September 7th, 2017 • 3h 1m
Shownotes
Every new episode of No Agenda is accompanied by a comprehensive list of shownotes curated by Adam while preparing for the show. Clips played by the hosts during the show can also be found here.
Hurricane Harvey & Irma
Boots on the Ground Report
Salutations John and Adam
I am a Floridian of 21 years who lived through Charlie and Francis despite being young. I come with my own report on the situation:
Many of the people who will give an off the camera answer to their thoughts are that they've stocked up but are like what all the memes online say: Hurricanes are more an annoyance than a threat despite what media is telling us. We all know to take it seriously and we are. This morning, I arrived at my neighborhood Publix (grocery store) 20 minutes after opening and I just barely got their amount of water at that moment. Within 30 minutes of opening they were out of water.
In terms of logistics, my company which has a base in Miami, is being closed Friday morning in Miami and most likely Saturday morning in Orlando where I am. Many of the trucks we would send south to Miami or Tampa from Orlando have been diverted and are being held up north until the storm clears. By my own listening's in, My company may be closed for up to 5 days, which is big considering we are a 24/7 terminal in our network. We only ever close that long for Christmas or New Year's.
I will send you all an e-mail of damage and on the ground reporting once the storm arrives.- Brandon
Red Cross Email - Central Distro issue
Sean on Wind Measurements
Adam and John-
As a person who often works with meteorological data I always loudly applaud your podcast when Adam brings up the fact that when a hurricane or other tropical storm makes landfall, the wind speeds measured at actual ground or bouy based weather stations don't even come close to the "record breaking" and "stunning" values reported by the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
This National Weather Service summary of Hurricane Harvey was perplexing to me as they completely threw their network of weather stations in the area where the storm made landfall under the bus:
6th Paragraph down:
"Many observing stations in South Texas with equipment measuring wind speeds were disabled before they could record the highest wind speeds. Thus, some of the observed wind speeds tallied over South Texas may be underestimated, especially over areas near the coast and close to the eyewall of Harvey. Still, a peak wind gust of 132 mph was reported 2 miles ENE of Port Aransas (the highest observed wind gusts as of this writing). Copano Village reported a peak wind gust of 125 mph"
So the equipment was working well enough to obtain gust measurements but not sustained winds? Sustained winds are what are used to classify hurricanes using the Saffir-Simpson Scale. So the discussion of gusts is really a moot point.
But then when you go look up the NOAA sites for Port Aransas, which I am assuming was used in the NWS analysis, you see that these stations are very well equipped, are sited well, and reported data through the entire storm. For example check out this station that has a picture of the equipment and a link to continuous data reported during the storm:
From my experience in installing and servicing meteorological stations, it appears that they have not one but two RM Young anemometers installed on this particular station. These anemometers have a workable range from 0-224mph. So I would be very confident of the max 93 mph sustained wind that this station reported.
The issue I believe is that prior to the use of hurricane hunter aircraft and dropsondes, data from fixed ground based weather stations and estimates from wind damage were used to classify a storm using the Saffir-Simpson scale. Now with the availability of highly accurate radar and satellite products these hurricane hunter planes are able to pinpoint the exact square kilometer of the storm that has the highest wind speeds and drop the sondes in that part of the storm, when it is still at sea to obtain a maximum wind speed. So now that they literally go out and 'hunt' out the peak winds, of course the data are going to show that storms in the modern area are more intense.
Take a look at this processed dropsonde data from Hurricane Harvey:
One thing that immediately stuck out to me are the two columns "Peak (10.s Average) Flight Level Wind" and "Peak 10.s Surface Level Wind" According to the table the flight level was generally 8,000 ft. So according to these data the winds were only 1-5 mph less at the surface than at 8,000 ft? How can that be?
I would argue that some of these storms such as the "Labor Day Hurricane of 1935" and the "Galveston Hurricane of 1900" were more intense than the storms making landfall today since these peak sustained winds making them Category 5 and 4 respectively were actually observed when they made landfall as opposed to bringing the equipment to the storm out at sea when the storm is usually at peak strength.
Harvey, although it has created devistation and an awful situation for those in the Houston and surrounding area from the rains, would have been classified as a Category 2 storm at best if it were using methods and data available in the early 1900's.
Thanks for your time!
-Sean C
Las Vegas, NV
DACA
DACA Producer
Preferably Anonymous:
Dear Adam and John,
Given that all the news channels, not just the Spanish ones, have been covering DACA, I wanted to check in as one of your DACA listeners. It is interesting to see around me that, up until just a few days ago, the main public had no idea what DACA was, and now they are more likely to know.
I have enjoyed your show since I started listening in 2014 and have been working towards my knighthood for a while now. (John: I'm one of the "Hispanics" from the LA meetup).
Your show is my main source of media, keeping me "sane", and you guys have certainly helped me try to understand different point of views instead of just falling for talking points or personal biases. I'm not a Trump hater, but your show made me view Hillary very unfavorably. I was a Sanders hopeful.
One thing I like to do is read the "negative" comments in immigration articles (Yahoo news comments seems to be more negatively vocal against illegal aliens). While I do see some comments that are truly hateful, even suggesting "lining them up and killing them all", I do see educated comments, but most of the comments I see are based on misconceptions or made up ideas. One misconception being that any illegal can get DACA. Another example being that "illegals" come here just to get benefits. At least from my experience, that has never been the case with the people I know. I don't know any new aliens, but know it is expensive to be smuggled(from Mexico), in the past 15 years I have heard numbers growing from USD$2K to now $5k-$8k or more. Most who come are only marginally better off who look forward to going back, but don't since their families depend on them, they kinda get stuck here.
There's a lot I could talk about and have wanted to communicate to you guys in the past, but not sure how much you care to know.
I live and grew up in California since age 4, so my experience is probably very different than others in my situation.
Got my EE degree at a UC and now work for a major tech company as a SW dev. During college I worked at a restaurant to pay for school/etc. It was not enough, but my awesome widowed dad, making less than $18k/yr managed to help me pay over half my tuition while still supporting my younger siblings. A LOT of sacrifices were made by my family, but my dad always prioritized education. The day of my commencement in 2012 I felt like shit because my friends were talking about jobs they had lined up, and I knew I could not get a "career" job. Upon arriving home I saw the breaking news about Obama's executive order and saw it as a blessing. I understood it was not a real solution, and now also understand President Trump had to make a choice. I know most other DAKAs are probably scared, but maybe Congress will come up with a solution that satisfies the majority of both opposing sides.
Personally, I am lucky that I am in the works to fix my status through my company or have other options. On Tuesday, their lawyers and HR actually setup a meeting to touch base given the announcement. Tim Cook says Apple has 250 DACAs, so I asked my company. I was told it is fewer than 10.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Love you guys,
David
The Media's DACA Numbers Are Misleading | Center for Immigration Studies
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 11:54
The attorneys general of 10 states have threatened to sue the federal government if President Trump does not rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program by September 5. DACA allows for qualifying illegal aliens who came to the country as minors to receive two-year stays of deportation and the ability to receive paperwork that allows them to attend universities, obtain driver's licenses, and secure work permits. The program is one of former President Barack Obama's most controversial and impactful immigration orders.
Observers have watched the administration's moves in recent days, trying to predict what President Trump will decide to do. The president, according to insiders, must decide to either keep his campaign promise to rescind the program or indulge in his sympathy for the thousands of "dreamers" whose status in the country would immediately change.
As the drama surrounding the impending decision grows, media outlets and advocacy groups have begun a campaign of publishing and discussing certain "trends" associated with DACA recipients since the program's unveiling in June 2012. The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank founded by staffers of Clinton and Obama, has blasted out a number of tweets and publications regarding DACA in the days leading up to September 5 that have thrown around shocking statistics on DACA's effectiveness. Advocates and pundits have accepted and quoted these numbers as bona fide truth without digging into their source. That is where the problem arises: The sources of these numbers have serious methodological problems.
The Center for American Progress' tweets cite their own survey conducted by Tom K. Wong, entitled "DACA Recipients' Economic and Educational Gains Continue to Grow", and list six impressive claims, purporting to show the economic impact of DACA recipients:
69 percent moved to a job with better pay;90 percent received their first driver's license or state ID;65 percent purchased their first car;5 percent started their own business;Recipients saw their average wage increase by 69 percent; and16 percent purchased their first home.These are certainly impressive numbers. But given the methodology and collection of the sample, they are misleading and do not really illustrate the true economic impact that DACA recipients have had on the country.
The data that Wong collected came from an online questionnaire administered by the Center for American Progress, United We Dream, and the National Immigration Law Center between August 1, 2017, and August 20, 2017. The questionnaire was "opt-in", which means that individuals chose to participate in the survey of their own volition, eradicating the chance for a random sample typically required of mainstream academic research. In describing opt-in internet surveys, the National Council on Public Polls said that "there is a consensus that many web-based surveys are completely unreliable. Indeed, to describe them as 'polls' is to misuse that term."
The authors of the study used measures to prevent ballot-stuffing (more than one response per person) and spoiled ballots (responses from people who are not actually DACA recipients.) The researchers did this to protect the validity of their responses, but it only muddied the waters.
To prevent ballot-stuffing, respondents could only use one IP address to respond to one survey. While this would seemingly root out most people from responding multiple times, it by no means guarantees that someone could not submit multiple responses. An individual with access to a laptop, cell phone, library, and school computer could submit a survey four different times. Because the researchers asked for no personal information or identification, there is no way of determining if one person submitted four separate responses. Less likely, but certainly possible, an activist using a program such as Tor (which scrambles your IP address every time you use it) could submit literally hundreds of responses.
To prevent spoiled ballots, the authors "used a unique validation test for undocumented status. The survey asked multiple questions about each respondent's migratory history. The survey asked these questions at different times and in different sections of the questionnaire. If there was agreement in the answers such that there was consistency regarding the respondent's migratory history, the respondent was kept in the pool of respondents." This means that someone taking the questionnaire could simply have created an imaginative and consistent migration story that would pass verification, regardless of their actual immigration status. There should be a pool of respondents who failed this test, but the author does not disclose how many respondents could not pass verification.
The three organizations selected the initial respondents, which means that the researchers were using individuals who had personal ties to the outcome of this study and understood the implication of their responses. That is to say the researchers and the organizations knew many of the respondents personally.
In addition to this group, the researchers used Facebook ads to recruit respondents outside of the networks of the partner organizations. That's right: Facebook ads. By polling their own network of engaged DACA youth and Facebook, the researchers were able to gather 3,063 surveys.
69 percent moved to a job with better pay. This result could really mean anything. Generally, as people mature and gain more job experience, they can expect better pay. A college-aged worker with more years in the job market is going to be making more than a high school-aged colleague. Additionally, a peer-reviewed study by Roberto G. Gonzales contradicts this information. Gonzales' study featured a truly random sample of DACA recipients. In that study, only 45 percent of respondents said that they had experienced any increased earnings following their DACA status.90 percent received their first driver's license or state ID. This is also contradicted by Gonzales' data, in which only 57 percent of respondents received a license.65 percent purchased their first car. This is not surprising given the general age range of DACA recipients, and says nothing about their experience in the United States as a result of DACA. According to a study released by Hofstra University, over 90 percent of American households own cars.5 percent started their own business. There is no way of authenticating this number and the researchers do not provide their definition of owning a business. However, this is not overly remarkable given that only about 10 percent of American workers own a business, according to a study from the National Poverty Center. Among minorities, only 5.1 percent of black workers own their own business and only 7.5 percent of Latino workers own their own business. This 5 percent figure is not remarkable in and of itself.Recipients saw their average wage increase by 69 percent. This is a recycling of the first point. In fact, the questions are the same on the survey: "Got a job with better pay" and "I have been able to earn more money", respectively. This gives the reader no new information.16 percent purchased their first home. In recent surveys, roughly 33 percent of Americans under the age of 35 have purchased homes, which makes the 16 percent figure look either roughly accurate to current trends or drastically behind current trends.Needless to say, these results are either not all that impressive or require further digging to determine what their actual impact really is. This is, of course, assuming that these numbers are representative of DACA recipients. Given the discussion of the methodology at the beginning of this blog post, there is good reason to believe that these numbers should raise suspicion.
The statistics cited by the Center for American Progress, the Washington Times, the Cato Institute, the New York Times, and CNN come from a flawed study that is neither peer-reviewed nor accurate. The methodology, sample collection, and conclusions are suspicious at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.
While the DACA debate is unlikely to end soon, even should President Trump come to a decision on September 5, the statistics provided in some oft-quoted sources demand closer scrutiny.
Ontario university offers $60,000 scholarship to students affected by Trump's DACA decision - London - CBC News
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 15:03
Huron University College is offering $60,000 scholarships to students affected by President Donald Trump's decision to rescind a controversial immigration policy. But it might not be an easy path to Canada, according to an immigration lawyer.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program allowed undocumented minor immigrants to receive work permits and avoid deportation in the U.S.
Barry Craig, who is the principal of Huron, said the school is ready to help in any way it can.
"What a terrible circumstance. They're facing deportation, the end of their dreams and the end of their education," he said. "We want to do anything as a small school to demonstrate our commitment to a just society."
Craig, who came up with the idea, wanted the school to make a clear statement to what he called a 'terrible injustice'.
"We want them to find a safe haven and quality education."
As of Wednesday afternoon no one from the U.S. had contacted Huron. Craig said administration would give scholarships to a dozen students.
Eddie Kadri, an immigration lawyer from Windsor, Ontario, said the idea is well intended but students who wish to apply for the scholarship may be faced with complex roadblocks.
"There are legal obstacles and political obstacles that would seem to be very difficult to overcome in order to facilitate the entry of these people," he said.
Initially, the scholarship was pegged at $50,000, but was raised to $60,000 to meet international student fees at Huron University College.
Craig said the school has been working with educational representatives in Washington DC to advertise the scholarship and understand immigration policies.
Huron University College is offering a $60,000 scholarship for people affected by President Donald Trump's decision to rescind DACA. (Submitted by Huron University College)
Kadri said eligible DACA recipients would most likely apply to come into Canada through a student visa. Government officials would assess many determining factors including areas of study and financial status.
"(Visa officers) are going to have reservations to admit you as a student because you don't meet the test of a genuine temporary resident because they think you're going to come here and not go back," he said.
Kadri thinks the federal government would have to bend some rules in order to see the program succeed without any complexities.
"We don't want to open up the flood gates here because our immigration system can only hold so much in terms of demand. We don't want to over burden it and punish people who have been waiting in legal queue system."
Trump has decided to end DACA, with 6-month delay - POLITICO
Mon, 04 Sep 2017 04:28
White House
Senior White House aides met Sunday afternoon to discuss how to roll out the controversial move affecting hundreds of thousands of Dreamers.
By ELIANA JOHNSON
09/03/2017 08:21 PM EDT
Updated 09/03/2017 10:30 PM EDT
2017-09-03T10:30-0400 Serafina Ha (right) of Chicago embraces Becky Belcore of the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium during a demonstration in favor of immigration reform in front of the White House on Aug. 30. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Donald Trump has decided to end the Obama-era program that grants work permits to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as children, according to two sources familiar with his thinking. Senior White House aides huddled Sunday afternoon to discuss the rollout of a decision likely to ignite a political firestorm '-- and fulfill one of the president's core campaign promises.
The administration's deliberations on the issue have been fluid and fast moving, and the president has faced strong warnings from members of his own party not to scrap the program.
Story Continued Below
Trump has wrestled for months with whether to do away with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA. But conversations with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who argued that Congress '-- rather than the executive branch '-- is responsible for writing immigration law, helped persuade the president to terminate the program and kick the issue to Congress, the two sources said.
In a nod to reservations held by many lawmakers, the White House plans to delay the enforcement of the president's decision for six months, giving Congress a window to act, according to one White House official. But a senior White House aide said that chief of staff John Kelly, who has been running the West Wing policy process on the issue, ''thinks Congress should've gotten its act together a lot longer ago.''
White House aides caution that '-- as with everything in the Trump White House '-- nothing is set in stone until an official announcement has been made.
Trump is expected to formally make that announcement on Tuesday, and the White House informed House Speaker Paul Ryan of the president's decision on Sunday morning, according to a source close to the administration. Ryan had said during a radio interview on Friday that he didn't think the president should terminate DACA, and that Congress should act on the issue.
A spokesman for Ryan did not immediately respond to a request for comment. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement, ''A decision is not finalized. We will make an announcement on Tuesday.''
The president's expected decision is likely to shore up his base, which rallied behind his broader campaign message about the importance of enforcing the country's immigration laws and securing the border. At the same time, the president's decision is likely to be one of the most contentious of his early administration, opposed by leaders of both parties and by the political establishment more broadly.
The White House and Congress have tried to pass the issue off on each other '' with each arguing that the other is responsible for determining the fate of the approximately 800,000 undocumented immigrants who are benefiting from DACA. Though most Republicans believe that rolling back DACA is a solid legal decision, they are conscious of the difficult emotional terrain. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch joined Ryan in cautioning Trump against rolling back the program.
The president is likely to couch his decision in legalese. Many on the right, even those who support protections for children brought into the country illegally through no fault of their own, argue that DACA is unconstitutional because former President Barack Obama carried it out unilaterally instead of working through Congress.
Some Republican lawmakers, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, have said that Congress needs to pass a law to protect the so-called Dreamers.
''My hope is that as part of this process we can work on a way to deal with this issue and solve it through legislation, which is the right way to do it and the constitutional way to do it,'' Rubio told CNN in June.
Trump's expected decision to scrap DACA within six months represents another challenge for Ryan and fellow congressional Republicans, who are facing an end-of-September deadline to avert a government shutdown and government debt default, while also tackling a Hurricane Harvey relief package and a major tax reform push.
It's not clear that Congress will be able to come to an agreement on the future of DACA.
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who previously said he was very disappointed by Trump's lack of action on DACA, expressed fresh frustration on Sunday night with the idea of a delayed implementation.
''Ending DACA now gives chance 2 restore Rule of Law. Delaying so R Leadership can push Amnesty is Republican suicide,'' King tweeted.
Meanwhile, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who has called on Trump to stand up for the Dreamers, tweeted out her displeasure with Trump's expected announcement.
''After teasing #Dreamers for months with talk of his 'great heart,' @POTUS slams door on them. Some 'heart'...'' she wrote.
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Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai speak out against end of DACA
Tue, 05 Sep 2017 16:13
IBM has already said it stands by "dreamers" -- those protected by the program. Box CEO Aaron Levie called for Congressional action, as did Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Other technology CEOs are likely to do "everything in their power to protect their employees" from the repeal of a law protecting certain immigrants, technology investor Roger McNamee told CNBC's "Squawk Alley" on Tuesday.
"I don't know the answer," McNamee said. "Our entire economy is based on having lots of different kinds of people in it."
Trump's decision comes with a six-month delay, giving Congress an opportunity to pass legislation protecting the country's 800,000 dreamers.
Only Mass Deportation Can Save America - NYTimes.com
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 03:25
Bret Stephens
In the matter of immigration, mark this conservative columnist down as strongly pro-deportation. The United States has too many people who don't work hard, don't believe in God, don't contribute much to society and don't appreciate the greatness of the American system.
They need to return whence they came.
I speak of Americans whose families have been in this country for a few generations. Complacent, entitled and often shockingly ignorant on basic points of American law and history, they are the stagnant pool in which our national prospects risk drowning.
On point after point, America's nonimmigrants are failing our country. Crime? A study by the Cato Institute notes that nonimmigrants are incarcerated at nearly twice the rate of illegal immigrants, and at more than three times the rate of legal ones.
Educational achievement? Just 17 percent of the finalists in the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search '-- often called the ''Junior Nobel Prize'' '-- were the children of United States-born parents. At the Rochester Institute of Technology, just 9.5 percent of graduate students in electrical engineering were nonimmigrants.
Religious piety '-- especially of the Christian variety? More illegal immigrants identify as Christian (83 percent) than do Americans (70.6 percent), a fact right-wing immigration restrictionists might ponder as they bemoan declines in church attendance.
Business creation? Nonimmigrants start businesses at half the rate of immigrants, and accounted for fewer than half the companies started in Silicon Valley between 1995 and 2005. Overall, the share of nonimmigrant entrepreneurs fell by more than 10 percentage points between 1995 and 2008, according to a Harvard Business Review study.
Nor does the case against nonimmigrants end there. The rate of out-of-wedlock births for United States-born mothers exceeds the rate for foreign-born moms, 42 percent to 33 percent. The rate of delinquency and criminality among nonimmigrant teens considerably exceeds that of their immigrant peers. A recent report by the Sentencing Project also finds evidence that the fewer immigrants there are in a neighborhood, the likelier it is to be unsafe.
And then there's the all-important issue of demographics. The race for the future is ultimately a race for people '-- healthy, working-age, fertile people '-- and our nonimmigrants fail us here, too. ''The increase in the overall number of U.S. births, from 3.74 million in 1970 to 4.0 million in 2014, is due entirely to births to foreign-born mothers,'' reports the Pew Research Center. Without these immigrant moms, the United States would be faced with the same demographic death spiral that now confronts Japan.
Bottom line: So-called real Americans are screwing up America. Maybe they should leave, so that we can replace them with new and better ones: newcomers who are more appreciative of what the United States has to offer, more ambitious for themselves and their children, and more willing to sacrifice for the future. In other words, just the kind of people we used to be '-- when ''we'' had just come off the boat.
O.K., so I'm jesting about deporting ''real Americans'' en masse. (Who would take them in, anyway?) But then the threat of mass deportations has been no joke with this administration.
On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security seemed prepared to extend an Obama administration program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which allows the children of illegal immigrants '-- some 800,000 people in all '-- to continue to study and work in the United States. The decision would have reversed one of Donald Trump's ugly campaign threats to deport these kids, whose only crime was to have been brought to the United States by their parents.
Yet the administration is still committed to deporting their parents, and on Friday the D.H.S. announced that even DACA remains under review '-- another cruel twist for young immigrants wondering if they'll be sent back to ''home'' countries they hardly ever knew, and whose language they might barely even speak.
Beyond the inhumanity of toying with people's lives this way, there's also the shortsightedness of it. We do not usually find happiness by driving away those who would love us. Businesses do not often prosper by firing their better employees and discouraging job applications. So how does America become great again by berating and evicting its most energetic, enterprising, law-abiding, job-creating, idea-generating, self-multiplying and God-fearing people?
Because I'm the child of immigrants and grew up abroad, I have always thought of the United States as a country that belongs first to its newcomers '-- the people who strain hardest to become a part of it because they realize that it's precious; and who do the most to remake it so that our ideas, and our appeal, may stay fresh.
That used to be a clich(C), but in the Age of Trump it needs to be explained all over again. We're a country of immigrants '-- by and for them, too. Americans who don't get it should get out.
Following The Algos
A Simple Design Flaw Makes It Astoundingly Easy To Hack Siri And Alexa
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 15:33
Chinese researchers have discovered a terrifying vulnerability in voice assistants from Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, and Huawei. It affects every iPhone and Macbook running Siri, any Galaxy phone, any PC running Windows 10, and even Amazon's Alexa assistant.
Using a technique called the DolphinAttack, a team from Zhejiang University translated typical vocal commands into ultrasonic frequencies that are too high for the human ear to hear, but perfectly decipherable by the microphones and software powering our always-on voice assistants. This relatively simple translation process lets them take control of gadgets with just a few words uttered in frequencies none of us can hear.
The researchers didn't just activate basic commands like ''Hey Siri'' or ''Okay Google,'' though. They could also tell an iPhone to ''call 1234567890'' or tell an iPad to FaceTime the number. They could force a Macbook or a Nexus 7 to open a malicious website. They could order an Amazon Echo to ''open the backdoor.'' Even an Audi Q3 could have its navigation system redirected to a new location. ''Inaudible voice commands question the common design assumption that adversaries may at most try to manipulate a [voice assistant] vocally and can be detected by an alert user,'' the research team writes in a paper just accepted to the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security.
In other words, Silicon Valley has designed human-friendly UI with a huge security oversight. While we might not hear the bad guys talking, our computers clearly can. ''From a UX point of view, it feels like a betrayal,'' says Ame Elliott, design director at the nonprofit SimplySecure. ''The premise of how you interact with the device is 'tell it what to do,' so the silent, surreptitious command is shocking.''
[Source Images: RamCreativ/iStock, photominus/iStock]To hack each voice assistant, the researchers used a smartphone with about $3 of additional hardware, including a tiny speaker and amp. In theory, their methods, which are now public, are duplicatable by anyone with a bit of technical know-how and just a few bucks in their pocket.
In some cases, these attacks could only be made from inches away, though gadgets like the Apple Watch were vulnerable from within several feet. In that sense, it's hard to imagine an Amazon Echo being hacked with DolphinAttack. An intruder who wanted to ''open the backdoor'' would already need to be inside your home, close to your Echo. But hacking an iPhone seems like no problem at all. A hacker would nearly need to walk by you in a crowd. They'd have their phone out, playing a command in frequencies you wouldn't hear, and you'd have your own phone dangling in your hand. So maybe you wouldn't see as Safari or Chrome loaded a site, the site ran code to install malware, and the contents and communications of your phone were open season for them to explore.
The exploit is enabled by a combination of hardware and software problems, the researchers explain in their paper. The microphones and software that power voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Home can pick up inaudible frequencies''specifically, frequencies above the 20KhZ limits of human ears. (How high is 20kHz? It's just above the mosquito ringtone that went viral a few years ago, which allowed young students who hadn't damaged their hearing yet to text message friends without their teachers hearing.)
According to Gadi Amit, founder of NewDealDesign and industrial designer of products like the Fitbit, the design of such microphones make them difficult to secure from this type of attack. ''Microphones' components themselves vary in type, but most use air pressures that probably cannot be blocked from ultrasounds,'' Amit explains. Basically, the most popular mics of today transform turbulent air''or sound waves''into electrical waves. Blocking those super-hearing capabilities might be impossible.
That means it's up to software to decipher what's human speech and what's machine speech. In theory, Apple or Google could just command their assistants to never obey orders from someone speaking at 20kHz with a digital audio filter: ''Wait, this human is telling me what to do in a vocal range they can't possibly speak! I'm not going to listen to them!'' But according to what the Zhejiang researchers found, every major voice assistant company exhibited vulnerability with commands stated above 20kHz.
[Source Images: RamCreativ/iStock, photominus/iStock]Why would the Amazons and Apples of the world leave such a gaping hole that could, potentially, be so easily plugged by software? We don't know yet, though we've reached out to Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, and Huawei for comment. But at least two theories are perfectly plausible, and both come down to making voice assistants more user-friendly.
The first is that voice assistants actually need ultrasonics just to hear people well, compared to analyzing a voice without those high frequencies. '' Keep in mind that the voice analyzing software might need every bit of 'hint' in your voice to create its understanding,'' says Amit of filtering out the highest frequencies in our voice systems. ''So there might be a negative effect that lowers the comprehension score of the whole system.'' Even though people don't need ultrasonics to hear other people, maybe our computers rely upon them as a crutch.
The second is that some companies are already exploiting ultrasonics for their own UX, including phone-to-gadget communication. Most notably, Amazon's Dash Button pairs with the phone at frequencies reported to be around 18kHz, and Google's Chromecast uses ultrasonic pairing, too. To the end user, that imperceptible pairing creates a magical experience that consumers have come to expect in the modern age of electronics (''How's it work? Who cares, it's magic!''). But because we can't hear these mechanisms at work, we also can't tell when they've gone wrong, or when they've been hijacked. They're designed to be invisible. It's the equivalent to driving a car with a silent engine. If the timing belt breaks, you might only realize it when the car inevitably stops and the engine is ruined.
User-friendliness is increasingly at odds with security. Our web browsers easily and invisibly collect cookies, allowing marketers to follow us across the web. Our phones back up our photos and contacts to the cloud, tempting any focused hacker with a complete repository of our private lives. It's as if every tacit deal we've made with easy-to-use technology has come with a hidden cost: our own personal vulnerability. This new voice command exploit is just the latest in a growing list of security holes caused by design, but it is, perhaps, the best example of Silicon Valley's widespread disregard for security in the face of the new and shiny.
''I think Silicon Valley has blind spots in not thinking about how a product may be misused. It's not as robust a part of the product planning as it should be,'' says Elliott. ''Voice systems are clearly hard to secure. And that should raise questions . . . It's difficult to understand how the systems work, and sometimes by deliberate design. I think hard work is needed to undo the seamlessness of voice and think about adding more visibility into how the system works.''
For now, there's a relatively easy fix to most DolphinAttack vulnerabilities. All you have to do is turn off the always-on settings of Siri or the Google Assistant on your phones and tablets, and a hacker won't be able to talk to your phone (except during those moments you're trying to talk to it, too). Meanwhile, the Amazon Alexa and Google Home (the Home was not tested by researchers but is theoretically just as vulnerable) both have hard mute buttons that should do the trick for a majority of the time.
But of course, these solutions are self-defeating. If the only way we can safely use voice assistants is to ensure they're not listening, then what point do they even serve? Maybe these eavesdropping computers don't belong in our lives in the first place''or at least, not anywhere in public.
We've reached out to Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, and Huawei and will update this story if we hear back.
About the authorMark Wilson is a senior writer at Fast Company. He started Philanthroper.com, a simple way to give back every day.
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Germans Ahead of the Vote: 'I've Never Seen So Much Hate' - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Tue, 05 Sep 2017 20:18
September 01, 2017 06:07 PM SPIEGEL: Mr. Gr¼newald, in the lead up to the election, the Rheingold Institute has once again undertaken a detailed analysis of Germany's political state. How did you proceed?
Gr¼newald: We put 50 voters on the couch. Twenty-six underwent in-depth psychological interviews, the others took part in three group discussions. Seven psychologists took part in the study, with two of them focusing on eastern Germany. It isn't representative, but you can recognize certain traits.
SPIEGEL: What did you find out?
Gr¼newald: On a fundamental level, the voters are totally disappointed in this election campaign. They feel like the things that are important to them aren't being discussed and that many things are being glossed over. We wanted to find out why.
SPIEGEL: What did you discover?
Gr¼newald: In the in-depth interviews, all people wanted to talk about was the refugee crisis, refugee crisis, refugee crisis. Despite being so elegantly left out of the campaign, it is still a sore spot that hasn't been treated by politicians.
SPIEGEL: What exactly is the problem?
Gr¼newald: The crisis two years ago plunged voters into a dilemma for which they still haven't found a clear response. Do I open the door, or do I close it? On one hand, they want to be part of the welcoming culture, but they are also afraid of being overwhelmed by foreigners and of no longer being able to recognize their own country. As a result, they want policymakers to develop a plan, to establish a compromise position. But they haven't, and now voters feel abandoned.
SPIEGEL: What is the consequence of this?
Gr¼newald: Voters are disoriented, full of uncertainties. They describe Germany either as an ailing, run-down country or as a secure island of affluence in a sea of risk. It's all very fragile and leads to emotional outbursts. I have never before seen so much anger and hatred among test subjects.
SPIEGEL: Do you expect growing political radicalization?
Gr¼newald: Not yet, because in reaction to the perceived hardening of the fronts, voters are also taking a step back. They argue that we cannot afford to slip into polarization because we are surrounded by three brutes: Trump, Erdogan and Putin. The anger is being expressed in shadowy digital worlds, but in the analog world, they keep a tighter rein on themselves.
SPIEGEL: Is the refugee crisis just a symbol for their discomfort with the difficult state of the world today?
Gr¼newald: Yes, because long before the refugee crisis people felt alienated by globalization and were also concerned about global security.
SPIEGEL: How is Trump being perceived?
Gr¼newald: He works to Merkel's advantage. Because of him, Putin and Erdogan, she is seen as the person who can tame the brutes. The chancellor is seen as the only one we can depend on, so we have to have a good relationship to her.
SPIEGEL: And her challenger?
Gr¼newald: Amid the skepticism around Merkel, Martin Schulz (of the center-left Social Democrats -- SPD) arrived early this year as a figure seen as down-to-earth with a take-charge attitude. He was seen as a returning father, someone to finally fill the paternal vacancy in German politics -- and it was blown up to almost messianic proportions. Schulz, the person, couldn't fulfill these expectations. He is seen more as a friendly uncle. The SPD faces a potential disaster in this election.
SPIEGEL: Could the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party do better than polls are currently leading us to expect?
Gr¼newald: The AfD channels a lot of this anger but it doesn't have a leadership figure. As such, it was a mistake to remove Frauke Petry from the spotlight. The tendency of voters to keep themselves in check, as I described earlier, won't help the AfD.
SPIEGEL: And the Green Party. Will they do well because climate change is such a critical issue?
Gr¼newald: No, it'll be tight for them. People think their problems lie elsewhere. And the Greens are also seen as arrogant because their fight for nature is often directed against human nature.
SPIEGEL: How do your test subjects see their personal situations?
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Gr¼newald: Good but they are also struggling to find their place. Workplaces, daycare spaces, parking spots. Housing is also a big issue. All are symbols for the strong need for structure and orientation.
SPIEGEL: Does the chancellor provide this order?
Gr¼newald: In part. She will win by a wide margin, but it is still little more than a half-hearted expression of loyalty. The tried-and-true will once again be put on probation.
SPIEGEL: If the far-left Left Party, the SPD and the Greens had fielded a different joint candidate and promised a completely different plan of action, would that have been well received?
Gr¼newald: We discussed a variety of possible coalitions with the test subjects. But that one was never mentioned.
SPIEGEL: What came up instead?
Gr¼newald: Merkel with (Christian) Lindner (of the pro-business Free Democratic Party -- FDP). There was a real love for Lindner in the interviews. The FDP's candidate is seen as a modern TV star, even like a kind of 007, who can engender change. A kind of dream team is the result: the proven Merkel and a mini German Macron that gives her a helping hand. As such, I'm predicting a coalition of Merkel's conservatives with the FDP.
Michael Englert / DER SPIEGEL
Stephan Gr¼newald, 56, wrote the bestseller "Deutschland auf der Couch" ("Germany on the Couch") and heads the Reingold Institute in Cologne, a specialized market research institute.
Merkel calls out haters, as boos and whistles greet her once again on campaign trail
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 11:32
Angela Merkel. Photo: DPA
When the German Chancellor was confronted by whistles and catcalls during an election event in east German town of Torgau on Wednesday, she attempted to turn the boos to her advantage.
People in other countries ''would be delighted if they could demonstrate in this way,'' Angela Merkel said, as more than 100 far-right protests attempted to drown out her speech with boos, whistles and cries of ''traitor.''
''That's why we should be happy that we have democracy in Germany and that we can vote freely. Other people can only dream of that,'' the Chancellor said, according to Die Welt.
Then, addressing her own voters, she said ''you can feel it here on this market square that it rests on you to go and vote on September 24th.''
Merkel is currently touring Germany giving speeches in town halls and market squares, as she seeks a fourth term in office in elections on September 24th.
Despite the fact that her Christian Democrats (CDU) are far ahead in polling, Merkel has become a divisive figure due to her refugee policies. Opponents on the far-right of German politics accuse her of endangering the country's security - and even trying to alter its Christian culture - by allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees to enter the country over the past two years.
READ ALSO: 10 things to know about refugees and asylum in Germany
At a speech in Heidelberg in southern Germany on Tuesday demonstrators threw tomatoes at the Chancellor, with one hitting her on the hip. Meanwhile protesters have disrupted entire speeches in the eastern states of Brandenburg and Saxony, where the far-right are particularly strong, with calls of ''traitor'', ''liar'' and ''fraud.''
But Merkel explained on Thursday that the hostile reception would not put her off visiting small town east Germany, where her own constituency lies.
''It's important to me to always go to those places where I won't be given a friendly reception,'' she told the Redaktionsnetzwerks Deutschland.
''Lots of people who don't belong to the booers and whistlers need to be given encouragement to show civil courage in the face of hatred.''
She said that she often sought dialogue with opponents in her own constituency, but that "if someone starts whistling or yelling I can't speak so well anymore."
Her Interior Minister Thomas de Maizi¨re was also critical of the protesters.
''Whoever can't bear other opinions, destroys placards and shouts others down, disqualifies themselves from democracy,'' he told the Passauer Neue Presse.
Polls show that Merkel's conservative alliance is holding a strong lead of around 15 percentage points against the runner-up Social Democratic Party.
Michael Caine doesn't want Britain to be controlled by EU | Daily Mail Online
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 10:21
Sir Michael Caine says he supports Brexit because he doesn't want Britain to be controlled by European Union bureaucrats.
At the Venice Film Festival, the Oscar-winning actor said Britain was 'being run by a man called Mr Juncker' - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg.
Sir Michael, 84, said on Tuesday that 'up until I was 20, I thought Luxembourg was a radio station. I didn't even know it was a country and now he's running my country - and he doesn't seem to like us.'
Oscar-winning actor Sir Michael Caine said Britain was 'being run by a man called Mr Juncker' - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg in new comments about Brexit
Sir Michael said in his comments on Tuesday that Juncker 'doesn't seem to like' the United Kingdom
The actor said his decision wasn't based on immigration or economics, but because 'I'd rather be a poor master of my own fate than a rich servant of someone else's'.
This isn't the first time that Sir Michael, who narrates Venice entry 'My Generation,' a documentary about the 1960s, has spoken out about his views on Brexit.
In April, Sir Michael said he was confident leaving the EU would be 'all right', adding: 'I voted for Brexit. What it is with me, I'd rather be a poor master than a rich servant.
'It wasn't about the racism, immigrants or anything '' it was about freedom.'
Speaking to Sky News, he added: 'Politics is always chaotic. In politics, you're always going into areas you've never been before, so you're going to get lost and then you're going to find your way, and then it'll be all right.'
Speaking to Sky News, he added: 'Politics is always chaotic. In politics, you're always going into areas you've never been before, so you're going to get lost and then you're going to find your way, and then it'll be all right.'
The Italian Job actor came out in support of leaving the EU before last year's referendum, leading former Ukip leader Nigel Farage to recall his famous line from the film and proclaim: 'Let's blow the bloody doors off!'
Sir Michael made his comments at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday. He's pictured above at the event with Director David Batty
In the run-up to the vote, Sir Michael admitted quitting the EU would be 'scary' but said the UK should not be dictated to by 'thousands of faceless civil servants'.
He has previously been attacked for his pro-Brexit views, with people on social media questioning his opinions and some even wishing he would die.
Meanwhile, a blueprint for tough new immigration rules that mean an immediate end to free movement after Brexit were revealed on Tuesday in a massive Home Office leak.
An 82-page document leaked to the Guardian revealed plans to make all EU citizens show a passport when they visit Britain after Brexit.
New rules could be imposed forcing employers to recruit in Britain before looking abroad.
And the draft plan proposes measures to dramatically cut long-term migration by demanding all new arrivals demonstrate benefit to Britain overall.
The document, dated August 2017 and marked 'extremely sensitive' has not been agreed by Cabinet and could be significantly changed before being officially published.
It will also be subject to the Brexit negotiations underway in Brussels. EU negotiator Michel Barnier warned last week there was no 'trust' on how EU citizens living in Britain would be treated after Brexit.
Raciss
The meaning of the word racist no longer holds the same power.
Popular While White
Taylor Swift's political silence sparks belief she voted Trump - NY Daily News
Tue, 05 Sep 2017 16:18
Taylor Swift has remained notoriously tight-lipped on her political leanings, but her friend and back-up dancer Todrick Hall says that anyone who takes her silence as evidence she voted for Donald Trump is making a "huge assumption."
Swift faced criticism throughout the election season for remaining mum, and not following in the footsteps of her fellow pop stars, who expressed their support for Hillary Clinton and disdain for Trump.
Her sole foray into the world of politics was as an apolitical Instagram post on Election Day telling her followers to "go out and VOTE."
But according to Hall, who has been friends with the "Look What You Made Me Do" singer for years, nothing about Swift leads him to believe that she's set on making America great again.
Every reference you missed in Taylor Swift's new music video
Todrick Hall defended Taylor Swift against assumptions that she voted for Donald Trump.(Todrick Hall via Instagram) "Many people have been tweeting me, 'She supports Trump! She probably voted for Trump!' They're making this huge assumption, when Taylor has never to my knowledge come out and said anything about her being pro-Trump," he told Yahoo! "But people would still rather believe that she is the one who is pushing Trump's agenda."
Hall also expressed frustration that Swift has been receiving the brunt of political criticisms while vocal Trump supporters like Kanye West have been let off the hook by fans.
"I'm like, 'So you are mad that you think she might support Donald Trump? But you're not mad that Kanye has been very openly pro-Trump?' I don't understand that," he said.
51 photos view gallery
The many BFFs of Taylor Swift West went on a bizarre rant onstage during his Saint Pablo tour in November, and told the California crowd that he did not vote in the 2016 election, but if he did, he "would have voted on Trump."
Taylor Swift's 'Look What You Made Me Do' is shattering records
The rapper also stopped by Trump Tower in December for a 15-minute chat about "life" and "multicultural issues" with the then-president-elect.
Hall, meanwhile, also maintained that despite the fact that Swift is not outspoken on social issues, she's not blind to them, and cited an instance on Thanksgiving where Hall, Swift and an African-American friend of theirs watched Ava DuVernay's "13th" on Netflix and had a frank discussion on racism.
Swift has never discussed politics, save for an Election Day Instagram post telling her followers to vote.(CARLOS BARRIA/REUTERS) "Maybe one day, Taylor will start being super-political, and using her voice to do the things that people think that she should be doing," he said. "But even then, she will probably be ridiculed for not being vocal enough, or not being on the right side. I don't think that there is a way to win in this industry, so every person has to take their own journey at their own pace, at their own time, and do what they feel like is right."
Political activist or not, Swift recently re-emerged from a quiet 2016, and is back dominating headlines thanks to her upcoming sixth album, "Reputation."
Taylor Swift's video director refutes 'Formation' comparisons
She debuted the album's second single, "'...Ready for It?" Saturday night in a college football promo on ESPN.
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Celebrities Under Mind Control | FreemanTV.com
Mon, 04 Sep 2017 12:26
If you believe that slavery is a thing of the past, you are still a slave. The continuity of the practice of slavery on planet earth is staggering. The idea of owning another person is as old as civilization itself, going all the way back to ancient Sumer. Predating all other forms of coerced labor, not only is it ancient, but it is oh, so contemporary...and fashionable!When Bob Marley sings about slavery, he calls it the Babylon System and hits the nail on the head. The Bible calls Nimrod, the King of Babylon ''a great hunter before the Lord." According to archeology and biblical context, the word ''hunter'' translates to plunderer or conqueror. Nimrod was immortalized not for his skill in hunting beasts, but in the success of his slave trading and the hunting of men to establish his imperial kingdom of tyranny. Nimrod hunted men and brought them into bondage to Babylon and forced them to build him a great tower to piss off Yahweh. The foundation of Babylonian society was the slave population; the necessary component of all mass economic activity. The sources of their slave supply were endless. Military conquests furnished many; others had fallen from the position of free laborers; still others were purchased from abroad, or were children of native slaves. Nimrod's Babylon is associated with slavery, military and economic power, seduction, and worship of the state.
If you want to see the Babylon system at work today, look no further than Hollywood. Every year the Academy Awards are held in the heart of downtown Hollywood at the Kodak Center. Adjacent to the theater is the Hollywood and Highland Center called the Babylon Courtyard. Its d(C)cor is taken straight from a 1916 movie about ancient Babylon called Intolerance. Four story columns topped with standing elephants surround an archway depicting two curious characters. The figure on the left holding the basin of water is Enki, one of the Annunaki brothers who were gods of the ancient Sumerians that came to earth to genetically engineer a slave race. Enki is also known as Ea and is usually distinguished from other gods by two streams of water erupting from his body, or from a pot held in his hands. The figure on the right is the Assyrian god, Nisroch. Both of these gods were usually depicted holding a pinecone like object, believed to be an ancient depiction of the pineal gland, however, in the Hollywood version the glands are strangely absent.
The most famous of slaves were the Jews of Babylon, so it is ironic that their own empire of Hollywood is founded on slavery. During Hollywood's golden age of the 1920's and 1930's, major studios spent a considerable amount of money to help locate, establish, and groom their legendary celebrities. The studio did as much as possible, even dictating social activities and personal relationships to ensure proper exposure of their best stars. The process of becoming a star invaded every aspect of a person's life. These actors essentially became the property of the studio once they signed a contract. Remember, the foundation of black magic is the pact or contract. Actors and actresses operated on strict contracts and this situation kept the power in the studio's hands. An actor's contract also entitled the studio to assign them to any role it chose, as well as loan out its stars to other production companies. Because of this, stars very often found themselves playing roles they weren't too crazy about. Actors of the studio really had no power or control over their own careers; their futures were at the mercy of the studio that signed them. With strategic planning and decision making that took place at the highest levels of studio management, they built unknowns into household names.
Babylon's legacy of blood sacrifice, human trafficking and slavery has been handed down through the generations. It exists today through a practice of slaves creating slaves called trauma-based mind control victims. Survivor of generational Satanic ritual abuse, Jay Parker, recalls a story his mother once told him about the Statue of Liberty. She told Jay that it was, in fact, Semiramis, wife of Nimrod. She said that their tradition of ritual abuse to create slaves was the religion with no name, ''the old religion'' from the time of Babylon.
Today, if an artist wants to ''make it'' or have their art shared with the rest of the world, there are many gatekeepers and processes of dark initiation that they must pass through. Many times artists, through their work, spell out exactly what they must go through in the name of fame. In her thirteen minute music video, Marry the Night, Lady Gaga explains, in an artistic way, the trauma she is made to endure to become a super star. In the beginning, Gaga delivers a monologue that defines the plight of a mind control victim. While lying on a stretcher that is pushed by two nurses, she describes the way she perceives reality and only by escaping into her own world is she able to go on:
''When I look back on my life, it's not that I don't want to see things exactly as they happen, it's just that I prefer to remember them in an artistic way. And truthfully, the lie of it all is much more honest, because I invented it. Clinical psychology arguably tells us that trauma is the ultimate killer. Memories are not recycled like atoms and particles in quantum physics. They can be lost forever. It's sort of like my past is an unfinished painting and, as the artist of that painting, I must fill in all the ugly holes and make it beautiful again. It's not that I've been dishonest, it's just that I loathe reality.''
The creepy nurse that attends to Gaga after her trauma session says, ''I remember when I delivered you.'' A clue about how slaves are conditioned from birth from inside their circle of friends and family. When the camera pans out, it shows that Gaga is not alone. She is in a ward filled with victims who are going through the same conditioning. In the video, the transformation from the real Stefani to her alter, Lady Gaga, is symbolized by the dying of her hair blonde. Ritual abuse survivor and Mother of Darkness, Arizona Wilder, explains that the dark occultists prefer their ritual goddesses blonde. In the context of the video, the expression ''marry the night'' takes on a metaphysical meaning. Marriage is a binding religious ritual. To marry the night means that Gaga is bonded to the elite occult slave masters and embraces her own ''dark side''.
The Britney Chronicles
Britney Spears' career is a perfect case study of trauma-based mind control in the entertainment industry. From Lolita/kitten themes to group sex to Mars and clone labs, practically every aspect of MK ULTRA programming can be witnessed in her career. When her music videos are watched in chronological order, they tell a horrific story of never ending enslavement.
Britney has been a performer since her childhood days of Disney's Mouseketeers and won many pageants and talent competitions in the vein of Toddlers and Tiaras. Her 1998 first hit single, Hit Me Baby One More Time, is an obvious reference to physical abuse and identification with her handler and she appears in a uniform similar to a catholic schoolgirl.
The Babylonian Mystery Religion eventually became the Roman Catholic Church and factions of the church are at the root of the mind control network. Survivor Cathy O'Brien's formal induction as a presidential model mind controlled slave began with her first Holy Communion where she was given the ''Rite to Remain Silent.'' She received a Rosy Cross necklace which would lead her through the rest of her mind controlled existence. Her abuser told her he worked for the Vatican and now, so did she. The Rite to Remain Silent is anchored in the ''Vow of Silence'' performed by the Jesuit monks. At the end of the music video Britney awakens from her disassociation to find that the entire scenario was all in her imagination. This becomes a common theme in many of her videos.
In the 1999 video, You Drive Me Crazy, Britney co-stars with Nickelodeon star, Melissa Joan Hart otherwise known as Sabrina the Teenage Witch. The setting is a factory for mass producing slaves. Common lyrics of her songs include the mind control themes of being lonely, losing her mind, losing her senses or going crazy. That same year she released Born to Make You Happy '' a reference to the generational programming that usually begins before birth. The video opens with Britney dreaming/disassociating on a bed made of two cubes. She's wearing a shirt covered in Monarch butterflies. In the world of dark occultism, the double cube, or hypercube represents an inescapable prison and the butterflies represent the genetic memories pass through the bloodline. Britney is related to Laura Bush, after all.
In 2000, Britney's masters released the video, Oops I Did it Again, in which Britney is shown laying on a bed made of two eight-pointed stars that represent Inanna/Ishtar, the goddess of Babylon. Sacred Prostitution and hermaphroditic bodies and feminine men were particularly involved in the worship and ritual practices of Inanna's temples. Inanna, Sumer's ''Queen of Heaven'', unlike any other deity, has the ability to descend into the netherworld and return again to the heavens. Many girls in the industry are led from innocence to the pit of Hell, and ''back again'' in honor of Inanna. The interlude of the this video is the most bizzare. An astonaugt meets Britney and she removes his helmet and to his surprise there is an atmosphere on Mars! He hands her a chunk of black stone. Britney exclaims, "But I thought the old lady dropped it into the ocean in the end?"-- a reference the Heart of the Ocean necklace from Titanic. The astronaut says, "Well baby, I went down and got it for you." In the Babylonian story of creation, the god Marduk battles the goddess Tiamat, who is the ocean deified. She is often seen to represent a female principle, whereas Marduk stands for the male principle. Marduk is victorious, kills Tiamat, and creates the world from her body.
As mega rituals were unfolding in 2001, Britney Spears blatantly sang I'm A Slave 4 U declaring once and for all who is controlling her. At her VMA performance of the song, she dances with a giant python on her shoulders. Scenes from a black mass of the Church of Satan look strikingly similar. In 2003, Britney became a fully grown woman and an industry veteran when she teamed up with Madonna to sing Me Against the Music, another video that ends with her waking up from disassociation. Her ''consecration'' into the Babylonian industry was celebrated in a symbolic performance during the 2003 VMAs, alongside fellow Mouseketeer, Christina Aguilera, where the two were wed to ''Hollywood'' by the Kabbalistic High Priestess, Madonna.
In her very next video, Toxic (2004) she appears as many different characters while playing a spy in some sort of weird espionage scenario. In mind control victims, the Delta alters are programmed to carry out assignments such as assassinations. Lady Gaga continues this assassination theme in her video, Paparazzi, when she poisons her boyfriend to death while dressed in a Mickey Mouse costume.
In the 2004 video, Everytime, Britney is shown drowning in a hotel bathtub. The scenario was chillingly close to the death of Whitney Houston at the Beverly Hilton in 2012. In her bathtub scene, she is wearing a Kabbalah bracelet. According to many mind control survivors, the Tree of Life from the Kabbalah is a structure that programmers use to house different alters. When Britney 'dies' in the bathtub, she is born again as a baby in a hospital. Could this possibly be an Aleister Crowley Moonchild reference? Once again, at the end of the video, she wakes up as if it was all a dream.
In 2004 Britney embarked on a world tour called The Onyx Hotel. It was described as a "unique, mysterious hotel powered by an onyx stone, where guests who enter shine their own light into the gemstone and make their fantasies come to life. It's a vibrant, whimsical place where wondrous dreams are realized, and the darkest of secrets are revealed." The tour was marketed to a different demographic than her previous tours, changing from families and children to a more adult audience and the show also heavily targeted the gay market. Britney told MTV that ''The onyx stone is kind of symbolic of what guides me in my life, like there's a bigger picture in everything, and there's something that guides you where you need to go.'' The onyx stone has a deep occult significance. According to Fritz Springmeier's work, The Illuminati Formula to Create an Undetectable Total Mind Control Slave, black onyx is used by the Mothers of Darkness to capture souls.
The concert begins when the master of ceremonies, a creepy, belligerent, one eyed cross between Fat Bastard and RuPaul, welcomes spectators to the Onyx Hotel. He takes an onyx and throws it into the video screens, causing a virtual chandelier to fall into the floor. Britney's face appears on the giant screen and says ''Once you check in, you can't check out.'' In a pre-recorded video interlude during the concert, Jada Pinkett Smith morphs through from another dimension to lead Britney down a dark alley to reveal a secret doorway to the ''Mystic Lounge.'' In the next act, there is a video interlude of Spears wearing a ribbon and flowered-themed dress and entering the "Mystic Garden". In mind control, alters are created called Ribbons, which are the beginning of the Luciferian alter-like demons. Ribbons live in the garden and guard the System's ''Garden of Eden.'' They are primarily the message bearers to the different, levels and alters. The ribbons might have angelic names such as Michael or Gabriel.
In 2006, Britney posted a repeated loop of her song ''Rebellion'' on her website even though it was not a single. In the song, she talks of people close to her using poison and voodoo. Was this the beginning of her realization? In 2007, she released an album called Blackout just as her programming began to deteriorate. This is the same year that Britney had her infamous breakdown. Survivors report that when victims of mind control approach 30 years old, their brain attempts to break the amnesiac barriers and reintegrate itself. First, she dyed her hair dark brown. She then walked into Esther's Hair Salon and demanded to have her head shaved. The owner told Britney that she would not shave her head and Britney took the shears and did it herself. When Arizona Wilder told David Icke of her escape from the Mothers of Darkness she said that she had dyed her hair brown to be removed as the ritual goddess of the order. When this wasn't enough to keep her out of the rituals, she then shaved her head. When Britney was asked why she did it, she replied that she was tired of people touching her and she didn't want them plugging things into her. She had been in and out of ''rehab'' before the salon incident. After she shaved her head, she checked into Promises clinic in Malibu where she terrified staff by scrawling 666 onto her bald head, screaming she was the Anti-Christ and then attempting to hang herself with a bed sheet. Nickelodeon star, Amanda Bynes, has exhibited some of the same bizarre behavior this year.
Even after all that, she had still not been able to break free, neither was she allowed to take a break. Her handlers stuck her in a blonde weave and a sparkly black bikini and sent her back on stage to lip-synch with auto-tune for her supposed "comeback" on the 2007 VMA's.
In January 2008, TMZ.com reported: ''Sources are now painting a very disturbing picture of Britney Spears, or whoever she happens to be at any given moment. We're told the whole British accent thing -- well, it's more than an accent. Britney has multiple personalities, including, as people in her life call it, "the British girl." We're told when Spears loses the British personality, she has absolutely no idea what she did during the time she assumed that personality. Sources say Brit has a number of other identities, where she becomes "the weepy girl, the diva, the incoherent girl," and on and on. Sources say Britney had become the British girl the day she didn't show for her deposition and has no recollection of it.''
Her 2008 video, Break the Ice, is an animation where Britney seems to enact some revenge on her handlers. Her character crashes an Eyes Wide Shut type Illuminati party and fights off the Men in Black. Dan Aykroyd has an interesting story that relates to the time some ''Men in Black'' monitored his phone call with Britney Spears. As Aykroyd spoke to his Crossroads co-star about appearing on Saturday Night Live with her, he noticed the MIBs observing him, but looked back a second later to realize that they had vanished. Two hours later, the producers of Out There, the program he was taping, were ordered to shut it all down. A coincidence until you realize that the show itself was about to set the stage for UFO disclosure. Aykroyd believed that this program was a key and motivation to socially transform the planet to a more peaceful, loving and tolerant state.
In Break the Ice, Britney finds a clone lab under the mansion where they are keeping hundreds of ''Britneys'' in liquid tanks. She battles the MIBs and blows up the lab. She then finds her handler, a robotic business man in a dark office and delivers a death kiss to him. That would be the second time she assassinated someone by kissing them. This video represented somewhat of a victory for Britney and ended with ''To Be Continued'...''
When mind control slaves begin to break their programming, their handlers will stop at nothing to get them back on track. Her victory was short lived as the press declared her insane, a drug addict, an unfit mother, and a ''trainwreck''. When a slave has outlived their usefulness or poses a threat, they are assassinated or programmed to self-destruct. This is called being thrown from the Freedom Train. In interviews, Britney can be seen switching between alter personalities. She talks of being completely alone, she tries to reach out to people but they don't understand what she is telling them. She describes her life as ''groundhog day'' and tearfully whispers ''I'm sad.''
Her 2011 album was named Femme Fatal. Her video Hold It Against Me was directed by today's go-to director for mind-control/occult imagery, Jonas Akerlund, who also directed Lady Gaga and Beyonce's video about mass murder, Telephone. In Hold it Against Me, Britney is wearing a white wedding gown that gives away the ritualistic aspect of the video. It seems that she wasn't all that successful in getting people to stop plugging things into her. In the video, she is shown attached to intravenous lines to further emphasize her mind control. While Britney is levitated, strange eyeless dancers emerge from under her gown. A quick shot of one eye with two pupils is shown for about a half of a second. The short scene is very significant, it represents the existence of multiple personalities within the same person.
Britney's 2011 video, I Wanna Go, tells the saddest story of all. It begins as Britney gives a press conference where she declares she's pregnant with Brad Pitt's quintuplets. During the video she sexually harasses a fan, seduces a baby, flashes a cop in front of a child and gets searched/molested by said cop. She slaughters the paparazzi with a microphone only to find that they are programmed robots like the Terminator. She is ''rescued'' by a character famous for playing Guerrmo, a merciless drug lord on the HBO show Weeds. This character apparently loves convertibles, dancing girls, and 2% milk. At the end of the video she wakes up from disassociation once again to find that she's back at the press conference. Guerrmo takes the stand with Britney saying ''No more questions'' to the press. Britney turns to him and says ''I had the strangest dream.'' He replies, ''I love dreams'...and sea shells'' He gives Britney a handful of sea shells and leads her away. If you look up sea shells in Fritz Springmeier's book, it explains that the ''the VOW OF SILENCE is a keep quiet program activated by 'THE WALLS HAVE EARS & THE PLANTS HAVE EYES SO YOUR SILENCE IS TANTAMOUNT TO SUCCESS.' This is explained to the victim that the sea shells and plants have the ability to hear and that a sensitive occultist (programmer) can psychically pick up what the plants and sea shells hear.'' In the end Guerrmo turns away from Britney back to the audience to deliver a maniacal laugh and reveal that he is actually a programmed robotic demon handler. She has come the full circle of innocence, victimization, realization and rebellion, but this video clearly illustrates that she is still ultimately under the control of her handlers.
Russell & Katy
More stars like Britney are struggling to break free, but they desperately need our help. Cory Feldman is outing Hollywood for pedophilia. Roseanne Barr is publicly speaking out about trauma based mind control and has become a political advocate of the legalization of marijuana for victims of post-traumatic stress disorder. Recently, British actor and comedian, Russell Brand, has had David Icke and Laura Eisenhower on his talk show. Key people with a large outreach are waking up and allowing truth to enter the mainstream media; but they need our support as they try to enlighten their audience and loved ones and sometimes, they pay a terrible price.
In October 2010 Brand married pop star Katy Perry on top of an elephant in Northern India, the same place he had proposed to her just a short time before. The marriage lasted only fourteen months. Is this just another example of Hollywood's cavalier attitude towards commitment or are there other dark forces at work? In February 2011, Katy embarked on the largest tour of her career. The tour was described as ''Alice in Wonderland'' and ''Wizard of Oz,'' two of the most classic Monarch programming motifs. The year proved to be a tremendous success in the industry for her, but also showed a devastating personal heartbreak. Katy Perry has been identified as one of the top Illuminati princesses/slaves since her debut in I Kissed a Girl, written and produced by pop mogul, Max Martin. Martin has had his hand in just about every slave hit since the mid 90's. He has made superstars out of the Backstreet Boys, N'Synch, Ace of Base, and Britney Spears. He revived the careers of Celine Dion and Bon Jovi. He has written for and produced Kelly Clarkson, Pink, Usher, Taylor Swift, Justin Beiber, Ke$ha and many more.
The film Katy Perry: Part of Me documents the story of Perry's career as gospel singer, Katheryn Hudson, until the present day as global superstar Katy Perry. Scenes from the movie document her last world tour, the California Dreams Tour. Katy talks about her childhood, where her mother and father are traveling Pentecostal preachers, something she oddly has in common with Aleister Crowley whose parents were members of a strict Christian sect called the Plymouth Brethren. Many times, a strict Christian upbringing can bring about a serous backlash like Katy, Crowley or even Marilyn Manson. When Perry first started recording, she was paired with a team called ''The Matrix'' to give her a point of entry into the mainstream. They eventually dropped her and she later went on to sign with Capitol Records.
Before fame, Katy sang gospel and Christian rock until one day she somehow made that age-old deal. According to one interview, Katy states: ''When I was 15, because I grew up in a household where all I ever did was listen to gospel music'...I swear I wanted to be, like, the Amy Grant of music, but it didn't work out, and so I sold my soul to the devil.'' It seems that Katy got the raw end of the deal when the devil turned out to be a literal slave driver. The tour for her album was no joke. It ran a whopping 124 shows in 108 cities in 337 days. The show begins with a video screen introduction which tells the story of a girl named Katy who lives in a colorless world wasting her life cutting meat for a mean old butcher. One night, Perry escapes her dreadful reality by falling asleep
and visits a vibrant candy land in search for her pet cat, Kitty Purry and also for the love of her life, the Baker's Boy. Kitten programming is classic trauma-based mind control and the most widely used program. This programming is specifically for eliminating the learned moral convictions that Katy grew up with. It stimulates the primitive instincts devoid of inhibitions. This program is for developing the ''ultimate prostitute.'' In the first number, Katy appears on stage and starts performing Teenage Dream, while wearing a white dress with hypnotic spinning peppermints. In one interlude, Perry is shown taking a shortcut that leads her into a candy forest where she meets two naughty mimes who join her to perform a song called Ur So Gay. At the end of the performance, Perry takes a bite of their magical brownie. In the next section, a video interlude reveals that the mimes' brownie has transformed Perry into a catwoman, a plan executed by the evil butcher all along. A song called Circle the Drain is performed while Perry battles her dancers who are dressed as butchers before going into her song about love with inter-dimensional reptilian beings, E.T. The show continues with Who Am I Living For in which she is strapped up by her dancers with elastic strings and is left on the ground defeated. The encore begins with the final interlude of the show, which reveals that Perry has been dreaming/disassociating all along, suddenly the Baker's Boy enters her room dressed in a gingerbread costume to deliver cupcakes she has ordered for breakfast.
During her marriage to Russell, most of which she spent on her California Dreams tour, the mandate from Katy was to tour for two weeks and then take three or four days off to spend with Russell. Her handlers sabotaged this at every chance. To see Russell, Katy would fly across the world, to New York, L.A., New Orleans'...wherever Russell was, just to spend time with him. In the documentary, she runs herself ragged trying to get to where he is. She was committed to him and she describes him as the love of her life. Around day 214 of her tour, Katy looks exhausted as she asks to see a calendar so she can look for her ''relationship days,'' days she had planned to spend with Russell. Her handlers tell her that she should be resting on her days off, not trying to see her husband. During her stop in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Katy is shown weeping backstage. Her handlers attempt to cheer her up by giving her a gift from her ''trinkets box'' which upsets her even more, it was a necklace given to her by Russell that she thought she had lost. She is still crying heavily until the moment her platform raises her to the stage. When the peppermints start to spin, she puts on her bravest smile for the crowd.
In December, 2011, Russell filed for divorce in Los Angeles citing irreconcilable differences. The pair met when he was filming Get Him to the Greek, and she did a cameo with him. Katy recalls being so happy to be working with Russell that she was hopping like a bunny. Kevin Smith appeared on Russell Brand's show and told the story from his point of view. One day Russell showed up at Smith's house to work on a project but he could not concentrate because he had just met the most amazing woman. Kevin was so touched he had to give Russell the day off to go and be with her. There is no doubt that Russell and Katy were very much in love, so what went wrong? Given Russell Brand's recent taste in guests it is safe to say that he has at least some sense of reality and a quest for the truth. Is this why Katy's handlers tried so hard to keep them apart? Was Russell feeding her information that the powers didn't want her to be aware of because they needed her to help program the masses? According to interviews Katy Perry was having a profound positive effect on Russell as well'--something the controlling occultists could not tolerate. Katy told Esquire Magazine that she had reformed the former sex addict, who according to rumors used to sleep with up to 80 women a month. ''He was a heroin addict and now he's not. He was addicted to all kinds of things and now he's not. And he basically used to be a professional prostitute and now he's not,'' she said. Brand also seemed to be perfectly comfortable with monogamy. "I am living in a different way at the moment. Regardless of what happens in my current situation," he said. "I am unlikely to be satisfied with the calamitous promiscuity of the preceding five or six years." He went on to say that monogamy is not the only change he's made since getting sober, he was living a much healthier life overall. "I'm living in a disciplined way, do lots of yoga, exercise and transcendental meditation.''
After the divorce, in interviews of Katy, the mere mention of Russell puts her in tears instantly. Her fairy tale had been destroyed. Her 2012 hit, Wide Awake, (another Max Martin song) conceals many references to Monarch programming within its symbolism. It is a story of her thinking she has ''woken up'' and escaped, but in the end we find the story conveys that this is never possible.
At the beginning of the video, we see Katy completing the filming of her single California Gurls, which is based on the board game, Candyland. This candy theme is no doubt part of Katy's personal Monarch programming and Candyland appears in a list of internal structures found in recovering mind controlled slave, Cisco Wheeler. In the beginning of Wide Awake, Katy is fully into her ''pop star'' persona. When she enters her dressing room, she removes her wig, which symbolically represents her switching to another alter. Katy then stares at herself in the mirror for a while until she begins to dissociate from reality and enter a fantasy world. This is the inner-world of her psyche and it is a dark labyrinth. She knows that she won't make it through the maze without the one who has been stripped from her during the programming--her core persona. Through lights emerging from her breasts, she makes a call for help and her core appears before her in the form of a young Katy. It is the ''real her'' before her values and convictions were taken away. The little girl is the personality she had before being subjected to programming. Katy and her core then enter a room designed in classic Monarch trigger decor and her dress is made of butterflies. Through the mirror, she sees the evil paparazzi. Katy breaks the mirror in front of her and leaves the room, a symbolic act representing her attempting to break out of her programming. Then next scene is a ghoulish contrast to the rest of the video. She is now in a cold, sterile mental institution similar to the institution we see in Gaga's Marry the Night. We appear to be out of Katy's head and back to reality. She is completely ''shut down'' sitting in a wheel chair. Is this her MK programming site? While Katy is immobilized, little Katheryn, is ''Wide Awake'' and is determined to get them out of there.
Upon escaping the institution, Katy and her core persona find themselves back in the fantasy land. A cat with hypnotic eyes is a reminder that she is still one of their ''kittens'' and under the control of her handlers. The butterflies on Katy's head also symbolize this. Katy then ''defeats'' her fairy tale prince charming by delivering a powerful punch. Was this supposed to be Russell? At this point, little Katheryn gets on her bike and leaves. The core, authentic persona of Katy says goodbye and leaves in her place only a butterfly. The butterfly leads from the dressing room to a stage, before a performance of the song Teenage Dreams. Katy has also gone full circle and is back at the beginning, in her pop star persona, who she really is now. The real Katy has disappeared and she is merely a puppet of the music industry and a mind controlled slave. Wide Awake represents the false rebellion that so many others like Britney Spears went through, but ended up right back in slavery. At this time, Perry is halfway done with her new album called Schizophrenic. In one final twist, it seems the devil has left his mark on Russell Brand's career as well. According to Aleister Crowley's system of sorcery, the symbol for Russell's show, Brand X, is the actual Mark of the Beast!
Like so many other things in life, when it comes to slavery, it takes one to make one. A true free and sovereign person would have no use for slaves. The programming really is like an infinite train, or a virus, where slaves are programmed to be handlers and programmers to create more slaves. The kings and priest craft of Babylon, were themselves, slaves to their gods. The duties of their religion were an indispensable element of their life. Before their idols they came, bowing as dependents and slaves, to make their offerings of flesh and blood. Girded with burdensome restrictions, they believed that the violation of their rituals would entail disaster upon themselves and their city. On the other hand, they claimed to be as gods before their subjects and captives, demanding from them the same type of servitude and reverence.
We are all victims of trauma-based mind control to varying degrees. The rich, powerful and famous are the worst off. Their opulence and degenerative behavior is promoted in the tabloids so that we can worship and envy their lifestyle, never knowing that to obtain those things, they are yoked in absolute physical and spiritual servitude. The trauma that they endure trickles down and is expressed through their art so that everyone can be traumatized vicariously and they call it entertainment.
The creation of dissatisfaction of life in normal people is another form of trauma. Extravagant weddings, awards ceremonies and vacations are splashed around in the headlines to a population that can barely make ends meet. America's economy is worse than ever, but it is nothing for President Obama and his family to take a trip to Africa that reportedly cost between $60 and $100 million dollars. How do you think a young, struggling single mother feels when she goes through the grocery store checkout and sees that Beyonce and Jay-Z spend $1,000,000 a year to rent nursery space in the basement of the Barclays Sports Center (probably a MK programming site) to have a place for their daughter to play while they watch the games? If you want to live like this, you must sell your soul.
Slavery dominates in Hollywood and many stars are extinguished on the path to global enslavement. Our entertainers and artists need us now more than ever to help them escape their inescapable prison. The more we research and talk about these things, the more we support their liberation and the easier it will be for them to come forward. If you really love your celebrities, share the information and let's release the stars!
Bibliography:
Children of the Matrix, David Icke
The Two Babylons, Alexander Hislop
An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, Neil Gabler
The Illuminati Formula to Create an Undetectable Total Mind Control Slave, Fritz Springmeier
Trance-formation of America, Cathy O'Brien & Mark Phillips
Access Denied: For Reasons of National Security, Cathy O'Brien & Mark Phillips
Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, Kenneth Grant
Check out Mystery Inc. Book Selection
Special Thanks To: Vigilant Citizen for the chronicles of Hollywood mind control and symbolism.
Written by Jamie Hanshaw
Taylor Swift's Look What You Made Me Do Video: Illuminati & MKULTRA Symbolism
Mon, 04 Sep 2017 12:07
Hi, my name is Isaac Weishaupt and I'm your host on IlluminatiWatcher.com!
Today we'll explore and unravel hidden symbols in Taylor Swift's new video for Look What You Made Me Do. We'll see a confluence of concept that emphasize her rebirth into the occult realm of thinking, as well as symbols that suggest there is some mind control programming at play'...
Without further delay, let's get into it'...
I DID have a YouTube version of this video but they took it down. They claim it was a copyright violation but the video is clearly in accordance with Fair Use.
Soooooo f'-- YouTube, I uploaded it to DailyMotion instead. I may start using them instead because YouTube and Google are shutting down folks like myself.
The video starts out with Taylor underground with her arms crossed in the ''X''.
For those of you that have been following my website for the past few years; you'll already recognize the deeply esoteric meaning of the ''X'' in terms of occult dogma. If you're unsure of what I'm talking about, check out my article on the Illuminati Mark of the Beast.
The Reader's Digest version of that article is that the ''X'' symbolizes an occult calling upon forces from the Abyss. A dark, sinister force that can grant the wishes of its user through the goddess of Isis.
Another symbol I've discussed in great depth is that of the bathtub. How curious is it that Taylor goes from the underground burial into the bathtub in this video.
This makes sense when you read my article on the symbolism of the bathtub, which discusses how the bathtub is a cleansing ritual that one takes before crossing over into a new realm.
This is also the allegation behind the curious deaths of the ''diva'' goddess Whitney Houston and her daughter Bobbi Kristina; a topic discussed at great length in my hip hop conspiracy book Sacrifice: Magic Behind the Mic.
When Taylor is in this bathtub, she is shown being showered in diamonds.
This symbol takes us into the realm of MKULTRA mind control, in which some claim diamonds represent the mind controlled victims that are utilized by politicians (referred to as ''Presidential Models'').
We've seen this symbolism in the past from artists like Britney Spears and Beyonce (artists that both have a slew of occult symbolism worth considering, like when Britney shaved her head and said she was ''tired of people plugging things into her''):
Beyonce's Diamond Sex Slave Status'...and that's only the beginning of this video's mind control symbolism'...
Another symbol of MKULTRA mind control is that of the birdcage, which also makes an appearance in this video.
The birdcage represents the breakdown of the mind as well as the alchemical principles of becoming transmutated into a new form through the process represented by various birds (starting with the nigredo or ''blackening'').
We've seen this many times in the past:
Beyonce ''Partition'' video
Miley Cyrus as the black bird
Shia and Sia in Elastic Heart
Ariana Grande
Staying on the theme of mind control programming; the symbolism of the sex kitten is also referenced as a link to this concept. We see this one as well in Taylor's video.
She then goes into a room to control a slew of slaves as robots'...
'...which eventually breakdown from the trauma.
It's possible that Taylor was mocking Katy Perry since she was using the sex kitten long before Swift.
Or maybe it was Iggy Azalea?'...
'...Or Beyonce?'...
Or Azalea Banks?
Or Rita Ora?
Or Meghan Trainor?'...
Nah, I'm just over-analyzing, right?'...
Taking a step back, we can argue the video starts out by showing us Taylor as an initiate of the occult, starting out underground much like they practiced in the ancient Egyptian secret societies that buried initiates underneath the Pyramids of Giza before they were ''resurrected'' as a newly enlightened being in the ways of the occult.
This explains why we see all of Taylor's alter egos- a fracture of the mind where it breaks down into various alters in order to create an amnesic barrier.
This is why we hear the following in the video:
''I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone now. Why? Oh, cuz she's dead.''
So it seems that Taylor has gone down the path of so many artists before her. They are ''enlightening'' her into the ways of the occult.
Or perhaps they are just showing the symbolism that suggest it to be so.
Either way, we can add her to a growing list of entertainers that keep these conspiracy theories alive in the minds of so many that have questioned the nature of reality and the higher purposes being used by the ''Illuminati'' to evolve ALL OF US into THEIR WAYS.
If you want to understand what this is all about, check out my new book which breaks the ENTIRE thing down with more examples of occult symbolism in music, film, television and more; using actual occult doctrine with links and citations so you can check them out for yourself (should you not believe in such an insidious agenda)'...
THE DARK PATH (*as of this writing, the book is only available on this exclusive Gumroad link to the PDF ebook; it will be available on paperback, audiobook, iTunes, Amazon, etc. in Sept. 2017!).
Thanks for reading!
-Isaac
Website publisher of IlluminatiWatcher.com, author, and independent researcher; Isaac Weishaupt has been on the leading edge of conspiracy theories surrounding the elusive ''Illuminati'' and its infiltration of the entertainment industry. Using examples of familiar pop culture and works of entertainment, Isaac has been speaking and writing about the occult from a unique perspective that seeks to understand the big agenda while helping others along the way.
Isaac has been a featured guest on Dave Navarro's ''Dark Matter Radio,'' Richard C. Hoagland's ''Other Side of Midnight'', SIRIUS/XM's The All Out Show, The HigherSide Chats, Freeman Fly's ''The Free Zone'', Mark Devlin's ''Good Vibrations'', VICE, COMPLEX Magazine, and many more radio shows and podcasts. His fresh perspective and openly admitted imperfections promotes the rational approach to exploring these taboo subjects and conspiracy theories.
Origins and Techniques of Monarch Mind Control - The Vigilant Citizen
Mon, 04 Sep 2017 11:50
Monarch Programming is a method of mind control used by numerous organizations for covert purposes. It is a continuation of project MK-ULTRA, a mind-control program developed by the CIA, and tested on the military and civilians. The methods are astonishingly sadistic (its entire purpose is to traumatize the victim) and the expected results are horrifying: The creation of a mind-controlled slave who can be triggered at anytime to perform any action required by the handler. While mass media ignores this issue, over 2 million Americans have gone through the horrors of this program. This article looks at the origins of Monarch programming and some of its methods and symbolism.
NOTE: This article contains disturbing elements and might triggerMonarchsurvivors.
Monarch programming is a mind-control technique comprising elements of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) and Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). It utilizes a combination of psychology, neuroscience and occult rituals to create within the slaves an alter persona that can be triggered and programmed by the handlers. Monarch slaves are used by several organizations connected with the world elite in fields such as the military, sex slavery and the entertainment industry. This article will look at the origins of Monarch programming, its techniques and its symbolism.
OriginsThroughout the course of history, several accounts have been recorded describing rituals and practices resembling mind control. One of the earliest writings giving reference to the use of occultism to manipulate the mind can be found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It is a compilation of rituals, heavily studied by today's secret societies, which describes methods of torture and intimidation (to create trauma), the use of potions (drugs) and the casting of spells (hypnotism), ultimately resulting in the total enslavement of the initiate. Other events ascribed to black magic, sorcery and demon possession (where the victim is animated by an outside force) are also ancestors of Monarch programming.
It is, however, during the 20th century that mind control became a science in the modern sense of the term, where thousands of subjects have been systematically observed, documented and experimented on.
One of the first methodical studies on trauma-based mind control were conducted by Josef Mengele, a physician working in Nazi concentration camps. He initially gained notoriety for being one of the SS physicians who supervised the selection of arriving prisoners, determining who was to be killed and who was to become a forced labourer. However, he is mostly known for performing grisly human experiments on camp inmates, including children, for which Mengele was called the ''Angel of Death''.
Joseph Mengele, 1935Mengele is infamous for his sordid human experiments on concentration camps prisoners, especially on twins. A part of his work that is rarely mentioned however, is his research on mind control. Much of his research in this field was confiscated by the Allies and is still classified to this day.
''DR. GREEN (Dr. Joseph Mengele): The most significant programmer, perhaps one could give him the title of the father of Monarch Programming was Joseph Mengele, an ex-Nazi Concentration Camp doctor. Thousands of Monarch mindcontrolled slaves in the U.S. had ''Dr. Green'' as their chief programmer.'' [1. Fritz Springmeier, The Illuminati Formula to Create a Mind Control Slave]
''Dr. Joseph Mengele of Auschwitz notoriety was the principle developer of the trauma-based Monarch Project and the CIA's MK Ultra mind control programs. Mengele and approximately 5, 000 other high ranking Nazis were secretly moved into the United States and South America in the aftermath of World War II in an Operation designated Paperclip. The Nazis continued their work in developing mind control and rocketry technologies in secret underground military bases. The only thing we were told about was the rocketry work with former Nazi star celebrities like Warner Von Braun. The killers, torturers, and mutilators of innocent human beings were kept discretely out of sight, but busy in U.S. underground military facilities which gradually became home to thousands upon thousands of kidnapped American children snatched off the streets (about one million per year) and placed into iron bar cages stacked from floor to ceiling as part of the 'training'. These children would be used to further refine and perfect Mengele's mind control technologies. Certain selected children (at least the ones who survived the 'training') would become future mind controlled slaves who could be used for thousands of different jobs ranging anywhere from sexual slavery to assassinations. A substantial portion of these children, who were considered expendable, were intentionally slaughtered in front of (and by) the other children in order to traumatize the selected trainee into total compliance and submission''. [2. Ken Adachi, Mind Control the Ultimate Terror]
Mengele's research served as a basis for the covert, illegal CIA human research program named MK-ULTRA.
MK-ULTRADeclassified MK-Ultra documentProject MK-ULTRA ran from the early 1950s to at least the late 1960s, using American and Canadian citizens as its test subjects. The published evidence indicates that Project MK-ULTRA involved the use of many methodologies to manipulate individual mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs and other chemicals, sensory deprivation, isolation, and verbal and physical abuse.
The most publicized experiments conducted by MK-ULTRA involved the administration of LSD on unwitting human subjects, including CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, mentally ill patients, and members of the general public, in order to study their reactions.
However, the scope of MK-ULTRA does not however stop. Experiments involving violent electroshocks, physical and mental torture and abuse were used in a systematic matter on many subjects, including children.
Declassified picture of a young MK-ULTRA subject, 1962.Although the admitted goals of the projects were to develop torture and interrogation methods to use on the country's enemies, some historians asserted that the project aimed to create ''Manchurian Candidates'', programmed to perform various acts such as assassinations and other covert missions.
MK-ULTRA was brought to light by various commissions in the 1970s, including the Rockefeller Commission of 1975. Although it is claimed that the CIA stopped such experiments after these commissions, some whistle-blowers have come forth stating that the project simply went ''underground'' and Monarch Programming has become the classified successor of MK-ULTRA.
The most incriminating statement to date made by a government official as to the possible existence of Project MONARCH was extracted by Anton Chaitkin, a writer for the publication The New Federalist. When former CIA Director William Colby was asked directly, ''What about monarch?'' he replied angrily and ambiguously, ''We stopped that between the late 1960s and the early 1970s.'' [3. Anton Chaitkin, ''Franklin Witnesses Implicate FBI and U.S. Elites in Torture and Murder of Children'', The New Federalist]
Monarch ProgrammingAlthough there has never been any official admittance of the existence of Monarch programming, prominent researchers have documented the systematic use of trauma on subjects for mind-control purposes. Some survivors, with the help of dedicated therapists, were able to ''deprogram'' themselves to then go on record and disclose the horrifying details of their ordeals.
Monarch slaves are mainly used by organizations to carry out operations using patsies trained to perform specific tasks, who do not question orders, who do not remember their actions and, if discovered, who automatically commit suicide. They are the perfect scapegoats for high-profile assassinations (see Sirhan Sirhan), the ideal candidates for prostitution, slavery and private movie productions. They are also the perfect puppet performers for the entertainment industry.
''What I can say is I now believe that ritual-abuse programming is widespread, is systematic, is very organized from highly esoteric information which is published no-where, has not been on any book or talk show, that we have found it all around this country and at least one foreign country.
People say, ''What's the purpose of it?'' My best guess is that the purpose of it is that they want an army of Manchurian Candidates, ten of thousands of mental robots who will do prostitution, do movies, smuggle narcotics, engage in international arms smuggling, all sorts of very lucrative things, and do their bidding and eventually the megalomaniacs at the top believe they'll create a Satanic Order that will rule the world''. [4. D. Corydon Hammond, Ph.D]
Monarch programmers cause intense trauma to subjects through the use of electroshock, torture, abuse and mind games in order to force them to dissociate from reality '' a natural response in some people when then are faced with unbearable pain. The subject's ability to dissociate is a major requirement and it is ,apparently, most readily found in children that come from families with multiple generations of abuse. Mental dissociation enables the handlers to create walled-off personas in the subject's psyche, which can then be programmed and triggered at will.
''Trauma-based mind control programming can be defined as systematic torture that blocks the victim's capacity for conscious processing (through pain, terror, drugs, illusion, sensory deprivation, sensory over-stimulation, oxygen deprivation, cold, heat, spinning, brain stimulation, and often, near-death), and then employs suggestion and/or classical and operant conditioning (consistent with well-established behavioral modification principles) to implant thoughts, directives, and perceptions in the unconscious mind, often in newly-formed trauma-induced dissociated identities, that force the victim to do, feel, think, or perceive things for the purposes of the programmer. The objective is for the victim to follow directives with no conscious awareness, including execution of acts in clear violation of the victim's moral principles, spiritual convictions, and volition.
Installation of mind control programming relies on the victim's capacity to dissociate, which permits the creation of new walled-off personalities to ''hold'' and ''hide'' programming. Already dissociative children are prime ''candidates'' for programming''. [5. Ellen P. Lacter, Ph.D., The Relationship Between Mind Control Programming and Ritual Abuse]
Monarch mind control is covertly used by various groups and organizations for various purposes. According to Fritz Springmeier, these groups are known as ''The Network'' and form the backbone of the New World Order.
Origins of the NameMonarch mind control is named after the Monarch butterfly '' an insect who begins its life as a worm (representing undeveloped potential) and, after a period of cocooning (programming) is reborn as a beautiful butterflies (the Monarch slave). Some characteristics specific to the Monarch butterfly are also applicable to mind control.
''One of the primary reasons that the Monarch mind-control programming was named Monarch programming was because of the Monarch butterfly. The Monarch butterfly learns where it was born (its roots) and it passes this knowledge via genetics on to its offspring (from generation to generation). This was one of the key animals that tipped scientists off, that knowledge can be passed genetically. The Monarch program is based upon Illuminati and Nazi goals to create a Master race in part through genetics. If knowledge can be passed genetically (which it is), then it is important that parents be found that can pass the correct knowledge onto those victims selected for the Monarch mind control.'' [6. Ibid.]
''When a person is undergoing trauma induced by electroshock, a feeling of light-headedness is evidenced; as if one is floating or fluttering like a butterfly. There is also a symbolic representation pertaining to the transformation or metamorphosis of this beautiful insect: from a caterpillar to a cocoon (dormancy, inactivity), to a butterfly (new creation) which will return to its point of origin. Such is the migratory pattern that makes this species unique.'' [7. Ron Patton, Project Monarch]
MethodThe victim/survivor is called a ''slave'' by the programmer/handler, who in turn is perceived as ''master'' or ''god.'' About 75% are female, since they possess a higher tolerance for pain and tend to dissociate more easily than males. Monarch handlers seek the compartmentalization of their subject's psyche in multiple and separate alter personas using trauma to cause dissociation.
The following is a partial list of these forms of torture:
1. Abuse and torture
2. Confinement in boxes, cages, coffins, etc, or burial (often with an opening or air-tube for oxygen)
3. Restraint with ropes, chains, cuffs, etc.
4. Near-drowning
5. Extremes of heat and cold, including submersion in ice water and burning chemicals
6. Skinning (only top layers of the skin are removed in victims intended to survive)
7. Spinning
8. Blinding light
9. Electric shock
10. Forced ingestion of offensive body fluids and matter, such as blood, urine, feces, flesh, etc.
11. Hung in painful positions or upside down
12. Hunger and thirst
13. Sleep deprivation
14 Compression with weights and devices
15. Sensory deprivation
16. Drugs to create illusion, confusion, and amnesia, often given by injection or intravenously
17. Ingestion or intravenous toxic chemicals to create pain or illness, including chemotherapy agents
18. Limbs pulled or dislocated
19. Application of snakes, spiders, maggots, rats, and other animals to induce fear and disgust
20. Near-death experiences, commonly asphyxiation by choking or drowning, with immediate resuscitation
22. Forced to perform or witness abuse, torture and sacrifice of people and animals, usually with knives
23. Forced participation in slavery
24. Abuse to become pregnant; the fetus is then aborted for ritual use, or the baby is taken for sacrifice or enslavement
25. Spiritual abuse to cause victim to feel possessed, harassed, and controlled internally by spirits or demons
26. Desecration of Judeo-Christian beliefs and forms of worship; dedication to Satan or other deities
27. Abuse and illusion to convince victims that God is evil, such as convincing a child that God has abused her
28. Surgery to torture, experiment, or cause the perception of physical or spiritual bombs or implants
29. Harm or threats of harm to family, friends, loved ones, pets, and other victims, to force compliance
30. Use of illusion and virtual reality to confuse and create non-credible disclosure [8. Ellen P. Lacter, Ph.D., Kinds of Torture Endured in Ritual Abuse and Trauma-Based Mind Control]
''The basis for the success of the Monarch mind-control programming is that different personalities or personality parts called alters can be created who do not know each other, but who can take the body at different times. The amnesia walls that are built by traumas, form a protective shield of secrecy that protects the abusers from being found out, and prevents the front personalities who hold the body much of the time to know how their System of alters is being used. The shield of secrecy allows cult members to live and work around other people and remain totally undetected. The front alters can be wonderful Christians, and the deeper alters can be the worst type of Satanic monster imaginable''a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde effect. A great deal is at stake in maintaining the secrecy of the intelligence agency or the occult group which is controlling the slave. The success rate of this type of programming is high but when it fails, the failures are discarded through death. Each trauma and torture serves a purpose. A great deal of experimentation and research went into finding out what can and can't be done. Charts were made showing how much torture a given body weight at a given age can handle without death.'' [9. Springmeier, op. cit.]
''Due to the severe trauma induced through ECT, abuse and other methods, the mind splits off into alternate personalities from the core. Formerly referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder, it is presently recognized as Dissociative Identity Disorder and is the basis for MONARCH programming. Further conditioning of the victim's mind is enhanced through hypnotism, double-bind coercion, pleasure-pain reversals, food, water, sleep and sensory deprivation, along with various drugs which alter certain cerebral functions''. [10. Patton, op. cit.]
Dissociation is thus achieved by traumatizing the subject, using systematic abuse and using terrifying occult rituals. Once a split in the core personality occurs, an ''internal world'' can be created and alter personas can be programmed using tools such as music, movies (especially Disney productions) and fairy tales. These visual and audio aids enhance the programming process using images, symbols, meanings and concepts. Created alters can then be accessed using trigger words or symbols programmed into the subject's psyche by the handler. Some of the most common internal images seen by mind control slaves are trees, Cabalistic Tree of life, infinity loops, ancient symbols and letters, spider webs, mirrors, glass shattering, masks, castles, mazes, demons, butterflies, hour glasses, clocks and robots. These symbols are commonly inserted in popular culture movies and videos for two reasons: to desensitize the majority of the population, using subliminals and neuro-linguistic programming and to deliberately construct specific triggers and keys for base programming of highly-impressionable MONARCH children. [11. Ibid.] Some of the movies used in Monarch programming include The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty .
The movie The Wizard of Oz is used by Monarch handlers to program their slaves. Symbols and meanings in the movie become triggers in the slave's mind enabling easy access to the slave's mind by the handler. In popular culture, veiled references to Monarch programming often use analogies to The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland.In each case, the slave is given a particular interpretation of the movie's storyline in order to enhance programming. For example, a slave watching The Wizard of Oz is taught that ''somewhere over the rainbow'' is the ''happy place'' dissociative trauma slaves must go to in order to escape the unbearable pain being inflicted upon them. Using the movie, programmers encourage slaves to go ''over the rainbow'' and dissociate, effectively separating their minds from their bodies.
''As mentioned before, the hypnotist will find children easier to hypnotize if they know how to do it with small children. One method that is effective is to say to the small children, ''Imagine you are watching a favorite television show.'' This is why the Disney movies and the other shows are so important to the programmers. They are the perfect hypnotic tool to get the child's mind to dissociate in the right direction. The programmers have been using movies since almost day one to help children learn the hypnotic scripts. For children they need to be part of the hypnotic process. If the hypnotist allows the child to make up his own imagery, the hypnotic suggestions will be stronger. Rather than telling the child the color of a dog, the programmer can ask the child. This is where the books and films shown the child assist in steering its mind in the right direction. If the hypnotist talks to a child, he must take extra precaution not to change the tone of his voice and to have smooth transitions. Most of the Disney films are used for programming purposes. Some of them are specifically designed for mind-control.'' [12. Springmeier, op. cit.]
Levels of Monarch ProgrammingThe levels of Monarch Programming identify the slave's ''functions'' and are named after the Electroencephalography (EEG) brainwaves associated with them.
Types of brain waves in EEGRegarded as ''general'' or regular programming, ALPHA is within the base control personality. It characterized by extremely pronounced memory retention, along with substantially increased physical strength and visual acuity. Alpha programming is accomplished through deliberately subdividing the victims personality which, in essence, causes a left brain-right brain division, allowing for a programmed union of Left and Right through neuron pathway stimulation.
BETA is referred to as ''sexual'' programming (slaves). This programming eliminates all learned moral convictions and stimulates the primitive instinct, devoid of inhibitions. ''Cat'' alters may come out at this level. Known as Kitten programming, it is the most visible kind of programming as some female celebrities, models, actresses and singers have been subjected to this kind of programming. In popular culture, clothing with feline prints often denote Kitten programming.
DELTA is known as ''killer'' programming and was originally developed for training special agents or elite soldiers (i.e. Delta Force, First Earth Battalion, Mossad, etc.) in covert operations. Optimal adrenal output and controlled aggression is evident. Subjects are devoid of fear and very systematic in carrying out their assignment. Self-destruct or suicide instructions are layered in at this level.
THETA '' Considered to the ''psychic'' programming. Bloodliners (those coming from multi-generational Satanic families) were determined to exhibit a greater propensity for having telepathic abilities than did non-bloodliners. Due to its evident limitations, however, various forms of electronic mind control systems were developed and introduced, namely, bio-medical human telemetry devices (brain implants), directed-energy lasers using microwaves and/or electromagnetics. It is reported these are used in conjunction with highly-advanced computers and sophisticated satellite tracking systems. [13. Patton, op. cit.]
In ConclusionIt is difficult to remain objective when describing the horrors endured by Monarch slaves. The extreme violence, the abuse, the mental torture and sadistic games inflicted on victims by ''notable scientists'' and high-level officials prove the existence of a true ''dark side'' in the powers that be. Despite the revelations, the documents and the whistle-blowers, a great majority of the population ignores, dismisses or avoids the issue altogether. Over two million Americans have been programmed by trauma mind-control since 1947 and the CIA publicly admitted its mind control projects in 1970. Movies such as The Manchurian Candidate have directly referred to the subject, even depicting actual techniques, such as electroshock, the use of trigger words and microchip implementation. Several public figures we see on our TV and movie screens are mind control slaves. Famous people such as Candy Jones, Celia Imrie and Sirhan Sirhan have gone on record and disclosed their mind control experiences'...and yet the general public claims that it ''cannot exist''.
The research and funds invested in project Monarch do not however only apply to mind control slaves. Many of the programming techniques perfected in these experiments are applied on a mass scale through mass media. Mainstream news, movies, music videos, advertisements and television shows are conceived using the most advanced data on human behavior ever compiled. A lot of this comes from Monarch programming.
Britney Spears' "Work B*tch" and Iggy Azalea's "Change Your Life": Two Videos Celebrating Kitten Programming - The Vigilant Citizen
Mon, 04 Sep 2017 11:44
Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea were born on opposite sides of the world, but their videos ''Work B*tch'' and ''Change Your Life'' contain the same exact hidden meaning. Indeed, the symbolism of these videos are both celebrations of the mind control culture of the Illuminati entertainment industry, especially Kitten Programming.
There are plenty of differences between Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea: Britney is from the U.S. while Iggy is from Australia; Britney is a veteran in the music business while Iggy is a newcomer; Britney sings pop while Iggy raps. Despite these surface differences, they both ultimately work for the same bosses who use their sex appeal to push the Illuminati Agenda. Work B*tch and Change Your Life were both released around the same time, they both take place in a ''Las Vegas showgirl'' context and they both convey the same exact twisted message: Being an industry Kitten is great because it will make you rich, famous and even powerful. Both videos are all about glamorizing the Mind-Control culture the occult elite revels in '' although it is all about violent, disgusting and sadistic exploitation.
While on the surface, these videos appear to be about ''empowerment'' (I hate that word), they are actually celebrating the entertainment industry's exploitation of victims of Kitten programming. (If you've never heard of Mind Control or Kitten Programming, read this article first).
Let's look at the insidious symbolism of these videos.
Work B*tchWhen one knows about Britney Spears' actual living conditions and mental state in the past few years, watching Work B*tch becomes somewhat difficult, as its message is ironic in the saddest way possible. In my several articles on Britney, I have described how, since her meltdown, she has become a literal slave, heavily medicated and with absolutely no power over her career, finances or personal life. Britney has been living under the conservatorship of various handlers since 2008, meaning that, during all of these years, she has never gained back control of her life.
Considering these facts, the lyrics of Work B*tch become somewhat disturbing, as they appear to be words a pimp who say to his ''employee''. Or what a Beta Kitten handler would tell an MK slave (like Britney) '...
You wanna hot body
You want a Bugatti
You wanna Maserati
You better work b*tch
You want a Lamborghini
Sip martinis
Look hot in a bikini
You better work b*tch
You wanna live fancy
Live in a big mansion
Party in France
You better work b*tch
In the song and video, Britney plays the role of the handler who is yelling stuff at her slaves '... the same kind of stuff she is probably told on a daily basis. Like most of Britney's recent releases, the song is almost ridiculing her condition, as if her handlers are saying: ''Look at what we're doing with her. We're making her sing about her own captivity''. To make things worse, Britney sings the song with a British accent. While, at first glance, this fact might be trivial, remember that in 2008, when Britney went through a gigantic meltdown, she was caught speaking with a British accent '' a symptom of Multiple Personality Disorder, which is itself a symptom of Monarch Programming. Here's a 2008 article about the meltdown and her British accent:
Britney Spears Lapses Into a British AccentBritney Spears has a new accessory to go with her pink wig: a British accent.
In the last several weeks, Spears, 26, has been videotaped numerous times trading her Louisiana twang for U.K. inflections.
''She had the English accent thing going the whole time'' while shopping at Kitson last Thursday, according to a source. ''It didn't stop.''
Even when angry, the accent appears. On an L.A. shopping trip to Macy's on Jan. 13, she screamed at the paparazzi, ''Get out of my G'--'-- face!'' '' in a British accent.
So is it all in fun or has she flipped her pink wig?
''When someone has dissociative identity disorder'' '' formerly known as multiple personality disorder '' ''each identity is split off from the other,'' says L.A. psychologist Renee A. Cohen, who is not treating Spears. ''Each identity would have its own name, memories, behavioral traits and emotional characteristics.''
Cohen says the critical question is: ''When Britney uses the British accent, or appears to take on another identity, does she know she's Britney Spears?''
''Otherwise, she could simply be behaving this way for attention, for sympathy, or any other reason,'' adds Cohen. ''It's foolish to attempt to diagnose her without a formal evaluation.''
One possible influence could be Spears's maternal grandmother, Lilian Bridges, who was originally from England.
Also, Spears's new beau, photographer Adnan Ghalib, grew up in Birmingham, England.
According to paparazzi who trail the singer around the clock, one thing is for sure: the pink wig means something's changing.
''When she puts on the pink wig, you just know something crazy is about to happen,'' said one paparazzo.
'' Source: People.com
Knowing this fact, making Britney sing in a British accent is almost a code for showing that she's embodying another persona. She's a MK handler.
In the video, Britney bosses around Beta Kitten slaves around (they even have kitten ears), whipping them into submission and calling them b*****s. Knowing Britney's condition, this is all rather twisted This scene defines the entire video. Britney is holding Beta Kittens on a leash, controlling them. She stands on an inverted pyramid, perhaps to highlight the fact that Britney is actually NOT at the top of the pyramid. She is actually at the bottom of it, not unlike these leashed kittens.Some might say: ''That's an empowering video! Britney is being empowered! She empowers her fans by seeing her being so empowered!'' Did I mention that I hate the word ''empowered''? To empower means ''to give power''. Watching a video does not give you power. It actually accomplishes the exact opposite. Those who use the word ''empowering'' to describe a music video remind me of a Simpsons line about the word ''proactive'': ''Excuse me, but ''proactive'' and ''paradigm''? Aren't these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important?''.
Britney herself admitted that she was not ''empowered'' by the video. Shortly after the release of the video, Britney called a radio station and stated that she was pressured into its highly sexualized concept, something she wants to stop doing ever since she became a mother. However, as stated above, she has no power over her own life or work.
Britney Spears implies she's being pressured to keep sexed-up imageIs Britney Spears being pressured to be overly sexual? That's what the pop star implied during a radio interview.
Spears told a Boston radio show that she wants to be more modest but she's pressured to maintain her sexy image. When discussing her latest music video for ''Work B***h,'' Spears said she made editors cut out a lot of the sexed-up scenes.
''Oh my God we showed way more skin and did way more stuff for the video than what is actually there,'' she said. ''I cut, like, out half the video because I am a mother and because, you know, I have children and it's hard to play sexy mom while you're, you know, being a pop star as well.''
The radio host then asked Spears straight out if she had people pushing her to shoot sexy scenes. She laughed and replied ''Yes.''
She said in her ideal world, her image would be different.
''A lot of sex goes in to what I do'... But sometimes I would just like to bring it back to the old days when it was like one outfit through the whole video, and you're just dancing through the whole video, and there's not that much sex stuff going on and it's just about the dance.''
('...)
'' FOX News, Britney Spears implies she's being pressured to keep sexed-up image
Towards the end of the video, we see blindfolded mannequins being brought into the desert. They then explode.
Blindfolded mannequins represent the state of mind controlled slaves. Blowing them up into body parts represent the fragmenting of a slave's psyche into several personas. This image is used in several videos including Beyonce's ''Crazy''.Work B*tch is therefore another tribute to Britney's own mind control status. While her situation is sad and disturbing, however, it doesn't stop new artists from following in her footsteps.
Change Your LifeIggy Azalea is a rapper from Australia who moved to the United States at the age of 16. She soon got signed by Interscope Records and almost immediately embraced that sweet, sweet Illuminati symbolism.
A butterfly hiding one eye: That's Illuminati symbolism 101.Iggy is now signed with Island Def Jam (also home to Rihanna, Kanye West and many others) and her single Change Your Life confirms that she's there to push the Agenda.
Inspired by the movie Showgirls, Change Your Life depicts Iggy as a Vegas dancer and T.I. as a club owner. While this premise is simple, when ones understand the symbolism of the video, it becomes the story of a Beta Kitten being initiated in the Illuminati industry.
The glass of this picture frame is shown broken at the beginning of the video for no apparent reason. This can represent the fractured personality of an MK slave. While not ALL broken glass represents fractured personalities, this image fits with the context of the rest of the video. Iggy lays in bed with a baby tiger '' a reference to Kitten Programming.As its title states, the song is about Iggy apparently being able to ''change your life'' '' going from rags to riches and so forth. Here are the lyrics of the chorus:
Imma change your life, Imma change it
Imma change your life (life)
Once you go great, you never go good
You never go back, even if you could
I'll show you my way, I got that good-good
You never go back, even if you could
Have you ever wished your life would change?
Woke up and you lived your dreams
Baby I could help you make that change
I could show you how to do this thing
While these lyrics are as ''empowering'' as Britney's Work B*tch, the video depicts Iggy as dancer who doesn't like her boss/pimp. In other words, she doesn't have power. Like Britney's song, it appears that the Illuminati is talking THROUGH Iggy, subtly letting young people know that ''changing their lives'' implies being exploited by the Illuminati industry. We once again see a twisted association between ''making it big'' and being an industry Beta kitten and, through symbolism, the video shows Iggy's initiation into the Illuminati industry.
Although Iggy does not appear to like the club owner played by T.I., she nevertheless gets intimate with him on the hood of a car. Why? Because that's what Beta Kittens do. On a more esoteric level, she wears a red dress, the symbolic color of initiation.
Is copulating with her boss/handler a requirement in order for her to ''change her life''? Does this represent the ritual initiation into the Illuminati industry?After the encounter, we see a new Iggy in town.
As if to denote her initiation, she is wearing a top featuring a big All-Seeing Eye. She stands in front of a club named Cheetah, which is another clear reference to Kitten Programming. She sets fire to a car (is it her boss'?) to represent the ''burning'' of her old life. In a scene that is shown in parallel to the one above, Iggy is dressed in white and is arrested by the police. Did she get arrested because she lit that car on fire? If that's the case, why is she dressed differently and why is this scene playing at the same time as the one above (and not after)? In actuality, this scene can represent what happens after initiation in the industry: the ''good girl'' dressed in white ''is taken away for good'' while the Illuminati-girl dressed in black (with an All-Seeing eye) remains.Is that what Iggy means by ''Once you go great, you never go good''? In the words of Iggy, once you're initiated: ''You never go back, even if you could''.
In ConclusionReleased around the same time, Britney's Work B*tch and Iggy's Change Your Life are similar in several ways: They both depict the artists as Vegas dancers, they are both drenched in Kitten Programming imagery, the lyrics are both written from the point of view of those controlling them and, more importantly, both have an psuedo-empowering message that revolves around the glorifying being an industry Beta Kitten.
Sadly, to ''make it'' in the Illuminati industry, stars must sell their bodies and give up their soul. This process is celebrated in these videos and sold to young girls around the world. Furthermore, as the MK symbolism of the videos subtly imply, these artists who ''made it'' are not in control of what's happening '' they're actually slaves to their owners. Britney Spears' life is probably the most transparent case of a pop star under heavy mind control. In a rare moment of clarity, Britney went on record and stated that Work B*tch went too far and was too sexual. However, she did it anyway '... because Beta slaves do not call the shots in their own lives. What did Britney's handlers tell her when she was opposed working on that video? ''You better work b*tch''.
The Sinister Meaning of Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do" - The Vigilant Citizen
Mon, 04 Sep 2017 11:36
Taylor Swift's Look What You Made Me Do is said to be about her poking fun at her foes and herself. However, the symbolism of the video directly refers to the sinister side of the entertainment industry and its obsession with mind control.
Taylor Swift is not new to the game. Back in 2009, in the article The 2009 VMAs: The Occult Mega-Ritual, I explained how Swift was part of a televised ritual. It was Taylor Swift's ''initiation'' into the entertainment industry. After she was ''humiliated'' by Kanye West during an acceptance speech, Swift re-emerged, dressed in red, as a new and consecrated artist. This is when Swift's work began to be tainted with the codes and symbolism of the occult elite.
Eight years later, at the 2017 VMAs, Taylor Swift premiered her new video Look What You Made Me Do (known as LWYMMD on Twitter). The message of the video couldn't be clearer: She is now a full fledged industry slave. What does that mean? Read on.
Most mass media sources who'll attempt to ''decode'' this video will point out the disses directed at Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry, and her ex-boyfriend Calvin Harris. However, by doing so, they ignore about 90% imagery of the video. There is something else going on.
To those ''in the know'', the video can almost be read as a MK-Symbolism 101. Indeed, the video taps into all of the imagery and concepts that have been discussed on this site for years. Those who rule the entertainment industry need to have this Monarch culture constantly at the forefront of popular culture. Now it is Taylor Swift's turn to bring it in full force, with a video that is breaking records of YouTube and Spotify.
LWYMMD is indeed a blatantly obvious Monarch manifesto. (If you've never heard of Monarch programming, a deviation of the CIA project MKULTRA, read this article first).
The main goal of Monarch is to program slaves to have multiple personas that can be triggered at will. Beta Programming (aka Sex Kitten programming) is used to create sex slaves to be trafficked in the shady elite underworld.
Newsflash: The entertainment industry is full of Beta Kittens. Newsflash: The elite brags about this in mass media using the likes of Taylor Swift.
To understand the true mind state of the video, one doesn't need to look much further than the title: Look What You Made Me Do. Industry handlers own Taylor Swift and they make her do whatever is needed to push their agenda.
The video symbolically describes what happens to stars who get caught up in the higher levels of the occult entertainment industry. Although they are insanely successful, they also become slaves to the industry, with no life of their own. Their sound, image, and even their personality are shaped at will by those behind the scenes.
The video doesn't only portray Swift as a slave of the industry, it also announces that she has paradoxically ''ascended'' to the status of Grand Priestess. Sounds ridiculous? Maybe it would be ridiculous '... if the video wasn't so blatant about it.
Mass media has been hard at word ''decoding'' the video. However, most critics completely miss the main underlying thread of the video.
''The video is good fun, if a little bit mad; it's certainly the most brazen and ambitious pop music video since Beyonc(C) dropped Lemonade in the spring of last year, replete with pyrotechnics and dozens of costume changes. But it doesn't amount to much more than a succession of disconnected images.''
'' The Guardian, Look what you made her do: decoding the disses of Taylor Swift's new video
The video is not a ''succession of disconnected images''. It is actually very linear and coherent. However, in order to understand the narrative at hand, one needs to a thing or two about Monarch programming.
The video begins with a zombie Taylor Swift rising from the dead.
Zombie Swift rises from the grave and starts singing about someone she really doesn't like.I don't like your little games
Don't like your tilted stage
The role you made me play
Of the fool, no, I don't like you
I don't like your perfect crime
How you laugh when you lie
You said the gun was mine
The first verse is said to allude to Kanye West and/or Katy Perry because they both performed on tilted stages. However, when one considers the context of the video, she can also be singing to her handlers who 'play little games' to program her and who push her into ''the roles they make her play''.
We then see zombie Taylor burying the old Taylor.
The old Taylor Swift is dead and being buried by a new Taylor Swift. This is classic Monarch imagery representing the creation of a new persona.This image of Swift's corpse is juxtaposed with the new persona laying in diamonds.
Taylor is bathing in diamonds and jewelry, next to a single dollar bill.In MK programming, diamonds are used to identify Sex Kitten slaves who elevated to a ''higher'' level and to become ''presidential models''.
''For bona-fides & recognition signals, the Monarch slaves wear diamonds to signify they are presidential models, rubies to signify their Oz programming for prostitution, and emeralds to signify their programming to do drug business.''
'' Fritz Springmeier, The Illuminati Symbolism to Create Mind Control Slaves
In the next scene, Taylor is crowned a ''high priestess'' of the industry. How? By recreating the High Priestess tarot card.
Swift sits between two pillars as snakes creep up the stairs. The High Priestess tarot card depicts a woman between the Masonic pillars Joachin and Boaz.In previous articles, I've stated that Madonna was considered a High Priestess of the industry. It appears that Taylor Swift has now achieved this status as well.
But why is this Grand Priestess surrounded with snakes?
Snakes everywhere.Do the snakes represent Swift owning up to her being called a snake by Kim Kardashian on social media? On one level, yes. However, considering the occult context of this scene, snakes also represent a deeper concept. Indeed, in Mystery schools, the serpent is associated with Lucifer '' the light bringer '' the ''savior'' who brought knowledge to Adam and Eve by convincing them to bite the proverbial apple. She's a Grand Priestess in the occult elite's system.
On each pillar is inscribed ET TU BRUTE, a Latin phrase meaning ''And you, Brutus?''. These words were made famous in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, said by Caesar as he was being stabbed to death by his friend and prot(C)g(C) Brutus.
What does that mean in Taylor Swift's context? Is she the Julius Ceasar of the industry who keeps being stabbed by lower individuals? Whatever. Because, in the next scene, we understand that, despite being a High Priestess and akin to Julius Caesar, she is still subjected to the will of her handlers.
As Swift repeats the song's mantra ''Look what you made me do'', she crashes her car. Taylor looks so stylish as she crashes her car. Self-destruction is so hot right now.Why is Taylor Swift singing ''Look what you made me do'' as she crashes her car? Who made her do this? As Swift gets out of the car, things are symbolically clear.
Taylor is dressed in a feline-print coat '' the occult elite's way of identifying Beta Kittens. To make things more obvious, there's a big kitty next to her. She's holding her Grammy trophy, reminding us of the true cost of being under that sweet, sweet limelight.When Swift sings ''look what you made me do'', she is actually singing to the industry that owns her. It controls her rise to success and her downfalls, pushing her to self-destruction (and even death) if needed.
The next scene clearly depicts what being an elite star truly means.
Swift sits on a swing inside a bird cage.Humans stuck in bird cages is a recurrent symbol to identify MK slaves in popular culture. This specific symbol has been identified several times on Vigilant Citizen.
While in the cage, Swift sings:
I don't like your kingdom keys
They once belonged to me
This is blatant MKULTRA vocabulary. Handlers in MK programming obtain the ''keys of the kingdom'' of a slave by taking control of their core persona '' their real self.
Although she is drinking champagne and eating lobster (representing the lavish life), Taylor is stuck behind bars as a bunch of guards watch her every move. She is not free.The next scenes depict Swift as a Beta Kitten who leads a bunch of other kittens.
Here, Swift wears a kitty mask while wearing a Gucci shirt that features a feline head. On the shirt are the words ''blind for love''. MK slaves are indeed blind to their situation and those who control them.In the above scene, Swift and her followers steam money from a streaming company. Is that what actually happened?
In another scene, Swift is the head of an army of girl bots.
Swift speaks to a crowd of young girls as hypnotic kitties flash on the screens.According to mass media, this scene pokes fun at Swift's ''squad'' of models she likes to hang out with. This might be correct on one level. However, the imagery goes much deeper than that.
The girls in the crowd are plastic, lifeless bots. Future beta kittens.As a High Priestess, Swift has power and influence over the next generation of industry bots.
Here, the bots are on the floor, lifeless and dismembered. Once again, this is a classic way of depicting MK slaves who are fractured and powerless. Although Swift lays over them in a position of power, she wears a huge choker/collar, reminding us that she too remains a Beta slave. #squadgoalsThe end of the video depicts the death of the ''old Taylor'' and the birth of yet another persona.
Dressed in black, the new Taylor stands above her previous personalities. As she sings ''Look what you made me do'', Swift dances feverishly. Yes, they make her dance like that. And yes, they make her do that subtle one-eye sign. There's a story behind ''I heart TS'' shirts worn by the dancers but that's some gossipy crap I don't give a crap about.The next scene is another Monarch symbolism classic.
Swift walks away from an exploding car while wearing the Beta Kitten uniform.This scene is yet another Monarch industry clich(C). Need an example? Okay, here's the final scene from Iggy Azalea's video Change Your Life.
Iggy Azalea walks away from a burning car as she is wearing a top featuring a big all-seeing eye (symbol of industry slave). The strip club is called Cheetahs '' a reference to Beta Kitten programming. Read my full article about this video here.Then Taylor says:
''I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now.''
''Why? Oh 'cause she's dead!''
The video ends with Taylor Swift's multiple personalities arguing with each other.
Over the years and with every album, Swift has switched styles and personalities. In this scene, they all argue with each other, highlighting how they are different and artificially created.At one point the zombie tells the starry-eyed, constantly surprised Swift of the early days:
''Stop acting you're all nice. You are so fake.''
That's the point of it all. Everything about her is fake. She constantly gets re-shaped and re-molded to fit her handlers' will. Which one is the real Swift? Who knows? Oh, her handlers know.
On a more visceral level, LWYMMD is about death, pride, greed, revenge, viciousness, hatred, mockery, power, control, exploitation and boatload of egoism. It is about negativity, destruction and low vibrations. In short, it is a typical product of today's toxic popular culture.
Some might say: ''Bro, you reaching bro. This is about Taylor Swift dissing Kanye, Kim, Katy, Calvin, and others. That's it. I read it on E! Online, so I got the actual 411 bro''. But, bro, think about it for a second. Kanye completely broke down last year and was forcibly sent to a hospital. He reportedly suffered memory loss and still has not resurfaced. The entire Kardashian/Jenner family has been, for years, all about Beta Kitten programming. Katy Perry has been a tool of the elite for years. In short, we are witnessing puppets insulting other puppets. Behind the scenes, the puppet masters are the same. There is no actual beef, just ridiculous, fabricated drama from people living in a toxic cloud.
Like in everything else in history, the truth about LWYMMD lies in the symbolism. Through strong imagery, the video depicts Taylor Swift ascending ranks inside a sinister system bent on control and exploitation. Stars like Swift are at the mercy of the people that control them. And when they are ordered to do something, whether it is constructive or self-destructive, they do it or they break down. And when they do it, all they can say is: ''Look what you made me do.''
'Alt-right' white supremacists have chosen Taylor Swift as their 'Aryan goddess' icon, through no fault of her own - The Washington Post
Tue, 05 Sep 2017 05:09
Taylor Swift (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
Taylor Swift is not a white supremacist. She doesn't identify as a neo-Nazi, and there is no evidence to suggest that, behind closed doors, she might.
That hasn't stopped some white supremacists from the ''alt-right,'' a fringe group of the movement that often uses humor and message boards like 4chan to spread its ideology, from reportedly choosing her '-- ironically or not remains unclear '-- as an icon for their movement. In much the same way Cher or Barbra Streisand can be seen as ''gay icons,'' a series of Internet memes, articles and message board posts have dubbed Swift an ''Aryan goddess.''
It appears to have begun in 2013 when a teenager named Emily Pattinson began overlaying quotes by Adolf Hitler on Pinterest photos of Taylor Swift as a joke, Buzzfeed reported. Swift's lawyer J. Douglas Baldridge, sent Pinterest a stern letter, asking for the images to be removed. It said, in part:
The association of Ms. Swift with Adolf Hitler undisputedly is 'harmful,' 'abusive,' 'ethnically offensive,' 'humiliating to other people,' 'libelous,' and no doubt 'otherwise objectionable.' It is of no import that Ms. Swift may be a public figure or that Pinterest conveniently now argues that the Offending Material is mere satire or parody. Public figures have rights. And, there are certain historical figures, such as Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson and the like, who are universally identified in the case law and popular culture as lightning rods for emotional and negative reaction.
Pinterest refused to take it down, citing parody laws. But those same images now appear on The Daily Stormer, which bills itself as ''the world's most visited alt-right website.''
The site was founded by self-proclaimed white supremacist Andrew Anglin after he realized Internet users were more interested in quick-hit, meme-type content than the long essays on white supremacy he would post on his previous site, ''Total Fascism.''
''My ideology is very simple,'' Anglin told the Los Angeles Times. ''I believe white people deserve their own country.''
The Southern Poverty Law Center dubbed it a ''neo-Nazi website'' and one of the two most popular ''hate sites'' online. Dylann Roof, the alleged shooter in the Charleston church massacre, was active on the site, and the idea of ''white student unions,'' which popped up around the country last November, percolated there.
The idea of Swift as an alt-right pop icon seems to have percolated there as well.
Along with the memes, the Daily Stormer has become home to several pages of articles praising Swift that bear titles like ''Taylor Swift, Avatar of European Imperialism,'' ''Aryan Goddess Taylor Swift: Nazi Avatar of the White European People'' and ''Aryan Goddess Taylor Swift Accused of Racism for Behaving Like an Ape in a Music Video.''
''Taylor Swift is a pure Aryan goddess, like something out of classical Greek poetry,'' Anglin told Vice's Broadly. ''Athena reborn. That's the most important thing.''
Columnist Milo Yiannopoulos explained in Breitbart the alt-right thinks ''Swift is covertly 'red-pilled,' concealing her secret conservative values from the progressive music industry while issuing subtle nods to a reactionary fanbase.''
Yiannopoulos wrote that Swift presents a perfect storm: she's white, blonde and doesn't speak about her politics. Meanwhile, she's drawn criticism regarding race in recent years.
Taylor Swift's big win over Apple Music isn't the first time the pop star has proven her savvy business skills in the music industry. (Nicki DeMarco/The Washington Post)
In Pacific Standard, writer Aaron Bady accused Swift of being ''nostalgic for a time when you could be nostalgic for white supremacy'' after her Africa-set video for ''Wildest Dreams'' came out, which also prompted the NPR headline ''Taylor Swift Is Dreaming Of A Very White Africa.'' Writer Camille Paglia inexplicably referred to her both as a ''Nazi Barbie'' and a ''fascist'' in a December column for The Hollywood Reporter. And, in 2009, a photo circulated the Internet showing her dancing with a man in a white t-shirt bearing a sloppy red swastika.
These are isolated incidents, but white supremacist websites have taken them out of context. For example, in the photograph, Swift wears a shirt with the letters ''JH,'' which someone on the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront claimed means ''Jew Hater.''
If it all seems a little absurd, that might be the point.
The line between purported comedy and drop-dead seriousness is blurred throughout the Swift memes. Take this Facebook page, which includes many of those aforementioned memes. Liked by more than 19,000 people '-- and once removed by Facebook '-- it's titled ''Taylor Swift for Fascist Europe'' and is tagged ''comedian'' but includes comments such as ''Not all races are equal'' and ''Let's show Muslims what a holy war really looks like.''
Its anonymous curator told Vice that Swift's perceived innocence '-- the singer doesn't curse and rarely finds herself in the crosshairs of sexual controversy '-- is partly what makes her an icon in the fascist world.
''Take Kim Kardashian or Miley Cyrus as examples of this: both began their lives with the same Nordic blood that Swift did, but what makes these two degenerates unfit for consideration as fascist icons?'' the curator said. ''It is because, although Aryan in blood, the two are not Aryan in spirit. To be Aryan in spirit is what completes the fascist.''
Anglin agreed.
''It's incredible really that she's surrounded by these filthy, perverted Jews, and yet she remains capable of exuding 1950s purity, femininity and innocence,'' Anglin said. ''She is the anti-Miley.''
The blurred line between ''comedy'' and ''hate speech'' also helps make Daily Stormer so popular.
''I wanted something punchy and funny and enjoyable to read, and something that anybody can get something out of,'' Anglin told the Los Angeles Times. ''A lot of people on the Internet prefer to write long essays, which a lot of people don't read, which have a limited audience.''
The memes can act as Trojan horses for ideology.
''Daily Stormer is a perfect example for me of the influence 4chan has had on the rest of the messaging machine for white supremacy,'' Southern Poverty Law Center's Keegan Hankes told The Daily Beast. And as Caitlin Dewey wrote in The Washington Post, the 4chan style of messaging often involves memes.
In the Daily Beast, Jacob Siegel wrote that Keegan ''sees the style of racism originally perfected on 4Chan's message boards'--where the racism is only as effective as the meme that spreads it'--as a template for Anglin's site.''
If that's the case, then Swift memes can be seen as serious or as jokes, and it doesn't matter.
''A lot of the same images, a lot of the same rhetorical styles are being emulated on Daily Stormer and it's pretty successful,'' Keegan said. ''The website has taken off.''
Swift has not responded again to these claims. In addition to heaping praise on Swift, the site also cheers on Donald Trump, The Post reported.
SJW BLM LGBBTQQIAAP
6 Reasons Men Can Literally Never Be Victims Of Sexism '-- And Those Who Think They Can Need To Learn What "Sexism" Is
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 10:51
One of the most frustrating things a man can do is claim that he's a victim of sexism. Men's rights groups who espouse the systemized oppression of men are ridiculously wrong in their philosophies. Sure, men might experience discrimination, bullying or even disparagement of their gender, but this doesn't equate to sexism. Sexism is institutionalized. Having someone be biased towards you in an isolated context, for instance, a woman excluding a man from something based on his gender, is simply mean or discriminatory, because it's an individual act, rather than one that's historically ingrained in the way society operates to the detriment of men. It's the exact same "nope, not even close to the same thing" comparison that happens when white people assert that they've been victims of racism: That is literally not possible, because you are in the privileged majority. If you think that isolated instances of feeling slighted or discriminated against amount to having the entire balance of favor in society stacked against you, then you're self-involved, ignorant, or at best, misguided about what words like "sexism" and "racism" actually mean. The fact is, if you're a white, straight, middle-class man, then society operates in your favor, regardless of any instances of discrimination. You always win. Congratulations, you are the lord of the genetic lottery, so give chance a giant hug for making your life so easy.
I believe that gay men and trans women do experience sexism, too, so for the purposes of the following points, let's assume we're talking about straight, cisgender men who adhere to strict gender binary. Because as well as sexism, the LGBTQ community experiences all kinds of bigotry, and I do not mean this to diminish that at all. What I am saying is that when men start crying "poor little rich white guy!" it can be incredibly frustrating to hear, as a woman, who you know, is threatened by cat callers every time she leaves the house, has to worry about not being paid the same as her male counterparts, and who's inherited a long and troubled history of discrimination through ownership, objectification and disenfranchisement.
1. Because men have the powerIt doesn't take a very deep look at the way society operates to see that men hold the power. From the top echelons of society, they're in control. Last year it was reported by the New York Times that of 200 of the top paid executives in the USA, only 11 were women. We've never had a female president. Women are consistently paid less than their professional male counterparts. And then there's the much more subversive: the physical power of men. Rape and domestic violence statistics support this, with 85% of reported cases having female victims, while only 15% are men. As I mentioned above, being constantly catcalled is an assertion of male power and provides a constant perceived threat, even if there's no actual physical violence. These are just several examples of how men have power and women do not in society today. So even if a man feels marginalized once because of his gender, it's not a consequence that he subsequently lives his life at a disadvantage because of his gender. And even if he has massive disadvantages/is subject to constant discrimination, it's probably due to other factors that have nothing to do with gender, like race, sexuality, religion, education and economic status.
2. Because of historical contextIt took decades for women to receive the right to vote, and weren't able to nationally in the U.S. until 1920. Think about that. That means that every law, and indeed the very founding of this country, was done entirely without women's interests in mind. Obviously there are other groups who were equally left out, so for women and also many of these groups, we're STILL fighting to have the systems of the country we live to reflect our needs. Historically the way this country (and many others) operates has ALWAYS reflected the interests of men. Because it was BUILT BY MEN, who until very recently, didn't believe women had the right to take part in public process. Sexism requires this level of institutionalized marginalization, which is something a man can never claimed to have experience based entirely on his gender and gender alone.
3. Because of the way established institutions operate with gender biasPursuant to the above, as a result of the country's history, many of its institutions are "boys clubs" which favor men. While these institutions might discriminate against men on different grounds, the only gender that finds itself pushed aside is the feminine. For instance, the way marriage operates still suggests ownership, and it wasn't until 1993 (yes, you read that right, 1993) that rape in marriage was criminalized in all 50 states. That means that just over two decades ago, probably in your lifetime (definitely in mine) a man could have non-consensual sex with a woman who was his wife with no repercussions. The residual effect of this still exists in the way marriage work: During the engagement period the woman alone wears a ring, and traditionally will take the man's name in marriage. These are subtle throwbacks to remind us of the gender bias of commonplace institutions, again, something which men do not experience based on gender alone.
4. Because "opportunity" for a man is never hampered by genderMen face challenges in life. They overcome difficulties. I have nothing against men being proud of overcoming hardship, or feeling like they've been unjustly treated. These are all valid things that happen to men. But they do not happen on the basis of gender. Men aren't precluded from the job market because one day they might have children, and therefore place a burden on their employer for seeking paternity leave (which, if you ask me, should be readily available to men, although only once we've established an acceptable level of care when it comes to maternity leave!). No one is, consciously or unconsciously, not hiring a man because he is a man (unless that job is for something very specifically female, like surrogate mother. Sorry, dudes.). I've talked about overt gender bias above, but there's also less obvious bias, that comes simply in the way in which people treat one another, and help one another. Men are taught from a very early age that they can be and do anything, and that they're entitled. Women, still, are taught to be apologetic and softly spoken as an ideal paradigm for female behavior. These things all coalesce to affect the way we pursue, and are offered opportunities, and gender definitely effects what is made available to women and what is made available to men.
5. Because "discrimination" is not "sexism"I really want to hammer this point home, because if a woman says to a man, "I don't like you because you're a man," she's just being a bully. She's discriminating against him, yes. But that's not the same as sexism. Our "-isms" require a rich, ugly history to precede them. They require marginalization en masse. They require everything spoken about above, including the institutionalization of bias. THERE IS NO HISTORY OR INSTITUTIONAL BIAS AGAINST MEN ON THE BASIS OF GENDER. It does not exist. Men: Learn to determine the difference between being discriminated against in an isolated context and being subject to a constant, sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle disadvantage that has plagued your entire gender group for centuries and across the board in all facets of daily life.
6. Because straight, white, middle class men are the most enfranchised group of people in the worldIf you're one of these, you've got the ability to get the best jobs, make the most money, be approved for credit cards, get the apartment of your dreams, take out loans, go to any school, receive unencumbered health care, run for office, become a CEO, freely move about in public unhindered, speak your opinion loudly and without opposition or with respectful opposition, get away with crimes other people couldn't get away with, be physically dominant, etc. And you get to do all these things without anyone questioning you, diminishing you, or reducing you because of your gender. So therefore, you cannot experience sexism. And being told you can't experience sexism IS NOT SEXISM. The primary point is, after reading all this: Why would you even want to experience sexism? It's not a pleasant or happy thing to claim. Maybe just be happy we don't have institutionalized sexism against men, and use your position of power to work towards re-building a society in which NO ONE is sexist, racist or bigoted against a group of people in any way, and everyone has equal opportunities to contribute to society and to be benefitted by that society.
Images: Kat N.L.M./Flickr;Giphy(6)
'Fed up with fantasies for male teenagers': fixing the depiction of women in games
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 11:36
When Nicole Stark set about writing a new video game, she took inspiration from an unusual subject: her autistic teenage daughter who was battling bullies.
''I was fed up with power fantasies for male teenagers,'' says Stark, one half of Noosa-based family studio Disparity Games. ''We wanted something different.''
Sick of seeing female protagonists who behaved ''exactly like the male character but with large boobs'', Stark, with help from her daughter, created Gemma, a 16-year-old ninja pizza delivery girl who must navigate a dystopian world of sky-high slums, exploitative mega-corporations and the cruelest of adversaries: her own peers.
''It was important to make Gemma look like a 16-year old,'' says Stark, recalling her career as an artist when she would routinely make the breasts smaller on female characters '' only for male colleagues to routinely make them bigger.
Launched in 2015, Ninja Pizza Girl received favourable reviews. Then came the hate mail. In online forums, Disparity was accused of being a ''cancer'' that would destroy gaming; having a teenage female protagonist who talks about her feelings was declared ''SWJ [social warrior justice] nonsense''.
''There's a vocal sector in the gaming community that reacts very angrily when you challenge the status quo,'' sighs Stark. ''They're the toddler in the sandpit who doesn't want to share.''
In an industry worth just under $3bn in Australia alone, more than 70% of Australians play video games and just under half of players are women. Yet games remain '' in narrative terms at least '' very much a man's world. With men traditionally dominating industry positions as writers, artists and creators, female lead characters have been few and far between. As late as 2014, Alex Amancio, the creative director at French game publisher Ubisoft, explained in an interview that there was not one playable female assassin in the blockbuster Assassin's Creed Unity because generating them ''was really a lot of extra production work''.
Video artist Nicole Stark took inspiration from her autistic teenage daughter, who was battling bullies, for her game Ninja Pizza Girl. Photograph: Diversity studiosThe resulting scandal led to the viral Twitter hashtag #womenaretoohardtoanimate. Ubisoft is far from alone in the gaming work. Melbourne-based game artist Marigold Bartlett has heard multiple stories about women ''risking their jobs simply by asking to include female characters. Even optionally. Even if that meant wearing the terrible costumes of yesteryear games''.
Those costumes consisted of big breasts and tiny waists accentuated in skintight outfits. While male characters come in all ages, shapes and sizes, female characters are uniformly young, slim and sexy: cue Lara Croft or female military unit the Saints who, in Hitman: Absolution hide latex fetish gear under nun's habits. In Lingerie is Not Armor, part of online video series Feminist Frequency, media critic Anita Sarkeesian declares: ''The problem isn't just what we're seeing in games. It's what we're not seeing.''
''Traditionally, women have been sidekicks, sexual objects or the prize that you win at the end,'' states Katryna Starks, an associate lecturer in serious games at the University of the Sunshine Coast. ''I would advocate for games that star women as having their own story where they are actually doing something '' solving a mystery, going out in space.''
Bad attitudes persist today, insists Bartlett, who was recently commissioned to draw female characters for two different commercial projects. ''One wasn't sexy enough and the other often wasn't drawn soft/feminine enough,'' she says. ''Both are highly respected studios, so it was quietly disappointing to see it's still ingrained.''
As different voices are heard in the industry, however, games are slowly changing. In 2011-2012, just 8.7% of game developers were female according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics; that figure reached 15% in 2015-16. ''Diverse teams create diverse games,'' maintains Australian writer and narrative designer Brooke Maggs.
First introduced in 1996, Lara Croft is viewed as a turning point in games: a strong, kick-ass female protagonist who forges her own path. But ''many of the other characters she interacts with are men'', says Maggs. ''I'm more interested in stories that just happen to have a lot of women in them with multiple relationships and complexities.''
The sexy nun assassins known as The Saints in Hitman: Absolution are typical of how women are depicted in games. Photograph: YoutubeWhat's more, in AAA games '' the biggest budget games developed by the biggest developers '' age-old tropes drawing on biblical notions of women as the source of evil are routinely trotted out.
Sarkeesian pinpoints ''the temptress'' '' who, like Eve in the Old Testament, lures men to their physical or metaphorical deaths through her fatal sexuality and duplicity '' and ''the grotesquely female'', foul creations whose very femaleness makes them monstrous (think killer babies fired from oversized nipples and a half-spider, half-naked woman with gigantic swinging breasts who is pregnant with a malformed foetus).
There's also ''women in refrigerators'' who are killed early on in order to motivate the male hero in a revenge tale; the ''damsel in distress'' who the male hero must rescue; or, in combat games, a female operations person who provides instructions for the male hero but doesn't actually fight.
To remedy this, Maggs is working on surreal puzzle game The Gardens Between, released next year. ''I wanted to see a girl and a boy being friends rather than sweethearts or siblings,'' she says. Central is 12-year-old female protagonist Arina and best friend Frendt. With no text or speech in The Gardens Between, it was critical, says Maggs, to make Arina look like a kid her age, one who is not ''super girly''.
Other games, too, are starting to explore different female narratives. Life is Strange (2015) by French Dontnod Entertainment depicts a group of teenage female friends who must solve a mystery (it also features a rare example of a female character who has a different body type from the super-slim norm).
Assassin's Creed III: Liberation (2012), meanwhile, stars Aveline de Grandpr(C), who is Creole and has the ability to sneak past guards while pretending to be a slave. For Starks, it is an important departure taking ''a marginalised position and turning it into a secret power''.
Australian games are also starting to hit the mark. Bartlett is one of a core team developing Wayward Strand, set in rural Victoria in 1978 aboard a flying regional hospital. The lead character is Casey, a 14-year-old on her summer holidays who is helping her mother, the head nurse. The seven female characters ''all have complex lives'', says Bartlett.
Gender stereotypes are not just reserved for women. True, male characters across the board tend have greater variation, simply by virtue of the fact there are more of them. Despite this, hypermasculinity remains a dominant motif.
''Overwhelmingly, male representation is terrible,'' says Bartlett. ''It's been said before that the big fights surrounding games culture in recent years were the canary in the coalmine for some contemporary American politics, and I'd believe it based on what's been sold through character idolisation for men.
''In AAA games, almost everyone is straight and white, American, and trained with guns or knives,'' she says. Characters are either ''thrust into their situation mysteriously or due to some outlandish government program, or are seeking revenge or fighting a war, all while trying to impress or save a white woman.''
Surreal puzzle game The Gardens Between features a realistic depiction of 12-year-old female protagonist Arina and her best friend Frendt. Photograph: Brooke Maggs''For males, it's a hero's journey narrative,'' says Starks. But while past heroes were flawless paragons of masculinity, games are now increasingly following in the wake of comics who have gone from celebrating the perfect superhero (the first incantation of Superman) to the flawed superhero (Spider-Man). Male characters in video games, too, are now battling their own traumas.
In 2003 John Carmack, co-founder of id Software, proclaimed: ''Story in a game is like story in a porn movie: it's expected to be there, but it's not that important.'' Over a decade later, developing technology has provided ever more nuanced facial expressions '' critical for showing emotion and character development. Games are increasingly becoming like mini-movies, with motivations explored through everything from carefully placed symbols to dialogue.
Taking advantage of this are games that show ordinary male characters struggling with events larger than themselves. Personal memoir game That Dragon, Cancer (2016) depicts a family dealing with their terminally ill son, including a father who is not in a position to deal out fantasies or heroic acts. In the exploration narrative game Gone Home, the father figure is a failed writer trying to make ends meet.
Still, there is a long way to go when it comes to gender representation. Maggs believes many AAA developers avoid depicting women altogether for fear of backlash over not doing it right: ''You might make decisions not to include those characters because you don't have the time or money to give that character the space and latitude and nuance they need.''
Thankfully for Stark '' who funded Ninja Pizza Girl through a Kickstarter campaign '' commercial pressures weren't an issue: ''We set out to make something we felt needed doing.''
15 Ivy League Professors Offer Surprising Advice in Open Letter to Incoming Freshmen: 'Think for Yourself'
Mon, 04 Sep 2017 13:04
A group of 15 Ivy League professors from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have published an open letter to incoming freshmen admonishing them to avoid ''groupspeak,'' and to think for themselves.
In today's world of college ''safe spaces'' and ''microaggressions,'' the news is borderline shocking. And from the hallowed halls of Ivy League academia, no less.
The letter, which was published on Tuesday, reads, in part:
We are scholars and teachers at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale who have some thoughts to share and advice to offer students who are headed off to colleges around the country. Our advice can be distilled to three words:
Think for yourself.
Now, that might sound easy. But you will find '-- as you may have discovered already in high school '-- that thinking for yourself can be a challenge. It always demands self-discipline and these days can require courage.
In today's climate, it's all-too-easy to allow your views and outlook to be shaped by dominant opinion on your campus or in the broader academic culture. The danger any student '-- or faculty member '-- faces today is falling into the vice of conformism, yielding to groupthink.
At many colleges and universities what John Stuart Mill called ''the tyranny of public opinion'' does more than merely discourage students from dissenting from prevailing views on moral, political, and other types of questions.
It leads them to suppose that dominant views are so obviously correct that only a bigot or a crank could question them. Since no one wants to be, or be thought of as, a bigot or a crank, the easy, lazy way to proceed is simply by falling into line with campus orthodoxies.
They then encouraged students to learn all sides of an issue before taking a position:
Thinking for yourself means questioning dominant ideas even when others insist on their being treated as unquestionable.
It means deciding what one believes not by conforming to fashionable opinions, but by taking the trouble to learn and honestly consider the strongest arguments to be advanced on both or all sides of questions [...]"
''Open-mindedness, critical thinking, and debate are essential to discovering the truth,'' they advised. ''Moreover, they are our best antidotes to bigotry.''
The advice is antithetical to the reality of many college campuses today, where safe spaces abound, and there exists an ever-growing list of ''microaggressions,'' and students protest '-- sometimes violently '-- in opposition to conservative speakers.
Nonetheless, the professors warned against the ''tyranny of public opinion'' and ''echo chambers.'':
So don't be tyrannized by public opinion. Don't get trapped in an echo chamber. Whether you in the end reject or embrace a view, make sure you decide where you stand by critically assessing the arguments for the competing positions.
Conservative Princeton professor Robert George, one of the letter's signatories, stopped by ''Tucker Carlson Tonight'' to reiterate the advice.
''We're telling our students not to fall into that groupthink,'' he told Carlson. ''You should be pursuing the truth. That's what being in college is all about. It's learning to pursue the truth and it's learning to become a life-long truth seeker.''
George urged students not to allow themselves to be intimidated and bullied by those who attempt to shut down debate. ''Don't put up with it,'' he said.
Incidentally, as you've most likely surmised, George is a conservative.
You can watch the segment below.
Some Thoughts and Advice for Our Students and All Students | James Madison Program
Mon, 04 Sep 2017 13:05
We are scholars and teachers at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale who have some thoughts to share and advice to offer students who are headed off to colleges around the country. Our advice can be distilled to three words:
Think for yourself.
Now, that might sound easy. But you will find'--as you may have discovered already in high school'--that thinking for yourself can be a challenge. It always demands self-discipline and these days can require courage.
In today's climate, it's all-too-easy to allow your views and outlook to be shaped by dominant opinion on your campus or in the broader academic culture. The danger any student'--or faculty member'--faces today is falling into the vice of conformism, yielding to groupthink.
At many colleges and universities what John Stuart Mill called ''the tyranny of public opinion'' does more than merely discourage students from dissenting from prevailing views on moral, political, and other types of questions. It leads them to suppose that dominant views are so obviously correct that only a bigot or a crank could question them.
Since no one wants to be, or be thought of as, a bigot or a crank, the easy, lazy way to proceed is simply by falling into line with campus orthodoxies.
Don't do that. Think for yourself.
Thinking for yourself means questioning dominant ideas even when others insist on their being treated as unquestionable. It means deciding what one believes not by conforming to fashionable opinions, but by taking the trouble to learn and honestly consider the strongest arguments to be advanced on both or all sides of questions'--including arguments for positions that others revile and want to stigmatize and against positions others seek to immunize from critical scrutiny.
The love of truth and the desire to attain it should motivate you to think for yourself. The central point of a college education is to seek truth and to learn the skills and acquire the virtues necessary to be a lifelong truth-seeker. Open-mindedness, critical thinking, and debate are essential to discovering the truth. Moreover, they are our best antidotes to bigotry.
Merriam-Webster's first definition of the word ''bigot'' is a person ''who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.'' The only people who need fear open-minded inquiry and robust debate are the actual bigots, including those on campuses or in the broader society who seek to protect the hegemony of their opinions by claiming that to question those opinions is itself bigotry.
So don't be tyrannized by public opinion. Don't get trapped in an echo chamber. Whether you in the end reject or embrace a view, make sure you decide where you stand by critically assessing the arguments for the competing positions.
Think for yourself.
Good luck to you in college!
Paul Bloom
Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology
Yale University
Elizabeth Bogan
Senior Lecturer in Economics
Princeton University
Nicholas Christakis
Sol Goldman Family Professor of Social and Natural Science
Yale University
Carlos Eire
T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies
Yale University
Maria E. Garlock
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Co-Director of the Program in Architecture and Engineering
Princeton University
David Gelernter
Professor of Computer Science
Yale University
Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions
Princeton University
Mary Ann Glendon
Learned Hand Professor of Law
Harvard University
William Happer
Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus
Princeton University
Martha Himmelfarb
Professor of Religion
Princeton University
Robert Hollander
Professor of European Literature and French and Italian, Emeritus
Princeton University
Joshua Katz
Cotsen Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics
Princeton University
Thomas P. Kelly
Professor of Philosophy
Princeton University
Sergiu Klainerman
Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics
Princeton University
Jon Levenson
Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies
Harvard University
John B. Londregan
Professor of Politics and International Affairs
Princeton University
Uwe Reinhardt
James Madison Professor of Political Economy and Public Affairs
Princeton University
Michael A. Reynolds
Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies
Princeton University
Jacqueline C. Rivers
Lecturer in Sociology and African and African-American Studies
Harvard University
Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe
James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Princeton University
Harvey S. Rosen
John L. Weinberg Professor of Economics and Business Policy
Princeton University
Marta Tienda
Maurice P. During Professor in Demographic Studies and Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School; and Director, Program of Latino Studies
Princeton University
Nol Valis
Professor of Spanish
Yale University
Tyler VanderWeele
Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Director of the Program on Integrative Knowledge and Human Flourishing
Harvard University
Adrian Vermeule
Ralph S. Tyler, Jr. Professor of Constitutional Law
Harvard University
Keith E. Whittington
William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics
Princeton University
Read the response to the "Think for Yourself" statement here.
Oxford student union offers emotional 'support' for those affected by vice-Chancellor's 'snowflake' comments
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 10:43
O xford University students have been offered emotional ''support'' by their student union 'if they were adversely affected by their vice-Chancellor's comments that it is not her job shield them from controversial opinions.
Professor Louise Richardson provoked a furious backlash when she said that students who are upset with their tutors for expressing views against homosexuality should ''challenge'' them, rather than reporting their tutors to university authorities.
The vice-Chancellor's comments are likely to be seen as a veiled attack on today's generation of ''snowflake'' students who are seen as over-sensitive and quick to take offence. Prof Richardson, said she has had ''many conversations'' with students who are unhappy that their tutors have express views that are ''against homosexuality''.
"They don't feel comfortable being in class with someone with those views," she told the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit earlier this week.
''And I say, 'I'm sorry, but my job isn't to make you feel comfortable. Education is not about being comfortable,'' she said. ''If you don't like his views, you challenge them, engage with them, and figure [out] how a smart person can have views like that.
"Work out how you can persuade him to change his mind. It is difficult, but it is absolutely what we have to do."
O n Tuesday Oxford University's student union urged anyone who is affected by the comments to discuss their concerns with Welfare and Equal Opportunities officer or the peer support team.
The university's LGBTQ+ campaign said they were ''angered and dismayed'' by the comments which ''appear to indicate support for tutors expressing homophobic views to their students''.
H undreds of Oxford students, academics, staff and alumni signed an open letter saying they ''strongly condemn'' Prof Richardson's comments, as they called on her to apologise.
''Homophobia is not an 'opinion', and the human rights and dignity of LGBTQ people are not up for debate,'' the letter said.
T he petition also said that her remarks could make gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students feel ''unsafe'' at university, and could discourage LGBT teenagers from applying to Oxford.
''It is alarming to see any form of harassment being described as merely an opinion by a respected public figure,'' the letter said.
''There is no excuse for Richardson's equation of LGBTQ+ students' human rights with an intellectual debate.''
''If it the best university in the world, Oxford should be leading the way for a model society which does not tolerate discrimination, instead of giving it the credibility of an academic debate.''
''Students and staff alike have worked hard for decades to create inclusive, accessible spaces to enable excellent learning and research. We are concerned that the Vice-Chancellor's comments will make current students feel unsafe or unable to report harassment: these remarks suggest that discrimination is acceptable.''
T he petition was signed by several Oxford University academics, including a junior dean at Queen's College, and two examinaton fellows at All Soul's College.
An Oxford University spokesperson said that Prof Richardon's words have been ''misconstrued''. ''Oxford is unambiguously opposed to discrimination.
We have a moral and legal duty to counter views that are objectionable or illegal, and a proud track record of action in this area,'' the spokesperson said. ''The University is a powerful advocate of free speech; its commitment to opposing discrimination is no less strong.''
Service Animals
Travel Experiences
Seems to also be my latest pet peeve.... During recent business trips I have witnessed "service dogs" (which obviously weren't) doing the following:
- two dogs fighting in the middle of an airport terminal
- people being tripped by leashes because the dog owners are treating the airport terminals like the local park
- a dog taking a dump on one of the moving walkways
- a dog taking a dump on a plane seat
- (the saddest) what appeared to be a lesbian couple talking to, and playing with their service animal, while their real child was told to sit on the ground under their chairs and play with stickers
This needs to end...
Sir KMac
The Coup
Continuity of government - Wikipedia
Mon, 04 Sep 2017 15:00
Canada Edit Canada built numerous nuclear bunkers across the country, nicknamed "Diefenbunkers" in a play on the last name of then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.
China/People's Republic of China Edit
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it.(June 2014)
In a tunnel of Project 131The People's Republic of China (PRC) once operated Underground Project 131, intended to be the PLA headquarters in Hubei during a nuclear conflict. Built due to the Sino-Soviet split during that portion of the Cold War, in 1981, the Project 131 site was turned over to the civilian authorities of the prefecture-level city of Xianning, where it is located.
Czech Republic Edit The K-116 facility under Zlchov hill in western Prague was designated to house the Czechoslovak government in case of nuclear attack (together with the K-9 facility in Jihlava) and might still be used as the emergency headquarters of the Czech government and military.[1]
Denmark Edit During the Cold War, Denmark built two bunker complexes, named REGAN Vest and REGAN st (Danish: "REGeringsANl...g", translated: "Government Complex West and Government Complex East"), in Jutland and Zealand respectively. The idea was to have half of the government and the royal family in one bunker, and the other half in the other, allowing continuity of government, even if one of the bunkers were destroyed or cut off.
France Edit The Centre d'Op(C)ration des Forces A(C)riennes Strat(C)giques (COFAS) is a hardened command centre for French nuclear forces at Taverny Air Base in Taverny, Val d'Oise. The alternate national command center is located at Mont Verdun near Lyon.
The hardened headquarters of Force Oc(C)anique Strat(C)gique (FOST), France's nuclear SSBN fleet, is at Houilles, Yvelines.
Germany Edit Germany operated a government bunker (Regierungsbunker) to house the German government, parliament and all federal personnel needed to keep the government working in the event of war or severe crisis. It was decommissioned in 1997.
Ireland (Republic of) Edit In Ireland, the National Security Committee (NSC) is the conduit for officials to communicate with the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and/or cabinet members if the normal channel of communication with their minister became unavailable. Drafts of emergency powers legislation have been drawn up in secret, including legislation to deal with circumstances such as an attack on cabinet involving numerous deaths.[2]
During the period of the Cold War, it was envisaged that cabinet ministers, senior civil servants and military advisers would use an underground nuclear bunker at Custume Barracks in Athlone in the event of a nuclear exchange. The bunker was equipped with a command and control centre with communications equipment '' which had a hotline to the British government in Whitehall '' a map room pointing out important areas for protection, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom facilities.[3][4]
New Zealand Edit The New Zealand government believes the most likely disaster scenario to affect the government is a large earthquake in Wellington. The government has plans to move Parliament and essential staff to Devonport Naval Base in Auckland if such an event occurs.[5]
Norway Edit The Norwegian government operates a nuclear bunker called Sentralanlegget in Buskerud County. The bunker is meant to accommodate the Norwegian Royal Family and the government in case of a nuclear/military attack on the nation, and also function as a wartime headquarters. There is also a bunker beneath H¸yblokka in downtown Oslo.
Soviet Union and Russia Edit
Map of the Metro-2 system as supposed by the United States military intelligence in 1991.[6]Very little, in the public domain, is known about Russia's COG plans. One sprawling underground facility residing in tunnels cut into Mount Yamantau is likely to be related to the survival of Russia's government, given its size and decades long construction history, with a construction start during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev (1964''82).[7]KGB defector Colonel Oleg Gordievsky states that an organization, known as Directorate 15, was (or is) tasked with building and maintaining a network of hundreds of underground command bunkers for the Soviet leadership; this includes the vast site beneath Yamantau Mountain, which is often called Mezhgorye / Ð'ежÐ"оÌÑÑе after the closed city that is located nearby. However, there is speculation, due to its proximity to Chelyabinsk-70, that Yamantau is a 400-square-mile underground complex which houses nuclear warheads, missiles, launch controls, and several nuclear weapons factories designed to continue production after a hypothetical nuclear war begins.[8]
The second command and control center in the Urals, after Yamantau, is similarly speculated to be underground and located near, or under, Kosvinsky Kamen. The site is believed to host the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces alternate command post, a post for the general staff built to compensate for the vulnerability of older Soviet era command posts in the Moscow region. In spite of this, the primary command posts for the Strategic Rocket Forces remains Kuntsevo in Moscow and the secondary is the Kosvinsky Mountain in the Urals.[9] The facility at Kosvinsky, finished in early 1996, was designed to resist US earth-penetrating warheads and serves a similar role as the American Cheyenne Mountain Complex.[8]
Further command centers, according to globalsecurity.org, include one near Chekhov, which is the Russian General Staff wartime command post, buried deep underground,[10] and Sharapovo about 80 kilometres (50 mi) south of Moscow, built in the 1950s, Sharapovo is believed to have been the primary backup command center for the Soviet era leadership. Both Chekhov and Sharapovo are each suggested to have the capability to accommodate about 30,000 individuals,[8] As an alternative to Sharapovo, a secondary political leadership base is located at Chaadayevka, some 650 kilometers southeast of Moscow near the city of Penza.[11]
There is also said to be as many as 12 underground levels beneath the Russian capital of Moscow to protect the government in the Kremlin, known as the Main Directorate of special programs of the President (Glavnoye Upravlenie Specialnih Program: GUSP) (ru) the direct successor of the 15th Directorate of the KGB, which was established in 1977, GUSP is said to oversee, amongst other sites, a parallel track line alongside the Moscow metro, known as the 'Kremlin line' Metro-2 or D-6 to be used in an emergency.[12] Two destinations of this system are suggested to be the old KGB headquarters, now the FSB headquarters, at Lubyanka Square, and the second being regarded as an enormous underground leadership bunker adjacent to Moscow State University.[6] Another alleged subterranean destination, apart from the aforementioned underground town at Ramenki/Moscow State University is Vnukovo-2 airport.[13] Despite official Russian state ambiguity, it is speculated that many of the Moscow bunkers are linked by an underground railway line.[8]
Sweden Edit During the Cold War, the Klara skyddsrum ("Klara shelter" or "Klara bunker") was built underneath Stockholm. The bunker is designed to accommodate two thirds of the government and between 8,000 and 12,000 civilians in the case of a military attack on Stockholm. It is designed as a very large, two-story oval, with multiple entrances. During peace time, parts of it are used as a parking garage.
United Kingdom Edit The primary British COG headquarters is at the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. The Central Government War Headquarters was previously maintained in a quarry complex near Corsham, Wiltshire. The above-ground support facility was RAF Rudloe Manor.
Service command centres are Northwood for the Royal Navy Trident SSBN force, and RAF High Wycombe for the Royal Air Force.
United States Edit Continuity of the national government was first threatened in late 1776, when British forces advanced toward the Continental capital at Philadelphia. On December 9 the Continental Congress passed a resolution in anticipation of a British capture:
Resolved: That in case this Congress shall be under the necessity of removing from Philadelphia, it shall be adjourned to Baltimore.The Congress was adjourned as planned three days later.[14] Other relocations followed during the course of the Revolutionary War.
For most of its existence, the United States operated without a standing continuity plan. When British forces burned Washington in 1814, Secretary of State James Monroe received only a few hours' notice to remove the government records. Although his staff saved many valuable records, much was nonetheless destroyed, and the next administration encountered a great deal of confusion.[15]
In 1952 President Truman ordered all federal offices to develop their own continuity plans for the event of a civil defense emergency. Plans have been maintained and adapted since then, at times requiring the construction of secret facilities such as the emergency Congress facility in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The current continuity policy is defined in National Security Policy Directive 51[16] and its implementation plan.[17] The continuity plan was activated for the first time following the September 11, 2001 attacks.[18]
Nuclear test conducted by North Korea, country claims - CNN
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 13:19
The combined drill, carried out by the South Korean army and air force and intended to simulate a strike on North Korea's nuclear test site, involved surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and F-15K fighter jets hitting targets off the east coast of South Korea, according to a statement form the country's Joint Chiefs of Staff.
-- North Korea said it successfully conducted a test of a hydrogen bomb Sunday -- the country's sixth nuclear test.
-- The explosion created a magnitude-6.3 tremor, making it the most powerful weapon Pyongyang has ever tested.
-- Hours before the test, North Korean state media released pictures of the country's leader, Kim Jong Un inspecting what it claimed was a nuclear warhead being placed inside a missile
Latest developments:
-- US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he is drafting tough sanctions against North Korea, adding "this isn't the time for just talk."-- As US President Donald Trump was leaving a church service for Hurricane Harvey victims, he was asked by a reporter if the United States would attack North Korea. "We'll see," Trump responded.-- US Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters in front of the White House that any threat to the United States, its allies or its territories "will be met with a massive military response, a response both effective and overwhelming." He added: "Kim Jong Un should take heed of the United Nations Security Council's unified voice. All members unanimously agreed on the threat North Korea poses and they remain unanimous in their commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula ... We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea, but as I said, we have many options to do so."-- Trump took to Twitter after the announcement and said North Korea's "words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States." He added that Pyongyang has become a "great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success"; warned South Korea their "talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work"; and said Washington is considering "stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea."-- Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is hosting an international financial summit, said in an opening ceremony speech that "incessant conflicts in some parts of the world and hotspot issues are posing challenges to world peace," according to a transcript published by Chinese state media.-- Japanese Prime Minister said the threat against his country is now "more grave and imminent"; South Korean President Moon Jae-in called it an absurd strategic mistake."
Emergency session
United Nations Secretary-General Ant"nio Guterres said the test was "profoundly destabilizing for regional security," and the UN Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting to discuss the issue for Monday at 10 a.m. ET.
The Security Council also met last week after North Korea shot a missile that overflew the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Though the only thing to come from that meeting was a strongly-worded statement, the Security Council did unanimously pass a new round of sanctions in early August. Those are meant to choke off North Korea's ability to bring in revenue across the globe.
"For months North Korea refrained from conducting a nuclear test and from launching missiles over Japan," said David Wright, the co-director of the Union of Concerned Scientists Global Security Program. "It now seems to have decided to end that restraint."
It's unclear if a new round of sanctions is in the works, but Japan and South Korea have both signaled they are in favor of applying more diplomatic pressure on Pyongyang.
However, a noticeable divide has emerged between Washington and Seoul when it comes to how exactly the world should respond to North Korea's latest move.
After President Trump's tweet on South Korean appeasement, the South Korean President's office said in a statement that it will "pursue the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula through peace with our allies."
The country's current President Moon Jae-in, who was elected in May, is seen as more open to dialogue than his hawkish predecessor.
China, long viewed as North Korea's only real regional ally, also condemned the test.
"We strongly urge (the) North Korea side to face up to the firm will of the international community on the denuclearization of the peninsula, abide by relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council, stop taking wrong actions that exacerbate the situation and are not in its own interest, and return to the track of resolving the issue through dialogue," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.
'Perfect success'
North Korea's test came hours after state-run media released images of leader Kim Jong Un inspecting what it said was a hydrogen bomb ready to to top an ICBM, which the country would need to deliver a nuclear warhead to far-away locations.State news anchor Ri Chun Hee hailed the test as a "perfect success" and the final step in attaining a "state nuclear force," which North Korea sees as crucial in order deter any adversaries from invasion or attempting regime change.
North Korean state media claims Kim Jong Un watched a hydrogen bomb being loaded onto an ICBM.
Analysts have said for months that another nuclear test was likely on the way, with satellite imagery revealing that a tunnel had been dug earlier this year.And the country has for years worked on miniaturizing a nuclear warhead so it can be fitted atop a long-range missile and survive the heat-intensive process of re-entering the earth's atmosphere.
North Korea claimed the device tested Sunday was a hydrogen bomb, a much more powerful type of nuclear weapon that uses fusion instead of fission to increase the blast yield, or destructive power. It is also known as a thermonuclear bomb.
While it's nearly impossible to verify the North Korean claim that the weapon was small enough to be put on a missile -- short of having independent experts examine the test -- the tremors that followed the blast can help scientists calculate how powerful the explosion was. Other countries will also take air samples to measure radiation levels, which will also offer important details.
NORSAR, a Norway-based group that monitors nuclear tests, estimated it had an explosive yield of 120 kilotons -- which means the power of 120,000 tons of TNT.South Korean officials gave a more modest estimate of 50 kilotons.
To put that in context, the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 -- which instantly killed 80,000 people -- created a yield of 15 kilotons.The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as it's officially known, claimed it set off a hydrogen bomb in its fifth nuclear test on September 9 of last year. That date is the country's Foundation Day holiday.
The blast triggered a 5.3-magnitude seismological event; which said the data showed the detonation was more likely a boosted fission weapon.
Sanctions
Trump's administration is now pursuing what it calls a strategy of "peaceful pressure" to get North Korea to bring its nuclear weapons program to the negotiating table.
North Korea has long maintained it wants nuclear weapons and long-range missiles in order to deter the United States from attempting to overthrow the regime of Kim Jong Un.
Pyongyang looks at states like Iraq -- where former dictator Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the United States, and Libya -- the country's late leader, Moammar Gaddafi, gave up his nuclear ambitions for sanctions relief and aid, only to be toppled and killed after the US intervened in the country's civil unrest -- and believes that only being able to threaten the US homeland with a retaliatory nuclear strike can stop American military intervention.
Many experts believe North Korea would not use the weapons first. Kim Jong Un values his regime's survival above all else and knows the use of a nuclear weapon would start a war he could not win, analysts say.
North Korea itself has long said it is open to dialogue, but will not abandon its nuclear aspirations unless the United States abandons what Pyongyang considers a "hostile policy" against it.
Sanctions have long been a tactic the international community has employed to punish and isolate Pyongyang, but in many ways they have failed. The Kim regime developed its weapons and nuclear program despite the international measures designed to cripple the economy and which exacerbated periods of mass starvation.
The White House, meanwhile, has been accused of sending mixed messages on the issue and lacking a clear strategy. The President's tweets regularly suggest he is not interested in dialogue.
"The Trump administration has clearly prioritized North Korea. Not all of that attention has been helpful," said Adam Mount, a North Korea expert and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. "The critical thing is now is that the United States does not cause more damage with its reaction than the test did itself."
CNN's Taehoon Lee reported from Seoul, while Joshua Berlinger reported and wrote from Hong Kong. CNN's Steven Jiang, Sol Han, Brad Lendon, Yazhou Sun, Jill Disis, Yoko Wakatsuki, Carolyn Sung, Elwyn Lopez, Junko Ogura, Barbara Starr, Angela Dewan, Elliott McLaughlin and Andreena Narayan contributed to this report.
GPS
Ships fooled in GPS spoofing attack suggest Russian cyberweapon | New Scientist
Mon, 04 Sep 2017 13:08
GPS signals of 20 ships in the Black Sea were hacked to indicate they were 32km inlandplainpicture/Tilby Vattard
By David Hambling
Reports of satellite navigation problems in the Black Sea suggest that Russia may be testing a new system for spoofing GPS, New Scientist has learned. This could be the first hint of a new form of electronic warfare available to everyone from rogue nation states to petty criminals.
On 22 June, the US Maritime Administration filed a seemingly bland incident report. The master of a ship off the Russian port of Novorossiysk had discovered his GPS put him in the wrong spot '' more than 32 kilometres inland, at Gelendzhik Airport.
After checking the navigation equipment was working properly, the captain contacted other nearby ships. Their AIS traces '' signals from the automatic identification system used to track vessels '' placed them all at the same airport. At least 20 ships were affected.
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While the incident is not yet confirmed, experts think this is the first documented use of GPS misdirection '' a spoofing attack that has long been warned of but never been seen in the wild.
Until now, the biggest worry for GPS has been it can be jammed by masking the GPS satellite signal with noise. While this can cause chaos, it is also easy to detect. GPS receivers sound an alarm when they lose the signal due to jamming. Spoofing is more insidious: a false signal from a ground station simply confuses a satellite receiver. ''Jamming just causes the receiver to die, spoofing causes the receiver to lie,'' says consultant David Last, former president of the UK's Royal Institute of Navigation.
Todd Humphreys, of the University of Texas at Austin, has been warning of the coming danger of GPS spoofing for many years. In 2013, he showed how a superyacht with state-of-the-art navigation could be lured off-course by GPS spoofing. ''The receiver's behaviour in the Black Sea incident was much like during the controlled attacks my team conducted,'' says Humphreys.
Humphreys thinks this is Russia experimenting with a new form of electronic warfare. Over the past year, GPS spoofing has been causing chaos for the receivers on phone apps in central Moscow to misbehave. The scale of the problem did not become apparent until people began trying to play Pokemon Go. The fake signal, which seems to centre on the Kremlin, relocates anyone nearby to Vnukovo Airport, 32 km away. This is probably for defensive reasons; many NATO guided bombs, missiles and drones rely on GPS navigation, and successful spoofing would make it impossible for them to hit their targets.
But now the geolocation interference is being used far away from the Kremlin. Some worry that this means that spoofing is getting easier. GPS spoofing previously required considerable technical expertise. Humphreys had to build his first spoofer from scratch in 2008, but notes that it can now be done with commercial hardware and software downloaded from the Internet.
Nor does it require much power. Satellite signals are very weak '' about 20 watts from 20,000 miles away '' so a one-watt transmitter on a hilltop, plane or drone is enough to spoof everything out to the horizon.
If the hardware and software are becoming more accessible, nation states soon won't be the only ones using the technology. This is within the scope of any competent hacker. There have not yet been any authenticated reports of criminal spoofing, but it should not be difficult for criminals to use it to divert a driverless vehicle or drone delivery, or to hijack an autonomous ship. Spoofing will give everyone affected the same location, so a hijacker would just need a short-ranged system to affect one vehicle.
But Humphreys believes that spoofing by a state operator is the more serious threat. ''It affects safety-of-life operations over a large area,'' he says. ''In congested waters with poor weather, such as the English Channel, it would likely cause great confusion, and probably collisions.''
Last says that the Black Sea incident suggests a new device capable of causing widespread disruption, for example, if used in the ongoing dispute with Ukraine. ''My gut feeling is that this is a test of a system which will be used in anger at some other time.''
More on these topics:
2020
New York Is About to Vote on a Constitutional Convention: Here's Why You Should Care | Village Voice
Tue, 05 Sep 2017 12:29
Virginia's constitutional convention of 1830, which had a marginally higher percentage of white men than Albany today painting by George Catlin In November, New Yorkers will head to the polls to decide on a very significant question that most are only dimly aware of: whether to hold a state constitutional convention, the first in a half-century.
The convention, or Con Con, as it's known in political circles, is an opportunity to make profound, long-lasting, and much-needed changes to New York's outdated state constitution '-- or open a Pandora's box that could doom working people forever, depending on whom you ask. I've written in favor of holding a convention before, but with the vote fast approaching, it's a good time to lay out arguments for and against the measure, so New York voters understand what's at stake and what could happen if a majority of them approve rewriting the state constitution.
If a majority statewide votes ''yes,'' a constitutional convention will be set for the spring of 2019. The convention would be made up of elected delegates, with three provided from each state senate district '-- there are 63 in total '-- plus fifteen statewide. Elections would occur next year, and anyone can run to be a delegate.
These delegates would come together with unlimited abilities to propose amending the constitution in any and all ways they can agree upon. Any amendments approved by delegates would need to be ultimately approved by the voters. This is important to remember: No changes can occur to the constitution without statewide approval at the ballot box.
The last New York State constitutional convention was held in 1967, some years after which the law was rewritten to require a vote on a convention every twenty years. Voters turned down a convention in 1997; if this vote fails, New York won't get another chance to try for one until 2037.
Below, you'll find common arguments for and against a constitutional convention, and what we might expect if one is approved. The caveat here: With only two conventions in the last century '-- in 1938 and 1967 '-- the past certainly doesn't have to be prologue.
Who Supports Having a Constitutional Convention? And Why?Though a July Siena College poll found that 47 percent of New Yorkers backed a convention, with only 34 percent opposed, most elected officials and interest groups on both sides of the aisle want the ballot initiative defeated in November. (More on that below.) Those in favor include the good government group Citizens Union; Bill Samuels, a prominent liberal activist and fundraiser; Evan Davis, a former counsel for Mario Cuomo; a group of Women's Marchers who are hoping a convention could enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution ahead of any Trump attempt to weaken Roe v. Wade; and the New York State Bar Association.
The elder Cuomo supported holding a convention, though his fellow governor son, Andrew, has been noncommittal. The arguments for a convention boil down to being offered a rare chance to enact sweeping change without grinding through a deeply flawed legislative process. The New York State Constitution is an old, unwieldy document '-- the length of a short novel, at fifty thousand words '-- that has not been updated since 1938.
Backers of a constitutional convention are largely liberal, though the Republican minority leader of the state assembly, Brian Kolb, also favors holding one. Samuels has spoken about adding a new bill of rights to the constitution '-- rights to affordable higher education, clean air and water, healthcare, equitable funding for schools '-- that would make New York a much more progressive place.
Campaign finance and voting bills that have repeatedly failed to pass the Republican-controlled senate, like closing the LLC loophole and allowing early voting, could be written into the constitution. Other things that would never pass any state legislature, including term limits for all lawmakers, could become a reality as well.
For New York City residents, there's potentially much to gain. Both upstate and downstate communities want more autonomy from the state legislature and governor, in order to control if or how much localities raise income taxes, raise the minimum wage, or in the case of New York City, implement new rent regulations. A home-rule provision in a new constitution would allow a city of more than eight million residents to chart its destiny independent of Albany's whims, freeing the five boroughs from the yoke of upstate and suburban conservative legislators who have voted to gut protections for tenants.
Some academics also see a far-reaching opportunity to dissolve the state assembly and senate and move to a unicameral legislature '-- which could take some of the vast leverage away from the executive branch by providing a single legislative body to face off against the governor. A unicameral legislature could be a boon for the city: City interests dominate the assembly but always run into roadblocks in the senate, where the larger districts are more susceptible to gerrymandering.
More small-bore, but not necessarily less consequential, reforms could come out of a convention as well. Legal watchers hope the governor could lose his power to elevate judges to the appellate division '-- the state's second-highest court level '-- to geographic areas they are not from. Former governor George Pataki, a Republican, drew the ire of many in the 2000s when he tapped an upstate conservative judge to serve in an appellate division that included Manhattan.
Convention proponents also hope to lessen the remarkable leverage the governor currently holds over the budgetary process. In 2004, Pataki won a case against the Assembly Speaker at the time, Sheldon Silver, that limited the legislature's ability to change the governor's wording in budget bills. As esoteric as this sounds, the ruling has since allowed the executive branch to set just about all the terms of state budget battles.
Without knowing who the delegates are or what issues come to dominate a hypothetical convention, it's difficult to predict what will really happen. All changes agreed upon at the 1967 convention were eventually voted down because, in part, they were packaged together at the ballot box, and one proposed change '-- allowing the state to provide funding for religious schools '-- ultimately sunk the others. Supporters hope the same thing won't happen again.
Who's Against Having a Constitutional Convention? And Why?Opponents are much easier to find. The Republican majority leader of the state senate, John Flanagan, and the Democratic Speaker of the Assembly, Carl Heastie, are against holding a constitutional convention. So are Mayor Bill de Blasio, State Senator Jeff Klein '-- the leader of the Independent Democratic Conference '-- and most other politicians in New York State.
Their opposition, in part, is driven by the strenuous and united front against a convention led by the state's major unions, who fear the loss of state protections for labor rights. They are set to outspend and possibly outmaneuver Con Con. They have formed a group, New Yorkers Against Corruption, to harness this energy and money.
Conservatives see much to lose from a Con Con, too. Guns-rights groups and the New York State Conservative Party, formed originally to push Republicans to the right, have joined New Yorkers Against Corruption, out of fear that progressive interests would steer New York too far left.
One argument made against a convention is that the delegates will end up being elected officials or lobbyists determined to protect the status quo, as happened in 1967. With a convention likely to occur during the 2019 legislative session, state lawmakers might be deterred from serving as delegates alongside their regular Albany duties.
The more significant argument animating opposition is the potential loss of strong labor protections baked into a constitution last written in 1938, when organized labor was on the rise. Pension obligations could be wiped away. Liberal opponents of a convention warn that right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers and Robert Mercer, the Donald Trump backer and Breitbart funder, could hijack the process by spending millions to elect fiercely anti-union delegates.
So far, no billionaire has spent significant money for or against holding a constitutional convention in New York, and there's no evidence the Koch brothers have any interest in investing their vast resources here when so many battlegrounds in the Midwest and South have preoccupied them. Still, anything is possible, and labor unions don't see Con Con as a risk worth taking.
Another question is how quickly, if a convention wins at the ballot box in November, progressive convention supporters could mobilize to elect delegates and strategize for what would be an undertaking unprecedented in most New Yorkers' lifetimes. Proponents haven't articulated much of a game plan for electing delegates or keeping the process out of the hands of more nefarious elements.
Of course, most of the great organizing forces in this state, like labor unions, are working to defeat it. They could change course and throw their muscle into protecting their rights at a 2019 Con Con.
The odds, however, of a state constitution stripping away significant labor protections and passing in a statewide vote are not that high. New York is increasingly Democratic. Any Mercer/Koch expenditure would be countered by the combined forces of organized labor and the political establishment in one of the greatest pitched wars the state has ever seen.
That is, if any of this comes to pass. As in 1997, most voters may just say ''no'' to a Con Con.
Ministry of Truthiness
Bookmark This: Over 400 Links Google Doesn't Want You To Visit
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 03:31
The war on truth has reached a fever pitch as Google has made it their mission to annihilate the independent media. The 'New Media' lead by the likes of Infowars, Breitbart, Natural News and many other great independent sites will have an uphill battle when it comes to getting their content in front of readers. Google has announced they will be doubling down on their 'Orwellian' practice of making stories disappear from their monopolistic search engine. Outlined in their Gestapo like 160-page handbook, Google describes exactly how they plan to suppress any information they deem unfit for readers. Highlighted at the bottom of page 108 Google states:
' Pages that directly contradict well established
scientific or medical consensus for queries seeking scientific or
medical information, unless the query indicates the user is seeking an alternative viewpoint.
' Pages that directly contradict well-established
historical facts (e.g., unsubstantiated conspiracy theories), unless
the query clearly indicates the user is seeking an alternative viewpoint.
These two guidelines provided by Google should set off alarm bells to anyone who has a thirst for knowledge or anyone that has the audacity to examine both sides of a topic. Imagine only being able to see and hear the corporate narrative on such important issues like vaccines, 9/11, holistic health, the Kennedy assassination, climate change, banking alternatives, and many other important matters. And that is only scratching the surface.
This information from Google's handbook was first uncovered by Melissa Dykes at Truth Stream Media who made a great video that eloquently breaks down the importance of this complex issue. I highly recommend everyone watch it and more importantly support their work.
As bad as this news sounds there is a bright side. We have solutions people; we just have to break the habit of being slaves to the Google regime. First, we can stop using Google altogether and start using some great alternatives out there like Good Gopher, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Searx.me and Qwant.com The second and most important thing we can do is go old school and start bookmarking sites again (something I have been doing for years). This will cut out the middle man (Google) and enable you to see all the great information from thousands of independent journalists that Google is trying to suppress.
Below you will find a comprehensive list of great sites broken down by category that do an excellent job in their respective field. I urge everyone to bookmark this page and make it their go to when searching for news on politics, health and prepping.
Sick of the lies? Get the Gov't Slaves newsletter delivered to your inbox.By no means is this list complete, there are thousands of great independent sites out there that I have inadvertently missed. If your favorite site is missing send me an email at govtslaves@protonmail.com and I will happily add it to the list if it's worthy.
Drudgereport.com
Breitbart.com
Infowars.com
SteveQuayle.com
Whatreallyhappened.com
Rense.com
Blacklistednews.com
Thefreethoughtsproject.com
Thedailysheeple.com
Public Intelligence Blog
Robert David Steele
Judicialwatch.org
Projectveritas.com
Henrymakow.com
Sott.net
Caravantomidnight.com
Joemiller.us
Newsbusters.org
Democracynow.org
Globalresearch.ca
Antiwar.com
Reason.com
Prisonplanet.com
Copblock.org
Opposingviews.com
Topsecretwriters.com
Allgov.com
The Freedom Articles
Veteranstoday.com
Whowhatwhy.org
Truthstreammedia.com
Thenewamerican.com
Freedomproject.com
Corbettereport.com
Sgtreport.com
Newsbud.com
Dailycaller.com
Mintpressnews.com
Informationliberation.com
Truthstreammedia.com
Fromthetrenchesworldreport.com
Trueactivist.com
Shtfplan.com
Collective-evolution.com
Counterpunch.org
Truth-out.org
Hangthebankers.com
Govtslaves.info
Theantimedia.com
Theintercept.com
Activistpost.com
Intellihub.com
Theeconomiccollapseblog.com
Coasttocoastam.com
Cnsnews.com
Wsws.org
Newstarget.com
Twitchy.com
Thenationalsentinel.com
USAwatchdog.com
PJmedia.com
Lifesitenews.com
Allnewspipeline.com
Thecommonsenseshow.com
Wakingtimes.com
WND.com
Theamericanmirror.com
Moonbattery.com
Thegatewaypundit.com
Bizpacreview.com
Christianpost.com
Vdare.com
Lifenews.com
Z3news.com
Constitution.com
Washingtonexaminer.com
Conservativedailypost.com
Anotherdayintheempire.com
Townhall.com
Paulcraigroberts.org
Dailysignal.com
Rollcall.com
USnews.com
McClatchy.com
Thecollegefix.com
Washingtontimes.com
Freebeacon.com
Godfatherpolitics.com
Refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com
Informationclearinghouse.info
Americanthinker.com
NTKnetwork.com
Independentjournalreview.com
Hellofla.com
Campusreform.org
Truepundit.com
Moonofalabama.org
ACLJ.org
Thenewspaper.com
Fellowshipoftheminds.com
AIM.com
Dennismichaellynch.com
Lewrockwell.com
Freedomoutpost.com
Westernjournalism.com
Conservativekings.com
Trunews.com
Disobedientmedia.com
Ronpaulinstitute.org
Thefederalist.com
EAGnews.org
Ground Zero
Gotnews.com
Davidicke.com
Skywatchtv.com
Weeklystandard.com
Photographyisnotacrime.com
Jonrappoport.wordpress.com
Freedomsphoenix.com
Libertybeacon.com
Lastresistance.com
Washingtonsblog.com
USdefensewatch.com
Redflagnews.com
Raygano.com
Newswithviews.com
Clashdaily.com
Marylanddriversalliance.com
Tenthamendmentcenter.com
Therightscoop.com
Whitehousedossier.com
Patdollard.com
Thomasdishaw.com
Full-Spectrum-Dominance.com
Massprivatei.blogspot.com
Devvy.com
Citypaper.com
Nationofchange.org
Axios.com
Skidie.com
Libertyheadlines.com
Caitlin Johnstone
HSLDA.org
Milo.yiannopoulos.net
Thesmokinggun.com
Truthrevolt.org
Newswars.com
Shane Kastler
Artofmanliness.com
Trump.news
Minds.com
Courthousenews.com
Barnhardt.biz
Wearechange.org
12160.info
Theblaze.com
Skidie.com
Conservativetribune.com
Hagmannreport.com
Cryptome.org
Wikileaks.org
Publicintelligence.net
Easton Spectator
Republicbroadcasting.org
Consortiumnews.com
Larouchepac.com
Larouchepub.com
Jim Stone
Redstatewatcher.com
Poisonpapers.org
Evolvepolitics.com
Independentsentinel.com
Wanttoknow.info
Clarionproject.org
Tarpley.net
Speroforum.com
Stonecoldtruth.com
Worldaffairsbrief.com
Realclearpolitics.com
Dilbert
Rightwinggranny.com
Realzionistnews.com
Blog.faithandfreedom.us
Barenakedislam.com
Oathkeepers.org
Chuckbaldwinlive.com
Gunsandbutter.org
Noagendashow.com
Cuttingthroughthematrix.com
Theduran.com
Zerohedge.com
Sovereignman.com
Thedailybell.com
Libertyblitzkrieg.com
Dailyreckoning.com
Coindesk.com
Thecrux.com
Dailyjobcuts.com
Alt-Market.com
ETFdailynews.com
Kingworldnews.com
Mishtalk.com
Retaildive.com
Visualcapitalist.com
Brotherjohnf.com
Personalliberty.com
321gold.com
Dollartoday.com
Investmentwatchblog.com
TFmetalsreport.com
Silverdoctors.com
Goldsilver.com
Economicpolicyjournal.com
Wallstreetonparade.com
Maxkeiser.com
Acting-man.com
Wolfstreet.com
Shiffgold.com
Capitalpress.com
Agweek.com
Thepacker.com
Seekingalpha.com
X22report.com
Moneyish.com
Wealthydebates.com
Chainstoreage.com
Armstrongeconomics.com
247wallstreet.com
Coindesk.com
Mybudget360.com
Misses.org
Goldismoney2.com
Ibankcoin.com
Sciencedaily.com
Geoengineeringwatch.org
Enenews.com
Climatedepot.com
Arstechnica.com
Eff.org
Techcrunch.com
Torrentfreak.com
Phys.org
Newscientist.com
Livescience.com
Universetoday.com
Redorbit.com
Dailygalaxy.com
Ancientcode.com
Disclose.tv
Betanews.com
Eurekaalert.org
Seeker.com
MNN.com
Themindunleashed.com
Techdirt.com
Hackernews.com
Watchers.news
Naturalnews.com
Nutritionfacts.org
Vactruth.com
Fooddive.com
Healthnutnews.com
Naturalsociety.com
Draxe.com
Preventdisease.com
Organicconsumers.org
GMwatch.org
Naturalblaze.com
Althealthworks.com
Healthimpactnews.com
Theheartysoul.com
Vaccines.news
Naturalhealth365.com
Mercola.com
Healthydebates.com
Organicauthority.com
Foodsafetynews.com
Ecowatch.com
EWG.org
Mindbodygreen.com
Dr Group
Alliance For Natural Health
Juicing For Health
Beautytalk.com
Foodbabe.com
Drmalcolmkendrick.org
Extremehealthradio.com
Greenmedinfo.com
Thetruthaboutcancer.com
RT.com
Sputniknews.com
Aljazeera.coDescrier.com
Rinf.com
Theepochtimes.com
Redice.tv
Southfront.org
Fort-russ.com
Tass.com
Pravdareport.com
Therussophile.org
Rbth.com
Russiafeed.com
Thetruthseeker.co.uk
Upi.com
Panampost.com
DW.com
PressTV.com
Longwarjournal.com
Nationalinterest.com
NKHworld.or.jp
UNZ.com
Journal-neo.org
Danielpipes.org
Middleeastmonitor.com
Venezuelanalysis.com
21stcenturywire.com
Strategic-culture.org
Russia-insider.com
Offthegridnews.com
Survivalblog.com
Theorganicprepper.ca
Lowtechmagazine.com
Naturallivingideas.com
Offgridsurvival.com
Modernsurvivalblog.com
Urbansurvivalsite.com
Readynutrition.com
Americanpreppersnetwork.com
Askaprepper.com
Backdoorsurvival.com
Doomandbloom.net
Morethanjustsurviving.com
Commanderzero.com
Rethinksurvival.com
Securityandselfreliance.com
Prepperwebsite.com
Bioprepper.com
Prep-blog.com
Shtfpreparedness.com
Survivalpedia.com
Thesurvivalistblog.net
Survivaldan101.com
Daretoprepare.com
Urbansurvival.com
NRAILA.ORG
Guns.com
Thefirearmblog.com
Gunshowtrader.com
Gunssavelives.com
Ammoland.com
Northeasternshooters.com
Bearingarms.com
Gunsamerica.com
Thetruthaboutguns.com
AR15.COM
Unexplainedmysteries.com
Godlikeproductions.com
City-Data.com
Yaplakal.com
Freerepublic.com
Lunaticoutpost.com
Fark.com
4chan.org
Abovetopsecret.com
Freebird.is
Voat.co
Censored.news
Newsblok.net
Alternativenews.com
Fetch.news
Thelibertymill.com
Hacker News
Wearethenewmedia.com
Standeyo.com
Beforeitsnews.com
Rumormillnews.com
Conspiracyculture.com
Health Ranger
Dr. John Bergman
Dr. Axe
Dr. Mercola
Dr. Eric Berg
Dr. Group
Dr. Greger
RT
Infowars
Project Veritas
Truthstream Media
Press For Truth
Mark Dice
Tim Pool
We Are Change
Chris Simpson
Paul Joseph Watson
The Still Report
Next News Network
David Icke
Frankie MacDonald
Lauren Southern
Mike Cernovich
Jason Goodman
Stefan Molyneux
Corbett Report
Steve Quayle
Gerald Celente
Morris
Rebel Media
Laughing at Liberals
George Webb
AMTV
Gregory Mannarino
Dollar Vigilante
Steve Pieczenik
DAHBOO77
X22 Report
Grant Cardone
Jason A
Ron Paul Liberty Report
The Real News
Adam Kokesh
Hagmann Report
Ron Gibson
Paul Begley
SGT Report
Greg Hunter
Realist News
Clif High
A Call For An Uprising
Face Like The Sun
Nicholson 1968
Richie From Boston
Dutchsinse
Thomas Dishaw is the editor and creator of Govtslaves.com. You can follow Gov't Slaves on Twitter, Facebook and GAB or contact us by email at govtslaves@protonmail.com.
This article is Creative Commons and can be republished in full with attribution. You can also view my catalog of writings at Naturalnews.com.
What is Verrit, the pro-Hillary Clinton news media platform? - Business Insider
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 12:23
Hillary Clinton. Chuck Burton/AP
Hillary Clinton promoted a new media platform Sunday that ostensibly collects and verifies facts. The website, called Verrit, advertises itself as a portal that "contextualizes noteworthy facts, stats, and quotes for politically engaged citizens."
The site's mantra, touted at the top of every page, is "Media for the 65.8 million," a reference to the popular-vote total Clinton received in the 2016 presidential election. Almost immediately after Clinton tweeted in support of the site on Sunday evening, it was hit with a denial-of-service attack, forcing the site offline for several hours.
In an interview Monday, Verrit founder and CEO Peter Daou told Business Insider what he hopes to accomplish with the site.
"We're in a time now where you just no longer trust anything that you're reading," Daou said. "Facts are now in question. Reality is now in question."
"So we want to do something where we rigorously vet these facts and we actually stand by our research and put an authentication code on every fact that we put up," he added.
A posting about DACA, the Obama-era policy that protects immigrants who were brought to the US illegally as children, on Verrit. Screenshot via Verrit
The "authentication code," according to Daou, who advised Clinton during her 2008 presidential run, links users to the original source of the content and provides necessary context, but he suggested there is a deeper urgency for a new kind of rigorous fact-checking in the era of the Trump administration.
President Donald Trump has consistently earned low marks for trustworthiness, according to some national polls. An August 23 Quinnipiac poll found a majority of voters do not trust Trump to tell "the truth about important issues." That followed similar polling from Gallup and CNN, among others, in the seven months since Trump took office. In January, Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway rattled viewers when she attempted to defend false information about the crowd size at Trump's inauguration by calling them "alternative facts."
"When you lose a shared reality, where the definition of a fact is in question there's no longer the possibility of civil dialogue anymore," Daou told Business Insider. "If the person you're arguing with says, 'I'm not going to concede that a fact is even a fact,' you've got nothing left."
In combatting this and the broader challenge of debunking false stories that spread on the internet, Daou said Verrit aims toward "a diligent adherence to being factual, so that this is not just a matter of some partisan site."
Despite that assertion, some of the early reaction to Verrit '-- and specifically to its "Media for the 65.8 million," mantra '-- has been negative.
Some users on social media seemed to interpret Verrit as a liberal, progressive answer to other partisan sites at best '-- and at worst, as a platform for a potentially resurgent Clinton. Daou says it's neither of those things, but he acknowledged that he does want Verrit to "reflect the worldview" of the 65.8 million voters who chose Clinton in 2016 '-- a group that included voters from all corners of the political spectrum.
"Those voters are not a monolith," Daou said. "Those include Republicans, independents, Greens, Bernie Sanders supporters, Obama supporters. It's a very diverse group of people. Of course, they all voted for the same person, but for different reasons."
Critics also pointed to Clinton's tweet promoting the site on Sunday, raising questions about any involvement she might have with the project. Daou said Verrit "has no financial relationship with Clinton." Daou and his wife, Leela, are funding the site themselves, but he says they may seek private investors in the future.
What the hell is Peter Daou trying to accomplish with Verrit?
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 12:19
Change the labels on the belts and you have the current Democratic partyPeter Daou was happy to announce a new website for news with a liberal bent. Well, strike that, not specifically a liberal bent. I thought that's what it was going to be but-
So it's not exactly a Democratic or a liberal or progressive news site but a specifically ''Clinton voters'' site.
One of the very first stories on the site was this gem ''Sanders and the Mainstream Media Helped Put Trump in the White House'' blaming Bernie voters for Clinton's loss. This is the week after Daou went ape on Bernie for an incomplete tweet from the week before the election that he claims gave Sanders voters the ''green light'' to vote for Trump.
He ignores the other tweets Sanders put out including
and
Verrit might yet be a success. They claimed to be DDOS'd after Hillary herself mentioned the site in a tweet. I don't know and I don't think we've seen evidence for an actual DDOS attack rather than just a huge influx of visitors once the presidential candidate who got the most votes last year essentially endorsed the site, but either way, Daou's crew should have been ready with a CloudFlare like service to help them ride the wave.
So is this site the new Air America/Rachel Maddow/anti-Fox or is it going to be a tool to bash the leftmost side of the party and to settle the grudges of Clintonians?
Much of the content has been excellent and serves Dems well, but if it's laced with this internecine refighting of 2016 it will do nothing but divide and demoralize.
Maybe this is all a setup for HRC to run again in 2020 (and I think that would be a HUGE mistake) but what the hell is Peter Daou trying to accomplish here and why does he think success comes by stepping over the bodies of Bernie's supporters?
I encourage you to also read Samantha Wilson's excellent Medium piece with the snarky title ''Who's Paying Peter Daou to Smear Bernie Sanders and the Left?''
Shareblue - Wikipedia
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 12:22
Shareblue, formerly known as Blue Nation Review, is an American left-wing[1][2] news website owned by the journalist and political activist David Brock. The website is headed by former Clinton staffer Peter Daou. [1] Shareblue is within a consortium of political groups in Democratic strategist David Brock's network that will raise a roughly $40 million budget to oppose President Donald Trump's policies.[3][4]
History and activities [ edit] Originally called Blue Nation Review, the website relaunched as Shareblue in September 2016 to more accurately reflect the ownership of the publication.[1] Formerly owned by Moko Social Media Limited, a multi-media platform developer, Blue Nation Review was sold to Media Matters for America founder David Brock on November 25, 2015.[5] After Blue Nation Review's sale, almost all of its staff were terminated.[6] Brock hired Peter Daou '' a former Clinton Senate-staffer who worked for her 2008 Presidential campaign as a digital media strategist '' to head True Blue Media, LLC and to write for the website. Before the purchase, Blue Nation Review had published reports that shed light on the spending habits of former U.S. Representative Aaron Schock (R-Ill.), playing a role in the former Congressman's eventual resignation.[7][8] During the primaries, the website was critical of Bernie Sanders and supportive of Hillary Clinton, posting stories like "With Bernie Sanders As Their Nominee, Democrats Can Kiss The Presidency Goodbye" and "Why does Bernie Sanders keep denigrating Hillary's supporters?". Blue Nation Review endorsed Clinton in January 2016.[8]
David Brock has described the website as alternative and independent, saying that Blue Nation Review would produce daily content including investigative reports and video.[6][8] Later, he said that the main goal of the website was to get presidential candidate Hillary Clinton elected.[1] During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Shareblue's "bread-and-butter content" was "exposing what it considers to be news coverage stacked against" Clinton; the group's major message was "that a shameful false equivalence was causing the media to soft-pedal Mr. Trump's many transgressions and overplay the few it could find on Mrs. Clinton."[1]
Ownership [ edit] Brock formed a Delaware-based corporation, True Blue Media, LLC, to manage his ownership stake in the website. True Blue Media owns 80% of Blue Nation Review, with Moko Social Media retaining a 20% ownership stake.[6] Brock tapped journalist David Sirota to lead the company, which Brock intends to be "an answer to Breitbart on the left",[9] but Sirota later rescinded his acceptance citing doubts about the project's funding and purpose.[10]
References [ edit] External links [ edit]
Agenda 2030
The 3% of scientific papers that deny climate change are all flawed '-- Quartz
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 03:23
It's often said that of all the published scientific research on climate change, 97% of the papers conclude that global warming is real, problematic for the planet, and has been exacerbated by human activity.
But what about those 3% of papers that reach contrary conclusions? Some skeptics have suggested that the authors of studies indicating that climate change is not real, not harmful, or not man-made are bravely standing up for the truth, like maverick thinkers of the past. (Galileo is often invoked, though his fellow scientists mostly agreed with his conclusions'--it was church leaders who tried to suppress them.)
Not so, according to a review published in the journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology. The researchers tried to replicate the results of those 3% of papers'--a common way to test scientific studies'--and found biased, faulty results
Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, worked with a team of researchers to look at the 38 papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the last decade that denied anthropogenic global warming.
''Every single one of those analyses had an error'--in their assumptions, methodology, or analysis'--that, when corrected, brought their results into line with the scientific consensus,'' Hayhoe wrote in a Facebook post.
One of Hayhoe's co-authors, Rasmus Benestad, an atmospheric scientist at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, built the program using the computer language R'--which conveniently works on all computer platforms'--to replicate each of the papers' results and to try to understand how they reached their conclusions. Benestad's program found that none of the papers had results that were replicable, at least not with generally accepted science.
Broadly, there were three main errors in the papers denying climate change. Many had cherry-picked the results that conveniently supported their conclusion, while ignoring other context or records. Then there were some that applied inappropriate ''curve-fitting'''--in which they would step farther and farther away from data until the points matched the curve of their choosing.
And of course, sometimes the papers just ignored physics altogether. ''In many cases, shortcomings are due to insufficient model evaluation, leading to results that are not universally valid but rather are an artifact of a particular experimental setup,'' the authors write.
Those who assert that these papers are correct while the other 97% are wrong are holding up science where the researchers had already decided what results they sought, the authors of the review say. Good science is objective'--it doesn't care what anyone wants the answers to be.
The review serves as an answer to the charge that the minority view on climate change has been consistently suppressed, wrote Hayhoe. ''It's a lot easier for someone to claim they've been suppressed than to admit that maybe they can't find the scientific evidence to support their political ideology'... They weren't suppressed. They're out there, where anyone can find them.'' Indeed, the review raises the question of how these papers came to be published in the first place, when they used flawed methodology, which the rigorous peer-review process is designed to weed out.
In an article for the Guardian, one of the researchers, Dana Nuccitelli points out another red flag with the climate-change-denying papers: ''There is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming,'' he writes. ''Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on. There is a 97% expert consensus on a cohesive theory that's overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence, but the 2''3% of papers that reject that consensus are all over the map, even contradicting each other.''
The Galileo example is also instructive, Nuccitelli points out. The ''father of observational science,'' championed the astronomical model that the earth and other planets in our solar system revolve around the sun'--a view that was eventually accepted almost universally as the truth. ''If any of the contrarians were a modern-day Galileo, he would present a theory that's supported by the scientific evidence and that's not based on methodological errors,'' he writes. ''Such a sound theory would convince scientific experts, and a consensus would begin to form.''
Arctic Melt Season Ends In Disaster For Climate Alarmists
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 11:31
I have been blogging for months that this summer was going to be a disaster for Arctic alarmists, who have been claiming record heat and record low ice extent. Nature has called them out on their fraud.
Ocean and Ice Services | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut
ssmi1_ice_area.png (33332500)
Poppie$
Execution in Nevada to use powerful opioid fentanyl
Tue, 05 Sep 2017 12:41
(CNN) At a time when the United States is grappling with an epidemic of opioid-related overdose deaths, one state is turning to a very high-potency opioid for criminal executions.
Opioids are a class of drugs that include some prescription painkillers as well as illicit drugs such as heroin and street fentanyl. The majority of drug overdose deaths nationwide involve an opioid, and about 91 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Now, the Nevada Department of Corrections is preparing to use fentanyl in a three-part drug combination for an upcoming execution, it said in a statement August 17.
The combination includes the sedative diazepam, which is often sold under the brand name Valium; the muscle relaxant cisatracurium; and fentanyl, according to the statement.
Nevada turned to fentanyl for an execution because the state had no other drugs to carry out a lethal injection after "pharmaceutical industry opposition to the use of their products in executions," The Marshall Project reported Wednesday.
The Marshall Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit news organization covering the criminal justice system, originally published news of this execution approach.
"I have one word that summarizes all of it, and it's 'irony,' " said Josh Bloom, senior director of chemical and pharmaceutical sciences for the American Council on Science and Health, adding that Nevada's decision left him "flabbergasted."
"You got something that's killing hundreds of people a day across the United States, and you got prisons who can't get death penalty drugs, so they're turning to the drug that's killing hundreds of people across the United States. This sounds like an article from the Onion," a news satire site, Bloom said.
On the other hand, Nevada's decision didn't seem to shock Dr. Edward W. Boyer, a medical toxicologist who also teaches at Harvard Medical School.
"Fentanyl itself is lethal. If you haven't heard about fentanyl-laced heroin and its impact on death rates in opioid users over the past several months, you might have been living under a rock," Boyer said.
"Fentanyl is a drug that you can inject intramuscularly, dermally and a wide number of routes," he said. "The main problem with them from a clinical perspective is that they wipe out your ability to breathe. You simply stop breathing. It causes profound respiratory depression."
'This specific chemical cocktail ... has never been used in this way before'This fentanyl drug combination is to be used in the execution of 46-year-old Scott Raymond Dozier on November 14 at Ely State Prison in Ely, Nevada, according to the Department of Corrections' statement.
"Dozier was sentenced to death after a first-degree murder conviction for the 2002 killing and dismemberment of Jeremiah Miller, 22," the statement said. "Miller's dismembered torso was found in a suitcase that had been dumped in a trash bin.
"During the course of their investigation, police uncovered another victim of Dozier who was dismembered and buried in the Arizona desert. Dozier was found guilty of second-degree murder in that case," the statement said.
The Marshall Project reported that "Nearly a year ago, Nevada death row inmate Scott Dozier asked to be executed, telling a state court judge he would forego his appeals."
In an emailed statement to CNN, Nevada's chief medical officer Dr. John DiMuro said, "I can confirm that I am consulting with the NDOC as required by Nevada statute. This consultation process is ongoing and not complete at this time. Our expectation is that any final decision is likely to be reviewed by the Court."
The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada opposes the plans to use the new drug combination, said Tod Story, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada.
"The concern is that this specific chemical cocktail that they have proposed has never been used in this way before. It's not like they can point to some success or result. This will be the first time," Story said.
"Using Mr. Dozier as a guinea pig is not an option, despite his stated desire to want to give up all of his rights to appeal," he said. "The use of the drugs that they have proposed are paralytics and an overdose of an opioid. So you're essentially trying to kill this person by paralyzing them to death, which sounds horrific, and it's certainly not in our perspective compliant with the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which is no cruel or unusual punishment."
Last week, the ACLU of Nevada announced that it filed a public records request with the Department of Corrections in order to obtain additional details about Dozier's upcoming execution.
The Marshall Project cited experts who said they saw no obvious reason why Nevada selected this drug combination.
The fentanyl and diazepam "may be trying to block the experience of suffocation," Joel B. Zivot, an Emory University anesthesiologist who has served as an expert witness in legal challenges to execution protocols, told The Marshall Project.
"The fentanyl takes away pain, and the Valium takes away anxiety. Both drugs are limited in their ability to do that, and of course neither is designed to block the pain or anxiety of death. So that's just a show," Zivot said.
However, as a former organic chemist who takes no position on the death penalty, Bloom said that he thinks Nevada's new execution cocktail is humane.
The diazepam will put people to sleep, "so they won't feel the fentanyl hitting them, and then the muscle relaxant stops them from breathing," he said. "This would legitimately be a humane lethal injection. Absolutely, no question, it would work, assuming they give enough fentanyl -- and it doesn't take much."
Phrase From the Chaise
Talk:nitty-gritty - Wiktionary
Mon, 04 Sep 2017 13:02
The phrase is also agreed to have another, less innocent meaning, although it has long since fallen into disuse. Reports do suggest however that it was a derogatory term for slaves in the early 1900s, or even worse; a euphemistic term for the practice of forcing intercourse on the female slaves under ones 'ownership'. As it has passed into such common usage few have call to know this unpleasant origin; and its use by public officials has occasionally caused some scandal. It is also believed to be a euphemism for the layer of excrement at the bottom of a slave ship after a trans-atlantic crossing. Hence to "get down to the nitty-gritty".
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term is of 20th Century coinage. Surely, therefore, the phrase could not relate to the issues described above because the practice of slavery as described was already historical? I have been led to believe the alleged slavery connection is an urban myth. Has anyone got a definitive source?
Dating the phrase is difficult, since the main function of the word seems to have been as a spoken euphemism that would allow, say, white Southerners to make an allusion to "black" issues over the dining table without their children understanding what was being mentioned. The spoken usage may well go back significantly further than the earliest written documentation, since there wouldn't have been an obvious need to write the phrase down (unless perhaps some KKK official felt the need to document its use).Insulting slang terms based on the idea of slavery can persist long after slavery has ended - remember, racial segregation was still legally supported in parts of the the South until comparatively recently (the fundamentalist Christian Jerry Falwell, very recently deceased, started out as a pro-segregation campaigner), so there would have been easily enough people in the South to keep these nasty terms alive . Abusive slang can have a very long life. Floortile 18:13, 16 May 2007 (UTC)...and on a lighter note: i have read that "nitty gritty" was a slang term used by blues musicians to refer to the rough texture felt by the tongue on the inner walls of a woman's vagina when performing cunnilingus upon her, thus "getting down to the nitty gritty". i kid you not64.185.130.149 22:05, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
Rough texture? I don't want to know. OK, maybe I do. No, I don't. neodanite
The mysteriousness of the origin of "nitty-gritty" stems from the fact that it originated as a word that wasn't supposed to be explained or documented. In the American Old South, white segregationist groups were fond of inventing codewords that would be understood by fellow segregationists but not by outsiders, and "nitty-gritty" was one of them.
The word is a basic "secret slang" construction of the type that kids often use to talk to each other so that any eavesdroppers hear it as gibberish. The speaker strips out all the vowels and vowel sequences from a sentence and replaces them with a distracting "nonsense" sound, which the intended listener then strips out, leaving just the original consonants, which are usually sufficient to recontruct the words.
Working backwards from "nitty-gritty" to reconstitute the original word, the fake sequence is obviously "itty", and the original source word becomes
n(itty) gr(itty) = n__gr__ = "negro", or "nigger"
This explanation seems to explain all subsequent usage.
The phrase "the nitty gritty" is sometimes used by Southern right-wing politicians and evangelist Christians to refer to a set of shared fundamental beliefs that the audience would consider self-evident, but which are not always stated, or which do not need to be stated. The speaker will often know the racial origin of the phrase and will assume that their target audience does too, allowing the phrase to be used as a "codeword" to connect with like-minded members of the audience without alienating other listeners who wouldn't understand the "racial" reference. However, the deliberate vagueness of the term means that it's also possible that some other Southern politicians and campaigners may have inadvertently adopted the phrase without realising its racial connotations, and may use it publicly to refer to other "back to basics" campaigns based around fundamentalist values and beliefs that have no racial content.
This can make it difficult for outsiders to tell whether a Southern politician or campaigner referring to "the nitty gritty" is really campaigning on a racist platform or not - and of course, this uncertainty was originally part of the reason for the phrase existing, it allowed "good ol' boys" to understand what was really being said by context, while still allowing the campaigner to claim that there was no "racial" content to their speeches. Floortile 17:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Agreed by whom? After a Equality and Diversity Course (much needed), this origin story for Nitty-Gritty was posited by our speaker, so that we would be aware of how offensive our language might be, without us even knowing it. When I asked for where this information came from, I received no sensible reply. At first I was a bit annoyed by this apparent fanciful redaction of history for no good reason so I calmed down and researched a little. There are no references in any literature either online or in any reference book I can find that Nitty-Gritty is anything but a common and innocent phrase referring to the basics, the soil, the unpleasant, hard part of any enterprise. For example Phrase.org who are a group of amateur and professional lexicographers (twas ever thus) gives the history of this mis-definition, and states the first written reference is Steve McQueen in Time in the 1960s! I even downloaded a sailors dictionary from the 1800s from Gutenburgh which doesn't refer to it at all (nitty means 'noisy'). So I'll ask Floortile, can you tell me of any literature from which this definition comes from, even the person who told you it. Or was it passed solely over the polite tables of Georgia Society until it reappeared to be used by 1920s jazz musicians, Steve McQueen, the Black Panthers, British Government Ministers at ACPO senior police officers conferences (google that one) and my mother to name but a few. I don't mind moderating my language if it truly offends, but don't destroy the English language over some specious definition. KBO (12th March 2009)
While the argument that nitty-gritty arose as an alternative to the use of nigger is plausible, I'd counter that euphemisms arise when there's a need to employ a more socially acceptable term. The word nigger was so ingrained in the antebellum vernacular of the American South that there was no need to employ a euphemism.
Philip Howard - The Times - London - Thursday May 16th 2002 ...[The police apparently believe that "nitty - gritty" refers to the debris left at the bottom of a slave ship after a voyage...]... This is not just politically correct nonsense... The first appearance of "nitty - gritty" in print was in Time magazine in August 1963;The negroes present would know perfectly well that the nitty - gritty of a situation is the essentials of it.... It is inconceivable that the phrase "nitty-gritty" lay dormant in Black American for a century after the last slave ship sailed without somebody like Harriet Beecher Stowe writing it down. To assert that "nitty-gritty" is racist is as moronic as saying "niggardly" is an insult to black people. We cannot allow English language to be kidnapped by ignoramuses in race relations industry... Of course, it behoves us all, including police, to use sensitive language and not cause offence. Philip Howard ; 2nd November 1933 - 5th October 2014
The Phrase "Nitty Gritty" was also adopted by some black musicians as a cultural reference, and/or as a euphemism for sex:
Chuck Berry's song: "Club Nitty Gritty".Shirley Ellis's song "Nitty Gritty" refers to "getting right down" to "the real nitty gritty".Gladys Knight and the Pips covered Ellis's song on their 1969 album: "Nitty Gritty".The Dirt Band , a group with a varying line-up, specialising in playing Country music classics, renamed themselves "The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band".Jamaican rapper Glen Holness went by the stage name "Nitty Gritty" until he was shot dead in 1991.The phrase also appears in the lyrics of some later popular songs that don't obviously share same cultural references, usually as an implied reference to sex. It's often not clear from the context of these later songs whether or not the phrase is still intended to carry an ethnic reference. Floortile 19:54, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Clinton Body Count
State Department Official Linked to Hillary Clinton Found Dead | Neon Nettle
Tue, 05 Sep 2017 12:40
on 1st September 2017 @ 3.57pm
(C) press Body found after mysterious disappearance of Hillary Clinton associate The body of a missing State Department official, and Hillary Clinton associate, has been recovered from the Potomac River in the District of Columbia following his mysterious disappearance.Diplomatic Security Special Agent Kurt Smolek, 45, had been declared a "critical missing person" by the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department earlier this week.
Smolek was last seen on August 28, 2017, at approximately 10 pm, in the 600 Block of Water Street, Southwest, Washington, according to a Missing Person report by the DC Metropolitan Police Department.
"He was last seen wearing a blue oxford shirt and khaki pants," read the report.
"Kurt was last seen operating a gray 2011 GMC Terrain SUV, bearing Virginia tags XGG6532 with tinted windows."
As Diplomatic Security Services of the Department of State, Mr. Smolek was tasked with global responsibilities, including the safeguarding of American diplomatic personnel, property, and classified information.
DSS also has jurisdiction over classified communications, such as secure email and other platforms used by State Department officials.
Kurt Smolek is the latest in a long line of people connected to the Clintons that died in suspicious circumstances.
In July, a key witness in the trial against the Bill and Hillary Clinton's charitable foundation for corruption and malpractice was found dead in a Miami hotel room.
READ MORE: Witness Due to Testify Against The Clinton Foundation Found DeadFlorida police ruled the death of Klaus Eberwein, a former Haitian government official, as a suicide after he died of a gunshot wound to the back of his head.
The ruling that he took his own life was made despite reports that Eberwein, 50, had told acquaintances that he feared for his life for his fierce criticism of the Clinton Foundation.
His family and close friends also stated that he was in "good spirits" and was "looking to the future" and say they are "shocked" to learn of his death.
This news comes shortly after the suspicious death of a GOP financier who was also connected to the Clintons.
Peter W. Smith was one of Donald Trump's major sponsors who was found dead in a Chicago hotel just 10 days after the Wall Street Journal revealed that he was attempting to obtain Hillary Clinton's missing emails from hackers.
READ MORE: Trump Donor Who Tried to Obtain Hillary Clinton's Hacked Emails Found DeadMr. Smith died of suffocation in a room at the Rochester Hotel and was found with a suicide note that said, "NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER", according to police records.
Condolences have emerged online for Smolek's sudden passing, one of which is attributed to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and Assistant Director for International Programs Christian Schurman, that read:
"It is with great sadness that I share with you the news of the death of Diplomatic Security Special Agent Kurt Smolek.
"Kurt was found deceased today and the DS [Diplomatic Security agency] is working closely with local authorities to investigate the circumstances of his death.
"Please keep the Smolek family in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time.
"Christian Schurman."
According to a State Department bio for Christian J. Schurman:
"Christian J. Schurman was named Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and Assistant Director for International Programs on September 15, 2014.
"Mr. Schurman is responsible for evaluating, managing, and mitigating security threats to, as well as the direction of resources for, more than 240 diplomatic posts within the International Programs Directorate.
"A Diplomatic Security (DS) Special Agent since 1987, Mr. Schurman was promoted to the rank of Minister Counselor in April 2014."
The Department of State website has no official mention of Kurt Smolek, and any searches for information about him prove fruitless.
On Facebook, a post by Beverly Santicola read as follows:
"Please pray for my cousins and Uncle Emil as Kurt Smolek died in a tragic accident this week.
"He was a husband, dad, son, brother and grandson to them and they are dealing with a lot of shock, grief and pain. This photo was taken in happier times.
"Kurt is the one in the red during a trip to Vietnam when he was on assignment there.
"His mom and dad are in the front. Kurt's dad Don is my first cousin. Words cannot convey my sadness and grief."
F-Russia
California Governor: Russia's Decision to Sue US Over Consulate Closure is Right - Sputnik International
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 13:04
Politics13:55 06.09.2017(updated 15:58 06.09.2017) Get short URL
The governor of the US state of California commented on Moscow's decision to sue Washington over the closure of the Russian consulate in San Francisco, as well as the seizure of other Russian diplomatic property in the US.
VLADIVOSTOK (Sputnik) '-- California Governor Jerry Brown said that Russia's readiness to go to court over the closure of its consulate in the United States could resolve the conflict.
Brown told reporters on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum that such lawsuits were common in the United States, and in that case, could help settle the matter.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday he would instruct the Foreign Ministry to go to court over the situation with Russian diplomatic property in the United States. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov informed his US counterpart Rex Tillerson of Moscow's intention to bring the issue of Russian diplomatic property seizure to court.
(C) AP Photo/ Alexander F. Yuan
The US State Department said last Thursday that Washington demanded that Moscow close down its consulate general in San Francisco and two other diplomatic entities in New York City and Washington, DC by Saturday. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that US actions constituted a violation of international law, including the Vienna convention on diplomatic and consular relations.A few days later, the US conducted searches in the buildings of the Russian General Consulate in San Francisco and its trade mission in Washington. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov commented on the move saying that the searches conducted by the United States at the Russian diplomatic properties on US soil were outrageous and constitute aggressive violations of international law.
Vaccine$
A fatal outbreak of ST11 carbapenem-resistant hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae in a Chinese hospital: a molecular epidemiological study - The Lancet Infectious Diseases
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 18:18
All five patients had undergone surgery for multiple trauma and subsequently received mechanical ventilation. The patients were aged 53''73 years and were admitted to the intensive care unit between late February and April, 2016. They all had severe pneumonia, carbapenem-resistant K pneumoniae infections, and poor responses to antibiotic treatment and died due to severe lung infection, multiorgan failure, or septic shock. All five representative carbapenem-resistant K pneumoniae strains belonged to the ST11 type, which is the most prevalent carbapenem-resistant K pneumoniae type in China, and originated from the same clone. The strains were positive on the string test, had survival of about 80% after 1 h incubation in human neutrophils, and killed 100% of wax moth larvae (G mellonella) inoculated with 1''106 colony-forming units of the specimens within 24 h, suggesting that they were hypervirulent K pneumoniae. Genomic analyses showed that the emergence of these ST11 carbapenem-resistant hypervirulent K pneumoniae strains was due to the acquisition of a roughly 170 kbp pLVPK-like virulence plasmid by classic ST11 carbapenem-resistant K pneumoniae strains. We also detected these strains in specimens collected in other regions of China.
CLIPS & DOCS
VIDEO - Late-night hosts on Daca's Dreamers: 'They're as American as anyone else' | Culture | The Guardian
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 11:48
'Trump's decision throws the lives of nearly 800,000 Americans who were brought here as children, and who work here and go to school here, into chaos' ... Seth Meyers. Photograph: YouTube
Late-night hosts on Tuesday addressed Donald Trump's controversial decision to rescind the ''Dreamers'' program, protecting the children of illegal immigrants, as well as his fumbling response to Hurricane Harvey and the administration's continued saber-rattling with regard to the North Korean nuclear threat.
''While Harvey's a natural disaster that seems to be bringing people together in very heartwarming ways, there's a manmade disaster unfolding in Washington right now because the Trump administration has announced they're ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or Daca,'' Stephen Colbert began.
''The thing is, the vast majority of Americans like this program, so by canceling it Trump has stepped in some steep Daca,'' he continued. ''Even though his decision is unpopular, Trump bravely stepped up, then cringed back, and had somebody else announce it. That someone was attorney general and turnip-that-learned-to-hate Jeff Sessions.''
Colbert showed footage of the press conference in which Sessions said the Dreamers weren't ''bad people'' and that the decision to end the program was not meant to ''disrespect'' or ''demean'' them.
''You're right, Jeff,'' Colbert quipped. ''Deporting innocent children does not mean they're bad people. It means you're a bad person.''
He went on: ''These Dreamers, they aren't the only ones being hurt. In fact, a recent study estimated that terminating Daca would cost the federal government $60bn and reduce economic growth by $280bn in the next ten years. Wow, Trump really is a dealmaker.''
Colbert then did his best impression of Trump, mocking his negotiating tactics: ''I'll trade you 800,000 productive young people and, wait, $280bn, for nothing. Final offer.''
Seth Meyers also addressed the president's decision to terminate the program, but began by discussing Trump's response to the tragedies afflicting Houston in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.
He said: ''On top of everything else he'll face in the next several months '' the budget, the debt limit, North Korea's nuclear program '' Trump has had to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.''
''To be fair to Trump, we don't need elbow grease from our president in times of tragedy,'' Meyers said. ''We need their inspirational words, but even there, Trump wasn't quite up to the task.''
Meyers then showed clips of the president making a speech in Houston, mentioning the ''great turnout'' and thanking people for coming to see him.
''What is wrong with you?,'' Meyers asked. ''You're the president, not a standup comic. But of course, as quick as he was to praise himself, Trump is even quicker to needlessly attack others, as he did on Saturday when he was praising emergency responders for their heroic work and, out of nowhere, took this false, gratuitous swipe at the media.''
Trump, in a clip that aired on television, said responders had gone into the winds the media was not willing to confront.
''Of course, the media was on those choppers with the coast guard during many of those rescues, which is why you saw those rescues on the news,'' Meyers said. ''And the coast guard and the media weren't the only ones braving dangerous conditions to save lives. There were also countless emergency responders like Houston-area paramedic Jesus Contreras. Contreras is protected from deportation under the Obama-era program known as Daca. He spent six straight days rescuing people from floodwaters in Houston, so how did the president thank him?''
''Well, today Trump announced that he was rescinding Daca, supposedly with a six-month delay to allow Congress to pass legislation to replace it,'' Meyers explained. ''Trump's decision throws the lives of nearly 800,000 Americans who were brought here as children, and who work here and go to school here, into chaos.''
Meyers continued: ''To be clear, Daca recipients were brought here as children, have known no other country, pay taxes, have no criminal record, and are as American as anyone else living here.''
''So, a president who backed himself into a corner by catering to the racial resentments of his base is now needlessly throwing the lives of hundreds of thousands of hardworking Americans into chaos,'' Meyers said.
Trevor Noah also discussed some of the latest news coming out of the White House, principally North Korea's escalating nuclear program and the response to it from representatives of the administration.
''You know that saying: find something you love and do it as much as possible,'' Noah began. ''Well, North Korea's problem is that what they love doing is testing nuclear weapons.''
He showed cable news coverage explaining that the country's most recent nuclear test was its sixth, amplifying international concerns about Kim Jong-un's nuclear capabilities.
''The whole thing that the world has spent the last 25 years to prevent North Korea from getting, now it has,'' Noah said. ''Both a missile that can reach the United States and a thermonuclear bomb, a bomb more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.''
''Now, coming after multiple warnings from the White House to cut this shit out, North Korea's new nuclear test was a huge provocation,'' he continued. ''And the Trump team got bigly provoked.''
Trevor Noah also discussed Trump's decision on Daca.Noah showed a speech given by the US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, in which she said North Korea was asking for war. He also aired footage of the defense secretary, James Mattis, stating that, while it did not intend to do so, the US had the ability to annihilate North Korea.
''But look, there's no need to freak out,'' the host added. ''That's just the United Nations person and the Pentagon guy. The real time to panic is when you hear saber-rattling from the commander-in-chief. So I guess what I'm saying is: panic.''
Noah showed a brief clip in which a reporter asked Trump if he planned to attack North Korea, to which he responded: ''We'll see.''
''We'll see? Dude, you don't Ryan Seacrest nuclear war! Will the planet be consumed in a radioactive hellfire, or will Fantasia take home this season's crown?'' Noah joked. ''We'll see.''
VIDEO - Stormzy: Theresa May is a 'paigon' '' video | Music | The Guardian
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 11:35
Grime MC Stormzy speaks at the GQ awards on Tuesday night after the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, presented him with the best solo artist prize. In his acceptance speech, the rapper criticises Theresa May, calling the prime minister a 'paigon', slang for someone who is two-faced or a liar
VIDEO - UK begins debate on key Brexit bill
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 11:30
Britain's parliament begins debating the legislation that will sever the country's political, financial and legal ties to the European Union, a step towards Brexit the opposition says it will challenge. Pascale Davies reports.
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Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit battle returns to the British parliament. She's calling on the House of Commons to support legislation to sever political, financial and legal ties with the European Union. On Thursday (September 7), the main principles of the so-called repeal bill will be debated. Formally known as the EU withdrawal bill, it's central to the government's plan to exit the bloc in 2019. It will untangle Britain from more than 40 years of EU lawmaking and repeal the treaty that first made Britain a member in 1972. May needs all the support she can get following criticism from Brussels over her Brexit strategy and after a series of leaks, including details of proposals to halt nearly all immigration from the EU. It'll also be a test for the UK Prime Minister's relationship with a small Northern Irish Party. May's Conservatives lost their majority in the House of Commons in a snap election in June, and now rely on an alliance with Northern Ireland's DUP. To defeat her, the opposition Labour Party will have to win over some Conservative MPs. The party led by Jeremy Corbyn says it will vote against the bill as it stands, arguing it amounts to a huge power grab by the executive. But no firm decisions or amendments to the bill will be made until Monday (September 11), when lawmakers will vote on whether the bill can move onto the next stage of its long legislative journey.
VIDEO - Facebook Offers Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for Music Rights - Bloomberg
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 11:55
Facebook Inc. is offering major record labels and music publishers hundreds of millions of dollars so the users of its social network can legally include songs in videos they upload, according to people familiar with the matter.
The posting and viewing of video on Facebook has exploded in recent years, and many of the videos feature music to which Facebook doesn't have the rights. Under current law, rights holders must ask Facebook to take down videos with infringing material.
Music owners have been negotiating with Facebook for months in search of a solution, and Facebook has promised to build a system to identify and tag music that infringes copyrights. Yet such a setup will take as long as two years to complete, which is too long for both sides to wait, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing details that aren't public.
Facebook is eager to make a deal now so that it no longer frustrates users, by taking down their videos; partners, by hosting infringing material; or advertisers, with the prospect of legal headaches.
New HomeThe latest discussions will ensure Facebook members can upload video with songs just as it's rolling out Watch, a new hub for video, and funding the production of original series. Facebook is attempting to attract billions of dollars in additional advertising revenue and challenge YouTube as the largest site for advertising-supported video on the web.
Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said on the company's second-quarter earnings call that for the next few years video will drive Facebook's business and determine how well the company performs. He told investors to expect the company to continue to increase its investment in the format, as it sees video sharing overtaking text and photo sharing in the future.
While Facebook can still pursue professional music videos, the company chose to prioritize clearing user-generated material. Most of the videos being uploaded to Facebook are by individuals (as opposed to media companies). Tamara Hrivnak, a former YouTube executive, has been leading negotiations for Facebook since joining the company earlier this year. Also a former executive at Warner/Chappell Music Publishing, Hrivnak is well-liked by her former peers.
Industry WindfallThe money from Facebook is the latest windfall for a music industry surging from the growth of on-demand streaming services Spotify and Apple Music. Global music sales grew 5.9 percent in 2016, according to The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, owner of the world's largest record label, reported a 15.5 percent increases in sales in the most recent fiscal quarter, while Warner Music Group, owner of the third largest label, reported a 13 percent increases in sales.
A QuickTake on the streaming revolution
Most of the growth is attributable to paid services from Spotify and Apple, though sales from advertising on YouTube are growing as well. The industry has rebuked YouTube time and again for not respecting intellectual property and paying too little to musicians.
Faustian BargainGetting into business with Facebook presents something of a Faustian bargain. Rights holders need a deal. Given the current legal framework for copyright online, users are going to upload video with infringing material no matter what. The onus is on rights holders to police those videos. A deal ensures they get something rather than waste resources tracking down all the illegal videos.
Music industry executives also hope licensing songs for user-generated video on Facebook will place greater pressure on YouTube to behave. Yet by further empowering Facebook to host video and music, rights holders risk creating another YouTube ''- a great source of promotion, but a place where consumption outpaces sales.
VIDEO - Nigel Farage MEP - Full interview on Brexit negotiations, Trump and the UKIP leadership race - YouTube
VIDEO - Yuri Bezmenov - Why We Need God - YouTube
VIDEO - Yuri Bezmenov on KGB interest in yoga - YouTube
VIDEO - Yuri Bezmenov was right - YouTube
VIDEO - Taylor Swift Attends Best Friend's Wedding -- And Then The Booing Starts
Tue, 05 Sep 2017 12:55
Sorry, the new Taylor Swift can't come to the phone right now either. Why? She's getting booed while attending her best friend's wedding.
Amid one of the craziest weeks of her career, the pop star took a break from stirring internet frenzy to be a bridesmaid at the wedding of high school bestie Abigail Anderson.
For those who haven't dedicated every waking moment to deciphering Swift's lyrics, Abigail is the redheaded girl she sings about in ''Fifteen.'' Remember? The one who ''gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind.''
Well, hopefully Swift left that part out of her bridesmaid's speech, but she did look ever-dutiful on Saturday carrying Anderson's veil before entering Old Whaling Church in Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard.
Dressing very much like the old Taylor, the ''Ready For It'' singer wore a maroon floor-length halter gown with a sweetheart neckline. She paired the look with a bold red lip and a pendant necklace.
Given how everything Swift does these days is shrouded in secrecy, of course, die-hard Swifties jumped at the opportunity to catch a glimpse of their idol, and waited out the day in the rain.
But when their moment of glory came, bodyguards erected a makeshift screen to shield Swift from her adoring public and some paparazzi, as she exited the church and hopped in an SUV. That's when the crowd's temperament soured and the booing began.
''Taylor, we love you!'' someone shouted. ''We thought you loved your fans!''
''Very disappointing, not cool,'' another fan chimed in.
Can we all just give the girl a break?
VIDEO - Inconvenient Lie Main Page
Mon, 04 Sep 2017 13:22
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Day 1 Speakers William HapperThe Real Inconvenient Truth; More CO2 Benefits the Earth Prof. Happer is a professor at Princeton University in the field of atomic physics, optics, and spectroscopy. He is a pioneer developer of adaptive optics. He has served as Director of Science in the US Department of Energy. Professor Happer is a strong voice against the myth of anthropogenic global warming and says there is no reason to believe that CO2 levels are a major factor in climate change.Tim BallGlobal Warming Is the Biggest Deception in History Prof. Ball is a retired professor at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. He earned a Doctorate of Science at Queen Mary College, University of London, was Chairman of the Canadian Committee on Climatic Fluctuation, Chairman of Winnipeg's Advisory Committee on Hazardous Waste, has authored 53 scientific papers, and is the author of The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science. Professor Ball says that human-caused global warming is the biggest deception in history.Day 2 Speakers Dan HappelThey Call It Green; Global Warming and Agenda-21 Mr. Happel is a former County Commissioner in Madison County, Montana, and is an outspoken foe of the UN's Agenda 21. Dan shows how this blueprint for tyranny parades under the guise of sustainable development but really is aimed at bringing all human activity under control of government '' supposedly justified by the myth of global warming. Dan is on the Leadership Council of Freedom Force International.Holly SwansonThey Call It Education;Global Warming and Political Indoctrination Holly Swanson is the author of two books on the hidden agenda of the environmental movement. They are: Set Up & Sold Out; Find Out What Green Really Means, and Training for Treason: The Harmful Agenda Behind Education for Sustainability. She is the founder and director of We Choose Freedom, a citizen's campaign to stop political indoctrination in our schools.Alex NewmanThey Call It News; Global Warming and Propaganda Mr. Newman is a journalist and co-author of the book Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America's Children. He has a keen understanding of the global-warming deception and shows how global-warming myth makers, embedded in schools and media organizations, follow Adolph Hitler's axiom: If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.Day 3 Speakers Jim LeeGeoengineering, Weather Modification, and the Weaponization of Nature Mr. Lee is a private geoengineering investigator without equal. With a talent for finding rare and sometimes hidden documents, he will stagger your mind with proof of your worst fears about weather modification for warfare, geoengineering for profit, steering tornados with HAARP antennas, adding sulfur, bio-fuel, aluminum, barium, strontium, and carbon dust to jet fuel, and much more. And he has the documents to prove it.Patrick WoodThey Call it Science; Global Warming and Technocracy Mr. Wood is the author of Technocracy Rising; The Trojan Horse of Global Transfor-mation. He is the go-to source for information on the Trilateral Commission. He shows how the age-old drive for world power has morphed into new forms and now hides beneath phrases like environmentalism, the green economy, and sustainable development '' but, at its root, it remains an all-out attack on private property and financial independence.Elaine WillmanNative Americans '' Pawns in the Agenda-21 game Elaine is co-author of Going to Pieces; The Dismantling of the United States, a report on how the government is funding the rise of tribalism in a strategy to reorganize local political subdivisions into regional governments to be recognized by the UN as sovereign nations. Elaine is of Cherokee lineage and has worked most of her adult life with tribal leaders to protect the rights of native-Americans. Now she is equally active in protecting the rights of non-tribal citizens from tribal-government overreach and loss of AmericanDay 4 Speakers Debbie BacigalupiThey Call It Smart Growth: Global Warming and The Depopulation of Rural America Miss Bacigalupi is a long-time student of the global-warming myth. She attended the UN's Paris-21 Conference on Climate Change as an observer and critic. She will show how Agenda-21 will be used to place an unbearable yoke of taxation on developed countries. This is said to be for the benefit of poor nations, but most of it will go to politicians, bureaucrats, and military '' in the name of fighting global warming.G. Edward GriffinWhy Do They Deceive? Mr. Griffin is an author, film maker, and Founder of Freedom Force. His best-known works are The Creature from Jekyll Island and World without Cancer. He shows that the myth makers are driven by an ideology called collectivism, and that global warming is a tactic to frighten us into accepting total government (the essence of collectivism) as necessary to save the planet. Without this understanding, the myth makers may seem stupid but, with it, we see that they are very smart in pursuit of their agenda.Lord MoncktonGlobal Warming Is A Monstrous Hoax Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, UK, is known for his journalism, conservative political views, opposition to the EU, and especially for masterful debunking of global warming. In 2016, he was a national leader in rallying the British vote on behalf of BREXIT. Lord Monckton is a member of the Freedom Force Hall of Honor.
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VIDEO - 'The New Washington': Roger Stone - NYTimes.com
Sun, 03 Sep 2017 22:22
On this week's episode:
Michael Barbaro interviewed Roger Stone, the provocateur, political consultant and subject of a new Netflix documentary, who is one of President Trump's oldest advisers. Mr. Barbaro analyzes the conversation with Maggie Haberman, a White House reporter who has written about Mr. Stone for years.
Speaking from Los Angeles, Mr. Stone talked about his views on the internal White House battle between globalists and nationalists, why he promotes conspiracy theories and mistruths, and what he sees as one of the worst things in politics '-- being boring.
How do I listen?If you don't see an audio player on this page or to subscribe to ''The New Washington'' for free, follow the instructions below.
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VIDEO - Predicting Irma's Path Is Giving Supercomputers a Challenge - NBC News
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 15:30
When it comes to hurricane prediction, the consensus is on the need for consensus among forecasters. No single computer model should be relied on. And no forecast remains static.
So as Hurricane Irma roars through the Caribbean, forecasters are looking at the top weather models from Europe, the United States and Britain, collectively, to track what on Tuesday was already being described as the second-strongest storm observed in modern times.
But even the world's best weather minds and most powerful computers can't say precisely where the Category 5 storm is headed or whether it will retain its 185 mph winds when it hits the U.S., probably sometime this weekend. One major factor that can't yet be determined: whether Irma will hit Cuba and lose power along with the energy-sustaining warmth it gained over the open ocean.
The best hurricane forecasting systems today are global models that solve the mathematical equations about the behavior of the atmosphere all over the world, said Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground, a research group he founded.
Tops among half a dozen of these systems in recent years has been the ECMWF, the European Union's super-computing system. The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting, known to those in the trade as the "European Model," has used very high-powered computers for more than a decade to model weather patterns around the globe.
The models, known as four-dimensional variational data assimilations (or 4D-Var) are expensive and take longer to assemble '-- producing two projections a day compared to the faster modeling systems run in the United States, which produce four or more projections every 24 hours.
The results from the private European system are available only to subscribers and are costly, but experts said they have been the most reliable in recent years.
''The idea behind their model is to forecast for the entire globe,'' said Ryan Maue, a research meteorologist for WeatherBELL Analytics. "The theory is that, if they can get as much of the atmosphere around the globe correct as possible, then the tropical cyclones in the model will go in the right places and do the right things.''
Put another way, Maue said: ''If you had to go in a casino and bet on one model, you would bet on the ECMWF, because it would be right more often than the others.''
But Maue and other experts stressed that they look at the European model along with many others in trying to predict the path and intensity of storms like Irma.
The principal predictive tool operated in the United States is the Global Forecasting System (GFS), run by the National Weather Service. Models generally have become twice as good in predicting storm tracks over the last two decades and the GFS system is particularly strong in this regard, said Masters.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami uses both the European and America's GFS system, along with several other computer modeling systems to make its forecasts. Britain's UKMET system is known for accuracy derived, like the European system, from high-powered 4D modeling. America's HWRF (Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting) uses real-time data, including from airplanes, to track ocean waves and, thereby, wind speeds.
Maue said HWRF did a ''fantastic'' job predicting the rapid intensification of Hurricane Harvey, as it prepared to make landfall last week. That remains one of the most difficult challenges for forecasters '-- because accurate intensity calls allow individuals, and governments, to decide when evacuations are a must.
The importance of perusing multiple models was exemplified again this week as the GFS model predicted a phenomenally low 870 millibar atmospheric pressure reading, said Masters. That would indicate winds of 200 miles per hour, or more, could be on the way.
But Masters said the European and HWRF models factor in the immediate impact of the winds in stirring up colder, sub-surface ocean water. That colder water will tend to decrease the power of the storm, increase pressures into the 920-millibar range, and reduce wind speeds. So while the GFS model might indicate ''a ridiculous, totally off the scale, hurricane," Masters said, "the other models say it's likely we merely have a ridiculous hurricane.''
As much as the science of hurricane prediction has improved, there is a lot left to know. Predictions made four days prior to landfall still end up being an average of about 175 miles off the mark, said Masters.
Related: How to Help Storm Victims
Even with all the models and improvements, experts still don't know a couple of crucial things about Irma: How will local "steering currents" fluctuate, hour by hour, to redirect the storm as it gets closer to shore? What will be the exact location, and strength, of pressure systems around the U.S. that will determine when Irma turns northward?
The huge storm will look for the path of least resistance '-- probably toward a trough of low pressure to the north. That would cause Irma to make a right turn up into the Atlantic Ocean, said Maue, a popular scientist, whose weather charts are followed closely by other meteorologists.
''That means it most likely will not head into the Gulf [of Mexico] but will turn north,'' said Maue, ''Irma is going to hit a big brick wall; we are just not sure exactly when.''