Nothing To See Over Here - The Breach Of Trust Is The Worst Aspect Of The Leak

politico  |  A deep secret, like a glass of water, can be easily controlled and contained. But when you build vast structures to hold them — a national security apparatus in the case of secrets and canyon-spanning dams when it comes to water — the pressures can exceed thousands of pounds per square inch. Unless adequately monitored and maintained, secrets and water can breach their restraints and flood everything downhill for miles.

The Pentagon just suffered such a dramatic breach as upward of 100 documents leaked. These files contained a grab-bag of national security secrets including about the conduct of the war in Ukraine; U.S. success in penetrating the Russian war machine; insights on the clandestine maneuverings of Israel and South Korea; hints about a previously unknown satellite surveillance technology; the attempted shoot-down of a British spy plane by the Russians; a pending arms deal between Egypt and Russia and one between Turkish contacts and the Wagner group; a Russian effort to hack Canadian gas fields; and intelligence sources and methods, all of which flowed onto online sites, drenching the Pentagon in embarrassment and endangering secret missions around the world.

As national security disasters go, the Pentagon leaks were complete. But as great a scandal as the secrets deluge might be, the greater scandal is how lax the Pentagon appears to be with such monumentally confidential information that it could be purloined and posted on freeform internet sites 4Chan and Discord. Squawking from Congress has ensued, of course, and the Pentagon has muttered about how “serious” the damage is. There is talk that some of the documents have been altered to exaggerate the number of Russian dead. But the government is mostly ostriching the calamity right now. President Joe Biden has been silent on the issue. And on Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, counseled the press to look away. Declining to confirm the provenance of the documents, Kirby said, “It has no business — if you don’t mind me saying — on the front pages of newspapers or on television. It is not intended for public consumption, and it should not be out there.”

Yes, yes! If the press and the public will only take a deep breath and ignore the rising floodwaters, the Russians and the Turks and the Israelis will ignore the tidal wave, too, and dryness will be restored to the land. Good work, Kirby!

The Pentagon — and Kirby, who previously worked as a military and diplomatic affairs analyst for CNN — have enough egg on their faces to start an omelet factory. They don’t know how these secrets escaped their cage, they don’t know who engineered the breakout, they don’t know if additional secrets were snagged. They seem to know nothing and to be engaged in the magical thinking that if we turn away the problem will disappear.

According to press reports, the stash of classified documents appears to have been printed and photographed before being posted online and were likely printed from a secure printer by an authorized user. One unnamed U.S. official told the New York Times that hundreds, if not thousands, of military and U.S. officials have security clearances that would permit them access to the documents. The Pentagon is going to need a wide dragnet if they hope to catch the leaker.

Doesn't The NYTimes Reporting Old OSINT Vetted By Bellingcat Make You Suspicious?

Guardian |  A damaging batch of documents leaked from the Pentagon appears to have been initially shared on the video game chat platform Discord in an effort to win an argument about the war in Ukraine, according to open-source intelligence analysts.

The bizarre provenance of the leak may seem unusual but it is far from the first time that a dispute between gamers has sparked an intelligence breach, with the overlapping communities causing problems for military and gaming platforms alike.

The existence of the leaked cache was exposed as documents showing estimated casualties in the Bakhmut theatre of battle began circulating on public social networks last week.

Two versions of those documents, one of which had been crudely digitally altered to understate Russian casualties and overstate Ukrainian ones, were passed around among observers of the war. One, with the correct figures, stemmed from a leak to 4chan, the chaotic image board best known for birthing the “alt right” movement.

At the same time, a second set of documents, including the edited image, were being passed around pro-Russian Telegram channels.

Neither was the original source, however. Before they emerged on to the public internet, the documents had been shared on closed chatrooms hosted by Discord, a gamer-focused chat app. In one server, called “Minecraft Earth Map”, 10 of the documents were posted as early as 4 March, a month before they appeared on 4chan.

“After a brief spat with another person on the server about Minecraft Maps and the war in Ukraine, one of the Discord users replied: ‘Here, have some leaked documents’ – attaching 10 documents about Ukraine, some of which bore the ‘top secret’ markings,” said Aric Toler, an analyst at the investigative research group§ Bellingcat.

That user had, in turn, found them on another Discord server, run by and for fans of the Filipino YouTuber WowMao, where 30 documents had been posted three days earlier, with “dozens” of other unverified documents about Ukraine. However, even that did not appear to be the original source: a third Discord server, named “Thug Shaker Central”, among other titles, may have been where the documents were originally posted as early as mid-January.

“Posts and channel listings show that the server’s users were interested in video games, music, Orthodox Christianity, and fandom for the popular YouTuber ‘Oxide’,” Toler said, referencing the military-themed YouTube channel. “This server was not especially geopolitical in nature, although its users had a staunchly conservative stance on several issues, members told Bellingcat. Racial slurs and racist memes were shared widely.”

Intelligence agencies have been aware of the need to monitor gaming communities for some time. In 2013, the cache of documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the agency was actively monitoring Xbox Live, the voice chat platform for Microsoft’s console, and had even deployed real-life agents into the virtual world of Azeroth, the setting of the World of Warcraft series.

One document, written in 2008 and titled Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments, warned that it was risky to leave gaming communities under-monitored, describing them as a “target-rich communications network”. The notes warned that so many different agencies were conducting operations inside gaming services that a “deconfliction” group was needed to prevent them spying on each other by accident.

 

A Limited Hangout Owned By Bidencorp Softening Rubes For Failure In Ukraine

thegrayzone  |  Perhaps the most notable piece of information contained in the leaked documents relates to military death tolls, with Ukrainian and Russian losses estimated at about a 4:1 ratio. According to one document, 71,500 Ukrainian troops have been killed in action.

That figure is close to the 100,000 KIA’s cited by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a November 2022 speech, before her comments were retracted. It also tracks closely with statements by one of Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky’s top advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, who told the BBC in June of last year that Ukraine was losing between 100 and 200 soldiers per day (200 deaths per day over the course of 370 days between the launch of Russia’s military operation and the date of the documents would total 74,000.) 

Other American and EU state officials have offered dramatically different figures placing Russian KIA’s over the six figure mark. For instance, Norway’s defense chief has charted 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers dead to Russia’s 180,000, while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Miley asserted that Russian losses are “significantly well over 100,000.” 

Another key detail in the documents pertains to the size of the front lines in Donetsk: Russia maintains 91 battalions in the “Donetsk axis” with around 23,000 total personnel, while Ukraine maintains eight brigades and 40 battalions, with 10,000 to 20,000 total personnel.

The documents also outline expectations of weapons deliveries to Ukraine from the US and other NATO countries along with training schedules for Ukrainian forces as a Spring counteroffensive approaches. The timeline spans from January through April, detailing twelve Ukrainian brigades under construction and the weapons they have been or will be supplied. Nine brigades are said to be armed and trained by the US and NATO allies, and six are said to be ready by the end of March, while the rest will be in action by the end of April. The brigades are said to require 253 tanks, 381 mechanized vehicles, 480 motor vehicles and more.

While the documents distributed on Telegram contain important details about NATO and Ukrainian military capacity, and highlight the astounding depth of American involvement in the war, their publication raises a number of questions.

If the documents were partially faked, were they disseminated to help Russia advance its public relations goals, perhaps by minimizing their casualty numbers or inflating those of their foe? They certainly would not be fooling anyone at the Department of Defense, since they obviously have the original files on hand. Or could it be that the United States leaked the documents with faulty intelligence strewn throughout their contents to confuse Russia ahead of a Ukrainian offensive? 

There is also the possibility that they are one hundred percent authentic. If so, Ukraine and its Western patrons may have more serious problems than a few leaked documents.

Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid YKYDFU When You Take Down Your Linkedin Profile....,

ICE COLD PISSY LAGER PRETTY MUCH SELLS ITSELF DUMB ASS!!!  

WHAT KIND OF CATEGORICAL FUCKTARD INCOMPETENT MUST YOU BE TO FUCK UP A GIG AS EASY AS THIS ONE????

NYPost  |  In 2018, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who oversees assets worth $8.6 trillion and has been called the “face of ESG,” wrote a now-infamous letter to CEOs titled “A Sense of Purpose” that pushed a “new model of governance” in line with ESG values.

“Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose,” Fink wrote. “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”

Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s VP of Marketing, doubles down on her extreme woke strategy to promote the “declining” American beer brand to “young people”, while smearing her former customers as “fratty and out of touch”.

How’s that working out for you, lady? @budlight pic.twitter.com/zNYKbMnZnu

— Old Row (@OldRowOfficial) April 9, 2023

Fink also let it be known “that if a company doesn’t engage with the community and have a sense of purpose “it will ultimately lose the license to operate from key stakeholders.”

In December, Florida pulled $2 billion worth of state assets managed by BlackRock. “I think it’s undemocratic of major asset managers to use their power to influence societal outcomes,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said at the time.

Fink has denied that ESG is political, but key staff managing his ESG operations worked in the Obama administration and donate to Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

In his first veto, President Joe Biden last month rejected a GOP-backed bill that sought to block ESG investing — especially in pension funds where, critics say, American retirement funds will be sacrificed to a radical left-wing agenda.

Protesters in Paris targeted BlackRock’s office there this week due to the company’s role in managing and privatizing pensions, which are at the heart of the French government’s recent retirement-age reforms.

ESG and CEI proponents say that adhering to socially conscious values when investing and managing a company will make the world a better place. Not everyone agrees.

Derek Kreifels is the co-founder and CEO of State Financial Officers Foundation, one of several financial officers fighting ESG on a national level.

He calls ESG itself a “highly subjective political score infiltrating all walks of life, forcing progressive policies on everyday Americans [and] resulting in higher prices at the pump and at the store.”

The Corporate Equality Index is an ominous cog in ESG’s wheel, Kreifels told The Post.

“The problem with measures like CEI, and its big brother ESG, is that it introduces an incentive structure outside of the bounds of business, often in ways contradictory to fiduciary duty,” Kreifels said. “Whether Anheuser-Busch was trying to cash in on Dylan Mulvaney’s TikTok following or chasing higher CEI ratings for inclusivity, the backlash has been significant, and the stockholders to whom the company is obligated will feel the pinch.”

 

 

Dylan Mulvaney's Mimicry Of White Women Is Absurd

thecritic.co.uk  |  If a man seeks to humiliate a woman he encounters, nothing is easier than reducing her appearance to a mere caricature. Men do this directly in front of the woman they are targeting: lifting their voice to a squeak, exaggerating hand gestures, pushing out pretend breasts, wiggling their bum, pouting and fiddling with their hair. Most of these men confine the taunt to the woman in front of them, and the woman often feels and displays a righteous rage. However, when it comes to Dylan Mulvaney, the Tik Tok user who has become famous for his grotesque parody of women, women are not supposed to react critically. They are seen as cruel or “transphobic” if they express annoyance at being so grossly insulted. 

In March 2022 Dylan Mulvaney saw a way to take his barely-concealed disdain for women up a level, with predictable success. After his career as a musical actor had stalled due to the Covid pandemic, with people finding solace daily on Tik Tok, wily Dylan invented a new role that guaranteed his future wealth and success. He announced he was embarking on a journey of “being a girl” and began a series of videos documenting this ludicrous notion. 

Women see this for the deliberately constructed misogyny it is

Shortly before this year-long, very public “transition”, Mulvaney performed a pilot video for his current lucrative act. In it he told the viewer that he “had trouble finding roles” so a friend had invented one for him, a “femme character”. His character wears a pink dress and pearls, white gloves and ankle socks. At this point Mulvaney must have been delighted to glimpse a potential new career path. It was a very savvy move for him to extend and develop this caricature of a 1950s woman. Now, just over a year later, Dylan Mulvaney has highly paid “partnerships” with a number of companies including Budweiser, Kate Spade and — during the past week, to great objection — the Sportwear giant Nike. 

In an inflammatory paid partnership video with Nike, an inanely grinning, barefoot Mulvaney wears a Nike sports bra and leggings. He performs a series of ridiculous moves including comedic side stretches, a theatrical run kicking his heels up nonsensically and failed chorus-line high kicks. He almost runs backwards into a hedge at one point and pulls a comedy expression of shock. It all looks ridiculous and slapstick. It mocks women by suggesting they exercise trivially and ineffectively, but smiling throughout. 

The media seems unwilling to focus on the actual reasons many women are angry about this. It has focused instead on stating that objections to the sponsorship are because Dylan is trans. This is not why women are outraged. When a man “performs woman” in front of women to such a humiliating degree, when he waggles and jiggles and implies that weakness and silliness are inherent to being a woman who plays sport, women appropriately see this for the deliberately constructed misogyny it is. Ria Chapman, a London PE teacher, told me why she finds this act so irritating and offensive:

Girls are still routinely bullied and mocked for being sporty and or breaking stereotypes, their achievements and ambitions not being celebrated and valued like those of their male peers. For a sports company the size of Nike to use a male performing a parody of what he believes women behave like during sport only adds to the ammunition that boys will use to put girls down.

Utilising female stereotypes is the foundation of Mulvaney’s role. On his “Day 1 of being a girl” video debut, he said:

I’ve already cried three times, written a scathing email I didn’t send, ordered dresses online that I couldn’t afford and when someone asked me how I was, I said “I’m fine” but I wasn’t fine. How did I do, ladies?

All of this encapsulates the stereotype of women as emotionally fragile, frivolous spendthrifts, imprudent around clothes and financially inept. In the stereotype Dylan performs, women routinely suppress our emotions and focus on being polite at all times. It is an archaic depiction of requisite female behaviour which was seared into women’s consciousness over decades in the past. This view of “girlhood” took further decades for feminist women to dismantle. Dylan Mulvaney is building it back up before our eyes and we refuse to stay quiet about it.

Clownish 25 Year Old Man Charts His Fame And "Girlhood" (REDUX 11/26/22)

dailymail |  Childcare experts are expressing alarm over transgender TikToker Dylan Mulvaney’s popularity bump after her White House debut, saying social media is driving a spike in teens seeking sex-change procedures.

Clinicians say Mulvaney’s sit-down time with President Joe Biden has raised the social media sensation’s profile, extending her reach and likely influencing teenage fans who may themselves be questioning their own gender identity.

Mulvaney’s TikTok following grew to 8.4 million after her White House appearance, and while she is entitled to share her experiences online, experts told DailyMail.com that online influencers like her in part drive an alarming uptick in teen transitioning.

dailymail |   'A lot of the initial deals were tailored to my queerness and to my transness,' she told The Creators newsletter last month.

'For some of these major corporations, I was actually their first trans creator. It's exciting to make money to support myself since I lost my job, and to have my transition surgeries be covered too.'

Her agency, CAA, did not answer DailyMail.com's interview request.

Mulvaney's ascent has not been without hiccups. Her appearance on Ulta Beauty last month led to controversy and calls to boycott the cosmetics firm. Critics called her 'misogynistic' for 'appropriating' womanhood.

Likewise, a post about Tampax feminine hygiene products left some viewers shocked and confused. Two replied: 'Is this a joke?' She is frequently bashed for referring to the vagina as a 'Barbie pouch'.

She has gained a massive following on TikTok as she documents her transition to a transgender female — originally identifying as 'nonbinary' but telling followers in March that she was a girl.

Mulvaney interviewed Biden last month as part of a panel of six progressive activists for NowThis News. In the interview, the Democrat vowed to protect 'gender-affirming care,' saying states should not limit access to transgender treatments.

 

Useless White Woman Signifiers Peddled As Feminine Gender (REDUX 2/11/23)

teenvogue  | The fast food joint where Zuriel Hooks worked was just up the street from where she lived in Alabama, but the commute was harrowing. When she started the job in April 2021, she had to walk to work on the shoulder of the road in the Alabama sun. She would pause at the intersection, waiting for the right opportunity to run across multiple lanes of traffic. 

It was hot, it was dangerous, it was exhausting – but if she wanted to keep her job, she didn’t have much of a choice. “I felt so bad about myself at that time. Because I'm just like, ‘I’m too pretty to be doing all this,’” Hooks said, laughing while looking back. “Literally, I deserve to be driven to work.” 

Hooks, 19, now works for the Knights and Orchids Society, an organization serving Alabama’s Black LGBT community. But the experience of walking to that job stuck with her. Though she’s been working towards it for two years, Hooks doesn’t have a driver’s license. 

For trans youth like Hooks, this crucial rite of passage can be a complicated, lengthy and often frustrating journey. Trans young people face unique challenges to driving at every turn, from complicated ID laws to practicing with a parent. Without adequate support, trans youth may give up on driving entirely, resulting in a crisis of safety and independence.

The most obvious obstacle involves the license itself. Teenagers who choose to change their names or gender markers face a complicated and costly legal battle. The processes vary: some states require background checks, some court appearances, some medical documentation. At times, the rules can border on ridiculous. Alabama’s SB 184 forbade people under the age of 19 from pursuing medical transition. Yet the state also passed a law requiring drivers to undergo medical transition in order to change their gender markers. Though that law has since been ruled unconstitutional by a federal court, the state of Alabama is appealing that decision, leaving trans drivers with no official resolution. 

“It creates this – I don't want to use the cliche, but – patchwork,” said Olivia Hunt, director of policy at the National Center for Transgender Equality. “Not just state-to-state, but even person-to-person, where every person's name change and gender marker change situation is different.”

The cost can vary widely, too. Documentation, court fees and other requirements can quickly tally up to hundreds of dollars. “If you've got somebody who's already in a situation where, due to financial problems, [who] doesn't have access to a car, that might make it just that more inaccessible for them,” Hunt told Teen Vogue.

This lack of access to name and gender marker revisions puts first time drivers in a dangerous limbo. If your name or gender marker doesn’t match your appearance, there’s potential for harassment. The fear of getting outed by an ID (and subsequent abuse) is what some researchers call “ID anxiety.”

“For trans drivers, this is a unique, personal embodiment of stress,” said Arjee Restar, a social epidemiologist and an assistant professor at the University of Washington, “given that the same ID anxiety does not occur to cisgender drivers.”

With that being said, ID law is not the only thing troubling young trans drivers. Public driver education programs have dwindled significantly since the 1970s, leaving much of the burden of teaching driver’s ed on parents. In most states, teenagers must practice for their driving exams under adult supervision, typically a parent or guardian. 

But trans youth often have fraught relationships with the adults in their lives . Hooks, who started practicing driving with someone close to her at 17, often felt like a captive audience while trying to drive. “As [they were] trying to somehow teach me how to drive, I feel like it was [their] way to try to… I would say somehow try to brainwash me back from being who I am,” said Hooks. “They’d turn [the conversation] from driving to, ‘why are you even transitioning?’”

In Alabama, teenagers must complete a minimum of 50 hours of driving with adult supervision in order to get their licenses in lieu of a state-approved drivers’ education course. Hooks tried to muscle through it. But navigating the roads while navigating the emotions in the passenger side got to be too much. One day, Hooks just gave up. “If I'm gonna have this much agony trying to get this done,” Hooks recalled thinking, “then I don't want to do it.”

The alternative wasn’t much better. She didn’t just feel miserable walking everywhere; she felt vulnerable. 

“I always got catcalled, I always got beeped at by a lot of men,” she said.

Nashville Shooter Manifesto: Memory Holed Cept For The Don't Fuck With Cats Peanut Gallery

Epochtimes  |  My home city of Nashville has been in a virtual non-stop uproar since the tragic murders of six people, three of them 9-year-old children, at The Covenant School on March 27.

This has been ineffably sad for the family and friends of the victims, who are victims themselves, their grief often overwhelmed in a city, indeed a country, now so politicized that our common humanity seems some distant memory from a long ago Jimmy Stewart movie one sees only at Christmas.

Lost too in all this is any sense of what really happened that Monday or why it happened.

Distraction reigns. The last few days have been arguably the mother of all distractions when, as reported here at The Epoch Times and virtually everywhere, riots or protests (depending on how you see them) broke out in front and within the Tennessee State Assembly.

The rioters/protestors were largely high school students, bent on gun control, instigated, at least in part, by three members of the assembly, two of whom have now been expelled for their behavior.

Unfortunately for the local GOP and Republicans everywhere, the two expelled, deservedly or not, happened to be black, naturally providing a propaganda opportunity for our resident White House “civil rights activist” and ally of former Sen. Robert Byrd (D-N.C.) who once informed us “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

Meanwhile, the tragic murders are being used inevitably as a battering ram for gun control that has never been shown to work and for red flag laws that can work, but not in the way intended.

Which brings me to the missing “manifesto.”

In the immediate aftermath of the murders the police informed us the obviously emotionally disturbed shooter was transgendered, something that was ratified by the video of the killings at the Christian school showing the female-by-birth Audrey Hale dressed entirely like a macho terrorist.

Further, they told us she had left behind documents and a manifesto, explaining her actions.

Then, as if by magic, we heard no more of the word transgendered in any of its forms, from the media or anywhere, nor, almost simultaneously, anything of the manifesto, except that it had been handed to the FBI for review.

Regarding the media, it isn’t just CBS, widely known to have decreed the word “transgender” should be omitted in coverage of the crime but almost all of the MSM. NPR, recently labeled “state-affiliated” on Twitter, does not mention the word in its recent update on the crime, nor does it apply a pronoun of any sort—male, female, or “they”—when referring to the shooter. This must be a new form of asexual reporting.

As for the FBI, no word so far on when they will release the manifesto, in original or redacted form.

Sound familiar?

No doubt it does. How long have we been waiting for the FBI to act on the Hunter Biden laptop or even reveal its contents? Do we expect it ever to happen, especially under the current administration?

Obviously not. And amidst the consternation over the expelling of the Tennessee assembly members, to demand transparency or even to mention the manifesto will invoke a response that one is transphobic.

But no one’s transphobic, just interested in the truth, a truth that has become evanescent for a reason.

Why suddenly has transgenderism broken out everywhere, as if sexual dysphoria were some new version of the measles? Cui bono?

Certainly not the children many of whom are going through developmental issues that have occurred since time immemorial without medical intervention, yet somehow we are all still here.

Who is guiding them to finding their salvation in changing sexes? Toward what end?

Perhaps the manifesto has a clue and that is why it is being hidden from us. Or maybe an abreaction is feared.

Seine Papieren Bitte: Memory Holed Indeed Cept For My Blanket Exemption Papers...,

brownstone  |  On a video podcast the other day, I made reference to the lockdown orders of March 2020. The host turned off the recording. He said it was fine to talk about this subject but from now on please refer to “the events of March 2020” with no specifics. 

Otherwise, it will be taken down by YouTube and Facebook. He needs those platforms for reach, and reach is necessary for his business model. 

I complied, but I was spooked. Are we really now in the position that talking about what happened to us is verboten on mainstream venues? Sadly, that seems to be where we headed. In big and small ways, and throughout the culture and the whole world, we are bit by bit being trained to forget and hence not learn and thus repeat the whole thing. 

This makes no sense since nearly every public issue in play today traces to those fateful days and the fallout thereof, including censorship, the entrenchment of industry-government oligarchs, the corruption of media and tech, the educational upheaval, the abuse of courts and law, and the developing financial and banking crisis. 

And yet hardly anyone wants to speak about the topic frankly. It is too upsetting. There is too much at stake. We cannot risk being canceled, the single greatest fear of every aspirational professional in today’s world. Plus too many powerful people were in on it and don’t want to admit it. It would appear that the whole subject is being memoryholed in ways of which they all approve. 

For nearly two years, or longer, respectable intellectuals knew not to dissent from the prevailing norms and challenge the whole machinery. This was true of Washington think tanks, which went on their merry way from March 2020 either celebrating the “public health response” or just remaining quiet. The same was true of the leadership of major political parties and third parties. 

Most religious leaders stayed quiet too, even as their doors were padlocked for as long as 2 holiday seasons. Civic organizations played along. If you thought that the job of the ACLU was to defend civil liberties, you were wrong: they one day decided that lockdowns, mandatory masks, and forced shots were essential to their mission. 

So many were compromised over 3 years. These same people now just want the whole subject to go away. We find ourselves in an odd position, having experienced the biggest trauma in our lives and in many generations and yet there is precious little open talk about it. Brownstone was established to fill this void but we’ve become a target as a result.

Before There Can Be A Revoution There Must First Be A Revolution Between The Ears

Consciousness reflects–and goes towards further influencing–the material underpinnings of the system in which it is situated. U$A is rapidly trending in a sharply authoritarian direction because the structural contradictions of capitalism can only be effectively addressed by the 1% via domestic austerity, increased repression (suppression of information, outright dismantling of supposed rule-of-law mechanisms, etc.), and accelerating militarism and war. 

We are not approaching a crisis–we are in one. It was remarked to me years ago, there is a death wish at the core of capitalism. It’s 50/50 whether it’s more insane or evil, but both characterizations fit increasingly generalized events like the expulsion of legislators in Tennessee, the outright bribery of Supreme Court “justices,” and as always, the ability of the biggest banks to wallow outright in their corruption. 

We live in interesting times. To the extent it is a spectator sport, we can only expect this plunge to continue and intensify. There is no “technical fix” to a system that is irrational and self-destructive–as someone remarked long ago, we will be its undertakers or ourselves be interred by its collapse.

From ChatGPT: Propaganda methods are techniques used to manipulate information, ideas, and opinions to influence and control people’s behavior. Here are some common propaganda methods:

• Name-calling: This is a technique used to create negative associations by using negative labels or name-calling to discredit a person, group, or idea. 

• Testimonials: This is a technique used to build credibility by using endorsements or testimonials from respected people or authorities.

• Bandwagon: This is a technique used to create a sense of social pressure or conformity by suggesting that “everyone else is doing it,” or that it is the popular or accepted choice.

• Emotional appeals: This is a technique used to appeal to people’s emotions rather than reason, often by using vivid imagery, personal anecdotes, or appealing to people’s fears or desires.

• Glittering generalities: This is a technique used to create positive associations by using vague or undefined terms that sound good but have no real meaning.

• Simplification: This is a technique used to oversimplify complex issues, often by reducing them to simple slogans or catchphrases.

• False or misleading information: This is a technique used to manipulate information or present false or misleading information as fact to support a particular point of view.

• Scapegoating: This is a technique used to blame a particular person or group for a problem or issue, often unfairly, to distract attention from the real causes. 
  

I foresee a future in which it is simultaneously claimed that AI is sentient for marketing purposes but lacks sentience for legal purposes.  This is the way that Corporations have been given legal rights amounting to Corporate personhood but without the possibility of sending the Corporate person to prison no matter how many people the Corporation kills.

but but but Aren't You Just Elon's Sock-Puppet?!?!?

racket  |  Earlier this afternoon, I learned Substack links were being blocked on Twitter. Since being able to share my articles is a primary reason I use Twitter, I was alarmed and asked what was going on.

.@elonmusk, you know that thing where the left eats its own? We mustn’t let that happen to the emerging western-values/free-speech coalition. Many of us who have backed your Twitter play and taken substantial heat for it are thrown by this move. The public square isn’t a monopoly https://t.co/qe1Gn6P6H6

— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) April 7, 2023

It turns out Twitter is upset about the new Substack Notes feature, which they see as a hostile rival. When I asked how I was supposed to market my work, I was given the option of posting my articles on Twitter instead of Substack.

Not much suspense there; I’m staying at Substack. You’ve all been great to me, as has the management of this company. Beginning early next week I’ll be using the new Substack Notes feature (to which you’ll all have access) instead of Twitter, a decision that apparently will come with a price as far as any future Twitter Files reports are concerned. It was absolutely worth it and I’ll always be grateful to those who gave me the chance to work on that story, but man is this a crazy planet.

If You Don't Like The Status Quo You Have No One To Vote For - Just People To Vote Against

neuburger  |  To answer that question seriously, consider the following premises. I think the first four accurately describe the thinking of mainstream Democratic leaders since the humiliating presidential loss of 2016:

1. Modern Republicans (leaders, media, and crucially, their voters as well) represent the worst threat to the American Republic since the Civil War.

   1. Or possibly since the Founding. Southern Confederates didn’t wish to institute Hitlerian reforms that would eliminate democracy from the governance of the state.

2. Any act by any individual or organization that advances the overall Republican Project, inadvertently or not, is as dangerous as the Project itself.

3. Because the Republican Project is evil, its supporters are evil — or in the most generous cases, deeply stupid.

4. Stopping the Republican Project means stopping all supporters and adherents, be they willing or not.

5. (Taibbi addendum 1) Matt Taibbi is a supporter, willingly or not, and therefore must be stopped.

6. (Taibbi addendum 2) Because his support is probably not inadvertent — Seder’s hosts and the Democratic committee members are certain his motive is money, a sell-out to advance Elon Musk — destruction of his entire career is a reasonable response. After all, the whole of American democracy is at risk; literally all.

I don’t think any of those statements, stark as they are, misrepresent the Democratic Party position. Everything I’ve observed since November 2016 confirms them all.

The Problem in a Nutshell

Statement 1 could well be true. I believe it myself, though about the leadership only. (I have other thoughts about Republican voters.)

But does the rest follow from that? Does it justify the destruction of free speech, to take one example, in order to preserve it? (If you doubt that’s what’s on offer, click the link.)

And even if it does, even if the means are justified by the end, the problem is that this Democratic Party response — this hate-Republicans-at-all-costs messaging (while party leaders themselves cut deals with them) — is not going to work. It won't blast them past their electoral opponents at near the speed it ought to, given their opponent's obvious and fatal flaws.

Mainstream Democrats run roughly even with Republicans except in protected districts. They certainly ran roughly even with Donald Trump in the only venue that counts, the Electoral College. And Democratic leaders are the reason that this is so. Will all this vitriol make them more attractive, or less?

If you don’t like the status quo, you have no one to vote for, just people to vote against.

What do you think would happen if Democrats ran a candidate of Real Rebellion, a Bernie Sanders, say, à la 2016, against the candidate of Pretending to Care what happens to suffering voters? Would real rebellion against predatory rule by the rich “trump” fake rebellion financed by the rich?

Of course it would. Sanders would have beaten Trump soundly, had he had the chance, in the 2016 race. All the momentum was his, and he won almost every head-to-head primary contest in states with open, same-day primary voting.

But Democrats, the other party of the rich, won’t take that course. Which leaves them only one pitch. In Taibbi’s language from the start of this piece:

It’s always “Vote for us or you’re a right-wing insurrectionist Putin-lover,” which is the opposite of persuasive.

This is the Democrats’ constant closing argument, and the worst they could advance. It makes them, not just wrong, but ugly as well, the “opposite of persuasive.” Yet this is all they have, if they can’t themselves attack the people’s real enemy, and this time actually mean it. Sad for us. Sad for them as well.

 

We Saw Matt Taibbi vs. Congressional DNC - Now Matt Taibbi vs. MSNBC

racket  |   I’m going to be interviewed on MSNBC today by Mehdi Hasan, the author of a book called Win Every Argument. I’m looking forward to it as one would a root canal or a rectal.

I accepted the invitation because it would have been wrong to refuse, on the off chance he was planning a good-faith discussion. If you’re reading this, things have gone another way.

I last appeared on MSNBC six years ago, on January 13, 2017, to talk with Chris Hayes and of all people Malcolm Nance, about the then-burgeoning Trump-Russia scandal.

The Trump-Russia story was white-hot and still in its infancy. That same day, news leaked from Israel that Americans warned the Mossad not to share information with the incoming administration, because Russia had “leverages of pressure” on Trump. Asked by Chris about the scandal generally, I made what I thought was a boring-but-true observation, that we in the media didn’t “have any hard evidence” of a conspiracy, just not a lot to go on. This was the TV equivalent of a shrug.

Nance jumped on this in a way I remember feeling was unexpected and oddly personal. “Matt’s a journalist. I’m an intelligence officer,” he snapped. “There is no such thing as coincidence in my world.” Chris jumped in to note reporters have different standards, and I agreed, saying, “We haven’t seen anything that allows us to say unequivocally that x and y happened last year.”

“Unequivocally” seemed to trigger Nance. With regard to the DNC hack, he said, “That evidence is unequivocal. It’s on the Internet.” As for “these links possibly with the Trump team,” he proclaimed, “You’re probably never going to see the CIA’s report.” Nance went on to answer “no” to a question from Chris about whether leaks “were coming from the intelligence community,” Chris wrapped up with a sensible suggestion that we all not rely on a parade of “leaks and counter-leaks,” and the segment was done.

To this day I get hit probably a hundred times a day with the question, “What happened to you, man?” What happened? That segment happened, but to MSNBC, not me.

That exchange between Nance and me was symbolic of a choice the network faced. They could either keep doing what reporters had done since the beginning of time, confining themselves to saying things they could prove. Or, they could adopt a new approach, in which you can say anything is true or confirmed, so long as a politician or intelligence official told you it was.

We know how that worked out. I was never invited back, nor for a long time was any other traditionally skeptical reporter, while Nance — one of the most careless spewers of provable errors ever to appear on a major American news network — became one of the Peacock’s most familiar faces.