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pinelife3 · 3 years

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What’s this Pizzagate in the heart of nature?

The big tech story in Australia last month was Facebook’s decision to restrict people and organisations in Australia from sharing or viewing news content on Facebook. This was in response to the Morrison government’s proposed Media Bargaining legislation which is basically a Murdoch-serving law to try to get tech companies to pay media organisations for news content hosted/linked/displayed on their sites and, most galling of all, share details of their algorithms with Australian media orgs. The idea that Facebook would have to notify NewsCorp every time they want to tweak their algorithm is patently insane. So I admire Facebook’s petty, dramatic manoeuvre: “if the way we share news on the site is such a problem then fine, no more news for you”. After all the fuss, the Australian government agreed to amend the Media Bargaining legislation - evidently with terms more agreeable to Facebook, meaning news has been restored to Facebook down under.

One of the key responses I saw expressed in relation to Facebook’s initial news eradication was concern that disinformation would be able to spread more easily on the site - and that people wouldn’t be able to rebut disinformation with factual news articles.

So far as I can tell, the proliferation of disinformation online wouldn’t matter if people didn’t believe it. And most especially, if people didn’t want to believe it. After all, the web is full of persuasive writing and people who want to convince you of things - for whatever reason, conspiracy theories just seem to be very alluring. So rather than trying to protect people from their own stupidity by hiding disinformation... maybe we could look at why people are so credulous in the first place. Deep state? Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams? CIA Contra cocaine trafficking? The great replacement? Pizzagate?

I’m going to class conspiracy theorists into three categories of my own making:

I believe: well meaning, uninformed people who have been fooled or duped. The fraudulent 1998 Lancet paper by Andrew Wakefield which started the vaccines cause autism conspiracy was actually written to support a class action lawsuit. Wakefield knew the results in his paper were not true: in addition to his conflicts of interest, he had falsified data. The paper was eventually debunked and retracted but the conspiracy had its roots and has continued to grow. I think a lot of the people who believe that vaccines are dangerous are parents who are just worried about their kids - and also want to protect other kids from a threat they believe to be real. Why is one debunked article more persuasive to people than a million proving the efficacy of vaccines? It is literally beyond reason.

It suits me to believe: people motivated by self-interest who adopt a conspiracy theory to support their larger world view. Their self-interest could be anything from their own ego to gun rights. The conspiracies around the Sandy Hook Primary School shooting are interesting because you can see a clear motivation for people to subscribe to that theory rather than the truth. If you’re a keen gun-owner, arguining that the shooting was a hoax to generate anti-gun sentiment and thereby allow the Democrats to pass harsher gun restrictions is neat and comforting. No one could argue that the events of Sandy Hook weren’t inhumanly terrible - so the only option is to argue that they didn’t happen at all. Plus, in this worldview, no kids are getting hurt so you can sleep easy knowing you have seven semi-automatic weapons in the house.

I need to believe: the world is disorganised, scary, unknowable. Ocean deep, sky vast, dark impenetrable - and meanwhile our skin is so thin and delicate. So. Wouldn’t it be comforting to think that there’s a race of reptilian overlords that control the planet by whipping their tails against a complicated system of levers and pullies? That would explain a lot of the chaos in our world. Or maybe the problem is an elite coterie of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles? If only we could defeat those accursed pedophiles then life would be peaceful. Luckily, Q and a septuagenarian reality TV host are here to save us.

Across these categories, there are two unifying features:

Rejection of widely accepted truth

Investment in the conspiracy

As a comparison with the conspiracists above, here’s my take on a conspiracy: I think it’s quite probable that Epstein didn’t kill himself. I think that some powerful, shadowy entity took him out to protect itself. But I’m not obsessed by this idea. It would not surprise or upset me if this was officially confirmed - similarly crazy shit happens all the time. I haven’t devoted my life to revealing this truth. I guess I fit into the “I Believe” category: all official information says that Epstein took his own life but my scepticism of the unusual circumstances around his death and Epstein’s powerful connections leads me to doubt the official information. The difference is I don’t do anything about it. I don’t really care if I’m right or not - I’m not that invested in the conspiracy.

And that’s why it seems ludicrous to me that Facebook should be tasked with combatting the conspiracy theories spiralling across our culture. Simply being exposed to bad information does not radicalise you, does not conjure an investment in the conspiracy. If a normal person reads something creatively wrong or misleading they discard it from their mind. If it hits a chord with them, they may adopt that opinion themselves - see: astrology, Armie Hammer as cannibal, tarot cards, essential oils as serious medical treatment, etc. But the evolution from agreeing with a thought to militaristically insisting that the rest of society also agree with it is an abnormal progression. That strange impulse runs deeper in people than their Facebook timeline.

Most people have fears for the planet or believe there are major issues plaguing humanity - and we never do anything about it because it would be mildly inconvenient or because it’s too hard to care about every issue under late capitalism:

"But sorting my recycling is boring”

“Yeah yeah fast fashion is problematic but H&M is just so affordable"

"Of course I hate R.Kelly! But ‘Ignition (Remix)’ is my jam”

“At least they have suicide nets in the Foxconn factories now”

“I only buy free range chicken thighs because I care about animal welfare”

“I retweeted that thing about anti-Black racism. Yay racism solved!”

There are probably lots of people who believe in conspiracy theories but are ultimately apathetic about doing anything: they can’t be bothered talking about vaccines and politics all the time, can’t be bothered going to a protest, can’t summon the interest to care much. So what’s interesting then is that across the three categories of conspiracy theory belief (I believe > It suits me to believe > I need to believe), what a person believes in, and perhaps even the reason for the belief, doesn’t create any impetus to enact real world change. On both the left and the right, the impulse to do something about an issue is rare. Do you think conspiracy theorists, like the left, have a problem with performative activism?

Imagine that you agree that Sandy Hook was a false flag, that ‘they’ hired crisis actors to publicly grieve as if their pretend children had been murdered... do you then get in your car and drive overnight to Sandy Hook and start harassing those crisis actors at the pretend funerals? What do you call someone like that? The hero of their own story.

Just wait!

In their worldview, QAnon are unironically trying to save us from pedophile cannibals. Given what conspiracists believe to be true, they are acting in good faith and doing the right thing. If you believed this shit, you’d be upset too. The fact that they’re doing something about it is kind of admirable: they don’t want our babies to get autism from the measles vaccine, they don’t want a deep state to manipulate our democratic governments. It’s existential for all of us - we just don’t agree on the threat.

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Can you imagine how electric the riot at the Capitol Building must have felt for the people who led it. Brave, romantic, a grand gesture: it was like their Storming of Tuileries. Remember this day forever!

Modern conspiracists are actually similar to the sans-culottes in terms of being avid consumers of propaganda and inflammatory reporting. Disinformation and stirring rhetoric are not new - but shouldn’t people today be less clueless than 18th century peasants?

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Why are there are so many people who believe things which are untrue? They exist on this planet with us but interpret it so differently. These questions really are existential: an ancient, echoing maw pointing to the heart of human nature. The struggle for a more perfect world, whispers about where the danger comes from at night, arguments about how to protect ourselves.

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Has there ever been a society where people didn’t have differing views on how best to shape the world? It’s the central conflict of human existence: epic, older than language - and now we want Facebook to fix it?

#qanon #epstein #trump #anti-vaxxers #facebook #auspol #media bargaining code #pizzagate #sandy hook

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Headlines

Images of brutality against Black people spur racial trauma (AP) Since Wanda Johnson’s son was shot and killed by a police officer in Oakland, California, 11 years ago, she has watched video after video of similar encounters between Black people and police. Each time, she finds herself reliving the trauma of losing her son, Oscar Grant, who was shot to death by a transit police officer. Most recently, Johnson couldn’t escape the video of George Floyd, pinned to the ground under a Minneapolis officer’s knee as he pleaded that he couldn’t breathe. “I began to shake. I was up for two days, just crying,” she said. “Just looking at that video opened such a wound in me that has not completely closed.” Johnson’s loss was extreme, but, for many Black Americans, her grief and pain feels familiar. Psychologists call it racial trauma—the distress experienced because of the accumulation of racial discrimination, racial violence or institutional racism. While it can affect anyone who faces repeated prejudice, in this moment, its impact on Black people is drawing particular attention. The unfortunate irony is that the very tool that may be helping to make more people aware of the racism and violence that Black and other people of color face is also helping to fuel their trauma.

Critics question `less lethal’ force used during protests (AP) When a participant at a rally in Austin to protest police brutality threw a rock at a line of officers in the Texas capital, officers responded by firing beanbag rounds—ammunition that law enforcement deems “less lethal” than bullets. A beanbag cracked 20-year-old Justin Howell’s skull and, according to his family, damaged his brain. Adding to the pain, police admit the Texas State University student wasn’t the intended target. Pressure has mounted for a change in police tactics since Howell was injured. He was not accused of any crime. He was hospitalized in critical condition on May 31 and was discharged Wednesday to a long-term rehabilitation facility for intensive neurological, physical and occupational therapy. His brother has questioned why no one is talking about police use of less lethal but still dangerous munitions. “If we only talk about policing in terms of policies and processes or the weapons that police use when someone dies or when they are ‘properly lethal’ and not less lethal, we’re missing a big portion of the conversation,” said Josh Howell, a computer science graduate student at Texas A&M University. The growing use of less lethal weapons is “cause for grave concern” and may sometimes violate international law, said Agnes Callamard, director of Global Freedom of Expression at Columbia University and a U.N. adviser.From 1990 to 2014, projectiles caused 53 deaths and 300 permanent disabilities among 1,984 serious injuries recorded by medical workers in over a dozen countries.

Coronavirus Global Death Toll Passes 500,000 (Foreign Policy) The coronavirus pandemic, about to enter its fifth month this week reached two grim milestones over the weekend: More than 10 million people have been infected with the virus and over 500,000 have died of it. Europe has seen the most deaths of any continent, although its overall caseload is declining. The situation in the Americas is more concerning: Two countries—the United States and Brazil—account for roughly 35 percent of all COVID-19 deaths worldwide and both countries are still seeing new cases in the tens of thousands daily.

Virus hits college towns (NYT) The community around the University of California, Davis, used to have a population of 70,000 and a thriving economy. Rentals were tight. Downtown was jammed. Hotels were booked months in advance for commencement. Students swarmed to the town’s bar crawl, sampling the trio of signature cocktails known on campus as “the Davis Trinity.” Then came the coronavirus. When the campus closed in March, an estimated 20,000 students and faculty left town. With them went about a third of the demand for goods and services, from books to bikes to brunches. Fall classes will be mostly remote, the university announced last week, with “reduced density” in dorms. Efforts to stem the pandemic have squeezed local economies across the nation, but the threat is starting to look existential in college towns. Communities that have evolved around campuses are confronting not only Covid-19 but also major losses in population, revenue and jobs.

Band’s pandemic diversion leads to every-night gig in park (AP) What started as a way for two musicians to get out of the house during the pandemic has turned into nightly concerts at the boathouse in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park—with fans who expect them to play three to four hours a night, seven nights a week. “One day I came here with my guitar out of nowhere, to just get some fresh air. And people just started coming over. And then they were like, ‘Thank you!’ And then it took a life on its own,” said Alegba Jahyile, leader of Alegba and Friends. Jahyile, a Haitian raised in New York who plays guitar, drums and bass, recalled a woman who cried at one concert. “You made my day,” she told him. “It’s been a terrible week for me and my family. Listening to you, singing, I felt the joy, I found a little bit of serenity, of peace to my day.” The area has steps that are good for sitting. It’s also adjacent to a grassy hill where people can bring children and dogs, spread blankets, plop down lounge chairs, and picnic while listening to the music.

World Food Program warns of ‘devastating’ pandemic impact in low- and middle-income countries (Washington Post) The World Food Program (WFP) warned Monday that the socioeconomic repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic will be “devastating” and could trigger food shortages for millions of residents of low- and middle-income nations. In the countries in which the organization operates, the number of people suffering from hunger is estimated to rise by more than 80 percent by the end of 2020, in comparison with pre-coronavirus times. Latin America and Africa are among the most heavily impacted areas. “This unprecedented crisis requires an unprecedented response. If we do not respond rapidly and effectively to this viral threat, the outcome will be measured in an unconscionable loss of life, and efforts to roll back the tide of hunger will be undone,” WFP Director David Beasley was quoted as saying in a release. “Until the day we have a medical vaccine, food is the best vaccine against chaos.”

Iceland’s president wins second term (Foreign Policy) Icelandic President Gundi Johannesson won a second term on Saturday in a landslide victory. Johanneson won 92 percent of the vote, while his right wing challenger Gudmundur Franklin Jonsson received just 7 percent of the vote. The Icelandic presidency is a largely symbolic post, although the president can exercise veto power over legislation.

Britons are fatter than most in the rest of Europe, says PM Johnson (Reuters) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday Britons were significantly fatter than people in most of the rest of Europe, admitting he had lost weight after contracting the novel coronavirus. Speaking to Times Radio, Johnson said: “I have taken a very libertarian stance on obesity but actually when you look at the numbers, when you look at the pressure on the NHS (National Health Service), compare, I’m afraid this wonderful country of ours to other European countries, we are significantly fatter than most others, apart from the Maltese for some reason. It is an issue.” “Everybody knows that this is a tough one, but I think it’s something we all need to address.” Johnson did some press ups to show he was “as fit as a butcher’s dog” in an interview with the Mail on Sunday newspaper, just months after he fought for his life in hospital against the coronavirus.

French court convicts former PM Fillon of embezzling public funds (Reuters) A French court on Monday found former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon guilty of embezzlement of public funds in a fake jobs scandal that wrecked his 2017 run for president and opened the Elysee Palace door for Emmanuel Macron. A French court on Monday found former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon guilty of embezzlement of public funds in a fake jobs scandal that wrecked his 2017 run for president and opened the Elysee Palace door for Emmanuel Macron.

Hard times even for homeless (Worldcrunch) Speaking to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, anthropologist Luisa Schneider described one homeless girl she’s followed. “Before the crisis, she was able to study and wash in cafes or libraries. Neither is possible now.” Schneider expects more Germans to sleep on the streets in the coming months. “Many networks have now collapsed. Even homeless people who used to support each other are now losing sight of each other.” In France, government authorities and NGOs were able to accommodate 177,600 people with shelter during the lockdown period, reports Le Monde. The government has invested more than 2 billion euros helping those without homes, including requisitioning 13,300 hotel rooms. Yet France’s emergency phone number for homeless assistance remains overwhelmed, with over 200 calls on average daily and many unable to secure a temporary housing situation. And as the country continues opening up, it is unclear how long the special accommodation period will last.

Polish election (NYT) Polish President Andrzej Duda failed to win enough of the vote in Sunday’s election to avoid a runoff, according to exit polls, forcing him into what is expected to be a tightly fought contest with the liberal mayor of Warsaw Rafal Trzaskowski next month. Although Duda came out ahead on Sunday, analysts expect that to change in the runoff election in two weeks, as opposition voters whose support was split in the first round unite around Trzaskowski.

Russian state exit polls show 76% so far back reforms that could extend Putin rule (Reuters) Russian state opinion pollster VTsIOM said on Monday that its exit polls showed that 76% of Russians had so far voted to support reforms that could allow President Vladimir Putin to extend his rule until 2036. The nationwide vote on constitutional reforms began on June 25 and is being held over seven days as a precaution against the coronavirus pandemic. If approved, the changes would allow Putin to run twice for president again after his current term expires in 2024.

Militants attack Karachi stock exchange, killing at least 3 (AP) Militants attacked the stock exchange in the Pakistani city of Karachi on Monday, killing at least three people—two guards and a policeman, according to police. Special police forces deployed to the scene of the attack and in a swift operation secured the building, killing all four gunmen. There were no reports of any wounded among the brokers and employees inside the exchange and a separatist militant group from a neighboring province later claimed responsibility for the attack.

China forces birth control on Uighurs to suppress population (AP) The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children. While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of “demographic genocide.” The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show. The population control measures are backed by mass detention both as a threat and as a punishment for failure to comply. Having too many children is a major reason people are sent to detention camps, the AP found, with the parents of three or more ripped away from their families unless they can pay huge fines. Police raid homes, terrifying parents as they search for hidden children.

Thailand opens its borders to some (Worldcrunch) Thailand will allow pubs and bars to reopen on Wednesday and plans to let in some foreign travelers after recording five weeks without any community transmission of the coronavirus, a government official said. Pubs, bars and karaoke venues will be able to operate until midnight as long as they follow safety guidelines such as ensuring two-meter spaces between tables. Foreigners with work permits, residency and families in Thailand will also be able to enter the country, but will be subject to a 14-day quarantine. Visitors seeking certain types of medical treatment such as some cosmetic surgery or fertility treatment could also be allowed into the country.

Balcony churches: Kenyans find new ways to worship in lockdown (The Guardian) The children hang over the balcony railings on Sunday morning. In the parking lot below, a four-person band test microphones and practise harmonies. A moment later, the group fills the Mirema apartment complex in Nairobi with music: “I’m happy today, so happy. In Jesus’s name, I’m happy.” The Rev Paul Machira, a tall, slender beanpole of a man with greying hair, leaps around energetically, encouraging the balcony worshippers to join in prayer. Sporting green overalls embroidered with his nickname, Uncle Paul, the 43-year-old has been traveling around apartment complexes across Nairobi, bringing his balcony services and Sunday school to families since the Covid-19 pandemic closed down places of worship in Kenya on 22 March. Pairing dance moves with their tunes, the band encourage children and their parents to spend the hour dancing and praying together. When Machira realises that a crowd has gathered on the balcony of the apartment building next door, he shifts to a “360 service” to include those neighbours. Machira’s services are by invitation only. He says that the group have had to skip services because some of the neighbours have objected to “noise-makers” in their complex. Machira’s group have been booked for as many as four services in one day before. This popularity means that they sometimes have to split into two, renting an additional van and musical equipment to cover more ground.

#headlines #news

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withastolenlantern · 4 years

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The sun set slowly over the western horizon towards the Mexican coast as the helicopter carried them across the swells, a bright orange glow in the distance that caused the waves to glisten and sparkle in a hypnotic rhythm in time with the whirring of the rotors above. Chatham sat dejected, her feet dangling out the side port where a machine-gun position had once existed. They’d chased the hovercraft as far as they could, but the copter had been built for transport, not speed, even when it was new, and they'd of course removed all the weaponry. The old bird kept them close for nearly forty kilometers, the autopilot bobbing and weaving around sporadic small-arms fire, but the large turbofans powering the hovercraft eventually outpaced them as the helicopter’s low fuel alarm had chimed.

Whoever they were, they disappeared into the Caribbean twilight like so many pirates before them. The sea that spanned before them had formed the early foundation of the old British Empire, its islands once abustle with privateers and naval frigates alike. Thousands of ships had sailed these waters trading in sugar and gold and slaves, bringing untold wealth to the nascent imperium; the sloops and galleons had long-ago been replaced by drone barges and the slaves with autofabs. Things had come full circle, now, and it seemed fitting that the reincarnated royal union might begin its decline here as well.

She instructed the autopilot to turn and head for the Jamaican coast, where they landed at a joint Union and US naval air station. The obsolete helo purred like an enormous kitten as the rotors spun down and she dismounted the deck of the aircraft onto still-hot tarmac in the fading light of the equatorial sun. Santomas followed, his head ducked low under the slowing whine of the helicopter, as if unsure of a safe distance from the blades. Davis’s mobile rang as they crossed the air field, and he walked a distance to take the call outside the din of the aircraft.

Across the landing pad she watched what appeared to be American Marines in exosuits running in PT formation; the base supported both Commonwealth and US operations in the Caribbean, but since the formation of the Union, the "Special Relationship" had become strained, especially since the Canadians had rejected a US-led proposal for a greater North American Congress of Nations. The Canadian parliament cited their status as a former Crown Dominion as a major factor in rejecting the invitation, but the influence of the US and it's defacto Mexican puppet-state's continued adherence to a "might makes right" socio-economic policy was evident. She passed several of the Union infantry garrison standing to the west end of the airfield, stoically but obviously observing their American counterparts' exercises with derision.

Among the gawkers was the young flight leader who’d lent Chatham the Merlin. She stopped beside him and handed over the authenticator fob.

“Yanks are up to something again,” he remarked. “They’ve been drilling like this for days, full recon gear.”

“Drugs, you think?” she responded idly. With the Americans and Mexicans it was always either drugs or immigrants. It wasn’t entirely surprising, she’d always thought. Central and South America had always been somewhat under-developed, and the shifting climate and rising seas had only exacerbated the situation. The US land border with its southern neighbor was enormous, and largely desert, which made securing it incredibly difficult. Her native South Africa had a similar geographic disadvantage, but while they still embraced the Rainbow Nation ethos, the Americans had responded to their modern economic challenges by ignoring their largely immigrant history and doubling-down on nationalist sentiments and geographic isolationism.

“Most likely,” the young man said with a shrug. “What’s your deal, then? Command just said to expect some civvies and to have the helo fueled when you arrived. Never got to ask.”

“HeRMES,” the detective said, flashing her credentials from her mobile.

“Didn’t think they gave coppers flying lessons.”

“No, but the SBS does,” she replied with a wry smile.

“Curiouser and curiouser. And what’s with the nerd?” he asked, pointing toward Santomas who she now saw was now sprinting toward them across the tarmac.

“Technical consultant,” Chatham said, doing a poor job of hiding a smirk. She could only imagine her own reaction, back then, to such a scene: an obvious civilian running across the airbase, caked in sweat, with such reckless abandon.

Santomas skidded to a halt next to her, his face red and drenched in perspiration from the heat and his recent exertion. He tried to speak, then thought better of it and swallowed several heavy gulps of air. “That was the boss,” he panted. “He was pissed.”

“I’d assume so,” she said with a snort.

“He’s in Singapore until next week but he wants a full report when he gets back. Wants me back in the lab figuring out how the hell somebody’s getting execution access to the fabs. ‘Right bloody now’ I believe were the exact words,” Davis explained.

“Never a dull moment I suppose,” she said, turning to the officer. She offered a crisp salute in thanks. “Squadron Leader.”

“Don’t I know it, mum,” he said, returning the gesture.

They left the cadre of servicemen and walked across the airfield to one of the distant hangars. One of the Consortium’s commercial aircraft was parked under a rusting corrugated aluminum roof; it had ferried them down to the Caribbean and would carry them back up to Wales. How the Earl had gotten permission to park a private jet on an active Commonwealth military installation was beyond the detective, but she presumed that it had something to do with wealth and its privileges.

They boarded the jet without fanfare, and Davis keyed in his credentials and submitted the flight plan. Chatham settled into one of the plush chairs midway through the cabin and opened a terminal to begin her situation report. Before she knew it the autopilot had spooled up the turbines and they were aloft into the rapidly darkening sky, chasing the sunset as it crawled its way east. She looked out through one of the windows and saw Jamaica, still green and verdant even in the twilight, quickly disappear, just another speck amidst the breakers, swallowed by the massive sea.

They flew in silence most of the way, Chatham working on her report and Davis just sitting quietly across the cabin. He nursed a small glass of whiskey from the Earl’s bar in the rear, mainly swirling it against the sides of the frosted crystal, staring off into space.

“You’ve been atypically quiet, Mister Santomas,” she said looking up from the terminal.

“I’ve, uh… I’ve never been shot at before. Never killed anybody either. I think that’s catching up with me a little bit,” he said, continuing to stare at the floor.

“Best not to make a habit of either, I’ve found,” Chatham responded.

“Puts things in perspective a little,” the engineer confessed. “What if it had been me, falling lifeless through that hatch?”

The detective put down the terminal and leaned forward toward him. She’d been through this existential crisis before, many years ago in a bivouac in some coastal Indian city she couldn’t remember. Earlier that day she’d fired her weapon for the first time in anger, shooting a suicide bomber out of mid-air as he leaped over rubble and sprinted toward her squad. Afterward, she stood over the body, silent, staring at the hole in the insurgent’s chest. It was bigger than she had expected, somehow, and when she’d closed her eyes that night it was all she could see; a gaping, oozing portal where a person used to be, and it threatened to pull her in and consume her whole.

“But it wasn’t you,” she said.

“Tell me one thing I’ve done that matters,” he challenged.

“I mean, I’m...” she started to argue.

“Its fine,” he said, waving the detective off. “It’s not you. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve heard it all. I’m reliable. I get things done. I’m ‘good at my function’.” He made finger quotes as he listed off descriptors. “But those are the qualities you look for in a washing machine, not a person.”

Chatham tried to interrupt, but he continued. “When I’m gone, it won’t matter. In the course of human history, I don’t even rate a footnote. Fuck, the shareholders won’t even notice, and I’ve done nothing but make them money. No… no they’ll probably be happy because they can replace me with someone cheaper,” he scoffed, turning his eyes to the floor. “I haven’t accomplished anything with my miserable existence that’s worth a damn.”

The detective sat quietly, unsure of what to say. She knew from her own experience that whatever arguments she might present to the contrary would fall on deaf ears. When one fell in to these depths, no rhetorical ropes could pull you out until you’d resolved to make the climb. Her companion continued to fume, obviously if quietly. “You’re probably not… wrong,” she hazarded. “In the grand scheme of things, I don’t know that any of us really matter. Not as individuals, anyway. I mean, I have a Military Cross and I keep it in a fucking sock drawer. When I’m dead, they’ll etch a fancy symbol on my tombstone, and that’ll be the last anyone thinks of me.”

He looked up at her, his gaze deep and penitent. “This is all a fucking show, you know,” he said, gesturing around the laboratory. “It’s a sham, like me. HenRI is more than capable of running everything in here, at least to the Board’s liking. They put a body down here because it ‘humanizes’ the Consortium, makes the investors feel like they’re doing business with a human enterprise, and not just a machine. When Diaz passed away, they thought about letting HenRI run all of Operations. It’s not like we really do any meaningful R&D anymore; there’s no point when they’re shutting down most of the fabs. But the Earl knew better, and he was nervous about giving a virtual intelligence that much control. He wanted someone… pliable. Someone he could trot out to glad-hand and speak the customers’ language, but wouldn’t make waves. I’m no more than HenRI’s secretarial functions in flesh and bone.”

“I don’t believe that, even if you do,” she replied.

“Diaz killed himself, you know.”

“What?” Chatam said, taken aback.

Santomas shook his head in the affirmative, pantomiming a finger gun. “Forty-five to the temple, a no-doubter. Two floors up from here, in his office. He printed the gun himself, in one of the dev lab fabs that were off the network. I found the code on the server a couple days later.”

“Christ,” the detective swore.

“Janitorial drone found him one night, 3 AM, slumped over his desk. Only threw up the flag because of all the blood. HenRI notified me, and I had to break the news to Jaime, his partner. The Consortium bought his silence, of course; he took the payout and their kid and moved to some island in the Caribbean, or whatever’s left of it. Haven’t heard from him since,” he explained.

“Did he leave a note?” she asked.

“Not as such. It’s… it’s probably my fault, if anything,” Santomas said, starting to choke up. “I know Jaime hated it here in Wales and they were drifting apart at the end; looking back, I think I was the closest thing Yangervis had left resembling a friend. His parents fled cartel violence in Colombia when he was five, and they landed in Texas. They had trouble making ends meet in the US. His dad was killed robbing a convenience store; his mother sued the state and the settlement was how he was able to afford his initial studies at A&M. He started the autofabs, in my opinion anyway, as a way to relieve some of that economic anxiety for other families so they didn’t have go through what he did. We were so successful at first, but then Black Tuesday happened, and I think he blamed himself for all the layoffs that followed.

Looking back, I keep wondering if there weren’t signs I should have recognized. He used to gripe all the time about expanding capabilities and finding ways to streamline distributions to do more for the growing poor. I just… I never realized how far down that particular rabbit hole he’d gone. We had a memorial here, and then a week later the Earl offered me his job. I should’ve said no, but I’m too much of a coward.” The engineer wiped a single tear from his cheek with his shirt-sleeve.

Chatham leaned forward and patted his leg gently.“You saved my life today,” the detective replied. “That’s what you did that matters. There was no cowardice in that.”

#long post #these passages have probably been posted before #but at the time they were mostly just exercises and now i've found an organic fit for them #or whatever this whole thing is terrible #the world ocean

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rulystuff · 3 years

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https://servicemeltdown.com/climate-change-science-or-propaganda/

New Post has been published on https://servicemeltdown.com/climate-change-science-or-propaganda/

CLIMATE CHANGE: SCIENCE OR PROPAGANDA?

The fear being stoked by the power elites in academia, business, government, and the media that climate change poses, as the current cliché has it, an “existential” threat to the planet is a threat alright but one that seeks to undermine a sovereign nation’s interests and priorities.

The self-absorbed elites around the world and in the United States now believe that they have found the boogeyman they have long sought to scare the public into accepting a construct of governance that would supplant the will of individual citizens with the whims of unelected, globalist technocrats accountable to no one but themselves. That boogeyman, of course, is climate change and it renders the mission of climate change proponents – presumably to save the world from extinction – little more than an anti-democratic power grab.

No more prominent a supranational organization than the United Nations, through its International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has sounded the alarm that unless urgent measures are enacted to limit global-warming we will have been responsible for a planetary crisis that will likely trigger severe storms, wildfires, pestilence, droughts, flooding, starvation, and death. The IPCC’s position is clear: the carbon dioxide emitted by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil is the principal cause behind the Earth’s rise in temperature. But the facts don’t square with the IPCC’s position: The main driver of greenhouse gases is not carbon dioxide but water vapor according to geologist Gregory Wrightstone author of the climate myth-busting book, Inconvenient Facts. It turns out that the atmospheric composition of water vapor is fifteen times that of carbon dioxide.

As evidence mounts that there is no global-warming calamity in the offing or that global-warming has its roots in mostly anthropogenic causes, climate change advocates have become more and more reliant on propaganda and disinformation to deliver their message of fear. Major media outlets, for their part, are complicit in parroting the latest shrill accounts of impending climate disaster without pushback or a critical analysis of the facts. One journalist in a Midwest newspaper, for example, recently stated that “The weather machine… is starting to act erratically…”, and that “The flood of immigrants around the world has been set in motion…principally by unbearable temperatures and loss of water and arable land.” No mention is made in the writer’s column of the fact that millions of people have been displaced by war, persecution, land exploitation, and overpopulation. The Biden Administration now blames global warming for the unprecedented surge of illegal immigrants coming across the southern border of the United States. “We are looking at extensive storm damage because of extreme climate.” So says Vice President Kamala Harris. Never mind that the average temperature across the country of Mexico, a key source of illegal immigration, has been on the order of .2 degrees Celsius or about one-third of one degree Fahrenheit for the years that span 1950 to 2009.

Not to be outdone, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Joseph Stiglitz, tells the New York Times that “Wall Street could be underwater by the year 2100.” One can only assume that Dr. Stiglitz was not forecasting a stock market crash.

But what could top the Associated Press story of June 29, 1989, when it reported that a senior U.N. environmental official had stated that “entire nations could be wiped out off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if global warming trends are not reversed by the year 2000.” We are now well into the year 2021 and as far as we know no nations have been wiped off the face of the Earth!

THE THEOLOGY OF CLIMATE CHANGE BLINDS OBJECTIVITY

The IPCC, which should stand as a paragon of scientific objectivity, and impartiality, is far from it. Emblematic of the agency’s bias, the IPCC has published a “manifesto” to guide authors in writing reports. Members of the IPCC are obligated to uphold the strictures contained in the manifesto. As such, authors are urged to parse their otherwise negative findings and to state questionable points of view without qualification. Certain word choices are prohibited and expressions which would cast doubt on an author’s expertise in a certain area are to be avoided. Members are in effect censored as they must not express opinions beyond the scope of published reports. Finally, minority opinions expressed in the body of an IPCC report rarely get mentioned in the Policymakers’ Summary. Journalists, and other non-experts unable or unwilling to wade through several hundred pages of technical data presumably read only the Summary. So much for scientific objectivity and impartiality.

The Earth’s temperature has been exceptionally stable for a very long time. For five thousand years global temperatures have been within the range of plus or minus one-half of one degree Celsius, or nine-tenths of one degree Fahrenheit, from average. And, according to astrophysicist S. Fred Singer “While it is true that global temperatures have risen about one-half of one degree Celsius in the last century, most of this warming occurred before 1940, while most of the human-caused carbon dioxide emissions occurred after 1940.” Recent global temperature readings come as a surprise to many.For example, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space report that the average global temperature for 2019 was unchanged from 2016 with two dips – global cooling, in effect – in 2017 and 2018.

The connection between carbon dioxide emissions and global temperature remains flimsy at best. A study in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate shows computer models exaggerated global warming temperatures from carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 45%. Professor of Geosystem Science at Oxford University, Myles Allen, explains that “…we haven’t seen the rapid acceleration in warming after the year 2000 that we see in models.”

And, while there has been much said in the media about how global-warminghas been responsible for a surge in major hurricane activity the data proves otherwise.The fact is thatthe number of severe hurricanes has not measurably increased during the last fifty years. According to the Stormfax Weather Almanac, the average annual number of Category 3,4, or 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic from the year 1970 to 2017 is 2.5. If we look at more recent data say from the year 2000 to 2017, the average annual number of major hurricanes shows a slight and inconsequential uptick to 3.2 or slightly more than one-half of one storm per year.The long-term trend is even more dramatic if disconcerting to climate alarmists as researchers at the National University of Mexicofound that, “from 1749 to 2012 the linear trend in the number of hurricanes is decreasing.”

Tornadicactivity, too, has been on the decline for the last sixty years. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) the number of F3+ (≥ 158 miles per hour) tornadoes in 2016 was the lowest on record. Scant notice of any of these findings have been seen in media reports. All of which goes to say that the apocalyptic data usually reported by the media is anti-empirical as it is not backed up by actual observation.

Climate change has been found to be the result of hugely complex phenomena such as oceanic tides, solar radiation, volcanic activity, tectonic plate movements, magnetic field variations, winds, the earth’s orbit and tilt, and ocean current fluctuations that are far beyond the scope of existing computer models to accurately simulate. It is no wonder then that computer modeling predictions fail to line up with observable data and for any government to rely on them as a guide in reordering a nation’s economic priorities is sheer folly and does a serious disservice to its citizenry.

The United Nations Paris Climate Accord, as a case in point, requires the United States to reduce its greenhouse emissions by the year 2025 to between 26 and 28 percent below its 2005 levels. Compliance with the dictates of the accord will cost the nation 2.7 million jobs, by 2025, according to the National Economic Research Associates and cause a sizeable contraction in GDP. Our arch-enemy Communist China, the world’s biggest polluter, was given a pass in the Paris Accord and by the terms of the agreement was allowed to continue increasing its carbon emissions until 2030. In any event, according to an article published in the Global Policy Journal on November 2015, Danish Statistician, Dr. Bjorn Lomborg wrote, “Even if all nations keep their promises under the agreement, temperatures will be cut by just one-half of one degree Celsius by 2100.”

In the end, the Paris Climate Accord amounts to a huge redistribution of wealth at the expense of the United States taxpayer. Seeing the writing on the wall, President Trump wisely withdrew the United States from the accord in 2019 before the Biden Administration genuflected before globalists and the Left in his own party and agreed to re-enter the accord.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Climate change proponents are undeterred by the facts. As MichaelCrichton, author of Jurassic Park, once said, “Increasingly, it seems facts aren’t necessary because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief.” In other words, belief trumps facts.

Generally, it is not possible to disprove an ideological construct simply with facts. More to the point, no amount of evidence can ever be brought to bear to counter the theology of those who believe in the urgent crisis that is posed by climate change. Environmental historian, William Cronon, calls environmentalism a new religion because it offers “a complex series of moral imperatives for ethical action and judges human conduct accordingly.”

A counter narrative to deal with the potentially destructive economic and political consequences of an unbridled and imperialistic climate change agenda must therefore go beyond a reliance on scientific arguments alone. Deep-seated doctrinaire beliefs cannot be overcome through logic and reason. A more effective counter narrative must have citizens demand of their government officials that the potentially coercive practices of supranational organizations like the United Nation’s IPCC will not be tolerated.

If we cherish the freedoms we have come to enjoy as citizens of an independent sovereign state we have little choice but to forcefully resist institutional and government intimidation whether foreign or domestic. When it comes to climate science, free-thinking citizens must remain skeptical and engage in greater self-study and research. Citizens must also take to the public square and hold policymakers accountable if they seek to embark on hastily thought out policies that will result in harsh economic consequences. Keep in mind that the Left in the United States is proposing a net-zero emissions standard by the year 2050 which would cost the nation on the order of $5 trillion per year. Worse, even global warming zealots need to heed Gregory Wrightstone’s admonition that carbon dioxide is not the devil it has been made out to be but a gas that is essential for life – all life. The current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of 400 parts per million should be viewed as a blessing as plant life cannot survive without at least 150 parts per million.

In the end, concerned citizens must demand more science and less propaganda especially from those with the power to affect our lives and livelihoods. A failure to do so will bring about an earthly catastrophe never imagined by the global-warming alarmists.

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peterdiamandis · 6 years

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Fixing Climate Change...

Earlier this month, 13 U.S. government agencies (NOAA, NASA, DOE, etc.) concluded that climate change is real and caused mainly by human activity.

There is no question that this is happening...

The only question now is: what do we do about it?

This blog looks at four options:

Pass government legislation that incentivizes carbon abatement

Drive mass adoption of solar energy and battery technology

Adapt ourselves and our civilization to the changing climate

Invest in geoscale engineering projects

Let’s dive in.

1. Government Regulation and Top-Down Incentives

We’ve seen many government debates, laws passed and treaties signed. We’ve heard a lot about the efficacy of cap and trade, taxing carbon, and other regulations that incentivize carbon abatement.

While we should rally behind policies that can assist in slowing the rise of global temperatures, forgive me if I don’t depend on this option to handle the problem.

Many special interests and scientifically ignorant members of the electorate make this option unlikely and risky to baseline as our primary strategy.

The time for radical action is now.

2. Make Renewables so Cheap that they KILL Fossil Fuels

Society faced a similar environmental crisis 120 years ago...

At the end of the 19th century, London was becoming uninhabitable because of the accumulation of horse manure.

As citizens moved from the rural countryside to the urban cities, they brought with them their motive force, the horse, and the piles of horse manure piled up rapidly, bringing disease. People were absolutely panicked. Because of their anchoring bias, they couldn’t imagine any other possible solutions. No one had any idea that a disruptive technology — the automobile — was coming.

What is today’s equivalent transformative technology? Clearly, it’s the mass adoption of renewal energy: solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear.

Let’s look at solar alone. Few people have any idea that 8,000x more energy from the sun hits the surface of the Earth in a day than we consume as a human race.

All the energy we could ever need is literally raining down from above. A squanderable abundance of energy.

These staggering numbers, in combination with an exponential decline in photovoltaic solar energy costs ($ per watt price of solar cells), put us on track to meet between 50 percent and 100 percent of the world’s energy production from solar (and other renewables) in the next 20 years.

Even better, the poorest countries in the world are the sunniest.

At the same time that renewable energy sources are on the rise, the demise of the internal combustion car is synergistically bringing about the end of the era of fossil fuels.

India, France, Britain and Norway have already completely ditched gas and diesel cars in favor of cleaner electric vehicles. At least 10 other countries (including China and India) have set sales targets for electric cars.

In the last year alone, every manufacturer has announced aggressive plans for electric vehicles. Ford Motor Company, for example, is investing $4.5 billion in electric cars, adding 13 electric cars and hybrids by 2020, making more than 40 percent of its lines electrified.

An EV market of two models in 2010 has climbed to more than 25 models today.

At the same time, many automotive companies (e.g. Volvo) have announced the end of the internal combustion car altogether.

Batteries: It’s next reasonable to ask whether the required battery technology will advance fast enough to give us the storage capacity needed for an “all-electric economy.”

The following chart shows that the battery performance pricing ($/kWh) is dropping 2x faster than even the optimists projected.

The bottom line: Our second option for combating climate change is to make renewable energy so cheap, such a ‘no-brainer’, that fossil fuels disappear for the same reason the Stone Age vanished: Not for a lack of stones, but for a 10x better option.

Abundance-minded entrepreneurs have the option to make solar and renewables easier, cheaper, and better, putting the petroleum, natural gas and coal industries out of business.

3. Adapting to a Warmer World

The Earth’s environment has been continuously changing for more than 4 billion years.

When life first emerged on Earth, our atmosphere was a deadly combination of carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane. Then, about 3 billion years ago, a poisonous and corrosive gas called oxygen came about from a process called “photosynthesis,” a process that transformed the climate and killed much of the existing life forms.

Ultimately life, whether it is microbial or homo sapiens, changes the environment. Our challenge today is the speed with which humanity’s use of fossil fuels has destabilized our ecosystem.

So, the question is, in parallel with items 1, 2 and 4 in this blog, do we accelerate our efforts to adopt to these changes as well?

One such example comes from China, where a team of scientists have successfully modified rice to grow in saltwater, which will allow them to feed their populace as sea levels rise. Cornell University projects that 2 billion people – around 20% of the world’s population – are at risk of being displaced by rising sea levels.

4. Geoscale Engineering: A Solution in Space

I recently had a conversation with a billionaire friend of mine from Silicon Valley who is committing his wealth and intellect to solving our climate problem. He’s tired of all the inaction and sees the climate crisis as one of humanity’s greatest existential threats today.

One solution that I discussed with him that I find compelling and elegant is called a “sunshade.”

Imagine a large, deployable mega-structure that sits between the Earth and the Sun, and blocks out very small (<0.1 percent) (variable) fraction of the photons coming from the sun to the Earth.

The preferred location for such a sunshade is near the Earth-Sun inner Lagrange point (L1) in an orbit with the same 1-year period as the Earth, and in-line with the Sun at a distance ≥ 1,500,000 kilometers from Earth.

While researching the idea, I found three well documented write-ups:

In 1989, James Early (from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) proposed putting a giant, 2000 km-wide glass deflector at L1.

A 1992 NASA report suggested lifting 55,000 “solar sails” into orbit at L1, each with an area of 100 km2, blocking about 1 percent of sunlight.

In 2007, Roger Angel (an astronomer from the University of Arizona), suggested creating a “cloud” of tiny sunshades at L1, each weighing about 1.2g and measuring 60cm in diameter.

All of these proposals have their respective limitations, whether it be cost, technical feasibility, and so on.

Roger Angel’s solution, which proposed millions of micro-shades rather than one large, expensive structure, has various pros and cons. It’s estimated that his concept could be developed and deployed in 25 years at a cost of a few trillion dollars, <0.5 percent of the world’s GDP over that time.

This is just one example of many geoscale engineering projects worth exploring.

Others (which I don’t like as much, because they may not be as easily reversible and controllable) include documented ideas like seeding our oceans with iron to increase the growth of plankton, or deliberately injecting the stratosphere with sulphur compounds to increase the Earth's reflectivity.

Clearly, I can’t put forth this option without acknowledging that we can’t fully know the secondary effects of these efforts. As Jim Haywood, professor of Atmospheric Science at University of Exeter said in an interview, “…there’s a healthy fear surrounding a technique that, without being hyperbolic, would aim to hack the planet’s climate and block out the sun.”

Final Thoughts

We can either wait for climate change to continue to decimate elements of our society, or we can begin focusing aggressively on solutions.

Given our access to exponential technologies, I am far more hopeful about our ability to address the climate crisis today, rather than 50, or even 20, years ago.

We can fix the problem — we just need to focus our intellect, resources and technology, and focus it fast.

Over the next decade, as climate change becomes more devastating and visible, great thinkers and entrepreneurs will emerge with even more surprising solutions to help tackle this grand challenge.

As I have often said, the world’s biggest problems are the world’s biggest business opportunities.

Join Me

1. A360 Executive Mastermind: This is the sort of conversation I explore at my Executive Mastermind group called Abundance 360. The program is highly selective, for 360 abundance and exponentially minded CEOs (running $10M to $10B companies). If you’d like to be considered, apply here.

Share this with your friends, especially if they are interested in any of the areas outlined above.

2. Abundance-Digital Online Community: I’ve also created a Digital/Online community of bold, abundance-minded entrepreneurs called Abundance-Digital.

Abundance-Digital is my ‘onramp’ for exponential entrepreneurs – those who want to get involved and play at a higher level. Click here to learn more.

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abujaihs-blog · 5 years

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Landmark Deal Reached on Rent Protections for Tenants in N.Y.

Newly empowered Democratic leaders in Albany announced a landmark agreement Tuesday to strengthen New York’s rent laws and tenant protections, seeking to address concern about housing costs that is helping drive the debate over inequality across the nation. The changes would abolish rules that let building owners deregulate apartments, close a series of loopholes that permit them to raise rents and allow some tenant protections to expand statewide. The deal was a significant blow to the real estate industry, which contended that the measures would lead to the deterioration of the condition of New York City’s housing. The industry had long been one of the most powerful lobbies in Albany, but it suffered a loss of influence after its Republican allies surrendered control of the state Senate in the November elections.

“These reforms give New Yorkers the strongest tenant protections in history,” the Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and the Assembly speaker, Carl E. Heastie, said in a joint statement. “For too long, power has been tilted in favor of landlords and these measures finally restore equity and extend protections to tenants across the state.” Both chambers are expected to vote on the legislative package this week. The current rent regulations expire Saturday. The new and strengthened rules would mark a turning point for the 2.4 million people who live in nearly 1 million rent-regulated apartments in New York City after a decades-long erosion of protections and the loss of tens of thousands of regulated apartments. The legislation in Albany is far-reaching: While rent regulations are currently restricted largely to New York City and a few other localities, the new package would allow cities and towns statewide to fashion their own regulations, which are meant to keep apartments affordable by limiting rent increases. It would also make the changes permanent — a major victory for tenant activists who have had to lobby Albany every few years when the old laws expired. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, said he would sign whatever package of rent bills the Legislature passed. The imminent changes come as New York and other major cities are grappling with a shortage of affordable housing, prompting even Democratic presidential hopefuls to increasingly court renters as a new voting bloc. New York has seen record numbers in homelessness statewide and skyrocketing rents that have acutely burdened low-income and older residents. “The Senate and the Assembly are taking a massive step in the right direction,” said Cea Weaver, the campaign coordinator of Housing Justice for All, a statewide coalition of tenants. “We have a long way to go to reach a point where every tenant in New York is protected, but this is a big step forward to correct decades of injustice between tenants and landlords,” she added. Real estate trade groups called the proposed legislation an existential threat to building owners. In hearings and through expensive ad campaigns, the groups warned that the changes could put small landlords out of business because they would be unable to increase rents to deal with escalating costs. “This legislation fails to address the city’s housing crisis and will lead to disinvestment in the city’s private sector rental stock consigning hundreds of thousands of rent-regulated tenants to living in buildings that are likely to fall into disrepair,” Taxpayers for an Affordable New York, a coalition of four real estate groups, including the powerful Real Estate Board of New York, said in a statement. “This legislation will not create a single new affordable housing unit, improve the vacancy rate or improve enforcement against the few dishonest landlords who tend to dominate the headlines,” the statement added. “It is now up to the governor to reject this deal in favor of responsible rent reform that protects tenants, property owners, building contractors and our communities.” The agreement Tuesday underscored the rising power of the progressive wing in Albany. Many of the lawmakers who fueled the Democratic takeover of the Senate last year pledged to decline contributions from real estate interests and ran on promises to take on the industry by passing legislation supported by tenant groups. Landlords and developers, accustomed to ready access to Albany insiders, were shut out of meetings and vilified at rallies. “None of these historic new tenant protections would be possible without the fact that New York finally has a united Democratic Legislature,” the legislative leaders said in their statement. As Saturday’s deadline loomed, tempers and tensions had risen. Last week, hundreds of activists flooded the state Capitol, staging a rowdy demonstration and leading to dozens of arrests. Anxiety over the deadline, and fighting among some Democrats, seemed to heighten the intensity surrounding the rent negotiations. On Tuesday, lawmakers and staff members huddled into the evening as they hashed out the final details on the legislation. Left uncertain was the involvement of Cuomo, an outsize figure in any negotiations in the capital, who won a third term in November. Tenant activists had urged the Democratic majorities in the Senate and the Assembly to shut out Cuomo, who has received millions of dollars in real estate campaign contributions. Though legislative leaders did not explicitly agree, Tuesday’s package was the product of two-way negotiations, according to a person familiar with the talks. Cuomo, at a news conference before the deal was announced, had dismissed the idea that he needed to be involved. “There is no negotiation. I will sign the best bill they can pass,” he said. He did not immediately comment after the Legislature’s deal. Encouraged by the Democratic takeover, a statewide coalition of tenants had been pressuring lawmakers for months to pass nine bills collectively known as “universal rent control.” The deal reached Tuesday included several of those proposals or modified versions of them. Lawmakers agreed to abolish so-called vacancy decontrol, a provision that allows landlords to lift apartments out of regulation when their rents pass a certain threshold. The rule has led to the deregulation of more than 155,000 units since it was enacted in the 1990s. They also agreed to repeal the so-called vacancy bonus, which allows landlords to raise rents by up to 20% whenever a tenant moves out of a rent-stabilized apartment. And they pledged to rein in provisions that allow landlords to raise the rents of rent-regulated apartments when they renovate units or fix up buildings — perhaps the most hotly debated proposal of the package. Housing advocates have long argued that building owners routinely abuse those provisions, inflating construction costs to jack up rents and push out tenants. But Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City said they supported revising the provisions, not repealing them, because they provide incentives for landlords to keep buildings in livable conditions. The real estate industry has argued the same. To combat abuse, the state would be required to inspect and audit a portion of building wide improvements. Additional changes would make permanent discounts on rents known as “preferential rents,” preventing landlords from sharply increasing those rents when a regulated tenant renews a lease.

Only one component of the tenant activists’ platform was notably absent: a “good cause” eviction bill that would have made it considerably harder for landlords to evict tenants in most market-rate apartments statewide. The Legislature did agree to limit security deposits on apartments statewide to one month’s rent and to provide tenants in eviction proceedings with more time to hire a lawyer, address lease violations and pay overdue rent. The legislation would also make it a punishable misdemeanor for landlords to evict tenants by illegally locking them out or through force. While tenant groups did not win total victory, they applauded the overall legislative package. “I think this is a huge win for the tenant movement that will impact the lives of millions of renters in a way that beats back the real estate industry,” said Jonathan Westin, the executive director of New York Communities for Change, an advocacy group. “But we also feel we have a long way to go.” Source: pulse.ng Read the full article

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alfredrserrano · 4 years

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Here are the top-ranked commercial brokers in South Florida

(Illustration by Thomas Pullin)

For the South Florida commercial broker community, 2019 was a banner year. Yet three months into 2020, an alarming existential threat to the bullish momentum has emerged. As the first global crisis since the Great Recession, the coronavirus pandemic seems more than likely to short-circuit deal flow over the next two quarters, maybe more, according to recent reports from two top brokerages.

On March 4, JLL released a report stating that prolonged disruptions such as quarantines, cancellations of public events and closures of schools and businesses would create a pronounced impact on the economy. As of press time, we’ve seen President Donald Trump ban European nationals from flying into the U.S. City, county and state elected officials have virtually shut down all leisure activities such as dining out, going to the gym and drinking beers at a bar.

“At this juncture, it is far too early to make a specific call on this,” the JLL report stated. “But the risks clearly line up on the downside.”

If the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic is short, then the negative impact should only last a couple of quarters, the report predicted. But “if the impact persists, and the response becomes more pronounced, then the probability of our more prolonged, severe downside scenarios will increase,” the firm concluded.

Avison Young forecasted on March 3 that leasing activity across most sectors and markets would experience a decline in transaction volume, and some deals already in the works will get delayed.

“A heightened sense of uncertainty over the economic and business outlook will cause some deals to be withdrawn,” a report from the firm stated. “Fewer new transactions will be initiated, and some expansion plans will be put on hold.”

In South Florida, some institutional investor groups are hitting the pause button in order to figure out how to behave in this new environment, said Robert Given of Cushman & Wakefield.

Despite that, “we are seeing heightened activity the last two weeks,” Given said on March 13. “Investors would rather be in hard assets over the stock market. Overall, the debt rates are fueling CRE activity.”

Given leads a team that landed in second place on The Real Deal’s ranking of South Florida’s best-performing commercial brokers. To compile the ranking, researchers analyzed the 25 most expensive on-market, fee simple commercial sales in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties in 2019. If more than one agent from the same firm represented the same party in a deal, the sale price was divided by the number of brokers and the quotient was credited evenly to each broker.

If agents were members of official teams or worked on at least five deals with another broker or group of brokers, their deal volume was pro-rated and credited to the team. Portfolio deals that exclusively included properties in the aforementioned counties were counted; deals with properties outside these counties weren’t included in the analysis.

Most of the usual firms showed up, including CBRE, Cushman, JLL, Walker & Dunlop and Eastdil Secured. In the local market, brokerages seem to compete for sellers, while buyers largely do their research and market analysis in-house. Only Eastdil Secured, Darryl R. Kaplan Company and Casal Group represented buyers in the deals included in the ranking.

It’s not easy to go it alone in this business. The top two entries in our ranking were teams, from CBRE (with six members) and Cushman & Wakefield (with five teammates). The individual broker who brought in the highest volume in the ranking was Chris Conklin of Walker & Dunlop, who represented sellers in two multifamily deals, each priced over $100 million. Another individual top performer is Ernesto Casal, who runs his own local brokerage, Miami-based Casal Group, which represents major buyers like Brookfield in huge industrial deals.

Multifamily properties dominated the top 25 investment sales analyzed for the ranking. Cushman’s South Florida Multifamily Team reached the No. 2 spot by selling a few huge multifamily properties with a combined 1,720 units. The CBRE Capital Markets Institutional Properties Team, which took the top spot, exclusively sold office and industrial properties in the $70 million-to-$200 million range.

Kind of a big deal

CBRE South Florida’s Christian Lee and José Lobón led the top ranking team, which closed seven transactions totaling $773.8 million, according to TRD’s analysis. Among those deals, Lee and Lobón’s team marketed and sold two Class B office buildings in Fort Lauderdale and Miami for a combined $242.5 million. They also sold a Hialeah warehouse complex for $178 million, the largest industrial transaction in Miami-Dade last year.

Lee, Lobón and their partner Amy Julian have been working together for 10 years. The team is very close. “We eat together most days,” Lee said. “We gather outside of the office together often. We take great pride in what we do and strive to get better on every deal.”

Other CBRE brokers pulling their weight are Dennis Carson and Casey Rosen, co-leaders of the firm’s National Retail Partners Team, which placed eighth in the ranking. In 2019, the duo represented the Blackstone Group in selling a Costco-anchored shopping center in Royal Palm Beach. An affiliate of InvenTrust Properties paid $96.75 million for Southern Palm Crossing.

According to Lee and other brokers interviewed for this article, sales were largely driven by healthy economic conditions in the industrial, office and retail categories.

“Office is definitely in demand, and so is industrial,” said Hermen Rodriguez, a senior managing director in JLL’s Miami office.

Rodriguez, senior director Ike Ojala and director Matthew McCormack, who together placed ninth in the ranking, listed and sold a nearly 349,000-square-foot portfolio at Sawgrass International Corporate Park in Broward County. Brookdale Group paid $80.27 million for the site.

Rodriguez said he is not worried about the coronavirus crisis, but is monitoring new developments regularly. “You have to keep your eyes on things,” he said. “But debt pricing and loans are much more favorable in times of general unrest.”

Multifamily’s hot streak

In 2019, Cushman & Wakefield closed 60 multifamily deals between South and Central Florida involving roughly 13,000 units that sold for a total of $3.1 billion, Given said.

Two multifamily deals totaling $303 million snagged second place for his Cushman & Wakefield team. In one of those transactions, Given and his colleagues Troy Ballard, Zachary Sackley and Neal Victor handled the $208.75 million sale of two apartment complexes in Doral. The Blackstone Group bought the garden-style communities from the Related Group and Rockpoint Group, both of which were represented by the Cushman & Wakefield team.

Given told TRD that Cushman & Wakefield also did four separate deals between $140 million and $250 million involving buyers he could not name due to nondisclosure agreements.

Given explained that multifamily institutional investors are searching for Florida assets to buy as they move out of states that have enacted rent control laws.

“It was private capital out of New York, which we are seeing a lot of,” Given said. “Last year and this year we are getting a lot of movement from the Northeast U.S. and California.”

Hospitality’s biggest sale

Institutional investor demand for Florida’s five-star resorts propelled a pair of JLL executives to third place in the TRD analysis with a single marquee deal. Gregory Rumpel and Jeffrey Davis marketed and sold the 1,047-room Boca Raton Resort & Club on behalf of Blackstone Group. Billionaire Michael Dell paid $461.6 million, representing nearly $441,000 per room, for the 337-acre resort at 501 East Camino Real.

“Obviously the Boca Raton Resort & Club was the big headline transaction,” Rumpel said. “That was a deal with a fairly lengthy time frame. But we had a patient seller and a patient buyer.”

In 2019, JLL’s hotel capital markets team expanded its market share in Florida even though overall transaction volume was down a little compared to the previous year, Rumpel said. “This is a market that ebbs and flows,” he said. “We are pretty active in Tampa and Orlando right now.”

While he and Davis lead their own teams at JLL, brokers in the Miami office collaborate on just about every deal they get, Rumpel said. “Jeffrey Davis and I have been working deals together for 15 years,” Rumpel said. “There has always been strong respect and support between our respective offices.”

Office-ial deal

Another broker who cracked the top 10 with a single transaction is Darryl Kaplan, who ranked seventh in the TRD analysis. He represented Gatsby Enterprises and Master Mind LLC, entities controlled by New York-based real estate investors Nader Shalom and Babak Ebrahimzadeh, respectively. Together they purchased 800 Brickell — a 209,122-square-foot office building and an adjacent nine-story parking garage. Gatsby and Master Mind paid $125.5 million to the seller, Deutsche Bank’s RREEF, which was represented by CBRE’s Lee and LobÓn.

Kaplan told TRD that the buyers wanted to acquire a premier office property in South Florida. “We were made aware 800 Brickell was on the market and made it a high priority to acquire it,” Kaplan said. “We looked at two others that we passed on. For us, 800 Brickell was the prize.”

He said his clients began looking at 800 Brickell in February of last year and went through several rounds of bidding and negotiations. He said Gatsby and Master Mind plan on renovating 800 Brickell from a Class B to a Class A office building that will have a 12,000-square-foot fine dining restaurant and new space for a bank tenant.

Since 1989, Kaplan has headed his own brokerage, representing property owners on the buy and leasing side. He also provides retail real estate services to upscale retailers and restaurants looking to expand throughout the U.S.

Kaplan said the coronavirus crisis has not deterred any of his New York clients from making deals in South Florida yet, but there is a heightened sense of awareness. “People are being cautious,” he said. “Everybody is holding their breath.”

The post Here are the top-ranked commercial brokers in South Florida appeared first on The Real Deal Miami.

from The Real Deal Miami https://therealdeal.com/miami/2020/03/24/here-are-the-top-ranked-commercial-brokers-in-south-florida/ via IFTTT

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financingideas-blog · 5 years

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US briefing: conflict in Yemen, climate change and finance, Notre Dame

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US briefing: conflict in Yemen, climate change and finance, Notre Dame

Wednesdays top story: Trump vetoes resolution to end US military support for Saudis. Plus, how school shootings became part of the American psyche

Subscribe now to receive the morning briefing by email.

Good morning, Im Tim Walker with todays essential stories.

President blocks bipartisan bill on US involvement in Yemen

Donald Trump has vetoed a bipartisan bill passed by both houses of Congress that would have put an end to US military support for Saudi-led forces in Yemen. The US provides billions of dollars in arms to a Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed rebels in a conflict that has caused the worlds most pressing humanitarian crisis. But Trump, who has a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, said the congressional resolution was an unnecessary, dangerous attempt to weaken [his] constitutional authorities.

Novichok sceptic. Trump wrote off the 2018 chemical weapons attack on a Russian defector in Salisbury, England, as legitimate spy games, and was reluctant to expel suspected Russian spies in solidarity with the UK, according to a report by the New York Times.

North Korea. Satellite images of North Koreas main nuclear site suggest the regime may be reprocessing radioactive material to make bomb fuel, a US thinktank has warned, underscoring the failure of Trumps recent denuclearisation talks with Kim Jong-un.

Bank governors warn financial industry to face climate threat

Mark Carney at the IMF and World Bank spring meetings in Washington earlier this month. Photograph: James Lawler Duggan/Reuters

The governors of the Bank of England and Frances central bank have issued a warning to the worlds financial industry that it must reform in the face of the existential threat from climate change. In a letter published in the Guardian on Wednesday, Mark Carney and Franois Villeroy de Galhau said the cuts to carbon emissions needed to avoid environmental catastrophe requires a massive reallocation of capital, and those industries that failed to adjust will fail to exist.

Green finance. The letter comes with the launch of a report by the Network for Greening the Financial System, an international group of central banks and financial regulators, which details the measures necessary for financiers to tackle climate change.

London protests. Climate activists led by the group Extinction Rebellion say they intend to escalate their protests to disrupt public transport, despite almost 300 arrests in the UK capital this week.

New interior chief met lawyer linked to Zinke scandal

Donald Trump with his new secretary of the interior, David Bernhardt. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Trumps new secretary of the interior, David Bernhardt, met a lawyer for the Native American tribe linked to one of the scandals swirling around his predecessor, Ryan Zinke, newly released agency records have revealed. In April 2018, Bernhardt met Marc Kasowitz, a former Trump lawyer whose firm represented the Schaghticoke tribal nation. The Schaghticoke opposed a request by two other tribes to operate a casino in Connecticut. Zinkes decision to block that request is under investigation by a grand jury.

Conflict of interest. Bernhardt, who was confirmed as interior secretary last week, is a former energy lobbyist described by environmentalists as a walking conflict of interest.

Macron vows to rebuild Notre Dame within five years

Play Video

1:25

Drone footage shows Notre Dame Cathedral fire damage video

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has promised Notre Dame Cathedral will be rebuilt more beautiful than before and within five years, in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics. But experts have said repairs to the fire-damaged landmark could take decades. More than 800m ($905m) has already been raised for the restoration, mainly thanks to pledges from French billionaires. Investigators working on a timeline of the fire said the structure came 15 to 30 minutes from complete destruction.

Historic blaze. The restoration of Notre Dame will inevitably draw on lessons from other historic landmarks that suffered a similar fate, including York Minster and Windsor Castle in England.

Crib sheet

The US attorney general, William Barr, says he will block immigration judges from offering detained asylum seekers at the border the chance of release while their cases are heard, overruling a precedent set by the Bush administration in 2005.

Almost 193 million Indonesians are expected to vote on Wednesday in the worlds biggest direct presidential election, with ballot boxes being transported to 800,000 polling stations, including by canoe and elephant.

The United Conservative party has defeated the incumbent progressive government in Albertas regional election, pledging to boost the Canadian provinces flagging oil and gas sector and scale back environmental policies, thus setting the stage for a standoff with the federal government.

The profound lack of diversity in the artificial intelligence field risks perpetuating historic gender and racial biases and has reached a moment of reckoning, according to a report by a New York University research centre.

Must-reads

Police conduct an Active Shooter Response Training exercise at a middle school in Fountain, Colorado. Photograph: Dougal Brownlie/AP

Columbine at 20: how a single attack became the routine

Schools in Denver were on lockdown this week following threats from a woman reportedly infatuated by the 1999 Columbine attack. As the Colorado community prepares to mark 20 years since Americas first major school shooting, Amanda Holpuch asks how these brutal events became part of the nations psyche.

The trailblazing school for trans people

The Bachillerato Popular Trans Mocha Celis in Buenos Aires is the first school of its kind in the world, helping adults who never completes high school to obtain their diplomas in a programme tailored to the trans community. Natalie Alcoba met the students.

Legal weed struggles to light up in Canada

Six months after Canada became the first G7 country to legalise marijuana, the governments cannabis stores and approved legal producers are struggling to meet demand, driving users back to the black market, as Leyland Cecco reports from Toronto.

Does everyone really love Mayor Pete?

The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is the unlikely star of the Democratic presidential primary. But how popular is Pete Buttigieg in his home town? As David Smith discovered, his mayoralty is a success by several measures, but he still has some local critics.

Opinion

Since 2004, Pink Floyds Roger Waters has respected the cultural picket line established by the Palestinians, who appealed to artists not to perform in Israel. He says Madonna and others due to appear at the Eurovision song contest in Tel Aviv ought to do the same.

To perform in Israel is a lucrative gig but to do so serves to normalise the occupation, the apartheid, the ethnic cleansing, the incarceration of children, the slaughter of unarmed protesters.

Sport

Lionel Messi was on dazzling form as Barcelona swept aside Manchester United at the Camp Nou on Tuesday to proceed to the Champions League semi-finals. United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjr admitted his club needed to rebuild after the 4-0 aggregate defeat, the heaviest in its history.

Meanwhile in Turin, a Cristiano Ronaldo goal was not enough to overcome giant-killers Ajax, who added a quarter-final victory over Juventus to their defeat of Real Madrid in the previous round. The match-winner came from their 19-year-old captain, Matthijs de Ligt.

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myfinancialguideme-blog · 5 years

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US briefing: conflict in Yemen, climate change and finance, Notre Dame

New Post has been published on https://financeguideto.com/must-see/us-briefing-conflict-in-yemen-climate-change-and-finance-notre-dame/

US briefing: conflict in Yemen, climate change and finance, Notre Dame

Wednesdays top story: Trump vetoes resolution to end US military support for Saudis. Plus, how school shootings became part of the American psyche

Subscribe now to receive the morning briefing by email.

Good morning, Im Tim Walker with todays essential stories.

President blocks bipartisan bill on US involvement in Yemen

Bank governors warn financial industry to face climate threat

Mark Carney at the IMF and World Bank spring meetings in Washington earlier this month. Photograph: James Lawler Duggan/Reuters

New interior chief met lawyer linked to Zinke scandal

Donald Trump with his new secretary of the interior, David Bernhardt. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Conflict of interest. Bernhardt, who was confirmed as interior secretary last week, is a former energy lobbyist described by environmentalists as a walking conflict of interest.

Macron vows to rebuild Notre Dame within five years

Play Video

1:25

Drone footage shows Notre Dame Cathedral fire damage video

Historic blaze. The restoration of Notre Dame will inevitably draw on lessons from other historic landmarks that suffered a similar fate, including York Minster and Windsor Castle in England.

Crib sheet

Must-reads

Police conduct an Active Shooter Response Training exercise at a middle school in Fountain, Colorado. Photograph: Dougal Brownlie/AP

Columbine at 20: how a single attack became the routine

The trailblazing school for trans people

Legal weed struggles to light up in Canada

Does everyone really love Mayor Pete?

Opinion

To perform in Israel is a lucrative gig but to do so serves to normalise the occupation, the apartheid, the ethnic cleansing, the incarceration of children, the slaughter of unarmed protesters.

Sport

The US morning briefing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If youre not already signed up, subscribe now.

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theinvinciblenoob · 5 years

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Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg obsessed over the wrong bit of history. Or else didn’t study his preferred slice of classical antiquity carefully enough, faced, as he now is, with an existential crisis of ‘fake news’ simultaneously undermining trust in his own empire and in democracy itself.

A recent New Yorker profile — questioning whether the Facebook founder can fix the creation he pressed upon the world before the collective counter-pressure emanating from his billions-strong social network does for democracy what Brutus did to Caesar — touched in passing on Zuckerberg’s admiration for Augustus, the first emperor of Rome.

“Basically, through a really harsh approach, he established two hundred years of world peace,” was the Facebook founder’s concise explainer of his man-crush, freely accepting there had been some crushing “trade-offs” involved in delivering that august outcome.

Zuckerberg’s own trade-offs, engaged in his quest to maximize the growth of his system, appear to have achieved a very different kind of outcome.

Empire of hurt

If you gloss over the killing of an awful lot of people, the Romans achieved and devised many ingenious things. But the population that lived under Augustus couldn’t have imagined an information-distribution network with the power, speed and sheer amplifying reach of the internet. Let alone the data-distributing monster that is Facebook — an unprecedented information empire unto itself that’s done its level best to heave the entire internet inside its corporate walls.

Literacy in Ancient Rome was dependent on class, thereby limiting who could read the texts that were produced, and requiring word of mouth for further spread.

The ‘internet of the day’ would best resemble physical gatherings — markets, public baths, the circus — where gossip passed as people mingled. Though of course information could only travel as fast as a person (or an animal assistant) could move a message.

In terms of regular news distribution, Ancient Rome had the Acta Diurna, A government-produced daily gazette that put out the official line on noteworthy public events.

These official texts, initially carved on stone or metal tablets, were distributed by being exposed in a frequented public place. The Acta is sometimes described as a proto-newspaper, given the mix of news it came to contain.

Minutes of senate meetings were included in the Acta by Julius Caesar. But, in a very early act of censorship, Zuckerberg’s hero ended the practice — preferring to keep more fulsome records of political debate out of the literate public sphere.

“What news was published thereafter in the acta diurna contained only such parts of the senatorial debates as the imperial government saw fit to publish,” writes Frederick Cramer, in an article on censorship in Ancient Rome.

Augustus, the grand-nephew and adopted son of Caesar, evidently did not want the risk of political opponents using the outlet to influence opinion, his great-uncle having been assassinated in a murderous plot hatched by conspiring senators.

The Death of Caesar

Under Augustus, the Acta Diurna was instead the mouthpiece of the “monarchic faction.”

“He rightly believed this method to be less dangerous than to muzzle the senators directly,” is Cramer’s assessment of Augustus’s decision to terminate publication of the senatorial protocols, limiting at a stroke how physical voices raised against him in the Senate could travel and lodge in the wider public consciousness by depriving them of space on the official platform.

Augustus also banned anonymous writing in a bid to control incendiary attacks distributed via pamphlets and used legal means to command the burning of incriminatory writings (with some condemned authors issued with ‘literary death-sentences’ for their entire life’s work).

The first emperor of Rome understood all too well the power of “publicare et propagare.”

It’s something of a grand irony, then, that Zuckerberg failed to grasp the lesson for the longest time, letting the eviscerating fire of fake news rage on unchecked until the inferno was licking at the seat of his own power.

So instead of Facebook’s brand and business invoking the sought-for sense of community, it’s come to appear like a layer cake of fakes, iced with hate speech horrors.

On the fake front, there are fake accounts, fake news, inauthentic ads, faux verifications and questionable metrics. Plus a truck tonne of spin and cynical blame shifting manufactured by the company itself.

There’s some murkier propaganda, too; a PR firm Facebook engaged in recent years to help with its string of reputation-decimating scandals reportedly worked to undermine critical voices by seeding a little inflammatory smears on its behalf.

Publicare et propagare, indeed.

Perhaps Zuckerberg thought Ancient Rome’s bloody struggles were so far-flung in history that any leaderly learnings he might extract would necessarily be abstract, and could be cherry-picked and selectively filtered with the classical context so comfortably remote from the modern world. A world that, until 2017, Zuckerberg had intended to render, via pro-speech defaults and systematic hostility to privacy, “more open and connected.” Before it got too difficult for him to totally disregard the human and societal costs.

Revising the mission statement a year-and-a-half ago, Zuckerberg had the chance to admit he’d messed up by mistaking his own grandstanding world-changing ambition for a worthy cause.

Of course he sidestepped, writing instead that he would commit his empire (he calls it a “community”) to strive for a specific positive outcome.

He didn’t go full Augustus with the new goal (no ‘world peace’) — but recast Facebook’s mission to: “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”

There are, it’s painful to say, “communities” of neo-Nazis and white supremacists thriving on Facebook. But they certainly don’t believe in bringing the world closer together. So Facebook’s reworked mission statement is a tacit admission that its tools can help spread hate by saying it hopes for the opposite outcome. Even as Zuckerberg continues to house voices on his platform that seek to deny historical outrages like the Holocaust, which is the very definition of antisemitic hate speech.

“I used to think that if we just gave people a voice and helped them connect, that would make the world better by itself. In many ways it has. But our society is still divided,” he wrote in June 2017, eliding his role as emperor of the Facebook platform, in fomenting the societal division of which he typed. “Now I believe we have a responsibility to do even more. It’s not enough to simply connect the world, we must also work to bring the world closer together.”

This year his personal challenge was also set at “fixing Facebook.”

Also this year: Zuckerberg made a point of defending allowing Holocaust deniers on his platform, then scrambled to add the caveat that he finds such views “deeply offensive.” (That particular Facebook content policy has stood unflinching for almost a decade.)

It goes without saying that the Nazis of Hitler’s Germany understood the terrible power of propaganda, too.

More recently, faced with the consequences of a moral and ethical failure to grapple with hateful propaganda and junk news, Facebook has said it will set up an external policy committee to handle some content policy decisions next year.

But only at a higher and selective appeal tier, after layers of standard internal reviews. It’s also not clear how this committee can be truly independent from Facebook.

Quite possibly it’ll just be another friction-laced distraction tactic, akin to Facebook’s self-serving ‘Hard Questions’ series.

WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 11: Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on April 11, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Revised mission statements, personal objectives and lashings of self-serving blog posts (playing up the latest self-forged “accountability” fudge), have done nothing to dim the now widely held view that Facebook specifically, and social media in general, profits off of accelerated outrage.

Cries to that effect have only grown louder this year, two years on from revelations that Kremlin election propaganda maliciously targeting the U.S. presidential election had reached hundreds of millions of Facebook users, fueled by a steady stream of fresh outrages found spreading and catching fire on these “social” platforms.

How Russia’s online influence campaign engaged with millions for years

Like so many self-hyping technologies, social media seems terribly deceptively named.

“Antisocial media” is, all too often, rather closer to the mark. And Zuckerberg, the category’s still youthful warlord, looks less “harshly pacifying Augustus” than modern day Ozymandias, forever banging on about his unifying mission while being drowned out by the sound and fury coming from the platform he built to programmatically profit from conflict.

And still the young leader longs for the mighty works he might yet do.

Look on my works, ye mighty…

For all the positive connections flowing from widespread access to social media tools (which of course Zuckerberg prefers to fix on), evidence of the tech’s divisive effects are now impossible for everyone else to ignore: Whether you look at the wildly successful megaphoning of Kremlin propaganda targeting elections and (genuine) communities by pot stirring across all sorts of identity divides; or algorithmic recommendation engines that systematically point young and impressionable minds toward extremist ideologies (and/or brain-meltingly ridiculous conspiracy theories) as an eyeball-engagement strategy for scaling ad revenue in the attention economy. Or, well, Brexit.

Whatever your view on whether or not Facebook content is actually influencing opinion, attention is undoubtedly being robbed. And the company has a long history of utilizing addictive design strategies to keep users hooked.

To the point where it’s publicly admitted it has an over-engagement problem and claims to be tweaking its algorithmic recipes to dial down the attention incursion. (Even as its engagement-based business model demands the dial be yanked back the other way.)

Facebook’s problems with fakery (“inauthentic content” in the corporate parlance) and hate speech — which, without the hammer blow of media-level regulation, is forever doomed to slip through Facebook’s one-size-fits-all “community standards” — are, it argues, merely a reflection of humanity’s flaws.

So it’s essentially asking to be viewed as a global mirror, and so be let off the moral hook. A literal vox populi — warts, fakes, hate and all.

Zuckerberg created the most effective tool for spreading propaganda the world has ever known without — so he claims — bothering to consider how people might use it.

It was never selling a fair-face, this self-serving, revisionist hot-take suggests; rather Facebook wants to be accepted as, at best, a sort of utilitarian plug that’s on a philanthropic, world-spanning infrastructure quest to stick a socket in everyone. Y’know, for their own good.

“It’s fashionable to treat the dysfunctions of social media as the result of the naivete of early technologists who failed to foresee these outcomes. The truth is that the ability to build Facebook-like services is relatively common,” wrote Cory Doctorow earlier this year in a damning assessment of the Facebook founder’s moral vacuum. “What was rare was the moral recklessness necessary to go through with it.”

Even now Zuckerberg is refusing the moral and ethical burden of editorial responsibility for the content his tools auto-publish and algorithmically amplify, every instant of every day, using proprietary information-shaping distribution hierarchies that accelerate machine-selected clickbait through the blood-brain barrier of 2.2 billion-plus users.

These algorithmically prioritized comms are positioned to influence opinion and drive intention at an unprecedented, global scale.

Asked by the New Yorker about the inflammatory misinformation peddled by InfoWars conspiracy theorist and hate speech “preacher,” Alex Jones, earlier this year, Zuckerberg’s gut instinct was to argue again to be let off the hook. “I don’t believe that it is the right thing to ban a person for saying something that is factually incorrect,” was his disingenuous response.

It was left to the journalist to point out InfoWars’ malicious disinformation is rather more than just factually incorrect.

Facebook has taken down some individual InfoWars videos this year, in its usual case by case style, where it deemed there was a direct incitement to violence. And in August it also pulled some InfoWars pages (“for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies”).

But it has certainly not de-platformed the professional purveyor of hateful conspiracy theories who sells supplements alongside his attention-grabbing lies.

One academic study, published two months ago, found much of the removed InfoWars content had managed to move “swiftly back” onto the Facebook platform. Like radio and silence, Facebook hates a content vacuum.

The problem is its own platform also sells stuff alongside attention-grabbing lies. So Jones is just the Facebook business model if it could pull on a blue suit and shout.

“Senator, we run ads”

It’s clear that Facebook’s adherence to a rules-based, reactive formula for assessing speech sets few if any meaningful moral standards. The company has also preferred to try offloading tricky decisions to third-party fact checkers and soon a quasi-external committee — a strategy that looks intended to sustain the suggestive lie that, at base, Facebook is just a “neutral platform.”

Yet Zuckerberg’s business is the business of influence itself. He admits as much. “Senator, we run ads,” he told Congress this April when asked how the platform turns a profit.

If the ads don’t work that’s an awful lot of money being pointlessly poured into Facebook’s coffers.

At the same time, the risk of malicious manipulation of Facebook’s machinery of mass manipulation is something the company claims it simply hadn’t thought of until very, very recently.

That’s the official explanation for why senior executives failed to pay any mind to the tsunami of politically charged propaganda blooming across its U.S. platform, yet originating in Saint Petersburg and environs.

An astute political operator like Augustus was entirely alive to the risks of political propaganda. Hence making sure to keep a lid on domestic political opponents, while allowing them to let off steam in the Senate where a wider audience wouldn’t hear them.

Zuckerberg, by contrast, created the most effective tool for spreading propaganda the world has ever known without — so he claims — bothering to consider how people might use it.

That’s either radical stupidity or willful recklessness.

Zuckerberg implies the former. “I always believed people are basically good,” he wrote in his grandiose explainer on rethinking Facebook’s mission statement last year.

Though you’d think someone with a fascination for classical antiquity, and a special admiration for an emperor whose harsh trade-offs apparently included arranging the execution of his own grandson, might have found plenty to test that theory to a natural breaking point.

Safe to say, such a naive political mind wouldn’t have lasted long in Ancient Rome.

But Zuckerberg is no politician. He’s a new-age ad salesman with a crush on one of history’s canniest political operators — who happened to know the power and value of propaganda. And who also knew that propaganda could be deadly.

If you imagine Facebook’s platform as a modern day Acta Diurna — albeit, one updated continuously, delivered direct to citizens’ pockets, and with no single distributed copy ever being exactly the same — the organ is clearly not working toward any kind of societal order, crushing or otherwise.

Under Zuckerberg’s programmatic instruction, Facebook’s daily notices are selected for their capacity to emotionally tug at the individual. By design the medium agitates because the platform exists to trade attention.

It’s really the opposite of “civilization building.” Outrage and tribalism are grist to the algorithmic mill. It’s much closer to the tabloid news mantra — of “if it bleeds it leads.”

But Facebook goes further, using “free speech” as a cloaking mechanism to cross the ethical line and conceal the ugly violence of a business that profits by ripping up the social compact.

The speech-before-truth philosophy underpinning Zuckerberg’s creation intrinsically works against the civic, community values he claims to champion. So at bottom, there’s yet another fake: no “global community” inside the walled garden, just a globally scaled marketing empire that’s had raging success in growing programmatic ad sales by tearing genuine communities apart.

Here confusion and anger reign.

The empire of Zuckerberg is a drear domain indeed.

One hundred cardboard cutouts of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg stand outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, April 10, 2018. Advocacy group Avaaz is calling attention to what the groups says are hundreds of millions of fake accounts still spreading disinformation on Facebook. (Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Fake news of the 1640s

Might things have turned out differently for Facebook — and, well, for the world — if its founder had obsessed over a different period in history?

The English Civil War of the 1640s has much to recommend it as a study topic to those trying to understand and unpick the social impacts of the hyper modern phenomenon of social media, given the historical parallels of society turned upside during a moment of information revolution.

It might seen counterintuitive to look so far back in time to try to understand the societal impacts of cutting-edge communications technologies. But human nature can be surprisingly constant.

Internet platforms are also socio-technical tools, which means ignoring human behavior is a really dumb thing to do.

As the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, said recently of modern day anthropogenic platforms: “As we’re designing the system, we’re designing society.”

The design challenge is all about understanding human behaviour — so you know how and where to place your ethical guardrails.

Rather than, per the Zuckerberg fashion, embarking on some kind of a quixotic, decade-plus quest to chase a grand unifying formula of IFTTT reaction statements to respond consistently to every possible human (and inhuman) act across the globe.

Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker made a related warning earlier this year, when she called for humanities and ethics to be baked into STEM learning, saying: “One thing that’s happened in 2018 is that we’ve looked at the platforms, and the thinking behind the platforms, and the lack of focus on impact or result. It crystallised for me that if we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behaviour, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life.”

What’s fascinating about the English Civil War to anyone interested in current day Internet speech versus censorship ethics trade-offs, is that in a similar fashion to how social media has radically lowered the distribution barrier for online speech, by giving anyone posting stuff online the chance of reaching a large audience, England’s long-standing regime of monarchical censorship collapsed in 1641, leading to a great efflorescence of speech and ideas as pamphlets suddenly and freely poured off printing presses.

This included an outpouring of radical political views from groups agitating for religious reforms, popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, common ownership and even proto women’s rights — laying out democratic concepts and liberal ideas centuries ahead of the nation itself becoming a liberal democracy.

But, at the same time, pamphlets were also used during the English Civil War period as a cynical political propaganda tool to whip up racial and sectarian hatred, most markedly in the parliament’s fight against the king.

Especially vicious hate speech was directed at the Irish. And historians suggest anti-Irish propaganda helped fuel the rampage that Cromwell’s soldiers went on in Ireland to crush the rebellion, having been fed a diet of violent claims in uncensored pamphlet print — such as that the Irish were killing and eating babies.

For a modern day parallel of information technology charging up ethnic hate you only have to look to Facebook’s impact in Myanmar where its platform was appropriated by military elements to incite genocide against the minority Rohingya population — leading to terrible human rights abuses in the modern era. There’s no shortage of other awful examples either.

“There are genuine atrocities in Ireland but suddenly the pamphleteers realise that this sells and suddenly you get a pornography of violence when everyone is rushing to put out these incredibly violent and unpleasant stories, and people are rushing to buy them,” says University of Southampton early modern history professor, Mark Stoyle, discussing the parliamentary pamphleteers’ evolving tactics in the English Civil War.

“It makes the Irish rebellion look even worse than it was. And it sort of raises even greater levels of bitterness and hostility towards the Irish. I would say those sorts of things had a very serious effect.”

The overarching lesson of history is that propaganda is baked indelibly into the human condition. Speech and lies come wrapped around the same tongue.

Stoyle says pamphlets printed during the English Civil War period also revived superstitious beliefs in witchcraft, leading to an upsurge in prosecutions and killings on charges of witchcraft which had dipped in earlier years under tighter state controls on popular printed accounts of witch trials.

“Once the royal regime collapses, the king’s not there to stop people prosecuting witches, he’s not there to stop these pamphlets appearing. There’s a massive upsurge in pamphlets about witches and in no time at all there’s a massive upsurge in prosecutions of witches. That’s when Matthew Hopkins, the witchfinder general, kills several hundred men and women in East Anglia on charges of being witches. And again I think the civil war propaganda has helped to fuel that.”

If you think modern day internet platforms don’t have to worry about crazy superstitions like witchcraft and devil worship just Google “Frazzledrip” (a conspiracy theory that’s been racking up the views on YouTube this year which claims Hillary Clinton and longtime aide Huma Abedin sexually assaulted a girl and drank her blood). The Clinton-targeted viral “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory also combines bizarre claims of Satanic rituals with child abuse. None of which stopped it catching fire on social media.

Indeed, a whole host of ridiculous fictions are being algorithmically accelerated into wider view, here in the 21st (not the 17th) century.

And it’s internet platforms that rank speech above truth that are in the distribution saddle.

Stoyle, who has written a book on witchcraft and propaganda during the English Civil War, believes the worst massacre of the period was also fueled by political disinformation targeting the king’s female camp followers. Parliamentary pamphleteers wrote that the women were prostitutes. Or claimed they were Irish women who had killed English men and women in Ireland. There were also claims some were witches.

“One of these pamphlets describes the women in the king’s camp — just literally a week before the massacre — and it presents them all as prostitutes and it says something like ‘these women they revel in their hot blood and they deserve a hotter punishment’,” he tells us. “Just a week later they’re all cut down. And I don’t think that’s coincidence.”

In the massacre Stoyle says parliamentary soldiers set about the women, killing 100 and mutilating scores more. “This is just unheard of,” he adds.

The early modern period even had the equivalent of viral clickbait in pamphlet form when a ridiculous story about a dog owned by the king’s finest cavalry commander, prince Rupert, takes off. The poodle was claimed to be a witch in disguise which had invested Rupert with magical military powers — hence, the pamphlets proclaimed, his huge successes on the battlefield.

“In a time when we’ve got no pictures at all of some of the most important men and women in the country we’ve got six different pictures of prince Rupert’s dog circulating. So this is absolutely fake news with a vengeance,” says Stoyle.

And while parliamentarian pamphlet writers are generally assumed to be behind this particular sequence of Civil War fakes, Stoyle believes one particularly blatant pamphlet in the series — which claimed the dog was not only a witch but that the prince was having sex with it — is a doubly bogus hoax fake.

“I’m pretty certain now it was actually written by a royalist to poke fun at the parliamentarians for being so gullible and believing this stuff,” he says. “But like so many hoaxes it was a hoax that went wrong — it was done so well that most people who read it actually believed it. And it was just a few highly educated royalists who got the joke and laughed at it. And so in a way it was like a hoax that backfired horribly.

“A classic case of fake news biting the person who put it out in the bum.”

Of course this was also the prince’s dog pamphlet that got the most attention and “viral engagement” of the time, as other pamphlet writers picked up on it and started referencing it.

So again the lesson about clickbait economics is a very old one, if you only know where to look.

Fake news most certainly wasn’t suddenly born in 2016. Modern hoaxers like Jones (who has also been at it for far longer than two years) are just appropriating cutting-edge tech tools to plough a very old furrow.

Equally, it really shouldn’t be any kind of news flash that free speech can have a horribly dark side.

The overarching lesson of history is that propaganda is baked indelibly into the human condition. Speech and lies come wrapped around the same tongue.

The stark consequences that can flow from maliciously minded lies being crafted to move a particular audience are also writ large across countless history books.

So when Facebook says — caught fencing Kremlin lies — “we just didn’t think of that” it’s a truly illiterate response to an age-old problem.

And as the philosophical saying goes: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

That’s really the most important history lesson of all.

“As humans we have this terrible ability to be angels and devils — to use things for wonderful purposes and to use things for terrible purposes that were never really intended or thought of,” says Stoyle, when asked whether, at a Facebook-level scale, we’re now seeing some of the limits of the benefits of free speech. “I’m not saying that the people who wrote some of these pamphlets in the Civil War expected it would lead to terrible massacres and killings but it did and they sort of played their part in that.

“It’s just an amazingly interesting period because there’s all this stuff going on and some of it is very dark and some of it’s more positive. And I suppose we’re quite well aware of the dark side of social media now and how it has got a tendency to let almost the worst human instincts come out in it. But some of these things were, I think, forces for good.”

‘Balancing angels and devils’ would certainly be quite the job description to ink on Zuckerberg’s business card.

“History teaches you to take all the evidence, weigh it up and then say who’s saying this, where does it come from, why are they saying it, what’s the purpose,” adds Stoyle, giving some final thoughts on why studying the past can provide a way through modern day information chaos. “Those are the tools that you need to make your way through this minefield.”

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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fmservers · 5 years

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What history could tell Mark Zuckerberg