Just ask ...

With nooze being nooze, the hysteria about Russian hacking continues unabated with bloviators telling everyone the RUSSKIES are everywhere but in reality, to discover the truth, all you have to do is just ask.

It’s also noteworthy that the usual suspects – Neocon warmongers such as Max Boot – have tried to discredit both Binney and Pompeo.

But there’s a huge part of the story that the entire mainstream media is missing …

Specifically, Binney says that the NSA has long had in its computers information which can prove exactly who hacked the DNC … or instead prove that the DNC emails were leaked by a Democratic insider.

Remember – by way of background – that the NSA basically spies on everyone in America … and stores the data long-term.

It gets better.

Binney also sent me hard-to-find company literature for Narus.  Here are some interesting excerpts:

NarusInsight …

Provides full visibility into network traffic …
Analyzes at macro or micro level targeting specific or aggregate full-packet data for forensic analysis
And:

Universal data collection from links, routers, soft switches, IDS/IPS, databases, etc. provides total network view across the world’s largest IP networks.

Binney also pointed me towards a couple of network engineering principles that show that figuring out who hacked the emails (or proving they were leaked) is well within NSA’s capabilities.

Initially, when data is transmitted online, it is sent using the TCP/IP Packet format.  Put simply, data is not sent in a vacuum, but rather as part of a bundle containing a lot of other information.

Here’s the TCP part of the bundle:

And here's the The IP part of the bundle

So any data analyst can learn a tremendous amount about the source address of the sender, the destination address of the receiver and a boatload of other information by using a “packet sniffer” to  inspect the “packets” of information being sent over the web.

Additionally, it’s simple to conduct “traceroute” searches. “Traceroute” is a computer network diagnostic tool for displaying the route and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol network.

Wired reported in 2006:

“Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network), we can record,” says Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California, company. “We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice over internet protocol) calls.”

So NSA can easily basic packet sniffers and traceroutes, 

Which means ... All you have to do is JUST ASK.

Nostrums

This Dilbert sums up what we have in Congress, fools spouting off nostrums instead of actually providing leadership of any way, shape or form. The incompetence and corruption of the political space boggles the mind but never mind, just listen to the nooze to get insight from the well paid corporate shills commenting on the nostrums given to us, free of charge, from congress and the president.

But this is what nooze should really say to us rubes ...

Howard Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

Network - One of the greatest films ever made.

Howard Beale

The "Nooze"

Empty vaccine vials at a vaccination site near Munich in May. Online disinformation campaigns targeting everything from vaccine manufacturers to elections have become a booming business.Credit...Matthias Schrader/Associated Press

We have no news. We have media platforms appealing to specific demographics in order to sell ads. Pundits spouting gossip on CSNBC or Fox or CNN is not news, its gossip and bloviating to the extreme, the exact opposite of AP or al jazeera who actually report news, not gossip. Well, it seems the ability to spout opinion has now descended into disinformation for sale and we haven't even talked about AI and its increasing impact on providing us rubes "news" from the digital side of the equation.

In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal.

A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it.

But it asked the influencers to push not beauty products or vacation packages, as is typical, but falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. Stranger still, the agency, Fazze, claimed a London address where there is no evidence any such company exists.

Some recipients posted screenshots of the offer. Exposed, Fazze scrubbed its social media accounts. That same week, Brazilian and Indian influencers posted videos echoing Fazze’s script to hundreds of thousands of viewers.

The scheme appears to be part of a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire.

Not even the great Paddy Chayefsky could have predicted this sad turn of events. 

"Nooze" 24/7 awaits

Klown Show Redux

Paddy Chayefsky would have a field day with these klowns running for president. Uninformed, crass and above all else, obsequent to Israel and devoted to war mongering, it truly is a sad moment in US politics to have to listen to these buffoons bloviate about everything save that Rand Paul actually makes sense vis a vis foreign policy.

The mainstream media is complicit in the circusization of the Republican debates.

When voters decide they will no longer be mistreated and summon candidates to their own citizen-powered debates, the dynamics behind the campaigns will shift toward the citizenry.

The mass media, with usual exceptions, have allowed themselves to be pulled down to the level of the political circus. If the Republican Party’s early primary campaigns for the presidential nomination had an elephant and a clown car, Ringling Brothers would be in trouble. It is hard for the Republican presidential candidates to resist temptation, defined by hyping an entertainment circus led by the chief circus barker—Donald Trump of gambling casino fame.

Sixteen candidates, after inexplicably excluding Mark Everson, the former IRS commissioner under George W. Bush and the first to announce, are hurling epithets, war-mongering bravados, and assorted boasts against one another. After their so-called debates, the media emphasize the insults of Trump and others against one-another. Reading the coverage and watching the TV clips, once comes away with the impression that snarls, quips, ripostes, and gaffes, now pass for news.

The operative term for news in this country is Nooze with a CAPITAL N for added emphasis to make sure us rubes are getting a "fair & balanced" view of what is actually going on in this country while we get plied with drugs, beer, cars and never ending financial advice on how to live life large in the good ole USA. :)

Days of Future Past/Rev L

 

IBM’s stock ended Monday as the worst-performing member of the S&P 500 following a disruptive AI announcement from Anthropic. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The sky is falling, the sky is falling. AI replaces COBOL and IBM is doomed.

 IBM fell 13.2% following a new blog post from Anthropic sharing that Claude Code can automate parts of the modernization process for common business-oriented language (COBOL), a high-level programming language developed specifically for business data-processing needs. The stock ended the day as the worst-performing member of the S&P 500 index.

Let's think about this as we're talking money, you know, the agreed upon lie on which civilization depends, something different from code driving gossip and so called nooze. This Chicken Little take also applies to Fortran as it too is an antique, difficult to code and not web savvy either but dig into the reality of these two stalwarts and one's take changes radically.

Illustration for the story "Chicken Little", 1916

The government report which introduced COBOL,
one of the world's most-used programming languages.

Cobol - Concise description - Gemini

COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) | The Financial Substrate

Primary Logic: Designed for Business Data Processing and massive file handling.

The 1% Truth: Its strength lies in Fixed-Point Decimal Arithmetic, ensuring that every fraction of a cent is accounted for without the rounding errors found in modern floating-point systems.

Hardware Floor: Optimized for Batch Processing and high-volume Mainframe Transactions; it is the "Big Iron" that manages the $3 quadrillion global payment circuit.

2026 Reality: Despite the "Anthropic Flirtation" with automation, COBOL remains  "Uncompromising" because its logic is deeply embedded in the Solid State reality of banking.

Fortran, a general-purpose, compiled imperative programming language

Fortran - Concise description - Gemini

 FORTRAN (Formula Translation) | The Scientific Constructor

Primary Logic: Designed for Numerical Computation and High-Performance Computing (HPC).

The 1% Truth: Its "Secret Sauce" is Array-Oriented Programming; Fortran handles massive multidimensional arrays with a Principle of Least Action that prevents the "Administrative Heat" of modern memory overhead.

Hardware Floor: It features Static Typing and No Pointer Aliasing, allowing compilers to optimize code to the physical limits of the silicon.

2026 Reality: It remains the base for the Top500 supercomputers and was the start point for CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry) math, the foundation for 3D computer graphics.

Something to think about don't you think? :)

Past as Prelude

As my loyal readers know, Network is one of the all time favorites of yours truly, a film worthy, IMHO, of belonging in the same league as Strangelove, Godfather I and Citizen Kane as great cinema forcing one to think differently about reality after seeing the work in question. Well, it seems Chayefsky wanted to have an ending even more prescient then the one in the film as his take on the news was prescient to a fault.

Chayefsky - "We are shooting for a third act in which the NETWORK becomes so powerful it is an international power of itself and even declares war on some country."

For Chayefsky it wasn't just about the TV network; he was obsessed with the idea of a multination corporation buying all of America's networks, making them the propaganda arms of these independent powers. This sort of corporate dystopia is very familiar to modern scifi and cyberpunk readers, but was less common in the 70s - especially on the scale that Chayefsky was making Network. While the final film is not exactly science fiction, Chayefsky was heading in that direction, including sketching out his vision of what calamties might befall America in the second half of the 70s:

• racial hysteria + jingoism
• police violence in the ghettos + barrios
• a consolidation of a United Front joining together all sections of the 
• revolutionary, radical + democratic movements
• the sheer numbers of the prisoner class and their terms of existence make them a mighty reservoir of revolutionary substructures and infrastructures

Of course like all the best futurists Chayefsky was simply using the past as a guide; you can see the outlines of William Randolph Hearst's yellow journalism, which pushed America into war with Spain, in Chayefsky's original ending concept. He just took that idea - a media entity so powerful it can cause war - and extrapolated one step further - a media entity so powerful it can go to war.

When you think about it, 6 mega corporations run news in this country with the obstensive purpose to sell ads. The best way to do it is be sensationalist, sleazy, patriotic and fear mongering, characteristics The Donald leveraged to the max when beginning his successful run to get the GOP nomination. Also consider the fact the big 6 are connected directly or indirectly with the Military/Industrial/Congressional Complex, the money and power engine that keeps on giving thus helping the big 6 in transforming news into NOOZE, the "reality" show that misinforms 24/7 to keep us rubes quiet and in the dark along the lines of They Live sans the B&W sunglasses.

This infographic created by Jason at Frugal Dad shows that almost all media comes 
from the same six sources.

That's consolidated from 50 companies back in 1983.

NOTE: This infographic is from last year and is missing some key transactions. GE does not own NBC (or Comcast or any media) anymore. So that 6th company is now Comcast. And Time Warner doesn't own AOL, so Huffington Post isn't affiliated with them.

But the fact that a few companies own everything demonstrates "the illusion of choice," Frugal Dad says. While some big sites, like Digg and Reddit aren't owned by any of the corporations, Time Warner owns news sites read by millions of Americans every year.

I rigged it just for you ...

The Dems are just as bad as the Repugs in terms of gaming the system since the beginning of time. As the great George Carlin said, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE but now us chickens are seeing this game played out in broad daylight, especially in terms of the Dems and the rigged game the DNC is playing against Bernie, the only one in this sorry ass election that qualifies to be POTUS without question.

While it might sound strange, a coronation of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary will mark the end of the party as we know it. There’s been a lot written about the “Sanders surge,” with much of it revolving around Hillary Clinton’s extreme personal weakness as a candidate. While this is indisputable, it’s also a convenient way for the status quo to exempt itself from fault and discount genuine grassroots anger. I’m of the view that Sanders’ support is more about people liking him than them disliking Hillary, particularly when it comes to registered Democrats. He’s not merely seen as the “least bad choice.” People really do like him.

The Sanders appeal is twofold. He is seen as unusually honest and consistent for someone who’s held elected office for much of his life, plus he advocates a refreshingly anti-establishment view on core issues that matter to an increasing number of Americans. These include militarism, Wall Street bailouts, a two-tiered justice system, the prohibitive cost of college education, healthcare insecurity and a “rigged economy.” While Hillary is being forced to pay lip service to these issues, everybody knows she doesn’t mean a word of it. She means it less than Obama meant it in 2008, and Obama really didn’t mean it.

It gets better.

I just finished watching a surprisingly good and honest 14 minute segment on MSNBC’s Morning Joe which covered how the Democratic National Committee has been rigging the primary in favor of Hillary Clinton. Host Joe Scarborough even went so far as to admit the media’s complicity in the process with regard to superdelegates. He notes:

“And I know the Republican party wishes they rigged the process as well as the Democratic party did right now, because they could rig it against Trump — but the Democratic party rigs their process so that these superdelegates, which by the way can move any direction they want, actually skew the process and the reporting so badly that the voters actually don’t have their say when it comes to voting.”

This is a key issue that has been driving me up a wall lately. It is journalistic malpractice for media outlets to include superdelegates in the total tally when these Democratic operatives can switch their support at any point between now and the convention.

Even though our so-called Network Nooze environment continues to "show" the opposite is true. 

At least the NY Times got it right in terms of the true delegate count between Clinton and Sanders.

With Trump doing a number on the Repugs, it's rather obvious the anger of the public on both sides of the political spectrum has gone critical vis a vis the establishment as this is the ONLY way us rubes actually have a chance to change things before it's too late. At the same time this insane campaign is being waged, it's no wonder the two parties are on life support, a situation I find rather comforting if you ask me.

Addendum. I like Bernie big time and I'm not alone on this by a long shot. :)

Birds aren't real

 

Peter McIndoe, the 23-year-old creator of the Birds Aren't Real movement, with his van in Fayetteville, Ark.Credit...Rana Young for The New York Times

When reading this blurb, your's truly keeps thinking about the nooze or better yet, Dada as Marcel Duchamp, and significant others thumbed their nose at the world with funny and insightful art for the ages. Think Camus about absurdity or Moliere about hypocrisy and one sees why McIndoe, and others, have something significant to say about misinformation writ large in the age of the net.

Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, 1920–21

Dada artists, group photograph, 1920, Paris. From left to right, Back row: Louis Aragon, Theodore Fraenkel, Paul Eluard, Clément Pansaers, Emmanuel Fay (cut off). Second row: Paul Dermée, Philippe Soupault, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes. Front row: Tristan Tzara (with monocle), Celine Arnauld, Francis Picabia, André Breton

Fountain is a readymade sculpture by Marcel Duchamp in 1917, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt". In April 1917, an ordinary piece of plumbing chosen by Duchamp was submitted for an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, the inaugural exhibition by the Society to be staged at The Grand Central Palace in New York.

What Birds Aren’t Real truly is, they say, is a parody social movement with a purpose. In a post-truth world dominated by online conspiracy theories, young people have coalesced around the effort to thumb their nose at, fight and poke fun at misinformation. It’s Gen Z’s attempt to upend the rabbit hole with absurdism.

Duchamp would get Birds aren't real in a nanosecond. :)

Rodan returns

 Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock

The graphic depicting The Donald as a rampaging Rodan is apt as the repugs have no answer to Agent Orange. Without a certain sense of irony, network nooze wants him back in the saddle due to the fact Trump's the all time money maker for said networks but for the rest of us, the country can ill afford having this sorry excuse for a human being becoming president yet again but it could just happen given to what's going on as of late in the good ole USA in the year of our lord 2022.

I have no idea if Donald Trump will actually run for president again in 2024. No one does. He could be feigning an intention to mount a campaign in order to maximize his power and fundraising among Republicans between now and the fall of 2023. He might be holding open the possibility of running in case the interminable criminal investigation into his business practices finally comes to head, with New York's attorney general moving forward with an indictment. The overweight 75-year-old former president could have every intention of running and yet die or become incapacitated by a heart attack or stroke between now and Election Day.

It gets better, right?

To see why, let's imagine how the early stages of the contest would unfold. Trump, DeSantis, Pence, and the others are standing together on a debate stage in the fall of 2023. The moderator opens by addressing DeSantis: Donald Trump says the 2020 election was stolen from him and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Do you agree?

What exactly is DeSantis supposed to say in response? One option would be to answer truthfully — which is to say, in the negative: No, the election wasn't stolen, and Biden won fair and square. But this would automatically place DeSantis on the opposite side of that 71 percent of Republicans and open him up to an onslaught of abuse from Trump himself. DeSantis would be labeled a cuck and a weakling who refuses to fight and would let the Democrats get away with murder from Day One of a DeSantis administration.

If, instead, DeSantis offered a tepid endorsement of the election fraud conspiracy, voters will be left to wonder why they should favor that second-best alternative over the man who was personally stabbed in the back and craves vengeance for himself and his party.

Then there's the most standard-issue-politician thing DeSantis could do, which is attempt to skirt the question and pivot to another, less politically perilous topic. But there is zero chance Trump would let him get away with that. He'd merely treat it as a different kind of confirmation that DeSantis is too weak to fight the ruthless Democrats to the death.

Sora no Daikaijū Radon

Illusion & Reality - The Art of War

A truly excellent article regarding Trump, racism and the deep state titled Strip and Flip: Democracy in a Cage - Robert C. Koehler, Reader Supported News echoes what yours truly has talked about in BRT for quite a long time as power elites have run every country in the world since the beginning of time, including ours.

Whatever else delivered Trump to our doorstep, the most undeniable element in his “victory” was the Electoral College. It’s hardly adequate to call this institution obsolete; its existence is the manifestation of racist hell.

“. . . to protect their interests in a nation where they were being rapidly outnumbered, Southerners got an Electoral College that included a ‘3/5ths clause,’” Fitrakis and Wasserman write. “Slaves (who could not vote themselves) were counted for 3/5ths of a vote for president and in establishing congressional districts.”

This is American history stripped naked, its basic lie revealed. Slavery wasn’t simply a regrettable sideshow. Repression and dehumanization — the creation of an “other” — smolder at the nation’s core. Because of slavery and institutionalized racism, impoverished white people could still feel good about themselves — and there would be no mixed-race uprisings against the status quo, which is still the case.

In other words, democracy is only acceptable if it can be controlled by those already in power, and the essence of this control is to ensure that the conditions benefiting the powerful are not seriously threatened. This condition has not gone away. American democracy remains in a cage, which means “we the people” — and our will to create a better world — also remain in a cage.

Interestingly enough, in an indirect way, Koehler channels the great Paddy Chayefsky in his astute take on nooze, elections and the organized bamboozling on the part of the deep state, of our grossly ignorant populace.

To this I would add mainstream media contempt for anyone who questions the election results sanctified on Election Night by TV anchorpersons, no matter that they differ significantly from exit poll results. I would also add the extraordinary superficiality of presidential elections: the systematic jettisoning of populist candidates, such as Bernie Sanders, from contention, and the avoidance of real issues (e.g., the military budget) in the debate, creating a huge public-interest void in the process.

But there is hope.

But all of these extraordinary efforts to keep democracy caged make me believe that the country — and the world — are on the brink of profound change. Most of us want a world free of poverty and war and would vote for its creation if we could.

Fitrakis and Wasserman make the following recommendations: “We need to win universal automatic voter registration; transparent voter rolls; a four-day national holiday for voting; ample locations for all citizens to conveniently cast ballots; universal hand-counted paper ballots; automatic recounts free to all candidates; abolition of the Electoral College; an end to gerrymandering; a ban on corporate money in our campaigns.”

Copy that. :)

Paddy Chayefsky

In Today's Nooze

Deliverance

Space cadet or wish upon a star

The art of Doublethink

"Network" - Alive and Well in 2017

Network, the great 1976 satire on the devolution of the news, is alive and well in 2017 as it's all about the money Trump makes for mainline nooze by being blindingly incompetent, quoteworthy and outrageous, characteristics conducive to generating stratospheric ratings and advertising revenues that have reached all time highs to the news outlets in question while the country sinks into irrelevance and despair thanks to one who has a tin ear to the max regarding on how to govern a country as large and diverse as this one happens to be.

The craziest part of Donald Trump's 77-minute loon-a-thon in Phoenix earlier this week came when he rehashed his shtick about the networks turning off live coverage of his speech. Trump seemed to really believe they were shutting the cameras off because "the very dishonest media" was so terrified of his powerful words.

"They're turning those lights off so fast!" he said. "CNN doesn't want its failing viewership to see this!"

No news director would turn off the feed in the middle of a Trump-meltdown. This presidency has become the ultimate ratings bonanza. Trump couldn't do better numbers if he jumped off Mount Kilimanjaro carrying a Kardashian.

This was confirmed this week by yet another shruggingly honest TV executive – in this case Tony Maddox, head of CNN International. Maddox said CNN is doing business at "record levels." He hinted also that the monster ratings they're getting have taken the sting out of being accused of promoting fake news.

Prescient to a fault and ...
Remember: It's all about the money.

Solitude

Solitude is a good thing, particularly when one can get away from the never ending noise of NOOZE. :)

Network 2021 ...

We'll tell you anything you want to hear. We lie like hell! We'll tell you Kojak always gets the killer, and nobody ever gets cancer in Archie Bunker's house… We'll tell you any shit you want to hear! We deal in illusion, man! None of it's true! But you people… do whatever the tube tells you... This is mass madness, you maniacs! — from Network, 1976

If you want to know yours truly's take on the nooze, just read the blurb above or view the clip of Howard Beale quoting said text with religious fervor as there is no news in the year of our lord 2021, only bloviation, lies and exaggeration used to sell ads and influence to the particular demographic each corporate controlled network panders to. If one looks hard, one can find viable news sources but it takes effort and smarts to do so, something simply not done anymore in the land of the brave and home of the free.

After a few days away from the news I watched Network, a movie about a mad prophet whose prophesies come true. Anchorman Howard Beale’s seminal speech described how America could commoditize anything, even the awful truth that its mass media had raised an illiterate populace that followed The Tube as the word of God. “Turn them off!” Beale screamed, just before collapsing in religious fervor, but one eye peeked out to see how his revelation was selling. True to form, even Network made a pile of money and won four Oscars.

Forty-five years later, the film’s predictions still look right, but too optimistic. Back then, a few networks dominated, and the trend was the One Big Lie: the Missile Gap, the Domino Theory, 4 out of 5 dentists recommend Trident. What could be worse? Ambrose Bierce once said there were only two things more horrible than a clarinet — two clarinets. The only thing darker than Network’s dystopian future with television as the national religion is the world we’ve got: two religions. - Matt Taibbi

Paddy Chayefsky lives ... 

FOIA

FOIA aka The Freedom of Information Act is a 1966 LBJ signed amendment that's more important than ever in the Age of Trump given where this administration is going regarding the environment, education and all things related to corporate power and the 1st Amendment. To whit

In the United States, the government is supposed to work for the people. It is, after all, in the people's name – and with their dollars – that everything is carried out, from tanks being transferred from military zones to American towns, to prisons being left to profit from mass incarceration, to soldiers being given secret, experimental treatments in an attempt to make them telepathically communicate. Since 1967, citizens have been allowed to request documentation of any government actions, thanks to a collection of laws known generally as the Freedom of Information Act. And since 2010, MuckRock, a Boston-based nonprofit, has been helping people to file FOIA requests.

"FOIA is this very old concept where essentially, anything that the government does, a citizen has a right to be aware of – and to be able to judge it based on their own volition," explains JPat Brown, 30, an executive editor at MuckRock who has worked with them for about three years, and has assisted their expansion from a FOIA-filing service to a daily publishing outlet. Brown's particular focus is on FOIA files related to the FBI, which contain data on everyone from Abbie Hoffman to Ray Bradbury to the Insane Clown Posse. But MuckRock has content covering way more than that, like the Trump Administration, the struggle to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline and even a special project to find out about the secretive undertakings of PayPal’s Peter Thiel, who financially backed the successful effort to bring down Gawker.

The Rolling Stone piece is a great start point to learn more about the rather questionable history of the government by the government itself. Far more valuable then the stream of pundits us rubes have to endure on network nooze 24/7. :)

Fake Nooze

BRT has channeled Network and George Orwell ad nauseam as both sources spoke truth to power in ways not even contemplated in today's frenzy over fake news and the mainline press who portend to "know" the truth based on unsubstantiated and anonymous "sources" who tell us rubes where fake news comes from and how to "combat" it when one faces it.

On Wednesday, U.S. congressional negotiators approved $160 million to combat what they deem foreign propaganda and the alleged Russian campaign to spread “fake news.” The measure is part of the National Defense Authorization Act and gives the State Department the power to identify “propaganda” and counter it.

This bipartisan stampede into an Orwellian future for the American people and the world’s population follows a shoddily sourced Washington Post article that relied on a new anonymous group (propornot) that identified some 200 Internet sites, including some of the most prominent American independent sources of news, as part of a Russian propaganda network.

Typical of this new McCarthyism, the report lacked evidence that any such network actually exists but instead targeted cases where American journalists expressed skepticism about claims from Western officialdom.

Consortiumnews.com was included on the list apparently because we have critically analyzed some of the claims and allegations regarding the crises in Syria and Ukraine, rather than simply accept the dominant Western “group thinks.”

Also on the “black list” were such quality journalism sites as Counterpunch, Truth-out, Truthdig, Naked Capitalism and ZeroHedge along with many political sites ranging across the ideological spectrum.

Yours truly checked out propornot and Robert Perry is right, no verification regarding the sites purported to be purveyors of fake news is given other then copious bloviation, which means slander becomes a viable response to environments as questionable as this.

The state of Nooze in America ...

Yes they will. :)

ICE yet again ...

A placard during a weekend protest against ICE in Minneapolis
Photograph: Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Ah, another partial shutdown. This is SOOOOOO tiresome. As stated so many times, you can't fix stupid. Yours truly can't watch the "nooze" anymore as stupid shit is everywhere. From vaccine denials to transgender issues to Epstein, the insanity just continues ever onward. In A Must Read ...  Nixon, the NSC and the spying done by the military on Nixon and the National Security Council is most illuminating as one saw not only the paranoia of Nixon but also his brilliance. Smart, incisive and astute in terms of politics and the thirst of power, the contrast cannot be any more stark versus the demented menace residing in the White House as we speak. And now another shutdown over the rightful push to eliminate ICE, the Brown Shirt equivalent of ill trained thugs masquerading as federal agents, complete with masks, in order to cover up the ids of these incompetents while they abuse and murder people without consequences. 

SA insignia

An Irish man who has been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement for five months despite having a valid work permit and no criminal record says he fears for his life and has appealed for help from Ireland’s government.

Seamus Culleton said conditions at his detention centre in Texas were akin to “torture” and that the atmosphere was volatile. “I’m not in fear of the other inmates. I’m afraid of the staff. They’re capable of anything.”

Any questions?

300/3000 ...

300/3000 ... = 300 blurbs in 2019, 3000 blurbs since 2007, something somewhat significant IMHO. What's even more significant is the fact you, my loyal readers, continue to read the musings of a senior citizen talking about all things related to science and tech and how both disciplines impact civilization 24/7.

This piece will not have links to sources more intelligent than said writer's (save 2) but rather personal takes on 2020, life in general and the issue of mortality as BRT has been fairly impersonal in its 12 years of existence inspired by a dear friend who said "You think you know a little bit so prove it." Hopefully I have and will continue to do so as there is simply too much happening to quit now in-spite of a world going mad as man moves ever forward into the 21st century. Note: this is a partial take at best.

The long decline

America is losing its mojo. From disastrous foreign policy endeavors beginning after WWII to the substitution of innovation in favor of money manipulation favoring the elite, the country's financial well being is being frittered away by greed (elimination of Glass-Stegall), incompetence and government corruption, not only in terms of tax code malfeasance favoring the rich but also with the fact there are no term limits, thus guaranteeing the pols never-ending quest for money in order to get re-elected no matter what the cost may be. This lack of term limits for the supremes also applies as this gives too much power to any sitting president in determining what political direction the country may go based on the kind of justice chosen for the job. Think Alito, Kavanaugh and Scalia for starters with Thomas in the wings.

The art of stupid

The educational construct in America is lacking to say the least and tech is one reason why this is so. Consider the smartphone and texting. In order to do this efficiently, newspeak is required due to the small form factor of the tech being used. This compression equation of newspeak ties in nicely with the use of emojis as showing one a happy face in social media equates to one-click while typing happy requires five. Expand this notion to writing whereby thought and the ability to tie together cogent thoughts necessitates taking the time and effort to make it happen, something starting to get rarer as AI is beginning to be used to replicate this valuable practice at speeds well beyond the ken of man. Endpaper. Nooze rules to sell ads and shape opinion. A lack of education makes the sell easy.

Thinking Elysium

The environment's unraveling, not only in terms of climate change but also in terms of environmental degradation and resource depletion, driven in large part by fossil fuel use, pollution and the impact of too many people living on planet earth. By 2050, the weakening polar vortex and jet stream, caused by global warming, will disrupt food production in unpredictable ways while intense drought and rising waters promise to displace millions, reminiscent of the film Elysium, a dystopian near-future view of mankind heading toward an abyss of our own making.

Technical incompetence & the denial of science

 All one has to do is listen to the president and congress talk tech to see just how blindingly ignorant these people truly are. The denial of science is even worse, not only in terms of the long term adverse effect it will have on the well being of the populace but also on the long term well being of the country. China has caught up to the US in terms of patents and computation and has surpassed the US in terms of developing rapid mass transit at a rate beyond anything this country has to offer. At the same time this is happening, the shortsighted view of never-ending growth and continued support of old industries like coal, fracking and drilling promise to accelerate the decline of the US while the rest of the world rapidly moves toward sustainables like wind, solar and wave. 

2020, politics & the end of the world

Politics, the art of lying and protecting the deep state of every country since the beginning of time, has reached its zenith (or nadir/take your pick) with the elections of far-right "populists" Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonro and Boris Johnson, provocateurs one and all, supporting the powers at be at all costs while the end of the world awaits thanks to climate change and the inability of nations to get their act together to ameliorate this existential threat to mankind. 

Regarding 2020, the Constitutional Crisis begins and ends with Trump with three questions silently moldering on the minds of thinking people everywhere ... 

1. The real 2016 Russigate ... How far will Barr and Durham go in their criminal proceedings?
2.  Will Trump leave if defeated? and ...
3. What will his hardcore followers do if Agent Orange is defeated?

On mortality

Gaff: It's a shame that she won't live, but then again, who does? - Blade Runner

Being a senior, yours truly thinks about mortality and ... the important things in one's life. 

To this writer it's

• Family. Having a son and his family close to my wife and me, rules. Ditto for two brothers and two sisters. On my wife's side, her niece's family rules.
• Friends, the close ones are truly rare indeed.
• Good art. You know, Miles, Shakespeare, Conrad, Twain, Carlin, Orwell, etc, etc, etc.
• Cartoons of all stripes :)
• Good coffee
• Good conversation
• Good wine & beer
• Pretty women - all ages :)
• Innovative tech
• Insightful science
• Good health
• Last but not least, having an open mind and the will to keep on moving :)

Any questions? :)