black faces as a covert way in which the whites expressed their latent recognition for the richness of the black musical culture. On the outside however, it came down to a comedian presentation of ridiculous and denigrating black stereotypes which was based on black music, but never represented the true spirit of it. The strength of the minstrelsy shows was such that even when black artists joined the shows they put black cork paint on their faces, just as the whites did ! It was the way that the blacks were accepted on stage. The popularity of the shows also within the black population testified of the efficiency by which the white population had succeed in having their control over the existing social order internalised with the people it oppressed (see also Scott Wilkinson – A Reassessment of the blues revival in America, 1951-1970, 1998, quoting Eric Lott : “The phenomenon of minstrelsy itself was an admission of fascination with blacks and black culture”. However, it did not represent the African-American culture at the time since the singing, dancing, and comedy performed at minstrel shows were, in reality, unique demonstrations of Americana in all of its multicultural glory” (pp. 11-12).
Once the African-Americans were freed as slave, the Reconstruction Period witnessed the popularity of the jubilee companies, groups of a Capella black singers who mostly had their social roots in the middle-class and black colleges. Some of them did some intensive touring, bringing them even on the international scene. The most famous are the Fisk Jubilee Singers that considerable contributed to funds raising for the Fisk University. Their repertoire was mainly spirituals, but also songs by the ‘Father of American Music’, Stephen Foster. Even though the aim of the jubilee groups was to offer a counterweight for the negative stereotypes that were promoted by the minstrelsy, they failed to build upon the culture that had grown on the fields and in the shacks. Their popularity was derived from a firm grounding of their style in the vocal harmonies of the European culture: university Jubilee groups presented folk material in a Western clas.... There was no indication of the promotion of the richness of the musical culture that had grown on the plantations.
The same can be said of Polk Miller, who is the first white person who aimed at reviving the older black music forms in an authentic manner. As the son of a plantation owner, he learned how to play the banjo from his father’s slaves. His career started out as a pharmacist, but turned to music in 1892, billing himself (without a black face !) as the “The Old Virginia Plantation Negro” . He toured with “The Old South Quartette”, a changing group of black vocalists. Their repertoire was black and white spirituals, coon songs, confederate war anthems (a capella or with banjo accompaniment). (Scott Wilkinson, 1998). His popularity however didn’t go without concessions to the constraints imposed upon him by the white population: it is said that he stopped from performing because he feared for the safety of his black musicians, who were sometimes even forced to perform behind a curtain, leaving Miller alone visible on stage.
In total respect for the achievements of Polk Miller, one cannot ignore the nostalgic perfume that surrounds his work and music. ” The show aimed at pure nostalgia, as seen in a 1910 brochure emphasizing that the Old South Quartette were “genuine” Negroes: “Their singing is not the kind that has been heard by the students from ‘colored universities,’ who dress in pigeon-tailed coats, patent leather shoes, white shirt fronds, and who are advertised to sing plantation melodies but do not. They do not try to let you see how nearly a Negro can act the white man while parading in a dark skin, but they dress, act, and sing like the real Southern darkey in his ‘workin’’ clothes. As to their voices, they are the sweet, though uncultivated, result of nature, producing a harmony unequalled by the professionals, and because it is natural, goes straight to the hearts of the people. To the old Southerner, it will be ‘Sounds from the old home of long ago’. . . . To hear them is to live again your boyhood days down on the farm.” (program brochHide allure quoted on http://jasobrecht.com/polk-miller-and-his-old-south-quartette-1910/) . The premise of his show was that he was the judge of the real African American Culture. It is hard to put the suspicion aside that pure nostalgia about the old, ante-bellum social order, was not far away.
thenation | there’s another reason actresses harassed by Weinstein may have been
discouraged from reporting sexual harassment. Any who were working on a
Weinstein film were almost certainly classified as independent
contractors, not regular employees. And that means that the
anti-discrimination and sexual-harassment protections of federal law
didn’t apply to them.
It’s a problem not just in Hollywood but throughout the economy,
in industries as diverse as real estate, trucking, technology, and home
health care. And the problem is growing. As more companies
classify their workers as independent contractors or push workers into
nontraditional employment arrangements, an increasing number of people
are at risk of having virtually no recourse for on-the-job harassment.
Workplace discrimination and harassment based on sex are prohibited
under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which outlaws “employment
practice[s] [that] discriminate against any individual with respect to
his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment,
because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national
origin.” If an employee feels she is being harassed at work, she can
file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the
first step in taking legal action. But the catch is that she has to be
an employee for Title VII protections to apply. Independent contractors,
temp workers, and those employed by contracting companies are not
covered under the law. “Title VII has to be related to employment,”
explained Catherine Ruckelshaus, program director at the National
Employment Law Project. Anyone who’s not a traditional employee can’t
easily bring claims under it. “The more attenuated you get from an
employment relationship, the harder it is under Title VII.”
When a film gets made, the employer is typically a holding company,
often an LLC, and the people who work on the show are rarely traditional
W2 employees. “Almost everybody across the board in this industry works
as an independent contractor when there’s an individual production
getting made, when you work on a feature film,” explained Maria Giese, a
film director who has pushed for greater gender equality in the
industry. The same is typically true for those who work on theater productions
or commercials. An individual actress who has been sexually harassed
could try to bring a case under Title VII—but that would require her
first to prove that she was illegally classified as an independent
contractor and should have been an employee. She may be successful. “I
don’t think that there has been an answer legislated or adjudicated” as
to whether film employees should be treated like employees, said Melissa
Silverstein, founder of Women and Hollywood. For example, the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission, which is charged with enforcing Title
VII and would only have jurisdiction if Title VII applied, is currently
investigating gender discrimination against directors at the major movie studios, with its efforts still pending.
Still, it’s a major hurdle. And if the actress can’t prove that
she was misclassified as a contractor, the only option left would be to
bring a contract claim between two business entities—the employer and
the contractor. “Then they’re in a private contract realm where they
would have to argue that the person violated their rights to operate
their business in an ethical manner,” Ruckelshaus explained. “Those are
really hard to bring because typically they’re very fact-based.… If you
get into the he said/she said side of things, if you can’t prove the
allegations of tort or contract breach, you’re out of luck.” Whereas
Title VII claims just have to prove the employer allowed harassment
based on sex, contract claims have to prove an employer’s intent to
discriminate. “It’s very specific,” Ruckelshaus said. “Filing a lawsuit
would be more difficult based on independent contractor status,” Giese
agreed.
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