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  • Originally posted by Double Edge
    I visited San Fran in '99 and did not see what he did. One trip was enough to confirm that i preferred NYC more.

    However, what he says did strike me not in San Fran but DC.

    You have those govt buildings and museums but try going down the side streets and you end up in a slum.

    I found this contrast of low income areas so close quite jarring but it was explained as people that work in DC commute to DC, they don't live in DC, hence they don't pay taxes in DC, they pay taxes in Virginia which is where they live.

    Hence DC has these poor areas very close to the seat of power.

    The contrast is striking and i've not seen this in Europe.

    Sure there are low income areas there but they aren't a stones throw away.
    A little more on DC...

    You are right that the majority of workers for the Federal government live in VA or MD and, hence, pay taxes there. But DC is also not a standard city, it is a federal district. Any home rule activity is monitored/approved by Congress. DC leaders for years have been Democrats...and at war with Congress. Attempts to raise and levy revenues have been held up by Congress. And DC has not voting representation in Congress, just a non-voting delegate like Puerto Rico, Guam, Virgin Islands, etc. Heck, a resident in DC couldn't vote for President until 1964. When we moved there in 1970 voting was still a very big deal.

    Also many areas of the city were greatly destroyed by the urban riots following the death of Martin Luther King in 1968. Income streams ended and funding was not available to rebuild for decades.

    Younger urbanites are starting to stay as some traditional areas have started to improve so that helps. Also, employment by the Federal Government has led to an expansion of the African American middle class which has led to many areas of the city receiving revenues which have improved them...the 14th Street Corridor comes to mind.
    “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
    Mark Twain

    Comment


    • Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
      Wouldn't know it based on the way they handled this crisis

      Calif. is the American showcase how to handle this virus. Five other states in there as well.



      Know what the good news is. Nobody is going to die of flu this year in the US.

      Any one dying of morbidities are all going to being tagged as C19 deaths.

      If some one is going at the end of the year but this thing takes them out sooner then it was C19 that did it and that is how the US will record it.

      The died of vs died with debate. See posts #39 & #39 here
      No, the books are not being cooked. Deaths by "normal causes" are being reported as such. The COVID deaths may have taken some who would have died for other reasons but there are many who are dying who do not meet the old standards (heart disease, cancer, etc.)
      “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
      Mark Twain

      Comment


      • Got something new for the coffee maker...Click image for larger version

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        “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
        Mark Twain

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post
          Got something new for the coffee maker...
          Make it a double shot, please. Got to keep surfaces wet for 4 minutes to be effective.

          Comment


          • Trump cancels daily coronavirus press briefing – then appears unable to resist

            The White House cancelled a planned Monday afternoon coronavirus task force briefing, the third consecutive day Donald Trump was not scheduled to appear for what had become his daily – and chaotic – Covid-19 press conference. But, later, his press secretary tweeted that Mr Trump would indeed brief the country on Monday evening.

            "UPDATE: The White House has additional testing guidance and other announcements about safely opening up America again. President @realDonaldTrump will brief the nation during a press conference this evening," White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted.

            Instead, the president will face reporters during a 4 p.m. event at the White House. He often takes questions during those kinds of "pool sprays." The Monday move comes after he left his Friday night briefing after just 22 minutes without taking questions.

            Ms McEnany had told reporters earlier Monday morning that the daily press briefings are expected to resume later this week, but likely with a facelift.

            "They might have a new look to them, a new focus to them," she said.

            The on-again-off-again-on-again nature of the Monday briefing is merely the latest time the Trump White House struggled with scheduling and sent mixed messages.

            The three-day briefing pause comes after Mr Trump on Thursday night suggested Americans might inject disinfectant into their bodies to kill Covid-19. The next day, taking questions during an Oval Office event, he claimed to be making a sarcastic remark, though video of the incident clearly showed otherwise.

            The president also falsely claimed to be talking to reporters and a Department of Homeland Security scientist, but video and transcripts show him addressing Deborah Birx, one of his top public health officials.

            "Not as a treatment," she replied to his suggestion about injecting disinfectant.

            On Friday, manufacturers of powerful cleaning products felt a need to issue statements urging Americans to avoid doing so.

            Even some GOP state leaders, including Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, reported "hundreds" of calls from citizens asking if they could inject disinfectant.
            ________________

            To the surprise of absolutely no one, Trump can't live without his ego-stroking pacifier.

            Clearly somebody told IMPOTUS "No sir, holding rallies again right now would be a catastrophe"

            Then they gave him the preschool-level definition of the word "catastrophe"

            And so back in front of the cameras he goes!
            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

            Comment


            • All I can say to this is WOW. Either I fly under the radar or over the radar and thankfully miss this stuff. Still I am amazed at the traction these things get. Clearly there are a lot of abnormal people, sorry HRC, in this world and good innocent people pay the price for others amusement. Saw this and thought about AR since both are in the region working for the government.



              Maatje Benassi, a US Army reservist and mother of two, has become the target of conspiracy theorists who falsely place her at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, saying she brought the disease to China.

              The false claims are spreading across YouTube every day, so far racking up hundreds of thousands of apparent views, and have been embraced by Chinese Communist Party media. Despite never having tested positive for the coronavirus or experienced symptoms, Benassi and her husband are now subjects of discussion on Chinese social media about the outbreak, including among accounts that are known drivers of large-scale coordinated activities by their followers...read on

              https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/27/tech/...ory/index.html

              Comment


              • White House schedules, cancels, then reschedules press briefing

                As President Donald Trump languishes in a grievance spiral that began with his offhand suggestion last week about ingesting household disinfectants and devolved this weekend into angry online venting about his press coverage, the White House coronavirus task force may soon begin slowly scaling back its number of meetings, a source familiar with the decision told CNN.

                The panel wasn't expected to meet on Monday, though some of its members were planning to join a midday phone call scheduled for Trump with the nation's governors.

                At the same time, the White House was publicly waffling on whether to convene a press briefing after political advisers encouraged the President to phase them out. After listing one on Trump's daily schedule, the White House revised it to show no briefing, only to declare an hour later he would convene a press conference at the usual time.

                A White House aide said plans were being made for a 5 p.m. ET statement by the President in the Rose Garden. He is expected to emerge after meeting with retail executives and would likely be joined by them, though it is up to the President if he will take questions from reporters.

                The plans could, of course, change again.

                The move away from briefings and daily task force meetings, and toward more contained events highlighting the economy, comes as the virus continues to rage in parts of the country and as testing shortfalls persist. Still, as curves begin to flatten in certain areas and states begin the process of reopening, Trump -- who has become progressively more frustrated at a precarious political moment -- is keen to show signs of progress.

                Over the last several days, an exasperated President lashed out at aides, the media and Democrats in what multiple sources described to CNN as one of the most frustrated moments of his presidency.

                The health-focused task force met only once this weekend, according to three people familiar with the schedule, after a tumultuous few days in the West Wing prompted by the disinfectant episode. The task force met Saturday but did not convene Sunday -- a rarity since the task force has met almost every day since it was assembled months ago.

                Task force meetings, which occur in the basement Situation Room, usually last a minimum of 90 minutes as aides go over the latest data before the once-daily press briefing. But there was no briefing this weekend, and the meeting Saturday moved relatively quickly, a person who attended said.

                That could presage things to come. There had been a concerted effort among aides and allies to convince Trump to stop conducting the daily coronavirus briefings, multiple sources told CNN, after concerns they were causing the President steep political damage.

                A briefing was initially listed on Monday's public White House schedule, but the press secretary later said there would be no dedicated question-and-answer session after all. The schedule was revised to reflect the change.

                But an hour after that, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted that plans had changed again.

                "UPDATE," she wrote, "The White House has additional testing guidance and other announcements about safely opening up America again. President @realDonaldTrump will brief the nation during a press conference this evening."

                After weeks of briefings that sometimes stretched more than two hours, a general agreement emerged in the West Wing last week that some of the news conferences have gone on too long, resulting in a situation where Trump got sidetracked on non-coronavirus related issues. The result, aides have noticed, is that the briefings stray into politics, arguments and venting instead of the matter at hand.

                Instead of a stoic wartime leader, Trump has come across as angry and aggrieved at not getting credit for his efforts -- an image that hasn't endeared him to Americans, according to polls, which have shown his approval rating dropping after an initial bump.

                McEnany told reporters at the White House on Monday the briefings "might have a new look to them, a new focus to them." She declined to provide further details.

                Some White House aides also view an eventual phasing-out of the briefings as a sign from Washington to the country that life is slowing returning to normal. They see the briefings as a set-piece of the crisis era, which Trump is desperate to see end.

                To that end, two officials said the White House is planning more economy-focused events in the coming days and weeks, including more roundtables with CEOs and workers meant to highlight efforts to spur an economic recovery. They hope to invite people who have been helped by stimulus funds or small business loans to showcase the steps the administration has taken to mitigate the economic fallout.

                On Monday, the White House invited retail executives for a meeting in the Cabinet Room to discuss that beleaguered industry as the administration prepares more specific guidance on how different sectors can reopen.

                The new economic focus could also include domestic travel, potentially as soon as this week, one official said, though the official cautioned that plans haven't been finalized for the President to leave the White House after weeks spent inside the executive mansion and West Wing. Like almost all the President's pre-outbreak official travel, he is not expected to spend the night on the road.

                Aides believe Trump is better positioned to drive an economic message rather than a health one, officials said, a fact they feel was proved true after last week's disinfectant disaster.

                For a leader who has been confined to his home for weeks, the fallout from the episode has seemed magnified. The President spent the weekend venting about the negative coverage he received after he suggested last week there should be studies on whether disinfectants or light could be used to fight the coronavirus inside the human body.

                He continued the Twitter assaults on Monday, returning to a favorite insult by declaring "FAKE NEWS, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE."

                One of the matters weighing heaviest on the President, people close to him say, are his sinking poll numbers -- though his restricted movements, with no campaign rallies or weekend golf trips, haven't helped. People who speak with Trump often said he's internalizing negative coverage more than ever because he doesn't have his usual outlets, such as golf or seeing old friends.

                Meanwhile, divisions are emerging among the staff in the West Wing. The new White House communications team has decided to retake control of the coronavirus messaging that Pence's staff had been handling.

                The new chief of staff, Mark Meadows, installed a new press secretary and communications advisers when he replaced ousted chief Mick Mulvaney, who had allowed the task force operations to coalesce under Pence's office after he was tapped to lead the panel in late February.

                That brought a heightened sense of mission to what was then a group racked with infighting and poor communication.

                The fate of the person who previously led the task force -- Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar -- remains uncertain. Trump on Sunday evening was forced to deny he was going to fire Azar after a series of news reports Saturday night quoted anonymous sources saying White House officials were looking at the possibility of replacing the health chief.

                The public pushback came after multiple calls between Trump, Azar, Meadows and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, who addressed the stories in the conversations and worked through the best way to respond, according to people familiar with the matter.

                Even as the task force scales back its meeting frequency, the panel will still weigh key guidelines and recommendations as parts of the country move to reopen. The administration could issue as early as this week a new set of guidelines on opening specific types of businesses as Trump looks to revive the US economy, people familiar with the matter say.

                The new guidelines would provide more detailed recommendations on how to reopen restaurants, child care centers, camps, public transportation and places of worship, with a focus on keeping people spaced apart and hygiene practices ramped up to prevent the coronavirus from re-spreading.

                Members of the task force have been weighing a set of recommendations produced by the US Centers on Disease Control and Prevention that includes items such as keeping tables separated and improving indoor ventilation.

                One official says that lobbying interests have flooded the White House in recent days hoping to influence the recommendations, which could have an effect on businesses' bottom lines.
                _______________

                And the dumpster fire continues. Nothing but a bunch of squabbling clueless children in the White House and it shows.
                “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post
                  Younger urbanites are starting to stay as some traditional areas have started to improve so that helps. Also, employment by the Federal Government has led to an expansion of the African American middle class which has led to many areas of the city receiving revenues which have improved them...the 14th Street Corridor comes to mind.
                  Prince George's County is the richest black majority county in the US.

                  When I lived in Arlington, I had a couple people come out to visit who expressed the sentiment of how "normal" black people seemed in the DC area compared to Minneapolis. Basically, dressed like, employed in the same types of jobs, and having the general mannerisms of middle-class whites they're used to.

                  Of course, Minneapolis, like other Midwestern cities, had a migration of blacks during WWII that took up industrial jobs, only to lose those jobs when white veterans returned, experiencing redlining, de facto segregation, and downward mobility in the decades afterward.

                  But yeah, DC has some rough neighborhoods. I never ventured into SE DC when I lived out there, and even only went into NE DC a couple times. The only experience I ever had in a traditionally "black" part of DC was a couple trips to Ben's Chili Bowl.
                  Last edited by Ironduke; 28 Apr 20,, 00:14.
                  "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Ironduke View Post
                    Prince George's County is the richest black majority county in the US.

                    When I lived in Arlington, I had a couple people come out to visit who expressed the sentiment of how "normal" black people seemed in the DC area compared to Minneapolis. Basically, dressed like, employed in the same types of jobs, and having the general mannerisms of middle-class whites they're used to.

                    Of course, Minneapolis, like other Midwestern cities, had a migration of blacks during WWII that took up industrial jobs, only to lose those jobs when white veterans returned, experiencing redlining, de facto segregation, and downward mobility in the decades afterward.

                    But yeah, DC has some rough neighborhoods. I never ventured into SE DC when I lived out there, and even only went into NE DC a couple times. The only experience I ever had in a traditionally "black" part of DC was a couple trips to Ben's Chili Bowl.
                    I go just about anywhere in the city with little to no fear. I treat folks with respect and get the same in return. If something seems not right, I leave. My best friend lives in DC...we went to high school there together. I have found as an historian I need to go where the history is.
                    “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                    Mark Twain

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by tbm3fan View Post
                      All I can say to this is WOW. Either I fly under the radar or over the radar and thankfully miss this stuff. Still I am amazed at the traction these things get. Clearly there are a lot of abnormal people, sorry HRC, in this world and good innocent people pay the price for others amusement. Saw this and thought about AR since both are in the region working for the government.
                      Fortunately I live and work about off of Exit 51 on I-95 and not Exit 173. I am far from this madness. My general officer equivalent headquarters is on FT Belvoir but I stay well away.

                      This just gives me one more reason to stay the hell away from Belvoir.
                      “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                      Mark Twain

                      Comment


                      • Trump's Bleach Statements Echo Claims by 'Miracle Cure' Quacks

                        President Donald Trump’s public statements about using disinfectants to potentially treat the coronavirus have put him in the company of pseudoscientists and purveyors of phony elixirs who promote and sell industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for autism, malaria and a long list of medical conditions.

                        The president’s comments, at a White House briefing last week, have already prompted widespread incredulity, warnings from health experts and a spike in calls to poison control centers around the country. The makers of Clorox and Lysol urged Americans not to inject or ingest their products.

                        But some scientists fear Trump’s remarks could breathe life into a fringe movement that embraces the medicinal powers of a powerful industrial bleach known as chlorine dioxide. Among its adherents are Alan Keyes, the conservative activist and former presidential candidate who has promoted a chlorine dioxide-based product called Miracle Mineral Solution on his online television show.

                        The impact of Trump’s words “is going to be huge, especially among people who are desperate,” said Myles Power, a British chemist who works to debunk quack medical remedies. “My fear is it will cause widespread harm to people who think that drinking bleach can prevent or cure COVID-19.”

                        Mark Grenon, the self-described archbishop of a Florida church that sells Miracle Mineral Solution as “a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body,” took credit for Trump’s comments in a Facebook post on Friday. In an online radio show earlier this month, he said that he and his supporters had sent letters to the president about the product he peddles.

                        The White House did not respond to an email seeking comment after Grenon’s letter was reported by The Guardian last week. A person familiar with senior administration officials said they were not familiar with him or his letter.

                        It is unclear what inspired Trump to suggest disinfectants as a cure for COVID-19 — and he did not mention chlorine dioxide or bleach specifically in his comments during the White House briefing. But promoters of such solutions have seized on his remarks with vigor.

                        “Do you realize how freaking cheap and easy it would be to mass produce chlorine dioxide for 100,000’s of people?” Jordan Sather, a follower of the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory, wrote on Twitter. “We could wipe out COVID quick!”

                        In a statement earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration reiterated its warnings about ingesting chlorine dioxide, which it described as “dangerous and unapproved.” Chlorine dioxide is widely used in paper processing, by water treatment plants and as a disinfectant in hospitals.

                        “We will not stand for this, and the FDA remains fully committed to taking strong enforcement action against any sellers who place unsuspecting American consumers at risk by offering their unproven products to treat serious diseases,” the administration’s commissioner, Stephen M. Hahn, said in the statement.

                        Grenon and his son, Jonathan, who helps run the church, did not respond to interview requests sent via Facebook.

                        Chlorine dioxide has also been embraced by vaccine opponents who say the toxic substance treats autism. Emma Dalmayne, a mother of five autistic children who maintains a website about the dangers of so-called bleach cures, said the treatments have left some children with skin burns, seizures, damaged digestive tracts and other injuries. “The harm done to these kids has been unconscionable,” she said.

                        Melissa Eaton, a mother of a child with autism in North Carolina who campaigns against phony cures, said she sees overlaps between those who embrace chlorine dioxide as a curative, conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, and the strident protesters who have clamored for loosening social distancing measures across the country.

                        “It’s like a Venn diagram,” she said. “What they all have in common is the idea that the government is hiding something from you. These people not interested in what scientists, doctors or the mainstream media has to say.”

                        Dr. Alan Levinovitz, a professor at James Madison University who studies the relationship between science and religion, said Trump’s comments about disinfectants were in keeping with his previous support for conspiracy theorists, agitators against the deep state and his promotion of two antimalarial drugs to fight the coronavirus, despite warnings from medical experts about their possible dangerous side effects.

                        “For a lot of people, Trump represents an alternative to pointy-headed experts in white lab coats who speak a language we can’t understand,” he said. “When you feel existentially threatened by a deadly virus, and the president says you can take control of your health with a product in your kitchen cabinet, that’s incredibly empowering.”


                        The problem, of course, is that ingesting or injecting industrial bleach can be deadly. Chlorine dioxide destroys red blood cells, wreaks havoc on the digestive system and can cause severe damage to the liver and kidneys.
                        __________________


                        Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
                        What did that comment cost the country ? Nothing

                        How many lives were lost because of that comment ? None

                        You all had a good laugh.

                        He'll get over it.

                        Modi once said he favoured sending the air force in only in cloudy weather as he thought it helped them hide better.

                        These guys are not supposed to know these details. Maybe they should not speak about them but yeah water off a ducks back.
                        Water off a duck's back.

                        Nearly 57,000 dead, the "President" is empowering deadly quack medicine advocates the same way he's empowered white nationalists and racists.

                        Yeah. What a good laugh we've all had.
                        “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by tbm3fan View Post
                          All I can say to this is WOW. Either I fly under the radar or over the radar and thankfully miss this stuff. Still I am amazed at the traction these things get. Clearly there are a lot of abnormal people, sorry HRC, in this world and good innocent people pay the price for others amusement. Saw this and thought about AR since both are in the region working for the government.
                          I've come across this Webb character, he labels himself as an investigative journalist. CCP's Global times refers to him as an "American journalist".

                          Originally posted by CNN article
                          Perhaps the most prominent cheerleader of the idea that Benassi had a role in the imaginary plot to infect the world is George Webb, a prolific 59-year-old American misinformation peddler. Webb has for years regularly streamed hours of diatribe live on YouTube, where he has amassed more than 27 million views and almost 100,000 followers.
                          The stranger part is the number of takers he has for whatever he can come up with. I used to think conspiracy theories were acceptable to people from the middle east to south asia. If you came up with some occams or hanlons razor type explanation that this answer would be rejected as too simplistic. But if the answer was dressed up as CT that pushed the right emotional buttons then it becomes credible. People prefer the long winded explanation !!

                          As the health crisis has wore on i'm amazed by what i think are westerners buying into all of this nonsense. It's no different to what i see locally in fact i think its worse because the people spreading this nonsense aren't young and doing it for a living. With the internet these people have global reach.

                          Of all US military personnel that participated in the Wuhan games, Webb singled out this couple. Why ? purportedly this woman tested positive. The Wuhan military games concluded last October end. Over five months ago.

                          Note how its an American that brought the virus to China.

                          All so convenient that the CCP adopts some of their positions. It makes me wonder whether they're funding these people in part. The military games idea comes from a Canadian CT character whose video i'd posted earlier in the SARS thread.

                          Comment



                          • IDEAS
                            Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal
                            In the debate over freedom versus control of the global network, China was largely correct, and the U.S. was wrong.

                            JACK GOLDSMITHANDREW KEANE WOODS
                            APRIL 25, 2020
                            An illustration of a internet browser window with cutouts.
                            THE ATLANTIC
                            Covid-19 has emboldened American tech platforms to emerge from their defensive crouch. Before the pandemic, they were targets of public outrage over life under their dominion. Today, the platforms are proudly collaborating with one another, and following government guidance, to censor harmful information related to the coronavirus. And they are using their prodigious data-collection capacities, in coordination with federal and state governments, to improve contact tracing, quarantine enforcement, and other health measures. As Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg recently boasted, “The world has faced pandemics before, but this time we have a new superpower: the ability to gather and share data for good.”

                            Civil-rights groups are tolerating these measures—emergency times call for emergency measures—but are also urging a swift return to normal when the virus ebbs. We need “to make sure that, when we’ve made it past this crisis, our country isn’t transformed into a place we don’t want to live,” warns the American Civil Liberties Union’s Jay Stanley. “Any extraordinary measures used to manage a specific crisis must not become permanent fixtures in the landscape of government intrusions into daily life,” declares the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group. These are real worries, since, as the foundation notes, “life-saving programs such as these, and their intrusions on digital liberties, [tend] to outlive their urgency.”

                            But the “extraordinary” measures we are seeing are not all that extraordinary. Powerful forces were pushing toward greater censorship and surveillance of digital networks long before the coronavirus jumped out of the wet markets in Wuhan, China, and they will continue to do so once the crisis passes. The practices that American tech platforms have undertaken during the pandemic represent not a break from prior developments, but an acceleration of them.

                            Read: No, the internet is not good again

                            As surprising as it may sound, digital surveillance and speech control in the United States already show many similarities to what one finds in authoritarian states such as China. Constitutional and cultural differences mean that the private sector, rather than the federal and state governments, currently takes the lead in these practices, which further values and address threats different from those in China. But the trend toward greater surveillance and speech control here, and toward the growing involvement of government, is undeniable and likely inexorable.

                            MORE BY JACK GOLDSMITH

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                            In the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong. Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values.

                            Beginning in the 1990s, the U.S. government and powerful young tech firms began promoting nonregulation and American-style freedom of speech as essential features of the internet. This approach assumed that authoritarian states would crumble in the face of digital networks that seemed to have American constitutional values built into them. The internet was a vehicle for spreading U.S. civil and political values; more speech would mean better speech platforms, which in turn would lead to democratic revolutions around the world.

                            China quickly became worried about unregulated digital speech—both as a threat to the Communist Party’s control and to the domestic social order more generally. It began building ever more powerful mechanisms of surveillance and control to meet these threats. Other authoritarian nations would follow China’s lead. In 2009, China, Russia, and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation announced their “agreement on cooperation in the field of international information security.” The agreement presciently warned of a coming “information war,” in which internet platforms would be weaponized in ways that would threaten nations’ “social and political systems.”

                            Evelyn Douek: The internet’s titans make a power grab

                            During the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, the United States helped secure digital freedoms for people living in authoritarian states. It gave them resources to support encryption and filter-evasion products that were designed to assist individuals in “circumventing politically motivated censorship,” as then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it in 2010. And it openly assisted Twitter and other U.S. tech platforms that seemed to be fueling the Arab Spring.

                            In these and so many other ways, the public internet in its first two decades seemed good for open societies and bad for closed ones. But this conventional wisdom turned out to be mostly backwards. China and other authoritarian states became adept at reverse engineering internet architecture to enhance official control over digital networks in their countries and thus over their populations. And in recent years, the American public has grown fearful of ubiquitous digital monitoring and has been reeling from the disruptive social effects of digital networks.

                            Two events were wake-up calls. The first was Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about the astonishing extent of secret U.S. government monitoring of digital networks at home and abroad. The U.S. government’s domestic surveillance is legally constrained, especially compared with what authoritarian states do. But this is much less true of private actors. Snowden’s documents gave us a glimpse of the scale of surveillance of our lives by U.S. tech platforms, and made plain how the government accessed privately collected data to serve its national-security needs.

                            The second wake-up call was Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. As Barack Obama noted, the most consequential misinformation campaign in modern history was “not particularly sophisticated—this was not some elaborate, complicated espionage scheme.” Russia used a simple phishing attack and a blunt and relatively limited social-media strategy to disrupt the legitimacy of the 2016 election and wreak still-ongoing havoc on the American political system. The episode showed how easily a foreign adversary could exploit the United States’ deep reliance on relatively unregulated digital networks. It also highlighted how legal limitations grounded in the First Amendment (freedom of speech and press) and the Fourth Amendment (privacy) make it hard for the U.S. government to identify, prevent, and respond to malicious cyber operations from abroad.

                            These constitutional limits help explain why, since the Russian electoral interference, digital platforms have taken the lead in combatting all manner of unwanted speech on their networks—and, if anything, have increased their surveillance of our lives. But the government has been in the shadows of these developments, nudging them along and exploiting them when it can.

                            Ten years ago, speech on the American Internet was a free-for-all. There was relatively little monitoring and censorship—public or private—of what people posted, said, or did on Facebook, YouTube, and other sites. In part, this was due to the legal immunity that platforms enjoyed under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. And in part it was because the socially disruptive effects of digital networks—various forms of weaponized speech and misinformation—had not yet emerged. As the networks became filled with bullying, harassment, child sexual exploitation, revenge porn, disinformation campaigns, digitally manipulated videos, and other forms of harmful content, private platforms faced growing pressure from governments and users to fix the problems.

                            The result a decade later is that most of our online speech now occurs in closely monitored playpens where many tens of thousands of human censors review flagged content to ensure compliance with ever-lengthier and more detailed “community standards” (or some equivalent). More and more, this human monitoring and censorship is supported—or replaced—by sophisticated computer algorithms. The firms use these tools to define acceptable forms of speech and other content on their platforms, which in turn sets the effective boundaries for a great deal of speech in the U.S. public forum.

                            After the 2016 election debacle, for example, the tech platforms took aggressive but still imperfect steps to fend off foreign adversaries. YouTube has an aggressive policy of removing what it deems to be deceptive practices and foreign-influence operations related to elections. It also makes judgments about and gives priority to what it calls “authoritative voices.” Facebook has deployed a multipronged strategy that includes removing fake accounts and eliminating or demoting “inauthentic behavior.” Twitter has a similar censorship policy aimed at “platform manipulation originating from bad-faith actors located in countries outside of the US.” These platforms have engaged in “strategic collaboration” with the federal government, including by sharing information, to fight foreign electoral interference.

                            The platforms are also cooperating with one another and with international organizations, and sometimes law enforcement, on other censorship practices. This collaboration began with a technology that allows child pornography to be assigned a digital fingerprint and placed in centralized databases that the platforms draw on to suppress the material. A similar mechanism has been deployed against terrorist speech—a more controversial practice, since the label terrorist often involves inescapably political judgments. Sharing and coordination across platforms are also moving forward on content related to electoral interference and are being discussed for the manipulated videos known as deepfakes. The danger with “content cartels,” as the writer Evelyn Douek dubs these collaborations, is that they diminish accountability for censorship decisions and make invariable mistakes more pervasive and harder to fix.

                            And of course, mistakes are inevitable. Much of the content that the platforms censor—for example, child pornography and content that violates intellectual-property rights—is relatively easy to identify and uncontroversial to remove. But Facebook, for example, also takes down hate speech, terrorist propaganda, “cruel and insensitive” speech, and bullying speech, which are harder to identify objectively and more controversial to regulate or remove. Facebook publishes data on its enforcement of its rules. They show that the firm makes “mistakes”—defined by its own flexible criteria—in about 15 percent of the appealed cases involving supposed bullying and about 10 percent of the appealed hate-speech cases.

                            All these developments have taken place under pressure from Washington and Brussels. In hearings over the past few years, Congress has criticized the companies—not always in consistent ways—for allowing harmful speech. In 2018, Congress amended the previously untouchable Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to subject the platforms to the same liability that nondigital outlets face for enabling illegal sex trafficking. Additional amendments to Section 230 are now in the offing, as are various other threats to regulate digital speech. In March 2019, Zuckerberg invited the government to regulate “harmful content” on his platform. In a speech seven months later defending America’s First Amendment values, he boasted about his “team of thousands of people and [artificial-intelligence] systems” that monitors for fake accounts. Even Zuckerberg’s defiant ideal of free expression is an extensively policed space.

                            Against this background, the tech firms’ downgrading and outright censorship of speech related to COVID-19 are not large steps. Facebook is using computer algorithms more aggressively, mainly because concerns about the privacy of users prevent human censors from working on these issues from home during forced isolation. As it has done with Russian misinformation, Facebook will notify users when articles that they have “liked” are later deemed to have included health-related misinformation.

                            But the basic approach to identifying and redressing speech judged to be misinformation or to present an imminent risk of physical harm “hasn’t changed,” according to Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management. As in other contexts, Facebook relies on fact-checking organizations and “authorities” (from the World Health Organization to the governments of U.S. states) to ascertain which content to downgrade or remove.

                            Read: How to misinform yourself about the coronavirus

                            What is different about speech regulation related to COVID-19 is the context: The problem is huge and the stakes are very high. But when the crisis is gone, there is no unregulated “normal” to return to. We live—and for several years, we have been living—in a world of serious and growing harms resulting from digital speech. Governments will not stop worrying about these harms. And private platforms will continue to expand their definition of offensive content, and will use algorithms to regulate it ever more closely. The general trend toward more speech control will not abate.

                            Over the past decade, network surveillance has grown in roughly the same proportion as speech control. Indeed, on many platforms, ubiquitous surveillance is a prerequisite to speech control.

                            The public has been told over and over that the hundreds of computers we interact with daily—smartphones, laptops, desktops, automobiles, cameras, audio recorders, payment mechanisms, and more—collect, emit, and analyze data about us that are, in turn, packaged and exploited in various ways to influence and control our lives. We have also learned a lot—but surely not the whole picture—about the extent to which governments exploit this gargantuan pool of data.

                            Police use subpoenas to tap into huge warehouses of personal data collected by private companies. They have used these tools to gain access to doorbell cameras that now line city blocks, microphones in the Alexa devices in millions of homes, privately owned license-plate readers that track every car, and the data in DNA databases that people voluntarily pay to enter. They also get access to information collected on smart-home devices and home-surveillance cameras—a growing share of which are capable of facial recognition—to solve crimes. And they pay to access private tow trucks equipped with cameras tracking the movements of cars throughout a city.

                            Derek Thompson: The technology that could free America from quarantine

                            In other cases, federal, state, and local governments openly work in conjunction with the private sector to expand their digital surveillance. One of the most popular doorbell cameras, Ring, which is owned by Amazon, has forged video-sharing partnerships with more than 400 law-enforcement agencies in the United States. Ring actively courted law-enforcement agencies by offering discounted cameras to local police departments, which offered them to residents. The departments would then use social media to encourage citizens to download Ring’s neighborhood application, where neighbors post videos and discuss ostensibly suspicious activity spotted on their cameras. (A Ring spokeswoman said the company no longer offers free or discounted cameras to law enforcement.)*

                            Meanwhile, the company Clearview AI provides law-enforcement agents with the ability to scan an image of a face across a database of billions of faces, scraped from popular apps and websites such as Facebook and YouTube. More than 600 law-enforcement agencies are now using Clearview’s database.

                            These developments are often greeted with blockbuster news reports and indignant commentary. And yet Americans keep buying surveillance machines and giving their data away. Smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home are in about a third of U.S. households. In 2019, American consumers bought almost 80 million new smartphones that can choose among millions of apps that collect, use, and distribute all manner of personal data.. Amazon does not release sales numbers for Ring, but one firm estimated that it sold almost 400,000 Ring security devices in December alone.

                            America’s private surveillance system goes far beyond apps, cameras, and microphones. Behind the scenes, and unbeknownst to most Americans, data brokers have developed algorithmic scores for each one of us—scores that rate us on reliability, propensity to repay loans, and likelihood to commit a crime. Uber bans passengers with low ratings from drivers. Some bars and restaurants now run background checks on their patrons to see whether they’re likely to pay their tab or cause trouble. Facebook has patented a mechanism for determining a person’s creditworthiness by evaluating their social network.

                            These and similar developments are the private functional equivalent of China’s social-credit ratings, which critics in the West so fervently decry. The U.S. government, too, makes important decisions based on privately collected pools of data. The Department of Homeland Security now requires visa applicants to submit their social-media accounts for review. And courts regularly rely on algorithms to determine a defendant’s flight risk, recidivism risk, and more.

                            The response to COVID-19 builds on all these trends, and shows how technical wizardry, data centralization, and private-public collaboration can do enormous public good. As Google and Apple effectively turn most phones in the world into contact-tracing tools, they have the ability to accomplish something that no government by itself could: nearly perfect location tracking of most the world’s population. That is why governments in the United States and around the world are working to take advantage of the tool the two companies are offering.

                            Apple and google have told critics that their partnership will end once the pandemic subsides. Facebook has said that its aggressive censorship practices will cease when the crisis does. But when COVID-19 is behind us, we will still live in a world where private firms vacuum up huge amounts of personal data and collaborate with government officials who want access to that data. We will continue to opt in to private digital surveillance because of the benefits and conveniences that result. Firms and governments will continue to use the masses of collected data for various private and social ends.

                            The harms from digital speech will also continue to grow, as will speech controls on these networks. And invariably, government involvement will grow. At the moment, the private sector is making most of the important decisions, though often under government pressure. But as Zuckerberg has pleaded, the firms may not be able to regulate speech legitimately without heavier government guidance and involvement. It is also unclear whether, for example, the companies can adequately contain foreign misinformation and prevent digital tampering with voting mechanisms without more government surveillance.


                            The First and Fourth Amendments as currently interpreted, and the American aversion to excessive government-private-sector collaboration, have stood as barriers to greater government involvement. Americans’ understanding of these laws, and the cultural norms they spawned, will be tested as the social costs of a relatively open internet multiply.

                            COVID-19 is a window into these future struggles. At the moment, activists are pressuring Google and Apple to build greater privacy safeguards into their contact-tracing program. Yet the legal commentator Stewart Baker has argued that the companies are being too protective—that existing privacy accommodations will produce “a design that raises far too many barriers to effectively tracking infections.” Even some ordinarily privacy-loving European governments seem to agree with the need to ease restrictions for the sake of public health, but the extent to which the platforms will accommodate these concerns remains unclear.

                            We are about to find out how this trade-off will be managed in the United States. The surveillance and speech-control responses to COVID-19, and the private sector’s collaboration with the government in these efforts, are a historic and very public experiment about how our constitutional culture will adjust to our digital future.

                            * An earlier version of this article misstated the status of a now-discontinued Ring initiative providing local police with discounted cameras. The company no longer extends that offer.

                            JACK GOLDSMITH is a professor at Harvard Law School and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was an assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration.
                            ANDREW KEANE WOODS is a professor of law at the University of Arizona College of Law.
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                            https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.the...rticle/610549/

                            ....
                            To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

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                            • Trump ignored 12 of CIA's warnings on COVID-19

                              The Central Intelligence Agency had issued at least 12 warnings to United States President Donald Trump about the spread of the coronavirus in China and its implications for the US; warnings which Trump ignored and subsequently the pandemic gripped the US.

                              Current and former US intelligence officials told The Washington Post that Trump, in the month of January and February, had repeatedly ignored warnings conveyed in issues of the US president's Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president's attention to the most significant global developments and security threats.

                              For weeks, the PDB -- as the report is known -- traced the virus's spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion's transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.

                              But, Trump continued to downplay the threat and skipped the reading of comprehensive articles on aspects of the global outbreak in the PDB's reference to the novel virus, according to the officials, who told the Post on condition of anonymity to discuss classified material.

                              The frequency with which the coronavirus was mentioned in the PDB has not been previously reported, and US officials were quoted as saying that the devlopment reflected a level of attention comparable to periods when analysts have been tracking active terrorism threats, overseas conflicts or other rapidly developing security issues.

                              The administration's first major step to arrest the spread of the virus came in late January, when Trump restricted travel between the United States and China, where the virus is believed to have originated late last year.

                              One official told the Post that by mid- to late January the coronavirus was being mentioned more frequently, either as one of the report's core articles or in what is known as an "executive update," and that it was almost certainly called to Trump's attention orally.

                              But Trump spent much of February publicly playing down the threat while his administration failed to mobilise for a major outbreak by securing supplies of protective equipment, developing an effective diagnostic test and preparing plans to quarantine large portions of the population, the official added.

                              On February 26, the US president insisted publicly that the number of cases "within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero," and said the next day that "it's like a miracle, it will disappear."

                              In reality, the virus was by then moving swiftly through communities across the United States, spreading virtually unchecked in New York City and other population centers until state governors began imposing sweeping lockdowns, requiring social distancing and all but closing huge sectors of the country's economy, the newspaper reported.

                              As late as March 10, Trump said: "Just stay calm. It will go away." The next day, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic.

                              By then, officials told the Post, the warnings in the PDB and other intelligence reports had started calling for immediate attention.

                              However, this was not the first case. Senior correspondents of The Washington Post, Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima, further wrote in the report quoting senior officials with direct knowledge of Trump's intelligence briefings that the president has been dismissive toward US intelligence agencies throughout his tenure.

                              The intelligence officals told the newspaper that the president was busy contending with the Senate impeachment trial in January and focused more on other security issues, including tracking Iran's response to a January 3 US airstrike that killed a top Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, in Baghdad -- than paying closer attention to the contagion threat which was about to clench the entire country.

                              In addition to intelligence reports, Trump's top health officials and advisers were also delivering warnings on the virus through January and February, though their messages at times appeared muddled and contradictory. But Trump, who was traveling in India in February, was outraged by what he regarded as the alarmist tone of remarks by Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and their perceived impact on the US stock market, the Post reported further.

                              US intelligence officials, citing scientific evidence, have largely dismissed the notion that the virus was deliberately genetically engineered. But they are continuing to examine whether the virus somehow escaped a virology lab in Wuhan, where research on naturally occurring coronaviruses has been conducted, the Post said.

                              The warnings conveyed in the PDB probably will be a focus of any future investigation of the Trump administration's handling of the pandemic outbreak, the report mentioned.
                              Bizarre!
                              Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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                              • Originally posted by Oracle View Post
                                Not reallly because until the first week of Feb, all the rambunctious media was interested in discussing was impeachment !!

                                But Trump spent much of February publicly playing down the threat while his administration failed to mobilise for a major outbreak by securing supplies of protective equipment, developing an effective diagnostic test and preparing plans to quarantine large portions of the population, the official added.
                                Trump had nothing to do with the test kit, that was the CDC that wanted to roll their own. It was delayed.

                                What plan to quarantine large portion of the population do they mean. All we do is home quarantine and check if its being complied with.

                                New Rochelle, a town in upstate NY that became a hotspot was quarantined.

                                PPE shortages were an issue in March and this has largely been addressed since.

                                On February 26, the US president insisted publicly that the number of cases "within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero," and said the next day that "it's like a miracle, it will disappear."

                                In reality, the virus was by then moving swiftly through communities across the United States, spreading virtually unchecked in New York City and other population centers until state governors began imposing sweeping lockdowns, requiring social distancing and all but closing huge sectors of the country's economy, the newspaper reported.
                                Even if Trump wants to lock things down the state governors can oppose it. All he can do is recommend. His power over states is limited unless he enacts some war powers. So you get a mix of policies across various states where some are strict like Calif. and others are more relaxed. How well or bad a states fares is more down to the states administration than Trump.

                                Trump can't claim credit for Calif. neither can he be blamed for NYC.

                                However, this was not the first case. Senior correspondents of The Washington Post, Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima, further wrote in the report quoting senior officials with direct knowledge of Trump's intelligence briefings that the president has been dismissive toward US intelligence agencies throughout his tenure.
                                Foreign adversaries have more respect for American intel orgs than Americans.

                                The intelligence officals told the newspaper that the president was busy contending with the Senate impeachment trial in January and focused more on other security issues, including tracking Iran's response to a January 3 US airstrike that killed a top Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, in Baghdad -- than paying closer attention to the contagion threat which was about to clench the entire country.
                                True

                                In addition to intelligence reports, Trump's top health officials and advisers were also delivering warnings on the virus through January and February, though their messages at times appeared muddled and contradictory. But Trump, who was traveling in India in February, was outraged by what he regarded as the alarmist tone of remarks by Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and their perceived impact on the US stock market, the Post reported further.
                                Especially on the subject of face masks. Very muddled messaging.

                                The warnings conveyed in the PDB probably will be a focus of any future investigation of the Trump administration's handling of the pandemic outbreak, the report mentioned.
                                Oh great, here's yet another enquiry the opposition wants to foist on him. His handling of this whole affair. If they can convince enough people he screwed it up then it helps them in Nov.
                                Last edited by Double Edge; 30 Apr 20,, 02:26.

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