March 19, 2018

Documentary- HyperNormalisation 2016

HyperNormalisation is a 2016 BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis. The film was released on 16 October 2016

HyperNormalisation is a 2016 BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis. In the film, Curtis argues that since the 1970s, governments, financiers, and technological utopians have given up on the complex "real world" and built a simple "fake world" that is run by corporations and kept stable by politicians. The film was released on 16 October 2016 on the BBC iPlayer.

Fast forward to 2:16:00( 2 hours in) to Trump and Putin. The new political technologists both use.

March 19, 2018

Facebook is facing an existential crisis

Facebook is facing an existential crisis
by Dylan Byers @CNNMoney
March 19, 2018: 10:40 AM ET

The Cambridge Analytica scandal has done immense damage to the brand, sources across the company believe. It will now take a Herculean effort to restore public trust in Facebook's commitment to privacy and data protection, they said. Outside observers think regulation has suddenly become more likely, and yet CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears missing in action.

The scandal also highlights a problem that is built into the company's DNA: Its business is data exploitation. Facebook makes money by, among other things, harvesting your data and selling it to app developers and advertisers. Preventing those buyers from passing that data to third parties with ulterior motives may ultimately be impossible.
Indeed, the most alarming aspect of Cambridge Analytica's "breach" is that it wasn't a breach at all. It happened almost entirely above board and in line with Facebook policy.
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In a statement, Facebook deputy general counsel Paul Grewal said "protecting people's information is at the heart of everything we do." That may be a hard argument for the public to accept given that Facebook's business is providing people's information to outside parties whose ultimate goals are unknowable.
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Meanwhile, Zuckerberg and the rest of the Facebook leadership seem conspicuously absent. Neither the Facebook CEO nor his top deputy, Sheryl Sandberg, have commented publicly on the matter. They have left that task to Grewal, a lawyer. No one has provided an adequate explanation for why Facebook did not disclose Kogan's violation to the more than 50 million users who were affected when the company first learned about it in 2015.
"We are conducting a comprehensive internal and external review and are working to determine the accuracy of the claims that the Facebook data in question still exists. That is where our focus lies as we remain committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people's information," Grewal said in a statement Sunday.
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http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/19/technology/business/facebook-data-privacy-crisis/index.html

March 19, 2018

You Will Not Destroy America: A Trump Battle Is No Longer One-Sided

‘You Will Not Destroy America’: A Trump Battle Is No Longer One-Sided
The New York Times
By KATIE ROGERS
2 hrs ago

WASHINGTON — Usually, top intelligence and law enforcement officials withdraw to lives of tight-lipped relative anonymity after their careers end. (Suffice it to say, they are not exactly known for viral Twitter battles.) But as President Trump has voiced his grievances against the F.B.I. with a series of insult-laden tweets, his targets have responded nearly in kind, turning a conflict that would in the past have stayed behind closed doors into a brawl for all to see.

Other former officials who have been the subject of the president’s taunts have also had choice words for him on Twitter. John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director who now refers to himself as “a nonpartisan American who is very concerned about our collective future,” attacked the president’s character on Saturday.

“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history,” wrote Mr. Brennan, whom Mr. Trump once called “one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington.” “You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you.”

Throughout history, presidents have found themselves in private conflict with members of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Bill Clinton clashed with Louis J. Freeh, who oversaw the F.B.I. during the Lewinsky scandal. Richard M. Nixon fired the independent special prosecutor in the “Saturday Night Massacre,” and his attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned in protest.

But those tense interactions, experts say, seem almost quaint compared to the public mudslinging unfolding now.“We’ve never had anybody so blatantly go after a president before,” Gary J. Schmitt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who was once an intelligence adviser to President Ronald Reagan, said in an interview. “It’s also unprecedented to have a president so overtly going after various intelligence officials.”

He added, “It’s a race to the bottom.”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/us/politics/trump-tweets-comey-mccabe.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

March 17, 2018

Michael Flynn Comes Out of Hiding to Stump for Far-Right Congressional Candidate

Michael Flynn Comes Out of Hiding to Stump for Far-Right Congressional Candidate
The former Trump natsec adviser will speak publicly for the first time since cutting a deal with Mueller, endorsing Navarro, who lost to Maxine Waters in 2016 by 50+ points.

Gideon Resnick
GIDEON RESNICK
03.16.18 5:48 PM ET
Michael Flynn will speak publicly Friday for the first time since pleading guilty to lying to the FBI to endorse a far-right Republican candidate challenging Rep. Maxine Waters.

The former Trump national-security adviser will be attend an event on behalf of Omar Navarro, who is once again challenging Waters for California’s 43rd congressional district, two years after losing to her by more than 50 points.
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The event also notably included a play in which a reenactor posed as Waters and other people wearing signs reading “Antifa” “ISIS” and “CNN” pretended to beat up singer Joy Villa as she said “freedom of speech” over and over.


https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-flynn-comes-out-of-hiding-to-stump-for-far-right-congressional-candidate


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IS THIS THE REAL LIFE? OR IS THIS JUST FANTASY?
An Utterly Strange, Motley Crew of Trumpkins Is Gunning to Defeat Maxine Waters
Roger Stone, Herman Cain, and Joe Arpaio have all thrown their support behind a political neophyte who lost by nearly 50 points the last time he ran.
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Navarro has become a cause celebre for some of the biggest political names in the Trump orbit—a motley nexus of political celebrities, renowned conspiracy theorists, and anti-immigrant zealots. His backers include former presidential candidate Herman Cain, previous Trump adviser and friend Roger Stone, and former member of the Pussycat Dolls Kaya Jones. He has gotten exposure and support from InfoWars, for which he once reported. And most recently, he has fundraised with disgraced-turned-pardoned Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Why all these figures have flocked to Navarro is not entirely clear. A 28-year-old resident of Torrance, California, Navarro hasn’t held elected office before. But not for lack of trying. He ran against Waters in 2016, only to lose by more than 50 points—a blistering defeat that he spun into a positive, proclaiming that he had won “an outstanding 25%!” of the vote in a predominantly Democratic district.

What seems to be his biggest draw is that he is, simply, there… in L.A… running against Waters, the bete noire of the Trumpites, who has called repeatedly for the president’s impeachment and openly questioned his sanity.


“You’ve got the old, horrible, senile, entrenched, crazy lady, vs. a real American,” as InfoWar’s Alex Jones put it during an interview segment with Navarro in May. “Throw her ass out!”
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/an-utterly-strange-motley-crew-of-trump-ites-is-gunning-to-defeat-maxine-waters



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Candidate is a former InfoWars reporter...loony land.

March 16, 2018

Stephen Hawking's final words to the internet:

Stephen Hawking's final words to the internet: robots aren't the problem, capitalism is

The last message Stephen Hawking posted to a public internet forum was an answer to a question in a Reddit AMA, querying how humanity will weather an age of technological unemployment.

Professor Hawking's answer said that there was no problem with robots taking jobs -- only with the dividends from that robotic efficiency accruing solely to the capital classes thanks to market dynamics, rather than being broadly shared through redistributive state intervention.

"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."

Stephen Hawking AMA [/r/science/Reddit]

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https://boingboing.net/2018/03/14/brief-history-of-class-war.html

March 14, 2018

How A Twitter Fight Over Bernie Sanders Revealed A Network Of Fake Accounts

How A Twitter Fight Over Bernie Sanders Revealed A Network Of Fake Accounts
HuffPost
Paul Blumenthal
03/14/2018 05:45 am ET

When Russians at the Internet Research Agency interfered in U.S. politics, they created false online personas and fake political groups to amplify divisive messages that already had a homegrown American audience. It’s not too far from what some U.S. political consultants are doing themselves.

Take Sally Albright, a Democratic Party communications consultant who backed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Unsurprisingly, Albright is vocally opposed to President Donald Trump and a big supporter of the resistance to his administration. She is also one of the loudest, most divisive voices attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Clinton’s onetime Democratic primary opponent, and his left-wing supporters.

Well after the primary, Albright continues to claim that Sanders is a fraud, a liar, racist and corrupt, among many other things. In one instance she declared that the policy idea of free college, as promoted by Sanders, was racist. This provoked Sanders supporters to argue back. Trevor, a Sanders supporter who declined to provide his last name for fear of being doxxed, but goes by @likingonline on Twitter, noticed a strange pattern of behavior when Albright responded to him. Her tweets addressing him were rapidly retweeted by the same series of accounts. This created a barrage of notifications making it look as though there was an avalanche of opposition to everything he said.

But as Trevor discovered, after an extensive amount of research that he posted online, these were not normal accounts. They appeared to be bots ― automated accounts masked as real people being used to amplify a particular political message. Who is really pulling the strings, however, remains a mystery.
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Much more:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democratic-bot-network-sally-albright_us_5aa2f548e4b07047bec68023?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000618

March 11, 2018

Theresa May set to blame Russia for Salisbury chemical attack

READY TO FINGER VLAD Theresa May set to blame Russia for Salisbury chemical attack on former spy as spooks confirm nerve agent poisoning
Relations between Britain and Russia freeze over again with spy chiefs to say nerve agent is key to Kremlin involvement
By Tom Newton Dunn, Political Editor
11th March 2018, 10:26 pmUpdated: 11th March 2018, 10:33 pm
THERESA May is preparing to name Russia as responsible for the chemical weapons outrage in Salisbury after confirmation from spy chiefs. The PM’s explosive move will plunge relations between London and Moscow into their worst crisis since the end of the Cold War.
A key intelligence assessment of who was behind the nerve agent poisoning is being delivered to No10 overnight, to be on PM’s desk in the morning.
In their report to Mrs May, The Sun has learned that MI5 and MI6 chiefs will cite the very rare substance used on ex-spy Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia as key evidence of the Kremlin’s involvement. It is believed to have been developed in the SVR Russian foreign spy service’s notorious Yasenevo laboratory.

Mrs May will then summon an emergency meeting of her National Security Council at 11am to decide on the scale of Britain’s retaliation.
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https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5782252/pm-set-to-blame-kremlin-for-nerve-agent-poisoning-of-ex-spy-and-daughter-in-salisbury/

March 10, 2018

Steve Bannon: Racist Label Is a Badge of Honor

Steve Bannon: ‘Racist’ Label Is a Badge of Honor

32 minutes ago

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said on Saturday that being labeled a racist should be a point of pride. Speaking at the annual meeting of the French far-right National Front party conference, Bannon told the crowd those who are called “racists,” “misogynists,” “homophobes,” and “xenophobes” by their critics are only given such labels because they’ve left their opponents stumped with provocative questions. “You argue for your freedom and they call you a xenophobe. You argue for your country and they call you a racist,” Bannon said. “Let them call you racist… Wear it as a badge of honor. Because every day we get stronger, they get weaker,” he told the audience. Since being forced out of the White House and the far-right Breitbart News, Bannon has embarked on an international mission to launch a “global populist movement.” The former Breitbert chair met with National Front leader Marine Le Pen on Saturday, and is expected to meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban later in the weekend, according to The New York Times.
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-racist-label-is-a-badge-of-honor
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'Let them call you racists ... wear it as a badge of honor,' Bannon says in France

CNN
2:43 PM, Mar 10, 2018

President Donald Trump's estranged adviser Steve Bannon told a far-right gathering in France on Saturday that they should handle accusations of racism with pride.

"Let them call you racists," Bannon said to the French National Front Party. "Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor."

Bannon told the National Front crowd that he had learned from traveling the world that "history is on our side" and that "the globalists have no answers to freedom."
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Bannon added that the pivot was partly in order to prepare for the upcoming midterm elections.

"He's got to energize that base and turn that base out," he said.
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Last week, Bannon appeared in Rome to observe the elections and advocated for an alliance between the anti-immigrant League party and the populist Five Star Movement in Italy.
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https://www.abc2news.com/news/world/let-them-call-you-racists-wear-it-as-a-badge-of-honor-bannon-says-in-france

March 9, 2018

Comey friend warns Stormy Daniels saga could unravel years of Trump hush money payouts

Comey friend warns Stormy Daniels saga could unravel years of Trump hush money payouts
TRAVIS GETTYS
09 MAR 2018 AT 09:41 ET

A friend of former FBI director James Comey predicted the Stormy Daniels scandal could open the floodgates for other women to talk about their past dealings with President Donald Trump.

Journalist Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the porn actress’ lawsuit against the president over an unsigned non-disclosure agreement could embolden others to come forward.

“The biggest implications, since this is already out there, is not whether Stormy Daniels will be able to talk,” Wittes said.

“The biggest implication is that there are presumably other such agreements,” he continued, “and the question is whether you create an environment in which everybody who has a nondisclosure agreement with the president feels free to come forward and say what that person, he or she, knows — and that would be, I would think, a problem for the president.”

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said the lawsuit puts Trump into an awkward position.

“Maybe he has a signed copy of the contract, but if he does, then he has to acknowledge that he signed the contract,” Robinson said. “So he’s sort of been twisted between there.”
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https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/comey-friend-warns-stormy-daniels-saga-unravel-years-trump-hush-money-payouts/

March 8, 2018

Trump's Las Vegas Urine party

Trump partied with Russian oligarchs at Vegas nightclub shut down over ‘lewd’ acts involving women and urine: report

TRAVIS GETTYS
08 MAR 2018 AT 10:53 ET

A bombshell new report suggests Donald Trump consummated a deal to hold his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow while hobnobbing with Russian oligarchs at a Las Vegas nightclub later shut down over lewd performances involving women and urine.

The future president invited himself to dinner June 15, 2013, with Aras and Emin Agalarov and British publicist Rob Goldstone while presiding over the Miss USA contest his company owned at the time, reported Michael Isikoff and David Corn for Yahoo News and Mother Jones.

The elder Agalarov is a real estate developer and businessman, like Trump, and Goldstone is the publicist for the Russian’s pop star son, and all three figure in the controversial June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr.

They were planning a dinner at CUT, a restaurant at the Palazzo hotel and casino, when Trump’s longtime security chief Keith Stiller called and asked if the pageant owner and reality TV star could join their party.

A group of about 20, including Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, dined in a private room, and Trump flattered his new friends and boasted that “nobody in the world” was better at self-promotion than he was, and referred to himself in third person.

Also at the dinner was Ike Kaveladze, the vice president of Agalarov’s Crocus International, who had been identified in 2000 by U.S. authorities as a conduit for money laundering $.14 billion out of Russia and Eastern Europe.
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https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/trump-partied-russian-oligarchs-vegas-nightclub-shut-lewd-acts-involving-women-urine-report/