Steve Punt, Hugh Dennis and guests present the week in news through stand-up and sketches. Jack Carroll explores the possible impact of President Trump's health-care reform, Jake Yapp plans for a time when robots take all of our jobs and Lord West of Spithead joins Punt and Dennis to discuss the function of the House of Lords in modern politics.

Speaker(s): Sarah Bakewell, Dr Andy Martin and Professor Stella Sandford | ‘Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?’ asks Martin Heidegger in his Introduction to Metaphysics. In this panel, we explore the ideas of being and nothing as described by existentialism’s most famous thinkers: Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus. What is the allure of the existentialists that their reputations should endure in popular and contemporary culture? And how is it that existentialist philosophy can be, at once, avidly consumed by modern audiences and unapologetically esoteric? Coffee, French cigarettes, and black polo necks not provided; intelligent discussion and provocative questions most definitely are. Sarah Bakewell (@Sarah_Bakewell) is author of three biographies, including the bestselling How to Live: A Life of Montaigne, which won the Duff Cooper Prize for Non-Fiction and the National Books Critics Circle Award for Biography in the US, and was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Marsh Biography Award. Her latest books is At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails. Andy Martin (@andymartinink) is a lecturer in French at Cambridge University and author of Stealing the Wave, Napoleon the Novelist, Waiting for Bardot and The Boxer and the Goalkeeper: Sartre vs Camus. Stella Sandford is Professor of Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London and a member of the Radical Philosophy Editorial Collective. She is author of How to Read De Beauvoir. Shahidha Bari (@ShahidhaBari) is a lecturer in Romanticisma at Queen Mary, University of London and Forum for European Philosophy Fellow. The Forum for European Philosophy (@ForumPhilosophy) is an educational charity that organises a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK.

From a young age, humans love to press buttons that light up and make a noise. The thrill of positive feedback lies at the heart of addiction to gambling, games and social media • Read the text version

Democracy Now! 2017-03-13 Monday

• Headlines for March 13, 2017
• How to Remove a President: Mass Protests Force Out South Korean Leader Amid Corruption Scandal
• Bruce Cumings: North Korea Timed Recent Missile Test to Take Place During Trump-Abe Dinner
• China Warns U.S. & North Korea Are Set for "Head-On" Collision Amid Rising Tensions & Provocations
• Mustafa Ali: Meet the Top EPA Environmental Justice Official Who Quit to Protest Pruitt & Trump

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Author (Photo: Gibraltar 1783) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It by Larrie D. Ferreiro. PART 1 OF 4. Winner of the Journal of the American Revolution 2016 Book of the Year Award The remarkable untold story of how the American Revolution's success depended on substantial military assistance provided by France and Spain, and places the Revolution in the context of the global strategic interests of those nations in their fight against England. In this groundbreaking, revisionist history, Larrie Ferreiro shows that at the time the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord the colonists had little chance, if any, of militarily defeating the British. The nascent American nation had no navy, little in the way of artillery, and a militia bereft even of gunpowder. In his detailed accounts Ferreiro shows that without the extensive military and financial support of the French and Spanish, the American cause would never have succeeded. France and Spain provided close to the equivalent of $30 billion and 90 percent of all guns used by the Americans, and they sent soldiers and sailors by the thousands to fight and die alongside the Americans, as well as around the world. Ferreiro adds to the historical records the names of French and Spanish diplomats, merchants, soldiers, and sailors whose contribution is at last given recognition. Instead of viewing the American Revolution in isolation, Brothers at Arms reveals the birth of the American nation as the centerpiece of an international coalition fighting against a common enemy. https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Arms-American-Independence-France/dp/1101875240/ref=la_B001ITTT9A_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488849894&sr=1-1

Author (Photo: Spanish ships of the line towing British prizes after the Action of 9 August 1780. ) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It by Larrie D. Ferreiro. PART 2 OF 4. “Brothers in Arms vividly tells the forgotten story of how French and Spanish military and financial support enabled thirteen weak colonies to take down an empire. Anyone interested in how the United States actually won its independence should read this book.” —Kathleen DuVal, author Independence Lost “An informative and wide-ranging introduction to the vital French and Spanish roles in the War of American Independence, Ferreiro’s survey is full of human interest details.” —Jonathan R. Dull, author of The Miracle of American Independence: Twenty Ways Things Could Have Turned Out Differently “Surprisingly the war that we people of the United States call our revolution, could not have succeeded if it were not part of a world war. Here is the story of the various motives that came together with a common purpose—the defeat of Great Britain—that resulted in our independence. Fascinating and revelatory.” —Thomas Chávez, author of Spain and the Independence of the United States About the Author LARRIE D. FERREIRO received his PhD in the History of Science and Technology from Imperial College London. He teaches history and engineering at George Mason University in Virginia and the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. He has served for over thirty-five years in the US Navy, US Coast Guard and Department of Defense, and was an exchange engineer in the French Navy. He is the author of Measure of the Earth: The Enlightenment Expedition That Reshaped Our World and Ships and Science: The Birth of Naval Architecture in the Scientific Revolution, 1600-1800. He lives with his wife and their sons in Virginia. https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Arms-American-Independence-France/dp/1101875240/ref=la_B001ITTT9A_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488849894&sr=1-1

Author (Photo: Battle of Yorktown ) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It by Larrie D. Ferreiro. PART 3 OF 4. “Ferreiro mounts a deeply informed, authoritative, and compelling argument for the importance of two major European powers to American independence. ‘Instead of the myth of heroic self-sufficiency,’ he writes, ‘the real story is that the American nation was born as the centerpiece of an international coalition.’ . . . Besides offering a vivid chronicle of combat, the author traces the tense negotiations between American emissaries in Europe—notably Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane—and their French and Spanish counterparts. . . . A largely untold, engrossing history of our nation’s fraught, and unlikely, path to liberty.” —Kirkus (starred review) “For some time, historians have understood that globalization was born during the founding of the American colonies, north and south. Now comes Larrie Ferreiro to recount in this magnificent volume the myriad ways that the globalized world was very much in play when those colonies began to come undone—during the American Revolution. A whole canvas of passions and interests is illumined here, allowing us to see history through a thoroughly fresh lens.” —Marie Arana, author of Bolívar: American Liberator “As Larrie Ferreiro proves in this fascinating and groundbreaking account of the American Revolutionary War, there would have been no United States without the help of France and Spain. Brothers at Arms is an important corrective to the notion that our nationhood was preordained. As Ferreiro demonstrates time and time again, American independence depended on France and Spain.” —Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Bunker Hill and Valiant Ambition “In Brothers at Arms, Larrie D. Ferreiro recasts the American Revolution in a revealing new light by situating the local fight for freedom in the context of global power struggles. This eye-opening narrative takes us beyond the shores of the fledgling United States to show us how French and Spanish forces in places as far flung as Honduras and Gibraltar helped make victory possible.” —Laura Auricchio, author of The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Arms-American-Independence-France/dp/1101875240/ref=la_B001ITTT9A_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488849894&sr=1-1

Author (Photo:Benjamin West, American Commissioners of the Preliminary Peace Agreement with Great Britain, 1783-1784, London, England. (oil on canvas, unfinished sketch), Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware, gift of Henry Francis du Pont. From left to right: John Jay, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Laurens, and William Temple Franklin. The British commissioners refused to pose, and the picture was never finished. Datum 1783-1784 ) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It by Larrie D. Ferreiro. PART 4 of 4. “Remarkable. . . . Brothers at Arms is one of the most important books on the American Revolution published in this decade.” —Dallas Morning News “[I]n his wide-ranging study . . . [Ferreiro] draws attention to people and events that George Washington and the other eminent founders routinely overshadow. The result is a familiar story told from a new vantage point. Revisionist in the best sense, Mr. Ferreiro’s book deftly locates the war within the rivalrous 18th-century Atlantic world. . . . . Impressive.” —The Wall Street Journal “Engaging and informative, Ferreiro’s Brothers at Arms refutes the widely-held view that the Marquis de Lafayette alone represented France until Vicomte de Rochambeau and Admiral de Grasse sealed the fate of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. . . . Ferreiro is a skillful storyteller. His experience in the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard and Department of Defense, and as an exchange engineer in the French Navy, is on display in his descriptions of battles on land and at sea. Brothers at Arms is filled with telling—and titillating—details. . . . In the end, however, the enduring importance of Brothers at Arms is Ferreiro’s accurate (and perhaps humbling) reminder that when Brig. Gen. O’Hara, representing Cornwallis, emerged at Yorktown to surrender, and turned toward Rochambeau, he was acknowledging that the victory was as much France’s as it was America’s. And when Rochambeau wordlessly pointed him across the lane toward Washington, he was ‘well aware to whom belonged the moment.’ After all, as Ferreiro concludes, ‘the American nation was born as the centerpiece of an international coalition.’” —Glenn Altschuler, Tulsa World “Imporant as scholarship, Ferreiro’s history is also eminently fluid for all readers interested in the U.S.’s beginning.” —Gilbert Taylor, Booklist “Even seasoned American history readers will likely find new content on a pivotal era.” —Library Journal (starred review) “Ferreiro mounts a deeply informed, authoritative, and compelling argument for the importance of two major European powers to American independence. ‘Instead of the myth of heroic self-sufficiency,’ he writes, ‘the real story is that the American nation was born as the centerpiece of an international coalition.’ . . . Besides offering a vivid chronicle of combat, the author traces the tense negotiations between American emissaries in Europe—notably Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane—and their French and Spanish counterparts. . . . A largely untold, engrossing history of our nation’s fraught, and unlikely, path to liberty.” —Kirkus (starred review) https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Arms-American-Independence-France/dp/1101875240

In recognition of the wrongs done by slavery, but not subsequent legal and actual discrimination, NYT columnist Ross Douthat proposes making a one time payment of $10,000 to every person who trace their ancestry to someone who was enslaved. This payment would be in exchange for ending affirmative action in education, employment, or any other area. The idea seems to be that after the descendants of slaves get their check, we're all good.

For anyone interested on how this measures up in the scheme of things, currently the median income for a white household is $71,300. The median income for an black household is $43,300. Since this is for an adjusted household of three people, Douthat's $10,000 per person payment will put the median black household slightly above the median income for white households, in the year they get it.

In subsequent years, they will get nothing to offset the discrimination they experience in schools, hiring, getting mortgages, and even selling baseball cards on eBay. Apparently, Douthat thinks that his one time payment of $10K (only to those with direct ancestors who were enslaved) would make things right. My guess is that this deal wouldn't look too good to people who are better at arithmetic than Mr. Douthat.

Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist and author who has become one of the nation’s leading Russia experts and one of its most relentless and vocal critics of Vladimir Putin. She has lived her life on and off in the U.S. and Russia, but as a Jewish lesbian and mother of three children, she left Russia in 2013 and moved back to the U.S. in part because she felt threatened by the increasingly anti-LGBT climate there, one that began particularly targeting LGBT adopted families with discriminatory legislation.

Throughout the years Gessen (pictured, above) has become one of the go-to Kremlin critics for the U.S. media, publishing harshly anti-Putin reporting and commentary in numerous media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, Harper’s and several articles about political repression in Russia for the Intercept. She has also become a virulent critic of Donald Trump, writing shortly after the election that “Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but for autocrat—and won,” while describing the critical lessons that can be learned on how to resist Trump’s autocratic impulses by studying Putin.

She now has a new article in the New York Review of Books – entitled “Russia: the Conspiracy Trap” – that I cannot recommend highly enough. Its primary purpose is to describe, and warn about, the insane and toxic conspiracy-mongering about Russia that has taken over not the fringe, dark corners of the internet that normally traffic in such delusional tripe, but rather mainstream U.S. media outlets and the Democratic Party. Few articles have illustrated the serious, multi-faceted dangers of what has become this collective mania in the U.S. as well as Gessen’s does.

To begin, Gessen details several examples of classic, evidence-free, unhinged, and increasingly xenophobic conspiracy theorizing masquerading as serious news in mainstream outlets such as MSNBC, CNN, and the Washington Post. Routine diplomatic interactions are depicted as dark and sinister if they involve Russians. When the most flamboyant, alarmist, tabloid-style Russia stories from leading news outlets collapse (as so many have), or when Trump’s actions (such as hiring numerous anti-Russia hawks for key positions) explode the “Putin’s puppet” narrative, it makes no difference to our mainstream conspiracy obsessives because – as she puts it – “such is the nature of conspiracy thinking that facts can do nothing to change it.”

Wild, melodramatic claims about hidden Russian plotting and Trump collusion are routinely and constantly hyped by leading media outlets based on nothing but their imaginations or, at best, coordinated whispers from intelligence officials utterly insusceptible to verification, from operatives trained in disinformation. As she writes:

The backbone of the rapidly yet endlessly developing Trump-Putin story is leaks from intelligence agencies, and this is its most troublesome aspect. Virtually none of the information can be independently corroborated. The context, sequence, and timing of the leaks is determined by people unknown to the public, which is expected to accept anonymous stories on faith; nor have we yet been given any hard evidence of active collusion by Trump officials. . . .

The dream fueling the Russia frenzy is that it will eventually create a dark enough cloud of suspicion around Trump that Congress will find the will and the grounds to impeach him. If that happens, it will have resulted largely from a media campaign orchestrated by members of the intelligence community—setting a dangerous political precedent that will have corrupted the public sphere and promoted paranoia. And that is the best-case outcome. . . . More likely, the Russia allegations will not bring down Trump.

The crux of her article is the point that has been driving everything I’ve been writing and saying about this topic for months: that this obsession with Russia conspiracy tales is poisoning all aspects of U.S. political discourse and weakening any chance for resisting Trump’s actual abuses and excesses. Those who wake up every day to hype the latest episode of this Russia/Trump spy drama tell themselves that they’re bravely undermining and subverting Trump, but they’re doing exactly the opposite.

This crazed conspiracy mongering is further discrediting U.S. media outlets, making Washington seem even more distant from and irrelevant to the lives of millions of Americans, degrading discourse to the lowliest Trumpian circus level on which he thrives, and is misdirecting huge portions of opposition energy and thought into an exciting but fictitious spy novel – all of which directly redounds to Trump’s benefit. As Gessen puts it in the key sentence that ought to be pinned everywhere in neon lights:

Russiagate is helping [Trump]—both by distracting from real, documentable, and documented issues, and by promoting a xenophobic conspiracy theory in the cause of removing a xenophobic conspiracy theorist from office.

I’ve been asked often why I’ve written so much against the prevailing sentiments on Russia and Trump. It’s not just because this obsessive narrative distracts from Trump’s genuinely consequential actions or from the need to find an effective vessel for activism against über-right-wing nationalism. It’s not just because it’s driven by ugly and historically familiar anti-Rusisan xenophobia, nor because it dangerously ratchets up tensions between two nuclear-armed, traditionally hostile countries. Those things are all true, but that’s not the main impetus.

Above all else, it’s because it’s an offensive assault on reason. This kind of deranged discourse is an attack on basic journalistic integrity, on any minimal obligation to ensure that one’s claims are based in evidence rather than desire, fantasy, and herd-enforced delusions. And it’s emanating from the most established and mainstream precincts of U.S. political and media elites, who have processed the severe disorientation and loss of position they feel from Trump’s shock election not by doing the work to patiently formulate cogent, effective strategies against him, but rather by desperately latching onto online “dot-connecting” charlatans and spewing the most unhinged Birther-level conspiracies that require a complete abandonment of basic principles of rationality and skepticism.

 

To see how extreme this derangement has become, let’s look at the latest conspiracy theory that took hold of fringe and mainstream figures alike this weekend. It was prompted by the death of Alex Oronov, a 68-year-old Ukrainian-American whose daughter married Bryan Cohen, who is the brother of Michael Cohen, who is Trump’s personal lawyer. Got all those connections, those “dots”?

Back in the 1990s, the fever swamp of the Far Right was driven mad by Bill Clinton’s election. They were convinced he and Hillary were mass murderers, constantly ordering the deaths of political opponents and others who could incriminate the Clintons – not just Vince Foster but an endless number of remotely related people.

Any person who died and had any kind of connection to the Clintons, no matter how remote, became part of the “Clinton Body Count.” These were people who died and whose death was ruled by the coroner to be due to “natural causes” yet were still classified by right-wing extremists as “mysterious deaths,” all for the purpose of implying that the Clintons were responsible for their deaths.

One of the primary pushers of this innuendo was the nation’s most influential radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who spent the 1990s hyping every death with any proximity to the Clintons as “suspicious.” He gleefully resurrected this theme during the 2016 campaign by claiming that people close to the Clintons were once again mysteriously dying. This is what Limbaugh told his audience in August:

I can remember reading magazines back in 1992 that catalogued all the people who the Clintons knew who had died. . . . The inherent conspiracies that were associated with this. And lo and behold, here we go again.

Limbaugh cited a Townhall article describing the deaths of three DNC-related officials and told his audience: “Since the DNC emails were leaked a few weeks ago, three people associated with the DNC have all found dead, under what could be questionable circumstances.” Limbaugh added: “This is exactly the kind of stuff we saw back in 1992 and 1993.” He then mocked the media for viewing this speculation as insane conspiracy theories, emphasizing:

A lot of people [the Clintons] know who have died, been murdered . . . . it’s amazing the cycle that exists with the Clintons . . . . How many other politicians do you know who have so many mysterious deaths associated with them?. . . . But there is a Clinton body count.

Rush Limbaugh Clinton body count, Julian Assange murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich WikiLeaks… https://t.co/gZzaJkXvOa pic.twitter.com/2zmkl9Nnik

— citizenwells (@citizenwells) August 11, 2016

There’s now an identical – and quite profitable – Democratic cottage industry that specializes in pointing to every death of anyone with any proximity to Trump or Russia and strongly implying – with zero evidence – that they were murdered. But the difference is that it’s not confined to the fringes but is fully embraced by numerous mainstream Democratic figures. It’s not a coincidence that one of the key figures of this early 1990s anti-Clinton sickness, David Brock, is now always lurking at the center of similar yet highly lucrative insanity, but now on behalf of Democrats.

One of the most popular online conspiracists among Democrats is now the former Tory member of the UK Parliament and current Murdoch-rag-writer Louise Mensch, whose history of public humiliations and pure bigotry is far too long to chronicle.

But because she has now turned her deranged behavior to peddling any and all conspiracies about Trump and Russia, she has built a huge Twitter following among Democrats convinced that all of their critics are Kremlin spies and anyone who dies was murdered by the Putin/Trump axis to protect their conspiratorial cover-up. Here’s what this newfound liberal journalistic icon tweeted two weeks ago:

I absolutely believe that Andrew Breitbart was murdered by Putin, just as the founder of RT was murdered by Putin.

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) February 24, 2017

That is as flagrantly insane as the most warped versions of birther and truther fever dreams that have tragically engulfed significant portions of the U.S. population. That tweet, by itself, should disqualify her from any form of serious consideration. But Mensch is now routinely cited as some sort of credible journalistic source on Russia conspiracies by unhinged, mainstream anti-Trump fanatics such as MSNBC and Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, who will launder any insanity as long as it promotes their Tom Clancy fever dreams of Trump as a Kremlin asset.

When news of Oronov’s death broke over the weekend, Democratic Party loyalists instantly began implying, if not outright stating, that his death was really a murder, intended to silence him from exposing the Trump/Russia conspiracy. One of the leading articles pushing this evidence-free tripe was this thing called “The Palmer Report,” whose insinuations went viral because they were quickly mainstreamed by all kinds of prominent Democrats with a platform.

What is the Palmer Report? It’s a classic Fake News site created by Bill Palmer, a crazed fanatical follower of Hillary Clinton who got caught purposely disseminating fake news during the election. The site he ran during the campaign was called “The Daily News Bin,” and among other gems, that was the site that published the totally false but viral claim – based on the fraudulent assertions of MSNBC’s partisan warriors Joy Ann Reid and Malcolm Nance – that the DNC and Podesta emails WikiLeaks was publishing were forgeries.

The Palmer Report is the same Fake News site that published multiple stories claiming that the vote totals for the 2016 election were altered, causing Slate to compare it to The National Enquirer. In February, the Atlantic warned of “The Rise of Progressive Fake News,” and one of its leading examples was the “very harmful” Palmer Report.

This is where Democrats are now getting their “news” from. The Palmer Report seems to be a trusted news source for Professor Tribe. Yet it’s no better – no different – than what Macedonian teenagers or Clinton Body Count sites are churning out. But it’s being mainstreamed by prominent, establishment Democrats who have completely taken leave of their senses in the wake of Trump’s victory and show no signs of returning to anything resembling sober, grounded reasoning any time soon.

The Democrats’ favorite reporter during the 2016 campaign was Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald, who outright fabricated a claim that Trump “was institutionalized in a mental hospital for a nervous breakdown in 1990,” and then when caught, claimed that it was a “signal to a source.” Not even an outright fabrication and a pitiful explanation like that hurt his standing among Democrats; if anything, it bolstered it, because it was for the Right Cause.

And now, every time a Russian dies, mainstream Democratic sites instantly imply with zero evidence that they were murdered by Putin and possibly Trump to cover up something or other. Even when the autopsy rules that they died of natural causes, the conspiracies persist, indeed are often bolstered – just as Louise Mensch “absolutely believes” Putin murdered Andrew Breitbart despite the coroner’s findings.

TPM’s Josh Marshall this weekend pronounced Oronov’s death a “startling new development” – just as Limbaugh and right-wing sites do for every Democrats’ death. The liberal journal The Washington Monthly – echoing the innuendo tactics of the right-wing fever swamps focused on the Clinton Body Count – added: “Was it a heart attack, as seems to be implied? Or something else? . . . . Someone might want to figure out the actual cause of death.”

Is it possible all these people were killed by Putin and Trump to ensure their conspiracy remains hidden? Anything is “possible” – in the same sense that it’s possible that Bill and Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster and multiple Arkansas state troopers murdered. But since there’s no evidence for it, responsible, rational people don’t go around spouting it and trying to lead others to believe it.

When DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered in 2016, his family was furious and sickened by the attempt to exploit his death by implying that he was murdered by the Clintons for political reasons. In an interview with Buzzfeed, Oronov’s family just did the same thing, denouncing the theories laundered by TPM, the Palmer Report and other Democrats as “total bullshit” and noting that Oronov “died of a prolonged illness,” only “after three months at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.”

But as Buzzfeed’s editor-in-chief Ben Smith noted last night, the denunciation of this conspiracy theory by Oronov’s family received only a tiny fraction of the attention which the viral stories implying he was murdered received.

This happens over and over and over. Totally fraudulent stories about Russia are published on the internet. Those who do it – including the leading media outlets and their journalists – receive endless benefits: exploding follower counts on social media, gushing praise from their peers, media appearances, profitable traffic for their sites. But then when the stories fall apart and are debunked, as they so often are, the debunking is shared by virtually nobody, and there is zero accountability or cost to their reputations because their false stories were peddled for a Good Cause.

The most obscenely transparent charlatans and grifters have built a huge social media following over the last year by feeding Democrats an endless stream of increasingly unhinged, insane conspiracy theories about Trump and Russia. That Trump is a Manchurian Candidate recruited by old Soviet leaders and installed in the White House as a 30-year-plan – or that any critics of Democrats are on the payroll of Putin – are completely acceptable theories which many of the Democrats’ most beloved commentators endorse literally on a daily basis.

Part of it is exciting: they get to center themselves as intrepidly uncovering an international Moscow-led plot to infiltrate the U.S. Part of it is self-excusing: it explains why Democrats have failed without having to confront the party’s fundamental corruption. Part of it is personally enriching: just as was true of the Clinton years, these conspiracies have created a whole stable of new media stars, and the crazier they are, the bigger their following will be.

But whatever the motives, what’s most damaging is how mainstreamed it’s all become. These are the same circles which endlessly rail against misleading reports from Fox News and right-wing radio, and the dangers of Fake News. And yet – in the name of stopping Trump and winning the New Cold War – they are the most enthusiastic disseminators of exactly what they denounce.

The most ironic part of it all is that they are achieving exactly the opposite of what they convinced their followers they are doing: they are strengthening Trump, not weakening him, by poisoning and corroding all of the institutions that – if they had any credibility – could effectively check him.

 

Ultimately, what makes Gessen’s article so important – aside from the fact that partisan smear artists cannot dismiss her on the ground that she loves Putin and works for the Kremlin – is that it focuses on the key point: namely, that this fixation on primitive conspiracy-mongering is just a slothful way of avoiding the real work of meaningfully opposing Trump. As she explains, this bottomless, ultimately pointless obsession with Russia has utterly crowded out effective strategies for opposing Trump, and has obscured many of the truly damaging policies he is implementing with little notice:

Meanwhile, while Russia continues to dominate the front pages, Trump will continue waging war on immigrants, cutting funding for everything that’s not the military, assembling his cabinet of deplorables—with six Democrats voting to confirm Ben Carson for Housing, for example, and ten to confirm Rick Perry for Energy. According to the Trump plan, each of these seems intent on destroying the agency he or she is chosen to run—to carry out what Steve Bannon calls the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” As for Sessions, in his first speech as attorney general he promised to cut back civil rights enforcement and he has already abandoned a Justice Department case against a discriminatory Texas voter ID law. But it was his Russia lie that grabbed the big headlines.

Indeed, even the most plausible plank of the story – that the Russians were behind the hacking of Podesta and the DNC – has been widely accepted as Truth despite no evidence from the U.S. Government. As Gessen notes: “A later building block in the story, which has become its virtual cornerstone, is the joint intelligence report on Russian interference in the campaign, which was released in December and is, plainly, laughable.”

Worst of all, our discourse is being drowned by irrational, highly corrosive delusions and feverish conspiracy theorizing – not just from Trump, who built his political career on a racist and deranged conspiracy theory about Obama’s true birthplace, but also from those who have anointed themselves leaders of the Resistance against him. How can one credibly denounce Trump’s birtherism or his fact-free accusation that Obama ordered his wiretapping if one is simultaneously spreading the most blatantly evidence-free claims and conspiracies or venerating those who have built their new platforms based on feeding hungry partisans flagrantly fraudulent “reporting”?

The Russia narrative dominates national discourse, as it has for months, and becomes progressively more removed from evidence. As Gessen concludes: “What is indisputable is that the protracted national game of connecting the Trump-Putin dots is an exercise in conspiracy thinking. That does not mean there was no conspiracy. And yet, a possible conspiracy is a poor excuse for conspiracy thinking.”

The post Leading Putin Critic Warns of Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Drowning U.S. Discourse and Helping Trump appeared first on The Intercept.

Russia’s role in Trump’s election has led to a boom in Putinology. But do all these theories say more about us than Putin? Read the text version

An insider's account of one of the world's most dishevelled, dilapidated, yet beautiful cities - Havana.

Speaker(s): Professor Michael Sandel | Professor Sandel’s work discusses the big moral and political questions of our age. He will be in conversation with Professor Tim Besley. Michael Sandel is a best-selling author and teaches political philosophy at Harvard University. He has been described as “the most relevant living philosopher,” a “rock-star moralist”(Newsweek) and “currently the most popular professor in the world.”(Die Zeit). Sandel’s books, including What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets and Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? relate the big questions of political philosophy to the vexing issues of our time. Should we financially reward children for good marks? Is it ethical to pay people to donate organs? Is it always wrong to lie? Should there be limits to personal freedom? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons or selling citizenship? Tim Besley is School Professor of Economics and Political Science and W. Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics at LSE. Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship at LSE's core aim is to improve the impact and effectiveness of private contributions to the public good.

That would be news for Republicans in Congress. The vast majority of the tax cuts they are pushing would go to the richest ten percent of the population, with close to half going to the richest one percent. It is very misleading to describe them as proponents of a big middle-class tax cut.

The problem of fake data may go far deeper than scientists admit. Now a team of researchers has a controversial plan to root out the perpetrators • Read the text version

Members of the Democratic National Committee will meet on Saturday to choose their new chair, replacing the disgraced interim chair Donna Brazile, who replaced the disgraced five-year chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Even though the outcome is extremely unlikely to change the (failed) fundamentals of the party, the race has become something of an impassioned proxy war replicating the 2016 primary fight: between the Clinton/Obama establishment wing (which largely backs Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who vehemently supported Clinton) and the insurgent Sanders wing (which backs Keith Ellison, the first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Congress, who was an early Sanders supporter).

The New Republic’s Clio Chang has a great, detailed analysis of the contest. She asks the key question about Perez’s candidacy that has long hovered and yet has never been answered. As Chang correctly notes, supporters of Perez insist, not unreasonably, that he is materially indistinguishable from Ellison in terms of ideology (despite his support for TPP, seemingly grounded in loyalty to Obama). This, she argues, is “why the case for Tom Perez makes no sense”: After all, “if Perez is like Ellison — in both his politics and ideology — why bother fielding him in the first place?”

The timeline here is critical. Ellison announced his candidacy on November 15, armed with endorsements that spanned the range of the party: Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Raúl Grijalva, and various unions on the left, along with establishment stalwarts such as Chuck Schumer, Amy Klobuchar, and Harry Reid. He looked to be the clear frontrunner.

But as Ellison’s momentum built, the Obama White House worked to recruit Perez to run against Ellison. They succeeded, and Perez announced his candidacy on December 15 — a full month after Ellison announced. Why did the White House work to recruit someone to sink Ellison? If Perez and Ellison are so ideologically indistinguishable, why was it so important to the Obama circle — and the Clinton circle — to find someone capable of preventing Ellison’s election? What’s the rationale? None has ever been provided.

I can’t recommend Chang’s analysis highly enough on one key aspect of what motivated the recruitment of Perez: to ensure that the Democratic establishment maintains its fatal grip on the party and, in particular, to prevent Sanders followers from having any say in the party’s direction and identity:

There is one real difference between the two: Ellison has captured the support of the left wing. … It appears that the underlying reason some Democrats prefer Perez over Ellison has nothing to do with ideology, but rather his loyalty to the Obama wing. As the head of the DNC, Perez would allow that wing to retain more control, even if Obama-ites are loath to admit it. …

And it’s not just Obama- and Clinton-ites that could see some power slip away with an Ellison-headed DNC. Paid DNC consultants also have a vested interest in maintaining the DNC status quo. Nomiki Konst, who has extensively covered the nuts and bolts of the DNC race, asked Perez how he felt about conflicts of interest within the committee — specifically, DNC members who also have contracts with the committee. Perez dodged the issue, advocating for a “big tent.” In contrast, in a forum last month, Ellison firmly stated, “We are battling the consultant-ocracy.”

In other words, Perez, despite his progressive credentials, is viewed — with good reason — as a reliable functionary and trustworthy loyalist by those who have controlled the party and run it into the ground, whereas Ellison is viewed as an outsider who may not be as controllable and, worse, may lead the Sanders contingent to perceive that they have been integrated into and empowered within the party.

 

But there’s an uglier and tawdrier aspect to this. Just over two weeks after Ellison announced, the largest single funder of both the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign — the Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban — launched an incredibly toxic attack on Ellison, designed to signal his veto. “He is clearly an anti-Semite and anti-Israel individual,” pronounced Saban about the African-American Muslim congressman, adding: “Keith Ellison would be a disaster for the relationship between the Jewish community and the Democratic Party.”

Saban has a long history not only of fanatical support for Israel — “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel,” he told the New York Times in 2004 about himself — but also an ugly track record of animus toward Muslims. As The Forward gently put it, he is prone to “a bit of anti-Muslim bigotry,” including when he said Muslims deserve “more scrutiny” and “also called for profiling and broader surveillance.” In 2014, he teamed up with right-wing billionaire Sheldon Adelson to push a pro-Israel agenda. In that notorious NYT profile, he attacked the ACLU for opposing Bush/Cheney civil liberties assaults and said: “On the issues of security and terrorism I am a total hawk.”

There’s no evidence that Saban’s attack on Ellison is what motivated the White House to recruit an opponent. But one would have to be indescribably naïve about the ways of Washington to believe that such a vicious denunciation by one of the party’s most influential billionaire funders had no effect at all.

The DNC headquarters was built with Saban’s largesse: He donated $7 million to build that building, and he previously served as chairman of the party’s capital-expenditure campaign. Here’s how Mother Jones’s Andy Kroll, in a November profile, described the influence Saban wields within elite Democratic circles:

No single political patron has done more for the Clintons over the span of their careers. In the past 20 years, Saban and his wife have donated $2.4 million to the Clintons’ various campaigns and at least $15 million to the Clinton Foundation, where Cheryl Saban serves as a board member. Haim Saban prides himself on his top-giver status: “If I’m not No. 1, I’m going to cut my balls off,” he once remarked on the eve of a Hillary fundraiser. The Sabans have given more than $10 million to Priorities USA, making them among the largest funders of the pro-Hillary super-PAC. In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential campaign, he vowed to spend “whatever it takes” to elect her. …

The ties go beyond money. The Clintons have flown on the Sabans’ private jet, stayed at their LA home, and vacationed at their Acapulco estate. The two families watched the 2004 election results together at the Clintons’ home, and Bill Clinton gave the final toast at one of Cheryl Saban’s birthday parties. Haim Saban is chummy enough with Hillary that he felt comfortable telling her that she sounded too shrill on the stump. “Why are you shouting all the time?” he says he told her. “It’s drilling a hole in my head.” Clinton campaign emails released by WikiLeaks in October contain dozens of messages to, from, and referencing Saban. And they show that he has no qualms about pressing Clinton and her aides on her position toward Israel. “She needs to differentiate herself from Obama on Israel,” he wrote in June 2015 to Clinton’s top aides.

When Clinton, during the campaign, denounced the boycott movement devoted to defeating Israeli occupation, she did it in the form of public letter to Saban. To believe that Democrats assign no weight to Saban’s adamantly stated veto of Ellison is to believe in the tooth fairy.

Saban’s attack predictably spawned media reports that Jewish groups had grown “uncomfortable” with Ellison’s candidacy (the ADL pronounced his past criticisms of Israel “disqualifying”), while whispers arose that the last thing the Democratic Party needed to win back Rust Belt voters was a black Muslim as the face of the party (even though the Detroit-born Ellison himself is from the Rust Belt).

Defeated Dems could've tapped Rust Belt populist to head party. Instead, black, Muslim progressive from Minneapolis? https://t.co/VLfMcEtMka

— Jonathan Weisman (@jonathanweisman) November 11, 2016

As both Chang and Vox’s Jeff Stein have argued, the fact that DNC chair is a largely functionary position, with little real power over party policy or messaging, is all the more reason to throw Sanders supporters a symbolic bone. If Democrats were smart, this would be the perfect opportunity to capture that energized left-wing movement without having to make any real concessions on what matters most to them: loyalty to their corporate donor base.

But it’s hard to conclude that a party that has navigated itself into such collapse, which deliberately and knowingly chose the weakest candidate, who managed to lose to Donald J. Trump, is one that is thinking wisely and strategically. As Chang persuasively argues, it seems Democratic leaders prioritize ensuring that the left has no influence in their party over strengthening itself to beat the Trump-led Republicans:

Top photo: U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison during a press conference at the Farview Recreation Center in Minneapolis, Minn., Nov. 30, 2015.

The post Key Question About DNC Race: Why Did Obama White House Recruit Perez to Run Against Ellison? appeared first on The Intercept.

For aspiring journalists, historians, or politically engaged citizens, there are few more productive uses of one’s time than randomly reading through the newsletters of I.F. Stone, the intrepid and independent journalist of the Cold War era who became, in my view, the nation’s first “blogger” even though he died before the advent of the internet. Frustrated by big media’s oppressive corporatized environment and its pro-government propaganda model, and then ultimately blacklisted from mainstream media outlets for his objections to anti-Russia narratives, Stone created his own bi-monthly newsletter, sustained exclusively by subscriptions, and spent 18 years relentlessly debunking propaganda spewing from the U.S. government and its media partners.

What makes Stone’s body of work so valuable is not its illumination of history but rather its illumination of the present. What’s most striking about his newsletters is how little changes when it comes to U.S. government propaganda and militarism, and the role the U.S. media plays in sustaining it all. Indeed, reading through his reporting, one gets the impression that U.S. politics just endlessly replays the same debates, conflicts, and tactics.

Much of Stone’s writings, particularly throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, focused on the techniques for keeping Americans in a high state of fear over the Kremlin. One passage, from August 1954, particularly resonates; Stone explained why it’s impossible to stop McCarthyism at home when — for purposes of sustaining U.S. war and militarism — Kremlin leaders are constantly being depicted as gravely threatening and even omnipotent. Other than the change in Moscow’s ideology — a change many of today’s most toxic McCarthyites explicitly deny — Stone’s observations could be written with equal accuracy today.

If Communists are some supernatural breed of men, led by diabolic master minds in that distant Kremlin, engaged in a Satanic conspiracy to take over the world and enslave all mankind — and this is the thesis endlessly propounded by American liberals and conservatives alike, echoed night and day by every radio station and in every newspaper — the thesis no American dare any longer challenge without himself becoming suspect — then how to fight McCarthy?

If the public mind is to be conditioned for war, if it is being taught to take for granted the destruction of millions of human beings, few of them tainted with this dreadful ideological virus, all of them indeed presumably pleading for us to liberate them, how can we argue that it matters if a few possibly innocent men lose jobs or reputations because of McCarthy?

Two vital points stand out here: 1) the key to sustaining fears over foreign adversaries is depicting them as all-powerful and ubiquitous; and 2) once that image takes root, few will be willing to question the propaganda for fear of being accused of siding with the Foreign Evil: “the thesis no American dare any longer challenge without himself becoming suspect.”

This tactic — depicting adversaries as omnipotent super-villains — was key to the war on terror. Radical Muslims were not just violent threats; they were uniquely menacing, like Bond-film bad guys.

When photos emerged showing how the U.S. government was transporting terror suspect Jose Padilla to his trial by placing blackened goggles and earphones over his face, one U.S. commentator justified it by explaining it was necessary to prevent him from “blinking in code” to his terrorist comrades to activate plots. When asked why terror suspects were bound and gagged for long intercontinental flights to Guantánamo, a U.S. military official said that these were “people who would chew through a hydraulic cable to bring a C-17 down.” They possessed powers of dark magic and were lurking everywhere, even when you couldn’t see them. That’s the reason to fear them so much that one submits to any claim and any policy in the name of crushing them.

Few foreign villains have been vested with omnipotence and ubiquity like Vladimir Putin has been — at least ever since Democrats discovered (what they mistakenly believed was) his political utility as a bogeyman. There are very few negative developments in the world that do not end up at some point being pinned to the Russian leader, and very few critics of the Democratic Party who are not, at some point, cast as Putin loyalists or Kremlin spies:

Has there even been a more ubiquitous and omnipotent villain in history? pic.twitter.com/gLzvdcubBr

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 24, 2016

Putin — like al Qaeda terrorists and Soviet Communists before him — is everywhere. Russia is lurking behind all evils, most importantly — of course — Hillary Clinton’s defeat. And whoever questions any of that is revealing themselves to be a traitor, likely on Putin’s payroll.

As The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel put it on Tuesday in the Washington Post: “In the targeting of Trump, too many liberals have joined in fanning a neo-McCarthyite furor, working to discredit those who seek to deescalate U.S.-Russian tensions, and dismissing anyone expressing doubts about the charges of hacking or collusion as a Putin apologist. … What we don’t need is a replay of Cold War hysteria that cuts off debate, slanders skeptics and undermines any effort to explore areas of agreement with Russia in our own national interest.” That precisely echoes what Stone observed 62 years ago: Claims of Russian infiltration and ubiquity are “the thesis no American dare any longer challenge without himself becoming suspect” (Stone was not just cast as a Kremlin loyalist during his life but smeared as a Stalinist agent after he died).

I’ve written extensively about all this throughout the last year, as Russia Fever reached (what I hope is) its apex — or, more accurately, its nadir. I won’t repeat that all here.

 

But I do want to draw attention to an outstanding article in today’s Guardian by the Russian-born American journalist Keith Gessen, in which he clinically examines — and demolishes — all of the hysterical, ignorant, fearmongering, manipulative claims now predominant in U.S. discourse about Russia, Putin, and the Kremlin.

The article begins: “Vladimir Putin, you may have noticed, is everywhere.” As a result, he points out, “Putinology” — which he defines as “the production of commentary and analysis about Putin and his motivations, based on necessarily partial, incomplete and sometimes entirely false information” — is now in great prominence even though it “has existed as a distinct intellectual industry for over a decade.” In sum, he writes: “At no time in history have more people with less knowledge, and greater outrage, opined on the subject of Russia’s president.”

It’s hardly unique for American media and political commentators to speak of foreign adversaries with a mix of ignorance and paranoia. But the role Putin serves above all else, he says, is to cast America’s problems not as its own doing but rather the fault of foreigners, and more importantly, to relieve the Democratic Party of the need to examine its own fundamental flaws and errors:

According to a recent report, Hillary Clinton and her campaign still blame the Russians — and, by extension, Barack Obama, who did not make a big issue of the hacks before November — for her electoral debacle. In this instance, thinking about Putin helps not to think about everything else that went wrong, and what needs to be done to fix it.

But while petty self-exoneration may be the prime motive, the far greater danger is how much this obsession distracts from, and distorts, the pervasive corruption of America’s ruling class. As Gessen writes:

If Donald Trump is impeached and imprisoned for conspiring with a foreign power to undermine American democracy, I will celebrate as much as the next American. And yet in the long run, the Russia card is not just bad politics, it is intellectual and moral bankruptcy. It is an attempt to blame the deep and abiding problems of our country on a foreign power. As some commentators have pointed out, it is a page from the playbook of none other than Putin himself.

As Adam Johnson detailed in the Los Angeles Times last week, the constant effort to attribute Trump to foreign dynamics is devoted to avoiding the reality that U.S. policy and culture is what gave rise to him. Nothing achieves that goal better than continually attributing Trump — and every other negative outcome — to the secret work of Kremlin leaders.

The game that establishment Democrats and their allies are playing is not just tawdry but dangerous. The U.S. political, media, military, and intelligence classes are still full of people seeking confrontation with Russia; included among them are military officials whom Trump has appointed to key positions.

As Stone observed in the 1950s, aggression toward and fearmongering over the Kremlin on the one hand, and smearing domestic critics of that approach as disloyal on the other, are inextricably linked. When one takes root, it’s very difficult to stop the other. And you can only propagate demonization rhetoric about a foreign adversary for so long before triggering, wittingly or otherwise, very dangerous confrontations between the two.

Top photo: Portrait of journalist I.F. Stone in his office in Washington in 1966.

The post The Increasingly Unhinged Russia Rhetoric Comes From a Long-Standing U.S. Playbook appeared first on The Intercept.

Author (Photo: 1918: The camel corps at Beersheba2.jpg) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East by Eugene Rogan. Part 5 of 6. New York Review of Books “Admirable and thoroughly researched.... A comprehensive history of World War I in the Middle East.” The Times (UK) “[A] comprehensive, lucid and revealing history.... This book will surely become the definitive history of the war.” Guardian (UK) “Compared to the western front, the Middle East was a sideshow for all but those who called it home. Rogan has rightly put these Turks, Armenians and Arabs at the centre of his account.” https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Ottomans-Great-Middle-East/dp/0465097421/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486501013&sr=1-1

One of the first things Donald Trump did when he took office was temporarily gag several federal agencies, forbidding them from tweeting.

In response, self-described government workers created a wave of rogue Twitter accounts that share real facts (not to be confused with “alternative facts,” otherwise known as “lies”) about climate change and science. As a rule, the people running these accounts chose to remain anonymous, fearing retaliation — but, depending on how they created and use their accounts, they are not necessarily anonymous to Twitter itself, or to anyone Twitter shares data with.

Anonymous speech is firmly protected by the First Amendment and the Supreme Court, and its history in the U.S. dates to the Federalist Papers, written in 1787 and 1788 under the pseudonym Publius by three of the founding fathers.

But the technical ability for people to remain anonymous on today’s internet, where every scrap of data is meticulously tracked, is an entirely different issue. The FBI, a domestic intelligence agency that claims the power to spy on anyone based on suspicions that don’t come close to probable cause, has a long, dark history of violating the rights of Americans. And now it reports directly to President Trump, who is a petty, revenge-obsessed authoritarian with utter disrespect for the courts and the rule of law.

In this environment, how easy is it to create and maintain a Twitter account while preserving your anonymity — even from Twitter and any law enforcement agency that may request its records? I tried to find out, and documented all my steps. There are different ways to accomplish this. If you plan on following these steps you should make sure you understand the purpose of them, in case you need to improvise. I also can’t guarantee that these techniques will protect your anonymity — there are countless ways that things can go wrong, many of them social rather than technical. But I hope you’ll at least have a fighting chance at keeping your real identity private.

For this exercise, I decided to pick a highly controversial political topic: Facts. I believe that what we know about reality is based on evidence that can be objectively observed. Thus, I created the completely anonymous (until publishing this article, of course) Twitter account @FactsNotAlt. Here’s how I did it.

Threat model

Before we begin, it helps to define a threat model, that is: what we need to protect; who we need to protect it from; what their capabilities are; and what countermeasures prevent or mitigate these threats.

Basically, it’s impossible to be completely secure all the time, so we need to prioritize our limited resources into protecting what matters the most first. The most important piece of information you need to protect in this case is your real identity.

Law enforcement or the FBI might launch an investigation aimed at learning your identity. It may be to retaliate against you — getting you fired, charging you with crimes, or worse. Your Twitter account might also anger armies of trolls who could threaten you, abuse you with hate speech, and try to uncover your identity.

If the FBI opens an investigation aimed at de-anonymizing you, one of the first things they’ll do is simply ask Twitter — and every other service that they know you use — for information about your account. So a critically important countermeasure to take is to ensure that none of the information tied to your account — phone numbers, email addresses, or IP addresses you’ve used while logging into your account — lead back to you.

This is true for all accounts you create. For instance, if you supply a phone number while creating your Twitter account, the phone service provider associated with that number shouldn’t have information that can lead back to you either.

Another concern: The FBI also might go undercover online and try to befriend you, to trick you into revealing details about yourself or to trick you into clicking a link to hack you. They might make use of informants in the community of people who follow you on Twitter as well. Organized trolls might use the same tactics.

Hiding your IP address with Tor

An IP address is a set of numbers that identifies a computer, or a network of computers, on the internet. Unless you take extra steps, every website you visit can see your IP address. If you’re using Twitter while connected to your home or office Wi-Fi network, or your phone’s data plan, Twitter can tell. If they hand these IP addresses to the FBI, you will very quickly lose your anonymity.

This is where Tor comes in. Tor is a decentralized network of servers that help people bypass internet censorship, evade internet surveillance, and access websites anonymously. If you connect to Twitter while you’re using Tor Browser, Twitter can’t tell what your real IP address is — instead, they’ll see the IP address of a random Tor server. Tor servers are run by volunteers. And even if any of the servers bouncing your data around are malicious, they won’t be able to learn both who you are and what you’re doing.

This is the primary benefit that Tor has over Virtual Private Network, or VPN, services, which try to help users hide their IP addresses. The FBI can go to a VPN service to learn your real IP address (assuming the VPN keeps a record of its users’ IP addresses, and cooperates with these requests). This isn’t true with Tor.

To get started with Tor, download Tor Browser. It’s a web browser, like Chrome or Firefox, but all its internet traffic gets routed over the Tor network, hiding your real IP address.

Using Tor Browser is the easiest way to get started, but it’s not perfect. For instance, a hacker who knows about a vulnerability in Tor Browser can discover your real IP address by tricking you into visiting a website they control, and exploiting that vulnerability — the FBI has done this in the past. For this reason, it’s important to always immediately update Tor Browser when you get prompted.

You can also protect yourself from Tor Browser security bugs by using an operating system that’s designed to protect your anonymity, such as Tails or Qubes with Whonix, (I’ve written about the latter here). This is more work for you, but it might be worth it. Personally, I’m using Qubes with Whonix.

Getting an anonymous email address

Before you can create nearly any account online, you need an email address. While popular email services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail let anyone make an account for free, they don’t make it easy to do so anonymously. Most of them require that you verify your identity with a phone number. You can in fact do that anonymously (more on that below), but I prefer using an email provider that is happy to give addresses to anonymous users.

One of these providers is SIGAINT, a darknet-only service that forces all its users to login using Tor to read or send email. The people who run it are anonymous and it contains ads for (sometimes very sketchy, sorry) darknet websites. However, you do end up with a working, anonymous email address.

Update: Feb. 20, 3:10 p.m. ET
The SIGAINT service appears to be down right now. While it’s down, you can try Riseup, or set up a burner phone and then try ProtonMail, Gmail, or some other service instead.

If you prefer not to use SIGAINT, another good choice is Riseup, a technology collective that provides email, mailing list, VPN, and other similar services to activists around the world. Accounts are free, and they don’t ask for any identifying information, but you do need invite codes from two friends who already use Riseup in order to create an account.

Yet another option is ProtonMail — a privacy-friendly email provider based in Switzerland that asks for minimal identifying information and works well over Tor. However, to prevent abuse, they require Tor users to provide a phone number (that they promise not to store) to receive an SMS during account creation. So, if you’d like to use ProtonMail instead (or any other email service that requires a phone number when creating an account over Tor), follow the steps below to create an anonymous phone number first.

I decided to use SIGAINT. In Tor Browser, I went to SIGAINT’s onion service address, sigaintevyh2rzvw.onion, which I found on their public website. This is a special type of web address that only works in Tor Browser, and not the normal internet. From there, I filled out the form to create a new account.

That’s it. I’ve now created a brand new anonymous email address: factsaretrue@sigaint.org.

Getting an anonymous phone number

While attempting to create a Twitter account, I quickly hit a snag. Even if I provide my (anonymous) email address, Twitter won’t let me create a new account without first verifying my phone number. (You might get lucky and get the option to skip entering your phone number — it doesn’t hurt to try — but if you’re coming from a Tor node that isn’t likely.)

This is a problem, because I obviously can’t use my real phone number if I want to remain anonymous. So to proceed, I needed to figure out how to get a phone number that isn’t tied to my actual identity. This is a common problem when trying to stay anonymous online, so you can follow these instructions any time you need a phone number when opening an account.

There are other ways to do it, but I chose a conceptually simple option: Buy a burner phone anonymously, use it to verify my new Twitter account, and then get rid of it. I wandered around downtown San Francisco looking in convenience stores and pharmacies until I found what I was looking for in a 7-Eleven.

Using cash, I bought the cheapest TracFone handset I could find (an LG 328BG “feature phone” —  as in, not a smartphone) as well as 60 minutes’ worth of voice service, for a total of $62.38 after tax. You might be able to find cheaper cell phone handsets if you look long enough.

If you’re going to get a burner phone and want to maintain your anonymity, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Buy your burner phone handset and pre-paid service using cash. Don’t use a credit card.
• When you buy service, the clerk activates your service card at the cash register. This tells the phone company (TracFone, in my case) exactly which store you bought it from, and when. Keep this in mind, and consider picking a store far away from where you live — like while you’re traveling in another city.
• Security cameras will probably record your face at the store. Most stores delete old footage on a regular basis, overwriting it with new footage. If possible, wait a week or two before you start tweeting so that the footage is already deleted by the time anyone tries to figure out your real identity.
• You can find phones and service like this at some convenience stores and pharmacies. If you need to do internet research to find a store near you that sells burner phones, use Tor Browser.
• As soon as you power on your burner phone, it will connect to cell phone towers, and the phone company will know your location. So, don’t activate your phone, or keep it powered on at all, at your home or office — instead, go to a public place, like a coffee shop, before activating your new phone. Keep it powered off while you’re not using it.
• Don’t use the burner’s phone number for anything at all that isn’t related to this specific project. This is called compartmentalization; if someone discovers the entire history of that phone number, they shouldn’t be able to learn anything new.
• Each cell phone handset has a unique identifier. So if you need a second phone number at some point in the future and you don’t want it to be connected to your first phone number, you’ll have to buy a second handset.

After buying phone service, you’ll need to activate the phone. This process will be different with different phone companies. TracFone requires you to activate your handset either by calling their phone number from a different phone — obviously not a good option for someone trying to remain anonymous — or by activating online at their website. I activated my burner phone online using Tor Browser.

Once you’ve activated your phone, you can use the phone’s menu system to learn what your new phone number is. On my LG 328BG, I pressed Menu, selected Settings, and finally Phone Information to find it.

Creating a Twitter account anonymously

Finally, armed with an email address and phone number that aren’t in any way connected to my real identity, I could create a Twitter account.

Before making an account, grab your laptop and burner phone and go to a public location that isn’t your home or office, such as a coffee shop. When you get there, power on your burner phone. Keep in mind that this location is now tied to your burner phone, so you might wish to do this step when you’re traveling in another city.

Using Tor Browser, I navigated to https://twitter.com/signup and signed up for a new account. The new account form asked for my full name (“Facts Are True”), my email address (factsaretrue@sigaint.org), and a password.

After clicking “Sign up,” I was immediately prompted to enter my phone number. I typed my anonymous phone number and clicked “Call me.” A Twitter robot called my burner and read out a six-digit number, which I typed into the next page on Tor Browser. It worked great.

With the phone number verification step complete, I powered off my burner phone. Once you’re sure you don’t need your burner phone anymore, it’s a good idea to get rid of it.

Toward the end of the signup process, Twitter prompted me to come up with a username. After many tries, I found one I liked: @FactsNotAlt. After clicking through the welcome screen, I was finally logged into my new anonymous account.

I went ahead and confirmed that I control my factsaretrue@sigaint.org email address.

And there you have it. I set up my new account and began tweeting about things that are true.

Maintaining the Twitter account over time

If you’re following along, you’ve now created a completely anonymous Twitter account as well. Congratulations! But your work has only just started. Now comes the hard part: Maintaining this account for months, or years, without making any mistakes that compromise your identity. I won’t be following these tips myself with the @FactsNotAlt account — I’ve already outed myself as the owner. But for anyone who is trying to anonymously maintain a popular Twitter account, here are some things to keep in mind.

Be careful about how you interact with people:

• You should operate on a strict “need-to-know” basis. Don’t tell anyone who doesn’t need to know that you’re involved with running this account. Don’t brag. This is, by far, the easiest way to mess up and for your real identity to come out: gossip.
• Be careful about what privileged information you tweet. If you’re part of a small group of people who have access to some information and you tweet about it, you might become a suspect when before you weren’t.
• If your account becomes popular, you might begin having conversations with lots of strangers on the internet. Be very careful what you say, even if you’re saying it in a private message. Some of these strangers might be gaining your trust in hopes that you’ll slip and tell them scraps of information about your identity.
• Be very careful about clicking links that people send you — they could be trying to learn your IP address, or even trying to hack Tor Browser. Avoid clicking them at all, but if you really want to click one, first make sure you’re running the very latest version of Tor Browser and set your security slider to High.
• Be conscious of your word choice. People might analyze your writing style to de-anonymize you, so you should try to write in a voice that’s distinctive from your own, if you can. For example, it wouldn’t be wise for Donald Trump to tweet, “The failing @theintercept keeps writing FAKE NEWS. Sad!” from his anonymous account, because people might suspect that he’s the person behind that account.

Compartmentalize:

• Never log in from your work computer — many companies spy on their employees’ computers. Use a personal computer instead. Also, avoid your work network — many companies log exactly which computers connect to their network and what they do online. Tor hides what you’re doing, but the company can still tell that you’re using Tor on their network.
• Always use Tor Browser when using your account. Don’t log in on your phone. Don’t log in with any other browser. Don’t even look at your anonymous Twitter account while logged into your personal account.
• When you are logged into your anonymous account, don’t follow your personal account, or the accounts of any of your friends. Don’t retweet or like any of those tweets either. Basically, don’t make it obvious who your social group is.
• Be careful about uploading photos for tweets or your profile. Photos often contain metadata that could be used to lead back to you. Screenshots don’t though, so one easy way to remove metadata from a photo is to take a screenshot of it.

Many successful Twitter accounts have a team of people who run them instead of a single individual. If you’re part of such a team, or thinking of sharing access to your existing account with someone new:

• Only invite people that you know and that you trust.
• Come up with a set of operational security rules — like the rules listed above — and make sure that everyone involved understands them and is on the same page.
• Come up with a secure communicate channel as a team, and only discuss the Twitter account using this channel, or in person. There are many different technologies you could use, all with different trade-offs, but one option is to use the encrypted messaging app Signal: Create a Signal group (with an innocuous name) and set your messages to automatically disappear after a short time, like 5 minutes.
• Instead of just tweeting when you come up with ideas, edit each other’s tweets. This will both improve the quality of the tweets, and could help defeat style analysis, since you’ll end up with a shared voice.

And finally, keep in mind that after all this, Twitter can always kick you off for their own reasons. And if your account gets hacked and the email address associated with it is changed, you’ll have no way to recover it.

Good luck!

The post How to Run a Rogue Government Twitter Account With an Anonymous Email Address and a Burner Phone appeared first on The Intercept.

There’s been lots of attention-grabbing opposition to Trump’s “Muslim ban” executive order, from demonstrations to court orders. But polls make it clear public opinion is much more mixed. Standard phone polls show small majorities opposed, while web and automated polls find small majorities continue to support it.

What surprises me about the poll results isn’t that lots of Americans like the ban — but that so many Americans don’t. Regular people have lives to lead and can’t investigate complicated issues in detail. Instead they usually take their cues from leaders they trust. And given what politicians across the U.S. political spectrum say about terrorism, Trump’s executive order makes perfect sense. There are literally no national-level American politicians telling a story that would help ordinary people understand why Trump’s goals are both horrendously counterproductive and morally vile.

Think of it this way:

On February 13, 1991 during the first Gulf War, the U.S. dropped two laser-guided bombs on the Amiriyah public air raid shelter in Baghdad. More than 400 Iraqi civilians were incinerated or boiled alive. For years afterward visitors to a memorial there would meet a woman with eight children who had died during the bombing; she was living in the ruined shelter because she could not bear to be anywhere else.

Now, imagine that immediately after the bombing Saddam Hussein had delivered a speech on Iraqi TV in which he plaintively asked “Why do they hate us?” — without ever mentioning the fact that Iraq was occupying Kuwait. And even Saddam’s political opponents would only mumble that “this is a complicated issue.” And most Iraqis had no idea that their country had invaded Kuwait, and that there were extensive United Nation resolutions and speeches by George H.W. Bush explaining the U.S.-led coalition’s rationale for attacking Iraq in response. And that the few Iraqis who suggested there might be some kind of relationship between Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the Amiriyah bombing were shouted down by politicians saying these Iraq-hating radicals obviously believed that America’s slaughter of 400 people was justified.

If that had happened, we’d immediately recognize that Iraqi political culture was completely insane, and that it would cause them to behave in dangerously nutty ways. But that’s exactly what U.S. political culture is like.

In an interview last March with Anderson Cooper, Donald Trump tried to puzzle out what’s behind the terrorism directed at the U.S. “I think Islam hates us,” Trump learnedly opined. “There’s a tremendous hatred there, we’ve got to get to the bottom of it.”

“In Islam itself?” asked Cooper. Trump responded, “You’re going to have to figure that out. You’ll get another Pulitzer.”

During Trump’s speech at the CIA right after his inauguration, he expressed the same bewilderment. “Radical Islamic terrorism,” pondered Trump. “This is something nobody can even understand.”

John F. Kelly, now Trump’s head of the Department of Homeland Security, is similarly perplexed, saying in a 2013 speech that “I don’t know why they hate us, and I frankly don’t care, but they do hate us and are driven irrationally to our destruction.”

Say what you want about the tenets of this worldview, but at least it’s an internally consistent ethos: We’re surrounded by lunatics who want to murder us for reasons that are totally inscrutable to rational people like us but … obviously have something to do with them being Muslims.

Meanwhile, in private, the non-crazy members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment aren’t confused at all. They understand quite well that Islamist terrorism is almost wholly blowback from the foreign policy they’ve designed.

Meanwhile, in private, the non-crazy members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment aren’t confused at all.

Richard Shultz, a professor at Tufts whose career has long been intertwined with the national security state, has written that “A very senior [Special Operations Forces] officer who had served on the Joint Staff in the 1990s told me that more than once he heard terrorist strikes characterized as ‘a small price to pay for being a superpower.’” That small price, of course, is the deaths of regular Americans, and is apparently well worth it.

The 9/11 Commission report quietly acknowledged, hundreds of pages in, that “America’s policy choices have consequences. Right or wrong, it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.” A senior official in the George W. Bush administration later put it more bluntly to Esquire: That without the post-Gulf War sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, “bin Laden might still be redecorating mosques and boring friends with stories of his mujahideen days in the Khyber Pass.”

Intelligence professionals were quite aware that an invasion of Iraq would take the conditions that led to 9/11 and make them far worse. The British Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war published a February, 2003 assessment by British intelligence of the consequences of an invasion of Iraq, which would occur one month later. “The threat from Al Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq,” the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee told Tony Blair, and “the worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly.”

The CIA had the same perspective. Michael Scheuer, who for several years ran the section of the Agency that tracked bin Laden, wrote in 2004 that “U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.”

For its part, the Defense Department’s Science Board concluded in a 2004 report that “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.”

When Barack Obama took office, he had two choices.

First, he could tell the truth: That the U.S. has acted with extraordinary brutality in the Middle East, that this had been the main motivation for most Islamist terrorism against us, and if we continued the same foreign policy Americans would be killed indefinitely in intermittent attacks. Then we could have had an open, informed debate about whether we like our foreign policy enough to die for it.

Second, Obama could continue trying to run the Middle East without public input, but in a more rational way than the Bush administration.

Obviously he went with the second choice, which demanded several different forms of political correctness.

Most importantly, Obama pretended that the U.S. has never done anything truly wrong to others, and can enjoy the benefits of power without any costs. This is the most pernicious and common form of political correctness, but is never called that because the most powerful people in America love it.

But Obama also engaged in something more akin to what’s generally called political correctness, by contending that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. But it does — just not in the way that Frank Gaffney and Pamela Geller would tell you.

Religion and nationalism have always been similar phenomena, and Islam sometimes functions as a form of nationalism. And like all nationalisms, it has a crazy, vicious right wing that’s empowered by outside attacks on members of the nation. The right loves to jeer at Obama for calling Islam “a religion of peace,” and they should — not because Islam specifically isn’t a religion of peace but because there is really no such thing, just as there is no “nationalism of peace.” It’s true religions and nationalism can bring out the best in people, but they also bring out the worst (sometimes in the same person for the same reasons).

But Obama could never say anything like that, because he knew the U.S. needs the governments of Muslim-majority countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to keep the rest of the Middle East in line.

This amalgam of political correctness made it impossible for the Obama administration ever to tell a story about terrorism that made any sense. For instance, in his 2009 speech in Cairo, he declared, “It is easier to blame others than to look inward” — and then went on to demonstrate that truism.

His description of wrongs done by the U.S. was vague to the point of meaninglessness: “tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims.” Also, “Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world.”

Obama then explained that “Violent extremists have exploited these tensions.” So … 19 people were motivated to fly jetliners into buildings by “tensions”? If that’s the only story that non-Muslim Americans hear, they’ll rationally be terrified of Islam.

In 2010, Obama’s counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan, emitted a similar bland puree of words at a press conference when questioned by Helen Thomas about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed underwear bomber. Their exchange went like this:

THOMAS: And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why.

BRENNAN: Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents… [They] attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that [they’re] able to attract these individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death.

THOMAS: And you’re saying it’s because of religion?

BRENNAN: I’m saying it’s because of an al Qaeda organization that uses the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way.

THOMAS: Why?

BRENNAN: I think this is a, uh, long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.

At his sentencing, Abdulmutallab explained his motivation in less time than it took Brennan to say there wasn’t enough time to explain:

[I pledged] to attack the United States in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel and in retaliation of the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Palestine, especially in the blockade of Gaza, and in retaliation for the killing of innocent and civilian Muslim populations in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and beyond, most of them women, children, and noncombatants.

To be fair, there is one situation in which American officials have lost the mushmouth and drawn a direct connection between a country killing Mideastern civilians and terrorist retaliation: when that country is Russia. William Burns, formerly Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State, recently and accurately proclaimed that “Russia’s bloody role in Syria makes the terrorist threat far worse.” John Kirby, an Obama State Department spokesman, warned that Russia’s brutalization of Syria would lead to  “attacks against Russian interests, perhaps even Russian cities.”

Russia’s response to our friendly observation was about the same as ours when Russia told us before the invasion of Iraq that it would cause a “wave of terror.”

That brings us back to President Trump and his executive order on immigration.

Trump’s story about why it’s necessary is, factually speaking, garbage. But a normal human being can at least understand it and its moral: These incomprehensible foreigners are all potential psychotics, we’ve got to keep them out. Under these circumstances, who cares that no one from any of these seven countries has killed any Americans yet? They’re all part of a huge morass of ticking time bombs.

By contrast, the Democratic, liberal perspective laid out by Obama makes no sense at all. We’ve never done anything particularly bad in the Middle East, yet … some people over there want to come here and kill us because … they’ve been exploited by violent extremists who’ve perverted Islam and … gotta run, there’s no time to explain.

Regular people could sense that anyone mouthing this kind of gibberish was hiding something, even if they didn’t realize that Obama was trying to keep the U.S. empire running rather than concealing his secret faith in Islam.

And because a coherent narrative always beats the complete absence of a story, no one should be surprised that many Americans find Trump’s fantasy of inexplicable Muslim hatred persuasive. The only way to conclusively beat it will be with a coherent, complicated, true story like this:

America has done hideous things to countries across the Middle East for decades, such as bomb a civilian air raid shelter, burning the silhouette of a mother trying to protect her baby onto its walls. It was inevitable that some people would seek revenge. This doesn’t mean that their brutality is justified, any more than the slaughter at Amiriyah was justified by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. It just means that humans are humans, violence begets violence, and Americans will always be in danger unless we change our foreign policy.

We must welcome immigrants from the Middle East both for moral and pragmatic reasons. Morally, the U.S. invasion of Iraq is what sent the region spiraling into catastrophe; only psychopaths set someone’s home on fire and then lock them inside. There are already three million Muslim American citizens. If the government keeps bombing the Middle East while making it clear that it genuinely hates Muslims, that will only spur to action more troubled weirdos like Omar Mateen — who was born in Queens, a few miles away from Donald Trump’s childhood home.

And we’d better get started with this story soon, because it may not be true forever. Israel has done an exemplary job turning a solvable, straightforward fight over land into a religious war that may no longer have any solution. We’re making similar strides in transforming a conflict that was 90 percent political, where there can be compromise, into a religious conflict where there can’t.

This can be seen, on the one hand, in ISIS propaganda. Bin Laden generally just talked about kicking the U.S. out of the Middle East and said things like, “Your security is in your own hands and each state which does not harm our security will remain safe.” The ISIS magazine Dabiq cheerfully tells us that “We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers; you reject the oneness of Allah … even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam.”

On the other hand, Donald Trump is president of the United States and Steve Bannon is his chief strategist. Bannon straightforwardly believes, as he told a conference at the Vatican in 2014, that “we’re in a war of immense proportions” that’s part of the “long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam.” To win, Bannon says, we must form the “church militant” – an archaic term for the “Christian church on earth regarded as engaged in a constant warfare against its enemies, the powers of evil.”

So it’s quite possible ISIS and the Trump administration can successfully collaborate on getting what they both want: a totally unnecessary, civilizational war. To stop them we have to end our truckling equivocation about terrorism, and start telling the truth while there’s still time.

Top Photo: During a memorial service in Baghdad, Iraqis gather around a bomb hole in the ceiling of the Al-Amariya shelter in 2003, where more than 400 people were killed in a U.S.-led missile attack during the Gulf War. Iraqis opened a new memorial center outside the Al-Amariya shelter to mark the 12 year anniversary of the attack.

The post Why Do So Many Americans Fear Muslims? Decades of Denial About America’s Role in the World. appeared first on The Intercept.

Florian Philippot is the strategist behind the rebranding of the extreme right Front National as a populist, anti-elite movement. But don’t mistake him for a moderate

Pedro da Costa tells us in Business Insider that the Republican tax proposal, with its border adjustment, is going to be really bad news because it will lead to a spike in inflation. The story is that the 20 percent tax imposed on imports will lead to a one-time jump in the core inflation rate of between 1.4 and 2.1 percentage points.

The implication is that the tax will be almost fully passed on to consumers. With imports at 15 percent of GDP, these numbers would be plausible.

While this is not an impossible scenario, it is worth thinking back to what Neil Irwin told us in the New York Times last week. He warned that the tax would lead to a 25 percent rise in the dollar, which could lead to a financial crisis as a result of the increase in the size of the dollar denominated debt held by developing countries. This is also a plausible scenario, although the prospect of a 25 percent increase in the value of the dollar seems a bit out of line, as I noted at the time.

Anyhow, it is worth stepping back for a moment and thinking this one through. Both Pedro da Costa and Neil Irwin are very good reporters. Neither is just making things up, but they are telling us completely opposite stories about the impact of the Republican tax proposal. In da Costa's version, the dollar moves little, with almost all the adjustment being in price. (It's worth noting that this would lead to a large reduction in the trade deficit.) In the Irwin version, the dollar fully adjusts leaving import prices essentially unchanged for people living in the United States.

My guess is that the Irwin version is closer to reality (not the crisis part), but the more fundamental point is that we actually have very little idea what will happen if this tax is implemented. It seems that many folks are prepared to shoot at this tax because they don't like the people pushing it.

I'm not terribly fond of them either, but this does seem like a serious proposal, which deserves a serious look. For the record, it did not originate with either Trump or Republicans in Congress, but rather Alan Auerbach, a Berkeley professor who I have always taken to be a serious economist. (I don't know his political leanings.)

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Democracy Now! 2017-02-15 Wednesday

• Headlines for February 15, 2017
• What Did Trump Know & When Did He Know It? White House in Crisis over Flynn & Russia Scandals
• Trump & Spicer Blame Russia Scandal on "Illegal Leaks" Rather Than Lies by Senior Officials
• Rep. Lieu on Kellyanne Conway: White House Should Not Be Used for Enriching the President's Family
• Rep. Lieu: The White House Lying & Stifling Dissent on Yemen Raid is Step Toward Authoritarianism
• Rep. Ted Lieu to Introduce Bill Requiring a Psychiatrist in White House
• Trump Security Protocols Questioned: Mar-a-Lago Resort is Not the White House Situation Room
• The Stephen Miller Story: From Pestering Latino Students in High School to Drafting Muslim Ban

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Research suggests that college students are not having more sex than their parents were a generation ago. But sociologist Lisa Wade says the culture around sex has changed dramatically.

(Image credit: mark peterson/Corbis via Getty Images)

AUTHOR (PHOTO: The American continent was populated in about 20,000 to 13,000 BCE, when peoples from the opposite side of the world crossed the great land bridge of ... ) HTTP://JOHNBATCHELORSHOW.COM/CONTACT HTTP://JOHNBATCHELORSHOW.COM/SCHEDULES HTTP://JOHNBATCHELORSHOW.COM/BLOG TWITTER: @BATCHELORSHOW Beringia's First Peoples are the New World's First Peoples. @mbalter @ScienceMagazine. “In 1968, when Sarah Anzick was 2 years old, a construction worker discovered more than 100 stone and bone tools on her family’s land near Wilsall, Montana. The artifacts were blanketed with red ochre, and with them, also covered with ochre, was the skull of a young child. In the years since, archaeologists concluded that the skull was about 12,700 years old—the oldest known burial in North America—and that the tools belonged to the Clovis culture, one of the first in the New World. Meanwhile, Sarah Anzick grew up, became a genome researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and dreamed of sequencing the rare bones. “This week, she is the second author on a paper in Nature that reports the complete sequence of the Anzick child’s nuclear genome. The sequencing effort, led by ancient DNA experts Eske Willerslev and Morten Rasmussen of the University of Copenhagen, comes to a dramatic conclusion: The 1- to 2-year-old Clovis child, now known to be a boy, is directly ancestral to today’s native peoples from Central and South America. “Their data are very convincing … that the Clovis Anzick child was part of the population that gave rise to North, Central, and Southern American groups,” says geneticist Connie Mulligan of the University of Florida in Gainesville….” http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/02/native-americans-descend-ancient-montana-boy “In 1968, when Sarah Anzick was 2 years old, a construction worker discovered more than 100 stone and bone tools on her family’s land near Wilsall, Montana. The artifacts were blanketed with red ochre, and with them, also covered with ochre, was the skull of a young child. In the years since, archaeologists concluded that the skull was about 12,700 years old—the oldest known burial in North America—and that the tools belonged to the Clovis culture, one of the first in the New World. Meanwhile, Sarah Anzick grew up, became a genome researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and dreamed of sequencing the rare bones. “This week, she is the second author on a paper in Nature that reports the complete sequence of the Anzick child’s nuclear genome. The sequencing effort, led by ancient DNA experts Eske Willerslev and Morten Rasmussen of the University of Copenhagen, comes to a dramatic conclusion: The 1- to 2-year-old Clovis child, now known to be a boy, is directly ancestral to today’s native peoples from Central and South America. “Their data are very convincing … that the Clovis Anzick child was part of the population that gave rise to North, Central, and Southern American groups,” says geneticist Connie Mulligan of the University of Florida in Gainesville….” http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/02/native-americans-descend-ancient-montana-boy