PP NewsBrief: 2021-03-29

We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.

========

Can’t argue with that: IBM scientists developing AI whose sole purpose is to debate with humans

"Project Debater, the AI in development for several years at the tech giant, picks a side and argues its case using a technique known as ‘argument mining’, wherein the machine parses and links together the most useful relevant sections of arguments by parsing a vast archive of some 400 million news articles on a given subject.

...

“Debating represents a primary cognitive activity of the human mind, requiring the simultaneous application of a wide arsenal of language understanding and language generation capabilities, many of which have only been partially studied from a computational perspective (as separate tasks), and certainly not in a holistic manner,” the researchers explain.

The researchers concluded that, despite the many leaps and bounds in technical development, artificial intelligence still remains a long way from matching humanity's best, especially when it comes to extremely complex, challenging or ambiguous topics, as true free-form debating remains outside the ‘comfort zone’ of the AI... for now."

========

The Wages of Orthodoxy

"The distance between the Communist utopia and the free market utopia isn’t as great as it seems at first glance.  

In reality, there are really only three ways to improve the lot of workers: unions, minimum wage laws, and tariffs. It’s worth briefly reflecting on Karl Marx’s support for free trade and free-market economics.

In general, he said, “the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free-trade system is destructive.” He acknowledged that free trade drove down wages while disintegrating national barriers and particularism. “It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution.” After making many of the same observations conservatives make in order to laud free trade today, Marx declared in January 1848, just before the Communist Manifesto was published: “It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.”

Marx was as good a capitalist as any conservative today because he saw the acceleration of capitalism’s brutality as a vehicle for the anti-capitalist revolution. He correctly observed that the contradictions in capitalism could sow the seeds of the sort of populist revolt that gave us Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

...

...conservatives have come to view the minimum wage as the pay acceptable for merely showing up to work and, essentially, breathing. But this is actually something of a recent phenomenon. The change in the perception of the meaning of a minimum wage might be caused by the decline in its real value; the minimum wage went from a true floor—a substantial wage—to a benchmark for minimal effort.

In 1968, the Economic Policy Institute reports, a minimum wage worker earned $10.59 per hour in inflation-adjusted terms, which is 46 percent more than today’s $7.25 federal minimum wage. Moreover, an exhaustive meta-analysis of over 200 relevant empirical studies shows that higher minimum wages raise the wages of both workers on the minimum wage and those who had previously been earning above but close to the new minimum.

An increase would not, as conservative orthodoxy holds, only help a small subset of the population. That point is worth stressing as the United States is increasingly defined by a massive service economy of low-paying jobs, even as the GDP has grown.

...

As a result, millions of Americans are forced to work more than one job, which leaves less time for starting or raising a family. And despite working multiple jobs, roughly 40 percent of American adults wouldn’t be able to cover a $400 emergency with cash, savings, or a credit-card charge that they could easily pay off, according to the Federal Reserve’s 2018 report on the economic well-being of U.S. households. About 27 percent of respondents said they would need to borrow the money or sell something to come up with the $400.

...

...If progressive proponents of a minimum wage hike truly cared for the workers’ plight, they would also support an immigration moratorium and worksite enforcement....

...

On the one hand, Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation approach did not have the enormously positive effect many of his supporters insist it did. According to a Capital & Main analysis of U.S. Census data, national median family income growth during Trump’s first three years was almost identical to the growth rate in the last three years of Obama’s presidency. Moreover, median household income growth slowed during Trump’s first three years to 2.1 percent annually compared with 2.6 percent annually during Obama’s last three years. Measured by typical household income, 26 states “saw slower growth under Trump even before the pandemic,” Jessica Goodheart and Danny Feingold wrote for Capital & Main, citing the Cook Political Report.

On the other hand, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act actually incentivized and accelerated job offshoring. More jobs went overseas under Trump’s first term than during Obama’s. Rather than investing revenues in better wages, corporations engaged in stock-buyback sprees. None of this should be a surprise, considering the principal architect of the TCJA is Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive.

...

The mantra cited by most conservatives when arguing against things like the minimum wage is, for example, that teenagers will become unemployed en masse if we raise the pay floor. But a 2017 study by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center found minimum wage increases did not lead to a meaningful decline in teen employment. Employment among teenagers between 16 and 19 is at its lowest level since 1999 when the minimum wage was $5.25, roughly half of the state’s current $11-an-hour pay floor.

According to traditional conservative economic theory, this should not be possible. And yet another study by American academic Christopher Flinn in Econometrica came to a similar conclusion.

...

None of this is to say that the minimum wage comes without costs, but that the long-term social benefit is worth the short-term pain its implementation may incur—just as an immigration moratorium or a bill ensuring billionaires do not pay fewer taxes than working-class Americans would be.

...

The key question is not the minimum wage or any single policy but the likelihood of a new social philosophy, beyond Right, Left, conservative, or liberal, that puts people and the nation above gross domestic product and outmoded ideology."

========

Biden White House Plans 'Vaccine Passports'

"The White House is working on a COVID-19 vaccine passport initiative that could be required for travel, sporting events and even eating out, reports The Washington Post.

The report comes as major U.S. airlines and nearly 30 travel and labor groups are pushing President Joe Biden to develop a standardized, government-backed credential to "accelerate safe economic activity and recovery."

"The U.S. must be a leader in this development," the groups wrote in a letter to COVID-19 Recovery Team Coordinator Jeff Zients on Monday. "The current diverse and fragmented digital health credentials used to implement different countries' air travel testing requirements risk causing confusion, reducing compliance, and increasing fraud."

...

The Vaccine Credential Initiative, a collaboration between tech and health care companies to develop technology that would store a secure copy of an individual’s vaccination record in a digital wallet on a person’s smartphone, is already in the works.

"The busboy, the janitor, the waiter that works at a restaurant, wants to be surrounded by employees that are going back to work safely - and wants to have the patrons ideally be safe as well," Brian Anderson, a physician at Mitre, a nonprofit company that runs federally funded research centers, who is helping lead the initiative, told the Post.

"Creating an environment for those vulnerable populations to get back to work safely - and to know that the people coming back to their business are ‘safe,’ and vaccinated - would be a great scenario."

...

Nita Farany, a professor and director of the Initiative for Science & Society at Duke University, told Advisory she had concerns of passports creating a "two-tiered society" where individuals who haven’t received a vaccine don’t have access to public places and jobs versus those who are vaccinated.

"I'm just opposed to it right now, when there is a significant limitation on the number of people who can get access to Covid vaccines," she said."

They're coming. Can we stop them?

========

Michigan GOP to Bypass Gov. Whitmer to Change State's Voting Laws

"Michigan GOP chairman Ron Weiser reportedly told the North Oakland Republican Club on Thursday that the party is looking to group together a number of bills that have been proposed in the House and Senate in a petition initiative, which, if it gathered at least 340,000 signatures, could be approved by the Republican-controlled state Legislature without Whitmer having the chance to issue a veto.

Senate Republicans previously released dozens of bills that would overhaul the state’s voting laws and impose widespread restrictions, including an identification requirement for absentee ballots and prevent the Democrat Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, from sending out absentee ballot applications without receiving a request first.

"If that legislation is not passed by our Legislature, which I am sure it will be, but if it's not signed by the governor, then we have other plans to make sure that it becomes law before 2022," Weiser said on Thursday, according to a video that was released on social media."

========

Gov. Ron DeSantis Opposes Vaccine Passports in Florida

"‘I just want to make very clear in Florida, we are not doing any vaccine passports,’ Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said during his news conference on Thursday afternoon. ‘I think it’s a bad idea. And so that will not happen. And so folks should get vaccinated if they want to obviously provide that. But under no circumstances will the state be asking you to show proof of vaccination.’

‘And I don’t think private companies should be doing that either,’ added DeSantis. ‘So we’re going to look into see what we need to do to be able to make sure we’re protecting Floridians. But I do think it would be a big problem to start going down the road of vaccine passports.’

…

‘You have some of these states saying to go to a sporting event, you have to show either a negative test or a vaccine proof. I think you just got to make decisions. If you want to go to an event go to an event if you don’t don’t, but to be requiring people to provide all this proof,’ said DeSantis. ‘That’s not how you get society back to normal. So we’re rejecting any vaccine passports here in the state of Florida.’""

========

New York is the first state to adopt digital vaccine passports for business access

"This weekend, New York launched the first “vaccine passport” in the United States. The idea of vaccine certifications is controversial due to privacy, ethical, and discrimination concerns.

New York’s vaccination certification system, called Excelsior Pass, rolled out on Friday and is already being used at large-scale venues such as Madison Square Garden. Starting next week, its use will extend to multiple venues state-wide. The digital passport will allow venues and events to increase capacity.

Excelsior Pass is a digital system that will allow New York residents to show their vaccination status and coronavirus test results using an app on their smartphone. The system was championed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to enable the re-opening of businesses most affected by the pandemic, particularly the entertainment and sporting industry."

========

Michigan AG Nessel Unleashes Political Diatribe Against Defiant Restaurant Owner

"My objections to the statement are two-fold.  First, Nessel goes out of her way to taunt Pavlos-Hackney and her supporters. She also makes specific reference to her going on the Tucker Carlson show. Given the free speech issues in such appearances, the reference to a national show (in which Nessel was criticized) shows, at a minimum, terrible judgment by Nessel. This is particularly concerning given Nessel prior threats against people who raised electoral fraud claims.

Second, Nessel uses the statement to confirm raw political bias in striking out at Trump and his supporters.  She mockingly notes “if you cheered Donald Trump when he bragged about the many ways he avoided military service while others complied with their legal obligations, it’s no wonder you revere this woman.”  Ironically, it is the type of gratuitous attack that many of us criticized Trump for using against political opponents. However, this is the Michigan Attorney General engaging in petty digs against Republican critics.

The entire statement reads like a political screed rather than a prosecutorial statement. It is both unprofessional and unwarranted in addressing the arrest of a citizen. What is bizarre is that most officials in such a controversy would strive to maintain an absolutely legally  objective and politically neutral position. Nessel could have left the matter by detailing the history of noncompliance as sufficient justification for the arrest. Nessel did precisely the opposite to pander to a political base.  She seems to struggle to fulfill every stereotype of a biased political operative exercising criminal enforcement authority."

========

To Tell the Truth: Reporting of Increasing "Hate Crimes" Against Asians Leans on Narratives Instead of Numbers

"You have likely heard about the recent spike in Anti-Asian hate crimes nationwide. Perhaps you have heard that President Trump injected xenophobic rhetoric into the discourse causing mass attacks on innocent Asian-Americans. At the very least, you probably know that this is a reality of the current landscape — a “surge” in race-based attacks on American citizens of Asian descent. But have you taken a look at the data informing this claim?...

...

The “fact” of a rise in Anti-Asian crime has been written in our Newspapers so frequently in recent months, that many have begun to accept it as truth. But a close look at news reports shows that America’s major news outlets rarely point to any actual evidence when they repeat the refrain. When they do cite a study or data — it doesn’t support their claims.

...

In the age of online reporting, it is traditional for hyperlinks to in some cases function as citation. Words included in statements of fact will ideally lead the reader to a source backing up the assertion. An attempt to find a source in the The New York Times pointing to the supposed anti-Asian hate crime epidemic, will instead land a reader in an endless web of links to anecdotal accounts of crimes in which the victims happen to be Asian in New York.

...

Hate crime FBI data isn’t available past 2019 — yet the MSM continues to publish wave after wave of articles about individual crimes that happen to victimize Asian individuals and include this unproven “rise” in the framing of almost every such article.

But CNN says the data doesn’t even matter anyway, because we have so many such stories...

...

...Human events has not come across any data disproving the claim that there has been a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, “hate incidents,” child bullying, “shunning” or whatever other metric there may be. But the media’s repeated insistence to the public that such a situation exists “nationwide” does not come with any supporting data, but instead an explanation of why such data is not needed. “Trust us– look an Asian man was attacked in San Francisco today,” seems to be the standard argument framework. It is pushed alongside an assumption that all crimes against Asian-Americans are racially motivated, and has successfully molded a narrative in which the baseless statement of fact has become accepted by the every day news consumer."

========

Conservative Group: Poll Shows Voting Rights Bill 'Out of Sync With American Voters'

"In a memo to be sent to congressional and state legislators on Tuesday, and obtained by the Hill, the group shared the results of a survey of 1,200 registered voters conducted by the Polling Company from March 4-10, with a margin of error of +/- 2.83 percentage points.

77% say voters should have to show a photo ID when casting a ballot.

66% say that voters who cast a mail-in or absentee ballot should also have a photo ID requirement.

80% agree with the statement: "election fraud disenfranchises voters and casts doubt on the legitimacy of the democratic process."

80% agree with the statement: "strong safeguards and ballot protections inspire confidence by making it harder to hide fraud, and easier to dispel false allegations of fraud."

62% said that door-to-door collection of absentee ballots by political candidates, campaigns, or organizers should be illegal.

"H.R. 1 is out of sync with American voters," Honest Elections Project executive director Jason Snead writes in the memo. "Few embrace its particular provisions, or its guiding principle that election integrity and voter confidence measures make voting ‘hard’ and that Congress must impose new laws that eliminate them.""

========

The Insanity of the PCR Testing Saga

"An important question that demands an answer is whether the experts at our federal health agencies and the World Health Organization were really too ignorant to understand the implications of using this test at excessive CT, or whether it was done on purpose to create the illusion of a dangerous, out-of-control pandemic.

...

An interesting case detailed in a January 21, 2021, Buzzfeed article that raises those same questions in regard to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is its recent spat with Curative, a California testing company that got its start in January 2020. It has since risen to become one of the largest COVID-19 test providers in the U.S.

...

In December 2020, Curative submitted that data,6 showing its oral spit test accurately identified about 90% of positive cases when compared against a nasopharyngeal PCR test set to 35 CT.

The FDA objected, saying that Curative was comparing its test against a PCR that had a CT that was too low, and would therefore produce too many false negatives. According to the FDA, the bar Curative had chosen was “not appropriate and arbitrary,” Buzzfeed reports.

This is a curious statement coming from the FDA, considering the scientific consensus on PCR tests is that anything over 35 CTs is scientifically unjustifiable.

From the start, the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended running PCR tests at a CT of 40. This was already high enough to produce an inordinate number of false positives, thereby labeling healthy people as “COVID-19 cases,” but when it comes to Curative’s spit test, the FDA is demanding they compare it against PCR processed at a CT of 45, which is even more likely to produce false positives.

...

A persistent sticking point with the PCR test is that it picks up dead viral debris, and by excessively magnifying those particles with CTs in the 40s, noninfectious individuals are labeled as infectious and told to self-isolate. In short, media and public health officials have conflated “cases” — positive tests — with the actual illness.

Medically speaking, a “case” refers to a sick person. It never ever referred to someone who had no symptoms of illness. Now all of a sudden, this well-established medical term, “case,” has been arbitrarily redefined to mean someone who tested positive for the presence of noninfectious viral RNA.

The research is unequivocal when it comes to who’s infectious and who’s not. You cannot infect another person unless you carry live virus, and you typically will not develop symptoms unless your viral load is high enough.

As it pertains to PCR testing, when excessively high CTs are used, even a minute viral load that is too low to cause symptoms can register as positive. And, since the test cannot distinguish between live virus and dead viral debris, you may not even be carrying live virus at all.

...

In an email to Buzzfeed, Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, stated that using a CT of 45 is “absolutely insane,” because at that magnification, you may be looking at a single RNA molecule, whereas “when people are sick and are contagious, they literally can have 1,000,000,000,000x that number.”

Mina added that such a sensitive PCR test “would potentially detect someone 35 days post-infection who is fully recovered and cause that person to have to enter isolation. That’s crazy and it’s not science-based, it’s not medicine-based and it’s not public health-oriented.”

...

According to an April 2020 study in the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, to get 100% confirmed real positives, the PCR test must be run at just 17 cycles. Above 17 cycles, accuracy drops dramatically.

By the time you get to 33 cycles, the accuracy rate is a mere 20%, meaning 80% are false positives. Beyond 34 cycles, your chance of a positive PCR test being a true positive shrinks to zero.

Similarly, a December 3, 2020, systematic review24 published in the journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases, which assessed the findings of 29 different studies, found that “CT values were significantly lower … in specimens producing live virus culture.” In other words, the higher the CT, the lower the chance of a positive test actually being due to the presence of live (and infectious) virus.

“Two studies reported the odds of live virus culture reduced by approximately 33% for every one unit increase in CT,” the authors noted. Importantly, five of the studies included were unable to identify any live viruses in cases where a positive PCR test had used a CT above 24.

In cases where a CT above 35 was used, the patient had to be symptomatic in order to obtain a live virus culture. This again confirms that PCR with a CT over 35 really shouldn’t be used on asymptomatic people, as any positive result is likely to be meaningless and simply force them into isolation for no reason."

========

Pelosi defends potential overturning of Iowa House race

"GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks beat Hart in Iowa’s 2nd district race by six votes. However, Hart challenged the results, arguing she would have won if votes that were deemed illegitimate were not throw out.

...

“Now if I wanted to be unfair, I wouldn’t have seated the Republican from Iowa,” Pelosi said. “That was my right on the opening day. I would’ve just said ‘you’re not seated,’ and that would’ve been my right as Speaker to do.”

Some House Democrats are reportedly warning Pelosi against trying to overturn the results of the race, noting it was certified by the state. They’re concerned the move would come off as hypocritical, after slamming Republicans for raising concerns of voter fraud in the 2020 election."

========

Bloomberg Op-Ed: “We Must Start Planning for a Permanent Pandemic”

"Bloomberg has published an article by Andreas Kluth which argues that new variants of COVID-19 mean the pandemic will be “permanent” and that there will be an “endless cycle” of restrictions.

Kluth says that the idea the world will at some point go “back to normal” is “almost certainly wrong” and that SARS-CoV-2 will become “our permanent enemy, like the flu but worse.”

The author cites “the ongoing emergence of new variants that behave almost like new viruses” which means that “we may never achieve herd immunity” because current vaccines are “powerless against the coming mutations.”

“If this is the evolutionary trajectory of SARS-CoV-2, we’re in for seemingly endless cycles of outbreaks and remissions, social restrictions and relaxations, lockdowns and reopenings,” says Kluth. “At least in rich countries, we will probably get vaccinated a couple of times a year, against the latest variant in circulation, but never fast or comprehensively enough to achieve herd immunity.”

Despite the fact the global population has been hit with worse pandemics which at the time it had far less medical expertise to deal with and eventually got over them, Kluth somehow thinks that won’t be the case with COVID."

========

ProtonMail is Inherently Insecure, Your Emails Are Likely Compromised

• "ProtonMail’s WebMail client cannot be verified to do what it says (this goes for most apps, but since private keys are stored on ProtonMail’s servers – this is especially true).
• ProtonMail cannot claim E2E encryption
• A larger implication is that any encrypted web application can’t be trusted to encrypt your data. This goes for other mailers and services that offer web-based E2E encryption… the research needs to be done.
• If we really want privacy, users should generate their own public & private keys."

The headline is a bit click-baity. More accurate might be "could easily be" rather than "likely"

========

Georgia adopts election integrity law denounced by Democrats as immoral, ‘evil’ and racist

"The US state of Georgia once again became a battlefield in the political war, thanks to an election reform bill most Republicans saw as too little, too late – and Democrats denounced as racist, evil and immoral voter suppression.

Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed the Election Integrity Act of 2021 into law on Thursday, just hours after it was approved in the state legislature: 100-75 in the House of Representatives and 34-20 in the Senate.

The law requires a valid photo ID for voting by mail, reduces the window to request mail-in ballots, and regulates the placement and duration of ballot drop boxes. It also replaces the secretary of state with a legislature-appointed official as the chair of the state board of elections, and allows the board to fire county election officials for failing in their duties.

Democrats were quick to denounce the law as “immoral” and “evil,” as well as racist."

========

Rutgers Will Require Vaccination Proof to Return to Classes by Fall

"Rutgers University will require all students to be vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19 to attend classes in-person for the fall semester, the school announced on Thursday.

In a letter posted to the New Jersey school’s website and signed by President Jonathan Holloway, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Prabhas Moghe, and Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Antonio Calcado, Rutgers said President Joe Biden’s order to states to make the vaccine to all adults by May 1 influenced the decision.

''The anticipated additional availability of the COVID-19 vaccine is enabling Rutgers to take steps to protect the health of our academic community and to move toward a full return to our pre-pandemic normal as a vibrant institution in Fall 2021,'' said the letter titled ''Our Path Forward – COVID-19 Vaccination and the Fall Term.''

''This health policy update means that, with limited exceptions, all students planning to attend in the Fall 2021 semester must be fully vaccinated. In parallel, we continue to strongly urge all Rutgers faculty and staff to get immunized against COVID-19 at the earliest opportunity.''"

========

Welcome to shocked and awed 21st century geopolitics

"China’s millennial diplomatic protocol establishes that discussions start around common ground – which are then extolled as being more important than disagreements between negotiating parties. That’s at the heart of the concept of “no loss of face”. Only afterwards the parties discuss their differences.

Yet it was totally predictable that a bunch of amateurish, tactless and clueless Americans would smash those basic diplomatic rules to show “strength” to their home crowd, distilling the proverbial litany on Taiwan, Hong Kong, South China Sea, “genocide” of Uighurs.

...

Visibly startled, but controlling his exasperation, Yang Jiechi struck back. And the rhetorical shots were heard around the whole Global South.

They had to include a basic lesson in manners: “If you want to deal with us properly, let’s have some mutual respect and do things the right way”. But what stood out was a stinging, concise diagnostic blending history and politics:

The United States is not qualified to talk to China in a condescending manner. The Chinese people will not accept that. It must be based on mutual respect to deal with China, and history will prove that those who seek to strangle China will suffer in the end.

...

Lavrov, always unflappable, clarified in an interview with Chinese media how the Russia-China strategic partnership sees the current US diplomatic train wreck:

As a matter of fact, they have largely lost the skill of classical diplomacy. Diplomacy is about relations between people, the ability to listen to each other, to hear one another and to strike a balance between competing interests. These are exactly the values ​​that Russia and China are promoting in diplomacy.

The inevitable consequence is that Russia-China must “consolidate our independence: “The United States has declared limiting the advance of technology in Russia and China as its goal. So, we must reduce our exposure to sanctions by strengthening our technological independence and switching to settlements in national and international currencies other than the dollar. We need to move away from using Western-controlled international payment systems.”

Russia-China have clearly identified, as Lavrov pointed out, how the “Western partners” are “promoting their ideology-driven agenda aimed at preserving their dominance by holding back progress in other countries. Their policies run counter to the objective international developments and, as they used to say at some point, are on the wrong side of history. The historical process will come into its own, no matter what happens.”

...

One has to applaud the gall of the “Western partners”. It’s 18 years since Shock and Awe – the start of the bombing, invasion and destruction of Iraq. It’s 10 years since the start of the total destruction of Libya by NATO and its GCC minions, with Obama-Biden “leading from behind”. It’s 10 years since the start of the savage destruction of Syria by proxy – complete with jihadis disguised as “moderate rebels”.

Yet now the “Western partners” are so mortified by the plight of Muslims in Western China.

...

In our latest conversation/interview, to be released soon in a video + transcript package, Michael Hudson – arguably the world’s top economist – hit the heart of the matter:

The fight against China, the fear of China is that you can’t do to China, what you did to Russia. America would love for there to be a Yeltsin figure in China to say, let’s just give all of the railroads that you’ve built, the high-speed rail, let’s give the wealth, let’s give all the factories to individuals and let the individuals run everything and, then we’ll lend them the money, or we’ll buy them out and then we can control them financially. And China’s not letting that happen. And Russia stopped that from happening. And the fury in the West is that somehow, the American financial system is unable to take over foreign resources, foreign agriculture. It is left only with military means of grabbing them as we are seeing in the near East. And you’re seeing in the Ukraine right now."

I don't think non-Western elites are any more or less noble than Western ones. We must always be wary that when criticizing one system we don't fall into Good vs Evil binary thinking.

========

The U.S. Intelligence Community, Flouting Laws, is Increasingly Involving Itself in Domestic Politics

"Entitled “Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021,” the March 1 Report from the Director of National Intelligence states that it was prepared “in consultation with the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security—and was drafted by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with contributions from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).”

Its primary point is this: “The IC [intelligence community] assesses that domestic violent extremists (DVEs) who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021.” While asserting that “the most lethal” of these threats is posed by “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and militia violent extremists (MVEs),” it makes clear that its target encompasses a wide range of groups from the left (Antifa, animal rights and environmental activists, pro-choice extremists and anarchists: “those who oppose capitalism and all forms of globalization”) to the right (sovereign citizen movements, anti-abortion activists and those deemed motivated by racial or ethnic hatreds).

The U.S. security state apparatus regards the agenda of “domestic violent extremists” as “derived from anti-government or anti-authority sentiment,” which includes “opposition to perceived economic, racial or social hierarchies.” In sum, to the Department of Homeland Security, an “extremist” is anyone who opposes the current prevailing ruling class and system for distributing power. Anyone they believe is prepared to use violence, intimidation or coercion in pursuit of these causes then becomes a “domestic violent extremist,” subject to a vast array of surveillance, monitoring and other forms of legal restrictions

...

...there are real and important legal and institutional limits on the authority of the intelligence community to involve itself in domestic law enforcement, or other forms of domestic political activity, that seem threatened here, if not outright violated.

In particular, the Report’s acknowledgement that it was compiled by institutions including “the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with contributions from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)”...

...

Involvement of the intelligence community in the domestic activities of U.S. citizens is one of the most dangerous breaches of civil liberties and democratic order the U.S. Government can perpetrate. It was after World War II when the CIA, the NSA and other security state agencies that wield immense and unlimited powers in the dark were created in the name of fighting the Cold War. Legal and institutional prohibitions on wielding that massive machinery against the American public were central to the always-dubious claim that this security behemoth that operates completely in the dark was compatible with democracy. As the ACLU noted, “in its 1947 charter, the CIA was prohibited from spying against Americans, in part because President Truman was afraid that the agency would engage in political abuse.”

Since then, Truman’s fear has been realized over and over. Some of the worst post-WW2 civil liberties abuses have been the result of breaches by the CIA and other agencies of this prohibition. As the ACLU documents, the CIA in the 1960s was caught infiltrating and manipulating numerous domestic political activist groups. Under the auspices of the War on Terror, entire new bureaucracies (such as the Department of Homeland Security) and new legal regimes (such as the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act) were designed to erode these long-standing limitations by dramatically increasing surveillance powers aimed at U.S. citizens. And by design, the infiltration of these security state agencies in U.S. domestic politics has dramatically escalated.

...

The head of the Church Committee, Sen. Frank Church (D-ID), made clear in his iconic quote on Meet the Press in 1975 that those reforms were primarily motivated by fears that the U.S. Government would one day turn its vast intelligence powers onto the American people, rendering core civil liberties an illusion:

"In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. (...) We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide."

...

Nobody from the Biden administration or Congressional members demanding enactment of Schiff’s proposed new “domestic terrorism” law can identify any activities that are not now criminal that they believe ought to be. Unless it is to permit intelligence agencies to start policing constitutionally protected speech and associational activities among U.S. citizens, why are any new laws needed? Unless it is to empower them to escalate their already-aggressive use of War on Terror tactics against U.S. citizens, what do they want security state agencies to be able to do on U.S. soil that they cannot now do?"

========

As Tide Turns, Houthis Reject US, Saudi “Peace” Deals for the Recycled Trash They Are

"For six years, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two of the richest countries on the planet, have relentlessly bombed the poorest nation in the Middle East, with crucial assistance from three consecutive U.S. administrations. For 2,160 days — six years straight — the Royal Saudi Air Force and the UAE Air Force have, with American assistance, launched nearly 600,000 airstrikes in Yemen. The bombing has targeted civilian homes, schools, hospitals, roads, funerals, food facilities, factories, mosques, water, pumps and sewage, markets, refugee camps, historical cities, fishing boats, fuel stations, a school bus full of children, and Bedouin camps, making any potential reconstruction very long and costly.

The bombing continues even as talks of new peace initiatives begin to surface. Just last Sunday, March 21, consecutive Saudi airstrikes destroyed a poultry farm in Amran province. The attack was especially egregious as Yemen is suffering from one of the most severe famines in recent history. In fact, the country faces a humanitarian, economic, and political crisis of a magnitude not seen in decades. According to the United Nations, almost 16 million Yemenis live under famine, with 2.5 million children suffering from malnutrition. And thousands of Yemeni state workers now face hunger as their salaries have gone unpaid for years after the Saudi Coalition seized control of the country’s central bank.

...

Yemenis for their part, have resorted to targeting the Saudi Coalition in its own backyard. Hoping that taking the battle to the Kingdom will exact enough of a toll on the Saudi monarchy to cause it to rethink its quagmire in Yemen, Houthi missiles and drones have had increasing success in striking Saudi oil infrastructure, airports and military bases, leaving Saudi soil exposed to daily bombardment for the first time since the Al Saud family established their state.

In a recent statement, the spokesman for the Ansar Allah-backed Yemen Army claimed that its Air Force had carried out more than 12,623 drone strikes and reconnaissance operations during the past six years and that, in the past two months alone, 54 high-precision ballistic missiles have been fired at vital Saudi targets, some of them deep inside Saudi Arabia.

...

On March 12, U.S. Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking announced an initiative to end the war during a webinar with the Atlantic Council. The plan is essentially a recycled version of a previous proposal presented by Mohammed Bin Salman and the Trump administration one year ago in Oman, dubbed “The Joint Declaration.” It contains a matrix of Saudi principles and conditions aimed at the surrender of the Yemen Army, the Houthis, and their allies, in exchange for an end to the war. Lenderking’s initiative gives no guarantee that the Coalition will take any measures to lift its blockade and end the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

On March 22, Saudi Arabia announced its own “ceasefire initiative” to end the war it announced from Washington D.C. six years ago. Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan revealed the initiative, which would include a nationwide ceasefire under the supervision of the UN and a partial re-opening of the Sana’a International Airport to certain destinations. It also included a revenue-sharing plan that would guarantee the Saudi government access to a portion of the wealth generated by Yemen’s oil and gas deposits in Marib.

...

Both initiatives were rejected by Sana’a. “We reject the American and Saudi peace initiatives because they do not meet the demands of the Yemeni people,” Khaled Al-Sharif, chairman of the Supreme Elections Committee, said of the proposals during a meeting held in Sana’a on Monday. According to many Yemenis, including decision-makers in Sana’a, the U.S. and Saudi plans are not intended to achieve peace, but to advance their political goals in the face of an imminent military failure following six costly years of war. The measures, according to officials in Sana’a, are also about saving face and presenting an untenable plan, so that when it is inevitably rejected the tide of public opinion will turn in favor of the Saudi-led Coalition.

...

Despite recent peace initiatives, the Saudi-led Coalition has only intensified military maneuvers in Yemen this week. Saudi warplanes are seen regularly above highly populated urban areas in the north of the country, dropping hundreds of tons of ordnance, most supplied by the United States. There is a near-consensus among the leadership of the Yemeni army and Ansar Allah that the current U.S. administration is participating in the battles taking place in the oil-rich Marib province. However, the Houthis have not directly accused the Biden administration of being involved in the fighting and are waiting for more evidence to do so. They may not have to wait long. On Tuesday, a sophisticated, U.S.-made MQ-9 Reaper drone was downed with a surface-to-air missile as it was flying over the Sirwah district in Marib."

========

Biden WH to Launch Campaign to Reach Vaccine-Hesitant Groups

"In an effort to encourage as many people as possible to get a COVID-19 vaccine, the Biden administration is deploying a full-out public relations blitz.

Set to kick off in the coming weeks, the White House will spend money on television, radio and digital advertising across a multitude of platforms to combat any skepticism Americans may have about getting the shot. The ultimate goal of the campaign: get people vaccinated as quickly as possible. According to Stat News, Congress and the Biden administration have set aside over $1.5 billion to carry out their plan.

During a call with Newsmax, Biden aides said conservatives are one of the target groups. They said they have realized that the government isn’t always the best messenger. So, the Biden administration is using the campaign to turn factual information provided by government agencies — including Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health agencies — to other outlets and organizations that people may be more inclined to trust.

...

On a call discussing the campaign to instill vaccine confidence, a representative from Biden’s coronavirus response team said they are working with media outlets to answer questions people have about receiving a coronavirus vaccine.

The Biden administration is looking to see trusted on-air talent talk about their vaccine experience, and even get one live on air. The administration is partnering with outlets to hold town-hall style events where viewers can ask experts questions and address any misinformation.

The Biden aides describe the planned approach as both a paid media outreach and grassroots effort. At the end of the day, they are hoping to create an opportunity for people to receive the information they need to make an educated decision about receiving a vaccine."

========

Project Veritas Wins Victory Against New York Times In Defamation Action

"Notably, this follows another significant loss by the New York Times to Sarah Palin last year. Having two such losses for the New York Times in the defamation area is ironic given its role in establishing the precedent under New York Times v. Sullivan.

The case came out of the highly divisive period of the civil rights movement. The New York Times had run an advertisement referring to abuses of civil rights marchers and the arrest of Martin Luther King Jr. seven times. The Montgomery Public Safety commissioner, L. B. Sullivan, sued for defamation and won under Alabama law. He was awarded $500,000 — a huge judgment for the time. Sullivan’s lawsuit was one of a number of civil actions brought under state laws that targeted Northern media covering the violence against freedom marchers. The judgments represented a viable threat to both media and average citizens in criticizing our politicians.

The Supreme Court ruled that tort law could not be used to overcome First Amendment protections for free speech or the free press. The Court sought to create “breathing space” for the media by articulating that standard that now applies to both public officials and public figures. The status imposes the higher standard first imposed in New York Times v. Sullivan for public officials, requiring a showing of “actual malice” where media had actual knowledge of the falsity of a statement or showed reckless disregard whether it was true or false.

...

The opinion is interesting because it calls out the New York Times for blurring the line between opinion and fact. It is a common complaint as major news media yield to the “echo chamber” model of journalism — appealing to the bias of readers or viewers in offering slanted coverage....

...

Note that this is not a finding of actual malice but it will allow the Project to plunge into discovery, including depositions, and possible a trial.

...

The opinion could prove a critical shot across the bow for many in the media that the blurring of opinion and fact could come at a high price.  Notably, The New York Times argued that there was nothing wrong with articles because the reporters were stating their opinions.  Project Veritas noted that the paper’s own ethical policies prohibit news reporters from injecting their subjective opinions into news stories.

The effort to argue that reporters can interlace fact with opinion reflects a broader discussion of how journalism is changing."