Charles Carmakal Hasn't Seen Any Evidence Sufficient To Name The Solarwinds Threat Actor...,

I know it doesn't matter. I know it's wrong to ask the question. I know asking the question raises grave doubts about one's loyalties and patriotism.

But has there been *any* evidence publicly presented, let alone dispositive proof, that Russia is responsible for this hack? https://t.co/nAugGeYDMh

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 17, 2020

bloomberg |  The hackers who attacked FireEye stole sensitive tools that the company uses to find vulnerabilities in clients’ computer networks. While the hack on FireEye was embarrassing for a cybersecurity firm, Carmakal argued that it may prove to be a crucial mistake for the hackers.

“If this actor didn’t hit FireEye, there is a chance that this campaign could have gone on for much, much longer,” Carmakal said. “One silver lining is that we learned so much about how this threat actor works and shared it with our law enforcement, intelligence community and security partners.” Carmakal said there is no evidence FireEye’s stolen hacking tools were used against U.S. government agencies.

“There will unfortunately be more victims that have to come forward in the coming weeks and months,” he said. While some have attributed the attack to a state-sponsored Russian group known as APT 29, or Cozy Bear, FireEye had not yet seen sufficient evidence to name the actor, he said. A Kremlin official denied that Russia had any involvement.

FireEye’s investigation revealed that the hack on itself was part of a global campaign by a highly sophisticated attacker that also targeted “government, consulting, technology, telecom and extractive entities in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East,” the company said in a blog post Sunday night. “We anticipate there are additional victims in other countries and verticals.”

The Department of Commerce confirmed a breach in one of its bureaus, and Reuters reported that the Department of Homeland Security and the Treasury Department were also attacked as part of the suspected Russian hacking spree.

Carmakal said the hackers took advanced steps to conceal their actions. “Their level of operational security is truly exceptional,” he said, adding that the hackers would operate from servers based in the same city as an employee they were pretending to be in order to evade detection.

The hackers were able to breach U.S. government entities by first attacking the SolarWinds IT provider. By compromising the software used by government entities and corporations to monitor their network, hackers were able to gain a foothold into their network and dig deeper all while appearing as legitimate traffic.

 

Congressional Democrats Liken Solarwinds Epic Fail To A RUSSIAN INVASION!

 c4isrnet |  The Senate’s No. 2 Democrat said Russia’s apparent hack into multiple government agencies is a “virtual invasion” that demands the U.S. show Russia and other adversaries there is “a price to pay” for breaching American systems.

In a Senate floor speech Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the U.S. needs to “respond in kind” and that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a friend. A day earlier on CNN, he called the hack “virtually a declaration of war by Russia on the United States, and we should take it that seriously.”

“No, I’m not calling for an invasion myself or all-out war. I don’t want to see that happen, but it’s no longer a buddy-buddy arrangement between the United States and Vladimir Putin,” Durbin said Thursday. “When adversaries such as Russia torment us, tempt us, breach the security of our nation, we need to respond in kind.”

Durbin’s remarks came hours before President-elect Joe Biden issued an announcement that he had instructed his team to learn as much as possible about the breach. He vowed a tough response, beyond expanding investment in cyber defense.

“But a good defense isn’t enough; we need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyber attacks in the first place,” Biden said in a statement. “We will do that by, among other things, imposing substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks, including in coordination with our allies and partners. Our adversaries should know that, as President, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation.”

This week brought the disclosure of a global cyberespionage campaign that penetrated multiple U.S. government agencies by compromising a common network management tool from the company SolarWinds used by thousands of organizations. Russia, the prime suspect, denied involvement.

Cybersecurity investigators said the hack’s impact extends far beyond the affected U.S. agencies, which include the Treasury and Commerce departments. Defense contractors like General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries were on SolarWinds’ client list, but those two firms have declined to comment.

SolarWinds counts all five military services, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency among its clientele, and the New York Times reported that the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and parts of the Pentagon were compromised.

Congressional Democrats have generally been more vocal about the hack than Republicans, pointing fingers at President Donald Trump, who fired Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency chief Christopher Krebs in November. As Washington continued to assess the extent of the hack, Democrats criticized Trump’s silence on the matter.

“We need to gather more facts. But early indications suggest Pres Trump’s tepid response to previous cyber transgressions by Russian hackers emboldened those responsible,” Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed said in a tweet Wednesday. He is the Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat and sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

 

 

Russian Hackers Are EVERYWHERE!!!

theintercept |  State-sponsored hackers believed to be from Russia have breached the city network of Austin, Texas, The Intercept has learned. The breach, which appears to date from at least mid-October, adds to the stunning array of intrusions attributed to Russia over the past few months.

The list of reported victims includes the departments of Commerce, Homeland Security, State, and the Treasury; the Pentagon; cybersecurity firm FireEye; IT software company SolarWinds; and assorted airports and local government networks across the United States, among others. The breach in Austin is another apparent victory for Russia’s hackers. By compromising the network of America’s 11th-most populous city, they could theoretically access sensitive information on policing, city governance, and elections, and, with additional effort, burrow inside water, energy, and airport networks. The hacking outfit believed to be behind the Austin breach, Berserk Bear, also appears to have used Austin’s network as infrastructure to stage additional attacks.

While the attacks on SolarWinds, FireEye, and U.S. government agencies have been linked to a second Russian group — APT29, also known as Cozy Bear — the Austin breach represents another battlefront in a high-stakes cyber standoff between the United States and Russia. Both Berserk Bear and Cozy Bear are known for quietly lurking in networks, often for months, while they spy on their targets. Berserk Bear — which is also known as Energetic Bear, Dragonfly, TEMP.Isotope, Crouching Yeti, and BROMINE, among other names — is believed to be responsible for a series of breaches of critical U.S. infrastructure over the past year.

The Austin breach, which has not been previously reported, was revealed in documents prepared by the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center, or MSTIC, and obtained by The Intercept, as well as in publicly available malware activity compiled by the site VirusTotal. “While we are aware of this hacking group, we cannot provide information about ongoing law enforcement investigations into criminal activity,” a spokesperson for the city of Austin wrote in response to a list of emailed questions.

On Sunday, Reuters reported that a state-sponsored hacking group had breached the Treasury and Commerce departments, sparking an emergency weekend meeting of the National Security Council. The Washington Post later attributed the attacks to Cozy Bear, citing anonymous sources, and reported that the group breached the agencies by infecting a software update to Orion, a popular network management product made by SolarWinds, a firm based in Austin. “Fewer than 18,000” users downloaded the malicious software update, which has been available since March, SolarWinds said in a federal securities filing on Monday. The Intercept has seen no evidence that the Austin breach and the SolarWinds hack are related.

 

Look What We Can Do to You Any Time We Fucking Want

consentfactory |  Even if one accepts the official “science,” you do not transform the entire planet into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare in response to a health threat of this nature.

The notion is quite literally insane.

GloboCap is not insane, however. They know exactly what they are doing … which is teaching us a lesson, a lesson about power. A lesson about who has it and who doesn’t. For students of history it’s a familiar lesson, a standard in the repertoire of empires, not to mention the repertoire of penal institutions.

The name of the lesson is “Look What We Can Do to You Any Time We Fucking Want.” The point of the lesson is self-explanatory. The USA taught the world this lesson when it nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. GloboCap (and the US military) taught it again when they invaded Iraq and destabilized the entire Greater Middle East. It is regularly taught in penitentiaries when the prisoners start to get a little too unruly and remember that they outnumber the guards. That’s where the “lockdown” concept originated. It isn’t medical terminology. It is penal institution terminology.

As we have been experiencing throughout 2020, the global capitalist ruling classes have no qualms about teaching us this lesson. It’s just that they would rather not to have to unless it’s absolutely necessary. They would prefer that we believe we are living in “democracies,” governed by the “rule of law,” where everyone is “free,” and so on. It’s much more efficient and much less dangerous than having to repeatedly remind us that they can take away our “democratic rights” in a heartbeat, unleash armed goon squads to enforce their edicts, and otherwise control us with sheer brute force.

People who have spent time in prison, or who have lived in openly totalitarian societies, are familiar with being ruled by brute force. Most Westerners are not, so it has come as a shock. The majority of them still can’t process it. They cannot see what is staring them in the face. They cannot see it because they can’t afford to see it. If they did, it would completely short-circuit their brains. They would suffer massive psychotic breakdowns, and become entirely unable to function, so their psyches will not allow them to see it.

Others, who see it, can’t quite accept the simplicity of it (i.e., the lesson being taught), so they are proposing assorted complicated theories about what it is and who is behind it … the Great Reset, China, the Illuminati, Transhumanism, Satanism, Communism, whatever. Some of these theories are at least partially accurate. Others are utter bull-goose lunacy.

They all obscure the basic point of the lesson.

The point of the lesson is that GloboCap — the entire global-capitalist system acting as a single global entity — can, virtually any time it wants, suspend the Simulation of Democracy, and crack down on us with despotic force.

The Elites Used Greece - Post 2008 - As A Model Of Just How Far They Can Push

thebellows  |  On January 19, 2020, Washington state reported the first US case of coronavirus. By the end of March, 245 million Americans were under stay-at-home restrictions to “flatten the curve.” Mainstream news terrorized the public with exponential graphs, threats of a medical supply shortage, and displays of hygiene theater. Appeals to science were weaponized to enforce conformity, and the media portrayed anti-lockdown protesters as backwards, astroturfed white nationalists bent on endangering the public. 

Today millions of Americans have fallen into poverty or are on the verge of destitution. Stimulus money has largely been used as a handout to corporations, and over 160,000 small businesses have closed. In March and April 30 million Americans filed for unemployment. Now temporary job losses are becoming permanent. 12 million unemployed people may see their benefits lapse even if Congress passes a new aid deal. Homelessness is spiking, 11.4 million households owe $70 billion in back rent and fees, and 40 million people are at risk of eviction. In some states, food bank lines stretch for miles, and 1 in 4 children are expected to experience food insecurity. 

Meanwhile, Walmart and Target reported record sales. Amazon tripled its profits and Jeff Bezos made $70 billion. Billionaires have collectively made over $1 trillion since March. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft now make up 20% of the stock market’s total worth. The tech industry has achieved an unparalleled level of wealth and dominance. Data, which has been more valuable than oil since 2017, is expected to expand its economic footprint.

Unemployment, hunger, institutional breakdown, and the destruction of social bonds are not symptoms of a virus. They are the indirect violence of class warfare. The pandemic is a convenient scapegoat for the largest upward wealth transfer in modern human history. Under the pretext of a public health policy, elites have successfully waged a counterrevolution that will result in the erosion of working conditions and quality of life for generations to come. 

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Death, disease, and pandemics have always been part of human life and they always will be. 2.8 million Americans die every year and 56 million people die worldwide. Each year 1.3 million people die of tuberculosis, 445,000 die of malaria, and 290,000-650,000 die of influenza. In 1968 1-4 million people died in the H2N3 influenza pandemic, during which businesses and schools stayed open and large events were held. 

Indefinite closures have never before been used as a disease control method on a global scale. These experimental restrictions were shaped by the discredited Imperial College Model which predicted 2.2 million US deaths. Many epidemiologists and doctors questioned these doomsday projections and pointed out that there was not sufficient data to justify lockdowns. The virus has a low mortality rate, especially for people under 65, and 94% of US covid deaths have occurred with comorbidities. Most statistical analysis does not show lockdown measures to be an effective strategy for reducing mortality.

In March unprecedented policies were rationalized through shocking stories and videos from northern Italy. The region’s crowded ICUs were presented as a warning for the rest of Europe and the US. Unknown to many was the fact that Lombardy had been severely impacted by ongoing privatization efforts and a shrinking hospital system regularly overwhelmed by influenza. This omission by mainstream media played a key role in developing the mythology that economic shutdown could magically eradicate a virus. In reality lockdowns have accelerated a cycle of austerity and created a self-fulfilling prophecy of perpetual crisis.

 

Fang Fang Bang Bang: Not Just For Hunter Biden Any More...,

nypost |  As we try to come to terms with the extent of Chinese influence over the Biden family, a leaked database of registered members of the Chinese Communist Party has exposed a mass infiltration of American companies — with serious national security implications. 

Boeing, Qualcomm and Pfizer are just three US companies that have employed dozens of CCP members in their Chinese facilities, the database reveals. 

As well, three female employees of the US consulate in Shanghai have been identified in the list of 1.95 million party members that was leaked to an international group of legislators, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which includes Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ). 

All CCP members swear an oath to “fight for communism throughout my life, be ready at all times to sacrifice my all for the party and the people, and never betray the party [and] guard party secrets, be loyal to the party.” 

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a member of the Homeland Security Committee, said yesterday: “CCP agents have no place in US government facilities, and this report should serve as a much-needed wake-up call to Washington, DC, and corporate executives, who continue to welcome the Chinese government with open arms. 

“[It] is just more evidence of the extent to which the CCP has successfully infiltrated American companies and government.” 

While none of the people listed in the database have been identified as spies, mounting concerns in the State Department about the CCP have resulted in tightened visa rules for its members earlier this month. CCP members and their immediate families now are limited to one-month, single-entry US permits. 

The database was verified by international cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0, which found it was originally leaked on encrypted messaging app Telegram in 2016. It was passed on to IPAC six weeks ago by a third party. 

“We have high confidence this list is authentic,” Internet 2.0 co-founder David Robinson, a former Australian army intelligence officer, told me Sunday. 

“Someone — an insider, a dissident — managed to get physical access to the server [in Shanghai] from outside the building. They didn’t have to hack it over the internet.” 

Each data entry contains the CCP member’s name, ethnicity, place of birth, education level, identification number and, in some cases, a phone number and address.  Fist tap Dale

As Went Blackness So Went America's Elites

unherd |  The Left’s posture of liberationism provided an interpretive frame in which the deadly riots and wider explosion of urban crime in the 1960s was to be understood as political rather than criminal. This interpretation played a key role in the wider inversion: it is “society” that is revealed to be criminal. The utility of urban rioting for the new Left lay in the fact that it was thought to carry an insight into the illegitimacy of even our most minimum standards of behaviour. The moral authority of the black person, as victim, gave the bourgeoisie permission to withdraw its allegiance from the social order, just as black people were gaining fuller admittance to it.

Consider the images that had so impressed the nation in the 1950s and lead to the passage of civil rights legislation: marchers demanding equal treatment, and being willing to go to jail as a demonstration of this allegiance to the rule of law, impartially applied. The civil rights movement began as an attack on the injustice of double standards; it was a patriotic appeal to the common birthright of citizenship, as against the local sham democracy of the South. Notably, the civil rights activists of this time wore suits and ties, the costume of adult obligations and standards of comportment. But in a stunning reversal achieved by the new Left working in concert with the Black Power movement, Lasch points out, “the idea of a single standard was itself attacked as the crowning example of ‘institutional racism’.” Such standards were said to have no other purpose than keeping black people in their place. This shift was fundamental, for shared standards are what make for a democratic social order, as against the ancien régime of special privileges and exemptions.

For the new Left, then, it was not capitalism but the democratic social order altogether that was the source of oppression — not just of black people, or of workers, but of us, the college bourgeoisie. The civil rights movement of black Americans became the template for subsequent claims by women, gays and transgender persons, each based on a further discovery of moral failing buried deep in the heart of America. Hence a further license, indeed mandate, granted to individual conscience, as against the claims of the nation.

But the black experience retains a special role as the template that must be preserved. The black man is specially tuned by history to pick up the force field of oppression, which may be hard to discern in the more derivative cases that are built by analogy with his. Therefore, his condition serves a wider diagnostic and justificatory function. If it were to improve, denunciation of “society” would be awkward to maintain and, crucially, my own conscience would lose its self-certifying independence from the community. My wish to be free of the demands of society would look like mere selfishness.

The white bourgeoisie became invested in a political drama in which their own moral standing depends on black people remaining permanently aggrieved. Unless their special status as ur-victim is maintained, African-Americans cannot serve as patrons for the wider project of liberation. If you question this victimisation, you are questioning the rottenness of America. And if you do that, you are threatening the social order, strangely enough. For it is now an order governed by the freelance moralists of the cosmopolitan consensus. Somehow these free agents, ostensibly guided by individual conscience, have coalesced into something resembling a tribe, one that is greatly angered by rejection of its moral expertise.

 

Childish Public Meltdown Between Developmentally Arrested Nerds?

 BBC  | Do you think that Google would have treated you differently if you were a white man?

I have definitely been treated differently.

In all of the cases that I've seen in the past, they [Google] try so hard not to make it a headline.

They try so hard to make it smooth.

When it's some other person who is toxic, there are always these conversations about: "Oh, but you know, they're so valuable to the company, they're a genius, they're just socially awkward, et cetera."

My entire team is completely behind me and they're taking risks.

They're taking actual risks to stand behind me.

My manager is standing behind me.

And even still, they decided to treat me in this way.

So definitely, I feel like I've been treated differently.

I suppose if you think that, the next obvious question is do you think Google itself is institutionally racist?

Yes, Google itself is institutionally racist.

That's quite a thing to say - you were a Google employee until a short while ago.

I feel like most if not all tech companies are institutionally racist.

I mean, how can I not say that they are not institutionally racist?

The Congressional Black Caucus is the one who's forcing them to publish their diversity numbers.

It's not by accident that black women have one of the lowest retention rates[, in the technology industry].

So for sure Google and all of the other tech companies are institutionally racist.

 

Is Full Social Maturity Inconsistent With The Expectations Of Google Senior Managers?

 BI |  Hi everyone,

The last two weeks have been difficult for many, many people, and have surfaced large, important issues. Many in the Black+ and other communities have trusted us to make good on promises regarding racial equity, respect and inclusion. I can understand how the handling of Dr. Gebru's departure has made some question our commitment to that. These are areas I care deeply about as well, both personally and professionally. You can and absolutely should raise concerns over our culture and lack of representation. We need to do more to make Google Research more inclusive and representative. I, along with our Research leadership team and the DEI Council, will be focusing intensely on this in 2021. We know we have work to do to improve our internal org culture and leadership accountability is essential to that culture.

At the same time, researchers might hesitate to pursue crucial work on bias in AI and related issues, and have raised concerns about our org culture and ability to pursue this research. This deeply saddens me, and I want to reiterate how important it is that we do work in this area to highlight risks and larger societal issues that can arise in uses of AI (indeed, much our of AI Principles highlight the importance of this). So, I want to assure you all that yes, we need to double down on research that ensures AI and other technologies have a positive and equitable impact. We have over 200 people on multiple teams across the company working on responsible AI, and we're going to continue and expand that work. We'll also sharped up our publication goals and processes going into 20201 to ensure that all researchers feel confident that their work is supported.

We've heard the important questions many of you have raised – thank you for your time and energy. We had intended to gather at our All Hands next week to celebrate the year and to preview our 2021 strategy, but while there's lots to be proud of as an org and what we've accomplished, a celebration doesn't seem appropriate at this time. So we won't hold that meeting next week, and will look at getting together as a whole org after the holidays. Instead, to make sure we have opportunities to come together and discuss these important issues, I'll be setting aside time next week, along with my direct reports and other leads within Research, to hold a series of smaller group conversations. If you'd like to participate in these, please fill out this form (the number of people interested and topics shared will help us figure out the most effective format and number of these sessions). In addition to the formal review underway that Sundar shared, many of you have shared useful suggestions on how we can improve our culture. If you have more thoughts, please feel free to share (this one can be anonymous, or you can add your idap) and know that I'll be reading every idea and reflecting on how we can do better.

I'm sorry for how challenging this has been. Please take some time over the next week as you see fit; if you prefer to continue your work, that's fine, but I want everyone to know you can take the time you need. The top priority for me is all fo you – your well-being and our ability to pursue great research together.

You can expect to hear a clear follow up from me and my leads on this in January.

Thanks,

- Jeff

Jimmy Dore Single-Handedly Outing All The Democratic Empty-Suit Sock-Puppets

Progressive: Madam Speaker Pelosi, why do you ignore us?

 

Pelosi: [slaps impudent progressive] Your place is to be seen, not heard. Now vote as you have been instructed and tell the rabble what you will. Now, be gone from my sight!

 

Progressives: As it pleases you. [Bows and leaves, stage right]

 

“Over the weekend, there has been a raging debate on social media, in which some progressive critics began demanding that lawmakers like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez use their votes in the upcoming House Speaker election as leverage to get a commitment for a floor vote on Medicare for All legislation…. However, only asking for that performative vote — rather than also asking for things that might change the structural power dynamic — would be a waste, and yet another instance of progressives reverting to a feckless tradition of prioritizing spectacles rather than the wielding of actual power. They could additionally condition their vote for Pelosi on a commitment that she:

 

– Remove the Medicare for All opponent who chairs the key committee [Richard Neal]

– Schedule a vote on existing legislation to let states create single-payer health care systems

– Schedule a vote on a resolution demanding Biden use executive authority to expand Medicare

– Include provisions in year-end spending bills that create a presidential commission charged with crafting a Medicare for All program

– Author a discharge petition to force a vote on Medicare for All

 

That’s a good list (and boy would I like to see Neal, who is a nasty piece of work, taken down a peg). More on the raging debate on social media:

 

Jimmy debated with David Sirota about this on an impromptu live broadcast on his YT channel just now. I only caught the closing minutes of the discussion but I can say that Sirota came off very disappointing. Jimmy got him to admit that he’s worried for Pelosi’s speakership. I suggest looking to Jimmy’s YT channel for a future clip– I have no doubt at all that he will post the entire discussion in short order.

Jimmy was also on the Katie Halper Show last night. She had a massive guest list last night, starting with a long conversation with Christian Parenti, then transitioning into a discussion of Jimmy’s strategy with Sirota, Stoller, Briahna Joy Gray, Justin Jackson, and Jimmy himself. Jimmy thoroughly dismantled the similar weak sauce arguments offered by Matt Stoller. In my humble evaluation, Stoller was utterly unmasked as a sinophobic chaos agent against any progressive ideas during a pandemic last night. The discussion starts at the 2:10 mark and Jimmy comes in 40 minutes later.

If I Had A Dollar For Every Pompous IQ-75 EdD I've Ever Met - I'd Be A Very Rich Man

WSJ  |  Madame First Lady—Mrs. Biden—Jill—kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter. Any chance you might drop the “Dr.” before your name? “Dr. Jill Biden ” sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic. Your degree is, I believe, an Ed.D., a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware through a dissertation with the unpromising title “Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs.” A wise man once said that no one should call himself “Dr.” unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.

I taught at Northwestern University for 30 years without a doctorate or any advanced degree. I have only a B.A. in absentia from the University of Chicago—in absentia because I took my final examination on a pool table at Headquarters Company, Fort Hood, Texas, while serving in the peacetime Army in the late 1950s. I do have an honorary doctorate, though I have to report that the president of the school that awarded it was fired the year after I received it, not, I hope, for allowing my honorary doctorate. During my years as a university teacher I was sometimes addressed, usually on the phone, as “Dr. Epstein.” On such occasions it was all I could do not to reply, “Read two chapters of Henry James and get into bed. I’ll be right over.”

I was also often addressed as Dr. during the years I was editor of the American Scholar, the quarterly magazine of Phi Beta Kappa. Let me quickly insert that I am also not a member of Phi Beta Kappa, except by marriage. Many of those who so addressed me, I noted, were scientists. I also received a fair amount of correspondence from people who appended the initials Ph.D. to their names atop their letterheads, and have twice seen PHD on vanity license plates, which struck me as pathetic. In contemporary universities, in the social sciences and humanities, calling oneself Dr. is thought bush league.

 The Ph.D. may once have held prestige, but that has been diminished by the erosion of seriousness and the relaxation of standards in university education generally, at any rate outside the sciences. Getting a doctorate was then an arduous proceeding: One had to pass examinations in two foreign languages, one of them Greek or Latin, defend one’s thesis, and take an oral examination on general knowledge in one’s field. At Columbia University of an earlier day, a secretary sat outside the room where these examinations were administered, a pitcher of water and a glass on her desk. The water and glass were there for the candidates who fainted. A far cry, this, from the few doctoral examinations I sat in on during my teaching days, where candidates and teachers addressed one another by first names and the general atmosphere more resembled a kaffeeklatsch. Dr. Jill, I note you acquired your Ed.D. as recently as 15 years ago at age 55, or long after the terror had departed.

Joseph Epstein Hurls Bricks Through Overton's Window

WaPo  |  The Wall Street Journal published a weekend op-ed that opened by addressing incoming first lady Jill Biden as “kiddo,” and argued she should drop the honorific “Dr.” from her name because she’s not a medical doctor.

The piece swiftly went viral, with critics bashing it as sexist and Northwestern University distancing the school from the lecturer emeritus who penned it. Dozens of Biden supporters, academics and activists hurled barbs at the newspaper’s opinion section on Saturday and Sunday with one Journal news reporter calling the piece “disgusting.”

“The @WSJ should be embarrassed to print the disgusting and sexist attack on @DrBiden running on the @WSJopinion page,” Michael LaRosa, a spokesman for Biden, said Saturday on Twitter. “If you had any respect for women at all you would remove this repugnant display of chauvinism from your paper and apologize to her.”

On Sunday, though, Paul A. Gigot, the editorial page editor and vice president of the Wall Street Journal, doubled down on the piece, calling the attacks a bad faith example of “cancel culture.”

“Why go to such lengths to highlight a single op-ed on a relatively minor issue?” he wrote in a letter to readers. “My guess is that the Biden team concluded it was a chance to use the big gun of identity politics to send a message to critics as it prepares to take power. There’s nothing like playing the race or gender card to stifle criticism.”

The rancorous debate this weekend echoed a much longer-running conversation about Biden’s use of an honorific, a discussion ongoing since she became second lady in 2009, two years after the community college professor earned her doctorate in education from the University of Delaware.

Joseph Epstein, who wrote the op-ed, taught English at Northwestern as an adjunct lecturer for three decades, but stopped teaching in 2003. He earned a bachelor of arts in absentia from the University of Chicago, and once received an honorary doctorate, but has no higher academic credentials.

He argued it is misleading for Biden to use the doctor title, at least while her husband is in the White House, because it is considered “bush league” in academic circles for nonmedical doctors to claim the honorific. Epstein also argued that an attachment to the title is silly because once-prestigious doctoral degrees have lost their value because of “the erosion of seriousness and the relaxation of standards” at universities, in part because of an abundance of honorary doctorates like the one Epstein received.

Biden responded to the op-ed without addressing it directly on Sunday.

“Together, we will build a world where the accomplishments of our daughters will be celebrated, rather than diminished,” she said in a tweet.

Frank Capra Never Imagined Vaccines And Reproductive Services

alt-market |  I have to look back at Event 201 to really gauge the state of the game, because what the elites planned and what has happened do not completely match up. For those not familiar, Event 201 was a type of “war game” held by globalists from the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The scenario? A pandemic outbreak of a coronavirus which would spread like wildfire and kill a predicted 65 million people. The simulation was held only a couple of months before the real thing happened at the start of 2020.

In the year since the outbreak, the globalists have attempted to enforce nearly every plan that was outlined during Event 201, including using social media to censor or restrict any news or information outside of the establishment approved narrative (Yes, narrative control was discussed at the event in great detail). Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum has consistently and excitedly applauded the pandemic crisis as a “perfect opportunity” to institute the “reset” that the globalists have been talking about for years.

Unfortunately for them, the virus has not been anywhere near as deadly as they appear to have hoped. With a death rate of well below 1% for anyone outside of a nursing home with preexisting conditions, the establishment has now been forced to pump up infection numbers as a means to terrorize the populace because the death numbers are not enough to convince people to willingly hand over their freedoms. The Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) for Covid 19 not counting nursing home deaths with preexisting conditions is only 0.26% of those infected.

There is a propaganda meme being passed around these days that tries to exaggerate the danger of death from Covid, and it goes a little something like this:

“Covid has killed more people that the Vietnam War and the Gulf Wars combined in a single year, therefore your freedoms are forfeit…”

This is an idiotic talking point but luckily no one is buying it. Over 40% of Covid deaths are people that are already sick and on the verge of dying anyway (And no, refusing to wear masks is not the same as endorsing “death panels”, because a death panel is about socialists refusing treatment to people at risk because of their age. No one is suggesting that old people be refused treatment, and they always have the option of staying under quarantine if they fear they will become infected. They are already retired and receiving social security, perhaps if we are going to stimulate then the bailout money should go to those most at risk so that the rest of us can continue on with normal life?)

Hundreds of thousands of people die every year from diseases and illnesses including the flu, common colds and pneumonia, yet, the prospect of abandoning the Bill of Rights, submitting to economic shutdowns and wearing a muzzle on our faces wherever we go was never brought up before.

Why should we ask 99.7% of Americans or the world to accept medical tyranny just to make .26% of the population feel safe? People who question the mandates are called “selfish”, but even if I was one of the people susceptible to the virus, I would NEVER demand that 99% of the population bow to totalitarianism at the off chance that I might live a little while longer. Now THAT would be selfish.

As more and more studies and data are released, the mask mandates are also coming into question. Though Big Tech has sought to suppress or censor studies that run contrary to the mainstream narrative, this has only led more people to question the motivations of governments pushing the mandates. After all, the mainstream media keeps saying that we should “listen to the science”, but they ignore or censor the science. So, if the pandemic response is not based in science, then it must only be about control.

Many Americans are not as stupid as the elites think. They see the inconsistencies in the rhetoric and the data and they are increasingly prone to refuse to comply. This might be why the establishment is suddenly rushing out at least two Covid vaccines in the span of half a year; they have to get the vaccine phase of the Reset underway before too many people jump from the panic bandwagon.

The vaccine rush and the claims of effectiveness of 94% to 95% from Pfizer and Moderna are suspect. The average effectiveness of most vaccines is around 50% or less, and these are vaccines with hundreds of trials and years of usage. Somehow, Pfizer and Moderna were both able to produce a vaccine for a SARS type virus when multiple governments tried for over a decade to produce vaccines for SARS in China and were unsuccessful, and they were able to achieve 95% effectiveness?

Many people are not buying the vaccine story, and this is perhaps why the elites are jumping headlong into vaccination so fast. Consider this fact:

Numerous polls indicate that at least 1 in 3 Americans plan to refuse the Covid vaccine when it is released to the general public. 60% of Americans have stated in polls that they will not take the vaccine unless it is proven to be at least 75% effective.

Here I think we have our explanation for the vaccination bonanza. The elites know that a third of Americans (and probably Europeans) will not take the vaccine regardless of any propaganda they dish out. They also know that 60% of Americans are unlikely to take the vaccine unless they can show an effectiveness rate of at least 75%. Neither Moderna nor Pfizer have actually produced any evidence that their vaccines are capable of prevented severe illness or death from Covid, so, their effectiveness rate is based on “projections” of success according to their minimal trials. Meaning, the effectiveness rate of 95% is completely arbitrary.

Why did they go with such a high number instead of a more realistic 50% to 60%? Because the polls say they need an epic effectiveness rate in order to convince Americans to take the vaccine. I think it is really as simple as that.

Americans are skeptical of the vaccines for a number of reasons. The reality that they are minimally tested and rushed out in less than a year is one reason . The fact that the government and the media have been caught censoring or lying about Covid data is another reason. People just don’t trust the elites, and who can blame them? Who would trust a cabal of psychopaths to inject them with an unknown viral cocktail? Maybe their intentions are not so pure?

Medical Passports And Vaccination Blackmail

birchgold |  Government officials are constantly in the media these days claiming that vaccinations will not be made mandatory. What they don’t mention is that they are already trying to legislate that anyone without a vaccination or medical passport will be unable to participate in normal society or even be allowed to work in their job. This program is moving at an incredibly fast pace, which makes me think the globalists realize they are losing the battle for the minds of the citizenry and they need to rush their agenda before it’s too late.

Here is what will happen in 2021 in terms of the pandemic:

1. The media and elitist organizations will continue to pump up the infection numbers to frighten the public, even though the death rate is so low it makes the infection rate meaningless.

2. If Biden is in office, mandates will be made into a federal issue and will be federally enforced.

3. If Trump is in office, state governments will try to enforce mandates and major corporations will help them.

4. There will then be a major push to require medical passports proving a person is not infected to enter into any public place. This means submission to 24/7 contact tracing or getting a new vaccine whenever ordered to. Basically, your life will be under the total control of state or federal governments if you want to have any semblance of returning to your normal life.

5. If this process does not work and does not intimidate enough people into compliance, governments will seek to offer stimulus checks or a form of Universal Basic Income, but only for those people who agree to tracking through their cell phones and to vaccination.

6. New mutations of COVID-19 will be conveniently found every year from now on, meaning the public will have to get new vaccinations constantly, and medical tyranny will never go away unless people take an aggressive stand.

It Gets Worse From Here On…

2021 will be far worse that 2020, but at least the lines will be drawn and the fight will be more clear to everyone. The economic crisis is what concerns me the most. The events listed above will complete the final downturn in the global system and America in particular. Such a financial crash would cause far more chaos and death than the coronavirus ever could.

Ultimately, I believe the public will respond badly to pandemic mandates. Many conservative states and counties will simply refuse to enforce them. However, the question is, will people end up fighting each other and forget all about the globalists that created the problem in the first place? Will mass poverty succeed where the pandemic failed in convincing Americans to give up their liberties in exchange for some stability?

Who Will Be The Rulers?

mises |  Individual liberty is at risk again. What may lie ahead was projected in November 2016 when the WEF published “8 Predictions for the World in 2030.” According to the WEF’s scenario, the world will become quite a different place from now because how people work and live will undergo a profound change. The scenario for the world in 2030 is more than just a forecast. It is a plan whose implementation has accelerated drastically since with the announcement of a pandemic and the consequent lockdowns. 

According to the projections of the WEF’s “Global Future Councils,” private property and privacy will be abolished during the next decade. The coming expropriation would go further than even the communist demand to abolish the property of production goods but leave space for private possessions. The WEF projection says that consumer goods, too, would be no longer private property.

If the WEF projection should come true, people would have to rent and borrow their necessities from the state, which would be the sole proprietor of all goods. The supply of goods would be rationed in line with a social credit points system. Shopping in the traditional sense would disappear along with the private purchases of goods. Every personal move would be tracked electronically, and all production would be subject to the requirements of clean energy and a sustainable environment. 

In order to attain “sustainable agriculture,” the food supply will be mainly vegetarian. In the new totalitarian service economy, the government will provide basic accommodation, food, and transport, while the rest must be lent from the state. The use of natural resources will be brought down to its minimum. In cooperation with the few key countries, a global agency would set the price of CO₂ emissions at an extremely high level to disincentivize its use.

In a promotional video, the World Economic Forum summarizes the eight predictions in the following statements:

1. People will own nothing. Goods are either free of charge or must be lent from the state.

2. The United States will no longer be the leading superpower, but a handful of countries will dominate.

3. Organs will not be transplanted but printed.

4. Meat consumption will be minimized.

5. Massive displacement of people will take place with billions of refugees.

6. To limit the emission of carbon dioxide, a global price will be set at an exorbitant level.

7. People can prepare to go to Mars and start a journey to find alien life.

8. Western values will be tested to the breaking point..

Deplorables Official Status Reduced To Expendables...,

taibbi |  In sum, it’s okay to stoke public paranoia, encourage voters to protest legal election results, spread conspiracy theories about stolen elections, refuse to endorse legal election tallies, and even to file lawsuits challenging the validity of presidential results, so long as all of this activity is sanctified by officials in the right party, or by intelligence vets, or by friendlies at CNN, NBC, the New York Times, etc.

If, however, the theories are coming from Donald Trump or some other disreputable species of un-credentialed American, then it’s time for companies like YouTube to move in and wipe out 8000+ videos and nudge people to channels like CBS and NBC, as well as to the home page of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. This is a process YouTube calls “connecting people to authoritative information.”

Cutting down the public’s ability to flip out removes one of the only real checks on the most dangerous kind of fake news, the official lie. Imagine if these mechanisms had been in place in the past. Would we disallow published claims that the Missile Gap was a fake? That the Gulf of Tonkin incident was staged? How about Watergate, a wild theory about cheating in a presidential election that was universally disbelieved by “reputable” news agencies, until it wasn’t? It’s not hard to imagine a future where authorities would ask tech platforms to quell “conspiracy theories” about everything from poisoned water systems to war crimes.

There’s no such thing as a technocratic approach to truth. There are official truths, but those are political rather than scientific determinations, and therefore almost always wrong on some level. The people who created the American free press understood this, even knowing the tendency of newspapers to be idiotic and full of lies. They weighed that against the larger potential evil of a despotic government that relies upon what Thomas Jefferson called a “standing army of newswriters” ready to print whatever ministers want, “without any regard for truth.”

We allow freedom of religion not because we want people believing in silly religions, but because it’s the only defense against someone establishing one officially mandated silly religion. With the press, we put up with gossip and errors and lies not because we think those things are socially beneficial, but because we don’t want an aristocratic political establishment having a monopoly on those abuses. By allowing some conspiracy theories but not others, that’s exactly the system we’re building.

Most of blue-state America is looking aghast at news stories about 17 states joining in a lawsuit to challenge the election results. Conventional wisdom says that half the country has been taken over by a dangerous conspiracist movement that must be tamed by any means necessary. Acts like the YouTube ban not only don’t accomplish this, they’ll almost certainly further radicalize this population. This is especially true in light of the ongoing implication that Trump’s followers are either actual or unwitting confederates of foreign enemies.

That insult is bad enough when it’s leveled in words only, but when it’s backed up by concrete actions to change a group’s status, like reducing an ability to air grievances, now you’re removing some of the last incentives to behave like citizens. Do you want 70 million Trump voters in the streets with guns and go-bags? Tell them you consider them the same as foreign enemies, and start treating them accordingly. This is a stupid, dangerous, wrong policy, guaranteed to make things worse.

Students Have No 4th Amendment Rights Administrators Are Bound To Acknowledge

gizmodo |  In May 2016, a student enrolled in a high-school in Shelbyville, Texas, consented to having his phone searched by one of the district’s school resource officers. Looking for evidence of a romantic relationship between the student and a teacher, the officer plugged the phone into a Cellebrite UFED to recover deleted messages from the phone. According to the arrest affidavit, investigators discovered the student and teacher frequently messaged each other, “I love you.” Two days later, the teacher was booked into the county jail for sexual assault of a child.

The Cellebrite used to gather evidence in that case was owned and operated by the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office. But these invasive phone-cracking tools are not only being purchased by police departments. Public documents reviewed by Gizmodo indicate that school districts have been quietly purchasing these surveillance tools of their own for years.

Gizmodo has reviewed similar accounting documents from eight school districts, seven of which are in Texas, showing that administrators paid as much $11,582 for the controversial surveillance technology. Known as mobile device forensic tools (MDFTs), this type of tech is able to siphon text messages, photos, and application data from student’s devices. Together, the districts encompass hundreds of schools, potentially exposing hundreds of thousands of students to invasive cell phone searches.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school district in the country with over 630,000 students enrolled in over 1,000 institutions in the 2018-2019 school year, has a Cellebrite device it says is used by a team that investigates complaints of employee misconduct against students. Its listed description for the job of Digital Forensics Investigator states, those with that role assist with “student safety issues, fraud, collusion, and/or conflicts of interest,” specifically mentioning expertise with Cellebrite as a qualification.

The Fourth Amendment protects people in the United States from unreasonable government searches and seizures, including their cell phones. While a search without a warrant is generally considered unreasonable, the situation in schools is a little different.

In the case New Jersey v. T.L.O, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that schools do not necessarily need a warrant to search students so long as officials have a reasonable belief a student has broken the law or school policy, and the search is not unnecessarily intrusive and reasonably related in scope to the circumstances under which the search was originally justified. The “reasonableness” standard is extremely broad, largely deferential to the whims of school officials, and can serve as the basis for fishing expeditions; courts have only rarely ruled that school searches violate the Fourth Amendment.

“The problem is as much with the legal standards as with the technology,” said Barbara Fedders, an assistant professor of law at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who focuses on the intersection of criminal law and school discipline. “Schools take student’s cell phones for all kinds of reasons, not because they think they are doing anything pernicious; you can see where racial bias could factor into this.”

Cell phones are deeply personal items, and it’s easy to imagine how embarrassing and potentially catastrophic it would be if an administrator or school resource officer used a Cellebrite to download students’ private text messages, photos, social media posts, location history, and more.

 

Democrat Preznit Of U.S. Council Of Mayors Declared Racism A Public Health Crisis

Forbes |  An executive order signed by Mayor Greg Fischer on Tuesday declares racism a public health crisis in Louisville, Kentucky, with Fischer stating that several of the city's "systems are more than broken" and that they need to "be dismantled and replaced."

At a press conference announcing the executive order, Fischer said that the death of Breonna Taylor, an unarmed black woman who was shot and killed in her home by Louisville Metro police officers, made the city a "focal point for America's reckoning on racial justice." 

Fischer declared that for Louisville to move forward, it would first need to address the pain and root causes of racism, in addition to acknowledging its impact.

Under the order, seven specific areas will be targeted by the Louisville Metro Government: public safety, children and families, employment, Black wealth, housing, health and voting.

The order also calls for continuing to offer mail-in ballots for all elections.

Fischer pointed to several statistics Tuesday that highlighted the racial inequity in the city, such as the fact that Black residents own only 2.4% of Louisville's businesses, despite constituting 22.4% of the city's population.

Between some majority-Black and majority-white neighborhoods in Louisville, life expectancy can vary by as much as 12 years, according to the mayor. 

Crucial Quote: "For too many Louisvillians, racism is a fact of daily life, a fact that was created and documented in our country's laws and institutional policies like segregation, redlining, and urban renewal," Fischer said. "Laws and policies that restrict the freedom of all Americans to exercise their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

 

 

Just Now Learned Why Our Little NippleHead Empty Suit Of A Mayor Lost His Mind...,

fox4kc |  Kansas City’s mayor is making a clarification on the COVID-19 restrictions for restaurants and bars, giving them a little more time to finish serving dine-in customers.

Bill Teel, executive director of the Greater Kansas City Restaurant Association, said restaurant staff can now take orders up to 10 p.m. but must have all customers out of the building by 11 p.m.

Previously, Kansas City restaurants were required to close for dine-in service by 10 p.m. under the city’s latest COVID-19 restrictions.

A spokesperson for Mayor Quinton Lucas said in order to remain consistent with neighboring jurisdictions, Kansas City has “only clarified that the 10 p.m. restriction means that no food or drink shall be served after 10 p.m., and that patrons can finish their visit in a reasonable amount of time.”

Restaurants and bars will not be able to take orders or sell drinks after 10 p.m., but it will give customers more time to finish their meals.

Carryout, drive-thru and delivery services can continue past 10 p.m.

In a letter to Greater Kansas City Restaurant Association members, Teel called this “a much needed step in the right direction.”

Restaurants and bars are still limited to 50% capacity under Kansas City’s restrictions, and dine-in customers must be seated at all times with 6 feet of distance between groups. Masks are required when anyone is not actively eating or drinking.

The news comes one day after Independence created its own COVID-19 guidelines, allowing its restaurants and bars to continue serving until midnight — instead of closing dine-in service at 10 p.m. like Jackson County’s order requires.

At A Deeper Political Level Gebru's Paper Said Google Machine Learning Creates More Harm Than Good

Gebru Called Into Question Google's Reputation  Based on the leaked email, Gebru's research says that machine learning at Google (the core of Google's products) creates more harm than good. Somebody finally figured out there that if she is effective in her role, she would be calling into question the ethical standing of Google's core products. If a corporation does ethics research but is unwilling to publicize anything that could be considered critical, then it's not ethics research, it's just peer-reviewed public relations. 

Google miscalculated with Gebru. They thought her comfy paycheck would buy her reputational complicity. Like a typical diversity hire at Corporation X, Gebru was supposed to function as a token figleaf and glad hander among snowflakes who might otherwise ask hard questions. Now Google couldn't just tell her that she was hired to be the good AI house negroe, could they?

Google wants the good narrative of "internal ethics research being done" They want to shape that narrative and message about all of "the improvements we can make" whatever it takes so that questions about their products don't effect their bottom line.  With internal ethics research you have access to exponentially more data  (directly and indirectly, the latter because you know who to talk to and can do so) than any poor academic researcher. 

The field has AI Ethics research teams working on important problems (to the community as a whole). These teams are well funded, sometimes with huge resources.  Now to get the best out of this system, the researchers just need to avoid conflicts with the company core business.  In the case of Gebru's paper,  it could have been reframed in a way that would please Google, without sacrificing its scientific merit. Shaping the narrative is extremely important in politics, business, and ethics.

 And Openly Flouted Managerial Authoriteh  Some are critical if machine learning SVP Jeff Dean for rejecting her submission because of bad "literature review", saying that internal review is supposed to check for "disclosure of sensitive material" only. 

Not only are they wrong about the ultimate purpose of internal review processes, they also missed the point of the rejection. It was never about "literature review", but instead about Google's reputation. Take another look at Dean's response email. 

It ignored too much relevant research — for example, it talked about the environmental impact of large models, but disregarded subsequent research showing much greater efficiencies. Similarly, it raised concerns about bias in language models, but didn’t take into account recent research to mitigate these issues. Google is the inventor of the current market dominating language models. Who does more neural network training using larger data sets than Google? 

This is how and why Gebru's paper argues that Google creates more harm than good. Would you approve such a paper, as is? This is being kept to the paper and the email to the internal snowflake list - we don't need to examine her intention to sue Google last year, or calling on colleagues to enlist third-party organizations to put more pressure on Google.

Put yourself in Google's cloven-hooved shoes. 

Gebru: Here's my paper in which I call out the environmental impact of large models and raise concerns about bias in the language data sets. Tomorrow is the deadline, please review and approve it. 

Google: Hold on, this makes us look very bad! You have to revise the paper. We know that large models are not good for the environment, but we have also been doing research to achieve much greater efficiencies. We are also aware of bias in the language models that we are using in production, but we are also proposing solutions to that. You should include those works as well.

Gebru: Give me the names of every single person who reviewed my paper otherwise I'll resign. Throw on top of this the fact that she told hundreds of people in the org to cease important work because she had some disagreements with leadership. 

Google: You're Fired!!! Get Out - We'll Pack Your Shit And Mail It To You!!!!