#and the fact we have to call him russia's greatest love machine

[brimfulofwispa]

what never fails to amaze me is gen z's fascination with rasputin, russia's greatest love machine

[dearvitya]

YOI Fic Recs (Part 2)

Look through part 1 here!

Unsinkable (29k): Victor is a wealthy heir with a lonely soul. Yuuri is a poor dancer with a tender heart. The deck of the Titanic might be a very romantic place to meet your one true love, but it's not exactly a fortuitous one. [Titanic AU]

all the wrong turns (48k): After his disastrous Grand Prix Final, Katsuki Yuuri decides to try to be the first skater to land a quad axel in competition. It’s a secret from everyone, except the mysterious text correspondent who appeared in his phone contacts as “Poodle” following the Sochi GPF.

when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes pleasure (19k): Yuuri felt his body grow cold at the name; he had known a Mr. Nikiforov, once upon a time.

Five years after the implosion of their acquaintance, Mr. Viktor Nikiforov returns to —shire society, bringing in tow a young cousin. Mr. Katsuki must navigate these once-familiar waters without giving further offense, all while keeping his own heart firmly protected. [A Persuasion AU]

Love in Exile (99k): Once a well know ballet dancer in St. Petersburg, Victor Nikiforov finds himself exiled to Sakhalin Island as a political convict in 1881. As a man sentenced to katorga he will never return to European Russia or his life on the stage. Known as the "Edge of the World," his life on Sakhalin could not be further from the life he once knew. Strange circumstances lead his path to cross that of a young Japanese man, one of the very few still living on the island. Katsuki Yuuri leads a life of exile of a different kind, one that is largely self-imposed. Drawn to each other, despite their differences, something slowly begins to grow between them. When a narrowly avoided tragedy leaves them stranded together for a long, cold Sakhalin winter, they are challenged to face what their relationship really means, and what future it could possibly have.

Smooth Runs the Waters (3k): Inspector Yuuri Katsuki comes to Hillsborough Hall to investigate a murder most foul and its two primary suspects: newly widowed Victor Nikiforov and his younger brother Yuri Plisetsky. 

The Other Side of Sunset (325k): 1874, Wyoming Territory: Yuuri Katsuki Taylor has got his future planned…mostly. Learn how to manage his adoptive parents’ ranch, and inherit it when he’s older. Get married and have kids (someday – not now). And most of all, carry on riding his horse with Phichit and the other ranch hands on the open range and in the mountains. But when he meets Victor Nikiforov, the striking and talented new master horseman at the neighboring ranch – and is treated to a show of his Cossack-style trick riding – his world will never be the same again…

A tale of love, loss, grief, redemption, and second (and third) chances, set in the Old West. [Cowboys AU]

Like a River to the Sea (41k): Gifts from the gods can come in strange wrappings. They can also be mixed blessings, as Victor will discover in time.Living alone on the island of Fleves, near Athens, the last thing Victor expects as he combs the beach one morning is a peculiar treasure that appears seemingly from nowhere in the shape of a handsome young dark-haired man... [Greek mythology AU]

pick lilacs for the passing time (68k): A spark flares up inside him, the vestige of some part of himself he thought long buried now resurfacing to—what, haunt him? And then he realizes. I want to dance with him, Yuuri thinks.

In which the outlandish prodigy Victor Nikiforov hits Yuuri’s life like a whirlwind after he transfers to a prestigious ballet conservatory in Moscow, two grumpy teenagers learn to be friends, and Mila’s Straight Girl CrushTM might not be so straight after all.

for better, for worse (18k): Yakov quirks an eyebrow. “Vitya, we are not having some grand ceremony."

“It doesn’t have to be grand! But the registration office? Signing some papers? Where is the romance in that?”

or: The Trials and Tribulations of Viktor Nikiforov, Six-Time World Champion and Wedding Planner Extraordinaire.

in the woods somewhere (32k): One evening in late autumn, Yuuri goes out to collect firewood. He returns with a man instead. (Viktor, Yuuri, and the end of isolation.)

The Death of Koschei the Deathless (39k): They tell tale of heroes, of men that slay monsters, and defy fate itself. Yuuri Katsuki is no hero. He's just a failed wizard trying to keep his shop afloat. This is the story of how Yuuri Katsuki fell in love with Viktor Nikiforov, and in doing so conquered death.

For the Record (10k): FOR THE RECORD by Viktor Nikiforov 

What it takes to craft an Olympic Champion, and what it takes to be one.

Or: Viktor Nikiforov, sports journalist and retired figure skater, interviews Olympic Champion Yuuri Katsuki for an exclusive piece.

Happiness Writes White (37k): Yuuri falls asleep after his first day in St. Petersburg and wakes up in a strange hospital room. To his dismay, the last year of skating has all been a dream simulation designed to wake him from a long coma. Viktor Nikiforov is, in fact, not a figure skater at all, but the creator of the program, and this real world Viktor is nothing like the one he knows.

and you knew what it was (he is in love) (204k): Here's what's normal for Katsuki Yuuri: playing Quidditch, practicing spells, keeping to himself.

Here's what's not normal for Katsuki Yuuri: transferring to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in his fourth year and getting to know his idol, International Quidditch Star Viktor Nikiforov. 

But maybe there's a reason they say love is the greatest magic of all. [Harry Potter AU]

All Our Yesterdays (1M): York, England, 2120: Yuuri Katsuki is a dime-a-dozen techie, spending his days doing routine repairs at the university. He hangs out with his friend Phichit, goes for a drink, watches holograms. It’s an existence – but is it a life?

Crowood Castle, Yorkshire, 1392: As the son of a baron, Sir Victor Nikiforov makes judgements where lives hang in the balance. As a knight, he must sometimes end them. It’s what he was born to do – but what of the heavy burden on his soul? Death is all too commonplace, while life and love remain elusive.

When a brilliant scientist goes rogue, journeying to the Middle Ages with the world’s first time machine, Yuuri is stunned to be called on as the last hope of preventing her from changing history. After an abrupt departure, he lands at Crowood Castle disguised as an enemy of the Nikiforovs, Sir Justin le Savage – and will need to act the part if he is to survive. It’s a tall order for someone who can barely tell the back end of a horse from the front. But if Ailis, in her own disguise, discovers who he is, his mission will end in a blaze of laser-gun fire. He must not give his real identity away, even to the beguiling knight he’s falling in love with…

[charliejrogers]

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

In 2006, Borat was one of those great cultural touchstones that transcended the big screen. There was no aspect of pop culture after its release that wasn’t in some way affected. It perfectly coincided with the rising popularity of YouTube, such that those who hadn’t seen it (or couldn’t because they were too young to get into the rated R movie) could at least see many of its famous clips.  Everyone knew Borat in 2006. Everyone. You couldn’t go two fucking steps without someone going “very nice!” or “my wife!” It was such a wonderfully smart movie. It combined the best aspects of a Jackass movie, i.e. the trolling of innocent and unsuspecting bystanders, with a noble cause, to expose to the world the ignorant side of America. It was a novel and insightful look at our country.

In 2020… there is no insight in telling us that much of the country is ignorant of the truth, racist, or sexist. As Borat himself points out in this film, in the years between when he filmed the first movie (2005) and the new movie 2019-2020, America has become transfixed by their new “magical abacuses”, i.e. cellphones. Phones, the internet, social media, all of them expose us everyday to how the other half lives in their little social bubbles. We don’t have to wonder “do people really think this?” Just type whatever terrible or stupid theory you can think of into Google, and you’re guaranteed to find at least one person who endorses whatever heinous thing you just wrote. Again, this is portrayed within the film when Borat, confronted by the fact that maybe some of his core beliefs are lies, finds websites that say that (much to his anti-Semitic disappointment) the Holocaust was not real. So, one is left wondering… what can Borat bring to the table in 2020 that is fresh?

Unfortunately, the answer is… not a whole lot. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm feels mostly like a retread of 2006 with the only additions aiming more for “shock factor” than real comedy aimed to grab headlines (which it succeeded in doing). This is not to say this is not a funny movie. It is. The film’s opening where Borat describes the typical (fictionalized) Kazakh’s view of American politics is hysterical. In sum, America went to shit with the election of Obama, paving the way for other Africans to take power of the West (cue the photo of Justin Trudeau in Black face). Now with Trump in power, Borat is sent on a mission to curry Trump’s favor so that Kazakhstan and its leader will be viewed with the same favor that Trump has bestowed upon other “tough guys and tough guy countries” like Russia/Putin, the Philippines/Duerte, North Korea/Kim Jong Un, Brazil/Bolsonaro, etc. The gift is supposed to be an overly sexually aggressive chimp for Vice Pussy Hound (i.e. Vice President) Pence. However, Borat’s daughter Tutar sneaks into the crate with the chimp, and after a chain of events Borat has no choice but to gift his daughter over to Pence, and eventually Rudy Giuliani, instead.

It’s a simple enough plot but I think the movie gets a little too caught up in it. No one is asking for a plot line for this movie. If this were just a string of sketches with a vague whiff of a plot to transition between the sketches no one would fault it. In fact, that sounds like the first Borat. We are just here for the sketches. Yet the movie is looking to do a little bit more than the first movie. It’s not content to just say, “Hey, look at yourself, America! You’re fucked up! Let’s all laugh at you.” This movie has specific targets that dominate its focus: Trump and Trumpland.

This is, I think, an unfortunate choice not because I don’t approve of bashing Trump and Trumpland, but because whereas the first movie felt like comedy was king with the sociopolitical insights as a dominant undercurrent, here the story and the humiliation of Trump and his base is the end goal. This still makes for funny scenes, but when I think back to the first Borat (and as I re-watched clips of the first movie after finishing this movie), some of the greatest parts of Borat had nothing to do with politics or sensitive subjects. Much of the humor was just based around the ballsiness of Sacha Baron Cohen. This is a guy who when invited into a person’s home for dinner makes openly sexually complimentary remarks about two of the female guests, but explicitly states that the host’s wife is ugly. Never mind the fact that at that same dinner party, Borat hand-delivers his shit in a bag to a guest, claiming to not know how Western toilets work. It’s hilarious, it’s daring, and has nothing to do with politics.

In essence, the first Borat was such a success because Cohen played the character with such a believable naivete and loose grasp of English idioms, that he was a factory of malapropisms, a genius of comedic-timing, and a troll that could annoy the ever-living daylights out of anyone. There are as many scenes of him trolling nice, innocent people (like the driving instructor, the man who teaches him jokes, the group of feminists, or really any time he goes on the news) as there are scenes of him trolling people so that Cohen can make a political point or social observation (like the singing the wrong national anthem at the rodeo or his innate criticism of a Pentecostal Chruch’s weirdness). And in the end, the “point” of that plot at least had nothing to do with politics. You can watch this movie, get your laughs, remark at America’s racism, and still get your laughs.

Here, there really isn’t any scene I can think of that wasn’t done to make some sort of observation or political point. The closest I can think of are the bits towards the beginning before the plot kicks into high gear. There’s a recurring bit I love of him communication with the Premier of Kazakhstan via fax machine at a local UPS Store. The genius isn’t contained in the sentence I just wrote, but that he requires the aging worker of the UPS Store to hand-write all of his faxes for him and read any and all replies. Similarly, there’s a quick bit of genius at the beginning where Borat goes to a cellphone store and cannot understand FaceTime at all. He assumes the person on the phone must be the brother of the phone store worker he sees in front of him; they cannot be the same. Similarly he somehow enlists the help of a delivery person to re-seal the crate in which his daughter came to America in.

But otherwise, the jokes are there either to say, “Woah! Aren’t these Americans terrible?!” (whether he’s talking about QAnon’s theorists, anti-abortionists, or anti-maskers). Or there’s gross out humor, mostly about vaginas and periods, (or moon blood, as Borat calls it). As I said, these aren’t all unfunny. Probably my favorite sequence in the film sees Borat and his daughter at a pregnancy crisis center because Tutar has accidentally swallowed a little baby doll that was on top of a cupcake her father had “given” to her as a “treat” that was just supposed to be “their little secret” because women in Kazakhstan aren’t supposed to have sweets. So she ate the cupcake behind a dumpster. I’ll let you guess what happens when you enter a Christian pregnancy crisis center asking for them to take out the dumpster baby your Dad wasn’t supposed to be giving you… but it’s hilarious to see the worker sorta squirm his away around addressing the reality of incest.

But mostly, I felt kinda fatigued knowing that Cohen and co. were mostly trying to show me the “underside” of QAnon and anti-maskers… but as I said, in 2020, I am unfortunately well aware of both these groups, their psychologies, and their world. So merely highlighting that these ideas exist and that the people who endorse these ideas don’t really have a lot of great ideas otherwise, isn’t that novel as it might have been back in 2006.

Probably the more “interesting” side of the film is it’s focus on feminism. The film uses Tutar (played perfectly by previously unknown Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova and deserves all the praise she gets) to really expose how America, despite being a “feminist” nation, still shares many aspects with the fictionalized version of Kazakhastan where women are considered equivalent to livestock. The movie hopes to shed light on the far reaching effects of the patriarchy. The movie ends at the top of the pyramid with politicians who feel like it is their right to use their power to sleep with whomever they want (Trump’s obviously the true target of this criticism and I will say, the final Giuliani scene feels a little bit like entrapment… that said, I think it’s fair to say not every man would be so willing to fall into that trap). But leading up to that we see aspects of America designed to fit perfectly with the patriarchy’s demands. We hear from a shallow, vapid Instagram influencer that to get by women need to be docile and pretty, and we see a frankly horrifying discussion from a plastic surgeon talking about all the things wrong with Tutar that he would fix with surgery so that men would want her… despite the fact that she’s a beautiful woman and has nothing wrong with her! We live in a society that recognizes the horror of a patriarchical society, but still so clearly buys into it.

But in the end… you’re not watching Borat Subsequent Moviefilm to get an education on feminism and the problems with the patriarchy. That should be the extra cherry on top of a main course of hearty laughter. In focuses on the politics, Cohen and co. find plenty of laughs and memorable moments, but fail (perhaps inevitably) to recreate the signature naivete and bumbling oafishness of his titular interviewer, in the process losing some of the film’s humor and paradoxically its ability to leave a lasting message.

**/ (Two and a half stars out of four)

[f1chronicle]

Why The 2020 Portuguese Grand Prix Will Be An Important Race For Antonio Giovinazzi?

When Formula 1 last featured a Portuguese Grand Prix, Alfa Romeo driver Antonio Giovinazzi was yet to celebrate his third birth anniversary.

When the Martina Franca-born enters his maiden drive at the Portimao-bound Algarve International Circuit, come Sunday, i.e., October 25, he will have two broad objectives in mind:

Which is to not just outperform his 41-year-old teammate but also record another impressive finish inside the points. For truth be told, it’s about time the Italian made up for a string of several lost chances of staking a claim in the 2021 line-up at his current employer.

To his credit, the product of the Ferrari Driver Academy has age and reflexes on his side, the latter of which actually epitomized what might be called- arguably speaking- one of the most underrated efforts at the recently held Eifel Grand Prix 2020 (where he scored a fighting P9 and hence, 2 points).

The driver at Nurburgring

George Russell (GBR) Williams Racing FW43. Eifel Grand Prix, Saturday 10th October 2020. Nurbugring, Germany.

Much was said about the desperately dangerous Nurburgring, the Green Hell returning to the roster after a gap of 7 long years.

But with attention resting with usual stars out in the front, the midfield wasn’t too far behind in lighting up a truly memorable race.

Antonio Giovinazzi, who began from fourteenth on the grid in the heart of the Eifel mountains, found himself immediately caught up in a web where the twin Alpha Tauris were not just ahead but attacking for grid positions.

To fight with the Russian Torpedo in a visibly stronger machine wasn’t his only challenge. He had to contend with beating Monza’s much-loved winner Pierre Gasly, too, the in-form driver at the Italian stable.

But Antonio Giovinazzi held his nerve. Sticking to the inside of the two faster cars out in front, he all but passed Kvyat in the run down to Turn 1. A brave move, which should’ve paid off but didn’t due to heavy braking as the trio negotiated the sharp right-hander.

Immediately after exiting turn 1 came ‘Tonio’s’ finest moment of the race, the one that warranted greater attention than given.

Despite not powered with a burst of speed, this being a barely quick and rather dreary machine, the lanky driver held to the inside, the racing line, and continued to attack, the plan ultimately paying off as lunged ahead of the two Tauris.

Now Sebastian Vettel, in the Ferrari, was next; a target Antonio Giovinazzi would hunt with utter ease, the Alfa Romeo carrying great traction in the approach to Turn 3, a right-hander. Vettel’s pace little match to Alfa’s Romeo.

Eventually, as Giovinazzi gathered Ninth, not before holding off more powerful cars, he gathered only a second finish inside points this season.

Holding On Despite Lost Chances

Antonio passed 2 Alpha Tauris and 1 Ferrari inside the opening lap at Nurburgring

To many, this was a guy trying to make do for lost chances, which isn’t hard to deny. But was that all?

You’d reckon, to the observer for whom the sport is not just about mega stars but about a consolidation of the powers that give the FORMULA 1 grid twenty of the world’s fastest men in a racing car, this was a bloke trying to indicate- I’m not done yet.

Frankly, the man whose first entry in Formula 1 was the 2017 Australian Grand Prix, a race in which he began from sixteenth, but finished twelfth (in the process of which he’s beat his then Sauber-teammate Marcus Ericsson), you’d feel Antonio Giovinazzi hasn’t had the greatest 2020.

To his critics, a man who’s the oldest on the grid has beaten him; even more so, a man whose reflexes haven’t quite deserted him despite age and et cetera.

A Reflection Of 2020 Challenges

Source: Planet F1

But then it was then it was the younger of the two Alfa Romeo drivers who scored the first points for the Swiss stable, beating Kimi Raikkonen in the opening round itself (2020 Styrian Grand Prix)

Interestingly, the Kimi versus Antonio fight- a clean tussle minus the scathing stains of a rivalry- has seen the Italian hit back at the Finn where recent races stand.

After his disappointing results at Spa-Francorchamps (DNF), Monza (P16), and FORMULA 1’s first-ever run at Tuscany (DNF, leading to P17), events where whereas Kimi finished higher up, managing to score his first points at the mayhem-making Mugello track, Antonio’s returned to form.

Just that his improvements- P11 in Russia in comparison to Raikkonen’s P14 and the valiant P10 at Eifel GP in comparison to the Finn’s P12- haven’t made the noise they should have or deserved.

But then, Antonio Giovinazzi’s life isn’t a jazz concert with soothing touches and soft melodies with many hovering around that Alfa Romeo 2021 seat. It’s a coveted target for would-be F1 drivers, the likes of which include- Mick Schumacher.

To make the road difficult, just to take stock of the Antonio Giovinazzi-predicament, if you want to call it, paddock grapevine already suggests that Kimi might stay on to ‘mentor’ the next Schumacher.

Should that come true, we could see the promising speedster who’s fighting to live another day, sidelined. Who knows what might happen; Haas are already gambling with the big ‘next,’ Grosjean and Magnussen finding other takers for their seat- the Hulk, after all, isn’t done yet.

Ditto for the vastly underappreciated Sergio Perez.

But what must find some light is the fact that Antonio Giovinazzi’s 2020 season isn’t only about the sterling effort at the season-opener at Austria.

In between losing the mojo to Raikkonen, responsible for putting the Alfa Romeo into Q2 for the first time ever, Spain, after 8 previous failed attempts by the duo- Giovinazzi’s dealt with no song, but more drama thanks to being powered by an underpowered car.

His is a machine that in 2020, is effectively, a backmarker, which, a world of a difference from the 2019 package that helped the mild-mannered bloke attain his best-ever F1 result: the P5 at Interlagos, Brazilian GP.

Blame it on the Ferrari engine or the lack of one that none could’ve imagined would come from a place as esteemed as Maranello.

The Fight Despite The 2020 Car

But the Alfa Romeo C39, at times, seems like a C-class, not in reference to one of Mercedes’ most liked sedan model but a FORMULA 1 car that actually seems as though it could be beaten by the conventional luxury sedan.

Yet, it’s also the car with which Antonio Giovinazzi is persisting with, never with an angry grunt but with customary simplicity. Remember the move on Grosjean- not exactly a mild warrior on the grid- at Sochi?

Remember those reflexes at Mugello before the red-flag, where he only just avoided running into Sebastian Vettel (toward the back of the grid) showing supreme caution, despite being contacted by Gasly in an unexpected opening lap skirmish?

The Long-Haired Dude Who Should Carry On?

The man who scored his first points in FORMULA 1 in 2019, at Austria, where a P10 saw more smiles in the Alfa paddock than any epic Kimi one-liner, has seen better days in the past.

A not so recent past where he would become the only Alfa Romeo driver to lead a Grand Prix all season in 2019 where under bright Singapore lights, he soldiered on, finishing eventually on tenth.

Sadly though, the fan can only do as much as voice opinion on social media or take sides in friendly discussions where passions and banter run high. One can’t afford the luxury to have the man hold onto a FORMULA 1 drive (2021).

For that, the powers that be shall play the judge. But before the verdict is delivered on the grey-eyed youngster, let a thing be known.

That drivers significantly experienced than Antonio are sitting below Italy’s only current F1 racer, including a troika that have driven for McLaren, Ferrari, and Lotus.

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[phroyd]

Trump Moves To Create and Sustain an Imperial Presidency. There are no longer three Branches of Government. - Phroyd

William Barr, the attorney general, came face to face this week with Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, at the Capitol in Washington. Shaking her hand, Barr was said to have joked:“Madam Speaker, did you bring your handcuffs?”

The remark, at a ceremony honouring fallen law enforcement officers, was a riposte to Pelosi’s quip a week earlier that if all members of the Trump administration were arrested, the jail in the Capitol basement would be overcrowded. (There is in fact no such jail.)

But it was also indicative of how Barr, and his paymaster in the White House, are perceived to be laughing in the face of congressional oversight and the rule of law. Indeed, following the sporting maxim that attack is the best form of defence, Trump had adopted the language of a tinpot dictator, denouncing the Russia investigation as a failed “coup”, branding his pursuers as traitors and threatening to lock them up.

“My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on,” he tweeted at 7.11am on Friday. “Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!”

He’s attempting to create a counter-narrative based on conspiracy theories in which the FBI is cast as the villain

The intention, critics argue, is to turn the tables and delegitimise the case laid out against him in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference, or at least crank up a giant fog machine that leaves the electorate weary and confused. But one side-effect could be a slide into an imperial presidency.

“Investigate the investigators!” has been the battle cry of Trump, Republicans and media allies ever since Barr produced a four-page summary of Mueller’s report that misleadingly implied Trump had been completely cleared of collusion and obstruction of justice. In fact the report documented numerous contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials and identified 11 instances in which Trump or his campaign attempted to illegally impede the investigation.

On 25 March, the day after Barr’s letter was released, the Fox News host Sean Hannity bristled with self-righteous indignation and thirsted for vengeance.

“This must be a day of reckoning for the media, for the deep state, for people who abuse power, and they did it so blatantly in this country,” he told viewers in a furious 25-minute monologue. “If we do not get this right, if we do not hold these people accountable, I promise you, with all the love I can muster for this country and our future for our kids and grandkids, we will lose the greatest country God has ever given man. We will lose it.”

That set the template for Trump, a regular viewer. Having spent two years trying to discredit Mueller’s work as a witch-hunt and hoax, he stepped up demands for an investigation into its origins and pushed the claim that the FBI spied on his 2016 campaign.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, said: “He’s attempting to create a counter-narrative based on conspiracy theories in which the FBI chiefly is cast as the villain of the deep state. It’s what is known as chaff. It’s to throw people off of the actual object itself and distract them from his well-documented crimes of obstruction of justice in the Mueller report.”

Trump is backed by Republicans, eager to grab ammunition that comes to hand. They have falsely claimed the investigation was triggered by a dossierfrom the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, which included reference to a so-called “pee tape” in Moscow, and cited anti-Trump text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to allege inherent bias.

But it is Barr who has emerged as the president’s most indispensable ally, his improbable Darth Vader. Testifying on Capitol Hill earlier this month, the attorney general used the incendiary word “spying” to describe FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign, a term later rejected by the FBI director, Christopher Wray.

Barr has asked John Durham, the US attorney in Connecticut, to examine whether the FBI erred in seeking a special federal court warrant to conduct surveillance on the former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. An investigation into the legality of the warrant is already under way, led by the justice department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, who is due to release his findings in coming weeks.

Barr is also working with Wray, the CIA director, Gina Haspel, and the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, to review intelligence-gathering techniques used to investigate the Trump campaign. In the meantime, ever loyal to Trump, Barr continues to defy Congress’s demands for the release of the unredacted Mueller report and underlying materials.

Democrats sense a crude ploy by Trump to deflect and distract, parry and prevaricate. Congressman Jared Huffman of California said: “It’s a smokescreen, obviously an attempt to change the subject like everything else he does. I almost don’t want to dignify it because it’s so preposterous that any time someone investigates Donald Trump or disagrees with Donald Trump they are being treasonous or they need to be locked up.

“This is a slippery slope to a banana republic if this is where we’re heading. And I think most Americans get that. You just don’t call for your political enemies to be investigated and jailed in the United States.”

Huffman called for an impeachment process and hearings.

“If [Richard] Nixon was the imperial presidency, this is the imperial presidency on steroids without any sideboards or adult supervision of any kind,” he said. “It’s a real crisis. I still believe we’re going to get through it because I think the institutions and the fabric of this country are still rooted in the rule of law and democracy and checks and balances, but we’re being tested like never before and I would be lying if I said I didn’t worry about it.”

‘Trumpification of the DoJ’

One of the rich ironies of Republican claims of bias in the FBI is that during the election the agency kept its Trump investigation secret but talked openly about its scrutiny of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. The then director, James Comey, held an extraordinary press conference in which he branded Clinton’s handling of emails as secretary of state as “extremely careless”. Eleven days before the election, Comey announced the FBI was reviewing more Clinton messages. Many Democrats have still not forgiven him.

Barr says Trump’s campaign was ‘spied’ upon. Trump claims treason. Both are incendiary. Neither is true

Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee, tweeted on Friday: “Barr says Trump’s campaign was ‘spied’ upon. Trump claims treason. Both are incendiary. Neither is true. Barr suggests a finger was put on the scale to affect the election. But the Trump probe was kept secret; the Clinton one wasn’t. It’s the Trumpification of the DoJ.”

Matthew Miller, former director of the office of public affairs for the justice department, said: “There are a few galling things. First, it would have been crazy for the FBI not to investigate [Trump’s] campaign given what Mueller found. Second, it would have been very easy for the FBI to stop Trump becoming president if that was their intention by leaking what they found. Third, the FBI publicly criticised his opponent: the FBI did have an impact but it was to hurt Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump!”

Miller, now a partner at Vianovo and justice and security analyst for MSNBC, added: “It’s a brazenly cynical strategy by the president and his allies. He hasn’t had a great explanation for what he did so what he’s done for two years is attack the investigation.

“The notion has existed since Watergate that there should be a separation between the White House and Department of Justice. It’s been erased. It’s just gone. It will probably come back when there’s a Democratic president, because they tend to be more sensitive to elite opinion, but the next Republican president will [not] see any reason to restore it.”

Just as the justice department is succumbing to Trump, so Congress is also struggling to maintain its status as a co-equal branch of government. The White House continues to stonewall House subpoenas for documents and hearings, not only regarding the Mueller report but Trump’s tax returns and other matters. The Democratic-led House judiciary committee has voted to hold Barr in contempt of Congress but the party is divided over whether to impeach his boss.

Max Bergmann, a former state department official, said: “We’re seeing an effort by the president to neutralise this as an issue for the 2020 election. He sees a gap because the Democrats have shown reticence in their willingness to prosecute the case against him. We have a situation where there is a vacuum and Trump sees an opportunity to attack the investigation, partly because Democrats aren’t using the results of it to attack him.

“The problem with not using the levers of congressional power is that it lends credence to the arguments Trump has been making. In the public’s mind, it might seem that because Trump is not being impeached, maybe he was exonerated. What is amazing about the Republican side is the ability to manufacture outrage over nothing; they eat, sleep and breathe scandal politics. Democrats are terrified of it and and run from it, even when it’s the biggest political scandal in American history. The inaction over the last four weeks has been unconscionable.”

‘We’ve crossed a Rubicon’

It was perhaps no coincidence that Trump hosted Viktor Orbán, strongman leader of Hungary, at the White House this week.

Bergmann, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress think-tank in Washington, and director of the Moscow Project, charting Trump’s involvement in Russian attacks on US democracy, said: “We’ve crossed a Rubicon. For the past two years, Trump has not been able to use the justice department to seek revenge against his opponents and as a political tool.

“Now he and his team have learned, and Trump has appointed someone in Barr who is a Washington insider, knows the justice department and is able to operate as the president’s hatchet man. For the past two years, we’ve said the institutions have held. Now we’re at a critical pivot where Trump has learned how to use the institutions to his advantage.

“It’s a dark turn. With the decline of our institutions, the decline of our moral authority, Trump is trying to turn the the moniker of an ‘imperial presidency’ into an autocratic presidency along the lines of Viktor Orbán or Vladimir Putin.

“The stakes couldn’t be higher for the future of American democracy in 2020.”

Phroyd

[zarrycheri-blog]

!!!ZARRY FIC REC!!!

I’ve read some fics this past month or so that are THE GREATEST but I feel are very underrated and deserve way more reads so I decided to make a fic rec. Enjoy!!!

This list (like my life) is NOT in order.

Those Heavy Days in June by Blueghosts (81,740)

Summary: There’s a certain spark that doesn’t ignite until now, bubbling and tingling away underneath the surface of his skin that needs just the inconsequential touch of a palm, or a brush of a knuckle, or a kiss to explode, and the only fear in Zayn’s mind, the most important and dire and breath-taking thought, is if Harry feels it, too; if he senses the pops between the surges of blood in his veins before they fall away into nothing but an aftermath of withdrawal, and it’s too late. Otherwise, they’re both on the road to Russia, with nothing but a past of what could have been’s behind them, and Zayn knows he’s going to go home with a hole in his chest that Harry will never get the chance to fill again.

(Zayn is heading to a funeral, whilst Harry is heading to a wedding. Zayn is great with words, and Harry is awful with them. Harry thinks Zayn hates him, and Zayn isn't sure how he feels anymore.)

GUYS THIS FIC RIGHT HERE IS UNDOUBTEDLY ONE OF THE BEST FICS IVE EVER READ. IT WAS SLOWBURN AND OMYGOD THE FEELS I JUST- I CANT EXPLAIN IT ITS SO GREAT JUST PLEASE READ THIS FIC YOU WONT REGRET IT.

dissolve by fondleeds (15,097)

Summary: He doesn’t remember the first time Harry kissed him. It might have been at the bungalow, an empty vodka bottle spinning between five scared-shitless boys who knew nothing about anything at all. It might have been in a dark hotel room with the television glowing red-hot and grimy, spilling shadows between the wet space of their mouths. It might have been on the bus, on that couch, four in the morning with their eyes half-closed and Harry’s laptop ebbing Patsy Cline like a third pair of eyes.

-

A night in New York.

THIS IS SO WELL WRITTEN AND I LOVED EVERY SINGLE PART OF IT. IT WAS JUST REALLY BEAUTIFUL PLEASE READ IT.

Coffee, Confessions and Other Trials of Being A Secret Service Agent by The_Wavesinger (18,344)

Summary: In which Harry Styles is a Secret Service Agent, Zayn Malik is the President, and all they do is talk, really. (Oh, and flirt awkwardly. There's that.)

Or, there's not much plot but the backstory makes up for it?

THIS WAS SO FLUFFY AND CUTE I JUST LOVED IT SO MUCH.READ IT PLEASE IT’S AMAZING. (AND ALL THE FLIRTING- AHHHH SO CUTE)

In me, you can by manticoremoons (17,959)

Summary: "In order to fight monsters, we created monsters of our own. We needed a new weapon. The Jaeger Program was born. Two pilots, our minds, our memories connected. And in the machine, we become one."

It's 2064 and the world is a scary place. The kaiju have returned, and the humans have marshaled their defenses to fight back once again.

THE CHEMISTRY BETWEEN HARRY AND ZAYN IN THIS STORY IS SO FUCKING STRONG OMYGOD AND THIS STORY IS JUST SO HOT AND AGHAJNSJAAK I JUST CANT EXPLAIN IT WELL ENOUGH ITS SO GOOD READ IT!!

Hear Your Heart by purpledaisy (78,217)

Summary: “That collective groan leads me to some more rules: do not cry, do not complain, and do not be embarrassing. This isn’t an easy job by any means but you all chose it. If you didn’t, get out now.”

-

Written for the prompt:Harry and Zayn are first year surgical interns.

The summary reminded me of Grey’s Anatomy so ofc I read it and LET ME TELL YOU- THIS FIC MAKES YOU FEEL PAIN AND LOVE JUST LIKE GREY’S ANATOMY DOES AND IT’S JUST SO FUCKING GREAT AND IT MAKES YOU FEEL EVERYTHING SO MUCH (IN A GOOD WAY) AND ITS JUST- AHH READ IT!

We are who we are (when no one’s watching) by darkzarrie (26,253)

Summary: 11.) He’s afraid of flying.

Harry’s never told anyone that he’s afraid of flying, just because it sounds lame. He isn’t phobic or anything. It’s not like he can’t get on a plane. It just… he prefers to be on the ground, is all.

He goes to pick up the laminated safety instructions and begins to read. He’s only disturbed when the person who’s assigned to sit next to him excuses himself so he can pass by and take the window seat. Harry goes to move and looks up at the stranger.

His world stops right in front of him at the sight of the man. He's the most beautiful man Harry’s ever seen. And he’s seen Ryan Gosling in person, mind you.

He was about to go introduce himself to the lovely stranger beside him when he hears Gigi’s voice through the speakers. “Thank you for flying with IMG Air. Please fasten your seatbelt, our flight is about to take off.”

Harry gulps at that and adjusts his already-tight seat belt. The announcement enough to distract him from the beautiful stranger. He’ll have to talk to him later.

-

or, Harry tells a complete stranger all his secrets and he finds out later he’s the CEO for the company he works for.

also, a secret relationship AU that no one asked for.

OK THIS- THIS STORY AAGHGAGHAHHG FIRST OF ALL, I FUCKING LOVE ZAYN SM IN THIS FIC. SECOND, HARRYS SO CUTE AND SOMETIMES OBLIVIOUS I LOVEEE IT. THIRD, IT’S SO FUNNY OMG AND ITS JUST GAHHH I LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS AND I GENUINELY WITH EVERY PART OF ME HOPE THE AUTHOR COMPLETES THIS STORY JSJSJSJ.(READ IT!!)

Drowning Shadows by Purpledaisy (99,265)

Summary: AU: Harry Styles, executive recruiter, finally meets his match in Zayn Malik. Or, Harry builds walls and Zayn breaks everything.

THIS MADE ME FEEL SO MUCH AND I LOVED LOVED LOVED EVERY SINGLE PART. I JUST LOVE THIS SO MUCH AND IT DESERVES SO MUCH MORE READS AND KUDOS SO PLEASEEEEE READ THIS.

We’re still Roaming by Catholicschoolgirl (39,065)

Summary: "Zayn gradually discovers that Harry Styles is, in fact, the devil. And, like the devil, Styles is exceptionally charming and probably very well-intentioned. He brings baked goods to their Events meetings. He smiles a lot and wears tight jeans that are very distracting. On the surface, he is everything that the Co-Chair of a Parent’s Association should be. But what Zayn very quickly ascertains is that Styles can be all of those things and also somehow manage to embody every single horrible stereotype about PTA parents at the same time."

Zayn's bored and decides to volunteer for the PTA at his daughter's school. He may or may not come to regret this decision.

OK I AM A SUCKER FOR KIDFICS AND ENEMY TO LOVER FICS AND THIS WAS BOTH IN ONE AND ITS JUST SO SO SO SOOOOOO WELL WRITTEN AND ITS JUST CO AMAZING! PLEASE READ IT AND IF YOU’VE ALREADY READ IT, WELL READ IT AGAIN.

Your Lips Taste like June by stephaniereads (12,317)

Summary: “See something you like?” Harry teases, his voice loud enough that everyone notices.

All the eyes in the room land on Zayn and his own widen. Harry grins, satisfied that he’s finally gotten a reaction out of him.

“I uh- you had something on your shirt,” Zayn mumbles, his lips twitching into a frown when he hears Liam and Louis giggling in the corner. “Look, are we going to the bonfire or not?”

Or the one where Harry meets Zayn at summer camp and they fall in love almost as fast as the summer goes by.

I LOVE ALL THE FLIRTING IN THIS!! ITS SO CUTE AND I THINK THE FACT THAT THE SETTING IS A SUMMER CAMP MAKE IT EVEN? MORE? CUTER? IDK ITS GREAT READ IT!!

Made Room for One by godonlyknows (14,273)

Summary:"Oh, well. Sorry. I really need to ask you a favor, though," Niall says, and Harry groans again. "I got a mate who needs a place to stay."

"And you're calling me because...?"

"Because you owe me, and you’ve got a free couch. Please? It's only for a few days, a week tops."

"Niall..." Harry sighs, running a hand across his face, "Do I even know this guy?"

Or: Zayn needs a place to stay, Harry's got a free couch, and both get more than they were expecting.

THIS IS SO VERY DOMESTIC AND SOOO CUTE. I LOVEDDD IT. IT’S JUST REALLY GOOD PLEASE READ IT!!

Happy reading!!

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 20/03/2021 (Central Cee, KSI/YUNGBLUD/Polo G)

On the tenth week that a song appears on the UK Singles Chart, it becomes likely that it has a cut to its streaming numbers by the Official Charts Company, particularly if it’s still in the top 10 and especially if it’s #1. So, the streaming and sales do not change, but the Official Charts Company just weighs them differently. This means that it’s often that songs reliant on streaming – read: most of the chart given that the UK doesn’t factor in radio – drop intensely on that particular week. Therefore, we switched out our Pokémon and “drivers license” by Olivia Rodrigo has been replaced at #1 after nine weeks by “Wellerman”, an 1800s sea shanty from New Zealand covered by Nathan Evans and remixed as a pop-house song by 220 KID and Billen Ted. Of course. I don’t know all of the complexities behind this rule but I do know it shakes up the chart at the cost of it being ridiculously inaccurate – I do think “drivers license” is probably still the biggest song in the country. “drivers license” is at #18 now, by the way. Yikes. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

We have a pretty interesting week, to say the least, but before all that, we can get through this brief rundown as always as we cover the UK Top 75 and all of what’s happening over there, since that’s what I cover. First of all, we do have some big drop-outs, like #1 hits “Roses” by SAINt JHN and remixed by Imanbek that seemingly had its second wind pummelled this week, and “positions” by Ariana Grande leaving somewhat prematurely. We also have “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers retreating to the other 25 slots I don’t cover because, well, of course, as well as “Midnight Sky” by Miley Cyrus and sadly, “Be the One” by Rudimental featuring MORGAN, TIKE and Digga D, but that’s all for the notable drops out of the chart. Still falling within the chart other than the aforementioned “drivers license” are... basically all of the Drake songs from last week falling behind the top 10 and even the top 20, and two of them being behind “Leave the Door Open” now – thankfully. “What’s Next” is at #20, “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” featuring Rick Ross is at #25 and “Wants and Needs” featuring Lil Baby is at #28. We also have a handful of other notable fallers like “WITHOUT YOU” by the Kid LAROI at #27, “Hold On” by Justin Bieber off of the debut at #31 (could rebound next week when the album makes its impact), “Paradise” by MEDUZA and Dermot Kennedy at #35, “Anxious” by AJ Tracey off of the debut to #45, “Anyone” by Justin Bieber at #49, “Medicine” by James Arthur at #54, “Bluuwuu” by Digga D at #57, “34+35” by Ariana Grande at #58, “Dance Monkey” by Tones and I at #60, “Toxic” by Digga D at #61, “Good Days” by SZA at #64, “Whoopty” by CJ at #65, “Prisoner” by Miley Cyrus featuring Dua Lipa at #66, “Afterglow” by Ed Sheeran at #68, “Regardless” by RAYE and Rudimental at #69, “you broke me first” by Tate McRae at #71 and finally, “Lemonade” by Internet Money and Gunna featuring Don Toliver and NAV at #75. I hope that next week is the last time I need to say “Lemonade” by Internet Money and Gunna featuring Don Toliver and NAV, not because the song is bad but that is a convoluted credit if I’ve ever seen one. In terms of gains and returning entries, it does get interesting. The only return is for “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles at #67, but our gains include “Didn’t Know” by Tom Zanetti at #56, “Heartbreak Anniversary” by Given at #42 thanks to the video, “Ferrari Horses” by D-Block Europe featuring RAYE at #36 off of the debut, “We’re Good” by Dua Lipa at #32, “All You Ever Wanted” by Rag’n’Bone Man at #29, “Astronaut in the Ocean” by Masked Wolf at #24, “Let’s Go Home Together” by Ella Henderson and Tom Grennan at #21, “Little Bit of Love” also by Grennan at #13, “Streets” by Doja Cat at #12 thanks to the video and three songs making their first entry into the top 10 after picking up the pace on the charts recently: “Commitment Issues” by Central Cee at #9 thanks to his album, “BED” by Joel Corry, RAYE and David Guetta at #8 and finally, to my dismay, “Latest Trends” by A1 x J1 at #2 thanks to a remix featuring Aitch. Sigh, okay, well, we have a... curious selection of new arrivals so let’s start with that.

NEW ARRIVALS

#73 – “You’ve Done Enough” – Gorgon City and DRAMA

Produced by Gorgon City and DRAMA

Gorgon City are a British EDM duo who were particularly big back in 2014 or so when they had their top 10 hits, particularly “Ready for Your Love”, which peaked at #4, but they haven’t really had much success since in the UK or Europe in general. This time, however, they’ve clinched a spot in the top 75 by collaborating with DRAMA, another electronic duo except they’re from Chicago instead of north London and the vocalist here, Via Rosa, is actually from DRAMA and not some uncredited session vocalist or a sample, which surprised me because the vocals here are genuinely great and remind me a lot of these booming diva voices used so commonly in 90s house. In fact, I think this whole song is genuinely great, relying on a house groove that is pretty damn funky and some subtle keys making the foundation for a bouncy four-on-the-floor beat, with the shaky percussion just adding the spice on top of it. It helps that this chorus is pretty ethereal, with Rosa’s vocals booming over this angelic synth blend before a pretty ugly-sounding drop but that is absolutely on purpose, as the content here is about that struggle between trying to find someone and trying to better yourself so you feel like you’d be worthwhile to anyone you end up meeting, which is kind of a depressing cycle in many ways... not that I’ve experienced that, but it sounds like it warrants the DRAMA here. There are tons of intricacies in the productions here too that make the song a lot more complete, particularly in the vocal production and all the intrusive bass wobbles by the second chorus and drop, so, yeah, for once, the generic house tune debuting low on the chart is a pretty great one. I wish it went somewhere further so it sounded like an actual song but as is, without a real bridge, this is still a good, almost anthemic dance track.

#70 – “Rasputin” – Majestic and Boney M.

Produced by Majestic and Frank Farian

Boney M. are a pretty legendary disco group collected by producer Frank Farian of several Caribbean singers to make some of the most fun pop music of the 70s. One of the most interesting things about this band were the fact that they were immensely popular in the Soviet Union back when that existed, and some Soviet films even show their songs playing during high-ranking Soviet government meetings, which sounds like pure comedy. Funnily enough, “Rasputin” was the only song Boney M. were forbidden to play in the USSR, even though it was still a big hit there. The 1978 song, a #2 hit for the band in the UK, basically retells the story that led to infamous and fascinating Tsarist Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin being assassinated, with most claims in the song itself being true or at least as far as we know, although the song does mostly focus on how much of a womaniser he was. The original hit is equally fascinating as the guy himself, with a great typical disco sound, those iconic strings and the use of Russian instrument balalaikas in its mix just furthering that intrigue. Now, in 2021, the song became a hit on TikTok because... of course, and now this remix by a DJ and producer called Majestic, is charting on the UK Singles Chart. Why this remix and not the original song? Well, this is basically a French house remix of the song, using those house patterns not too dissimilar to Daft Punk or Stardust-type stuff, which makes perfect sense to remix a classic disco tune. I do prefer the original track about “Russia’s greatest love machine”, because it’s a lot more natural and the remix is kind of poorly done in some places if I’m being honest, but if this is how kids decide to experience this type of classic disco, I’m not going to complain. It’s a good song; I’m interested to see how this second chart run goes.

#53 – “DAYWALKER!” – Machine Gun Kelly featuring CORPSE

Produced by BaseXX, Machine Gun Kelly and SlimXX

Nope. No, no, no. I refuse. I’m completely fine with bringing pop-punk and post-hardcore stuff back, but if the ringleader is Machine Gun Kelly and he’s bringing out Corpse Husband to help him on this trap-metal garbage, I’m not even going to acknowledge it further than the fact that it exists and it’s probably not in MGK’s best interests to compare himself to Capitol Hill rioters. Otherwise, absolutely not. Nope. Not even going to give this the time of day.

#46 – “Addicted” – Jorja Smith

Produced by Compass

In stark contrast, here we have Jorja Smith’s new single to add to that confusing sophomore album roll-out that I feel has been delaying itself for two years now. This new song is about giving your all to a relationship and not having it reciprocated, but she paints this in a very odd way, painting herself as “too selfless” to leave and that her partner should be “addicted” to her, which seems like the wrong way to go about writing this entirely, especially if this instrumental is going to be the dullest blend of checked-out live percussion and a boring electric guitar loop, and Jorja Smith’s not going to sell this in a different way to how she sells her other songs, going for a subtle croon that just doesn’t make sense for a song where we’re clearly not supposed to think Jorja’s in the right for being this obsessive and somewhat hyperbolic about this relationship not going the way she planned. I could see this being done really well but the song is too weak and flimsy as is to grasp how to handle the content and I’m sorry but it just does not work for me.

#44 – “Day in the Life” – Central Cee

Produced by Frosty Beats

Central Cee released his debut mixtape, Wild West and, listen, there was a point to me not saying much about “DAYWALKER!” so I think Central Cee existing and giving me so little to work with will weaken that point even further. To be fair, I like the choir sample in this beat, even if the drop is going to be really awkwardly staggered by a loose 808 for no reason, and this drill beat never really feels like it keeps up with itself, especially because Central Cee might be the least interesting rapper in a crop of already desperate British rappers. He also says that rappers that use Auto-Tune don’t “really rap” or “really trap”, which is awkward considering some of this guy’s back catalogue, and also incredibly untrue. He also disses D-Block Europe pretty directly which, regardless of who it’s from or how famous DBE continue to get, always feels like punting down, so, yeah, this is worthless.

#43 – “On the Ground” – ROSÉ

Produced by 24, Jon Bellion, Ojivolta and Jordgen Odegard

This is the debut solo single from ROSÉ, one of the singers from K-pop group BLACKPINK, which explains my initial confusion to why this was so high. The label has enlisted Jon Bellion of all people to produce as they intend to push ROSÉ as a global hit-maker in her own right, given that this is part of a two-track EP so that if one track doesn’t do as well, fans could gravitate to another and that becomes the hit. See “Havana” or, really, how Drake releases his singles nowadays. Looking at some of her television appearances and the language surrounding that, it seems like they’ve been trying to push her as a soloist for a while, and given that she broke PSY’s record for most-viewed solo South Korean video in 24 hours with this song, I think it’s a success. Is the song itself any good? Well, to my surprise, it’s all in English. It now sits at 100 million views and really, there’s no way to distinguish that this is from Korea... which isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, because the song is great, relying on this slick electric guitar pluck and ROSÉ’s vocals which, despite being drenched in reverb, sound really great, before the whole song is abruptly plunged into this distorted, bassy electro-pop void which is just a fascinating and kind of avant-garde choice for a pop song like this. The song doesn’t really develop further than that, pretty much repeating its own structure, but that drop with all the spliced-in backing vocals, is such an interesting catharsis itself that I think it makes up for that. The final drop does a lot different as well, going for a lead synth melody on the top of the mix that again sounds really great when paired with that mix and then the rising strings. I was tempted to write this song’s quirks off as shoddy K-pop songwriting but given the credits, especially Jon Bellion, I’m confident all of this nonsense is absolutely on purpose, and I love it. Check it out, I hope this becomes a hit outside of this debut week, although I really don’t think that’ll happen given it’s (ostensibly) a K-pop song and their western success is largely dominant on sales from fans. Regardless, I’m glad it debuted here in the first place as I wouldn’t have heard it otherwise.

#16 – “6 for 6” – Central Cee

Produced by Okami202, Sevon and Young Chencs

This is Cee’s sixth song to hit the chart, and hence he’s going “six for six”, even though only two of those singles were actually poised to stick around in any shape or form. He does seem to be going somewhere with this, particularly the direction I thought “Loading” would be going, as it uses a choir sample as the background to this janky UK drill beat... but it’s soon drowned-out and Cee himself is such a non-presence that it’s not worth paying attention to the guy’s content, let alone his lyrics which seem to try and be somewhat introspective about his drug-dealing and gang violence, but end up being incredibly shallow and not really saying anything, about as shallow as this instrumental. The outro would be a pretty nice piano interlude if it didn’t stop so abruptly and I’ve only got to hope that leads into a track on the album and isn’t just a mistake, because I’m not listening to that mixtape if my life depended on it. Another snooze from Central Cee, what a surprise.

#3 – “Patience” – KSI featuring YUNGBLUD and Polo G

Produced by Matt Schwartz

Remember when I said we had three songs making their first entry into the top 10? Yeah, turns out that I’m a compulsive liar since we actually have a fourth at #3, and I’m tempted to nope my way out of this one as well. What’s with this week and whiny, wannabe pop-punk singers collaborating with obnoxious YouTubers? I feel like I’m too old to cover this stuff every other week, and that’s saying something considering KSI himself is pushing 30 at this point, but regardless, I have to check out the song and to my surprise, it’s actually kind of decent. It goes for an 80s synth-rock vibe, with massive guitar tones and obviously not live drums that kind of undercut the pretty great bass groove here, but man, Polo G sounds surprisingly good on this production. His verse is pretty infectious, even if it ends up crushed at the end by YUNGBLUD’s hook, which sounds the least insufferable this guy has ever been, probably because of how the vocal production keeps him slightly in check. KSI himself might be the weakest link as he cannot sing at all, and the Auto-Tune in his verse is not helping, but I do like his David Bowie-interpolating ad-libs on the choruses (Yes, seriously). The bridge is a pathetic excuse of a bridge and the song’s mostly chorus – I’m kind of worried about KSI as a hit-maker going forward if he’s going to consistently contribute so little to his own singles, most of which have two other people on. I mean, it works as a short, inoffensive pop-rock song and not much else. I really wish this was Polo G’s song, actually, I think he deserves a second verse here.

Conclusion

Well, that week happened, that’s for sure. I’m going to give Best of the Week to the obvious outlier here, “On the Ground” by ROSÉ, but not without an Honourable Mention to Gorgon City and DRAMA for “You’ve Done Enough”. Worst of the Week is also going to the obvious outlier, “DAYWALKER!” by Machine Gun Kelly featuring Corpse Husband. Can I give a song I literally refused to review Worst of the Week? Yes, yes, I can. For Dishonourable Mention, just pick your Central Cee-flavoured poison. Here’s this week’s top 10:

I’ll see you next week for... Justin Bieber and Lana Del Rey. Damn, maybe I won’t see you next week.

[thisdaynews]

The United States of Anxiety

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-united-states-of-anxiety/

The United States of Anxiety

Tim Alberta is chief political correspondent atPolitico Magazine.

Des Moines, Iowa

Dear Washington,Since our last correspondence, voting finally got underway in the Democratic primary for president. That term—voting—is used loosely in Iowa, the state with a nearly 50-year history of kicking off the presidential selection process. Rather than step into a private booth anytime during the day to cast a ballot for their preferred candidate, Iowans wait until dusk to gather in churches and libraries and high school gymnasiums all across the state and sort themselves into groups.

By now, you’re well aware just how spectacularly this ritual backfired. Iowa Democratic officials not only failed to transmit results on caucus night; they failed for more than a week to provide verified numbers to satisfy the simple question of who won the state. There’s still no official winner. This debacle probably sounded a death knell for Iowa’s place at the front of the line, and if so, well, good riddance. The truth is, an overwhelmingly white, rural state doesn’t reflect a slice of America the way it once did. Someplace else deserves a chance to pick presidents—or, at least, to sift the serious candidates from the jokers.

There is one thing I’ll miss about Iowa: the people.

Iowans take mighty seriously their charge of vetting potential leaders of the free world. In fact, you could argue they take ittooseriously: It’s not uncommon to encounter a caucus-goer who has seen each and every candidate in person, holding off on making a decision until—like a dairy farmer assessing a prize-winning heifer—they could assess the contenders in the flesh. The more time you spend in Iowa, the more you appreciate how the people here stay politically informed both as a point of communal relevance and civic duty.

Iowans are a great bunch to talk with if you want to understand what high-information voters think about the election, and the state of the country more generally. And among Iowans, I’ve found there’s an even more selective group that is hyper-informed about American politics: Uber drivers.

Don’t laugh. There’s a reason journalists love to share Twitter vignettes from backseats all across the country, and it’s not because we’re lazy. The drivers we encounter make up a fascinating cross-section of the electorate: young and old, blue collar and white collar, black and white and brown. One thing they have in common: They are cogs in a gig-employment machine that, more than most American industries, scrambles our notions of cultural, ideological and socioeconomic belonging. The other thing these people have in common is they spendlotsof time in their vehicles, which often translates intolotsof time listening to talk of current events, either by radio or podcast or conversation with their passengers.

If Uber drivers tend to be more politically informed than your average worker, Iowa’s Uber drivers are the most politically informed on Earth. Talk to enough of them and you’re liable to learn a lot about how people are living and how they’re voting—and why.

“Let me guess,”JOHN FISHERsaid as I climbed into his cherry red Chrysler 200. “You want to talk about the caucuses?”

Yup—and apparently, I wasn’t the only one.

With thousands of journalists, campaign staffers, volunteers, activists and curious onlookers descending on Des Moines, Fisher’s car had turned into something of a traveling panel show. He liked to let the guests make their pitch, on behalf of a candidate or maybe a specific policy proposal, before introducing a programming twist.

“Finally, I’ll say that I’m a Trump supporter, and it’s dead silence for a minute,” he said, laughing. “But then we just keep talking. They’re still very kind. So, I’m kind to them in return. They don’t get pushy or anything. When they leave, I always wish them and their candidates the best of luck.”

Fisher, a 66-year-old Des Moines native, started driving after he retired from the insurance industry in 2015. He likes the extra income; even more, he likes the experiences with new people. “I’ll listen to anybody. I’m not a right-winger. I’m barely a Republican. I just like Trump,” he said. “These Democrats, they’re really not doing themselves any favors with impeachment and the way they treat him. I just don’t understand it. Why drag our country through this?”

He paused. “Then again, I only watch Fox News, so maybe I’m only getting one side of things.”

I asked if there were any Democrats he could support. “Pete Buttigieg. I like that he’s young and energetic. And I like his supporters, too,” Fisher said. “I actually like Tulsi Gabbard, too, every time I hear from her. But then you have these old dogs— Sanders, Warren, Biden. They need to get out of the way.”

Fisher said that national security—particularly “the drugs and the violence coming across the border” with Mexico—has long been his priority at the ballot box. But there’s another concern that weighs on him more and more: the diverging economic fortunes of Americans based on where they live. “Right now things are very good in a place like Des Moines,” he says. “But the rural areas are drying up. The farms are being bought out by large corporations. The young kids are all moving to the cities. That’s a bad sign for the rest of the state.”

CASEY FORCEknows something about rural Iowa.

Raised in the town of Lovilia (population: 512), a speck of turf located 30 miles southwest of Oskaloosa, she felt the calling of the world. Force worked overseas as an international business consultant, first in Japan and then in Russia, unsure of whether she’d ever live in the U.S. again. It was only after a visit home for the holidays, and a chance encounter with her future husband, that Force returned to Iowa. But small-town life wasn’t an option. Now 40 years old, with two children, ages 2 and 7, Force works in special education at a high school in south Des Moines.

“And I drive six days a week,” she said. “Usually it’s just a handful of rides here and there, before school and once the kids are asleep at night. This paid for our last trip to Disney World. We’re going to take another one soon.”

Force voted for Hillary Clinton in the last general election. But she has never caucused before. This will be her first time—if she can work up the courage to participate. “I’m super intimidated by this whole thing,” she said.

The other hang-up: Force still hadn’t settled on a candidate. “I’ve just been listening. Last night, I had some Bernie Sanders volunteers; they offered me yard signs. The night before it was the Trump rally; I drove a lot of people from there. Then there was a girl I picked up from WalMart who was all emotional because she couldn’t decide who to caucus for. I’m really busy with work and family and everything, so I’ve been interested in hearing what everyone else thinks and why.”

Ultimately, Force said, she was leaning toward Buttigieg. But she’s prepared to vote for any Democrat who’s on the ballot in November. “I’m an educator, and we need money for our schools, and I just know we’re not going to get it without Democrats in power,” she said.

Force worries about her children and whether they’ll be able to afford college. She also worries about the low-income students at her school; two of them were recently lost to gun violence in a triple homicide that shook Des Moines. Above all, however, she worries about “the decision-making at the top” of the U.S. government.

“I still think back to that [Access Hollywood] tape, and how the reporter on the bus with him got fired and Trump became president,” Force said. “I think about the #MeToo movement. I think about the racial episodes. And it just seems—I thought we’d gotten somewhere as a country with Obama in office. I guess not.”

Behind the wheelof his grey Hyundai Sonata later that night,GEOFFREY O.sounds no less optimistic.

“I don’t believe in our politics anymore,” he says, shaking his head. “They are all lying to us. Like Andrew Yang – where is he getting that money from? And how much is he giving himself before I get my share? And Bernie Sanders, he talks about paying for everyone’s education—but how? Where is he getting that money from?”

Geoffrey, who was born in the U.S. but raised in Uganda, thought he was leaving dysfunctional and corrupt governance behind when he returned to America a few years ago to attend college. But that idealism has diminished. On one side, he says, he sees a Democratic Party that makes unrealistic promises. On the other side he sees Trump.

“I respect that he is the president. But he is detached from reality,” said Geoffrey. (He asked not to be identified by his last name because it’s not hard to find an African migrant in Iowa.) “Trump does not want immigrants in this country. But America a big place. It needs immigrants to help solve its problems. People are running away from their countries because they don’t want to die, and we don’t let them into this country? He is anti-immigrant, and the people surrounding him are anti-immigrant.”

Geoffrey holds out some hope that things will change, that people will become “exhausted” with the extremes and look for middle ground. But he’s not holding his breath. Rather than concern himself with politics he’s hard at work, driving his sedan eight to ten hours a day, all week long, hoping to make $150 each day to pay for his undergraduate degree.

Geoffrey longs for the notions of the idyllic America of his youth. But he worries this country is “no longer welcoming to people like me.” Moreover, he worries that it isn’t safe. “When I drive my Uber I just pray there are no shootings that happen,” he said. “That is my greatest prayer: I hope I don’t meet someone holding a gun.”

JOSEPH GAYhas his own concerns about the state of the country. But he has a unique solution: Make Trump the permanent president.

“I think Trump is the best thing that has come along in America in a long, long time,” said Gay, 68, as he steers his blue Ford Ecosport through the Des Moines suburbs. “And I think all the trouble they’re giving him, it’s just criminal. They said they were going to impeach him even before he took office. It’s just not right. He’s the only president I’ve ever seen keep his word, keep his promises.”

Gay’s own political evolution is recognizable: a Democrat until Ronald Reagan came along, then a conservative-leaning independent, and now, a full-fledged, no-turning-back MAGA enthusiast.

“You know, if it wasn’t for Trump, I might not even be a Republican anymore. The Republicans stopped caring about me a long time ago,” he said. “I wouldn’t vote for Democrats either. Honestly, I would just stop voting altogether. I really wish Trump could serve three terms—or even longer. Let him serve as long as he wants. The guy, he’s just—he’s an amazing person.”

Is there anything that Gay dislikes about the president?

“Oh, once in a while he says things that are goofy, and it’s like, ‘C’mon Donald, you didn’t need to say that,’” Gay chuckled. “But I do like his sense of humor. ThePocahontasthing, that was funny. Childish, maybe. But still funny.”

The thing is, Gay explained, he doesn’t have time to waste being offended. There are more immediate problems. Having worked odd jobs most of his life—mostly involving construction and delivery—Gay has no pension, no savings, no nest-egg for retirement. He drives for Uber three days a week and trades shifts with his wife, who drives the same car another three days a week. They do this to supplement their Social Security, which isn’t enough to cover the cost of living. “I could have made better choices to where I had a better job and more income to retire with. But this is where we’re at,” he said. “Uber works pretty well for us, even though I don’t think they should take as much of a cut as they do.”

Gay’s biggest concern for himself and his wife is getting sick. “We don’t have a retirement thing, and medicine is expensive, so money would get pretty tight,” he said. “I’ve got some things I could probably sell. But still.”

And the biggest concern he has for America? “The Democratic Party. The socialism,” he said. “I can’t tell you a single one I’d vote for anymore. They’re all socialists now. It’s dangerous.”

She’s two decades from retirement age,butANGELA GOLDBERGis driving the Uber because she doesn’t want to wind up like Gay.

A 45-year-old mother of four, Golberg has a part-time marketing job that keeps her busy anywhere from 15 to 25 hours a week. But it’s not nearly enough. Not with three of her kids attending college. Not with this economy so unstable for people, like her, who don’t have advanced degrees. Not with the endless political disruption and all that it could entail.

“I’m nervous about Social Security. They keep talking about it as an ‘entitlement,’ but it’s not an entitlement. Ever since I was the age of 16, and you’re old enough to get your job at McDonald’s, I’ve been paying taxes into Social Security. And now they’re trying to claim it’s an entitlement,” she said.

To fortify her family’s income, and to add some cushion to her and her husband’s retirement plan, Golberg started driving for Uber. “In this area, I’ll be lucky to make $100 to $150 on Friday nights. Saturdays, I’ll be lucky to make about $250 if there’s a lot going on at night,” she explained. “But I’ve already hit $1,000 for this weekend, starting Thursday night, because Trump was here. This has been a wonderful few days.”

Golberg was glad to see the president come to town, even as she wrestles with her decision to vote for him in 2016.

“I liked him, I liked his track record, so I voted for him,” she said. “But I can tell you I don’t like his behavior and the way he goes about things. He’s lacking in social graces, I guess would be the best way to say it. And he is a bully.”

Golberg said she’s leaning toward voting for a Democrat in 2020, but wouldn’t be participating in the caucuses. (“I don’t really know how it works.”) As for who that Democrat might be, she’s got no idea. Joe Biden “just tries to take credit for being Barack Obama’s vice president, but that was Obama making the decisions.” Elizabeth Warren “I’m not quite sure about—not sure she can beat Trump.”

She seemed most taken with Buttigieg. “I think Pete would have a real chance. He talks about what he believes in, what his plans are, how he’s going to do it, whether or not it’s accomplishable. I like him,” she said. “And he doesn’t slam anyone. I don’t like when the candidates slam one another. It’s really distasteful. Let Trump do that.”

CRAIG CARTERknows he shouldn’t laugh. But he just can’t help himself.

“This guy, the president,” Carter said, “He entertains the old farmer in me.”

While cruising through West Des Moines in a black Ford Escape, Carter, 70, described the moment three years ago when he knew Uber was right for him. After running a successful asphalt paving business for many years, he had finally retired—only to find his wife annoyed at his constant presence around the house.

“The night I decided to become an Uber driver, my wife was looking at me in that sweet, Christian way of hers,” he said. “She told me she never thought I’d live this long – it was clear I needed to get out of the house and do something to leave her alone and prolong our marital bliss of 48 years. So I did.”

These days, Carter said, two things provide his “comic relief”: Uber rides and Donald Trump. Sometimes they overlap.

“Oh, I’ve had a whole lot of caucus rides lately. Everyone wants to talk about The Donald,” Carter said. “I had a worker for Biden, like a month ago, and he wouldn’t stop talking. So, I warned him, ‘Here in the Midwest we don’t talk about politics, sex or religion.’ And he tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘For the next month, you’re going to get a pass on the politics.’ Man, was he ever right.”

Carter said he’s glad to have civilized political conversations with strangers in the car—because he can’t have them at home anymore.

“My wife’s a Democrat, and we both woke up on Election Day with that McCauley Culkin look”—he slaps his cheeks—“ahhhh!” We couldn’t believe that he won. But you know, that shock faded for me. Not her. She still has that look every morning. Like she’s out for blood. … She bought herself a shirt, a pink shirt, with a little kitten holding an M-16 military rifle, and it says, ‘Grab this pussy, asshole.’ I’m serious.”

All humor aside, Carter said Trump’s crude nature has begun to wear on him—so much so that, after a lifetime of voting for Republicans, he’s open to voting for the Democratic nominee in 2020. The only catch?

“It’s gotta be Bernie,” Carter said, grinning. “Maybe he’s a socialist, I don’t know. I don’t want to put that label on him. But the truth is, I see myself in him. And he might be the man to do something near and dear to my heart: legalizing marijuana.”

That pipe dream aside, Carter said he’s coming around to Sanders’s trademark proposal: Medicare for All. When I asked what issue concerns him most, Carter pulled out his iPhone, opened up his photos, and toggled between two screenshots. They were taken from his account on the Walgreens pharmacy app. The first shot showed how much his heart medication cost with insurance: $2.18. The second showed the cost without insurance: $249.00.

“Seriously now,” he said. “When I see that, I just think to myself, how are we doing this to people?”

I met too many fascinatingIowa Uber drivers to recount: the old rich chap who drives for charity and gives cash tips to passengers down on their luck; the Malaysian immigrant who needs to push his dying Chevy 10 more months to have enough money saved to open his long-dreamed-about Asian market; the guy who placed strict no-political-talk rules on relationships with his closest friends, including a next-door-neighbor, in order to preserve relationships.

I didn’t meet any Trump voters who were resolved to abandon the GOP this November. Nor did I meet any Democrats who threatened to sit out the election if a certain candidate—say, Bernie Sanders—wins the nomination. Partisans were, pretty reliably,partisan. There were no dramatic, road-to-Damascus resolutions to be witnessed on the streets of Des Moines. Despite unprecedented political disruption, people are preparing for some variation of the same binary choice they’ve been making their entire adult lives.

The prevailing sentiment among the people with a front-row seat to the greatest political show on Earth was discomfort. Something isn’t right in our country—that much came across, unsolicited, in every conversation with every person of every possible political persuasion. This continues to be the most obvious and contradictory feeling of union in America circa 2020: Despite living in a time of nearly unrivaled peace and prosperity, the one thing that unites us is that nobody feels very good about it.

It’s time to move on from Iowa. There are so many more stories to tell.

If you’ve got places you think I should visit, people you think I should meet, drop me a line: L2W@politico.com

Your old friend,

Tim

Read More

[cabiba]

Students of the Communist movement are bound to run across the story of how M. Oudendyke, Netherlands Minister in Russia at the time of the Russian Revolution, had warned the British and French governments that Communism is Jewish; but that this warning had been carefully deleted from the official British papers on the subject. Oudendyke had taken over British affairs in Russia at the time.

It may be asserted that such a report never existed. Yet here it is, printed in 1931 as part of the USA State Department papers, and reproduced as Exhibits 256 through 259. The Oudendyke report is long. I have reproduced not all of it but enough so that the context of his warning is clear.

Oudendyke’s communique went to various governments including our own, and included:

“The danger is now so great that I feel it my duty to call the attention of the British and all other Governments to the fact that if an end is not put to Bolshevism in Russia at once the civilization of the whole world will be threatened. This is not an exaggeration … I consider that the immediate suppression of Bolshevism is the greatest issue now before the world, not even excluding the war which is still raging and unless as above stated Bolshevism is nipped in the bud immediately it is bound to spread in one form or another over Europe and the whole world as it is organized and worked by Jews who have no nationality and whose one object is to destroy for their own ends the existing order of things (Exhibits 258, 259)

Oudendyke’s prophetic warnings went unheeded. How Jewish pressure was brought to bear to remove Allied forces fighting with the anti-Communist Whites in Russia is still another story. Bloody Trotsky and Lenin were armed and financed to clean up the job initiated by Jewish Kerensky, and Russia went under sadistic totalitarian anti-Christian, Jewish controlled enslavement, with more countries to follow, until now the entire World is threatened.

The Jews Gloat

At the celebration of the 1917 triumph of Jewry, at Carnegie Hall in New York (N.Y. Times, 3/24/17), it was proudly told how Jacob Schiff had financed Communist propaganda spread among 50,000 Russian war prisoners in Jew-financed Japan, which sent them back to attempt putting over the 1905 Red Revolution in their Russian homeland.

Not only are the agent connections of Schiff with the Japanese war against Russia hailed in his Kehillah sketch (Exhibit 214) and his agent ties chronicled elsewhere in aid of every phase of the Talmudic plan, his own words bear witness to his deeds.

As the State Department communications herein show, Schiff and his Jewish cohorts were, at the time of the Carnegie Hall meeting, financing the bloody terrorists Trotsky and Lenin to finish off the job instituted and furthered under Kerensky.

To further quote the 1917 N.Y. Times report:

“An authority on Russian affairs, George Kennan, told of a movement by the Society of the Friends of Russian Freedom financed by Jacob H. Schiff, which had at the time of the Russo-Japanese war spread among 50,000 Russian officers and men in Japanese prison camps the gospel of the Russian revolutionists … ‘The movement was financed by a New York banker you all know and love,’ he said, referring to Mr. Schiff, ‘and soon we received a ton and a half of Russian revolutionary propaganda. At the end of the war 50,000 Russian officers and men went back to their country ardent revolutionists!’

“Mr. Parsons then arose and said: ‘I will now read a message from White Sulphur Springs sent by the gentleman to whom Mr. Kennan referred.’ This was the message:

“ ‘Will you say for me to those present at tonight’s meeting how deeply I regret my inability to celebrate with the Friends of Russian Freedom the actual reward of what we had hoped and striven for these long years …’”

This was followed by pious hopes that a “proper government and constitution which shall permanently assure to the Russian people … happiness and peace,” and the signature: “Jacob H. Schiff.”

By what followed we know what Schiff meant as a “proper government.”

The New York Times report of the great Carnegie Hall celebration of the Russian Revolution was subtitled:

“Rabbi Wise Ready for War — Relates How Jacob H. Schiff Financed Revolution Propaganda in Czar’s Army.”

To quote:

“Then the rabbi praised the Russian revolution … ‘I cannot forget,’ continued the rabbi, ‘that I am a member and a [page 88] teacher of a race of which half has lived in the domain of the Czar, and as a Jew, I believe that of all the achievements none has been nobler than the part the sons and daughters of Israel have taken in the great movement which had culminated in the free Russia.”’ (Note: for “free,” read “Red Dictatorship.”)

To his dying day, Rabbi Stephen Wise, a tireless Red, never waned in his enthusiasm for the Soviet slave state, the murderer of so many millions of Christians.

“At the close of the meeting pictures of the revolutionary leaders were shown upon the screen,” reported the N.Y. Times.

Next: Chapter XIII.

Modern Jewish “Anti-Communism”

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Introduction to Elizabeth Dilling

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Very few people are aware of the extent to which Jews were responsible for the Communization of Russia, first through organizing of the unsuccessful revolution of 1905, and then the later and successful Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Both were heavily financed by outside Jewish financial and banking houses, and ultimately resulted in Jews assuming control of what had become the Russian Soviet Government. Concurrently, Jewish machinations in the United States, Germany and elsewhere helped set the stage for the take-over.

This Jewish control still exists, despite propaganda to the contrary, designed to delude and deceive non-Jews.

Long prior to the Revolution of 1905, Jews had conceived a hatred of Christian and Czarist Russia, because of opposition of the Russian people and Government to Jewish Talmudism.

In his introduction to the 1903 translation of the Talmud, for example, Rodkinson details the repeated denunciations of the Talmud over many centuries by nearly every country, the Popes, and others, and also states (see Exhibit 11): ‘Still what has been the result? The Talmud exists today, and not one letter in it is missing. It is true, the persecutions against it are not yet at an end; accusations and calumnies by its enemies, under the new name of anti-Semites, are still directed against it, while the government of Russia legislates against and restricts the rights of the nation which adheres to the Talmud.”

One of the prime Jewish conspirators plotting to Communize Russia was Jacob Schiff, who became head of the enormously powerful New York Jewish banking house of Kuhn, Loeb and Co.

Turn to the laudatory sketch of Jacob Schiff, in the Jewish Communal (Kehillah) Register of New York City, 1917-18, of which Kehillah he was an Executive Committeeman (see Exhibits 210, 212, 214, 215). It is stated there how German-born Schiff came to America and made connections with a banking house. “In 1873, he returned to Europe where he made connections with some of the chief German banking houses” and “The firm of Kuhn-Loeb & Co. floated the large Japanese war loans of 1904-5, thus making possible the Japanese victory over Russia …”

The last paragraph (Exhibit 215) boasts “Mr. Schiff has always used his wealth and his influence in the best interests of his people. He financed the enemies of autocratic Russia. [This was written in 1918, after the Bolshevik revolution had been made secure] … and used his financial influence to keep Russia from the money market of the United States.” It is stated that “all factions of Jewry” hailed him for this.

“Today it is estimated by Jacob’s grandson, John Schiff, a prominent member of New York society, that the old man sank about $20,000,000 for the final triumph of Bolshevism in Russia.” (Cholly Knickerbocker in his society news column in the Hearst Press, Feb. 3, 1949, appearing in the N.Y. Journal-American and other papers.)

The Jewish Bankers

The great Jewish banking monopolies have been interwoven by marriage like a rug. Note three things about the Rothschilds in Exhibit 298, which is from the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1905:

That of the 58 Rothschild marriages to that date, exactly half, or 29, had been to first cousins. This appears in the right hand column.

That the Rothschilds “were the first to make use of journalistic methods to arouse the interest of the public in their loans. They have, however, consistently kept the secret of their own operations!”

A major reason why Russia collapsed and went under the Red heel during World War I also appears in this exhibit, namely, “Of recent years the Rothschilds have consistently refused to have anything to do with loans to Russia owing to the anti-Jewish legislation of that empire.” (This was 1905.)

The Warburg International Jewish banking family has also been closely connected with the Schiffs and Rothschilds. James Paul Warburg, in his sketch in Who’s Who in American Jewry — 1938-9 states:

“Born Hamburg, Germany, August 18. 1896 … paternal ancestors through six generations have been bankers as members of the banking house of MM. Warburg & Co., founded in Hamburg, 1798 … maternal grandfather, Solomon, founder of international banking house of Kuhn, Loeb &Co … Came to U.S., 1902 …”

Paul M. Warburg had married Jenny Nina Loeb, mother of James Paul. Jacob Schiff, after coming to the U.S., had married Theresa Loeb, sister of Nina, and daughter of the Kuhn, Loeb founder. Schiff’s daughter, Frieda, married Felix M. Warburg, Hamburg-born banker who headed the agro joint work for Jewry in Russia to help keep them in power after the Red Revolution. Their daughter, Carola, married Walter M. Rothschild. Felix M. Warburg and Paul M. Warburg of Kuhn, Loch & Co., partners of Jacob Schiff, were brothers of Max Warburg of Hamburg, Germany, the pay-off man, in power with the Kaiser, who funneled funds to Lenin and Trotsky during World War I to undermine and destroy the Russian Government.

[page 80] Jacob Schiff received his banking training in his father’s business, he being a Rothshild agent and associate. The basement of the two-in-a-row houses of Schiff and Rothschild, which I visited in Frankfort-on-Main, Germany, was one room-in-common, with a joint “get-away” which formerly had led beyond a ghetto wall. The little shack at the back was where Kings, hat-in-hand, would come to get Jewish loans. The original name of Bauer had been abandoned for “Red Shield” (Rothschild) and a Red Shield hung out as an address sign at the front of the house.

A ship sign for “Schiff” hung outside the Schiff house, built along the same common wall. Each house was about the width of an entrance hall. The room back of the Rothschild kitchen was a tiny synagogue when I was there in 1934. A skull-capped Jew was the guide, who collected entrance fees for showing the houses, the Rothschild house being the chief attraction. A gambling table was the main piece of furniture in the front room in the upstairs of the Rothschild house. Two rooms on each floor comprised the house.

“When the Kehilla [i.e. the Jewish community] of New York was organized in 1909, the control rested with a group of German Jews including Jacob Schiff, president of Kuhn, Loch and Co., a branch of the Bleichroeder Mendelssohn Bank, affiliated with the big “D” banks in Germany: Deutsche Bank, Disconto Gesellschaft, Dresdener Bank, Darmstadter Bank.” (From Waters Flowing Eastward, by L. Fry, published by the R.I.S.S. of Paris, founded by Monsignor Jouin.)

“In Germany the leading private bankers included the Mendelssohns … and the Bleichroeders … who were bankers to Emperor William I., Bismarck, and the early industrialists … Frankfort, the ‘mother city’ of Jewish bankers … produced its Lazards, Speyers, Sterns, Dreyfuses, and Sulzbachs as well as sending abroad one Jacob H. Schiff.” (The Jews of Germany, Marvin Lowenthal, Longmans Greenand Co., N.Y., 1936).

And, says the same source:

“Toward the end of that period the house of Warburg in Hamburg played an important part not only in the finances but destinies of Germany. Max Warburg was adviser to the government at the Versailles Peace Conference. Carl 1. Mel-choir, another member of the firm … headed the financial section of the Armistice Commission in 1918-1919 and was one of the six German delegates to Versailles.”

Elsewhere herein, through State Department documents, you will note the role played by the M.M. Warburg banking firm in financing the Red Russian Revolution. And, when Max Warburg came here from Hamburg in 1939, the American Jewish Committee placed him on its “Post-War” committee for the reorganization of the World which, in turn, set up the propaganda claque for the ensuing United Nations.

And so, down through the decades, Kuhn, Loch, and international bankers, “Princes of Jewry” remold the World toward the ultimate aim — World Jewish dictatorship, now so rapidly coming about.

The Kaiser

Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and his Government were used during World War I by Jews such as Max Warburg to channel funds into Russia to breed disaffection in the Russian Army and Navy, and to set the stage for the ultimately successful Bolshevik Revolution.

When Kaiser Wilhelm realized that he had been made a tool of Jewry, it was after the War was over, and he was sawing or chopping wood at Doom, Holland. It was too late.

Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent carried this article, July 9, 1921:

“It is a most significant fact that, as in Washington, the most constant and privileged visitors to the White House were Jews, so in Berlin the only private telephone wire to the Kaiser was owned by Walter Rathenau [who later wrote the constitution of the post-war Jew-controlled Weimar “Republic”]. Not even the Crown Prince could reach the Kaiser except through the ordinary telephone connections.

“It was a family enterprise, this international campaign. Jacob Schiff swore to destroy Russia. Paul M. Warburg was his brother-in-law; Felix Warburg was his son-in-law. Max Warburg, of Hamburg, banker of the Bolsheviks, was thus brother-in-law to Jacob Schiff’s wife and daughter.

“Max Warburg represents the family in its native land. Max Warburg has as much to do with the German war government as his family and financial colleagues had to do with the United States war government.

“As has been recounted in the press the world over, the brother from America and the brother from Germany both met at Paris as government representatives in determining the peace. There were so many Jews in the German delegation that it was known by the term ‘kosher,’ also as ‘the Warburg delegation,’ and there were so many Jews in the American delegation that the delegates from the minor countries of Europe looked upon the United States as a Jewish country which through unheard-of-generosity had elected a non-Jew as its president … The Jews had several objectives in the war, and one of them was to ‘Get Russia’ … In this work Max Warburg was a factor. His bank is noted in a dispatch published by the United States government as being one whence funds were forwarded to Trotsky for use in destroying Russia. Always against Russia, not for German reasons, but for Jewish reasons, which in this particular instance coincided. Warburg and Trotsky — against Russia! While Otto Kahn, another partner in Kuhn, Loch & Co. denounced ‘pro-German propaganda,’ his partner Paul was playing the German symphony string! It is a great international orchestra, this Jewish financial firm; it can play the Star Spangled Banner, Die Wacht am Rhein, the Marseillaise, and God Save the King in one harmonious rendering, paying obsequious attention to the prejudices of each.”

Thus spoke the Ford paper in 1921. [page 81]

Jews in Russian Revolution

of 1905

The New York Communal Register of 19 17-18 (Exhibit 228) related the actions of the American Jewish Committee in the U.S. to protect Russian Jewish revolutionaries. In 1909, so many Red revolutionary criminals had fled to this country from the Jewish war against Christian Russia that the Committee fought to keep two of them, Pourea and Rudovitz, here.

“The Committee appreciated the bearing of their cases upon a large number of Jews who had taken part in the Russian Revolution [i.e. of 1905] and who had sought or might seek, an asylum in this country, and in cooperation with others succeeded in defeating the attempt of Russia.”

The “others” referred to included Secretary of State Elihu Root, who despite the fact that “no substantial evidence was produced before the committing magistrate that the offenses charged against Pourea were political [therefore under the law he could be extradited] delayed in deciding the case until it could be changed in Pourea’s favor.” (Letter of Root to Jacob Schiff — see Exhibit 245). Socialist Jew Samuel Gompers was also among those who intervened for Pourea (Same Exhibit).

Rutenberg and the Russian Revolution

We see in Exhibit 224 how the 19 17-18 Jewish Kehillah report boasted of Pinchas Rutenberg as a founding force in the American Jewish Congress as well as his being the right hand man to Jewish Premier Kerensky in the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Mourning the death of its founder, Pinchas Rutenberg, the American Jewish Congress publication, The Congress Weekly (1/16/42) stated in an article, “Rutenberg’s Mission to America:”

“His role in the birth of the American Jewish Congress was immense … the young Russian intellectual, in other words, revolutionist, soon made his influence felt in the underground council of the Social Revolutionary Party. Rutenberg was the man who, in 1905, piloted the revolutionary activities of the notorious Father Gapon and then sat in judgment and brought about his execution.

“In Italy, during the first World War, he got in touch with Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of the Jewish Legion. In New York in 1915 he got in touch with the representatives of the Social Revolutionary Party there, Dr. Chaim Zitlowsky and Dr. Samuel Ellsberg, who were now interested in the Poale Zion party, Palestine, and Jewish rights.”

Father Gapon

The above Father Gapon incident is typical of applied Judaism. The dramatic prayer addressed by Gapon to the Czarist government with the threat that if it were not granted, we shall die here on the Square before thy Palace,” combined with mutinies, strikes involving more than 2,000,000 people, are related in William Henry Chamberlin’s The Russian Revolution 1917-1921(1935).

We read: “Gapon himself was doubtful about the wisdom of bringing large masses … to present this petition” (Vol. I, p. 48). Yet Gapon was pushed ahead as the leader. Then, “when the demonstrators refused to obey orders to disperse and go home volleys of rifle fire poured on them … The casualties of Bloody Sunday [Jan. 22, 1905] are estimated at from two hundred to fifteen hundred.”

That the Jew Rutenberg “piloted the revolutionary activities of the notorious Father Gapon, then sat in judgment and brought about his execution,” is not mentioned by historian Chamberlin, who was correspondent for 12 years in Russia for the leftist-oriented Christian Science Monitor, and now writes for the new Jewish-line “Anti-communist” Human Events. He also serves as Contributing Editor of the Socialist Social Democratic Federation party’s magazine, New Leader.

Rutenberg was chosen in 1937 as one of the 120 leading Jews of the world, along with Litvinov (Finkelstein), the Soviet Commissar, and Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, head of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He died in Palestine in 1942, much mourned, having set up the Palestine Electric Corporation, using huge water rights, issued under British protection, for the use of Jewry.

More Jewish Manipulations in the U.S.

No corner of the earth has been too remote to manipulate for Jewry. We note activities of the American Jewish Committee (Exhibit 228) concerning: “The Jews in the Balkans,” after 1913. And our government was used again to pressure for Jewish power.

Exhibit 229 shows how restriction of immigration from Russia was fought by the American Jewish Committee after 1906, so that the flow of revolutionaries might not be curbed. The literacy test was fought so that illiterate Jews might swarm here — as they did. Of three literacy test bills, we are told, President Taft vetoed one and President Wilson two, under pressure of the American Jewish Committee. And then when one of them was passed, despite the veto, the Committee “succeeded in procuring adoption of a clause which excluded … those who came to this country to avoid religious persecution, whether induced by overt acts, oppressive laws, or by governmental relations.”

The cry of “persecution,” has always been used to cover the crimes of the only people on earth whose very religion teaches them that murder and enslavement and cheating of all other peoples is a sacred right.

We are told in the New York Jewish Communal Register, that the American Jewish Committee considered it “one of its most important functions to bend every effort toward the solution of the passport question.” (Exhibit 230) This “solution” was to circumvent Russia, which sought to bar Russian-born Red Jews, who came to the U.S.A. to get citizenship so as to return to Russia as American citizens, from [page 82] using their immunity to steer the Red Revolutionary overthrow of the Russian Christian government.

Russia had instructed its consuls to inquire of any applicants for passports to enter Russia from the U.S.A., and if they were Russian-born Jews, not to give them an entrance visa. The U.S.A. was at that time full of jailbird revolutionaries wanted in Russia, who thus sought to escape Russian law as American citizens. The aim of the American Jewish Committee was first to overthrow the Russian government, and later to sustain the Red butchers as they enslaved the Christian populace.

Note the sanctimonious “Hearts and Flowers” pose of the Committee (Exhibit 231) about Russia “refusing to recognize the American passport in the hands of American citizens of the Jewish faith.” And what is that holy “faith?” A criminal conspiracy against all humanity, against all civilized laws, all reciprocity, a code which makes that of gangsters seem benign.

Treaty with Russia Broken

Too often unmentioned today is the fact that under Article 6 of the United States Constitution, a treaty becomes the “supreme law of the land; and judges in every state shall be bound thereby; anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”

At one stroke, thereby, all State laws as well as the Constitution itself may be legally nullified by a treaty.

In our time, this has been done. The United Nations Charter, ratified by almost 100% of the Senate, became as a treaty the Supreme Law of the Land, anything in the Constitution or the laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding. The machinery to nullify our freedoms therefore is in place.

That the top American Jewish Committee was well aware of this provision of the Constitution back in 1917-18 when the New York Kehillah report was issued, is evident from the text. The reciprocal trade treaty of 1832 with Russia had to be broken. It had permitted Russia to have some say as to those from the U.S.A. it must admit through its borders. Russia retained some sovereignty which Red Revolutionary Jewry from Russia, armed with American citizenship, could not hurdle. The Jewish mob must be free to return to Russia and put over the Jewish revolution.

The New York Kehillah text states (Exhibits 231, 232):

“The Committee, after serious consideration, determined to recommend to the President the abrogation of the treaty with Russia, and on May 18, 1908, dispatched a letter to President Roosevelt. This began the attempt on the part of the organization to induce our Government to take some effective action to terminate the controversy. Correspondence with the same end in view was also had with President Taft and was supplemented by personal interviews with the President and with Secretaries of State, Root and Knox. [Schiff headed this delegation.]

“The effect of the termination of the treaty, was the declaration of the national policy of the United States that it would not tolerate further discrimination against American citizens of the Jewish faith. Since treaties are, under the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, with the termination of the treaty there no longer exists a law which according to the Russian Government’s contention was susceptible of the unconstitutional construction that our Government permitted discrimination against American citizens on account of race or religion.

“The action of President Taft and of the Congress of the United States was subsequently approved by all the great political parties of the country, in platform adopted by them in 1912, and again in 1916.”

More of the background of these pre-revolutionary activities of the American Jewish Committee, which was headed by Jacob Schiff, was covered in the Henry Ford Dearborn Independent, in an article in January, 1921 entitled: “Taft Once Tried to Resist Jews and Failed.” To quote:

“Mr. Taft once stood out against the Jews, was strongly denounced as unfavorable to the Jews, was soundly beaten by the Jews on a matter on which he had taken a firm stand, and has ever since shown that he has learned his lesson by accommodating the Jews in their desires …

“For centuries Russia has had her own troubles with the Jews and, as the world knows, has at last fallen prostrate before Jewish power which for centuries, has been working to undermine her … The biggest hoax in modern times was the propaganda against Russia as the persecutor of the Jews. Russia devoted to the Jews a large part of the most favored section of the land, and was always lax in those laws which prohibited Jews from settling in other parts of the country that the Jew was able to create an underground system throughout the whole of Russia which controlled the grain trade, controlled public opinion, and utterly baffled the Czar’s government. The cry of ‘persecution’ arose because the Jews were not permitted to exploit the peasants as much as they desired. They have, however, gained that privilege since.”

Reports of U.S.A. Ministers are quoted showing that while 1500 Jews were registered in St. Petersburg with the police, 30,000 were operating there illegally. Jewish editors and writers wielded power on “the leading newspapers of St. Petersburg and Moscow,” and the liquor trade was entirely in Jewish hands. “At every turn the United States Government discovered that Jews were exaggerating their difficulties for the purpose of forcing governmental action … The Jews represented that their life in Russia was a hell … Presently, after years of underground work and open propaganda against Russia in the daily press, until the American conception against Russia was fixed almost beyond correction, the agitation took the form of the ‘Russian passport question’ … Jews demanded nothing less than that the United States should break all treaty relations with Russia. They demanded it.”

How Jacob Schiff, Louis Marshall, Adolph Krauss and [page 83] Judge Henry M. Fogle (Executive Committee members of the American Jewish Committee) walked in on President Taft at the White House, February 15, 1911, is described. They had demanded the conference, were dined at the White House luncheon table, but Taft insisted upon reading them his conclusions that the trade treaty of 1832 with Russia should not be broken as an exceptional favor to Jews, despite his sentiments in favor of Jewry.

Jacob Schiff was enraged. “This means war!,” he exclaimed.

“On leaving the White House, Jacob Schiff refused to shake the President’s hand, but brushed by it with an air of offended power … Neither did the President know what was behind it all … It meant that German Jews would be the intermediaries of trade between Russia and the United States [if the treaty were broken] … The Frankfort bankers and their relatives in the United States knew what that meant … the relation meant power over Russia — and Jacob Schiff lived to overthrow Russia.

“The neutrality of the United States was torn to shreds by a movement organized and financed on American soil for the overthrow of a friendly nation, and the organizers and financiers were Jews! … The United States was to be used as a crowbar to batter down the walls.

“When the Jewish Ambassadors left the White House, orders flew from Washington and New York to every part of the United States, and the Jewish ‘nagging’ drive began. It had a center in every city. It focused on every Representative and Senator — no official, however, was too mean or unimportant to be drafted. American editors can remember the drive: it was operated on precisely the same lines as the one which is proceeding against the press today. The Jews have given absolute proof in the last two months that they control the majority of the American press.

“Jacob Schiff had said on Feb. 15, ‘This means war!’ He had ordered a large sum of money used for that purpose … On December 13 of that same year — almost ten months to a day after Jewry had declared war on President Taft’s conclusions — both houses of Congress ordered President Taft to notify Russia that the treaty with Russia would be terminated. Frankfort-on-Main Had Won!

“Nine years later, at the writing of this article, it is noted that Taft is making speeches for the Jews after the ‘Jewish’ press of the United States berated President Taft with Jewish unreserve. It would be an eye-opener if, at every speech which William Howard Taft makes for his Jewish clients there could be distributed copies of the remarks printed about President Taft by those same Jewish clients nine years ago … Two governments had been beaten … and the glee with which Jewry hailed the event is also known.”

The fact that Taft was that strange phenomenon — a one-term President, is noted and the question raised that this might have been in consequence of his disobedience.

“The President had really done what he could to prevent the Jewish plan from going through. On Feb. 11, 1911, he withstood them face to face. On December 13, 1911, they whipped him. And yet, in the next year, 1912, a peculiar thing occurred; the high officials of the B’nai B’rith went to the White House and there pinned on the breast of President Taft a medal which marked him ‘as the man who had contributed most during the year to the welfare of the Jewish cause.’ There is a photograph extant of President Taft standing on the south portico of the White House, in the midst of a group of prominent Jews, and the President is wearing his medal. He is not smiling …

“That is the story of William Howard Taft’s efforts to withstand the Jews, and how they broke him. It is probably worth knowing in view of the fact that he has become one of those “Gentile fronts’ which Jews use for their own defense.”

At every stage of the game of take-over for Talmudism, the United States was used a base of operations for “the synagogue of Satan” to put Christian Russia under heel. Propaganda flooded this country which inculcated those of my vintage with the conviction that the weak Czar with his outnumbered, outfinanced foes, wielded a blacksnake whip over little “angel” Jews, made to suffer just because they were “People of the Book.” We were taught that to the tune of millions of dollars spent by the American Jewish Committee and others.

You have only to read such Jewish books as Dubnow’s History of the Jews of Russia and Poland, put out by the American Jewish Committee’s Jewish Publication Society of America for its own people to see how every law was flouted as the Talmudists rose to assassinate and crowd their way into complete mastery and butchery in Russia.

Ford “Apologizes” to Jewry

Even one of the most wealthy and powerful men in the World was not immune to Jewish power and intimidation. The unqualified crawl, even the misstatement that he had been unaware of the contents of his Dearborn Independent, appeared over Henry Ford’s signature, June 30, 1927, just about six-and-a-half years after the above article appeared. The apology was addressed to Louis Marshall as head of the American Jewish Committee.

The renowned theologian, Dr. James M. Gray, head of the Moody Bible Institute, wrote, concerning this apology by Ford (Moody Monthly, September, 1927):

“This confession in our opinion is another link in the chain of prophecy. As we read it we were impressed that the great millionaire went further than the circumstances of the case required him to do. To put it another way, we do not believe the editor of the Independent, Mr. Ford’s paper, was either as foolish or as wicked as the confession of its proprietor would make him appear. We believe he had good grounds for publishing some of the things about the Jews which he did publish … Indeed, the pressure brought to bear upon Mr. Ford to make his confession was in itself such corroborative evidence. This pressure came from Jews all over the world, and in the face of it Mr. Ford was panic-stricken. He is one of [page 84] the richest men in the world, and of course, conscious of the power that money brings with it; but he was made to feel that the Jews have more money and hence more power than he, and that in such a cause their money and their power can be quickly mobilized against an opponent and with crushing consequence …”

Dr. Gray knew what he was talking about, having been subjected to Jewish threats himself. But he refused to recant his assertions that the Protocols of Zion represent the program of Talmudic World Jewry.

I knew Dr. Gray. Large numbers of my book The Red Network were sold in the Moody Bookstore. I spoke in the Moody Church and over the Moody radio. Unfortunately Dr. Gray’s successor has quieted down many matters in favor of Jewry.

The Russian Revolution —

Suppressed State Department Documents

Much authentication of the Jewish hand in the successful Communization of Russia through the revolution of 1917 is contained in official United States Government documents — namely Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918, Russia, consisting of three volumes and published in 1931. (See Exhibit 243) Included are many communications between then Secretary of State Lansing, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Francis, and various consular officials, detailing events as a “moderate” regime took over Russia under Jewish Premier Kerensky, who was then superseded in a few months by the bloody Bolsheviks, led by Jews such as Trotsky (real name Bronstein), Zinoviev (real name Hirsch Apfelbaum), Kamenev, and Sverdlov. Exhibits 244 through 260 (244, 245, 246, 247,248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260) are excerpts from these Government documents.

All through the State Department papers, most of which are not reproduced, is the picture of Russia in a state of economic collapse as soldiers and sailors are being paid to demonstrate against the Christian government, by Jewry, events which are followed by the final Red take-over.

These documents are today suppressed for public view, and if you don’t believe this to be so, try to obtain copies, or even to find them in any public library. The current Jewish line is that Soviet Russia is “anti-Semitic,” and organized Jewry has no desire to have our people learn of the true origins and beginnings of anti-Christian Communist Russia.

The Revolution Begins

On March 15, 1917, Russian Czar Nicholas II abdicated under revolutionary pressures, naming as regent Grand Duke Michael, until his son came of age.

Not reproduced here is the communication, the very next day from Secretary of State Lansing telling Ambassador Francis to call on Milyukov, Foreign Affairs Minister of the new government, and to “state that the Government of the United States recognizes the new Government of Russia,” to which Ambassador to Russia Francis replied that he had arranged to turn out his entire staff “in full uniform” to recognize the revolutionary regime.

Also omitted here are reports showing the Premiership of Prince Lvov, a sop to the royalty-adoring Russians.

All party functions of the Left had unitedly put over the revolution and this interim regime was to be short-lived, indeed.

Four days after the Czar’s abdication, Ambassador Francis stated: “Financial aid now from America would be a master stroke, immeasurably important to the Jews that revolution succeed.” (State Dept. - Exhibit 244)

Enter Kerensky

The premiership of Prince Lvov lasted only two months. To quote from the 1920 four-volume report of the New York State Committee Investigating Subversive Activities (headed by Senator Clayton R. Lusk): “Alongside of the provisional government headed first by Prince Lvov, the socialist and anarchist elements of Petrograd’s population established a Soviet of Soldiers’, Workmen’s, and Sailor’s Deputies…

Its president was at first Tcheidze [Menshevik leader] and its vice-president Kerensky [leader of the socialist Social Revolution Party]. In May, 1917, the Soviet [Kerensky’s] forced the resignation of the first cabinet … Kerensky then succeeded Prince Lvov, the first premier of the provisional government, who proved to be a weak and vacillating character.” (Vol. 1, Page 218)

Kerensky was “weak and vacillating,” not because he did not know about the Lenin-Trotsky revolution being financed by the Kuhn, Loeb cabal, and which was to follow him. The State Department papers herein show he knew every move in advance and did nothing about it. About five months after Kerensky became Russian Premier, the Bolsheviks took over. The wrecking Red work of Jewish Kerensky during his time in office is described in part as follows in the above N.Y. State Lusk Report: “The liberal decrees of the Provisional Government had destroyed the discipline of the army and the disintegration of the once powerful Russian military machine became complete.” (Page 219) “Kerensky’s Social Democrats distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets among Russian soldiers” urging “that the soldiers should disobey their officers and lay down their arms.” (Page 215) The “swift success” of the final Revolution was “attributed in large measure by Lenin to a fortuitous cooperation between contending groups and factions.” (Page 217) [Note: Lenin’s real name was Ulyanov. His father was of Mongol origin, his mother a German Jewess.]

Kronstadt

The great mutiny of the Kronstadt sailors of July 16-17, 1917, is chronicled in modern encyclopedias as a Red Revolutionary event. Kronstadt is an island 21 miles from Petrograd (now Leningrad), in the Gulf of Finland.

On July 16, 1917, Kerensky has come home from the front when Milyukov’s Cadet Party ministers resign. And the next [page 85] day, July 17, 1917, we see that the Bolshevik turmoil is used as “the ostensible grievance” for Kerensky to demobilize “two regiments at the front.” Enter Trotsky (Bronstein).

With Kerensky having conveniently “departed for the front,” Trotsky harangues the crowds. The Cossacks, who are anti-Jew, are unable to prevail. (Exhibits 247, 248)

Chamberlin, in his The Russian Revolution 1917-21 describes the march of 20,000 sailors who disembarked from Kronstadt and marched through Petrograd, shooting into homes and killing people on the pretext that they had been attacked. The roaring bloody days of July 16th and 17th left the people helpless at the hands of the bloodthirsty demonstrators: “So the city was really at the mercy of the demonstrators,” says Chamberlin (Vol. 1, page 173). He also says:

“The Kronstadt sailors marched through the main streets of Petrograd … They promptly broke into houses from which shots were supposed to have come and killed with scant ceremony anyone whom they suspected of shooting … ‘five people were killed and twenty-seven wounded before his eyes on Sadovaya Street,’” read one report by one Kantorovitch.

Terrorist Trotsky (real name Bronstein), who was later to gouge out eyes and dismember his victims in sadistic Talmudic fashion, during the Red Terror, was reported by Ambassador Francis to have “aroused great enthusiasm by advocating violent measures.” (State Department — Exhibit 248).

Kronstadt was a rehearsal leading up to the ripe time for take-over, in November, 1917, several months later.

Trotsky had been living in New York, editing the Russian Communist paper Novy Mir (New World), financed by the communist Garland Fund, directed by Jacob Schiff’s rabbinical protege, Rabbi Judah Magnes, and such leading Communists as William Z. Foster and Roger W. Dunn, Sidney Hillman, Norman Thomas and others, serving on the Red Revolutionary battlefield in this country.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson heard about the abdication of the Czar’s government March 15, 1917, and hailed it. The pretense then, on the part of stooges like Alexander Kerensky and other Jews, was that a “democratic” revolution had been successful, and that “humanity” was to profit from it; the weak Czar, under the thumb of his Jewish bankers and occult Rasputin, having been a pushover achieved by Jewish finance for Jewish power objectives.

The scholar, Jennings Wise, has written (Woodrow Wilson, Apostle of Revolution):

“Woodrow Wilson, despite the efforts of the British police, made it possible for Leon Trotsky to enter Russia on an American passport.” (page 647)

In Document 5 (State Department — Exhibit 254) we see that Lenin got 315,000 marks in June, 1917, just before the Kronstadt revolutionary rehearsal. As the note of our Ambassador states: “Kronstadt, the navy base, was the nerve center from which L’s [Lenin’s] activities radiated during the Summer …”

The funds originated from the “Diskonto Gesellschaft” Bank (Same Exhibit), one of the Jewish controlled German “D Banks” which helped finance the Bolshevik takeover. You may see by referring to the 1943 Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (“Finance, Jews in”) that the so-called “D” banks of Germany were all run by Jews, including the Diskonto Gesellschaft and Deutsch Bank, all being part of the conspiracy.

In September, 1917, Kronstadt is notified that the order to give passports and 207,000 marks “as per order of your Mr. Lenin have been handed to persons mentioned in your letter. The selection met with approval of his excellency the ambassador.” Ira Nelson Morris was Jewish U.S. Ambassador to Sweden at that time.

Jewish Financing Long Planned

As Documents 1 and 2 (Exhibit 251) show, the revolutionary set-up and the banking credits were all ready to function in 1914, and Document 3 (Exhibit 252) specifically names the Diskonto Gesellschaft and Deutsch Banks in this 1914 conspiracy. Exhibit 253, of February 23, 1915, reports the work of revolution, with “W [Warburg] chiefly works from Stockholm” where Jewish Ira Nelson Morris was U.S. Ambassador from July, 1914, until 1922. The “Rhenish Industrial Syndicate” (Document 5, Exhibit 253) advises the Nya Banken in Stockholm and the Stockholm representatives of two of the Jewish-run “D” Banks of Germany that they are to give money for revolutionary propaganda against Russia.

Ambassador Francis detailed (Exhibit 251) documents showing: That, in the name of the German government, agencies had been set up in such Finnish border towns as Lulea, Haparanda and Varda, also in Bergen and Amsterdam. That: “very close and absolutely secret relations [are] being established with Finnish and American banks. In this connection the Ministry begs to recommend the Swedish Nya Banken in Stockholm, the banking office of Furtsenburg; the commercial company Waldmar Hansen in Copenhagen, which are maintaining close relations with Russia.”

Francis adds: “Note: this is an outline of basic financial structure begun in February, 1914, five months before war was launched and still in operation; notice reappearance in subsequent Lenin messages, towns Lulea and Varda, likewise reference to American Banks. Olof Aschberg; one of the heads of the Nya Banken, came to Petrograd a month ago and boasted that N.B. [Nya Banken] was the Bolshevik bank.”

The Guarantee Trust Co., of N.Y. is mentioned, and “Furstenberg,” under the name of Ganetski, and Aschberg are cited as inner group members apt to run the Bolshevik state bank.

Looking at the map of Sweden, you may see that in the North where Sweden joins Finland, and the Gulf of Bothnia ends, washing both shores, there is a little border town of Haparanda and south of it is Lulea, also on the Gulf, with Russia, of today, a short trek to the east across Finland. Those were chosen for the arms-running to the Bolsheviks. The Imperial and “D” Banks of Germany, in the political [page 86] saddle, in cahoots with the Jewish U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, Ira Morris, and the Red Revolutionary Jews, armed with endless funds, put over the job. The Jewish network touched everywhere.

Furstenberg at Stockholm

Stockholm was a cozy place those days for the Reds with the USA Jewish Ambassador friendly to Jewry’s aims. There the “banking office of Furstenberg,” and the “Swedish Nya Banken in Stockholm” are mentioned in Document 1, Exhibit 251, and that was February 14, 1914. Document 8, Exhibit 254, is written to “Mr. Furstenberg” and is from the representative of the Deutsche, one of the German “D” Banks, in Switzerland. He is writing Furstenberg, June 16, 1917, to tell him that Bolshevik pamphlets costing 32,000 francs (Swiss francs were the highest of all in exchange value) have been sent and he would like to know when they arrive. “Maximalist” is used throughout the reports, meaning Bolshevik.

Furstenberg, in good approved Communist style, addresses his letter in Document 9, Exhibit 254, to Raphael Scholnickar as: “Dear Comrade:”, stating: “The office of the banking house M. Warburg has opened … an account for the undertaking of Comrade Trotsky.” The arms have been purchased and sent and a “person authorized to receive the money demanded by Comrade Trotsky.”

Ambassador Francis noted that this communication connected Trotsky “with banker Warburg and with Furstenberg.”

Furstenberg was a busy Jew those days, sending messages of cheer. Document 10, Exhibit 255, is to Bolshevik military leader Antonov at Haparanda telling him that: “Comrade Trotsky’s request has been carried out,” and that a trusty Bolshevik “Sonia,” will be coming to hand him “400,000 kroner.”

We also see that note of Ambassador Francis (Document 10, Exhibit 255):

“This letter from Scheidemann, the German Socialist leader, links him with Furstenberg-Ganetski, with the Nya Banken and with subsidizing the Russian revolution. Trotsky published a paper during the Summer. Another paper spoke for Lenin. Vorwarts would seem to refer to the Socialist organ at Berlin …”

Elsewhere (Exhibit 253) we see the name of Max Warburg, of M.M. Warburg bankers of Hamburg, and related to the Kuhn, Loeb Warburgs of the U.S.A.

As previously mentioned, Max Warburg, later, in 1939, came from Germany and served on the American Jewish Committee “Peace Committee” which drew up and organized the United Nations, its Charter and its propaganda network, consummated at San Francisco in 1945 (See American Jewish Year Book, “Report of American Jewish Committee,” on “Institute on Peace and Post-War Problems,” p. 751, Vol. 43, 1941-2).

Note that Warburg is cited in this Exhibit 253 as one of the three Jewish bankers Rubenstein, Max Warburg, and Parvus, who maneuvered with the Russian revolutionaries, Zenzinov and Lunacharski. Ambassador Francis noted that “Parvus and Warburg both figure in the Lenin and Trotsky documents.”

The Bolsheviks Take Over

While the Army was disintegrating, Premier Kerensky knowing all the time what was to follow, was fluttering with small talk when the take-over by the Red murderers came in November, 1917.

The day of the “Coup D’Etat,” November 7, 1917, Ambassador Francis communicated with Lansing, telling him that the Secretary of the Embassy, Sheldon Whitehouse, had met Kerensky hurrying out of Petrograd, and acknowledging that the Bolsheviks held the city and the Ministers of his government would be arrested (page 224). From then on, the reports go like this: “All Ministers arrested except Kerensky.” “Bolsheviki took possession of Winter Palace where all Ministers except Kerensky were located, all Ministers except Kerensky in Peter and Paul Fortress.” Conflicting reports screen Kerensky’s safe exit, not a hair of his head being harmed. Kerensky later retired to New York, to live graciously after performing his part in the Russian Red Revolution.

It is plain to see from State Department papers that at first Ambassador Francis saw the “German money” financing the Bolsheviks as just that and nothing more. He sensed, however, that a general European revolution was being fomented. And his information came from the files of “Kontrerazvedka, Government secret service organized under Kerensky.”

Concerning this, Ambassador Francis stated in February, 1918:

“If so, unavoidable questions arise why K [Kerensky] did not use evidence against Bolsheviki last July.” “Many clues lead to Stockholm and Copenhagen.”

The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia boasts of the Jews who led the Bolshevik revolution in Russia:

“The political revolution of March, 1917, brought about the complete emancipation of the Russian Jews.” (Page 670, “Soviet Russia”)

“Individual revolutionary leaders of Jewish origin — such as Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Sverdlov — played a conspicuous part in the revolution of November, 1917 which enabled the Bolsheviks to take possession of the state apparatus.”

The great majority of Jews were Socialists, socialist Bundists, socialist Mensheviks, we are further informed, all of whom had worked for the overthrow of the Christian government of Russia.

Consequent “Anti-Semitism”

It followed, in the fight between the Christian elements and the Bolshevik Jews and their dupes, as the same source states that:

“Wherever the civil war was fought, the Whites identified [page 87] the Jews with the Bolsheviks and singled them out for attack … from the first, Anti-Semitism was severely condemned by the Bolsheviks … The recuperative process which set in with the end of the civil war was furthered by the New Economic Policy (NEP) adopted in the Spring of 1921 … By 1924 nearly one-third of all the stores in Moscow were owned by Jews.” (page 674, Encyclopedia)

From our Embassy in Russia came the report of: “conditions appalling; a veritable slaughter … Men are shot without trial.” (Sept. 21, 1918) And “bloody delirium now reigning at Moscow and Petrograd.” (Sept. 25, 1918, page 694; State Department)

In Exhibit 260, we have a typical report from those on the ground, a communication from the U.S. Consul General at Moscow (Summers) to the Secretary of State, May 2, 1918: “Jews predominant in local Soviet government; anti-Jewish feeling grows among population which tends to regard oncoming Germans as deliverers.”

Another State Department report during this period (Exhibit 261) notes: “Fifty per cent of Soviet Government in each town consists of Jews of the worst type, many of whom are anarchists.”

[sayedsadii-blog]

Is Artificial Intelligence Here?

The idea of artificial intelligence and the hopes and fears that are associated with its rise are fairly prevalent in our common subconscious. Whether we imagine Judgement Day at the hands of Skynet or egalitarian totalitarianism at the hands of V.I.K.I and her army of robots - the results are the same - the equivocal displacement of humans as the dominant life forms on the planet.

Some might call it the fears of a technophobic mind, others a tame prophecy. And if the recent findings at the University of Reading (U.K.) are any indication, we may have already begun fulfilling said prophecy. In early June 2014 a historic achievement was supposedly achieved - the passing of the eternal Turing Test by a computer programme. Being hailed and derided the world over as being either the birth of artificial intelligence or a clever trickster-bot that only proved technical skill respectively, the programme known as Eugene Goostman may soon become a name embedded in history.

The programme or Eugene (to his friends) was originally created in 2001 by Vladimir Veselov from Russia and Eugene Demchenko from Ukraine. Since then it has been developed to simulate the personality and conversational patterns of a 13 year old boy and was competing against four other programmes to come out victorious. The Turing Test was held at the world famous Royal Society in London and is considered the most comprehensively designed tests ever. The requirements for a computer programme to pass the Turing Test are simple yet difficult - the ability to convince a human being that the entity that they are conversing with is another human being at least 30 percent of the time.

The result in London garnered Eugene a 33 percent success rating making it the first programme to pass the Turing Test. The test in itself was more challenging because it engaged 300 conversations, with 30 judges or human subjects, against 5 other computer programmes in simultaneous conversations between humans and machines, over five parallel tests. Across all the instances only Eugene was able to convince 33 percent of the human judges that it was a human boy. Built with algorithms that support "conversational logic" and openended topics, Eugene opened up a whole new reality of intelligent machines capable of fooling humans.

With implications in the field of artificial intelligence, cyber-crime, philosophy and metaphysics, its humbling to know that Eugene is only version 1.0 and its creators are already working on something more sophisticated and advanced.

Love in the Time of Social A.I.s

So, should humanity just begin wrapping up its affairs, ready to hand over ourselves to our emerging overlords? No. Not really. Despite the interesting results of the Turing Test, most scientists in the field of artificial intelligence aren't that impressed. The veracity and validity of the Test itself has long been discounted as we've discovered more and more about intelligence, consciousness and the trickery of computer programmes. In fact, the internet is already flooded with many of his unknown kin as a report by Incapsula Research showed that nearly 62 percent of all web traffic is generated by automated computer programs commonly known as bots. Some of these bots act as social hacking tools that engage humans on websites in chats pretending to be real people (mostly women oddly enough) and luring them to malicious websites. The fact that we are already battling a silent war for less pop-up chat alerts is perhaps a nascent indication of the war we may have to face - not deadly but definitely annoying. A very real threat from these pseudoartificial intelligence powered AI chat bot was found to be in a specific bot called "Text- Girlie". This flirtatious and engaging chat bot would use advanced social hacking techniques to trick humans to visit dangerous websites. The TextGirlie proactively would scour publicly available social network data and contact people on their visibly shared mobile numbers. The chatbot would send them messages pretending to be a real girl and ask them to chat in a private online room. The fun, colourful and titillating conversation would quickly lead to invitations to visit webcam sites or dating websites by clicking on links - and that when the trouble would begin. This scam affected over 15 million people over a period of months before there was any clear awareness amongst users that it was a chatbot that fooled them all. The highly likely delay was simply attributed to embarrassment at having been conned by a machine that slowed down the spread of this threat and just goes to show how easily human beings can be manipulated by seemingly intelligent machines.

Intelligent life on our planet

Its easy to snigger at the misfortune of those who've fallen victims to programs like Text- Girlie and wonder if there is any intelligent life on Earth, if not other planets but the smugness is short lived. Since most people are already silently and unknowingly dependent on predictive and analytical software for many of their daily needs. These programmes are just an early evolutionary ancestor of the yet to be realised fully functional artificial intelligent systems and have become integral to our way of life. The use of predictive and analytical programmes is prevalent in major industries including food and retail, telecommunications, utility routing, traffic management, financial trading, inventory management, crime detection, weather monitoring and a host of other industries at various levels. Since these type of programmes are kept distinguished from artificial intelligence due to their commercial applications its easy not to notice their ephemeral nature. But lets not kid ourselves - any analytical program with access to immense databases for the purposes of predicting patterned behaviour is the perfect archetype on which "real" artificial intelligence programs can be and will be created.

A significant case-in-point occurred amongst the tech-savvy community of Reddit users in early 2014. In the catacombs of Reddit forums dedicated to "dogecoin", a very popular user by the name of "wise_shibe" created some serious conflict in the community. The forums normally devoted to discussing the world of dogecoins was gently disturbed when "wise_shibe" joined in the conversation offering Oriental wisdom in the form of clever remarks. The amusing and engaging dialogue offered by "wise_shibe" garnered him many fans, and given the forums facilitation of dogecoin payments, many users made token donations to "wise_shibe" in exchange for his/her "wisdom". However, soon after his rising popularity had earned him an impressive cache of digital currency it was discovered that "wise_shibe" had an odd sense of omniscient timing and a habit of repeating himself. Eventually it was revealed that "wise_shibe" was a bot programmed to draw from a database of proverbs and sayings and post messages on chat threads with related topics. Reddit was pissed.

Luke, Join the Dark Side

If machines programmed by humans are capable of learning, growing, imitating and convincing us of their humanity - then who's to argue that they aren't intelligent? The question then arises that what nature will these intelligences take on as they grow within society? Technologist and scientists have already laid much of the ground work in the form of supercomputers that are capable of deepthinking. Tackling the problem of intelligence piece meal has already led to the creation of grandmaster-beating chess machines in the form of Watson and Deep Blue. However, when these titans of calculations are subjected to kindergarten level intelligence tests they fail miserably in factors of inferencing, intuition, instinct, common sense and applied knowledge.

The ability to learn is still limited to their programming. In contrast to these static computational supercomputers more organically designed technologies such as the delightful insect robotics are more hopeful. These "brains in a body" type of computers are built to interact with their surroundings and learn from experience as any biological organism would. By incorporating the ability to interface with a physical reality these applied artificial intelligences are capable of defining their own sense of understanding to the world. Similar in design to insects or small animals, these machines are conscious of their own physicality and have the programming that allows them to relate to their environment in real-time creating a sense of "experience" and the ability to negotiate with reality.

A far better testament of intelligence than checkmating a grandmaster. The largest pool of experiential data that any artificially created intelligent machine can easily access is in publicly available social media content. In this regard, Twitter has emerged a clear favourite with millions of distinct individuals and billions of lines of communications for a machine to process and infer. The Twitter-test of intelligence is perhaps more contemporarily relevant than the Turing Test where the very language of communication is not intelligently modern - since its greater than 140 characters. The Twitter world is an ecosystems where individuals communicate in blurbs of thoughts and redactions of reason, the modern form of discourse, and it is here that the cutting edge social bots find greatest acceptance as human beings. These socalled socialbots have been let loose on the Twitterverse by researches leading to very intriguing results.

The ease with which these programmed bots are able to construct a believable personal profile - including aspects like picture and gender - has even fooled Twitter's bot detection systems over 70 percent of the times. The idea that we as a society so ingrained with digital communication and trusting of digital messages can be fooled, has lasting repercussions. Just within the Twitterverse, the trend of using an army of socialbots to create trending topics, biased opinions, fake support and the illusion of unified diversity can prove very dangerous. In large numbers these socialbots can be used to frame the public discourse on significant topics that are discussed on the digital realm.

This phenomenon is known as "astroturfing" - taking its name from the famous fake grass used in sporting events - where the illusion of "grass-root" interest in a topic created by socialbots is taken to be a genuine reflection of the opinions of the population. Wars have started with much less stimulus. Just imagine socialbot powered SMS messages in India threatening certain communities and you get the idea. But taking things one step further is the 2013 announcement by Facebook that seeks to combine the "deep thinking" and "deep learning" aspects of computers with Facebook's gigantic storehouse of over a billion individual's personal data.

In effect looking beyond the "fooling" the humans approach and diving deep into "mimicking" the humans but in a prophetic kind of way - where a program might potentially even "understand" humans. The program being developed by Facebook is humorously called DeepFace and is currently being touted for its revolutionary facial recognition technology. But its broader goal is to survey existing user accounts on the network to predict the user's future activity.

By incorporating pattern recognition, user profile analysis, location services and other personal variables, DeepFace is intended to identify and assess the emotional, psychological and physical states of the users. By incorporating the ability to bridge the gap between quantified data and its personal implication, DeepFace could very well be considered a machine that is capable of empathy. But for now it'll probably just be used to spam users with more targeted ads.

From Syntax to Sentience

Artificial intelligence in all its current form is primitive at best. Simply a tool that can be controlled, directed and modified to do the bidding of its human controller. This inherent servitude is the exact opposite of the nature of intelligence, which in normal circumstances is curious, exploratory and downright contrarian. Man made AI of the early 21st century will forever be associated with this paradox and the term "artificial intelligence" will be nothing more than a oxymoron that we used to hide our own ineptitude. The future of artificial intelligence can't be realised as a product of our technological need nor as the result of creation by us as a benevolent species.

We as humans struggle to comprehend the reasons behind our own sentience, more often than not turning to the metaphysical for answers, we can't really expect sentience to be created at the hands of humanity. Computers of the future are surely to be exponentially faster than today, and it is reasonable to assume that the algorithms that determine their behaviour will also advance to unpredictable heights, but what can't be known is when, and if ever, will artificial intelligence attain sentience.

Just as complex proteins and intelligent life found its origins in the early pools of raw materials on Earth, artificial intelligence may too one day emerge out of the complex interconnected systems of networks that we have created. The spark that aligned chaotic proteins into harmonious DNA strands is perhaps the only thing that can possible evolve scattered silicon processors into a vibrant mind. A true artificial intelligence.

[robgrayofficial]

GOOD AFTERNOON PATRIOTS!This is your favorite Saturday Afternoon mod here to deliver yet another weekly recap of winning! As always, before we officially get this recap started, if you happened to miss any past recaps you can catch them here!Sunday, August 12th:🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:@JudgeJeanine “Bob Mueller, isn’t your whole investigation premised on a Fake Dossier, paid for by Hillary, created by a man who hates Donald Trump, & used to con a FISA Court Judge. Bob, I really think it’s time for you to give up your phony investigation.” No Collusion!.@GovMikeHuckabee “Your paycheck is bigger, your pension is stronger.” @foxandfriends Unemployment numbers are better than they have been in 50 years, & perhaps ever. Our country is booming like never before - and it will get even better! Many companies moving back to the U.S.A.Many @harleydavidson owners plan to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas. Great! Most other companies are coming in our direction, including Harley competitors. A really bad move! U.S. will soon have a level playing field, or better.“Seems like the Department of Justice (and FBI) had a program to keep Donald Trump from becoming President”. @DarrellIssa @foxandfriends If this had happened to the other side, everybody involved would be in jail. This is a Media coverup of the biggest story of our time.SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Keith Ellison has been accused of domestic abuseHow stupid is Omarosa? She secretly records Kelly inside the WH situation room. a huge security violation, respectfully telling her she's fired for "significant integrity issues". And that's somehow supposed to make Trump & Kelly look bad? All she did was validate why she was fired with her own tapeJUST IN: Growing calls for Omarosa to be prosecuted after illegally recording president Trump and COS Gen Kelly.So let me get this straight. We chant “CNN sucks” at Jim Acosta, and we are a physical threat to journalists. But Antifa literally assaults and threatens a photojournalist and the media is SILENT.🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Leftist protest backfires..... again..Gender Studies...I'm out volunteering for a Republican candidate today, and I saw a sign for his opponent in someone's lawn. You guys will love what I did to it.Holy shit! A white supremacist compound training kids to become school shooters! Aaaaand it's MuslimsMonday, August 13th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Personnel to Key Administration PostsPresident Trump Delivers Remarks and Participates in a Signing Ceremony for H.R. 5515🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard.... ... ...really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired!While I know it’s “not presidential” to take on a lowlife like Omarosa, and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!The very unpopular Governor of Ohio (and failed presidential candidate) @JohnKasich hurt Troy Balderson’s recent win by tamping down enthusiasm for an otherwise great candidate. Even Kasich’s Lt. Governor lost Gov. race because of his unpopularity. Credit to Troy on the BIG WIN!Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI - finally. The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!Just fired Agent Strzok, formerly of the FBI, was in charge of the Crooked Hillary Clinton sham investigation. It was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone!Wacky Omarosa already has a fully signed Non-Disclosure Agreement!Brooks Koepka just won his third Golf Major, and he did it not only with his powerful game, but with his powerful mind. He has been a man of steel on the Tour and will have many Victories, including Majors, ahead of him. Congrats to Brooks and his great team on a job well done!(Retweeting Michael Cohen) LTo the many dozens of #journalists who called me, questioning @OMAROSA claim in her new book that @POTUS @realDonaldTrump took a note from me, put it in his mouth and ate it...I saw NO such thing and am shocked anyone would take this seriously.(Retweeting Frank Luntz) I’m in @Omarosa’s book on page 149. She claims to have heard from someone who heard from me that I heard Trump use the N-word. Not only is this flat-out false (I’ve never heard such a thing), but Omarosa didn’t even make an effort to call or email me to verify. Very shoddy work.Just landed at Fort Drum, New York. Looking forward to making a speech about our GREAT HEROES!Great to be in Fort Drum, New York with our HEROES!Pete Stauber is running for Congress in Minnesota. He will make for a great Congressman. Pete is strong on crime and borders, loves our Military, Vets and Second Amendment. Vote for Pete tomorrow. He has my full and total Endorsement!It was my great honor to sign our new Defense Bill into law and to pay tribute to the greatest soldiers in the history of the world: THE U.S. ARMY. The National Defense Authorization Act is the most significant investment in our Military and our warfighters in modern history!“Trump’s foreign policy is actually boosting America’s standing”Scott Walker of Wisconsin is a tremendous Governor who has done incredible things for that Great State. He has my complete & total Endorsement! He brought the amazing Foxconn to Wisconsin with its 15,000 Jobs-and so much more. Vote for Scott on Tuesday in the Republican Primary!.@MarkBurnettTV called to say that there are NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa. I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up. Look at her MANY recent quotes saying.... ... ....such wonderful and powerful things about me - a true Champion of Civil Rights - until she got fired. Omarosa had Zero credibility with the Media (they didn’t want interviews) when she worked in the White House. Now that she says bad about me, they will talk to her. Fake News!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:FINALLY! FBI fires Strzok over anti Trump textsThe left owes Trump a huge apologyISIS Social Media Presence Soars as Big Tech Focuses on Censoring ConsrvativesJudicial Watch: Firing of Peter Strzok is a Body Blow to Robert Mueller's Special CounselBoy at New Mexico compound died in ritual ceremony, prosecutors say!🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:MFW Journalists Go To Cover A Neo-Nazi Rally But Are Forced To Report On Antifa Violence Instead.The new leader of Italy is seriously taking no Crap when it comes to Islam. WOW I like this fellaThis is the kind of President we have that the media doesn’t want you to see.Tuesday, August 14th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Donald J. Trump at Fort Drum🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch: “The Strzok firing is as much about the Mueller operation as anything else. There would be no Mueller Special Councel to investigate so called collusion but for the machinations of Strzok & his colleagues at the top levels of the FBI. We know this... ... ....guy was corrupt and had anti-Trump animus. Strzok and others at the FBI should be criminally investigated for the way the conducted this investigation. Instead, Mueller is pretending nothing went wrong. He used Strzok, he used the Clinton DNC Dossier...the whole thing.... ... ....should be shut down. The Strzok firing shows that the fundamental underpinnings of the investigation were corrupt. It should be shut down by the courts or by honest prosecutors.” Thank you Judicial Watch, I couldn’t have said it better myself!When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!Another terrorist attack in London...These animals are crazy and must be dealt with through toughness and strength!Bruce Ohr of the “Justice” Department (can you believe he is still there) is accused of helping disgraced Christopher Steele “find dirt on Trump.” Ohr’s wife, Nelly, was in on the act big time - worked for Fusion GPS on Fake Dossier. @foxandfriends“They were all in on it, clear Hillary Clinton and FRAME Donald Trump for things he didn’t do.” Gregg Jarrett on @foxandfriends If we had a real Attorney General, this Witch Hunt would never have been started! Looking at the wrong people.Fired FBI Agent Peter Strzok is a fraud, as is the rigged investigation he started. There was no Collusion or Obstruction with Russia, and everybody, including the Democrats, know it. The only Collusion and Obstruction was by Crooked Hillary, the Democrats and the DNC!Strzok started the illegal Rigged Witch Hunt - why isn’t this so-called “probe” ended immediately? Why aren’t these angry and conflicted Democrats instead looking at Crooked Hillary?Lou Dobbs: “This cannot go forward...this Special Counsel with all of his conflicts, with his 17 Angry Democrats, without any evidence of collusion by the Trump Campaign and Russia. The Dems are the ones who should be investigated.” Thank you Lou, so true!“Hope and Change in an Alabama Coal Mine”SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:The Monster Of New Mexico, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, Grinning At Court Hearing Moments Before Insane Judge Lets Him Out! DISBAR AND FIRE THE JUDGE!!!THIS ... is CNNWhy Our Kids Are Screwed | Professors Of Gender and Ethnic Studies are making about $15,000 more per year than their counterparts in fields of Math, Biology, and the Physical SciencesBreaking Bad - GoFundMe being used for anonymous kickbacks for Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe?THIS IS A HISTORIC NUMBER! President Trump’s approval rating with African Americans hit 31%PRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:Press Briefing🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Lol“PARTS AND PARCEL of BIG CITY”(No title needed)How To Be Presidential While TweetingIncredible view of the March for Our Lives protesters outside the NM Courthouse after 5 school shooting conspirators were released on $20k bondWednesday, August 15th:TODAY'S ACTION:One Nomination Sent to the Senate Today🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Great Republican election results last night. So far we have the team we want. 8 for 9 in Special Elections. Red Wave!Congratulations to Leah Vukmir of Wisconsin on your great win last night. You beat a very tough and good competitor and will make a fantastic Senator after winning in November against someone who has done very little. You have my complete and total Endorsement!Scott Walker is very special and will have another great win in November. He has done a fantastic job as Governor of Wisconsin and will always have my full support and Endorsement!Jeff Johnson of Minnesota had a big night in winning the Republican nomination for Governor against a very strong and well known opponent! Thanks for all of the support you showed me. You have my complete and total Endorsement. You will win in November!Congratulations to Bryan Steil on a wonderful win last night. You will be replacing a great guy in Paul Ryan, and your win in November will make the entire State of Wisconsin very proud. You have my complete and total Endorsement!“People who enter the United States without our permission are illegal aliens and illegal aliens should not be treated the same as people who entered the U.S. legally.” Chuck Schumer in 2009, before he went left and haywire! @foxandfriends.@PeteStauber won big last night in Minnesota. A big star in Hockey, he will be an even bigger star in politics. It all begins with a win in November. Pete has my complete and total Endorsement!It is about time that Connecticut had a real and talented Governor. Bob Stefanowski is the person needed to do the job. Tough on crime, Bob is also a big cutter of Taxes. He will win in November and make a Great Governor, a major difference maker. Bob has my total Endorsement!My friend and very early supporter Kris Kobach won the Republican Nomination for Governor of Kansas last night in a tough race against a very fine opponent. Kris will win in November and be a great Governor. He has my complete and total Endorsement!The Rigged Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on as the “originators and founders” of this scam continue to be fired and demoted for their corrupt and illegal activity. All credibility is gone from this terrible Hoax, and much more will be lost as it proceeds. No Collusion!“The action (the Strzok firing) was a decisive step in the right direction in correcting the wrongs committed by what has been described as Comey’s skinny inner circle.” Chris Swecker, former FBI Assistant Director.Happy Birthday to the leader of the Democrat Party, Maxine Waters!Our Country was built on Tariffs, and Tariffs are now leading us to great new Trade Deals - as opposed to the horrible and unfair Trade Deals that I inherited as your President. Other Countries should not be allowed to come in and steal the wealth of our great U.S.A. No longer!Chuck Schumer, I agree!(Retweeting Rasmussen Reports) Today’s @realDonaldTrump approval ratings among black voters: 36% This day last year: 19%“John Brennan is a stain on the Country, we deserve better than this.” Former Secret Service Agent and author of new book, “Spygate, the Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump,” Dan Bongino. Thank you Dan, and good luck with the book!“Hillary Clinton clearly got a pass by the FBI. We have the unfortunate situation where they then decided they were going to frame Donald Trump” concerning the Rigged Witch Hunt. JOE DIGENOVA, former U.S. Attorney.“WE’RE NOT GOING TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, IT WAS NEVER THAT GREAT.” Can you believe this is the Governor of the Highest Taxed State in the U.S., Andrew Cuomo, having a total meltdown!Mark Levin “When they had power they didn’t stop the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, they funded the Iranians & are responsible for the greatest scandal in American history by interfering with our election & trying to undermine the Trump Campaign and Trump Presidency.”“I’d strip the whole bunch of them. They’re all corrupt. They’ve all abused their power. They’ve all betrayed the American people with a political agenda. They tried to steal and influence an election in the United States.” @seanhannitySIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:HUGE! Trump revokes security clearance for former CIA director John BrennanAndrew Cuomo shocks crowd, says America 'was never that great'WHAT.THE.ACTUAL.FUCK. After being completely wrecked by SCOTUS, the massively butthurt state of Colorado is suing baker James Phillips AGAIN -- this time, for not making a tranny cake. THIS IS TARGETED STATE HARASSMENT OF A PRIVATE CITIZEN. COLORADO PEDES, GET THESE LUNATICS OUT OF OFFICE NOW.Somehow CNN missed this: Americans’ CO2 Emissions Hit A 67-Year Low Under Trump | In the last year, U.S. emissions fell more than 0.5 percent while European emissions rose 1.5 percent — an ironic turn of events given Europe’s shaming of Trump for leaving the Paris climate accord.PRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:Press Beating🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:CNN's Unbiased Journalism !!!US INTERNET SPEED HAS GONE FROM 12TH TO 6TH FASTEST SINCE END OF NET NEUTRALITY... WTF, I HATE FASTER INTERNET SPEEDS NOWFeelings. Nothing more than feelings. . .As a gay man, I demand that the State of Colorado stop harassing Baker Jack. If I am free to practice my lifestyle, he should be free to practice his religion. Why can’t we just have mutual respect?Thursday, August 16th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate, Designate, and Appoint Personnel to Key Administration PostsNineteen Nominations and Two Withdrawals Sent to the Senate TodayPresident Donald J. Trump Announces Seventeenth Wave of United States Attorney Nominees and Twelfth Wave of United States Marshal NomineesPresident Trump Hosts a Cabinet Meeting🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Our Economy is doing better than ever. Money is pouring into our cherished DOLLAR like rarely before, companies earnings are higher than ever, inflation is low & business optimism is higher than it has ever been. For the first time in many decades, we are protecting our workers!THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS THE OPPOSITION PARTY. It is very bad for our Great Country....BUT WE ARE WINNING!The Boston Globe, which was sold to the the Failing New York Times for 1.3 BILLION DOLLARS (plus 800 million dollars in losses & investment), or 2.1 BILLION DOLLARS, was then sold by the Times for 1 DOLLAR. Now the Globe is in COLLUSION with other papers on free press. PROVE IT!There is nothing that I would want more for our Country than true FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. The fact is that the Press is FREE to write and say anything it wants, but much of what it says is FAKE NEWS, pushing a political agenda or just plain trying to hurt people. HONESTY WINS!The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, is dead. She was a great woman, with a wonderful gift from God, her voice. She will be missed!Great @Cabinet meeting today at the @WhiteHouse!(Retweeting GOP) Thank you for the kind words Omarosa!Turkey has taken advantage of the United States for many years. They are now holding our wonderful Christian Pastor, who I must now ask to represent our Country as a great patriot hostage. We will pay nothing for the release of an innocent man, but we are cutting back on Turkey!“The FBI received documents from Bruce Ohr (of the Justice Department & whose wife Nelly worked for Fusion GPS).” Disgraced and fired FBI Agent Peter Strzok. This is too crazy to be believed! The Rigged Witch Hunt has zero credibility.“While Steele shopped the document to multiple media outlets, he also asked for help with a RUSSIAN Oligarch.” Catherine Herridge of @FoxNews @LouDobbs In other words, they were colluding with Russia!“Very concerned about Comey’s firing, afraid they will be exposed,” said Bruce Ohr. DOJ’s Emails & Notes show Bruce Ohr’s connection to (phony & discredited) Trump Dossier. A creep thinking he would get caught in a dishonest act. Rigged Witch Hunt!.@TuckerCarlson speaking of John Brennan: “How did somebody so obviously limited intellectually get to be CIA Director in the first place?” Now that is a really good question! Then followed by “Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut is a FAKE War Hero...” So true, a total Fake!How can “Senator” Richard Blumenthal, who went around for twenty years as a Connecticut politician bragging that he was a great Marine war hero in Vietnam (then got caught and sobbingly admitted he was neither a Marine nor ever in Vietnam), pass judgement on anyone? Loser!“....An incredibly corrupt FBI & DOJ trying to steer the outcome of a Presidential Election. Brennan has gone off the deep end, he’s disgraced and discredited himself. His conduct has been outrageous.” Chris Farrell, Judicial Watch.“Director Brennan’s recent statements purport to know as fact that the Trump campaign colluded with a foreign power. If Director Brennan’s statement is based on intelligence he received while leading the CIA, why didn’t he include it in the Intelligence Community Assessment...... ... .....released in 2017. If his statement is based on intelligence he has seen since leaving office, it constitutes an intelligence breach......” Richard Burr (R-NC) Senate Intel Cmte Chair @LouDobbsSIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:WTF? New Mexico compound mysteriously destroyed by authorities.Statement by Lara Trump on Omarosa's "Unhinged"California Judge Rules Twitter CAN Be Sued for Falsely Advertising Free Speech | Breitbart🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Graduate with useless degree...play victim...blame society...vote DemocratThe Onion is the only outlet that can tell funny Trump jokes rather than vicious ones 😂😂When you’re browsing the_donald real quick at a red light and look up to see The DonaldFrom the fabulous year of 2004: "In his private 727, Trump and girlfriend Melania Knauss travel in gilded style".Friday, August 17th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Trump Delivers a Statement Upon DepartureMrs. Pence Celebrates National Honey Bee Awareness DayPresidential Proclamation on National Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve Week, 2018🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:In speaking with some of the world’s top business leaders I asked what it is that would make business (jobs) even better in the U.S. “Stop quarterly reporting & go to a six month system,” said one. That would allow greater flexibility & save money. I have asked the SEC to study!How does a politician, Cuomo, known for pushing people and businesses out of his state, not to mention having the highest taxes in the U.S., survive making the statement, WE’RE NOT GOING TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, IT WAS NEVER THAT GREAT? Which section of the sentence is worse?The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it. When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it. Never let someone hold you up! I will instead... ... ....attend the big parade already scheduled at Andrews Air Force Base on a different date, & go to the Paris parade, celebrating the end of the War, on November 11th. Maybe we will do something next year in D.C. when the cost comes WAY DOWN. Now we can buy some more jet fighters!Just announced, youth unemployment is at a 50 year low! @foxandfriendsThe U.S. has more than double the growth rate than it had 18 months ago.Wow! Big pushback on Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York for his really dumb statement about America’s lack of greatness. I have already MADE America Great Again, just look at the markets, jobs, military- setting records, and we will do even better. Andrew “choked” badly, mistake!When a politician admits that “We’re not going to make America great again,” there doesn’t seem to be much reason to ever vote for him. This could be a career threatening statement by Andrew Cuomo, with many wanting him to resign-he will get higher ratings than his brother Chris!Which is worse, Hightax Andrew Cuomo's statement, “WE’RE NOT GOING TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, IT WAS NEVER THAT GREAT” or Hillary Clinton’s “DEPLORABLES” statement... ... ..I say Andrew’s was a bigger and more incompetent blunder. He should easily win his race against a Super Liberal Actress, but his political career is over!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:BREAKING: Judge Ellis, the judge presiding over Manafort trial, has been threatened and is now being guarded by U.S. Marshals, also says he WON'T RELEASE jurors' personal informationIT'S BACK!Trump 'trusted' more than Democrats to boost economy, keep US safe 🇺🇸😂Why snopes is fake newsBan Alex Jones but this is totally acceptable.🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:They Gone5 months ago, I told you I'd become a Marine! I did it!They hate us because we showed them they have no powerMOTHERFUCKING BEEEEES!!!Saturday, August 18th:🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Social Media is totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices. Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won’t let that happen. They are closing down the opinions of many people on the RIGHT, while at the same time doing nothing to others....... ... .....Censorship is a very dangerous thing & absolutely impossible to police. If you are weeding out Fake News, there is nothing so Fake as CNN & MSNBC, & yet I do not ask that their sick behavior be removed. I get used to it and watch with a grain of salt, or don’t watch at all.. ... ....Too many voices are being destroyed, some good & some bad, and that cannot be allowed to happen. Who is making the choices, because I can already tell you that too many mistakes are being made. Let everybody participate, good & bad, and we will all just have to figure it out!All of the fools that are so focused on looking only at Russia should start also looking in another direction, China. But in the end, if we are smart, tough and well prepared, we will get along with everyone!Has anyone looked at the mistakes that John Brennan made while serving as CIA Director? He will go down as easily the WORST in history & since getting out, he has become nothing less than a loudmouth, partisan, political hack who cannot be trusted with the secrets to our country!Great Job Rachel Campos-Duffy on @foxandfriends.The Economy is stronger and better than ever before. Importantly, there remains tremendous potential - it will only get better with time!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:FBI Dealt Blow By DC Judge; Must Address Measures Taken To Verify Steele Dossier and give the documents to Judicial WatchPRAGERU: BREAKING: We're being heavily censored on @Facebook. Our last 9 posts are reaching 0 of our 3 million followers. At least two videos were deleted last night for “hate speech” including our recent video with @conservmillen. SHARE to spread awareness about big tech censorship!Trump Curse wins again! Nasty woman Michelle Wolf loses Netflix seriesWe’re up to two: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bans media from two 'public' eventsMan Found Contracts Showing Obama Was Paying Trump Spy — Obama Tried to Shut Him Up by Stripping Security ClearanceIt Has Officially Been Confirmed About Sarah Huckabee Sanders – Congrats! Claim: In 2018, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was listed as one of the 10 “most admired” women in the United States.” “Rating: True”🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Good job resistance! You guys must be so proud of yourselves!Everyone else did it the wrong way...but this time...this is the oneGood Morning pedes.....MAGAIt's Happening, Baby! DRAGON ENERGYNO BRAKES ON THIS TRUMP TRAIN!!!Without further ado; some music to get you jamming:See You AgainXTCYBarbie DreamsSelf ControlRebornMAGA ON PATRIOTS!! #robgray

[johnswriting-blog]

Is Artificial Intelligence Here?

The idea of artificial intelligence and the hopes and fears that are associated with its rise are fairly prevalent in our common subconscious. Whether we imagine Judgement Day at the hands of Skynet or egalitarian totalitarianism at the hands of V.I.K.I and her army of robots - the results are the same - the equivocal displacement of humans as the dominant life forms on the planet.

Some might call it the fears of a technophobic mind, others a tame prophecy. And if the recent findings at the University of Reading (U.K.) are any indication, we may have already begun fulfilling said prophecy. In early June 2014 a historic achievement was supposedly achieved - the passing of the eternal Turing Test by a computer programme. Being hailed and derided the world over as being either the birth of artificial intelligence or a clever trickster-bot that only proved technical skill respectively, the programme known as Eugene Goostman may soon become a name embedded in history.

The programme or Eugene (to his friends) was originally created in 2001 by Vladimir Veselov from Russia and Eugene Demchenko from Ukraine. Since then it has been developed to simulate the personality and conversational patterns of a 13 year old boy and was competing against four other programmes to come out victorious. The Turing Test was held at the world famous Royal Society in London and is considered the most comprehensively designed tests ever. The requirements for a computer programme to pass the Turing Test are simple yet difficult - the ability to convince a human being that the entity that they are conversing with is another human being at least 30 percent of the time.

The result in London garnered Eugene a 33 percent success rating making it the first programme to pass the Turing Test. The test in itself was more challenging because it engaged 300 conversations, with 30 judges or human subjects, against 5 other computer programmes in simultaneous conversations between humans and machines, over five parallel tests. Across all the instances only Eugene was able to convince 33 percent of the human judges that it was a human boy. Built with algorithms that support "conversational logic" and openended topics, Eugene opened up a whole new reality of intelligent machines capable of fooling humans.

With implications in the field of artificial intelligence, cyber-crime, philosophy and metaphysics, its humbling to know that Eugene is only version 1.0 and its creators are already working on something more sophisticated and advanced.

Love in the Time of Social A.I.s

So, should humanity just begin wrapping up its affairs, ready to hand over ourselves to our emerging overlords? No. Not really. Despite the interesting results of the Turing Test, most scientists in the field of artificial intelligence aren't that impressed. The veracity and validity of the Test itself has long been discounted as we've discovered more and more about intelligence, consciousness and the trickery of computer programmes. In fact, the internet is already flooded with many of his unknown kin as a report by Incapsula Research showed that nearly 62 percent of all web traffic is generated by automated computer programs commonly known as bots. Some of these bots act as social hacking tools that engage humans on websites in chats pretending to be real people (mostly women oddly enough) and luring them to malicious websites. The fact that we are already battling a silent war for less pop-up chat alerts is perhaps a nascent indication of the war we may have to face - not deadly but definitely annoying. A very real threat from these pseudoartificial intelligence powered chatbots was found to be in a specific bot called "Text- Girlie". This flirtatious and engaging chat bot would use advanced social hacking techniques to trick humans to visit dangerous websites. The TextGirlie proactively would scour publicly available social network data and contact people on their visibly shared mobile numbers. The chatbot would send them messages pretending to be a real girl and ask them to chat in a private online room. The fun, colourful and titillating conversation would quickly lead to invitations to visit webcam sites or dating websites by clicking on links - and that when the trouble would begin. This scam affected over 15 million people over a period of months before there was any clear awareness amongst users that it was a chatbot that fooled them all. The highly likely delay was simply attributed to embarrassment at having been conned by a machine that slowed down the spread of this threat and just goes to show how easily human beings can be manipulated by seemingly intelligent machines.

Intelligent life on our planet

Know more about AI chat for your business.

Its easy to snigger at the misfortune of those who've fallen victims to programs like Text- Girlie and wonder if there is any intelligent life on Earth, if not other planets but the smugness is short lived. Since most people are already silently and unknowingly dependent on predictive and analytical software for many of their daily needs. These programmes are just an early evolutionary ancestor of the yet to be realised fully functional artificial intelligent systems and have become integral to our way of life. The use of predictive and analytical programmes is prevalent in major industries including food and retail, telecommunications, utility routing, traffic management, financial trading, inventory management, crime detection, weather monitoring and a host of other industries at various levels. Since these type of programmes are kept distinguished from artificial intelligence due to their commercial applications its easy not to notice their ephemeral nature. But lets not kid ourselves - any analytical program with access to immense databases for the purposes of predicting patterned behaviour is the perfect archetype on which "real" artificial intelligence programs can be and will be created.

A significant case-in-point occurred amongst the tech-savvy community of Reddit users in early 2014. In the catacombs of Reddit forums dedicated to "dogecoin", a very popular user by the name of "wise_shibe" created some serious conflict in the community. The forums normally devoted to discussing the world of dogecoins was gently disturbed when "wise_shibe" joined in the conversation offering Oriental wisdom in the form of clever remarks. The amusing and engaging dialogue offered by "wise_shibe" garnered him many fans, and given the forums facilitation of dogecoin payments, many users made token donations to "wise_shibe" in exchange for his/her "wisdom". However, soon after his rising popularity had earned him an impressive cache of digital currency it was discovered that "wise_shibe" had an odd sense of omniscient timing and a habit of repeating himself. Eventually it was revealed that "wise_shibe" was a bot programmed to draw from a database of proverbs and sayings and post messages on chat threads with related topics. Reddit was pissed.

Luke, Join the Dark Side

If machines programmed by humans are capable of learning, growing, imitating and convincing us of their humanity - then who's to argue that they aren't intelligent? The question then arises that what nature will these intelligences take on as they grow within society? Technologist and scientists have already laid much of the ground work in the form of supercomputers that are capable of deepthinking. Tackling the problem of intelligence piece meal has already led to the creation of grandmaster-beating chess machines in the form of Watson and Deep Blue. However, when these titans of calculations are subjected to kindergarten level intelligence tests they fail miserably in factors of inferencing, intuition, instinct, common sense and applied knowledge.

The ability to learn is still limited to their programming. In contrast to these static computational supercomputers more organically designed technologies such as the delightful insect robotics are more hopeful. These "brains in a body" type of computers are built to interact with their surroundings and learn from experience as any biological organism would. By incorporating the ability to interface with a physical reality these applied artificial intelligences are capable of defining their own sense of understanding to the world. Similar in design to insects or small animals, these machines are conscious of their own physicality and have the programming that allows them to relate to their environment in real-time creating a sense of "experience" and the ability to negotiate with reality.

A far better testament of intelligence than checkmating a grandmaster. The largest pool of experiential data that any artificially created intelligent machine can easily access is in publicly available social media content. In this regard, Twitter has emerged a clear favourite with millions of distinct individuals and billions of lines of communications for a machine to process and infer. The Twitter-test of intelligence is perhaps more contemporarily relevant than the Turing Test where the very language of communication is not intelligently modern - since its greater than 140 characters. The Twitter world is an ecosystems where individuals communicate in blurbs of thoughts and redactions of reason, the modern form of discourse, and it is here that the cutting edge social bots find greatest acceptance as human beings. These socalled socialbots have been let loose on the Twitterverse by researches leading to very intriguing results.

The ease with which these programmed bots are able to construct a believable personal profile - including aspects like picture and gender - has even fooled Twitter's bot detection systems over 70 percent of the times. The idea that we as a society so ingrained with digital communication and trusting of digital messages can be fooled, has lasting repercussions. Just within the Twitterverse, the trend of using an army of socialbots to create trending topics, biased opinions, fake support and the illusion of unified diversity can prove very dangerous. In large numbers these socialbots can be used to frame the public discourse on significant topics that are discussed on the digital realm.

This phenomenon is known as "astroturfing" - taking its name from the famous fake grass used in sporting events - where the illusion of "grass-root" interest in a topic created by socialbots is taken to be a genuine reflection of the opinions of the population. Wars have started with much less stimulus. Just imagine socialbot powered SMS messages in India threatening certain communities and you get the idea. But taking things one step further is the 2013 announcement by Facebook that seeks to combine the "deep thinking" and "deep learning" aspects of computers with Facebook's gigantic storehouse of over a billion individual's personal data.

In effect looking beyond the "fooling" the humans approach and diving deep into "mimicking" the humans but in a prophetic kind of way - where a program might potentially even "understand" humans. The program being developed by Facebook is humorously called DeepFace and is currently being touted for its revolutionary facial recognition technology. But its broader goal is to survey existing user accounts on the network to predict the user's future activity.

By incorporating pattern recognition, user profile analysis, location services and other personal variables, DeepFace is intended to identify and assess the emotional, psychological and physical states of the users. By incorporating the ability to bridge the gap between quantified data and its personal implication, DeepFace could very well be considered a machine that is capable of empathy. But for now it'll probably just be used to spam users with more targeted ads.

From Syntax to Sentience

Artificial intelligence in all its current form is primitive at best. Simply a tool that can be controlled, directed and modified to do the bidding of its human controller. This inherent servitude is the exact opposite of the nature of intelligence, which in normal circumstances is curious, exploratory and downright contrarian. Man made AI of the early 21st century will forever be associated with this paradox and the term "artificial intelligence" will be nothing more than a oxymoron that we used to hide our own ineptitude. The future of artificial intelligence can't be realised as a product of our technological need nor as the result of creation by us as a benevolent species.

We as humans struggle to comprehend the reasons behind our own sentience, more often than not turning to the metaphysical for answers, we can't really expect sentience to be created at the hands of humanity. Computers of the future are surely to be exponentially faster than today, and it is reasonable to assume that the algorithms that determine their behaviour will also advance to unpredictable heights, but what can't be known is when, and if ever, will artificial intelligence attain sentience.

Just as complex proteins and intelligent life found its origins in the early pools of raw materials on Earth, artificial intelligence may too one day emerge out of the complex interconnected systems of networks that we have created. The spark that aligned chaotic proteins into harmonious DNA strands is perhaps the only thing that can possible evolve scattered silicon processors into a vibrant mind. A true artificial intelligence.

[andongaustin]

All football fans are scared of something. Be it fate, habit, man or beast. For some, there is the annual spectre of relegation looming in their thoughts; others are constantly afraid of snatching failure from the jaws of success – even after Wenger has left. At United, the fans are in most fear of an inanimate object. No, not Daley Blind, but the fax machine. They dread the beep and whir of an official communication from Real Madrid Club de Futbol, pertaining to the purchase of David de Gea. The ineffectiveness of such an arcane form of communication famously (and fortuitously) put pay to a previous attempted coup, but it has since felt like a glitchy delay of the inevitable: the Spaniard’s return. In their heart of hearts, even the most biased red would concede that for most of his seven year stint at the club, United have been punching with Dave. He has been far too good for the players around him, and deserves better in every respect. Undisputedly the best goalkeeper in the world, he has never had the merest sniff at a Champions League medal. Allied to this, the Madrid native has made no secret of his desire to return home. A product of the Atletico Juvenil, it is obvious he’d have zero qualms about joining their local rivals at the Bernabeu – quite the opposite in fact. Real Madrid is a special draw to anyone of Iberian blood, never mind a son of their streets. Alas, there’s no place like home. Everything calls him back: the sun, the glamour, the culture, the food, the very real prospect of European glory, and proximity to his long-term girlfriend Edurne Garcia – Manchester may be wonderful, but it can’t possibly compete with all of that. Thankfully for everyone associated with United, the stars — and fax toners — have failed to align…just yet. Dave is 27 now, and more than served his time. He has remained extremely patient and serene in spite of the perma-transition going on before him. It would be extremely harsh for anyone of Old Trafford allegiance to do anything other than thank him wholeheartedly and wish him the very best were he to return to the city that reared him. That said, perhaps it needn’t end that way. More so, perhaps it shouldn’t end that way. Everyone has a story, but until the words are written – prior to the jets of ink hitting the fax roll – perspective can shift in a way that causes all future plans to jam and recalibrate. None of us are hostages to fortune forever; we eventually arrive at a point that allows us to push for what we most determinedly want. The only thing that can stop us is a change of mind. De Gea arrived at the World Cup as the universally accepted number one number one, playing for the expert’s choice team to reign supreme. His neck may have been barren of ribbons, barring an FA Cup losers’ medal, but his chest was swollen from rave reviews and platitudes. If nothing else, Manchester always lets its heroes know they’re ace and appreciated. Sadly, things in Russia did not pan out quite as he would have hoped. Real Madrid, in their infinite and arrogant wisdom, chose to derail all of Spain’s best-laid plans by swooping for Julen Lopetegui – leading to his untimely sacking. This directly contributed to a disjointed and all-too-brief campaign under Fernando Hierro. They topped their group, but only managed a single victory – against Iran – before losing to the hosts on penalties. Of course such failure demanded a scapegoat, with Florentino Perez the obvious candidate. But no, the Spanish media rounded rather bizarrely on De Gea. He was condemned as ineffectual and weak – and the prime reason why his country only lasted a fortnight. So much so that Edurne received online abuse for her partner’s perceived failures. Foremost in their criticism were Marca – famed for being Real’s media mouthpiece. Having identified De Gea as the convenient stooge to distract from Florentino’s sabotage, they got to work on building a negative narrative. Rating him the very lowest of all of Spain’s performers in Russia, they concluded that the United man had “lost his position as the country’s undisputed number one.” Understandably, Dave was miffed. He succinctly and pointedly responded: “To whom supported, suffered and criticised us with respect, thanks. We’re f****d but we’ll get up again and never give up.” The apology was sincere, but so was the obvious irritation. United fans, old hands at providing sanctuary to World Cup bête noires, advised he ‘fuck ’em and come home’. That word again: home. There is nothing nice about being labelled a national failure. It is not a positive thing. We certainly didn’t want one of our own to be subjected to such torment. However, if there’s a silver lining to the cloud, it is that the greatest goalie in the world may now have a different sense of where he truly belongs — and where he can be most happy. Dave did not deserve the very focused criticism he received. He was essentially thrown under the bus for the sins of others. In the process, he got a small taste of what he could face were he to swap Manchester for Madrid. Old Trafford enveloped him with love and support during his most vulnerable moments; Spain spat on his name for not stopping penalties. You don’t need me to tell you how good our boy is – you already know. I could wax lyrical about how he has saved our skins time and time again. I could waste paragraphs expanding on the obvious — that he is quite possibly the closest that any of us will get to witnessing a real life superhero. But why try to articulate what you’ve seen with your own eyes? We absolutely know and appreciate that we have a rare gem in our possession. And we never fail to let him and world know that. Each stunning save is celebrated like a winning goal, whilst the rare fumble is forgiven in an instant. You won’t find a bad word said of the man when he fails to reach a goal-bound effort — there’s no white hankies here. In targeting De Gea as an outlet for their pent up frustrations, perhaps the Spanish and Madrid-based media have done us a massive favour. Maybe they’ve caused our number one to reassess where he feels most comfortable and accepted. To use a quote often attributed to one of Manchester’s finest sons, it’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at. Fuck ’em and come home, Dave. You’re safe with us just as much as we’re safe with you. Republik of Mancunia

http://austinakwa.blogspot.com/2018/08/theres-no-place-like-home-for-de-gea.html