WhoIs Louise Mensch [former Tory MP who moved to New York and works for Rupert Murdoch]
○ Louise Mensch: the former British MP who scooped US media on Trump’s Russian ties | The Guardian |
EXCLUSIVE: FBI ‘Granted FISA Warrant’ Covering Trump Camp’s Ties To Russia By Louise Mensch|10:18 pm, November 7, 2016
Two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community [?!] have confirmed to Heat Street that the FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October, giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of `U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia.
Contrary to earlier reporting in the New York Times, which cited FBI sources as saying that the agency did not believe that the private server in Donald Trump’s Trump Tower which was connected to a Russian bank had any nefarious purpose, the FBI’s counter-intelligence arm, sources say, re-drew an earlier FISA court request around possible financial and banking offenses related to the server. The first request, which, sources say, named Trump, was denied back in June, but the second was drawn more narrowly and was granted in October after evidence was presented of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign, and its alleged links to two banks; SVB Bank and Russia’s Alfa Bank. While the Times story speaks of metadata, sources suggest that a FISA warrant was granted to look at the full content of emails and other related documents that may concern US persons.
The Struggle Inside The Wall Street Journal By David Leonhardt - Op-Ed columnist NY Times
The most successful modern publisher of ideological journalism is Rupert Murdoch. He buys media properties, or starts new ones, and turns them into conservative megaphones.
In England, he carefully nudged the venerable Times to the right, while his tabloids mocked Labour Party politicians as weaklings or Stalinists. In the United States, he transformed the once-liberal New York Post into a peppery conservative tabloid and then built Fox News from scratch.
Clearly, he enjoys both populist and elite media. And in 2007, he bought a journalistic jewel, The Wall Street Journal.
○ Hillary Clinton Says “I’m In.” My Reply, “I’m Out” © By Betsy L. Angert @BooMan on Jan. 20, 2007
Now The Journal’s newsroom is embroiled in a fight over the paper’s direction.
Many staff members believe that the paper’s top editor, Gerard Baker, previously a feisty conservative commentator, is trying to Murdoch-ize the paper. “There is a systemic issue,” one reporter told me. The dissatisfaction went public last week …
[Update-1] on March 4, 2017 :: More diaries about Louise Mensch …
○ Rupert Murdoch’s Louise Mensch a Hillary Supporter
○ Old Trumpist Line: Louise Mensch is a Looney!
New Trumpist Line: Louise Mensch is the New Woodward and Bernstein! By Steven M. @NoMoreMister
Continued below the fold …
And now… loons of the left prove that it isn’t a monopoly – 2009
And now… loons of the left prove that it isn’t a monopoly – 2009
All right then, you’ve been warned to expect some of my trademarked “contrariness,” this time. A tendency — call it a compulsion — to always turn and point in some unexpected direction, especially if I have been looking one way for too long. It drives everything from my chosen profession to science to politics.
And yes, today I plan to take a break from decrypting the political madness of the far-right and instead point my j’accuse finger to the left.
But first, do not even begin to interpret what I am about to say as “both sides are equally crazy.” Anyone who read my previous missives can tell which direction I condemn most harshly, as the core of madness and outright treason in American life. I’ve spoken at length about the rightwing cult that has taken over the conservative movement, sending poor Barry Goldwater spinning in his grave and betraying America by sending our great nation into debilitating “culture war.”
It is still monstrous and unbelievable that Rupert Murdoch and his co-conspirators can get away with posing as populists, while pursuing oligarchic takeover of the country. Without any doubt, that is the direction from which civilization and the American Republic face their greatest danger.
Sheeple of Amerika is a short music video exposing the sinister agendas of certain corporations and the Elite. It also reveals a lot of truths that the sheeple are too scared to acknowledge. Some of the topics discussed in the video are vaccine, dietary supplement, chemtrail, pharmaceutical drug, GMO, politics, mainstream media, and the Elite and their New World Order. The music video contains some humor, so you might giggle a little bit when watching it.
○ A Parable about Openness: Followed by Some Thoughts on Privacy, Security, and Surveillance in the Information Age By David Brin, Ph.D.
So, will Brin ever get to the point? How does all of this apply to “Sheeple”?
Let’s be frank. THE message of this ‘film’ is not urging folks to wake up, or fomenting rebellion; it is contempt. Feeding the producers’ sanctimonious sense that they are privileged and smarter and more insightful than their sheeplike neighbors, like gods above mere animals. Self-flattery is the cheapest drug around. Any addict can get all he wants, and these guys have it hard. ADDICTION
But it gets worse. For, you see, it’s been shown that the surest way to get the masses under control is NOT to inculcate worshipful passivity, but rather to spread a dull, simmering state of generalized resentment, aimed in all directions and at each other.
What? You’ve never studied Machiavelli? Really? What do you think “culture war” is all about? The whole “populist” theme driving Red America to hate the cities and anyone with a graduate degree?
The formula is simple. Inundate the prols with distractions that scatter their SOA in every direction. And if some of those directions are “up” toward some corporations and meeting groups of the rich? So what? So long as you shotgun a vast number of targets, you’ll keep it scattered. Impotent. (Notice though, the Sheeple guys never mention Rupert Murdoch or the petroprinces [Koch Bros.] who have been doing the most meddling of all. Gee I wonder why.)
And so, the ultimate irony. This is exactly the sort of thing that the masters would want produced!
Do I seriously believe that “Sheeple” was generated at the AEI or Heritage or some other Murdochian pimphouse? Naw. Funny thing is, they probably got it for free, or maybe with the gentlest prodding. This shit is self-stirring.
Note that this film — after purportedly demanding that people “wake up!” — doesn’t suggest any of the things that might ACTUALLY cause sheep to look up… such as actual, pragmatic links to learned and detailed analyses of world power, for example. Or self-organizing tools. Nor does it recommend the kind of “proxy power” organizations that can empower any individual to join with large numbers of others, in common cause to deal, effectively, with specific, targeted issues.
…
If you actually and really want to pragmatically fight evil, promote justice, save the world and advance the Enlightenment, there’s a proved method. One that bypasses all this contempt-for-the-masses malarkey and goes straight to problem solving — combining the tiny influence of individuals into the momentum of millions. Drop by the PROXY POWER site.
Dr. David Brin - Scientist, NASA adviser, astrophysicist, futurist, tech-pundit, forecaster
David’s science-fictional Uplift Saga explores genetic engineering of higher animals, like dolphins, to speak and join our civilization. In EARTH and EXISTENCE he explores near future trends that may transform our world.
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As a scientist/futurist, David is seen frequently on television shows such as The ArchiTechs, Universe, and Life After People, with frequent appearances on PBS, BBC and NPR. He has consulted for original shows like Ascension, Seven Days and Century City.
A patent-holding inventor, he is in-demand to speak about future trends, keynoting for IBM, Google, Procter & Gamble, SAP, Microsoft, Qualcomm, the Mauldin Group, and Casey Research, all the way to think tanks and public agencies.
With degrees from Caltech and the University of California-San Diego, Dr. Brin serves on advisory panels ranging from astronomy, NASA innovative concepts, nanotech, and SETI to national defense and technological ethics.
Brin, D. (1998) The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose between Privacy and Freedom?, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Brin, D. (2008) ‘David Brin Rebuts Schneier in Defense of a Transparent Society’, Wired News, 12 March.The Future of Cyber-Resilience in an Age of Global Complexity
An Unstable World? Part One: Russia
Some folks have lately asked why I seem so calm, when every week brings news of yet another brewing disaster, with the world apparently spinning into chaos. So much for Francis Fukayama’s famous line – around 1990 – that the rapid and unstoppable spread of liberal democracy would soon bring an “end of history” .
A few years earlier, I had made a different prediction. That the Cold War and the communist empire would soon shatter…
(few believed it even remotely possible)… but that our struggles would thereupon move on to strife between a rising world-liberal culture… and one branch or another of machismo… traditionally male dominated cultures upset over the prospect of seeing their women become like ours.
○ U.S. Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News to Americans – July 2013
○ Influence on behavior by government – Cass Sunstein’s Why Nudge?
My recent diary on NATO – NATO, 4.0 – Atlantic Alliance Relevance by Mission Change.