Sunday, July 21, 2019

QUOTE OF THE DAY, SUGGESTED READINGS, AND MORE!


First up, we have this very interesting, in-depth exploration in the New York Times that sheds some light into how Youtube accidentally (?) became the world's most effective vector for Far Right propaganda, thus radicalizing a generation of young men and boys into reactionary politics. Remember, if you've already reached your quota of free NYTimes articles for the month, just open this article in an "incognito" window.

***

Next up, but definitely related, comes this series of VICE interviews with people who have literally lost family members to the deranged, Trump-centric, post-Pizzagate, conspiranoid hurricane of weaponized nonsense known as "Qanon". It begins:

One of the most disheartening signs of our advancing hellworld are the thousands of people who wholeheartedly believe in the deranged conspiracy known as QAnon. 
It's near impossible to summarize the entire QAnon conspiracy theory, as it’s fluid and ever-changing. The nuts and bolts are that a secret government insider, the titular Q, has taken to the internet forum 8chan of all places to drop clues (known in the community as Q Drops breadcrumbs) about how U.S. President Donald Trump is taking down the deep state. The conspiracy takes some twists and turns into the occult, an ever-present cabal of pedophiles, possible executions, and the idea JFK Jr. may have faked his own death and is cosplaying as an old guy who goes to Trump rallies. 
While the QAnon conspiracy often feels like an elaborate troll, an online community of real, actual people has built up around it. There’s been a lot written about how lonely these people are, how they will cut themselves off from their family ... and poking fun at the whole thing. Rick Ross, a cult deprogrammer and executive director of the nonprofit Cult Education Institute, says the community bears a lot of the hallmarks of a cult: the main character is infallible and everything is part of a greater plan. ...
No one knows how hard it is to break through a bubble one creates around themselves than loved ones. While maybe it’s funny for those outside peering in, what is it like for those who are close to them, the people who experience their loved one's brain being rotted by YouTubers breaking down 8chan posts in real time? 
I decided to seek them out. I found a woman whose husband became so obsessed with YouTube conspiracy videos he would follow her around the house and force her to watch them, someone who avoids their mother because of Q, and someone who was dumped by the man she loved because she actively attempted to debunk QAnon. Here are their stories.
Some of these stories are ridiculous, while some are truly heartbreaking. All of them are disturbing, in that they provide yet more evidence to the increasingly voluminous pile that shows how we are, most likely, up against something that goes far beyond the mere human propensity for occasionally believing stupid things. 

I think it's patently obvious by now that what we are witnessing is an engineered phenomenon, wherein a new generation of propagandists have at their disposal bleeding edge communications tools and predictive psychometric technologies that have allowed them to create "psychiatric software" bordering on literal mind control. 

This is one of the core elements of my "New Fascist International(e)" theory, which I hope to explain more fully in an ebook that I've been working on for the past two and a half years. So keep your eyes peeled.

***

In an important op-ed piece for the Washington Post, Paul Waldman describes the lengths to which a newly empowered Far Right are going in order to prevent those who have yet to be brainwashed into their cult from voting at all, thus maintaining their illegitimate grip on power until the day finally comes when they can do away with the charade of democratic elections altogether, and simply exert their God-ordained right to rule over their lessers entirely unimpeded.

Unfortunately, WaPo is behind a paywall nowadays, so if you find yourself locked out, here is a distillation of Waldman's most important points and revelations:

As we turn our attention toward the 2020 elections, Republican lawmakers across the country are asking: How can we keep people from voting? In Tennessee, which already has lower-than-average rates of turnout, the legislature is on the case
"Tennessee could penalize some paid voter registration groups with fines for too many faulty signups and criminal charges for violating new requirements under a proposal passed by the House on Monday. The vote bucked some voting rights groups, who have voiced fear that the bill would create a chilling effect on Tennessee’s already-poor voter participation marks. Republican Secretary of State Tre Hargett has made the legislation a top priority, deeming it important for election security after Shelby County, which includes Memphis, saw a flood of often-faulty registrations that came in on last year’s deadline. But Tennessee Black Voter Project, which led the voter signup charge in Memphis and elsewhere across the state, has said the bill immediately followed the group’s efforts to register 86,000 black voters."
Under this law, organizations that mount voter registration drives will have to be trained by the state, and then they can be fined and face jail time if they have lots of registrations with mistakes. 
Just to provide a bit of context, every group that does registrations gets some faulty ones. When you sit at a table outside a supermarket registering people to vote, there are always jokesters who will fill out the form in the name of Mickey Mouse or Clark Kent, but the group doing the registering is legally required to submit the forms, even if they’re sure they’re false.

The problem here is obviously not that erroneous registrations create some kind of unmanageable burden on state officials, because they've always existed and always will.
It’s that too many black people registered to vote in Tennessee, and something had to be done about it. 
So in addition to using all the other tools in their voter-suppression drawer, Republicans in Tennessee decided to clamp down on registration, knowing full well that liberal groups are much more likely to mount registration drives than conservative groups.
This isn’t the first time something like this has been tried. Before the 2012 election, Republicans in Florida passed a registration law so restrictive that it led nonpartisan groups such as the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote to suspend their voter registration drives in the state.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who often makes plain what other Republicans prefer to conceal amid a fog of misdirection, used to say that “low voter turnout is a sign of a content democracy.” More recently he has described Democratic efforts to make voting easier, with measures like making Election Day a national holiday, as a “power grab.” In other words, he makes no bones about the fact that if we made it easier to vote, too many people would vote for Democrats.

Every Republican understands that; McConnell is just one of the few willing to say it out loud. But the truth is that suppressing votes is absolutely critical to Republican success. They know full well that their ability to compete and win in the American political process is dependent on the countermajoritarian features of our system — the filibuster, the fact that the Senate gives the same representation to the fewer than 600,000 residents of Wyoming as the nearly 40 million in California, the electoral college — nearly every one of which works to the advantage of the GOP.
And as the party grows more dependent on older, wealthier, white voters — who are more likely to be registered and more likely to turn out — Republicans know that the harder registering and voting is, the more likely they are to win. No prospect is more threatening to Republican success than high turnout.

Consider the last three midterm elections. Last year, turnout was 50 percent, and Democrats won huge victories, including taking back the House. In 2014, a “wave” election for Republicans, it was only 37 percent. In 2010, another Republican wave, it was 42 percent. Anything that gets more people to the polls will be good for Democrats and bad for Republicans. 
Which is why the GOP will do everything in its power to keep registration and turnout low — and why making it easier to vote is so important for Democrats. So in the coming days we’re almost certain to see a further separation between red and blue states.
It will look like this: Where Democrats are in charge, they’ll institute automatic voter registration, same-day registration, no-excuse absentee voting, extended early voting, and anything else that will maximize turnout and make voting easy. Where Republicans are in charge they’ll employ voter ID, restricted early voting, polling place closures, and anything else that will drive voting down, particularly among African Americans.
And if all that isn’t enough, Republicans will go after the people registering voters, too.
Get the picture yet, folks? It isn't four relatively progressive Congresswomen representing their communities and their constituencies who pose a threat to America and the American WayTM... it's the entire radicalized Far Right reactionary pseudo-religious cult into which the Republican Party has transformed over the past few decades that is the TRUE "enemy of the people".

***

But don't take my word for it! Here's a former intelligence agent who was part of the team who drafted National Intelligence Estimates for a previous White House (Paul Nailer is a pseudonym) to tell you why "The Biggest Threat to Our Country Today is the Republican Party". He begins, in part:
In case you’re not familiar with the finer points of threat assessment within the national security apparatus, the NIE is the big enchilada: the document seen by presidents and members of congress; an objective, non-political, comprehensive piece of work that categorises and prioritises the threats faced by the United States. 
While I no longer have regular access to the complete set of intelligence reports from which the NIE is drawn, I have access to some, and I am an avid reader of the related publicly available information. I’ve developed my own amateur NIE based on this information, and here’s the organisation at the top of the list: 
The Republican Party. 
Shocking as that may seem – and your level of shock may vary widely depending on how closely you’ve been tracking the actions both center stage and behind the scenes of the rapidly toxifying Grand Ole Party – the real problem with this revelation is that we cannot actually do much about this threat in the classic manner. 
The threat from the right is the first national-level “insider threat” the United States has faced since the Civil War. It is insidious, asymmetric, powerful – and existential. ... Let me say it again: the Republican Party is the biggest threat the United States is facing. And without proper attribution, recognition, and a well-articulated and implemented counter-strategy, it could be terminal. There is no other reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the facts. 
An enemy of the United States might seek to sow discord between ethnic groups, or to wage a disinformation campaign, or to highlight moral inconsistencies that weaken the standing of the United States on the world stage. An enemy of the United States might try and degrade the capacity and public trust within our intelligence apparatus. It might use propaganda and weaponised information. It might seek to engage in fraud or other criminal acts to sway an election in their favour. Does any of that sound familiar? 
The Republican Party has steadily embraced authoritarianism, suspect electoral tactics, and racism more and more over the past few decades. That process has been turbocharged with Trump at the helm of the party. We’re now seeing an explicit embrace of white supremacy. Denial in the face of climate change. Deliberate sowing of discord within the FBI and the CIA. Weakening of the rule of law. Brazen criminality. Removing funding for elections oversight. Blatant human rights abuses at the border. 
The explicit nature of these acts is the point. The Republicans mean to bludgeon any and all resistance to their reshaping of the nation’s institutions to their will. And so far, they’ve gotten away with it.
I realize that I've quoted from the article quite extensively, and that you may feel like there's no real reason to go ahead and read the entire thing for yourself. But I suggest that you do, if only to more fully grasp the fact that "Donald Trump and his coterie of criminals have done more in two years to weaken the United States than the Soviet Union was able to achieve in decades."


***
QUOTE OF THE DAY!

But how do we know for sure that the guy who was fined for refusing to rent to Black people and called for a ban on Muslims and called Mexicans rapists and called Puerto Ricans lazy and called for the execution of innocent Black teens is a racist? If only there were a clear sign!

- Our old pal Jeff Tiedrich over at Twitter expresses his frustration 
over how difficult it is to figure out whether or not 
President Rotten Pumkin Face is a racist or not.

Friday, July 19, 2019

PLAYING CATCH-UP AGAIN... SHOULD I BOTHER?


CNN's Jim Acosta masterfully calls out the rank hypocrisy of President Rotting Pumpkin Face -- as well as the rank hypocrisy of right-wingers in general -- when it comes to their laughable assertions that Representative Ilhan Omar is some sort of horrible anti-Semite. This, over statements no tougher than that which is spoken and written by Jews within Israel, itself, against the dangerously reactionary Netenyahu regime in Israel.

And to think, these right-wingers enjoy fantasizing about how they're the last stand for freedom of speech in the West! It's absolutely fucking ludicrous. Furthermore, it has been my experience that, even though most try to keep it hush-hush, when push comes to shove, self-styled right-wing "intellectuals" more often than not turn out to be closet Holocaust deniers, or else, at they very least, they have some very "interesting" ideas about the (ahem) "Jewish Question".

***

One of the dumbest ongoing debates in the world of politics surrounds the question of "What is more evil? Fascism or Communism?" The debate is idiotic because the answer is obvious. For a number of reasons, Fascism is clearly more evil than Communism, the main reason for this being that while it is possible for evil people to become dictatorial rulers of nominally Communist regimes, the evil of Fascism is baked right into the ideology, itself. It is simply impossible to have a just, fair, or "decent" Fascist regime. No one, not even Stalin, became a Communist because they wanted to do evil, whereas that is the entire point of Fascism.

Regardless of the debate's obvious stupidity, it will likely continue for years to come, and that's because of two reasons. First, because amateur political hobbyists love to compare body-counts (even though that's a tricky proposition, indeed). And second, because amateur political hobbyists have this weird psychic blind spot that prevents them from looking back any farther than the year 1900 for some strange reason.

Which is fortunate for them, because if they ever do decide to play the body-count game without such a fortuitous limiter guaranteeing their parameters lead to foregone conclusions, they'd be faced with the horrible truth that Nazi Party, the Soviet Politburo, and even Mao's Cultural Revolution were all pikers when compared to... the Western European Capitalism and Colonialism Project.

I mean, for fuck's sake, a recent scientific survey has found that the colonization of America, alone, led to such a vast amount of megadeath over a short period of time that it literally caused a mini-Ice Age! Which makes me worry that some gang of overly ambitious multi-billionaires is going to see the linked article and get inspired by it. Can smallpox infected blankets be looming in all our collective encroaching futures?

***
Speaking of right-wingers getting big ideas, check out The Night Wolves, a short documentary about Vladimir Putin's Russian biker militia fighting alongside more traditional troops in the occupied territories of Ukraine.



According to the directors:
The Russian motorcycle club the Night Wolves first made international headlines in 2014, fighting as a paramilitary group alongside pro-Russian forces during the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. Although the Night Wolves formed as an anti-Soviet countercultural group during perestroika, today they’re sometimes called ‘Putin’s Angels’, having embraced the potent mix of Orthodox Christianity, nationalism, hypermasculinity and Soviet nostalgia that drives the Russian president’s base.
Does any of this sound at all familiar to you? Well, it should. Remember when Trump posed for this ridiculous photo-op? It was only four months ago, when Trump threatened to sic "his" police, bikers, and other "tough guy" supporters on those Democrats who... um... don't like him and oppose his policies, I guess?


Oh well. I'm not saying Trump is copying his hero, Putin, here. I'm just saying it sure fucking looks like it.

VITAL INFORMATION FOR THOSE PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION



Hello, friends!

A few weeks back, in the wake of the admittedly disappointing, premature release of the Mueller Report -- which, just like the recently kaiboshed SDNY investigations into the Trump org's criminal goings-on related to campaign funds being illegally used as hush money for the porn stars and Playboy models Trump was fucking while his line-jumping immigration cheat wife Melania was pregnant with/giving birth to Little Barron Trump, pretty much shuttered operations the day after Trump named his criminal co-conspirator William Barr Attorney General of the USA -- our old pal and undisputed heavyweight Tweet-Lord Seth Abramson put together a Tweet Storm about other, still ongoing investigations into the cabal of shadowy Sinister Forces (alongside the fatally corrupt criminal cult that the GOP has long since become) behind the conspiracy to install President Rotting Pumpkin Face in the highest office of the land.

Here, for your edification, is the entirety of Abramson's Tweet Storm, complete with links, illustrations, and occasional added links and information from yours truly. 

It all started with this Tweet:
1/ POST-MUELLER INVESTIGATION #1, per the NYT: "Investigators are still examining the campaign contacts of an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation who has worked for Prince Mohammed [bin Zayed of the UAE]."
(NB: I'll list the three investigations, then explain them.)

2/ POST-MUELLER INVESTIGATION #2, per the NYT: "Investigators are still examining...a Lebanese-American businessman [George Nader] who acted as [a pre-election] emissary [for Mohammed bin Zayed of the UAE, also known as "MBZ"].

3/ POST-MUELLER INVESTIGATION #3, per the NYT: "Prosecutors are investigating whether another top Republican donor whose security company worked for the prince [Elliot Broidy, named RNC deputy finance chair post-election by Trump] should legally have registered as [MBZ's] agent."

4/ (The NEW YORK TIMES has also implied that a *fourth* investigation is ongoing—but because the reference to it mentions the "special counsel," I've held off on saying that the TIMES is "officially" reporting it as ongoing. In the next tweet I'll summarize its contours, though.)

5/ POST-MUELLER INVESTIGATION #4, per the NYT (see prior tweet for note): "[Prosecutors] also questioned Rashid al-Malik, an Emirati real-estate developer close to MBZ and...the head of Emirati intelligence. Mr. al-Malik is also close to Mr. Trump’s friend Tom Barrack... (cont.)

6/ ...and investigators are asking whether al-Malik was part of an illegal [UAE] influence scheme, according to two people familiar with the matter." From PROOF OF CONSPIRACY research, I know the key al-Malik intel involves pre-election contact with Barrack—and possibly Manafort.

7/ Those who read this feed know that I've long been saying—and saying, too, that those most fully "in the know" are saying—that the pre-election crimes most likely to implicate Trump and his family involve bribery and aiding and abetting, and *not just Russia* but other nations.

8/ The Mueller Report is a must-read for every American, despite being long and complex. Once you've read it—and this is the hard part—you have to understand that, for all the terrible stuff you just read, it's only a narrow window on a much larger story still being investigated.


10/ Beginning then—in March 2018—journalists around the world began investigating this conspiracy. I know not just because I've written a book about the "Red Sea Conspiracy" but because major-media journalists from all over have contacted me to say they're working on this, too.

11/ There are 3 reasons you've heard little about this:
  1. The best reporting on it is in foreign media.
  2. Our media consistently "buries the lede" in reporting on the story—as it considers America not ready for it.
  3. The story is so complex it's taken over a year to research.
12-19/ I'll now tell you the basic facts of the story that has emerged:
  1. Six nations hatched a plot to elect Trump. The plot was hatched in 2015; the nations involved were Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt. The leaders of these countries were all involved.
  2. Three of these six nations—Russia, Israel, the UAE—had infiltrated deep into the Trump campaign by March 2016: Russia through Dimitri Simes; the UAE through Yousef al-Otaiba; Israel through Kushner, Groner, and Birnbaum. The campaign understood the plan these nations had.
  3. The plan was simple: historic detentes between the US and Russia and the Sunni Arab Gulf states and Israel; the US drops all sanctions on Russia and Russia agrees to withdraw support for Iran, thus clearing a path for a new Arab-Israeli alliance to remake the Middle East.
  4. The Trump campaign became aware of the plan via *many* interlocutors: Kushner; Flynn; Nader; Manafort; al-Otaiba; Simes; Birnbaum; Barrack; others. The plan was seen as a "grand bargain" and sometimes called that—other times it was called "the Middle East Marshall Plan."
  5. Russia began operations in what would become the plot (through the GRU and IRA) in 2014, at a time it was in a *massive* new joint investment program with the UAE and there were regular high-level Moscow/Abu Dhabi contacts. The UAE and Russia knew Trump would run by 2013.
  6. By March 2016, Russia had become the first nation with a "man in"—Dimitri Simes. (Though you could argue Kushner saw himself as an unofficial agent of Israel prior to that). By April 2016, Israel had a "man in"—via Birnbaum. By May 2017, UAE had a "man in"—with al-Otaiba.
  7. Saudi Arabia (whose leader, MBS, is a mentee of the UAE's MBZ); Egypt (whose leader, el-Sisi, is in power because of the UAE's MBZ); and Bahrain (whose leader is basically along for the ride), did not *need* their own agents, as they effectively were using the Emiratis'.
  8. The conspirators spent March through July trying to get access directly to the Trumps, though Jared Kushner was conspiring with Simes, al-Otaiba, and Netanyahu's office by late spring. On August 3, 2016, agents of Israel, Russia, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia got to Trump Jr.
  9. At that August 3 Trump Tower meeting, both the family and campaign were represented: the family via Don Jr., the campaign via Trump's chief domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller.
Four nations offered the Trump campaign illegal pre-election assistance; Don Jr. said yes.

20/ I've given you the most basic contours. The full story (at least as I've written it) takes 500 pages and 3,500+ endnotes. It can't be relayed on Twitter. But it is fully sourced, and sourced with the top media outlets in the world (particularly in the US, the UK, and Israel).

PS/ Many may wonder, "What's the connection between the Mueller Report and this?" The answer: Mueller's report is a prequel, following 2 of 7 characters—the US and Russia—in what was, in the event, a full five-act play. It's the TALES OF BEEDLE THE BARD to Rowling's HARRY POTTER.

KEY/
INVESTIGATION #1: Israeli intel expert Joel Zamel offering illegal pre-election aid to Trump's campaign.
INVESTIGATION #2: UAE/Saudi agent George Nader repeatedly meeting the Trump team secretly in last 90 days of campaign.
INVESTIGATION #3: UAE agent Broidy bribing Trump.


PS2/ I'm *not* one of those who thinks Pelosi is "waiting" for all this to come out—I tend *not* to ascribe much long-range strategic thinking to most politicians. But I'll say that the case for impeachment will be *much* stronger once this evidence is fully in the public record.

***

And here you thought the worst thing about Trump is that he's the kind of racist piece of shit who goes around telling American citizens, who were duly elected by their constituents to enact needed reforms to the government, to "go back where they came from" if they "don't love" the USA as is, no reforms allowed! This, from the self-same moron who's done nothing but whine and complain about how the USA is an "international laughing stock" (oh, the fucking irony of that!), in the midst of an era of "American Carnage" that "only he" can correct.

Friday, July 12, 2019

SIGN OF THE TIMES


Not just the t-shirt with its (untrue, btw) "message", but the fact that this vile jackwad feels perfectly justified and comfortable wearing it out in public, and appears to be going about his business unmolested, blissfully free of the knuckle sandwiches upon which he should rightfully be feasting.

Thursday, July 11, 2019

"PROJECT X" FIELD OF VISION


A fascinating short documentary based upon a Top Secret NSA handbook that was discovered among the vast collection of files and information "freed" by Edward Snowden. It doesn't really contain anything we didn't already know, but it's an intriguing glimpse into the institutional aesthetics of the American intelligence community, right down to the brutalist architecture of the Project X building at 33 Thomas street in New York, NY, an imposing and (according to Tom Hanks) downright terrifying building that formerly sat in the shadows of the Word Trade Center's Twin Towers. Esquire's Keith Flamer describes the building thusly:
The tower is 550-feet high but only 29 stories tall due to its nearly 20-foot double-height floor-to-ceiling interiors. It also has three sub-basement levels. Labeled “Project X” in Warnecke’s original architectural drawings, it was designed as “a skyscraper to be inhabited by machines.” Today, the former long distance telephone and telegraph hub operates primarily as a fortified, high security corporate data complex (and alleged covert government nerve center) with powerful computers, cables, switchboards and “big brother” surveillance equipment.
A skyscraper to be inhabited by machines, eh? And this was built a fairly long time ago, too... in the heyday of the technocrats and in the early days of cybernetics. So much so that the documentary above would make a decent companion piece, or appendix, to Lutz Dammbeck's documentary The Net: The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet., for which I wrote an in-depth concordance a little while back.