How widespread the problem is

Feb 3rd, 2018 10:59 am | By

In the Times, Emily Kelly tells us about her husband, a former football player who took a lot of blows to the head.

Professional football is a brutal sport, he knew that. But he loved it anyway. And he accepted the risks of bruises and broken bones. What he didn’t know was that along with a battered body can come a battered mind.

For decades, it was not well understood that football can permanently harm the brain. Otherwise, many parents would most likely not have signed their boys up to play. But this reality was obscured by the N.F.L.’s top medical experts, who for years had denied any link between the sport and long-term degenerative brain diseases like chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Just as tobacco companies for years denied any link between tobacco and lung cancer.

That started to change in late 2009 when, for the first time, the N.F.L. publicly acknowledged that concussions can have long-term effects. In 2016, a top league official admitted that there is a connection between football and C.T.E., which has now been found in the brains of more than 100 deceased players. But for Rob, and countless other players, those admissions came too late.

And yet – people here still get wildly excited about football and expect everyone else to share their enthusiasm. I find that disturbing.

It wasn’t until I joined a private Facebook group of more than 2,400 women, all connected in some way to current or former N.F.L. players, that I realized I wasn’t alone.

Our stories are eerily similar, our loved ones’ symptoms almost identical: the bizarre behavior I had tried to ignore, the obsessive laundering of old clothes — our washing machine ran from morning till night.

It was comforting and terrifying all at the same time. Why did so many of us see the same strange behaviors? “Our neurologist said they do it to calm their brains,” one friend told me.

Symptoms consistent with C.T.E. are a recurring topic in the Facebook group. They include memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, aggression, depression and anxiety. These problems become apparent sometimes years or even decades after a player hangs up his helmet.

One woman may write a post, desperate and afraid of the man her husband is becoming — the rage, mood swings, depression, memory loss. A man so drastically different from the one she once knew. Hundreds of comments will follow, woman after woman confirming that she is going through the exact same thing.

While the symptoms and behaviors are telling, C.T.E. can be conclusively diagnosed only posthumously, because it requires the close examination of brain tissue. But many of us, including me, are convinced our husbands suffer from the disease. We try to comfort one another with the same words: “Just know you’re not alone.”

I don’t think the public has any idea how widespread this problem truly is. Rob and I hope that, in telling our story, we might help other families. There are likely to be hundreds of wives and partners of football players, maybe more, who live a life like mine. Sadly, there is a feeling of shame among those affected, in both the men and their families.

But hey, the Super Bowl is tomorrow. Let’s focus on that instead.



A historic world leader

Feb 3rd, 2018 10:36 am | By

Trump is feeling perky.

The Moony paper calls him “Trump the orator” – because he read an address written by other people, from a teleprompter, slowly and with difficulty and not at all well. Some orator.

Also, applauding himself. Also Mussolini-face.

Funny how he always cites Rasmussen, which always has his numbers higher than anyone else.

Why the scare quotes on his own name? Is he saying he’s not real? Is he telling us he’s a myth or a political fiction? Is he signaling that he’s being held captive?

Why is he talking about himself in the third person?

Sad about “their” for “there,” especially when immediately followed by the [cough] alternate spelling.

Anyway – nope, the memo does no such thing. “Trump” is still going to have to talk to Mueller. Feeling perky is not the same as being either vindicated or found innocent.



Shan’t

Feb 2nd, 2018 4:52 pm | By

Pennsylvania Republicans are refusing to obey a court order to redraw their congressional map to make it not so grotesquely gerrymandered.

A top Pennsylvania state Senate Republican is refusing to follow a court order requiring lawmakers to turn over data that would redraw the state’s congressional map.

In a letter to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which struck down the map, state Sen. Joe Scarnati on Wednesday called the order unconstitutional and said he would not comply.
“In light of the unconstitutionality of the court’s orders and the court’s plain intent to usurp the General Assembly’s constitutionally delegated role of drafting Pennsylvania’s congressional district plan, Senator Scarnati will not be turning over any data identified in the court’s orders,” wrote Brian Paszamant, Scarnati’s attorney.

Let’s hear more about how patriotic and law-respecting the Republicans are.



What’s down there

Feb 2nd, 2018 3:58 pm | By

To move to a less distasteful subject than rapey theocrats and constitution-trampling crooks, there’s this exciting story that’s been in the headlines for a couple of days of finding huge previously unknown Maya sites buried in Guatemala.

By raining down laser pulses on some 770 square miles of dense forest in northern Guatemala, archaeologists have discovered 60,000 Maya structures that make up full sprawling cities.

And the new technology provides them with an unprecedented view into how the ancient civilization worked, revealing almost industrial agricultural infrastructure and new insights into Maya warfare.

“This is a game changer,” says Thomas Garrison, an archaeologist at Ithaca College who is one of the leaders of the project. It changes “the base level at which we do Maya archaeology.”

The data reveals that the area was three or four times more densely populated than originally thought. “I mean, we’re talking about millions of people, conservatively,” says Garrison. “Probably more than 10 million people.”

The technology makes it possible to strip away vegetation visually and see what it’s hiding. Garrison spent eight years with a team mapping less than a square mile at a site called El Zotz without LiDAR, while LiDar took data for 67 square miles in a few hours.

The most important Maya city, Tikal, was found to be three or four times larger than the scientists had thought, with a previously undiscovered pyramid in its center. And Garrison adds that they’re not totally sure they’ve surveyed the entire extent of that city.

Suddenly having a broad view allows archaeologists to ask many new questions, he says. And there’s plenty of forest to still explore — the study area is a fraction of the total area where the Maya lived.

I call that exciting.



Tariq Ramadan again

Feb 2nd, 2018 12:33 pm | By

Tariq Ramadan has been charged with rape and is currently incarcerated.

I don’t see anything in English yet so this is from Le Monde:

Tariq Ramadan a été mis en examen, vendredi 2 février, pour viol et viol sur personne vulnérable. L’islamologue suisse a demandé qu’un éventuel placement en détention provisoire, requis par le parquet, fasse l’objet d’un débat ultérieur entre le juge des libertés et de la détention (JLD) et sa défense. Dans l’attente de ce débat, qui doit avoir lieu dans les quatre jours, il a été incarcéré.

Les enquêteurs du deuxième district de police judiciaire ont enquêté pendant trois mois, méthodiquement et sans laisser échapper la moindre information, avant de se décider à entendre, à partir de mercredi 31 janvier, le théologien suisse de 55 ans, qui a longtemps eu une très large audience auprès de centaines de milliers de musulmans européens.

Après avoir reçu deux plaintes pour viol, l’une déposée le 20 octobre 2017 par Henda Ayari, une ancienne salafiste devenue militante de la laïcité, l’autre le 27 octobre par une femme qui a préféré rester anonyme, et dont Le Monde avait publié le témoignage accablant, les policiers ont recueilli d’autres récits de femmes. Elles ont décrit la même forme d’emprise, la même violence et, selon un proche de l’enquête, « le même modus operandi » que celui dénoncé par les plaignantes, sans pour autant déposer plainte à leur tour.

Since the two complaints that were in the news in October the police have gathered more women’s accounts that fit the pattern of the first two.

Updating to include the BBC version:

A French judge has placed prominent Islamic studies scholar Tariq Ramadan under criminal investigation on two charges of rape.

The 55-year-old was questioned by police in Paris earlier this week and has now been remanded into custody.

He denies wrongdoing and is suing one of his accusers, a former radical Islamist, for slander.

Mr Ramadan teaches at Oxford University, but took leave of absence after the claims surfaced in October.

Then there’s the typical BBC refusal to admit that he’s not a nice liberal human rightsy kind of guy:

A controversial and influential figure among Muslim scholars, he is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the Egyptian imam who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s.

Tariq Ramadan challenges Muslim fundamentalists and encourages dialogue between religions, but some critics say he is a promoting a version of Islam that is inconsistent with French secular values.

He has made regular media appearances in France and Britain, and is a popular figure among young Muslims in Europe.

“Some critics say”; “a version of Islam that is inconsistent with French secular values”; “a popular figure among young Muslims in Europe” – he’s an Islamist, a radical religionist who thinks religious rules should govern everyone. The Beeb as usual makes him sound like a liberal.



No more money for containing epidemics

Feb 2nd, 2018 12:03 pm | By

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest that Trump is chopping down – now we want more global disease outbreaks.

Four years after the United States pledged to help the world fight infectious-disease epidemics such as Ebola, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is dramatically downsizing its epidemic prevention activities in 39 out of 49 countries because money is running out, U.S. government officials said.

But don’t worry, Donald Trump’s golf courses and hotels are profiting like crazy.

The CDC programs, part of a global health security initiative, train front-line workers in outbreak detection and work to strengthen laboratory and emergency response systems in countries where disease risks are greatest. The goal is to stop future outbreaks at their source.

Most of the funding comes from a one-time, five-year emergency package that Congress approved to respond to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. About $600 million was awarded to the CDC to help countries prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics. That money is slated to run out by September 2019. Despite statements from President Trump and senior administration officials affirming the importance of controlling outbreaks, officials and global infectious-disease experts are not anticipating that the administration will budget additional resources.

Of course not. He thinks epidemics are what shithole countries deserve.

Countries where the CDC is planning to scale back include some of the world’s hot spots for emerging infectious disease, such as China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo. Last year, when Congo experienced a potentially deadly Ebola outbreak in a remote, forested area, CDC-trained disease detectives and rapid responders helped contain it quickly.

But in future? The outbreak will just have to proceed according to nature’s plan.



It’s on

Feb 2nd, 2018 10:12 am | By

Thug Donald says hell yes release the memo, the memo is out.

The House Intelligence Committee made the memo public after a week of pleading from senior national security officials not to disclose the classified details, reading it aloud on a conference call with reporters after President Trump declassified the memo.

“A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves and much worse than that,” Mr. Trump said on Friday.

The memo alleges that senior government officials favored Democrats over Republicans and accuses federal law enforcement officials of abusing their authorities when they sought permission to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.

Never mind the fact that Carter Page was already dirty, independently of Trump; that he had been under FBI surveillance before the Trump gang ever approached him.

Earlier on Friday, Mr. Trump said top officials and investigators at the F.B.I. and Justice Department have “politicized the sacred investigative process.”

I wish a bunch of people would pin him down and shovel dirt into his mouth.

The early-morning Twitter post reinforced reports that Mr. Trump, in allowing the Republican memo to be released, is seeking to clean house in the upper ranks of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, even at the risk of losing his own F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray.

No, not “clean house” – Trump is seeking to replace people in the upper ranks of the FBI with people who are loyal to him. That’s it, that’s his only goal: transforming the FBI into an arm of Donald Trump the ManGod.

Earlier this week, The F.B.I. made an unusual public plea not to release the document, which could reveal classified sources and methods. Mr. Trump declassified the memo without requesting any redactions.

In other words he acted as recklessly and self-absorbedly as he always does.

Constitutional crisis in full flow.

Updating to add:

The Times has the memo plus a few annotations.



Not future tense any more

Feb 1st, 2018 5:47 pm | By

By the way we’re no longer approaching or heading for or in danger of a constitutional crisis, we’re in one. We have met the crisis and it is all around us.

Reasonable people are saying the US appears to be teetering on the edge of a constitutional crisis, as the system of checks and balances that has kept democracy humming in America for more than 240 years could be on the verge of breaking down.

“We’re in absolutely uncharted waters,” Heather Richardson, a professor of American history at Boston College and the author of a history of the Republican party, told Quartz, adding “I’m beside myself.”

The framers of the constitution “did not construct a system that was designed to withstand failing all at once,” she said. But the US is now in the throes of a “rogue presidency, a rogue Congress, and packed courts.”

“I think this is the most profound crisis the country has ever been in,” she said, “and we’re all acting as if this is normal.”

Not all.

“The threat from Russia to our democracy is now far less than the threat from within,” California’s Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said today (Feb. 1). “There is nothing Russia can do to us that rivals what we are doing to ourselves right now.”

Depending on who you ask, the US is on the brink of, or has already fallen into, a constitutional crisis—a political problem brought on by the failure of government institutions to protect democracy in the way they’re supposed to. Here’s why Schiff and others are concerned:

The White House is refusing to upholding a law passed by Congress, for Russia’s benefit

The idea of a US constitutional crisis started in earnest on Jan. 29, when the White House said it would not impose new sanctions on Russia, ignoring recent legislation that passed with strong support from both Republicans and Democrats.

That one is staggering. Nunes’s coup attempt is distracting from it, but it’s staggering.

There’s Trump’s relentless interference with the Russia investigation, there’s Congress’s failure to do anything about it, there’s the failure to fund the government.

On Feb. 8, the Congress again is to convene in its next attempt to pass a budget to keep the government open for the next few weeks or months, the fifth time it has been forced to pass a short-term budget since Trump took office, and a sign of how dysfunctional Washington is right now.

Tonight Trump is addressing the winter conference of the Republican National Committee, and you’ll never guess where.

At Trump’s hotel, so all the money spent on the conference will go into Trump’s bank account.

Yeah, we’re in it all right.



Not exactly justice

Feb 1st, 2018 5:05 pm | By

Speaking of “where was the mother while this man was torturing a baby?” – the ACLU offers one example of a woman punished because a man abused their children.

Tondalao Hall spent her 13th New Year’s Day inside a prison cell this month. The man who abused her and her young children never served a single day in prison. The details of Hall’s story speak volumes about criminal injustice in the nation today.

Thirteen years ago, Tondalao Hall’s ex-boyfriend and abuser, Robert Braxton Jr., pleaded guilty to breaking the ribs and femur of their 3-month-old daughter. Hall had not abused her children. She herself was also a victim of her ex’s violence. Prosecutors presented no evidence that Hall, then 19 years old, knew of any abuse against her children. On the advice of her original attorney, Hall signed a “blind” guilty plea — meaning, a plea without any deal with the prosecutor promising leniency. That plea resulted in a 30-year sentence for “failing to protect” her children from abuse.

Hall’s sentence violates the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the government from handing out cruel and unusual punishments to individuals convicted of crimes, in two ways. First, her sentence is disproportionate to her crime in relation to Braxton’s light sentence. Second, it lacks any consideration of the abuse she endured and the choices she was forced to make as a result.

In a cruel coincidence, Braxton was released from custody on the same day Hall was told she’d serve 30 years in a maximum security prison. Now, after eight years of probation, he lives with minimal consequences for his violent crimes.

The ACLU of Oklahoma is representing Hall and seeking her release because she has been abused and denied justice. Her suffering mirrors that of so many women of color who have been the subject of unjust prosecution.

She got thirty years for failure to protect; he got probation for the actual violence to their three-month-old baby.

Oklahoma is one of 29 states that makes “permitting child abuse” a crime. Oklahoma’s statute was designed to ensure that those who witness abuse take action to prevent further abuse. The statue is supposed to encourage people to report crimes against children. In Hall’s case, the law was used not to protect children but to criminalize and punish a domestic violence survivor.

It is a mockery of justice to claim that Hall’s sentence protected any of the children Braxton abused. In fact, each survivor of Braxton’s abuse has suffered tremendously as a result of her prosecution. Hall’s three children have been left to grow up without their mother, while their abusive father signed away his parental rights. This May, Hall’s oldest son will graduate from high school while his mother remains locked away from her family.

Oklahoma incarcerates more women per capita than anywhere else in the world. Oklahoma imprisons about 151 out of every 100,000 women, which is about twice the national average. The state’s harsh laws and other “hard on crime” forms of over-prosecution disproportionately affect women of color. Black and native women make up a combined 16.7 percent of Oklahoma’s population, but 33 percent of the prison population.

Oklahoma also ranks among the top five states for women enduring extreme violence from their partners. Survivors of this abuse are overrepresented in jails and prisons. More than half of all womenincarcerated in Oklahoma are survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault. Rather than address this problem through preventive services, district attorneys and lawmakers in Oklahoma have used the statute that landed Hall in prison to criminalize mothers enduring abuse, trauma, and adversity.

At the time Hall was arrested, she had been actively creating a plan to leave her abuser. But escaping a violent partner is much easier said than done, as the likelihood of serious violence or murder skyrockets when victims make moves to leave. As long as Hall’s abuser walks free, any claim that her sentence was about justice or protecting children rings hollow.

H/t Rebecca Solnit



Guest post: They keep treating it as politics as usual

Feb 1st, 2018 2:21 pm | By

Originally a comment by iknklast on Grave concerns.

why nobody in the media seems to grasp the gravity of what the GOP is trying to do

The media has struggled with the Trump dumpster fire from the beginning, because they keep trying to do things the same way. They keep treating it as politics as usual, so they try to figure out what the strategy is, what the end game is, what Plan B might be. None of these things exist. This is a demolition operation, and unless you understand demolition, you can’t get there.

Maddow gets it because she is able to see that this is not business as usual. But most of the pundits are in the mode of doing what they’ve learned to do, and thinking what they’ve learned to think, and acting how they’ve learned to act.

Many of the Republicans are in the same handbasket with Trump. This isn’t the Republican Party of Eisenhower, or even of Nixon, where working within the government system to promote business and lower taxes was the order of the day. This is a group of wildcats (no insult meant to any actual cats who might be reading this) who have no integrity, no conscience, no compassion, no human feeling for people outside their own set, and believe with an almost religious belief that they are a race of superior human beings. They have gorged themselves on Ayn Rand, and are vomiting Rush Limbaugh. They believe in the superman, and they are the superman. The rest of us are, to use a familiar parlance, “losers”.

They may sell themselves as promoting the “American Way”, but in reality, they are seeking to be the rulers of the rest of us. Some of them are motivated by money, some by Christianity, but a horrifying number are motivated by both. They are serving God and Mammon, and mistakenly believe that they are the natural ruling class. They believe fervently that they achieved their exalted place by their own efforts alone, because they are incapable of seeing all the people helping them as they climbed – including healthy doses of the government, which provides so much for so many and is despised by most.

This is what the media isn’t expecting. They have been part of the aristocratic class for a long time, and assume they understand it, but they are not listening anymore. They open their mouths to begin analysis almost the second the politician stops speaking, so they don’t have time to process what was said. And, if I may liken this to sports (my husband is an avid watcher), it is like those announcers who will discuss endlessly whether that ball was really in or out, whether that play was good or not, and will announce with enormous smug satisfaction what the answer is, even though they are perched in a soundproof booth above the field and may not be seeing what the refs are seeing. Just as these announcers are always totally sure that they know, even if the ref doesn’t, the pundits are convinced that they understand what is going on, even though this is nothing they’ve seen before. In short, they lack the flexibility to accommodate the new world where we find ourselves.



No objections

Feb 1st, 2018 12:58 pm | By

Trump has said sure, go ahead.

President Trump cleared the way on Thursday for the release of a secret memo written by Republican congressional staffers and said to accuse federal law enforcement officials of abusing their surveillance authorities.

Mr. Trump, who had a brief window to block the memo’s disclosure on national security grounds, was expected to tell Congress on Friday that he had no objections and would likely not request any material be redacted, according to a senior administration official. It would then be up to the House Intelligence Committee, whose Republican leaders have pushed for its release, to make the document public.

The president’s decision came despite a growing chorus of warnings from national security officials who say that releasing the document would jeopardize sensitive government information, including how intelligence is gathered, and from Democrats who say it is politically motivated and distorts the actions of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. by omitting crucial context.

But Mr. Trump wanted the memo out.

Of course. He thinks it will be good for him, and he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything else. What’s good for him is far more important than the good of the 350 million people he’s supposed to be working for.

His people, on the other hand, are worried that Wray might quit.

Wray has made clear he is frustrated that President Donald Trump picked him to lead the FBI after he fired FBI Director James Comey in May, yet his advice on the Nunes memo is being disregarded and cast as part of the purported partisan leadership of the FBI, according to a senior law enforcement official.

Wray’s stance is “raising hell,” one source familiar with the matter said.

Trump doesn’t care. Trump does what Trump wants to do.



No one will ever find out

Feb 1st, 2018 12:32 pm | By

Another This Looks Bad item for Mueller’s note pad: last July, that Times story about the Russia meeting at Trump Tower, the scramble on the flight home from Yurrup to put out a statement by Team Trump saying we talked about adoption and nothing else.

The latest witness to be called for an interview about the episode was Mark Corallo, who served as a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team before resigning in July. Mr. Corallo received an interview request last week from the special counsel and has agreed to the interview, according to three people with knowledge of the request.

Keep that bit about resigning in July in mind; it’s important.

Mr. Corallo is planning to tell Mr. Mueller about a previously undisclosed conference call with Mr. Trump and Hope Hicks, the White House communications director, according to the three people. Mr. Corallo planned to tell investigators that Ms. Hicks said during the call that emails written by Donald Trump Jr. before the Trump Tower meeting — in which the younger Mr. Trump said he was eager to receive political dirt about Mrs. Clinton from the Russians — “will never get out.” That left Mr. Corallo with concerns that Ms. Hicks could be contemplating obstructing justice, the people said.

Her lawyer says oh no she didn’t.

Before publishing the Times asked the White House some questions while Trump was at the G-20 meeting.

Times reporters submitted a list of 14 questions about the meeting to the White House and to the lawyers of the Trump campaign aides who attended the meeting. Among the questions: What was discussed, and what did the attendees think was going to be discussed?

President Trump’s aides received the list midflight on Air Force One on the way back from the summit meeting and began writing a response. In the plane’s front cabin, Mr. Trump huddled with Ms. Hicks. During the meeting, according to people familiar with the episode, Ms. Hicks was sending frequent text messages to Donald Trump Jr., who was in New York. Alan Garten, a lawyer for the younger Mr. Trump who was also in New York, was also messaging with White House advisers aboard the plane.

Marc E. Kasowitz, the president’s personal lawyer, was not included in the discussion.

The president supervised the writing of the statement, according to three people familiar with the episode, with input from other White House aides. A fierce debate erupted over how much information the news release should include. Mr. Trump was insistent about including language that the meeting was about Russian adoptions, according to two people with knowledge of the discussion.

What was the fierce debate about? I’m guessing the issue was the riskiness of making affirmative claims that could be demonstrated to be false?

the statement that had been cobbled together aboard Air Force One was sent to The Times. The statement was in Donald Trump Jr.’s name and was issued by Mr. Garten.

“It was a short introductory meeting,” it read. “I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow up.”

According to four people familiar with the discussions, Donald Trump Jr. had insisted that the word “primarily” be included in the statement.

The Times published, and then another, slightly different statement appeared in another source.

The dueling statements, both of which withheld the true purpose of the meeting, created tension at the White House.

Accusations began flying that the botched response made an already bad situation worse. Ms. Hicks called Mr. Corallo, according to three people who relayed his version of events to The Times. She accused him of trafficking in conspiracy theories and drawing more attention to the story.

American capitalism in action.

The conference call with the president, Mr. Corallo and Ms. Hicks took place the next morning, and what transpired on the call is a matter of dispute.

In Mr. Corallo’s account — which he provided contemporaneously to three colleagues who later gave it to The Times — he told both Mr. Trump and Ms. Hicks that the statement drafted aboard Air Force One would backfire because documents would eventually surface showing that the meeting had been set up for the Trump campaign to get political dirt about Mrs. Clinton from the Russians.

There, that was my guess (via months of following this story, so not much of a leap) – don’t make affirmative claims that are susceptible to being shown to be lies.

According to his account, Ms. Hicks responded that the emails “will never get out” because only a few people had access to them. Mr. Corallo, who worked as a Justice Department spokesman during the George W. Bush administration, told colleagues he was alarmed not only by what Ms. Hicks had said — either she was being naïve or was suggesting that the emails could be withheld from investigators — but also that she had said it in front of the president without a lawyer on the phone and that the conversation could not be protected by attorney-client privilege.

Contacted on Wednesday, Mr. Corallo said he did not dispute any of the account shared by his colleagues but declined to elaborate further.

They’re crooks and they’re incompetent. I guess given the first we should rejoice at the second.



Self-conscious contrarianism throughout history

Feb 1st, 2018 12:04 pm | By

John Elledge at the Staggers:

Crack opinion-haver Brendan O’Neill reports throughout history

WAR 2 July 1916

Don’t listen to the virtue-signallers and their lazy contempt for the noble Tommy

It’s just a bit of mud – why the hysteria over the Somme, asks Field Marshal O’Neill.

384 comments

CONQUEST 17 October 1066

The revealing hysteria over the Norman Invasion

Anglo-Saxon elites finally reveal how much they despise ordinary people.

2,316 comments

FEAR 10 October 1940

Keep calm and carry on? No thanks

Brendan O’Neill makes the case for abject panic in the face of German onslaught.

121 cmments

And more.

Feel free to add your own.

Updating to add:



Grave concerns

Feb 1st, 2018 11:50 am | By

The crazy is ratcheting up. Even a Republican senator is urging Nunes and his gang not to be in such a hurry to release the memo.

Mr. Thune’s note of caution joined a growing chorus of warnings from national security officials who say that releasing the memo would jeopardize sensitive government information, including how intelligence is gathered, and from Democrats who say it is politically motivated and distorts the actions of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. by omitting crucial context.

President Trump, who has made clear that he wants the memo to be public, was expected to indicate as early as Thursday that despite strong objections by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, he did not intend to block its release — a move that would free the committee to release it.

And the only reason he’s ignoring the F.B.I. and the Justice Department is because he hopes the memo will thwart the investigation into Russia’s role in his election. He’s thinking solely about his own skin and not even a little bit about the broader good.

In a rare statement on Wednesday, the F.B.I. strongly condemned the memo’s release, saying the bureau had “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

People familiar with the three-and-a-half page Republican memo say it contends that officials from the F.B.I. and Justice Department may have misled a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge when they sought a warrant to spy on the former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, in October 2016. The people say the officials relied on information handed over by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, without adequately explaining to the judge that Democrats had financed his research.

Using Vince Foster’s bank account which is in a vault in a pizza place off Dupont Circle.

In a sharply worded letter of her own on Thursday morning, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, called on Speaker Paul D. Ryan to remove Representative Devin Nunes of California as the Intelligence Committee’s chairman.

“Congressman Nunes’s deliberately dishonest actions make him unfit to serve as Chairman, and he must be removed immediately from this position,” she wrote, adding, “The integrity of the House is at stake.”

Mr. Nunes gave no indication that he intended to change course.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s earlier request to see the memo was declined.

Nunes, let’s remember, is the guy who pretended to have briefed the White House on matters that in fact the White House had just briefed him on, to the incomprehension of all onlookers.



That contract has now been spectacularly broken

Jan 31st, 2018 6:15 pm | By

Adam Schiff (the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee) explains why the release of Nunes’s memo is such a terrible move.

As multiple investigations work to unearth the full truth, the president has lashed out with Nixonian ferocity at the Justice Department, the FBI, congressional investigators and the media.

However, unlike President Richard Nixon, who waged his Watergate fight without the same kind of vocal allies, Trump not only has an entire media ecosystem dedicated to shielding him from accountability but also senior Republicans on the Hill who have cast aside their duty to uphold the law and perform oversight in favor of protecting the Trump presidency — no matter the cost. Nunes may have wielded the committee gavel here, but the ultimate responsibility lies with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who lacked the courage to stop him.

Ryan, who has never served on the Intelligence Committee, seems not to understand the central bargain underpinning the creation of the intelligence committees after Watergate. In exchange for the intelligence community’s willingness to reveal closely guarded national secrets to a select group of members and staff for the purposes of oversight, the committees and the congressional leadership pledged to handle that information responsibly and without regard to politics.

That contract has now been spectacularly broken by the creation of a partisan memo that misrepresents highly classified information that will never be made public. Intelligence agencies can no longer be confident that material they provide the committee will not be repurposed and manipulated for reasons having nothing to do with national security. As a result, they will be far more reluctant to share their secrets with us in the future. Moreover, sources of information that the agencies rely upon may dry up, since they can no longer count on secrecy when the political winds are blowing. This is a grave cost for short-term political gain.

We want Congress to oversee the intelligence agencies, because the alternative is the Hoover-era FBI or the Cold War CIA overthrowing elected governments all over the planet. We want oversight, but not if it’s done by corrupted hacks like Nunes.



R U my devoted slave?

Jan 31st, 2018 4:04 pm | By

Chapter 785 of Trump doesn’t know what the rules are and he doesn’t care either. CNN reports:

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein visited the White House in December seeking President Donald Trump’s help. The top Justice Department official in the Russia investigation wanted Trump’s support in fighting off document demands from House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes.

But the President had other priorities ahead of a key appearance by Rosenstein on the Hill, according to sources familiar with the meeting. Trump wanted to know where the special counsel’s Russia investigation was heading. And he wanted to know whether Rosenstein was “on my team.”

We know he’s been told repeatedly that the whole entire Justice Department is purposely and carefully not on any team, because it’s the Justice Department.

The episode is the latest to come to light portraying a President whose inquiries sometimes cross a line that presidents traditionally have tried to avoid when dealing with the Justice Department, for which a measure of independence is key. The exchange could raise further questions about whether Trump was seeking to interfere in the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking into potential collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia and obstruction of justice by the White House.

He’s been doing this all along, like any small town hoodlum: taking people aside and demanding to know if they’re “loyal” to him and going to do whatever he tells them to no matter what.

The meeting happened shortly before Rosenstein was supposed to talk to the House Judiciary Committee. Trump was all worked up about that, and grilled Rosenstein about it. He’d also come up with proposed questions for the Committee to ask Rosenstein.

One line of inquiry Trump proposed lawmakers ask about was whether Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election because Mueller was not selected as FBI director. CNN has reported that Trump has been venting to his aides about Rosenstein in recent weeks and even raised the possibility of his removal. Sources say Trump believes Rosenstein was upset Mueller wasn’t selected as FBI director and responded by making him special counsel. It does not appear those questions were asked of Rosenstein at the hearing.

Probably because it sounds so junior high school. “Do you like Mueller more than Donnie?? Do you?!?”

At the hearing, Rosenstein repeatedly declined to say whether Trump had ever asked him about the Russia Investigation. But he testified that he never received any “improper orders” from Trump and denied that anyone ever asked him to pledge his loyalty, dating back to his time in the Bush administration.

“Nobody has asked me to take a loyalty pledge, other than the oath of office,” Rosenstein said.

Sooo if this story is accurate then he wasn’t entirely telling the truth. Asking “are you on my team?” is asking for a loyalty pledge, surely.

While searching for Comey’s replacement, Trump interviewed acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. Trump asked McCabe who he voted for during that interview, according to a source familiar with the matter. McCabe did not vote for president in the 2016 general election but did vote in the Republican primary in Virginia, sources told CNN. Trump has publicly denied that he asked McCabe who he voted for.

Seven months later, Rosenstein made his pitch in the December meeting with the President, asking for White House backing as the Justice Department sought to deny access to sensitive documents demanded by Nunes, who has spent months pursuing claims of surveillance abuses by the FBI and the Justice Department against the Trump campaign.

To no avail, it seems. Dirty dirty dirty.



The reality of being born female

Jan 31st, 2018 12:45 pm | By



Horrors

Jan 31st, 2018 12:39 pm | By

The drawbacks to being born female:

An eight-month-old baby girl has been raped, allegedly by her cousin, in the Indian capital Delhi.

Police say she is in a critical condition after being admitted to hospital on Sunday. They have arrested the 28-year-old cousin.

Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal, who visited the girl, described her injuries as “horrific”.

Ms Maliwal tweeted that the baby had undergone a three-hour operation and that her cries could be heard in the hospital.

Geeta Pandey, BBC News, Delhi, has analysis:

This distressing case of assault on an infant has shocked India and made national headlines. The extent of her injuries has horrified many and prompted them to wonder whether we have reached a new low.

But a look at the statistics, compiled by the government, shows that such crimes are not uncommon.

And worryingly, their numbers are rising rapidly.

According to the latest National Crime Records Bureau data, 2016 saw 19,765 cases of child rape being registered in India – a rise of 82% from 2015 when 10,854 cases were recorded.

A couple of years ago, an 11-month-old was kidnapped by a neighbour while she slept next to her mother and brutally raped for two hours.

The tighter the better, I guess.



Some people are happy

Jan 31st, 2018 11:42 am | By

Al Jazeera gently points out mash notes to Trump’s speech from white supremacists.

White supremacists quickly took to social media to comment on the president’s comments, with many of them praising the characterisation of Americans as “dreamers”.

In a Twitter post, David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a racist organisation popular in the southern US for over a century after slavery ended in the 1860s, thanked the president.

Yes, some Americans Dream of a White Country.

During Trump’s electoral campaign in 2016, he came under fire for hesitancy to disavow Duke, who had pledged his support for the then Republican candidate.

In an interview with CNN, Trump had said of Duke and other white supremacists who endorsed him: “You wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about.”

Correction: we wouldn’t want you running for political office while not knowing who David Duke is.

Mike Cernovich, a conspiracy theorist and far-right commentator, described Tuesday as “a good day for the good guys” in response to Trump’s address.

Cernovich is affiliated with the “alt-light”, a far-right, pro-Trump movement that avoids the open white supremacy of the alt-right and advocates civic nationalism.

https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/958538670251757568

Oh yes, there’s nothing like a puffy orange millionaire in a bad suit for projecting strength.



Wisdom digested

Jan 31st, 2018 11:20 am | By

John Crace at the Guardian does a Digested Read version of Jordan Peterson’s already brisk 12 rules for being like Jordan Peterson.

1 Stand up straight with your shoulders straight
Most lobsters are complete bastards left to their own devices. Most humans are complete bastards left to their own devices. This proves there is a God who wants us to have Order. Order is Masculine and Chaos is Feminine. Therefore to move towards Order, we all need to man up.

Order is Masculine and Chaos is Feminine except when it’s the other way around. Men are the rebels, the lone geniuses, the innovators, the disrupters, while women are the boring anal petty rule-followers and tidiers of messes who stay home lining up the forks. Only a man could be a Nawesome Genius like Jordan Peterson; women color inside the lines and suck up to Teacher.

11 Do not bother children while they are skateboarding
This is the rule that’s the real catnip for right-wingers everywhere. Want to know why the world is falling apart? It’s because liberals are turning boys into girlies with their namby-pamby ways. Let boys do boy things and girls do girl things.

See? Order is Masculine but on the other hand boys must be very unlike girls and girls are, let’s face it, kind of weak and worthless.

Meanwhile I’d rather read Seneca.