Don't worry about breaking any rules. It is really hard to break rules
when there are no rules. There is only one person who ever got muted -
not banned - on this list and it was because of relentless flaming of
me. I was very reluctant to restrict him, but I finally gave in to
pressure from other list members. Personally I was willing to let him
flame all he wanted to flame and I was the one being flamed.
___
Carl Sagan
“Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder
and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to
nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will
prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront
the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the
Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will
penetrate its deepest mysteries.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
On 8/6/2020 11:06 PM, Erica R wrote:
I am glad you see me as an asset to the group. I don't want to take up too many of the emails because I am not part of the group's focus. By that I mean, I am not blind. I found this mailing list because I am part of an email list for birding enthusiasts that is hosted on the same "free email lists" internet server. Last week I decided to check what other lists were available to join, and I thought that this one sounded like it would align with my interests. The rules said that it was founded by people who are blind, but that seeing people were welcome to join. I hope I didn't break any rules. Please let me know if so.
Once I joined the group and saw that it was mostly used for you all to share leftist reading material and your opinions about it, I felt it was very aligned with my interests and that I could learn a lot.
I am 26 years old, I live in Wisconsin and will finish school in a couple of months to be a registered nurse. I graduated college and worked for a few years at an abortion clinic and decided to back to school to go into nursing.
I do not know any of the podcasts that you shared, but I appreciate new suggestions! One that I have really enjoyed recently is called Blowback. I believe it is only available with a paid subscription to the podcast application called Stitcher. Blowback is about the geopolitical events that occured in the decades leading up to the Iraq War. Here is a link to a soundcloud file for a comedic introductory teaser that was made to announce the podcast's release. Let me know if there is a better way to send this to you.
https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/blowback-iraqnophobia-feat-h-jon-benjamin-james-adomian
Miriam, I will send you a private email as well!
On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 4:27 PM Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Erica,
You are a terrific asset to the list, or to me, anyway. You're
young and tech savvy and apparently, you can do all the things
that I can't . I'm 83 and was never technically capable or
confident from the day that I knew that I had to get a computer to
do the work that I did. But I'm into all the things that the young
journalists on the left are doing because of the articles that I
can access and because of the podcasts that I learned about
through those articles. Would you be comfortable telling us a bit
more about yourself? People on this list already know , probably
more than they'd like to, about me. But I'll tell you anything
you're interested in knowing, either publicly or privately.
I'm relieved to know that Rania is OK. The episodes of their
podcasts have been a bit irregular, recently. They used to appear
on my VR Stream on Sundays and sometimes on Mondays. Do you also
listen to Pushback, Moderate Rebels, and Clearing The Fog?
Miriam
*From:* blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> *On Behalf Of *Erica R
*Sent:* Thursday, August 6, 2020 10:49 AM
*To:* blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: can we say, Industrial/Military
takeover?
I do not know anything about Liz's background.
I am not familiar with Unauthorized Disclosure but I will take a
listen. I just checked their social media. Rania is okay, and it
says she might be discussing the incident on the next episode of
the podcast.
On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 8:37 AM Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Erica,
That's fascinating. It sounds like he has a rather
sophisticated understanding of the Syrian situation. On the
podcast, he tends to act more sort of clownish. Liz takes the
more rational role. I know that she, too, is a Leninist. Do
you know any more about her history and background?
Do you listen to Unauthorized Disclosure? Rania, who is a
journalist and spends a lot of time in Lebanon, where her
family comes from, has been staying with family in the US but
just recently returned to Lebanon. Seems like her timing was
really bad. I wonder what happened to her.
Miriam
*From:* blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> *On Behalf Of
*Erica R
*Sent:* Wednesday, August 5, 2020 10:24 PM
*To:* blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: can we say,
Industrial/Military takeover?
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for your reply. I am one of those young people who
listens to true anon. Haha. I know what you mean about the
weird style. I don't know about Ken Klippenstein's podcast.
Here is an interview with Brace Belden in the Yale Review of
International Studies if you want to learn more about why he
went to Syria and his experience there.
/In May, YRIS Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Siegel (MY ‘20) had
the chance to talk over the phone with Brace Belden, a former
soldier for the YPG (In Kurdish, Yekîneyên Parastina Gel), a
mainly-Kurdish militia in Syria formed in 2004. /
/The militia group fought against ISIS, and Belden spent 6
months among their ranks as a foreign volunteer. In 2015,
after a major victory against ISIS at Kobane, the United
States government began to send munitions to the YPG. Most
recently, Turkey, who considers the YPG a “terrorist
organization” has moved against YPG occupied areas in Northern
Syria. /
/Belden himself achieved Twitter fame during his time in Syria
as he posted regular tweets and photos from the battlefield,
often accompanied by humorous observations in an iconically
ironic, internet-native style. He was among the foreign
fighters profiled by the Rolling Stone in 2017, which called
him an anarchist, much to his chagrin./
/In the interview with YRIS, Belden, an avowed communist,
discussed his own personal experiences during his time with
the YPG, the situation facing Kurds in Kurdish-controlled
areas of Syria, and the political future of the militia group
and its associated political party, the PYD (Partiya Yekîtiya
Demokrat / Democratic Union Party)./
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Elisabeth Siegel:*To start out, could you give a short
rundown of how you got involved and why you wanted to join the
YPG?
*Brace Belden*: I think, in 2014, I read about the story of
this woman Ivanna Hoffman who went there and fought with a
Turkish group within the YPG, the MLKP (The Marxist-Leninist
Communist Party of Turkey). She died in a fight, and there was
a hubbub in Leftist media about it, and it got me more
interested in it. After a long time of trying to figure out
how to go, I went. My political ideology — communism,
specifically a kind of Marxism-Leninism — that I subscribe to
isn’t the same as the YPG, but it is the same as some of the
groups that fight alongside or under them, so I went with the
intention of joining them. I was there a little over six
months and got back about a year and a couple weeks ago.
*ES*: You came back before the big push to liberate Mosul, right?
*BB*: I was part of the beginning of the push to liberate
Raqqa and then I fought on a different front.
*ES*: So, what specific area of the fighting were you part of
during your time with the YPG, and what was day to day life
like on the front lines?
*BB*: Originally I was part of this push at Ain Issa, two
hours south of Kobane, and all rhetoric we were getting was
saying we were going to go West to connect with Afrin, and we
thought that going south was just a feint at first. We covered
a lot of territory, because it’s pretty barren desert out
there — it’s not like we have to fight for every inch or
anything. We took this big town, ten small villages around it,
and then I went to a different front that was west of there
called Qalta and then fought around there.
It sucked. I wouldn’t recommend it. It was really hot and
confusing. And some strange maneuvers on everybody’s part.
It’s scary. It’s pretty much just like you read about, it’s
not fun. The second part, I was with a different unit and that
was a little more organized.
*ES*: I hear they’re making a Jake Gyllenhaal movie about it.
*BB*: Not if I can help it. Apparently if you just write a
story about someone the author can sell the rights to it,
which is surprising… and that’s what happened to the Rolling
Stone article, but I think I made a big enough stink so that
it probably won’t happen. 1% of movie ideas that get bought or
whatever actually get made, so I’m not too worried about it.
However, if it does start, I’m just going to do something
really embarrassing and then have them cancel it out of shame.
Although they’re smart and so would just change the name and
story.
*ES*: Were you surprised at the level of popularity that your
Twitter account, with the handle of @PissPigGranddad, got?
*BB*: Sort of. I was at first, and then it kind of made sense.
I speak the same language of people of a certain age cohort
and sensibility so people kind of latched onto that. A lot of
political stuff is spoken or transmitted rather mechanically,
and I am too stupid to talk like that. I think that people got
a better insight because of the way I spoke.
*ES*: Are you still in touch with anyone that you met in Syria?
*BB*: Quite a few people.
*ES*: Are they still there?
*BB*: Some of them are. Some of them are back. I went to a
funeral for a buddy named Jack Holmes and saw a lot of guys
that I hadn’t seen since I was over there.
*ES*: So now, in terms of what the YPG has currently been
facing, from your perspective of having been there on the
ground, what do the areas that the YPG liberated look like on
the ground in the wake of the invasion of Afrin?
*BB*: Turkey sees YPG as its main — or only — enemy in Syria.
While the Syrian government is an enemy, it’s much more
difficult to attack a sovereign state rather than a separatist
group up north — well, semi-separatist. The Westernmost region
of the Kurdish controlled zones has always been separate from
the main bulk area where the YPG and the PYD (Democratic Union
Party) are. It was separated first by a large group of ISIS
fighters, and then Turkey came down with the Turkish-backed
Free Syrian Army (FSA) which is the regular FSA with Turkish
army involvement. They came down there and replaced ISIS in a
weird quasi-battle, and it was even more isolated after that.
That happened like a year and a half ago. Ever since then,
Erdogan has been ratcheting up the rhetoric around Afrin — “We
gotta destroy these terrorists on the borders,” stuff like
that — and they staged some cross-border incidents, one of
which I saw, but that was in the east, near Kobane. They would
fire across the border and try to provoke YPG, and obviously
the Turkish army, which is the largest or second largest army
in NATO, is a little better equipped. Any sort of retaliation
they would point to as the reason they would need to invade.
They started massing tanks and troops near the border with
Afrin, and then invaded. There was no hope that YPG would ever
beat them — you’re going against a NATO army with an airforce
and advanced weaponry. They’ve lost 1500 people, and after two
months, pretty much lost all of Afrin city and most of the
territory. They still have a little bit where they share a
front line with a Syrian government-aligned force. The main
Turkish plan is to make this rebel protectorate up north
linking the Euphrates Shield area at Al Bab, which is sort of
the center of the north, with the new Afrin-based FSA zone.
*ES*: What has been the effect on the Syrian Kurdish groups of
the recent referendum with the Kurdish population in Iraq, and
what that has meant for Kurdish unity or separatism?
*BB*: The way that I sort of saw it, and the way that a lot of
people interpreted the referendum, was that the Kurdish
Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq has been ruled by the
Barzani tribe for a long time and are growing increasingly
unpopular. The peshmerga’s salaries hadn’t been paid in a
year, and the oil revenues were clearly being sapped by
members of the Barzani family, and tensions with the central
[Iraqi] government were increasing. I think that the ruling
party, the KDP, saw their influence ebbing. They weren’t doing
very well and needed to shore up some support. They assembled
this bullshit referendum, which I don’t think anyone really
believed would succeed, and which of course would not, and
people voted for it, but nothing happened. [The KDP] basically
tried to exacerbate tensions with the central government to
shore up support at home. And it didn’t work, it just
discredited the government more.
For overall Kurdish unity, the left-wing Kurdish groups that
are involved with the Kurdish freedom movement, like the PKK,
had a cautious view towards it — “We don’t support the
referendum completely, but people should vote for it if they
want to” — which is a pragmatic thing. The baseline,
non-super-ideological Kurdish nationalists will vote for this
— like, people who support the PKK but also want Kurdish
independence — and I think [the PKK took that stance] not to
alienate their base. They sort of played it quiet on that.
*ES*: Having spent time with the YPG, how do you reflect on
the way Kurds are treated or referred to within the scope of
domestic American politics?
*BB*: The American government treats Kurds as a monolith.
They’ll just say “Kurds” when they’re talking about pretty
wildly different groups and different political alignments.
They mean “Kurds everywhere but Turkey,” because they never
talk about /those /Kurds. It’s funny, with the YPG and the way
they’re portrayed in the media, it really depends on who’s
talking about them. You’ll see these really idealistic takes
from every side, from left wing to right wing — they have no
basis in reality. The American government always tries to
isolate these minorities and then boost them specifically to
divide people in certain regions, like the Hmong in Vietnam
and stuff like that.
The YPG is a left-wing nationalist movement. They use a lot of
words like democracy, which has a different connotation to
them. They don’t mean liberal democracy, and I think that a
lot of American politicians — I mean, some of them are dumb,
and some of them are cynical, sort of use that and use the
“Syrian Democratic Forces,” which is a total f—ing sham. They
try and use the Kurds as, “These are the civilized people in
that area. They’re not like the Arabs. They’re different,” as
their main point. I think a lot of it has to do with cynicism
and then racism, the way that the American government talks
about them and tries to use them. They think they’re the most
palatable group in the region for their audience.
*ES*: Yeah, and then there’s those articles about the YPJ
[Women’s branch of the YPG]…
*BB*: Those ones are /really/ weird. Any sort of article
written about the YPJ is either by someone who is breathlessly
regurgitating YPJ propaganda. And like, I’m /for/ YPJ
propaganda, but it’s creepy to see people repeat it basically
word-for-word. Or [they’re written by] really horny people.
The worst kind of writers. It’s super weird. The way that
articles are written about the YPJ creep me the f— out.
*ES*: What do you see as the political future of the group
that you were involved with?
*BB*: It’s impossible to predict what’s going to happen in the
Syrian Civil War. The worst case scenario, and kind of a
likely one, is that the Turkish armed forces will probably
move east and try to take out all of northern Syria, like the
YPG-held areas. I didn’t mention this before, but the invasion
of Afrin by Turkey came about because they made a deal with
Russia over what seemed to be Syrian government objections to
have rebels surrender in Douma and Ghouta and move to Idlib in
exchange for Turkey getting free reign in the north or the
northwest. I hope a similar deal doesn’t happen. Russia seems
to play both sides in this. They flew a YPG leader to Moscow
and gave him a medal in a sort of semi-secret ceremony, but
then a month later gave the green light for Turkey to invade
the north, so who knows.
What most people I know want to happen is, they want the
Syrian government to come to an agreement with YPG or PYD for
not quite an autonomous area in the north but one with more
minority rights and representation for the political parties
they’ve started. Whether that’s likely I don’t know, because
the US government certainly doesn’t want that to happen and
has recently been trying to inflame tensions with SDF, the
front group that the YPG started. The group has a lot of
either reformed FSA people or just tribal militants — and I
don’t mean tribal in the insulting way, but literally they’re
in tribes, that’s how they refer to themselves — and a lot of
those tribal elements especially those from Deir al-Zour and
rocket country are political and occasionally descend into
gangsterism. I think the US is trying to use some of those
unreliable elements to fight the Syrian government to inflame
tensions between the SDF-YPG and the Syrian government. It’s
their last chance to topple Assad, which won’t work.
*ES*: Is there anything else you’d like to say to our
readership about the Syrian Civil War or your personal experience?
*BB*: I hope [the YPG] are able to overcome what I think is
mistaken tactical alliance with the United States, because if
history guides us at all, which it should, that won’t turn out
well for them. I think that the only hope is to come to an
agreement with the Syrian government, and they should do
whatever it takes for that.
There’s a lot of cyclical propaganda in the US government
— Assad is, of course, the devil and the “Free Syrian Army is
democratic” rhetoric — but that FSA line disappeared when it
became too obvious that most of them were in Al-Nusra. If
there’s one thing [my time in Syria] taught me it’s just that
all of the press that comes out in America and a lot of the
takes on the Syrian Civil War you see from America or even
Lebanon-based writers is just bullshit. A lot of it is almost
state department propaganda, which makes it very difficult to
navigate any news sources for actual truth about it. I hope
the conflict ends soon.
On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 8:45 PM Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
wrote:
Erica,
Wow, am I glad that you posted this whole article! First,
it's interesting. Second, I've seen articles by Ken
Clippenstein or his name as author of articles and I
didn't know he has a podcast. I wonder what the name of
the podcast is and what it's about. But most interesting
to me is what is in the discussion of antiFa. It isn't an
organization or anything. It's just a lot of people on the
left who have been labeled that way. Some of them
actively identify with the label, while others don't. But
most interesting to me was the explanation of who Brace
Belden is. For many weeks, I listened to the podcast,
gtrueanon which focuses on the Jeffrey Epstein case, its
background and history, and the fallout. I listened
because it's a fascinating case and there is a set of
multiple articles about it on the Mint Press website that
were difficult to access, or at least some of them were,
and they were very long. So when I heard about the
Trueanon podcast on Useful Idiots, I subscribed. But it is
a podcast for much younger people and its style is, I
thought, sort of weird. I listen to other podcasts for
young people like Unauthorized Disclosure, but this was
different. Anyway, what I learned about Brace Belden from
his participation on Trueanon, is that he had been drug
addicted, is Jewish, and did some kind of manual labor. It
was very strange. Now, having read this article, I
understand a bit more about him, but not why he went to
fight in Syria. I suppose he's like some of the other
young Americans who, because of their own personal inner
conflicts, went off to fight other people's wars in
Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
Miriam
*From:* blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> *On Behalf
Of *Erica R
*Sent:* Wednesday, August 5, 2020 8:45 PM
*To:* blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: can we say,
Industrial/Military takeover?
Thank you Miriam. Here is the text of the article for
those who are interested.
Homeland Security Is Quietly Tying Antifa to Foreign Powers
An intelligence report obtained exclusively by /The
Nation/ mentions several Americans, including a
left-wing podcast host.
Ken Klippenstein
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intelligence
officials are targeting activists it considers “antifa”
and attempting to tie them to a foreign power, according
to a DHS intelligence report obtained exclusively by /The
Nation/.
The intelligence report, titled “The Syrian Conflict and
its Nexus to the U.S.-based Antifascist Movement,”
mentions several Americans, including a left-wing podcast
host who traveled to Syria to fight ISIS. The report
includes a readout of these individuals’ personal
information, including their Social Security numbers, home
addresses, and social media accounts, much of the data
generated by DHS’s Tactical Terrorism Response Teams. As
the intelligence report states, “ANTIFA is being analyzed
under the 2019 DHS Strategic Framework for Countering
Terrorism (CT) and Targeted Violence.”
Dated July 14, the document, marked for official use only
and law enforcement sensitive, draws on a blend of
publicly available information and state and federal law
enforcement intelligence. It was provided to /The Nation/
by a source who previously worked on DHS intelligence.
“They targeted Americans like they’re Al Qaeda” a former
senior DHS intelligence officer with knowledge of the
operations told /The Nation/. The officer, who served for
years in the DHS’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis
(I&A), compared the operations to the illegal surveillance
of activists during the civil rights era. “They
essentially were violating people’s rights like this was
the ’60s…the type of shit the Church and Pike committee[s]
had to address.”
While the law generally prohibits intelligence agencies
from spying on US residents, many of those protections do
not apply if the individual is believed to be acting as an
agent of a foreign power.
“Designating someone as foreign-sponsored can make a huge
legal and practical difference in the government’s ability
to pursue them,” explained Steven Aftergood, who heads the
Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of
American Scientists. “It’s a crucial distinction. Once
someone (or some group) is identified as an agent of a
foreign power, they are subject to warrantless search and
surveillance in a way that would be illegal and
unconstitutional for any other US person. The whole
apparatus of US intelligence can be brought to bear on
someone who is considered an agent of a foreign power.”
Last week, the DHS reassigned its intelligence chief after
/The Washington Post /revealed that the agency had been
compiling intelligence reports on American journalists and
activists in Portland. In response to President Trump’s
executive order to protect monuments and other federal
property, the DHS created the “Protecting American
Communities Task Force,” which sent DHS assets to Portland
and other cities. The agency has found itself in
transition under the Trump administration.“They are always
pressuring I&A for political reasons; it’s been like that
since the election,” the former intelligence officer said.
This weekend, /Politico/ reported that DHS Deputy
Secretary Ken Cuccinelli loosened oversight of I&A.
Cuccinelli, at I&A’s request, curtailed the requirement
that the DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
approve I&A’s intelligence products prior to distribution
to law enforcement partners.
The intelligence report’s executive summary states:
In June 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s
(CBP) National Targeting Center (NTC) Counter Network
Division (CND) compiled CBP encounter data on
individuals who returned from Syria and fought with
the Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (YPG, translation:
PEOPLE’S PROTECTION UNITS), and had some with reported
ties to a U.S.-based ANTIFA (Anti-fascist) movement.
CBP concerns about and interest in these individuals
stem from the types of skills and motivations that may
have developed during their time overseas in foreign
conflicts.
These skills were also appreciated by the US military,
which cooperated with the YPG in fighting ISIS for years.
Last year, President Trump enraged many in the US military
when he green-lighted a Turkish offensive against the
Kurdish militia. Jim Mattis reportedly resigned as defense
secretary in part because of what he considered a betrayal
of our Kurdish allies.
The intelligence report describes over half a dozen people
who traveled to Syria in order to fight alongside Kurdish
factions—usually the YPG, but also other Kurdish groups
like the PKK and the Peshmerga. Some of the individuals
described have denied membership in antifa but variously
identified with far-left causes. The DHS appears to define
antifa broadly, to encompass various left-wing tendencies:
“[A]ntifa is driven by a mixed range of far-left political
ideologies, including anti-capitalism, communism,
socialism, and anarchism.” In two cases, evidence of
antifa affiliation was limited to photos taken in front of
an antifa flag. As the intelligence report itself notes,
“ANTIFA claims no official leadership,” raising questions
about whether antifa even exists in any sort of
operational capacity.
The first individual mentioned in the intelligence report,
Brace Belden, cohosts the popular left-wing podcast
/TrueAnon/, and fought with the YPG in 2016. The
information appears to be partly drawn from a 2017 article
on Belden in /Rolling Stone/. Belden is described as “a
minor criminal and drug addict who started reading Marx
and Lenin in drug rehabilitation treatment and became
involved in a number of political causes before deciding
to fight alongside the YPG.”
The report goes on to describe an encounter between Belden
and border authorities.
U.S. citizen (USC) Brace BELDEN was encountered on 08
April 2017, arriving in San Francisco, California from
Frankfurt, Germany. BELDEN was returning from a six
month tour of volunteering to fight with the YPG under
the umbrella of the Syrian Democrat Forces (SDF)
fighting ISIS in Syria as part of the ongoing Raqqa
offensive starting in November 2016 to retake Raqqa
from ISIS. BELDEN stated he recently learned that an
open source article had been written about him and his
“Anarchist” fighters.
Belden scoffed at the association. “I am not now nor have
I ever been a member of any antifa organization,” he told
/The Nation/. “The US government has been spying on and
smearing communists for 100 years, but they usually have
the decency not to call a Red an anarchist!”
“There appears to be a clear connection…between ANTIFA
ideology and Kurdish democratic federalism teachings and
ideology,” the intelligence report states. At least one of
the activists listed is described as being ethnically
Kurdish.
On May 31, Trump vowed to designate antifa a “terrorist
organization.” While antifa groups have engaged in acts of
property destruction, antifa has not been linked to a
single murder in the United States, according to data
compiled in the past 25 years by the Center for Strategic
and International Studies. By contrast, the same data
found that far-right extremist groups had killed 329 people.
The intelligence report appears to conclude that the
individuals described were not acting on behalf of a
foreign group—save for one unnamed person.
“Aside from a single instance derived from open-source
reporting, there does not appear to be evidence of a
centralized effort to give marching orders to returning
ANTIFA-affiliated USPER [US person] foreign fighters once
they return to the United States.”
On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 4:25 PM Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hello Erica,
Yes, it's fine to share a link. I try, when it's not
too difficult, to share the article because it's more
difficult for some of us to get to some links than for
others of us, me included. I guess I don't try to read
more of those online Nation articles than three
because I've never been barred when I access an
article from that free daily email I receive each day.
That reminds me, I do read The Nation which I download
from BARD, or some of it, and also, The New Yorker.
Just now, I've been reading an article in the August
3/10 issue of The New Yorker about the 1960 Kennedy
campaign by Jill Le Por. It reminds me that political
campaigns are run by incredibly cynical people and
some of what happened, is reminiscent of the 2016
primary campaign between Clinton and Sanders.
Miriam
*From:* blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> *On
Behalf Of *Erica R
*Sent:* Wednesday, August 5, 2020 5:14 PM
*To:* blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: can we say,
Industrial/Military takeover?
Thanks for the share. I was particularly struck by
this passage: "AIC acting director Nand Mulchandani
advanced this narrative when he claimed China had “the
world’s most advanced [AI] capabilities, such as
unregulated facial recognition for universal
surveillance and control of their domestic population,
trained on Chinese video gathered from their systems.”
Mulchandani, nevertheless, conceded that the “U.S. is
capable of doing similar things,” but offered only the
U.S. Constitution as the barrier that would prevent
America from building “such universal surveillance and
censorship systems.”"
Regarding the constitutionality of surveillance--I was
reminded of reports released earlier this week by The
Nation's Ken Klippenstein revealing DHS surveillance
of Americans with previous involvement in the YPG.
Linked here
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/dhs-antifa-syria/
I am new to the list. Let me know if this is an
appropriate way to share links. The Nation does have a
paywall after 3 articles have been read in a month, I
believe.
Erica
On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 9:52 AM Carl Jarvis
<carjar82@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Of course we can!
Miriam, I was going to comment on the post, along
with my complaining.
When we look at our military expenditures and the
profits "earned" by
the Corporations profiting directly off the
military, and the huge tax
supported employment of military
personnel(servicemen and service
women, generally known as Grunts)what more proof
will it take?
Strange behavior for a nation that professes to be
able to communicate
directly with God, but can't hear the rattle of
sabers and the
explosion of many bombs.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/5/20, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> Miriam,
> I thought I'd sent out several messages, but
happened to check to see
> if I'd entered the right address on an email,
and discovered that the
> process of entering only part of an address, and
having the entire
> address appear, no longer worked. Since I have
over 800 names in my
> Contact file, having to search for each address
makes me feel like
> shutting down my computer and getting some long
overdue work around
> the house taken care of.
> I've tried everything including contacting the
google help center.
> They gave me a huge number of suggestions, and
people who had the same
> problem, but most of it was not helpful, and the
rest did not work on
> my ancient machine.
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
> On 8/5/20, Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>> The reason I couldn't send this article last
night was that as I was
>> trying,
>> my internet went down. We had a severe tropical
storm yesterday. Up to
>> that
>> point, we'd been unaffected because when this
house was purchased, I
>> purchased a generator for it, having been
traumatized by Hurricane Sandy.
>> But the cable? That, I had no control over. It
just came back now.
>>
>>
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Raul at MintPress News
<share@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:share@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 8:09 PM
>> To: =?utf-8?Q??= <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
>> Subject: US aggression against China's AI
officially a bipartisan effort
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Add <mailto:share@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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>>
>> Raul Diego
>>
<https://mintpressnews.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3b33b8b02bdc833e727219156&id=ee94ae5408&e=963fedaebb>
>> reports on the bipartisan anti-China plan for
Artificial Intelligence
>>
>>
>> Does anyone really believe the US has public
interest in mind when it
>> comes
>> to technology and artificial intelligence?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> The bipartisan plan on AI offers five “Key
Principles” the first of which
>> involves the implementation of the DoD’s
“Ethical Principles for AI,” a
>> set
>> of broad
>>
<https://mintpressnews.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3b33b8b02bdc833e727219156&id=a957f46f04&e=963fedaebb>
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Intelligence Center (JAIC);
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<https://mintpressnews.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3b33b8b02bdc833e727219156&id=7f1b73e012&e=963fedaebb>
>> an agency established in 2018 within the Pentagon.
>>
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ethics?
>>
>>
>>
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