- 4-Star General Convinces Trump to Reconsider Pro-Torture Stance
I slammed Trump in March for calling for more torture and waterboarding.
I pointed out that the overwhelming majority of military and intelligence experts say that torture prevents the ability to obtain helpful information, makes us less safe, decreases national security and only creates more terrorists.
Saturday, Trump met with a very high-level military man: Four-Star General James Mattis , former head of the U.S. Central Command, Unified Combatant Command and U.S. Joint Forces Command, as well as being Supreme Allied Commander Transformation.
The New York Times reports:
On the issue of torture, Mr. Trump suggested he had changed his mind about the value of waterboarding after talking with James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, who headed the United States Central Command.
“He said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful,’” Mr. Trump said. He added that Mr. Mattis found more value in building trust and rewarding cooperation with terrorism suspects: “‘Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, and I’ll do better.’”
“I was very impressed by that answer,” Mr. Trump said.
Torture, he said, is “not going to make the kind of a difference that a lot of people are thinking.”
Exactly …
- Is "Fake News" The New 'Conspiracy Theory'?
Barack Obama on fake news: ‘We have problems’ if we can’t tell the difference The US president denounced the spate of misinformation across social media platforms, including Facebook, suggesting American politics can be affected. -Guardian
Is fake news the new “conspiracy theory.” We’ve read that it may be, and it seems likely to us.
That’s because “conspiracy theory” has seemingly lost credibility as a way of dismissing anti-mainstream critiques, and it can be argued that “fake news” is being substituted.
We recently wrote about the decline and fall of “conspiracy theory” as an effective denigration of Deep State critiques. You can see the article here.
This make sense to us because the CIA was apparently responsible for disseminating the initial “conspiracy theory” meme, and “fake news” could certainly have been developed to take its place.
Secondly, as reportedly some 50 percent of Americans now believe in so-called “conspiracies,” it’s very obvious a elite replacement was needed.
Some caveats: Regarding this second point, it’s very likely that many more than 50 percent of Americans believe in conspiracy theories. And the substitution of “fake news” is a very unappealing alternative.
More:
President Barack Obama has spoken out about fake news on Facebook and other media platforms, suggesting that it helped undermine the US political process.
“If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not, if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems,” he said during a press conference in Germany.
Since the surprise election of Donald Trump as president-elect, Facebook has battled accusations that it has failed to stem the flow of misinformation on its network and that its business model leads to users becoming divided into polarized political echo chambers.
Our mission is to cover elite memes – propaganda that scares people into giving more control to the government – and having Obama comment on “fake news” is part of a standard meme reinforcement.
The “fake news” meme is all over search-engine news and prominent people like Obama are speaking out about the meme and basically endorsing it.
But it all strikes us as rather desperate.
Conspiracy Theory is far less prone to analysis than “fake news.” It has persisted so long and been so successful because it is difficult to quantify a “conspiracy” and thus the dismissal cannot be either confirmed or denied.
“Fake news” however, lends itself to fact-checking. One may not wish for a variety of reasons to delve into “conspiracy theory,” but if someone is told he or she is espousing fake news, the resultant irritation may move that person to further research.
When we coined the term Internet Reformation, our idea was that the information available via the ‘Net would generate a gradual process of enlightenment – and an accretion of truth. In fact, this process is occurring, in fits and starts.
If “conspiracy theory” really has lost impact – and apparently it has – as a way of debunking criticism of the Deep State, this is certainly a setback for modern propaganda.
Additionally, “when it comes to “fake news,” the mainstream media is going to have to speak with one voice in order to disparage factual information.
But fewer and fewer people believe the mainstream media. Thus, if the media places its communicative muscle behind tarring certain cogent criticisms as “false,” it will likely only speed up the decline of mainstream credibility.
Conclusion: Of course, those in power could ban the Internet outright, but it’s probably too late for that – and wouldn’t work effectively in any case.
- Is The US Next: Facebook "Quietly" Develops Censorship Tool In Chinese Market Push
In what is surely a mere coincidence, at the same time as Facebook has been embroiled in a scandal involving the dissemination of “election tipping” stories, which prompted Zuckerberg to release a 7-point plan to eradicate “fake news” and which many conservatives believe is a preamble toward wholesale banning of so-called “fake news” websites (as arbitrarily defined by an ultra-liberal, Trump-bashing “professor”) by the social networks (when ironically, Wikileaks revealed that Google was actively engaged in developing a “strategic plan” to help the Democrats win the election and track voters), we learn that in an attempt to penetrate the Chinese market, Facebook has “quietly” developed a censorship tool to appease China’s politburo in hopes the social network will finally get the blessing to address the world’s largest market.
According to the NYT, which first reported Facebook’s strategy, the social network “has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas, according to three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for anonymity because the tool is confidential. The feature was created to help Facebook get into China, a market where the social network has been blocked, these people said. Mr. Zuckerberg has supported and defended the effort, the people added.”
Why would Zuckerberg support an effort that goes fundamentally against the premise of free speech? Why ad revenue, and profits, of course, because while it remains to be seen if organic revenue growth in the rest of the world is topping out, suddenly getting access to the Chinese market means making a compromise unlike any done previously in Facebook’s history.
To be sure, Facebook has restricted content in other countries before, such as Pakistan, Russia and Turkey, in keeping with the typical practice of American internet companies that generally comply with government requests to block certain content after it is posted. According to its own data, Facebook blocked roughly 55,000 pieces of content in about 20 countries between July 2015 and December 2015, for example. But the censorship tool in China takes a step further by preventing content from appearing in feeds in China in the first place.
The NYT adds that Facebook does not intend to suppress the posts itself. Instead, it would offer the software to enable a third party — in this case, most likely a partner Chinese company — to monitor popular stories and topics that bubble up as users share them across the social network, the people said. Facebook’s partner would then have full control to decide whether those posts should show up in users’ feeds. In effect, Facebook is willing to admit its sold out its integrity to a third-party Chinese vendor and arbiter, simply to boost revenue, and its stock price (we are confident FB’s stock price will rise on the news that the company may be close to penetrating the Chinese market, no matter the cost).
Of course, there is the possibility that once the story becomes public that Facebook is now officially in the censorship game, that it may shelve plans: after all, the last thing Zuckerberg needs now is to be accused not only of spreading “fake news” but of engaging in premeditated censorship due to ideology or bias. The Facebook employees the NYT spoke with cautioned that the software is one of many ideas the company has discussed with respect to entering China and, like many experiments inside Facebook, it may never see the light of day. The feature, whose code is visible to engineers inside the company, has so far gone unused, and there is no indication that Facebook has offered it to the authorities in China. Although, it is hard to imagine why Facebook would spend millions developing such a project if it had no intention of using it.
Worse, the project illustrates the extent to which Facebook may be willing to compromise one of its core mission statements, “to make the world more open and connected,” to gain access to a market of 1.4 billion Chinese people. Even as Facebook faces pressure to continue growing — Mr. Zuckerberg has often asked where the company’s next billion users will come from — China has been cordoned off to the social network since 2009 because of the government’s strict rules around censorship of user content.
But what may be the most interesting part of this story, is that Facebook’s creeping censorship may have led to an internal “whistleblower” with a conscience: a Facebook “Snowden: if you will:
Several employees who were working on the project have left Facebook after expressing misgivings about it, according to the current and former employees.
An official statement from the company was non-committal: a Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement, “We have long said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and learning more about the country.” She added that the company had made no decisions on its approach into China.”
Censorship notwithstanding, Zuckerberg may have trouble breaching the Chinese market even purely on its “redacted” merits: coming at a time when Trump is actively preparing for trade war with China, the last thing Xi Jinping will want to do is make a political concession that grants Facebook market share in China at the expense of protected domestic companies.
Indeed, as NYT adds, the current climate for internet companies in China may not help Facebook. In August, the ride-hailing giant Uber gave up an expensive battle to crack the Chinese market, selling its Chinese business to an incumbent rival, Didi Chuxing. More broadly, China has streamlined and tightened its controls over the internet under President Xi, targeting influential social media celebrities and adding new reviews to popular online video sites.
However, China may allow Facebook to enter, on one condition: that it is used to root out political dissidents, making the social network into a “snitch”:
Some officials responsible for China’s tech policy have been willing to entertain the idea of Facebook’s operating in the country. It would legitimize China’s strict style of internet governance, and if done according to official standards, would enable easy tracking of political opinions deemed problematic. Even so, resistance remains at the top levels of Chinese leadership.
Ultimately, what Facebook may end up doing is transforming itself into a mutant, minority version of itself where it keeps a portion of the upside, while letting a bigger partner deal with the local political headache: analysts have said Facebook’s best option is to follow a model laid out by other internet companies and cooperate with a local company or investor. Finding a partner — and potentially allowing it to own a majority stake in Facebook’s China operation — would take the burden of censorship and surveillance off the Silicon Valley company. It would also let Facebook rely on a local company’s government connections and experience to deal with the difficult task of communicating with Beijing, the NYT notes.
Facebook currently sells advertising for some Chinese businesses from its Hong Kong office. Among its customers are state-media sites that act as the propaganda arm of the Chinese government, and that operate official accounts where they post articles. Chinese citizens who wish to gain access to Facebook must tunnel in using a technology known as a virtual private network, or VPN.
* * *
Going back to the censorship tool, it is unclear when it originated, but the project is said to have picked up momentum in the last year, as engineers were plucked from other parts of Facebook to work on the effort, the current and former employees said. The project was led by Vaughan Smith, a vice president for mobile, corporate and business development at Facebook, they said. Like Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Smith speaks a smattering of Mandarin.
Unveiling a new censorship tool in China could lead to more demands to suppress content from other countries. The fake-news problem, which has hit countries across the globe, has already led some governments – most notably Germany – to use the issue as an excuse to target sites of political rivals, or shut down social media sites altogether.
Curiously, for whatever reason, several Facebook employees who were working on the suppression tool left the company over the summer. Internally, so many employees asked about the project and its ambitions on an internal forum that, in July, it became a topic at one of Facebook’s weekly Friday afternoon question-and-answer sessions.
Mr. Zuckerberg was at the event and answered a question from the audience about the tool. He told the gathering that Facebook’s China plans were nascent. But he also struck a pragmatic tone about the future, according to employees who attended the session.
“It’s better for Facebook to be a part of enabling conversation, even if it’s not yet the full conversation,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, according to employees.
And if Facebook is willing to go the full distance and compromise its core mission statement in China just to pick a few basis points of growth, how long until the social network will do the same in the US, where a witch-hunt against “fake news” unlike any other, has exploded in recent days and which effectively grants Facebook the ability to censor anyone it disagrees with. After all, we now know that the tool is in place – all Zuckerberg has to do is flip a switch.
- Obama Legacy Already Crumbling As Federal Judge Blocks Overtime Rule
Ever a big fan of unilateral “rule changes,” back in May of this year Obama and the Department of Labor implemented a new overtime regulation that was set to take effect on December 1st. The rule change called for increasing the minimum salary threshold at which employers would have been required to pay overtime to workers from $23,660 to $47,476, or a mere 101%. The rule would have required employers to pay time-and-a-half to salaried workers making less than $47,476 per year for any time worked in excess of 40 hours per week. According to the Wall Street Journal, the new regulation would have cost employers about $2BN per year.
But, all that changed today when a federal judge in the Eastern District of Texas signed a preliminary injunction (attached at the end of this post) temporarily blocking the rule from taking effect next week to allow more time for litigation. Of course, the delay will be viewed by the Plaintiffs, and many employers around the country, as an outright victory as it likely postpones any final decisions until Trump takes over over the White House in January. And with Trump already signaling his intentions to roll back many of Obama’s “job-killing” regulations we suspect this one will get moved to the top of his list.
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) praised the court’s decision as a huge victory for small business owners, 44% of which they claim would be directly impacted by the rule change.
“This is a victory for small business owners and should give them some breathing room until the case can be properly adjudicated,” NFIB President and CEO Juanita Duggan said in a statement.
The NFIB claimed that 44 percent of small businesses employ at least one person who would have been subject to the higher overtime pay.
Duggan said the NFIB would continue to fight against the rule, which she said would raise small business expenses by forcing them to pay their employees overtime.
Of course, the “political hacks” (as Trump refers to them) in the Department of Labor have asserted that the impact of this simple “rule change” would all accrue to the benefit of employees as American corporations and shareholders would simply allow the increased costs to flow straight through to their bottom lines. Per the DOL:
- Put more money into the pockets of many middle class workers—or give them more free time.
- Prevent a future erosion of overtime protections and ensure greater predictability.
- Strengthen overtime protections for salaried workers already entitled to overtime and provide greater clarity for workers and employers.
- Improve work-life balance.
- Increase employment by spreading work.
- Improve workers’ health.
- Increase productivity.
But, as our readers certainly understand, in the real world these increased regulations inevitably just lead to higher unemployment over the long-term as the higher costs simply make returns on automation and mechanization capital projects that much more attractive.
As the Wall Street Journal points out, employers have spent the last 6 months frantically trying to figure out how to comply with the new rule amid uncertainty as to whether or not it would survive multiple open lawsuits and/or a Trump reversal once he takes over the White House in January. While some companies had already taken actions to comply with the new law, it is now looking increasingly like those actions were premature.
U.S. employers have spent months adjusting employee schedules, job duties and pay ahead of a new overtime rule that takes effect Dec. 1.
The regulation, which makes millions more workers eligible for overtime pay, was intended as one of President Barack Obama’s signature achievements, and a way to meaningfully raise incomes for people in front-line roles in retail, food service and beyond.
The fate of the rule, however, is far from assured as it faces both a strong challenge in the courts and, in Donald Trump, the president-elect, who has vowed to roll back business regulations.
Employers who have made or are considering big changes in their workforce—either by raising managers’ salaries to the newly set threshold for overtime pay or eliminating job categories like assistant manager—say the uncertainty is adding to the challenge of preparing for the rule.
The Labor Department rule will require employers to start paying overtime to workers earning salaries of less than $47,476 a year—a threshold the business community says is too big a jump from the current $23,660, which was last updated in 2004. Some workers whose salaries exceed the threshold can qualify for overtime pay depending on job duties.
Per the Department of Labor, the overtime rule change would impact 4.2mm workers across the country with California, Texas, Florida and New York bearing the brunt of the impact.
The Department of Labor even created this lovely propaganda video to sale everyone on the merits of Obama’s latest regulation…which we’re sure cost taxpayers millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, the CEO of Fazoli’s beautifully illustrates our point above that the practical implementation of “rule changes” imposed by “political hacks” is often very different than what’s expected.
Fazoli’s Chief Executive Carl Howard said his restaurant chain couldn’t afford to raise salaries for its 125 assistant general managers to the new threshold. (They generally earn in the low $30,000s, he said.) Yet, he wanted them to continue working 45 hours a week, as they do now, without cutting pay.
So Mr. Howard will make them hourly employees at rates low enough to fund a 45-hour week, including five hours of overtime at time-and-a-half.
How many times will the uninformed left try to impose new regulations that actually hurt the people they’re trying to help before finally learning the error of their ways?
- Obama Pressured To Free Central American "Asylum Seekers" Before Trump Takes Over
Just two days ago we shared our complete shock that Obama’s justice department agreed to stay a federal court case, that would have granted amnesty to 4 million illegal immigrants, citing a “change in Administration” (see “Trump Wins Again – Obama DOJ Halts Amnesty Lawsuit In Uncharacteristic Display Of Humility“). But some immigration advocates are refusing to give up the fight and, as Bloomberg notes, are urging Obama to use his last couple of months in office to release nearly 4,000 “asylum seekers” from Central America currently being held in “jail-like” facilities in Texas and Pennsylvania.
Immigration advocates are asking the Obama administration to release thousands of detained Central American women and children who want asylum in the U.S., citing concerns that Donald Trump will deport them after his inauguration in January.
Representatives of groups including the Women’s Refugee Commission and the American Immigration Lawyers Association met with White House officials last week to discuss a host of immigration issues, including the fate of about 4,000 Central American detainees, some as young as two years old, who have fled violence in their home countries. They’re housed in jail-like facilities in Texas and Pennsylvania, some for more than a year, as they wait for the government to process their asylum pleas.
“The family detention infrastructure is something that President Obama built, and unless he tears it down in the next two months this will be part of his presidential legacy,” said Carl Takei, staff attorney at the the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project.
Meanwhile, proving once again that the rules mean absolutely nothing to the left, democrats have called on President Obama to go one step further and “pardon” 750,000 illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as small children. That said, even the Obama administration admits that its power only extends so far and can’t be used to grant legal status to illegal aliens.
Separately, advocates for about 750,000 young undocumented immigrants granted protection from deportation under Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, have pressed the White House to ensure Trump can’t use data compiled by the program to instead target and remove the people from the country. House Democrats called on Obama last week to issue a presidential pardon for the immigrants, who were brought into the country as children and have grown up as “Americans,” Obama said in Nov. 14 news conference.
The White House said last week that the president’s clemency power can’t be used to confer legal status on undocumented residents. Pete Boogaard, a White House spokesman, declined to comment on whether the administration has the authority to release the asylum seekers.
Of course the urgency comes as Trump is set to take office in less than two months and has promised to deport millions of illegal immigrants from the U.S., starting with those that have criminal records. Meanwhile, panic is setting in along the border as migrants staying in cramped shelters or
church basements are trying to leave the border region for cities
farther north such as Baltimore or New York…“there’s literally not enough commercial bus space to get the people out….they’re all terrified.”Trump has promised to crack down on undocumented border crossers while also restricting refugees from terror-prone countries, but he has yet to articulate a policy for the thousands of asylum seekers who enter the U.S. each year. Trump’s top immigration advisers, including Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican who Trump plans to nominate as attorney general, have argued that Obama has been too easy on migrants.
“Instead of removing illegal immigrants, the President has expended enormous time, energy, and resources into settling newly arrived illegal immigrants throughout the United States,” Sessions wrote in a January 2015 “immigration handbook” for Republicans.
Under Trump, the advocates fear, the government could broaden the use of expedited removal -– fast-track deportation proceedings that take place without a judge — a practice that is already being used more frequently with asylum seekers.
“There is an added urgency to make sure that the families that are here get an opportunity to be heard in front of a judge,” said Ben Johnson, executive director at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “There is some concern that those families under the new administration will never have that chance.”
Stay tuned, though Obama has refused to take any unilateral actions on immigration since election day, we wouldn’t be shocked if he dropped a couple of surprises on the American people before departing the White House in two months.
- Privatize to Get Rid of Passports and Resolve Immigration
To silence dissidents, Gulf states are revoking their citizenship Many are left stateless as a result. – The Economist
The Economist “newspaper” is worried that nations are beginning to use passports as a way to punish people that leaders don’t like.
This article focuses mainly on the Middle East, especially Bahrain, which the article calls an “energetic stripper.”
More here:
Bahrain’s … Sunni royals have dangled the threat of statelessness over its Shia majority to suppress an uprising launched in 2011, during the Arab spring.
In 2014 it stripped 21 people of their nationality. A year later the number was up tenfold. “Gulf rulers have turned people from citizens into subservient subjects,” says Abdulhadi Khalaf, a former Bahraini parliamentarian whose citizenship was revoked in 2012 and now lives safely in Sweden.
“Our passports are not a birthright. They are part of the ruler’s prerogative.” Neighbouring states are following suit. Kuwait’s ruling Al-Sabah family have deprived 120 of their people of their nationality in the past two years, says Nawaf al-Hendal, who runs Kuwait Watch, a local monitor.
Qatar is another big stripper. It suspended citizenship of an entire clan — the Ghafrans— some 5,000 Ghafrans since 2004. But it’s not just travel that is affected when a passport is revoked, but also in many cases jobs, house ownership, even the ability to own a phone or maintain a bank account.
If you are abroad, you cannot return, nor can the birth of a child be recorded, nor even a marriage. The laws allowing passport revocation are broader now, according to The Economist, and include the “terrorism,” which can be defined loosely.
Loyalty is beginning to be used as a reason for passport removal, and the West is not exempt. Britain will remove passports based on the contravention of the “public good.” And many EU nations cite terrorism for some passport confiscations
In the US, passports may be suspended by the IRS if overseas citizens owe more than $50,000 and the IRS has filed a notice of lien. However, the largest issue regarding passports remains unexamined by this article. And that issue has to do with the necessity for passports in the first place.
It can be argued of course, that passports are an absolute necessity for nation-states, but passports are basically an invention of the 20th century. The Guardian tells us, “Passports were not generally required for international travel until the first world war.” Before then, passports were issued in a haphazard manner. Here, from the Guardian:
Following an agreement among the League of Nations to standardise passports, the famous “old blue” was issued in 1920. Apart from a few adjustments to its duration and security features, the old blue remained a steady symbol of the touring Briton until it gradually began to be replaced by the burgundy-coloured European version in 1988.
INTERPOL is another form of global control that is less than 100 years old. Post-World War II, the United Nations has played a more active role in resuscitating and formalizing INTERPOL, see here.
Thus, international control of people’s movements and actions has drastically increased in the 20th and 21st century. Passports are now starting to represent regions rather than countries. A pan-African passport was announced earlier this year at the African Union (AU) summit in the Rwandan capital Kigali. From the report:
With the launch of the new pan-African document, the continent moved up a notch towards the free cross-border movement of goods and people—in direct opposite to Brexit, the decision by British voters to exit the European Union.
Of course, one could argue that expanding a passport’s operational function is not the same as reducing the power of a passport. In fact, even as passports expanded in power and scope in the 20th century, there were many high-level discussions about getting rid of them.
From an article posted at Business Insider:
In 1947, the first problem considered at an expert meeting preparing for the UN World Conference on Passports and Frontier Formalities, was “the possibility of a return to the regime which existed before 1914 involving as a general rule the abolition of any requirement that travelers should carry passports”.
But delegates ultimately decided that a return to a passport-free world could only happen alongside a return to the global conditions that prevailed before the start of the first world war.
By 1947, that was a distant dream. The experts advised instead a series of bilateral and multilateral agreements to attain this goal.
World leaders were still talking about banning passports as late as 1963, when the UN Conference on International Travel and Tourism recognised “the desirability, from both an economic and social point, of progressively freer international travel”. Once again, it was estimated that “it is not feasible to recommend the abolition of passports on a world-wide basis.”
Now, neither the public nor governments consider passports as a serious obstacle to freedom of movement, though any would-be traveller from Yemen, Afghanistan or Somalia would no doubt argue differently.
The world survived without passports for thousands – tens of thousands – of years. Likewise, the necessity of an expanding, global police force has not historically been a matter of discussion, much less implementation. Yet today the passport system is globally ubiquitous and growing. INTERPOL is merging some operations with the UN and becoming evermore aggressive and empowered.
The Economist article promotes the idea that passports ought to be seen as travel documents, not weapons of punishment. This is logical as far as it goes. But it never occurs to The Economist editors to argue that passports ought not to exist to begin with.
The Economist like most of the mainstream media is always apt to criticize the powers that government has but never to suggest that the real solution is to do away with those powers.
Even a passing familiarity with free-market economics would yield up options other than merely re-calibrating government power.
Private property is the key to a better and more rational world. If people – rather than their governments – owned a substantial portion of the world’s real estate, immigration might soon cease to be a problem. People themselves would decide who would come and go. The poisonous immigration battles now taking place would be at least mitigated.
Likewise, government abuse of passports would be considerably reduced if it were generally accepted that people had a right to invite people onto their own property without government permission.
The argument then comes up that “terrorism” necessitates passports and government control over immigration. But even a cursory examination of the history of al Qaeda and ISIS will show that the West and especially the US fostered these terrorist groups to begin with.
Here, from GlobalResearch.com:
The so-called “War on Terror” should be seen for what it really is: a pretext for maintaining a dangerously oversized U.S. military. The two most powerful groups in the U.S. foreign policy establishment are the Israel lobby, which directs U.S. Middle East policy, and the Military-Industrial-Complex, which profits from the former group’s actions.
Since George W. Bush declared the “War on Terror” in October 2001, it has cost the American taxpayer approximately 6.6 trillion dollars and thousands of fallen sons and daughters; but, the wars have also raked in billions of dollars for Washington’s military elite.
Those controlling government are ever jealous of their prerogatives and the wealth they have access to. They will create an endless amount of crises to justify and expand their control. Government itself, based on monopoly power and resultant force, is purveyor of the problem, always.
Conclusion: Reshaping public solutions does no good. Jettisoning them to greatest degree possible is the only viable solution.
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More from The Daily Bell:
Rand Corp. Blasts ‘Truth Decay’ – Wants Facts Determined by Appropriate Leaders
How Deep Will Trump’s Truths Go?
- A Highly Respected Medical Journal Just Declared 'The War On Drugs' An Epic Failure
Submitted by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,
“The war on drugs has failed,” the editors of the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal declared this week, arguing that doctors should lead the global effort to reform drug policy.
Fiona Godlee, the journal’s editor-in-chief, and Richard Hurley, its features and debates editor, penned an analysis citing academic and scientific reports to argue global policies on drug use — including the United Nations’ — have fallen drastically short.
Godlee and Hurley note the annual cost of prohibition, which entails criminalizing “producers, traffickers, dealers, and users,” totals at least $100 billion annually.
“But the effectiveness of prohibition laws, colloquially known as the ‘war on drugs,’ must be judged on outcomes,” they write. “And too often the war on drugs plays out as a war on the millions of people who use drugs, and disproportionately on people who are poor or from ethnic minorities and on women.”
The authors cite a variety of reasons why the global war on drugs has been a failure.
Citing an academic study on international drug policy from the Lancet medical journal, the authors argue that “prohibition and stigma encourage less safe drug consumption and push people away from health services.”
These policies have other negative consequences. Godlee and Hurley highlight the current situation between Russia and Crimea, “where patients in Crimea died after the Russian invasion because they were forced to stop taking methadone, which is viewed as opioid misuse and illegal in Russia.”
Further, though opioid addiction is a growing epidemic, “drug control policies effectively deny two-thirds of the world’s population—more than five billion people—legitimate access to opioids for pain control.”
Another problem [pdf] with prohibition policies, they argue, is that “they impede research into medical use of cannabis and other prohibited drugs despite evidence of potential benefit.”
This is the case in the United States, where the federal government’s designation of cannabis as a Schedule I drug has hampered the ability of scientists to research the medical effects of the plant. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) recently ruled to maintain this classification. This decision was largely deemed hypocritical, especially considering the United States government holds a patent on cannabis for its antioxidant properties. The federal government’s National Cancer Institute also admits cannabis can help treat the symptoms of cancer and that “[c]annabis has been shown to kill cancer cells in the laboratory.” In spite of the promise of the plant, it remains prohibited under federal law.
Still, Godlee and Hurley argue, the effects of the drug war aren’t limited to health. They extend to the realm of human rights:
“All wars cause human rights violations, and the war on drugs is no different. Criminally controlled drug supply markets lead to appalling violence—causing an estimated 65 000-80 000 deaths in Mexico in the past decade, for example [pdf]. Mandatory sentencing for even minor drug offences has helped the United States attain the highest rate of incarceration in the world [pdf]. The Philippines has seen 5000 extrajudicial killings [pdf] since July, after President Rodrigo Duterte’s call for vigilantism against drug dealers.”
The paper also cites countries around the world that have moved to lessen the invasiveness of the drug war. They cite Portugal, which famously removed criminal penalties for drugs 15 years ago.
Further, they note:
“Jurisdictions such as Canada, Uruguay, and several US states, now including California, and have gone further, to allow regulated non-medical cannabis markets, retaking control of supply from organised crime. The Netherlands has tolerated regulated cannabis sales for decades.”
The editors of the BMJ acknowledge drugs can cause harm. But they argue “governments should decriminalise minor drug offences” and “strengthen health and social sector approaches,” as well as move toward regulated drug markets.
Most importantly, they assert doctors should play a key role in developing drug policy.
“Health should be at the centre of this debate and so, therefore, should healthcare professionals. Doctors are trusted and influential and can bring a rational and humane dimension to ideology and populist rhetoric about being tough on crime.”
The BMJ editors are not the first to condemn the war on drugs. Earlier this year, over 1,000 world leaders, scientists, and medical experts condemned the U.N.’s half-hearted effort to reform its drug policies. In a separate criticism of the U.N.’s proposed solutions, 194 advocacy groups also expressed disappointment.
Similarly, a group of doctors in the United States called Doctors for Cannabis Regulation has advocated an end to marijuana prohibition in favor of regulation of the market.
BMJ acknowledges efforts like these but asserts “such calls are far from universal—and far from loud enough.”
“Doctors and their leaders have ethical responsibilities to champion individual and public health, human rights, and dignity and to speak out where health and humanity are being systemically degraded.”
“Change is coming,” they conclude, “and doctors should use their authority to lead calls for pragmatic reform informed by science and ethics.”
- "Emotionally F**king Pissed" Media Blows Embargo And Lashes Out At Trump – "F*ck Him"
Just yesterday Trump called a summit of all the major mainstream media executives and anchors at Trump Tower. While many expected the meeting to be an oppotunity to ask questions of the president-elect, the media elites apparently got the surprise of their lives when Trump spent the majority of the meeting attacking they’re blatant biased coverage the 2016 presidential elections referring to the room as a bunch of “dishonest, deceitful liars.” One participant in the meeting described it as a “f—ing firing squad” after “Trump started with Jeff Zucker and said “I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed….” We suspect that was rather less cordial than they expected.
Despite the conversation being completely off the record, many of the “emotionally fucking pissed” media anchors have decided to blow their embargoes and lash out at Trump. According to one source interviewed by the New Yorker, the meeting at Trump Tower was “fucking outrageous.” The same source also questioned how he could remain impartial after the meeting saying “How can this not influence coverage?”…yes, because coverage was so impartial up until yesterday.
Another participant at the meeting said that Trump’s behavior was “totally inappropriate” and “fucking outrageous.” The television people thought that they were being summoned to ask questions; Trump has not held a press conference since late July. Instead, they were subjected to a stream of insults and complaints—and not everyone absorbed it with pleasure.
“I have to tell you, I am emotionally fucking pissed,” another participant said. “How can this not influence coverage? I am being totally honest with you. Toward the end of the campaign, it got to a point where I thought that the coverage was all about [Trump’s] flaws and problems. And that’s legit. But, I thought, O.K., let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. After the meeting today, though—and I am being human with you here—I think, Fuck him! I know I am being emotional about it. And I know I will get over it in a couple of days after Thanksgiving. But I really am offended. This was unprecedented. Outrageous!”
Participants said that Trump did not raise his voice, but that he went on steadily at the start of the meeting about how he had been treated poorly. “It was all so Trump,” one said. “He is like this all the time. He’ll freeze you out and then be nice and humble and sort of want you to like him.”
“But he truly doesn’t seem to understand the First Amendment,” the source continued. “He doesn’t. He thinks we are supposed to say what he says and that’s it.”
And, as the eloquent Kellyanne Conway pointed out in her opening response last night on the Megyn Kelly show, negative reactions, like the one above, went a long way toward helping Trump win the presidency.
“Fairness is actually not having presumptive negativity written about you and always assuming the worst about you. And I think that Donald Trump has faced an unprecedented avalanche of critical coverage when he was running and frankly i think, in part, he owes his victory to that. There was a backlash against the elites, a backlash against those who were telling Americans what is important to them.”
What are the chances that the mainstream media figures out before 2020 that by relentlessly attacking Trump they’re actually helping him?
* * *
Here is our full coverage of the Trump “media summit” that was described by some as a “f—ing firing squad”:
Earlier today we reported that in a “summit” organized by Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, executives and anchors from the major US media outlets, including CNN president Jeff Zucker, ABC News president James Goldston, Fox News co-presidents Bill Shine and Jack Abernethy, and NBC News president Deborah Turness, visited Donald Trump at his Trump Tower penthouse for an off the record meeting.
Courtesy of the Post, we have a complete list of the participants at the Trump media meeting: the hour-long powwow included top execs from network and cable news channels. Among the attendees were NBC’s Deborah Turness, Lester Holt and Chuck Todd, ABC’s James Goldston, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Martha Raddatz, CBS’ Norah O’Donnell John Dickerson, Charlie Rose, Christopher Isham and Gayle King, Fox News’ Bill Shine, Jack Abernethy, Jay Wallace, Suzanne Scott, MSNBC’s Phil Griffin and CNN’s Jeff Zucker and Erin Burnett.
The contents of what was discussed were initially unclear.
Wolf Blitzer
Now, according to the Post and Politico, we learn that the President-elect “exploded at media bigs in an off-the-record Trump Tower powow on Monday.”
“It was like a f—ing firing squad,” one source told the Post.
According to the Post’s recound of the conversation, “Trump started with Jeff Zucker and said I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed….”
Jeff Zucker (left)“The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down,” the source added. A second source confirmed the encounter.
The Post adds that “the meeting took place in a big board room and there were about 30 or 40 people, including the big news anchors from all the networks…”
“Trump kept saying, ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong. He addressed everyone in the room calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was network of liars.
“Trump didn’t say Katy Tur by name, but talked about an NBC female correspondent who got it wrong, then he referred to a horrible network correspondent who cried when Hillary lost who hosted a debate – which was Martha Raddatz who was also in the room.
“Gayle did not stand up, but asked some question, ‘How do you propose we the media work with you?’ Chuck Todd asked some pretty pointed questions. David Muir asked how are you going to cope living in DC while your family is in NYC? It was a horrible meeting.”
Politico adds further details, according to which “Trump complained about photos of himself that NBC used that he found unflattering, the source said. Trump turned to NBC News President Deborah Turness at one point, the source said, and told her the network won’t run a nice picture of him, instead choosing “this picture of me,” as he made a face with a double chin. Turness replied that they had a “very nice” picture of him on their website at the moment.”
Amusingly, since the meeting was off the record, meaning the participants agreed not to talk about the substance of the conversations, it means they will most likely be unable to confirm or deny the Post’s report.
Politco’s recollection of events was slightly less dramatic:
The New York Post on Monday afternoon portrayed a much more heated meeting, including a quote from one source who said the encounter was “like a f–ing firing squad.” The Post also said Trump called CNN journalists “liars” and that they should be “ashamed.” The source who spoke with POLITICO characterized the meeting as less intense, and said the discussion included Trump expressing the possibility of a “reset” of the tumultuous relationship between the president-elect and the media and that all he wants is “fairness.”
Asked how he defines fairness by a network executive, Trump said simply, “The truth.” But aside from the few moments of contention in the beginning, the source said the meeting was largely substantive.
Politico also adds that Trump, flanked by chief of staff Reince Priebus and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway at the table, also expressed annoyance at the protective press pool and the complaints over him ditching the press when he went out to dinner last week with his family after reporters were advised he was in for the night. But Priebus assured the attendees that the protective press pool will be taken care of and it would all work out.
Other attendees at the meeting from Trump’s team included chief strategist Stephen Bannon, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, spokesman Jason Miller, and Republican National Committee chief strategist and communications director Sean Spicer.
Asked for comment, Miller referred POLITICO to Conway’s comments to reporters after the meeting, in which she echoed the sentiments made in the meeting about turning over a new leaf with the media.
“There was no need to mend fences,” Conway said. “It was very cordial, very genial. But it was very candid and very honest. From my own perspective, it’s great to hit the reset button.”
Conway later on Monday hit back at the New York Post report. “He did not explode in anger,” she said.
While one can have a subjective interpretuation of the nuances at the meating, one thing was clear: Trump’s attempt at a ‘reset’ will be frowned at by the media which is not used to this kind of treatment, even if the “kindler, gentler” version of events as reported by Politico is accurate.
It also means that what has already been a conventional war between the various US media organizations and Trump, is likely about to go nuclear.
- Scientists Find "Persuasive Evidence" Of Vote Hacking, Demand Clinton Recount In 3 States
Between the so-called 'Hursti Hack', questions over Soros-linked voting machines, some peculiarities in Texas, and the media furore over Trump's democracy-threatening questioning of the election outcome; it is perhaps ironic that, after being soundly beaten across the vast majority of counties in America, NY Mag reports, a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers are urging the Clinton campaign to call for a recount in three swing states won by Donald Trump after allegedly finding "persuasive evidence" of vote hacking.
The group, which includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked.
New York Magazine reports that sources confirmed that the activists held a conference call last Thursday with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign general counsel Marc Elias to make their case…
The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots.
Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000.
Notably, however, it’s important to note the group has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review – especially, as New York Magazine so gleefully points out, in light of the fact that the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee.
As a reminder, via MishTalk.com, Geographically speaking, Trump won at least 80% of the Nation.
The only states Hillary carried are Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.
Trump won every county in Oklahoma and West Virginia. Trump won all but one county in Wyoming, and Kansas. Trump won all but two counties in North Dakota, Kentucky, Tennessee, Utah, and Nebraska.
Nearly the entire state of Minnesota, Illinois, New York, Oregon, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Michigan, etc., went for Trump.
Geographically speaking, except for big cities and a few isolated areas, the country cannot stand Hillary.
So the big question is – could she win? Well the answer is complicated…
According to current tallies, Trump has won 290 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232, with Michigan’s 16 votes not apportioned because the race there is still too close to call.
It would take overturning the results in both Wisconsin (10 Electoral College votes) and Pennsylvania (20 votes), in addition to winning Michigan’s 16, for Clinton to win the Electoral College.
There is also the complicating factor of “faithless electors,” or members of the Electoral College who do not vote according to the popular vote in their states. At least six electoral voters have said they would not vote for Trump, despite the fact that he won their states.
The Clinton camp is running out of time to challenge the election. NYMag notes that according to one of the activists, the deadline in Wisconsin to file for a recount is Friday; in Pennsylvania, it’s Monday; and Michigan is next Wednesday.
Of course, should this happen, we can only imagine what carnage it would cause to global financial markets as the Trump Bump hope fades into the Clinton crash.
Finally, it appears that far from a frivolous flight of fancy, Huma Abedin's sister, Heba Abedin, has been encouraging her Facebook followers to call the Justice Department to have vote in key states audited.
On Facebook, Huma Abedin's sister, Heba Abedin, encourages her followers to call the Justice Department to have vote in key states audited. pic.twitter.com/y4BPazFPmL
— Yashar (@yashar) November 22, 2016
None other than Nate Silver is now chiming in on these ‘scientists’ claims…
Good chance there'll be a whole cottage industry of "STATISTICS PROFESSOR PROVES ELECTION RIGGED" posts at HuffPost, etc., though.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016
Which is also wonderfully ironic, though he does point out one glaring hole in their ‘hacking theory’…
And Michigan has paper ballots everywhere, so not even sure what claim is being made there. pic.twitter.com/4YKrZEhTJl
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016
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