Conservative uprising in Seoul protests unchecked ruling party

From Free Pressers.com (Dec. 2019):

South Korea’s National Assembly on Monday canceled a vote on fast-tracked legislation being pushed by leftist President Moon Jae-In after a massive protest by opposition lawmakers and their supporters in the streets outside the parliament.

“I will not open a plenary session today because it won’t be possible to smoothly operate a session,” National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-Sang said in a statement.

The Liberty Korea Party (LKP) protested the ruling Democratic Party (DP) and its legislative allies for attempting to push through bills which would revise the electoral system and weaken the powers of prosecutors in a process that excluded opposition parties.

Thousands of protesters, many waving Korean and American flags, flooded the area in front of the National Assembly to protest what they said was a power grab by President Moon and his Democratic Party.

Korea analyst Lawrence Peck, who witnessed the protest, posted his reaction online, writing: “As I Watched Live Protests In Front Of National Assembly, Police Announced They Would Arrest Not Only Protesters, But Also Arrest Media Covering The Protest! I Heard It With My Own Ears! Wow! But No Foreign Journalists Were There To Report It! The protest was against an attempt by Moon's party to ram through, in expedited manner, Moon's special political prosecution unit reform plan. Thousands of people were there to protest it. How can police threaten to arrest reporters covering it? Crazy!”

Many of the protesters were members of conservative groups who support impeached President Park Geun-Hye, Korea JoongAng Daily reported. The pro-Park protesters are known as the “Taegeukgi Troops,” for the Taegeukgi, or the Korean national flag, they always wave.

On Dec. 10, the ruling party and four smaller parties formed a bloc to pass what is known as the “Super Budget” ($432 billion), the largest budget in South Korea’s history, “while excluding the main opposition party,” East Asia Research Center reported.

The Deobureo Minjoo Party (Democratic Party of Korea), together with Bareun Mirae Party, Justice Party, Democratic Peace Party, and New Alternative Party pushed forward in passing the bill, despite LKP’s protest. The bill passed only one minute after it was introduced, the report said. [read more]

Other articles about S. Korea:

• Unreported: Seoul government invited nation's virus outbreak
• South Korea Provides Lessons, Good and Bad, on Coronavirus Response

Constitution 101 2019 Course Notes Part 3

In Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson writes that slavery teaches slave owners how to become tyrants.

The slave trade was legally abolished in the United States in 1807.

The three-fifths clause in the Constitution was a compromise to secure the ratification of the Constitution.

Progress toward emancipation stopped, and then reversed, due to the invention of the cotton gin and more adaptable strains of cotton, the growing attachment to an aristocratic society, and an overt rejection of the principles of the founding.

John C. Calhoun articulated a new ideology which held that slavery was a positive good.

According to the political theory of John C. Calhoun, liberty is a reward for moral and intellectual development.

John C. Calhoun argued that human beings receive their rights as members of a group, and not as individuals.

Dr. Portteus asserts that the pro-slavery critiques of Northern working conditions resemble the arguments of Karl Marx.

Source: “Constitution 101: The Meaning and History of the Constitution”

Dr. Portteus is right. The slave owners back then were early progressives. They didn’t like the Constitution and were elitists with a superiority-complex (which is kind of redundant.)

House Funds Key Programs but Adds to Government Bloat, Waste

From Daily Signal.com (Dec. 17):

The House passed two spending bills totaling $1.4 trillion Tuesday to fund the federal government through the remainder of fiscal year 2020, which began Oct. 1.

Although the first bill would provide much-needed funding and budget certainty to core constitutional responsibilities, such as national defense, the second “minibus” is a Christmas tree of bloated spending and add-ons that have no place being voted on through an appropriations bill.

The House passed the two bills, introduced late Monday afternoon, in less than 24 hours. The Senate is expected to consider the two measures later this week.

The fact that the House voted on more than 2,000 combined pages of text within 24 hours of introducing the two bills is a troubling symptom of Washington’s budget dysfunction. This is not the way that the budget process is supposed to work, and it leads to wasteful spending and other negative impacts for American taxpayers.

Lawmakers must work together to implement reforms that create a better functioning and more responsible budget process.

The first spending bill, dubbed the “national security” minibus, provides a total of $860.3 billion in fiscal 2020. This includes $92.6 billion in funding adjustments that fall outside the Budget Control Act spending caps. The funding is divided among the Defense; Commerce, Justice, and Science; Homeland Security; and Financial Services appropriations bills.

Providing national security is one of the key responsibilities of the federal government. This package will ensure that the Department of Defense and other security agencies are properly trained and equipped so that they can continue to ensure the safety of all Americans. Passing full-year appropriations now also will enable these agencies to proceed with long-term projects.

However, the national security “minibus” is not without flaws. The bill includes $17.4 billion in disaster funding that is not constrained by the budget caps and is not paid for. This funding goes directly to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund and is intended to be used to respond to disasters that have a cost of less than $500 million per event. [read more]

Turtle Power: Study Finds Giant Tortoises Have Strong Memories, High Intelligence

From Study Finds.org (Dec. 16):

OKINAWA, Japan — Move over elephants, giant land tortoises may just be the kings of the animal kingdom when it comes to memory. Historically, these large reptiles haven’t been considered especially intelligent, but a new study conducted at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology is suggesting both their overall brain power and memory skills have been greatly underestimated.

“When first discovered, giant land tortoises were viewed as stupid because explorers could simply collect and store them on ships as a supply of fresh meat,” explains study author and postdoctoral scholar Dr. Tamar Gutnick in a statement.

Despite this unfair stereotype, the research team say there have been signs of these turtles’ high intelligence and superior memory for a long time. In fact, Charles Darwin himself noted that Galapagos tortoises tended to travel great distances between the locations they typically ate, slept, and bathed, which would require sufficient memory skills in order to remember their routes back and forth. Additionally, other explorers around this time period had noted that tortoises were capable of being trained to stay in one location aboard ships.

“We also observed firsthand that tortoises recognized their keepers, so we knew they were capable of learning,” Dr. Gutnick adds. “This research shows the rest of the world just how smart they are.” [read more]

“Faith and reason are mutually reinforcing”

Speech from Clarence Thomas on imprimis.hillsdale.edu (Oct. 2019):

The construction of a college chapel, in particular, is a public declaration that faith and reason are mutually reinforcing.

……………

Beginning in the early 1900s, many elite private colleges and universities began to face questions about the continuing relevance of religious instruction on campus. These questions would have surprised the founders of those schools, many of which were created in part for the express purpose of providing religious instruction. But as time went on and as schools moved away from their religious roots, the relevance of religion to higher education was increasingly questioned, and campus chapels, in particular, came to be viewed as relics of a bygone era.

……………….

Our country was founded on the view that a correct understanding of the nature of God and the human person is critical to preserving the liberty that we so enjoy.

John Adams wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He recognized that the preservation of liberty is not guaranteed. Without the guardrails supplied by religious conviction, popular sovereignty can devolve into mob rule, unmoored from any conception of objective truth.

As I think about our political culture today, I am reminded of Ronald Reagan’s warning that, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it on to them . . . [to] do the same.”

Each generation is responsible both to itself and to succeeding generations for preserving and promoting the blessings of liberty. Faith in God, more than anything else, fuels the strength of character and self-discipline needed to discharge ably that responsibility. [read more]

Artificial neurons developed to fight disease

From BBC.com (Dec. 3):

Scientists have made artificial nerve cells, paving the way for new ways to repair the human body.

The tiny "brain chips" behave like the real thing and could one day be used to treat diseases such as Alzheimer's.

A team from the University of Bath used a combination of maths, computation and chip design to come up with a way to replicate in circuit form what nerve cells (neurons) do naturally.

Neurons carry signals to and from the brain and the rest of the body.

Scientists are interested in replicating them, because of the potential that offers in treating diseases such as Alzheimer's, where neurons degenerate or die.

Prof Alain Nogaret, from Bath's department of physics, said the novelty of their research was to transfer the electrical properties of brain cells on to synthetic circuits made from silicon.

"Until now, neurons have been like black boxes, but we have managed to open the black box and peer inside," he said. "Our work is paradigm-changing because it provides a robust method to reproduce the electrical properties of real neurons in minute detail." [read more]

Nice.

Constitution 101 2019 Course Notes Part 2

In the period between the Revolutionary War and the Constitution, state governments were dominated by a strong legislature.

Paper money laws enacted in the states violated the property rights of creditors.

The Framers of the Constitution believed human nature was a mixture of good and bad.

The national government under the Articles of Confederation functioned like a diplomatic entity of loosely connected sovereign states.

The government under the Articles of Confederation was insufficient because it was incapable of protecting citizens from foreign threats, it failed to provide the conditions necessary for economic prosperity, and it failed to protect citizens from internal threats.

According to the Framers, the purpose of government is to secure the natural rights of its citizens.

In Federalist 9, Publius lists separation of powers, representation, and an independent judiciary as an improvement to the science of politics.

In Federalist 51, Publius argues that the system of separation of powers and checks and balances assumes that people in government will be ambitious.

The founders held that all persons have the right to possess and acquire property.

The security of a natural right may often conflict with the security of another.

According to the founders, clarity of ownership was fundamentally important to securing property rights.

The founders believed that government must secure the right to buy and sell, protect equal access to transportation and communication, and establish a system of sound currency in order to protect free markets.

The founders held that foreign commerce should benefit the interests and rights of American citizens.

Marriage and family law during the founding emphasized protecting and raising children.

Source: “Constitution 101: The Meaning and History of the Constitution”

Revolution as a Mental Disease

From American Thinker.com (Nov. 26):

People are gradually getting used to living in an inverted world.  For the first time in our history, the upcoming elections are not about a better standard of living or more freedom.  They are about secular pietism, a collective devotion to an apparently noble cause, which leads to less affluence and freedom.

Illegal immigration has a negative impact on the labor market, especially low-income Americans, by keeping wages down.  Nevertheless, half of our fellow citizens believe that any action taken against illegals is tantamount to sending them to concentration camps.  Medicare for all would lead to long waiting times, with the problem being compound by the coverage provided to an undetermined number of illegals.  In a country where 85% of people have access to quality health care, this would represent a major downgrade.  Socialism is another major electoral theme, and rejecting it in an affluent society would normally be a matter of common sense.  However, part of the secular pietist mission is to fight inequality, even if that leads to worse living conditions for the majority, provided that the object of their envy is also harmed.

Young people are attracted to socialism not because of poverty or some knowledge derived from the Marxist theory, but simply because they see it as an antithesis to the existing system.  Finally, the esoteric doctrine of climate change", based on completely unquantifiable assertions, provides the political tool required to take over the key energy sector that enables control of the entire economy.

With common sense gone out the window, we have started our journey down the rabbit hole. In the absence of transcendence, the only morality that matters originates from the people holding power.  They determine what is good or evil, and ultimately, by controlling people's minds, they control reality.  In the virtual reality of psychological warfare and propaganda, nothing is self-evident.  Living in a parallel, ideological reality is a form of mental disease.  In this inverted world, socialism is good, and "hate" is associated with any diverging opinions.  The historical core of our civilization is gradually being replaced by an ideological narrative. [read more]

Other articles on socialism:

• Why We Must Defeat Socialism
• These 3 Countries Tried Socialism. Here’s What Happened.
• Socialism’s Past

Mexico’s New Tax Law Could Chill Its Economy, Hurt US Trade Relationship

From The Daily Signal.com (Nov. 21):

A new tax law approved last month by the political party of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador—which holds absolute control of the Mexican Congress—gives the government the right to seize land and assets without legal due process in certain tax evasion cases.

These new fiscal enforcement measures could damage Mexico’s economic freedom as well as its economic growth and its trade relations with the U.S.

Under U.S. federal statutes, tax evasion is a Class E felony, the lowest category of felonies—just above a Class A misdemeanor. By contrast, murder is a Class A felony in the United States, the highest category. Furthermore, prosecution of all federal crimes must be according to due process.

Opponents of the new Mexican law, however, assert that tax evasion has now been categorized as the equivalent of much higher felony classes, along with such grave infractions as organized crime, narcotics trafficking, corruption, and even homicide. 

In answer to a reporter’s question about those concerns at one of his daily morning press conferences, Lopez Obrador defended the new law by saying: “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.”

Certainly, Lopez Obrador is right to fight against Mexico’s deeply rooted corruption, and tax evasion in the country is a well-known and long-standing problem.

But Mexican business leaders are deeply concerned by the authority the new law gives the government to suspend the presumption of innocence and seize assets prior to any legal due process. [read more]

Well, the new president is a socialist. What did you expect.

New border wall blocks 90% of illegal crossings, up from just 10%

From Washington Examiner.com (Mar. 9):

President Trump’s long-promised border wall is working.

The new chief of Border Patrol, which is under U.S. Customs and Border Protection, revealed that the parts of the new “wall system” are 90% “effective,” up from just 10% before it was built, replacing a ragtag of broken fencing.

“It changes everything,” said Chief Rodney Scott, of the 135-136 miles of new wall, roadways, and high-tech spyware. “There is a huge return on investment,” he added.

“This system is going to have a huge impact,” added Deputy Chief Raul Ortiz.

In the San Diego area, Scott said that the wall has essentially ended illegal crossings of humans and cars.

And, in an added benefit, it now requires 150 fewer border agents, a savings of $28 million in salaries and benefits, he said at a press briefing, his first since he and Ortiz took over CBP in January.

Plus, with a better border road, vehicles that once fell apart at 40,000-60,000 miles now last to 100,000 miles before they are auctioned off.

“There is return after return,” said Scott.

The wall is especially good at stopping trucks and cars, he said, because it takes too much time and effort to saw through several wall bollards needed to make an opening that is big enough to drive through.

“The border wall system all but stopped that completely,” he said. [read more]

That is good news.

Dick Morris: Chinese Sneaking into US, Evading Screening

From Western Journal.com (Mar. 11):

Kansas U.S. Senate candidate Republican Kris Kobach has charged that at least 12,000 Chinese nationals snuck into the U.S. last year, evading customs and health screening, a process that continues, he says, to this day.

Kobach, a Republican running for the vacant Senate seat in Kansas, is a widely respected authority on sealing our southern border and has, in fact, raised tens of millions to build a privately financed section of the wall, soon to be completed.

Kobach points to data that indicates an increase in apprehensions of Chinese nationals for illegally crossing in the Rio Grande Valley section of the Mexican border from 700 in 2018 to 1,300 last year.

Projecting to the entire length of the border, Kobach estimates that conservatively, 12,000 Chinese nationals are crossing illegally each year.

He notes that, even though China was the original source of the coronavirus, none of these immigrants had been screened for the disease. [read more]

This is why America should not have open boarders. It has no idea who has a deadly disease or not.

Other articles on the Coronavirus:

• What the Coronavirus Should Teach Us
• C. S. Lewis and the Coronavirus
• A Doctor Explains What You Need to Know About Coronavirus
• John Hopkins CORONAVIRUS RESOURCE CENTER
• New Tests Indicate Coronavirus can Survive in Air, on Surfaces
• 86% of people with coronavirus are walking around undetected, study says
• CDC Data Show Younger Adults Also End Up in Hospital From Coronavirus
• A warming light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel?
• Trump Clears Way to Use Malaria Drug Against COVID-19
• Human lab rats needed: Would you get infected with coronavirus for $4,500?
• BOMBSHELL REPORT: CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK MAY HAVE STARTED EARLIER THAN CHINA TOLD US
• The WHO Was Warned In December About The Coronavirus, Taiwan Says. The Organization Ignored The Warning.
• 4 Things to Know About Chinese Origins of Coronavirus
• Coronavirus burial pits so vast they’re visible from space
• Iranian Regime’s Reckless Disregard Made the Coronavirus Outbreak Worse
• Sound Policy Responses to the Economic Consequences of the Coronavirus
• The Great Coronavirus War Is Upon Us
• Churches on the Front Lines of Responding to Coronavirus
• In National Emergency, Trump Waives Regulations to Fight Coronavirus
• WATCH: TWO WOMEN DUKE IT OUT OVER TOILET PAPER AFTER CORONAVIRUS SCARE
• With Coronavirus, the Chinese Repeat the Soviets’ Chernobyl Failure
• MIT biologist slams 'fear mongering' by 'deep state'
• Coronavirus: China launches major disinformation offensive
• Coronavirus Fears Fed by Soviet-style Agitprop From Russia, China, and Iran
• Dick Morris: Coronavirus Under Control in China - At Last!
• Dick Morris: A New Donald Trump Is Emerging in Coronavirus Battle
• Chinese Official Suggests US Introduced Coronavirus to Wuhan, Says US ‘Owes Us an Explanation’

Constitution 101 2019 Course Notes Part 1

God appears four times in the Declaration of Independence. He appears as legislator, judge, executive, and Creator.

Aristotle explains that human beings make laws because of their ability to speak.

The Declaration of Independence argues that the king violated the principle of separation of powers, representation, and an independent judiciary.

In Federalist 63, Madison argues that the United States is the first purely representative government in history.

The Declaration of Independence establishes that all legitimate power stems from the people.

A doctrine of natural rights and natural law became widely known and discussed in the American colonies during the 1710s.

The founders' doctrine of human equality means that no one has the right to rule another without their consent.

The social compact describes an agreement that fellow citizens make with each other to form a government and accept the laws made by that government.

According to the founders, a government that is to secure the rights of individuals must secure the borders of the nation and create laws against crimes and equally enforce them.

The founders did not believe that, because natural rights are universal, it's the job of the United States to protect rights all over the world.

Source: “Constitution 101: The Meaning and History of the Constitution”

Space travel barrier removed as docs freeze and revive human for first time

From The Daily Star.co.uk (Nov. 20):

Journeys to other star systems will forever be out of reach unless a massive breakthrough in physics makes faster-than-light travel a reality, or a breakthrough in medicine makes suspended animation possible.Now, at least, one of those things has happened.

Samuel Tisherman, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, is the leader of a team that has successfully put a human being in suspended animation.

Describing the successful operation as “a little surreal,” Professor Tisherman told New Scientist how he removed the patient’s blood and replaced with ice-cold saline solution.

The patient, technically dead at this point, was removed from the cooling system and taken to an operating theatre for a two-hour surgical procedure before having their blood restored and being warmed to the normal temperature of 37C.

Prof Tisherman says he will be producing a full account of the procedure in a scientific paper in the new year.

He says that his focus is on pausing life long enough to perform emergency surgery rather than sending astronauts on interstellar journeys. [read more]

Scientists are using MRI scans to reveal the physical makeup of our thoughts and feelings

From CBS News.com (Nov. 24):

Advances in neuroscience have shown that, on a physical level, our thoughts are actually a vast network of neurons firing all across our brains. So if that brain activity could be identified and analyzed, could our thoughts be decoded? Could our minds be read? Well, a team of scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has spent more than a decade trying to do just that. We [60 Minutes TV show] started our reporting on their work 10 years ago, and what they've discovered since, has drawn us back.

In Carnegie Mellon's scanner room, two floors underground, a steady stream of research subjects come to have their brains and thoughts "read" in this MRI machine. It's a type of scanning called functional MRI, FMRI.

That looks at what's happening inside the brain as a person thinks.

Marcel Just: It's like being an astronomer when the first telescope is discovered, or being a biologist when the first microscope is-- is developed.

Neuroscientist Marcel Just says this technology has made it possible for the first time to see the physical makeup of our thoughts. 

…………..

One of Dr. Just's main questions was whether he could find patterns for abstract ideas, so he did a study asking people to think about forgiveness, gossip, spirituality. Could they be identifiable in the brain the way the screwdriver was?

Remarkably, the answer was yes. This was the activation pattern when people thought about spirituality. And this was gossip.

………………

One difference between the two was in areas of the brain scientists had already shown become active when we think about other people. Circled in blue. Those areas lit up bright red when subjects thought about gossip; not so much for spirituality.

In another study, Dr. Just tested whether patterns are the same when people think in different languages. They are. And he's asked acting students to conjure up emotions in the scanner to see if feelings have distinctive activation patterns too. [read more]

Kind of unnerving. A totalitarian system like China, N. Korea, and Iran would love this technology. They could figure out which citizen was a dissident or not.

New tech puts virtual sense of touch at our fingertips

From News.Yahoo.com (Nov. 20):

Paris (AFP) - Garrett Anderson has never known the pleasure of holding hands with both his children at the same time.

While deployed in Iraq with the US army in 2005, a bomb blast shot shrapnel through his right arm, severing it just below the elbow.

Today, the Illinois-based retired veteran wears a prosthetic which allows him to pick up objects and have basic mobility.

But it cannot duplicate the sense of touch.

A new second-skin "virtual reality" technology -- designed to work with both prosthetics and gaming applications -- may change that.

The system, developed by researchers at Northwestern University and described in the journal Nature, incorporates 32 individually programmable actuators -- a device that emits electric impulses or vibrations -- which are embedded into a pliable material made from silicone that adheres to the skin.

Controlled by a wireless touchscreen such as a smartphone or tablet, each actuator -- the size of a small coin -- vibrates to create the perception of touch. The user can control the pressure and the pattern of the sensation.

Anderson tried the system, integrated with his prosthetic. While wearing a patch on his skin, he could feel sensations from his prosthetic fingertips transmitted to his arm.

Over time, the brain converts that sensation to what researcher John Rogers describes as a "surrogate sense of feeling". [read more]

Congress Shouldn’t Get Paid Until It Does Its Job. Why This Bill Is a Great Step.

From The Daily Signal.com (Nov. 18):

Congress is likely to vote next week on its second continuing resolution of fiscal year 2020. Another continuing resolution will prevent a government shutdown, but there’s not much to celebrate.

The fact that a month-and-a-half into the new fiscal year none of the 12 annual appropriations bills have been enacted is a sign of how dysfunctional the congressional budget process is.

Thankfully, more members of Congress are taking notice of the breakdown in the budget process and are putting forth reforms to not only create a more efficient budget process, but one that is also more transparent and responsible.

Republican Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona and Ralph Norman of South Carolina on Nov. 14 introduced the Budget Process Enhancement Act. The bill would make two major changes to improve the current budget process.

First, it would remove the assumption that federal programs grow at the rate of inflation from the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline.

Next, it would institute a “no budget, no pay” policy: If Congress doesn’t adopt a budget resolution by April 15 of each fiscal year, lawmakers would receive no pay until it does.

The Budget Process Enhancement Act is a positive first step toward removing the bias in favor of higher spending from the baseline and eliminating an accounting gimmick used to skew the impact of budget decisions.

Including a “no budget, no pay” provision should encourage members of Congress to debate budget and appropriations bills in a timely manner.

Congress should continue to pursue reforms that will create a better functioning and more responsible budget process. [read more]

Hopefully the republicans will get the majority in Congress so they can pass this bill. The President will then probably sign it into law.

All the Evidence for Ukraine: The Scandal Explained

From Glenn Beck.com (Oct. 4):

One technique that magicians use for psychological misdirection is called the false solution. The goal is to distract the audience, to make them believe that they know what's really happening. All the while, the machinations of the actual trick are happening right in front of them, because "implanting an unlikely and unfamiliar idea in the mind can prevent participants from finding a more obvious one."

I [Glenn Beck] want to tell you a story of tremendous corruption, masked cleverly, using many of the same techniques that magicians have used for centuries. Only it's not a rabbit disappearing into a hat or a coin vanishing behind an ear. It's billions of dollars. Lost. Gone.

And the people responsible are the same people who have been so monstrously worked up about Trump's impeachment. The same people screaming about Trump's malfeasance with Ukraine are actually the ones misbehaving in Ukraine.

It's essentially an elevated, highly organized form of projection. Only instead of one person lashing out at the world, it's an entire political party, right up to the top. The very top. Barack Obama. It's right there on video.

Or how about the audio recording we uncovered, with Artem Sytnyk, Director of the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine, openly admitting a connection between the DNC and Ukraine?

So far, the story told by the Democrats and the media has been about Trump and Ukraine. Every so often, you hear mention of Joe Biden's dubious history with the war-torn country.

………………………

Extract of Letter from Senator Chuck Grassley to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein:

According to news reports, during the 2016 presidential election, “Ukrainian government
officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump” and did so by “disseminat[ing]
documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the
matter…”1 Ukrainian officials also reportedly “helped Clinton’s allies research damaging
information on Trump and his advisers.”2 At the center of this plan was Alexandra Chalupa,
described by reports as a Ukrainian-American operative “who was consulting for the Democratic
National Committee” and reportedly met with Ukrainian officials during the presidential election for the express purpose of exposing alleged ties between then-candidate Donald Trump, Paul Manafort, and Russia.3

Extract of State Department report on Clinton emails:

It was APD's [Program Application Division] determination that the use of a private email system to conduct official business added an increased degree of risk of compromise as a private system lacks the network monitoring and intrusion detection capabilities of State Department networks. While the use of a private email system itself did not necessarily increase the likelihood of classified information being transmitted on unclassified systems, those incidents which then resulted in the presence of classified information upon it carried an increased risk of compromise or inadvertent disclosure.

Extract from Victor Shokin (former General Prosecutor of the Republic of Ukraine) statement:

Therefore, it is clear to me that certain US officials from President Obama's administration, in particular the US Vice-President Joe Biden, directly manipulated the leadership of Ukraine on false pretexts, in order to prevent DF [Dimitry Firtash] from returning to Ukraine, as they were about him  re-establishing public life there. [read more]

Flaw in popular ATMs allows criminals to steal cash and your data

From Komando.com (Nov. 12):

ATMs are supposed to be a safe, convenient way for people to access their money. At least, they are in theory — but hackers, as always, have other ideas.

A team of security researchers has discovered two critical security flaws in some of the most common ATMs in America. With a bit of malicious code, a hacker can easily steal all the cash from an ATM. Worse still, the second flaw gives total access to an ATM’s data — which means a hacker could siphon up the information of anyone who’s ever used it.

…………..

If you think you’re safe when you visit an ATM, think again. Here’s what you need to know about this dangerous ATM flaw before hackers are able to take advantage of it.

Bank ATMs let you “apply for a pwn”

According to new reports from Bloomberg, a pair of researchers from Red Balloon Security found a two critical security flaws in ATMs manufactured by Nautilus Hyosung America Inc. This company is the largest provider of ATMs in the United States, and their machines are found in most major banks.

The researchers found that with access to the same network as the ATM, they were able to hijack its system and completely take the machine over. These vulnerabilities allowed the researchers to bypass any security software, giving them them plenty of opportunity to wreak havoc.

One vulnerability is in the software that powers the ATM’s accessories — such as the cash dispenser, PIN pad and card reader. By cracking this exploit, the researchers found plenty of areas where malicious code could be injected. This would allow the hacker to theoretically empty the ATM of all its cash. [read more]

You’ll Be Surprised Who Is Trying to Empower the Deep State at EPA

From The Daily Signal.com (Nov. 15):

Some key House Republicans have chosen to support a Democratic bill called the Scientific Integrity Act. That nearly every House Democrat is a co-sponsor of the bill was apparently insufficient warning.

Recently passed out of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, the bill actually has nothing to do with what one would reasonably think of as “scientific integrity.” It does nothing to ensure that federal scientists conduct legitimate science.

Instead, the bill is aimed at empowering deep-state scientists for the duration of the Trump administration.

In a nutshell, the bill requires that federal agencies set up formalized grievance procedures for federal scientists who claim they are being silenced by senior bureaucrats and political appointees.

Under the bill, the filing of a grievance would start a process that not only disseminates the underlying “science” to the public regardless of its merits, but also guarantees dramatic headlines of censorship and persecution.

Such claims of censorship are not new, but they’ve been greatly exaggerated.

Followers of the climate wars will recall, for example, during the Bush administration when NASA gadfly James Hansen ludicrously claimed the Bush administration tried to silence him. The truth is that Hansen had been talking to anyone who would listen to him, without any government interference. [read more]

Stupid bill.

More articles on the deep state:

• How The Deep State "Justifies" Itself In America
• Deep State Agencies Issue Joint Statement Ahead of Super Tuesday Vote Warning Public to be Aware ‘Foreign Actors Are Trying to Shape Voter Perceptions’

Adam and Eve Are Possible

From Break Point.org:

An oft-repeated claim by skeptics is that geneticists have disproved the possibility of Adam and Eve. Because existing human genetic diversity is so great, there can be no original couple from whom all people are descended.

Or, that’s what we’re told.

Biology professor and author Dennis Venema summarizes this argument in his book, “Adam and the Genome.” In it, he claims that “every genetic analysis estimating ancestral population sizes has agreed that we descend from a population of thousands, not a single ancestral couple.”

An oft-repeated claim by skeptics is that geneticists have disproved the possibility of Adam and Eve. Because existing human genetic diversity is so great, there can be no original couple from whom all people are descended.

Or, that’s what we’re told.

Biology professor and author Dennis Venema summarizes this argument in his book, “Adam and the Genome.” In it, he claims that “every genetic analysis estimating ancestral population sizes has agreed that we descend from a population of thousands, not a single ancestral couple.”

Using accepted population growth and mutation rates, Gauger and Hössjer programmed a computer to start with a genetic Adam and Eve and replicate the known distribution of diversity in today’s human population. Their results, to put it simply, fly in the face of the much-touted consensus.

According to their model, a couple who shared some genetic markers could generate all the diversity we see today within about 2 million years—which Venema and others claim is impossible.

However, given two people who share no genetic markers—in other words, two people who weren’t born but were created with four unique sets of chromosomes—that time frame drops to a few hundred thousand, not millions, of years.

Writing at Evolution News, Gauger points out that further tweaks in the rates of population growth, structure, mortality, birth, and mutation could place that theoretical first couple even more recently in history.

In any case, the authors are careful to note that the point of their paper was not to date Adam and Eve, or even to prove from a genetic standpoint that they existed. Rather, they just wanted to demonstrate—contrary to the oft-repeated claim—that it is possible for all human beings to have descended from an original pair. [read more]

Interesting.

Another article about Genesis:

Scientists Admit: Snakes Once had Legs as Described in Book of Genesis

How Russian Hybrid Warfare Has Weaponized Disinformation

From The Daily Signal.com (Nov. 15):

KYIV, Ukraine—As the Russian shells and rockets rained down on them in the frontline town of Debaltseve in February 2015, Ukrainian troops began to receive curious, anonymous text messages on their cellphones.

“Your comrades nearby already left their positions, so you should leave yours as well,” one message read.

The messages also claimed that Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president at that time, as well as Ukrainian military commanders, had “betrayed” their soldiers.

The Ukrainian military later concluded that Russian military forces had taken over the local cellphone network with mobile jamming stations.

The text messages were part of a psychological operation against Ukrainian troops—not too different in its intent from dropping propaganda leaflets from airplanes, a psychological warfare technique that dates back to World War I as a way to demoralize troops.

“Fake news is a weapon,” my friend Viktor Kovalenko told me.

Kovalenko, who is a former journalist and a Ukrainian army combat veteran of the Debaltseve battle, added: “Via fake news, Russians wanted to defeat Ukrainians the same way … as by artillery and tanks.”

In Ukraine, Russian military forces have combined World War I and II era weapons and tactics—such as artillery bombardments, tank attacks, and trench warfare—with weapons unique to the 21st-century battlefield, such as cyberattacks and sophisticated social media propaganda campaigns.

……………….

Using cyberwarfare and an empire of weaponized propaganda, Russia has embarked on a hybrid war blitz against Western democracies. Looking back, it’s clear that Ukraine was the opening salvo of Russia’s ongoing war against that American-led, democratic world order.

Russia has used the war in Ukraine as a testing ground for both its modern conventional and hybrid warfare doctrines, providing a case study for the new kinds of security threats the U.S. and its Western allies can anticipate from Moscow. [read more]

Disinformation campaigns could come from China, N. Korea, and other rogue states too not just Russia. Just to focus on Russia is stupid.

A Political Glossary

Every field has its own special words and expressions, which others find hard to understand. Politics is no exception. For those who have difficulty understanding the strange way words are used by politicians and the media, here is a glossary translating political rhetoric into plain English:

"crisis": any situation you want to change
"bilingual": unable to speak English
"equal opportunity": preferential treatment
"non-judgmental": blaming society
"compassion": the use of tax money to buy votes
"insensitivity": objections to the use of tax money to buy votes
"simplistic": an argument you disagree with but can't answer
"rehabilitation": magic word said before releasing criminals
"demonstration": a riot by people you agree with
"mob violence": a riot by people you disagree with
"a matter of principle": a political controversy involving the convictions of liberals
"an emotional issue": a political controversy involving the convictions of conservatives
"funding": money from the government
"commitment": more money from the government
"docu-drama": a work of fiction about famous people
"autobiography": a work of fiction about yourself
"federal budget": a work of fiction about government spending
"people's republic": a place where you do what you are told or get shot [read more]

Source: Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays (1987) by Thomas Sowell.

Another column by Mr. Sowell: Political Glossary: Part III

A Media Guide For Distinguishing Conservatives From Alt-Right Lunatics [Satire]

From Daily Wire.com (Nov. 13):

There seems to be some confusion in the media about the difference between the Right and the Alt-Right. For instance, the Alt-Right is famously anti-Semitic and yet The New York Times, a former newspaper, has associated them with Orthodox Jew Ben Shapiro in such sentences as, “Ben Shapiro is Alt-Right, and if you believe that, we have a yarn about Trump colluding with the Russians you’re really going to love, you sucker.” I guess the New York Times isn’t even pretending anymore.

In any case, as a public service to the Times and other dishonest organs of misinformation strangling on their hatred of ordinary people’s freedom, here is a handy guide on how to distinguish between right-wingers, who believe in the noble concepts of liberty handed down to us by our forefathers, and Alt-Righters, who are sniggering little femboys spewing hatred on YouTube. It’s a subtle distinction but with a little help, even the New York Times might figure it out.

One. Real right-wingers come in all different skin colors and religions and no religion and various sexualities and also include a startling number of women who somehow manage to be extremely intelligent and also smoking hot, which is an amazing side benefit of the whole movement.

Alt-Righters have never been with a woman because they hate everybody who doesn’t look like them, and, I mean, look at them. [read more]

Coronavirus-infected Americans flown back to US on plane full of healthy people

From NY Post.com (Feb. 20):

The 14 coronavirus-stricken Americans evacuated from a cruise ship in Japan were flown back to the US on a plane full of healthy people against advice from the CDC, a report said Thursday.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials argued the 14 infected Diamond Princess passengers shouldn’t be flown back with the 300 or so virus-free people — but ultimately lost the battle to the US State Department, according to the Washington Post.

“It was like the worst nightmare,” an anonymous senior US official involved in the decision told the paper.

“Quite frankly, the alternative could have been pulling Grandma out in the pouring rain, and that would have been bad, too.”

Test results had found that the 14 passengers were infected prior to boarding planes to the US on Monday. [read more]

Yea, flying infected people with healthy people is crazy.

Physicists Can Finally Peek at Schrödinger's Cat Without Killing It Forever

From Live Science.com (Nov. 7):

There may be a way of sneaking a peak at Schrödinger's cat — the famous feline-based thought experiment that describes the mysterious behavior of subatomic particles — without permanently killing the (hypothetical) animal.

The unlucky, imaginary cat is simultaneously alive and dead inside a box, or exists in a superposition of "dead" and "alive" states, just as subatomic particles exist in a superposition of many states at once. But looking inside the box changes the state of the cat, which then becomes either alive or dead.

Now, however, a study published Oct. 1 in the New Journal of Physics describes a way to potentially peek at the cat without forcing it to live or die. In doing so, it advances scientists' understanding of one of the most fundamental paradoxes in physics.

…………..

Hofmann and Kartik Patekar, who was a visiting undergraduate student at Hiroshima University at the time and is now at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, wondered if there was a way to look without "paying the price." They landed on a mathematical framework that separates the initial interaction (looking at the cat) from the readout (knowing whether it's alive or dead).

…………..

Here's how they described their work in terms of Schrödinger's cat. Say the cat is still in the box, but rather than looking inside to determine whether the cat is alive or dead, you set up a camera outside the box that can somehow take a picture inside of it (for the sake of the thought experiment, ignore the fact that physical cameras don't actually work like that). Once the picture is taken, the camera has two kinds of information: how the cat changed as a result of the picture being taken (what the researchers call a quantum tag) and whether the cat is alive or dead after the interaction. None of that information has been lost yet. And depending on how you choose to "develop" the image, you retrieve one or the other piece of information.

Think of a coin flip, Hofmann told Live Science. You can choose to either know if a coin was flipped or if it's currently heads or tails. But you can't know both. What's more, if you know how a quantum system was changed, and if that change is reversible, then it's possible to restore its initial state. (In the case of the coin, you would flip it back.)

"You always have to disturb the system first, but sometimes you can undo it," Hofmann said. In terms of the cat, that would mean taking a picture, but instead of developing it to see the cat clearly, developing it in such a way as to restore the cat back to its dead-and-alive limbo state. [read more]

Popular Android phones can be tricked into snooping on their owners

From Tech Crunch.com (Nov. 8):

Security researchers have found several popular Android phones can be tricked into snooping on their owners by exploiting a weakness that gives accessories access to the phone’s underlying baseband software.

Attackers can use that access to trick vulnerable phones into giving up their unique identifiers, such as their IMEI and IMSI numbers, downgrade a target’s connection in order to intercept phone calls, forward calls to another phone or block all phone calls and internet access altogether.

The research, shared exclusively with TechCrunch, affects at least 10 popular Android devices, including Google’s Pixel 2, Huawei’s Nexus 6P and Samsung’s Galaxy S8+.

The vulnerabilities are found in the interface used to communicate with the baseband firmware, the software that allows the phone’s modem to communicate with the cell network, such as making phone calls or connecting to the internet. Given its importance, the baseband is typically off-limits from the rest of the device, including its apps, and often come with command blacklisting to prevent non-critical commands from running. But the researchers found that many Android phones inadvertently allow Bluetooth and USB accessories — like headphones and headsets — access to the baseband. By exploiting a vulnerable accessory, an attacker can run commands on a connected Android phone. [read more]

The Righteous Mind: Second Principle

The second principle of moral psychology is: There's more to morality than harm and fairness. In support of this claim I described research showing that people who grow up in Western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies are statistical outliers on many psychological measures, including measures of moral psychology. I [the author] also showed that:

• The WEIRDer you are, the more you perceive a world full of separate objects, rather than relationships.
• Moral pluralism is true descriptively. As a simple matter of anthropological fact, the moral domain varies across cultures.
• The moral domain is unusually narrow in WEIRD cultures, where it is largely limited to the ethic of autonomy (i.e., moral concerns about individuals harming, oppressing, or cheating other individuals). It is broader—including the ethics of community and divinity—in most other societies, and within religious and conservative moral matrices within WEIRD societies.
• Moral matrices bind people together and blind them to the coherence, or even existence, of other matrices. This makes it very difficult for people to consider the possibility that there might really be more than one form of moral truth, or more than one valid framework for judging people or running a society.
• Morality is like taste in many ways—an analogy made long ago by Hume and Mencius.
• Deontology and utilitarianism are “one-receptor” moralities that are likely to appeal most strongly to people who are high on systemizing and low on empathizing.
• Hume’s pluralist, sentimentalist, and naturalist approach to ethics is more promising than utilitarianism or deontology for modern moral psychology. As a first step in resuming Hume’s project, we should try to identify the taste receptors of the righteous mind.
• Modularity can help us think about innate receptors, and how they produce a variety of initial perceptions that get developed in culturally variable ways.
• Five good candidates for being taste receptors of the righteous mind are care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity.

The "five foundations" image
Five adaptive challenges stood out most clearly: caring for vulnerable children, forming partnerships with non-kin to reap the benefits of reciprocity, forming coalitions to compete with other coalitions, negotiating status hierarchies, and keeping oneself and one’s kin free from parasites and pathogens, which spread quickly when people live in close proximity to each other.
The fifth row lists some of the virtue words that we use to talk about people who trigger a particular moral “taste” in our minds.

The moral foundations are innate. Particular rules and virtues vary across cultures, so you’ll get fooled if you look for universality in the finished books. You won’t find a single paragraph that exists in identical form in every human culture. But if you look for links between evolutionary theory and anthropological observations, you can take some educated guesses about what was in the universal first draft of human nature. I tried to make (and justify) five such guesses:

• The Care/harm foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of caring for vulnerable children. It makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need; it makes us despise cruelty and want to care for those who are suffering.
• The Fairness/cheating foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of reaping the rewards of cooperation without getting exploited. It makes us sensitive to indications that another person person is likely to be a good (or bad) partner for collaboration and reciprocal altruism. It makes us want to shun or punish cheaters.
• The Loyalty/betrayal foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forming and maintaining coalitions. It makes us sensitive to signs that another person is (or is not) a team player. It makes us trust and reward such people, and it makes us want to hurt, ostracize, or even kill those who betray us or our group.
• The Authority/subversion foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forging relationships that will benefit us within social hierarchies. It makes us sensitive to signs of rank or status, and to signs that other people are (or are not) behaving properly, given their position.
• The Sanctity/degradation foundation evolved initially in response to the adaptive challenge of the omnivore’s dilemma, and then to the broader challenge of living in a world of pathogens and parasites. It includes the behavioral immune system, which can make us wary of a diverse array of symbolic objects and threats. It makes it possible for people to invest objects with irrational and extreme values—both positive and negative—which are important for binding groups together.

It appears that the left relies primarily on the Care and Fairness foundations, whereas the right uses all five.

If you think about religion as a set of beliefs about supernatural agents, you’re bound to misunderstand it. You’ll see those beliefs as foolish delusions, perhaps even as parasites that exploit our brains for their own benefit. But if you take a Durkheimian approach to religion (focusing on belonging) and a Darwinian approach to morality (involving multilevel selection), you get a very different picture. You see that religious practices have been binding our ancestors into groups for tens of thousands of years. That binding usually involves some blinding—once any person, book, or principle is declared sacred, then devotees can no longer question it or think clearly about it.

Our ability to believe in supernatural agents may well have begun as an accidental by-product of a hypersensitive agency detection device, but once early humans began believing in such agents, the groups that used them to construct moral communities were the ones that lasted and prospered.

Moral matrixes:

• Liberal- Values from high to low: Care/harm, Liberty/oppression, Fairness/cheating, Tied in 4th place: Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, Sanctity/degradation.
• Libertarian- Values from high to low: Liberty/oppression, Fairness/cheating, the rest are tied in 3rd place.
• Social conservative- all values are equally important. 

Source: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012) by Jonathan Haidt.

6 Things Every American Should Know About Congress’ Bailout for Select Coal Miners’ Pensions

From The Daily Signal.com (Nov. 8):

Americans lose when Congress is in the business of picking winners and losers.

Just this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signed onto a bill, the Bipartisan American Miners Act of 2019, that would bail out one multiemployer, or union pension plan.

This Senate bill is similar to the combination of two bills in the House—H.R. 934 and H.R. 935, the Health Benefits for Miners Act of 2019 and the Miners Pension Protection Act—that the Energy and Natural Resources Committee recently passed.

There is a lot of misleading and false reporting about what these bills would do.

Here are six things you need to know:

1. This Is a Taxpayer Bailout.  Not one penny will come from the Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Fund. The United Mine Workers of America already uses up the entirety of the available Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Fund for its unfunded health benefits.
2. This Does Not Fix the Multiemployer Pension Crisis. The United Mine Workers of America pension plan represents less than 1% of multiemployer plans and participants and its $6.5 billion pension shortfall is roughly 1% of the entire system’s $638 billion deficit. Virtually every multiemployer plan is drastically underfunded and at risk of insolvency, but this bill would only protect benefits for one select and politically powerful group.
3. The U.S. Government Did Not Make a Promise to Coal Miners. The United Mine Workers of America and private coal companies made promises to coal miners, not the federal government. Proponents of a bailout point to the 1946 Krug-Lewis Agreement, which was established after the government stepped in to intervene in a coal strike and helped negotiate a deal between the coal companies and the United Mine Workers of America.
4. This Could Lead to More Bailouts. Unless Congress wants to pick winners and losers—bailing out coal miners and probably truckers, but not steelworkers, police, or firefighters—this bailout signals what Congress will do for the other nearly 1,400 multiemployer pension plans with $638 billion in underfunding. It also signals what it will do for state and local pension plans that have an estimated $4 trillion to $6 trillion in unfunded pension promises. A comprehensive union pension bailout could cost each household in America up to $52,000.
5. One Bailout Is Never Enough. When the United Mine Workers of America first received financial assistance for its health benefits in 1992, it was temporary and limited to interest on the Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Fund. But that was not enough, so in 2008, Congress made the assistance open-ended and provided taxpayer funds. Then again, in 2017, Congress doubled the size of the bailout to cover about 45,000 retirees. The current proposals would add at least another 13,000 retirees and add to taxpayer costs, which have already totaled nearly $2 billion for the United Mine Workers of America’s unfunded health care benefits. There is a good chance that the $750 million provided in these bills will not be enough and that this bailout would have to be expanded in the future.
6. This Bailout Does Nothing to Fix the Problem. The problems that led to this crisis are pervasive as 96% of workers with multiemployer pensions are in plans that are less than 60% funded. Yet, this bailout does absolutely nothing to fix the issue and make sure that this never happens again.

Congress can help coal miners as well as 10 million other workers who are at risk of losing most of their promised pension benefits by: preserving the solvency of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., fixing the rules so that broken promises do not happen again, and providing tools for plans to minimize pension losses across beneficiaries. [read more]

Yea, Congress shouldn’t be picking winners and losers.

Guns drawn, fired against unarmed Hong Kong protesters

From Free Pressers.com (Nov. 11):

A Chinese state-run media outlet warned the Chinese military could enter Hong Kong “at any time” as the pro-Beijing government in Hong Kong has increased its violent crackdown on pro-democracy activists.

Millions of protesters have been in the streets daily for eight months beginning on March 15.

Addressing Hong Kong police, Hu Xijin, editor of a tabloid published by the state-owned People’s Daily, wrote: "You have the backing of not only the Hong Kong and Chinese people, but also Chinese soldiers and the People's Liberation Army in Hong Kong. They can go into Hong Kong to provide support at any time."

A protester on Monday was badly wounded when he was shot at close range by a police officer in an incident that was shown on Facebook live. He was the third person shot by Hong Kong police since the protests began.

The BBC reported: “Footage posted on Facebook showed the officer drawing his gun before grappling with a man at a roadblock. When another man approached wearing a face mask, the officer fired at him, hitting him in the torso. The officer fired twice more, but there were no injuries. After the shooting, footage showed the 21-year old protester lying with his eyes wide open and with blood around him. He has undergone surgery and remains in a critical condition, a Hospital Authority spokesman told the BBC.”

At a Monday news conference, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam referred to pro-democracy activists as enemies of the people. [read more]

It does sound like Berlin Germany in the Soviet days.

More articles on China:

• Challenging Beijing’s Distortions About Human Rights in China
• China using supercomputers, 5G tech for total control
• How Beijing Controls Chinese Citizens Through Family, Education, and Speech
• China Fires Shot Across Bow With New Aircraft Carrier
• China blocked lived Dem debate when Xinjiang came up
• Before Christian missionaries reached Korea, China was there
• China to rewrite Quran, Bible to fit 'socialist values'
• Co-Opting China’s Churches
• Chinese Pastor Sentenced to 9 Years in Prison Amid Renewed Persecution
• China’s Repression of the Uighurs Merits a Strong Human Rights Response
• Analyst warns of overlooked threats from China, rogue proxies
• Pompeo Warns of China’s Hidden Influence in America
• China’s Coronavirus Response Shows the Weakness of Authoritarianism
• Assessing Beijing’s Power: A Blueprint for the U.S. Response to China over the Next Decades
• China’s Government Is Like Something Out of ‘1984’

Facebook Reveals Another Leak: 100 Developers Had Access to User Data

From Breitbart.com (Nov. 6):

Facebook has revealed yet another data leak, this time stating that up to 100 third party developers still had access to users’ data through private groups.

Business Insider reports that over a year after Facebook cracked down on the amount of user data that third parties could access, the firm has found that some app developers still had access to people’s data through Facebook Groups. Facebook tightened its rules around user data following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and in 2018, app developers’ access to groups was restricted to content rather than data of individuals belonging to those groups.

Facebook’s director of platform partnerships Konstantinos Papamiltiadis published a blog post this week admitting that the new rule relating to groups had not been uniformly implemented and roughly 100 app developers still had access to group members’ personal data.

Papamiltiadis stated in the blog post that there was “no evidence of abuse” but that at least 11 developers had accessed the data in the last 60 days. [read more]

EXCLUSIVE: This Is How the U.S. Military’s Massive Facial Recognition System Works

From One Zero.medium.com (Nov. 6):

Over the last 15 years, the United States military has developed a new addition to its arsenal. The weapon is deployed around the world, largely invisible, and grows more powerful by the day.

That weapon is a vast database, packed with millions of images of faces, irises, fingerprints, and DNA data — a biometric dragnet of anyone who has come in contact with the U.S. military abroad. The 7.4 million identities in the database range from suspected terrorists in active military zones to allied soldiers training with U.S. forces.

“Denying our adversaries anonymity allows us to focus our lethality. It’s like ripping the camouflage netting off the enemy ammunition dump,” wrote Glenn Krizay, director of the Defense Forensics and Biometrics Agency, in notes obtained by OneZero. The Defense Forensics and Biometrics Agency (DFBA) is tasked with overseeing the database, known officially as the Automated Biometric Information System (ABIS).

DFBA and its ABIS database have received little scrutiny or press given the central role they play in U.S. military’s intelligence operations. But a newly obtained presentation and notes written by the DFBA’s director, Krizay, reveals how the organization functions and how biometric identification has been used to identify non-U.S. citizens on the battlefield thousands of times in the first half of 2019 alone. ABIS also allows military branches to flag individuals of interest, putting them on a so-called “Biometrically Enabled Watch List” (BEWL). Once flagged, these individuals can be identified through surveillance systems on battlefields, near borders around the world, and on military bases. [read more]

The Righteous Mind: First Principle

People reason and people have moral intuitions (including moral emotions), but what is the relationship among these processes? Plato believed that reason could and should be the master; Jefferson believed that the two processes were equal partners (head and heart) ruling a divided empire; Hume believed that reason was (and was only fit to be) the servant of the passions. In this chapter I [the author] tried to show that Hume was right:

• The mind is divided into parts, like a rider (controlled processes) on an elephant (automatic processes). The rider evolved to serve the elephant.
• You can see the rider serving the elephant when people are morally dumbfounded. They have strong gut feelings about what is right and wrong, and they struggle to construct post hoc justifications for those feelings. Even when the servant (reasoning) comes back empty-handed, the master (intuition) doesn't change his judgment.
• The social intuitionist model starts with Hume's model and makes it more social. Moral reasoning is part of our lifelong struggle to win friends and influence people. That's why I say that “intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.” You'll misunderstand moral reasoning if you think about it as something people do by themselves in order to figure out the truth.
• Therefore, if you want to change someone's mind about a moral or political issue, talk to the elephant first. If you ask people to believe something that violates their intuitions, they will devote their efforts to finding an escape hatch—a reason to doubt your argument or conclusion. They will almost always succeed.

The first principle of moral psychology is Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. In support of this principle, I reviewed six areas of experimental research demonstrating that:

• Brains evaluate instantly and constantly.
• Social and political judgments depend heavily on quick intuitive flashes.
• Our bodily states sometimes influence our moral judgments. Bad smells and tastes can make people more judgmental (as can anything that makes people think about purity and cleanliness).
• Psychopaths reason but don't feel (and are severely deficient morally).
• Babies feel but don't reason (and have the beginnings of morality).
• Affective reactions are in the right place at the right time in the brain.

Putting all six together gives us a pretty clear portrait of the rider and the elephant, and the roles they play in our righteous minds. The elephant (automatic processes) is where most of the action is in moral psychology. Reasoning matters, of course, particularly between people, and particularly when reasons trigger new intuitions. Elephants rule, but they are neither dumb nor despotic. Intuitions can be shaped by reasoning, especially when reasons are embedded in a friendly conversation or an emotionally compelling novel, movie, or news story.

How moral thinking is more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth:

• We are obsessively concerned about what others think of us, although much of the concern is unconscious and invisible to us.
• Conscious reasoning functions like a press secretary who automatically justifies any position taken by the president.
• With the help of our press secretary, we are able to lie and cheat often, and then cover it up so effectively that we convince even ourselves.
• Reasoning can take us to almost any conclusion we want to reach, because we ask “Can I believe it?” when we want to believe something, but “Must I believe it?” when we don't want to believe. The answer is almost always yes to the first question and no to the second.
• In moral and political matters we are often groupish, rather than selfish. We deploy our reasoning skills to support our team, and to demonstrate commitment to our team.

I concluded by warning that the worship of reason, which is sometimes found in philosophical and scientific circles, is a delusion. It is an example of faith in something that does not exist. I urged instead a more intuitionist approach to morality and moral education, one that is more humble about the abilities of individuals, and more attuned to the contexts and social systems that enable people to think and act well.

Source: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012) by Jonathan Haidt.