Sunday, August 26, 2018

Why Shouldn't the CBC Dedicate Itself to Defunding Indians and Israel Alike?



WaPo  |  About US is a new initiative by The Washington Post to cover issues of identity in the United States. Look for the About US newsletter launching this fall.

A decade after the Cherokee Nation voted overwhelmingly to deny citizenship for descendants of the people it enslaved, a district court judge has invalidated the tribe’s decision. The Cherokee Nation has long argued that only those with Cherokee blood should be citizens — excluding the descendants of its black slaves — and a legal ruling otherwise would be an affront to its sovereignty and self-determination. Journalist Kenneth J. Cooper disagrees and is gathering evidence to show he and his relatives are among the estimated 3,000 living descendants of Cherokee Freedmen and deserve citizenship. (Leaders of the freedmen’s group have said as many as 25,000 descendants could be eligible to apply for citizenship.) Cooper explains why this part of his family’s identity deserves formal recognition:

I’m preparing to order certified copies of birth certificates: seven of my grandmother’s from Oklahoma, seven of my mother’s from Kansas, and 10 from Colorado, where I was born.
I’m getting them to enroll myself, my siblings and our nieces as citizens of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. My birth certificate and my siblings’ identify both our parents, in the language of that bygone era, as “Negro.”

So why are we, African Americans, seeking citizenship in a Native American nation?

Two weeks ago, Thomas F. Hogan, a senior U.S. district court judge in D.C., ruled that descendants of the former slaves of the Cherokee — yes, the Cherokee had black slaves, an unusual bit of American history most people don’t know — were entitled to citizenship in the Cherokee Nation under a treaty signed in 1866.

On my mother’s side, some of our ancestors were enslaved by prosperous Cherokee. Our family’s history with the Cherokee Nation goes back at least 200 years, to the early 1800s, in Georgia and North Carolina. The history of the Cherokee Freedmen and the Cherokee Nation are intertwined, a point Hogan makes in his opinion.

The lawsuit that led to Hogan’s ruling was prompted by a 2007 referendum that kicked the freedmen out of the tribe, a move supported by the great majority of Cherokee who voted. That summer, I confronted then-Chief Chad Smith, who orchestrated the referendum, at a panel discussion on the issue at the Unity: Journalists of Color convention in Chicago. I spoke angrily because of a comment Smith made to The Washington Post: “A lot of Cherokees don’t know who the freedmen are.” I read that as trying to erase slave-holding and my family from the tribe’s history.

Through a decade of genealogical research, I have identified my enslaved ancestors and most of their Cherokee slaveholders. One of those ancestors for sure, and likely two, Thomas Still and Malinda Thompson, separately trekked with the Cherokee on the “Trail of Tears.” Under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Army soldiers forced that tribe and others from the southeast to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, so white settlers could take over their lands.

Queer Academic and Clerical Slug Trails DEMAND Cleansing Blue Fire


newyorker | This is academics doing their job: engaging with things in great complexity. Discussions of #MeToo cases in other areas haven’t been up to this task. We certainly can’t expect it from Hollywood, whose job is to make stories palatable and simple. Writers, who on the subject of #MeToo have often practiced either avoidance or positional warfare, have been able to advance the conversation only so far. But this rare moment, when a wider audience is briefly interested in what academics have to say for and about themselves, might give us a chance for complicating the conversation. They can bring us back to some under-deliberated questions. In the #MeToo revolution, does the focus on identifying bad actors distract us from breaking down the structures that enable them? What is justice in terms of #MeToo, if not merely public disgrace and professional exile for the perpetrators? And how can justice be achieved?

As it happens, many of the scholars apparently most invested in the Ronell case have spent their professional lives studying power. That may give us a chance to finally acknowledge that there are power imbalances in all relationships, and that both parties in two-person interactions exercise some sort of power. The philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who is firmly convinced of Ronell’s innocence, argues that it was Reitman who was using Ronell. This sort of assertion is perhaps easier to make because the accuser is, in this case, a man, but also because Žižek has made a career of making shocking arguments.

What Žižek’s take does not acknowledge, however, is that even when it seems that everyone has behaved badly, it doesn’t mean that everyone has behaved equally badly, or is equally responsible for the bad relationships that have been created. This is where Duggan’s question, about the boundaries in the relationships between graduate students and their advisers, becomes crucial. The same blog on which Žižek’s post appeared, Theory Illuminati, posted a video of Jeremy Fernando, now a fellow at the European Graduate School (where Ronell is a professor), delivering a talk called “On Walking With My Teacher.” In the video, from 2015, Fernando, seated in front of a large projected photograph of him and Ronell, says, among other things, “My dear teacher Avital always reminded me that movement of thought and our bodies are potentially entwined.” For nearly forty minutes, he talks about love as a precondition for teaching and learning and bodies as the location of both knowledge and love. The talk is, clearly, full of love.

Ronell employs the psychoanalytic term “transference” to describe intense relationships with her students. She is not the first feminist postructuralist scholar to have done so, nor is she the first to get in trouble for it—or to take it too far. Twenty-six years ago, two graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee filed sexual-harassment complaints against the scholar Jane Gallop, who was eventually found to have violated a rule against consensual amorous relationships, though the university found no evidence to support other claims . (A contemporary account of the case, by Margaret Talbot, is eerily relevant.)

A different take on Ronell’s pedagogy came in an anonymous quote that circulated on Facebook. (I don’t know the name of the author, who declined to communicate with me, citing, through an intermediary, the fear of retaliation.)
We don’t need a conversation about sexual harassment by AR, we should instead talk about what AR and many of her generation call ‘pedagogy’ and what is still excused as ‘genius.’ When people talk about sexual harassment it’s within the logic of the symbolic order – penetration, body parts – I doubt you will find much of this here. But AR is all about manipulation and psychic violence. . . . AR pulls students and young faculty in by flattery, then breaks their self-esteem, goes on to humiliate them in front of others, until the only way to tell yourself and others that you have not been debased, that you have not been used by a pathological narcissist as a private slave, is that you are just so incredibly close, and that Avi is just so incredibly fragile and lonely and needs you 24/7 to do groceries, to fold her laundry, to bring her to acupuncture, to pick her up from acupuncture, to drive her to JFK, to talk to her at night, etc. . . . All I am saying is: the AR-case is not about a single case of sexual harassment, it’s about systematic manipulation, bullying, intimidation, pitting students against each other, creating rivalry between them. . . . I agree the concept of “Avital Ronell” is a great one: I too would love to be friends with a smart, hilarious, queer, Jewish, feminist, anarchist theorist!
Duggan calls for looking at harassment as an issue that is neither limited to sex nor rooted in “bad apple” individuals—rather, it is a function of power structures. Closed Title IX investigations are not a good way to address harassment, she suggests. “Perhaps we should begin to think about a restorative justice process that would center in departments, be transparent, hold faculty responsible, and assess the question of boundaries in local context?” she writes. “Perhaps impose confidentiality as the exception, not the rule—to be invoked when a need is demonstrated.”

Saturday, August 25, 2018

Sicherheitsdeinst: The Obvious Ass-Clownery of the Deep State


Counterpunch |  So, Paul Manafort, described by the New York Times as “a longtime lobbyist and political consultant who worked for multiple Republican candidates and presidents,” was convicted of bank fraud, tax fraud and failure to report a foreign bank account. And Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, pled guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud (making false statements to obtain loans), and breaking campaign finance laws by paying off two women who claimed to have had sexual affairs with Trump. Because Cohen says those payoffs were made at Trump’s direction, that is the one charge that directly implicates Trump. 

On the basis of the these results, the NYT editorial board insists: “Only a complete fantasist … could continue to claim that this investigation of foreign subversion of an American election, which has already yielded dozens of other indictments and several guilty pleas, is a ‘hoax’ or ‘scam’ or ‘rigged witch hunt.’” Democrats concur, saying the results “put the lie to Mr. Trump’s argument that Mr. Mueller was engaged in a political investigation.”

But these crimes are tax fraud, money laundering, and credit app padding that have nothing to do with Donald Trump, and campaign-finance violations related to what a critic of Trump aptly describes as “a classic B-team type of bumbling screw-up of covering up mistresses.” I question the level of word play, if not fantasizing, necessary to claim that these crimes validate “this investigation of foreign subversion.” None of them has anything to do with that. The perils of this, that, these, and those.

Do these results disprove that the Mueller probe is “a political investigation”? I think they imply quite the opposite, and quite obviously so.

Why? Because these convictions would not have occurred if Hillary Clinton had been elected president. There would be no convictions because there would have been no investigation.



Sicherheitsdeinst: The Ominous Brazenness of the Deep State


thenation |  Leaving aside the missed occasion to discuss the “revolving door” involving former US security officials using their permanent clearances to enhance their lucrative positions outside government, Cohen thinks the subsequent political-media furor obscures what is truly important and perhaps ominous: 

Brennan’s allegation was unprecedented. No such high-level intelligence official had ever before accused a sitting president of treason, still more in collusion with the Kremlin. (Impeachment discussions of Presidents Nixon and Clinton, to take recent examples, did not include allegations involving Russia.) Brennan clarified his charge: “Treasonous, which is to betray one’s trust and to aid and abet the enemy.” Coming from Brennan, a man presumed to be in possession of related dark secrets, as he strongly hinted, the charge was fraught with alarming implications. Brennan made clear he hoped for Trump’s impeachment, but in another time, and in many other countries, his charge would suggest that Trump should be removed from the presidency urgently by any means, even a coup. No one, it seems, has even noted this extraordinary implication with its tacit threat to American democracy. (Perhaps because the disloyalty allegation against Trump has been customary ever since mid-2016, even before he became president, when an array of influential publications and writers—among them a former acting CIA director—began branding him Putin’s “puppet,” “agent,” “client,” and “Manchurian candidate.” The Los Angeles Times even saw fit to print an article suggesting that the military might have to remove Trump if he were to be elected, thereby having the very dubious distinction of predating Brennan.) 

Why did Brennan, a calculating man, risk leveling such a charge, which might reasonably be characterized as sedition? The most plausible explanation is that he sought to deflect growing attention to his role as the “Godfather” of the entire Russiagate narrative, as Cohen argued back in February. If so, we need to know Brennan’s unvarnished views on Russia. 

They are set out with astonishing (perhaps unknowing) candor in New York Times op-ed of August 17. They are those of Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover in their prime. Western “politicians, political parties, media outlets, think tanks and influencers are readily manipulated, wittingly and unwittingly, or even bought outright, by Russian operatives…not only to collect sensitive information but also to distribute propaganda and disinformation.… I was well aware of Russia’s ability to work surreptitiously  within the United States, cultivating relationships with individuals who wield actual or potential power.… These Russian agents are well trained in the art of deception. They troll political, business and cultural waters in search of gullible or unprincipled individuals who become pliant in the hands of their Russian puppet masters. Too often, those puppets are found.” All this, Brennan assures readers, is based on his “deep insight.” All the rest of us, it seems, are constantly susceptible to “Russian puppet masters” under our beds, at work, on our computers. Clearly, there must be no “cooperation” with the Kremlin’s grand “Puppet Master,” as Trump said he wanted early on. (People who wonder what and when Obama knew about the unfolding Russiagate saga need to ask why he would keep such a person so close for so long.) 

And yet, scores of former intelligence and military officials rallied around this unvarnished John Brennan, even though, they said, they did not entirely share his opinions. This too is revealing. They did so, it seems clear enough, out of their professional corporate identity, which Brennan represented and Trump was degrading by challenging the intelligences agencies’ (implicitly including his own) Russiagate allegations against him. It’s a misnomer to term these people representatives of a hidden “deep state.” In recent years, they have been amply visible on television and newspaper op-ed pages. Instead, they see and present themselves as members of a fully empowered and essential fourth branch of government. This too has gone largely undiscussed while nightingales of the fourth branch—such as David Ignatius and Joe Scarborough in the pages of the The Washington Post—have been in full voice. 



Deep State Sanctions Cannot Bring Russia To Its Knees


bloomberg  |  The U.S.’s sanctions policy against Russia is evolving from trying to nudge the Kremlin in a desired direction to inflicting maximum pain. This is a slippery slope, and it’s time to consider the most extreme consequences for Russia, as well as the U.S. and its allies.

During a Senate Banking Committee hearing this week, a telling exchange took place between Republican Senator John Kennedy and the Trump administration’s senior sanctions officials.

Kennedy demanded to know what they would do if the president ordered them to bring the Russian economy "to its knees.” They wouldn’t give a straight answer, saying instead that the ramifications of such a goal would need to be assessed and that current sanctions were already aggressive. Irritated, Kennedy insisted: “But the economy hasn’t been brought to its knees!”

His frustration is understandable. The U.S. has levied sanctions, or said it will, in response to a series of Russian actions: the annexation of Crimea, the fomenting of a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine, the attempted poisoning of an ex-spy in the U.K. and a string of cyberattacks. The list could go on — but President Vladimir Putin’s Russia has gone on doing all those things.

Treasury Undersecretary Sigal Mandelker said in her testimony that she believes Russia’s “adventurism” has indeed been checked by the economic pain the sanctions have inflicted.
That, however, looks like a statement of faith rather than fact. There is no evidence the sanctions have affected Putin’s thinking or plans. That he might like them to be lifted isn’t such proof.

Friday, August 24, 2018

Affirmative Action Never Intended For White Women or Replacement Negroes


newyorker  |  The application process for schools, fellowships, and jobs always came with a ritual: a person who had a role in choosing me—an admissions officer, an interviewer—would mention in his congratulations that I was “different” from the other Asians. When I won a scholarship that paid for part of my education, a selection panelist told me that I got it because I had moving qualities of heart and originality that Asian applicants generally lacked. Asian applicants were all so alike, and I stood out. In truth, I wasn’t much different from other Asians I knew. I was shy and reticent, played a musical instrument, spent summers drilling math, and had strict parents to whom I was dutiful. But I got the message: to be allowed through a narrow door, an Asian should cultivate not just a sense of individuality but also ways to project “Not like other Asians!”

In a federal lawsuit filed in Massachusetts in 2014, a group representing Asian-Americans is claiming that Harvard University’s undergraduate-admissions practices unlawfully discriminate against Asians. (Disclosure: Harvard is my employer, and I attended and teach at the university’s law school.) The suit poses questions about what a truly diverse college class might look like, spotlighting a group that is often perceived as lacking internal diversity. The court complaint quotes a college counsellor at the highly selective Hunter College High School (which I happened to attend), who was reporting a Harvard admissions officer’s feedback to the school: certain of its Asian students weren’t admitted, the officer said, because “so many” of them “looked just like” each other on paper.

The lawsuit alleges that Harvard effectively employs quotas on the number of Asians admitted and holds them to a higher standard than whites. At selective colleges, Asians are demographically overrepresented minorities, but they are underrepresented relative to the applicant pool. Since the nineteen-nineties, the share of Asians in Harvard’s freshman class has remained stable, at between sixteen and nineteen per cent, while the percentage of Asians in the U.S. population more than doubled. A 2009 Princeton study showed that Asians had to score a hundred and forty points higher on the S.A.T. than whites to have the same chance of admission to top universities. The discrimination suit survived Harvard’s motion to dismiss last month and is currently pending.

When the New York Times reported, last week, that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was internally seeking lawyers to investigate or litigate “intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions,” many people immediately assumed that the Trump Administration was hoping to benefit whites by assailing affirmative action. The Department soon insisted that it specifically intends to revive a 2015 complaint against Harvard filed with the Education and Justice Departments by sixty-four Asian-American groups, making the same claim as the current court case: that Harvard intentionally discriminates against Asians in admissions, giving whites an advantage. (The complaint had previously been dismissed in light of the already-pending lawsuit.) The combination of the lawsuit and the potential federal civil-rights inquiry signals that the treatment of Asians will frame the next phase of the legal debate over race-conscious admissions programs.

Just last year, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the University of Texas at Austin’s affirmative-action program, which, like Harvard’s, aims to build a diverse class along multiple dimensions and considers race as one factor in a holistic review of each applicant. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, approved of a university’s ability to define “intangible characteristics, like student body diversity, that are central to its identity and educational mission.” Incidentally, the phrase “intangible characteristics” echoes the sort of language that often describes the individualizing or leadership qualities that many Asian-American applicants, perceived as grinds with high test scores, are deemed to lack. The complaint against Harvard highlights the school’s history of using similar language to describe Jewish students nearly a century ago, which led to a “diversity” rationale designed to limit Jewish enrollment in favor of applicants from regions with fewer Jews, such as the Midwest. If diversity of various kinds is central to an élite school’s mission, an Asian may have to swim upstream to be admitted.

The U.T. affirmative-action case was brought by a white student and financed by Edward Blum, a white Jewish conservative who is also financing the lawsuit against Harvard. Justice Alito’s dissent in the U.T. case said that, in failing to note that U.T.’s admissions practices discriminated against Asians, the Court’s majority acted “almost as if Asian-American students do not exist.” For Asian-Americans—the majority of whom support affirmative action—being cast in the foreground of the affirmative-action debate can be awkward and painful. Affirmative action has consistently been a “wedge” issue, and groups such as Asian Americans Advancing Justice have opposed attempts to use Asian students as the wedge in conservative attacks on affirmative action that may harm black and Latino students. Some simply deny that race-conscious admissions procedures are disadvantaging Asians at all, which avoids confronting a complicated dilemma.

What Makes You Native American?


WaPo  |  In March 2012, Heather McMillan Nakai wrote a letter to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs asking the agency to verify that she was Indian. She was seeking a job at the Indian Health Service and wanted to apply with “Indian preference.” Nakai knew this might be difficult: As far as she was aware, no one from her North Carolina tribe — the Lumbee — had ever been granted such preference.

Her birth certificate says she’s Indian, as did her first driver’s license. Both of her parents were required to attend segregated tribal schools in the 1950s and ’60s. In Nakai’s hometown in Robeson County, N.C., strangers can look at the dark ringlets in her hair, hear her speak and watch her eyes widen when she’s indignant, and know exactly who her mother and father are. “Who’s your people?” is a common question in Robeson, allowing locals to pinpoint their place among the generations of Lumbee who have lived in the area for nearly 300 years.

Yet in the eyes of the BIA, the Lumbee have never been Indian enough. Responding to Nakai the following month, tribal government specialist Chandra Joseph informed her that the Lumbee were not a federally recognized tribe and therefore couldn’t receive any federal benefits, including “Indian preference.” Invoking a 1956 law concerning the status of the Lumbee, Joseph wrote: “The Lumbee Act precludes the Bureau from extending any benefits to the Indians of Robeson and adjoining counties.” She enclosed a pamphlet titled “Guide to Tracing Indian Ancestry.”

As a staff attorney for the National Indian Gaming Commission, Nakai understands the intricacies of documenting native bloodlines. In fact, she had submitted 80 pages of evidence to support her case. The Lumbee are descended from several Carolina tribes, including the Cheraw, who intermarried with whites and free African Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries. Nakai, 38, can trace her family tree back to at least 1900, when her great-grandfather was listed as Indian on the federal census. “That’s a terrible feeling,” she says, “to have somebody say to you, ‘You’re so not Indian that you need somebody to send you a pamphlet.’ ”

Lumbees rely on historic census documents listing the “Indian Population” of specific counties to enroll members in their tribe. In researching her response, Nakai realized the same documents could be used to argue that Lumbees were eligible for federal benefits. She thought hers was a powerful legal argument. If she could receive Indian preference, then so could other members of her tribe. “When I’m pushed, I don’t run,” Nakai says. “I want to push back.” And so she appealed the bureau’s decision — and kept appealing until her case landed in federal court.

Her battle would force the Department of the Interior to reexamine its policy toward the more than 55,000 Lumbee who make up the largest tribe east of the Mississippi. For more than 60 years, the government has acknowledged that they are Indians, yet denied them the sovereignty, land and benefits it grants to other tribes. It’s a situation that raises fundamental questions about identity: What makes someone Native American? Is it a matter of race, or culture, or some combination of both? The Lumbee don’t fit neatly into any racial categories, but they have long been living as Indians, cultivating unique traditions and community. Can a country divided by race ever accept them?

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Political Activism and Mental Health


opendemocracy |  ‘Social prescribing,’ where patients with depression join in community activities as a part of their treatment, is moving from the fringe of medical practice to the mainstream. Matt Hancock, the new British Minister for Health and Social Care, has pledged £4.5m to promote it, but we should stop to think before we take this medicine: linking patients to their communities is a positive step, but a better move would be for people to get involved in social activism.

The Minister probably has one eye on his budget, since social prescribing is thought to stop patients coming back to doctor’s surgeries—so saving the state money in the National Health Service (NHS). But this scheme, which normally involves referring the patient to a link worker who then recommends different types of community activity for them, is about more than balancing the books: in fact the NHS is administering a large dose of social theory. 

Almost 20 years ago, the American Political Scientist Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone. Since then there has been a groundswell of interest in its central concept of ‘social capital’—the idea that community bonds such as those developed in bowling leagues in the USA make both individuals and societies happier and healthier. 

Putnam is a nuanced writer, but the core focus of Bowling Alone is on community participation not social activism. He wants to unify us not cause political fights, and hopes to develop a country of association-joiners: religious service attenders, sports club players, park gardeners, members of knitting circles and school governors. In one interview he analogises this to a honeycomb, a social system of welcoming and interlocking groups, each empowered as a part of a greater civic whole.

Charismatic, and with the enigmatic appearance of a nineteenth century preacher, Putnam has become an academic celebrity. His ideas on social capital have been met with great enthusiasm by policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic. One British policy group working right at the heart of the Cabinet Office has called him the most influential political scientist alive. Before his promotion, Hancock held the British Government’s brief for civil society, and the influence of Bowling Alone can be clearly felt in his new policy on social prescribing. Linking individual depression to a lack of community activity takes a leaf straight out of Putnam’s book.

Neuropolitics: Computers See You In Ways You Can't See Yourself


TechnologyReview |  This spring there was a widespread outcry when American Facebook users found out that information they had posted on the social network—including their likes, interests, and political preferences—had been mined by the voter-targeting firm Cambridge Analytica. While it’s not clear how effective they were, the company’s algorithms may have helped fuel Donald Trump’s come-from-behind victory in 2016.

But to ambitious data scientists like Pocovi, who has worked with major political parties in Latin America in recent elections, Cambridge Analytica, which shut down in May, was behind the curve. Where it gauged people’s receptiveness to campaign messages by analyzing data they typed into Facebook, today’s “neuropolitical” consultants say they can peg voters’ feelings by observing their spontaneous responses: an electrical impulse from a key brain region, a split-­second grimace, or a moment’s hesitation as they ponder a question. The experts aim to divine voters’ intent from signals they’re not aware they’re producing. A candidate’s advisors can then attempt to use that biological data to influence voting decisions.

Political insiders say campaigns are buying into this prospect in increasing numbers, even if they’re reluctant to acknowledge it. “It’s rare that a campaign would admit to using neuromarketing techniques—though it’s quite likely the well-funded campaigns are,” says Roger Dooley, a consultant and author of Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing. While it’s not certain the Trump or Clinton campaigns used neuromarketing in 2016, SCL—the parent firm of Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Trump—has reportedly used facial analysis to assess whether what voters said they felt about candidates was genuine.

But even if US campaigns won’t admit to using neuromarketing, “they should be interested in it, because politics is a blood sport,” says Dan Hill, an American expert in facial-expression coding who advised Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto’s 2012 election campaign. Fred Davis, a Republican strategist whose clients have included George W. Bush, John McCain, and Elizabeth Dole, says that while uptake of these technologies is somewhat limited in the US, campaigns would use neuromarketing if they thought it would give them an edge. “There’s nothing more important to a politician than winning,” he says.

The trend raises a torrent of questions in the run-up to the 2018 midterms. How well can consultants like these use neurological data to target or sway voters? And if they are as good at it as they claim, can we trust that our political decisions are truly our own? Will democracy itself start to feel the squeeze?

Security- Convenience- Social Credit- Human Factor Continuity...,


activistpost |  Big Tech has gathered unprecedented amounts of personal data from millions of people. At the same time, a system of total surveillance has been constructed: Facial recognition, biometric scanning, cell phone surveillance and more have amassed a huge amount of information.

We see the stories about the growing surveillance state, but we don’t hear about the gigantic multinational corporation that is helping to build the physical infrastructure supporting it.

Idemia (formerly Morpho), is a billion dollar multinational corporation. It is responsible for building a significant portion of the world’s biometric surveillance and security systems, operating in about 70 countries. Some American clients of the company include the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and the FBI.

The company website says that Morpho has been “…building and managing databases of entire populations…” for many years.

From the company site:
Morpho has been building and managing databases of entire populations for governments, law enforcement agencies and other government bodies around the world, whether for national ID, health cards, bank cards or even driver license programs.
In the United States, Idemia is involved in the making of state issued drivers licenses in 42 states.
The company is now pushing digital license trials in the U.S. Delaware and Iowa are among five states involved in the trials this year. With the mobile license, law enforcement will be able to wirelessly “ping” a drivers smartphone for their license. The move is part of a wider trend toward cashless payment.

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Not Just In Crime-Ridden Inner Cities Any More...,


Rutherford |  Police in a small Georgia town tasered a 5-foot-2, 87-year-old woman who was using a kitchen knife to cut dandelions for use in a recipe. Police claim they had no choice but to taser the old woman, who does not speak English but was smiling at police to indicate she was friendly, because she failed to comply with orders to put down the knife.

Police in California are being sued for using excessive force against a deaf 76-year-old woman who was allegedly jaywalking and failed to halt when police yelled at her. According to the lawsuit, police searched the woman and her grocery bags. She was then slammed to the ground, had a foot or knee placed behind her neck or back, handcuffed, arrested and cited for jaywalking and resisting arrest.

In Alabama, police first tasered then shot and killed an unarmed man who refused to show his driver’s license after attempting to turn in a stray dog he’d found to the local dog shelter. The man’s girlfriend and their three children, all under the age of 10, witnessed the shooting.

In New York, Customs and Border Protection officers have come under fire for subjecting female travelers (including minors) to random body searches that include strip searches while menstruating, genital probing, and forced pelvic exams, X-rays and intravenous drugs at area hospitals.

At a California gas station, ICE agents surrounded a man who was taking his pregnant wife to the hospital to deliver their baby, demanding that he show identification. Having forgotten his documents at home in the rush to get to the hospital, the husband offered to go get them. Refusing to allow him to do so, ICE agents handcuffed and arrested the man for not having an ID with him, leaving his wife to find her way alone to the hospital. The father of five, including the newborn, has lived and worked in the U.S. for 12 years with his wife.

These are not isolated incidents.

These cases are legion.

This is what a state of undeclared martial law looks like, when you can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed merely for not complying with a government agent’s order or not complying fast enough.

This isn’t just happening in crime-ridden inner cities.

Real ID


ericpetersautos |  The REAL ID card, as they’re styled.  

And the “upgrade” – as that is styled – is trackable biometric tagging, just the right word. Like the ear tags ranchers use to keep track of their cattle.

Without which they aren’t allowed beyond the barbed wire. Just like us.

The REAL ID will also plug the cow – whoops, person – into “ . . .national linked databases allowing millions of employees at all levels of government around the national to access personal data.”

That data being … everything.

Not just your DMV record, date of birth, sex and the usual data pertaining to driving. The REAL ID will tie everything about you that’s been uploaded to government/corporate data bases into one easily accessible (by the government and corporations) place. When an armed government worker pulls you over, he’ll be able to know you better than your spouse does just by scanning your card. Also your bank, employer and everyone else you’re forced to ID yourself to. 

And if you don’t get the REAL ID?  It’s the reservation for you.

How did this happen?

The REAL ID Act was imposed upon Americans back in 2005 by the enemies of freedom – that is, by George W. Bush, his puppet master, Dick Cheney and the politicians of both the Democrat and Republican persuasion – who voted to rescind the freedoms of Americans in the aftermath of the (ahem) terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In the name of “fighting terror,” Americans would be terrorized – forced to submit to fingerprinting, retinal-scanning and other such biometric cattle tagging in order to travel . . . anywhere.

Including within the United States.

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Has Trump Crossed the Black Chasm?



tomluongo |  Do you remember the Zune?  I barely do.

Do you remember the iPod?  Silly question.

The iPod changed everything.

While the Zune was technically superior in nearly every way to the iPod, the iPod became a phenomenon.

Why?  Because Apple focused on how the iPod made your life better.

In marketing there is something called “The Chasm.”  It’s an idea put forth by Geoffrey Moore in the early 90’s.  Getting 16% market share is easy. There are nearly always one in six people who are willing to adopt the new or different thing.


But, to become a social phenomenon that ‘new thing’ has to ‘cross the chasm’ by shifting the marketing message from its newness superiority to why this ‘new thing’ will make your life better.

The message has to appeal to people’s sense of shared experience and community.  And if that shift is successful your product or message will ‘cross the chasm’ and begin to see mass adoption.

For that shift to win out conditions have to be right and the message aligned perfectly with it.
If you do your new thing will explode in the public consciousness literally overnight.
Look at how quickly Jordan Peterson has blown up.

Conditions were right for people to receive his message.  And all it took was for the right moment him to stand up to a virulent ideologue like Kathy Newman of the BBC to become a hero to millions.

The First Black President

So, what does all this 16% Chasm stuff have to do with Donald Trump?

Black Staffers at the White House?


realclearpolitics |  CNN's Commentator and former Congressional Black Caucus Executive Director Angela Rye blasted Gina Loudon, a member of President Trump's 2020 Advisory Council, over her "nonsense" talking points about black staffers at the White House.

Transcript, via CNN:

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: OUTFRONT now, Angela Rye, former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Gina Loudon, a member of President Trump's 2020 reelection advisory council.
Gina, let me start with you. You know, in the context we're talking about, all this discussion about Omarosa, and whether there's an N- word tape, and Kellyanne Conway not able to say the last name of one African-American she could label who worked with her in the White House, it would seem a simple question, how many black staffers work in the White House? She couldn't even give a rough number. Does that disappoint you?

GINA LOUDON, MEMBER OF PRESIDENT TRUMP'S 2020 RE-ELECT ADVISORY COUNCIL: You know, what disappoints me is the division and the fact that we're having to count people based on their skin color, I don't like that. And I think that, you know, you look back at our history, we have a pretty amazing history of overcoming slavery, of expanding civil rights, of women's rights, and a lot of those things happened under American presidents who didn't have any minorities at all on their White Houses.

Thank God we do. I looked over the list of people I know there, about one-third are a minority or women. Those are great strides. Could they be better? Absolutely.

And I know -- I talked to some of my friends in the White House tonight, and they said, yes, they would love more diversity in the White House. The problem is when you have someone come out, and defend the president or even say they want to sit down and have a conversation with him, for example, Kanye West, they're completely annihilated in the press.

And so, there is a trepidation there. So, I think if we could focus on the fact that we would like to build on that and work on it together, I know the administration is open to that.

BURNETT: So, your number is roughly a third and that counts women, too. So, you're saying two-thirds are white men, and one-third are diverse in some way, but you're counting women in there? Just to make sure I understand.

LOUDON: Erin, if you look at the comms department, as far as my count, I did this cursory before the show, but Hogan Gidley is the only white guy I can even find in the comms department. So, I think it depends department to department. It's going to vary.

But I think the bottom line is the policy that comes out of this White House, 700,000 new jobs, record unemployment for all minorities and women. I mean, you know the list and it's a good list.

And there's more coming out. There's new -- on Dodd-Frank repeal. There's great news coming out about small business leaders, many of them are minorities. So, there's a lot of good news, Erin.

BURNETT: Angela?

ANGELA RYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think I got stuck at Gina saying that American presidents have done a great deal for people of color like ending slavery? Like I think I'm stuck in 1865 right now. Like I can't believe that's -- 

Is Omarosa Banned From CNN?




The controversial former White House staffer and ex-Donald Trump crony has been hawking her book, “Unhinged,” on rival MSNBC, but hasn’t been able to book an appearance on CNN.

“Don Lemon was offered one of the first cable interviews and passed,” an insider told Page Six.
We’re told Manigault Newman was also scheduled to appear on Jake Tapper’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, but CNN canceled the appearance.

Another source said CNN was initially only interested in booking commentators who would trash-talk the reality-show vixen. “They only wanted to book guests with nothing positive to say about her. They were specifically looking for people who would provide a more negative slant when discussing Omarosa,” the source said.

CNN |  Only a few paragraphs of Omarosa Manigault Newman's book are about Puerto Rico. But their claims are significant: that President Donald Trump lacked empathy in Hurricane Maria's aftermath and that the President and Chief of Staff John Kelly referred to Puerto Ricans in derogatory terms. 

The result, the new book titled "Unhinged" alleges, was a slow and cavalier response to the devastation wrought, especially when compared to Trump's swift and effective handling of the hurricanes in Texas and Florida weeks earlier.
 
Manigault Newman, a former senior White House adviser, wouldn't specify what offensive terms the Trump administration allegedly used when referring to Puerto Ricans, even when pressed to do so during one of her many interviews to promote her book.
 
CNN has not independently verified her claims, and the White House did not respond to CNN's requests for comment.
 
I was in Puerto Rico when the Category 4 storm tore through the island on September 20. I witnessed much of what the book describes about conditions and response on the ground unfold in real time. 
 
The White House has branded Manigault Newman a liar, and many have questioned her tactics, her motives and her accuracy. But based on what I witnessed in Puerto Rico and what I read in her book about the hurricane response, this might be one example where she got it right. 


 

Monday, August 20, 2018

One Mouthy Gekko Doing THEE MOST Can Eff Up The Whole Lucrative Swamp Ecosystem...,


thehill |  Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Sunday that he thinks former CIA Director John Brennan's rhetoric is becoming an issue "in and of itself."

"John and his rhetoric have become an issue in and of itself," Clapper said on CNN's "State of the Union." "John is subtle like a freight train and he’s gonna say what’s on his mind." 

Clapper's comments came in response to an op-ed penned by Brennan in The New York Times this week, in which he wrote that President Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 election. 

Clapper said he empathized with Brennan, but voiced concerns for Brennan's fiery rhetoric toward Trump and his administration.

"I think that the common denominator among all of us [in the intelligence community] that have been speaking up … is genuine concern about the jeopardy and threats to our institutions," Clapper said.
Brennan's claims drew criticism from some in the intelligence community who said the timing was suspect. 

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) on Thursday took aim at Brennan for "purport[ing] to know, as fact, that the Trump campaign colluded with a foreign power."

“If his statement is based on intelligence he has seen since leaving office, it constitutes an intelligence breach. If he has some other personal knowledge of or evidence of collusion, it should be disclosed to the special counsel, not The New York Times,” Burr said.

Burr added that Trump has the “full authority” to rescind security clearance if the statements were “purely political and based on conjecture.”

Who Cares What These Overfed "Intelligence Community" Reptiles Think?


We know John to be an enormously talented, capable, and patriotic individual who devoted his adult life to the service of this nation. Insinuations and allegations of wrongdoing on the part of Brennan while in office are baseless.
(Scores of “ex-spies” later joined the original twelve.) In this post, I’m not going to discuss motive, whether Trump’s for revoking Brennan’s clearance, or the intelligence community’s outrage that he did so, or the media’s. Rather, I’m going to focus on the question of whether “the twelve” should have any standing to issue such a statement in the first place. After all, if torture, extraordinary rendition, warrantless surveillance, and whacking US citizens without due process are not “wrongdoing,” then what on earth can be?[3] To this end, I will first present a table sketching the careers and personal networks of “the twelve.” Next, I’ll look at those who did not sign the statement. After that, I’ll make a few brief comments about “the twelve” as a class. I’ll conclude by raising the issue of standing again. I hope this post will be especially useful to those who haven’t been following politics since 9/11, who may take our current institutional structures for granted (see especially footnotes [1] and [2]).

Treasonous SwampTard Tantrum


TBP |  As for Phil Mudd, he exploded in rage when the African-American gentleman pointed out that he himself had made a pile after his retirement from the government thanks to retaining his security clearances.  The gentleman should have added that Mudd’s wealth was really due not just to his clearances but to his membership in what has become known as the Deep State.  People like Mudd, who has held senior positions at the Agency and the FBI (he is a protégé of Robert Mueller, no less) are almost guaranteed huge salaries, bonuses and benefits at government contractors, think tanks, and consulting firms.  They have golden parachutes for life.  Mudd, with a look of injured outrage and indignation on his face, denied that he had ever made penny because of his clearances.  This may or may not be true in a technical sense, but, as Mudd knows very well, his claim is bullshit.  He is part of the club, he is protected from any chance of having to actually work for a living for the rest of his life.  Mudd’s performance was ridiculous for anybody who knows the score.
Of course, the real reason for his hissy fit is that he suspects (correctly, I think) that Trump is planning to cancel the security clearances of the swamp creatures like Mudd who have tried to undermine his presidency and the will of the American people.  The loss of the clearance may not have any direct effects on their earning power but it sends a powerful signal that they no longer are part of the inner circle.  That is a fate worse than death for the men who think they know what is good for the American people.

If I was Trump, any former senior official who said a peep against me would have his clearances pulled the next day.   These people are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, in or out of government.  Suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome is no excuse for the behavior of people like Brennan and Mudd.

Sunday, August 19, 2018

#BlackVotesMatter #BlackJobsMatter


zerohedge |  Support for President Trump among black voters hit 36% according to a new Rasmussen poll released on Thursday - nearly doubling his approval rating among African-Americans from the same day last year, which stood at 19%. 

The boost corresponds with all-time low unemployment among blacks of 5.9% in May, which President Trump and others have been touting: 

What's more, the Rasmussen poll comes amid controversy over the reported existence of a tape which contains Trump saying the N-word. The curiously timed allegations were brought by former White House aide and apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault Newman - who was fired from the Clinton administration after being shuffled around four times

That said, the Washington Post refutes Rasmussen's results with a Friday article entitled "No, one-third of African Americans don’t support Trump. Not even close."
Polling firms that have interviewed far more African Americans, and that are much more transparent than Rasmussen, all show that Trump’s black approval rating is much lower than 36 percent.
For example, Gallup has interviewed thousands of African American respondents in 2018. Its polling suggests that Trump’s black approval rating has consistently been around 10 to 15 percent through 2018.
Perhaps it depends on who's doing the asking, and what part of the country the questions are being asked?

What Would These Degenerate Twerps Be Without A Young and Literally Captive Audience?


jezebel  |  By many accounts, the New York University professor Avital Ronell—a German and comparative literature scholar and a superstar in her corner of academia— is a brilliant woman and a sought-after advisor. Former students who have taken her classes describe her as “original” and “inspiring.” Ronell, who is in her 60s and has taught at NYU for more than two decades, inspires a kind of admiration that some have called “mystical.” She is the kind of professor whose classes students don’t want to end.

But, for the past year, Ronell has also been the subject of a sexual harassment investigation by NYU’s Title IX office, initiated after a former graduate student, Nimrod Reitman, alleged in a complaint filed last September that she had sexually harassed him over a period of several years. On August 13, the New York Times reported that after an 11-month investigation, the university has found Ronell responsible for sexually harassing Reitman while he was earning his Ph.D. The university has suspended her for a year without pay and has also mandated that any future meetings she has with students will be supervised upon her return. Reitman and his attorney are considering filing a lawsuit against NYU, as well as Ronell.

News of the sexual harassment complaint against Ronell surfaced earlier this summer, after a group of prominent academics—including the noted feminist scholar Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, and Gayatri Spivak—sent a letter of support to NYU officials, rallying to Ronell’s defense and decrying what they describe as a “legal nightmare.”

The letter, which was never meant to be public, was subsequently posted on the philosophy blog Leiter Reports, with the title, “Blaming the victim is apparently OK when the accused in a Title IX proceeding is a feminist literary theorist.” It is likely that without the publication of this letter, and without the signatures of so many influential and feminist scholars, many if not all of the details of Reitman’s complaint would have remained confidential—it is almost certain that much of this now very public and increasingly messy case would have been swept under the rug (a situation that I suspect NYU officials would have preferred).

In the letter, dated May 11, 2018 and addressed to NYU President Andrew Hamilton and Provost Katharine Fleming, the signers acknowledge they had “no access to the confidential dossier,” but believe that Reitman was waging a “malicious campaign” against Ronell and that “the allegations against her do not constitute actual evidence.”

The Russian People Have Given The Kremlin Carte Blanche To Get Even

strategic culture |   Let’s start with the possible chain of events that may have led to the Crocus terror attack. This is as explosive as...